Posts
Programs like the Grassroots Cafe, J-term and Be a Buddy, Not a Bully! have earned Malcolm Price Laboratory School a national award designed to honor schools that educate the whole child.
The school recently won the first-ever Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award, created to recognize schools that "move beyond a narrow focus on academic achievement to take action for the whole child, creating learners who are knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, civically active, artistically engaged, prepared for economic self-sufficiency and ready for the world beyond formal schooling." The award was given by ASCD, a nonprofit, worldwide education organization, which boasts more than 170,000 members in 136 countries.
PLS Wins National Education Award
cooking in Spanish class
While PLS 6th graders are cooking in Spanish class, kids in Singapore are learning math.
20 comments:
As a UNI grad who studied at Price Lab, I thought I'd assure you that the kids are doing just fine in core subjects. According to the ASCD press release:
"PLS is seeing the results of its comprehensive, coordinated whole child approach. It has a perfect graduation rate, and 97 percent of its graduates enroll in two- or four-year colleges. Its students rank second in the state for college freshmen grades earned in the most advanced courses. When compared to high school graduates from other Iowa schools, graduates from Price Laboratory School rank among the top 10 percent for overall GPA for college freshmen courses."
This is interesting.
"It has a perfect graduation rate, and 97 percent of its graduates enroll in two- or four-year colleges. Its students rank second in the state for college freshmen grades earned in the most advanced courses. When compared to high school graduates from other Iowa schools, graduates from Price Laboratory School rank among the top 10 percent for overall GPA for college freshmen courses."
Is there a original source that shows the data for this claim?
PLS looks like a charter school, but are students selected by lottery? They have a tuition-in fee schedule, which seems appropriate only if the lottery does not provide enough kids to fill the school. What is the cost per student for the school?
So, the obvious first questions are;
1. Are these just average kids from the community?
2. As a laboratory school, are they controlling the cost variable?
3. What, exactly, do those claims mean?
It's obvious that the goal of the school is to validate their beliefs about teaching the whole child and project-based learning. Obviously, one can't take their claims on face value. So, is there really something to this, or is it just a matter of trying harder with a carefully pre-selected group of kids?
One of the fundamental problems of public education is the need to teach all students. It is a common practice to dismiss private schools on the basis that the kids are all pre-selected. Even though charter schools are supposed to use lotteries, there is a certain amount of pre-selection going on. The parents have to care enough to apply and get their kids to and from the school. Are there other academic requirements to remain a student at the school? Do they use full inclusion?
In some ways, this solves a huge problem of public schools; they can't or won't separate kids who care from kids who don't care. It seems like a school would have a big adantage with just this one change. However, it's also clear that many charter schools stink anyways.
So, has PLS figured out something related to whole child learning and project-based learning that we have missed? I would like to see exactly what is going on.
"The Laboratory School serves as an attendance center of more than 375 students living within the Cedar Falls/Waterloo metro area."
375 for PK through high school? Looking at the list of teachers, this would indicate that the teacher:student ratio is extremely high, but it's not clear if the teachers are assigned full or part time to the school
It's also not clear what the average credentials are for the teachers. One of the common claims is that "all we need are good teachers". Is PLS a reflection of that idea, or is it really the whole child and project-based learning that makes the difference?
Generally, the argument goes: If you don't like the curriculum, then that's the problem. If you like the curriculum, then it all about teacher training.
It's clear that by using better trained teachers in a small (somewhat selective?) teaching environment, you can get some major improvements just by having teachers take more responsibility for ensuring that learning gets done. Throwing Singapore Math into our schools won't get more kids to know their times table in 5th grade unless the school and teachers change their attitudes.
So how much of the improvement is due to the small school environment and teacher effort, and how much is due to whole child and project-based learning concepts? Since it is a "laboratory", don't you think they would want to vary the curriculum and look for improvements?
Somehow, I doubt that's the purpose of their laboratory.
In linking through to the teachers' web sites, it appears that they use Everyday Math, followed by CMP, with Core-Plus for high school. (Did you expect anything else?) I didn't see any option for a real algebra course in 8th grade.
In high school, there is only Core-Plus. So, it's not just about teaching the whole child and project-based learning towards the same goal, it's a different goal. It's the same issue in science.
It's clear that when they talk about the "whole child" and "project-based leraning", a major component is a different curriculum. There are no AP courses in their high school. So how does this match up with the needs of college and the claim:
"Its students rank second in the state for college freshmen grades earned in the most advanced courses."
Does Iowa track college freshman grades by high school and by course? Is there a web site with this information? I want to know what the "most advanced courses" are. This must be defined somewhere or else they couldn't make this claim.
Could it be that kids from other high schools skip over these advanced courses because they have taken AP classes? Or, could it be that many more of these other students are going to colleges out of state?
It's clear that this is no laboratory. It's a validation center. They have no interest in testing any other educational ideas.
