Austin Scholar, a gifted teenager at the unconventional Alpha school in Austin, commented on X (Twitter) that “half of our graduating seniors score the EXACT same on standardized tests as the highest-performing 3rd graders,” suggesting that, “kids are literally wasting nine years of their lives,” accompanied by this table of math test scores for the top half of test-takers from kindergarten through 12th grade:
Many kids are getting very little out of school, but that’s not what this comparison shows. This comparison shows that gifted children can move through the curriculum far, far faster than they’re allowed to.
What shows that most kids get very little out of school is the curve of the median student’s performance, which climbs nicely for the first few grades and then almost levels off, so that a typical 12th-grader knows almost nothing more than a typical 8th-grader.
Since the typical student learns roughly nothing in high school, it’s a waste of everyone’s time to keep them there, going through the motions.
(School does provide childcare and juvenile detention, though.)
These are MAP test results, by the way. When you look at the lower and upper halves, the results are even more revealing:
The top 1st-graders outperform many 12th-graders.
The bottom 13 percent of 12th-graders are obviously not scholars, but one 7th-grader per couple classrooms (98th percentile) has the fundamental skills of a college-bound senior (90th percentile).
The convoluted wording of legalisms grows up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”
“The bottom 13 percent of 12th-graders are obviously not scholars…”
Heh.
“…but one 7th-grader per couple classrooms (98th percentile) has the fundamental skills of a college-bound senior (90th percentile).”
Now meditate on the unfathomably sorry fate of the 99.9th-percentile second-grader.
Raze every public school and salt the earth that nothing may grow.
”The convoluted wording of legalisms grows up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other.”
We’ve been trained to believe that if we are nice to people, they will be nice to us. Ignores the base conflict and adversity inherent in life; especially between various groupings: men/women; ethnicities; races.
Thus, we’re told if we are nice to women and give them stuff, things will work out. If we are nice to Palestinians, they will join us around the campfire, smoking the crackpipe. Ditto for Jews. If we quit being mean to George Floyd, all colors will bleed into one.
Can’t seem to convey to people that this stuff doesn’t matter; there will always be a pretext for violence. If not a George Floyd, a Freddy Gray. If not Freddy Gray, then we have to atone at maximum expense for not treating Sojourner Truth properly. If not Sojourner Truth, then the various tribesmen circa 1619. Etc. etc.
Uses adaptive testing for the norming: https://teach.mapnwea.org/impl/normsResearchStudy.pdf#page=31
School takes; it does not give.
There’s more to life than books and paper tests, but school has little or nothing to do with learning, other than wasting prime learning years.
normsResearchStudy
Oh gawd; usual stuff we get from Ed Establishment: systemic change blah blah blah; so much jargon you need a chainsaw; ten cents of value delivered by a hundred dollars of effort.
Can’t even fill us in on their acronyms. I’ll assume MAP stands for Madly Advocating Persecution ; NWEA stands for New World Evildoers Association.
This analysis is utter nonsense. The great majority of children leave school able to read and write and do arithmetic at some level. They have some idea of science and history and how the political system is supposed to operate.
If that were not true, the whole economy and governmental system would collapsed long ago. So the mere fact the article was written, published, and read proves it is nonsense.
The main problem is that we are bringing in some 2 million illegal refugees each year, none of whom has any education relevant to our society, and almost all of whom are openly hostile to our system.
”The great majority of children leave school able to read and write and do arithmetic at some level. They have some idea of science and history and how the political system is supposed to operate.”
True. The point here is that kids get this organically; school does little to expand upon this. You can put 25 yr olds in a room with professional educators, and the educators can’t pick out the college grads from the grade school drop outs.
”The main problem is that we are bringing in some 2 million illegal refugees each year, none of whom has any education relevant to our society, and almost all of whom are openly hostile to our system.”
Truer words never spoken.
Au contraire I got a lot out of high school in the form of canings and strappings. (De la Salle Brothers God rot their souls.)
To reiterate, almost all kids improve dramatically through the elementary years, improve a bit through the middle-school years, and improve very little after that — unless they’re in the college-bound top 10 percent.
High school does not seem to improve most kids’ performance — but almost anyone discussing this was in that top 10 percent and did learn through high school.
Schooling should begin at age 8 and end at age 13. In those 5 years, everything the average person needs to get out of general education can be taught and learned by 90% of the population. (The lowest 10% will never learn, so don’t bother everybody involved by trying.)
At age 13, most teenagers should enter into apprenticeships. The top 10% could go on to high school, which exists explicitly as college prep.