Having a “They can’t fool me, I know how the world works” attitude to everything just makes you complicit in increasing cynicism.

The source of all this: disagreement about church and drinking.

1: You don’t have up-to-date knowledge, notes that you can reference or sources to cite. 
2: The evidence that you claim does exist is most likely not accessible for free or to laypeople.
3: You saw a documentary once which you claim supports your points but you can not remember the name of the documentary or the name of the school it focused on.
4: You conflate call-and-response for learning to read with call-and-response to enforce a certain type of behaviour.
5: You continue to repeat unsupported statements despite lacking evidence, insisting that they are facts which you “stand by”. 
6: You continue to claim that the techniques listed in the article are effective at priming students for NCLB testing, without supporting facts.
7: You claim foreknowledge that the school would be popular.
8: You conflate that popularity with effectiveness.

None of the above points that I summarized look anything like evidence.  Mostly they are vague affirmations and occasionally they are conjecture.

You keep saying the techniques listed are necessary for keeping large classes under control, but section II.a of the Argosy Application suggests that the class size is to be reduced, and the total number of students at full capacity is only 397 spread across 8 separate grades.  That is roughly 50 students per grade, so assuming smaller class sizes it is reasonable to infer that each grade will be split into 2 to 3 separate classes, with roughly 25 to 16 students per class.  You assert that control of large classes is a large part of the rationale for adopting these techniques, but there is no evidence to indicate that there will be large classes.

Please don’t get the impression from this that I am against stating ones opinion.  There is nothing wrong with a statement like “I like this approach because of x, y and z.”  Stating preference, admiration or interest are all fair game. 

However, when you state that what’s being described is an “evidence based practice” and then fail to present the evidence that supports the practice, you aren’t being helpful, you’re being irresponsible. 

That is is horrible might be the motivation they need.

I think we will be seeing this happen very soon. But not in MA, I think the school board has the sense to rip up the stupid proposal. It will however be fodder for endless distopian SF movies.

And I admit, my anti-social science remark was in irritation of the lack expertise in education that led to such a jump in conclusions. I do enjoy all the ‘hard science’ reporting.

As if such values don’t vary by region, and the topic should be off-limits.

If school districts or municipalities had one school like this in the community where the worst offenders, those that would not stop disrupting other kids’ learning, were sent where the rules were actually enforced against them, then I see two benefits.  First, the kids might actually learn that they can face consequences for their actions, and that maybe if they don’t want to suffer these kinds of conditions that perhaps they need to actually behave in class, and second, kids that might go along with the idiots that would end up here won’t, either for fear of ending up here or because those they’d go along with aren’t around for them to emulate.

I’ve worked in educational environments for eleven years.   Kids seemingly have less and less grasp of consequences as time goes by, and that means they’ll learn about them when they’re fired from their jobs, or when they’re arrested and thrown in jail.  And I would expect that even the cushiest jail looks worse than this school program.  At least the kids get their afternoons and nights away from it.

1: What evidence-based practices are being applied?  Where is the evidence for these practices? Please cite studies, with title, authors, publication date, and journal of publication.
2: Have any of those studies been peer reviewed?
3: How have similar practices been put in to place at other schools?  Please provide specific examples, school names, links to curricula, and supporting rationale for the techniques.
4: How have those practices caused schools to meet goals set by No Child Left Behind?  Please cite standardized test scores, or other independently verifiable sources which illustrate, with traceable causality, that similar techniques have improved schools abilities to comply with No Child Left Behind.
5: How does general disdain for a teaching method that favours priming students for passing college entrance exams at the possible expense of other ways of being and learning make BoingBoing “against the social sciences”?  How are value systems that favor traits other than college admisability inferior to value systems and teaching styles that value other goals?  Please explain the philosophical, social, economic and scientific background for this assertion.

I look forward to your answers.

As for BoingBoing being “against the social sciences”, if Social Science means being able to drive policy and action with unverifiable “evidence based practices” and claims that can not be widely reproduced, then yes, BoingBoing is against “social science”.

It seems to me that the discussion threads here, with their limited length and rapid turnover of topics, are designed for soundbytes or humour. I will try soundbytes next time.

Perhaps Boing Boing just has a thing against social sciences, as we’re just not ‘science-y’ enough.

Well, I would like to know where the non-regimented schools are in which fifth graders are at the level of learning Latin verbs and how mortgages work, so I can enroll every kid I know there.

But that doesn’t allow for as many snarky, apocalyptic comments, does it?