Failure to reject the null hypothesis, I at least was taught, demonstrates merely that there is no relationship between two data sets. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not prove anything and its use as evidence in favor of some other assertion is weak evidence at best. Thus, using the null hypothesis as a basis for the various dubious assertions made or implied here seems to do quite some violence to the ordinary limits of what is traditionally understood as “the null hypothesis.” If you want to wave around the null hypothesis, that would ordinarily imply you have no standing for making a policy prescriptions, even it is only to accept the status quo.
The assertions that appear to be made here that we are asked to accept based upon failure to reject the null include:
1. “for the purpose of mass education, schooling as we do it today has evolved to be nearly optimal”
2. “When the other kids in elementary school want the approval of the teacher, I want the approval of the teacher. For most students, that is necessary and sufficient motivation. That is why ordinary classroom learning works, and nothing else works at scale,” and
3. “Take the average 8-year old out of the classroom and put him in front of a computer at home, where he no longer sees other kids wanting the approval of the teacher. His motivation drops to zero.”
Let’s take each in turn.
First, regarding the optimal US education system and its implied policy prescription of generalized complacency. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress found:
“Thirty-one percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the reading assessment in 2024—2 percentage points lower compared to 2022 and not significantly different from 1992, the first reading assessment year.”
The lack of progress would appear to be a perfect demonstration of the null hypothesis: nothing makes a difference so why bother? However, around the world there are a variety of education models that produce different levels of achievement:
“Results from the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015, which is a test administered to 15-year-old students in participating economies every three years, showed that students in the United States lag far behind other high-income countries across different subjects, despite making the most progress in equity compared to other participating countries. … …
Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. Although these countries have well-delineated standards, they do not necessarily outline similar goals. For example, one country may emphasize cooperation, another student growth, or yet another may focus on equality, as in Finland.[2] Another thing the high-performing nations had in common was a tendency to recruit teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).
Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States’ low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as ‘resilient students,’ or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States’ educational system may be on a descending trajectory that could detrimentally affect the country’s economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).
Recent research has found that the United States’ low overall educational achievement is in large part due to an underperformance by the middle class. The poorest students in the United States, despite being among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged around the world, perform averagely relative to other poor students. The richest students from the U.S., despite being among the wealthiest, are also average when compared to other rich students – which is also an alarming finding. However, students in the middle of the SES distribution perform half a school year behind comparable middle-SES students, despite being among the wealthiest middle-SES groups in the world.”
So even if the US lacks the intellectual capital to produce efficacious educational reform, there is no convincing evidence that education reform is necessarily doomed in all places and at all times. The interest of basic national survival alone would counsel continued efforts regardless of the track record of failure. What really needs to be addressed and overcome is the doctrine of establishment complacency (aka “institutionalism”.) The threat of a moldering status quo is much worse than than the threat of change.
On the second assertion, there is a vast literature on the varieties of learning motivation that is easily accessible. LLM prompt: What are the major theories of student learning movition in schools?
On the final assertion asserting the primacy of teacher approval-centered mimetic motivation in learning:
“Research shows that children self-motivate information seeking behavior to solve problems. For example, 5–9-year-old children are more likely to persist in information-seeking behavior to effectively solve a problem when given ambiguous rather than conclusive evidence (Busch & Legare, 2019). Children also adjust self-motivated exploratory behavior under problem-solving conditions in response to the credibility of their resources (Gweon et al., 2014). Some researchers suggest children are actually better self-motivated problem-solvers than adults (Lucas et al., 2014), as children seemingly are more willing to expend effort exploring information and resources before exploiting findings and drawing conclusions (Liquin & Gopnik, 2022). On the other hand, children may be less efficient self-motivated learners since they may struggle to terminate information-seeking behavior, even after the answer has been discovered (Ruggeri et al., 2016).”
At the risk of citing to Voldemore, American students actually do very well in PISA when you correct for ethnic background. Which makes clear standards and smart teachers an explanation in search of a result. In the US, the most money often goes to schools serving the poorest (monetarily) families. Shockingly, students from poor families tend to be less intelligent and less focused on schooling than students from less poor families.
