More education brouhaha.
By now some of you have probably heard that Florida rejected a number of math books for use in elementary school. What appears to have happened is:
- Florida Department of Education suggest publishers propose books Florida might use.
- Publishers suggest their books.
- The Florida Department of Education evaluate the suggested books to see if the (a) align with Florida’s State Standards and (b) contain “prohibited” content. Those that align well with the state standards and don’t contain prohibited content are accepted as eligible for use by public school districts.
The not recommended list with a column indicating if it’s for not aligning or forbidden topics is here.
This process seems rather mundane. I think it’s what all states do.
But this year, Florida rejected lots of math books. Some where rejected for not aligning with state standards; some for containing “prohibited” content. The initial articles I read said ‘CRT and prohibited content”, but this seems to have been clarified: Some were banned for “SEL”, which is social and emotional learning.
The offending material being SEL seems to be highlighted in this New York Post article which reports:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to take feelings out of the equation.
DeSantis on Monday defended his education department’s rejection of math textbooks as part of an effort to eliminate social-emotional learning, a teaching philosophy that helps kids manage their feelings and show empathy for others, from the subject curriculum.
“Math is about getting the right answer. We want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Jacksonville.
“It’s not about how you feel about the problem or to introduce some of these other things. There’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer. And we want our students getting the right answer.”
There’s a lot of speculation about what the content that caused the books to be rejected might be. That’s not surprising as it’s hard to get some truly concrete information on the contents of the rejected books without buying them.
I hunted a little– limiting my hunt to books for kindergarten. Four out of five of the publisher suggested books for kindergarten were rejected. I did manage to find this page for one rejected book: “Big Ideas Learning, LLC’s “Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards for MATH Grade K”. This appears to be described under Grade K here.
Paging through the publisher supplied preview to page xxvi, I find “Support for Social Emotional Learning” appears in the book. The example is of someone being afraid of heights and dealing with it. There is also a section on “Responsible Decision-Making” where two cartoon characters ruin their autographed t-shirts.. Here’s the page hawking the Social Emotional Learning sections in their book:
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I found nothing informative for the other three rejected kindergarten math books. (For two I found literally nothing. Another I was blocked from seeing content. YMMV.)
One could argue back and forth what precisely lessons in “social emotional learning” are, whether they should be taught in schools, and if SEL is taught, how it should be taught. But at least for now, it appears those in charge in Florida think lessons on social emotional learning don’t belong in math textbooks which, evidently they think should be restricted to covering math.
So, with respect to this kerfuffle: As far as I can tell, “SEL” seems to be the “wrong content” in, at least this rejected math book.
Social and Emotional Learning in textbooks supposedly for teaching math — and people wonder why the US is falling behind the rest of the world in STEM learning. What’s even more ludicrous than the existence of these “textbooks” are the people belaboring Florida for rejecting these abominations rather than the idiots who wrote and published them.
“relationship skills”, “social awareness”, and “responsible decision making” in math? Come on, it is like a hilarious parody, but is, sadly enough, quite real. Nobody learns much of anything through “social awareness”, except maybe how to be a good socialist. Which I guess is the whole point of all the woke horse$hit ‘educators’ try to dump on kids. Some kids will be better at math than others, but teachers should strive to maximize math learning in all kids, not make some ‘feel better’ about themselves if they are less capable.
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I have a better suggestion: just teach math, reading, writing, geography, science, etc. Forget the endless social engineering, and fire all the woke teachers who resist doing their jobs.
It’s unclear why math textbooks need to be updated frequently, and why they even need printed copies for most students. Both my daughters barely bought any college books at all because a PDF was available through one means or another. It wasn’t even the cost, which was excessive, it was the inconvenience of dragging around heavy books. It’s even worse for high school.
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My wife taught high school algebra over ten years ago and there was a book on the classroom shelf that was full-on woke math. I thought it was hilarious. It had some strange title and all the word problems were properly diverse, etc. A stack of those books were there in pristine condition but obviously never used.
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There are some people pushing crazy stuff, and if it worked or it is just an experiment that is fine. However this stuff has been tried and failed repeatedly. I object mostly because it is just a waste of time and money. Both sides are making a big deal on this because they believe it helps them politically. I haven’t heard a single person question or assert that this stuff is effective educationally for math.
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There were some minor problem with the older SAT’s as I recall, some reading comprehension and word problems were legitimately culturally slanted a bit. They put in way more effort than needed to scrub that out and nothing really changed in outcomes.
Tom Scharf,
“They put in way more effort than needed to scrub that out and nothing really changed in outcomes.”
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Of course not. Most differences in academic achievement have nothing whatever to do with the test, everything to do with educational background, family environment, native intellect, and the priority given to excellence in education.
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The woke nonsense of dumbing down courses, eliminating advanced courses, closing advanced schools, and stopping standardized testing is all a response to the utter failure of most every past attempt to close the achievement gap between the academically successful and the academically unsuccessful. The past efforts failed because they refused to address the root causes for poor academic performance. The woke rubbish will just diminish all students’ performance, not improve the weakest.
