?Educating a broad swatch of the population does not necessarily prevent high levels of performance.?

With all due respect Ms. Dare - no one here has ever said you couldn’t.  Where SQE and the Joe/Dean/Doug’s of the world disagree is how to get there.  I don’t pretend to have all the answers like JDD, but one thing logic would tell you is that you won’t get there by adopting the failed policies of a nation that is lagging behind us in performance.  Neither will you get there by abolishing the entire education system as you implied yesterday.

The passage can be found on page 20 of the report, under the heading of The Political Economy of Student Achievement. Just prior to the passage cited by Malkin, “Here we focus on improvements in test scores for countries, not on the level of scores. If there is a causal relationship between test scores and growth, we should find that countries that test score improvement should be correlated with an improvement in their growth rates. In other words, trends in test scores should be related to trends in growth rates. In Figure 10, taken from a paper by Hanushek and Woessmann, is displayed the relationship between trends in a nation?s test score performance and its trend in the rate of economic growth over the period 1975 to 2000.20 It shows a very strong correlation between the two trends.
Because rates of economic growth have a huge impact of the future well-being of the nation, there is a simple message: A country ignores the quality of its schools at its economic peril.”
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG12-03_CatchingUp.pdf

A country ignores the quality of its schools at its economic peril - strikes me as being relevant in the year 2012, since much of the education system is based on 19th century’s political ideology, and at a time where there was little known of learning in children, their cognitive minds, based on the science. Today, there is no excuse for not having high levels of performance for the majority of students, when one considers the knowledge and advances in the science of the learning fields.

Instead, children are caught within the political vertex of education politics, where education for the individual child becomes different quality levels based on 19th century philosophies and ideologies, rather than the science of learning in the 21st century.

In the beginning of the subsection entitled -  The Political Economy of Student Achievement - The author(s) states: “Few doubt that the quality of a nation?s educational system is critical for its economic and political well-being. But too often the quality of an educational system is judged by the percentage of students graduating from high school or the percentages enrolled in college. While not denying the importance of attaining a high school diploma and a college degree, these credentials are meaningless unless they are accompanied by the acquisition of a set of skills that can prove useful later in life. And it turns out that those skills can be measured by the kinds of tests we have relied upon in assembling this report.”

One can see it at any high school across Canada. The students in grade 11 and 12, realizing for the first time how many future doors have been sealed, shuttered and nailed, and how few are opened wide, with attached conditions to upgrade their skills, that they thought they had. The skills that are useful throughout life, and more so to continue learning and understanding the world as an adult. The skills in the fundamentals of reading, writing and numeracy.

So let us talk about the how-tos?

Three articles that came my way in the last two days.
. Let?s Help Improve Your Working Memory!
http://helpforstrugglingreaders.blogspot.ca/2012/11/lets-help-improve-your-working-memory.html

Don’t see much of it, or even talk about working memory according to the science in the public education systems in Canada.

“In an interview with reporter Ariane Zurcher at the Huffington Post, he noted one of the major complaints disabled people, particularly those with cognitive and intellectual disabilities, have about interactions with the nondisabled community:

Please don?t talk about me in front of me. I can hear you. I can read your lips. I can read your body language. It feels terrible. Sad. But it feels great when you treat me like I am smart.”

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/autistic-student-wins-the-right-to-go-to-school.html#ixzz2CsBjkwve

Quality of education counts for all, when all students are steadily progressing to the standard curriculum, and not the dumb-down kind.

The next one is at the post-secondary level, but can easily be applied to the K to 12 system, of what is promise and what has been delivered.It goes to the heart of quality education.

“A group of graduates has won a class-action suit against George Brown College for a course description that promised three credentials it was not qualified to deliver.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1290683—george-brown-grads-win-class-action-suit-over-misleading-course-description

The faces of the disappointed students in grade 11 and grade 12, realizing they don’t have the skills after 12 years of schooling, without taking an intensive upgrading on the 3 Rs, to be allowed into trade school. For both the students with the high school diplomas and the students with the education certificates.

