The Tension...

I've posted something to another blog that I thought might also be appropriate for KTM. This community has always felt very comfortable to me, but also challenges me to think! Posters and commenters have focused on educational issues [SteveH just nailed it!] rather than "politics"...

Anyway, HERE it is!
Have a wonderful day!

ps-Catherine, I'm not sure how to tag it, so please feel free to do so if you wish.

Forget Grade Levels?

I saw this in our paper yesterday.

Forget grade levels

It's interesting to see how ed school thought can be spun any which way.

"The current system of public education in this country is not working" said Superintendent John Covington. "It's an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills."


Students progress through school only if they allow them to progress. When I grew up, kids were held back or had to go to summer school. Apparently, since then, they've moved to an "industrial, agrarian kind of model". This is really stupid thinking.

With this new model, are they going to continually keep kids in second grade if they don't pass the proficiency test? Speaking of which, I assume that these are minimal grade level state tests. However, it might force schools to actually try to get kids to pass the exam and not just "trust the spiral". It will force them to deal with the issues sooner rather than just pass the problems along and then blame the kids or parents or poverty.


"This system precludes us from labeling children failures," Covington said. "It's not that you've failed, it's just that at this point you haven't mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level."

What about the 12 year old who still hasn't gotten past the 2nd grade material? What about differentiated learning? That's not a "factory model". However, both models have the same core philosophy. The onus for learning is on the kids and there is no direct teaching. At least the approach descrbed here allows kids to accelerate out. I don't know what they are accelerating to or around, but it at least forces schools to define what is required knowledge and skills for each grade. Unfortunately, we know what those standards are.


"Greg Johnson, director of curriculum and instruction for the Bering Strait School District in Alaska, recalled that before the switch there were students who had been on honor roll throughout high school then failed a test the state requires for graduation."


Incompetence. How is that going to change with the new model? They will show kids the state tests for each grade and leave it up to them to meet the low cutoffs. Then they will have kids who meet the low state graduation requirements when they are 14. What next? They will have kids stuck as sophomores. What next?

Will they have low and high grade level standards, not just pass/fail cutoffs? What will high grades mean for kids? Will they properly map the math required (and test grades) for algebra in 8th grade back to Kindergarten?

At least this model forces schools to deal with these issues. With differentiated instruction, their heads are completely in the sand - or somewhere else.

full stop

Our school system has solved their efficiency problem by not only slowing gifted students but seemingly requiring them to stop all forward momentum. No acceleration and no 'enrichment' either. If you're done with an assignment alphabetize folders or tutor another student.

-Lisa


Same here. When full inclusion came six years ago, enrichment and in-class ability grouping were totally canceled in the elementary. Nothing above grade level can be offered. The old practice of going to a different class or grade to join an appropriate reading group was ended. If the student is done, s/he can read, draw, or navel gaze.

-lgm

My own district replaced the SRA math series with Math Trailblazers 6 years ago, eliminating achievement grouping as part of the package. Since Trailblazers moves more slowly than SRA, this meant that the advanced students were doubly decelerated. They lost their accelerated curriculum and they were now learning less in the regular curriculum than the non-accelerated kids had learned in the past.

Recently the superintendent told the school board that Trailblazers is built for and depends upon heterogeneous grouping; if you're going to have Trailblazers you can't have grouping and if you're going to have grouping you can't have Trailblazers.

So naturally she's committed to Trailblazers.

testing

ok, I'm writing a blog post about a book sold on Amazon: Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo.

hmmm

Interesting.

my thoughts exactly

You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices
by Swen Nater, Ronald Gallimore, Bill Walton (Foreword), Jim Sinegal (Foreword)

basic skills

BEDFORD, Ohio — Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.

Plenty of people are applying for the jobs. The problem, the companies say, is a mismatch between the kind of skilled workers needed and the ranks of the unemployed.

[snip]

Here in this suburb of Cleveland, supervisors at Ben Venue Laboratories, a contract drug maker for pharmaceutical companies, have reviewed 3,600 job applications this year and found only 47 people to hire at $13 to $15 an hour, or about $31,000 a year.

The going rate for entry-level manufacturing workers in the area, according to Cleveland State University, is $10 to $12 an hour, but more skilled workers earn $15 to $20 an hour.

All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs. It is now struggling to fill 100 positions.

Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: July 1, 2010

Here's Tyler Cowen:

Currently political debate is focused on the short-run employment issue, but a lot of the problem is probably long-run in nature.

One simple hypothesis is that a lot of workers weren’t producing much value, but firms were willing to carry them in good times. When bad times came, firms cut them loose and also took greater trouble to identify them in the first place.

Stimulus alone won’t give those workers jobs because, as it stands now, their labor simply isn’t worth very much. The longer-term issue is how to improve the American educational system. This includes creating a culture where more parents value education, school choice is more available to bypass dysfunctional local systems, and teachers are more subject to incentives to encourage effectiveness.

President Obama does want to make progress on all those fronts, but it’s not a battle which can be won mainly at the federal level. We need to have a culture which simply does not tolerate bad local school districts. We’re a long way from that, so we need to focus on more than just the short-term alone.

June 24, 2010, 6:20 pm
Can Obama Create More Jobs Soon?
By THE EDITORS

I'd love to see that test.

I wonder if they're using Accuplacer?


The Race Between Education and Technology

momof4

It doesn't say anything good about ed school that only one basic science course is required. BTW, as first-graders in the mid-50s, my class learned parts of plants, plant nutrition, photosynthesis, heliotropism etc. Why am I not surprised that global warming is part of this curriculum? I also agree with the last comment about the inefficiency of this approach, but efficiency seems to be fighting with mastery for last place in the pantheon of ideas that concern the ed system.

I love that: efficiency fighting with mastery for last place.

In my experience it's no contest. Mastery is last and efficiency isn't even in the running.

Public schools are almost anti-efficiency at all levels: in hiring and spending as well as teaching and learning.

That's why public schools are happy to slow the progress of gifted students by substituting enrichment for acceleration.

edspeak

At other times, the board is moved to the front of the room, and students take turns solving math problems, sorting items into groups and matching words with their meanings.

letter to the editor quoted in:
The Great Whiteboards Debate Rages On
Anthony Reborda
Education Week

In my world, the set consisting of students who spend class time "solving math problems" does not intersect with the set consisting of students whose teachers ask them to "sort items into groups."