A function of the faddishness and gimmickry inherent to pedagogy discourse

A nice update from A Reductive Explanation for Recent Changes in Math Pedagogy by Freddie deBoer.  The subheading is "Yes, your kid's math homework is weird. Is it worth it? Hard to say"

It is a good update on a trend of which I was only tangentially aware.  But as usual, he also has some nuggets.  The rub of the problem is that improvements in 4th grade NAEP scores are not sustained when that cohort ages into 8th grade.

[snip]

My own assumption, as regular readers might guess, is that the talent curve simply asserts itself more heavily in advanced math - more people are likely to reach the limits of their natural ability in Algebra II than when learning long division. But our entire educational policy discussion is based on the notion that there is no such thing as natural talent, so that conclusion can’t be reached.

[snip]

(It’s perhaps worth noting that there’s also been something of a similar push for more quantitative reasoning in higher education. This is, as you like it, a demonstration of symmetries in thinking across the entire educational system or a function of the faddishness and gimmickry inherent to pedagogy discourse.)

[snip]

It would probably be better for marketing purposes if I had some passionate criticism or defense of this broad change, but I don’t. I think anyone telling you that we know one way or another if this is working or will work, in an empirical sense, is way out ahead of their skis. My generic prediction is always that while pedagogical developments can have small-scale changes that are meaningful for individual kids, regardless of pedagogical technique we’ll almost certainly get the same general performance distribution that more-or-less matches the talent distribution.  

 [snip]

On the other hand, all of this should remind us of a basic element of education, which is that most children, or at least children fortunate enough to have involved parents, are inevitably going to be learning a lot at home as well as at school And so there’s a permanent baked-in complication with major pedagogical changes: they will frequently create a scenario where parent and child are using very different vocabularies and techniques to approach the same questions. That’s the kind of pain point that can inspire parents to apply pressure on administrators and politicians. That might not sound like a big deal, but exactly that kind of parent uprising has contributed to (though not unilaterally caused) the reversal of political fortunes for K-12 census testing. This increased difficulty for parents, tutors, workers in afterschool programs, etc. compounds the dissatisfaction of teachers, who have been justifiably complaining for decades that endless policy changes and attendant pedagogical evolutions force them into constant training and compel them to abandon principles that have worked for them for years. Are these reasons to oppose pedagogical evolution in general? No, obviously not. But they are complications to consider.