As the report states - “The Political Economy of Student Achievement
Few doubt that the quality of a nation?s educational system is critical for its economic and political well-being. But too often the quality of an educational system is judged by the percentage of students graduating from high school or the percentages enrolled in college. While not denying the importance of attaining a high school diploma and a college degree, these credentials are meaningless unless they are accompanied by the acquisition of a set of skills that can prove useful later in life. And it turns out that those skills can be measured by the kinds of tests we have relied upon in assembling this report.”

Wayne states, “..... but one thing logic would tell you is that you won?t get there by adopting the failed policies of a nation that is lagging behind us in performance.”

Sure would love to adopt the kind of reforms in some U.S. states, Access to resources at a very low cost or free, for LD students and the blind. Here in Canada, for both the blind and LD, resources and devices comes with a high ticket price. Sure would be nice for students that need intensive reading instruction to access the LD private schools and tutoring services to correct reading problems based on the science-based research and what has proven to be effective.

The report does speak about the proficiency in reading and numeracy in great detail. Canada is no better than the United States, but the education powers will not published the data that reflects the education quality on the set of skills that are useful throughout life. In so doing, the set of skills are reflected back in the mirror in the adult population. Close to half of the adult population have low literacy skills and over 50 percent of the adult population have low numeracy skills. Or the prison population, where 75 % have low literacy or numeracy skills. Or the work force in the lower-skilled jobs and employers dealing with the costs of upgrading skills in the 3 Rs, so the employees can now work effectively with the new tools and technology of automation, safety regulations, and other work related skills that are dependent on the level of the 3 Rs. Or the costs to government dealing with society, where over 50 percent of the adults need direction and guidance to governed their day to day activities and decisions. The nanny state is born, filled with public sector workers, not to addressed the lack of proficiency in the basic skill sets and fundamentals lacking in the adult population after 12 years of schooling, but to increase economic activity to profit off the weaker proficiencies of the citizens.

I wonder what a study would reveal, on the drag of the GDP and growth, when students are not taught to proficient levels in math, reading and numeracy, after 12 years of schooling. No doubt some eager beavers at the top of the education food chain, are well on their way to answering my question. Just a matter of time….....

Two major differences separate the USA from other nations.First are the very wide gaps between rich and poor. The second is that the Americans actually spend more public dollars per middle class student than on poorer students due mainly to reliance on property taxes for public education. This is perverse.

The U.S. spend more on education than any of the countries in the report. In fact from the report, there is no correlation between funding and achievement.

What is in the report are the inequalities of note.

” However, their initial level of performance explains only about a quarter of the variation among the states. Also, variation in state increases in per-pupil expenditure is not significantly correlated with the variation in learning gains…......States with the largest gains in average student performance also tend to see the greatest reduction in the percentage of students performing below the basic level. They also are the ones that experience the largest percent shift of nonproficient students to the level of proficiency set by NAEP.”

The report goes on in the summary, discussing the reasons often used to explain the data. The but comes in by the researchers of the report - the only correlation found -  “Some would excuse the mediocre U.S. performance by claiming that it provides a more equal education to a much more diverse population than other countries do. It is claimed that test scores in the United States are lower than those in many other countries because they are not providing an education to all their students. That argument might have made some sense fifty or seventy-five years ago, but it is a seriously dated view of the world…......And when it comes to high school completion rates, the United States, with a 72 percent graduation rate within four years of entering high school, performs no better than the average industrialized nation. Indeed, the countries that eclipse the United States in math and science have done it while also expanding dramatically their high school graduation and college enrollment rates, many reaching levels noticeably higher than those in the United States. Educating a broad swath of the population does not necessarily prevent high levels of performance.
ACHIEVEMENT.”

