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*
Thinking Outside the Box *
(02/06/07)
Predict Your Child's Academic
Success
Dr. Charles Ormsy
 University
researchers have long sought a way to predict a student’s
academic success. They, like all citizens, have a
societal interest in promoting good outcomes. A
well-educated citizenry will promote economic growth, a
higher standard of living, better social policies, and
greater tranquility. This, of course, is why education
enjoys such strong support.
Parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles have an
additional, more personal interest. They have children,
grandchildren, nieces and nephews and would like to
understand the factors that will ensure their academic
success.
The debate has raged for decades. Is a child’s
success dependent almost exclusively on genetics? Will
more spending ensure that no child is left behind? What
can parents, legislators, community groups, and
taxpayers/voters do to maximize the best possible result
for their children and for society at large?
Now, for the first time, a simplified formula for
predicting a student’s success has emerged that will
provide the needed guidance to both a student’s
extended family and to society at large.
Note to the more mathematically sophisticated: You can
presume that each factor in the formula needs to be
raised to an appropriate power that adjusts the overall
formula’s predictions to best fit experimental data.
To those less mathematically inclined, the formula, as
stated, is sufficiently precise for grasping the impact
of the various factors. For readers who quit when they
saw the formula, you can thank your school’s fuzzy
math curriculum.
One final note before we proceed: The formula is designed
to predict the average academic success in a particular
academic discipline for those students sharing the same
values of the factors included in the formula. Some
students will be hit by a truck midway through their high
school career and spend months in a body cast while
others will, through happenstance, never miss a day of
school due to illness. Individual life experiences will
cause some variability of results, but the averages will
be correctly predicted as the factors are varied. Also,
all the factors have to be considered in the context of a
particular discipline, e.g., math, language arts, music,
science, etc. Individuals do not have the same innate
ability across all skill areas and the other factors in
the formula can also vary from one skill area to another.
OK, let’s discuss the factors one at a time.
First, Innate Ability - Nothing much matters if a student
has the IQ of a brick (IQ = 0). This is the educational
equivalent of the well-known computer saying, revised
here, which says: B-I-B-O or, Bricks In Bricks Out.
Multiply anything by zero and you get zero. The term used
in the formula is “innate ability” rather than
IQ because IQ typically is a composite measure of innate
ability across multiple disciplines, and the formula, as
noted previously, specifically addresses outcomes on a
discipline-by-discipline basis. All discussion in this
article should be assumed to share this caveat.
Sociologists and liberal politicians try to cover up or
ignore genetic differences but, let’s face it, half
of our students are below average (more precisely, half
of our students are below the median, but that
distinction will be left for those taking statistics).
Thus, with everything else being equal, i.e., home
support, academic environment, and personal effort,
innate ability will drive differences in academic
achievement.
Home Support - A common reaction to the formula is:
“Where is the ‘per capita income’ effect
and where are the effects of other demographic factors
taken into account?” The implication of the formula
is that they don’t matter one bit, except as they
influence the factors that are actually included.
A wealthy family may be wealthy because the parents are
high-achieving, highly educated individuals with
successful careers or businesses. Such individuals may
make it clear to their children the importance of
academic success and hard work, and they may bring
intellectual discussions involving four-syllable words to
the dinner table every night. They may use their
financial resources to ensure that their children are
enrolled in an academic institution that reflects these
values and sets high standards for achievement. On
average, students nurtured by adults expressing and
acting on these values will do very well academically.
This is not a treatise on parenting, but clearly the
above factors can be present in an iron-fisted household
will little or no love or emotional support. The children
can rebel and attempt to punish the parents by failing in
school and turning to drugs. Parents need to provide the
right values in the right way … what that way is, is
an exercise for the reader. Nobody said child rearing was
easy.
While wealth, on average, increases the likelihood that
the last three factors in the formula are more conducive
to good academic outcomes, it is neither necessary nor
sufficient.
