kitchen table math, the sequel

Stop me if you've heard this one

2012-01-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

In Waterloo, Iowa, Investigations in Number, Data and Space, is being used and getting rave reviews, according to this article.

Here's a quote taken right from the article. Stop me if you've heard it before:

"Administrators describe the curriculum, published by Pearson Education, as providing rich, problem-based, student-centered lessons that foster inquiry and develop critical thinking skills. They believe the result of developing those skills will be increasing student achievement."

the ridiculous debate over charter schools

2012-01-28T16:49:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

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.”

We need a maiden aunt.

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

Katharine Beals in the Times

2012-01-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

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?

2012-01-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

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.
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 memory. It didn't matter how many times I looked up the 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, so I looked up the first terms 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

Now supposing I gave you two-line definitions of these 13 items and asked you to write a coherent, reasoned 5-paragraph essay on the basal ganglia, what it is and what it does.

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 back out of working memory. Then, when I tried to stuff 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 is an example of the reason why we need to practice until we learn content and skills to 'automaticity.' (Another basal ganglia term!) Once you've learned something so well you don't have to think about it, you free up working memory 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 13 items on the basal ganglia list at the same time. I can think about all 13 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 13 are no longer 13 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-ish, 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)

Larry Summers has a really bad idea

2012-01-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

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 a really good search engine.

That reason has to do with working memory.

More anon.

and see: extremely fast learning & extended working memory

Algebra for Parents

2012-01-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

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?

clear as mud

2012-01-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

I was just reading one of my favorite "market monetarists," (pdf file) Jose Marcus Nunes, who writes Historinhas. Apparently, the Fed is at last making its move to increase transparency.

The results - charts (pdf file) illustrating such arcana as the appropriate timing of policy firming and the appropriate pacing of policy firming - brought to mind my all-time favorite edu-chart: the strands.

how to free up time for action research

2012-01-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

Peter Meyer on MLK and education

2012-01-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

beautiful

the new, new thing

2012-01-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

When was it school personnel used to talk about what students should "know and be able to do?"

The 90s?

The 80s?

For the last few years, whenever I've thought of it, I've checked my district's documents for the words "knowledge" and/or "know." So far, I haven't found them.

What I have found is lots of references to understanding. Students in my district will understand this, that, and the other.

Occasionally, too, a district document will mention 21st century skills.

Which sets me to wondering...how exactly does one acquire a 21st century skill?

Can you memorize a 21st century skill? (And if you can, would that be kosher?)

Can you practice a 21st century skill until you get really good at it?

And does aptitude for 21st century skills fall on a bell curve?

Can you be gifted in 21st century skills?

Average?

Below average?

Are there specific 21st century skill learning disabilities?

This could be big.

"Now What?"

2012-01-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

from Authentic Education:

The workshop is over, and many staff naturally want to know: “What is going to happen next? How will we follow up on our good conversations?” This is of course a key question! So, how will you build upon the day? How will you avoid cynical comments about “This, too, shall pass”? How can you keep the momentum going? How can you show your colleagues that you are serious about long-term, focused, and well-supported renewal?
On the next pages we offer an array of possible actions and approaches for follow-up.
[snip]
Examples of 10 possible ‘next step’ actions: Design/Analyze/Research
1. Design a model unit in teams. Ask staff to commit to a timeline of the design of a unit or unit elements. e.g. try using essential questions next week; have a complete unit by semester’s end, designed and piloted, etc.....
2. Design a model scoring rubric (supported by work samples) that makes “understanding” a clear, prominent, and explicit aim. Have staff use the rubric and work sample models (‘anchors’) to clarify for students that the aim is understanding, not recall.....
3. Design a transfer task for a key Standard (e.g. a complex novel-looking math problem; a document-based question in history; a test of reading strategy and skill on a new piece of non-fiction, etc.). Analyze the Standard carefully: if that’s the Standard, what would count as performance evidence of meeting the Standard? Then, sketch out a task. Design a protocol for administering the task in which students initially receive no hints or scaffold, but can receive hints if they truly need them. Use a graduated-prompted rubric to score the results (4 = needed no hints, 3 = needed 1-2 minor hints or reminders, 2 = needed reminders and hints all along the way, 1 = even with much scaffolding could not produce an adequate response.)
4. Design a Gradual-Release-of-Responsibility unit. Use the 4-step process (I do, you watch; I do, you help; You do, I help; You do, I watch) to design a unit or set of units deliberately aiming at autonomous transfer of student learning. Use a graduated-prompting rubric to score student performance.
5. Analyze model and typical units against UbD design standards. Have teams/departments assess units or lessons using our peer review process against the criteria for “good design” (see the UbD design standards, or use your own). Have teams report out what they learned from studying and self-assessing units against standards.
6. Analyze local assessments. For a targeted time frame, (e.g. the month of November or the next marking period) collect all the assessments given in a building. Then, taking a sample of the assessments (e.g. every 4th assessment item) analyze the type and validity of the assessments. Use credible criteria to rate the assessment (e.g. Bloom’s Taxonomy, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, the six facets of understanding, state standards, etc.) Make 1-2 specific recommendations for improving the quality of local assessment, based on the findings.
7. Analyze local grading. Examine trends in local teacher grading to identify the validity of grades (given Mission, state standards, critical thinking, understanding, etc.). Compare local grading standards to state performance standards (e.g. state-wide writing, college freshman exam scoring, etc.) – i.e. how predictive are local grades of later important performance? Also, look at cross-teacher consistency by having teachers grade the same student work on their own, then discuss their grading in groups.
8. Analyze results on a common assessment that you design, making sure that the assessment includes higher-order as well as lower-order questions....
9. Research test results: go to your local site or to the Florida FCAT, Massachusetts MCAS, or Pennsylvania PSSA websites to download their released test items with analysis. Study the results – especially the ones in Reading and Mathematics. Note the hardest questions and most common wrong answers. (All test reports in these states show the correct answer and what % of students picked which answer; they also code the purpose of each test question against the key state standard it is assessing)....
10. Research motivation in students. In teams, study a small group of ‘typical’ kids over the course of a day; you might shadow one student each through their day or half-day. In what work are they most motivated and engaged in class - and out of class (sports/computer games/arts)? When are they least motivated? When do students persist with a challenge and when do they quit? What general conclusions can you draw from motivation and engagement about how to make schoolwork less boring? (We have online student surveys you can use, too).

So I guess there's not going to be a lot of time left over after teachers get done with all this to administer a spelling test or two.

Also, if there are teams of grownups at school wanting to 'shadow' my 'typical kid' over the course of a day, I would like to be asked whether that is OK with me.

Then, when I inform the team that shadowing my typical kid over the course of a day is not OK with me, I would like the grownups to return to the classroom and teach.

math and race in Iowa

2012-01-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Among the possible explanations offered for the decline [in ITBS scores] are increased drug use in the mid-60′s, permissiveness, increase in divorces and single family homes, as well as the progressivist trends in education resulting in student-centered and needs-based courses. (See Protecting Students from Learning for a more extensive discussion of this last item.) Another explanation offered is that the population of test takers starting around that time began to include more minority students, resulting in a dilution effect. That argument fails to explain, however, why the same pattern of declining test scores for the SATs exists for the ITBS and ITED test scores which were not limited only to college bound students. Also significant is the fact that the population of test takers in Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana remained primarily white which has been noted by Bishop (1989) and Murray (1992). Specifically, the U.S. Census of 1950 shows that the population in Iowa was 99.2 percent white, declining by 0.7 percentage points to 98.5 percent white by 1980. Similarly, the populations of Minnesota and Indiana were 99 and 95.5 percent white in 1950, dropping respectively to 98.2 and 92.8 by 1970. (Hobbes, 2002).
Barry Garelick: The Myth About Traditional Math Education
Education News

Nobody Gets Out Unless Everybody Gets Out

2012-01-16T09:23:00.000-08:00

Why to oppose Mayoral Academies

While it's true that charter schools form a way to self-select into a more willing group of students, the author's assumption is that those left behind will be less well served. She does not explain why that would happen. Although she argues that separation does help, she does not explain why public schools will not offer the same separation. She does not argue that Achievemnt First does not work. She does not argue that some public school are failing. She offers no solution other than the supporters of Achievement First should be putting their efforts into public schools.

OK. Separate kids by willingness to work hard. Offer them a more rigorous curriculum.

what is a professional learning community

2012-01-15T18:06:00.000-08:00

I would like my school board to hire a superintendent who has headed a district with Professional Learning Communities.

teach, test, and hope for the best

2012-01-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

Richard DuFour:

”Typically, teachers teach, test, and hope for the best. [Adlai] Stevenson [High School] teachers established standards of mastery for...common assessments and for each subtest within a common assessment. They set a bar for student performance and then worked to ensure that each student could make it over that bar.”
The Learning-Centered Principal
Richard DuFourMay 2002 | Volume 59 | Number 8
Beyond Instructional Leadership Pages 12-15

professional learning communities

is this a clinically-known hypothesis on autism?

2012-01-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

when asked about the yelling, humming, hands over ears, etc., the girl in the video explains that it's because of a sensory overload, saying, "we create output to block out input".

Rocketship Schools

2012-01-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

Does anyone have any information about a bunch of new charter schools called The Rocketship Schools?

Andy Rotherham gave a rave about it here.

why Americans need precision teaching: we're hyper

2012-01-14T17:01:00.000-08:00

One consequence of the recent expansion of human genetic variability is that a number of culturally relevant SNPs are also local and cross-culturally variable in frequencies. For example, long (e.g., 7-repeat) allelic versions of dopamine receptor gene 4 (DRD4) have been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and novelty seeking. Importantly, these versions of the gene are quite common among Caucasian Americans, but they are virtually absent among Asians. Chen et al. (1999) hypothesize that long allelic versions of DRD4 provide a selective advantage in new, challenging environments because they are increasingly predominant as a function of the distance by which different ethnic groups immigrated in historic and evolutionary times (for alternative possibilities, see Cochran & Harpending 2009). Findings such as these strongly suggest that to fully understand the origins of cultural differences in psychological processes, genetic processes must be taken into account.
Shinobu Kitayama1 and Ayse K. Uskul. Culture, Mind, and the Brain: Current Evidence and Future Directions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2011. 62:419–49.Chen C, Burton M, Greenberger E, Dmitrieva J. 1999. Population migration and the variation of dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) allele frequencies around the globe. Evol. Hum. Behav. 20:309–24.

