the ridiculous debate over charter schools

http://www.ajc.com/news/fulton-school-board-denies-1266177.html

A Georgia school board denies a charter renewal request by an award-winning charter school in a 7-0 unanimous decision.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fairfax-teacher-proposes-charter-school/2012/01/18/gIQAHTsS9P_story.html

"Virginia law gives local school boards authority to approve or deny a charter proposal. Charter advocates say the system creates a difficult hurdle because local boards are often loath to help create direct competition." 

Some comments on the Washington Post's facebook:

That's CRAP!!! That wouldn't be fair to the kids who are not high-performance....

Charter Schools STEAL educational advantages from the students left behind. Disgusting! Public schools should not allow a caste system for students...

Sounds like reinventing the wheel. Why not FIX the schools that need it instead


How curious, because most charter schools I know have admission by lottery. Of course, higher-achieving students might be more wont to apply to a charter school, causing a statistical bias. Is the argument against charter schools really, "they'll draw the brighter students away?" Because of course the brighter lower-income students who can't afford private school should be FORCED to stay imprisoned, and cooped-up.

College Goal Sunday helps students obtain financial aid

College Goal Sunday is a program dedicated to assisting students and families in accessing financial aid for college.  Events are held nationwide where students can go to:

• Get free on-site professional assistance filling out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form.
• Talk to financial aid professionals about financial aid resources and how to apply.
• Get information regarding state-wide student services, admission requirements, and more!

Check out their website to find a location near you.  Act quickly because you must pre-register and some sites are very popular.  I will be at the New Rochelle College Goal Sunday on February 12, but it has filled up and is no longer accepting registrations.  Yonkers is nearby and still has open slots.

ALSO:  Don't wait too long to request financial aid

(Cross-posted at Cost of College)

afterschooling circa 1910

YOUNG Thomas Jones came home from school with sad and solemn air;
He did not kiss his mother’s cheek nor pull his sister’s hair;
He hungered not for apples, and he spoke in dismal tones;
‘T was very clear misfortune drear had happened Thomas Jones.

“My precious child,” his mother cried, “what, what is troubling you?
You ‘re hurt–you ‘re ill–you ‘ve failed in school! Oh, tell us what to do!”
Then Thomas Jones made answer in a dull, despairing way:
“I ‘ve got to write an essay on ‘The Indian To-day.’”

His tallest sister ran to him, compassion in her eye;
His smallest sister pitied him–nor knew the reason why;
And all that happy family forsook its work and play
To hunt up information on “The Indian To-day.”

They read of Hiawatha and of sad Ramona’s woe–
You found encyclopedias where’er they chanced to go.
They bought a set of Cooper, and they searched it through and through,
While Thomas Jones sat mournfully and told them what to do.

For three whole days the library was like a moving-van.
“Is Mr. Jones,” each caller asked, “a literary man?”
And day by day more pitiful became young Thomas’ plight,
Because, alas! the more he read, the more he could not write.

“Write what you know,” his mother begged (she stirred not from his side).
“I do not know one single thing!”that wretched child replied.
“Oh, help me, won’t you ? Don’t you care?” Then when assistance came,
“Don’t tell me–don’t! It is n’t fair!”he pleaded just the same.

The night before the fateful day was quite the worst of all.
Black care upon the house of Jones descended like a pall.
All pleasure paled, all comfort failed, and laughter seemed a sin;
For “Oh, to-morrow,” Thomas wailed, “it must be handed in!”

When, lo! the voice of Great-aunt Jones came sternly through the door:
“I cannot stand this state of things one single minute more!
The training of a fractious child is plainly not my mission;
But–Thomas Jones, go straight upstairs and write that composition!”

And Thomas Jones went straight upstairs, and sat him down alone,
And–though I grant a stranger thing was surely never known–
In two short hours he returned serenely to display
Six neatly written pages on “The Indian To-day”!

His teacher read them to the class, and smiled a well-pleased smile;
She praised the simple language and the calmly flowing style;
“For while,” she said, “he does not rise to any lofty height,
‘T is wonderful how easily young Thomas Jones can write.”

We need a maiden aunt.

poem posted by historian Zachary M. Shreg at his terrific site 

Katharine Beals in the Times

Wonderful letter:

Excluding the higher functioning [autistic] children [from the autism diagnosis] means that schools will have to do more to make regular classrooms hospitable to them without the early intervention based accommodations mandated by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. 

In particular, teachers will have to stop requiring children to work in groups, share personal reflections and do organizationally demanding interdisciplinary projects — all of which are challenging for the sort of child who, rightly or wrongly, has sometimes received a diagnosis of mild autism/Asperger. 

The new American Reform Math is also problematic for this population, since it waters down the actual math and teaches it less systematically. 

KATHARINE BEALS
Philadelphia, Jan. 23, 2012 

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and the author of “Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World.”