I could make Everyday Math work, but I could also make Singapore Math work better. Are their methods transferable to other schools? Are they limiting or slowing down kids at the top end becuase their curriculum is not as rigorous? How valid is their claim of "the most advanced courses"?
It's one thing to teach better to improve a low average, but quite another to keep all educational doors open.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the kids in this school are very likely to be faculty/senior admin kids. That was true at the lab school(don't know if it had HS, but went through 8th) at the University of Wyoming, when I was acquainted with one set of parents) and I have the impression that it was also true of the lab preschool where Englemann piloted DI. One of his associates had a child in the program. It was also true of the lab preschool at the university I attended.
I don't know the answers to all of your questions ( I live in Des Moines not Cedar Falls/ Waterloo). I know that free tuition is only for students that live in a certain area. Everyone else is supposed to pay tuition. There was a recent scandal that people (including an elected official) were using false addresses to avoid tuition.
The school also recieves extra money from the state. They also have small class sizes.
When it comes to advanced classes, the local school districts aren't very good about offering AP classes, especially compared to the East Coast. There are a few exceptions: Central Academy in Des Moinnes, Valley in WDM, two of Cedar Rapids High Schools and maybe a few others. One of the larger suburbs in the Des Moines area recently signed an agreement with UNI (were the lab school is located) to offer algebra based and calculus based physics via distance ed. I guess instead of offering AP or working with Iowa State which is much nearer?
I really don't think most of Iowa gets advanced high school classes.
Here is the really scary thing about the Price Lab School. UNI is the old Normal school. It has the major teacher prep. program in Iowa. This means that the majority of new teachers in Iowa will expect schools to use Everyday Math, CMP and Core Plus.
I know understand why districts are starting to adopt Everyday Math. I'm going to have to see if the middle school and high schools are changing as well.
I was only hoping to reassure readers that Price Lab had a strong academic focus along with "cooking in Spanish class." I didn't mean to imply anything else about the school!
As the "Laboratory" title suggests, this is a school run by the University of Northern Iowa, which itself (as the former Iowa State Teachers College) has a long history of a strong education program. The teachers at the school are employed as university faculty, and it's not uncommon for some to teach a university-level course along with their other duties.
SteveH, you were wise to question the selection of the students. The school seeks to choose a representative sample of the population, including 25% minorities, but the combination of applications for enrollment and fees/tuition means there is still plenty of self-selection going on. For that reason alone, I think ASCD would have been wiser to choose a purely public school.
Every education major at UNI spends time at Price Lab, and when I made my first visit the teacher clearly identified which ideas they were testing, piloting, evaluating, etc. There is a healthy amount of experimentation going on within the school, but the "laboratory" label has more to do with the school's association with the university, not the practice it has with students.
As for higher-level math courses, I think it's still common for Iowa high schools to send students to a local college under the post-secondary enrollment options act instead of running their own AP program. Given that Price Lab is located on the same campus as a university, it's not surprising that students ready for college-level material simply walk a few blocks to take college classes.
PLS represents the circumstances of very few schools across the country, and while that might not make them a good choice for the award, they are an example of what can happen when people with shared beliefs and goals combine in a common purpose. There's a lot to be said for a harmonious educational environment - Price Lab may not use a curriculum you agree with, but they believe in it and that belief helps make it work. For the same reason, Saxon is more likely to work better in the hands of some of the readers of this blog than it would at Price Lab.
The Bereiter-Engelmann preschool was not a “lab school” with university faculty kids, etc. The experimental group consisted entirely of low-income kids from the projects. There were, however, two middle-class control groups, one from a nearby Montessori preschool that did not use any DI-type programming, and one which received DI programming (like the experimental group) for ½ day for one academic year. I have the exact specs in an article Bereiter and Engelmann published in the early 70’s, complete with data tables.. It’s possible one of the instructors in the preschool project had a child in the program in the “middle class” group (I can find out) but it may be that the reference is to the fact that Engelmann tested out some of his programs as he wrote them on his own young children (who were not included in either the experimental or control groups).
What made the Bereiter-Engelmann results so outstanding is precisely that they were obtained with low-SES, below-average-IQ minority students, and that their academic skills at the end matched or exceeded those of the Montressori preschool control group. Engelmann and Bereiter are careful to point out, however, that this did not mean that all the language gap between the experimental and Montessori controls was closed, but that it was possible to get these children up to an average “middle class” level by first grade. Every child in the experimental group was performing at an average or better level in reading and math and scored above IQ 100 on the Stanford-Binet. Some gained much more than 1 SD.
Although no formal follow up was performed on these students, a number ended up completing secondary school and/or college and made successful lives for themselves – a statistically low-probability outcome for children from the housing project where they lived.
