need for speed - Vlorbik, Steve, Doug Sundseth

I'm assuming this is from Vlorbik:

please don't tell me that
you're taking "celeration" seriously.

to my eyes, it makes the already
formidable disincentives to teach
look almost pleasant.

if these guys actually
get any influence, i'll be
back on the loading dock ...

All I can say to that is: don't listen to me.

Having got my "start" as a parent in ABA,^* naturally I think it would be an excellent idea to introduce celeration charting into K-12.

But I have no idea - none - what the fall-out of such a scheme might be.

Here at ktm we tend to assume parents can't get too far lobbying for change in their districts. But there's always the other possibility: you spend 10 years of your life pushing, bugging, noodging, and otherwise squeaky-wheeling your way to actual change, and it turns out to be the wrong change.

Although I stumbled across the phrase "unintended consequences" relatively late in life, the instant I read it I thought: Bingo. Probably anyone who's managed to have not just one but two autistic kids has assimilated the saying about the best laid plans of mice and men often running amok.



here's Steve H:

"Since 1990 the Standard Celeration Society has comprised a collegial organization for all persons who use Standard Celeration Charts to monitor and change human behavior frequencies."

I'm all in favor of mastery and speed in the basics of math, but I'm not too keen on schools trying to monitor units of behavior frequency change. I would rather have them monitor units of correctness (grading) on weekly quizzes and tests.

These two comments led me to post my question to our "math brains":

How fast are you at the fundamentals?

I'm not quite sure why I ask, apart from the obvious, which is that I need some kind of rough performance standard for C & for me.

The field of reading appears to have well-developed fluency standards.

Math seems to be different. I've come across performance standards for the basic math facts, but I'm thinking about fluency on some of the "composite skills," too. I imagine the world of precision teaching has not yet produced research-based standards for, say, how quickly an expert can factor a trinomial.

Or: should there even be such a thing?

I don't know which higher-level component skills math experts typically learn to automaticity.



Here's Doug's answer to "how fast are you?":

Quite fast; I normally see the answer to simple questions without consideration.

Possibly related: In the summer between 4th and 5th grade, the summer school I attended did mad-minute multiplication. We were doing 100 single-digit problems in one minute with 95%+ accuracy.

More generally, I've learned other things by extended rote practice and I still know most of those things with no real thought. (German irregular verbs, typing, judo throws.)

Yes, the practice is tedious for both student and teacher. But the student only has to do it once and the teacher is being paid very well. (Note: the work of a teacher is easier and the pay is better than the work and pay on a loading dock -- I've worked on a loading dock.)

As to the loading dock issue, I do have a serious comment: I've led speed drills with kids, and they're fun. Or at least the kids and I found them fun in our afterschool setting. A speed drill takes 5 minutes max (in my own experience 1 minute would have been better, though Saxon's sheets are 5 minutes long); the kids get a charge out of them; and everyone can see himself beating his last time. I was amazed at how quickly the kids picked up speed from one drill to the next, including one high-end SPED kid. That boy zoomed.

A timed drill wakes kids up and, as John Saxon wrote, "sets an up-tempo atmosphere to start the lesson." Or at least it did for me.

I have no idea what would happen if you introduced celeration charts in all subjects, or with all fundamentals..... but I can predict with some confidence that you aren't going to lose future math teachers over a requirement that they do one-minute speed drills at the start of a class.

I think.

update: Here's a Minnesota school that has posted fluency data for its students.



Do Your Students Really Know Their Math Facts? (pdf file)
performance standards (pdf file)

^* I've linked to the new book by the Koegels who, while trained by Ivar Lovaas, are a different kettle of fish. The Koegels are our autism gurus.