Years ago, John Ratey and I argued in Shadow Syndromes that Americans had a higher genetic propensity to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and we were right.

Americans need precision teaching because it's fast, and it's efficient:

Morningside Academy offers a money-back guarantee for progressing 2 years in 1 in the skill of greatest deficit. In twenty-five years, Morningside Academy has returned less than one percent of school-year tuition.

zip

news you can use

2012-01-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

27 States Sign on for Digital Learning Day

Celebrations will vary by state.

deathless

2012-01-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

We point out simply that not only do U.S. students on average perform better internationally than reported in a myriad of policy papers, but as Boe and Shin demonstrate, the majority of U.S. students (white students) actually rank near the very top on international tests.
Into the Eye of the Storm
October 2007
B. Lindsay Lowell Georgetown University
Hal Salzman The Urban Institute

Right.

That's why my high-IQ, culturally-advantaged, non-hyperactive, W-H-I-T-E, rising-5th grade son placed into the second-semester 3rd grade textbook in Singapore Math back when he was age 9. (placement test here).

In the real world, a gap that big by age 9 does not get smaller.

It gets bigger.

non-poor students doing fine in Princeton

what is the Chinese language?

2012-01-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

interesting post at The Economist

momof4 boils it down

2012-01-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

on another thread, momof4 writes:

As far as I can tell, the best-performing countries don't expect their kids to discover multiplication, reading or anything else on their own; teachers explicitly teach the material.

Until this moment, I had never thought of it quite this starkly -- but now that I am thinking of it quite this starkly, my sense is that momof4 is probably right.

From time to time high-performing countries seem to decide they need to be more creative, which seems to mean sending teams of teachers to the U.S. to observe our cr**** math curricula,^* but these initiatives never seem to last.

^*I'm not going to take the time now to track down the links.

More Fourth Grade Slump

2012-01-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

Speaking of Memoria Press, my catalog came in a mail a couple of days ago and there was an article in there on the "top ten" reasons you should teach your child Latin. (Preaching to the choir in our case -- the only question here is what grade are we going to start Latin.)

But I read the article, and one part popped out at me:

#1
Latin is the next step after phonics.

We all understand the importance of phonics, the systematic study of the English letters and their sounds. But phonics only covers half of our language, the English half, those good old concrete words that students learn to speak and read first. But then we stop, even though there is another half of English that has a whole new set of root words, spelling, and pronunciation patterns.

English, you see, is a hybrid language, a marriage of two languages—English and Latin. The name English comes from the Angles who, along with the Saxons and other barbarians, invaded Britain after the fall of Rome in the 5th century. English is a Germanic language and, the Germans being barbarians, had mostly concrete, common, everyday words, the words children learn to speak and read first in primary school.

But, beginning in 3rd grade, students start to encounter the Latin half of English. Latin words are bigger, harder, have more syllables, more abstract meanings, and different pronunciation and spelling patterns. How do we teach the Latin half of English in a systematic orderly way like we do phonics? We don’t. But we should. And the only truly systematic way to continue the study of the English language after phonics is to teach Latin—the foundation of the Latin half of English.

the return of Exo!

2012-01-14T09:25:00.000-08:00

Synchronicity is real.

Heck, maybe ESP is real.

I can't tell you how many times, now, I've thought "WHERE is so-and-so," so-and-so being a ktm Commenter who hasn't commented in a long time. The next thing I know, I read the site and there s/he is!

Just this week, I was thinking, "I miss Exo."

And presto chango, here is Exo!

must-see TV: Common Core edition

2012-01-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

woo hoo!

old wine, new bottle

pop quiz: what do Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success?

2012-01-12T18:11:00.000-08:00

Answer: The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

I give up.

Crazy U - Andrew Ferguson on why he wrote the book

2012-01-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

Ferguson:

An editor/friend of mine planted the seed for the book when he asked me to write a magazine article about Katharine Cohen, an extremely successful and extremely expensive private college counselor in Manhattan. I spent a fair amount of time with her and discovered her to be an appealing subject. What really opened my eyes, though, was an information seminar she held one winter evening in suburban Connecticut. Like most parents with kids about to apply to college, I’d heard how the process had descended into Absurdistan. But it wasn’t until I saw the feral squint of parental ambition in the faces of these well-to-do moms and dads that I realized how weirdly competitive and confused the whole thing had become. These people were out for blood -- they were going to do whatever it took, including hire a private counselor for $40,000, to get their little Ashleys and Caitlins into Brown. My own son was a junior in high school at the time, just starting to daydream about college, and I remember thinking, “Yow, this is what we’re up against?”
'Crazy U' by Sam Patulla
Inside Higher Ed

the "China Study" abstract and the soldiers

2012-01-11T18:26:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I mention T. Colin Campbell's The China Study: a terrific book. A few minutes ago, I found what I think is probably the main abstract from the published study, so I'm posting the link:

Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China study.
Am J Cardiol. 1998 Nov 26;82(10B):18T-21T.

I went looking for Campbell & Esselstyn after reading Megan McArdle's post arguing that the biggest risk factor for heart disease is age. I'm pretty sure that's not true (as I recall, the biggest risk factor is diet), so I went looking for the incidence of heart disease amongst the Chinese peasants Campbell studied.

While I was at it, I remembered this passage from Esselstyn's book:

Autopsies of soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars showed the effects of America's artery-clogging diet even on the very young. The arteries of Asian soldiers were largely clean, free of fatty deposits. But almost 80 percent of American battlefield casualties showed gross evidence of coronary artery disease--clogging and damage that, had the soldiers lived, would have grown worse with every passing decade.

I think this passage, more than anything else I've read, was the shocker for me.

Glen on the flood

2012-01-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

In a comment on another thread, Glen writes:

SteveH asked: But how about the MITx degree? What's the catch?

The catch is that nobody at MIT (that I know of) is talking about an MITx "degree". These and the new Stanford online classes only give you credit toward a degree if you are an admitted MIT or Stanford student.

Otherwise, the idea is to give you some sort of acknowledgement that is carefully designed to make it clear that it is NOT MIT or Stanford credit. Both institutions are desperate to avoid diluting their own brand equity.

However, these projects often take on lives of their own. Some Stanford students are now complaining that they have to pay $5000 to take the same online class that non-students take for free. No difference at all in the educational experience, assignments, tests, feedback from TAs, etc., but the Stanford student pays a fortune and gets Stanford credentials; the equally-taught non-student gets it for free and gets no Stanford credential. That's an unstable situation, I believe, that may end up like breaching a barrier between two oceans at different levels. I'm looking for a flood to pour through this opening, which might overwhelm the people who are trying to keep these projects under control.

I see them right now as desperate to defend their monopolies but well aware that huge pressures are mounting to change the system. I think they figure, rightly, that if they don't disrupt themselves, someone else will do it to them. They probably don't want to be the venerable Kodaks and Fuji Films of higher ed as the world goes digital.

The final section of Walter Russell Mead's The Ice Cream Party and the Spinach Party is directly relevant.

Crazy U

2012-01-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Heard from Susan S yesterday, who wanted to know if I'd read Crazy U by Andrew Ferguson.

Answer: yes, and I've been meaning to post excerpts forever. The book is fantastic. If you're sending a child to college any time soon, you must read it (along with Barry Seaman's Binge and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, neither of which I have had the nerve to crack as yet...)

Susan says I have to get to Crazy U now, so here goes:

The cost of college is the consuming preoccupation for parents, of course, and a major source of the craziness. It's not hard to see why. I graduated from a small liberal arts college in 1978. My annual tuition bill was $5,100. If my school's tuition had tracked inflation, the bill today would be $16,500. Instead it's nearly $40,000--an exponential rise repeated at nearly every school in the country.

But unlike other questions related to college admissions--how do I make my kid write the essay, do we really have to do a tour, who designs these stupid applications, when will it all be over?--how to pay for school is a peculiarly sensitive matter. With the Kitchen People I could start a good thirty- or forty-minute chain rant y asking about the college counselors at their kids' high schools. But when I'd ask about college costs I'd provoke a quick Vesuvius-like first, followed by a slow glide into silence, a lot of foot-shuffling and ceiling glancing, until people drained their cups and wandered off for a refill. Nobody likes to talk about money, especially when you're being reminded you don't have enough of it.

[snip]

But when it came to finance I restricted myself for the most part to College Board and the Department of Education Web sites. I took their directives to be authoritative. (If you can't trust an agency of the federal government, who can you trust?) By the time I was through collecting material about college costs, I had enough documents to make several impressive new stacks in the dining room. There were booklets, worksheets, request forms, disclaimers, power points, suggested guidelines, official guidelines, disclosures, charts, backgrounders, tables, monthly planners, and FAQs beyond number. Usually the sheets showed ranked masses of bullet points with impenetrable headings: "ICR Consent to Disclosure of Tax Information," "Repayment Plan Selection," "DCL GEN-04-04 General Guidance for FRAC Participants," "Fafsa4caster," "Income Based Repayment Selector," and "FFEL Convertible-rate Interest Rates Calculation Sheet." I could concentrate on them for no longer than forty-five seconds at a time. Then I'd look up and hear Patton: "Very difficult, very complicated."

Among those reams of paper many pages were pure salesman-ship--and what the CB and the Education Department were selling was, once again, college itself, the raw idea of it, quite apart from any considerations that might draw a kid to one particular school or another, or heaven forbid toward a future of work and family without higher ed. The message was nmistakable: When it comes to college, you should just go. Don't worry so much about the money. Go. The money--we'll help with the money. Just go. Go, for crying out loud.

One of the first sheets I acquired from the CB, under the section College Costs, set the tone. It offered a little USA Today-like charticle--half chart, half article--headlined "Keep Rising Prices in Perspective."

"Media reports," the sheet said, "can be intimidating. Don't let the sticker prices scare you." Damn lyin' media.

"There's no escaping the fact that college costs are rising," the sheet acknowledged, though I knew that if there were a way of escaping the fact, the College Board would have found it.

"But there is good news," it continued. "There is more than $143 billion in financial aid available." (That number--$143 billion, the pot of gold--was repeated frequently, endlessly, in the documents. The chart that followed showed two columns. On the left was the bad news. On the right was the good news, offered as refutation of the bad, in a box labeled "But did you know that..."

So in the left-hand column we saw that last year tuition rose by 5.9 percent at private schools and 6.4 percent at public schools. "But did you know that..." 56 percent of students enrolled at four-year colleges attend institutions that charge tuition and fees of less than $9,000 per year." Good for them. And the other 44 percent?

