the ingredients to good teaching

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html

Oh, check out these amazing videos.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/07/magazine/20100307-teacher-videos.html

The idea behind the whole article is that great teaching doesn't have to require the skills of a charismatic extroverted genius -- it's a set of concrete techniques combined with deep understanding of the subject you're teaching.

community college is the new high school

from K9Sasha:

My son went to school until Spring Break of his 8th grade year. At that point, I had had it with him not knowing how to write, and not even knowing his basic math facts. I told him that we had four years to get him ready for college and that it would take all four.

I was a little concerned about him getting into college from a homeschooling situation, but he applied to 6 schools and was accepted at all 6. He was strong enough academically to take Chemistry at the community college his junior year, and Writing and Physics there his senior year. The school I removed him from felt good if their students were ready for the community college after high school. I used the community college as part of high school to get him ready for university. What a difference in expectations!

One of the things that really stands out for me: When my son came home from taking his first PSAT test, the first thing he said was, "Thank you for making me learn my math facts. The first math problem was a simple doubling problem and I had it answered by the time everyone else got their calculators out."

My sister has done the same thing with one of her daughters. They did a California variant of homeschooling for 8th grade,^* then public high school for 9th. Most of the subjects in 9th grade were so low level that she enrolled in community college for 10th. It's worked out well.

^* It's not homeschooling....consultant schooling, maybe? I believe this option was created for students who are acting or perhaps homebound. There is a consulting teacher & texts are provided by the state. On the other hand, the parent can choose which textbooks his child uses. It's similar to what we would call Independent Study.

New York vs ALEKS

I've just finished topic number 210 in ALEKS geometry. One topic left to go.

ALEKS lets you compare what you're learning from ALEKS to your state standards. According to ALEKS, New York state geometry standards includes 101 of ALEKS' 211 standards.

I don't know whether New York's geometry standards include topics ALEKS doesn't cover.

palisadesk on instructional time

I have homeschooled and homeschooling family members, and we all see how much more rapidly children can learn in the 1:1 (or even 1:3 or 4) environment, with materials at exactly their instructional level. My sister was surprised how much her not-very-academically-inclined daughter could get done in the one or two mornings they worked on "school" per week. When they came back from their sailing odyssey, my niece had to take a test to ensure she was ready for fifth grade (had been a low average kid in third). She aced it -- was ready for sixth grade! And my sister admitted she was closer to an "unschooler" than a "homeschooler" and got serious about schoolwork in fits and starts.

Beyond that, although we think of the school day as 6 hours, it isn't 6 hours of instructional time in most places. My district's school day is 300 instructional minutes, although the actual time kids are in school is 8:30 to 3:00 -- six and a half hours. 50 minutes for lunch, 15 minutes each for morning and afternoon recess, and entry/dismissal times eat up that hour and a half, so we only have 5 hours of instruction, of which maybe 60% (if you're lucky) is dedicated to "the three R's." There are many interruptions -- PA announcements, assemblies, fund raising events. Students also have music, gym, library, art, science, social studies and health -- all important, too. The science and social studies are often incorporated into the literacy and math by very good teachers, but doing this well isn't easy, and the curriculum materials available are little help. Many teachers have to "write their own curriculum" because they don't have materials ready to hand. What a waste of time!

Then there's the whole issue of so many levels in one classroom. This means that inevitably some students' needs will be overlooked. My district is firmly committed to "differentiating instruction" and "full inclusion" of all but the most violent students, but they do not put their money where their mouth is. Every time I get the opportunity, I suggest to the higher-ups: WHY doesn't the district commission a cadre of experienced teachers/curriculum experts to produce units for different grade levels that match the curriculum and have differentiated reading materials, problems, activities and assessments? For example, a unit on explorers for fifth grade could have reading material from a first to a seventh grade level, map work, project topics and materials for kids from the very beginning level (they could learn the continents and make a globe model, for example) to challenge activities for the high achievers. They could have these for every major curriculum unit, and sell them to other districts and make money. Why are teachers having to write their own curriculum for 6 different grade levels in multiple subjects? It absolutely doesn't work. No wonder they use foldables.

So five hours of instructional time quickly gets whittled down. In classrooms with many levels, the actual teaching time at the student's level for those at the extreme ends of the spectrum (true for the gifted AND the very challenged) is only 1 or 2 % of the time available. No wonder that studies have found that students with the lowest level of reading skill read only about two or three minutes a day. Yikes!

