[HN Gopher] How my school gamed the stats
___________________________________________________________________
How my school gamed the stats
Author : optimalsolver
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-02-21 08:44 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.greaterwrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.greaterwrong.com)
| ilamont wrote:
| In the U.S., I heard from a parent whose kids go to exclusive
| private schools that the schools will often hold new students
| back a year or even two, as they are more likely to do better in
| class, do well on standardized tests, and exceed in certain
| sports - all of which burnish the schools' reputations and lead
| to better college placements, which often means Ivies and other
| elite schools.
|
| Another option for students who struggle at public or private
| high schools (and whose parents can afford it) is a "post-
| graduate" year at a dedicated private academy for 18 and 19 year
| olds. The main purpose of these academies is to bring their
| grades and SATs up to a good level so they are more likely to get
| in to a good college. I know two people who did this in the 90s,
| one of them got into NYU after the post-grad academy.
| [deleted]
| etothepii wrote:
| I can't imagine teachers at my school ever actually cheating by
| giving results in exams. Teachers Unions in the UK fought very
| hard to remove exam invigilation from Teachers responsibilities,
| which makes that much harder.
|
| However, the inspection thing chimes strongly with my experience
| and the focus on the resistant materials track of design
| technology as a way that _anyone_ can get a 'good pass'.
|
| All the effort went in to getting border line D kids to
| borderline C. If you were a borderline 5C candidate (a key metric
| in the UK at the time) you were on detention every night to try
| and trip over the line.
| opheliate wrote:
| UK state schools absolutely suck. My experience mirrors that of
| the author in a lot of ways.
|
| I will say though, some of the content of this article appears
| outdated, and the author doesn't seem to have checked to see if
| their memory lines up with the reality of how things work today.
|
| For example, about Ofsted inspections:
|
| > Now, you may imagine that these inspections would be
| unannounced, so as to best get a real image of how a school
| works. Not the case. They're scheduled well in advance.
|
| This is absolutely not the case today. Schools have a general
| idea of when an inspection will be (i.e: what season of the year)
| based on when their last inspection was, but they're only told
| that an inspection will happen on the morning of the inspection
| [0]. Schools don't really have a window of opportunity to game
| the inspection in the way the author describes.
|
| > Another way the stats were gamed was by not recording bad
| behavior
|
| This whole section seems a little naive. Teachers in lower sets
| have an incredibly tough job, and have to try to support those
| students who genuinely want to learn, but are struggling, while
| also managing the behaviour of disruptive children. Sometimes, it
| is the better option to just allow some disruptive behaviour
| slide (e.g: swearing) rather than interrupting the whole lesson
| just to deal with one kid. A lot of the time, if behaviour
| doesn't provoke any response, it won't escalate. As the author
| says, if a student is actually aggressive towards other students,
| then obviously action is taken, but I'm not sure they quite
| appreciate how difficult it is to try to teach a struggling
| class.
|
| wrt cheating, it definitely happens. I'm not personally aware of
| any examples quite as extreme as what the author described, but I
| know my Spanish teacher turned a blind eye while I let my friends
| copy my work, for example, and I'm sure in the lower sets
| behaviour such as this was more widespread. I will say though,
| the exams the author is talking about here are GCSEs. They don't
| determine your ability to get into university, they're only used
| by 6th-forms (equivalent of US high school) to determine what
| subjects you can study. While they absolutely affect parents'
| perception of schools, they are not quite as serious as if
| students were receiving A-levels based on cheating. Also,
| students choose GCSE subjects. If someone only speaks 20 words of
| French, it's unlikely they would choose to study French.
|
| 0:
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
| bArray wrote:
| > This is absolutely not the case today. Schools have a general
| idea of when an inspection will be (i.e: what season of the
| year) based on when their last inspection was, but they're only
| told that an inspection will happen on the morning of the
| inspection [0].
|
| I have family still in the school system in the UK - but they
| still get advanced notice. Essentially somebody at the school
| either knows the inspector or somebody very close to them, and
| gets a tip off about when it will occur. The system is still
| corrupt.
|
| One of the biggest things they do is to take a disruptive child
| and literally lock them up in a building called "room 101". The
| entire school would have an assembly on that morning at very
| first thing and told to behave or else.
|
| Half of the stories reflect exactly cases I know to have
| happened in my local secondary schools, where both students and
| teachers have acted badly, and in many cases illegally.
| Honestly, it really makes home schooling an attractive option
| if you can afford to do so.
| opheliate wrote:
| > Essentially somebody at the school either knows the
| inspector or somebody very close to them, and gets a tip off
| about when it will occur.
|
| That's impressive corruption. My mother works in one of the
| local secondary schools, and they absolutely do not get know
| when inspections will occur, I guess that really depends on
| the school.
| michaelt wrote:
| I don't know anything about corruption - but I _do_ know
| multiple inspectors turn up together, and most inspectors
| are themselves former teachers.
|
| So it's easy to imagine how occasionally an inspector would
| have an old friend at the school.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Ofsted has changed somewhat because they moved to 24 hour notice
| of inspection.
|
| When I was at secondary school, we did the same lesson three
| times with my French teacher before an upcoming OFSTED inspection
| and he said if we all kept quiet, he'd buy us all an Aero.
| waterhouse wrote:
| _It begins to look as if the test-examination-marks business is a
| gigantic racket, the purpose of which is to enable students,
| teachers, and schools to take part in a joint pretense that the
| students know everything they are supposed to know, when in fact
| they know only a small part of it--if any at all. Why do we
| always announce exams in advance, if not to give students a
| chance to cram for them? Why do teachers, even in graduate
| schools, always say quite specifically what the exam will be
| about, even telling the type of questions that will be given?
| Because otherwise too many students would flunk. What would
| happen at Harvard or Yale if a prof gave a surprise test in March
| on work covered in October? Everyone knows what would happen;
| that 's why they don't do it.
|
| ...
|
| When I was in my last year at school, we seniors stayed around an
| extra week to cram for college boards. Our ancient-history
| teacher told us, on the basis of long experience, that we would
| do well to prepare ourselves to write for twenty minutes on each
| of a list of fifteen topics that he gave us. We studied his list.
| We knew the wisdom of taking that kind of advice; if we had not,
| we would not have been at that school. When the boards came, we
| found that his list comfortably covered every one of the eight
| questions we were asked. So we got credit for knowing a great
| deal about ancient history, which we did not, he got credit for
| being a good teacher, which he was not, and the school got credit
| for being, as it was, a good place to go if you wanted to be sure
| of getting into a prestige college. The fact was that I knew very
| little about ancient history; that much of what I thought I knew
| was misleading or false; that then, and for many years
| afterwards, I disliked history and thought it pointless and a
| waste of time; and that two months later I could not have come
| close to passing the history college boards, or even a much
| easier test, but who cared?
|
| I have played the game myself. When I began teaching I thought,
| naively, that the purpose of a test was to test, to find out what
| the students knew about the course. It didn't take me long to
| find out that if I gave my students surprise tests, covering the
| whole material of the course to date, almost everyone flunked.
| This made me look bad, and posed problems for the school. I
| learned that the only way to get a respectable percentage of
| decent or even passing grades was to announce tests well in
| advance, tell in some detail what material they would cover, and
| hold plenty of advance practice in the kind of questions that
| would be asked, which is called review. I later learned that
| teachers do this everywhere. We know that what we are doing is
| not really honest, but we dare not be the first to stop, and we
| try to justify or excuse ourselves by saying that, after all, it
| does no particular harm. But we are wrong; it does great harm.
|
| It does harm, first of all, because it is dishonest and the
| students know it. My friends and I, breezing through the ancient-
| history boards, knew very well that a trick was being played on
| someone, we were not quite sure on whom. Our success on the
| boards was due, not to our knowledge of ancient history, which
| was scanty, but to our teacher's skill as a predictor, which was
| great. Even children much younger than we were learn that what
| most teachers' want and reward are not knowledge and
| understanding but the appearance of them. The smart and able
| ones, at least, come to look on school as something of a racket,
| which it is their job to learn how to beat. And learn they do;
| they become experts at smelling out the unspoken and often
| unconscious preferences and prejudices of their teachers, and at
| taking full advantage of them. My first English teacher at prep
| school gave us Macaulay's essay on Lord Clive to read, and from
| his pleasure in reading it aloud I saw that he was a sucker for
| the periodic sentence, a long complex sentence with the main verb
| at the end. Thereafter I took care to construct at least one such
| sentence in every paper I wrote for him, and thus assured myself
| a good mark in the course.
|
| Not only does the examination racket do harm by making students
| feel that a search for honest understanding is beside the point;
| it does further harm by discouraging those few students who go on
| making that search in spite of everything. The student who will
| not be satisfied merely to know "right answers" or recipes for
| getting them will not have an easy time in school, particularly
| since facts and recipes may be all that his teachers know. They
| tend to be impatient or even angry with the student who wants to
| know, not just what happened, but why it happened as it did and
| not some other way. They rarely have the knowledge to answer such
| questions, and even more rarely have the time; there is all that
| material to cover.
|
| In short, our "Tell-'em-and-test-'em" way of teaching leaves most
| students increasingly confused, aware that their academic success
| rests on shaky foundations, and convinced that school is mainly a
| place where you follow meaningless procedures to get meaningless
| answers to meaningless questions._
|
| -- John Holt, _How Children Fail_
| mncharity wrote:
| > enable students, teachers, [...] to take part in a joint
| pretense
|
| Years back, exploring possibilities for transformationally
| improved science education content, I watched videos of best-
| practices exemplar teaching in K-1. Of estimation for instance.
| I was struck by how much seemed to be training students to
| support a collaborative pretense of understanding. For example,
| a teacher providing a proxy signal for selecting answers. I was
| astonished. Perhaps some of it was an artifact of video taping.
| And perhaps it was clear to people creating and watching the
| videos that this was happening. So I was left wondering, is
| that really what best practices on teaching estimation looks
| like? Maybe even more generally? If so... well, yay, there's so
| much room for transformative improvement??
