Pass/Fail

Examination dreams are reported to persist even into old age...
- Time magazine

You will never graduatefrom this dream
of blue books.
No matter how
you succeed awake,
asleep there is a test
waitinmg to be failed.
The dream beckons
with two dull pencils,
but you haven't even taken the course;
when you reach for a book--
it closes its door
in your face; when
you conjugate a verb--
it is in the wrong
language
Now the pillow becomes
a blank page. Turn it
to the cool side;
you will still smother
in all of the feathers
that have to be learned
by heart.

Linda Pastan
1975

in:
The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature
Michael Meyer

edu-fads at home

Found this comment on Jay Mathews' 2009 column about 21st century skills:

One of my friends holds advanced degrees in education, and she used cutting-edge methods to teach her own kids. What she forgot was the classic problem of the teacher being all fired up and motivated, and the student feeling left out of the picture. After all, fundamentals may be old-hat for teachers, but for students they're all new concepts. Her son was all but forgotten in her enthusiasm and fascination with the perpetually new. She has asked me a hundred times what I think is "wrong" with him (answer: "you").

She force-fed her son this and that fad over the years while he quietly turned off to learning. He recently dropped out of the marginal college he was able to squeak into with his middling test scores, yet it is obvious to anyone who talks with him for five minutes that he is very bright. I think he'll probably drop back in some day when he returns for his own reasons, but his mom's incessant buzz-speak about the latest pedagogical gewgaws of the day (I suspect 21st-century skills were part of it) really did a number on him. Poor kid.
1/5/2009 7:10:48

The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st-Century Skills
by Jay Mathews
Washington Post
Monday, January 5, 2009

I wonder if this boy was being homeschooled or afterschooled.

survey: charter support at 65%

Support for charter schools also continued to grow among the public, with 65 percent of respondents saying they would back new public charter schools in their community and 60 percent saying they would support “a large increase” in the number of such schools operating in the United States.

Fewer Americans Back Obama’s Education Programs
By Dakarai I. Aarons
Published Online: August 25, 2010

I'm glad to see this level of support for charters, but I do worry about charters killing off private and parochial schools.

Robert Pondiscio on curriculum vs value-added

When I think of the curriculum and teaching methods I was required to use in my classroom, the idea that my effectiveness might be dependent upon them makes me want to lie down with a damp wash cloth on my forehead. Manipulatives and discovery instead of basic arithmetic? Endlessly revising ”small moments” and teaching the writing process to 10-year olds instead of basic grammar? No time for even basic science, social studies because of district demands for ever larger math and literacy blocks? If it fails, it’s on me? Seriously?

Erin Johnson left a comment:

Robert, Why do you think that the LA Teachers Union (or the national unions) have not highlighted the issue of curricula?

I have recently been in contact with a LA teacher who was rated “more effective” in math by the LA Times. She states that her good rating was probably due to the fact that she “subversively” uses Saxon math instead of her district adopted program. Do ed reformers expect that teachers will subvert the curricula adoption process?

And here is Robert again:

I’m not sure curriculum reform is on anyone’s radar screen in a big way, including the unions. I used to regularly subvert…er…adapt my math curriculum to assure automaticity on basic functions. 5th graders counting on their fingers or multiplying with arrays is an offense to my sensibilities. I had less flexibility on ELA since there was lots of joint planning and execution involved. I’d go as far as saying my school’s ELA program (“It’s not a curriculum, Mr. Pondiscio, it’s a philosophy,” I can still hear the staff developer reminding me) is what turned me into a curriculum advocate.

Curriculum effects and value-added

cart, horse

from Casting Out Nines:

[I]t’s not clear to me that doing “algebra” is a better idea here than just doing straight-up subtraction.  What’s to be gained by saying “the whole is 8; one part is 3; the other part is ____” versus “What is 8 minus 3?” Again, maybe I’m out of touch, but subtraction is a fundamental skill that algebra builds upon; doing algebra before subtraction seems a little backwards to say the least. A kid who is comfortable with subtraction will be able to do these whole/part problems in a snap by using subtraction. A kid doing these “algebra” problems basically has to invent subtraction in order to do them, or else draw pictures of balloons and start counting. It feels like the curriculum is trying to be intentionally nontraditional here, just for the sake of doing things differently rather than because it works better.

what makes this question difficult?

This is one of the lowest percent corrects I've seen on a Question of the Day -- as low as the percent correct for the 3 people in an office question.

Why is that?

Critique of Envision Math by Casting Out Nines (Robert Talbert)

From January, 2008:

Four questions about this:

1. Should it be a requirement of parenthood that you must remember enough 5th grade math to teach it halfway decently to your kids?
2. Does the smartboard come included with the textbooks?
3. Did anybody else have the overwhelming urge to yell “Bingo!” after about 2 minutes in?
4. When will textbook companies stop drawing the conclusion that because kids today like to play video games, talk on cell phones, and listen to MP3 players, that they are therefore learning in a fundamentally different way than anybody else in history?