Sure, there are lots of theories of educational motivation. But they basically don't give any strategies that work to raise student achievement.
People are indeed information seekers. But after puberty, they rarely are self-motivated for what state ed departments say they are supposed to learn. A kid who can tell you lots of things about a local sports team or Taylor Swift--which they learned all on their own!--will probably not voluntarily seek out world history or algebra. I don't think you have to throw in "mimetic motivation". Number 3 would be perfectly correct is it was modified to:
3. "Take the average 8-year old out of the classroom and put him in front of a computer at home, where he no longer" has 20 peers doing the same work, interacting with each other and the teacher, and advancing together. "His motivation drops to" pretty much "zero.” (The essayist uses "motivation" not to mean intrinsic motivation but causing something actually to be done whether you really want to or not.
Confused about whether Arnold thinks Alpha School has beaten the Null Hypothesis. At the end he seems to say that he believes the essay critical of the reformers, but compares a classroom setting to being alone with a computer, which is a straw-man.
I think that most interventions are too small or short-lived to expect major changes. Alpha School's completely different structure, going from K-12, seems like it clearly meets the intervention size and length to expect a non-null hypothesis. I have full expectation that they have found a better way to educate, and I hope it spreads.
The emphasis on practical skills and engagement with the real world would also tend to result in better outcomes for students than singular focus on SAT test performance, given the reality that industry cares about more than just IQ. Some of the wealthiest people I know are in sales or own/run a business, doing much better than me who was single-minded / successful in academics.
Re: "When the other kids in elementary school want the approval of the teacher, I want the approval of the teacher. For most students, that is necessary and sufficient motivation. That is why ordinary classroom learning works, and nothing else works at scale." - Arnold Kling
Good friends pull you up. Bad friends pull you down. Sideward glances can cut either way. Thus, school can undermine motivation for education if there are numerous students (or school inmates?) who resent the classroom and teachers. There was more pulling down than pulling up in the middle school and then in high school that I attended.
Thomas Sowell would ask: Compared to what? Arnold contrasts school to home schooling at the computer. I would experiment with educational activities in the wild, involving teams, outputs, and a variety of authorities. Youths might want to learn by doing.
You might want to think of teachers as grouped into similarly categories
1) A small cohort of high-motivation teachers who are like the Alpha School guides, not just willing but also adept at mastering and using multiple individualized teaching techniques
2) A large group of mid-level teachers who capable of mastering and deploying a few well-defined techniques
3) Another group, smaller than the mid-level but larger than the high, who are generally ineffective at teaching but remain in the field because they like being known as a teacher and comply with the directives of their administrators enough to not be a problem.
Your Null Hypothesis would largely be the result of experimental programs being staffed largely by teachers in group 1 who would be able to get good results using any technique with the results then being dulled as students are passed on to teachers in groups 2 and 3.
Back in the early 2000s, there was a push to determine who was a better or worse teacher. The obvious metric was how much a class had advanced relative to the average. There was a black humor saying, "I wonder who's going to be the best teacher this year." There were few obvious best and worst teachers. Rather, the "best" teacher was the one who, often out of randomness, got the best students.
In the United States at least, there are few really bad teachers. Group 3 is small, because most teachers are equally ineffective (glass half empty, or equally effective, glass half full). Students will learn some things but not nearly as much as the state standards say. Group 1 is nearly non-existent because in a classroom of 25 people, there are pretty much no "individualized teaching techniques" that a teacher can become "adept at mastering".
One thing Arnold didn't mention that I think is relevant is that the School essay seems to estimate "no-structure" learners at 5%, "low-structure" learners at 15%, and "high-structure" learners at 80%. So if you're going to be "democratic" and "inclusive", you have to design for the 80%.
Also, Arnold's summary seems to imply that the "high-structures" can't learn much of anything in high school: " These are students who at most can get through middle school. But in high school, they are no longer able to keep up, and they have to be socially promoted in order to graduate." I didn't get that from the essay.
