The report also included a finding that in every country surveyed, girls read better than boys — a gap that has widened since 2000. Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.
Western Nations React to Poor Education Results
By D.D. GUTTENPLAN
Published: December 8, 2010
I believe it.
Educated parents with the money to hire tutors can go a ways towards mitigating the effects of bad curricula and teaching.
I've seen that for years in my district.
I'm curious about the reading gap in countries with highly phonetic languages.
Yes, you are right, but in our times, money means power so...........
ReplyDeleteBritish Minister of Education, Michael Gove said, "We need to learn from the best-performing countries. Other regions and nations have succeeded in closing the gap and in raising attainment for all students at the same time. They have made opportunity more equal, democratized access to knowledge and placed an uncompromising emphasis on higher standards all at the same time.”
ReplyDeleteI'm really tired of hearing in the US that other countries are different, or that they cherry pick the students that take the test, or that they value education more, or whatever. It's all just excuses designed to take people's eyes off the fact that the US does not do a very good job of educating our students. Michael Gove hit the nail squarely -- democratic nations see achievement gains for all students -- look at Estonia and Finland. They could be our models if we stopped denying any problem exists.
This UK RRF newsletter article explains 'the reading gap'
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rrf.org.uk/archive.php?n_ID=117&n_issueNumber=51
We, at Sounds-Write in the UK, have been testing the children taught using our programme throughout Key Stage 1 (i.e. from age four years to seven years three months, on average).
ReplyDeleteOur results show that while some boys are slightly behind at age five, they quickly catch up by age seven.
Our report to schools taking part in action research includes over one thousand five hundred pupils, tracked (in spelling) over the first three years of their schooling.
You'll find the full report at: http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/sounds_write_research_report_2009.pdf
Congratulations on your tireless campaigning for better teaching of maths.
Best wishes,
John Walker
Educated parents tend to make more money. And, since they tend to be educated themselves, one can assume that these parents also value their childrens' education.
ReplyDeleteTherefore... parents with money (aka "educated parents") tend to encourage their child to do well, they tend to be more involved in their childrens' schooling, they don't allow their children to become lazy in school, thry help with homework, they study with their kids, etc.
The question is - How does society get more parents to think like this?
Tim
from SuperTeacherWorksheets.com
Think like what, exactly?
ReplyDeleteThis is what I mentioned on the other thread. What, exactly, do people expect from parents? ... for what level? KTM is all about parents who think like this and more, but we still have to teach and reteach at home.
Here is a sample NAEP 4th grade question:
"Write the next two numbers in the number pattern."
1 6 4 9 7 12 10 ____ ____
Write the rule that you used to find the two numbers you wrote."
Only 37% got it correct.
This is exactly the sort of thinking problem that schools love to push.
Here is a traditional type of problem:
"Divide: 476 by 5
1) 85 R1
2) 95 R1
3) 96
4) 135 R1
Only 39% got it correct.
We're not talking about Ivy League home prep here.
This is 4th grade, not 8th where it's easier to look at disaffected kids and blame them or their parents or society. They should be able to teach everything at this level without any homework and with little or no support from home. These numbers are for the whole country, not just urban areas.
In my son's old private school, his fifth grade teacher had to spend a lot of time making sure that the (affluent) kids knew their basic math facts. They were using Everyday Math and trusting the spiral. After 8th grade, the kids head off to tony prep schools, so the K-8 private school thinks that everything is just fine.
There are problems in education and there are problems in society. Let's not confuse the two. Let's remember all of the incredibly stupid math assignments that have come home and how we wondered what in hell is going on in the school. If you do want to talk about parent-culture, please make sure you define exactly what you mean.
I'm curious about the reading gap in countries with highly phonetic languages.
ReplyDeleteThe gender gap in reading existed for every country ( ca.65) including ones with highly phonetic languages and no-nonsense, systematic phonetic teaching of reading. We can hypothesize (and find good supporting data) that teaching methods of the "balanced literacy"/Whole Language sort have a significant negative effect on boys' reading skills in English-speaking countries, but that argument does not explain why girls outperform boys in every country.
Finland, for example, has a highly regular, consistent orthography, taught systematically and phonetically by highly-educated teachers, but their 15-year-old girls were a year and a half above their boys in reading achievement, and only half of the boys surveyed reported that they ever read for pleasure. Something other than phonics is going on.
Other countries with very regular orthographies also scored quite low, and had the same gender gap, differing more in degree than in kind. Then too, English-speaking countries with a fervent Whole Language (and aggressively anti-phonics) approach, like Australia, New Zealand and Canada did significantly better than the UK or U.S., though they too had the "gender gap."
There must be multiple factors involved here, and the relevant ones may vary from country to country and from language to language, though the consistency of the outcome makes one wonder whether environmental factors (toxins, teratogens) might be part of the mix. The prevalence of phytoestrogens and heavy metals in food, water and everyday products may influence males more than females in some respects.
Of course we do know that systematic instruction boosts boys' achievement and we should hammer that point but there are doubtless other reasons for the gap that remain to be addressed.
"...their 15-year-old girls were a year and a half above their boys in reading achievement, and only half of the boys surveyed reported that they ever read for pleasure."
ReplyDeleteEven if decoding is trivial because of highly regular mapping of sound->letter, reading comprehension still requires knowing lots of words *AND* being able to handle complex grammar.
Written language tends to have more complicated vocabulary and grammar than spoken language, so *IF* the girls read more than the boys, I'd expect them to become better readers (all other things being the same, of course). This is simply because they would have been more exposed to the more complicated vocabulary and grammar in the written texts.
