In Honor Of The First Day Of Schoool

In honor of the first day of school, which I ALWAYS loved (the PeeChee folders all crisp and perfect- the new Mead binder!  All the pencils in the new pencil case!  THOSE were the days!), I want to pass along some very POORLY designed educational studies and the results which may be affecting your school this year:

1. Elementary classrooms devoid of decorations are NOT better learning environments.

A study that was recently published in Psychology, tested two groups of kindergarteners to see if they could answer questions about a story better in a room with and without decorations.  Imagine your child's class with NO decorations.  COMPLETELY blank walls.  The study jumped to the conclusion that, because more students were able to answer more questions about the story, that the blank-wall environment is better for learning.

To this point, I'd like to REMIND educators of a couple of key concepts about education:
Bloom's Taxonomy- while the students may have been able to RECALL more information, you did not test whether or not they LEARNED better.  RECALL IS THE MOST BASIC "learning".  It does not prove that you are able to better incorporate the lessons into new applications or understand what you are learning and evaluate what you have learned.  I think all educators would agree that just recalling that "the dog went left" is not as important as "the dog went left because there was a car coming at him on the right".

See my point?

So, if your educator feels starts boasting about this new educational finding, please spew Bloom's Taxonomy at her/him.

In addition, the two classes that were tested:  there is no description of the cultural or IQ distributions of these classes.  You have no idea if there was a morning class or an afternoon class compared side by side.  What the study did NOT do was to use the same sample of kindergarteners with and without decorations...and then to repeat that 30 times (if you're a statistician, you know that n=30 is the magic number).  So, GREAT study.  Please remind your educators of this.

And then find a new teacher for your kid.

2.  Schools starting later do NOT make high school kids get better grades.

I know!  It sounds like something that came out of a high schooler's paper, doesn't it?  I kid you not, studies published in Scientific American, site different school districts and the grades that the high schools receive as proof that the start time of the classes makes a difference.

ahem.

a)  CULTURAL DIFFERENCES HERE!?!  The school districts that they compare do NOT have an comparable distribution of  "A students".  DUH!

b)  Did anyone take into account the number or Advanced Placement classes at these schools as a comparison of the educational drive of these students?

c) Most Important:  DID ANYONE THINK THAT MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STUDENTS AT ALL?  Maybe, just MAYBE it's the TEACHERS who like to start later?  Perhaps having a later start time for them means that they get to do all their grading in the morning instead of at night? Perhaps they're in a better mood when they do their grading?  MAYBE?????

Of course, there are no simple solutions for education because every child is different.  But blindly changing the school system just to get published- I think that's pretty expected.  I mean, you have to make results after you take NEA money.