Common Core PARCC Test?

Our state is part of a 24 state group that will use the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) tests that are (will be) tied to the Common Core Standards (CCSS). There was a big article about it in our local newspaper. It is a step up from NCLB, but it's still "one size fits all". Schools will still be able to get away with using curricula like Everyday Math.

The claim that:

"Students who will know if they are on track to graduate ready for college and careers"

is more true than for our old NCLB test, but it says little about being ready for STEM careers. You can meet CCSS standards and still have career doors close.

The interesting thing I see is that it's a 24 state group working on a common test. It seems that we are moving towards a national curriculum and test. This should provide better data to compare states and towns. Our state will have to compete with others. The way it is now, our NCLB tests can only be compared with two other states using the same test. However, they have to (once again) restart the collection of longitudinal data.

I haven't seen sample tests, so I might change my mind.

why students have to memorize things

re: Larry Summers' claim that "in a world where the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog, factual mastery will become less and less important":

The reason factual mastery has not and will not become less important is that it is not possible to think about something that is on Google.

Seriously.

While you are thinking about something, that something has to be lodged inside your working memory, not on Google.

And your working memory is tiny.

How tiny?

This tiny:

Working memory storage capacity is important because cognitive tasks can be completed only with sufficient ability to hold information as it is processed. [emphasis added] The ability to repeat information depends on task demands but can be distinguished from a more constant, underlying mechanism: a central memory store limited to 3 to 5 meaningful items in young adults.
The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Limited, and Why?
Nelson Cowan

I hit this limit all the time trying to write about topics that are new to me. The basal ganglia, for instance. For well over a year, I have been endlessly working and re-working a project on the basal ganglia, a subject I knew essentially nothing about going in.

I was not able to write about the basal ganglia until I actually learned about the basal ganglia - learned as in committed the material I was trying to write about to memory. It didn't matter how many times I looked up the basal ganglia on the internet. I looked up the basal ganglia a lot, as a matter of fact; then I forgot whatever it was I had looked up while I was thinking about something else to do with the basal ganglia, so I looked up the first terms again. And again and again.

Try it if you don't believe me.

Here are some items related to the basal ganglia:

dorsal striatum
ventral striatum
putamen
nucleus accumbens
ventral tegmental area
orbital frontal cortex
dopamine
two pathways
OCD
addiction
habit
impulsive
compulsive
intuition
probabilistic learning
associative learning

Now supposing I gave you two-line definitions of these 13 items and asked you to write a coherent, reasoned 5-paragraph essay on the basal ganglia, what it is and what it does.

You couldn't do it. You couldn't do it because every time you wrote about the ventral striatum, the dorsal striatum, and the OFC, you would forget the VTA and the putamen -- and you would forget the VTA and the putamen because your working memory will hold only 3 to 5 things at a time. Something has to go.

That's what happened to me when I took a calculator I didn't know how to use to the SAT. Each time I swapped the steps for using the calculator into working memory, my brain swapped the information for the problem back out of working memory. Then, when I tried to stuff the information for the problem back into working memory while holding onto the calculator steps, I couldn't do it.

I could remember the problem, or I could remember how to work the calculator, but I couldn't remember both at the same time. Too much information, literally.

That experience is an example of the reason why we need to practice until we learn content and skills to 'automaticity.' (Another basal ganglia term!) Once you've learned something so well you don't have to think about it, you free up working memory to hold other things.

I repeat:

You can't think about something on Google.

You can't think about something on a piece of scratch paper.

You can only think about content that is currently lodged inside your working memory, and your working memory holds only 3 to 5 separate items ------ UNLESS you are an expert (or no longer a novice) in the subject you're trying to think about, in which case you have "chunked" the information so that "dorsal striatum" and "ventral striatum" are now just one item instead of two.

To a highly gratifying degree, I can now think about all 13 items on the basal ganglia list at the same time. I can think about all 13 at the same time because I have learned enough about the basal ganglia that the items have become connected in my long-term memory. The 13 are no longer 13 separate items but probably closer to 2 or 3.

If our schools are going to ask students to 'think' about material they haven't learned, students are going to be thinking about 3 to 5 small-ish, not-well-elaborated items at a time. Period. Their thinking will be superficial, and the conclusions they reach will be superficial, too.

Which is exactly what we see in Larry Summers' op-ed about education, a field in which he is neither expert nor learned.

and see: 
Superior Memory of Experts and Long-Term Working Memory (LTWM)

Larry Summers has a really bad idea

What You (Really) Need to Know by Lawrence A. Summers

Answer: not too much 'cuz the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog!

Larry bases his novel and highly original thesis (to wit: "factual mastery will become less and less important") on "what we now understand about how people learn."

Does Harvard have node chairs, I wonder? Sounds like no.

