Education and Externalities
Some years ago I read this NBER working paper. (Note – a couple years later a slightly modified version appeared in the American Economic Journal but I will quote from the earlier, non-paywalled version since it is available to everyone.)
Here’s the issue, in a nutshell:
In this paper, we use administrative data from the Houston Independent School District and the Louisiana Department of Education to examine whether the influx of Katrina and Rita students adversely affected the academic performance, attendance and discipline of their new peers.
Later in the paper:
…the arrival of low achieving peers hurts all native students, but this effect is more negative for low achieving natives in elementary and high achieving natives in secondary schools. By contrast, the arrival of high achieving evacuees benefits everyone, though the biggest benefit is for the low achieving natives.
If you missed that, later on the same page they write:
…we find that high achieving evacuees increase native performance and low achieving evacuees reduce native performance.
But it isn’t just performance…
By contrast, the results for discipline and attendance do show that it is enough to have 1 or 2 misbehaving evacuee children to worsen the attendance and behavior of native kids in elementary schools. In middle- and high-schools, only having many undisciplined kids in a classroom worsens native behavior.
And it isn’t just because more kids = less resources:
These results show no statistically significant effect of the fraction of evacuees on class-size in elementary schools. In middle and high-schools there is little evidence that the influx of evacuees significantly increased class-size, except for class-sizes in social studies which shows a marginally significant effect…. The results once again show no statistically significant effect of the influx of evacuees on either operating or instructional expenditures per student. This is likely because the Federal and State Governments seemed to have reimbursed schools and districts almost fully. Also, interviews with principals in Houston, suggested that schools received substantial aid from a number of foundations around the country.
Jumping to the conclusion, just to repeat the findings in case someone is tempted to misread them:
Non-linear models show that high achieving natives are significantly positively affected by high achieving evacuees and significantly negatively impacted by low achieving evacuees. Low achieving natives also generally benefit from high achieving evacuees and are hurt by low achieving evacuees in terms of their own test scores…
Of course, any parent who isn’t blind knows that a big determinant of the quality of his/her kids’ education is the quality of his/her kids’ peers. Still, its a well constructed and well executed paper. I also happen to think this situation makes a fine allegory for immigration.
My last post in any post written by kimel.
Mike, I’m not sure what ethnic group you are from but I’m sure it had the same effect on fellow students (and “allegories”) as today’s low skilled immigrants. Whenever our ethic groups arrived in this country I assume none were “high-tech.”
So you got yours and everybody else can go to h___.
Really want to help low achieving schools? Nationwide problem in poor neighborhoods is that students (and teachers!) don’t expect sufficiently remunerative jobs to await them upon graduation so that many (maybe half) don’t feel it worth the effort to excel.
Got any ideas on making work pay?
Dennis Drew,
I was expecting someone to bring up that inanity, but I didn’t expect it to be you.
Here’s one of the things I liked about this article:
The issue is not one of ethnic groups. For the most part, if students in a given classroom are suffering from the bad behavior of one of their classmates, it is a classmate of the same ethnic group.
The point is that some students in New Orleans felt it was worth studying, and some didn’t. And some students in Houston felt it was worth studying, and some didn’t. And putting the students who didn’t feel it was worth studying with those that did made those that did want to study worse off. Bringing in new students who did want to study benefited everyone. So regardless of what students believe the future holds, keeping the bad apples away from the rest of the students benefited everyone else. I think that’s a useful result and the sort of prescription that would benefit people and the economy.
“Adversely affected?” Says who — but maybe that’s a question to be avoided?
Urban Legend,
I think the authors of the paper were fairly open about what they meant: student scores decreasing, increased absenteeism, etc. There is nothing nefarious or discriminatory about this.
“Got any ideas on making work pay?”
We could stop paying people to not work. We could stop pricing them out of the job market.
“Nothing nefarious or discriminatory…”
What are the policy implications? What are we supposed to do about this? Why is the question formulated in the first place?
Urban Legend,
Those are excellent questions. I would say that the policy implications are that we should discriminate, but not on the basis of race or religion or what have you, rather on the basis of whether a student is disruptive or not.
In the last few years, we as a society got concerned because discipline in schools often meant that Black and Hispanic boys were disproportionately likely to be suspended or expelled. Many (and this seems to have been the view of the Obama administration) felt that this was discrimination against Black and Hispanic people and the policies were somewhat lessened in impact.
What they forgot is that 1) other students benefit when the disruptive students are removed, and 2) the classmates of Black and Hispanic boys who are punished or removed for disruptive behavior are, disproportionately other Black and Hispanic children. In other words – these policies discriminate in favor of the Black and Hispanic children who do want to perform. Since, on average, Black and Hispanic families have less material wealth than Asian and White families, they also have less of a way to insulate their children from trouble.
As I’ve noted before – you can side with the thugs or with their victims. But you cannot do both at the same time. Or, as Abe Lincoln once put it:
Society needs to decide if it’s purpose is to benefit the sheep or the wolves. And not just when it comes to education.
Attempting to analogize a disruptive child in public school to a slave-owner seems a bit overwrought to me.
“other students benefit when the disruptive students are removed”
Removed to where?
Joel,
The fact that other kids tend to benefit upon the removal of disruptive classmates is a statement supported by data in the article from which I quoted. Where the disruptive classmates should be removed to is not addressed in that paper. It is a question worth asking.
My answer – I am more concerned about the well-being of the non-disruptive students. My view is that disruptive students should not be simply placed back in the class where they came or another class filled primarily with non-disruptive students. Place them in a separate facility. If they show signs of wanting to become non-disruptive, only then return them to the general population.
As to the quote being overwrought…. I guess it depends on the disruptive student. Some commit murder and rape.
“I am more concerned about the well-being of the non-disruptive students.”
I can see that. However, society has to answer the inconvenient question you choose to ignore.
“As to the quote being overwrought…. I guess it depends on the disruptive student. Some commit murder and rape.”
I had no idea that the “disruptive students” you were referring to were the ones who were murdering and raping their classmates in school. Where I come from, those activities are not called “disruptive,” they are called “violent” and “criminal.” It would have helpful to your case if you had made clear that this was your focus of concern.
Joel,
It seems that somewhere between about 17 percent and 28 percent of students report gangs are present in their schools: https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Content/Documents/Assessment-Guide/Assessment-Guide-Chapter-6.pdf
I have to imagine their primary purpose is not supporting the PTA.
But I take your point. More numbers are needed to make my case. Sadly data is often lacking when we discuss juveniles but I will look for more information later.