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| the uk DofE are themselves guilty of the same crime. The school
| league tables do not include gcse statistics for key stage 3
| students. This is because students in state schools don't take
| gcses before ks4- only private schools offer them. In order not
| to draw attention to the academic superiority of private schools
| and embarrass the state run schools, they simply ignore those
| gcse results! this artificially "improves" the quality of state
| education vs private.
| cybert00th wrote:
| Focusing on the bullying aspects of the article for a moment,
| homeschooling goes a long way towards making that a non-issue.
|
| Both our homeschooled boys played hockey for a local school and
| both our homeschooled girls are in Air Cadets, so they get plenty
| of socialising, and we've never had to deal with bullying.
|
| I understand that homeschooling's not for everyone, but if you
| can then you should give it serious thought. Homeschooling's been
| around for decades, and with the advent of the Internet, there
| are now plenty of resources available - pretty much regardless of
| what country you're in.
| violetgarden wrote:
| When I was younger, I thought homeschooling was almost
| exclusively because parents were weird and controlling - maybe
| even in a cult like situation. Or I thought homeschooling was
| for socially hopeless kids that couldn't cut it in "real"
| school. I have no idea why my perception was so negative. Now
| that I'm older, my opinion has completely flipped. I am
| grateful to have had access to public education, but it was
| probably bronze standard at best. If I had children, I'd
| probably homeschool them.
| rdtwo wrote:
| A lot of school problems don't do away in the real world.
| Cheating, bullying, boredom are regular parts of daily life
| for many workers. There are life skills that are learned in
| school that aren't just textbook educational items
| musingsole wrote:
| Those life skills get taught in homeschool programs too. Or
| are you under the impression homeschool students are locked
| away in a closet with a textbook and no windows until they
| turn 18?
|
| The only lesson a state school can teach that might be
| missing in a homeschool program is that large institutions
| are out of your control, have their own motivations, and
| will maim you without a second's hesitation.
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| this is nonsense. almost nothing is carried over. it seems
| like you have never been the target of viscous bullying.
| there is no comparison whatsoever to bullying in school and
| in the workplace. the differences are innumerable. the most
| important difference is that childhood bullying damages the
| developing brain and creates lasting emotional damage. you
| are simply more vulnerable at those ages. you will be much,
| much better equipped to deal with bullying later in life if
| you are not carrying the emotional scars of being
| systematically targeted when you were a child. some
| adversity is necessary but this is a different discussion.
|
| im so sick of people offering this idiotic perspective
| because they never experienced being the target for more
| than a year. your opinion hurts people.
| throwawaysthrow wrote:
| Throwaway for obvious reasons.
|
| I think you're the one whose talking nonsense. Isolating
| children from the outside world to "protect them" (or for
| any reason for that matter) should not be celebrated.
|
| I've been the target of relentless, viscous bullying in
| school, and it was at a time where kids openly bullied in
| front of teachers (and camp counselors) and it was just
| considered normal. Nobody ever tried to stop it because
| at the time that was not considered something to really
| correct, just part of normal childhood. The main reasons
| I was bullied was because I was a runt (physically) and I
| was not taught any social skills by my parents.
|
| HOWEVER, my parents were severely abusive and were much
| worse bullies than anyone in school. If I were taken out
| of school because of "bullying" I would just be much,
| much worse off and I can't see how I'd ever be able to
| recover from that without exposure to the outside world.
| How else would I ever learn better, learn social skills,
| or learn to make friends (eventually)?
|
| >there is no comparison whatsoever to bullying in school
| and in the workplace
|
| In an office full of college graduates, probably not, but
| I've experienced very similar bullying at a dysfunctional
| blue collar job
|
| Beyond that bullying growing up was just as bad at non-
| school organizations - summer camp, after school
| programs, and dance/gymnastics classes so I don't see how
| homeschooling (if my parents weren't abusive) is going to
| stop bullying without also isolating children from the
| outside world completely, which would be severely
| damaging. So you're basically advocating not letting
| children to socialize in any capacity because their
| feelings might get hurt by other kids. This is cruel.
|
| My point is, homeschooling doesn't prevent bullying
| unless completely isolate your children. I'm not accusing
| all (or even most) homeschoolers of isolating their
| children, however, all the ones I personally know did
| isolate their children.
|
| People are actually trying to stop bullying in school
| nowadays, so my experience would be different nowadays.
|
| >childhood bullying damages the developing brain and
| creates lasting emotional damage
|
| Oh, please, the severe emotional damage caused by
| isolating children from the outside world is so much
| worse. Also the severe emotional damage that parents can
| inflict on their children are so much worse than anything
| a peer at school can inflict, like 1000% worse. I was
| barely phased by the relentless bullying at school
| because home was just so much worse. (Plus my parents had
| already taught me that I was worthless, so it wasn't
| exactly surprising)
|
| I've known a few people (different families) who grew up
| entirely isolated from the outside world to "protect"
| them from any person, place, or (especially) idea that
| wasn't pre-approved by their parents. They are all
| extremely dysfunctional. My husband was a boss to one of
| these guys and he literally couldn't function in the
| workplace and would have emotional breakdowns regularly.
| He's dead now, he killed himself. The rest I know are
| perpetual children who literally have no ability to
| function without a caretaker (usually their parents, one
| her arranged marriage husband). I have no idea what's
| going to happen to these people if they outlive their
| caretaker, I don't want to think about it, it's
| incredibly sad.
|
| >im so sick of people offering this idiotic perspective
| because they never experienced being the target for more
| than a year. your opinion hurts people.
|
| If you want to turn childhood trauma into a competition,
| I will "win."
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| this is utter drivel.
|
| nobody is saying children should be isolated. they should
| be isolated from things and people who will damage them
| regardless of what they do. a stove can harm a child, but
| a child can choose not to touch a stove. a viscous bully
| will target and track a child, and in modern schools
| there is no option to fight back. the child has to simply
| sit there and endure it. so for example, if you put a
| child into a good private school this would meet my
| criteria. almost invariably, bullies behave the way they
| do because they are abused at home. if you separate your
| kids from the wife-beating riff-raff then you have done
| your kids a huge favor without "isolating" them.
|
| i would almost not care about this issue if we still had
| a sane culture that let kids behave naturally and fight
| each other from time to time. maybe you are a little
| older than me, but the way it works now is that kids are
| raised to believe that without school, their life will be
| over. worse, they will bring disgrace to themselves and
| their whole family if they dont do well in school. if you
| fight, you will jeopardize everything by getting in
| trouble, getting expelled. we are putting boys between
| and anvil and a hammer with no way out. if my kid has no
| way to overcome it, and it causes him intense
| psychological pain for _years_ , then there is no use in
| subjecting him to it. i cant understand how anyone can
| not understand this blindingly simple fact.
|
| the key to raising kids is to let them confront danger,
| adversity and challenges and to make sure they have some
| kind of agency to overcome what they are facing. school
| bullying is unambiguously outside of this category of
| things because fighting is not allowed. its basically no
| different than strapping the child down and torturing
| him. it will build just as much character.
|
| there was never any bullying or heroin overdoses anywhere
| in my life except for my public school. there are all
| kinds of people, groups and activities. saying that all
| outside world interactions are the same is utter drooling
| nonsense.
|
| palmer luckey and Billie Eilish are both homeschooled and
| they are doing a lot better than you are. not all
| homeschooling is the same. i could keep my kid in a cage
| and call it homeschooling.
|
| i see that you endured intense trauma as a child and you
| enjoyed it. you would not do it any differently. a
| pamplet of your story should be given to victims of
| childhood trauma who have schizophrenia and other trauma-
| induced diseases. clearly they have an attitude problem.
| it is not the trauma that hurt them, it was their sour
| attitude about it. what a revolution you have brought.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > Isolating children from the outside world to "protect
| them" (or for any reason for that matter) should not be
| celebrated.
|
| Then why do we isolate adults from criminals, by putting
| criminals in prisons?
|
| > I was barely phased by the relentless bullying at
| school because home was just so much worse.
|
| That is wrong. But for many people it's the other way
| round.
|
| I wonder if we could find a solution that would somehow
| help both types of kids. Being able to leave home, but
| also being able to avoid bullies at school.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I don't know if you were necessarily 'wrong' for having those
| perceptions. Homeschooling has become far more of a 'thing'
| in the past 20+ years, and I think it's been fueled by access
| to technology and growing concerns over school quality. Even
| info about 'school quality' is more accessible/shared/debated
| because of technology (forums/facebook/etc).
|
| That said, the only handful of homeschooling families I knew
| 40 years ago were - to my recollection - exclusively
| religious in their motivations. Not everyone homeschooling
| family I know in the last few years is due to religious
| conviction, although that's still there in many cases.