My guess is that we have a feedback loop going on here: The boys don't read for pleasure, so they aren't as good at reading ... so they don't read for pleasure.
This clearly can go in either direction, but my guess is that it goes in both.
I'll volunteer a wild speculation: Girls tend to read earlier than boys in general. I think it is because that part of their brain develops earlier than boys. Once school starts the girls tend to be the better readers. Reading is seen as a girly/feminine activity, so the boys don't want to do it as much as they might if reading skills were more evenly distributed.
Since the boys do less reading than the girls, the girls get even *MORE* good at it. Rinse, repeat.
Obviously, this is for broad averages only.
Equally obviously, this is wild speculation.
But I think it has a pretty good chance of being roughly true.
-Mark Roulo
Selection of reading materials may aggravate the problem. My 1-8 classes read many "boy-friendly" books, like the Mark Twain and Jack London ones, Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, the Arthurian legend, the Greek and Roman myths and legends, Aesop's Fables, animal stories (Albert Payson Terhune, Thornton Burgess, Marguerite Henry), biographies and lots of good poetry. That was less true of my older kids (mid-30s) and very much less true of my younger kids (mid-20s). It was replaced by chick-lit lite; all touchy-feely all the time; even for the occasional biography.
ReplyDeleteI had to visit the teacher (who hated boys and non-girly girls) and apply pressure to get her approval for my 6th-grade son to read one of the Rosemary Sutcliff books (historical novels set in Roman Britain and versions of many of the legends) for a book report and to allow him to write a book report instead of making a poster or diorama. Of course, I wasn't sure she was aware that there ever were Romans in Britain and I'm not sure she had ever heard of some of the legends; she certainly had no interest in either. My daughter hated her class equally. She also told the class that she had never diagrammed sentences, didn't know how and didn't care. Ditto for the rest of grammar and composition.
Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.
ReplyDeleteI believe this. I also think we don't see the ways schools ration access to education. Catherine Johnson has done a great job posting entries about the methods her local school system--and others like it--use to limit access to the top track. Steve H has also pointed out the hurdles that lie in students' path.
In our local public high school, when they need to balance the budget, they reduce sections of AP/honors courses. In my opinion, it would help the nation as a whole, if schools didn't try to create a small subset of superstars for college admissions. The courses at the top tend to be filled with children whose parents know how the game is played. They know not to trust the school when the teachers preach "responsibility" for middle schoolers. High school placement depends upon middle school performance. Middle school performance depends upon a student's executive function. The name of the game is to keep your child organized and compliant with the teacher's demands, even if there's no educational advantage to decorated notebooks.
I'll go out on a limb and say that neat handwriting and decorated notebooks are not academic qualities. I love neat handwriting, but to give a student poor grades because his handwriting's not as neat as a girl's is perverse. It can also depress the grade point average enough to keep him out of honors courses, especially when a school system's cutting sections.
I'm not denying that there is a range of ability in every school. Heck, there's a range of ability in every group of people, no matter what criteria you might use to select them. It is, however, striking to me the number of children in our school system who are noticeably intelligent, but aren't allowed into courses they could do well in. It's also striking that placement can be influenced by parental pressure, and by parental status within the school community.
"paths."
ReplyDeleteThe gender gap in reading abilities could also be connected to different "acceptable" leisure activities. Boys are encouraged to play sports and they like to play computer games. Girls may have more time to read books. There are always exceptions to any rule, but if boys spend less time reading, on average, then over years the difference does add up.
Cranberry, I agree that there's always a range of ability and motivation in every school, but those ranges are likely to vary widely. In some of the affluent suburban schools where most kids have parents with graduate or professional degrees, it is likely that most, maybe 2/3-3/4, of the kids are capable of and should be on the honors/AP/IB path. Now, many such schools ration entry very heavily. In some urban or rural districts, there may only be enough prepared kids that it would be desirable to concentrate them at one HS only (and I agree that in rural areas, that might have to be at least a Sun PM-Fri noon boarding program or something online) With better k-5 and MS preparation, it should be possible to increase that percentage over time if the kids are willing to put in the effort.
ReplyDeleteI think there most likely is something to the notion that boys' brains are wired to be somewhat superior in spatial abilities and girls' brains are wired to be somewhat superior in language abilities. But these small differences get exacerbated by the environment. My 5 y.o. DS will spend hours building stuff with Legos. His sister at the same age spent hours reading. Now DD liked Legos and DS likes reading. But left to their own devices, they spend a lot more time on their preferred activity. This will presumably translate down the line to somewhat higher reading achievement for DD and somewhat higher math achievement for DS. I don't think this is a problem so long as they each do well enough in the other domain to get into a good college.
ReplyDeleteI could see DD becoming an advertising or PR executive when she's grown up and DS becoming an architect or engineer.
It is, however, striking to me the number of children in our school system who are noticeably intelligent, but aren't allowed into courses they could do well in. It's also striking that placement can be influenced by parental pressure, and by parental status within the school community.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
The district I did my student teaching in had many 8th graders who could have benefited from honors course, but were not permitted to because of the number of absences the year before. Instead, they sat by bored and underchallenged.
The teachers seemed decidedly unconcerned about this.
Anonymous wrote: "I'll volunteer a wild speculation: Girls tend to read earlier than boys in general. I think it is because that part of their brain develops earlier than boys. Once school starts the girls tend to be the better readers. Reading is seen as a girly/feminine activity, so the boys don't want to do it as much as they might if reading skills were more evenly distributed."
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, the men knew how to read but the women were illiterate. Better to know how to operate a loom than to spend time on the classics.
I think what we're really seeing is a pendulum that has been pushed to the opposite extreme.
ari-free