From the US department of Justice:
“The Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disagree with the district court’s decision and will appeal, subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health,”
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The stupidity, it burns. I think they will ultimately lose if they actually appeal the ruling (they may not; note the weasel “subject to the CDC’s conclusion”). If they lose on appeal, that will be pretty much the end of future “emergency” regulations by fiat.
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I am so very glad Merrick Garland is not on the SC; he is a lefty hack who will be retiring in exactly 31 months.
Lucia,
“There’s a lot of speculation about what the content that caused the books to be rejected might be.”
Conspiracy theory… DeSantis’ political acumen may be at work. The plan: Hold back damning details until the Liberal Politicians and Media get all in an uproar and then spring it on them…. A few horrible examples of Liberal indoctrination in math problems. Most parents and most voters will be appalled and the Liberals will shrink back into their holes. It’s Deja Vu all over again.
Russell,
No disrespect to DeSantis’s acumen, but I think the dribbling out of info has more to do with “the process”. The department of education announced they’d made a decision with a very brief discussion. The brevity was probably the normal amount of explanation because usually, there is no controversy. Then the media reported and people got their knickers in a twist.
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Knickers in a twist was the situation a day or two ago. Most were just speculating– often under the assumption that the books could not really be anything other than just “math” and the possibility the word problems were somehow “ethnically balanced”.
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I thought: Well… I’m not going to guess. Maybe the books contain “something” not allowed, maybe they don’t. So I looked. It’s actually not that easy to see the contents of the books. They are, after all, sold by the publisher. Posting .pdfs of the books means everyone can pretty well find them for free. So I hunted little.
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It was only luck that “kindergarten math” was at the top of the list, and the very first book did have a “preview” section. I actually found the problem with that book was “SEL” yesterday. (I think Florida doesn’t want SEL at all— but they definitely don’t want it in math books!)
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I googled and found DeSantis defending the decision today. The fact is: it’s perfectly reasonable to want math textbooks to limit themselves to math.
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If someone wants to advance the idea that SEL presented with formal lessons is good, they should just do explain why it’s a good idea. But SEL doesn’t need to be in a math book where you expect to find math. If you think SEL is important, do it in “home room”, or something. Don’t put it in math. That’s kinda-sorta just sneaky.
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Some of those books may pass muster if they take out the SEL content. That should be pretty easy for the publishers to do. They appear to be entire “sections” and the copy editor can just make a “Florida” version of the book. OR, make that the normal version.
I think what really happens here is some part of the Department of Education is tasked to reduce the math score gaps. Imagine this was your job to get quick results. They ask for “ideas” on how to do this and the usual activists say the usual things. They all probably understand there are no quick fixes here and that it is unlikely they will achieve any reasonable improvements in any reasonable timeframe. So they put out lame ideas and spend money on a few pilot projects that have little hope of long term impacts. They then declare victory after somebody doctors some study results and repeat the same process the next year.
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Who is going to reward a government bureaucrat for sticking their necks out and blaming the parents and the local culture’s value of education? Nobody. Nowadays you will literally get fired. So we get dumb things like math is racist and a system that is hopelessly ineffective because people are afraid to say what they really think because even if everyone agreed it is not racism it is still monumentally hard to fix.
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Florida spent over a decade on No Child Left Behind testing kids, punishing and rewarding schools and teachers for competence and it was uniformly hated by the school system.
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After all the effort, things are the same. Parents who care move to local areas that care about education outcomes. The same places have the best schools. They ignore the progressive silliness and concentrate on getting their kids educated. The posturing progressives advocate for crazy things for other kids such as dropping competence tests and gifted programs, but not for their kids which they will do almost anything to get placed in the right schools.
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The cultural changes required to turn this thing around will take a generation.
“to do with “the process”. The department of education announced they’d made a decision with a very brief discussion. The brevity was probably the normal amount of explanation because usually, there is no controversy. ”
This is what they expected with their implementation of CRT and banning advanced math.
After FoxNews reported, Virginia DOE put out new talking points that school districts were free to implement tracking and acceleration.
Only after Youngkin won was the plan officially scrapped, though the same officials are in charge.
‘Culturally Responsive Teaching’ is the phrase being used, as to putting in non-math into the math curriculum.
I think I posted here before, I looked thru a calculus curriculum, either the Railside school or Jaime Escalante’s school, and they had extra credit for writing about your favorite woman or minority inventor.
Tom Scharf,
“Who is going to reward a government bureaucrat for sticking their necks out and blaming the parents and the local culture’s value of education?”
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Sure, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan learned the hard way… instantly accused of blaming the victim, he was criticized for the rest of his life for pointing out the obvious. Culture is destiny. If a culture, and especially the culture within a family, is self defeating, then personal success will be the exception, not the rule. Refusal to focus on, or even accept, the fundamental cultural/family problems means the situation will not improve…… just as it hasn’t since Moynihan’s time. I am reminded of the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein.
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BTW, it has already been two generations, and educational outcomes have only gotten worse. It might take only a generation to make real progress if the actual problems were addressed, but all the woke nonsense just ensures there will be no progress at all.
MikeN,
It isn’t necessarily wrong to do something like give extra credit for writing some non-math things in math. It’s extra credit, not an integral part of the class. As long as nothing is dropped, the kids still get their math education. Yeah, part of the grade is not math– but grades are never perfect reports of anything. And in AP Calculus, they do have to pass the test.
