Algebra textbooks....

My daughter just finished basically wasting 6th grade math. Due to Kumon, which she no longer takes, and general aptitude, she was ahead of most of the advanced 6th grade class, but unfortunately she (apparently) didn't test quite well enough to jump ahead a grade.

Leaving out details, the 2nd semester of 6th grade math was going to be more challanging. That didn't turn out to be the case. I won't go so far as to say she didn't learn anything, because she did, but she was a sponge ready to soak up whatever they would teach her and unfortunately there wasn't much for her to soak up.

This leaves me with the strategy of teaching her as much Algebra as I can over the summer and hoping that she can possibly skip a grade in math, or I will continue to teacher her as time allows during the school year.

So, this is a very long winded way of asking for suggestions for Algebra I textbooks. I was steered to this website by the 9th grade math teacher (former electrical engineer) but we were discussing worksheets, not textbooks. At anyrate, the book Introduction to Algebra look interesting, although it may be too difficult (complex numbers in an Introductory book?).

I'd like to hear your suggestions. Also I'll ask the school what textbook they're using for Algebra I, perhaps we should use that.

Thanks for your help.

I won't get into the school messing up and not testing her for Gifted and Talanted after she was sick the day they did the 1st testing. Now they say it's too late, even though we attempted to remind them multiple times. Uugh.

horse and dog

This one's very sweet:




horse and cat, too:




Of course, I don't have the nerve to watch the videos of "horse kicking dog," "horse killing cyclist," etc.

herd instinct

I found this posted at what looks like a terrific new horse blog: Equus Palaverous.

nonconsumers and the schools

The Crimson Avenger has another terrific post up about the permanent struggle to reform the public schools.

It seems to me that the education reform work of the past few decades has all focused on combat strategies. We “attack”, so to speak, by instituting new requirements – standards, assessments, etc. – and by pushing for new models of public schooling (charters).

But what we’ve seen is that our pushes have all been blunted, subverted, and ultimately used to reinforce the status quo. Set academic standards, and what was meant to be a baseline floor becomes a ceiling. Require assessments, and the cut scores are set so low that almost every school looks like a high performer. Insist on charters, and then allow the state department of education to act as the authorizing body, ensuring that nothing markedly different gets through. (And then reduce the funding those charters get just to make it interesting.)

[snip]

What if we stopped trying to fight? What if we realized that we can’t reform a monopoly from the outside, and that there’s no incentive to do it from the inside? What if we tried a different approach?

What if we shifted our focus to a war of attrition?

Imagine what would happen if we stopped trying to reform the system, and instead just said, “Clearly, we have different ideas about education. So we’re dropping out. If there are parents who want what you offer, that’s fine. I don’t, so I’m sending my kid elsewhere – which means you won’t be seeing the money he represents any more.”

I personally have reached the conclusion that the system can't be reformed. I say "personally" because I'm not sure I'm right, though I think I probably am. The schools aren't going to change. Individual schools, yes. But the system? No. I don't see it happening.

I had this revelation as the result of an email exchange with a longtime veteran of the schools here. She made me see the reality of what Crimson is saying: when parents have "won" -- when the programs parents put weeks, months, and years of their lives into making happen finally happened -- they weren't what parents had worked for.

They were something else.

Exhibit A: foreign language instruction in the grade school. A group of parents here spent 8 years lobbying for foreign language instruction in K-5.

The administration, backed by the school board, blocked them all the way.

Ultimately, though, the parents prevailed, and foreign language instruction was "implemented" in grades 4-5.

What did that mean?

That meant French and Spanish were both taught to all kids: French one semester, Spanish the next. Or vice versa. Your child couldn't take just one language and develop proficiency. He had to take one language for half the school year and then drop that language and start taking a whole other language the next semester, pretty much guaranteeing he would retain neither.

Also, the school didn't teach spoken French or Spanish. There were no language labs, no language CDs, no use of the school laptops to help kids acquire a native accent before the window closed at puberty a year or two later.

The school didn't teach very much in the way of French or Spanish vocabulary or grammer, either (this wasn't the teachers' fault). Instead, the school taught "the culture." Songs, cooking projects, things of that nature.

That was the beginning, and the district has been chipping away at the program ever since. This year they may be down to just one day of foreign language culture instruction a week.

Now the town is asked to vote in an 8% tax increase which will go, in part, to funding "enhancements" to the program.

Meanwhile there probably isn't a parent in town who does not want real foreign language instruction offered in K-3, but the school isn't going to be teaching foreign language in the early grades. It's out of the question.

Well, it's not quite out of the question. The superintendent says she wants to offer Chinese. A regular 21st century language, Chinese.

That's not going to happen.

