Mark Roulo & Steve H on open vs closed loops

An open loop control system is one in which you don't bother checking to see how you are doing. An example would be a robot arm, where to move to a certain position, one just moves a motor a certain number of revolutions, but doesn't check to see if maybe the gears are slipping.

Open loop systems tend to be simpler and cheaper than closed loop systems, but less reliable.

A closed loop system would be the robot arm with a sensor that fed back the arm position. In this case, even with slightly slipping gears you can get the arm to the correct location because the robot might issue one extra revolution command to make up for the slipping gears.

Poor schools and classrooms tend to run open-loop ... no one knows if the kids are learning what they are supposed to learn. Well run schools and classrooms run closed-loop by checking the kids for progress AND THEN TAKING ACTION (e.g. reteaching). Even better would be a school or classroom that was closed loop on the teaching itself. For example, if kids kept not learning, trying to figure out what to change so that the kids learned the first time around.

I don't get the impression that the second version is done formally in very many schools (or businesses for that matter).

Positive feedback means you do more as you get closer to what you want. I don't think any engineers design these things on purpose, but sometimes you get one anyway (I think ram-jets have a built in positive feedback ... without external controls, the faster they go the faster they want to go until they burn themselves up).

Mark Roulo

Steve H:

"I don't get the impression that the second version is done formally in very many schools.."

Because of NCLB, our state mandates that this process takes place. They send out (almost worthless) questionnaires to parents and students and they hold parent-teacher meetings to review the standardized test results.

For example, the committee might see that the standardized test scores for problem solving in math have gone down a few points. They will sit around and discuss the problem. It's down only a slight bit, so there is not much of a problem, right? Perhaps it's due to the small sample size (they get to sound rigorous). Well, in any case, the administration will tell the teachers in their next meeting to emphasize problem solving more. OK, next problem.

The flaw, as you can see, is that this is all relative. You can provide all of the feedback you want, but if the basic structure of the system is wrong, it will never be fixed. Standardized tests will never tell you that many more kids should be getting to algebra in 8th grade. In fact, it tells the school and many parents the opposite. (They conveniently ignore international tests.)

This reminds me of my son's Science Olympiad project. He can tweak things all he wants, but his basic vehicle design will never reach the required maximum distance.

In our district, "Extra Help" is the answer to all learning difficulties, across the board. Students are supposed to "be proactive and seek extra help." If a student does not seek Extra Help then he deserves his C or D or F. At the high school, students are to seek extra help and also practice "self-advocacy," which means parents are not to contact the teacher or the administration about a problem until the student has tried and failed to solve the problem on his or her own.

This philosophy has now been imported into the 4-5 school. When parents raise an issue with a teacher, the parent is told that the student should have come to the teacher with the problem. It appears that ten year olds are supposed to monitor their learning, seek Extra Help, and self-advocate.

Steve H on collecting & correcting

"He needs to collect and correct the homework and have them re-do the problems they missed. That's what works."

I agree 100%. It's astounding that math teachers don't collect homework. It's lazy and THEY KNOW they should do it. Waiting for the test to figure out what areas need work is TOO LATE! I ALWAYS collected and went over each paper carefully. I would give a check plus, a check, or a check minus for each homework based on effort. But it was MY job to see what the issues were each day. I would then be prepared to make the most of the time allocated for reviewing the homework. I would NEVER just "go over" the homework. That's lazy teaching. I don't care how many problems that adds up to. That's their job!!!!


"...the onus falls upon him or her to 'seek extra help.'"

OK. Mark the problems you get wrong on the homework and ask for extra help. Does the school require the teacher to provide extra help after school? Does some other group or person do the job? I can't imagine (probably I'm wrong) that the school would allow a teacher to avoid providing extra help, but then make big bucks tutoring. That's unethical.

I suppose that if you pay for tutoring it's OK, but if you ask for too much free "extra help" that means you shouldn't be in the class.

Generally, I didn't like to call students up to the board. It is extrordinarily stressful for many students and it takes time. It would be nice to have some mechanism to get them to prepare more each day, but I liked to give weekly quick quizzes. Students pay attention to quizzes much more than homework.

I never thought of my (college) classes as a tool to build character, love of learning, or to develop their self-learning skills. My goal was to get them to learn the material as easily as possible. It wasn't a game. There were no trick questions. If I wanted them to know something, I would teach it to them and they would see it in their homework. I would cover the material in class, they would do it for homework, I would collect and grade the homework, I would review the problems in the NEXT class, they knew my office hours, and I tested them on exactly what was in the homework. I told them that I was on their side and that I wanted them to succeed.

