Repeating the Same Mistakes?
So now we know what does happen in top countries (including some standardized testing in Finland and some union conflict in South Korea), despite what we keep hearing.
What doesn’t happen?
One major difference, about which we hear far too little, is that kids virtually never repeat grades in Finland or South Korea. Now this is counter-intuitive in a way. Isn’t it better to repeat a grade than to promote a student who isn’t ready? Don’t kids benefit from the extra year of schooling?
Not so says a new PISA In Focus Report. High rates of grade repetition are not associated with better performance; they are associated with higher costs per student.
“PISA 2009 shows that countries with high rates of grade repetition are also those that show poorer student performance. Some 15% of of the variation in performance among OECD countries can be explained by differences in the rates of grade repetition, and students’ socio-economic background is more strongly associated with performance in these countries, regardless of the country’s wealth.”
When a country transfers a large percentage of students to another school, whether for low achievement or behavior issues, overall performance suffers again. Even though such a transfer is supposed to send a student to a school that can better deal with their individual learning needs, the PISA 2009 results point out an unfortunate irony:
“[...]transferring students tends to be associated with socio-economic segregation in school systems, where students from advantaged backgrounds end up in better-performing schools while students from disadvantaged backgrounds end up in poorer-performing schools.”
Happily, transferring, repeating or suffering are not the only options. Or they shouldn’t be. In countries with low rates of transfers, teachers have more autonomy to determine the best curriculum for different kids and better training to know how to do so effectively. In those countries, schools with the most poverty and other challenges also tend to receive the most resources.
RSS-VB said on August 15, 2011 at 5:26 pm
QUOTES ON MISTAKES
If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm—but that’s a lie…. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
VINCENT VAN GOGH, letter to Theo van Gogh, Oct. 1884
The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798
If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person.
BILL CLINTON
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
OSCAR WILDE, Lady Windermere’s Fan
It is with pleasure I receive reproof, when reproof is due, because no person can be readier to accuse me, than I am to acknowledge an error, when I am guilty of one; nor more desirous of atoning for a crime, when I am sensible of having committed it.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Governor Dinwiddie, Aug. 27, 1757
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
If common sense were as unerring as calculus, as some suggest, I don’t understand why so many mistakes are made so often by so many people.
CARY WINKEL, as quoted in Explaining One’s Self to Others: Reason-Giving in a Social Context
To err is human, but it feels divine.
MAE WEST, The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West
A double error sometimes sets us right.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, Festus
To rectify past blunders is impossible, but we might profit by the experience of them.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Fielding Lewis, Jul. 6, 1780
Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a “foregone conclusion.” Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.
DIANE F. HALPERN, Thought and Knowledge
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
WERNER HEISENBERG, Physics and Beyond
I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this; because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults, or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Joseph Reed, Jan. 14, 1776
All men may err; but he that keepeth not his folly, but repenteth, doeth well; but stubbornness cometh to great trouble.
SOPHOCLES, Antigone
Hindsight, or our ability to see our past clearly, is a learning function that, when damaged ... renders us unable to look at the past to guide ourselves through the present and into the future. Without this ability, we cannot learn from our mistakes. We cannot clean up the wreckage of our actions. We are locked into a cycle of repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. This is commonly known as the definition of insanity.
BARBARA S. COLE, The Gifts of Sobriety
We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience. To enveigh against things that are past and irremediable, is unpleasing; but to steer clear of the shelves and rocks we have struck upon, is the part of wisdom, equally as incumbent on political as other men, who have their own little bark, or that of others, to navigate through the intricate paths of life, or the trackless ocean, to the haven of security and rest.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Major-General Armstrong, Mar. 26, 1781
It’s a good deal easier to resist the first step on the road to ruin than any of the thousand that inevitably follow.
MARK FROST, The List of Seven
If you don’t have a margin for error, error kills you.
S. M. STIRLING, The Sunrise Lands
There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Mistakes occur through haste, never through doing a thing leisurely.
CHINESE PROVERB
No error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors.
HORACE MANN, Thoughts
If you insist on disavowing that which is ugly about what you do ... you will never learn from your mistakes.
CASSANDRA CLARE, City of Bones
To make mistakes is human, but to profit from them is divine.
ELBERT HUBBARD, The American Bible
The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favour of that which is old.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Though you may be last to discover your follies, be always first to correct them.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
We are never so liable to fall into an error, as when we have just escaped from one.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Even honest men mistake oftener in their own favor than in other peoples.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else’s.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, Contemporary Russian Literature
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Rob said on September 01, 2011 at 4:41 am
There must be a trade off between the needs of the child that may be seen as failing as against what is best for the class as a whole.
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