The possibility that “gang members” (whatever that means) are “present” in schools is not the same as disruption. I went to school with students who were shop-lifting and using and selling a variety of illegal drugs. The ones I knew were high performers, never disrupted classes, went on to graduate from college, and in a couple cases, earned advanced degrees. I don’t think they were “supporting the PTA” either, as your misdirection would have it.
Maybe you could start with a clear definition of “disruptive students.” Classroom murders and rapes don’t seem to be a big problem in this country, so let’s stop pretending that that was what you were referring to, m’kay?
Ditto
Yes, let’s see is one misbehavior that causes the teacher to stop teaching to the smart students for a minute enough to make for this new segregation? I mean, that’s zero tolerance, a broken-windows philosophy of enforcement. Three times?
I’m afraid someone was fast asleep while they covered the period from 1876 through, say, 1980 or so — and, really, until this day.
Just a question …the definition of “disruptive” in a classroom or schoolyard environment is hugely vague and depends entirely on the individual teacher’s own assessment of what thay deicide is “disruptive enough to be considered “disruptive. My father, aunt, wife, brother, sister, and two 1st cousins were / are teachers in public schools. Needless to say I therefore have had constant contact with dozens and dozens of tea hers in my life (as an adult). It is well understood by teachers that “disruptive” is a teacher determined assessment… how frequently, the level of disruption, whether the teacher considered it intentional, the student’s otherwise grades in general and historically, etc.
I was terribly disruptive from 5th grade through college. I can’t count how often I was sent out of the the cloak-room, sent ouf of the classroom, sent to the vice – principle, sent to the principle, and often enough suspended for 2 days to a week… parents brought in to the school, etc. I ditched school a lot as well… for a lark to see how often I could get away with it without being found out (forging my “parents” excuse letters, even doctors signatures). It became a “game”… between me and the administration to see if they could catch me or whether they even wanted to pursue trying to catch me. When they did I was suspended for 2 – 3 days depending on the severity of my forgeries, etc.
None the less, I was an A- to A+ student, occasionally a B+ in advanced classes from 7th grade on up through high-schools, I could be and was charming even while disruptive. I talked back to teachers, told them they were incompetent in front of the entire class, argued vehemently, loudly, and persistently with some things they were trying to teach refused
But I was well liked at all my schools, and in all my classes by most (80%) of my fellow students. In 8th grade the teacher used the edge of a 12 inch ruler on the back of my hand at least 1x every 2 weeks or more… and it hurt, but never drew blood. I got used to it and fully accepted this physical punishment as a fair “penance” for being disruptive.
In those days kids were “tracked”.. that is placed in classes that were according to their ability based on prior year teacher assessments, recommendations and grades.. mostly the former two were weighted more than grades. . friom the smart kids, down the ones that weren’t so much… roughly 3 levels or 4 levels.
As a result of this ‘unofficial’ tracking I always found myself in the classes with the smart kids… even though I never considered myself to be nearly as smart as the others…. and probably wasn’t…. so I had to work a lot harder for good grades. Getting good grades was my passport to privileges at home… not being restricted, allowed to stay out later at night on week-ends, allowed to use the family car, getting an allowance or “spending money”, etc.
There’s at least one or up to three disruptor students in every class room for the entire school year. Whether the teacher finds it severe enough is the only question… and where that line is drawn depends on the teacher, their experience, their personality styles, their own personal expectations which has a lot to do with how they grew up themselves, their mood at that time in that particular class.. and for female teachers it’s also affected by their menstrual cycle.
So until there’s an objective measure of “disruptive” from one school to the next, from one classroom to the next, from one district to the next, friom one state to the next, etc. it’s entirely subjective.
You can make relative comparisons, which is what the study used… but “disruptive” may have been associated with the differences in the school districts in flood ravaged New Orleans neighborhoods of refugee kids pulled out of their home environment in emergency conditions, plucked down in different regions (strange area’s) living in difficult and temporary circumstances than any thing else. Was there perhaps also any racial issues going on? tolerances might have differed on that basis?
In any event the study wasn’t about or even remotely related to intelligence levels … as Mr. Kimel is trying to obliquely infer.
The study was valid… I’ve found no issues with it or the methods of evaluation. It had nothing to do with intelligence levels or cultures.. it was about kids from one region of the country who were torn involuntarily from their home environment, plucked down into temporary and strange new environments and told to “cope” with it. So the study was about how kids cope or don’t. in terms of performances in schools and disruptions.
If you’re a parent with years of experience and few kids you know this. If your a teacher you know this even better than most parents know it.
Oh…….. I forgot to say my sister-in-law is a PhD child psychologist working full time for two school districts. She has more insght that most in why some kids have more trouble coping in school than others…. in 80% of the casers it’s the teacher’s inability to deal appropriately with different kids and their personalities and problems at home. Blaming the kid is the teacher’s favorite pastime.
Oh…….. I forgot to say my sister-in-law is a PhD child psychologist working full time for two school districts. She has more insght that most in why some kids have more trouble coping in school than others…. in 80% of the casers it’s the teacher’s inability to deal appropriately with different kids and their personalities and problems at home. Many teachers blame the kids as if the teacher should expect every kid to behave as little robots.
My wife took over for other classrooms frequently — one of the major reasons was that the former teacher was having too many discipline problems with the classes… but for some “strange” reason when my wife took over there were no serious or frequent discipline problems and their average performance for the class (and the prior most disruptive “discipline problem kids”) increased significantly in short order.
And wife was not an easy teacher.. very demanding in fact… but she had a knack for connecting with kids on the kid’s level .. and they loved her. She still get’s comments from kids who were in her classes 20 and 25 years ago who recognize her and tell her she was probably the best teacher they’d ever had. Sure some of that is just talk… but much of it testifies to her ability to connect with kids at their own level while still being tough … and they got along because the kids knew “she understood them.. not because she meted out punishments and sent them to office. My cousin teacher and brother say the same thing.. . they thought their job to teach required them to connect with the kids to maximize their potential for learning and willingness to learn or be taught, so to teach they did the prerequisites … connect with the students first.
My sister taught the imbicile kids (I know, I know that’s not politically correct or “nice”). Probably one of the most demanding of teaching jobs, requiring a lot of specialized training. She said it’s not that much different than regular kids… it’s just a matter of degree in connecting with them, understanding what a kid’s motivations are or finding them, then finding a way to inspire them..
For what teacher’s get paid you either have to love to teach or it’s just a job. And if you only like to teach the “easy” kids, you’re not really a teacher… being a prof at a university would perhaps be a better type of job for them.
It seems that some are forgetting or ignoring that public school attendance is mandatory by laws until age 16 I think (in most states).. it’s not a choice. If it were a choice then ~ 13rd would stop attending by high school or be disruptive enough to get expelled permanently.
