Schools Should Pursue Excellence

"Those who study education quickly realize the surprising shallowness and inaccuracy of existing knowledge and practice: the curriculum and research output of education schools are driven by ideologically driven visions and fads. Most of the best information is found on isolated blog posts, within neighboring disciplines like cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and in books written decades or centuries ago. As our project develops, we will organize and expand this knowledge to create a framework education schools have not."

This is absolutely true. I worked as a secretary at a university that churned out teaching degrees. It took 2 years to finish the degree (which was in addition to a bachelors) and was almost entirely non scientific fluff. I wish more educated, experienced people could become teachers without the beaurocracy of being certified. I think many people would choose to serve their communities as teachers for a few years, especially in retirement. A lost opportunity.

Unsure if this is a scalable model public schooling can afford. While it would be wonderful if every child could have an IEP, that tends to only work at rich schools with lots of educators. OTOH, what could be done is encouraging and expecting more achievement from students (perhaps at 2 or 3 different pace levels) using proven methods rather than foisting uncontrolled experiments on millions of students without evidence for efficacy.

Every student, parent, teacher, and school administrator should read Derek Sivers' essay "There's No Speed Limit".

https://sive.rs/kimo

I have a hard time with any ideological approach to education that comes from those not participating in the system. There are competing goals that are stratified from the classroom to the federal government. Due to the diversity of the participants, literally most of the country, aligning these goals makes it a never-ending problem with new strategies and approaches and proposals being produced every few cycles. Here is my take. The most important and impactful area that you can put your collective effort is into the teacher and student relationship. The educators are the ones challenged to tactically implement this year's "flavor of instruction", but their goal remains to elevate your child. You can argue about what measure they are using, but the end-result is that they are working for the betterment of your child within the constraints of their situation. Which includes every other child in that same classroom, an ever changing curriculum, assessment goals, local, state, and federal expectations. The teachers are the ones translating all of that into effective instruction to the best of their ability. Give them your support, your understanding, your time, and your advocacy. You will see change while the rest of the country argues over the next "best idea".

We are well past the point of diminishing returns in education: https://www.winginstitute.org/does-state-education-funding. Schools should probably focus on developing healthy kids while controlling ballooning costs.

Singapore PISA average score beats that of the US by 110 points (1). The PISA is an exam which measures the relative performance of 15-yos in OECD countries.

Some information about the education system which produces these results: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Singapore

(1) https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1

Worth drilling down on Direct Instruction- https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/guest-the-drawbac...

> Want to raise reading comprehension scores? Direct Instruction (or direct instruction) is a surefire way to do it.

> But the strengths of the program are also its weaknesses. The program dramatically narrows the aims of education and leaves little room for creativity, spontaneity and joy in the classroom.

It strikes me that the problem here, much like with phonics vs "holistic" learning, is that educators don't want to do it. It's too grim and serious, and culturally, that's not what people who go into education in America are about.

Maybe instead governments should pursue resource equalization. Some posts on a linked blog (https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-doesnt-work-2...) suggest that the differences in achievement between different demographic groups can be due to environmental differences. Unequal "head starts" due to economic circumstances are an obvious one. It may be that the best way to "pursue excellence" has nothing to do with education; it may have to do with taking money away from very wealthy people and giving it to less wealthy people.