Poor parents, if they have the will and they understand
the importance of these factors, can achieve extremely
favorable outcomes. They often have handicaps that make
success more difficult, but these rarely make it
impossible. Setting the right values, being adamant about
the importance of education, insisting on hard work
… all of these can overcome the disadvantages of
poverty.
Just look at the example of the Cambodian family in
Lowell whose members nearly died on a boat in the South
China Sea while trying to escape Cambodia. They lived
with other refugees in a crowded Lowell apartment and
their daughter, who could speak practically no English
when she entered 9th grade, graduated first in her class
just four years later. Home support and personal effort
made all the difference.
On the other hand, a family that hits the lottery for
millions will see little improvement in academic outcomes
if the parents do not succeed in raising the factors that
matter. So demographics is important, but only because,
on average, it influences these factors. It should NEVER
be considered a factor that cannot be overcome.
Several years ago the principal of North Andover’s
Atkinson Elementary School told the school’s parents
that MCAS scores (at the time, the lowest in the
district) could not be raised significantly because of
the demographic factors in that area of town. Some
parents reacted quite badly to this pronouncement and
insisted on higher standards. Within a short time the
Atkinson School’s scores approached the highest in
the district while the scores of one of the schools in a
wealthier area of town sank nearer the bottom. So much
for demographics.
Quality of the Academic Environment - Notice
that this factor has a “1” added. Really poor
schools (mostly inner city) can contribute a negative
amount to this factor – in the worst case nearly
canceling out the “1” in the formula and making
good outcomes nearly impossible. Alternately, if the
school environment contributes nothing — i.e., it is
neutral and has a zero value – the “1”
allows the other factors to operate.
This is best seen in the case of home schooling. Clearly,
the student doesn’t attend the local public school
or any other formal educational institution. Formal
educational institutions contribute NOTHING. The
parents/guardians substitute an extraordinarily high
“Home Support” factor by not only providing the
positive inputs previously discussed, but also by
directly providing educational services in the home. Of
course, they could do a poor job of providing these
services, but experience shows this is rarely the case.
When a student’s academic environment is provided by
an institution outside the home, the question arises as
to what factors influence its quality. The Beacon Hill
Institute conducted a substantial research project in
this area (Getting Less For More, Lessons in
Massachusetts Education Reform) and found that the
hundreds of millions of extra dollars spent in
Massachusetts to improve educational outcomes since the
early 1990s had little or no effect on measured outcomes.
In fact, in some cases these funds were used to support
activities (e.g., greater athletic opportunities) that
distracted from academic outcomes. The single factor that
could be traced to improved outcomes was the high-stakes
10th grade MCAS test that must be passed to graduate. It,
and it alone, accounted for nearly all of the improvement
in Massachusetts’ student outcomes.
High-stakes achievement tests that provide a meaningful
quantitative academic standard are what mattered, not
money. This is a case of the academic institution
encouraging the other factors in the formula: Home
Support (because parents want their children to graduate)
and Personal Effort (because most students want to
graduate or are fearful of the consequences of failure to
graduate).
Personal Effort – Hopefully, nobody needs convincing
of the importance of this factor.
So figure it out. Wealth has little effect except insofar
as it encourages high expec-tations, high standards, and
hard work. Taxpayer money also has little effect unless
it is translated into these same factors.
History shows that monopoly institutions use their power
to line their own pockets, which is why all you ever hear
is, “We need more!” There is only one way to
find out if more resources are really needed: Let the
public institutions compete and see who translates the
resources consumed in a manner that most effectively
raises these key factors.
Without competition in education, we will never know.
In the meantime, parents should focus their energies on
home support and on their children’s level of
personal effort, and simultaneously demand that their
schools set high academic standards. If the schools do
not respond, parents need to overcome this failing on
their own – either through private schools, home
schooling, or, at a minimum, by providing extra attention
at home every day. No excuses.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The February 2007
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2007, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 10,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
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