On the left, the bad news: "The average surcharge for out-of-state students at public institutions is $10,867."

Then the good: "But did you know that...About two-thirds of all full-time undergraduates students receive grant aid."

On the left: "Students will pay on average from $381 to $408 more than last year on room and board."

"But did you know that...More than $143 billion in financial aid is available to students and their families.

Actually, we did know that, since it had already been printed right there at the top of the page. The rebuttals weren't very effective, if you thought things through. It was small comfort to know that this problem of rising costs was solvable, but only so long as the family agreed to go deeper in debt or accept repeated handouts. Maybe it's good news that $143 billion was available for aid. But isn't it bad news we need the $143 billion in the first place?

"Consider college an investment," the information sheet concluded, its manner calm and reassuring. Then this College Board charticle quoted a study from the College Board that said people who earned a degree from a college, schools such as those that make up the College Board, earn 60 percent more than workers with only a high school degree--adding up to $800,000 over a lifetime.

"Whatever sacrifices you and your child make for his or her college education in the short term are more than repaid in the long term."

I'd noticed something interesting about these communications from the higher-ed establishment. The only time they spoke of higher education in business terms, weighing costs and benefits, was in the middle of a come-on to parents and students, most of whom were presumably comfortable with seeing life in terms of commercial transactions. Otherwise the literature treated higher ed as a spiritual realm, filled with mystery and magic, immune from the worldly pressures of costs and benefits."

The cultlike disingenuousness of it was galling. Much of the stuff I'd accumulated from the College Board was thinly disguised propaganda of this kind--prettied up in numbers, but just as self-serving as anything you'd expect from a business lobby.

"Don't let the sticker price scare you," the next sheet said, ramming the message home. "Financial aid often makes up the difference between what you can afford to pay and what college costs." And just so you don't forget: "Education loans are also an appropriate way for families to pay for college."

more t/k

more more middle class....

2012-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

re: re: We all want to be 'middle class' and Speaking of the middle class

As part of not getting my stride back today, and inspired by my success at finally locating an income chart that includes medical benefits, I tracked down inflation charts on:

public education spending (and here)
college spending
health care spending

Gadzooks.

Good thing apparel prices have been falling or we'd all be walking around naked. Walking around naked or, alternatively, walking around fully clothed with a whopper of a student apparel loan to pay off.

And while we're on the topic of mind-boggling and rising prices for the big stuff, as opposed to reasonable and falling prices for the little stuff, why do I have to keep hearing about housing bubbles when the really huge bubbles seem to be tuition and health care?

speaking of the middle class

2012-01-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

re: Grace's post "We all want to be middle class" (and other posts on this subject)

I finally found an income chart that includes medical benefits:

Concerned About Income Stagnation? Blame Rising Health Insurance Costs

(I haven't fact-checked the chart.)

Every time I see articles about stagnating wages, I want to know whether benefits are or are not part of wages. Assuming benefits are not included in most estimates of wages, and assuming this chart is accurate, what we see is health insurance eating up what would have been a nice, steady series of raises.

Good thing we can all buy cheap electronics from China--!

palisadesk on joined manuscript vs cursive

2012-01-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

The research actually shows that "joined manuscript" is both faster and more legible than cursive, especially at maximum speed. It doesn't degenerate into a scrawl or scribble the way the "loopy" styles do.

Kate Gladstone is the handwriting go-to guru, her website Handwriting Repair has a ton of resources on the topic. She recommends a number of the italic and quasi-italic styles, which have always been dominant in the UK and Australia.

It's untrue that traditional cursive will eliminate, or prevent, b-d reversals and other such anomalies. I've had a number of students who consistently made b-d errors in cursive -- "The bog is darking," and so on -- even though the letters did not look anything alike. Kids with graphomotor output issues have a terrible time learning traditional cursive writing, and their writing always looks like chicken tracks despite their best efforts. Italic and manuscript-style joined cursive, a la "Handwriting WIthout Tears" yield better results.

still off-topic: Gallup poll on weight loss

2012-01-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

I've become a tad health-and-diet-preoccupied here in the New Year. But I figure I am not alone.

Just came across a Gallup poll -- How Americans Who Have Lost Weight Made it Happen -- and thought this was interesting:

Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare survey results reveal the top weight loss tactics Americans say they have used successfully. The 52% of all U.S. adults who say they have succeeded at losing weight at some point in their lives were more likely to credit dietary changes than exercise.

The top three diet-related tactics Americans said they used were eating less, counting calories/portion control, and eating more natural foods. In terms of those who relied on exercise, just working out in general was the most frequently mentioned form of activity.

they do what they do

2012-01-09T18:59:00.000-08:00

A teacher friend told me her district is not going to teach cursive handwriting any more. The children entering Kindergarten next year won't be able to write cursive script, and they won't be able to read cursive script. Their parents' love letters will be as indecipherable to them as 1960s shorthand is to me.

My friend thinks dropping cursive is a bad idea, but no one asked her. No one asked the parents, either, or the taxpayers. District administrators made the call, and that is that. They are the deciders.^*

Meanwhile some children will undoubtedly suffer in ways the deciders have failed to consider:

Cursive longhand helps some people in a way few would think about. I am dyslectic to the point that I had to depend on others to read to me for many years. Over 50 years ago I received an engineering degree, and went on to a successful career supervising the design and construction of several big-ticket projects.
With my dyslexia pattern I would never print "dog" as "god" but I could, even today, print "dog" as "bog" and not know the difference, even if someone pointed it out to me. I do not make these mistakes when writing in longhand. I hope the schools continue to teach this method of writing to the dyslectic students.
R.W.
Ridgefield, Wash.
July 16, 2011

^*I don't use the word "decider" as a slam against President Bush. Deciders is an excellent word.

re-entry

2012-01-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

First we had a great Christmas, then we had a great trip to IL to see my brother and his family.

Now: re-entry.

Yuck!

Blech!

I hate re-entry!

We all want to be 'middle class'

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

Why we want to be middle class

But whatever its exact size, the middle class is usually considered more deserving – and more threatened – than those at the extremes.

This helps explain why we label the offering of financial aid to families with incomes up to $200,000, a policy of some Ivy League schools and other elite colleges, as help for the "middle class". It feels good to do so, and since the definition is muddled, it's hard to challenge it.

Definition of middle class is muddled

the other answer to all our problems

2012-01-04T17:46:00.000-08:00

Fitness in 6 minutes a week:

20 to 30 seconds highest intensity exercise you can stand (running, jumping, etc – not sure about weight-lifting per se)
4 minutes rest
repeat 20 to 30 seconds of highest intensity you can stand
repeat rest
continue for 4 to 6 cycles
repeat 3 times a week

Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
by GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
June 24 2009

Fasting exercise:

3 groups 28-year old men
overate by 30% of what they actually needed
diet was 50% fat
1 group did no exercise
1 group did rigorous running/cycling exercise 4 mornings a week – two workouts were 90 minutes; two were 60 AFTER eating breakfast & while also drinking sports drinks during exercise
3rd group ate the same & did same exercise BEFORE breakfast – in fasting state
no-exercise group gained more than 6 pounds, became insulin resistant, and began storing fat inside muscle
vigorous exercise-after-breakfast group gained 3 pounds, also became insulin resistant & began storing fat inside muscle
fasting-exercise group gained no weight, did not become insulin resistant, and showed increase in protein related to glucose transport in muscle
exercise in fasting state burns fat, not carb
probably any level of fasting exercise would be better than nothing

The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
by Gretchen Reynolds
December 15, 2010

I've decided to put these two together. I'm nixing the 90-minute workout in favor of a 10-minute walk/run with the dogs and 4 high-intensity cycles of jump-rope.^*

Will let you know how it goes

^*Speaking of jump rope, today's jump ropes, the ones with the "precision" ball bearing handles are awful! They spin too fast and too erratically, so much so that my sister calls them "spinny." What happened to the old jump ropes with hollow wood handles & the rope threaded through? Apparently someone's going to have to reinvent them. Fortunately, I discovered today that it is possible to get a very good workout jumping rope without the rope. All you have to do is imagine the rope.

when Harvard had to advertise

2012-01-04T15:31:00.000-08:00

Top-drawer universities like Harvard and Columbia advertised for students steadily through August and September right up to opening day and offered entrance exams the weekend before classes resumed to give students every chance of taking and passing them.

Harvard even played down the difficulty of its entrance exam in ads, reprinted above, that it placed in The New York Times in September 1870, noting that of the 210 candidates who took its test the June before, “185 were admitted.”
Remembering When College Was a Buyer’s Bazaar
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
March 31, 2011

Shep Barbash's new book

2012-01-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

Clear Teaching: The Book (pdf file)

I just downloaded my copy!

The Unappreciated Benefits of Dyslexia

2012-01-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

Liz Ditz has the post

How's your Latin? or Plane Geometry?

2012-01-03T11:16:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering: Harvard Entrance Exam circa 1899

Fixing Group Projects to Actually Prepare Students for the "Real World"

2012-01-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

Bryan Caplan offers some suggestions to make group projects in school better reflect real life group projects.

more on the mental number line

2012-01-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

in the Wall Street Journal:

Body posture can influence how we estimate such things as age and size, a study shows.

Thirty-three undergraduates stood on a Wii Balance Board, a videogame-system accessory. Researchers surreptitiously manipulated the subjects' stances, slightly tilting them, though an onscreen measure misled the students into thinking they were evenly balanced.

In each stance, students answered 13 questions, including the height of the Eiffel Tower, the size of the Netherlands and the life expectancy of a parrot. On average, participants gave smaller estimates when they leaned left than when they stood straight or leaned right—stances producing virtually identical results.

"Mental-number-line theory" accounted for the finding, the researchers said. We envision numbers as they appear on a ruler, rising from left to right. Leaning left nudged estimates lower.

"Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation," Anita Eerland, Tulio M. Guadalupe and Rolf A. Zwaan, Psychological Science (December).
Christopher Shea | Week in Ideas

number line posts

the answer to all our problems

2012-01-02T15:49:00.000-08:00

exercise before breakfast:

The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance — their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently — and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”
Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
December 15, 2010, 12:01 AM

This year's New Year's Resolution.

query for palisadesk and other teachers and parents

2012-01-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I've been teaching freshman composition at a local college. I'm interested in hearing more about this category of readers:

The last group [of children experiencing the fourth-grade slump], which Jeannette Chall discusses in some detail, are students whose language skills generally are weak and who thus cannot make the jump from reading simple, literal text to more complex material, even when they decode well. While vocabulary is often mentioned as the key factor, I have not found this to be the case. Language comprehension generally – understanding of complex syntax, subordinate clauses, connecting words, subjunctive, pronoun referents, temporal sequence, idiomatic expressions – the list goes on. There are some good DI programs for developing the needed language skills, but this kind of “Fourth Grade Slump” requires a more long-term approach.