OK, I'm going to go look up calculus on the internet. I've always been interested in calculus, so now that I've received a mobile device for Christmas, I'm going to look it up. Then I'm going to collaborate with some friends who also looked up calculus on the internet to figure out what to do about the 21st century global world meltdown.

I'm going to do this because I've noticed that economists use calculus in their collaborative group papers.

[pause]

There is a reason why students must commit content to memory as opposed to looking it up on a mobile device with a really good search engine.

That reason has to do with working memory.

More anon.

and see: extremely fast learning & extended working memory

Algebra for Parents

My employer, the School of Education and Human Services at Oakland University, is currently considering (at my urging) offering one or more online courses for parents of secondary school-aged children.  Our target audience is homeschooling parents, but others are welcome as well.  We plan to offer, as our pilot offering, "Algebra for Parents".  If that is successful, we would look into expanding to a larger menu of courses.

The main idea behind these classes would be to help parents shore up their content knowledge, with a secondary focus on the pedagogy of home-based education.  These would be not-for-credit courses run through our professional development program; we are framing this as "Professional Development for Homeschool Teachers".

I know that Ed Schools are not very popular on this blog, and PD in math ed has a pretty poor reputation for being superficial and light on content (often, unfortunately, completely deserved).  And I know first-hand that many homeschoolers are skeptical about getting entangled with institutions.  But I have pretty high hopes for this venture.  For one thing, I'll be teaching the course, and I have complete creative control over what gets done.  For another thing, I myself am the parent of five home-educated & unschooled children, all of whom learn quite differently, so you can count on an atmosphere that is open to a wide range of approaches.

All the details of format and pricing are still being worked out, but right now I am thinking that the class will run in six-week sessions.  Each week we will meet once for a single two-hour, real-time webinar (ugh, hate that word), with the rest of the week filled out with individual work and forum discussion.   Figure total involvement at anywhere from 2-6 hours per week, depending on how much you want to engage with the work.

Catherine has given me permission to announce the class here for the purposes of gauging interest.  So please let me know (either in comments, or in private email):  Would you be interested in taking (and paying for) a class like this?  Does the format and focus sound right for you, or are there other things we should consider? 

clear as mud

I was just reading one of my favorite "market monetarists," (pdf file) Jose Marcus Nunes, who writes Historinhas. Apparently, the Fed is at last making its move to increase transparency.

The results - charts (pdf file) illustrating such arcana as the appropriate timing of policy firming and the appropriate pacing of policy firming - brought to mind my all-time favorite edu-chart: the strands.

how to free up time for action research

more from authenticeducation:

Action research requires that each individual or team have at least 4 half-days of non-contact time spread across a year, over and above in-service training days like the one we just had together....

Some ideas for creatively freeing up time are provided below:

1. Half the faculty covers for the other half once per month on pre-assigned days; classes double up and/or teachers of “specials” plan large-group activities to free up half the staff.

2. One hour per month of action research/design time, is set aside from currently scheduled faculty/department/team meetings and in-service days.

3. Late start/early release once per month to permit 2 hours of work in teams.

4. Each design team gets 2 hours per week, covered by other teams, administrators & subs.

5. 4 days in the summer becomes part of the contract, to be scheduled by each design group.

6. 2 hours of non-contact time are added to each Monday, traded for 3 days added to end of year.

7. Hire 1 permanent sub per Department/Grade Level for the needed period of time.

8. Reorganize the School Year next year - 1/2 day twice per month should be scheduled with no students; add 5 minutes to other instructional days for the minutes lost.

9. Teachers meet for an extended lunch and resource period or assembly schedule.

10. Providers of special group learning (Project Adventure, National Endowment for the Humanities, etc.) give assemblies to release teachers of one or more grade levels for 3 half-days per year.

11. Hire roving subs for a day to release teams for 90 minutes each.

source: "Now what?" Possible next steps after the workshop

Out with teach, test, and hope for the best.

In with hire a roving sub, shadow a student throughout his day, and keep the momentum going (Word doc).

Peter Meyer on MLK and education

beautiful

the new, new thing

When was it school personnel used to talk about what students should "know and be able to do?"

The 90s?

The 80s?

For the last few years, whenever I've thought of it, I've checked my district's documents for the words "knowledge" and/or "know." So far, I haven't found them.

What I have found is lots of references to understanding. Students in my district will understand this, that, and the other.

Occasionally, too, a district document will mention 21st century skills.

Which sets me to wondering...how exactly does one acquire a 21st century skill?

Can you memorize a 21st century skill? (And if you can, would that be kosher?)

Can you practice a 21st century skill until you get really good at it?

And does aptitude for 21st century skills fall on a bell curve?

Can you be gifted in 21st century skills?

Average?

Below average?

Are there specific 21st century skill learning disabilities?