How much time do pull-outs consume, I wonder - ?

indies nominees

Animals Make Us Human is on the list!

I didn't even know. A friend found out and sent me the link. Then my sister had to send them an email and ask them to add my name to the book, since they'd only listed Temple as the author.

sigh

I'm filing this under schmuck with an Underwood.

palisadesk on the math police - & parents teaching math facts

A propos of Kindergarten children being asked to write journals and stories without any instruction in spelling (or even in pencil grip or how to form the letters), and also children being taught -- or not -- number facts and algorithms, this discussion has come up on a couple of other boards I read. One important issue stands out: there is enormous variability in what is required and/or permitted to be taught in these areas.

I advise all parents to get a copy of your district's curriculum documents, if you can (many have them online) and see what teachers are being told to do. It may surprise you. In many places, expectations for teaching the mechanics of writing -- pencil grip, letter formation, manuscript or cursive writing styles, even spelling -- have been *completely* removed from the curriculum. Teachers can of course model them or give instructions en passant, but cannot actually focus on these things as objects of lessons.

Catherine has brought up the use of "instructional coaches." This is becoming more and more common, and one of their (unstated) roles is to act as "literacy police" or "numeracy police." If they see teachers doing spelling, or printing, or teaching math facts systematically, they are to discourage these things and also discuss it with school administration. My district no longer requires math facts to be taught, and teachers have actually been forbidden to practice them in class. They can assign math fact practice for "homework" which is another way of outsourcing to parents, as Catherine has pointed out in the past. This disproportionately penalizes low-SES kids whose parents don't have the time or sometimes the expertise to teach these things to their children.

It's very often not a matter of teachers not wanting to teach "the basics," but of their being prevented from doing so. Many of my colleagues grumble quietly about it, but because it is ordered from on high it can't be openly flouted. It's not clear to me who makes these curriculum decisions higher up the ladder, but sometimes it does seem (as an anonymous person said earlier) that the goal might just be to keep the proles in their place! In my darker moments I am tempted to think this is so.

Outsourcing math facts to parents handicaps all children. I know we've talked about this a lot over the years, but I don't have the patience to go hunting the posts. Easier to write a new post now---

At least two high-SES, highly-educated parents we know told us they were never able to remediate their sons' deficiencies in math facts or in long division. One of these parents went to Harvard. They tried, but they did not get the job done. Even Kumon didn't get the job done for one of the kids. (Not sure why -- possibly because the parents realized what the situation was too late -- ?)

I was lucky because the Saxon Math "Fast Fact" sheets worked for C. after 2 other approaches I tried failed outright: flash cards and flash card software. When I switched to the Saxon worksheets, he learned rapidly.

I had no idea what to make of it. Can't learn his math facts using flash cards? Can learn them practically overnight using worksheets?

Later on, I read a Rafe Esquith passage advising parents that students need to practice material in the format they'll use it on the test. That makes sense. It's consistent with everything I know about animal training and with Dan Willingham's explanation of flexible and inflexible knowledge.

But how many parents know this?

I sure didn't.

At a board meeting recently, our new part-time Interim Director of Curriculum and Instruction made one fantastic observation. She said she'd told teachers that "If we were serving a low-SES population, with parents working two jobs to make ends meet, we wouldn't expect parents to be skilling and drilling the math facts. Our parents have busy lives and many demands on their time, and we shouldn't expect them to do it, either."

Then she added, diplomatically, that in fact parents here, nearly all of whom are high-SES and well-educated, are not getting the job done.

Last year, the 6th grade accelerated math class had to stop dead in its tracks so the teacher could teach math facts & the standard algorithms. The kids were all high-SES and their parents are well-educated.

Teaching math facts isn't simple or obvious. Skilled teachers do it far better than most parents.

Blind Side

If you haven't seen Blind Side, you should. For anyone who has spent years of his life struggling to give his children an education, this is the movie. It's the movie for teachers waging the same struggle, too.

There's a moment, at the end, when Leigh Anne asks Michael if he even wants to play football. By this point he has been famously recruited by dozens of college coaches across the country and has committed to playing for Ole Miss, his new parents' alma mater. And only now does his mother ask him whether this is what he wants.

Michael answers, simply, "I'm pretty good at it."

For many of us, that's what education is about. A good education takes a small child and makes him good at reading, writing, and arithmetic whether he wants to be good at these things or not. The truth is, as Michael begins life with his adoptive parents, he doesn't want to play football. He's not suited to the game emotionally. But he learns to play because his parents and his coach and even his little brother painstakingly teach him to play, and they teach him to play because they know he can do it and because football matters to them. And now he plays well.