I really don't like the effect screens have on my kids and whenever I've looked at the app on the laptop they bring home I'm convinced they rot their brains.
I don't think it's an accomplishment to get through academics in 2-3 hours. As far as I can tell from ordinary school that's all they spend on actual academics. The rest of the day is just useless filler.
I continue to believe that the #1 educational intervention would just be to make half the day recess.
In elementary school kids are stuck in the same classroom - which can be a problem for the teachers because the range of levels in the kids. I restricted screens (including TV) and had the kids read instead of watch -> by the end of elementary school they had at least high school reading levels. I also supplemented math because the elementary school spent too much time repeating the same material that they had already mastered. I would note that they were not pleased with Daddy's homework assignments, which were harder than those of the school.
The advantage in Middle and High School is that kids start doing separate classes, so kids can jump grades in various subjects.
I was intent on having the kids take advantage of Running Start - which meant that they had to be fully ready for Calculus in 11th grade. That way when they started college in 11th grade they would be ready for STEM introductory classes. I supplemented my daughter's math via correspondence classes (Geometry and pre-Calculus) over two summers. She dropped out of high school and went to the university after 10th grade. My son did the Running Start program.
My daughter was an autodidact. My son needed a bit of structure, but would do well then if he found the material at all interesting.
I think the key distinction that was carefully left out of the essay is that the no-structure learners are being explicitly sacrificed - their experience suffers because the the school needs them to be bored to motivate the low and high-structure learners, who compromise the majority, and other options fail because they either cannot function at all when they include high-structure learners, or because doing so brings them back down to basically public school levels.
There's lots in this piece that's interesting to think about but it seems there's also quite a bit that seems obviously wrong.
"At the lowest level are “high-structure learners.” These are students who at most can get through middle school. But in high school, they are no longer able to keep up, and they have to be socially promoted in order to graduate."
Is this equating motivation and intelligence? I can believe they might be somewhat correlated but is it even close to always?
"The no-structure learners will always be bored, as long as we are committed to putting them into classrooms where everyone learns the same thing. ... …No-structure learners thrive anywhere."
So a bored student thrives?
"Lumping everyone together and asking them all to learn the same curriculum seems to work better at scale than anything else we’ve tried. These are the core challenges of education."
Sure. That's why everyone takes the same math classes in high school. Why would we expect limping everyone together works better for younger grades? I agree with Zvi about grouping kids except I have concern about it become a stressful competition but maybe we already have that as bad as it would get with different tracks in high school.
"School is designed to maximize motivation." To quote Lisa Simpson, I know all of those words, but that sentence doesn't make any sense.
"Grouping students by ability, whether within or across classrooms, has shown little benefit" and "The no-structure learners will always be bored, as long as we are committed to putting them into classrooms where everyone learns the same thing" seem to contradict each other.
I'm with Zvi. My own experience with tracking took place in the 1970s in a Catholic high school. We had Honors, General and Remedial tracks for almost all classes -- except Religion. I guess the idea was we are equal in God's eyes. Fine, but the teacher had to slow things down and dumb things down so much for the Remedial kids that the rest of us were just screamingly bored, and developed a passionate hatred for the class.
In practice the null hypothesis is hard to distinguish from the almost-null hypothesis—i.e., small gains (or losses) can be difficult to measure. And changes in technique that produce very small gains may be worth instituting if they cost very little (ideally, nothing, or even less).
Unfortunately, paying kids to learn would not be costless or near-costless (unless it *replaced* some even more costly technique).
“Long-time readers will know that I emphasize what I call The Null Hypothesis. This is the view that when all is said and done, attempts at different ways of schooling make no difference.”
There are a myriad of different private schools that if you were to put your children into would likely cause (at least) slight differences in outcomes. For example, one private school might emphasize computer programming while another might not have any programming. Surely going to this one school or the other would probably lead to a different outcome in your child’s computer programming skills at a certain critical point in their life. Does this nullify the Null Hypothesis?