This could be big.

"Now What?"

from Authentic Education:

The workshop is over, and many staff naturally want to know: “What is going to happen next? How will we follow up on our good conversations?” This is of course a key question! So, how will you build upon the day? How will you avoid cynical comments about “This, too, shall pass”? How can you keep the momentum going? How can you show your colleagues that you are serious about long-term, focused, and well-supported renewal?
On the next pages we offer an array of possible actions and approaches for follow-up.
[snip]
Examples of 10 possible ‘next step’ actions: Design/Analyze/Research
1. Design a model unit in teams. Ask staff to commit to a timeline of the design of a unit or unit elements. e.g. try using essential questions next week; have a complete unit by semester’s end, designed and piloted, etc.....
2. Design a model scoring rubric (supported by work samples) that makes “understanding” a clear, prominent, and explicit aim. Have staff use the rubric and work sample models (‘anchors’) to clarify for students that the aim is understanding, not recall.....
3. Design a transfer task for a key Standard (e.g. a complex novel-looking math problem; a document-based question in history; a test of reading strategy and skill on a new piece of non-fiction, etc.). Analyze the Standard carefully: if that’s the Standard, what would count as performance evidence of meeting the Standard? Then, sketch out a task. Design a protocol for administering the task in which students initially receive no hints or scaffold, but can receive hints if they truly need them. Use a graduated-prompted rubric to score the results (4 = needed no hints, 3 = needed 1-2 minor hints or reminders, 2 = needed reminders and hints all along the way, 1 = even with much scaffolding could not produce an adequate response.)
4. Design a Gradual-Release-of-Responsibility unit. Use the 4-step process (I do, you watch; I do, you help; You do, I help; You do, I watch) to design a unit or set of units deliberately aiming at autonomous transfer of student learning. Use a graduated-prompting rubric to score student performance.
5. Analyze model and typical units against UbD design standards. Have teams/departments assess units or lessons using our peer review process against the criteria for “good design” (see the UbD design standards, or use your own). Have teams report out what they learned from studying and self-assessing units against standards.
6. Analyze local assessments. For a targeted time frame, (e.g. the month of November or the next marking period) collect all the assessments given in a building. Then, taking a sample of the assessments (e.g. every 4th assessment item) analyze the type and validity of the assessments. Use credible criteria to rate the assessment (e.g. Bloom’s Taxonomy, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, the six facets of understanding, state standards, etc.) Make 1-2 specific recommendations for improving the quality of local assessment, based on the findings.
7. Analyze local grading. Examine trends in local teacher grading to identify the validity of grades (given Mission, state standards, critical thinking, understanding, etc.). Compare local grading standards to state performance standards (e.g. state-wide writing, college freshman exam scoring, etc.) – i.e. how predictive are local grades of later important performance? Also, look at cross-teacher consistency by having teachers grade the same student work on their own, then discuss their grading in groups.
8. Analyze results on a common assessment that you design, making sure that the assessment includes higher-order as well as lower-order questions....
9. Research test results: go to your local site or to the Florida FCAT, Massachusetts MCAS, or Pennsylvania PSSA websites to download their released test items with analysis. Study the results – especially the ones in Reading and Mathematics. Note the hardest questions and most common wrong answers. (All test reports in these states show the correct answer and what % of students picked which answer; they also code the purpose of each test question against the key state standard it is assessing)....
10. Research motivation in students. In teams, study a small group of ‘typical’ kids over the course of a day; you might shadow one student each through their day or half-day. In what work are they most motivated and engaged in class - and out of class (sports/computer games/arts)? When are they least motivated? When do students persist with a challenge and when do they quit? What general conclusions can you draw from motivation and engagement about how to make schoolwork less boring? (We have online student surveys you can use, too).

So I guess there's not going to be a lot of time left over after teachers get done with all this to administer a spelling test or two.

Also, if there are teams of grownups at school wanting to 'shadow' my 'typical kid' over the course of a day, I would like to be asked whether that is OK with me.

Then, when I inform the team that shadowing my typical kid over the course of a day is not OK with me, I would like the grownups to return to the classroom and teach.

math and race in Iowa

Among the possible explanations offered for the decline [in ITBS scores] are increased drug use in the mid-60′s, permissiveness, increase in divorces and single family homes, as well as the progressivist trends in education resulting in student-centered and needs-based courses. (See  Protecting Students from Learning for a more extensive discussion of this last item.) Another explanation offered is that the population of test takers starting around that time began to include more minority students, resulting in a dilution effect. That argument fails to explain, however, why the same pattern of declining test scores for the SATs exists for the ITBS and ITED test scores which were not limited only to college bound students. Also significant is the fact that the population of test takers in Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana remained primarily white which has been noted by Bishop (1989) and Murray (1992). Specifically, the U.S. Census of 1950 shows that the population in Iowa was 99.2 percent white, declining by 0.7 percentage points to 98.5 percent white by 1980. Similarly, the populations of Minnesota and Indiana were 99 and 95.5 percent white in 1950, dropping respectively to 98.2 and 92.8 by 1970. (Hobbes, 2002).
Barry Garelick: The Myth About Traditional Math Education
Education News