The Avenger is right. The public can't win, and whenever the public does win, the win ends up being a loss. Another one.

That's why I was blown away when I read this prediction at the new Fordham blog, Flypaper:

[B]y 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught online.

How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

from the article in Education Week:

Clayton M. Christensen, the book’s lead author and a business professor at Harvard University, is well respected in the business world for his best-sellers The Innovator’s Dilemma, published in 1997, and The Innovator’s Solution, published in 2003.

Those books analyze why leading companies in various industries—computers, electronics, retail, and others—were knocked off by upstarts that were better able to take advantage of innovations based on new technology and changing conditions.

School organizations are similarly vulnerable, Mr. Christensen contends.
“The schools as they are now structured cannot do it,” he said in an interview, referring to adapting successfully to coming computer-based innovations. “Even the best managers in the world, if they were heads of departments in schools and the administrators of schools, could not do it.”

Under Mr. Christensen’s analytical model, the tables typically turn in an industry even when the dominant companies are well aware of a disruptive innovation and try to use it to transform themselves.

[snip]

With the advent of new technologies, companies usually resort to “cramming down” the innovations onto their existing systems, an approach that generates only incremental improvement, he says.

Upstart organizations—though they cannot at first compete head to head with the leaders—find markets for innovative products and services among “nonconsuming” groups who are are priced out of the main market or are seen as peripheral by the leaders. The nonconsuming groups embrace the innovations, which gradually improve until they are better than the top products—and sweep to dominance, according to the book.

[snip]

Like the leaders in other industries, the education establishment has crammed down technology onto its existing architecture, which is dominated by the “monolithic” processes of textbook creation and adoption, teaching practices and training, and standardized assessment—which, despite some efforts at individualization, by and large treat students the same, the book says.

But new providers are stepping forward to serve students that mainline education does not serve, or serve well, the authors write. Those students, which the book describes as K-12 education’s version of “nonconsumers,” include those lacking access to Advanced Placement courses, needing alternatives to standard classroom instruction, homebound or home-schooled students, those needing to make up course credits to graduate—and even prekindergarten children.

[snip]

Those providers will gradually improve their tools to offer instruction that is more student-centered, in part by breaking courses into modules that can be recombined specifically for each student, the authors predict.

Such providers’ approaches, the authors argue, will also become more affordable, and they will start attracting more and more students from regular schools.

Mr. Christensen and his co-authors apply an S-shaped curve, accepted in the business-research literature as a mathematical model of disruptive change in industry, to data from 2000 to 2007 to predict that by 2019, online learning will account for 50 percent of high school course enrollments.

The prediction is based on current projections of the supply of qualified teachers and of the costs of traditional and computer-based learning. “As long as that ratio stays the same, we’ll see that happen,” Mr. Christensen said. “Who knows if it is 2019, 2017, or 2020, but sometime around there, it should hit 50 percent.”

[snip]

He underscored that the book does not aim to frighten school leaders, but to urge them to treat the approaching changes as an opportunity rather than a threat.

“If they will set up heavyweight teams and create the new architecture for the curriculum in a new space—so they have a school within a school, or a different school underneath the umbrella of the district—at that level the school can truly transform itself,” he said.

Online Education Cast as 'Disruptive Innovation'
by Andrew Totter
Education Week
Vol. 27, Issue 36, Pages 1,12-13

I find Christensen's argument utterly compelling.

nonconsumers

Look at the pitch for K12:

James is reading over 130 wpm and is only a second grader.

Sophie’s brain seems to have undergone somewhat of a mental explosion.

I hope you go to bed each and every night knowing what a HUGE difference your work makes for some of these precious children.

Both girls are superior cognitive gifted. The private school taught to the middle. Now, both children are able to work at their own pace.

No more phone calls from the school to tell me how Bruce “didn’t get anything done today.” No more wasted days where Bruce just killed time at the school.

She was getting C’s and D’s at her public school and was being bullied. She entered last year, two years behind. In one year she completed two math courses 100%.

The other day my son said, “You know mom, three years ago I thought I was dead fish on the wayside of the beach and now I feel like I am an eagle in the sky looking down and know I can soar.

That's a whole lot of nonconsumers ripe for the plucking.

And check out Bror's Blog: Middle School Changes Afoot in the Brick and Mortar World.

Brick and mortar world.

Sounds creepy. Makes me feel like enrolling my kid in the wholesome high-tech online learning world where I can keep an eye on him.

I'm serious. The K12 pitch works for me. Really works. This is some of the most effective advertising I've ever seen, possibly because I am, relatively speaking, a nonconsumer who's just been alerted to a whole new world of possible fun consumption. A nonconsumer being captured by a disruptive innovator.