There's a lovely moment where Michael's new dad, Sean, recites The Charge of the Light Brigade. Michael asks why the 600 have to die, and Sean tells him it's because the leaders have made a mistake. So Michael writes a paper about what it means to trust your leaders, and to follow them.

At home, parents are the leaders; at school, teachers are.

But the real education leaders in this country, the ones deciding what our children will and, more importantly, will not learn, have made a mistake.

They've decided our children don't need to be in the game.

off-topic

Have I mentioned Ed has a stand-up desk?

Well, he does.

That's gotta be next on my list.

testable hypothesis

Elizabeth wrote:

Here is a quote from Sally Shaywitz's "Overcoming Dyslexia, A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level" p. 261:

"In one Tallahassee, Florida, elementary school where such a program [scientifically proven prevention and early intervention programs] was implemented, the percentage of struggling readers dropped eightfold--from 31.8 percent to 3.7 percent."

I would guess 1% using Webster's Speller and teaching both spelling and phonics at the same time, its focus on spelling and syllables is very helpful for my struggling students.

BTW, that's a great motto, "Education not remediation." Every smart students learn more when taught explicitly.

palisadesk answered:

The Shaywitz example that Elizabeth quotes is a fairly representative one. Schools that use effective instructional methods and materials significantly reduce their "struggling reader" populations, usually to a 1-digit %ile. There are many examples; most however are school-based. We don't see scaled-up replications of this type of success on a district basis.

The 1% that Elizabeth cites is reasonably the percent of children who would still flounder even after intensive 1:1 teaching with effective methods and materials over a significant period of time. However, it would not be likely to represent what could be achieved in general education classrooms at our current level of knowledge and operational constraints.

Students with severe disabilities must be taken on a case-by-case basis, as their learning needs are highly specific; in other cases, important variables are not always under school control -- for instance, students with high levels of absenteeism and/or frequent changes of residence. You can have the best-ever teaching, but the student has to actually be there and participate in order to benefit.

So hard data on what is the lowest percentage of students who we can expect will still lag *far* behind despite our best efforts is not available. What we do know is that the number of "struggling" students is far too high.

From intensive work with students at all ability levels, I believe it's a testable hypothesis that 99% could be taught foundation skills in reading, writing and math that are commensurate with their level of receptive language comprehension and cognitive functioning. Some cases would be extremely labor-intensive, and this becomes a time and resources issue. Public schools realistically do not have enough instructional time to be as successful with some high-needs cases as private services can be. I can think of cases where children have needed 4-6 hours a day of intensive therapy in several areas to make significant progress. Schools are not set up to provide this, and perhaps it's a separate question: should allowances be provided to parents of such children to purchase the needed services using special education funding? Should the school district contract these out?

We are talking about a small number (percentage-wise) of students, but their needs are real and not easily met.

Getting all students reading at the K-2 level is realistic for most schools. It is, however, only a step in the process. Children who master decoding and spelling early on may be strugglers later. That is why careful progress monitoring of all students is needed.

my 2 cents

on Response to Intervention

Linda on Response to Intervention

Response to Intervention, when done correctly, begins by addressing all students receiving excellent instruction in the classroom (Level 1). Even with excellent instruction, there are a number of students who may need either more time or more intensity of instruction to achieve grade level.

That is what the level 2, small group, interventions are for-- additional time and attention. I do level 2 math interventions, but my school does not use an artificial 20% cut-off. I only work with students who are not progressing at level 1, which in our school, is probably 5% of the population. In my experience, the level 2 kids often are ones who have behavior that keeps them from focusing their attention in large groups, have low intelligence (not PC to point out- but some kids just take a LOT of repetition to learn), or will eventually be diagnosed with a learning disability. If level 2 interventions don't work, then kids often are tested for learning disabilities and go on to level 3 interventions, one-on-one. [Level 3 is typically going to be classification for special education, as I understand it (but please correct me if I'm wrong) - cj]

It is actually a fantastic model that can save districts a lot of money by preventing kids from being diagnosed with disabilities that they do not have. The problem comes in when you don't have excellent level 1 programs and/or you arbitrarily decide that a certain percentage of students needs to be at level 2 regardless of whether or not they could learn in a whole group situation with excellent instruction.

It is too bad that RTI done poorly is probably going to doom this as another failed waste of money, when done well it would be exactly the opposite and really does help kids who are struggling for legitimate reasons.

