... and no.

Respectively, I mean.

Because if it could, there would be a Turing medal, which would be extremely shiny. And that's just silly. There's a Fields medal. But no Turing medal.

Yes. This is my favorite idea. Turing medal awarded to you.

Agreed.

Is it possible that removing the transcript notation creates a different shiny prize?

When transcripted the same, might the easier route to an 'A' afforded by taking the gen ed version of a class be a shiny prize?

This would tend to incentivize the fixed mindset.

Meanwhile the higher risk of the more challenging Honors version of the course comes with no commensurate higher reward.

This would tend to de-incent the growth mindset.

Maybe articles such as this will calm some parents. But it makes me wonder about the ability of education research to guide parenting. Looking at the last paragraph I excerpted, who believes that "regularly discussing school experiences with your child" has a causal positive effect on the academic achievement of Hispanic children but a *negative* effect on white children? I doubt that these correlations reflect causation.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/parental-involvement-is-overrated/
Parental Involvement Is Overrated
By KEITH ROBINSON and ANGEL L. HARRIS
New York Times
April 12, 2014, 2:32 pm 24 Comments

Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” But evidence from our research suggests otherwise. In fact, most forms of parental involvement, like observing a child’s class, contacting a school about a child’s behavior, helping to decide a child’s high school courses, or helping a child with homework, do not improve student achievement. In some cases, they actually hinder it.

...

When involvement did benefit kids academically, it depended on which behavior parents were engaging in, which academic outcome was examined, the grade level of the child, the racial and ethnic background of the family and its socioeconomic standing. For example, regularly discussing school experiences with your child seems to positively affect the reading and math test scores of Hispanic children, to negatively affect test scores in reading for black children, and to negatively affect test scores in both reading and math for white children (but only during elementary school). Regularly reading to elementary school children appears to benefit reading achievement for white and Hispanic children but it is associated with lower reading achievement for black children. Policy makers should not advocate a one-size-fits-all model of parental involvement.

...

Keith Robinson, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, and Angel L. Harris, a professor of sociology and African and African-American studies at Duke, are the authors of “The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children’s Education.”

Thank you for posting another thought-provoking article. This sentence may be key:

Extrapolated to other areas, including reading to or with a child, and discussing school experiences... the level of expertise or effectiveness of the parents may have a strong positive or negative effect.

This brings to mind the work of Hart & Risley.

Having positive interactions with children such as two-way conversations (as opposed to directives) was a distinction observed by Hart&Risely.

Some parents may find spanking to be a culturally acceptable form of discipline. The impact of a spanking parent "regularly discussing school experiences" may have a negative impact on a child's self-esteem and performance.

Some may say that the ethnic groups whose children were seen to benefit most from parental involvement may be characterized by:
- developing a network for acquiring information/support for parents
- sharing information freely among one's cultural group
- positive, supportive interactions with their children.

LOL, this does not account for helicopter parents or hothousing Tiger Moms who tend to be competitive, pushy, and may guard opportunities/information from others.

The crux seems to be this paragraph:-



No surprises for just about all on this forum, I am sure.

There's a Turing Award. Not having won it, I can't say whether there's a medal attached, though.

I was under the impression that there wasn't a medal. I will feel extremely pouty if all this time I had been passing up opportunities simply because I wrongly assumed that nothing shiny was available.

The Turing Award is nothing to do with the Turing Test except that both are named after Turing. (I am not sure whether the revelation that this thread contained poster(s) who are actually AIs would suffice to win the TA; I suspect not, this style is too easy to automate.) However, if you have been sitting on something that would win you the Turing Award, HK, please don't!

ITA. Very true in general, not just with respect to education.