So society would be far worse off if school attendance were not mandatory.
Since we want society to be better off, we make it mandatory, and that means there’s a small, minute trade-off we make … dealing with disruptive students. .. they go to special “central high schools” for example, barely able to get the equivalent of a GED if at all. It costs us more in tax dollars to keep those kids in school and attempt to give hem the minimum education, and off the streets, but it pays greater dividends to society.
Some may also forget that the human being’s distribution of intelligence lies on a normal or semi-normal distribution. All this means is that half the population are less intellectually capable and thus less inclined to learn (it’s harder) than the other half. That also means it’s more difficult to teach them and some proportion will always be “disruptive”.
But intelligence capability increases with age and some kinds mature to intelligence levels more closely corresponding to their potential than others at an earlier age .. some at a slightly later in age.
I have a cousin that rarely went to school… once or twise a week and failed all his classes from 7th grade on, was in jeopardy of not graduating high school… but he took the college entrance exams and scored in the top 0.01 percentile in the nation. He persuaded the school district to let him take a comprehensive high school graduating test … one that the specific school district made up … and of course he passed it.
He went to one of the UC system universities in CA graduated with two degrees… one physics the other in a totally unrelated field, and goofed off for several years as a musician before getting curious about computing, self taught himself, and then landed a job in one of the major new computing companies in the US. shortly becoming in charge of major new computing produces and their implementations in major US and foreign facilitiess, etc., etc….
He was a “late bloomer” whom teachers had given up on early… so is he an exception or is he the general rule … some people mature intellectually sooner than others. Some learn at their own pace… some slower, some faster, some accelerate intellectually at some point and some don’t. Where’s the correct line? Is there a “correct” line? Where is the societal best trade-off point? Is it based on costs or should it be based on something else? And if costs, then how should costs v benefits be measured? We can measure the direct costs of education quite well.. we do it in every school district in the nation every year. But we don’t measure the benefits of those costs at all… unless we can say the benefit is the U.S. GDP, perhaps, or the costs of the justice system and incarcerations perhaps. So what measure and what weights should be applied to them?.
Oh… my cousin read books a lot when he felt like it .. novels and academic stuff he thought was interesting or for which he was curious. And he goofed off smoking pot and playing his guitar a lot as well…. he had long hair too… and for awhile I recall an ear-ring in one ear.
Most would have called him a pot-head loser.. given him zero chance of being a benefit to society.. and in fact figured him for a “taker” from society. But those of us who knew him never thought that at all… he could carry on an intelligent intellectually challenging conversation with full grown adults by the time he was 12 or 13. Was or is he ‘genius’ level? … almost certainly not. Does he probably have a higher IQ than most … almost certainly. Was he a late bloomer because he was bored with standard classroom teaching or because he didn’t “get it?”
If my cousin in an exception then do such exceptions make up for the ones that are disruptive or those on the other side of the normal curve who’s intellectual capacity is lower? So is system we use actually not a problem in composite and if it is, then is the difference even significant or do we just focus on the downside parts?
I’m sure we could do better.. there’s always something we can do better, but then “better” needs a measure. And “better” needs to figure out what makes it “not better” and focusing on the student’s academic score is a dependent result… what are the independent variables that result in the dependent ones? And then shouldn’t we be focused on those instead?
It’s not the kids who are the problem here, folks. It’s not their parents “fault” either.. that’s purely passing the blame… we hear this all the time in everything (“It’s their own fault”; “they made the wrong decisions.”, etc.) Of course I always also hear that “if we didn’t have to deal with all the immigrants we wouldn’t have these problems in schools” Implied solution: Keep the immigrants out. Make sure immigrants conform to U.S. cultural standards (according to whom?)
Re the comment about immigrants and skills if you go back to the 19th century a lot of immigrants who were peasants in Europe had the skills needed to be a subsistence farmer in the US. (Just needed to know what crops grew well where the moved to). With the closing of the frontier this became no longer an option and the skills question came up. Of course some immigrants came over with a trade already learned, Such as carpenters, cobblers etc (trades of the first 1/2 of the 19th century). So it is hard to back project todays situation to that before the civil war in the north.
If this article is correct: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-day/why-boys-are-failing-in-a_b_884262.html it is boys who are 80% of the discipline problems. Many cite a part of the problem for boys is that reading etc has been moved to earlier ages in school in order to fit everything into 12 years. However boys are not ready to learn at age 5 according to the post. It says that young boys at least learn better experientially than thru reading etc. Boys need movement etc, sittling still in place is not their style. As a result as related in Hillbilly Eulogy success in school by boys is regarded as a thing that girls do and a boy doing well is being girlish.
So a piece of the disruptive issue relates to the gender ratio in College and with College degrees.
A follow up.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49
Also,
Not big numbers in percentage terms, but still, a fair number of students or teachers are finding themselves disrupted by threats of violence.
However, most classroom disruptions are obviously less severe.
The paper referenced in the post noted that the presence of students who were reported for being disruptive – which can be everything from mouthing off and being uncooperative to violent – reduced the performance of their peers.
“Of course, any parent who isn’t blind knows that a big determinant of the quality of his/her kids’ education is the quality of his/her kids’ peers. Still, its a well constructed and well executed paper. I also happen to think this situation makes a fine allegory for immigration.”
Kudos Mike for another courageous post. While some of the objections have some merit, they do not override this conclusion.
@Mike,
I don’t see anything in your follow-up quotes about classroom disruption.
“Not big numbers in percentage terms, but still, a fair number of students or teachers are finding themselves disrupted by threats of violence.”
Where is the evidence that these threats occur in the classroom and disrupt the learning environment in the classroom?
I am not going to argue with your study, Mike, but I am going to dispute how good of an “allegory” it is for the case of immigration. A 2014 study in Educational Studies of classroom disruptions in 20 countries (sorry, did not write down author’s name, but he is Dutch) found that while there tends to be more disruptions in classes with more ethnic diversity, that effect is weaker in naions with more “tolerant” immigraiton policies and more immigrants in the classrooms.
I would also note that in the US, even the migrants from poorer countries tend to commit fewer crimes than the US native population and to be fairly highty motivated to work hard.. While some are family members, most are motivated to work, and their children are encouraged to try to do well in schools. There is not much evidence of school disruptions being associated with having lots of immigrants in schools in the US. Your allegory assumes that immigrants have more “disruptive” children among them than natives, which is far from obvious.
Barkley Rosser,
You misunderstood the allegory but I feel your comment deserves s response anyway since it’s thought out but missing a few facts.