Worth revisting: Arthur Whimbey's zoonoses test.

palisadesk on phonics and multi-syllabic words

2012-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

A propos of the “Fourth Grade Slump,” it can occur for several, quite different, reasons. Kids who have learned to read with solid synthetic phonics can still experience difficulty when they have to decode multisyllable words.... Even in the famous Clackmannanshire study (pdf file) (where all the students were taught a systematic phonics approach similar to Jolly Phonics), a number of students had to be specifically taught how to read multisyllable words in Year Four. They developed a program called “Phonics Revisted” to deal with this. It included, IIRC, learning to segment multisyllable words, some morphemic strategies, and emphasis on less common correspondences. Unfortunately the Clackmannanshire report doesn't provide many details.

However, the Clackmannanshire study only replicates what has been found on this side of the pond as well. Many students who are good decoders, because they have learned (or intuited) basic phonics skills, come to a screeching halt at mutisyllable words especially, as in examples by Allison and Chemprof, scientific terminology. These skills can be systematically taught, of course.
continue reading

and see:
K9sasha on Sopris West REWARDS
palisadesk on Orton-Gillingham compared to DI and Sopris West REWARDS

bidding war

2012-01-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

Robert H. Frank writing in the Times:

WHY do many middle-class families now struggle to get by on two paychecks, whereas most got by on just one back in the 1950s and ’60s?

The answer, according to “The Two-Income Trap,” by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, is that many second paychecks today go toward financing a largely fruitless bidding war for homes in good school districts.

Parents naturally want to send their kids to good schools. But quality is relative. Because the best schools tend to be those serving expensive neighborhoods, parents must outbid 50 percent of other parents with the same goal just to send their children to a school of average quality.

How hard is that? I constructed a measure I call the toil index. It tracks the number of hours a median earner must work each month to earn the implicit rent for the median-priced house.

From 1950 to 1970, when incomes were growing at about the same rate for families up and down the income ladder, the toil index actually declined slightly. But since 1970 — a period during which income inequality has grown — the toil index has risen sharply.

[snip]

From a postwar low of 41 hours a month in 1970, it rose to more than 100 hours in 2005.
December 31, 2011

Frank cites other factors, too (housing bubble, credit bubble). It would be interesting to see an estimate of how much the bidding war for suburban schools has contributed to the increase in Frank's toil index.

I remember, a few years ago, reading an estimate of what would happen to home prices in Westchester County if the state adopted a voucher system. A large drop, as I recall. Very large.

When I was a child, my dad, a farmer in central Illinois, was able to support a wife and four children. He didn't buy health insurance because he figured he'd come out ahead paying doctors out of pocket, and he was right. He put four children through college without loans.

Why are things different today?

Why has the cost of houses, health care, and public schools risen at above-inflation rates for decades?

That's what I'd like to know.

banished!

2011-12-31T20:56:00.000-08:00

Lake Superior State University 2012 List of Banished Words

In 1977, one year after Lake Superior State University Public Relations Director W.T. (Bill) Rabe released the first "banished words list," he said that the international reaction from news media and the public told him "it would go on forever."

Forever may be stretching it, but the annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness has been going strong since New Year's Day 1976 and shows no signs of stopping. People from around the world have nominated hundreds of words and phrases such as "you know," "user friendly," "at this point in time," and "have a nice day," to be purged from the language.

This year's list:

AMAZED
BABY BUMP
SHARED SACRIFICE
OCCUPY
BLOWBACK
MAN CAVE
THE NEW NORMAL
PET PARENT
WIN THE FUTURE
TRICKERATION
GINORMOUS
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE

OK, so....this is not the list I would pick, but I see the logic.

Disagree re: amazing, however. An excellent word, overused or not. I'm keeping it.

Baby bump can go.^*

Ditto the new normal. I am against the new normal, and I am against calling the new normal the new normal. Get rid of it!

I'm keeping ginormous. Also bazillion and gazillion, in case anyone has big ideas for next year.

Never heard of pet parent or trickeration; don't care about blowback, shared sacrifice, or occupy. I don't spend time around people who say "man cave." If I did, I'd put it on the list.

Which brings me to Thank you in advance:

"Usually followed by 'for your cooperation,' this is a condescending and challenging way to say, 'Since I already thanked you, you have to do this.'" Mike Cloran, Cincinnati, Ohio

Oh, man. That takes me back. Do any of you remember all the 'Thank you for your ongoing cooperation and support' communiques we used to get from our erstwhile superintendent of schools?

I sure do. I'm going to have to dig up the citizens' op ed I wrote on the subject of parents being thanked for their ongoing cooperation and support. I was against it.

Back to the Lake Superior State:

The first list was dreamed up by Rabe and a group of friends at a New Year's Eve party in 1975. The following day, he released the list and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, nominations for words and expressions to be banished have been invited and accepted throughout the year.

I've already got my list for 2012 started.

Edu-words that should be banished from the queen's English:

Start with ENHANCED.

^* Does anyone who is NOT an actress ever have a baby bump?

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

2012!

chemprof on masked deficits in high-achieving students

2011-12-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

chemprof responding to "EVERY PARENT SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO SPELLING"

Absolutely. I think I've told the story of my first research student before, a very bright biochem major. She got a low C in biochem (after A's in organic) because of exactly this kind of problem. She was an early reader who basically memorized words, but really only read the first 3-4 letters. So she couldn't keep what she called the "glys" straight - glycine, glycolysis, glycogen, etc. all looked the same to her. She really needed explicit phonics, but no one noticed early enough.

That is an amazing story. Amazing, and chilling.

In the early grades, a strong ability to memorize, which C. had and has, is going to mask deficits if the only data anyone cares about is a passing score on the state tests.

C., too, was an early reader with a quick memory; he was one of those kids who 'taught himself to read.' But when he was in fourth grade, I discovered that he could not read a two-syllable nonsense word.

And he couldn't spell at all, which I knew was not right. Everyone in the household thought he'd naturally learn to spell if he just read more, but he had abruptly stopped reading, and his school didn't give many reading assignments.

Interestingly, at some point after C. enrolled in his Jesuit high school, he told me that "The kids are better readers" -- meaning they could read out loud better than kids in his public school. He also heard stories of parents who put their kids in Catholic school "because they couldn't read."

Catholic schools still teach phonics, I believe.

---------------

from the annals of All the answers are belong to us: trying and failing to buy a Direct Instruction spelling book

non-poor students doing fine in Princeton

2011-12-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

From the Princeton Alumni Weekly, an interview with Earl Kim, Class of '93, now superintendent of Montgomery Township Schools:

When, exactly, did public education become a blood sport? Granted, there were vicious battles over busing in the 1970s. But now the whole American system of public education, which once made us so proud, seems to have become suspect. Perhaps it’s all those reports that show how far our students now lag behind their peers in places like Finland and Singapore — though Kim points out that once you adjust for poverty, we are still doing fine...

Affluent suburban schools, in my experience, don't have much truck with data. My own affluent suburban school district, for instance, grades itself on a strictly pass-fail basis. Percent passing the state tests, percent failing the state tests. Percent passing AP exams, percent failing AP exams. We have many more passes than fails, and we are doing fine.

The question is: what does "doing fine" actually mean in the larger scheme of things?

The Global Report Card, which ranks US schools against schools in 25 developed countries, puts Montgomery Township schools at the 76th percentile in math, 83rd in reading.

As to Finland and Singapore, here are the numbers for Montgomery Township:

Mind you, these aren't apples-to-apples comparisons. Montgomery Township is affluent and well-educated; assuming I understand the website, affluent children with well-educated parents in Montgomery Township are not being compared to affluent children with well-educated parents in Finland, Singapore, and Canada. Affluent children with well-educated parents in Montgomery Township are being compared to all students in Finland, Singapore, and Canada.

If Montgomery Township students are in, say, the 90th percentile of US students in math (they may be higher), is it "fine" for them to be in the 56th percentile in math in Singapore?

Maybe so.

Princeton trivia: Ben Bernanke served on the Montgomery Township Board of Education.

annual posting of Siouxsie and the Banshees

2011-12-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

The French song Il est né le divin enfant is my favorite Christmas carol, and for some reason this performance by Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I discovered on YouTube a couple of years ago, is my favorite version. The trumpets, the choral round, the triumphal tone --- love it.

random

2011-12-27T09:53:00.000-08:00

Is this video just one take?

About 3 minutes in, it came to me that I hadn't seen any cuts.

Don't have the patience to watch it again.

source: Small Business blog

Six to Eight Black Men

2011-12-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

I read the David Sedaris piece on Christmas in Holland a couple of mornings ago -- hilarious. Starts slowly, with a somewhat protracted rumination on gun laws in the hinterlands, but once he gets to Holland the piece takes off. (I would probably feel differently if I were from Holland, as opposed to the hinterlands, myself. Here's Leon De Winter on Santa Claus's Dutch Uncle in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. De Winter's account doesn't mention six to eight black men.)

From the Sedaris piece:

In France and Germany, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve, while in Holland the children receive presents on December 5, in celebration of Saint Nicholas Day. It sounded sort of quaint until I spoke to a man named Oscar, who filled me in on a few of the details as we walked from my hotel to the Amsterdam train station.

Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I was told, is a carryover from his former career, when he served as a bishop in Turkey.

One doesn't want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn't use to do anything. He's not retired, and, more important, he has nothing to do with Turkey. The climate's all wrong, and people wouldn't appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not true.
Six to Eight Black Men

Chris can spell!

2011-12-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

update: Here is Mary Damer on masked deficits & poor spelling in high-performing students.

Some of you who've been reading and writing ktm from the beginning may remember Chris's "psychotic" spelling as a 4th grader.

Well, great news: Chris can spell. I suspect he's still not spelling as well as I probably did at his age, but his spelling is completely 'within the realm,' if you know what I mean, and you probably do.

I've been thinking lately about the issue of how much you can learn about writing (and spelling) just from reading, and I think the answer is that you can learn a great deal ultimately. I say that with the caveat that school reading needs to be guided by a teacher and needs to be systematically increased in difficulty.

