G. P. RichardsonAAAS STEM Meeting, Nov 9-10, 20111

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Fixed and Sliding Goals in Education?

A tiny example of a famous systems insight, applied to education

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Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

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Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

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Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyRockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyUniversity at AlbanyUniversity at Albany

Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

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Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyRockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyUniversity at AlbanyUniversity at Albany

Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

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Striving (But Falling a Bit Short)

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Where Does the Goal Come From?

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Where Does the Goal Come From?

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A Flexible Goal Can Slide

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Sliding Goals in Sophistication of School Texts?School Texts Have Gotten Simpler Over Time

• The most difficult readers were generally published before 1918. By modern standards, Professor McGuffy’s pre- and post-Civil War readers were very difficult.

• Average sentence length of 1963-91 books was shorter than that of 1945-1962 books.

• Mean length dropped from 20 to 14 words, “the equivalent of dropping one or two clauses from every sentence”

• Wording of schoolbooks after 1963 for 8th graders was as simple as that in books used by 5th graders before 1963

• Wording of 12th grade texts after 1963 was simpler than the wording of 7 th grade texts before 1963.

• Today’s mean sixth, seventh, and eighth grade readers are simpler than fifth grade readers were before World War II.

G. P. RichardsonAAAS STEM Meeting, Nov 9-10, 201111

Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyRockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyUniversity at AlbanyUniversity at Albany

Could Declining Sophistication of Texts Account for Declining SAT Verbal Scores?

G. P. RichardsonAAAS STEM Meeting, Nov 9-10, 201112

Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyRockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyUniversity at AlbanyUniversity at Albany

Sliding Goals in School Texts?

G. P. RichardsonAAAS STEM Meeting, Nov 9-10, 201113

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A Formal Model to Fit to the Data

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Historical and Simulated SAT Verbal Scores

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The Endogenous Point of View

Causal forces (school texts?) are not exogenous but feed back upon themselves

“System as cause”

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The “X/N” Matrix

Striving for understanding and

leverage, but failing

Achieving understanding and

leverage

Accepting fate, Predicting, Preparing

Confused, Misguided, Misguiding

Exogenous EndogenousTrue (Predominant) State of Affairs

Exog

enou

sEn

doge

nous

Pred

omin

ant M

ode

of A

naly

sis

G. P. RichardsonAAAS STEM Meeting, Nov 9-10, 201117

Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyRockefeller College of Public Affairs and PolicyUniversity at AlbanyUniversity at Albany

School Texts Studies• Marilyn Jager Adams, Advancing our Students’ Language and

Literacy, The Challenge of Complex Texts, The American Educator 34, 4 (winter 2010-11)

• Hayes, Wolfer & Wolfe (1996), Schoolbook Simplification and Its Relation to the Decline in SAT-Verbal Scores, American Educational Research Journal 33 (2): 498-508.  

• http://www.soc.cornell.edu/hayes-lexical-analysis/schoolbooks/Papers/HayesWolferAndWolf1996.pdf

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Optimal Parameters for SAT Fit• Maximum of simulations/optimizations found at:• Pressure to devote time and effort elsewhere = 7.99971• Time to act on gap = 17.2977• *Time to adjust goal = 37.935• Simulations = 25138• Optimizations = 107• Pass = 3• Payoff = -711.039• ---------------------------------• The final payoff is -711.039