revolution

"A revolution takes time to settle in." ~Lanza del Vasto

(thanks to Concerned CT Parent)

It bears repeating

Thanks to Vlorbik, I've revisted one of my favorite Rafe Esquith quotes. I just don't get tired of reading it. I hope you won't either.

"Many people in the public schools want certain things done for economic or political reasons. Frequently, teachers attending staff development meetings are taught not by master teachers but by publishing-company employees. Why do fifth-grade teachers need hours of instruction before they can use a fifth-grade math book? Book publishers don't go to bed at night worrying that Johnny can't read; they worry about sales and profits. If our teachers can't teach, they're unlikely to be reformed by textbook publishers.

My school currently has two literacy coaches-- former teachers-- who constantly beg me to use their materials with my children. When these coaches try to convince me about their approaches, they rarely rely on arguments about improving reading. At the end of the last school year, my fifth-graders scored in the ninety-first percentile in national tests while the rest of the school scored in the forties. The coaches know this, so why do they want me to change my methods? They want to satisfy their boss, who wants to please his boss, who wants to impress her boss-- administrators all. It's insulting (and boring) to listen to them drone on about how to use their books.

The same song-and-dance routine accompanies the promotion of the latest new-and-improved math textbook. Seriously, how many ways can you teach a child his multiplication tables? Arithmetic hasn't changed. If a math text is so complicated that the average fifth-grade teacher can't understand it without hours of instruction, then there's something wrong with the book, the teacher, or both. These companies interfere with creative and effective teachers. If we want Johnny to calculate better, we need to hire better teachers, not buy newer textbooks."

--Rafe Esquith, An actual classroom teacher
excerpted from There Are No Shortcuts

Vlorbik also suggested that I watch the movie: The Hobart Shakespeareans. It's now at the top of the queue.

How about a little history this summer?

If you're looking to infuse some history into your child's summer study plans, I have a great recommendation for you. History Odyssey by Pandia Press (the people with the great history timeline) has put together a very nice world history curriculum that brings together literature, history, and geography. The courses are divided into four periods: Ancients, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern.

The best part is that you can download the initial lessons from each of the levels in a new try-before-you-buy feature that you really can't go wrong with.

Here's what you get in the trial PDF absolutely FREE:

• table of contents
• introductions
• applicable worksheets
• applicable maps (for History Odyssey)
• applicable appendices
• first several lessons (enough of the course to keep you busy for several weeks)

Level 1 (1st - 4th grade)
Level 2 (Grades 5 and up)
Level 3 (Grades 9 and up)

If you visit the Pandia Press website, you can review the table of contents/course outlines, lesson samples, and book & supply lists for each of the levels. Many of the literature and reference books should be available in your local library. This is my second year of using History Odyssey with my children and I've not been disappointed yet. My hope is that you won't be either.

I highly recommend you download the free trial PDFs and think about how you might use this to enrich your child's summer study plans. If you like it like I think you might, you'll be back for more.

http://www.pandiapress.com/

concerned parent on Everyday Math & tutoring

"Parents are shelling out money for their kids because of such programs."

This is the problem. I live in a high SES town where the parents volunteer in the classroom, help with homework, read to their kids each night, make sure their kids get to school on time, and purchase a copy of the Everyday Math reference book to keep at home and help with homework.

Many of these same parents still shell out $80/hour (cash) to the teachers to tutor their child on the side; or they send their child to Kumon, Huntington, or Sylvan because their child just isn't getting EM. These parents are convinced there's something wrong with their child even though their child is trying to pay attention in class and diligently doing all the work.

In these cases (I know of many), there should definitely be an option to support the child because they all don't have access to a teacher like Cheryl or to Singapore Math, for example. They get the teacher they get (who may have little if any interest of content knowledge when it comes to mathematics) and are subjected to ill-conceived curricula such as Everyday Math. Who lobbies for these children?

In these cases I would rather see taxpayer money go to effective tutoring than to pay for teacher in-service or a math coach who lacks advanced math content knowledge and is merely a cheerleader for the math curricula d'jour.

paging Dr. Willingham

We need Daniel Willingham to break this down:

Study gives more proof that intelligence is largely inherited
UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed

Because unfortunately that headline has quickly turned into this one:

Bad at Math? Blame It on Your Parents
And if your kids aren't good at math, blame yourself

Just imagine the kind of damage this kind of headline can do.

