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Second, for at least the first five years after SATP is initiated, the school will solicit feedback from college and university admissions officers during and following each admissions cycle, with the aim of determining how the program has affected student access to the colleges and/or Scarsdale students’ attractiveness as candidates.
Third, the school will conduct cohort studies of students for at least the first five years after the SATP is initiated, in order to understand the program’s impact on their success in college and on their college experience more generally.
I served on the board of the National Alliance for Autism Research for seven years. The IRB process is stringent, intricate, and time-consuming. I don't know whether it's correct to say that this is as true of research involving animal subjects as it is for human subjects, but I do know that animal research is also closely scrutinized by IRB boards. As I recall, we rejected at least one project due to animal welfare issues. (I could be remembering this incorrectly; it's possible we sent it back for revision. My memory, however, is that we decided not to fund.)
question:
How much time and energy has the administration of Scarsdale devoted to meeting IRB requirements?
answer:
None.
Schools are not required to obtain permission from parents or undergo IRB review in order to conduct research using their students as human subjects.
A ktm commenter left this link a couple of weeks ago:
Committee on the Use of Human Research Subjects: Exemptions
Research that isGenerally applies to the study of teaching methods, strategies, and curricula in the process of education. If individuals may be identified directly or indirectly, file for Expedited Review.
- conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, and
- involves normal educational practices.
FERPA and PPRA also regulate research in school settings and limit information that may be gathered from schools and minors without subject or parental consent.
These 19 curricular projects have essentially been experiments.
14 comments:
solicit feedback from college and university admissions officers during and following each admissions cycle
That phrase really stood out to me when I read it the first time, I almost commented on it.
What's it supposed to mean? What sorts of information does admissions have on your school's graduates? If it's aggregate data why shouldn't this be made publicly available? If it's not then how meaningful can it be?
What is the ranking of the universities from which they choose to get information? 2nd tier? 3rd tier? I'd want to know about the unviersities that the students get rejected from as much as the unversities that accept them...How many of your graduates even bother applying to, say the top 20 universities? Does the school keep track of that?
Myrtle points out the same thing that caught my eye.
1st, why don't they solicit feedback from college and university admissions officers prior to implementing a paradigm shift such as this?
Couldn't they save everyone a huge amount of stress and worry by floating such a trial balloon past the people who will be making the critical decisions for their students?
Strikes me as educational malpractice.
2nd, everything that Myrtle says. Me too.
It does NOT work that way at the university. Restrictions are so tight on conducting research that it took us a year of meetings with university attorneys and reps from the human subjects committee just to be allowed to analyze our students' scores.
i just spotted this:
http://tinyurl.com/ytd77r
"let's abolish high school",
in _education_week_ (apr. 4).
vlorbik sez check it out.
It does NOT work that way at the university. Restrictions are so tight on conducting research that it took us a year of meetings with university attorneys and reps from the human subjects committee just to be allowed to analyze our students' scores.
Well, that had always been my impression.
I was stunned when a commenter left this link the other day.
You should see some of the posts on Beyond TERC.
Parents are getting letters home simply informing them of a "great research opportunity" their kids will be involved in which will result in the school having to change its schedule.
Unbelievable.
V
great find
Unfortunately, the dramatic changes set in motion by the turmoil of America’s industrial revolution also obliterated from modern consciousness the true abilities of young people, leaving adults with the faulty belief that teenagers were inherently irresponsible and incompetent. What’s more, the rate at which restrictions were placed on young people began to accelerate after the 1930s, and increased dramatically after the social turmoil of the 1960s. Surveys I’ve conducted suggest that teenagers today are subject to 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, to twice as many restrictions as are active-duty U.S. Marines, and even to twice as many restrictions as are incarcerated felons.
This is exactly the question I have....we see kids misbehaving themselves in school and we assume that's the nature of kids.
But what is the nature of kids NOT IN SCHOOL?
We don't know because we've forgotten.
Over the past century or so, we have, through a growing set of restrictions, artificially extended childhood by perhaps a decade or more, and we have also completely isolated young people from adults, severing the “child-adult continuum” that has existed throughout history. This trend is continuing. Just last year, Reg Weaver, the second-term president of the National Education Association, while lamenting the fact that 30 percent or more of our young people never complete high school, called for extending the minimum age of school leaving to 21. When adults see young people misbehaving or underperforming, they often respond by infantilizing young people even more, and the new restrictions often cause even more distress among our young.
I buy it.
You know, C. is 12.
He's a kid, definitely.
But he's a responsible kid; he also possesses some core common sense.
He looks out for other people; he can take care of his disabled brothers to a large degree (though we're not quite sure how to go with this -- in terms of making sure he's willing to undertake this role after we're gone...)
Finally, whereas that first compulsory-education law in Massachusetts was competency-based, the system that grew in its wake requires all young people to attend school, no matter what they know. Even worse, the system provides no incentives for students to master material quickly, and few or no meaningful options for young people who do leave school.
Another great point.
The research I conducted with my colleague Diane Dumas suggests that teenagers are as competent as adults across a wide range of adult abilities, and other research has long shown that they are actually superior to adults on tests of memory, intelligence, and perception. The assertion that teenagers have an “immature” brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world.
This isn't quite right.....although the reality (as it's been explained to me) is consistent with the thesis here.
The brain continues to mature until at least age 30 (Martha Denckla told me age 35).
As far as I know, there's no biological reason to define adulthood as starting at 21 instead of 17 or 18.
Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their “inner adult” emerges.
I'm sure that's true.
This is one of the "criticisms" always made of kids who have disabled siblings -- it's called "parentification," iirc.
The criticism is that these kids become mature too fast.
I don't dismiss this idea, because I'm going to have only one chance to get this right.
But I'm always skeptical.
People ALWAYS say that kids with disabled siblings are nicer, etc.....
Well, what is going on in homes with disabled children?
What is going on is that the typical child has been placed in a challenging situation that calls out his "inner adult."
Based on my extensive research involving a single teenager, there is a world of difference between a 10 year old and a 15 year old. The kid I never thought I'd leave home alone, babysits his sisters, does his homework, and demonstrates extremely good judgement regularly. It's like he woke up one morning ready to take on the world intelligently. I have no way of explaining it.
Lynn & Myrtle -
This is essentially a marketing document, and I hope Scarsdale parents will challenge them.
This kind of thing needs to stop. Schools must perform due dilligence; they must present "both sides" of the debate, etc.
(The Scarsdale PTSA president resigned when the district mishandled the survey data they came up with in the first place. I believe the situation was that they'd done a survey, asking colleges whether AP courses mattered. They then reported back to the community that colleges said AP courses didn't matter. The PTSA president asked to see the raw data and the district refused. Things developed from there.)
The kid I never thought I'd leave home alone, babysits his sisters, does his homework, and demonstrates extremely good judgement regularly. It's like he woke up one morning ready to take on the world intelligently.
Well I think we already do have brain data that is at least consistent with this.
Around age 12 kids have a "second window" of brain growth - quite explosive, as I understand it.
The brain starts growing again like crazy, then prunes back (not sure when the pruning happens).
I THINK the period during which this happens coincides with exactly this transition from middle years to early high school years.
It's true, you know.
Our neighbor's son went to school a year late, and is now 14 years old.
He's only one year ahead of C. in school (he's in 8th, C is in 7th) but they no longer seem like the same species.
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