the ridiculous debate over charter schools

http://www.ajc.com/news/fulton-school-board-denies-1266177.html

A Georgia school board denies a charter renewal request by an award-winning charter school in a 7-0 unanimous decision.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fairfax-teacher-proposes-charter-school/2012/01/18/gIQAHTsS9P_story.html

"Virginia law gives local school boards authority to approve or deny a charter proposal. Charter advocates say the system creates a difficult hurdle because local boards are often loath to help create direct competition." 

Some comments on the Washington Post's facebook:

That's CRAP!!! That wouldn't be fair to the kids who are not high-performance....

Charter Schools STEAL educational advantages from the students left behind. Disgusting! Public schools should not allow a caste system for students...

Sounds like reinventing the wheel. Why not FIX the schools that need it instead


How curious, because most charter schools I know have admission by lottery. Of course, higher-achieving students might be more wont to apply to a charter school, causing a statistical bias. Is the argument against charter schools really, "they'll draw the brighter students away?" Because of course the brighter lower-income students who can't afford private school should be FORCED to stay imprisoned, and cooped-up.

College Goal Sunday helps students obtain financial aid

College Goal Sunday is a program dedicated to assisting students and families in accessing financial aid for college.  Events are held nationwide where students can go to:

• Get free on-site professional assistance filling out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form.
• Talk to financial aid professionals about financial aid resources and how to apply.
• Get information regarding state-wide student services, admission requirements, and more!

Check out their website to find a location near you.  Act quickly because you must pre-register and some sites are very popular.  I will be at the New Rochelle College Goal Sunday on February 12, but it has filled up and is no longer accepting registrations.  Yonkers is nearby and still has open slots.

ALSO:  Don't wait too long to request financial aid

(Cross-posted at Cost of College)

afterschooling circa 1910

YOUNG Thomas Jones came home from school with sad and solemn air;
He did not kiss his mother’s cheek nor pull his sister’s hair;
He hungered not for apples, and he spoke in dismal tones;
‘T was very clear misfortune drear had happened Thomas Jones.

“My precious child,” his mother cried, “what, what is troubling you?
You ‘re hurt–you ‘re ill–you ‘ve failed in school! Oh, tell us what to do!”
Then Thomas Jones made answer in a dull, despairing way:
“I ‘ve got to write an essay on ‘The Indian To-day.’”

His tallest sister ran to him, compassion in her eye;
His smallest sister pitied him–nor knew the reason why;
And all that happy family forsook its work and play
To hunt up information on “The Indian To-day.”

They read of Hiawatha and of sad Ramona’s woe–
You found encyclopedias where’er they chanced to go.
They bought a set of Cooper, and they searched it through and through,
While Thomas Jones sat mournfully and told them what to do.

For three whole days the library was like a moving-van.
“Is Mr. Jones,” each caller asked, “a literary man?”
And day by day more pitiful became young Thomas’ plight,
Because, alas! the more he read, the more he could not write.

“Write what you know,” his mother begged (she stirred not from his side).
“I do not know one single thing!”that wretched child replied.
“Oh, help me, won’t you ? Don’t you care?” Then when assistance came,
“Don’t tell me–don’t! It is n’t fair!”he pleaded just the same.

The night before the fateful day was quite the worst of all.
Black care upon the house of Jones descended like a pall.
All pleasure paled, all comfort failed, and laughter seemed a sin;
For “Oh, to-morrow,” Thomas wailed, “it must be handed in!”

When, lo! the voice of Great-aunt Jones came sternly through the door:
“I cannot stand this state of things one single minute more!
The training of a fractious child is plainly not my mission;
But–Thomas Jones, go straight upstairs and write that composition!”

And Thomas Jones went straight upstairs, and sat him down alone,
And–though I grant a stranger thing was surely never known–
In two short hours he returned serenely to display
Six neatly written pages on “The Indian To-day”!

His teacher read them to the class, and smiled a well-pleased smile;
She praised the simple language and the calmly flowing style;
“For while,” she said, “he does not rise to any lofty height,
‘T is wonderful how easily young Thomas Jones can write.”