We've been talking about cultural attitudes towards ability and this absolutely sends the wrong message that effort doesn't count for much. If you're not good at something, blame it on your gene pool and get on with it.

We already have a serious problem with believing that we're either good at math or we aren't. This just adds fuel to the fire.

In Why Don't Students Like School? Daniel Willingham asserts, "Our genetic inheritance does impact our intelligence, but it seems to do so mostly through the environment. There is no doubt that intelligence can be changed."

Children need to know that it is within their power to increase their intelligence. That ability can be improved with effort. If parents and educators buy into the you're-either-born-smart-or-you're-not mindset, we're doomed to continue declining on all internationally benchmarked assessments of academic ability.

We need Dr. Willingham to counteract this spin and control it with headlines that make sense. Changing cultural perceptions about learning needs to happen now.

I blogged more about it here .

opportunity cost

According to one recent analysis, if the United States had managed to improve students’ science and math skills during the 1990s—enough to match top-performing countries on the 2006 PISA assessment—then the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would have increased by 4.5 percent by 2015, a dollar amount equal to what the U.S. federal government currently spends per year on K–12 education. Even if the United States takes twenty years to reform and become globally competitive, its GDP could eventually realize an increase by a substantial 36 percent.

Source: E.A. Hanushek, D.T. Jamison, E. A. Jamison, and L. Woessman, ―Education and Economic Growth, Education Next 8, no. 2 (2008): 62–70.


Short Sighted

Alliance for Excellent Education

uninformed and unconcerned

Short Sighted: How America’s Lack of Attention to International Education Studies Impedes Improvement

In addition to its lack of participation, the United States also suffers from a lack of attention to the international data that are available. In America, the release of PISA results and other outcome indicators is more likely to be met with indifference than with shock.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond:

"If you visit Spain or Belgium or Germany or Japan, you can almost go and ask people on the street, and they will know about PISA and international benchmarking," [Schleicher] said. That phenomenon has gone hand-in-hand with increasing interest among national leaders. "We survey the member countries on their education policy priorities [ ] and in the last few years, student performance and international benchmarking has consistently come out at the top."

- Andreas Schleicher, head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, Directorate for Education, OECD.

Alliance for Excellent Education

He's Back

I just happened across the Connecticut Academy for Education and a reference to the Algebra I Curriculum Project. You know, just doing my five minutes of Google research and such. Channeling the eternal optimist, I wanted to believe that perhaps there was hope and that CT might finally be on the path to joining the ranks of those states with world-class algebra standards-- or any algebra standards at all for that matter.*

One click led to another and I ended up learning that in December 2008, the CT DOE opened up the bidding process for a curriculum grant for the Connecticut Algebra I Model. They don’t appear to have had an overwhelming response given that of 25 available spaces at the bidder’s conference, only 4 were taken. Four.

Not yet ready to abandon all hope, I trudged on to the winning proposal submitted by the Connecticut Academy for Education folks. I was stopped dead in my tracks when I hit page 8, regarding personnel:

“The Steering Committee includes a diverse group of individuals, respected within the state, nationally, and internationally, who will provide vision and guidance for the work. The committee members are Steve Leinwand…”

Leinwand.

This would be the same Steven Leinwand who in February 1994 said, It’s Time to Abandon Computational Algorithms.

"It's time to recognize that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multidigit, pencil-and-paper computational algorithms, on the other, are mutually exclusive. In fact, it's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous."

The same Steven Leinwand who in September 1998 sealed our doom with CT Math PIRK. The very man who can take all the credit for our failing math standards -- earning an “F” as well as a place on the list of “states to shun”. His hand in our state standards is glaringly obvious and the result of his handiwork makes it no surprise that 40% of incoming freshman at Central, Eastern, Southern and Western Connecticut state universities are ending up in remedial math. (Courant)

The same Steven Leinwand who made decisions on which math programs recommended by the Department of Education to the tune of billions of edu-dollars, would be rated “exemplary” or “promising” despite having “personal connections with ‘exemplary’ curricula.” (Math Problems) The very programs which have prompted districts such as my own to sink boatloads of taxpayer money into well-hyped and expertly marketed snake-oil.

