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The film depicts the Indian and Chinese students as well-rounded and having much more parental support than the Americans. For example, Rohit sings in an American-style rock band, and Hu is learning the violin. Rohit's parents and sister routinely help him with his physics homework....
U.S. Schools: Not That Bad
by Vivek Wadhwa
Business Week May 28, 2008
Next fall, or a year after that at the latest, is the point where I get knocked out of the rink.
Until now I could figure out how to teach my kid what he wasn't learning in school. Which I have done. I've spent the past several years teaching myself math so I could re-teach math to C.
I can't do the same with high school chemistry and physics. Well, I could, but not in the time I've got.
A friend of ours, a physician, spent this year reteaching h.s. chemistry to his kid. Each and every night, he sat and taught chemistry. Worked all day, taught Honors chemistry all night.
I can't do that, and neither can Ed.
The homework gap is part of the achievement gap; at least, it is in my school district. Our family is about to experience the homework gap between us and the rest of the world.
How many families in this country have mothers and sisters who can help with physics homework? I don't know a single one.
bonus thought for the day: US Schools: Not That Bad doesn't cut it. Good enough isn't good enough. Not for a half trillion dollars a year.
The article is worth reading, btw. The author takes issue with Compton on a number of points. Comments are interesting, too.
20 comments:
"I can't do that, and neither can Ed."
But I'm sure you will maintain high expectations. You can be tough about expecting more from schools without giving C. an excuse. I think you've done the tough part and shown C. that hard work can overcome many problems. That's more important than anything.
I think you've done the tough part and shown C. that hard work can overcome many problems. That's more important than anything.
You know...I don't entirely agree.
If C. had stayed here for high school, he may not have been able to take the level of science & math courses he has the ability to do.
In fact, I know he wouldn't have been able to, because he'd already been tracked into "accelerated" geometry instead of Honors geometry. "Accelerated" means he would take geometry as a freshman. The kids in the class would be sophomores in the regular track, and I know enough about what's been going on in the regular track to be fairly sure that C. would be way out in front of these students.
So, going in to high school, he was going to be taking a math course pretty substantially below the level of what he could actually do with good teaching. (We could have contested the placement & I assume we could have had it changed ---- but then we'd be looking at hiring a tutor before he even got to the school.)
Before we realized we were leaving, we had laid plans to try to persuade friends to go in with us on hiring a separate teacher for physics & probably for chemistry and math, too. Our idea was that we'd have a small group of kids take a "shadow class" outside the high school.
I didn't have a lot of hope for this working out because our friends all have higher incomes than we do; they can afford to hire as many tutors as they need.
Also, the kids are in direct competition with each other for GPA in high school & I get the feeling that there isn't a lot of cooperation amongst parents, which may be rational given the system.
Realistically, we were looking at having to foot the entire bill for private instructors for much of C's math/science high school education.
Not to mention the "mental" cost of watching huge quantities of money we don't have go to tutors when our school is spending $25,000 per pupil.
Also, what I've learned from all the afterschooling I've done is that there are large opportunity costs.
The outcome of these 4 years is that C's math knowledge is decent for an American kid. For the past two years he's scored at the 90th percentile of the country on norm-referenced tests.
But that's not where he would be if his school had taught him at his "ZPD" (i.e. taught to his level, for folks who aren't familiar with the "zone of proximal development"). And we spent huge quantities of time, and blood, sweat, & tears, to get him where he is.
Point is: remediating your school through hard work teaches the value of hard work but it doesn't teach the subject matter very well.
The bad news: he can't write AT ALL. This is a kid with two writers for parents. I read the last paper he wrote for school and almost passed out. There wasn't a single paragraph. "I forgot to put paragraphs." It was like integers all over again: "I forgot the minus sign."
He had run-on sentences everywhere.
BUT HIS SPELLING WAS EXCELLENT! (Megawords rocks.)
If the school had taught him math effectively, we could have taught him how to write here at home. Ed did work with him on writing, but basically our time was eaten up by math, math, math (and, at one point, by Earth Science).
This is another "ZPD" issue. C. had a dedicated, hard-working socials studies teacher this year - probably one of the best teachers in the school - who spent a HUGE amount of time working on the kids' writing. Apparently the high school teachers can tell which students were in this teacher's class.
The problem is that 8th grade teachers are required to teach the kids how to write a research paper. They must do this; it's not an option.
But none of the kids is ready to write a research paper. They can't write paragraphs.
So: C. can't write.
Speaking of writing....all of K-12 is now obsessed with WRITING, and the wholistic approach to writing could be even more deadly than the wholistic approach to math.
The workshop approach starts with papers. Period. You're 5; you write a paper.
Then you revise!
Speaking of revising, that's what I'm supposed to be doing (yes, I DO need to hire a behaviorist)...
The point is: public school isn't working for us for all the reasons Paul describes.