Robin on the Seattle ruling

School administrators who omit public testimony and duly submitted evidence when there are hearings on textbook adoptions from the record provided to the final elected decision makers can now get in trouble. The resulting decision can be subject to judicial challenge.

It's that omission of public information that was contrary to the story they wanted told and might have prevented the textbook decision they wanted reached that set up the "arbitrary and capricious" ruling.

Especially given the State "mathematically unsound" ruling on top of the omissions.

If the Seattle administrators had submitted everything in the public record to the school board, we would likely have a different decision.

New Standard: If you change the public record to influence how the school board sees the evidence, you are setting the board up that its decision will be subject to an arbitrary and capricious challenge.

How is that open-ended? Administrators should not be doctoring the public record to present a one-sided story to the public decision-makers.

=============

I have read all the briefs and corresponded with some of the principals and those omissions were key to the court's ultimate finding.

To insulate themselves School Boards could simply decree that they will accept no public input on textbook decisions but as Barry Garelick notes, that attitude will likely not get them reelected.

I see less downstream craziness but I'm a lawyer so I tend to see the safety devices in place if an informed citizenry knows they exist, how to use them, and appropriately asserts the relevant facts to trigger them.

I think that is in fact what occurred in Seattle.

A chilling effect on wanton disregard of troubling facts and duly submitted evidence by school administrators and elected public officials involved with education is healthy for better decision making.

I think this is an especially important time to be having this discussion because I think we are moving away from any evidence based criteria limiting instructional materials or techniques in the US K-12 classrooms. I see that in every piece of federal legislation or regulations concerning education currently being enacted or discussed.

I'm hoping Robin will fill us in on what she's seeing in federal legislation and regs ----

Chicago Tribune endorses vouchers

Beautiful.

New York, New York

How did this happen?

New York’s placement among the finalists had been anything but certain, even though Mr. Duncan has frequently praised New York City’s school improvement efforts under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. But the competition barred states with laws that prohibit the use of student achievement data to evaluate teachers, and New York has a law that seemed to fit that criteria. But the state argued that the law banned the use of such data only in making teacher tenure decisions. The law sunsets at the end of June.

Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said Thursday that she believed the Legislature needed to pass a law raising the state’s cap on charter schools before New York could be awarded money.

New York Is Among Finalists for U.S. School Grants by Sam Dillon - March 4, 2010

Here was Joe Williams, in August:

In my home state (New York) we’ve got big problems with a law on the books that prevents student performance from being used in making teacher tenure decisions. The law is so bad, that when reporters wrote about it last year, not even the teachers union would claim credit for having pushed it through the legislature. So yeah, New York should have to adios this law before it can apply for Race To The Top funding, especially since nobody seems to want to defend it anyway. If New York doesn’t lift a finger and it gets funding in the Race, Obama and Duncan will essentially be lifting a finger (you know which one) to all of the other states that are doing everything they can to show they are ready for change and reform.

217

So... the state of Wisconsin mentioned "professional development" 217 times in its Race to the Top application and still didn't make the final 16.

Good.


update: uh-oh

from Fred Hess:

New York's 908-page application included some choice phrases. It promises, "An intense focus on curriculum and meaningful professional development based on student performance; data-drive instruction where teams develop individual student action plans based on data from formative and interim assessments; differentiated professional development and coaching based on data" (page 6).

It also declares that it will create "clear, content-rich, sequenced, spiraled, detailed curricular frameworks" (yes, five adjectives) for new assessments (page 10).

And, impressive for the sheer amount of jargon that could be wedged into a single sentence, New York's app promises "to support differentiated professional development closely linked to student growth data, identify coaches and mentors using effectiveness ratings closely tied to student growth data, and build data-driven feedback loops between professional development, coaching/mentoring activities, and teacher effectiveness" (page 144).

Spiraled frameworks, differentiated professional development, and coaching ----

Whoa.

I have to move.

Possibly to Wisconsin.

Or Guam.

Basically, any place not in danger of winning Race to the Top.

dodged a bullet

For a while there it seemed as if everyone was talking about Lengthening the School Year and/or Lengthening the School Day - yikes. More time in school: when will parents & tutors teach math?

And then, the taxes.

oy

Looks like that one's not getting off the ground.

bonus: Maybe people will stop saying KIPP gets its results from all the extra time. (Maybe KIPP doesn't need all the extra time?)

that was quick

Elsewhere in the edu-world, the town of Avon, CT hired a new superintendent last fall, only to discover, via a story in the newspaper, that as of March 4 the new superintendent of Avon has signed a contract to become the new superintendent of Berlin, CT.

