See, I think there is a disagreement here about what "the real problem" is. If "the real problem" is racial inequality, then affirmative action/racial quotas don't fix it because they only operate at the finish line. But if "the real problem" is that people from My Group don't get enough power or money, then quotas can in fact fix it, and you may not care at all whether the people who get the power and money know what to do with it.
The other problem with the view that the real problem is racial inequality is that no one knows what to do about it, and even interventions at very early stages in work (free prenatal care, preschool/Head Start, free school lunches, aggressive intervention in child abuse) seem not to work.
Yeah I lean really hard on the machine metaphor in this piece, which ignores the interesting thing about the ecology metaphor - we aren’t actually all working together in a well-designed machine, we’re seeing the outcomes of a messy process of interactions. The act of trying to reform that outcome is itself one of the interactions constituting it. So one can’t just like, assert the “real problem,” in a sense.
I think that demonstrates the importance of a shared civic project and honest discourse. Social fragmentation into stupider loyalties is very bad! So I am comfortable smuggling in the assumption that everyone agrees with me on that; if anyone doesn’t they can feel free to defend that.
I think you’re taking an over-pessimistic view of the problem - or maybe over optimistic? As Piper’s piece points out, there’s plenty we know we can do to start with, because we undid it and made things worse!
One "solution" to unequal outcomes in standardized testing is to decrease the effect that standardized testing (and college education) has on people's lives. If Stuyvesant's alumni didn't have such drastically superior life outcomes to others, then the racial composition of the school wouldn't matter.
This is the argument presented in Freddie DeBoer's The Cult of Smart. The general idea of compressing outcomes, rather than worrying about human capital development(such as education) comes up in the conversation between Piper and Matt Bruenig here:
I find the thinking behind this pretty convincing. Just because someone is smarter doesn't mean that they need to have a drastically better life than their dumber peers. And it sidesteps the morass of arguing about why different groups perform differently. I've never seen that be a productive discussion.
I’ll have to read this, because my main response is I just don’t know what that meaningfully looks like.
I definitely agree that the diversity of outcomes is a cause. You see with grade inflation how making a metric so important degrades its usefulness as people try to do this flattening themselves, and I agree that’s a pressure causing worry around things like gifted programs etc.
It looks like any egalitarian policy. A high minimum wage or tax funded services make being a loser less punishing. High taxes make being a winner less rewarding. So the finish line becomes less important.
I didn't particularly enjoy deBoer's book, even if the ideas were interesting. Scott Alexander's review summarizes it well, without the issues the book has:
I think you raised some very good points here. As someone who's worked for over a decade in the US public education system (much of that time in special education) I'd like to add my perspective on addressing the root of the problem, and it is this. General education classrooms which rely on Common Core curriculum standards are simply not an effective way to educate the majority of the population. Even factoring out mitigating circumstances like developmental/learning/behavioral disabilities, or family income level, this one size fits all approach to learning presumes that there is a set norm of learning pace/style that all "normal" students should conform to, and that is simply not the case. Some first graders are going to take longer than others to learn basic reading skills, but if all first graders are expected to master certain skills and then pushed into second grade regardless of mastery of those skills, they are going to flounder. The second graders who mastered the prior prequisite skills will outperform those who haven't yet mastered those skills, yet all these kids are held to the exact same standards and are pushed forward year after year with shaky foundations.
Now, add to that the structure of general education classrooms with 25-30 plus students with different learning abilities, and a single teacher who is expected to impart knowledge to each student's individualized learning style while also managing classroom behaviors and having little to no admin support for disruptive behaviors... and you get an environment designed for no one's advancement. There's also been a push recently towards mainstreaming kids with behavioral disabilities into gen ed settings in the name of "equity" and "inclusion," but teachers are not always provided with the support that these students need. The "inclusion" part is put ahead of what the child realistically needs. A kid who has regular meltdowns that require classroom evacuation is not a recipient of so-called inclusion... they are being placed in an environment that they're not equipped to handle so that the adults can make themselves feel better about being inclusive. I've worked with students like this and have great love and affection for them, but I think it harms them and everyone else around them when we try to force a one-size-fits-all approach to education and call that equity.
I am definitely far from qualified to talk about education and how it should be done, but it seems to me that it’s right that grouping everyone together is having issues - people seem to want more and more specialized education; real support for kids who need it, depth and pathways to success for kids who can handle it, all around more attention paid per child… in a world in which kids are *more* distracted, and their future more uncertain… this all makes sense to me except that it runs up against what’s. actually possible for a teacher to do (unless we have a LOT more of them). So the idea of going the other direction - collapsing differentiation on academic performance, mainstreaming kids with extra needs - strikes me as odd.