Nobody Gets Out Unless Everybody Gets Out

Why to oppose Mayoral Academies


While it's true that charter schools form a way to self-select into a more willing group of students, the author's assumption is that those left behind will be less well served. She does not explain why that would happen. Although she argues that separation does help, she does not explain why public schools will not offer the same separation. She does not argue that Achievemnt First does not work. She does not argue that some public school are failing. She offers no solution other than the supporters of Achievement First should be putting their efforts into public schools.

OK. Separate kids by willingness to work hard. Offer them a more rigorous curriculum.

what is a professional learning community

I would like my school board to hire a superintendent who has headed a district with Professional Learning Communities.

teach, test, and hope for the best

Richard DuFour:

”Typically, teachers teach, test, and hope for the best. [Adlai] Stevenson [High School] teachers established standards of mastery for...common assessments and for each subtest within a common assessment. They set a bar for student performance and then worked to ensure that each student could make it over that bar.”
The Learning-Centered Principal
Richard DuFourMay 2002 | Volume 59 | Number 8 
Beyond Instructional Leadership   Pages 12-15

professional learning communities

is this a clinically-known hypothesis on autism?

when asked about the yelling, humming, hands over ears, etc., the girl in the video explains that it's because of a sensory overload, saying, "we create output to block out input".

Rocketship Schools

Does anyone have any information about a bunch of new charter schools called The Rocketship Schools?

Andy Rotherham gave a rave about it here.

why Americans need precision teaching: we're hyper

One consequence of the recent expansion of human genetic variability is that a number of culturally relevant SNPs are also local and cross-culturally variable in frequencies. For example, long (e.g., 7-repeat) allelic versions of dopamine receptor gene 4 (DRD4) have been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and novelty seeking. Importantly, these versions of the gene are quite common among Caucasian Americans, but they are virtually absent among Asians. Chen et al. (1999) hypothesize that long allelic versions of DRD4 provide a selective advantage in new, challenging environments because they are increasingly predominant as a function of the distance by which different ethnic groups immigrated in historic and evolutionary times (for alternative possibilities, see Cochran & Harpending 2009). Findings such as these strongly suggest that to fully understand the origins of cultural differences in psychological processes, genetic processes must be taken into account.
Shinobu Kitayama1 and Ayse K. Uskul. Culture, Mind, and the Brain: Current Evidence and Future Directions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2011. 62:419–49.Chen C, Burton M, Greenberger E, Dmitrieva J. 1999. Population migration and the variation of dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) allele frequencies around the globe. Evol. Hum. Behav. 20:309–24.

Years ago, John Ratey and I argued in Shadow Syndromes that Americans had a higher genetic propensity to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and we were right.

Americans need precision teaching because it's fast, and it's efficient:

Morningside Academy offers a money-back guarantee for progressing 2 years in 1 in the skill of greatest deficit. In twenty-five years, Morningside Academy has returned less than one percent of school-year tuition.

zip

news you can use

27 States Sign on for Digital Learning Day

Celebrations will vary by state.

deathless

We point out simply that not only do U.S. students on average perform better internationally than reported in a myriad of policy papers, but as Boe and Shin demonstrate, the majority of U.S. students (white students) actually rank near the very top on international tests.
Into the Eye of the Storm
October 2007
B. Lindsay Lowell Georgetown University
Hal Salzman The Urban Institute

Right.

That's why my high-IQ, culturally-advantaged, non-hyperactive, W-H-I-T-E, rising-5th grade son placed into the second-semester 3rd grade textbook in Singapore Math back when he was age 9. (placement test here).

In the real world, a gap that big by age 9 does not get smaller.

It gets bigger.


non-poor students doing fine in Princeton

what is the Chinese language?

interesting post at The Economist

momof4 boils it down

on another thread, momof4 writes:

As far as I can tell, the best-performing countries don't expect their kids to discover multiplication, reading or anything else on their own; teachers explicitly teach the material.

Until this moment, I had never thought of it quite this starkly -- but now that I am thinking of it quite this starkly, my sense is that momof4 is probably right.

From time to time high-performing countries seem to decide they need to be more creative, which seems to mean sending teams of teachers to the U.S. to observe our cr**** math curricula,^* but these initiatives never seem to last.


^*I'm not going to take the time now to track down the links.

More Fourth Grade Slump

Speaking of Memoria Press, my catalog came in a mail a couple of days ago and there was an article in there on the "top ten" reasons you should teach your child Latin. (Preaching to the choir in our case -- the only question here is what grade are we going to start Latin.)