The reader comments are priceless.

Berlin introduces David B. Erwin as superintendent

education, not remediation

With my tiny district's per pupil spending now somewhere north of $30K and rising, and a new law requiring Response to Intervention, I'm getting desperate.

So this morning I wrote this plea for adopting programs that work and unadopting programs that don't work:

Response to Intervention wouldn't break the bank if we used evidence-based decision making: if we rigorously evaluated curricula and teaching methods for evidence of effectiveness -- and had a Plan B in place for abandoning curricula and teaching methods that aren't working sooner rather than later.

Example: we use 'balanced literacy' to teach reading.

Scientists who study reading instruction, and the National Reading Panel of 2000, tell us that children should be taught to read using "systematic synthetic phonics instruction." Balanced literacy is far less effective than phonics.

Exactly as the science predicts, here in Irvington we have a very large number of struggling readers. I believe the number is currently 18 or 19%, but I will check my notes. We currently have 5.5 "literacy specialists" remediating all of our struggling readers K-8, and after Response to Intervention kicks in I assume we'll have to hire more.

If we were using the program "Jolly Phonics," a field-tested British (pdf file) synthetic phonics curriculum, we would have only 5% of our students struggling to read. That 5% would include kids like my two children with autism.

We can easily afford to teach the 'bottom' 5% of our students in a 1:5 or 1:3 ratio. We're pretty much doing it now.

Moreover, because fluent reading is the core skill underlying all future academic achievement, we would likely have fewer special education students. That is the goal of Response to Intervention law: to reduce the number of students needing special education.

For me, the most important path out of our financial crisis is to ardently embrace evidence-based decision making: do what works, stop doing what doesn't.

In the run-up to the first fields vote, when people were putting up hand-lettered signs overnight, someone put up a sign that said:

EDUCATION
NOT
REMEDIATION

That should be our principle. Remediation is fantastically expensive: it costs the taxpayer who must fund remedial teachers, and, more importantly, it costs the child who is struggling to learn.

Our district-wide goal should be to reduce to the absolute minimum the number of children needing remediation. We should adopt curricula and teaching methods that give our kids success.


update

I can no longer locate the Johnston & Watson PowerPoint that gave the 5% figure (I can email a copy if you'd like to see it). Palisadesk cites 10%.

more is more

anonymous says:

The Common Core national assessment being developed right now will apparently require teachers to grade it as it will have open-ended, critical thinking questions to which their is no specific right answer.

(per Linda Darling-Hammond's presentation to NGA where she said teachers would be the graders)

Apart from the difficulty of knowing where our kids really stand, this will mean employing more salaried human beings with benefits rather than that disinterested computer scantron without union representation.

Hadn't thought of that.

So we've got, coming down the pike, 4 new categories of public school employment:

• teachers to provide "Tier 2" intervention
  
• instructional coaches in math & ELA (& other - ?)
• curriculum specialists to 'develop' curriculum
• stipends for teachers scoring the groovy new Common Core assessments, should such occur
  

Have I left anything out?

fyi: our Director of Pupil Personnel says that "Response to Intervention" is starting with reading instruction but will then be expanded to include all of the other subjects (and ages) as well. If that is the case, we are looking at paying teachers to teach up to 15% of the K-12 student population in tiny groups of 3 to 5 students. (I think our administrator said 18%, but I'll check.)

Laura on executive function in 2nd grade

I'm finding myself in a position where I'm wondering if I can leverage the district's fear of being sued to try to get them to put together a more academically focused class for my son.

He's hitting the second grade wall (I spoke with a mom yesterday who pulled her kid out and is sending him to Eagle Hill in Greenwich, where he's now thriving, and she said second grade is when it really starts)--absurdly high demands for executive function are being pushed ever higher and higher (pick out your own book, monitor your own reading for 30-40 minutes, remember whatever little reading activity of the day you're supposed to apply to what you read), and focused academic instruction is plummeting ever lower.

They are talking about the possibility of putting my above average IQ kid in a segregated special education class.

I'm starting to wonder if the threat of being sued to pay for an out-of-district placement might motivate my school system to do something more creative.

Two years running, now, the principal of our K-3 school has told the school board that her goal is to 'create a safe environment where children can take risks.'

She's talking about 5 year olds.