1. The NY Times had a recent story – an interview with a Swedish immigration expert. (https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/opinion/are-immigrants-causing-a-swedish-crime-wave.amp.html). The story was pro Immigration but basically it came down to this. Recent immigrants (past generation or so) aren’t causing crime or going off to join ISIS. Their children and grandchildren are, or the immigrants who have been here since they were young and are now grown. We see the same pattern here. Somali-Americans arrested for trying to go off and fight for Al Shabaab, for example, have tended to be those who came when they were very young or second generation immigrants.
2. What is going on? Joel used a term on another thread: regression to the mean. (His term – he’s the geneticist, not me.) The mean is partly set by culture, and immigrants are usually self-selected to some extent from a group that is relatively compatible with US cultural norms.
3. Why wasn’t this an issue in the past. Occasionally it did happen. Think the Niihau incident, or perhaps Murder, Inc. But until recently international travel or migration was difficult and maintaining close connections to the homeland was hard, which forced at least some break with some of the more incompatible culture. But now a kid in Minneapolis can read Al Shabaab or ISIS propaganda in real time.
Joel,
I cannot prove that gets terrorized in the bathroom at lunch is still agitated a few minutes later in math class. Of course, I also can’t prove that a kid who leaves home hungry and underfed would still be hungry and underfed in his Social Studies class either, but you won’t find me using that to argue against providing kids who need it with a free breakfast.
Mike,
You completely failed to show that I misunderstood your allegory. And, as it is, you changed it, suddenly accepting that immigrants may be less oriented to crime (and maybe less to disrupting classes, the actual topic of your post), but maybe their kids are worse and will do so, mostly citing a study of Sweden, which is not the US.
As it is, I am aware of evidence that children of immigrants are more likely to be criminals than their parents, but the mean they are reverting to is that of the natives rather than to the nations of their origin. The natives have the higher crime rates (again, no evidence or data here regarding school disruptions).
And, sorry, but a few anecdotes about a small number of Somali-American second generation people does not prove your point. What is the overall crime rate of Somali American second generation kids? Is it higher than that of natives? Heck, we have had WASP native US kids getting converted to ISIS and going over and joining them. You really have shown nothing here.
BTW, I happen to agree that if you put disruptive kids in a classroom, they may well increase disruptiveness there, and if you put model students in classrooms, they may well increase model behavior by others in the classroom. The bottom line you have not addressed is what is the rate of disruptiveness of immigrants or their kids, and if anything the evidence is that they are likely to be less disruptive than the natives, at least in the US. Your “allegory” is a pathetic failure..
Mike Kimel bleats: ” Of course, I also can’t prove that a kid who leaves home hungry and underfed would still be hungry and underfed in his Social Studies class either, but you won’t find me using that to argue against providing kids who need it with a free breakfast.”
Your speed and versatility in goal post moving is impressive. It is, of course, evidence the poverty of your arguments.
Mr. Kimel,
You stated @March 6, 10:05 pm that:
““Not big numbers in percentage terms, but still, a fair number of students or teachers are finding themselves disrupted by threats of violence.”
More to the point however.. .given the fact of life that the numbers may never go to sub-1%, what does this have to do with immigration? What does this have to do with anything other than the fact that kids make threats to teachers.
Do you propose that these threats can be eliminated from the classroom or educational environment? There are already severe penalties, including criminal prosecution for making such threats (but only when they are credible threats…90% aren’t which the article you cite failed to mention.
Furthermore, of the credible threats 1 in 1000 are actually carried out in some form.. papering a teacher’s house, deflating tires, keying their car, etc. Almost none of the threats to a teacher’s person (health, bodily injury) are ever carried out. I wish I could find the California stats on that .. it was a few years (5? 8?) ago but I think they were published for teachers in a CA education document (not on the web) that my wife got a copy from a current teacher friend of hers.re — and I recall discussing these numbers with my brother (a 7th-8th grade teacher). Teachers know and have always known kids make threats … because they received a bad grade (F or D) or because they got sent to the principle, or because the teacher looked at them “the wrong way”.
I can’t recall as a student from 7th grade through high-school how often I was threatened with getting beat up, depantsed (sp?) , and “I’ll kill you” threats.. it was in the hundreds though. I was beat up muoltiple times… 2 against 1 or 3 against 1 in all cases… never one-on-one. That stopped only when I was Jr in high school, grew about 6 inches to 6’1″ and filled out in weight by 20 or 30 lbs… and used a 3″ diam tree branch to beat the shit out of 3 guys that attacked me at a school dance about a block from the school… two were hospitalized (one broken jaw… badly damaged), the other got stitched up at the clinic (including me (15 stiches on my head).. I was exonerated by all witnesses and the MP’s & local Police though the witness’s were not favoring it, or my attackers, kids always gather to see a school fight.. and egg it on. I was meek little kid until I grew in my Jr year… but I had a loud mouth and wouldn’t be cowed by the bullies. So I took it on the chin until I finally decided “playtime” was over and used a tree branch laying on the ground to make sure I got my point across in no uncertain terms.. After that I was never bullied again in high school.
So what are you citing “threats” by students to other students and teachers for? It’ a constant through time. You think that will change or has changed? You think that it’s a “cultural” factor? Adolescent males in all cultures and races and ethnicities e have a surge and unending supply of this hormone called “testosterone”… every hear of it? It’ also the ingredient that enables soldiers to fight (and do so willingly even). But if you’ve never been in the military or faced a military enemy or threat of same, you might not grasp this fact of life among humans.
Mr. Kimel,
You stated @March
“My answer – I am more concerned about the well-being of the non-disruptive students. My view is that disruptive students should not be simply placed back in the class where they came or another class filled primarily with non-disruptive students. Place them in a separate facility. If they show signs of wanting to become non-disruptive, only then return them to the general population”
From a psychological point of view and I’m not a shrink, but my sister-in-law has her doctorate in educational child psychology and is now going on 20 years experience in that field, full time.. In our many discussions of problems of children in education the subject of “central high schools” has come up fairly frequently. In CA the high-school students that are disruptive and/or frequently truant are place in a separate high-school sub-system at a separate and not nearby facility .. generally referred to as “central high”. They have accredited high school teachers and special curricula to at least get them to a GED level education… not always successful I might add.
The issue however with central high is that once a student enters it, they never (< 1% – 2%) get back into the general high-school classes. So another type of special high school was established in several school districts… an alternative to "central high"… for students whom the faculty thought deserved a 2nd chance.. This was a sub-school on the main campus. The psychological theory was that if they remained part of the main campus, then "peer pressure" by the majority of students would enable most or very many of these "2nd chance" kids to revert to the norms of classroom behaviors, absenteeism, etc.