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Some of these non-ac things in school are also not necessarily horrible. I mean– there’s nothing wrong with something that really does this
See https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/
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The above is stated pretty generically. It’s not a “program”. On the other hand. CASEL who runs it does have a specific program, and I would need to see the actual implementation to either support of criticize what happens when the rubber meets the road.
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Also: It’s not math! So as I said: if it’s a great program, it should stand on it’s own, not be snuck into math or take time from math. The devil is in the details.
Lucia,
“SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
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Which I think is mostly nonsense. These are characteristics most successful kids develop outside school, not because of school. I doubt any school can substitute for what should have been happening constantly since a kid was still crawling. I would be more than happy to be convinced there is a way for schools to achieve the things that family and local culture fail at, if such data exists. I doubt it does. Burdening schools with “how to be a responsible, decent person” seems to me a bridge too far; schools have plenty to teach in subject matter.
SteveF (Comment #211396): “Which I think is mostly nonsense. These are characteristics most successful kids develop outside school, not because of school. I doubt any school can substitute for what should have been happening constantly since a kid was still crawling.”
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Indeed. A child’s academic success is far more dependent on family than schools. Surely that is even more the case with “social and emotional learning”.
SteveF,
I agree that most kids develop those things outside school. But the paragraph I quoted doesn’t specify where– it’s just “the” process. So presumably, the process happening outside school is still “SEL”.
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The problem is the fact that kids learn it somehow doesn’t automatically mean it should be dealt with in school. Parents interacting with kids, kids participating in sports, scouts, 4H and so on all should contribute to “THE process.”
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It is, however, true that teachers need to intervene in bad behavior or emotional behavior at school. If a kid gets bullied, teachers have to stop it. If a kid breaks down and cries– an adult present has to try to figure out how to deal with that. But, of course, that’s hardly the same as saying we need a full blow, formal SEL.
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Based on what I’ve read, the various formal SEL programs can be quite involved. Sometimes they look like neither cost nor the time-sink for the activities has any limit!
Sexuality education and early childhood educators in Ontario, Canada: A Foucauldian exploration of constraints and possibilities
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https://doi.org/10.1177%2F14639491211060787
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Abstract
Open conversations regarding sexuality education and gender and sexual diversity with young children in early childhood education settings are still highly constrained. Educators report lacking professional training and fearing parental and community pushback when explicitly addressing these topics in their professional practices. As such, gender and sexual diversity and conversations of bodily development are left silenced and, when addressed, filtered through heteronormative and cisnormative frameworks. Through a Foucauldian post-structural lens, this article analyses data from open-ended qualitative questions in a previous research study regarding early childhood educators’ perceptions on discussing the development of sexuality in early learning settings in an Ontario, Canada context. Through this Foucauldian post-structural analysis, the authors discuss forms of surveillance and regulation that early childhood educators experience in early learning settings regarding the open discussion of gender and sexuality. The authors explore how both the lack of explicit curricula addressing gender and sexuality in the early years in Ontario and taken-for-granted notions of developmentally appropriate practice, childhood innocence, and the gender binary – employed in discourses of sexuality education in the early years – regulate early childhood educators’ professional practices. The authors provide recommendations which critique the developmentalist logics – specifically, normative development – that are used to silence non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities in the early years, while articulating the need for explicit curricula for educators in the early years regarding gender and sexuality in young children.
Some of the activists and some of the parents basically want the schools to rear their children and absolutely blame the schools for their own child’s lack of progress. There is a political divergence of thought on who is responsible for poor performance, the family or the state. It could be either, at least in theory, but this has been extensively studied over decades. At this point in time it is toxic to study home environments that might result in “blaming the victim”.
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Many progressives have bought into the model of the schools rearing the kids because they have given up on all the other solutions which have for the most part been tried and failed on the merits. It becomes so crazy that the subject is not worth even talking seriously about. They want the schools to raise the kids but then forcibly install policies that prevent the ability to punish the kids for bad behavior. Now it’s not even measure outcomes or reward competence. Such a mess.
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Example: What Really Happened At The School Where Every Graduate Got Into College
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/28/564054556/what-really-happened-at-the-school-where-every-senior-got-into-college
“The majority of Ballou’s 2017 graduating class missed more than six weeks of school”
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That’s how they fixed graduation rates. They stopped requiring performance and competence tests. This example is not an aberration. You have this going on and all they worry about is CRT and political indoctrination. What a mess.
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As with anything like this, it is complicated. There are single mothers who are working two jobs and can’t monitor their kids and live in bad neighborhoods, and there are parents who can’t even be bothered to make sure their kids go to school at all. The lack of effort can be fixed and it seems in my view to be the prevailing problem.
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As SteveF mentioned, the failure to recognize the root cause of the problem just delays any real solution, and it is being willfully avoided. I just can’t imagine what meetings on this subject are like when certain topics are effectively banned from discussion.
Jen Psaki was in tears on a podcast when discussing the Florida parental rights law and referred to it as bullying. I suspect she genuinely feels her interpretation of the law as being anti-LGBTQ is correct. I think this reaction signals that there is a significant number of the US population who favor public schools getting involved in these matters at least at an emotional level.
