6 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Their wordsBecause some people are simply better at school than other people, any pedagogical strategy, practice, or method that improves the performance of the worst students will also improve the performance of the best students
Their wordsBut with education and intelligence, we’re unwilling to countenance the simple reality that some people are better equipped to succeed and some worse.
Our reading
Education can raise how much everyone knows, but it almost never changes who is ahead of whom.
Their wordsDecades of grading data; standardized test scores; cross-sectional, longitudinal, observational, and experimental studies; along with many other types of ancillary and convergent evidence, ultimately tell the same story: education can raise the absolute performance of most students modestly, but it almost never meaningfully reshuffles the relative distribution of ability and achievement
Their wordsThe brute reality is that most kids slot themselves into academic ability bands early in life and stay there throughout schooling.
Their wordsBut in thousands of years of education humanity has discovered no replicable and reliable means of taking kids from one educational percentile and raising them up into another.
Their wordsWhat we need, ultimately, is a return to a holistic, humanistic vision of what school is for, and we need a robust social safety net to protect those who are not lucky enough to be naturally academically talented.