Dr. Jo Boaler helps to confirm the accuracy of the critique of her ‘Railside’ study in her book 1/n
2/n Stanford’s Dr. Boaler has long relied upon research from her ‘Railside’ study (https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/... to make claims about how math should be taught; those claims have made their way into the Oct. ‘23 California Math Framework (CMF), citing ‘Railside’ as evidence (Ch. 1
3/n. In ‘Railside’ Dr. Boaler claimed lower achieving and lower income ‘Railside’ high school (HS) students caught up and surpassed the math achievement level of students in two higher achieving and more affluent HSs, over the course of 9th and 10th grades, due to a
4/n However, the ‘Railside’ research and claims relied upon the results of a custom set of tests created by the research team and ‘Railside’ teachers, along with student interviews and group projects. Standardized math test scores of the students could not be analyzed to verify
5/n Dr. Boaler has long neglected to identify or confirm the identification of any of the three high schools involved in ‘Railside.’
6/n However, in an effort to verify the claims made in ‘Railside,’ ‘Railside’ critique (https://www.nonpartisaneducati... authors did identify the three HSs involved. Once critique authors had identified the HSs, they could analyze students’ publicly available standardized math
7/n And now, in her recently published book, “Mathish,” Dr. Boaler has inadvertently confirmed the critique authors' identification of ‘Railside’ HS, lending even more credence to the accuracy of the critique. More explanation below:
8/n Dr. Boaler, a math education professor at Stanford, identified two ‘Railside’ High School math teachers in her book “Mathish” (page 31), Carlos Cabana and Lisa Jilk, who she says worked at ‘Railside’ HS when she was studying students there.
9/n By naming Cabana and Jilk, Dr. Boaler inadvertently confirmed the identity of ‘Railside’ HS and inadvertently helped confirm the accuracy of the critique of ‘Railside,’ in which its authors had identified the three HSs involved, including ‘Railside’ HS.
10/n ‘Railside,’ ‘Greendale,’ and ‘Hilltop’ were pseudonyms for the three high schools (HSs) Dr. Boaler studied in her ‘Railside’ study, more formally known as Creating Mathematical Futures through an Equitable Teaching Approach: The Case of Railside School.
11/n ‘Railside’ studied HS mathematics outcomes for students who entered 9th grade in three (California) HSs in the 2000-2001 school year (https://grantome.com/grant/NSF... From the abstract of Dr. Boaler’s ‘Railside’ NSF grant #9985146: “Approximately 1000 students will be monitored in
12/n Grant details show the ‘Railside’ grant began April 1 2000, and was scheduled to end March 31, 2005 (https://grantome.com/grant/NSF...
13/n Dr. Boaler claimed in ‘Railside’ that ‘Railside’ HS students, from a lower math-achieving and lower-income HS, made startling math achievement gains, beginning in 9th grade, to outperform students in math at two other higher-achieving and higher-income HSs, at the end of
14/n From ‘Railside’: “Comparisons of means indicated that at the beginning of Year 1, the students at Railside were achieving at significantly lower levels than students at the other two schools using the traditional approach….” (pg. 620 Creating Mathematical Futures through an
15/n From ‘Railside’: “By the end of Year 2 Railside students were significantly outperforming the students in the traditional approach…” (pg. 620 Creating Mathematical Futures through an Equitable Teaching Approach: The Case of Railside School).
16/n From ‘Railside’: “One of the findings of the study was the success of Railside school, where the mathematics department taught heterogeneous classes using a reform-oriented approach. Compared to the other two schools in the study, Railside students learned more, enjoyed
17/n However, Dr. Boaler never identified the three HSs involved in the study, frustrating attempts to independently verify (or debunk) ‘Railside’s’ claims. But, ‘Railside’ critique authors Bishop, Clopton, and Milgram, did identify the three HSs, using publicly available means,
18/n ‘Railside’ HS is San Lorenzo HS (San Lorenzo,CA), ‘Greendale’HS is San Lorenzo Valley HS (Felton, CA), and ‘Hilltop’ HS is Aptos HS (Aptos, CA).
19/n Only once the three HSs’ identities were available, could standardized math assessment data for students in the three HSs be compared to the non-standardized custom assessments that the ‘Railside’ team created and administered to the HS students. Dr. Boaler’s ‘Railside’
20/n As such, results based upon these non-standardized assessments can not be seen as predictive or reliable. The predictive validity of standardized assessments, however, has been well established (Standardized Test Scores and Academic Performance at Ivy-Plus Colleges | NBER).
21/n After extensive examination of available external standardized math assessment data for the three HSs’ students (San Lorenzo, San Lorenzo Valley and Aptos High), including data for API school rankings, California State University (CSU) math remediation rates, SAT I Math
22/n and after examination of the ‘Railside’ study’s custom tests, for grade level content, mathematical errors, validity, and results, and after checking the comparability of the student cohorts studied at each HS, critique authors concluded that Dr. Boaler’s claims in
23/n From ‘A Close Examination…’: “It is consistent with this conclusion that all the other measures of student achievement we studied gave a dramatically different picture than the Boaler tests did.” (A Close Examination of Jo Boaler’s Railside Report pg. 11)
24/n From a follow up paper by ‘Railside’ critique authors, ‘Private Data…’: “We show that there is no external evidence for improved student outcomes at Railside after the Boaler/Staples treatment.” (Private Data - The Real Story: A Huge Problem with Education Research pg. 4)