In moving beyond No Child Left Behind in ways that are humane, effective, and efficient, we must implement education policies that challenge economic inequality rather than increasing it, which will require an about-face for most politicians on both sides of the aisle of the corporate jet. One thing that schools can do in this regard is to take seriously the research by James Coleman, which has been ignored or misused since it was published in 1966, just one year after Congressional approval of the first ESEA in 1965.
Coleman’s findings are here summarized by Coleman scholar, Gerald Grant (2009):"Simply put, Coleman found that the achievement of both poor and rich children was depressed by attending a school where most children came from low-income families. More important to the goal of achieving equal educational opportunity, he found that the achievement of poor children was raised by attending a predominantly middle-class school, while the achievement of affluent children in the school was not harmed. This was true even if per-pupil expenditures were the same at both schools. No research over the past forty years has overturned Coleman’s finding . . . (p. 159)."
Coleman also found that the longer that poor black children were stuck in low SES schools, the lower their achievement moved in comparison to middle class children.
Read it at Common Dreams
On US Education: It’s the Socioeconomic Segregation, Stupidby Jim Horn
(h/t Rohan Grey via Twitter)
Education is arguably the single most significant economic factor, in that it is the sine qua non of survival and progress, fundamentally influencing everything else. As such it is foundational.
We keep beating our heads against the wall on education and nothing seems to work.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is mostly the people. IQ is largely heredity. Period, end of most conversations.
Blacks and Latino's will never on mass achieve what other higher IQ races have achieved. Fine, find things that help people be the best they can be, but STOP thinking we can make everyone educated and intelligent.
I struggle every day with my own limitation and I'm so sick of people try to argue that if I just studied more in school, or had a better environment, I could be launching rockets at NASA. NO I CAN'T! We all have limitations, except for the egg heads who think intellectual pursuits are easy because they have 140IQ.
Education should focus on attitude and let people excel to their natural strengths. The only way to truly fix stupid, is genetic engineering....
Research shows that every normal child is a genius up to about age five. By eighteen, the % of those that continue to excel is minuscule.
ReplyDeleteThis will be continue to be the case if we take a one shoe fits all approach to education instead of culturing the individual genius that everyone has inherently.
This requires a completely different culture to implement. But it is possible.
Read A. S. Neill's Summerhill, for example. It's been done before, and it continues.
Summerhill School (UK)