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From Roland Fryer is a brilliant Black economist vilified by the Left because his FACTS undermine the Systemic Racism narrative:
Roland & his team tried to identify all best practices for improving student performance from the best NYC Charter Schools. To quote Fryer : "What mattered most were five concrete, replicable practices: more instruction time, high expectations, frequent teacher feedback, data-driven instruction and high-dosage tutoring. Together, these five tenets explained roughly half the difference between effective and ineffective schools". [My additional Note: most of these things can be done very INEXPENSIVELY by Artificial Intellience. ]
Contrary to Democrat & teachers unions obsessions; class size & teacher credentials mattered little to best practices identified.
He then tested that hypothesis in an experiment in Houston, called Apollo 20. That experiment showed it was possible to erase the Racial achievement gap in Math in less than 2 years. Why haven't you heard about this immense success? Bureaucratic Inertia !
What is the detail on the "test of Fryer's hypothesis" ?
Houston worked with Fryer & tested the hypothesis in 20 struggling schools with nearly 20,000 students. Students were NOT cherry picked. They just had the benefit of BETTER Educational Practices. They lengthened the school year, brought in tutors, replaced principles & about half of teachers & retrained the teachers kept, built a culture of high expectations for all students, & used data on student performance proactively.
To quote Fryer again: "The results were astonishing. In elementary-school math, students gained the equivalent of four extra months of learning a year—enough to erase the racial achievement gap in less than two years if we implemented these practices in the lowest-performing half of schools nationwide. In secondary schools, where skeptics said reform was impossible, students gained nearly eight additional months of learning in a nine-month school year. These were bigger effects than those produced by the Harlem Children’s Zone. Bigger than Success Academy. Bigger than anything else I’ve seen in my career. By the third year, elementary students had accumulated the equivalent of an extra academic year. In middle and high school, it was two. These weren’t “miracle kids” or “superhuman teachers.” The system—not the students—changed."
Math showed huge improvements as described above. Reading showed limited or no improvement. That is a problem for another day.
But these lessons learned on how to improve student performance in MATH can be applied now.
Let's make it happen.
And to repeat what I said earlier A. I. is an inexpensive way to add tutors & individualize a data driven programs for each student. We know what needs to be done. We can do it inexpensively. Let's fix MATH education in this country !
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