But I read the article, and one part popped out at me:

#1
Latin is the next step after phonics.

We all understand the importance of phonics, the systematic study of the English letters and their sounds. But phonics only covers half of our language, the English half, those good old concrete words that students learn to speak and read first. But then we stop, even though there is another half of English that has a whole new set of root words, spelling, and pronunciation patterns.

English, you see, is a hybrid language, a marriage of two languages—English and Latin. The name English comes from the Angles who, along with the Saxons and other barbarians, invaded Britain after the fall of Rome in the 5th century. English is a Germanic language and, the Germans being barbarians, had mostly concrete, common, everyday words, the words children learn to speak and read first in primary school.

But, beginning in 3rd grade, students start to encounter the Latin half of English. Latin words are bigger, harder, have more syllables, more abstract meanings, and different pronunciation and spelling patterns. How do we teach the Latin half of English in a systematic orderly way like we do phonics? We don’t. But we should. And the only truly systematic way to continue the study of the English language after phonics is to teach Latin—the foundation of the Latin half of English.

the return of Exo!

Synchronicity is real.

Heck, maybe ESP is real.

I can't tell you how many times, now, I've thought "WHERE is so-and-so," so-and-so being a ktm Commenter who hasn't commented in a long time. The next thing I know, I read the site and there s/he is!

Just this week, I was thinking, "I miss Exo."

And presto chango, here is Exo!

must-see TV: Common Core edition

woo hoo!

old wine, new bottle

pop quiz: what do Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success?

Answer: The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

I give up.

Crazy U - Andrew Ferguson on why he wrote the book

Ferguson:

An editor/friend of mine planted the seed for the book when he asked me to write a magazine article about Katharine Cohen, an extremely successful and extremely expensive private college counselor in Manhattan. I spent a fair amount of time with her and discovered her to be an appealing subject. What really opened my eyes, though, was an information seminar she held one winter evening in suburban Connecticut. Like most parents with kids about to apply to college, I’d heard how the process had descended into Absurdistan. But it wasn’t until I saw the feral squint of parental ambition in the faces of these well-to-do moms and dads that I realized how weirdly competitive and confused the whole thing had become. These people were out for blood -- they were going to do whatever it took, including hire a private counselor for $40,000, to get their little Ashleys and Caitlins into Brown. My own son was a junior in high school at the time, just starting to daydream about college, and I remember thinking, “Yow, this is what we’re up against?”
'Crazy U' by Sam Patulla
Inside Higher Ed

the "China Study" abstract and the soldiers

From time to time, I mention T. Colin Campbell's The China Study: a terrific book. A few minutes ago, I found what I think is probably the main abstract from the published study, so I'm posting the link:

Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China study.
Am J Cardiol. 1998 Nov 26;82(10B):18T-21T.

I went looking for Campbell & Esselstyn after reading Megan McArdle's post arguing that the biggest risk factor for heart disease is age. I'm pretty sure that's not true (as I recall, the biggest risk factor is diet), so I went looking for the incidence of heart disease amongst the Chinese peasants Campbell studied.

While I was at it, I remembered this passage from Esselstyn's book:

Autopsies of soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars showed the effects of America's artery-clogging diet even on the very young. The arteries of Asian soldiers were largely clean, free of fatty deposits. But almost 80 percent of American battlefield casualties showed gross evidence of coronary artery disease--clogging and damage that, had the soldiers lived, would have grown worse with every passing decade. 

I think this passage, more than anything else I've read, was the shocker for me.

Glen on the flood

In a comment on another thread, Glen writes:

SteveH asked: But how about the MITx degree? What's the catch?

The catch is that nobody at MIT (that I know of) is talking about an MITx "degree". These and the new Stanford online classes only give you credit toward a degree if you are an admitted MIT or Stanford student.

Otherwise, the idea is to give you some sort of acknowledgement that is carefully designed to make it clear that it is NOT MIT or Stanford credit. Both institutions are desperate to avoid diluting their own brand equity.

However, these projects often take on lives of their own. Some Stanford students are now complaining that they have to pay $5000 to take the same online class that non-students take for free. No difference at all in the educational experience, assignments, tests, feedback from TAs, etc., but the Stanford student pays a fortune and gets Stanford credentials; the equally-taught non-student gets it for free and gets no Stanford credential. That's an unstable situation, I believe, that may end up like breaching a barrier between two oceans at different levels. I'm looking for a flood to pour through this opening, which might overwhelm the people who are trying to keep these projects under control.

I see them right now as desperate to defend their monopolies but well aware that huge pressures are mounting to change the system. I think they figure, rightly, that if they don't disrupt themselves, someone else will do it to them. They probably don't want to be the venerable Kodaks and Fuji Films of higher ed as the world goes digital.

