OnPoint: Re: Education
86 Responses
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Russell Brown, in reply to
So not only is the y axis full of shit but so is the x axis?!?!?
It appears so.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
So not only is the y axis full of shit but so is the x axis?!?!?
Now it gets really difficult to plot.
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And all this would be fun and games at the expense of The Herald, but it really is all about the future of the children being taught in our schools.
Our media should be working to improve our education system, instead we get this.
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James Butler, in reply to
So not only is the y axis full of shit but so is the x axis?!?!?
More spatter than scatter.
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JacksonP, in reply to
More spatter than scatter.
A scatological scatter plot, if you will.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
A scatological scatter plot, if you will.
I hadn't realised there was a default for that in Excel.
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LOL. top work keith.
you seem to have written down what i was thinking
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Tom Beard, in reply to
That's the default for everything in Excel.
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Che Tibby, in reply to
but it really is all about the future of the children being taught in our schools.
maybe. the literature is pretty clear. the education of the parents is far more significant than the quality of the school environment or teaching.
reference pending...
i think i remember that another significant factor is if the dad reads to the child.
reasons: dad is around
dad can read
dad gives enough of a fck to read to child
child is emotionally attached, secure etc. -
Bart Janssen, in reply to
maybe. the literature is pretty clear. the education of the parents is far more significant than the quality of the school environment or teaching.
reference pending…
i think i remember that another significant factor is if the dad reads to the child.
reasons: dad is around
dad can read
dad gives enough of a fck to read to child
child is emotionally attached, secure etc.Tempting just to quote that again because it is so very important. I've read the same papers, PNAS I think.
That relationship has been noted by the specialists in education, their take was (I think) "so we should teach boys that their role in raising their children is really important".
That's one of the things I've admired about that field, when faced with something they can't directly have much impact on they think of ways they can have an indrect impact.
Of course that is the kind of liberal namby pamby teaching national standards is designed to rid us of ... sigh.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
So not only is the y axis full of shit but so is the x axis?!?!?
It appears so.
The Herald could usefully consider this well-known graph. (Except I'd rather they didn't, because I can already imagine the headline.)
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Now it gets really difficult to plot.
This is in fact a classic example of the thick plotting.
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Che Tibby, in reply to
meh. take their benefit away if the bastards don't read to their kids.
why i don't work in policy i really have no idea.
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Mike Graham, in reply to
In some ways it's a shame that both axes are rubbish as looking at the plot from Danyl, if you take the points to the right of 25 on the x-axis (estimated class size) it appears to show a strong inverse correlation between class size and achievement.
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Danielle, in reply to
take their benefit away if
Che, have you got a leopard-skin paint job on your car?
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Or cut the benefit if they don't enrol their kids in the local library and take out at least three books a week. We could also address equity issues and require the same for superannuitants. And those who live far from a local library will just have to get there somehow - not our problem. (You can tell I do policy research)
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Che Tibby, in reply to
only when you pick away at the edges of the current one.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
Our media should be working to improve our education system, instead we get this.
This fundamentally misunderstands the role of the media in a democracy.
Truth to power. Public accountability with public money. Etc.
It's not their job to improve the education system. Or to help police catch criminals. Or anything else many people seem to want them to do.
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mic weevil, in reply to
This fundamentally misunderstands the role of the media in a democracy.
Truth to power. Public accountability with public money. Etc.
in that case, I think the media fundamentally misunderstand the role of the media in a democracy (Herald and Stuff at least...)
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Very nice post, Keith. Thank you.
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Keith Ng, in reply to
Truth to power. Public accountability with public money. Etc.
I think the point of contention here is that, instead of "truth to power", this is just "some bullshit interpretation of meaningless numbers to power".
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Truth to power. Public accountability with public money. Etc.
I think the point of contention here is that, instead of “truth to power”, this is just “some bullshit interpretation of meaningless numbers to power”.
You could also argue that that "truth to power" would have involved the press screaming blue murder about the national standards legislation being shoved through under urgency.
And then perhaps about the minister's refusal to countenance a trial of the standards scheme.
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Classic, Keith. The direction of causation is also something that's worth considering when you find a correlation. Is it possible that performing less well in National Standards causes smaller classes? That would hardly be a surprising thing to find, since weaker students need more teacher time, to get the same result. It would also not be a bad thing to find, since it would indicate teachers are helping those who need help the most. The extreme end of this scale is special needs schools, in which the ratios are very high, and the performance against normalized standards are low. At the other end, you can have classrooms with a lot of kids like I was when I studied computing at high school - someone you can basically leave with a textbook, and they'll top the school. The ratios could be quite high indeed, as they are at University level, where students are self-selected and more motivated.
So what you're discovering is pedagogical behaviour of the education system, the complete no-brainer that any 13 year old can see, that the slower kids need (and frequently get) more help. That this is not more strongly correlated is what is surprising, and that to me suggests teachers actually get results, which rather tallies with NZ's performance against other nations on educational measures.
Two causations are working against each other - on the one hand, the weaker students cause higher teacher numbers, and on the other, the teaching they then get lifts their performance. Both of which causations are highly desirable, and also totally the opposite of the suggestion that it is better for students to be in bigger classes.
This is a theory, anyway. There's way more at work than that, stuff that legions of professional educators have known for decades, and that's why we generally leave it to them.
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Sacha, in reply to
Is it possible that performing less well in National Standards causes smaller classes?
John Minto speaking for QPEC (on Radio NZ in the last quarter hour) said that lower decile schools tend to use the extra funding they get to pay for more teachers per student. Danyl graphed the relationship between decile and these 'standards' results.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
So what you’re discovering is pedagogical behaviour of the education system, the complete no-brainer that any 13 year old can see, that the slower kids need (and frequently get) more help. That this is not more strongly correlated is what is surprising, and that to me suggests teachers actually get results, which rather tallies with NZ’s performance against other nations on educational measures.
Our older boy was flagged as in need of Reading Recovery at primary school. He got it – and it was transformative. The system works pretty well at well-resourced schools. I have no idea what national standards would have told us as parents that we weren’t already told.
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