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<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Don't get me started
on how stupid this is. It doesn't sound exactly like Goodhart's
law, since it's not really about the disparity between what is
measured and what is valued, but rather, as you suggest, the law
of unintended consequences.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Educators are giving
up on finding ways to bring poor kids up, so they're trying to
bring the rich kids' educations down to the poor kids' levels.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">It is my (unpopular)
view that education can probably never overcome the disparities
caused by poverty and racism. In Massachusetts, kids spend about
17% of their waking hours in "structured learning time" in
schools. There are huge disparities in what happens in the other
83%, where of course education also happens, between rich and
poor, and white and black. I have worked with poor kids in the
inner city and mostly privileged kids in Lexington, and there is
a huge disparity in what they are ready to learn (what Vygotsky
called the "zone of proximal development"). The way to combat
the inequities caused by poverty and racism is to attack those
problems directly, rather than under-educating the privileged.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Under-educating the
privileged is exactly the wrong thing. Society needs highly
educated people in some fields, like law, medicine, engineering,
government, and of course education. Under-educating those folks
without improving the educations of those whose lives require
less education ultimately harms not just those people, but all
of us, who depend on those highly-educated people. Next time you
see a doctor, or drive over a bridge, ask yourself whether you
want the doctor or bridge designer to have been under-educated.
And of course policies like these will also encourage those who
can afford it to either leave districts with those policies, or
leave the public school system entirely, in either case
demotivating the more privileged from wanting to pay taxes to
support public schools.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Another unintended
consequence of this policy is to screw those poor kids who, with
an extra dose of grit, intelligence, and luck, could otherwise
have started their way out of poverty by excelling in advanced
courses.<br>
</font></p>
<p>-- <br>
</p>
<p style="font-family: Times, serif">
Jon "Next Up: Lobotomies For The Privileged" Dreyer<br>
<a href="http://www.passionatelycurious.com">Math Tutor/Computer
Science Tutor</a><br>
<a href="http://music.jondreyer.com">Jon Dreyer Music</a>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/15/23 8:11 AM, JOHN M BROWN wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:EDF91A3E-43BF-444F-AB8F-F95D210157CA@icloud.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
This item, "<a
href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/14/metro/cambridge-schools-divided-over-middle-school-math/?et_rid=696624770&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter"
moz-do-not-send="true">Cambridge schools are divided over middle
school algebra,</a>” in the Globe may be an illustration of the
strong form of Goodhart’s Law (… or, at any rate, of the law of
unintended consequences) as applied to education -
<div><br>
</div>
<div><i>"The district’s aim was to reduce disparities between
low-income children of color, who weren’t often represented in
such courses, and their more affluent peers. But some families
and educators argue the decision has had the opposite effect,
limiting advanced math to students whose parents can afford to
pay for private lessons, like the popular after-school program
Russian Math, or find other options for their kids, like
Udengaard is doing." </i></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Regardless, the response to the measured problem was a cop
out. Having detected a racial disparity statistically, rather
than taking steps to help poor kids move up, they sought to
correct the statistic by keeping affluent kids down. </div>
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<div> John B</div>
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<div>On Jul 10, 2023, at 1:29 PM, Jon Dreyer
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jon@jondreyer.org"><jon@jondreyer.org></a> wrote:</div>
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<p>By the time I got through the first few paragraphs, I
remembered that, over a decade ago, I saw the danger of
what he calls "overfitting" in education and coined what
I called "the implicit motto of education reform":</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>If you can't measure what you value, value what
you can measure.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So I was not surprised to see education as the first on
the list of examples of the the danger of overfitting in
section 3.</p>
<p>I'd not read of Goodhart's Law, either the weak or
strong forms, but I had discovered the idea. It seems
increasingly important to keep in mind as technology
makes it ever easier to measure things. A few examples I
don't think I saw in the article are measuring executive
performance by measuring quarterly financials or
measuring software engineers by lines of code.<br>
</p>
<p>-- <br>
</p>
<p style="font-family: Times, serif"> Jon "Measure Twice,
Gut Once" Dreyer<br>
<a href="http://www.passionatelycurious.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Math Tutor/Computer Science
Tutor</a><br>
<a href="http://music.jondreyer.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Jon Dreyer Music</a> </p>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/10/23 8:40 AM, Harry
Forsdick wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CABKvzKoTUFAH7o8tgTpCfJZ2=RXSC6tr5ZxBPTH6eHq5AC8ZQw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">Interesting
use of ML/AI:</div>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)"><br>
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<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0
40px;border:none;padding:0px">
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<div class="gmail_default" style=""><span
style="font-size:calc(var(--simplify-font-size)
+
0.3125rem);color:rgb(11,83,148);font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Too
much efficiency makes everything worse:
overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart's
law</span></div>
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</blockquote>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="">
<ul>
<li><span
style="font-size:calc(var(--simplify-font-size)
+
0.3125rem);color:rgb(11,83,148);font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><a
href="https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart.html"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart.html</a></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">--
Harry</div>
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