1) You figure out anything on that last sentence of your idleness paragraph, you tell me.
2) I kept resisting reading this story because most media writing on education only annoys me and doesn't tell me anything new-to-me (with double annoyance points if it comes from the NYT), but I saw this SO many places I broke down and read it. And you know what's fascinating to me? The metric the original study had for quality of kindergarten teaching was standardized tests on academic content...and the places the longitudinal studies are observing success are in things like adult earnings (and a lot of other adult outcomes that are nice to have, but don't necessarily pertain to academic skills at all). And there is SO much sturm und drang in the education debate about whether standardized tests measure anything meaningful at all, and how they can't measure creativity or all these personal traits, and yet -- we somehow have this correlate. And we have it even though the academic gains -- the ones measured by standardized tests -- disappear over the course of K-12 schooling if kids do not continue to have quality teachers.
I mean, WTF is up with that?! What are the correlates here? And why have the journalists and bloggers I've seen this from, some of whom have actual extensive social science and psychometrics experience, not dig into that? Because I would love to see that one theorized.
(Also, of course, the headline is stupid, but whatever. A newspaper making trite use of math? Wake me up when something surprising happens.)
no subject
2) I kept resisting reading this story because most media writing on education only annoys me and doesn't tell me anything new-to-me (with double annoyance points if it comes from the NYT), but I saw this SO many places I broke down and read it. And you know what's fascinating to me? The metric the original study had for quality of kindergarten teaching was standardized tests on academic content...and the places the longitudinal studies are observing success are in things like adult earnings (and a lot of other adult outcomes that are nice to have, but don't necessarily pertain to academic skills at all). And there is SO much sturm und drang in the education debate about whether standardized tests measure anything meaningful at all, and how they can't measure creativity or all these personal traits, and yet -- we somehow have this correlate. And we have it even though the academic gains -- the ones measured by standardized tests -- disappear over the course of K-12 schooling if kids do not continue to have quality teachers.
I mean, WTF is up with that?! What are the correlates here? And why have the journalists and bloggers I've seen this from, some of whom have actual extensive social science and psychometrics experience, not dig into that? Because I would love to see that one theorized.
(Also, of course, the headline is stupid, but whatever. A newspaper making trite use of math? Wake me up when something surprising happens.)