The last question is all about the research-free digital nativist assumption that is the source of many lucrative curriculum deals these days. Data, please?

I've added emphasis

basically laughing it off the blogosphere for its happy-clappy, uncritical acceptance of unproven digital nativist frameworks and for going way over the top with smartboards. Little did I know that my own offspring would be in the middle of it just three years later. So, in an effort to process what she’s doing (for me, for her, and for anybody else who cares), this is the first of what might be many posts about the specifics of enVisionMATH, as viewed by a parent whose kid happens to be learning from that curriculum, and who also happens to be a mathematician and math teacher.

So I suggest you bookmark Casting Out Nines and see what develops.

Steve H on setting up problems

re: how many unknowns?

I like to use more variables than are needed because I find it easier to create correct equations. I know that I can always turn the algebra crank later without much thought.

r+s=12 is easy and I know that it's correct. I also know that the half perimeters are pi*r and pi*s.

I then look for enough equations to meet my unknowns. That is what's funny about this problem. You don't have enough information to directly solve for the answer before you look at the choices. There are not enough equations for the variables. Even if you use just r and (12-r), you have no equation, unless, that is, you plug in each answer.

I don't like problems like this, because my first reaction is that you don't have enough information. You do, however, if you look at the possible answers.

Also, why is there no variable in the answer? It's just a unique aspect of this particular problem. What if one of the semicircles is replaced by half of a square? You would have something like this:

4r + (12-r)*pi

for the perimeter. the variable does not disappear when the expression is reduced.

You can't trust what you think because problems try very hard to trick your understanding. You just have to follow the facts (equations) and see where they lead you. As I always say, let the math give you the understanding, not the other way around.

how many unknowns, part 2

gasstationwithoutpumps said:

Although Glen would never create 2 unknowns, preferring r and 12-r to r and s, I often find it easier to create multiple unknowns when initially setting up the problem, then remove the unnecessary ones. In this case, it was easier to remove (r+s) as a single unit, and never worry about manipulating 12-r.

I can't tell you all how important these threads have been to me: how much I'm learning (I hope I'm learning - !) and how rich the experience has been.

It's led me to think about the question of self-teaching a bit. Until last night, I had simply never thought about 'how many unknowns' in the way you all are talking about unknowns now. I had never thought about it because, where unknowns are concerned, the books seem to suggest that less is more.

Mind you, I don't think any math book I've used has directly stated that 12 - r is superior to r + s=12. I'm pretty sure I inferred that it was based in the fact that I don't recall any instances of r + 12 where 12 - r was a possibility.

This strikes me as the kind of thing a good math teacher would bring up in class, perhaps as an aside?

Or something that would come up in discussion?

What do you think?

poll: top education books of the decade

at Education Next

hmmmm...

Teach Like a Champion isn't on the list.

I find that incredible. 

Not sure I'll vote.

how many unknowns?

re: how many unknowns in the two half-circle problem, Glen wrote:

I would never create two unknowns in a situation like this, where the two radii are not independent. Since the distance from R to S was given as 12, the radius of one circle made a good unknown, and the radius of the other was 12 minus that SAME unknown. Either circle would do, of course.

The length of the curve can then be expressed in terms of the one unknown for both semicircles. Using the left circle, and calling its radius r, the right has to be 12-r, so the two semicircles added together were,

= pi*r + pi(12-r)
= pi*r + pi*12 - pi*r
= 12pi

If I took part of my $100 and gave it to a friend, there would be only one unknown. Whether you made it the amount I gave him, or the amount that I kept, or the percent I gave him, or the percent I kept, or the difference in dollars or percent or fraction between what he got and what I kept, or the ratio of our money, or whatever, there is only one unknown. Everything else in such a problem can be expressed in terms of that one unknown, which usually makes the problem easier to manage.

THIS is what I was trying to do.

THIS is what I always do, if possible.

I don't know what the problem was.

Inflexible knowledge?

Heat prostration?

I'm half serious about the heat. I took the test outside in 85+ temp. All summer long I've had severe performance deterioration any time I work in the heat. One day, when the temperature was close to 100, I found myself unable to solve even the simplest of problems. I sat at the picnic table working the same problems over and over again in slow motion. Five, 6, 7 times. Or more. I'd crawl through the problem, check my (wrong) answer, then go back to the beginning and crawl through it again and then again until finally the correct answer appeared.

Then I'd go on to the next problem and do that one 6 or 7 times.

I love summer. Have to soak up the sun while I can.

Big Calendar pin-up

fair warning

If all goes as planned, I am going to begin working through the Unit 5 worksheets from the Arlington Algebra Project, as lgm suggested. Tonight.

I say 'fair warning' because there's no answer key.