The final section of Walter Russell Mead's The Ice Cream Party and the Spinach Party is directly relevant.

Crazy U

Heard from Susan S yesterday, who wanted to know if I'd read Crazy U by Andrew Ferguson.

Answer: yes, and I've been meaning to post excerpts forever. The book is fantastic. If you're sending a child to college any time soon, you must read it (along with Barry Seaman's Binge and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, neither of which I have had the nerve to crack as yet...)

Susan says I have to get to Crazy U now, so here goes:

The cost of college is the consuming preoccupation for parents, of course, and a major source of the craziness. It's not hard to see why. I graduated from a small liberal arts college in 1978. My annual tuition bill was $5,100. If my school's tuition had tracked inflation, the bill today would be $16,500. Instead it's nearly $40,000--an exponential rise repeated at nearly every school in the country.

But unlike other questions related to college admissions--how do I make my kid write the essay, do we really have to do a tour, who designs these stupid applications, when will it all be over?--how to pay for school is a peculiarly sensitive matter. With the Kitchen People I could start a good thirty- or forty-minute chain rant y asking about the college counselors at their kids' high schools. But when I'd ask about college costs I'd provoke a quick Vesuvius-like first, followed by a slow glide into silence, a lot of foot-shuffling and ceiling glancing, until people drained their cups and wandered off for a refill. Nobody likes to talk about money, especially when you're being reminded you don't have enough of it.

[snip]

But when it came to finance I restricted myself for the most part to College Board and the Department of Education Web sites. I took their directives to be authoritative. (If you can't trust an agency of the federal government, who can you trust?) By the time I was through collecting material about college costs, I had enough documents to make several impressive new stacks in the dining room. There were booklets, worksheets, request forms, disclaimers, power points, suggested guidelines, official guidelines, disclosures, charts, backgrounders, tables, monthly planners, and FAQs beyond number. Usually the sheets showed ranked masses of bullet points with impenetrable headings: "ICR Consent to Disclosure of Tax Information," "Repayment Plan Selection," "DCL GEN-04-04 General Guidance for FRAC Participants," "Fafsa4caster," "Income Based Repayment Selector," and "FFEL Convertible-rate Interest Rates Calculation Sheet." I could concentrate on them for no longer than forty-five seconds at a time. Then I'd look up and hear Patton: "Very difficult, very complicated."

Among those reams of paper many pages were pure salesman-ship--and what the CB and the Education Department were selling was, once again, college itself, the raw idea of it, quite apart from any considerations that might draw a kid to one particular school or another, or heaven forbid toward a future of work and family without higher ed. The message was nmistakable: When it comes to college, you should just go. Don't worry so much about the money. Go. The money--we'll help with the money. Just go. Go, for crying out loud.

One of the first sheets I acquired from the CB, under the section College Costs, set the tone. It offered a little USA Today-like charticle--half chart, half article--headlined "Keep Rising Prices in Perspective."

"Media reports," the sheet said, "can be intimidating. Don't let the sticker prices scare you." Damn lyin' media.

"There's no escaping the fact that college costs are rising," the sheet acknowledged, though I knew that if there were a way of escaping the fact, the College Board would have found it.

"But there is good news," it continued. "There is more than $143 billion in financial aid available." (That number--$143 billion, the pot of gold--was repeated frequently, endlessly, in the documents. The chart that followed showed two columns. On the left was the bad news. On the right was the good news, offered as refutation of the bad, in a box labeled "But did you know that..."

So in the left-hand column we saw that last year tuition rose by 5.9 percent at private schools and 6.4 percent at public schools. "But did you know that..." 56 percent of students enrolled at four-year colleges attend institutions that charge tuition and fees of less than $9,000 per year." Good for them. And the other 44 percent?

On the left, the bad news: "The average surcharge for out-of-state students at public institutions is $10,867."

Then the good: "But did you know that...About two-thirds of all full-time undergraduates students receive grant aid."

On the left: "Students will pay on average from $381 to $408 more than last year on room and board."

"But did you know that...More than $143 billion in financial aid is available to students and their families.

Actually, we did know that, since it had already been printed right there at the top of the page. The rebuttals weren't very effective, if you thought things through. It was small comfort to know that this problem of rising costs was solvable, but only so long as the family agreed to go deeper in debt or accept repeated handouts. Maybe it's good news that $143 billion was available for aid. But isn't it bad news we need the $143 billion in the first place?

"Consider college an investment," the information sheet concluded, its manner calm and reassuring. Then this College Board charticle quoted a study from the College Board that said people who earned a degree from a college, schools such as those that make up the College Board, earn 60 percent more than workers with only a high school degree--adding up to $800,000 over a lifetime.

"Whatever sacrifices you and your child make for his or her college education in the short term are more than repaid in the long term."

