GCSE scores were obtained for 13,306 twins at age 16, whom we also assessed contemporaneously on 83 scales that were condensed to nine broad psychological domains, including intelligence, self-efficacy, personality, well-being, and behavior problems. The mean of GCSE core subjects (English, mathematics, science) is more heritable (62%) than the nine predictor domains (35–58%). Each of the domains correlates significantly with GCSE results, and these correlations are largely mediated genetically. The main finding is that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of GCSE than any other single domain, the other domains collectively account for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE. We conclude that the high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.[1]
Even a major educational reform is just tinkering around the edges. Of course, people don't want to hear that so politicians will lie and give us exactly what we want. In this case, illusion that school matters a lot and they can significantly improve it. When it inevitably fails, we will blame them and hang our hopes on a different curriculum, "focusing on growth," getting ivy grads into teaching, or maybe just game the stats to tell ourselves it worked.
Next up, all new episode of democracy in the Middle East.
You have very badly misread the behavior genetics literature if you think "heritable" means "not subject to change with changes in environmental conditions." It does not. Let me provide a reference for my statement, from four eminent behavior geneticists writing a review article together.
"Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."
Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas (2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220
Really now, before commenting about public policy on the basis of heritability it would be a very good idea to learn what the word "heritability" means and what it does not.
Playing devil's advocate: in a perfect world with perfect schooling for everyone, wouldn't you expect a very high level of heritability due to the fact that this is the only source of inequality left?
That's like cancer becoming the primary cause of death - not because cancer is getting more dangerous, but because other, competing causes are eliminated.
The paper explicitly says this (that changes to equalise the educational environment will thereby increase heritability) which makes it odd for it to be cited in support of the thesis that the educational environment doesn't matter, because academic success is so heritable.
I think the question is, can 100% of children be brought up to read and write and do basic math? If so (and it would be pretty controversial to argue otherwise -- who are these genetically unhelpable children? maybe there are a few, but less than 1%), then the goal of "No Child" is at least coherent, even if the implementation was so poor that it could never have improved public education so drastically.
> I think the question is, can 100% of children be brought up to read and write and do basic math?
No. There are children whose brains pretty much failed to form, children with intact brains but severe mental retardation (such as the most serious form of Down Syndrome), and children who were normal until an adverse environment in the womb or later made them seriously mentally retarded, such as fetal alcohol syndrome.
You can reduce the fraction of the children we can't help by defining "read and write and do basic math" as broadly as possible, but that won't be useful from two angles: One, at some level you have to really be able to read and write and do basic math, and, two, some children can't be brought up to any reasonable level.
The fraction of the ineducable might end up being very small, but, hey, you're the one who said 100%.
Interesting that GCSE is used as the example (GCSE is the UK exam), when I took my GCSEs (quite a while ago I admit) students were placed into different sets based on ability. Lower sets took exams covering a smaller amount of material and had a maximum grade of a C. Are students seperated by ability in the US?
Students are segregated by ability in the US, but in a variety of inconsistent ways. "Tracking," or comprehensive separation by ability, fell out of favor thirty years ago. A lot of this has to do with racial politics, but there's definitely a Lake Wobegon component as well. That said, in individual subjects, there's almost always a regular and an advanced course, and it turns out that the same group of kids are in all of the advanced courses at most schools.
Intra-school politics aside, in the US class and geography are tightly linked. Schools are locally controlled, so rich areas will have their own schools populated solely with their children, and poor areas will have their own schools populated solely with their own children. Rich schools have more advanced and AP (it's like American IB, basically. Very rich areas will have IB courses too) courses, poor schools often have trouble meeting state and federal requirements that science be taught.
So, since 'rich' and 'academic ability' are tightly linked, whatever the nominal defenses against tracking are, they don't mean anything in practice.
The SAT is in no way more "rigorous" than the ACT. The theoretical difference between ACT and SAT is a slight shift between "achievement" (ACT) vs "potential" (SAT) although the reality is that this is pretty minimal. That is to say, ACT was supposed to slightly more reflect what you had learned in HS, while SAT was slightly closer to something like an IQ test that changed less by HS education.
In practice, the only difference between ACT and SAT for decades has been geographic preference. East&West coast schools primarily use SAT and Midwest/Central schools primarily use ACT.
The relationship between the ACT and SAT may be changing as the latter is watered down. Or at least MIT has found as of late the ACT is a better test for its purposes.
It used to be that in the Midwest only a few people took the SAT, people looking to get into schools that required/preferred it or people looking to get a scholarship that used the score. The state schools were all fine with the ACT.
I think the reasoning is that we should allow less able students more time to understand the material, there isn't much point teaching calculus if someone struggles with basic algebra.
>But, he adds, "I think it's safe to say, and we anticipated this early on, that policymakers erred. They turned an aspirational goal that inspires support, into a target for accountability, meant for consequences."
Unfortunately, this is how nearly every department of the government views pretty much anything. That is why the regularly fail, and its also the reason why intelligent, talented people rarely want to work for the government.
This is pretty much literally what "accountability" means. When you say you want an "accountable" government or support politicians who talk about "accountability," measuring things and then firing people or cutting funding based on those measurements is exactly what you're asking for.
Accountability is maybe the solution if the problem is laziness. If your problem is anything else, greater accountability won't solve anything.
When I talk about accountability in politics, I want accountability for the near-universal corruption. I want the 500+ member royal family we have established in the United States to follow the same rules as everyone else, and to go to prison when they don't.
As far as accountability in public programs, now that you have made me think about it a bit more, I suppose the greater issue is the fact that the federal government is absolutely terrible at coming up with metrics. Whenever they measure in order to take accountability, they seem to focus on the wrong things.
I think metrics can be helpful in some cases, but in our education system, it would have to be an extremely complicated system, else we would just end up preparing children to take unhelpful standardized tests like we do now.
"The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
GCSE scores were obtained for 13,306 twins at age 16, whom we also assessed contemporaneously on 83 scales that were condensed to nine broad psychological domains, including intelligence, self-efficacy, personality, well-being, and behavior problems. The mean of GCSE core subjects (English, mathematics, science) is more heritable (62%) than the nine predictor domains (35–58%). Each of the domains correlates significantly with GCSE results, and these correlations are largely mediated genetically. The main finding is that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of GCSE than any other single domain, the other domains collectively account for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE. We conclude that the high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.[1]
Even a major educational reform is just tinkering around the edges. Of course, people don't want to hear that so politicians will lie and give us exactly what we want. In this case, illusion that school matters a lot and they can significantly improve it. When it inevitably fails, we will blame them and hang our hopes on a different curriculum, "focusing on growth," getting ivy grads into teaching, or maybe just game the stats to tell ourselves it worked.
Next up, all new episode of democracy in the Middle East.
[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111