All teachers should be required to provide "office" hours for extra help. Our school has a "late bus" that leaves one hour later. Children can tell their parents that they will take the late bus and go for extra help. It's quick and simple, with no complex need to arrange something. I had certain students coming in all of the time for extra help. It was no big deal.

I am now extremely skeptical of Extra Help because of our experience here: a public school district in which the provision of Extra Help (specified in the union contract no doubt) is viewed as the solution to all teaching and learning problems across the board.

Extra Help, at the middle school (and the high school, I gather), is the answer. If the student "doesn't understand," he must be "proactive in seeking extra help." It's up to him.

The school, however, apparently does not need to be proactive in improving classroom instruction.

No word on what happens when the student dutifully shows up for Extra Help and still doesn't understand. Apparently the reasoning is that while classroom instruction leaves students not understanding material, Extra Help is 100% effective.


the teacher is great; school culture is not

C's teacher this year is terrific: C. is actually making up for lost time, I think, and that is extraordinary. I'm in a position to know just how difficult it is to regain lost ground because I accelerated C. nearly 3 years ago when I decided he should be in a position to take algebra in 8th grade. It is very difficult - and to do it in a classroom setting is miraculous.

What makes this teacher so good, I think, are 3 things:

• he's a positive, upbeat guy who has terrific rapport with the kids: they are learning in an "emotionally safe" environment
  
• his classroom presentations are probably very good (haven't seen one, but that's the impression I get from C.)
• his homework assignments are brilliant - every homework assignment is "shuffled"; every assignment includes problems from many previous lessons; no skill left behind!
  

Given the way this year is going, I am extremely glad we hung in there.

C. is learning and he's learning well.

BUT he wouldn't be learning if I weren't collecting and correcting the homework. I am functioning as the course T.A. The math chair, in issuing her no answers for parents edict, has gone out of her way to make it as difficult as possible for me to do what I need to do to make sure my kid learns math.

The school needs to establish a policy that homework is collected and corrected, and if the school is not going to do that, the school needs to make it possible for parents to perform this function.


in the TIMES

Every advertisement my district runs in the TIMES employment section sports the following boilerplate:

We are seeking highly qualified, professional educators to join this outstanding and innovative district in southern Westchester....the Irvington School District is committed to excellence for ALL students, welcoming parental involvement, and dedicated to ongoing professional development.

on a certain arrogance, part 2

A couple of years ago I posted this passage from Siegfried Engelmann's The War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse summarizing Galen Alessi's classic study of school psychologists:

I didn't post the full passage, however, which I re-read last night. The full passage has to do with arrogance. Seeing as how Concerned has raised the subject, I thought I'd chime in:

Diagnosis Diagnosed: A Systemic Reaction, Professional School Psychology, 3 (2), 145-151


Galen Alessi wrote an article in 1988 in which he diagnosed diagnosis. He asked 50 school psychologists to indicate how many cases they referred during the year. The average was about 100 per psychologist; so the group provided information on about 5000 kids. Alessi next tried to determine the different causes of the kid's learning problems. How many of the kids had the learning problem because of inappropriate curriculum? How many had learning problems because of poor teaching, or because of school administration problems? How many kids had problems because of home problems, or because there was some defect in the kid?

The percentages came out something like this:

• The curriculum caused 0% of the referred problems:

• The teaching practices caused 0% of the referred problems;

• The school administration caused 0% of the referred problems;

• The home environment caused 10-20% of the referred problems;

• The child caused 100% of the referred problems.

The results tend to leave little doubt about whether the school psychologists work for the schools or the children. It further leaves no doubt that the sorting machine is alive and well. Consider the presumed infallibility of the schools suggested by this outcome. Not one of 5000 failures is presumed to be caused by school practices.

[snip]

The arrogance of many administrators is not apparent in their personality. They may appear thoughtful, concerned, and open to suggestions. Their arrogance is in their decisions and their actions. Their actions reflect a fundamental lack of important values. Galen Alessi alluded to the problem with school psychologists: “Mere logic and research data will not change the role of school psychology, because the problem is not one of science but of values.”

Source: War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse by Siegfried Engelmann, page 65-6

I hadn't thought about the arrogance this betrays.

100% infallibility!