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| let me just say how much i appreciate and admire you. people
| love to look down their noses at homeschooling and
| homeschooling has been the subject of terrible and dismissive
| ridicule. a terrible stigma has been created for home-
| schoolers. its all nonsense. god bless you for putting up with
| all of that. its such a shame that the vapid masses impose this
| emotional tax on smart people like you who are just doing what
| they think is in the best interest of their children. i think
| youve done an excellent job.
| cloudedcordial wrote:
| Same kind of cheating is present in Canadian public schools, too.
| This is a case that has been exposed. Just to give some context,
| the French language schools in an English speaking area in Canada
| is highly desirable by parents. Only the students who are strong
| academically attend those schools.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/eqao-cambr...
| sebmellen wrote:
| Eh, I commiserate with the author, and experienced some of the
| same in American public school. However, this part of the article
| really stood out to me, as I couldn't imagine it happening in any
| of my school environments (which were not optimal by any means):
|
| > _There were many ways in which the school and teachers gamed
| the system to boost their measured performance. One way was to do
| exams for students. I was on a bottom set language class for
| French. After two years I literally couldn't speak a single
| sentence in french and maybe knew 20 words in total. I still
| passed my exams. How? We did the tests in class. Often the
| teacher would go through them with us. Literally giving us the
| test and then going through each question on the whiteboard and
| telling us what to write. A different year and a different
| teacher, this time the teacher would sit next to us and write the
| answers down._
|
| Could this behavior by teachers really be widespread??? I think
| this is just an anomaly of the author's school. Any of my
| teachers would've been wary of behaving like this. Kids don't
| keep such things quiet! I'm sure this behavior would be quickly
| reprimanded by administrators or other teachers in my past
| schools.
| notahacker wrote:
| One of my old school teachers (ordinary UK comprehensive) was
| fired for doing German speaking tests one on one with some
| helpful phrases written on the board in the background.
| asciimike wrote:
| I've seen a few variations on this that are less blatant but
| equally effective at gaming the system. Note that these all
| happened in college, rather than in HS--I never recall seeing
| this in high school.
|
| The first is professors providing previous exams for students
| to study from, and then only changing the numbers, not the
| questions (e.g. the test is a template). This wasn't the norm,
| but it wasn't uncommon either--several professors gained
| nicknames to this effect, and you knew if you were in one of
| their classes how everything was going to work.
|
| Even if the professor didn't provide the exam, fraternities and
| sororities usually kept prior exams from folks who had done
| well, and I believe the "learning center" also would keep
| copies, to the point where I am occasionally recognized when I
| come back to campus (mostly for recruiting) because one of my
| completed computer architecture tests has been given out as
| reference for the past decade.
|
| The second is providing study sessions the day/night before an
| exam where professors would run through common scenarios that
| might appear on tests. When done correctly, students would ask
| the questions and the prof would get another student to
| demonstrate and they would help as necessary--when done poorly
| (and unfortunately, in my experience, the more common of the
| two), it devolved to the first scenario.
|
| Neither are explicitly "cheating" in the way outlined in the
| parent (I don't know if they'd show up on accreditation, for
| instance), but they achieve the same end result.
|
| As a bonus, I worked as a proctor in the learning center for a
| year or two, and while the majority of students came in because
| they were legitimately struggling with one concept and needed
| tutoring to jump the knowledge gap, there was a core group of
| frequent fliers who were there every day basically getting
| their homework done by others, and thus boosting overall grades
| (and ultimately graduation rate).
|
| As has been stated many, many times in this thread, incentives
| (staying accredited, getting some arbitrary US News and World
| Reports ranking, having a high graduation/job placement rate,
| etc.) push this behavior to the detriment of student learning.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In my experience, this kind of thing happened more in lower-
| tier classes than upper-tier ones. Lower-quality teachers might
| have less compunction over cheating than their upper-quality
| counterparts and often get the non-AP/IB classes due to their
| qualifications.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Perhaps, though I don't think that's the case in this
| article:
|
| > ... _I was mostly in top ability streamed classes, meaning
| my classroom experience was likely far better than average._
| syrrim wrote:
| The french classes, where the exam cheating took place,
| were specifically described as lower tier.
| klyrs wrote:
| I took a class at a community college and the teacher did this
| with take home exams. I never did understand why
| retsibsi wrote:
| If the people further up the chain have similar incentives
| (higher scores = we've all done a great job), and most students
| are either benefiting from the cheating or being harmed by it
| in only a fairly minor indirect way, it's plausible to me that
| nobody would want to stick their neck out and make enough of a
| fuss to change things.
|
| I've never seen anything this egregious, but in my own
| experience people are usually willing to go along with systems
| that don't make sense (according to their ostensible purpose)
| and aren't very fair, if that's what everyone else is doing and
| there's no personal gain to be had by rocking the boat.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Yes, you make a good point. But there's another factor that I
| think makes this untenable, at least in the US -- the
| widespread use of well-proctored standardized tests. Very
| hard to cheat on those.
| heymijo wrote:
| "...I think makes this untenable, at least in the US"
|
| Some information that may be new to you:
|
| Widespread cheating is common in the US. Atlanta, El Paso,
| Columbus. Google "big city name + cheating" and you'll
| likely get a result.
|
| "A state investigation of Columbus, Ohio, public schools
| found a "top-down culture of data manipulation and employee
| intimidation" in connection with changes to test scores and
| student grades" [0]
|
| "An investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
| (GBI) released in July 2011 indicated that 44 out of 56
| schools cheated on the 2009 CRCT.[2] One hundred and
| seventy-eight educators were implicated in correcting
| answers entered by students" [1]
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023032777045
| 79349...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Public_Schools_ch
| eatin...
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Give me a break! Are you unaware of the college admissions
| scandal?
|
| _American Exceptionalism_ -- what this comment is -- is
| pure delusion. I watched kids cheat on proctored exams a
| generation ago, and I'm certain it's continuing and I'm
| certain my nieces and nephews will see the same.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| I attended high school with a person whose mother pretended
| to be a guidance counselor, and was able to obtain a copy
| of the SAT test weeks before her daughter took the test.
|
| She graduated from Harvard.
|
| The mom got 24 months probation, 200 hours of community
| service, and had to pay $15k in restitution.
|
| Also "Operation Varsity Blues" revealed it is indeed
| possible to bypass 'well-proctored' protections.
| astura wrote:
| Why would a (legitimate) guidance counselor have access
| to a copy of the SAT test before it was given?
| syrrim wrote:
| Possibly the tests were stored on site, and the social
| engineering was needed to gain access to the room where
| they were stored.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Very different situation though. A school can't game its
| stats year after year using measures like this, because
| they will be caught. From your references, it seems even
| in isolated cases there's punishment. In larger scales,
| like that of a whole classroom, subversion of the system
| is near impossible.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| My thought is that there are a number of parents who
| would say that the punishment is worth it if you can get
| your child into a top-tier university (based on my first
| reference - the parent spent no jail time away).
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Not sure about the probation but assuming 50$/hr, that's
| 25k$ to get into Harvard, versus bribes of usually >1M$
| for alumni getting their kids in by funding a building,
| scholarship, or whatever. Sounds like they got a steep
| (if unreliable) discount.