Those conditions have been true for Chris, who has taken all Honors and AP courses in high school, and who says he's done all the reading in his classes. The reading load in Honors/AP courses is pretty hefty, the books are quite difficult, and a teacher leads the way.

We worked our way through Megawords Grade 6, which helped tremendously, and Chris's high school reading and writing took him the rest of the way.

His handwriting still stinks, however, although it's better than it was. (Takes me back to our summer adventures with Write Now. Chris's handwriting didn't improve, but mine did.)

the Megawords posts at ktm, the sequel

from the "blooki" index:

Merry Christmas Happy Holidays - 2011

2011-12-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

oldies but goodies

2011-12-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

May 7, 2006

my 21st century autistic son...

2011-12-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

employing 21st century technology...

then and now

2011-12-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

4/2006 - the first day .... and Catherine's story (all pages are frozen; I can't edit them)

11/30/2006 - Christopher masters technology

12/23/2011 - thick envelope

thick envelope

2011-12-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

Just in time for Christmas!

(It's from U Mass, which has put Chris in its Honors college and given him $10K in merit aid (unasked). Have I mentioned Scores are Gold lately?)

December SAT Scores (aka, My Buddha)

2011-12-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

I'd characterize yesterday as an epically bad day in my 46 years of life, and while the turmoil had nothing to do with the SAT, my December scores did not help.

Yes, I do realize (intellectually) that I should feel happy about my Reading and Writing scores; but honestly, that Math score feels crushing, like a bully. Today, well, I'm trying to see it as my Buddha.

The worst part was telling my son. I swear to you, he looked at me with these big, wide, honest to god eyes of surprise, and said "really?" -- like he truly couldn't believe his mom didn't do it. I think I'd actually convinced him that hard work pays off (that's what I thought!).

But he's a sweetie, and he quickly focused on my Reading and Writing scores, telling me how great they are, blah blah blah. In fact I got all sorts of encouraging emails from friends and family:

"I know it's hard to remember at times like these, but these scores are not a judgment. They're just numbers ..... You did your best and gave it your best shot. That's what's most important -- the process, not the outcome .... Your scores are fantastic – you’re 40 points away from an 800 on CR – do you know how many parents would kill for that score?? The 730 on writing just puts you in your range."

They made me feel better, in a supported sort of way -- but deep inside I couldn't help feeling like a high school senior who just found out they didn't get into their first choice college, and everyone writes on their Facebook wall: "You're too good for them.... It wasn't meant to be..... There's a better school for you..."

And that's all true, but it still feels devastating. At least it does for me.

At the end of the day yesterday, I received an email that truly did lift my spirits. It came from a high school senior whom I'd never met:

SAT scores came out today! How did you do? I hope you did well. I know you'll get a good score, and congrats on completing the project! What you did was very inspiring, especially for high school seniors. I just thought that I would let you know that you motivated me to study, and I went from a 1630 (520R 600M 510W) (junior year) to a 2300 (700R 800M 800W) (senior year).

I need to print that out and post it at eye level on my bulletin board.

I haven't fully processed how it's possible that I spent dozens and dozens of joyful hours studying SAT math over the course of 10 months, and hardly improved at all from where I started without knowing a thing last January. My friend Catherine says it's one more piece of evidence that a solid curriculum is essential, and without that, no amount of SAT prep in the world is going to improve your score.

For all intents and purposes, I didn't learn a lick of math after 9th grade (until I began this project). I'm thinking about taking a math class at my local community college -- and just starting from scratch.

I'm not done. I have to pause in order to write a book right now, but I'm not done with the math. I feel incomplete.

If there's anyone else out there feeling disappointed by their SAT scores, here's a quote that I have posted in a few places around my house that seems to help:

If you have the privilege of being with someone at the time of his or her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple:
"Did I love well?"
"Did I live fully?"
"Did I learn to let go?"
-- Jack Kornfield

llustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

Cross-posted on Perfect Score Project

speaking of grammar to enrich and enhance writing

2011-12-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

re: Stop the multiverse, I want to get off

Why do we have books called Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing?

Seriously. How is "Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing" a sensible title for a book on grammar and writing?

Grammar is writing. Without grammar, you don't have writing; without grammar, you have a list of words, which is not writing. (Not really.) Grammar to enhance writing is like paint to enhance painting or pianos to enhance playing the piano. If you don't have paint, you're not painting. Same deal with writing.

Ordinary people get this.

That's why ordinary people tend to think schools should just go back to teaching grammar as they once did lo these many years ago and be done with it. Teach grammar in isolation, teach grammar out of isolation, teach grammar in and out of isolation.

Just teach it.

And make sure the kids have actually learned it.

stop the multiverse, I want to get off

2011-12-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

So I was propounding my theory that Something Happened in 1985, a world-jarring event that catapulted us all into a parallel universe where Not Teaching is Teaching and Salman Khan is the man you summon to help you spice up your presentations.

Then a couple of minutes later I came across this: The Accidental Universe: Science's Crisis of Faith by Alan P. Lightman.

Why are we living in a world where Writing to the Point is out of print and Grammar to Enrich & Enhance Writing is in print?

I blame the multiverse.

Steve H on node chairs

2011-12-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

"The Nodal Classroom"

An amazing new educational paradigm! It's the Node™, brought to you by Steelcase. Ta Da! Music please.

I'll bet they can add PC docking stations with connections to the Smartboard. Oops! It's time to scoot into your new formations. Beep, beep! Ha, Ha! Now that's what I call active learning. PE across the classrooms.

Down with the Harkness Table. Up with nodal chairs. They can be so easily rearranged on the deck of the Titanic.

Robyne Camp says PISA may be coming to my town

2011-12-22T16:15:00.001-08:00

How are we doing?

speaking of inequality

2011-12-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

We haven’t been able to increase the share of our youth that completes college or high school. It’s really remarkable, and most people wouldn’t actually guess this, but in the US, the cohorts that had the highest high-school graduation rates were the ones that were graduating in the middle of the 1960s. Our high-school graduation rate has actually been declining since then. If you look at college, it’s the same thing.
Daron Acemoglu on inequality

Two words: node chairs.

disappearing act

The Race redux

2011-12-22T15:36:00.000-08:00

Two summers ago, I wrote a number of posts on The Race between Education and Technology, a book I found revelatory. Via Greg Mankiw's blog, I've just come across economist Daron Acemoglu's recommendation of The Race as one of the top 5 books to read on inequality:

This is a really wonderful book. It gives a masterful outline of the standard economic model, where earnings are proportional to contribution, or to productivity. It highlights in a very clear manner what determines the productivities of different individuals and different groups. It takes its cue from a phrase that the famous Dutch economist, Jan Tinbergen coined. The key idea is that technological changes often increase the demand for more skilled workers, so in order to keep inequality in check you need to have a steady increase in the supply of skilled workers in the economy. He called this “the race between education and technology”. If the race is won by technology, inequality tends to increase, if the race is won by education, inequality tends to decrease.

The authors, Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, show that this is actually a pretty good model in terms of explaining the last 100 years or so of US history. They give an excellent historical account of how the US education system was formed and why it was very progressive, leading to a very large increase in the supply of educated workers, in the first half of the century. This created greater equality in the US than in many other parts of the world.

They also point to three things that have changed that picture over the last 30 to 40 years. One is that technology has become even more biased towards more skilled, higher earning workers than before. So, all else being equal, that will tend to increase inequality. Secondly, we’ve been going through a phase of globalisation. Things such as trading with China – where low-skill labour is much cheaper – are putting pressure on low wages. Third, and possibly most important, is that the US education system has been failing terribly at some level. We haven’t been able to increase the share of our youth that completes college or high school. It’s really remarkable, and most people wouldn’t actually guess this, but in the US, the cohorts that had the highest high-school graduation rates were the ones that were graduating in the middle of the 1960s. Our high-school graduation rate has actually been declining since then. If you look at college, it’s the same thing. This is hugely important, and it’s really quite shocking. It has a major effect on inequality, because it is making skills much more scarce then they should be.

Do Goldin and Katz go into the reasons why education is failing in the US?

They do discuss it, but nobody knows....It’s not that we’re spending less. In fact, we are spending more. It’s certainly not that college is not valued, it’s valued a lot. The college premium – what college graduates earn relative to high-school graduates – has been increasing rapidly. It’s not that the US is not investing enough in low-income schools. There has been a lot of investment in low-income schools.

[snip]

Goldin and Katz’s book shows that the college premium was higher in the early 1900s than it was in the 1940s and 1950s. Then it remains stable for several decades, and then it starts increasing again in the 1980s.
Daron Acemoglu on inequality

in a nutshell:

the US education system has been failing terribly at some level

the cohorts that had the highest high-school graduation rates were the ones that were graduating in the middle of the 1960s

He goes on to say that "What’s missing from the Goldin and Katz book is that they really don’t look at all at what’s going on in the top 10%," a point I think I recall Allison making (although Allison may have been talking about the the top 1 or 0.5%).

yet another brilliant idea from the folks who brought you all those other brilliant ideas

2011-12-22T04:47:00.000-08:00

Jen writes:

I was talking to a teacher friend the other day and he was lamenting that the curriculum is going to change yet again and that if they follow what they say they want to do, they'll move everything to a grade earlier.

Mind you, this is an urban district with not great scores. Mind you, they spent years with EM which is likely the worst way to teach kids who come in without number sense, without support for education at home, and without a parent who can figure out what's being asked and more importantly, what's being missed.

But, the new big idea (again, this is really part of the idea of spiraling) is that if kids aren't getting, 5th grade math in 5th grade it means you really need to teach those concepts in...4th grade! Brilliant! Bravo! Imagine how much better they'll do at it, not learning it at an earlier age!

Now kids coming into K and 1st grade without any number skills, 1-3 years behind other kids of middle class, well-educated parents, will be expected to be getting through 1-3 more years of math in their first few years of school, too. It's genius!

What teacher can't take 25-30 elementary students who are starting behind and teach them 2-6 years of math in a year? Whiner slacker teachers, that's who!

I say, Whiner, slacker teachers of the world, unite!

disappearing act

2011-12-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

Having now spent two fall semesters in a row trawling the web for research and advice on the teaching of freshman composition, I have come to the conclusion that all useful thinking on the subject ceased in 1985.^*

Prior to 1985, people are thinking and writing all manner of helpful stuff; after 1985 you get the rise of the boss compositionists and the erasure of the sentence.