I need a maiden aunt.

poem posted by historian Zachary M. Shreg at his terrific site 

Katharine Beals in the Times

Wonderful letter:

Excluding the higher functioning [autistic] children [from the autism diagnosis] means that schools will have to do more to make regular classrooms hospitable to them without the early intervention based accommodations mandated by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. 

In particular, teachers will have to stop requiring children to work in groups, share personal reflections and do organizationally demanding interdisciplinary projects — all of which are challenging for the sort of child who, rightly or wrongly, has sometimes received a diagnosis of mild autism/Asperger. 

The new American Reform Math is also problematic for this population, since it waters down the actual math and teaches it less systematically. 

KATHARINE BEALS
Philadelphia, Jan. 23, 2012 

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and the author of “Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World.”

Common Core PARCC Test?

Our state is part of a 24 state group that will use the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) tests that are (will be) tied to the Common Core Standards (CCSS). There was a big article about it in our local newspaper. It is a step up from NCLB, but it's still "one size fits all". Schools will still be able to get away with using curricula like Everyday Math.

The claim that:

"Students who will know if they are on track to graduate ready for college and careers"

is more true than for our old NCLB test, but it says little about being ready for STEM careers. You can meet CCSS standards and still have career doors close.

The interesting thing I see is that it's a 24 state group working on a common test. It seems that we are moving towards a national curriculum and test. This should provide better data to compare states and towns. Our state will have to compete with others. The way it is now, our NCLB tests can only be compared with two other states using the same test. However, they have to (once again) restart the collection of longitudinal data.

I haven't seen sample tests, so I might change my mind.

why students have to memorize things

re: Larry Summers' claim that "in a world where the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog, factual mastery will become less and less important":

The reason factual mastery has not and will not become less important is that it is not possible to think about something that is on Google.

Seriously.

While you are thinking about something, that something has to be lodged inside your working memory, not on Google.

And your working memory is tiny.

How tiny?

This tiny:

Working memory storage capacity is important because cognitive tasks can be completed only with sufficient ability to hold information as it is processed. [emphasis added] The ability to repeat information depends on task demands but can be distinguished from a more constant, underlying mechanism: a central memory store limited to 3 to 5 meaningful items in young adults. [emphasis added]
The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Limited, and Why?
Nelson Cowan

I hit this limit all the time trying to write about topics that are new to me. The basal ganglia, for instance. For well over a year, I have been endlessly working and re-working a project on the basal ganglia, a subject I knew essentially nothing about going in.

I was not able to write about the basal ganglia until I actually learned about the basal ganglia: learned as in committed the material I was trying to write about to (long-term) memory. It didn't matter how many times I looked up basal ganglia on the internet. I looked up the basal ganglia a lot, as a matter of fact; then I forgot whatever it was I had looked up while I was thinking about something else to do with the basal ganglia, which meant I had to go look up basal ganglia again. And again and again.

Try it if you don't believe me.

Here are some items related to the basal ganglia:

dorsal striatum
ventral striatum
putamen
nucleus accumbens
ventral tegmental area
orbital frontal cortex
dopamine
two pathways
OCD
addiction
habit
impulsive
compulsive
intuition
probabilistic learning
associative learning
serotonin
orbitofrontal cortex
cortico-striatal circuit

Now supposing I gave you two-line definitions of these 19 items and asked you to write a coherent, reasoned 5-paragraph essay on the basal ganglia: what it is and what it does. Just a quick summary organized into 3 coherent paragraphs.

You couldn't do it. You couldn't do it because every time you wrote about the ventral striatum, the dorsal striatum, and the OFC, you would forget the VTA and the putamen -- and you would forget the VTA and the putamen because your working memory will hold only 3 to 5 things at a time. Something has to go.

That's what happened to me when I took a calculator I didn't know how to use to the SAT. Each time I swapped the steps for using the calculator into working memory, my brain swapped the information for the problem I was doing back out of working memory. Then, when I tried to cram the information for the problem back into working memory while holding onto the calculator steps, I couldn't do it.