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| > I'm sure this behavior would be quickly reprimanded by
| administrators or other teachers in my past schools.
|
| Bold of you to assume the prime directive of most schools is to
| teach kids.
| speeder wrote:
| What I think is a major issue is that the UN "human rights"
| document says that schooling is mandatory and must teach about
| the UN (yep! it is a "human right" to be indoctrinated)
|
| I noticed then that several governments to please the UN (and
| get their precious IMF money and whatnot) will then game the
| stats as needed.
|
| I am from Brazil, here the public schools after UN meddling got
| in the picture first went the route OP said, but the UN didn't
| rated the country education based on scores, but based on
| dropouts, the more dropouts you have the worse your score is.
|
| So solution is not have dropouts! Cue government doing two
| things:
|
| 1. Banning any possible form of homeschooling.
|
| 2. Making a law where you can't fail a kid, even if the kid is
| completely retarded and just drools all day, as long the kid in
| question can write their own name (even if they don't
| understand the meaning or treat it just as a drawing), they
| will pass...
|
| 3. Convince the population that avoiding dropouts is important,
| the government regularly runs massive marketing programs
| (doesn't even matter if government is left or right) saying how
| important it is for kids to finish school, and how great it is
| that now that they can't fail, they don't drop out.
| DanBC wrote:
| > What I think is a major issue is that the UN "human rights"
| document says that schooling is mandatory and must teach
| about the UN (yep! it is a "human right" to be indoctrinated)
|
| Can you post a link to this human rights document please?
| speeder wrote:
| https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
|
| As for what I am talking about, read Article 26.
|
| I will quote the relevant phraseS (not the whole article)
| for brevity:
|
| "Elementary education shall be compulsory"
|
| and
|
| "Education shall ... tons of stuff ... and shall further
| the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of
| peace."
|
| And this is reinforced elsewhere.
|
| "Article 29.3:
|
| These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised
| contrary to the purposes and principles of the United
| Nations."
|
| "Article 30:
|
| Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying
| for any State, group or person any right to engage in any
| activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of
| any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."
|
| And just to explain why I said Brazil went with the
| cheating route after UN meddling:
|
| Until around 1970s, Brazil didn't need the IMF or anything
| like that, thus it was ignoring the UN regarding certain
| subjects, among them it was that then the approach to
| public schooling was that the purpose of the public school
| was the education of brilliant students, and those that
| didn't want to be there shouldn't be there, so bad
| students, bullies, etc... were outright kicked out.
| rat87 wrote:
| Sounds like the UN was correct in criticizing Brazil for
| failing to uphold the rights of its people to get an
| education which likely resulted in significantly worse
| economic outcomes both on an individual level and for
| Brazil as a whole
| DanBC wrote:
| Article 26 is short and sweet, you may as well quote all
| of it.
|
| > Article 26.
|
| > (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education
| shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental
| stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
| Technical and professional education shall be made
| generally available and higher education shall be equally
| accessible to all on the basis of merit.
|
| > (2) Education shall be directed to the full development
| of the human personality and to the strengthening of
| respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It
| shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship
| among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall
| further the activities of the United Nations for the
| maintenance of peace.
|
| > (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of
| education that shall be given to their children.
|
| You need to quote all of it to give the correct context.
|
| Here's article 29 in full:
|
| > Article 29.
|
| > (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone
| the free and full development of his personality is
| possible.
|
| > (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms,
| everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are
| determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due
| recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of
| others and of meeting the just requirements of morality,
| public order and the general welfare in a democratic
| society.
|
| > (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be
| exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the
| United Nations
|
| 29(3) is saying that nation states can't, for example,
| claim to be providing people with compulsory eduction
| when in fact those people are being indoctrinated.
| sizeofchar wrote:
| You forgot:
|
| 4. Government gives money to families whose kids don't have
| more than 3 day misses per bimestrial.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I wonder if the kids are not aware this is a test submitted.
|
| I remember doing "class exercises" which were collected and had
| much less security (around copying, cheating) than normal
| tests.
| dash2 wrote:
| Welcome to Britain :-(
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| In my maths GCSE (UK) one of the teachers observed I was having
| some trouble expanding brackets and whispered a mnemonic she
| had taught us weeks previously to help. One data point, one
| observation... but yes, I can believe it.
| nobrains wrote:
| But isn't that also good teaching / learning happening right
| there?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| During the administration of a national exam?
| matsemann wrote:
| On national tests in Norway I've never heard this occur. What
| they do instead is to ask the weaker pupils not to attend that
| day to increase the average score.
| fma wrote:
| In my state, they report the number of students who took the
| state test for each school as a percentage of population. I
| would be suspicious of any school that doesn't have over 98%
| take.
|
| Yeah they can have a few kids not take it, but the overall
| score still is impacted by 98%.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Similar shenanigans happened in California during the brief
| period of rating schools by student's test scores. The tests
| were not annual, so poor performers would repeat a grade the
| year before the test. Then schools were rated lower for
| having kids repeat grades. They did the encouraging poor
| performers to be absent on test day thing as well, so the
| state subtracted points for poor attendance and had a second
| day for kids who missed the first.
|
| On top of this, anecdotally it seemed that the marginal
| schools were made worse because they would spend time
| teaching to the test, while the higher performing schools
| didn't feel compelled to do that.
|
| There are still knock-on effects today after having stopped
| that. Our daughter has been consistently behind by 1-1.5
| years in assessment testing in every subject from grades 1-6.
| It took years of fighting to get her retained.
|
| An actual conversation ended with the person we were talking
| to admitting that the best thing for both the school and our
| daughter would be to retain her, and that the only reason
| they were refusing was because "it is against policy for us
| to retain any student for any reason other than a long-term
| absence"
|
| Fortunately once that was said out loud we made progress
| through the system again. Prior to that there was all sorts
| of apologia for the policy, and how retaining our daughter
| would cause irreparable damage to her psyche; as if her
| knowing she was the "dumb kid" and having entire lessons go
| completely over her head was not at all damaging...
| underwater wrote:
| I attended state run schools in Australia in the 90s and this
| experience sounds so foreign to me. Sure, there were shitty kids
| and other problems, but we were learning consistently.
|
| The Australian Federal government has since introduced
| standardised testing in the form of NAPLAN and, yes, schools try
| to teach to the test. But the idea of teachers outright cheating
| on behalf of students is unfathomable.
|
| Was I an outlier? Or did the author just have bad luck?
| iso1210 wrote:
| I don't get this cheating comment. Schools have internal exams
| sure, but they don't count for much - the ones that count (at
| high school) are GCSEs, A-Levels, and other external exams.
|
| Teachers can't cheat on these as they don't have the tests
| until it opens. If the actual exams were happening in the way
| the author depicts, then
|
| 1) There would be a whistleblower
|
| 2) The people marking the exams would notice that people were
| getting the exact same answers (unlike US SATs, UK exams are
| mainly written answers, very few questions are multiple choice)
|
| Now teachers do have copies of previous years exams, and go
| over those in class, and use them for mock-exams earlier in the
| year, isn't that normal? It's not cheating -- exams are an
| imperfect system, but if you're going to have exams, having
| test exams and going over what worked and what didn't is valid.
| ajxs wrote:
| I went to a state run (public in local parlance) high school in
| Australia in the 2000s. The school was in an area that was
| beginning to gentrify. It had students from a variety of
| backgrounds, with the majority being working class. The school
| had many problem students to keep staff occupied and looked as
| though it was very under-funded. However I agree with GP: I
| never saw any of the kind of incompetence and institutional
| dishonesty this article talks about. One thing I'll say of
| Australia, it's public institutions seem reasonably honest.
| corty wrote:
| We once had a young teacher, who had to pass his own entrance
| exam for a permanent position. He was to be tested by teaching
| us, while a senior teacher sitting in the back judges him. A
| week before his test, this young teacher then goes through
| everything that was supposed to happen in that class with us,
| right down to the questions he'd ask and the answers a specific
| pupil was supposed to give. At the end of it, he promised us a
| keg of beer if he passed (Germany, younger pupils would maybe
| have gotten sweets).
|
| He passed with flying colours, after which the senior teacher
| asked discreetely when we intended to drink that beer, because
| he wanted to attend. Obviously stuff like this was completely
| normal and expected.
| steveharman wrote:
| I used to work in the UK care sector. The regulator there gave no
| notice of their arrival, they just turned up.
|
| Which feels like a far more effective way of seeing the real
| world operations of a school or care facility.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think ofsted now do (at least some) inspections with no
| notice or one day of notice
| alexpotato wrote:
| In high school, state and ETS (e.g. PSAT/SAT) tests were always
| required to be taken at a school from another district.
|
| For example, if you went to school in district A, everyone from
| district A took the test in a school building located in district
| B. The reverse was also true.
|
| This has always struck me as such an easy system to implement
| that I'm always surprised when I hear about the "teachers just
| changed the results" stories. While I'm sure this doesn't
| eliminate the risk of collusion, doesn't it dramatically reduce
| it?
|
| Plus, wasn't an entire chapter of Freakonomics dedicated to how
| teacher cheating can largely be caught algorithmically? In this
| day and age I would think it's even easier.