As posters here before me have inferred it appears there are significant numbers of people who feel the public schools should raise the kids and that there are “experts” out there with unquestionable methods that can be readily passed to teachers for handling these tasks – even though it is difficult to believe that a teacher is prepared to teach well beyond what they have been trained to teach.
I do judge that the directions taken by the opponents of these developments are avoiding the discussion in its most basic form. Public schools should be limited to teaching the basics to their students. Crossing into issues better handled by families – if the families so choose – should be red lighted as much as public schools teaching religion.
Being aware of current issues and discussing them without teachers taking sides could be handled as a separate classroom activity where students are encouraged to discuss issues with civility and by listening to counter arguments without interruptions and emotional displays. The students could be graded on their deportment and the evidence they bring to the discussion topics. It could well be an optional class.
I think that public education in authoritarian regimes should be spotlighted in these discussions and particularly where the state has an interest in complete student agreement on topics of state interests.
A simple question should be put to the groups on all sides of these issues and that should be: What do you judge should be the purpose and focus of public school curriculum? I suspect I would get answers from the right, middle and left with which I would not agree, but would hope there would be at least a plurality that favored getting back to the basics.
“These are characteristics most successful kids develop outside school, not because of school. I doubt any school can substitute for what should have been happening constantly since a kid was still crawling.”
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“Should have” is true but teachers have deal with kids where this is not happening. They cannot ignore classroom behaviour issues and I think that empathy is a quality present in many good teachers which leads them to try and substitute for what home hasn’t provided. What are the other options? At the extreme, you effectively tell the parents “Sorry, you failed, remove your kid from this school” but I doubt this solves any real problem.
Societies problem is figuring out what effective intervention actually looks like, because sooner or later it will be a problem for wider society.
Phil Scadden (Comment #211408): “Societies problem is figuring out what effective intervention actually looks like, because sooner or later it will be a problem for wider society.”
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Fair enough, but we can be sure that effective intervention does not look like SEL stuff inserted into math class. Effective intervention, if it exists, would need to be intensive. And that means at least partially removing the problem students from normal classes.
In my day for behavioral issues you would be reprimanded in class, then sent to the office, then sent to detention, then removed from school a few days, then sent to an alternative school, then removed from the school system entirely. It was a progressive (in the dictionary sense) punishment. Most of the time kids voluntarily dropped out before they were kicked out. Many kids progressed through several levels and recovered and few did not.
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I went to a decent public school, but by no means the best school and there were no instances where a complete lack of effort by a student was tolerated. They would be “kicked out” of school.
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An alternative viewpoint is that once kids know that a lack of effort is tolerated long term and they can graduate without any work then this spreads like a virus. Doing the work in public school is unpleasant for the most part and if given a choice many will choose to not do it.
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Where do you draw the line for unacceptable effort or disruptive behavior? Some kids can be recovered and there should be some effort, but you can also not allow them to drag down the entire classroom or school. My view is you are doing them no favors by accepting bad behavior or no effort.
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In many states now the parents can be charged criminally and arrested for not getting their kids to school. These type of things don’t really help, it’s more desperation.
https://www.jamesmadison.org/florida-parents-could-face-arrest-for-childrens-truancy/
Phil,
I am glad you replied.
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“Societies problem is figuring out what effective intervention actually looks like, because sooner or later it will be a problem for wider society.”
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Wider (US) society has been suffering that problem for a very long time (at least 70 years, if not longer). What effective intervention ‘looks like’ depends on identifying the root causes for very poor educational, economic, and social outcomes. One thing is certain: effective intervention does not, and will never, look like ‘all white people are irredeemable racists so they must be punished’, which is the rubbish we hear endlessly from the MSM and many others.
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Effective intervention should identify the root causes and address them. What are the root causes? Well, different people may have slightly different opinions, but if we ignore the crazy “you whites are all irredeemable racists” crowd, the root causes are as clear now as they were 60 years ago: 1) Too many black families are not formed in committed, long term relationships. This means that most black children in the USA grow up in a household with no father present, and a mother (or grandmother!) who is under terrible stress (both financially and personally). 2) Black families do not consistently insist on academic performance… or often even the basic responsibility of attendance at school. The simplest of steps (like reading to toddlers until their school years) too often seems absent. 3) The culture of the inner city appears ready to dismiss antisocial/criminal behavior as not deserving any negative consequences, either legal or social.
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Whatever solutions are proposed have to address these terrible ground realities. Eliminating standardized testing and giving preferences to those who are plainly incompetent is not, and will never be, a solution to the problem. Excluding the most capable from the most challenging environments (whether school or work) to leave open positions for those less capable is never going to be a solution to the problem.
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Cultural change is the only solution which will work. Cultural change is the only solution which nobody is willing to address.
You do not have to pass the AP Calculus exam when you take AP Calculus. The teacher determines the grades. The class uses College Board’s curriculum, and I think the school has to pay College Board for calling the class AP Calculus, but students are not required to take the exam.
Well, if you going to wait around a generation or two for cultural change, then penitentiaries are going to be full. I am not going to be suggesting solutions for an alien system (don’t think I nor my children saw a textbook before entering high school), but I would be pretty surprised if there were not examples of effective interventions happening through some schools in the States. They might be pointers to what is possible for the current generation.