The compositionists are still busy erasing the knowledge we used to have:

Before: Campus Writing Program | Indiana University - grading; sequenced microthemes; pamphlets for students, etc. Good stuff.

Now:

After: Node Chairs Move Students to New Activity

Honest to God: this is Indiana University's Campus Writing Program, and they've devoted an entire page to a furniture purchase.

^* a proposed factoid that supports my hit-by-a-meteor hypothesis

parallel universe

2011-12-21T16:35:00.000-08:00

from the Annals of I read the news today, oh boy:

Stanford Medical School, which allows its students to take lectures online if they want, summoned Mr. Khan to help its faculty spice up their presentations.
Online Learning, Personalized
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 4, 2011

I am happy Salman Khan exists. I'm glad he's doing what he's doing; I hope he keeps on doing it. His SAT videos weren't helpful in our case (though I can imagine they would be to many others), and he talks too fast in the one distributive property video I watched for me to use it with my middle school math student (who is now distributing the negative rather well, thank you for asking). I have high hopes for the videos on the American-Chinese Debt Loop, however.

But here's the question.

In what universe is Salman Khan the person you summon to "spice up" a presentation?

Surely not the one I'm living in.

what do students say about 'online learning'?

2011-12-20T07:54:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I was talking to 3 of my students about this and that when the topic of online learning and online courses came up. I don't remember why it came up, but it did.

My campus is keenly interested in online learning. It looks to me as if the college hopes to increase enrollment in online courses substantially, although I don't know this.

In any event, the topic came up, and instantly all three said they hate -- hate, that was the word -- online learning. They didn't just say it; they showed it. Their faces were filled with disgust.

The look of disgust is meaningful to me because I was once given an extended parent-of-an-autistic-child interview (took hours to complete), and one of the questions was: Does your child display the facial expression of disgust? I vividly recall feeling relieved and proud when I realized that Jimmy did indeed have a distinct facial expression of disgust, which came across his features when he saw disgusting things.

So last Thursday my students were saying they hate online learning, and their faces were exhibiting disgust.

Where there's smoke there's fire: where 3-out-of-3 students inside a classroom express vocal dislike of online learning, there are more. Many more, no doubt.

Why is no one listening to these kids?

That is a rhetorical question.

No one in the public school establishment ever listens to kids. Their misery in 'traditional' classes is simply assumed, and their future pleasure in flipped classrooms is assumed, too.

what's to like about Khan

2011-12-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

from the same article:

Khan Academy, for its part, teamed up last year with the Los Altos, Calif., school district to launch a pilot of the model. In it, students in grades 5-8 use Khan-produced online lectures as part of their math curriculum. The pilot has expanded from 150 students in five classrooms last year to 1,000 students in 40 classrooms this year.

“It’s not just about the kids watching the same lecture the night before. For us, the big piece is having teachers use data to make instructional decisions about their students,” said Alyssa Gallagher, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the 4,500-student district.

Courtney Cadwell, who teaches 7th grade math at Eagan Junior High School and serves as a math coach to teachers in Los Altos, agreed that the rapid feedback on her students has been the best part of the model. The Khan program allows teachers to track what videos and individual exercises students spend the most time watching and working through, and how long it takes students to correctly solve 10 problems in a row for any given math concept.

Last year, as one of the first teachers in the Los Altos pilot, Ms. Cadwell started all of the students in her remediation class on Addition 1, the most basic Khan unit, and asked them to work through all the units at their own pace while she watched using the program’s data-tracking system.

Students worked through those initial units quickly, but she could see when they hit their “pain points”—sometimes on material covered several grades earlier.

“In order for me to get that kind of understanding of a student, I would have had to sit down one-on-one and work through problems and see a pattern, which I’m happy to do, but it takes a lot of time,” Ms. Caldwell said. “This confirmed my suspicions and allowed me to remediate much more quickly.”

“I was able to identify those learning gaps in real time, whether it was from 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, and I was able to remediate and saw those learning gaps begin to disappear,” Ms. Cadwell said.

Before the start of the pilot, only 23 percent of the 7th grade remediation students were proficient on the state mathematics test, but after the first year, the proficiency rate climbed to more than 40 percent, according to district data.

“The math class that they dreaded became something they really loved,” Ms. Caldwell said.
Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead By Sarah D. Sparks | Published Online: September 27, 2011

This is the aspect of "technology" that strikes me as extremely useful: the possibility of immediate, and reasonably accurate, formative assessment of student learning.

Speaking as a parent and a teacher of college freshmen, I have zero interest in a 'flipped' classroom. I don't think it's going to work, and while I normally avoid making predictions (even in private), in this case I have no qualms:

I PREDICT: The flipped classroom - hot! hot! hot! - is going to be yet another edu-flop taking its place in a 100-year parade of edu-flops. 100 years and counting.

COROLLARY: the flipped classroom is looking to be a big, bold, and brassy flop if everyone piles on before we have any indication whatsoever that a flipped classroom actually works. I.e.: before we have any indication that a) kids will actually watch the videos, and b) if they do watch, whether they actually learn anything.

The assessment question is different, I think. As a teacher (and a parent) I have a near-desperate need for more information on what students know and don't know -- and acquiring that information is easier said than done. I can easily imagine the Khan site (or any similar site) being an enormous help -- so much so, that I'm planning an 'online component' for my course next fall. (Though, again, we'll see whether my students can - or will - manage it. That is a subject for another post.)

Meanwhile C. is taking a physics course in which the teacher seems to have actually made "technology" work, also a subject for a separate post.

Flipping the Classroom: Hot! Hot! Hot!

2011-12-19T19:13:00.000-08:00

Susan Kramer watched her packed 10th grade biology class weave through rows of desks, pretending to be proteins and picking up plastic-bead “carbohydrates” and goofy “phosphate” hats as they navigated their “cell.” As they went, they explained how the cell’s interior system works.

It’s the kind of activity her students love....
Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead by Sarah D. Sparks | Education Week | September 27, 2011

10th grade?

Really?

They're 15 years old and they love weaving through rows of desks pretending to be proteins and picking up plastic-bead carbohydrates and goofy phosphate hats as they navigate their cell?

hmmmm...

Granted, Flipping the Classroom is Hot! Hot! Hot!. But still.

Christopher Hitchens, RIP

2011-12-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Ross Douthat on "The Believer's Atheist":

But in the world of journalism, among his peers and competitors and sparring partners, it was nearly impossible to find a religious person who didn’t have a soft spot for a man who famously accused faith of poisoning absolutely everything.

Intellectually minded Christians, in particular, had a habit of talking about Hitchens as though he were one of them already — a convert in the making, whose furious broadsides against God were just the prelude to an inevitable reconciliation. (Or as a fellow Catholic once murmured to me: “He just protests a bit too much, don’t you think?”) This is not a sentiment that was often expressed about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any other member of the New Atheist tribe. But where Hitchens was concerned, no insult he hurled or blasphemy he uttered could shake the almost-filial connection that many Christians felt for him.

Some of this reflected his immense personal charm, his willingness to debate with Baptists and drink with Catholics and be comradely to anyone who took ideas seriously. But there was something deeper at work as well. American Christian intellectual life is sustained today, to a large extent, by the work of writers very much like Hitchens — by essayists and journalists and novelists and poets, from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to W. H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh, who shared his English roots, his gift for argument and his abiding humanism.

Recognizing this affinity, many Christian readers felt that in Hitchens’s case there had somehow been a terrible mix-up, and that a writer who loved the King James Bible and “Brideshead Revisited” surely belonged with them, rather than with the bloodless prophets of a world lit only by Science.

In this they were mistaken, but not entirely so. At the very least, Hitchens’s antireligious writings carried a whiff of something absent in many of atheism’s less talented apostles — a hint that he was not so much a disbeliever as a rebel, and that his atheism was mostly a political romantic’s attempt to pick a fight with the biggest Tyrant he could find.

This air of rebellion did not make him a believer, but it lent his blasphemies an air of danger and intrigue, as though he were an agent of the Free French distributing literature deep in Vichy. Certainly he always seemed well aware of the extent to which his writings traded on the unusual frisson of saying “No!” to a supposedly nonexistent being.
New York Times | December 17, 2011

And here is Ian McEwan: Christopher Hitchens, Consummate Writer, Brilliant Friend

project

2011-12-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

from Don Stewart: Preface to the Third Edition - Notes Toward a New Rhetoric by Francis Christensen and Bonniejean Christensen:

I first asked [Bonniejean] to tell me about the research that her husband, a professor at the University of Southern California, had done that led him to discover the secrets of the world's great authors. She first had me conjure up in my mind an image of the classic English professor's study, lined from floor to ceiling with book shelves containing volumes of all sorts of writing, both fiction and nonfiction. In the middle of the room was a large mahogany table, and on that table stood dozens of glass canning jars, each with a label taped to it displaying the name of a particular grammatical construction and its placement in the sentence: participial phrase in initial position, adverb clause in medial position, absolute phrase in final position. In front of those soldier-like jars was a pile of coffee beans. Whenever he could capture a moment between classes or late at night, Francis would pull a book from the shelf, open to his bookmark, and read -- very carefully. Sentence by sentence. If the sentence began with an adverb clause, he picked up a coffee bean and dropped it into the jar labeled "Adverb Clause in Initial Position." He watched the jars as they filled up with beans, and at the end of each week he would pour out each jar's contents and count. He recorded the results and made charts that showed what types of grammatical elements these authors used, where they placed them, and how often each grammatical unit occurred. And from this most primitive of bean counting he discovered the answer to that most mysterious of questions, How do writers write?

Reading this passage, I recalled a Grade 5 data-collection project from Math Trailblazers:

So I'm thinking ... if you want 5th grade students to collect data, which apparently you do, why not have them collect data on number of participial phrases, adverb clauses, and absolute phrases and their positions in the sentences of professional writers? That would be interdisciplinary!

First we'd have to tell them what participial phrases, adverb clauses, and absolute phrases are, of course.

Someone would have to tell the teachers, too. I myself had never heard of these things until two years ago, when I started teaching composition at my local college.

Today I have a reasonably firm grasp of participial phrases and adverb clauses. (Reasonably).

Still working on absolutes.

No idea what contemporary linguistics thinks of these entities. It appears I have to acquire the old, outdated knowledge along with the new, updated knowledge in order to know what I'm doing inside the classroom.

