First Get Kids in School, Then Offer Educational Theories, Then Pilot Them, and We Might Believe You
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24 responses to “First Get Kids in School, Then Offer Educational Theories, Then Pilot Them, and We Might Believe You”
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Excellent analysis and research. Hopefully it will get read by teachers and School Boards. And especially by the School Boards superiors-the voting citizens.
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Try Hanlon if not Occam.
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Capt. you are the bomb! By using your stats, would I be able to extrapolate the other demographic groups. I can’t WAIT to pass this around AND I speak in front of school boards and council. I will get this out!!
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You don’t need to extrapolate. I will create an expanded version for Chesapeake with the expanded numbers for other groups and send it to you if you need it. Let me know.
I can get to it early next week. Two grandsons graduating from high school this weekend.
And by the way, Chesapeake has really shown the way on limiting chronic absenteeism. Well done. Send flowers to your J&D judges.
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I will – easily done. 😉
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I agree that kids can’t learn if they are not in school. School divisions should be doing everything they can to reduce chronic absenteeism.
You start off your otherwise good discussion with the classic “straw man” debate fallacy. Give me examples of the “left” contending that Black children “cannot learn at the same level as white children”. I can give you lots of examples of conservatives saying saying that, which explains why there is a whole generation of Black adults who were denied a decent education.
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Joe Biden’s statement on poor kids smart as white kids? It was obvious. How about systemic racism blocks black students from learning at all, we need SEL for them to learn.
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What about Biden’s comment? He said that poor kids are as smart as white kids. He quickly realized that was poorly worded, and amended it to say “smart as wealthy kids”.
As for systemic racism, it makes it more difficult for Black kids to get as good an education as whites, but does not mean that Black kids can’t learn as well if given the chance.
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No matter what, the inference was there. The man has a history of “jungle” comments. Proof of systemic racism? Proof that none of the single parent homes, a culture of gangs, women as less than men and toys, non focus on education, has nothing to do with it? How is it that Oriental Asians were able to come back from the 1940’s and do so well? The Chinese? Folks from India, you know the Asian Americans, they are tops on the $$$ earning poll. Has to do with family stability and culture.
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I do not know what any of that has to with educators allegedly not wanting to conduct pilot programs or with absenteeism.
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What groups are most successful and what groups are the most absent? That right there tells you a lot. Putting in a hypothesis and thinking it comes to the conclusion you want, isn’t a pilot program. How about we take former POTUS’ Obamas’ children and see how they are doing? Different from parents or just one parent, that isn’t interested in education?
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That is the underlying assumption of the sudden revolution in school curricula. And it came from the left.
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I disagree that such is the underlying assertion. Just because some want the curricula changed does not mean they think Black kids can’t learn as well as whites.
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Proof? You’re asking it of us. How about the video that showed that people in NYC thought black people were incapable on the internet and getting drivers’ licenses?
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I am not aware of that video. Were there “leftists” on it?
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One thing to note about student attendance is that school folks can do some things to promote attendance (the carrot) such as building relationships with students and their families, addressing known issues that serve as a barrier to school attendance (such as providing additional supports or dealing with bullying behaviors), and providing incentives. However, school folks don’t have any sticks with which to enforce attendance- all of those are held by the Juvenile and Domestic Relations judges across the Commonwealth.
Based on my experience (and from discussions with other educators from across the state), these judges deal with this issue in varying degrees in their courtrooms. For example, a now retired judge (in whose courtroom I had witnessed many court proceedings) was so lax in the enforcement of mandatory school attendance laws that chronically truant students and their families knew they would get off with a warning, despite how many days they missed and how many times they had to appear in that court. Other judges took a much different approach and simply the thought of going in front of those judges caused students to attend school more regularly. I don’t know if it is the philosophies of the judges, the fear of perpetuating the “schools to jail pipeline”, the lack of resources to provide court ordered interventions/disincentives, or a combination of the above, but generally, judges aren’t typically viewed as helpful by school folks working to get their kids in school.
Nothing I wrote here should be construed to say we need to drop the hammer on every kid who is truant. Most if not all schools can do a better job in those things in which they can control (providing the carrots). However, we have some students and parents who will take advantage of the situation if they know their judge won’t effectively enforce mandatory school attendance laws, and that word gets around in the community.
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Thank You Matt.
The major premise of your discussion is itself a straw man. That is the assertion that ”
educational theory has avoided pilot studies” and that educational theorists “cannot pilot studies”.
A quick internet search disproved this assertion. Here are descriptions of two pilot studies on absenteeism:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190740917305509
https://www.attendanceworks.org/26412-2/
Here is an article summarizing the research and pilot studies on the teaching of reading:
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-do-kids-learn-to-read-what-the-science-says/2019/10
Here are a couple about pilot programs on the teaching of poor kids:
https://www.pmi.org/most-influential-projects/50-most-influential-projects/keep-kids-learning-pilot
And here is one about a pilot program in your back yard, Norfolk:
https://www.pilotonline.com/news/education/article_2b04c4c0-8b85-11e8-9969-2b1b77c77612.html
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Explain why the absentee from classroom kids are failing so badly? There are loads of stories showing the zoom stuff (as in not in school) failed. Btw, you have a lot of stories from edweek, maybe not the most enlightened place, when these are the same problem people who can’t figure out that they should have been back in school for a long time. Same for VP. They’ve produced drivel for years. The reason why their readership when down the tank is because they’re propaganda, not news.
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I agree that chronic absenteeism is harmful, as was the virtual learning experience over the past year. But, that is not the point. Mr. Sherlock asserted that the education establishment does not conduct pilot studies. These stories, including the one in the Virginian Pilot, show that numerous pilot studies are conducted, regardless of what you think of the publications.
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What I think is that any pilot studies they are doing is a waste of money because its not showing them what they need to do to help kids succeed.
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Testing theories. A couple decades ago, parents of autistic children approached Fairfax County Public Schools with a request to implement what I recall was Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) techniques. At the time, the method was very expensive, requiring a very low teacher-student ratio and the results were quite mixed. As I recall, FCPS did a ten-student trial. 2 students improved greatly; 2 students declined substantially; and the rest showed no change. Given the cost/benefit ratio, FCPS said it would not institute the program.
The same parents then tried to form a charter school. Given the antipathy towards charter schools by teachers unions, FCPS decided that, rather than see a charter school and offend those who make campaign contributions to school board candidates, FCPS would institute the ABA program. The Party of science, data and analysis.
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