I'd noticed something interesting about these communications from the higher-ed establishment. The only time they spoke of higher education in business terms, weighing costs and benefits, was in the middle of a come-on to parents and students, most of whom were presumably comfortable with seeing life in terms of commercial transactions. Otherwise the literature treated higher ed as a spiritual realm, filled with mystery and magic, immune from the worldly pressures of costs and benefits."

The cultlike disingenuousness of it was galling. Much of the stuff I'd accumulated from the College Board was thinly disguised propaganda of this kind--prettied up in numbers, but just as self-serving as anything you'd expect from a business lobby.

"Don't let the sticker price scare you," the next sheet said, ramming the message home. "Financial aid often makes up the difference between what you can afford to pay and what college costs." And just so you don't forget: "Education loans are also an appropriate way for families to pay for college."

more t/k

more more middle class....

re: re: We all want to be 'middle class' and Speaking of the middle class

As part of not getting my stride back today, and inspired by my success at finally locating an income chart that includes medical benefits, I tracked down inflation charts on:

public education spending (and here)
college spending
health care spending

Gadzooks.

Good thing apparel prices have been falling or we'd all be walking around naked. Walking around naked or, alternatively, walking around fully clothed with a whopper of a student apparel loan to pay off.

And while we're on the topic of mind-boggling and rising prices for the big stuff, as opposed to reasonable and falling prices for the little stuff, why do I have to keep hearing about housing bubbles when the really huge bubbles seem to be tuition and health care?

speaking of the middle class

re: Grace's post "We all want to be middle class" (and other posts on this subject)

I finally found an income chart that includes medical benefits:

Concerned About Income Stagnation? Blame Rising Health Insurance Costs 

(I haven't fact-checked the chart.)

Every time I see articles about stagnating wages, I want to know whether benefits are or are not part of wages. Assuming benefits are not included in most estimates of wages, and assuming this chart is accurate, what we see is health insurance eating up what would have been a nice, steady series of raises.

Good thing we can all buy cheap electronics from China--!

palisadesk on joined manuscript vs cursive

The research actually shows that "joined manuscript" is both faster and more legible than cursive, especially at maximum speed. It doesn't degenerate into a scrawl or scribble the way the "loopy" styles do.

Kate Gladstone is the handwriting go-to guru, her website Handwriting Repair has a ton of resources on the topic. She recommends a number of the italic and quasi-italic styles, which have always been dominant in the UK and Australia.

It's untrue that traditional cursive will eliminate, or prevent, b-d reversals and other such anomalies. I've had a number of students who consistently made b-d errors in cursive -- "The bog is darking," and so on -- even though the letters did not look anything alike. Kids with graphomotor output issues have a terrible time learning traditional cursive writing, and their writing always looks like chicken tracks despite their best efforts. Italic and manuscript-style joined cursive, a la "Handwriting WIthout Tears" yield better results.

still off-topic: Gallup poll on weight loss

I've become a tad health-and-diet-preoccupied here in the New Year. But I figure I am not alone.

Just came across a Gallup poll -- How Americans Who Have Lost Weight Made it Happen -- and thought this was interesting:

Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare survey results reveal the top weight loss tactics Americans say they have used successfully. The 52% of all U.S. adults who say they have succeeded at losing weight at some point in their lives were more likely to credit dietary changes than exercise.

The top three diet-related tactics Americans said they used were eating less, counting calories/portion control, and eating more natural foods. In terms of those who relied on exercise, just working out in general was the most frequently mentioned form of activity.

they do what they do

A teacher friend told me her district is not going to teach cursive handwriting any more. The children entering Kindergarten next year won't be able to write cursive script, and they won't be able to read cursive script. Their parents' love letters will be as indecipherable to them as 1960s shorthand is to me.

My friend thinks dropping cursive is a bad idea, but no one asked her. No one asked the parents, either, or the taxpayers. District administrators made the call, and that is that. They are the deciders.^*

Meanwhile some children will undoubtedly suffer in ways the deciders have failed to consider:

Cursive longhand helps some people in a way few would think about. I am dyslectic to the point that I had to depend on others to read to me for many years. Over 50 years ago I received an engineering degree, and went on to a successful career supervising the design and construction of several big-ticket projects.
With my dyslexia pattern I would never print "dog" as "god" but I could, even today, print "dog" as "bog" and not know the difference, even if someone pointed it out to me. I do not make these mistakes when writing in longhand. I hope the schools continue to teach this method of writing to the dyslectic students.
R.W.
Ridgefield, Wash.
July 16, 2011

^* I don't use the word "decider" as a slam against President Bush. Deciders is an excellent word.

re-entry

First we had a great Christmas, then we had a great trip to IL to see my brother and his family.

Now: re-entry.

Yuck!

Blech!

I hate re-entry!