“Telling and Frequent” Feedback[1], Age Cohorts, and Change Over Time, including assumptions about immediate effects

This visual helps to reveal change over time in a system that operates on age groups as those individuals go through the system. Two issues: 1) In 2000, some Texas districts began “mandating minimum grades—typically a 50”. 2) In 2001, No Child Left Behind also became law. For the motivation for sketching this, click here.

 

Notice how this change that started in 2000 plays out over the following years, especially with the key years for the basics of evidence in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Examples:

§         Starts college (and, if 18, voting) - Students who experienced their 6th, 7th, and 8th grades before the changed system started in 2000

Assumption “that the absence of immediately obvious negative effects meant that correct measures had been taken”

Dietrich Dörner, The Logic of Failure, p. 18

§         Starts college (and, if 18, voting) - Students who experienced developmental years of their 6th, 7th, and 8th grades after the changed system started in 2000 – For one instructor’s experience with students in Fall 2008, click here.

§         Starts college (and, if 18, voting) – Students who experienced their 6th, 7th, and 8th grades after the 2010 court ruling blocking districts’ policies that mandated teachers to give 50% as a minimum grade—but the reality is systems do not change that fast (More) and the policy of “teaching to the test”[2] remains.

 

Student

2000

2001

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2010

STOPPED

2011

2012

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2015

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12th

grade

Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11th

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12th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10th

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11th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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9th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

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8th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6th

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Starts college

 

 

 

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5th

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Starts college

 

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4th

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Starts college

 

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Starts college

Ú

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2nd

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1st

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

1st

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

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1st

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2nd

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11th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

 

-

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1st

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10th

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11th

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12th

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Starts college

 

 

 

 

-

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1st

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2nd

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3rd

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4th

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5th

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6th

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12th

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Starts college

 

 

 

-

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1st

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2nd

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11th

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Starts college

 

 

-

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10th

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11th

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12th

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Starts college

 

-

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Starts college

 


 

What motivated the initial sketch?

Learning by accident about the districts’ policy explained what had looked unexplainable: a sudden increase in 2008 of a problem—an increase that seems to become the new norm:

§         Students passively copied words, either outright plagiarism or what The Bedford Handbook describes as “half-copy” plagiarism.

§         These students also had another trait in common: they misread and had numerous factual errors.

§         Finally, these students were certain—even indignant in their certainty—that they were right about what the world wanted.

 

Turning a piece of notebook paper on its side and logging in pencil what is now typed in the table revealed the pattern. The students who were graduating from high school when the new policies started did not seem different in skills from those from the prior years. The students in 2008 who seemed to become the new norm did have something in common: They were the first to have experienced the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades under the new system. For many of us as students, these were the years when teachers made sure we had mastered the basics of what is plagiarism, what is a reliable source, and what is evidence.

 

These students seem to have missed “telling” feedback. Dörner’s work explains the need for such feedback and the rise of “magical” hypotheses when people do not receive it. For examples of our students’ “magical” hypotheses, click here.

 

How fast can systems change?

The report Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete? at http://educationnext.org/are-u-s-students-ready-to-compete/ comments on this time frame for change:

“a 20-year delay before any school reform is completed and the newly proficient students begin their working careers.”

 

 

Copyright 2010-2012 C. J. Bibus, Ed.D.

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2012 - 6/04

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/

 

 

 

 



[1] Click here for this term by Dietrich Dörner.

[2] “Driving a No. 2 pencil into the heart of the testing monster” By PATRICIA KILDAY HART, HOUSTON CHRONICLE, May 2, 2012