| shiftoutbox wrote:
| Every school does this !
| retsibsi wrote:
| Link to this article on the main Less Wrong site:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Yv9aj9bWD5H7aaDdy/how-my-sch...
|
| (Greater Wrong is probably great for powerusers, but I find the
| default view much uglier than LW.)
|
| The article is interesting and depressing. I'm not surprised that
| the metrics are gamed, but I am surprised by how awful the school
| was, and how normal that apparently is.
| blacktulip wrote:
| I find the GW site is much easier to read due to larger font.
| retsibsi wrote:
| Default font sizes/layouts often don't suit me, so I've
| become very used to zooming (out, usually). LW is about right
| for me at 90%, while GW is a bit big at 80% but rather
| crowded at 70%. I can't pinpoint what I like about the LW
| layout, but it feels spacious without being wasteful. I think
| a lot of it might come down to the font itself.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Twenty years ago I was sharing a conclusion w/ my kids' principal
| - that preparing for state assessment tests was cheating.
|
| The point of the tests is to evaluate the schools overall
| effectiveness. As much as test-centric cramming effects those
| results, it creates a false picture.
|
| Some notes and observations:
|
| Because the state both accommodates and encourages this scenario,
| the fault can't reasonably be laid on the schools.
|
| A more impeccable (but problematic) way to handle these tests
| would be for the state to show up with little/no notice and
| administer it.
|
| I'm personally inclined to scrap state assessment testing
| altogether. The zero-sum nature of pitting the schools against
| each other for limited funding consumes a great deal of precious
| teaching time for little clear benefit.
|
| This conversation happened at our county's first charter school.
| A few years earlier, this principal happened to be my son's PS
| teacher.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| What is the expected benefit of punishing schools by
| underfunding them if they get beaten by other schools' test
| scores?
|
| Have school districts not yet discovered that competition
| applied to learning is counterproductive?
| JCharante wrote:
| In Maine for example, when the boards are looking into
| renewing a charter school's license, their test results on
| the state exam is heavily weighed. Schools that are not
| performing well on the tests may get their charter revoked.
| So the benefit is saving children from incompetent
| management.
|
| My town's school department had 5 elementary schools. During
| 4th grade, my elementary school which I lived closest to was
| underperforming in state evaluation tests. This meant that
| they allowed anybody attending it to transfer over to any
| other elementary school. I opted for this option and was able
| to re-attend my original elementary school before I had
| moved.
|
| My (charter) high school consistently performed in the higher
| ranks for SAT & state tests. They didn't have any classes to
| prepare us for them, although that probably would have been
| useful from a college admissions perspective. If a school is
| performing really badly it's probably that their curriculum
| is flawed or that management isn't doing a good job.
| Competition applied to learning helps light a fire under
| people doing a bad job running a school.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I believe it is district funding that suffers for low grades
| and that it takes a few years of consistently low performance
| before the state applies any action. I should note that our
| schools are primarily funded from county taxes but state
| funding is enough to matter.
|
| However, the testing dynamic tends to nurture a perverse
| incentive for counties to showcase their high performing
| schools and increase funding to them. Some school boards
| resist that temptation better than others.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Not sure about the UK, but in the US, it's the opposite.
| Failing schools get more funding, at least temporarily, with
| the expectation they turn the scores around in a few years.
| They risk losing accreditation if they don't improve, but
| that's usually years away.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Personally, I feel we have reached the limits of what schools
| can do with the current structures, that there is very little
| improvement that can be mined.
|
| The things we do to maximize fiscal efficiency (grouping by
| age, school start times during optimal sleep periods) aren't
| in the students' best interests. The OP's article seems to
| bear witness of that.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm not sure what it would look like, but I'd like to see
| kids a few years older teaching younger kids. You get a
| much better understanding of the subject when you have to
| teach it.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| "point of the tests"
|
| The point of the tests should be to determine what topics a
| student has successfully mastered and which they need to spend
| more time on. If each school is allowed to come up with their
| own standard, it will be difficult to tell which schools are
| lowering standard. Using it as a measure of school
| effectiveness is a secondary measure that is really not
| possible without longitudinal data.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They're also useful for evaluating schools and teachers.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Schools on poor areas in general go bad on tests not just
| because the teachers are bad, there are other socioeconomic
| variables that influence much more on student grades, like
| poverty, nutrition, violence, and so on.
|
| Even if you do believe evaluation works the way it is I
| still think its execution doesn't make any sense. You're
| taking schools that have bad grades and granting them less
| money on the next term, what positive effect is this
| supposed to have?
| pdm55 wrote:
| Allow me to explain one reason to have standardised tests. My
| last teaching job before retiring was in a school where the
| administration expected 75% of the students to pass Yr 9 Maths.
| The Middle School Head had come to my class a number of times
| to help the students, so she certainly knew what their ability
| was. It would have been no surprise to her that, rather than
| 75% passing the test, 75% failed badly. Yet, she was not
| prepared to accept those results. She pointed out that one
| particularly disruptive student had passed the previous year.
| Fortunately, I could point to the standardised test that showed
| that that particular student was in the bottom 10% in the
| state. My implication was that his pass in the previous year
| was fabricated. I was instructed not to hand back any of the
| students' test results, at that time. I left the school shortly
| after and have no idea how they would get 75% of the students
| to pass. But I did know that the standardised results would be
| a truer indication of that class's Maths ability, than the
| school's results would be.
| JackFr wrote:
| If the test is good, there is nothing wrong with teaching to
| the test.
|
| If test scores are rewarded, teachers will teach to the test.
| The obvious solution is to accept the fact that people respond
| to incentives, and make the test better.
| choeger wrote:
| How about this, then: Each school gets a share of the
| economic benefit it generates. That is, every year after
| leaving the school, every student is graded by what they paid
| in taxes, earned in income, contributed to social security,
| or whatever scheme you can make up. This grade then goes back
| to the school. This should be arguably the best and most
| relevant test one can conceive. Do you see anything wrong
| with that?
| JackFr wrote:
| Reducing humans to hedonic consumption machines where life
| satisfaction is measured by consumption and value is
| measured by production is easy and terrible.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| yes. High income is more to do with where you are born, not
| how well you did in school. though there may be a gigantic
| gray area, this holds true in general. You will be throwing
| money where it's needed the least and will help the least.
| powersnail wrote:
| Yes, it's quite problematic.
|
| First, it's obviously not a fair measure; tax contributed
| is not a direct reflection of education quality. Parents,
| background, accidents, moving abroad... You can't possibly
| clean the statistics enough to get rid of all those
| factors.
|
| Second, it's not the business of the school to know my tax
| information and employment status. You can't measure
| something based on a number that you can't know.
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Determining how well a school did at teaching people
| subjects like literature, foreign languages, science,
| mathematics and history now depends on how many of their
| graduates became stockbrokers and business executives, not
| on whether the school actually did a good job at educating
| their students.
|
| Assessing the quality of education by economic output means
| the engineer who declines a job at Google or Facebook to
| take a job at a human rights non-profit is a "worse"
| engineer, and their education must be considered
| substandard compared to one who goes and takes a Big Tech
| job. Same with doctors who volunteer to run free HIV
| clinics in sub-Saharan Africa when they could get a job
| doing buttlifts for movie stars in Los Angeles, or lawyers
| who become public defenders or represent asylum seekers and
| other public interest clients rather than doing extremely
| well-compensated corporate work.
|
| In as much as it reduces all of human life and values to
| numbers on a spreadsheet, yes, there is almost certainly
| something wrong with it.
| nkingsy wrote:
| What is a better test?
|
| To me this implies more material will be tested, to the point
| where the test dictates the course material.
| shawticus wrote:
| I went to a "blue ribbon" school that was attached to a
| continuation school. It _was_ a great school. Kids behaved well,
| very upper middle class. However, if you were doing at all not
| great for any reason -- C average, struggling with depression or
| learning, anything -- they would pressure you into the
| continuation school right next door. So you have one school
| operating as two schools so that they can pretend to be the top
| school in the state by moving the bottom set next door.
| xerosis wrote:
| UK school leader here. I can't argue with the perceptions in
| general, but an important thing to acknowledge is that school
| inspectors are not born yesterday. The inspectors will be former
| school leaders, and some still will be in schools themselves.
| They also speak to parents and students to get a full picture of
| the school. Is it all disingenuous? A bit, but doesn't everyone
| tidy their house before someone comes round?
| m463 wrote:
| In the Bay Area, the cupertino schools are well known to be
| excellent public schools, always 9 and 10 out of 10 ratings.
| Schools in surrounding areas are usually not as good. This means
| all kinds of things, for example cupertino homes have very strong
| real estate values ("cupertino schools!").
