This is brilliant. “but reading more and doing more math problems is likely necessary, while pointing blame elsewhere isn’t going to help. Colleges, with all their social justice talk, could be creating robust after-school and weekend opportunities for poor communities to support doing more schoolwork.”
We tend to overcomplicate the issues in higher ed. There may be all sorts of reasons, but ultimately you still have to do the work and sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one. In this case there’s no shortcut.
I love how you name that colleges could DO something about it. It is tricky though as that is not their charge nor what tuition should go towards. But pointing the finger at K-12 and telling them to do it has not worked either…
It becomes intractable which is how we got here. So perhaps higher ed needs to get their hands more in the community in the way that say a Portland State has…
On one hand, sure, the issue isn't the responsibility of college. But they are big proponents of social justice, and so maybe they should put something behind their rhetoric. At the same time, improving K-12 outcomes increases their pool of possible college students. One could think of these efforts as investing in their futures.
In the end, their costs here wouldn't be high. There are plenty of students looking for community service opportunities, basically free labor. You could probably do something with the cost of a director and one other assistant plus some transportation expenses to move students around.
Great post that emphasizes the timing of smartphone use and COVID affects.
Is there socioeconomic status in the NAEP data?
A problem I see with these conclusions, whether from the Left or Right, is an overemphasis on racial analysis. Earnings in a household are ignored, or interpolated. Typically what's done is the school district is labelled rich or poor based on property taxes, but that is a proxy measure. We really need household incomes.
Good points. I think NAEP has SES data, but I'm not certain. If they do, I'll post about it at some point. I want to do fourth-grade math first based on race and sex. What I doubt they have is the mix of SES and race. Do poor Asians do better than other groups that are poor? I do think there are cultural issues partly at play here.
The one issue with SES is that people see that as causation, but maybe there are factors that leave one in low SES that also lead to low scores. I'd like a measure of executive functioning skills (time management, motivation, organization, long-term goals, etc.) as they relate to success. My anecdotal evidence from teaching is that executive functioning skills are the first problem in doing well in math, not general cognitive ability. For some subset of students, phones, Netflix, and the general high availability of distraction make this worse.
This is brilliant. “but reading more and doing more math problems is likely necessary, while pointing blame elsewhere isn’t going to help. Colleges, with all their social justice talk, could be creating robust after-school and weekend opportunities for poor communities to support doing more schoolwork.”
We tend to overcomplicate the issues in higher ed. There may be all sorts of reasons, but ultimately you still have to do the work and sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one. In this case there’s no shortcut.
I love how you name that colleges could DO something about it. It is tricky though as that is not their charge nor what tuition should go towards. But pointing the finger at K-12 and telling them to do it has not worked either…
It becomes intractable which is how we got here. So perhaps higher ed needs to get their hands more in the community in the way that say a Portland State has…
Thanks Alex.
On one hand, sure, the issue isn't the responsibility of college. But they are big proponents of social justice, and so maybe they should put something behind their rhetoric. At the same time, improving K-12 outcomes increases their pool of possible college students. One could think of these efforts as investing in their futures.
In the end, their costs here wouldn't be high. There are plenty of students looking for community service opportunities, basically free labor. You could probably do something with the cost of a director and one other assistant plus some transportation expenses to move students around.
Great post that emphasizes the timing of smartphone use and COVID affects.
Is there socioeconomic status in the NAEP data?
A problem I see with these conclusions, whether from the Left or Right, is an overemphasis on racial analysis. Earnings in a household are ignored, or interpolated. Typically what's done is the school district is labelled rich or poor based on property taxes, but that is a proxy measure. We really need household incomes.
Good points. I think NAEP has SES data, but I'm not certain. If they do, I'll post about it at some point. I want to do fourth-grade math first based on race and sex. What I doubt they have is the mix of SES and race. Do poor Asians do better than other groups that are poor? I do think there are cultural issues partly at play here.
The one issue with SES is that people see that as causation, but maybe there are factors that leave one in low SES that also lead to low scores. I'd like a measure of executive functioning skills (time management, motivation, organization, long-term goals, etc.) as they relate to success. My anecdotal evidence from teaching is that executive functioning skills are the first problem in doing well in math, not general cognitive ability. For some subset of students, phones, Netflix, and the general high availability of distraction make this worse.