My first thought reading about the Florida study was whether they controlled for poverty. Are different kinds of communities having different school structures?
It's not totally clear, but it seems insulting to assume the researchers didn't. My question is how they accounted for parental engagement, since my suspicion is that the k-8 model would tend to be opt-in and not city-wide.
My school was K-12. It seemed to work O.K., except for the one guy who tried to overthrown the election.
My question is how they accounted for parental breeds, since my suspicion is that the k-9 model would tend to be exogamous and not kennel-defined.
My school was K1-8. American pop culture products do not make sense to me. Except the one with Heath Ledger, because that was Shakespeare.
I went to 3 different junior high schools -- 7th grade in a Detroit suburb, 8th grade in a Tel Aviv suburb, and 9th grade in Bethesda, Maryland. Wherever I went there was not a whole lot of learning going on.
I believe that even at the time, educational theorists had discovered the flaws in the junior high school model and found the solution with the invention of the middle school. I am shocked to discover that the middle schools have the same problems.
Trump would have sent you to junior high in Jerusalem.
Here's the 2012 study referenced in the first link. It seems to be a student-level, rather than school-level analysis, and says, "Because we compare the achievement of individual students to themselves over time, our analysis takes into account all student characteristics (both observed and unobserved) that do not change over time." So, race/ethnicity but not income or location? I'm not sure what I think of that.
The study finding no benefit is this, which I can't access, but an essay elsewhere says it used an actual case where Philadelphia merged some schools and not others; that seems a more real-world comparison.
13 is the situation that makes me skeptical as in 2.
My sincere belief: fix the poverty, and then you can tinker with the schools.
At my job, we always say, fix the housing, and then you can address the addictions. And then we say, Hey, over at Department of Education, I bet they're saying the same thing about their work, just with poverty!
Austria has a different and problematic system: primary school is 1-4, then you're tracked into either Gymnasium (5-12) or middle school (5-8). After middle school you can theoretically go to upper gymnasium (9-12) or higher vocational school (9-13), both of which end with a test that qualifies you to attend university, but you have to have the grades for it -- many end up in polytechnic school (grade 9 only) to finish the 9 year legal schooling requirement (or fulfill it by having to repeat a year in the first 8 years) and that's it. If they then do an apprenticeship, they also do some schooling in parallel at the "career school" (which includes general education), but those who just end their schooling with PTS (or even without) do not do well in life.
The obvious issue here is sorting winners and losers at 9.5 years old, but the issue mentioned in the article, that transitions are tricky, also hits the worst-off after grade 8 -- they're going to go to a new school for only a year, and then have to figure out their lives. 2 big transitions in a year, for kids who are disproportionately poor, not native speakers, etc. Not easy!
A lot of rural elementary schools around here are finding themselves on the chopping block due to lack of students. Maybe if the middle schools got chopped instead, the one-elementary-school-per-town model could be saved.
Clearly the problem that is particular for educating children of that age is puberty, so the obvious solution is puberty blockers.
Now there's the out-of-the-box policy thinking this country needs.
There are twice as many fireworks related hospital visits in January as in December. So remember to set them off before midnight.
I cannot figure what time zone Minivet must be in.
Esprit d'Escalier Standard Time.
Heh. (also)
Kevin Drum's post just now (title: "Nothing works. Now with proof!") is very much on point. I'm very much in the "you get teacher buy-in with time-consuming relationship-building and trust" camp and I am so grateful for Ms. Ammons, the principal of the elementary school both our boys went to. One person in the right position can be so transformative. [does not scale].
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Our analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with 40 women involved in the methamphetamine market in rural Missouri shows their cultural responses to this market shift. Our data revealed widespread nostalgia towards former, locally produced meth types, along with rumors regarding the new ice.|>
Yeah, grandma's recipe was the best. She didn't even have a Walmart to shoplift from.
29: I am so tired of the demand to make things scale. I think we need to recognize that they can't always scale the same and structure incentives - money, work environment so that good people will stay and be encouraged (or at least not active,y discouraged) from doing the right thing.
Encouraged to do, or at least, not actively discouraged from doing, the right thing.
Yes. The subtext seems to be "how can we create a system that replicates the results of employing skilled people who give a shit without paying enough to attract skilled people who give a shit?"
And I think the demographics support this. When you're doing your industrial revolution-urbanization-state formation thing you've got to get the kids in and out like hamburger patties. Once you're demographic transitioned and graying, you've got more adults per kid, so can you can spend mre time on each one.
Math was easier back then, because Calculus wasn't invented yet.
35: Now we'll give the old people hamburger-patty healthcare because of physician shortages.
I think it's because they don't want to pay enough nurses.
Old people are not hamburger patties. Maybe a nice breaded chicken sandwich, or a bowl of dandan noodles.
18: Most, though not all (Bildung ist Ländersache!), of Germany has similar tracking. Not coincidentally, among EU countries Germany has the closest correlation between parent's and children's educational attainment. Or at least it did last time I looked.
Consequently, the very first thing that I will do in the very first hour of the very first day that I am Kaiser is eliminate tracking after fourth grade. If I turn out to be a Habsburg instead, I'll do it in Austria.
Habsburgs do it everywhere.
I wonder if they have blue erections? Or is that just the Spanish ones?
Any color of erection would be an improvement.
Habsburgs do it everywhere.
Or as they said at the time, A.E.I.O.U. - Austriae est imperare orbi universo or in German Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan.
Can someone please explain to me the Postmaster scandal in the UK? What's going on?
The one with the accounting? Was there a new development? (I see on Googling that there was just an ITV show about it, so that's probably the right one.) In the early 2000s they rolled out a new and broken accounting software system, which incorrectly flagged dozens of post offices as having monetary shortfalls; post office managers were then accused of embezzlement and ordered to return the (non-existent) stolen money or face prosecution. The Post Office kept prosecuting people even after it should have become apparent (and in fact even after it was internally known) that the accounting software was broken, and people went to jail, had their homes seized, etc. There has been an official inquiry that has dragged on forever about who's to blame.
It's really awful. A complete miscarriage of justice and a pathetic engineering failing. A black spot on both the legal and software development professions. Hundreds of lives ruined. Multiple suicides. Significant jail time. In some cases sub-postmasters were putting their own money in--up to five figures--to try to make things balance.
That being said, I saw the TV spot for the show and initially thought it was for a low stakes comedy with a Hot Fuzz vibe.