Some schools emphasize snow skiing, others music, some Latin, others critical thinking. Seems like there are important decisions to be made in school choice.
Since masculine influences for young children and students has been systematically driven out of family and education in this hyper-Feminized insane-accepting society the less time our children are near pedo-grooming women predators and devouring mothers the less chance of significant harm they will likely suffer.
Generally, there something very sick about today's children educators and administrators and a significant sign of this is the active toxic anti-man environments that schools have become and it is reasonable to argue that since men protect and do not allow psychotic women to mind-rape or sexually abuse children they were driven away under threat of Witch-Whisper-Web false-accusations and reputational damage.
Devouring Mothers, Teachers, and society has significantly damaged our once sane, virtuous, caring trust society and generations of children. And it is long past time to actively stand against such Witch minions of Satan 5th column that poisons and destroys families, employment spaces, professions, gov, truth, justice, good-order, prudence, Charity, .. because it is clear that womanhood is unable to correct themselves and men that have tried have been crushed by the State and psyche-vicious mobs of screeching lying delusional femNazis and man-hating disHonorable insane baby-killing false-accusing women.
Besides a 'black swan' event like God sending us a Real pandemic that kills women at menopause and so we saved from the extra 40 years of hate-filled poison that Sickens children and young adults and public spaces, work-places, and schools, and Love-Joy-Life-Hope-sanity may start to return, .. besides something like that the next best thing is to reduce children's risk of contact.
A 150+ years ago a student would get a decent education by 8th grade and so I used AI to report what a K-12 education should provide and condensed it down to K-8th and with men teachers and the few women able to focus and stop fingering their poo, it is doable and if any students have trouble they moved to a Trades School because unlike the psychotic Feminized insane professionals willing to harm every other student because one has trouble the rule will be that the troubled student is moved along and away.
.. What a sick society the hyper-empowered retarded feelie womanhood has made!
K-12 can and should be reduced to K-8th by using Men teachers that aren't mind-raping Witch minions. Trades or university and employed by 18 years old and married with start of family by 20, not castrated mind-raped infantile breast-feeding [adult] children at 30, like we have today.
You understand what 'Devouring Mother' is?
We have Feminized this level of hell, and so now we suffer 'Devouring Society'.
When I'm Pope-King of world, God willing, we all will Exorcise the devouring fatherhood childhood Satanic mind-soul crippling mothers and devouring retarding mind-raping societies demon-possessed from any power positions. If you can't work and think like a man then Get away from working men and our excellent systems, we have suffered your poison-vomit far too long.
In this article below I argue that generations of child psychological damage has caused world-wide insanity-accepting intellectual, judgement, prudence and other mental harms. I use both Catholic Theology teaching supported by modern psychological science.
Entire HS basic subjects and critical-thinking fit in k-8th grade because men teachers will not be psychologically abusing and crippling them, the students will have the best opportunity to have a successful adult life and healthy family or best service to God and Man, to truth, to Justice, to Right-Order, to Prudence, to honor, to ...
Latin and perhaps Greek learned world-wide by every educated person so they have access to older original records, and international Univeral communications.
End of 8th grade will have tests and the top 15% will enter University if desired, and rest to trades so the men may be fully employed by 20 years-old and start a family with 16 yo woman or older. No more Sick mind-raping putrid endless forced childhood.
Men and fathers will return to right-ordered duties, and women will stop destroying Love, Life, Joy, Hope, .. and be more valuable than the 2-week old putrid poison most have become. You are not children, and you will suffer or celebrate from your choices.
School and trades all sex-segregated. Dress-code and women will be expected to work and learn as hard as men, no tits-out disOrdering use and abuse of sexuality. Shut-the-F-up and get to work or leave.
Failure to reject the null hypothesis, I at least was taught, demonstrates merely that there is no relationship between two data sets. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not prove anything and its use as evidence in favor of some other assertion is weak evidence at best. Thus, using the null hypothesis as a basis for the various dubious assertions made or implied here seems to do quite some violence to the ordinary limits of what is traditionally understood as “the null hypothesis.” If you want to wave around the null hypothesis, that would ordinarily imply you have no standing for making a policy prescriptions, even it is only to accept the status quo.