Engelmann did say that middle class kids took off like rockets with DI and he could see how it would turn average kids into “superstars,” relatively speaking. He elected to pursue developing programs and teaching protocols for low-income kids because he saw that as a real moral issue. I used some of the DI comprehension skills and writing programs with gifted elementary students and it did indeed accelerate their performance to an amazing extent.
the kids are doing just fine in core subjects
So are the kids in my district.
They are, however, 2 years behind their peers in Europe and Asia.
"...reassure readers that Price Lab had a strong academic focus ..."
If you've followed KTM at all, then this statement is not good enough. Everyday Math, CMP, and Core-Plus is not a strong academic sequence. In too many cases, the use of "strong" or "rigor" is relative and statistical, with the assumption that individual kids should be happy with that definition. They will keep hearing it over and over, yet will be unprepared to major in engineering in college.
"I think it's still common for Iowa high schools to send students to a local college under the post-secondary enrollment options act instead of running their own AP program."
I count at least 7 AP classes listed on the Cedar Falls High School web site. It could be that PLS students walk down the street to take real college classes, but I want to see the numbers who do. I can't imagine that many even start with calculus in college, let alone take an AP calculus class in high school.
" they are an example of what can happen when people with shared beliefs and goals combine in a common purpose. There's a lot to be said for a harmonious educational environment - Price Lab may not use a curriculum you agree with, but they believe in it and that belief helps make it work. "
Is that all they are saying? They never intend to claim that their curriculum and philosophy is "best educational practice"? What are they saying if all teachers have to get indoctrinated with such ideas. Does the educational system encourage Core Knowledge schools? Do the schools of education promote a wide variety of charter schools and full vouchers to allow parents to decide what is best for their individual children?
"For the same reason, Saxon is more likely to work better in the hands of some of the readers of this blog than it would at Price Lab."
Yes, and the results would be better. And schools of education have no interest in finding out if their fundamental assumptions about education are right or wrong. It would be one thing if this kind of education were an optional choice, but it isn't.
I want to see the detailed data that justifies the comments in the ASCD press release.
I want to see the detailed data that justifies the comments in the ASCD press release.
I second that.
Palisadesk; Thanks for the info on Englemann. That said, I'm pretty sure that I remember reading that his early work with DI had a middle-class (+) group that included a coworker's child and that group was not officially reported as part of a study, for that reason. I seem to remember that it was mentioned in one of his articles or interviews. I certainly don't argue with his philosophy or results. I just wish more schools would adopt the idea.
I feel bad because I slammed Iowa. Raymond Johnson is correct. Students do take classes at the local colleges and community colleges. My basic problem is that not enough students are encouraged to take advanced classes and there doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure on the school to change. The quality of the classes available at local colleges also probably varies.
University of Iowa's Belin-Blank International Center on Gifted Education compiles a list similar to Jay Matthews challenge index. Here is a link that explains it: http://www.iowaapindex.org/
Here is the actual list: http://www.iowaapindex.org/top50.html
Cedar Falls is pretty far down the list. It is 25 in the state with a score of .65 (number of tests taken/number of seniors).
For people that don't know Iowa, the two college towns are higher up as is the wealthier high school in the largest city and several high schools from the second largest city. Only one of the suburbs of the largest city is in the top half (and the majority of people with means now live in the suburbs).
Price Laboratory School student achievement data are not available--apparently they have fewer than ten students in every category. www.edinfo.state.ia.us/data/aprchart.asp?f1=1&f2=2&s=10449601&ch=2
Everyday Math and TERC Investigations are used in every school district in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area, as far as I can tell. Perhaps if we can believe in it more strongly, we will start seeing better results.
Everyday Math and TERC Investigations are used in every school district in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area, as far as I can tell. Perhaps if we can believe in it more strongly, we will start seeing better results.
lolllll ----
The school seems to be a wonderful school. On the other hand, what's it's effective teacher/student ratio?
25% minorities is, ironically enough, not representative of the population of the Cedar Falls school district, which according to Great Schools, is 88% white. (6% black, 3% Asian, and 2% Hispanic.) Although, the school's own website lists 25% drawn from "diverse cultural and ethnic minority groups," whatever that means.
Looking at the school's attendance zone, and the Google map of the University of Northern Iowa's campus, the student body is highly likely to contain many children related to university employees and graduate students. There's nothing wrong with that, but university towns are notorious for being Lake Woebegones on steroids.
On the special needs front, the enrollment application includes the statement, "Additional steps may be required to review applications if a child has special needs."
So, I have enormous problems with attributing the school's academic success to its curriculum. A school with this many demographic factors in its favor should post sterling results.
Genevieve, the Cedar Falls Comm School District's test scores beat the state average, on all tests listed on Great Schools. If the schools don't score well on the challenge index you cited, I don't think it's because the students can't do advanced work. Do the students who would otherwise sit in AP classes cross-enroll at UNI? Or maybe AP classes don't fit the community's values.
Post a Comment