For John, BLUF: It is obvious that, from our ranking on the MCAS scores, that we need to do more for our students. Nothing to see here; just move along.
My thoughts on equity and public schools.
When I first heard the used of the term "equity" with regards to schools, vice "equality", I was skeptical. I was like my follow City Life Show host, George Anthes.
Then I saw the graphic, with three boys of different heights, trying to watch a baseball game over an outfield fence, and then the companion sketch, with the boys standing on different sized boxes, depend on their individual heights. It made perfect sense.
Then I wondered about visual acuity. One boy could have 20/40 vision, a second 20/20, and the third a Ted Williams like ability to read the stitches on the baseball. And eye-hand coordination. One might be able to easily grab a pop foul, one might or might not grab it and one might be beaned by it. Think about reading. One of those boys may read a 1,000 words a minute and one at 400 and one might struggle over each sentence.
Talents differ. We can compensate for physical differences, but perhaps not for all natural or nurtured talents.
Which got me to thinking about Schools. I just finished a book (Tangled up In Blue), by Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks. In the book the author told about her high school years, when she suffered from some degree of depression. Approaching high school graduation she had been accepted at Harvard, but her High School Principal was not going to graduate her, for having missed about half her school days. Fortunately, her Step-Father, a union shop steward, went to the Principal and explained she had gotten out of high school what was to be gained and should be allowed to go to Harvard.
In like manner, my Buddy Jim Peters says that he used to ditch classes and go into the loft of the High School Auditorium and read books. Yet, he graduated and went on to college, from which he graduated.
In my own case I never cut a class, not even for "Senior Ditch Day" and still managed to graduate in the bottom half of my class. On the other hand, in geometry, where we did problems in class, I used to rip through them so I could get a magazine in the black of the classroom to read. I earned an "A" in that class.
My conclusion is that the performance of the student may not necessarily be correlated with teacher contact time. My expectation is that if we did a thorough evaluation of our COVID Zoom classes that some small percentage of students thrived overall and some thrived in certain classes, while many struggled. And, perhaps it isn't exactly correlated with in-classroom performance.
What this suggests is that we may be mis-allocating teaching assets. Not allocating resources equitably. To cartoon it, some students may learn best with minimal instruction, perhaps less that an hour a day or two, while others might do better if those surplus instructional assets were focused on them.
This need based approach, would require a flexibility in assignments and also a high quality testing regimen. It would also require Parent and Student buy-in. Further, it would require a certain degree of Student social maturity.
Such an approach would enhance educational equity. It would also improve the performance of our students on standardized testing.
It would, however, be the hard way, except for the students.
Regards — Cliff