We moved to a community that's too expensive for us to live in because we thought rich suburban schools were the equivalent of private schools paid for by public money.
They're not.
C. has got to get to a school that teaches him at his level -- or at least has a commitment to doing so.
"I can't do that, and neither can Ed."
But you'll be paying $XX,000 per year in tuition, on top of your $YY,000 per year in school taxes that you were already paying, so that you won't have to.
If, after paying $XX,000, you still have to afterschool C., then you should contact the school and request a tutor -- or demand your money back as a last resort.
It's okay for C. to know more math and science than you do. I have a feeling you would be delirious if he got into a good engineering school.
"You know...I don't entirely agree."
Well, I guess I don't either, on second thought, but there are limits to how far I'll go for opportunity. Do I try to get S. (not named after me) into Phillips Andover? A friend of mine has one of her kids going there. Next stop, Harvard, where she went to college.
One of the subtle issues that came up with our change from private school back to public school was the idea of programmed versus non-programmed. S. didn't like to be programmed from morning to night. Required sports, required volunteering, required everything. "OK, what's next?" was a common phrase. It all headed towards the huge angst of SSAT and applying to the fancy prep school. (The 8th grade graduation program said where each of the graduates was headed.) Then off he would go to another school loaded with type 'A' personalities where everything is programmed. We want S. to become programmed internally rather than externally. If he really wants to go to something like a performing arts high school, it will be because he really wants to do it. Well, that's the theory.
We also wanted to keep him local, because we could make it work. I suppose that's the key. We can make it work. The question is whether we can make high school work. I can deal with chemistry if I have to, but I'm assuming that there are no bigger issues than sink or swim. Our goal is to survive K-12 and look for the big opportunities at the college level. I just have to make sure he is prepared for those opportunities.
"a half trillion dollars a year"
That reminds me, our local school district has just released its budget figures for next year.
Sit down for this one.
One point six billion-with-a-B dollars.
That's about the same as the GDP of an island nation such as Cape Verde, the Maldives, or the Virgin Islands; more than the GDP of Liberia.
"I can't do the same with high school chemistry and physics. Well, I could, but not in the time I've got."
You don't really have to teach him anything, with all the available online resources. Have you looked into online courses and cyberschools available to homeschoolers? There's K12, Calvert, and Oak Meadow, for starters, and for gifted kids there's EPGY (through Stanford) and CTY (through Johns Hopkins).
I can't do the same with high school chemistry and physics.
I'm sure you won't have too, at least in the total re-teach mode you've been in to date.
BTW in the Catholic High Schools here (and even the K-8s) the better students in the upper grades are available to tutor the younger or struggling students, either for baby-sitting level wages or for service hours.
Your comments about writing are interesting. That may be where C is going to have some remedial work to do, based on the amount of grammar I've seen taught in parochial elementary school.
If, after paying $XX,000, you still have to afterschool C., then you should contact the school and request a tutor -- or demand your money back as a last resort.
Hah!
Not bloody likely.
If C. needs a tutor in high school, we'll be taking out a loan and hiring a tutor.
BTW in the Catholic High Schools here (and even the K-8s) the better students in the upper grades are available to tutor the younger or struggling students, either for baby-sitting level wages or for service hours.
My LA friend told me that!!
I'll tell you, I am a HUGE proponent of "peer-tutoring" at this point (mostly because of a set of twins I know who teach each other EVERYTHING. Those two are smart kids, but they also TEACH EACH OTHER EVERYTHING).
Our high school here has a fair amount of peer tutoring available, but I can't tell how well it's going.... ??
Parents still seem to hire private teachers for science & math.
The high school here also has some EXCELLENT, common sense rules such as a requirement that kids playing team sports attend a study hall where they do their homework before practice. (At least, I think they have this rule -- a friend of C's told me about it. I couldn't tell whether this is a universal requirement or whether they enforce the rule for kids in danger of losing their place on the team...in any case, it's a good rule.)
The high school is probably a good school - BUT I'm hearing way too much discussion of tutors in math & science.
And I hear nothing about the district (and I do mean the district as opposed to a particular school in the district) being committed to providing effective classroom instruction.
The entire district is based on Extra Help and tutoring.
"Extra Help" is so fundamental to the functioning of the district that it's pretty much seen as a sign of quality. "We're a great school because our teachers are available for Extra Help."
S. didn't like to be programmed from morning to night. Required sports, required volunteering, required everything.
Absolutely.
The problem for us is that a lot of the high school kids here are "programmed" -- they're working around the clock. (I'm not criticizing that, btw....just describing it.)
Basically, our dilemma was that C. would be facing 12 to 18-hour days and STILL be struggling in math/science (and in writing papers) and not learning what he could be learning if he weren't struggling, etc.
Apparently the new school massively piles on the work freshman year --- but is less crazy for the next 3 years ??
I don't know quite why that would be, but that's what one dad told a friend of mine.