The assertions that appear to be made here that we are asked to accept based upon failure to reject the null include:
1. “for the purpose of mass education, schooling as we do it today has evolved to be nearly optimal”
2. “When the other kids in elementary school want the approval of the teacher, I want the approval of the teacher. For most students, that is necessary and sufficient motivation. That is why ordinary classroom learning works, and nothing else works at scale,” and
3. “Take the average 8-year old out of the classroom and put him in front of a computer at home, where he no longer sees other kids wanting the approval of the teacher. His motivation drops to zero.”
Let’s take each in turn.
First, regarding the optimal US education system and its implied policy prescription of generalized complacency. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress found:
“Thirty-one percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the reading assessment in 2024—2 percentage points lower compared to 2022 and not significantly different from 1992, the first reading assessment year.”
(https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g4_8/national-trends/?grade=4#achievement-level-trends )
The lack of progress would appear to be a perfect demonstration of the null hypothesis: nothing makes a difference so why bother? However, around the world there are a variety of education models that produce different levels of achievement:
“Results from the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015, which is a test administered to 15-year-old students in participating economies every three years, showed that students in the United States lag far behind other high-income countries across different subjects, despite making the most progress in equity compared to other participating countries. … …
Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. Although these countries have well-delineated standards, they do not necessarily outline similar goals. For example, one country may emphasize cooperation, another student growth, or yet another may focus on equality, as in Finland.[2] Another thing the high-performing nations had in common was a tendency to recruit teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).
Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States’ low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as ‘resilient students,’ or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States’ educational system may be on a descending trajectory that could detrimentally affect the country’s economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).
Recent research has found that the United States’ low overall educational achievement is in large part due to an underperformance by the middle class. The poorest students in the United States, despite being among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged around the world, perform averagely relative to other poor students. The richest students from the U.S., despite being among the wealthiest, are also average when compared to other rich students – which is also an alarming finding. However, students in the middle of the SES distribution perform half a school year behind comparable middle-SES students, despite being among the wealthiest middle-SES groups in the world.”
(https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-introductiontosociology/chapter/education-around-the-world/ )
So even if the US lacks the intellectual capital to produce efficacious educational reform, there is no convincing evidence that education reform is necessarily doomed in all places and at all times. The interest of basic national survival alone would counsel continued efforts regardless of the track record of failure. What really needs to be addressed and overcome is the doctrine of establishment complacency (aka “institutionalism”.) The threat of a moldering status quo is much worse than than the threat of change.
On the second assertion, there is a vast literature on the varieties of learning motivation that is easily accessible. LLM prompt: What are the major theories of student learning movition in schools?
On the final assertion asserting the primacy of teacher approval-centered mimetic motivation in learning:
“Research shows that children self-motivate information seeking behavior to solve problems. For example, 5–9-year-old children are more likely to persist in information-seeking behavior to effectively solve a problem when given ambiguous rather than conclusive evidence (Busch & Legare, 2019). Children also adjust self-motivated exploratory behavior under problem-solving conditions in response to the credibility of their resources (Gweon et al., 2014). Some researchers suggest children are actually better self-motivated problem-solvers than adults (Lucas et al., 2014), as children seemingly are more willing to expend effort exploring information and resources before exploiting findings and drawing conclusions (Liquin & Gopnik, 2022). On the other hand, children may be less efficient self-motivated learners since they may struggle to terminate information-seeking behavior, even after the answer has been discovered (Ruggeri et al., 2016).”
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691822003316 )
The null hypothesis might tell us something specific, but it does not justify endorsement of any other policy prescription.
At the risk of citing to Voldemore, American students actually do very well in PISA when you correct for ethnic background. Which makes clear standards and smart teachers an explanation in search of a result. In the US, the most money often goes to schools serving the poorest (monetarily) families. Shockingly, students from poor families tend to be less intelligent and less focused on schooling than students from less poor families.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-scores-usa-usa/
Sure, there are lots of theories of educational motivation. But they basically don't give any strategies that work to raise student achievement.
