I have a theory about large bureaucracies. If they don't want to do something, they fail at it till it goes away.
I'll use schools as an example.
President W Bush supported a law that had schools tested, and checked on their ability to teach, and then have more funds given to those that did better. He also supported a system where parents could take their kids to those better schools as well.
The schools spent billions on making sure students passed these tests, and didn't actually teach better or find better methods to teach. Eventually it got so ridiculous, the entire thing was abandoned. The teachers won by failing.
Most states have requirements for each grade. Either the student shows they understand what is being taught, and can move on, or they have the equivalent time in hours, and are considered educated on the matter. Guess what schools do?
I took an online class in the 90's. It was so bad, I couldn't complete the first page because of a bug. Online schools continued to show they could do things, but most physical schools kept laws and directions to make it difficult for online schools to exist. Even today, during COVID, I know teachers that are angry that they have to teach online and have to deal with all of these rules, which they themselves made. They intend to make online schooling so bad, it fails and they win.
What other examples can you think of?
I think the law makers tried to fix things, but the schools insisted to keep doing the over testing until things dropped. The teachers complained that they had to do the testing, the administration complained about the cost of it all, and the law makers offered other ways to be checked. The schools declined the other ways.
We can see the same thing happening in all three examples. This is a function within bureaucracy that makes difficult to get things done. Sort of like the end of a chinese dynasty when the eunuchs are running the show, and the emperor is unable to really do anything. Everyone keeps their jobs, and gets to do what they want to do, and can only be persuaded after being slaughters by Kublai Kaahn.
Sabotage has always been a tried and tested way to not obey your superiors. It goes back to Habsburg imperial officials: I obey, but do not execute.
As for the teachers though, I don't think it was as conscious as you say. It's all about incentives. If you make it possible to teach to the test, they will.
All the incentives in the world won't change the students you're working with, though. Barring any inherent genetic arguments, simply having students that were taught poorly early in their schooling will generally create persistent developmental issues. Tying funding to performance was a great way to start a negative feedback cycle.
There is a two part answer to this. A lot of schools receive more funding for students with learning problems. The second is creating a way to fix the initial mistake. This sounds like the two make a great solution, but they compete instead, and the school gets more money if the student remains unable to answer the questions or do the research.
True, if you can assess a learning disability, there's funding for that. If you can get a non-english student, there's funding for that. If you can get non-english migrant, it's a little gold mine. There are a lot of incentives to retard the learning environment.
And none to help anyone smart or gifted.
A part of Common Core was to have the smart and gifted kids help the struggling ones, putting the impetus of teaching on the group (a bit of marxist collectivism, there). Retarding the smart kids was their new way of trying to close the achievement gap.
I'm going to guess the smart kids weren't allowed to move ahead in the studies or figure out other stuff so teaching would be easier.
Pretty much. When I looked at it last, I think multiplication and division weren't recommended until grade 3 or 4. Mostly drawing pictures of boxes to add and subtract until then.
We were expected to know our times table by the end of 1st.
I don't know if it is conscious for most teachers, but someone had to make the decision to do specific things, and the complaints from the teachers was a major factor.
It's sort of like when a kid doesn't want to do something, and they are often bad at it, so they just do an uncooperative job until let go. It may or not be conscious, but the results look the same.
This is a government staple, take x amount of money to solve a problem, spend all the money with no results, demand that y amount is needed to obtain results, use y on irrelevant spending then manipulate data to show “progress”. This is why Democrats can’t seem to get anything to work despite having endless funds. Baltimore and DC spend crazy amounts on education just to see worse results. Education has gotten to be such a racket that charter schools work better for less than half the budget.
Charter schools are also known for cheating at times. If a student is doing poorly, they are transferred out right before exams. So the other school pays for what the charter school didn't teach.
"Act stupid so that they go away and stop harassing you; I don't care what you think of me as long as you go away" Strategy used by kids and non-humans all the time.
Koalas are great that way. They are so stupid, and eat foods that make themselves unedible that most predators don't even think about hunting them.
It's actually amazing how much effort is needed to be lazy.
Private online school is thriving for the most part. But depends on the kid and family how well they do. Check out Ron Paul's school.