Sebastian comments:
Take the claim that there were no claims of improvements in English or Math – that might be technically true (although there are studies that at least claim overall improvements in test scores). But I [Sebastian] hope everyone would agree that science is important?
Science achievement of third, fourth, and fifth grade elementary students was studied using a sample of 647 students from seven elementary schools in Temple, Texas. Students in the experimental group participated in school gardening activities as part of their science curriculum in addition to using traditional classroom-based methods. In contrast, students in the control group were taught science using traditional classroom-based methods only. Students in the experimental group scored significantly higher on the science achievement test compared to the students in the control group.
There are a bunch of others as far as I can tell – but contrary to what [Flanagan] seems to suggest, the empirical literature is actually quite small and mostly focused on nutritional benefits, the declared central goal of the school gardens.
So maybe the evidence on school gardens is more favorable than we thought. It makes sense that the literature would focus on nutritional benefits. But it also makes sense to look at academic outcomes to address the concern that the time being spent in the garden is being taken away from other pursuits. If Caitlin Flanagan sees this, perhaps she can comment.
Nice that there is some evidence, but evidence can distract or a least not be the best venue for "flexing intellectual muscle" …
This was perhaps suggested in Andrew's previous post with his comments "[lack of ] any sort of useful evidence-based evaluation … strong political nature of this policy question"
As a previous boss of mine once put it – "any idiot can do a randomized study, just randomize two groups and see which one does better" – one of the real values of randomization is that it is a cure for ignorance that works approximately 95% of the time (but no one can take personal _credit_ for that) and the evidence does constrain _somewhat_ what one can claim about the world.
Keith
If a program provides a better understanding of nutrition and increased science content knowledge and doesn't clearly harm literacy or numeracy then I fail to see the problem.
Flanagan is making a mountain out of a molehill. Like you said in the first post, the level of anger directed towards gardening in school is confusing. Sex education also doesn't help bring up Algebra I scores, should that be eliminated as well? (cheap multiplication puns aside) What about art education? Social studies? And before you dismiss me as a hippie dippy, I used to teach math. In high school.
I understand the trade-offs argument Flanigan makes, the time has to come from somewhere, right? And that time could be used for math instruction. But doesn't that assume we're operating at the production-possibility frontier? And doesn't it also assumes that the 15th hour of math instruction is equally valuable as the first hour of gardening / science instruction? I'm not sure either of those conditions are true in a majority of classrooms. I'll be honest and admit that my classroom wasn't ever 100% efficient, and I'd have a lot of trouble making a third hour of math in one day interesting or productive.