Taking risks.

That's her goal.

Constructivism means transferring responsibility from the grown-ups to the children.

Seattle school district appeals

here

thanks to Cassy T

insider baseball

from Steve H:

At one underperforming high school in our state, the administration got to the point where they fired all of the high school teachers. (They wanted more money.) It recently made national news and even Obama commented on it. Only 7% of the 11th graders met minimal proficiency on the state math test. (Just today, it appears that this leverage has worked and they will come to some sort of agreement with the union.) Ironically, the superintendent of this school system was the one in charge of bringing MathLand to our schools (a different town) years ago. She left to go to this job when my son was in first grade. My son left for a private school after that year and the school started the process of switching to Everyday Math.

I feel that many of us parents are over on the sidelines with our hands raised and asking "Can we say something here?"

At a recent board meeting, when the topic of whether our teachers could 'handle' Singapore Math came up, I raised my hand and asked whether I could say something.

The Interim Director for Curriculum and Instruction said, "No!" Teachers and building principals sitting in the audience were invited to speak; parents had to follow the rules and wait until the end of the very long presentation to make 3-minute comments.

The Interim Director also told us she is recommending that we soldier on with Trailblazers because "there is no perfect curriculum." She said that several times over the course of the evening, with an air of gravitas: There is no perfect curriculum.

Also, we need a math coach, to complement the ELA "teaching learning facilitator" we have now. Plus we need to hire back the teaching-learning facilitator whose position was eliminated last year during the budget fracas.


coming soon to a school district near you

To those of you living in affluent suburban towns: this is the future. Public schools are committed to hiring tenured teachers to teach tenured teachers, and tenured curriculum specialists to "develop" curriculum. Absent tax revolts, there is no conceivable limit to the number of instructional coaches and curriculum specialists affluent schools will attempt to hire in the coming years, because there is no conceivable limit to the amount of "in-house professional development" classroom teachers require and no conceivable limit to the amount of "curriculum development" imperfect curricula require. A whole new tier of administration has been invented and is now in the process of being hired.

This story about Seattle administration tells you where we're headed. Here's Meg Diaz' report. (pdf file)

Do our policy elites have any idea this is going on? Do our newspapers and media outlets?

palisadesk on 'standards'

It's all relative, though. As Elizabeth pointed out, in a low-performing school 60% (or more) of first-third graders will be non-readers or close to it. RTI will not single out 60% of the population for Tier 2; only the most extreme cases will get that specialist help. For others it will be business as usual. Everything depends on local school conditions and populations.

We occasionally get a student transferring in who has been classified LD, mild cognitive delay, or some other exceptionality. In some cases these students perform above average for our non-classified, general ed students. They get As and Bs without modifications or accommodations.

It serves as a reminder that "standards" are very flexible things and what is "low" or "high" depends on the school context.

Right you are.

lgm on Tier 2

re: Response to Intervention

Tier 2 reading intervention is done as a pull-out. The student still participates in the daily whole class lesson, but goes to a reading specialist or sped teacher for the intervention with a small group composed of eight or less students who have the same lacking skill that will be the topic of the lesson.

Haven't seen any data yet as to its effectiveness compared to the old style of leveled reading groups of 6-8 students.

RightStart

anonymous says:

RightStart is, indeed, an Asian mental abacus program--but it's actually more. I can say, hands down, that RightStart is superior in every way to Singapore in the first grade level. And that's saying a LOT because Singapore is amazing!

Want to get the worst kid in the class adding two-digit numbers with regrouping in first grade? And adding four-digit numbers on paper with PERFECT understanding? RightStart does it. RightStart takes the very best of Asian mathematics programs and distills it down into it essence. It uses a very few select manipulatives extremely well--as conceptual connectors, not crutches--which echoes the author's original background in Montessori education.

AND it's scripted, so it helps teach the educator even as it teaches the student, even it the educator isn't a naturally mathy person.

If you want your child to score in the 90th percentile, I will guarantee that RightStart can do it with any kid of AVERAGE intelligence. The most that it requires from the instructor is to pay attention to any stumbling place and to further break down and clarify any points of confusion that might arise rather than doing sheer repetition--solve the problem rather than waiting for it to resolve itself by using the approach that YOU'VE learnt from RightStart and apply it to the lesson at hand to chop it into smaller bits.

My son had intuitive mathematical power, but with his language processing problems, communicating anything he couldn't instantly intuit was very, very hard--until I found RightStart. It was amazing. We did the entire series because he needed to make stronger connections between language and concept, and I've never been so impressed with a math program. Ever.