In any case, if C is going to have 12-hour days, then I want him to have the best instruction possible with the least reliance on Extra Help & tutoring possible.
You don't really have to teach him anything, with all the available online resources.
Online courses don't work as Extra Help!!!
They absolutely don't.
It is SO frustrating.
New York state doesn't allow parents to homeschool just one subject. You either pull your kid out of school & homeschool everything, or you stay in your public school and your kids take everything there.
It is absolutely impossible to remediate a course that's not going well using an online course, no matter how good it is. When you have to remediate your local course, you're constantly putting out fires. There is NO time for your kid to learn each topic step by step with the online course.
This is part of what I mean when I mention overwork combined with "struggle."
You put far more hours into trying to rescue a badly-taught course for your kid (or the kid puts in the time - in h.s. a lot of the kids start providing this service for themselves) than you do when the course is taught well in the first place.
It's okay for C. to know more math and science than you do.
One year from now he BETTER know more math and science than I do.
Google Master - what's your per pupil spending up to?
That may be where C is going to have some remedial work to do, based on the amount of grammar I've seen taught in parochial elementary school.
oh yeah.....
Yup, that's what I'm expecting.
Actually, his grammar is probably OK (he tested well on ITBS) -- though why on earth I'm seeing run-on sentences, I don't know.
But he has no idea how to write a paper.
I'm pretty sure he hasn't mastered paragraphs.
The situation with writing instruction really is a scandal.
My district has a fancy new writing program called "Assured Writing Experiences."
Turns out what Assured Writing Experiences means is that every student is "Assured" of having been given X number of writing assignments in X number of writing genres (narrative, expository, etc.)
If your kid can't write a paragraph, tant pis. He's Assured of having the opportunity to write an array of papers without paragraphs.
I wonder if there's a disruptive technology niche for teachers who reteach whole classes.
I know two different districts where parents automatically hire private teachers when they find out their h.s. kid has been assigned to a particular Earth science teacher. (Neither district is mine - these are two other "high performing" districts in Westchester County.)
Suppose you went into business as a teacher who can "shadow" the Regents course your child is forced to take in his own district....
Or suppose you set up as the middleman who puts together parents with private teachers.
I've always found that when kids are struggling with a particular math concept, the concept isn't at the root of the struggle. There's something else going on. It might be a misconception regarding some precedent concept. Or, it might just be that some precedent work was never mastered.
The child's short term memory get's overwhelmed searching for connections that aren't there in these cases and the concept never makes it through the eye of the needle (short term memory) into permanent mastery (long term memory). Good tutoring is able to diagnose these things, fix them, and then go back to the lesson at hand with higher chance of success.
Typical classroom and school organizations have no formal way to get this done. If you try something supplemental, like an online course it's likely not able to do the diagnosis any better than what's happening in the classroom because it's just reteaching the same confusion.
I think there is room for a disruptive innovation (I'm trying to build one) but it has to be one that combines the best traits of tutoring (the analytical hunt for root cause) with the best traits of presentation (think advertising as a model) and relentless search for individual ZPD all delivered in DI packaging.
My model is for a hybrid learning system; some online, some personal. It has no grade levels and it has no classrooms. In order to be disruptive it has to start as supplemental. This means it's not a 'school' so you don't have to answer to anyone but customers, the kids.
Online teaching 1.0 just replicates all the mistakes being made in classrooms. Online teaching 2.0 is a whole new beast and it's underway in higher ed, on the way to high schools and really big internationally (remember the Swedish model posting).
>>I'm pretty sure he hasn't mastered paragraphs.
My son missed this too; low expectations teacher that year.
This site was helpful to my son. He had had plenty of instruction on the parts of a paragraph, but nothing on how to form an argument or support/elaborate on a point.
http://www.essaytoday.com/paragraph_structure.shtml
This fellow has a fantastic collection of internet aids for English skills: http://www.bismarck.k12.mo.us/English/skinner/Classes/7th.html
This one has daily paragraph prompts:
http://www.geocities.com/jhwayne/
>>But he has no idea how to write a paper.
My son is so top down in learning that by the time his teacher was done explaining all the different parts of the paper, he had lost sight of the original goal.
We used Fearless Writing's Essay Guide and Research Paper Guide for Middle Schoolers, since the school had no reference text. Both are from Barnes and Noble, $8 each.
The very best thing I did was to show my son how some five paragraph essays were built:
http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/English/essay/table.html
and
http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/essay/index.html
then, the social studies dbq anchor papers which are on the NY state website. These were enough to solidify the instruction and get him to realize how to effectively go quickly from a collection of facts to an interpretation & thesis statement, then writing an essay. Once that lightbulb is on, the papers are no trouble.
Same problem here. I have to intervene with various writing assignments at least 2 or 3 times a year. Then, we have to do remedial work over the summer to correct bad habits formed over the year.
Thanks for the great links, lgm.
SusanS
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