I am also pretty sure that little progress is going to be made if programmes are going to be judged by their conformance to a particular ideology (right or left – the left manage plenty of damage here) rather than results.
The penitentiaries are full now.
MikeN,
The school does not need to pay the college board to call the class an AP class. They need to fill out a syllabus they supposedly follow that shows they cover the topics. Once the class is approved, the teacher gets access to certain materials– for free. They can also enroll the kids in “AP classroom”– for free.
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The students (usually) then pay to take the test which is proctored by the school. (If the students don’t pay, the school does.) That’s where college board makes money– selling test taking. ( There are costs associated with grading and so on. But that’s where the revenue is.)
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Students are not required to take the exam, but most do. That’s sort of the whole point for them. They can also take the exam without taking the class– but they still pay for the exam.
Yes, you pay for the AP tests and then don’t have to take certain college classes depending on your major. It’s definitely worth it.
Tom, that is my understanding but I also believe that this is undesirable and I guess I naively expect people to be prepared to try changes to make them less full.
Phil,
Florida requires something that is similar to the broad claims of SEL in schools. It isn’t necessarily what has been called “SEL” by groups selling their programs under the name SEL which itself is a sort of “buzzword”– like CRT. So, of course to be clear, a law can’t really require or ban SEL. They have to describe in specific features they require (or ban.) What the Florida requires is here
Some of the wording includes
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Some of this (italicized) overlaps what SEL is saying they want kids to learn. But it includes more and also doesn’t have SEL “language”. But quite a bit of it is the same dang thing! (At least generically. What activities someone promoting SEL things help with conflict resolution might be different from what someone calling it something else might think. And there-in lies the rub.)
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Florida is just not approving math books which stray into other topics or that don’t meet Florida’s math standards. For some reason, SEL, a non-math topic happens to be straying into math books. I suspect they wouldn’t want a kindergarten math book to have a section on “resume building” either. (But no one is sneaking that into math books, so books aren’t being rejected for that.)
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Public schools, at least in my state, can only kick a student out for six months and that’s for major expellable offenses. Pretty sure they can also only coerce, not force, students into the alternative schools. Schools are also held accountable for graduation rates. That counts for 15% of their overall grade.
https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Data/Report-Card-Resources/Report-Card-Guide.pdf.aspx
They have spent decades tweaking, I took the beta tests in the 10th grade 40 years ago, but it’s really just remained a very expensive way to rate public schools on the social economic background of the students families.
When my wife talks about SEL, it’s about having the kids be able to operate in a classroom. Basically how to play well with others. build self confidence and the ability to socialize and collaborate with their peers of different backgrounds and personalities. Follow directions. They don’t do that by labeling the differences just working through them. That’s been around for decades. It’s more the focus of primary and pre-primary education than anything to deal with numbers and letters. Lately there’s been a push to add topics that really aren’t age appropriate. Not in a moral sense but in comprehension. Does anyone really believe that a 5 or 6 year old can comprehend what an sexual or gender identity is? Any attempt to do so is more focused on indoctrination than enlightenment.
Sounds about right Andrew P. SEL is the Motte, the vector and fallback position. Critical theory in all its incarnations, the Bailey.
AndrewP
That’s a version. But there are specific programs which are marketed and sold and called SEL. I guess we could distinguish these by using a trademark symbol SEL® may or may not be “Just ‘how to play well with others. build self confidence and the ability to socialize and collaborate with their peers of different backgrounds and personalities. Follow directions.’. ” The way it’s marketed by those selling programs says SEL® is not just that.
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Whether SEL® is good bad or indifferent, I don’t actually know. But it’s not what your wife describes. (They have the same goals, but there are specific activities yada, yada. You can read the papers and see.)
Andrew P,
By the way, you can find tons of marketed “packages” of SEL® here. A school can purchase all these programs.
Presumably, the person buying can actually see what they consist of first. I can’t easily. You can “view details” and then, perhaps read a paper under references. Otherwise, they hawk the outcomes and so on. But you need to dig to see what is done. Then it’s going to be in “journal speak”. I haven’t read all the papers, but presumably “methods” discusses something.
I didn’t link to the SEL® programs.
https://pg.casel.org/review-programs/
I clicked “K” for kindergarten. One of the package descriptions includes this language.
It’s not clear that’s “only” what AndrewP’s wife describes, nor what has been done for 40 years. Certainly the “equity-and-trauma informed lense” is new language. (Maybe good; maybe bad to do. But probably not what was doen 40 years ago.
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Then
https://pg.casel.org/incredible-years%e2%93%a1-teacher-classroom-management-program-dinosaur-school/
Of course, no one is for bias. Note this involve “making connections with families “, not just peers. Making those connection is not bad, but it’s also what AndrewP’s wife describes. In fact, it sounds like it’s more about ‘bias’ than about learning to deal with one’s emotions, developing self awareness yada, yada that is normally include in “social emotional awareness”.