Now, Singapore does have one powerful tool that RS lacks--it has the model method of problem solving, and the word problems are more sophisticated and also much more frequent. RS also weirdly peters out before really giving much work on multiplying and dividing fractions using the standard algorithm, having covered it EXCELLENTLY conceptually but not having practiced it as it does other things.

Anyhow, my very mathy kid is using the sequence RightStart/Singapore Primary to NEM 1-3/Additional Mathematics/IMACS Elements of Mathematics. His personality is such that getting him to do any practice not on the Flashmaster is WWIII, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. (which has already added some 6 months to his journey, though daily battles and sheer cussedness...)

My next door neighbor is very, very UN-mathy (failed algebra II), and her kid would be thrilled to step through algorithms without understanding a thing, if he can. After Calvert failed him (letting him get away with zero comprehension), she's now doing RightStart with great results. His sequence will likely be Right Start to Life of Fred/VideoText to either community college or ChalkDust or EPGY for calc.

In short, it works great for very different kids.

"The Joy of X"

here

Speaking of joy, I finally got back to my ALEKS geometry course,^* which I abandoned last August after my mother fell.

My mother is continuing to improve, by the way. Which means the four death talks -- four -- that various doctors initiated with me and my siblings were premature.

Actually, the four death talks appear to have been not only premature but wrong in every respect. Take, for instance, the observation, made by my mom's intensivist in ICU, that: "Your mother has tiny little lungs and an enormously enlarged heart. Her only hope of survival would be a heart-lung transplant."

That appears to be codswallop, according to my mom's new cardiologist. "Heart function is good." "Heart muscle is strong." "Ejection fraction is normal." "Pulmonary hypertension has resolved." And so on.

Also, the diagnosis of congestive heart failure: wrong, it seems. My mom tells me she was given a brochure on congestive heart failure sometime after her heart attack 5 years ago, which informed her that a person in her situation had 5 years to live, max. Also wrong. Unless, of course, she doesn't have congestive heart failure (confusion reigns amongst us family members), in which case the brochure is possibly right but irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the physicians associated with the nursing home where my mom is recuperating have been operating under the assumption that my mother's diagnosis is congestive heart failure so they are now trying to nail that down. Congestive heart failure: yes or no? That is the question. The nephrologist (my mother does have kidney failure; of that we are sure) says she is going to read the entire history.

oh, man

My life goal: vegan my way to a healthy old age and die in my sleep. By then I will have spent a good 30 years dealing with the public schools; I don't want to spend the last 20 wrangling with hospital intensivists and hospice-touting PCPs. Noooooooooo.

That said, I will also point out that modern medicine is a miracle. Wow. My mom is alive and recovering because emergency rooms do what they do and dialysis machines & nephrologists do what they do and a good nursing home does what it does - because they all do what they do. Modern medicine keeps desperately sick and dying people alive and then some.

true story: in February I flew back to Chicago and went with my mom to an appointment with her new cardiologist. We're sitting together in his tiny office, my mother is back from the grave and getting around by wheelchair and medi-van...... and the doctor tells her to "lose weight and exercise." In 6 months we have gone from "tiny little lungs and an enormously enlarged heart" to "lose weight and exercise."

Alright, then!

Seriously, though, I don't know what to make of our experience thus far, and I have made a conscious decision not to delve into the literature on US medicine. (Also banned: the literature on US food industry.) I've read just enough to see that some of the institutional problems besetting health care are similar to institutional problems besetting public education, and that is helpful and intellectually stimulating to know. But that's enough. If I start finding out what goes on in your basic American hospital, my head will explode. Ditto for factory farming and the USDA.

The one tentative conclusion I hold at the moment: doctors aren't particularly expert at making predictions about an individual patient's immediate future. That's fine with me. I want doctors to save my mother's life, not ship her off to hospice because things look bad. And save her life is what they did.

My advice, which I realize is not original but bears repeating: when you're dealing with major medical, keep your wits about you and take things with a grain of salt.

And: if different doctors are telling you different things, pay attention to that fact. In our case, we were getting so much bad news about our mother, doctors were so insistent the jig was up, that we discounted the observations of doctors who weren't telling us that death was imminent. Not long after the intensivist told us my mom's only hope was a heart-lung transplant, another doctor told us, "She's doing well. This is what we do in ICU. We support a patient's organs and bodily systems while the patient recovers to the point that they can function on their own."