Can be applied to Canada, and in Canada it is hidden from view. The outliers become the exceptions, and are ignore for the most part, for students who went from poorly achieving to high achieving students. It shows at the high school level, but the data is not published. What are numbers for previously high performing students, now C students, or previously high C students now achieving at a D level, or the number of students only achieving at the basic level. How many students maintain their achievement levels? How many grade 12 graduates are at high levels of achievement? 

In Canada, supposedly equal funding per student, and yet as one goes down the income ladder, there is less and less students achieving at high levels, and the large majority performing at just the bare minimum of proficiency and below proficiency. In Canada, the education system does not look at students who were previously low achievers and over time are now performing at high levels. Nor do the education system ponders on the why. Is it private tutoring services available?  And a host of other questions relating to parents and their purchasing activities and actions.

What schools do not do, is to focus on teaching quality, that ultimately improves the fundamentals and brings more and more students at the high performance levels.

Today, I heard a very good example of how mental health - low self-esteem is being used as a reason for low achievement of students in my local area. On the grapevine, a number of parents have file complaints, and the education heavyweights will be investigating. Have not confirmed it, but planning to, because I have the excuse in black and white to avoid providing my child, alternative setting for tests, and exams. If there is one thing I do know, that last thing the school board would want, is me coming in as the cavalry to aid the parents, with the documented goods. From what I understand, the parents want help for what one calls the 3 Rs, which is real tough to receive if the student is not failing, but are passing with a bare minimum 50 percent.

Instead the SES variables are used to explain to parents why their children will always be low achievers. The new excuse is low self-esteem. It sounds to me the local parents are not buying that one, and I suspect most parents will not be buying that excuse across Canada.

Sounds to me equal funding is not the answer, if the education system are explaining the reason for low achievement is due to external SES variables. Hanushek and the other researchers who are studying the global numbers, are certainly coming up with different hypotheses, that seem to point it is the quality of education. The lower the quality, the more inequities among the students.

Mr. Joe,

“This is perverse.”

Not perverse, doesn’t quite fit…but pertinacious with a sprinkling of spurious vacuity pretty well hits the nail on the head.

I thought to translate, for those like myself, who do not the high command of vocabulary, like Frank has.

per?ti?na?cious/?p?rtn??SH?s/
Adjective: 
Holding firmly to an opinion or a course of action.
Synonyms: 
dogged - persistent - stubborn - obstinate - tenacious

Definition for vacuity:
Web definitions: 
vacuum: the absence of matter.

the problem is not the total amount of spending in the United States or even the fact that the average spending of a state might be quite the appropriate but the fact is because public education is funded by property tax the Richer you are the more money you get the poorer you are the less money you get

we should not have equal funding we should have funding based on the Richer you are the less money you get per pupil and the poorer you are the more money you get per pupil.

Hah - Equal funding works like the communist system.
Equal dabs for each student, and the bells and whistles are paid accordingly to income of parents and their social status. Gotta love the schools with a healthy population of students with professional parents. Don’t lack a thing, and have all the bells and whistles. And for the rest, something like the state grocery store in the old USSR, There is always quite a few basic things food items missing.

I was watching a show tonight, I decided to change the saying to - It is best to build strong learners, than to repair learners who have never learned to become strong learners.

To build strong learners, funding according to the needs of the individual learners. Some only need $5000, others need $12,000 and some might get by on a bit more. What all students need, is an education that best suits their needs to become strong learners. I am sure there is something to ponder on, especially since one school board in Canada, will be paying $100,000, ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada, for avoiding to build a strong learner for one dyslexic boy. However, I feel sorry for the public tax purse, because inevitably they be picking up the costs of the school board and the minister of education for the lawyers fees throughout the years, fighting the Moores. I bet that cost far more than the $100,000.

Would it not have been easier,, to roll up their sleeves and teach the Moore boy to read, write and do numeracy well, and so he could become a strong learner, at a fraction of the costs?

Do you like being bait Nancy? Doug/Dean/Joe is casting a hook that you’ve already taken.

It doesn’t happen too often but even Wayne and I agree on the transparent nature of DDJ.