I have a lot to say about the issue, but I always have trouble figuring out where to start because everything is so tangled. But here is one point: the Nikole Hannah-Jones article shines a light on a lie at the heart of progressive education reform.
This lie stems from how activists have interpreted a central finding of the 1966 Coleman Report. It noted that minority students achieved higher standardized test scores when attending integrated schools, while finding no statistically significant decline in performance for white students. Though subsequent studies have replicated these results, the conclusions have been twisted.
While the Coleman Report did not find statistically significant harm to white students, its methodology never ruled it out using a non-inferiority test or equivalence test. NHJ and other commentators misinterpret the absence of evidence as evidence of absence*. They comfortably claim that integration poses zero academic risk to affluent children, thereby concluding that any parents who flee the same kind of school NHJ just fled are just racist.
Progressives understand that highly involved, affluent parents are the ones who keep public schools accountable, get involved, volunteer, and their children foster positive peer effects. Reformers need to cajole these families into staying, so they lie: their children lose nothing by attending an impoverished school, and parental hesitation is a moral failing.
* Note: I do not think this is a conscious lie, but rather that they do not understand the details of statistical testing and this is a favorable conclusion.
School choice is key, but more important is an administration that holds schools--principals and teachers--accountable for student outcomes. Matt Yglesias' experience in DC is instructive. Since the imposition of annual reviews in 2009 and the 2010 teachers' contract reducing tenure protections and increasing bonuses, DC schools have improved. There are a lot of charter school students there, which is a good thing. But standards are what unlocks growth for all students.
Nikole Hannah Jones does not owe an apology to anyone other than her kid. Who took education advice from her? Did anyone get forced into taking education advice from her? Who should apologize to Nikole Hannah Jones for convincing her to do this with her child? By all means there is plenty to say about her decisions but no reason to expect wholesale apologies for ideas that receive traction all over the place and are present everywhere. She has come out to say her experience taught her that following the philosophy was bad for her daughter. That’s way more than we get from anyone who voted for Trump.
I can tell you one thing with 100 percent certainty, everyone in this country holds some kind of wrong idea regarding education. Even those who are mostly right nevertheless hang onto something incorrect. That’s because in education, something might be true some of the time for some of the people. That’s what you get when dealing with human beings.
This is just her virtue signaling about her perfectly justified mistake for the greater good. Is she saying inner city schools are terrible, the teachers are ignorant and lazy, and the administration are criminally negligent? No, I don't think she is. But my God, isn't she a good little soldier for the cause, sacrificing her daughter. Yes, she really is, isn't she. If only those classrooms had been improved by the attendance of her white daughter, all would have been well.
Gavin Newsome.....yeah, closing the beaches during Covid was probably not the right thing to do
HNJ......maybe school choice isn't such a bad thing
Bernie Sanders with Steve Bannon (?).....taking on the tech bros/AI
What do they ALL have in common?.......and it's a big election year!
It's a lot of "sorry....not sorry" and I'm not biting on that line! Acknowledgment without Apology AND Atonement is just empty rhetoric. She ruined public education for millions of students across the country and now that those students have graduated into the world without basic life skills/knowledge, how will they succeed in life?
Nothing good is coming out of academia and it needs to be shut down! Those that make stupid policy decisions while residing in their ivory towers and sequestered from the masses are to blame for this whole mess.....and HNJ is one of those.
I have a lot to say about the issue, but I always have trouble figuring out where to start because everything is so tangled. But here is one point: the Nikole Hannah-Jones article shines a light on a lie at the heart of progressive education reform.
This lie stems from how activists have interpreted a central finding of the 1966 Coleman Report. It noted that minority students achieved higher standardized test scores when attending integrated schools, while finding no statistically significant decline in performance for white students. Though subsequent studies have replicated these results, the conclusions have been twisted.
While the Coleman Report did not find statistically significant harm to white students, its methodology never ruled it out using a non-inferiority test or equivalence test. NHJ and other commentators misinterpret the absence of evidence as evidence of absence*. They comfortably claim that integration poses zero academic risk to affluent children, thereby concluding that any parents who flee the same kind of school NHJ just fled are just racist.
Progressives understand that highly involved, affluent parents are the ones who keep public schools accountable, get involved, volunteer, and their children foster positive peer effects. Reformers need to cajole these families into staying, so they lie: their children lose nothing by attending an impoverished school, and parental hesitation is a moral failing.
* Note: I do not think this is a conscious lie, but rather that they do not understand the details of statistical testing and this is a favorable conclusion.
School choice is key, but more important is an administration that holds schools--principals and teachers--accountable for student outcomes. Matt Yglesias' experience in DC is instructive. Since the imposition of annual reviews in 2009 and the 2010 teachers' contract reducing tenure protections and increasing bonuses, DC schools have improved. There are a lot of charter school students there, which is a good thing. But standards are what unlocks growth for all students.
Since we're facing school choice here in Texas, I think a lot about whether it's fair to say our system can fixed. And can it be fixed?
Nikole Hannah Jones does not owe an apology to anyone other than her kid. Who took education advice from her? Did anyone get forced into taking education advice from her? Who should apologize to Nikole Hannah Jones for convincing her to do this with her child? By all means there is plenty to say about her decisions but no reason to expect wholesale apologies for ideas that receive traction all over the place and are present everywhere. She has come out to say her experience taught her that following the philosophy was bad for her daughter. That’s way more than we get from anyone who voted for Trump.
I can tell you one thing with 100 percent certainty, everyone in this country holds some kind of wrong idea regarding education. Even those who are mostly right nevertheless hang onto something incorrect. That’s because in education, something might be true some of the time for some of the people. That’s what you get when dealing with human beings.
This is just her virtue signaling about her perfectly justified mistake for the greater good. Is she saying inner city schools are terrible, the teachers are ignorant and lazy, and the administration are criminally negligent? No, I don't think she is. But my God, isn't she a good little soldier for the cause, sacrificing her daughter. Yes, she really is, isn't she. If only those classrooms had been improved by the attendance of her white daughter, all would have been well.
AOC.....Woke 1.0 was crazy
Gavin Newsome.....yeah, closing the beaches during Covid was probably not the right thing to do
HNJ......maybe school choice isn't such a bad thing
Bernie Sanders with Steve Bannon (?).....taking on the tech bros/AI
What do they ALL have in common?.......and it's a big election year!
It's a lot of "sorry....not sorry" and I'm not biting on that line! Acknowledgment without Apology AND Atonement is just empty rhetoric. She ruined public education for millions of students across the country and now that those students have graduated into the world without basic life skills/knowledge, how will they succeed in life?
Nothing good is coming out of academia and it needs to be shut down! Those that make stupid policy decisions while residing in their ivory towers and sequestered from the masses are to blame for this whole mess.....and HNJ is one of those.