Hearing this, my sister and I thought, in so many words: this guy is nuts.

Then, during my mom's third hospitalization, when I received two hospice-promoting telephone calls from two of her PCPs, the hospital cardiologist told my sister that my mom's heart was strong and we weren't anywhere near hospice decisions. The nurse said the same thing. Another glaring contradiction.

That go-round we reached the reductio ad absurdum of having the hospital social worker apparently develop a suspicion that we children were trying to usher our mother out the door, seeing as how we kept bringing up hospice. The social worker actually interviewed my mother on the subject. What is your relationship with your children, she asked.

Hah!

Next time, Ms. Hospital Social Worker, try asking: What is your relationship with your PCP and why does he keep calling your kids up long-distance to bend their ear about how their mother can have a "peaceful, quiet death" if they talk her into going to hospice sooner rather than later?

My other provisional conclusion: more specialists. Fewer PCPs. (Just kidding.)

In any event, my siblings and I needed to attend to the fact that we were getting wildly different opinions from different physicians, and we needed to find out why that was happening and insist that everyone get on the same page if possible. Instead, we assumed the worst and we grieved. Grieving before the fact clouds your reasoning. I don't think there's any way not to grieve before the fact, but from now on I am going to know that's what I'm doing and try to reason my way around it.

But back to ALEKS. I've got 3 more topics to master, then I return to Algebra 1, which I was working on before I decided to sign up for geometry last June because I was forcing C. to sign up for geometry. During the 9 months I've been away, ALEKS Algebra 1 seems to have grown from 288 topics to 333. Oy. When I switched to Geometry last June, ALEKS erased my Algebra 1 records, but my screen grab says I had mastered 270 topics.

Will I ever get to calculus?




^* Now I just have to get back to Fluenz Spanish and life will be good.

Artsy math; what about mathy art?

Yet another breathless newspaper report of a hands-on, student-centered math class, this one out of North Penn, Pennsylvania. It begins with a typical math diss:

If you think geometry is a bit boring, well, you may be right.

Geometry was one of my favorite math classes--and my favorite class at the time. I especially loved the abstract proofs, and the elegant, infinite world you could construct out of a handful of axioms. This class took me places I'd never been before, and, I think, took my thinking to a whole new level. Writing about it makes me smile.

The article continues:

But for one Pennridge 10th-grade geometry class, a hands-on architecture project has made geometry exciting.

Geometry teacher JoAnn Rubin uses a creative architecture project that teaches her students to use the precision of geometry and architecture as well as the freedom of artistic expression to help all types of students succeed in her math course.

"Not everyone is good at math," Rubin said about the project. "Some kids are really artistic."

The project asks students to create a representation of a building that they think is interesting or original.

They can make a model or a poster or any kind of representation of the building using their geometry skills. There is really only one thing curtailing the student's creativity on the project.

"The only restriction was that the buildings couldn't be rectangular," Rubin said with a smile.

This one restriction led students in many different directions and had them recreating all different kinds of buildings, from architectural classics to the downright bizarre.

Rubin's assignment appears to have fulfilled her goals--with flying colors:

Although the project results were all over the spectrum, students of all mathematical abilities consistently succeeded.

"It's about recognizing that we all have our talents and interests," Rubin said about the project that allowed every student to explore their abilities beyond the chalkboard. "I wanted them to look at the geometry of the actual buildings."

Equality of outcome; celebration of multiple intelligences; real-life examples; it's all there.

But I can't help feeling concerned for one of Rubin's thriving students:

One of the more creative projects was built by Brett Saddington, who turned the parameters for the project completely upside-down.

"I just looked up the world's strangest buildings," Saddington said about the Google search that led him to an upside-down house built in Szymbark, Poland.

He said that he one day hopes to be an architect or an engineer, and he showed off his talent with his topsy-turvy creation.

His teacher is hopeful, too:

Most of Rubin's students will not become architects or engineers, but by giving her students a look at the practical and creative side of geometry, she has given them an appreciation that could take them anywhere.

"They really don't know what direction they may be heading," Rubin said. "But who knows? They may become architects or engineers."

But I'm worried that, in this topsy turvy world of math education, where art is math and appreciation is learning, Brett's high school teachers may never teach him the math he needs to pursue an architecture or engineering degree in college and beyond.

Unless, of course, the art teacher is having Brett and his classmates spend the same amount of time doing math problems about the geometry of perspective drawing and optical wave forms.