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We're all trying to find the right angle or leverage to create the most change. Perhaps [Prof. Wu] can change the thinking at the NCTM level, I don't know, but I don't think he will have much effect at the local level.
I find this an interesting point to elaborate on. I understand Steve's point, but I don't know if I agree: Steve, what do you think created the perspective at the local level?
Personally, from my outsider perspective, it looks to me like all of the local changes in our school board to disasters like Everyday Math or TERC came from the top level. They came from national boards. They came from national foundations, big things like Gates, etc. And overwhelmingly, the ideas came to them from ed schools' ideas having infiltrated the very top of the food chain, and that food chain is now pushing down down down to the local level.
I cannot IMAGINE a situation where a local public school board change is made without the national ethos changing first. That's why it takes privates or charters or any other structure to just get decent textbooks.
But maybe I'm wrong. What do you all think? I'm not a teacher in the schools. For those who are, where did these changes come from? Top down? Has ANY change come bottom up? What can an individual teacher or even principal do? What would it take to make a change at the local level if philosophies on the national level aren't changed?
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I am quite certain that at the local level, everything is driven by the current fads being displayed at curriculum conferences. That, and the State Standards.
But every single program being marketed to our curriculum director claims to meet "state standards." The standards are so vague they give no direction at all to schools looking to purchase something new. So the administrators talk to their friends in other districts and they listen to the sales reps.
The National Math Panel won't be the first to try to push curriculum in a more intelligent direction. Since the focal points came out from NCTM, there has been no change in the elementary focus in my local district. None. Until a new program comes out claiming to teach focal points, no one will change what they are doing. The curriculum people don't want to design curriculum. They want to purchase something.
ditto that
the Tri State Consortium person came & talked to the district a month ago. I didn't go to the meeting because I'm on strike; also because Karen Pryor says "no." (I'm withdrawing attention from the district's many public relations initiatives.)
The presentation was poorly attended (other parents seem to have reached the same conclusion I have re: district presentations and "communication").
However, I did hear from one person who attended. Trailblazers was treated with respect.
Apparently Tri State feels our curriculum needs more flexibility, not more math.
Or more teaching, either, I gather.
but curriculum conferences are shows on tour, right? they are national. There's nothing "local" about where their ideas come from. So where did their ideas come from?
It all comes from ed school, though I don't know how the various "consultants" descend from ed schools...
Do you know the great Reid Lyon quote?
"If I could pass a law I would blow up the ed schools"
something like that...
"I cannot IMAGINE a situation where a local public school board change is made without the national ethos changing first."
It's perhaps a chicken and egg sort of thing. I won't hold my breath about a substantive change in national ethos, and I won't hold my breath about our schools changing their philosophy of full inclusion and spiraling mastery.
We don't have a school of wishy-washy teachers who will do only what is passed down from a national level, but then again, that is a strong influence. It's a strong influence because they are all birds of a feather. If NCTM says "Use Singapore Math", then a lot of surprised schools might start using it, but don't bet on it. Local teachers reflect the national powers, and vice versa.
I can't imagine any sort of national panel having a large effect on math teaching. At best, there will be improved state standards that will drive the market. Some companies have specific California-approved texts. This is going in the right direction, but it won't solve the underlying philosophical issues of ensuring mastery. Schools have to make sure that learning gets done. They don't do that and I don't see how that will change.
Principals in suburban schools could have a great deal of power.
That is no longer the case in my district where the superintendent holds all power and makes all hiring decisions.
The school board defers to her in all matters.
Catherine is right in that the source of the conflict over assumptions, expectations, and values in education come from ed schools. All of these people get filtered through those doors. We all know this, but we still talk as if their assumptions and values come from research. They don't.
I decided to look at a major college of education to see (superficially) what I could find. I chose Ohio State. This is what I found in 5 minutes.
"Our Mission:The mission of the College of Education and Human Ecology is to develop a tradition of excellence in promoting outstanding teaching, research, and service that significantly and positively impacts individuals, families, schools, and consumers within our global communities. The mission simultaneously embraces the land-grant mission of The Ohio State University as expressed in its Academic, Diversity, and Outreach plans."
"Human Ecology"?
Where, in the human ecology realm, does parental control and choice fit in?
Here is a job opening description.
"Associate or Full Professor in Early Childhood Education
The college’s Lab School is moving into a state-of-the-art facility in the high-need area
just east of campus, reflecting the commitment of the college to urban education. We seek
candidates whose perspectives and scholarship inform urban education (e.g., developmental, critical, sociocultural, ecological) and whose commitments are to cultural
diversity, inclusion and social justice."
Whose social justice?
Statistics, not individuals. The social group reigns supreme over the individual. They don't want to be individual helpers, they want to be social deciders.
By the way, one of the requirements for the position is "grantsmanship". How about grantspersonship? How about get money to support and push our view of the world?
Where, in the human ecology realm, does the idea of individual thought fit? What assumptions are they making for power and contol relationships between the individual and the social whole?
Their assumptions rule, and since there is no self-interest involved, they must be right. They don't use science to inform themselves, they use science to inform others.
great news
looks like there's a renegade ed school at Hunter College
I'm probably going to have to subscribe to Ed Week to get the article (maybe Vicky S can pull it)
Check this out:
While most parents did not report that homework got in the way of family life, a sizable group did have concerns about the quality of their children’s homework assignments. Forty percent said a great deal of the homework their children do is busywork, and one-third rate the quality of their children’s assignments as fair or poor.
“That’s a signal to our educators that they need to do more parent education in this realm,” said Mary Brabeck, the dean of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University in New York City. “We also need to do more to improve what’s done in these assignments.”