I’m curious about where things will end up in the next few decades. I’m sure technological change will have a huge impact. The current situation just doesn’t sound like it’s working to anyone’s satisfaction, that’s for sure.
My proposed solutions (all of which are unlikely to happen because they would cost money):
1. Reduce class sizes across the board. I can't give an exact number for what that should look like, but ideally a developmentally appropriate adult-to-child ratio.
2. An increase in co-teachers and/or instructional aides, regardless of whether there are kids with identified disabilities or not. I believe the ideal is a two-person team in which one person focuses primarily on instruction/academics while the second adult provides redirection, behavioral support, approves the kid who needs the bathroom pass, manages attendance.... etc.
3. Students with emotional disabilities were not any better served by the old system of segragating them into a classroom that feels more like a jail cell. I truly believe that these kids need a curriculum/schooling model of their own that actually accommodates their needs. I truly believe that some children can never thrive in a traditional academic setting and that the failure is on the adults trying to force them into one. I think these students would have better outcomes if they were allowed things like flexibility in start time/length of school day/choice of what to study. Or a way of learning that incorporates movement. Behaviors are communication, and if a child who had regular meltdowns stops having them in a more optimized environment, they were communicating to us what they needed all along. We need to broaden our idea of what makes a good learner beyond the obedient child who can sit still.
If you select purely by merit, not all groups will have exactly the same score on whatever cutoff you're using, leading to disparities.
If you select in accordance with demographic identity, you likely have some decrease in competence relative to the pure-merit case. Exactly how much depends on the underlying distribution of 'merit' (whatever that is) and how much merit actually varies among the population.
IRL, people of course seesaw back and forth between the two, with various groups arguing for whatever will benefit them. That's just democracy.
If we have more diverse movies that aren't quite as technically good but the population sees themselves in it, maybe it's a win? Politicians are supposed to represent the interests of the population; police officers are supposed to hold the state monopoly on violence. Obviously people are very concerned about their demographics. In other cases, like UCLA's medical school, they may have gone too far.
See, I think there is a disagreement here about what "the real problem" is. If "the real problem" is racial inequality, then affirmative action/racial quotas don't fix it because they only operate at the finish line. But if "the real problem" is that people from My Group don't get enough power or money, then quotas can in fact fix it, and you may not care at all whether the people who get the power and money know what to do with it.
The other problem with the view that the real problem is racial inequality is that no one knows what to do about it, and even interventions at very early stages in work (free prenatal care, preschool/Head Start, free school lunches, aggressive intervention in child abuse) seem not to work.
Yeah I lean really hard on the machine metaphor in this piece, which ignores the interesting thing about the ecology metaphor - we aren’t actually all working together in a well-designed machine, we’re seeing the outcomes of a messy process of interactions. The act of trying to reform that outcome is itself one of the interactions constituting it. So one can’t just like, assert the “real problem,” in a sense.
I think that demonstrates the importance of a shared civic project and honest discourse. Social fragmentation into stupider loyalties is very bad! So I am comfortable smuggling in the assumption that everyone agrees with me on that; if anyone doesn’t they can feel free to defend that.
I think you’re taking an over-pessimistic view of the problem - or maybe over optimistic? As Piper’s piece points out, there’s plenty we know we can do to start with, because we undid it and made things worse!
One "solution" to unequal outcomes in standardized testing is to decrease the effect that standardized testing (and college education) has on people's lives. If Stuyvesant's alumni didn't have such drastically superior life outcomes to others, then the racial composition of the school wouldn't matter.
This is the argument presented in Freddie DeBoer's The Cult of Smart. The general idea of compressing outcomes, rather than worrying about human capital development(such as education) comes up in the conversation between Piper and Matt Bruenig here:
https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/mad-libs-bruenig-v-piper
I find the thinking behind this pretty convincing. Just because someone is smarter doesn't mean that they need to have a drastically better life than their dumber peers. And it sidesteps the morass of arguing about why different groups perform differently. I've never seen that be a productive discussion.
I’ll have to read this, because my main response is I just don’t know what that meaningfully looks like.
I definitely agree that the diversity of outcomes is a cause. You see with grade inflation how making a metric so important degrades its usefulness as people try to do this flattening themselves, and I agree that’s a pressure causing worry around things like gifted programs etc.