I could remember the problem, or I could remember how to work the calculator, but I couldn't remember both at the same time. Too much information, literally.

That experience illustrates the reason why we need to practice until we learn content and skills to 'automaticity.' (Another basal ganglia term! Add it to the list!) Once you've learned something so well you don't have to think about it, you free up working memory -- consciousness -- to hold other things.

I repeat:

You can't think about something on Google.

You can't think about something on a piece of scratch paper.

You can only think about content that is currently lodged inside your working memory, and your working memory holds only 3 to 5 separate items ------ UNLESS you are an expert (or no longer a novice) in the subject you're trying to think about, in which case you have "chunked" the information so that "dorsal striatum" and "ventral striatum" are now just one item instead of two.

To a highly gratifying degree, I can now think about all 19 items on the basal ganglia list at the same time. I can think about all 19 at the same time because I have learned enough about the basal ganglia that the items have become connected in my long-term memory. The 19 are no longer 19 separate items but probably closer to 2 or 3.

If our schools are going to ask students to 'think' about material they haven't learned, students are going to be thinking about 3 to 5 small, not-well-elaborated items at a time. Period. Their thinking will be superficial, and the conclusions they reach will be superficial, too.

Which is exactly what we see in Larry Summers' op-ed about education, a field in which he is neither expert nor learned.

and see: 
Superior Memory of Experts and Long-Term Working Memory (LTWM)
extremely fast learning & extended working memory

Larry Summers has a really bad idea

What You (Really) Need to Know by Lawrence A. Summers

Answer: not too much 'cuz the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog!

Larry bases his novel and highly original thesis (to wit: "factual mastery will become less and less important") on "what we now understand about how people learn."

Does Harvard have node chairs, I wonder? Sounds like no.

OK, I'm going to go look up calculus on the internet. I've always been interested in calculus, so now that I've received a mobile device for Christmas, I'm going to look it up. Then I'm going to collaborate with some friends who also looked up calculus on the internet to figure out what to do about the 21st century global world meltdown.

I'm going to do this because I've noticed that economists use calculus in their collaborative group papers.

[pause]

There is a reason why students must commit content to memory as opposed to looking it up on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog.

That reason has to do with working memory.

More anon.

update: why students have to memorize things
and see: extremely fast learning & extended working memory

and see:
the founder, chair, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea

David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
David Brooks has a really good idea

Algebra for Parents

My employer, the School of Education and Human Services at Oakland University, is currently considering (at my urging) offering one or more online courses for parents of secondary school-aged children.  Our target audience is homeschooling parents, but others are welcome as well.  We plan to offer, as our pilot offering, "Algebra for Parents".  If that is successful, we would look into expanding to a larger menu of courses.

The main idea behind these classes would be to help parents shore up their content knowledge, with a secondary focus on the pedagogy of home-based education.  These would be not-for-credit courses run through our professional development program; we are framing this as "Professional Development for Homeschool Teachers".

I know that Ed Schools are not very popular on this blog, and PD in math ed has a pretty poor reputation for being superficial and light on content (often, unfortunately, completely deserved).  And I know first-hand that many homeschoolers are skeptical about getting entangled with institutions.  But I have pretty high hopes for this venture.  For one thing, I'll be teaching the course, and I have complete creative control over what gets done.  For another thing, I myself am the parent of five home-educated & unschooled children, all of whom learn quite differently, so you can count on an atmosphere that is open to a wide range of approaches.

All the details of format and pricing are still being worked out, but right now I am thinking that the class will run in six-week sessions.  Each week we will meet once for a single two-hour, real-time webinar (ugh, hate that word), with the rest of the week filled out with individual work and forum discussion.   Figure total involvement at anywhere from 2-6 hours per week, depending on how much you want to engage with the work.

Catherine has given me permission to announce the class here for the purposes of gauging interest.  So please let me know (either in comments, or in private email):  Would you be interested in taking (and paying for) a class like this?  Does the format and focus sound right for you, or are there other things we should consider?