'Writing, writing, writing' - a skill lacking among too many college graduates

2011-12-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

Jeff Selingo wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about what he learned from employers who are having a difficult time finding qualified employees to hire among recent college graduates. This was just one problem he found.

Writing, writing, writing. We keep throwing around the word “skills,” but it seems the one skill that almost every job requires is the ability to write well, and too many graduates are lacking in that area. That’s where many of the recruiters were quick to let colleges off the hook, for the most part. Students are supposed to learn to write in elementary and secondary school. They’re not forgetting how to write in college. It’s clear they’re not learning basic grammar, usage, and style in K-12.

Why are students not learning to write before they get to college? Maybe a different type of writing instruction is needed?

Related: The Kerrigan method of ‘Writing to the Point’

(Cross-posted at Cost of College)

Absent Teachers

2011-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

This is getting to be a real big issue with me. What are typical contract rules about this? My son has soooooo many substitute teachers. Nothing happens in those classes. His teachers talk of dire consequences for students who miss school without following protocol and keeping up to date. Some of the rules are draconian. You even have to come after school to make up gym or you will get a zero for that day.

I just got an email from my son (he got it out during advisory) saying that his English teacher is not in today. This is the teacher who doesn't put any explanation on homework or exams and expects students to come in after school to get any sort of feedback or explanation. You have to sign up for this meeting, and if you fail to come, he will add a zero into your grades. I'm not making this up. My son was emailing me because I had to pick him up from school after one of these scheduled meetings. The teacher and school don't care that getting normal feedback on tests requires special transportation. I don't know what they expect from parents who work far away.

And in precalc, they are on their third teacher while the regular teacher is on long-term leave. The latest teacher was complaining that her stay was longer than anticipated and that, in effect, she was not prepared and had no lesson plans. This was in response to students' questions that she couldn't answer or had answered wrong. That was her excuse to the students.

SAT - For those still interested

2011-12-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

This is something I meant to post before. It's the relationship between the raw score and the SAT score for the May 2011 SAT. It demonstrates how much your SAT score will drop with each error.

54 - 800 No errors or skipped problems.
53 - 790 One strike (error).
52 - 760 Two strikes.
51 - 740 You can’t get here for most cases. You round down.
50 - 720 Three strikes - this error drops you 40 points.
49 - 710
48 - 700
47 - 680

For the Student-Produced Response section, you don't get the extra quarter point penalty for a wrong answer and the rounding jump is delayed. Skipped problems will also cause a delay in the rounding jump. However, at some points the roundings kick in. It's a real killer in the 700 range.

Schools find Khan Academy works better than group learning

2011-12-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

More schools are trying Khan Academy videos in their classrooms, and initial results look promising. But when you start with an instructional method that includes lots of time-consuming group work, maybe almost anything else will work better. Here's how it's going at one school.

In the past, math class at the Summit schools was always hands-on: the class worked on a problem, usually in small groups, sometimes for days at a time. But getting an entire class of ninth graders to master the fundamentals of math was never easy. Without those, the higher-level conceptual exercises were impossible.

They found that Khan Academy did a better job. Not too surprising to me.

You can read more at Cost of College.

SAFMEDS instructions

2011-12-05T07:06:00.000-08:00

SAFMEDS = Say All Fast a Minute Each Day

SAFMEDS on the web

The best set of directions I've seen so far: SAFMEDS cards: Instructions - begins with the words: "I’m going to show you a method that will make it easier to learn the NEW terms (i.e., facts or rules) contained in the CLM Course of Study."

Is Fluency Free-Operant Response-Response Chaining? by Ogden R. Lindsley - inventor of SAFMEDS; explains the rationale

Ogden R Lindsley and the History of Precision Teaching

update: Youtube video explaining SAFMEDS -- and, about 6 minutes in, celeration charts

Help Desk - Best online flash cards

2011-12-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

Any suggestions on the best websites for using and/or creating online flashcards for a Spanish language course? There seem to be so many.

from the archives: grading student writing

2011-12-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

from 2009:

Students have long believed (on good evidence) that if the same paper is submitted to two teachers in two different sections of the same course, the paper is likely to receive two very different grades. In 1961, Paul Diederich and his colleagues proved that this student belief is no myth. When 30 student papers were graded by fifty-three graders (a total of 15,900 readings), more than one third of the papers received every possible grade. That is, 101 of the 300 papers received all nine grades: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, and D. Diederich also reported that

94 percent [of the papers] received either seven, eight or nine different grades; and no essay received less than five different grades from fifty-three readers. Even when the raters were experienced teachers, the grades given to the papers by the different raters never attained a correlation greater than .40. Diederich, P.B., French, J.W., and Carlton, S.T. "Factors in judgments of writing ability." Research Bulletin RB-61-15. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 60 pp.
The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them
E. D. Hirsch
185-188

palisadesk on inclusion issues

2011-12-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

Part 1
Part 2

prodigy

2011-12-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

in the Times today:

Great things were expected of him. His math teacher at Greenwich High School in Connecticut, Stephen Willoughby, now a retiree in Tucson, Ariz., says he was a math prodigy. “I always expected Chris would win a Nobel. I just wasn’t sure what field it would be.”

Mr. Sims’s classmates voted him most likely to succeed. “In a class of intelligent people, he was exceptional,” says Joyce Tracksler, a high school friend who is now a mystery writer in Kittery Point, Me.

His parents were exceptional, too. His father, Albert, was a diplomat, and young Chris lived in Germany a few years as a child. The family later moved to the Washington suburbs before settling in Greenwich. His father became an executive at the Institute of International Education and at the College Entrance Examination Board in New York. During the Kennedy administration, he helped start the Peace Corps.

Because of his father’s College Board connections, Mr. Sims got hold of an old SAT exam, which he and Mr. Willoughby used to conduct a statistical analysis. They found that on multiple-choice questions in English and social studies, the “longer answers tended to be correct.” In math, they determined that the number that was “closest to all of the other numerical choices” was probably the right one. Mr. Willoughby says Mr. Sims got perfect scores on SATs, and his teacher assumed that the young man would later “do something involving math, statistics and probability.”
Good Morning. You're Nobel Laureates by Jeff Sommer | December 3, 2011

Tolkien On Fairy Stories

2011-12-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

Lsquared recommends Tolkien's On Fairy Stories, and here it is - !

update: STEM careers and small liberal arts colleges

2011-12-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

For people reading posts on email, I've added the missing paragraph to last night's post.

STEM careers and the small liberal arts college

2011-12-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

I've just come across a passage that is relevant to this exchange between ~~Mark R~~ anonymous. and ChemProf:

~~Mark~~ anonymous:

With STEM degrees and with physics undergraduate degrees in particular I'd be a little wary of the large research institutions. As an example Cal (UC Berkeley) is the top rated graduate school in chemistry but I sure wouldn't send my kids there as undergraduates with the 500 person classrooms taught by grad students with three weeks of training.

There are a few top notch undergraduate-centered places (Harvey Mudd leaps to mind) but failing getting into there I think there's a lot to be said for finding a strong 2nd tier liberal arts college with one or two solid STEM departments that are actually doing some research as well as teaching. Strong students get lots of attention and opportunities as well as stronger and more personal letters of recommendation.

chemprof:

I was one of those chem grad students at Cal, and we got two days of training. But yeah, for STEM and given the current economic environment, I'd suggest looking at second tier liberal arts colleges and see what scholarship money was out there, as well as which departments have a strong history. It does take a little more searching, but there are some gems. I used to think it was a problem to be the big fish in a little pond, but at least for now, that seems to be a good strategy for students.

from Liberal Arts Colleges in American Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities (pdf file):

Liberal arts colleges have produced disproportionate numbers of career scientists, as the surveys conducted by Oberlin and Franklin & Marshall Colleges have shown over the years. This fact alone ought to be grounds for enormous federal investment in small colleges. What has not been as obvious has been the role of less well known liberal arts colleges in meeting the national need for scientists. For example, Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania has a biology department that in 1985 consisted of six faculty members and 73 majors. Now it has nine faculty members and 195 majors. Elon University in North Carolina has steadily increased the number of mathematics majors, with two (of 10) majors going to graduate school in math in the year 2000, three (of nine) going to graduate school in 2001, four (of 12) in 2002, and eight (of 12) in 2003. Hendrix College in Arkansas ranks 24th in the nation in the number of its graduates per total enrollment who have received Ph.D.s in chemistry. Most dramatic may be Whitworth College in Washington State, which has increased the number of physics majors by almost 400 percent in five years, from 11 in 1997 to 41 in 2002.

I happen to know about these lesser-known liberal arts colleges that are doing such a good job of producing career scientists because the Council of Independent Colleges has, for the past three years, run a prize program that recognizes outstanding achievement in undergraduate science education. What has been interesting about the applicant pool for these Heuer Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Science Education (as they are called) is that only five out of the 60 institutions that were nominated in 2002 and eight out of the 47 institutions nominated in 2003 had enrollment of over 3,000 students. Almost all of the institutions that have good reason to believe that they are making significant contributions to society’s need for high-quality career scientists are very small.

Richard Ekman, "Selective and Non-Selective Alike: An Argument for the Superior Educational Effectiveness of Smaller Liberal Arts Colleges" in American Council of Learned Societies, ACLS OCCASIONAL PAPER, No. 59.

what is curriculum support specialist, please?

2011-12-02T16:47:00.001-08:00

I was sitting here on the sofa going through ancient Education Weeks when I heard Pat Sajak introduce a contestant as "a curriculum support specialist."

"A curriculum support specialist," he said. "What is that?"

answer: "It's a teacher that goes into the classroom to support the curriculum and other teachers."

Who says times are hard? Back in the real Depression, curriculums and teachers didn't have support! Curriculums and teachers had to make do with a principal, a superintendent, and the occasional school nurse.

How fortunate we are today, here with our civilian employment ratio of zilch.

oops

I spoke too soon.

The curriculum support specialist just went bankrupt.

another question

2011-12-02T07:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks SO much for the comments on teaching students how to distribute a negative -- I can't tell you how much I appreciate your taking the time.

You are all good deed doers!

Unfortunately, I haven't actually read all you've written.

I was in the midst of reading when I had to break off mid-stride, load Andrew into the car, and drive the two of us around a sketchy part of Yonkers^* for one hour, after dark (not a lot of street lights in Yonkers, not a lot of street signs, either), with cars honking at us and drivers yelling out their windows (RUDE DRIVERS IN SKETCHY YONKERS!) searching for and not finding ARC,^* where we had an appointment to try and get Andrew's weekend aide hired because the agency she's been working for is kaput. Ed called the guy who runs it and reported back that the owner had been 'vague' as to what has transpired. Distressing, because we thought the world of the guy, and so did everyone who worked for him, it seemed.