People are indeed information seekers. But after puberty, they rarely are self-motivated for what state ed departments say they are supposed to learn. A kid who can tell you lots of things about a local sports team or Taylor Swift--which they learned all on their own!--will probably not voluntarily seek out world history or algebra. I don't think you have to throw in "mimetic motivation". Number 3 would be perfectly correct is it was modified to:
3. "Take the average 8-year old out of the classroom and put him in front of a computer at home, where he no longer" has 20 peers doing the same work, interacting with each other and the teacher, and advancing together. "His motivation drops to" pretty much "zero.” (The essayist uses "motivation" not to mean intrinsic motivation but causing something actually to be done whether you really want to or not.
Confused about whether Arnold thinks Alpha School has beaten the Null Hypothesis. At the end he seems to say that he believes the essay critical of the reformers, but compares a classroom setting to being alone with a computer, which is a straw-man.
I think that most interventions are too small or short-lived to expect major changes. Alpha School's completely different structure, going from K-12, seems like it clearly meets the intervention size and length to expect a non-null hypothesis. I have full expectation that they have found a better way to educate, and I hope it spreads.
The emphasis on practical skills and engagement with the real world would also tend to result in better outcomes for students than singular focus on SAT test performance, given the reality that industry cares about more than just IQ. Some of the wealthiest people I know are in sales or own/run a business, doing much better than me who was single-minded / successful in academics.
Re: "When the other kids in elementary school want the approval of the teacher, I want the approval of the teacher. For most students, that is necessary and sufficient motivation. That is why ordinary classroom learning works, and nothing else works at scale." - Arnold Kling
Good friends pull you up. Bad friends pull you down. Sideward glances can cut either way. Thus, school can undermine motivation for education if there are numerous students (or school inmates?) who resent the classroom and teachers. There was more pulling down than pulling up in the middle school and then in high school that I attended.
Thomas Sowell would ask: Compared to what? Arnold contrasts school to home schooling at the computer. I would experiment with educational activities in the wild, involving teams, outputs, and a variety of authorities. Youths might want to learn by doing.
You might want to think of teachers as grouped into similarly categories
1) A small cohort of high-motivation teachers who are like the Alpha School guides, not just willing but also adept at mastering and using multiple individualized teaching techniques
2) A large group of mid-level teachers who capable of mastering and deploying a few well-defined techniques
3) Another group, smaller than the mid-level but larger than the high, who are generally ineffective at teaching but remain in the field because they like being known as a teacher and comply with the directives of their administrators enough to not be a problem.
Your Null Hypothesis would largely be the result of experimental programs being staffed largely by teachers in group 1 who would be able to get good results using any technique with the results then being dulled as students are passed on to teachers in groups 2 and 3.
Back in the early 2000s, there was a push to determine who was a better or worse teacher. The obvious metric was how much a class had advanced relative to the average. There was a black humor saying, "I wonder who's going to be the best teacher this year." There were few obvious best and worst teachers. Rather, the "best" teacher was the one who, often out of randomness, got the best students.
In the United States at least, there are few really bad teachers. Group 3 is small, because most teachers are equally ineffective (glass half empty, or equally effective, glass half full). Students will learn some things but not nearly as much as the state standards say. Group 1 is nearly non-existent because in a classroom of 25 people, there are pretty much no "individualized teaching techniques" that a teacher can become "adept at mastering".
One thing Arnold didn't mention that I think is relevant is that the School essay seems to estimate "no-structure" learners at 5%, "low-structure" learners at 15%, and "high-structure" learners at 80%. So if you're going to be "democratic" and "inclusive", you have to design for the 80%.
Also, Arnold's summary seems to imply that the "high-structures" can't learn much of anything in high school: " These are students who at most can get through middle school. But in high school, they are no longer able to keep up, and they have to be socially promoted in order to graduate." I didn't get that from the essay.