I’m not goign to click through all (many have practically no discussion of what the approach might be. Presumably you read the paper referenced at the bottom. I don’t have time to read the papers right now. Maybe they are good programs. Or not. (Education studies are very difficult to do well. What’s called “randomized” often isn’t. Number of actual independent trials are small– for example two classrooms with two different teachers tend to be described as “60 students”. And so on. But we can’t assume these have that sort of problem without reading.)
I’m adding this separately to point out something about the claim SEL is just what teachers have always done:
It very clear based on the claims that SEL® promoters have done studies is that this is supposed to be different from what has been done 40 years. If it was not different then the “control” group would be doing the “same” thing.
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So those promoting SEL® are clearly claiming it is not “just what we’ve always done”. They claim it’s a new and different thing that gets much better results than whatever it is was done before.
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Of course some teachers might not really quite grasp this because (a) they weren’t here 40 years ago and (b) they are just busy doing their jobs and not reading everything there is to know about SEL®. They may think what they are doing is SEL®, when what they are doing is only SEL. But there certainly seems to be a difference according to the SEL® people selling programs.
Phil,
I’ll forgive you in advance for not living here, ha ha.
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Seriously though, the US recognizes these problems and has been working seriously on them for the better part of 50 years. There have been real problems and most of those have been addressed. Examples are unequal school funding, little school choice, and things like crack cocaine sentencing being much harsher than real cocaine sentencing, criminal sentencing reform (less ability of the judge to insert bias), capital punishment racial bias, and so on. The US is pretty good at measuring outcomes and not so great at fixing them.
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The long story short is that all the low hanging fruit have been picked. Inequities still exist (although some progress was made) as does the fact that the US is one of the most violent developed countries.
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The US is a violent culture, it’s just part of the way we live here. It may be tied to how we also have a thriving arts and innovation culture and we just tend to over-express ourselves in every way.
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Over the past decade the solution to problems has gotten a lot less serious and kind of kooky. When the Asians do better in education here, we don’t ask how are the Asians oppressing everyone, we ask what are they doing different that results in better outcomes. Instead we are currently in a Defund the Police and stop requiring testing for competence in education phase. In many large cities they no longer prosecute “petty thefts” under $900. You can reduce prison populations by not prosecuting crimes.
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You have enough Asians in New Zealand that my guess is you could offer up some opinions based on personal experience on why the Asians outperform the Maori in many life outcomes there even though they are both minorities. Let’s just say you mustn’t express those opinions in the US if you value your career, the only answer would be the people of European descent are oppressing the Maori, and they probably are oppressing them in some measurable ways, but is that really the root cause there? It’s complicated but we shouldn’t be suppressing different ideas and experiments.
Andrew P,
Things are definitely different now, I was referring to how it worked in the 1970’s and 1980’s where I went to school. When you increase your tolerance of unacceptable behavior then you will likely get more bad behavior because kids know where the limits are and will always probe the boundaries. You may be able to recover more kids from being expelled now but at the expense of more overall bad behavior. Where exactly to draw the line is up for debate.
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As part of No Child Left Behind in Florida they tried to stop “social promotion”, where a parent could override the school and promote a child to the next grade even though they were not academically qualified. Ironically this was leaving children behind so they could catch up. This effort was eventually dropped for all the usual reasons. If a child gets too far behind they just can’t function academically.
Just to be clear, my wife works for a private school whose tuition rivals that of local colleges. In a very red neighborhood. They might promote some liberalist views like environmentalism, but in no way would the packaged SEL products you describe go over well. When I hear her speak of SEL, it’s in response to parents saying but Johnny knows all these letters, numbers, and colors and shes trying to draw them back to Johnny’s social deficits like not being able to share or needing to always be the center of attention. She’s been doing this for over 20 years and this isn’t anything new. SEL has been part of the teaching jargon for a while. IOW, SEL was co-opted by those pushing a more extreme view. Much like critical thinking was co-opted into critical race theory. Truthfully she’s just as likely to use Social Emotional well-being instead of learning. She sees her job is getting kids as prepared to succeed in school as possible. Regardless of their learning differences.
I was in k12 when NCLB was passed. Predictably Ohio dumbed down the tests after NCLB came into existence. Before then the testing was geared so that schools only needed 75% of their students to pass in order to be considered successful. They weren’t as interested at testing a baseline as finding where improvements could be made.
It became a running joke in the UK that the General Certificate of Secondary Education results improved year on year since they were implemented (about 30 years ago). Pluses and minuses were added to try and distinguish performance better. Clearly, kids today are smarter than ever before!
AndrewP,
Yeah, “critical thinking” is another phrase that has been coopted. I’ve read teachers say they don’t care if their kids learn facts or mundane things like addition and multiplication. What matters is “critical thinking”. But anyone with any critical thinking skills at all knows you when you are trying to solve any problem or understand a situation, you also need to know some facts and that certain quantitative skills might also be necessary.
Acquiring these quantitative skills also often requires critical thinking. I learned the difference between the “ones” and ‘tens” position when I learned to add. That’s a concept and it was taught right along with the algorithm. We learned that “more” was more than “less” and so on. Knowing some rather “mundane” arithmetic is important to thinking through certain problems.