Yep. He’s back.

He’s crept back into the Connecticut math standards game and that’s a very, very bad thing.

In fact, I'd say it's counterproductive and downright dangerous.


*Not surprisingly, not only does Connecticut not have world class math standards, it seemingly has no standards for Algebra I and II courses at all. (National Mathematics Advisory Panel Final Report: Report of the Task Group on Conceptual Knowledge and Skills- Figure 2)

concerned parent on language & "memory tags"

I checked out Spanish by Association and I can see why you're liking it.

I was raised in a bi-lingual home and so, never experienced learning another language from scratch until I studied German and Italian (but mostly German because it's not Latin-based). I'm not sure if I ever took the time to consider how I organize language until more recently.

Anyway, I had a funny experience where I consciously realized that when I hear a word, particularly Eng/Span, I have an image, a sound (music, voice), or a feeling, etc. running through my mind. These references are tagged with words in the languages I speak and in the case of Spanish I can recall them just as easily as I can in English. These associations are what allow me to be fluent which I am less so in Italian, and even less than that in German. In Spanish the associations are on par with the English while the other are weaker. It only makes sense that finding an efficient way to tag or associate concepts would improve your ability to speak and understand another language, or anything for that matter.

Strangely enough, I recently picked up a couple of mnemonic books (Thirty Days Hath September, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge) as a result of this feeling that I should be helping my children associate many of the concepts they've been learning so they can more easily retrieve the ideas when they need them.

and see: It's on the Tip of the Tongue by Charles Zanor WAPO March 11, 2008

helicoptering done well

Glory Road - My Son Harry Can Movies & TV SPIKE.com

*Open for Questions* questions

I mentioned in the comments of my previous Open for Questions: Education post that the set-up for reviewing questions over at change.gov is very cumbersome. You must scroll through the questions in the order they were posted and with more than 5,000 submitted at last count, most people aren't going to get very far. The result of this is that only the initial questions really get voted on. This is a shame considering the Obama transition team is supposed to be using this data to gauge the issues of interest.

What questions would you ask? Here are some of mine:

1) Balanced literacy (whole language) is failing to effectively teach children to read. As it stands, children are learning to guess words and memorize lists- they are not learning to decode language. When will phonics regain its proper place in the classroom?

2) Will you act upon the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s findings? Among other important recommendations they stated that math courses must be streamlined, focusing on a 'well-defined set of the most critical topics' taught to mastery.

3) In this economy, we need to learn how to do more with less. Throwing more money at the problem is not an option. Shouldn’t we be looking at successful models? KIPP, Green Dot, Cristo Rey and many charter, magnet, and private schools do more with less.

4) Why have liberal arts all but disappeared from our classrooms? Such study develops strong minds, ordered intellect, and teaches students how (not what) to think. We need a renaissance in our schools- we need to value our freedom by creating great thinkers.

5) Isn't our obsession with 21st century skills somewhat short-sighted? The liberal arts better prepare students to be creative and think critically by calling upon important content knowledge. It takes more than media literacy and computer skills to do that.

6) Will you encourage schools of education to revisit Project Follow Through, Precision Teaching, and Direct Instruction? How will you assure that we study and apply what cognitive and behavioral science has taught us about how children learn?

Open for Questions: Education

Why not vist change.gov and ask the Obama aministration a question or two about education? Actually, you can also ask them about the economy, national security, foreign policy, and just about anything else that's been nagging you.

They've certainly made it easy enough. All you have to do is visit Open for Questions (you do have to register to participate). Others may vote on how important your concerns are and you can vote on theirs too.

The goal is to get a pulse on what people like us want people like them to zero in on by using votes to rank the various issues. When it comes to education, we have a big challenge ahead of us while simultaneously dealing with decreasing resources. Figuring out precisely what Americans want the administration to focus on and where to direct funding and effort may be a very wise first step.

They need to hear from us. KTM contributers and commenters have some very important arguments to add to this education debate. It would be a shame if we let this opportunity to add to the discussion pass us by.

