Friday, January 23, 2009
Ed reform much easier to implement than previously imagined
According to science, the achievement gap was never about school quality in the first place. This is great news. So when I go tutor my students on Tuesday, they're going to know calculus, right?
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While you think its ridiculous to suppose that the achievement gap can be strongly affected by something other than school quality, the strong effects of "priming" have been known for a long time. See this paper for a nice table of experiments which show how subtle reminders about racial stereotypes strongly affect math and verbal test results.
I know about priming and stereotype threat, but remain doubtful that "the achievement gap" actually disappeared last week, as this article claims. However, if it was only a figment of our imaginations all along, and all we ever had to do was say, "Black people are awesome!" to kids taking exams, then, again, great news. It's certainly a lot cheaper and less complicated than hiring qualified teachers or maintaining order or even teaching anything.
Ah, I missed the claims in the article that the achievement gap completely disappeared. Yeah, I agree that does sound implausible, though I won't be surprised if some shrinkage in the the achievement gap observed due to the priming effect of Obama.
May I just say, in total agreement, that: That is a load of CRAP. Science is wrong.
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