Here's the high school pitch. It works, too. Sign me up!

Of course, part of what makes this material so effective is the fact that it's a pitch at all.


don't try this at home

Let's watch what happens as a nonconsumer begins the process of becoming a consumer:

find your path

vs.

"If students need distributed practice, parents can find worksheets online."

Oh, and here's Bror.

why you shouldn't throw paperclips

glumbert - Why You Shouldn't Throw Paperclips...

I am still revising 24/7, still off email, and still off kitchen table math.^**

I have not put together a National Geographic jigsaw puzzle in weeks.

I really can't say how I ended up at Glumbert just now.^** (Be sure to read the comments. I'm glad I did.)

Question: do I need a 30-dollar book on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Adult ADHD?

Don't answer that.


^* I've cut back.

^** Susan S, email purveyor of things Glumbert, has a lot to answer for. A whole lot.

the good old days

The Public Schools 1957 and 2007

Scenario : Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

A French sociologist of education spoke at the Institute of French Studies saying the same thing has happened in France. I wish I could remember the details. As I recall, the sociologist said that the kinds of things parents handled back in the day - things like fights, bloody noses, and black eyes - were now, in France, resulting in the police being called to the school.

His point was that the sight of policemen entering a public school is extremely damaging. The very fact of their presence undermines the authority of teacher, principal, and parent; it conveys the message: this behavior is so bad no teacher, principal, or parent can possibly cope.

More fights and more trouble ensue.^*

Of course, all of this is he** on boys.

Although I have a theory it's no good for girls, either.


^* I think that was part of the argument. I can't fact-check this post, so take it with a grain of salt.

Any questions about autism?

I'm off, tonight, to London, to the International Conference for Autism Research, where my collaborator and I will be presenting a poster on computerized grammar instruction.

Lots of interesting talks, from neurology, to treatment, to vaccines.

If you have a burning question about autism that you'd like me to try to seek answers to at the conference, please post it here at Out In Left Field.

Education reform: battle or attrition?

According to strategists like Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, there are two basic ways to win a war: you can either defeat your opponent militarily, or you can starve them by cutting off their resources.

Is there a lesson here for folks in education reform? I think there is.

It seems to me that the education reform work of the past few decades has all focused on combat strategies. We “attack”, so to speak, by instituting new requirements – standards, assessments, etc. – and by pushing for new models of public schooling (charters).

But what we’ve seen is that our pushes have all been blunted, subverted, and ultimately used to reinforce the status quo. Set academic standards, and what was meant to be a baseline floor becomes a ceiling. Require assessments, and the cut scores are set so low that almost every school looks like a high performer. Insist on charters, and then allow the state department of education to act as the authorizing body, ensuring that nothing markedly different gets through. (And then reduce the funding those charters get just to make it interesting.)

We see all of our work come to naught – all the while pumping ever-greater levels of money into the system.

What if we stopped trying to fight? What if we realized that we can’t reform a monopoly from the outside, and that there’s no incentive to do it from the inside? What if we tried a different approach?

What if we shifted our focus to a war of attrition?

Imagine what would happen if we stopped trying to reform the system, and instead just said, “Clearly, we have different ideas about education. So we’re dropping out. If there are parents who want what you offer, that’s fine. I don’t, so I’m sending my kid elsewhere – which means you won’t be seeing the money he represents any more.”

Granted, this already happens to an extent: homeschooling and private schooling pull around 10% of school-aged kids out of the public system, and have for some time. But what if we boosted that number to 20%, 30%, 50%, or higher?

Of course, not everyone is cut out for home schooling, nor can everyone pay the often-high cost of private schooling. What we need is our own Henry Ford – someone who can tap a great public need by revolutionizing an industry, providing a quality product at a price that makes it accessible to a much broader market.

Can some entrepreneur out there come up with a way to provide a solid education for $300 a month – the equivalent of a car payment? Surely at that price you’d peel a lot more kids off the public system.

And if that were to happen – if you were to substantially reduce the funds flowing into public education, thereby reducing its size and influence, while at the same time showing what’s possible at a markedly lower cost – I expect that you’d start to see the kind of reform of the system that most of us have only wished for.

Is that right? And where’s the revolutionary model that produces solid results at a market-friendly price?

back to the future

Still working around the clock; still off email -- hope to be back tomorrow -- !

In the meantime, here is today's nugget:

The revival of the progressive notion that inquiry, discovery, and ‘higher order’ thinking skills should guide instruction emerged from many sources in the 1950s and 1960s. Arthur Bestor’s call for the restoration of the liberal arts and higher standards for everyone had horrified most professors of education.

America's Public Schools: From the Common School to No Child Left Behind
by William J. Reese