|
| I found out how they do (part of) it. If a child living in the
| cupertino school district registers and is not proficient in
| english, they are "redirected" to a nearby school say in
| sunnyvale.
|
| simple.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I thought I read somewhere that most of the richer people in
| San Francisco send their children to private schools (to the
| extent that the public schools were minority-white in a
| majority-white city.) I wonder how much this happens in the
| Cupertino.
|
| Normally there is some reasoning that public schools do well
| because of rich parents who can help fund the school and who
| generally care about their children's education, and that's an
| guess I might make about Cupertino based on your comment, but
| it seems to not be the case in SF.
| asciimike wrote:
| Have you seen the state of SF public schools lately?
|
| - https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/SF-Board-of-
| Ed... (which is clearly more important than
| https://www.sfusd.edu/services/health-
| wellness/covid-19-coro...)
|
| - https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1359382113875755011
|
| - https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/sf-school-
| lottery-L...
|
| I think your idea of "rich parents funding SF public schools"
| would probably be rejected by the school board, so for most
| it's not even worth trying, given the proliferation of high
| quality private schools nearby. And even if the school
| accepts it, the community won't.
|
| Say what you want about Zuck, but he donated $75M to the only
| public hospital in the city and they don't even want to keep
| the building named after him and his wife (who worked there
| no less!). Comically, they can't actually do anything about
| it, so they stick to meaningless non-binding resolutions.
|
| Therefore, if given the choice, those who can are much more
| likely to spend 30-50k/year to send their kids to private HS
| than to try and go through the process of dealing with the
| city government. I assume that dealing with Cupertino/PA/etc.
| is frustrating, but not nearly as insane as SF.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I was trying to be quite careful in my comment to not
| suggest that rich San Francisco were funding public
| schools, but it seems I wasn't careful enough.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Context: I grew up attending Cupertino schools.
|
| Cupertino schools are fairly well funded, but not as well
| funded as schools in say Palo Alto. It was my experience that
| in our school the best students did most of their learning
| outside of class as very few public school teachers could
| keep up with them. From what I hear, some parents would send
| their children to private schools because they would do this
| and the schools would have somewhat better mentoring, but
| overall I didn't see much difference in the quality of top
| students from either.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Parents send their kids to china during summer vacation to
| learn next year's classes
|
| There are consulting firms that help raise toddlers to be top
| performers.
| heymijo wrote:
| What you noticed is what is well known in education--school
| ratings are merely a proxy for the socioeconomic status of its
| students/families [0].
|
| What can be teased out from that regarding
| cause/effect/deterministic is still mostly unknown.
|
| I don't have a canonical source for this, but this nature paper
| gets the point across. This link [1] also has a useful chart on
| p. 6 to visualize the point.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0022-0
|
| [1]
| https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20dist...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I plotted a graph of test scores vs fraction of Latino
| students for my local school district. It was so linear I did
| a regression and found that it was more correlated than
| income or highest level of parental education. Also of note
| was that there were no schools between 30 and 70% Latino.
|
| If you see the above as a problem, and have a solution other
| then cross-town bussing, I'm all ears.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Funny how no newspaper ever reports shit like this
| gruez wrote:
| Because you'd immediately get called out/canceled for
| being racist.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you're a newspaper, you can choose how to write the
| story. You _could_ go "oh, turns out the _Untermensch_
| are inferior, but don 't look too hard at my evidence" or
| you could instead say "we found systematic discrimination
| again!".
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| i went to one of the best public schools in the states. even then
| the environment was toxic. heroin was dealt in the hallways, many
| kids even died of heroin overdoses. kids were viciously bullied
| and physically assaulted while the drooling, slack-jawed staff
| looked onward. i never put it together until now that this was
| probably because formally acknowledging what was going on would
| negatively impact the schools numbers/ratings.
|
| the school system as a whole wore away at the physical and
| psychological health of a massive number of kids because of the
| insane schedule that deprives them of sleep. this was
| scientifically proven a while ago.
|
| american public schools are a disgrace. i would never enroll my
| kids into a public school. they are glorified daycare centers
| where the inmates run the asylum. and all you have to do is
| reflect on your interactions with average americans to understand
| the fact that these schools are more likely to damage a person
| intellectually than advance them.
|
| the only thing that separates people who had a good experience vs
| people who didnt is their personality. if you are not on the
| spectrum then its just one big pleasant vacation. but if you are
| unhealthy, on the spectrum, have a troubled childhood or for
| whatever reason fall behind emotionally or socially, then public
| schools are worse than a death sentence. everyone involved should
| be ashamed.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I would have thought that the most significant form of gaming the
| system would be discreet student selection. This is available to
| both independent and state school systems. You find a kid who
| isn't doing well in your school, and as the head teacher you find
| a way to invite them to leave. That way you don't need to have
| the resource for whatever special requirements they need, it gets
| dumped on some other school. It has the nice benefit of being
| vaguely justifiable, because of course there are kids who
| genuinely need special help.
|
| On the other end you game the system by offering scholarships,
| and by selecting parents who are keen enough to part with a few
| tens of thousands of pounds a year.
|
| I'm pretty surprised at the outright exam cheating though. My
| guess would be that if it happened it would be the teachers
| doctoring the papers without the students seeing it.
|
| My impression of the UK school system is that they've done a lot
| with reducing bullying in the last couple of decades. It's
| visible when you visit a school that they care about it, and the
| kids have assemblies about it, something that would have been
| left to the kids themselves back in my day.
| occz wrote:
| > I would have thought that the most significant form of gaming
| the system would be discreet student selection.
|
| This is very common in the private, for-profit schools in
| Sweden. The general procedure goes as follows:
|
| 1. Spend heavily on marketing to attract 'good students' 2.
| Avoid selecting 'bad students' 3. Automatically use the scores
| that follow from this selection to create a feedback loop that
| keeps bringing in good students 4. Cut as much spending as you
| can - you're getting paid a set amount of money per student
| from the government, after all 5. Pocket the difference
|
| Meanwhile, the public schools are not allowed to engage in the
| same sort of filtering and are hence required to accept the
| 'bad students', which constrains their resources and creating
| the opposite feedback loop to what the private for-profit
| schools have.
|
| Kind of sickening, to be honest.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| It occurs at a higher level than that due to neighborhood
| gentrification and school zoning.
|
| This effect is already seen heavily in suburbs of Australia,
| where Asian (particularly Chinese) migrants will buy into
| suburbs with good schools - pushing out poorer families due
| to increased pricing.
|
| The fundamental problem is that we need to treat poor
| behaviour in the same way we treat serious autism - with
| special schools for those students. The problem is that those
| schools will get filled with minorities, the whole thing will
| be attacked as 'racist', and we'll be back to square one.
| fma wrote:
| Happens in the US too. It's similar to what's known as
| "white flight".
|
| White people leave an area due to minorities coming. The
| new area property value increases... More tax money,
| resources for schools, better teachers get attracted to
| schools and districts with more resources.
|
| Also a part of my wonders how much influence schools even
| have on the kids. Families with more resources can pay to
| get outside help, like enrolling their kids in Kumon...or
| getting a private SAT tutor.
| treis wrote:
| >White people leave an area due to minorities coming. The
| new area property value increases... More tax money,
| resources for schools, better teachers get attracted to
| schools and districts with more resources.
|
| This is a commonly held myth but it's not backed up by
| the data. Inner city districts are usually near the top
| of their state for per pupil spending. What they lack in
| residential tax base they usually make up for in
| commercial buildings. All of those high rise office
| buildings pay lots of property tax and don't send any
| kids to school.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Schooling has little impact on final outcomes generally.
| The biggest factors are genetics, and parenting.
|
| The problem is that acknowledging this leads to
| politically incorrect conclusions, so we continue to
| throw money at education and certain schools.
|
| We'd achieve better outcomes by reducing air and plastic
| pollution which are shown to have substantial negative
| potential impacts on intelligence and personality.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The biggest factors are genetics, and parenting._
|
| How are you distinguishing the two? Show us the evidence,
| not your conclusions.
| gruez wrote:
| > Inner city districts are usually near the top of their
| state for per pupil spending
|
| does this include donations and other sources of revenue
| (eg. bake sales)?
| treis wrote:
| I've not seen numbers for that but the difference is
| usually quite large. For example, Atlanta Public Schools
| is 14k per pupil while the Georgia state average is 10k.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| Why is it sickening? And why have good students in quotes?
|
| Students that for example try to rank high in status by using
| violence in class or bullying will also always exist. They
| are extremely costly and teachers are not allowed to
| incentivize good behavior.
|
| What I mean is that private schools quickly understand just
| how much damage a student can do and the teacher board /
| politicians really don't, they think everything is sunshine
| and unicorns and put systems in place that are extremely
| naive.
