At 12:23 PM 9/18/2007, Craig Hancock wrote:
>DD,
>   As a professional educator, I think I should concern myself very 
> much with finding approaches that give my students the best chance at success.

DD: An excellent idea. "Success at what?" should be part of the 
mission statement. How to allocate your scarce resources, time, and 
perhaps money, is an economic question. Needs to be addressed. Some 
say do it so that the ones who do really well on the subject material 
prosper, some say cut out those at the ends and aim for the middle. 
{Those at the top will get it anyway, and the ones at the bottom 
won't ever.} That should be in the mission statement, too. 
Economically, you go for the place where marginal investment and 
marginal costs equate, given the budget restraint.

>This is especially true of teaching writing, which isn't just a 
>content area that can be lectured to them. I also think I have an 
>obligation as a citizen to care deeply about what is happening in 
>our inner cities. (The people running our cities are us, insofar as 
>we have a democracy.)

DD: Why me, Oh Lord? I live on a farm in rural land. [Rural middle of 
the muddle of Middle Tennessee.] I don't vote in or pay taxes in the 
City. I don't run the cities at all. Don't vote for their 
politicians, either. Do send tax money, though. Have no voice in how 
it is spent.

>I'm not a big fan of no child left behind, but I do think our 
>schools should be accountable, and I think teachers fall too easily 
>into a pattern of blaming parents, neighborhoods, the media, and so 
>on, and not their own teaching.

DD: So true. But the schools seem to have no clearly assigned 
missions. Who is to blame? All of the above.

>   What I worry about with tests like the SAT is that people think 
> they measure capabilities rather than a rather narrowly defined 
> current ability. My experience has been that they underestimate the 
> abilities of many students.

DD: And overestimate, too. Test validity it is called.

>   I don't think you meant the analogy to go that far, but my 
> students are not Forest Gumps in any way, shape, or form. If they 
> want to be doctors, they have to pass the same chemistry courses as 
> other students. To an extent unpredicted by their admissions 
> profiles, they are doing just that.

DD: I rather doubt that. Either you are getting a vastly superior 
group, or they have dumbed down the requirement to fit the class. 
Still, you did specify "their admissions profiles." I would gather 
that they are not reliable, and hence lose on validity, in the 
statistical sense. Now how well does the SAT predict? R of .85?

>  I think it's naive to think that success in this country is merely 
> a matter of hard work and innate ability.

DD: If you don't work hard, or have innate ability, better both, the 
chances of success are slim.

>Like good doctors, we can't turn away patients on the grounds that 
>they deserve to be sick.

DD: No, in the military and in the emergency rooms it is called 
triage. You go for the ones who can be saved if you intervene, ignore 
those doomed to falter, and get to those who will survive, more or 
less, with out your attention, after taking care of the first group. 
Rather like most schools do with their students.

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