Something that keeps me motivated - absolute learning really does matter to me in 7th grade math. I may not get my struggling students to leapfrog a bunch of their peers in relative learning, but if I can help them understand percents or what an angle really is, that actually does matter.
If I were an Algebra 2 teacher I'm not sure how I would stay motivated, but the math I am teaching in 7th grade really does help people understand the world in addition to helping them with later years of education.
I felt the lack of relevance when I taught precalc. Plus trying to help 7th graders understand percents feels way more tractable than a lot of the "let's bring up test scores" stuff that feels vague and distant from classroom teaching.
I think that there is a subtle misunderstanding that can arise with these kinds of statistics. When one says that 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers, they mean 10% of the *variation*. This doesn't mean that schooling is unimportant. But it suggests that the variation in the quality of schools and teachers is less than the variation in other factors.
Great point -- the counterfactual here isn't "school doesn't make much of a difference compared to no school," it's "school with this intervention we tried doesn't make much of a difference compared to business as usual."
Something that keeps me motivated - absolute learning really does matter to me in 7th grade math. I may not get my struggling students to leapfrog a bunch of their peers in relative learning, but if I can help them understand percents or what an angle really is, that actually does matter.
If I were an Algebra 2 teacher I'm not sure how I would stay motivated, but the math I am teaching in 7th grade really does help people understand the world in addition to helping them with later years of education.
I felt the lack of relevance when I taught precalc. Plus trying to help 7th graders understand percents feels way more tractable than a lot of the "let's bring up test scores" stuff that feels vague and distant from classroom teaching.
I think that there is a subtle misunderstanding that can arise with these kinds of statistics. When one says that 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers, they mean 10% of the *variation*. This doesn't mean that schooling is unimportant. But it suggests that the variation in the quality of schools and teachers is less than the variation in other factors.
Great point -- the counterfactual here isn't "school doesn't make much of a difference compared to no school," it's "school with this intervention we tried doesn't make much of a difference compared to business as usual."