|
| The system in place only highlights the problem, but it's not
| the root cause.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| >Students that for example try to rank high in status by
| using violence in class or bullying will also always exist.
|
| i don't understand this position. violence will _always_
| exist but we should blame the politicians?
|
| >the teacher board / politicians really don't ... are
| extremely naive
|
| where you're mistaken is that
|
| >the root cause
|
| is exactly these kinds of practices that divide
| people/create inequality.
| Spivak wrote:
| > I don't understand this position. violence will always
| exist but we should blame the politicians?
|
| Yes! Sure, violence will always _exist_ but that doesn't
| mean that kids should have to be subjected to it. I was
| bullied in the "dragged outside of a teachers view and
| then beaten until I couldn't move" sense and you know
| what happened to them... fucking nothing. Like actually
| literally nothing. Everyone in the school knew all the
| times it happened including the teachers and
| administrators but nobody had the power to remove them
| from school. One of my teachers took pity on me and
| offered to give me "detention" whenever I needed it.
| That's what they could do. My parents fought for years to
| do something with no avail and then moved me to a private
| school.
|
| So yeah these practices create inequality because anyone
| lucky enough to have the means to get out does. As an
| individual family my parents couldn't fix my local public
| school so they did what they could. Therapy was more
| expensive than the private school tuition.
| superflit wrote:
| _" What I mean is that private schools quickly understand
| just how much damage a student can do and the teacher board
| / politicians really don't, they think everything is
| sunshine and unicorns and put systems in place that are
| extremely naive."_
|
| The politician Really understand the problem that is the
| reason _their_ kids are on the private school or them
| likely live in the ""same district"" then.
| ben_w wrote:
| If it was both easy and desirable for private[0] schools to
| both spot and expel the violent, the current Prime Minister
| of the UK would not have completed Eton and from there
| gotten into Oxford, where he developed his current thuggish
| reputation by smashing up restaurants.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/07/oxford-
| bull...
|
| [0] or, as they are called in the UK, "public schools",
| because reasons
| spoonjim wrote:
| I feel like it is only the worst 5% of kids who ruin public
| school for everyone else, but it's those students who the
| school devotes the most resources to "fixing" or "helping"
| which rarely work. If the bottom 5% were sent to a different
| school system where the objective was just to keep them away
| from the other 95% and prepare them for a life of beating
| their wives and robbing liquor stores, the other kids would
| do much better.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > I feel like it is only the worst 5% of kids who ruin
| public school for everyone else
|
| Can confirm, as a former teacher. There were days when that
| 1 kid was sick, and the entire class worked completely
| differently. Suddenly it was possible to teach, the other
| kids learned, and some of them even said they preferred it
| that way. Then that 1 kid returned.
|
| In teachers' room, 95% of time spent talking about
| students, is usually about the same 5 kids.
| madpata wrote:
| Let's just create an explicit class system, assign people
| to those classes using some weird metrics and then decide
| their whole life for them using those classes! What a
| perfect solution!
|
| /s
| spoonjim wrote:
| We already do: the upper class is the kids whose parents
| either by home prices or private school tuition can get
| their kids the hell away from the losers.
| memling wrote:
| > Kind of sickening, to be honest.
|
| This kind of sorting could actually be a good thing if
| resources were adequately devoted toward helping problem
| students find better outcomes. I wonder, for example, if
| trades education would be better suited for many of the
| problem students--allowing of course that there are manifold
| causes for bad classroom behaviors and poor outcomes.
|
| Education is difficult, and I've snipped a rather lengthy
| comment that would probably be a waste of time to read. In
| sum, I think differentiation with strong socio-economic
| support (i.e., a social respect for all lines work and
| economic support for them) is probably a better solution than
| dumping people into classrooms who obviously don't belong
| there (at least not right now). But this is obviously hard to
| do (or else we'd probably have done it already).
| sjg007 wrote:
| US charter schools do this extensively. It's the whole point
| of an entrance exam.
| tlb wrote:
| Pushing troublesome kids out isn't gaming the system in the
| same sense that fudging exam results is, because it makes the
| school better for all the remaining kids. (I think "gaming the
| system" should be reserved for things that are overall zero- or
| negative-sum.)
|
| The quality of the school experience depends as much on the
| peer group as on the teachers, curriculum, and facilities.
| Moving troublesome kids to schools with strict discipline can
| help them in life, too. But even if not, the needs of the many
| outweigh the needs of the few.
| solveit wrote:
| > Pushing troublesome kids out isn't gaming the system in the
| same sense that fudging exam results is, because it makes the
| school better for all the remaining kids. (I think "gaming
| the system" should be reserved for things that are overall
| zero- or negative-sum.)
|
| The troublesome kid goes _somewhere_ , very likely somewhere
| worse equipped to deal with troublesome kids, not being a
| fancy school with a ton of money and all.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| That's the bad design of the system, that a kid that
| predictably will ruin learning experience of all their
| classmates, has no place to go where they would cause least
| harm.
|
| The system simply denies existence of such kids, and
| pretends that teachers just need to work harder, or we need
| to throw more money on that kid, and then everything will
| magically be ok.
| strken wrote:
| What's positive sum for the school might be negative sum for
| the whole school system, or for the whole of society,
| depending on where the troublemakers end up. Are they sent to
| a special school with lower class sizes and more oversight,
| do they just end up at another school down the road, or are
| they thrown out into a society they're not prepared to deal
| with?
| tlb wrote:
| I claim it's positive sum for society. To be concrete,
| suppose that moving the troublemakingest 5% out of a school
| lets the remaining 95% of kids learn 20% more. And the 5%
| learn about the same. So overall society is up 20% * 95% =
| 19%.
|
| It depends on the numbers, of course. If the 95% of kids
| only learned 1% more, it wouldn't be worth it.
|
| It's notoriously hard to measure those numbers because
| everything is confounded by everything else and experiments
| take decades to run. But I think 20% is plausible and 1%
| isn't.
| taeric wrote:
| Aren't you talking past the accusation? It isn't just
| troublemakers that were pushed out. Low scoring students
| will be, too.
| verall wrote:
| Those numbers are made up to support your assumptions. I
| claim the troublemakingest 5% have an increased chance of
| having an outsized negative effect on overall society,
| and by tossing them by their ears, we double their
| chances of behaviors that have serious (10X) negative
| effects: perpetrating fraud, abuse, or violence.
|
| Depending on assumptions, it is easy to argue that money
| is best spent accelerating our brightest minds and giving
| extra support for the most at-risk, letting the middle
| atrophy. Or it is best to treat everyone equally, which
| certainly leaves the top underfulfilled and the bottom
| underprepared. It's just spitballing.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Are we talking about trouble making kids, or kids who
| aren't going to ace their exams?
|
| Your numbers are all invented whole cloth; please don't
| try to math with them.
|
| More precisely: Why should I believe that the remaining
| kids learn more? In my experience, everyone learns more
| when they teach, as it forces them to shore up their
| assumptions. (When you learn something yourself, you
| learn one wrong way to do it. When you teach, you learn
| thirty wrong ways.) Having kids who think differently
| around for peer exchange is then a good thing overall.
| The struggling kids have stronger peers around to teach
| them, and the stronger kids have more chances to teach.
| gambiting wrote:
| So my sister went to an extremely prestigious private school in
| the UK(basically Eton-level) and they had an easier way around it
| - they basically wouldn't let students sit exams they knew they
| would do poorly in, so the school wouldn't lose its great
| ratings. So my sister wasn't allowed to take maths or chemistry
| in her A-level years because the school didn't think she was good
| enough in those subjects to score and A or higher on the exam. So
| in her final year she only had literally a handful of subjects
| which weren't a danger to the school's academic rating.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| It's very common in German universities that taking exams for a
| particular requires acquiring a "Schein" (certificate) for that
| course. Which are often harder and require much more work than
| preparing for the actual exam.
| mercury_craze wrote:
| The story I've heard a few times is that students who are
| expected to perform poorly in their GCSE's or A-Levels get
| expelled for minor behavioural infractions prior to their final
| exams so their poor grades don't risk bringing down the
| average.
| Traster wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Stage 1 - you can't do
| subjects they don't think you'll do well in. Stage 2 you
| won't be "offered" a place studying for GCSEs if you didn't
| do well in the previous year. Stage 3, If you get bad GCSEs
| you won't return for A levels. Stage 4, you get an offer from
| a prestigious university but get caught smoking pot (or some
| equally expellable act) you'll be invited to study from home
| for the rest of the year so they don't damage their
| statistics and don't need to report your behaviour.
| doovd wrote:
| Very common practice amongst top schools in the UK.
| [deleted]
| mhh__ wrote:
| Mine was in the top 2% or so, and that would never fly (One
| of the most dumbsad things I have seen in my life so far is
| the sight of watching someone not open his exam paper and
| fall asleep then try and have a go in the last five minutes
| in a panicked frenzy)
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I went to the top-ranked state school in Scotland and this
| absolutely happened to my friends - it's not limited to private
| institutions. It was obvious that they were gaming the system
| at the expense of the pupils even then.
| amrrs wrote:
| Exactly the same thing I read about Delhi (Indian) Schools, 10th
| standard is board exams where the marks are published Nation-wide
| so to look good on Media, students who didn't do well during
| their 9th standard were "Pushed-out" of it to different schools
| so that their 10th std cohort looks awesome -
| https://thewire.in/education/delhi-govts-push-out-policy-for...
| not_knuth wrote:
| Every time I see an article like this about how the UK government
| (all large orginzations of people in general though) is obssessed
| with measuring meaningless things, I am reminded that it is the
| birthplace of Goodhart's Law [0].