The shrinks said that once a kid enters "central" their peers are just like they are… disruptive, truant, uncaring about and not induced to participate in learning… so there's an amplification of all the negatives when placing kids in "central".
The results of the "2nd chance" schools was that ~50% and more re-enter the normal classes within a years or 1.5 years and turn out very well, graduating on time and with proficiencies within the normal school population adjusted for other factors (home-life, level of poverty, English proficiency, etc.). .
So your belief that
Sorry.. hit post comment prematurely… continuing
So your comment that “Place them in a separate facility. If they show signs of wanting to become non-disruptive, only then return them to the general population” has merit in one regard, but not in the other. It depends heavily on the “separate facility” conditions and whether peer pressure is predominantly limited to the negative or the positive. An entirely separate facility doesn’t work as well as an integrated and but only partially separated (academically, rather than physically) facility.
I liken this in a way to “tracking” which was prevalent in my time of being a primary and secondary school student.
So the disruptive student isn’t always disruptive or inclined to always be disruptive and peer pressure tends to reduce the incidence and frequency over time (though it didn’t in my own case). Then there’s the issue of frequency… how often or severe should disruption be before a student is removed to some other facility? What criteria should be used? Should extenuating circumstances considered? Like not having had a decent breakfast, or sleeping in a room with 6 or 8 siblings (2 or 3 to a bed), or an alcoholic abusive parent or a single mother, or a single mother with multiple “boy-friends” sleeping over all the time, or poor dental care with sub-conscious irritation and pain constantly present?
Or maybe “it’s all their own fault”, huh?’ You don’t think many of those kids will carry some deep resentments and anger within their developing brains?
And what about the kids who grow up in a racist environment… they see all the racism, discrimination all around them, all the time, but the internet and social media, and low cost local transportation systems also show them it doesn’t have to be that way… so they live in one environment but see another that they’re not part of. You don’t think they creates deep rooted resentments and anger? They can’t just “get out of it.” Then they’re asked to compete with kids that have had 2 years of pre-school and better primary educational facilities and teachers (fewer students per class room for example) when they enter a high school, who have had all the privileges of a middle class upbringing and neighborhood and who are “white” and you think they won’t be disruptive or carry resentment with them and display it?
Given the GDP / capita of the U.S. we don’t even come close to walking the walk regards education, but you can sure talk the talk. You want a nice little pure one race one ethnic one religion culture with low standard deviation as if that’s the real world. You live in a mental bubble of your own fantasy..
Barkley,
My allegory to immigration comment was that bringing in new people (New Orleans students or immigrants) is good if they are high performing, and bad if they are low performing.
Joel,
I was responding to your goal post moving when you insisted that kids who feel threatened by violence on school property but not in the classroom are somehow not having their classroom experience disturbed. It seemed an odd finding, and I provided an analogy to make it clear.
Mr. Tooth,
You have put a lot of time and effort into your comments. I suggest that you contact Run or Dan about making one of your comments into a guest post so it can get the attention it deserves given the effort you put into it rather than leaving it buried at the tail end of a long comment thread.
But I would note… this statement comes out of where?
I strongly disagree, but OK, let’s entertain your statement. Let’s assume I am the racist that you assume. Now, from my posts, it is clear I value education, particularly in science and mathematics, as it is a component of economic growth. Also, I have stated a few times – I am a citizenist. I want what is best for my fellow citizens, in general.
So… letting SAT scores be a proxy for education (and you can find plenty of material online that would satisfy you its a decent one), and SAT scores in math to be a good proxy for education in STEM, take a gander at how SAT scores break down by race:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171
So… if I looked at things at a racial level (and what racist wouldn’t?) then which group do you think I would be suggesting we allocate our education spending toward?
FWIW, I have stated very clearly my view on race/ethnicity multiple times, which is that thinking about people as being from a race/ethnicity instead of who they are as individuals is a mistake. Here are my views in the form of a letter to my son: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2016/12/discussing-differences-a-letter-to-my-son-a-few-years-from-today.html
“I was responding to your goal post moving when you insisted that kids who feel threatened by violence on school property but not in the classroom are somehow not having their classroom experience disturbed.”
Uh, no. I was restoring the goalposts. Your topic was classroom disruption, by which you meant disruptive behavior in the classroom that prevented others from learning. But then you moved the goalposts to rape and murder committed outside the classroom. By calling out your obvious and clumsy attempt at misdirection, I am using the original goalposts.
Joel,
From the post:
The paper obtained data at the classroom level. But as I noted in the post, the point is more general. Peers are peers, and they affect you whether they are in the same third period class or you just see them in the hall. And if they make you feel threatened, they hurt your ability to learn.
I was fortunate – my parents had the ability to insulate me from most of the bad actors. I am fortunate – for now, at least, I have the ability to insulate my kid from most of the bad actors. But I am not blind enough to see that this is not the case for most people, and the poorer people are, the less they are able to insulate their children. And political correctness hurts the poor Black kids who are willing to work hard to succeed most of all. After all, when we don’t take the bad actors out of their classrooms and schools, who do you think those bad actors prey on?
Mike:
What type of 1st to 8th grade school(s) did you go to?
“After all, when we don’t take the bad actors out of their classrooms and schools, who do you think those bad actors prey on?”
Moved the goalposts again. Mike, predatory behavior goes on outside classrooms. In fact, most predatory behavior occurs outside classrooms. Maybe you should write a post on juvenile crime, so your comments can be on topic. In the context of this thread, your replies concerning behavior out of the classroom, like the quote above, are misdirection.
Oh dear, Mike. You have really lost it, talking about your own privileged ed and that of your child’s. Has all this been about you justifying not sending your kid to your nearest public school? Frankly, I do not give a damn, but you would have maintained more of your already pretty much shredded cred if you had avoided dragging in these personal matters.
Seriously? OK.
1. 92% of teachers say disruptive behavior is a barrier to learning (https://www.communitiesinschools.org/about-us/publications/publication/national-survey-american-teachers)
2. That takes up time, particularly in urban schools (http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/winter-2003-2004/heading-disruptive-behavior#sthash.mCKYG4CR.dpuf):
3. I was in Brazil from K to 10th grade. Brazilian schools are generally awful. I went to two international schools, not because my parents had the money to pay for it but because my mother was a teacher and got free tuition for my sister and I as a result.
4. My son very literally walks to the public school which is about a quarter of a block away every weekday morning, except for weekends, holidays and vacation. The school is not as good as the ones I went to, but it is in a safe neighborhood. We were lucky enough to be able to pay to live in a better neighborhood than a lot of people can afford. I’m not sure what it is anyone would think I am trying to justify. I can tell you that if we could afford it, my son would be in a better school (either because we would buy in a neighborhood with even better schools, or because we’d send him to a private school.)