I really don't like the effect screens have on my kids and whenever I've looked at the app on the laptop they bring home I'm convinced they rot their brains.
I don't think it's an accomplishment to get through academics in 2-3 hours. As far as I can tell from ordinary school that's all they spend on actual academics. The rest of the day is just useless filler.
I continue to believe that the #1 educational intervention would just be to make half the day recess.
In elementary school kids are stuck in the same classroom - which can be a problem for the teachers because the range of levels in the kids. I restricted screens (including TV) and had the kids read instead of watch -> by the end of elementary school they had at least high school reading levels. I also supplemented math because the elementary school spent too much time repeating the same material that they had already mastered. I would note that they were not pleased with Daddy's homework assignments, which were harder than those of the school.
The advantage in Middle and High School is that kids start doing separate classes, so kids can jump grades in various subjects.
I was intent on having the kids take advantage of Running Start - which meant that they had to be fully ready for Calculus in 11th grade. That way when they started college in 11th grade they would be ready for STEM introductory classes. I supplemented my daughter's math via correspondence classes (Geometry and pre-Calculus) over two summers. She dropped out of high school and went to the university after 10th grade. My son did the Running Start program.
My daughter was an autodidact. My son needed a bit of structure, but would do well then if he found the material at all interesting.
I think the key distinction that was carefully left out of the essay is that the no-structure learners are being explicitly sacrificed - their experience suffers because the the school needs them to be bored to motivate the low and high-structure learners, who compromise the majority, and other options fail because they either cannot function at all when they include high-structure learners, or because doing so brings them back down to basically public school levels.
There's lots in this piece that's interesting to think about but it seems there's also quite a bit that seems obviously wrong.
"At the lowest level are “high-structure learners.” These are students who at most can get through middle school. But in high school, they are no longer able to keep up, and they have to be socially promoted in order to graduate."
Is this equating motivation and intelligence? I can believe they might be somewhat correlated but is it even close to always?
"The no-structure learners will always be bored, as long as we are committed to putting them into classrooms where everyone learns the same thing. ... …No-structure learners thrive anywhere."
So a bored student thrives?
"Lumping everyone together and asking them all to learn the same curriculum seems to work better at scale than anything else we’ve tried. These are the core challenges of education."
Sure. That's why everyone takes the same math classes in high school. Why would we expect limping everyone together works better for younger grades? I agree with Zvi about grouping kids except I have concern about it become a stressful competition but maybe we already have that as bad as it would get with different tracks in high school.
"School is designed to maximize motivation." To quote Lisa Simpson, I know all of those words, but that sentence doesn't make any sense.
"Grouping students by ability, whether within or across classrooms, has shown little benefit" and "The no-structure learners will always be bored, as long as we are committed to putting them into classrooms where everyone learns the same thing" seem to contradict each other.
I'm with Zvi. My own experience with tracking took place in the 1970s in a Catholic high school. We had Honors, General and Remedial tracks for almost all classes -- except Religion. I guess the idea was we are equal in God's eyes. Fine, but the teacher had to slow things down and dumb things down so much for the Remedial kids that the rest of us were just screamingly bored, and developed a passionate hatred for the class.
In practice the null hypothesis is hard to distinguish from the almost-null hypothesis—i.e., small gains (or losses) can be difficult to measure. And changes in technique that produce very small gains may be worth instituting if they cost very little (ideally, nothing, or even less).
Unfortunately, paying kids to learn would not be costless or near-costless (unless it *replaced* some even more costly technique).
“Long-time readers will know that I emphasize what I call The Null Hypothesis. This is the view that when all is said and done, attempts at different ways of schooling make no difference.”
There are a myriad of different private schools that if you were to put your children into would likely cause (at least) slight differences in outcomes. For example, one private school might emphasize computer programming while another might not have any programming. Surely going to this one school or the other would probably lead to a different outcome in your child’s computer programming skills at a certain critical point in their life. Does this nullify the Null Hypothesis?