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| But the alternative to decision by metrics is decision by
| committee. The former may be gamed, but the latter may be
| corrupt. The inherent human nature that leads to corruption
| cannot be fixed, but in theory there could be a metric that
| isn't flawed. Therefore the solution is not to abandon evidence
| based policy, but to have more and better evidence based
| policy.
| caddemon wrote:
| I've always wondered about using multiple metrics, but
| instead of combining them prior to selection, bin the spots
| and for each bin consider a subset of metrics weighted in
| different ways. For something like a school ranking, instead
| of giving a number (which is way more precision than I think
| these systems can actually achieve), the schools could be
| tiered - with each bin contributing some spots to the first
| tier, then repeat.
|
| At the very least it should diversify how people try to game
| the system, and then the "winners" of various bins could be
| studied to compare usage of different metrics in selection.
| If the specific formula could be kept mostly secret, perhaps
| switched up every so often, it would hopefully disincentivize
| gaming at all.
|
| Along those lines, committees and metrics could both be used.
| Give committees control over 10% of the spots or something.
| Corruption is obviously a downside, but I do think committees
| also have upsides that are difficult if not impossible to
| replicate with pure metrics. In doing this committee
| selections could also be tracked against the various metric
| ones for longer term outcomes.
| iheartblocks wrote:
| I'm currently watching The Wire, and this aspect of people
| juking the stats to move up the ranks is a deep underlying
| theme. It's gotten me to thinking: what is the best alternative
| to focusing on metrics? Surely, relying on something other than
| data would be no improvement over the status quo.
|
| The only thought I've had is to: 1) Rely on a spectrum of
| metrics, to get a more holistic perspective. Instead of just
| seeing "crime is down x%" administrators would see how many
| reports end up classified as a lower-level infractions, how
| civilians rate the safety of their area, etc. 2) Add common-
| sense restrictions to make stat-pumping more difficult. For
| example, bringing in classroom inspections on random days 3)
| Penalizing institutions and individuals who are clearly
| attempting to juke the stats. Enforcement would certainly be
| difficult, but simply having something to this effect on the
| books would, imho, reduce schools dedicating time to studying
| for a standardized test
| aronhegedus wrote:
| My grammar school definitely mentioned in assemblies before the
| inspections that we should all be on our best behaviour, I'm
| pretty sure that's fairly standard in UK.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think you're right that telling students to behave is common.
| I think now the assessments happen wi less notice (day of or
| day before.)
|
| I'm not sure how I feel about inspections happening with so
| little notice. It's surely a very stressful time to be a
| teacher. I wonder if inspections might be more fair if instead
| of a single inspection, several could be made over a year and
| then aggregated into the school's grade.
| dash2 wrote:
| I would think unannounced inspections might be less stressful
| than announced ones. You have to make less effort preparing
| for them, and the standards are going to be a bit more
| relaxed, because the inspectors won't assume that you have
| prepared.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Well if you're having a bad week or teaching a
| harder/slower/weirder part of the curriculum at the time or
| otherwise feel like you're not on your best form it could
| be stressful. I don't know how important inspections are to
| eg teachers' pay or promotions but if they do matter then I
| think teachers would be stressed by a random inspection
| having an outsize impact on their careers compared to every
| other day
| timthorn wrote:
| The UK government introduced a test to check how children were
| progressing in phonics. Teachers were told the pass mark to aid
| in assessment, but the national results showed a remarkable bump
| for exactly the pass mark:
|
| https://schoolsweek.co.uk/phonics-check-needs-rethink-after-...
|
| The government decided to not share the pass mark ahead of time
| for tests in future years. I attended a conference that year at
| which the Education Secretary gave a keynote to an audience of
| educators; he got booed for not trusting teachers as a result.
| gumby wrote:
| I have to confess a little sympathy even though I agree it's
| dishonest.
|
| Most schools are struggling to evolve in an environment they
| weren't set up for. And in parallel, parents with money and/or
| education for it definitely try to game the system as well. Hence
| a bit of sympathy on my part.
|
| I attended a private school that did the opposite: no "GPA" (just
| letter grades, no average nor class rank computed), its own
| curriculum, no designated "AP" courses (you could take the exam
| if you liked). And all the graduates did fine at university. It
| was very clear to me that they could get away with this because
| they had spent centuries educating kids. They strongly
| discouraged gaming the system...because they had gamed it at a
| deeper level already.
| mattbee wrote:
| I can't see how old the author is but my son's primary school got
| 24hrs notice of their last inspection a coule of years back. A
| ex-teacher friend 10 years ago told me it was a lot less than a
| week's notice for her larger secondary.
|
| I'm sure some details are gameable, but what I'm more interested
| in are the inspectors' incentives, not just the schools'.
| timthorn wrote:
| The author's experiences are historic. In 2012, the notice
| period for inspections was reduced to the afternoon before the
| inspectors turned up, but prior to that it could be several
| weeks: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/changes-to-education-
| insp...
|
| The London Challenge was implemented to turn around the issues
| in London schools that the author recounts, and did so
| remarkably successfully:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Challeng
| zackmorris wrote:
| I hadn't seen greaterwrong.com, and was hoping that it would
| offer counterarguments to articles on lesswrong.com, but it's
| just a summary of it.
|
| I get frustrated by articles like this because they focus on
| second-order causes instead of first-order. I don't know how it
| works overseas, but the main problem in the US is that schools
| are funded by property taxes from state and local governments
| instead of the federal government (which only accounts for less
| than 10% of funding):
|
| https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html
|
| Which means that public schools are a magnifying glass for issues
| like discrimination and wealth inequality that the whole country
| is wrestling with. Want to know why schools in the south side of
| Chicago are doing worse than schools in Beverly Hills? There's
| your answer. Full stop.
|
| Until we fix that nationally, expect more of the same.
|
| What's the solution? To me it's very simple, but unfortunately we
| need some kind of consensus on this, and that's not going to
| happen until people start reaching similar conclusions when
| presented with the same facts. But we're more polarized than
| ever.. so.. let me offer an analogy instead:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel
|
| America is quite strong in certain areas (finance, the military,
| etc) but so weak in others (education, health and human services,
| etc) that we've become vulnerable. Look at Texas right now: the
| fossil fuel energy capital of America (maybe the world?) unable
| to keep the lights on as its citizens slowly freeze to death.
| Look at the US response to COVID-19 as hundreds of thousands of
| people die unnecessary deaths because we weren't brave enough to
| quarantine long enough. If that stuff isn't biblical, I don't
| know what is.
|
| No, these problems are not due to failings at the personal or
| local level. They're systemic, national and cultural.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Do you have per-student spending figures for those schools
| you're comparing? The schools in the cities I'm familiar with,
| federal supplemental funding actually makes it so the poorer
| areas are able to spend more per student than the wealthier
| areas, and the poorer area schools still perform way worse.
|
| IMO money plays some role, but it's not directly the property
| taxes that matter.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Want to know why schools in the south side of Chicago are
| doing worse than schools in Beverly Hills? There's your answer.
| Full stop.
|
| This analysis completely fails; the correlation between student
| performance and per-student spending in US schools is negative.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Those figures never weigh parental wealth, income, and credit
| access.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What adjustment are you thinking of making? If you want to
| bump up the Beverly Hills per-student spending by assuming
| parents in Beverly Hills spend money on their students that
| doesn't show up in the school budgets, you still have to
| give up on the idea that "funding from local property taxes
| is the reason schools in the south side of Chicago are
| doing worse than schools in Beverly Hills, full stop".
| Unless, of course, you're proposing to prohibit parents
| from spending money on their own children, as some people
| in the US actually have.
|
| The analysis would fail anyway, though; spending on
| students (by parents) is also negatively correlated with
| student performance _within families_. Parents seek to
| bring low-performing children up to the level of high-
| performing children more than they seek to boost their
| high-performing children further.
| pjscott wrote:
| FYI, greaterwrong.com is an alternate front-end for
| lesswrong.com. The content is identical, but with different UI.
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