Tom, ” why the Asians outperform the Maori in many life outcomes there even though they are both minorities”
The strongest predictor of life outcome is income level of parents and I believe that applies very much more widely than just NZ. NZ’s point-based immigration scheme means that Asians in NZ are very much from high-skill and/or high-income backgrounds. A much more interesting comparison is between Maori children and immigrant Pacifika. Of course, when you ask why is average Maori income lower then you do run into complex historical issues and self-perpetuating negative cycles that dont have simple solutions. I suspect those same issues are present in States.
Educationists, IMO, are very fond of doing small scale studies on some program that they have dreamed up, then massaging the data to make it look good and then implementing large scale adoption. But then they don’t pay attention to how it’s working out in practice.
They’ve been doing it for a long time, i.e. look-say vs phonics for teaching reading because that’s the way skilled readers do it, largely neglecting how skilled readers became skilled. If they do actually notice that the program isn’t working, they will double down and claim it’s not being done correctly because if they did it right it would work because the small scale studies proved it.
I wonder if educational researchers even try to reproduce published studies.
Phil Scadden (Comment #211459): “The strongest predictor of life outcome is income level of parents and I believe that applies very much more widely than just NZ”.
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Not true in the US, from what I have read. The strongest predictor is marital status of the parents. That correlates with income, so it can be difficult to separate the factors.
DeWitt,
“I wonder if educational researchers even try to reproduce published studies.”
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For a second I thought you were joking.
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No, of course not. They publish a contorted horse$hit study of a “successful intervention” technique, arms waving so violently they risk rotator cuff injury. Then they try to get taxpayers to fund something which likely doesn’t work. When it is finally shown years later it really doesn’t work (eg Head Start), they double and triple down on wasting ever more taxpayer funds on something that doesn’t work. The educational establishment is the absolute last place to look for solutions to vastly divergent educational and social outcomes. Seems like everyone from the center to the extreme left refuses to address the root causes. The gross racial disparities will outlive everyone commenting on this blog, because half the country (or more) refuses to accept reality.
Phil Scadden,
“The strongest predictor of life outcome is income level of parents and I believe that applies very much more widely than just NZ.”
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A dubious claim if ever one was made, and one that confounds other factors (parental intellect, a culture of responsible behavior and educational excellence) with family income. Often these things are highly correlated.
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Many first generation asians in the USA excel in education *despite* low family income. Many first generation latinos do much worse in school than equally poor asians. Identical twin studies (separated at birth for adoption) indicate there is little correlation between the adoptive family’s income and both educational and life outcomes for the separated twins. I grew up in a family with relatively low income, but excellence in education was not just encouraged, it was expected. I am not at all alone.
CNN+ Streaming Service Is Shutting Down a Month After Launching
https://www.wsj.com/articles/warner-bros-discovery-is-shutting-down-cnn-streaming-service-11650556680
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I never understood this product or why anyone thought it would be popular. They spent $300M on this. In a bit of better news the new masters of CNN have said they want to get away from advocacy journalism. We shall see, I’m not exactly holding my breath.
CNN+ was not as much a failure as presented; they just had ridiculous expectations. 150,000 subscribers, almost 10,000 per day. Fox Nation has just a few millions subscribers after years. I didn’t even know Fox Nation was a separate product until CNN+ came out. I assumed it was just a generic term for people who watched Fox News.
Discovery was not interested in spending billions to see if they could match or exceed Fox numbers.
They had offered severe discounts, including a promise of a lifetime guaranteed pricing.
Reminds me of the Simpsons where Homer are poisonous fugu.
‘The jokes on him. I’ll be dead by then.’
I am not able to comment on US, but the claim most certainly does have support (eg https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cr/casereport80.pdf for meta-analysis. For NZ synthesis, https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/7692/bes-community-family-influences.pdf)
However, the NZ report also notes:
“Regardless of ethnic or SES background, families with high levels of educational expectations have the most positive effects on their children’s achievement at senior school level”
This is something I was alluding to in comparison of Maori versus Pacifika. I am certainly not going to pretend that there is a single causative factor – a family can have low SES for many reasons, including that they are lazy and stupid. Creating a different family culture however seems no easier than improving SES. I dont think schools have to solve the issue but I do think that they can help provided they are working with robust evidence-based interventions. I dont think society is improved by simply blaming the parents and building more prisons.
Predictors of life outcomes and intelligence.
Who would want to go there?
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Human intelligence is a function of having a human brain.
Full stop.
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Human brains are not perfect and they have blocks in how they receive and how they are able to handle information built in.
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There is no special trigger or predictor for human intelligence.
The neurons grow, intersect and the pathways and connections, channels and functioning speed develop.
The brightest person in the world can come from any branch of the human family.
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Life expectancy, health happiness, wealth, married parents?
All figments of the imagination.
I have met many people from most countries and many backgrounds and am amazed by how the most unassuming of
people can have wicked [in a good sense], innate intelligence.
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Life outcomes are not about intelligence but luck of the draw.
Reminds me very much of an old computer game, ADOM.
At the start you are given by luck of dice all the various attributes to get through the game, or not.
Just like in real life.
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In regard to social emotional learning, or not, it is innate anyway whether taught or not we all go through it.
The issue is more about the appropriate time and place to have sex education as a young person and who should do it.
Good luck with that question.