Is your child a word guesser?

Many of us know that poor reading instruction is often disguised as “balanced literacy” (revisit When Phonics Isn't). Schools like to sell it to parents this way because it sounds safe and well, it's balanced. How bad can it be? Throw in a little phonics and it's all good, right? The balance thing appeals to that nagging danger-of-extremes fear. On some level, balanced literacy sounds reasonable.

When parent-teacher conferences are limited to fifteen minutes a couple of times a year and the school is not open to allowing you watch the teacher teach or bring home the reading materials for careful review, how do you recognize the signs of poor reading instruction? How can you tell whether your child is being or has been taught to read the whole-word way?

Jessie Wise of The Well Trained Mind suggests paying attention to how children read.

Children who read by the whole-word method often did not learn to move their eyes from left to right through words and sentences. If you notice that your child’s eyes are wandering all over the page when he is reading, he is searching for clues to guess words.

So, your child's a word guesser. What can you do about it?

The only cure for word guessing is to go back to phonics.

What can you do to break the guessing habit?

If your child persists in this habit, you may have to sit across from him at a small table where you can see his eyes. This will allow you to move your pencil or finger above the line of print, so you will not get in the way of the child’s vision. You may also want to cut a window out of heavy paper that will reveal only one line at a time. Then, have the child run his finger under each word from left to right, sounding out each word as he comes to it. If a common word is too irregular to be easily sounded out, (such as come or said) tell him that word so that the sentence makes sense.

When the child gets to the end of a line, watch his eyes and make sure they move quickly back to the left, looking for the beginning of the next line rather than searching for “words I know.” Some children may even move their eyes down to the end of the next line. Both of these are common errors used by children who have been taught whole-language techniques. Have the child read out loud to you as long as necessary to make sure he gets into the habit of moving from one line to another.

“It is a tragedy that many school-based reading programs actually encourage guessing as a learning-to-read strategy,” say Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading. You might be surprised to find that your child's school uses a reading program that does precisely that.

You may not even realize there's a problem until your reader hits second, third or fourth grade when books have less pictures and the vocabulary becomes more complex and difficult to guess. The sooner you work to break the guessing habit and teach your child to depend upon a well-stocked phonics toolbox instead, the better for your child.

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading
Jessie Wise and Sarah Buffington

JessieWise
Well-Trained Mind

While we're busy developing 21st century skills...

U.S. colleges scour China for top students

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Harvard, Stanford and other top U.S. colleges say they're actively recruiting China's best high school students and offering them full scholarships.

Recruiting the best Chinese students will help elite U.S.colleges maintain international dominance, especially in math and science, said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's admissions dean.

"There are no quotas, no limits on the number of Chinese students we might take," Fitzsimmons told more than 300 students during a recent visit to a high school in Beijing.

Somehow I doubt those Chinese students are busy putting together PowerPoint presentations or posters in anticipation of the 21st century. They're too busy working on math and science skills the world needs right now.

Source: United Press International

Powell on Education

I've been intrigued by the idea of Colin Powell as Secretary of Education. I like the idea that he isn't cut from the education establishment cloth and has no allegiances to the Teacher's Unions or Schools of Education. I like the idea of discipline and hard work that he represents.

Mostly, I was encouraged when I turned up this quote today:

"If we truly believe they are all our children, then all of us must be willing to spend more to repair our schools and spend more to pay our teachers better. But we must also be open to new ideas.

Let’s not be afraid of standardized testing for students. Let’s not be afraid of testing teachers’ qualifications. Let’s not be afraid of charter schools. Let’s not be afraid of using private scholarship money to give poor parents a choice that wealthy parents have. Let’s not be afraid of home schooling. Let’s experiment prudently with school voucher programs to see if they help. What are we afraid of? Let’s use innovation and competition, good old American innovation, good old American competition to help give our children the best education possible."

Colin Powell, Speech at the GOP Convention, 7-30-2000

Colin Powell on Education

awesome and fun math

I think I've found a new theme song...