Lemme tell it from my perspective.
I went to a public school from first grade to seventh, then private school from eighth to twelfth. The smart guys I knew in public school did just fine in life. I did not see any great advantage given to the people in private school. They would have done well coming out of the public high school I would have attended.
My kids have done well in public school. And they went to some of the poorest schools in our area. LOTS of immigrant children. While those children do need extra services (and extra food), they are NOT disruptive and ARE hard-working. (And their parents make delicious food!)
Mr. Kimel @March 8, 9:46 pm posted a link to a teacher survey by a non-profit group “Communities in Schools” that cited a “national survey” of 700 teachers.
“1. 92% of teachers say disruptive behavior is a barrier to learning https://www.communitiesinschools.org/about-us/publications/publication/national-survey-american-teachers)
The full Communities in Schools survey results are more enlightening than Kimel’s statement…. only 26% of teachers found it a serious problem and 66% found it to be a moderate or slight problem, and 8% found it to be no problem “IN THEIR SCHOOL DISTRICT.. .NOT 26% of teachers found it to be a serious problem… so a teacher in the cited survey is extending what they might have heard by hear-say or random comments over who knows what period or time or at how many schools, etc., rather than citing their own personal direct knowledge And there’s no definition of what “disruptive means”. Not a very good statistical methodology. Compare the above with a statistically valid and precise characterization by teachers that I cite further below … and the link to the full survey (US Dept of Eduation Survey)
https://www.communitiesinschools.org/media/filer_public/ad/4d/ad4de975-3f03-408d-87ca-54f4570fb376/communities_in_schools_teacher_survey_presentation.pdf
I read the entire Community in Schools survey results and found several things seriously wanting:
There is no information on the distribution of teachers surveyed by state or geographic region, nor whether they were statistically selected or were just those teachers that chose to respond.
Furthermore the Communities in Schools organization has a highly disproportionate number of members (teachers or schools? or administrators?) in the southern states, but only two in the largest population state in the nation.(CA… both in LA region). It is not at all clear whether the respondents in the survey were dominated by or exclusively from teachers in the member schools.
The other item I found seriously wanting was that there’s no definition of “disruptive”.
But in the gov’t surveys there is a specific definition and distinction made between “disruptive” & “misbehavior”, as well as complete statistics on teacher’s incidence of threats by students and physical assaults by students, broken down by elementary or secondary, national region, school location (city, urban, town, rural), school size in number of students, etc.
The method of teacher responses and method of selections very specifically documented as well… what anybody would expect to be disclosed for any decent academically justifiable survey.
For example,
For All Schools, the average number of incidences per teacher::
a) verbally abused in the prior 4 weeks = 0.98 (e.g. less than 1/ per teacher)
b) threatened with injury in the prior 12 months = 0.2 (e.g. 1 per 5 teachers)
c) physically attacked in the prior 12 months = 0.04 (e.g.1 per 25 teachers… but interestingly enough this is 0.05 in elementary schools and 0.02 in secondary schools — and this includes “physical attacks” by an elementary kid kicking out at the teacher for example… any physical contact in anger). Also, interestingly it’s 4x more likely in the South than in the other regions of the nation.
The full survey tables: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/148523NCJRS.pdf.
Another fact: The percentage of teachers in All Schools who have ever (from those who’ve just begun teaching to those that have been teaching for 20 or more years) been::
a) verbally abused – 51%
b) threatened with injury – 16%
c) physically attacked – 7% (same definition of physically attacked at above)
And about “disruptive behavior”..
Table 9.–Percentage of teachers indicating the extent to which certain factors limit their ability to maintain order and discipline in their school, and the extent to which certain factors interfere with teaching:
1) Disruptive behavior (see specific definition below)
a) to a great extent – 12%
b) to a moderate extent – 22%
c) to a small extent – 36%
d) not at all – 30%
2) Misbehavior (see specific definition below)
a) to a great extent – 14%
b) to a moderate extent – 30%
c) to a small extent – 44%
d) not at all – 12%
Table 10 Percentage of teachers indicating that certain factors limit to a GREAT or MODERATE extent their ability to maintain order and discipline in their school, and the percentage indicating that various factors interfere to a great or moderate extent with their teaching, by instructional level and location of school:
a) Disruptive behavior – 34%
b) Misbehavior – 44%
Disruptive behavior – Refers to serious and/or unlawful actions that may interfere with order in school (e.g., physical attacks, property
destruction, thefts). Alcohol, drug, and tobacco use, possession, sales, and distribution are reported separately on the FRSS questionnaire and are not included under “disruptive behavior.”
Misbehavior – Refers to less serious actions that may interfere with classroom teaching (e.g., student talking in class, tardiness, class cutting).
So one thing I’m wondering about is why Mr. Kimel chose to cite a non-profit group’s non-scientific survey results instead of the far more comprehensive, statistically valid, recognized source. I mean the first thing I thought of was to look for the gov’t national data on the subject relating to teachers and student behavior issues.. It certainly seems like what Mr. Kimel did is use “selective” data … and I can’t figure out how he came across the Community in Schools survey in the first place… it’s not easy to find in a Google search for “national teacher survey” It’s on the 4th page of results… so why did he select that specific survey if he googled it and bypass all the others on the 1st three pages? Or did he even find it by Googling it at all?
No kidding that an influx of poorly educated and incrementally more unruly kids into a school is bad for the school. Those hurricanes should consider more carefully the kinds of school districts they pummel in the future.
People should be cautious about drawing conclusions from school district “discipline” data. Districts have been under a lot of pressure to avoid the appearance of racially distinct discipline and if they have a fairly even balance of minorities and non-minorities are suspected of handling discipline in a manner that the data looks about the same for these groups, regardless of objective standards. The DOJ has been clear in the past that “well that is what actually happened” was not a very compelling defense if the data was not close enough for their liking.
In Mr.Kimel’s cited NBER analysis where-in the paper cited that kids from a terribly devastated flood torn region (Hurricane Katrina) who were displaced to Houston and other regions temporarily and put in local schools enabled a measure of performance and disruptions in the native kids classes that affected the native kids performance, due to the refugees being in those native classes.
I found the paper accurate and statistically acceptable, though only by an economist’s measure of statistical significance, and I don’t dispute the paper’s results at all. Refugee kids, who’ve gone through and experienced one of the greater disasters in recent times, who are thenr temporarily being housed in a strange location, uprooted from their friends and perhaps even part of their own families, will certainly have a lot more than just some behavioral problems — they’ll have animosities and anger and frustrations that they will have to act out one way or another … and school classrooms is very often precisely the location where kids act out their domestic problems.