CNN+. I’ve been through a lot of management changes at small companies and it is not unusual for the new bosses to immediately kill the previous boss’s pet project. I think it’s some weird alpha dog kind of thing, like a new alpha lion killing the previous one’s cubs.
It’s not about “blaming the parents and building more prisons”, it’s about accurately identifying root causes even if they are hard to solve and go against the preferred tribal narrative.
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We don’t want to spend limited resources on a solution that fixes nothing. Example: No amount of money will make the average child of parents with an IQ of 80 as smart as an average child of parents with an IQ of 120. It’s a fundamental limitation to outcomes. We can treat them fairly and equally and also accept that there won’t be equal outcomes.
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A counterargument is why worry or investigate things we can’t change? Genetics, etc. Beyond just the quest for knowledge is that arguments are made that persistent gaps that can’t be adequately explained must be due to structural racism or other mystical societal maladies. People are not born blank slates and the older they get the more their environment molds them.
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Society forces kids to spend endless hours in schools but makes almost no effort in training them to be responsible parents. Isn’t that odd? Parents can be trained to at least get their kids to not miss 60 days of school I assume.
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This is not a argument to stop trying to make progress. It is an argument that investigating successful outcomes is a more effective plan than castigating successful outcomes as oppressive regimes. Asians work harder at education than basketball. Does this make them happier? Who knows. It sure helps their SES and that of their kids, but they will likely take a beating on the basketball court. It’s their cultural choice.
Haven’t read all of the comments, so maybe I am repeating someone. However, my basic reaction is that the schools have enough of a hard time teaching Math. Why would they want to add this secondary learning task?
Phil,
“Creating a different family culture however seems no easier than improving SES.”
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SES and family culture are always going to be correlated. If you could change the culture to one that demands of children good behavior, responsibility, and a focus on education, that would also tend to improve family SES. Nobody said a cultural change would be easy. But the first step is recognizing that cultual values are, and must be, the thing that we try to change. The band-aid steps of dumbing down schools, eliminating testing, ’emotional learning’, and refusal of schools to discipline badly behaved kids are only making things worse. Doing nothing is bad. Doing things that make the problem worse is insane.
Example of banned “Math” problem in Florida schools. It’s a graphing example that shows older and politically conservative people as much more racially biased than younger, liberal people…. Wow!
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/518442-state-education-officials-release-examples-of-impermissible-materials-in-math-textbooks/
JDOhio
I think the FL DOE’s position, and DeSantis’s is they shouldn’t want to add this to math books.
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The fact is: Florida already requires their “character building” activities in schools as I cited above. So there should be no need to stuff it in the math book.
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If you read FL requirements for character building parts would match what AndrewP’s wife might recognize as “Historic SEL”. It doesn’t (necessarily) match what I call SEL®. (Although even that is so broad– you can look at all the “programs” and they have a huge range of elements– some of which are things like “equity” and “trauma” and so on.)
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Having whatever teachers do be scheduled explicitly and not hidden in math would certainly allow parents, community members and so on to see what is being done. And it also has less risk of derailing math. It also elminates situations where someone says whatever they do is ok because parents can opt out but then parents are in the odd position of opting out of math class. It’s just stupid to put it in math.
Clearly no political indoctrination there, Russel, it’s all entirely factual according to the fevered minds of leftists. They may categorize everyone by race, assign stereotypes, heap slurs on those who step out of line, and even change how they talk to better suit “the audience”, but that’s not racism because they don’t intend it to be.
Reedy Creek Improvement District:
I had a professional relationship with the engineers and administrators who ran the public works side of the district for about a 25 year period. This is essential to the operation of the parks.
For example they operate the following systems that are normally under local government control:
Potable water supply and distribution
Sewage collection and treatment
A very sophisticated surface water management system [think lakes, canals, drainage, rivers.. All of it]
Garbage collection and disposal
Mosquito control
Animal control
Building department
Planning department
Zoning department
Fire Department
Police department
Electric power plant and distribution
And many more.
I think the main threat here is that Disney currently does their own environmental review. Environmental review is the primary method new development that is not preferred by a certain class of people is stopped. Just yesterday I heard a story on how a local golf course to condo development plan was stopped by a finding of multiple protected species being “found” on the golf course.
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Disney also keeps their infrastructure in top condition, they don’t want to leave that to the whims of the local government.
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It’s a good partnership, everybody loses if it is modified. Disney isn’t going to move over this kerfuffle. Disney’s brand image has been meticulously crafted and it is a huge blunder to enter the culture wars, especially ones like this that are completely avoidable. They modify their movies for China’s market and culture over these same issues, this is not a hill they want to die on. Their current silence is the best move, wait until Twitter finds another shiny object to play with.
Disney parks are becoming a playground for the rich.
The lines are too long, and Disney’s solution is to raise prices, which is what anyone would do.
On top of that they are raising fees, like for the previously free fastpass.
Galaxy’s Edge flopped because Kathleen Kennedy ordered it focused on the recent movies, when people wanted the old characters, plus the even newer Mandalorian run by Jon Favreau.
Their Star Wars hotel is super expensive, and seems to be a flop.
Just noticed that the thread we have been using has closed, probably due to the 30 day limit.
MikeM, I’ll open it and then make a new one. 🙂