Bailing the creative writing train

My ten year old was never obligated to write anything creative last year, her first year of being homeschooled. She worked on grammar (including outlining) and received writing instruction on the persuasive essay, personal narrative, outlining, summarizing and such, but not once was she ever assigned a creative writing piece. She responded to journal prompts such as “Share one of your most embarrassing moments,” or “Describe the perfect vacation,” for example, and the topics were always very concrete and specific.* She read a good range of quality writing both fiction and non-fiction. She modeled good writing through dictation exercises including The Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence. She wasn't ever assigned a short story, asked to respond to some ambiguously touchy-feely prompt, or write about her innermost feelings.

She didn’t seem to miss it at all. Actually, she was genuinely relieved because the only thing that her previous writing instruction had taught her was that she was not a writer and now hated anything having to do with it.

I am happy to report that despite (and perhaps because of) the lack of creative writing instruction, her writing has improved significantly. Not only has she abandoned her temporary hatred of writing that caused her to freeze up at the mere mention of it, but ironically, she has decided to write a book. Not just any book, either. She's writing a book based on fantasy creatures that she has been conjuring up in her imagination for some time. She’s put together a cast of characters, is working on a glossary of terms that it seems she has invented, has got sketches and clip-art of characters to provide inspiration, and is typing her book into a publishing template. I have nothing to do with this project aside from helping her find the template.

This past year she wasn't taught or required to do creative writing, in fact, I’ve worked diligently to erase the damage such instruction has caused. I trusted that quality curricula and well chosen literature would be enough. It seems to have been an exquisitely perfect choice. Not only do I have a child who is learning to write thoughtfully and well, but I have a writer who chooses to write for the sheer joy of expressing herself.

I share this because I’m certain she wouldn’t be writing a book, or anything (fiction or otherwise) not required of her, if she had gone through another academic year of creative writing exercises of the Ed-school variety. By that I mean requiring more and more creative writing under the mistaken belief that ever increasing quantities of creative writing on demand leads to inspiration. Just ask Calvin (see above), this mostly results in sheer panic.

There is so much emphasis on being a creative writer in our schools these days when the reality is that adults will never have to write creatively. Adults must write letters, reports, and summaries, but the creative writing is purely optional. It’s a choice. So why do we force it on our children? Why not build the foundation, develop the content knowledge, and grow competent and confident writers?

I'm thrilled that my daughter's excited about writing a book, but I'm not going to push it. This will be her choice exclusively. I will support her in her efforts, but she knows that this project is supplementary. That is, perhaps, what makes it so magical.

Grammar and writing and math and science and all the other important subjects that will give her the content knowledge she needs will always come first. Her desire to write creatively has grown out of this despite not being explicitly taught or required and as such, should continue to give her the tools to accomplish these kinds of personal goals.

In Writing with Ease, Susan Wise Bauer ends the chapter Why Writing Programs Fail by reminding us that “the process of writing needs to be taught in an orderly, step-by-step method that will set young writers free to use their medium rather than wrestle with it.” My daughter has seemingly proven this true and I cannot express what a gift bailing the Ed-school creative writing train has turned out to be.

*Our program of choice for the middle school age is Grammar and Writing by Christie Curtis and Mary Hake.

The Educational Industrial Complex

Today I came across a great blog entry over at The Daily Kos by Nanoman, "a professor of electrical and computer engineering in Louisville, Kentucky and a parent who has had children attending K-12 public schools." He's taken the liberty of welcoming Education to "the old familiar Military, Tobacco, Pharmaceutical and Medical Insurance Industrial Complexes."

He prefaces a fabulous chart, a centerpiece of the blog entry, with this:

Please forgive the hyped intro, but the story that follows (which is summarized in the blue and yellow chart) is worth reading because it is being repeated in school districts across the country where choreographed ploys are used to bypass parent concerns about poor math texts.

Just take a look at Math Wars: The Educational Industrial Complex. The chart with Steve Leinwand at the center of all the hullabaloo is certainly worth the price of admission.

When you're done with that, you might want to check out "Is Our Children Learning" Math Texts too.

Engage Me!

So is this what schools mean when they insist on developing 21st century skills and go on and on about preparing our children for the jobs that don't exist yet?

I'm speechless.

If you're a glutton for punishment, and watching Engage Me! just wasn't enough, I dare you to read Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today's Learners Demand.

If you still have words left at that point, please share them.