So I refer to the study results as the effect of kids coping with very high levels of difficulty, fear, anger, frustration that aren’t the standard distribution of such levels, comparing to kids that aren’t coping with those highly elevated levels. I’m sure it’s a valid measure of the effects, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it has to do with immigration.
I can surmise why someone might want to think there’s some relationship to immigration, but then you have to also surmise that the average distribution of immigrant children also have a highly elevated level of personal issues and are also living in temporary quarters.
Be that as it may, Mr. Kimel stated at the end of his blog post:
“I also happen to think this situation makes a fine allegory for immigration.”.
If I try to make logical and rational sense of his statement I can’t.. though believe me I have honestly tried. The only sense I can guess is being made by Mr. Kimel’s illogical and irrational reasoning is that he is trying to equate a behavior problem with immigrants into the general US population as having a negative effect on the general population.
This might be extended to saying he believes all immigrants only immigrate to the U.S. because they’re forced to and don’t actually want to be here at all — just as the refugee kids torn from their homes and forced to live somewhere else temporarily didn’t want to be dislocated to these other strange places.
So there’s at least two things about is equating the study about refugee kids having a negative effect on the natives that are illogical and irrational:
1) Immigrants to the U.S. have behavioral psychologically induced problems.
2) Immigrants are being forcibly and involuntarily relocated to the US only temporarily.
Of the 11 million soimeodd “illegal” Mexican and Central Americans that immigrated to the U.S. I’ve never heard that they weren’t here voluntarily… having had to pay exorbitant fees to coyotes and/or suffer through extreme geographical conditions to get here, and wanting to stay permanently. Nor have I heard that they are miscreants or largely misbehaving (in fact percentage wise at fractions of the natives misbehaviors).
But maybe he’s thinking of a specific cultural group of immigrants rather than the Mexican’s and South Americans. Perhaps he’s thinking of Iraqi’s, Syrians, and others from the ME who are seeking to leave a war-torn region or region where their opportunities for a better life over time have evaporated in their native nation.. for any host of reasons.
Or maybe he’s thinking that Immigrants aren’t very well educated by US standards.. he mentioned immigrant goat -herders from India being non-preferable and MD’s from India being preferable… which certainly directly implies both ultra poor and uneducated versus wealth and highly educated.. I mean medical doctors are among the best educated in any nation.
But then if that’s his reasoning, I’m reminded of my own immigrant grandparents and those of my wife’s and hundreds of thousands of others who immigrated because they were as poor as the Indian goat-herders, and just a poorly educated… and they came because their likelihood of having a better life eventually in their own nation was virtually ‘nil. and pulled up stakes and borrowed passage money or indentured themselves to get here to perhaps have a better chance at improving their lives than they would believe they had in their home country, And you can bet your bottom apple that they carried animosities and anger and frustrations with them when they immigrated.. having been among the poor whom their own country wasn’t providing for them, while the wealthy in their nations were laughing all the way to the banks as they took their small farms from them or forced them out of work or to work for less than subsistence wages.
My grandfather was the youngest of two sons… the eldest inherited the tiny, very poor farm in the poorest region of Sweden and little farm couldn’t have supported two families anyway, so splitting it wasn’t any better an option. He came without speaking a word of English and worked in the Colorado silver mines..
My wife’s grandfather was a foot-soldier (cannon fodder)on the loosing in a civil war in Bulgaria who narrowly escaped capture and death by a shot to the back of his head for being a soldier on the losing side 9and probably by some other ethnic difference to the winning side as well). He escaped across a border and was indentured for passage to the US. He was an illiterate migrant farm worker who only spoke very broken low vocabulary hardly able to understand half the words he spoke stoop laborer on the western circuit his whole life.
These were not atypical.. they were typical immigrants in fact. .. dirt poor and uneducated.
So I can’t figure out Mr. Kimel’s logic or rational reasoning no matter how I try to re-reason what he’s trying to do by comparing refugee kids from Katrina to other natives in a different geographic location having an effect on the native kids (classroom achievements) in those new locations. If the Katrina refugees are supposed to be an “allegory” for immigrants I can’t for the life of me find the rational and logical basis for it.
Maybe I should add the Vietnamese immigrants (boat-people) to this… thousands of whom were also as poor as church mice, spoke no English and had mediocre educations as well and who escaped by taking putting their lives at risk, leaving relatives behind
One much younger (than I) friend and colleague escaped after 3 tries (caught 3 times, put in a “relearning center” .. concentration camp… (his father had been executed for being the lowest level officer in the Vietnamese Army) and his mother was forced into prostitution to put food on the table for he and his sister…. and they lived in a 8×8 foot shack with a dirt floor and no light, no windows in Saigon in a storage shack.. with another widow and her three kids. My friend actually graduated from UC Berkeley with a masters in physics in 4 years…. broken English speaker but he could read and write it as well as I could… and the only English he knew when he got here was “ok” and “hello”… and he was 15 at that time… had spent 2 years in some south pacific Island refugee camp before he got a visa to immigrate to the US. He escaped VN at 13 years old by himself on his own.. no parents, no friends, no relatives with him. A real “boat-person”
He had some real issues and angers and resentments.. more than the refugee kids from Katrina displaced a few hundred miles to Houston, ferchristsake.
So I’m stumped… no matter how I try to figure out Mr. Kimel’s illogic and irrational reasoning I still can’t come up with how he relates the NBER study to an allegory of immigration.. .
“no matter how I try to figure out Mr. Kimel’s illogic and irrational reasoning I still can’t come up with how he relates the NBER study to an allegory of immigration”
That’s because you’re trying to apply deductive reasoning, starting with the data and reasoning towards a conclusion. Try starting with his conclusion and reverse-engineer the evidence to support it.
Mr. Tooth & Joel,
you don’t have to guess or rummage around chicken entrails. It is now two days after I provided that answer. See my comment of: March 7, 2017 10:15 pm
FWIW, the post relation to the allegory you used in your March 7, 10;15 pm post
“My allegory to immigration comment was that bringing in new people (New Orleans students or immigrants) is good if they are high performing, and bad if they are low performing.”
negates the entire history of the US’s immigration policies and practices, indeed our nation as a whole — dirt poor, uneducated Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican’s all come to mind.
So the relation of the NBER elation of student performance to refugee’s as an allegory to immigration still has no logic and rational reasoning got support it for the same reasons I posted @March 9, 9:01 am..
“you don’t have to guess or rummage around chicken entrails.”
No guessing on my part. No chickens were sacrificed.