It looks like any egalitarian policy. A high minimum wage or tax funded services make being a loser less punishing. High taxes make being a winner less rewarding. So the finish line becomes less important.
I didn't particularly enjoy deBoer's book, even if the ideas were interesting. Scott Alexander's review summarizes it well, without the issues the book has:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-cult-of-smart
I think you raised some very good points here. As someone who's worked for over a decade in the US public education system (much of that time in special education) I'd like to add my perspective on addressing the root of the problem, and it is this. General education classrooms which rely on Common Core curriculum standards are simply not an effective way to educate the majority of the population. Even factoring out mitigating circumstances like developmental/learning/behavioral disabilities, or family income level, this one size fits all approach to learning presumes that there is a set norm of learning pace/style that all "normal" students should conform to, and that is simply not the case. Some first graders are going to take longer than others to learn basic reading skills, but if all first graders are expected to master certain skills and then pushed into second grade regardless of mastery of those skills, they are going to flounder. The second graders who mastered the prior prequisite skills will outperform those who haven't yet mastered those skills, yet all these kids are held to the exact same standards and are pushed forward year after year with shaky foundations.
Now, add to that the structure of general education classrooms with 25-30 plus students with different learning abilities, and a single teacher who is expected to impart knowledge to each student's individualized learning style while also managing classroom behaviors and having little to no admin support for disruptive behaviors... and you get an environment designed for no one's advancement. There's also been a push recently towards mainstreaming kids with behavioral disabilities into gen ed settings in the name of "equity" and "inclusion," but teachers are not always provided with the support that these students need. The "inclusion" part is put ahead of what the child realistically needs. A kid who has regular meltdowns that require classroom evacuation is not a recipient of so-called inclusion... they are being placed in an environment that they're not equipped to handle so that the adults can make themselves feel better about being inclusive. I've worked with students like this and have great love and affection for them, but I think it harms them and everyone else around them when we try to force a one-size-fits-all approach to education and call that equity.
I am definitely far from qualified to talk about education and how it should be done, but it seems to me that it’s right that grouping everyone together is having issues - people seem to want more and more specialized education; real support for kids who need it, depth and pathways to success for kids who can handle it, all around more attention paid per child… in a world in which kids are *more* distracted, and their future more uncertain… this all makes sense to me except that it runs up against what’s. actually possible for a teacher to do (unless we have a LOT more of them). So the idea of going the other direction - collapsing differentiation on academic performance, mainstreaming kids with extra needs - strikes me as odd.
I’m curious about where things will end up in the next few decades. I’m sure technological change will have a huge impact. The current situation just doesn’t sound like it’s working to anyone’s satisfaction, that’s for sure.
My proposed solutions (all of which are unlikely to happen because they would cost money):
1. Reduce class sizes across the board. I can't give an exact number for what that should look like, but ideally a developmentally appropriate adult-to-child ratio.
2. An increase in co-teachers and/or instructional aides, regardless of whether there are kids with identified disabilities or not. I believe the ideal is a two-person team in which one person focuses primarily on instruction/academics while the second adult provides redirection, behavioral support, approves the kid who needs the bathroom pass, manages attendance.... etc.
3. Students with emotional disabilities were not any better served by the old system of segragating them into a classroom that feels more like a jail cell. I truly believe that these kids need a curriculum/schooling model of their own that actually accommodates their needs. I truly believe that some children can never thrive in a traditional academic setting and that the failure is on the adults trying to force them into one. I think these students would have better outcomes if they were allowed things like flexibility in start time/length of school day/choice of what to study. Or a way of learning that incorporates movement. Behaviors are communication, and if a child who had regular meltdowns stops having them in a more optimized environment, they were communicating to us what they needed all along. We need to broaden our idea of what makes a good learner beyond the obedient child who can sit still.
You have kind of a tradeoff, right?
If you select purely by merit, not all groups will have exactly the same score on whatever cutoff you're using, leading to disparities.
If you select in accordance with demographic identity, you likely have some decrease in competence relative to the pure-merit case. Exactly how much depends on the underlying distribution of 'merit' (whatever that is) and how much merit actually varies among the population.
IRL, people of course seesaw back and forth between the two, with various groups arguing for whatever will benefit them. That's just democracy.
If we have more diverse movies that aren't quite as technically good but the population sees themselves in it, maybe it's a win? Politicians are supposed to represent the interests of the population; police officers are supposed to hold the state monopoly on violence. Obviously people are very concerned about their demographics. In other cases, like UCLA's medical school, they may have gone too far.