Some schools emphasize snow skiing, others music, some Latin, others critical thinking. Seems like there are important decisions to be made in school choice.
Since masculine influences for young children and students has been systematically driven out of family and education in this hyper-Feminized insane-accepting society the less time our children are near pedo-grooming women predators and devouring mothers the less chance of significant harm they will likely suffer.
Generally, there something very sick about today's children educators and administrators and a significant sign of this is the active toxic anti-man environments that schools have become and it is reasonable to argue that since men protect and do not allow psychotic women to mind-rape or sexually abuse children they were driven away under threat of Witch-Whisper-Web false-accusations and reputational damage.
Devouring Mothers, Teachers, and society has significantly damaged our once sane, virtuous, caring trust society and generations of children. And it is long past time to actively stand against such Witch minions of Satan 5th column that poisons and destroys families, employment spaces, professions, gov, truth, justice, good-order, prudence, Charity, .. because it is clear that womanhood is unable to correct themselves and men that have tried have been crushed by the State and psyche-vicious mobs of screeching lying delusional femNazis and man-hating disHonorable insane baby-killing false-accusing women.
Besides a 'black swan' event like God sending us a Real pandemic that kills women at menopause and so we saved from the extra 40 years of hate-filled poison that Sickens children and young adults and public spaces, work-places, and schools, and Love-Joy-Life-Hope-sanity may start to return, .. besides something like that the next best thing is to reduce children's risk of contact.
A 150+ years ago a student would get a decent education by 8th grade and so I used AI to report what a K-12 education should provide and condensed it down to K-8th and with men teachers and the few women able to focus and stop fingering their poo, it is doable and if any students have trouble they moved to a Trades School because unlike the psychotic Feminized insane professionals willing to harm every other student because one has trouble the rule will be that the troubled student is moved along and away.
.. What a sick society the hyper-empowered retarded feelie womanhood has made!
K-12 can and should be reduced to K-8th by using Men teachers that aren't mind-raping Witch minions. Trades or university and employed by 18 years old and married with start of family by 20, not castrated mind-raped infantile breast-feeding [adult] children at 30, like we have today.
You understand what 'Devouring Mother' is?
We have Feminized this level of hell, and so now we suffer 'Devouring Society'.
When I'm Pope-King of world, God willing, we all will Exorcise the devouring fatherhood childhood Satanic mind-soul crippling mothers and devouring retarding mind-raping societies demon-possessed from any power positions. If you can't work and think like a man then Get away from working men and our excellent systems, we have suffered your poison-vomit far too long.
In this article below I argue that generations of child psychological damage has caused world-wide insanity-accepting intellectual, judgement, prudence and other mental harms. I use both Catholic Theology teaching supported by modern psychological science.
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AI generated audio overview of article;
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/dcc1110c-6fdc-4966-a0a6-10948155a59c/audio
Full article;
"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2220:, 9th July 2025, A Letter to Traditional Catholic Bishops, Calling for Champions."
https://stevenwork.substack.com/p/multiverse-journal-index-number-2220
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Entire HS basic subjects and critical-thinking fit in k-8th grade because men teachers will not be psychologically abusing and crippling them, the students will have the best opportunity to have a successful adult life and healthy family or best service to God and Man, to truth, to Justice, to Right-Order, to Prudence, to honor, to ...
Latin and perhaps Greek learned world-wide by every educated person so they have access to older original records, and international Univeral communications.
End of 8th grade will have tests and the top 15% will enter University if desired, and rest to trades so the men may be fully employed by 20 years-old and start a family with 16 yo woman or older. No more Sick mind-raping putrid endless forced childhood.
Men and fathers will return to right-ordered duties, and women will stop destroying Love, Life, Joy, Hope, .. and be more valuable than the 2-week old putrid poison most have become. You are not children, and you will suffer or celebrate from your choices.
School and trades all sex-segregated. Dress-code and women will be expected to work and learn as hard as men, no tits-out disOrdering use and abuse of sexuality. Shut-the-F-up and get to work or leave.
Sounds better?
God Bless., Steve