Anyway: Mission Not Accomplished.

Next time I am going to ask Garmin to take me to 265 Saw Mill River Road in Hawthorne. We'll see how that goes.

No time to read this morning, either, as I am attending a two-hour workshop at my local college on how to pass the course I teach. My college gives exit exams to students taking the remedial courses, which I think is a great idea. The workshop is for students, not teachers, but still. I figure I'll attend and find out what it is they think I'm teaching.

Then, if it just so happens that I am somehow not teaching what it is they think I'm teaching, I'm going to start teaching it right away.

For the moment, I have a quick follow-up question: what do you think of yourteacher.com? I discovered last night that yourteacher has an algebra app (update: a pre-algebra app, too!) Fifty bucks, but I'm seriously considering springing for it. I'm not experienced enough to be teaching the distributive property on the fly.

^* No numbers on the buildings and a paucity of signs announcing who was inside or why: a neighborhood in which a number of the local establishments appeared to have concluded that it makes good business sense not to advertise their whereabouts or even their existence. Curious! Question: what kind of enterprise is housed in a run-down, low-rise office building with a dozen shiny late-model cars crammed together outdoors beneath an oversized carport? I spoke with the two proprietors, who came outside to ask me what I wanted (I wanted directions), and wish now I had asked what they wanted.

The Day of Reckoning, brought to us from India

2011-12-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

Together, the rise of Reform Math, the reduction in ability-based grouping and AP classes, the demise of the close reading and the analytical essay (see also this), and the growing rarity of instruction in the finer points of English grammar and sentence construction, have caused current and future American high school graduates to be decreasingly prepared for college. As more and more American college students display skills in math, writing, and reading comprehension that are way below expectations (ending up, even in some of the more selective colleges, in remedial math and writing classes), college admissions committees are increasingly looking abroad.

While much of the news about overseas applicants centers on China, with its thousands of Ivy League-aspiring applicants and their glossy, high-production value applications (and the growing suspicion that a fair amount of cheating is involved), it's India, I predict, that will bring to the American K12 education system the day of reckoning that we so desperately need it to have. First, unlike their Chinese counterparts, college applicants from India face no linguistic barriers; many speak and write a much more eloquent English than American (and even British) students do. Second, there are apparently tons of extremely well-qualified Indian applicants pinning their hopes on America's top colleges.

Indeed, as an October New York Times article inadvertently suggests, the Day of Reckoning may be close at hand:

Moulshri Mohan was an excellent student at one of the top private high schools in New Delhi. When she applied to colleges, she received scholarship offers of $20,000 from Dartmouth and $15,000 from Smith. Her pile of acceptance letters would have made any ambitious teenager smile: Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Duke, Wesleyan, Barnard and the University of Virginia.

But because of her 93.5 percent cumulative score on her final high school examinations, which are the sole criteria for admission to most colleges here, Ms. Mohan was rejected by the top colleges at Delhi University, better known as D.U., her family’s first choice and one of India’s top schools.
...

Ms. Mohan, 18, is now one of a surging number of Indian students attending American colleges and universities, as competition in India has grown formidable, even for the best students. With about half of India’s 1.2 billion people under the age of 25, and with the ranks of the middle class swelling, the country’s handful of highly selective universities are overwhelmed.

True, another reason--indeed, the only reason mentioned in the Times article--why American recruiters are seizing on this opportunity is because so many of the crème de la crème of overseas students are wealthy enough to pay full tuition, unlike many of their American counterparts. But it also helps that the K12 schools they attend aren't using Reform Math, aren't renouncing ability-based grouping, and aren't failing to provide college prep classes that are truly college preparatory. Indeed, if it were primarily her parents' pocket books that make Moulshri Mohan so attractive to Dartmouth and Smith, why are they offering her so many thousands of dollars of scholarship money?

So here are my dire predictions. In the next ten years, as the effects of Reform Math continue to percolate up the American school system, and as the number of highly qualified Indian students continues to outpace the numbers of spots at the best Indian universities, there will be a the growing displacement of American students by Indian students. Only then will a large enough proportion of the Powers that Be start realizing how urgent it is to enact actual education reform--reform, that is, that reverses the century's-long tide that has pushed our K12 schools further and further away from what's happening in the most successful school systems overseas.

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field)

help desk - 'distributing the negative'

2011-11-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

I'm working with a boy in a neighboring town who can solve equations with positive values like the following:

3 + 2(x + y) = 9

He is having difficulty solving equations that require him to distribute a negative:

3 - 2(x + y) = -3

I remember C. having trouble distributing a negative, and I remember stumbling over minus signs myself when I was a kid. At some point, I solved my problems by deciding to treat minus signs as either a -1 or the addition of a negative, depending on the expression I was dealing with.

Thus -x became (-1)(x) and x-8 became x + (-8).

I don't think anyone ever told me to translate expressions in this manner. Quite the contrary; I have vague memories of reasoning it out for myself on more than one occasion.

Here's the way a sheet I have from Glencoe says to teach distribution of the negative:

Use the Distributive Property to write each expression as an equivalent algebraic
expression.
a. 3(w – 7)
= 3[w + (-7)] Rewrite w – 7 as w + (-7).
= 3w + 3(-7) Distributive Property
= 3w + (-21) Simplify.
= 3w – 21 Definition of subtraction

Unfortunately, this sequence doesn't solve the problem. My student can simplify 3(w-7); what he can't do is simplify 3–2(x+y).

Today I tried having him draw huge brackets around 2(x+y), then simplify the 2(x+y), and then simplify the remaining expression:

3–2(x+y)
3–[2(x+y)]
3–[2x+2y]
3-2x-2y

In effect, I was turning the problem into two distributions: first the 2, then the negative sign.

This approach always worked for me, but the logic of it wasn't obvious to my student.

One more thing: this student probably had Everyday Math in elementary school, and his current class seems to be intensely procedural. The only textbook his teachers are using seems to be a NY state test prep book.

I'm eager to hear any thoughts you have both about procedural teaching (including mnemonics) and about how I might help this student make some sense of the math he's learning. Moreover, and I hate to say this, but if I'm going to help him make some sense of it, I have to do it on the fly. Our time together is extremely limited.

If anyone knows of a good set of "instructional worksheets," that would be fantastic. I'm combing through my own collection.

Last but not least, what do you think of this video?

ture and flase

2011-11-30T05:39:00.000-08:00

In the thread on reading kcab and the SAT, Glen writes:

As a child, my bête noire was always true-false tests. The more details you know about a topic, the more likely you are to see every answer as, "well, yes and no." True or False: Lincoln was well-educated? Well, he had very limited formal education, which the teacher mentioned and which is what people today tend to mean when they say "educated," so maybe she wants me to say false. But he had extensive self-education, which she also mentioned, and this may be a trap where she's going to argue, "No, education doesn't have to mean formal education, and I told you he was self-educated" which would make it true. But if I answer true, she'll end up marking it wrong and telling me, "Oh, come on, you know what I mean by 'educated'", and someone will tell me--they always do--to stop "overthinking" it. What does "overthinking" mean? Does it mean that answering correctly requires answering as if I knew less? How much less?

And what does "true" mean? Does it mean 100% true? In formal (binary) logic, something that is mostly true is false. So, on a true-false test, if something is mostly true, is it true or false?

Those %#$@ true-false tests drove me nuts.

I'm laughing!

Glen's story calls to mind my first year T.A.ing freshman rhetoric at the University of Iowa. I was young and wide-eyed.

I was so young and wide-eyed that I vividly recall to this day my shock at one of the older T.A.s^* telling a group of us that his students so often misspelled "true" and "false" on true/false tests that he had once required everyone in the class to write "ture" and "flase"(which he pronounced "flace") instead of true and false.

Later on, he became my boyfriend, but I don't think the ture-flase episode had anything to do with it.

^* I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be an apostrophe after "T.A.s," but I don't like an apostrophe after T.A.s, so I'm not putting on in.

Charles Murray on abolishing the SAT

2011-11-29T16:52:00.000-08:00

Murray writes:

For most high school students who want to attend an elite college, the SAT is more than a test. It is one of life's landmarks. Waiting for the scores--one for Verbal, one for Math, and now one for Writing, with a posible 800 on each--is painfully suspenseful. The exact scores scores are commonly remembered forever after. So it has been for half a century. But events of recent years have challenged the SAt's position. In 2001, Richard Atkinson (2001), president of the University of California, proposed dropping the SAT as a requirement for admission. More and more prestigious small colleges, such as Middlebury and Bennington, are making the SAT optional. The charge that the SAT is slanted in favor of privileged students--"a wealth test," as Harvard law professor Lani Guinier calls it--has been ubiquitous (Zwick, 2004).

I have watched the attacks on the SAT with dismay. Back in 1961, the test helped get me into Harvard from a small Iowa town by giving me a way to show that I could compete with applicants from Exeter and Andover. Ever since, I have seen the SAT as the friend of the little guy, just as James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard, said it would be when he urged the SAT upon the nation in the 1940s.

Conant's cause was as unambiguously liberal in the 1940s as income redistribution is today. Then, America's elite colleges drew most of their students from a small set of elite secondary schools, concentrated in the northeastern United States, to which America's wealthy sent their children. The mission of the SAT was to identiy intellectual talent regardless of race, color, creed, money, or geography, and give that talent a chance to blowwom. Students from small towns and from poor neighborhoods in big cities were supposed to benefit--as I thought I did, and as many others think they did. But data trump gratitude. The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be abolished. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained.

Murray, Charles. (2011). Abolishing the SAT. In Soares, Joseph A. (Ed.), SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (pp. 69-81). New York: Teachers College Press.

John McWhorter on Big Dude languages

2011-11-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

A fascinating interview with John McWhorter on bloggingheads -- amazing!

I ran his argument by Ed, a historian, and Katharine, a linguist. Ed said it made sense to him; Katharine disagreed with McWhorter that some languages are more complex than others (far more complex, according to McWhorter) but agreed that the "Big Dude" languages are less inflected than the Little Dudes.

Enormously interesting.

SAT Math Problem

2011-11-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

If a square has a side of length x+4 and a diagonal of length x+8, what is the value of x?

You have 75 seconds. Go. No thinking first and then starting the clock.

This is a simple problem, but where is the shortcut?