“It is now two days after I provided that answer. ”
I’m quite familiar with your answer and the mechanism you used to arrive at it. I encounter reverse-engineered reasoning many times. Sadly.
Longtooth,
Does it?
Joel,
State, in plain English, what it is that I reverse engineered here? What is the conclusion that I reached that I worked backward to reach? And please demonstrate how it contradicts whatever data is available.
I already pointed out the statistical fallacies of drawing conclusions for have Rsquared’s in the range of 50% (or for that matter anything lss than an Rsquared of < ~ 80% is highly speculative in drwwing conclusions about the dependence of y on x. You show Rsquared = .49 and = 0.7 are in the speculation range, and then there's the whole question of segmenting by prior (pre-immigrant) economic status, US family ties, age, skill set's, educational attainment, etc.
It's your other rendition of Indian goat-herds v MD's … economic or educational attainment status or both prior to immigration.
Your charts are an amateurs good effort but they don't stand the tests of normal scientific relationship validity. They are reminiscent of Breitbart type reporting of "evidence", and the uses of selective data to support an otherwise objectively unsupportable position.
BTW, there are numerous "academically credentialed" (by academics with an agenda) which show "statistical validity" that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites as well…. I'm still surprised you haven' also used those yet. Your chart relations in the linked response to me have the same "scientific validity" as the "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" "science"..
Mr. Kimel, I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but your two charts show the following relationships based on the regression of y on x.:
Figure 1: 1st Generation Immigrants
US Income of Foreign Immigrants = 1.2 x Foreign Nation GDP/Capita
R^2 = 49%
Less than half variation in the US Income of 1st Generation Foreign Immigrant income can be explained by their country of origin’s GDP/Capita
Figure 2: Long time Immigrant generations
US income of Foreign Immigrants = 0.9 x Foreign Nation GDP/Capita
R^2 = 70%
Only 70% of the variation in US incomes of long time generations of Immigrants can be explained by their country of origin’s GDP/Capita
If you want to attach statistical significance of causation of US incomes to native nation GDP/Capita (and no legitimate scientist would do so) then the longer they’re here the lower their US income relative to their native Nation’s GDP per Capita.
Or another way of saying this is that your charts say the 1st Generation Immigrants US income relative to their native nation’s GDP/Capita increases… while longer term generations income decreases.
Also just FYI, it is standard regression practice to put the lesser known or unknown independent variable on the y axis. But it doesn’t matter since the inverse relationship is simply 1/slope which interchanges the x and y variables. In either case the R^2 is unaffected however.
Now just from a much longer foundation of data it is quite clear and HUGELY well documented that the longer immigrant generations are in the US the greater their incomes in the US, irrespective of the nation of origin of the original immigrants. Your data shows the opposite as if the originating nation GDP/capita is causal to US multiple generation’s US Income.
Furthermore since it is well documented that the U.S.’s GDP per capita in constant international dollars is larger than almost any other nation on the globe (excepting oil sheikdoms, Luxemburg,, and presently, 2015 data, Ireland Norway, & Switzerland (at 1.16, 1.09, & 1.09 the US/Capita income respectively), and has been for a very long time, then it should stand to reason that an immigrant’s U.S. income would rise on average relative to their native nation’s GDP per Capita no matter what other nation they came from (excepting citizens of oil sheikdoms, Luxemburg, perhaps Ireland at present, Norway, & Switzerland).
This also shows the invalidity of using foreign nation’s present GDP per capita in a causal relation to US incomes…. The GDP/Capita of Ireland for example, when my and most Irish immigrated to the US was far, far below the U.S.s at that time, while it’s presently (2015) 16% greater.
here’s another aspect of that. Since the US is composed only of immigrants, and most of the nation’s current citizens are just 2nd or 3rd generation’s removed from their immigrant ancestors, then how can the US’s GDP/Capita be so much greater than the immigrant nations friom which they all came is there’s a relationship to originating nation’s GDP per Capita as a measure of US income?
Do you really have any kind of grasp on the real world?
Joel, just a reminder that Mr. Kimel uses the relationship of garbage in = garbage out. to justify his belief system, but try to show that their input garbage isn’t … slight of hand, selective data designed to mislead, use of vagaries that sound right (or popular) but aren’t, etc..
I’m an analytic (trained as a scientist) …and one thing I learned in my career in R&D high tech is that there are always far, far more people who weight the variables that improve their own personal career advancement and raises in the near term far more than they weight the variables that improve the standing of the whole corporation over the long term.
In terms of reverse analysis from a given conclusion to it’s supporting foundations, if the conclusion is false then so must the be the supporting foundations for it. We all know that (at least objective and rational logical thinking knows that).
What I found is that I couldn’t possibly come up with all the irrational foundations I encountered and for every one I exposed, there were a dozen others then brought forth in succession. What I learned to do is just keep showing the only rational basis or foundations for decisions to a given desired result, since the irrational ones could never show that the rational foundations were false… in other words to show an irrational foundation is true, one must then also show the rational foundations are false.
This is very often due to a difference in objectives… short v long term, satisfying condition A rather than B, etc. where those objectives aren’t explicit or transparent in the foundations’ arguments. The favorite tactic to keep from making the objective explicit and transparent is to keep changing the arguments.. effectively using obfuscation as the primary tactic. .. in your vernacular, changing the goal posts.
It’s a game people play .. the game played by rational, logical arguments with people using irrational, illogical ones. The irrational ones support the popular emotionally based objectives so they can’t be made rational by definition.
I’m sure you know this though (judging from your comments).
But it is quite fun and entertaining from time to time to expose the irrational arguments for what they are. And since I’m retired I can afford to have that kind of entertainment fun from time to time without adverse consequences..
“State, in plain English, what it is that I reverse engineered here? What is the conclusion that I reached that I worked backward to reach?”
You start with the conclusion that non-elite immigration is bad for society and use a study of dislocated Katrina kids to support it.
“And please demonstrate how it contradicts whatever data is available.”
Others here have done a good job of Fisking your comparison.
My comments also refer to your attempt to support your conclusion about classroom disruption with the non sequitur of rape and murder off campus.
Hope that helps.
Joel,
Actually, that didn’t start with this post. I’ve had plenty of others and I’ve supported it with both my own numbers and those of experts in the field. For example, George Borjas is considered the most prominent expert on the economics of immigration these days, and I’ve cited him a few times. I’ve linked to this article he wrote a couple of times, just as an example.
What you object to is that I noted a parallel between the dislocated Katrina kids and immigrants. I noted that when you bring in new people, those that tended to do well prior to migrating tend to make their new home better. Those that tended to do poorly prior to migrating tend to make their new home worse. People don’t automatically change when they pick up and move.