Survey on Homework Reveals Acceptance, Despite Some Gripes
You see this everywhere: the word "educate" used to mean "convince people we're right and they're wrong."
This is the dean of the NYU ed school speaking.
"Education," for ed schools, is political in almost every sense of the word.
It's not just about "social justice," a political concept. It's about ed schools winning their side of the argument.
Ed schools will educate us until we back off and stop complaining.
Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. If only parents understood Everyday Mathematics, they would support it. Ergo, let's hold a math night and educate the parents. If only parents understood balanced literacy, they wouldn't worry that their child isn't reading well in first grade. Let's hold a twenty-first century literacy event and convince parents that we know what we're doing. We're preparing their children for the brave, new world. This is exactly how my district handles things.
Parents, it would seem, have no idea on earth what they're talking about.
[looks like there's a renegade ed school at Hunter College]
That's because David Steiner is dean of ed.
Remember Steiner when he was at BU and did a major study of ed schools? He found that the assigned reading materials are extremely skewed.
Steiner writing in Ed Next:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3252116.html
In the domain of foundations of education, the books most often required by the programs we reviewed were authored by Anita Woolfolk, Jonathan Kozol, Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire, Joel Spring, Howard Gardner, and John Dewey. Woolfolk’s work is a textbook in educational psychology, and one of Joel Spring’s volumes is a textbook in educational foundations. The rest are well-known works that embrace a constructivist and/or progressive standpoint. Conspicuously absent from almost all such syllabi were works that took a very different approach to teaching, such as those by E. D. Hirsch or Diane Ravitch. (We found Hirsch on two syllabi, Ravitch on just one.) Equality of education is a central theme of these courses, as evident from the included authors. Nonetheless, not one of the foundations courses, in the 15 schools of education for which we had complete data sets for that domain, asked students to read The Black-White Test Score Gap, at the time of our review arguably the leading collection of scholarly writings on that subject. We also noted that eight of the programs of teacher certification we reviewed did not cover either the philosophy or the history of education among the courses required for certification.
In our review of the courses in the teaching of reading, we followed the same approach. Here, however, we could draw on the findings of the National Reading Panel (NRP) and the National Research Council (NRC) to determine what was missing from the syllabi. Although recent research on reading is incorporated into some programs, work by Louisa Moats, Jeanne Chall, and Marilyn Adams—whose books and articles have been referenced frequently and used to support conclusions by the NRP and NRC—is rarely required. Analyzing the assignments and assessments listed in the syllabi, we also noted how rarely students were required to demonstrate competence in teaching reading skills and strategies. They were infrequently asked to demonstrate knowledge through presenting a lesson on critical reading skills in class or through taking a quiz or test.
This is the question I have after learning that my local school board just voted to adopt EM. Apparently it was recommended by the "Elementary Math Committee" but I've been unable to find out ANY additional information- not even who was on this math committee.
The changes in math in my district (upstate NY, commuting distance to NYC) are coming from all parties except the teacher's union. The Superintendent and Board are constantly pressuring the principals to increase state test scores. This resulted in the 2005 change in state math objectives reaching us in 2008. The state's consequences for failing AYP for a few years in a row have helped too...the appropriate head was rolled, which lit a fire under the remaining principals. It also resulted in mandated remediation in the form of double period math classes in Gr. 7 - 8 for those scoring a '2' or '1'the previous year and for high schoolers who failed the 8th grade state math test, the Regents Math A exam or the Regents Math B exam.
One change resulting from parental complaints is that the teachers have to teach. Past practice in Gr. 5-8 was typically either 1) spend the period working a few examples as the children watched silently,then send the kids home with a problem set leaving the tutor to explain the concept and algorithm 2) spend half the period having students silently copy notes off the board, then work an example, send students home to figure out from the notes or tutor what the teacher was doing. Present procedure is for all the teachers to explain the lesson in both words and diagrams (consistent with part III of Gr. 3-8 math tests) and solicit feedback from the student regarding understanding...work problems at board, play games, check homework for more than scribbles etc. In the past, only the competent did these type of lessons...my guess is that the test scores showed they were effective and the principals have gone with this approach.
Also, from the parents and the m.s. principal, is the 'no suprises' thinking. Parents don't want suprise poor grades or summer school, and principals don't want surprise poor test scores. Principals have decided that teachers will be held accountable for student learning..teachers must notice when a child has failed to grasp a concept and provide intervention..before the student fails the course totally. It is no longer the student's responsibility to figure out that he needs help. RtI is pushed by the state, and is being used.
Note: we have no curriculum that has to be used. The grade level teams use their team planning time to figure out what resources they wish to use to get the lessons across so that the state objectives are covered. At no time have my kids ever been assigned to read a math lesson explanation in a text (Gr. K-8 so far). Texts are only used for problem sets here occasionally.
"Apparently it was recommended by the "Elementary Math Committee" but I've been unable to find out ANY additional information- not even who was on this math committee."
The school board decided? Was it a school board committee that did the evaluation?
Our schools make the decision, and they avoid giving the groups an official name. I don't think there is any need for school committee (board) approval. I remember when they wanted to change from MathLand to something else. A teacher told me that "they" were talking about it and some wanted to go to TERC. I wanted to find out more about the process. It didn't happen and back then I didn't want to force the issue. I'm better now, but I have to be careful about how I do it. They ended up selecting Everyday Math.
At one time, they were going to have a Citizen's Curriculum Committee and I was going to be on it, but that never happened. It's their turf.
They know that people don't like Everyday Math, but they don't want to let parents even have a say in the selection process. They don't even offer to let a school committee member in on the process. The school committee is about money and peripheral things like healthy lunches.
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