The schools involved in this study have never, in 5000 cases of school failure, been at fault. Perfection has been achieved.

Years ago, when C. was first in school, I noticed that our district never admitted error. Ever. Not admitting error was a principle.

Very often, though, when a problem was brought to someone's attention, the school would publicly deny it but then privately fix it. I always thought that was fine. The school was responsive in its way.

Today, given what we've seen in the middle school, I've changed my view. Schools need formal, public mechanisms for identifying error, admitting error, and working with parents and students to remediate errors in teaching, curriculum, and/or administration.

I think I've mentioned my friend who sends her children to a private school down south a ways. The school gives the kids standardized tests 4 times a year, then meets with parents to go over the results. If a student has fallen behind in an area the school tells his parents why they believe this has occurred.

This means telling parents whether or not other students have been having the same problem.

If a child is the only one having a problem (this will be a true statement as opposed to the non-true statement that is routinely made or implied to parents in public schools), the school says so and tells the child's parents what steps the school is taking to bring him or her back up to speed. I remember one spring my friend's older child had lagged in usage of personal pronouns. This was a bright and capable child, so the school gave the family a packet of worksheets for their child to do over the summer. They said that was all it would take, and that was all it took.

If all of the kids, or a large portion of them, have fallen off the track in a particular area the school says so and explains what they are doing to bring everyone back up to speed.

All schools should function this way.

If a student is having a problem the school should:

• know the child is having a problem
  
• remediate the problem at once
  
• analyze the situation to see why the problem developed
  

That is not what happens in public schools.

Instead, in public schools the child develops a problem and the teacher grades his work accordingly. Parents find out when the report card comes home. If the district sends out Interim Reports parents can get the bad news sooner instead of later.

And that is that.

If the parents care to contact the teacher or the school, fine. If not, that's fine, too.

In either case, the solution will be Extra Help, which the child and/or the parent will be responsible for "seeking."

If Extra Help doesn't work, there's nothing more to say.



Galen Alessi on the odds

First, the psychologists were asked whether all agreed that each of the just-mentioned, five factors may play a primary role in a given school learning or behavior problem. They almost always agreed. Next, they were asked for the number of cases each had examined in the past year to determine the source of learning problems. The answer was usually about 120. Using 100 as a round number, multiplied by the group size of 50, yields about 5,000 cases studied by the group in the past year.

At the next step, the group was asked for the number of psychological reports written that concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to curriculum factors. The answer was usually none. All cases out of 5,000 examined confirmed that their schools somehow had been fortunate enough to have adopted only the most effective basal curricula.

When asked for the number of reports that concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to inappropriate teaching practices, the answer also was none. All cases out of 5,000 examined proved that their districts had been fortunate enough to have hired only the most skilled, dedicated, and best prepared teachers in the land.

When asked how many reports concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to school administrative factors, the answer again was none. All cases out of 5,000 examined demonstrated that their districts had hired and retained only the nation's very best and brightest school administrators.

When asked how many reports concluded that parent and home factors were primarily responsible for the referred problem, the answer ranged from 500 to 1,000 (10% to 20%). These positive findings indicated that we were finally getting close to the source of educational problems in their schools. Some children just don't have parents who are smart, competent, or properly motivated to help their children do well in school.

Finally, I asked how many reports concluded that child factors were primarily responsible for the referred problem. The answer was 100%. These 5,000 positive findings uncovered the true weak link in the educational process in these districts: the children themselves. If only these districts had better functioning children with a few more supportive parents, there would be no educational difficulties.

As an addendum, I offered informal data collected in local Individual Educational Planning Committee (IEPC) meetings that suggest that family factors are invoked most often when the parent does not attend the meeting or if the parent is involved in a way deemed inappropriate by the school staff. Otherwise, child factors alone seem to carry the explanatory burden for school learning and behavior problems.

One does not need complex statistical analyses to know that these results are significant beyond the .0000001 level. The set of all cases studied by these school psychologists comprises a needs assessment for their districts. And, the results indicate clearly no need to improve curricula, teaching practices, nor school administrative practices and management. The only needs involve somehow improving the stock of children enrolled in the system, and some of their parents. But, it is equally unclear how school psychologists can help resolve this kind of problem. School psychologists seem to define school problems in ways that cannot be resolved.

Wait!

I know the answer to that!

Extra Help.

.............................

Until schools agree to connect teaching with achievement -- inputs with outputs -- and to do so publicly, matters will not improve.