What would happen if parents had choice?

This question has come up in the comments thread of "If you want your children to sit in rows, you have to pay extra."

I strongly support choice, partly because Ed and I had sufficient income to exercise choice by, first, moving to a district we couldn't afford^* (because we thought affluent suburbs had private school education at public school prices)^** and, second, withdrawing our 'neurotypical' son from our public school and enrolling him in a Jesuit high school.

Choice number 2 was the best money we ever spent.

As a simple matter of fairness, I believe that if we had choice, other parents should have choice, too.

How school choice would turn out is another question, and I certainly agree with froggiemama that the prospect of public schools taking the path colleges and universities have taken (more, more amenities) gives me the willies.

On the other hand, we do have evidence from other Western countries that I think should be part of the conversation.

We also have evidence from Project Follow-Through, in which low-income parents chose Direct Instruction over progressive education (must rustle up the link - sorry it's not here).

My two favorite what-do-parents-want stories:

• Holland and the project method
• What happened when Sweden adopted choice

Which reminds me: I recall reading that the U.S. has the least free school system among Western countries . . . is that the case? I no longer remember where I picked that up.

In any event, it's definitely the case that a number of Western countries fund parochial schools (or fund parents who want to send their children to parochial schools).

Also germane to the discussion: Andrew Cuomo is supporting tax credits for school choice.

In his fifth State of the State speech, the governor also called for an education tax credit for donations to public schools or scholarship funds that aid students in parochial schools, a top priority of Timothy Cardinal Dolan.
Cuomo proposes sweeping education changes 

I'm ambivalent about Governor Cuomo, but he does seem like a pretty savvy political operator:

While the bill is supported by some 20 unions, who say that it would help the children of their members, the New York State teachers’ union staunchly opposes it, calling it a backdoor voucher program that directs tax dollars to private schools.

Cuomo’s Education Agenda Sets Battle Lines With Teachers’ Unions

^* Almost sufficient income
^** Reality turned out to be exactly the opposite: public school education at private school prices.

single-sex schools

Ed was talking this morning with a neighbor who also sent her son to Hogwarts. He's been accepted by a very selective (and terrific) college, and she said he would never have gotten in if he'd stayed in the public schools here. (Per pupil spending: $28,517) 

I'm sure she's right.

Abstract
Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul—the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools—to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socio- economic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take into account various school-level variables, such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.

books are technology

A great observation re: technology from Brad DeLong:

From my perspective, I will not dare make predictions about the potential Christensenian disruption of higher education until I understand why and how the university as we know it survived the Christensenian disruption that was the coming of the printed book. I don't understand that. Thus I do not dare forecast what is coming.

Shortly after C. began his freshman year at Hogwarts, Ed and I asked the principal about technology. We had learned that the school had a technology committee, and we were concerned. We'd seen what cascading Technology Initiatives had wrought in our district.

The principal said people often worried they were behind on technology (true), but technology was expensive (true), and they weren't going to invest in technology that didn't advance the students' education.

Then he held up a pencil and said, "A pencil is technology."

help desk help desk help desk help desk help desk help help help

arrghh

First of all: once again, I'm sorry to be MIA -- I'm looking forward to becoming a regular on my own blog some time again soon.

Second: help! help!

C's second calculus test came back today: a disappointment, and a Bad Sign. And I am fresh out of enthusiasm for dealing with another year of high school math. Meaning: I am fresh out of enthusiasm for dealing with high school math teaching and high school math grading and high school math hiring of high school math tutors to remediate high school math grading and high school non-learning of high school math and on and on and on and then further on and on some more.

I'm done.

Also: calculus tutors are few and far between. I found only one last year, and the lone session he had with C. didn't help. Other parents have told me they couldn't find calculus tutors, either, and for years I've been hearing things like: "My son did well in BC Calculus. We were lucky because his father can teach it." As I recall, the mom who told me her husband could re-teach BC Calculus at home also told me that her husband's first cousin was an economist who had won the Nobel Prize. I'm pretty sure I'm not making that up.

Nobody in this house can teach calculus. I haven't even finished taking algebra 2, and Ed has forgotten the calculus courses he took in high school and college and doesn't care to revisit them.

So here we are.

Also - and this is a repeat - last year's math class was a total, effing disaster. The teacher was and is seriously ill but is still teaching, and the kids were and are dropping like flies. A huge percentage of last year's AP Calculus AB students got 1s on the AP test. Ones. And when I say "huge percentage," I mean eighty-five or ninety percent: the guy broke the bell curve. This was the teacher C. had for pre-calc, so C. is bringing to this year's calculus course an epic level of non-preparedness.

The teacher C. has this year is supposed to be fantastic and in fact told us he was fantastic on Back to School Night (he actually said: "I am it," which was exhilarating at the time), but if the grades are not great then the learning is not great, either. Fantastic is as fantastic does.

Ed is thinking we should just transfer C. to AP Stat (or maybe it wouldn't even be AP Stat - maybe just "Stat Honors," a class in which, according to C., students recently took a test on bar charts after completing a bar chart project) and be done with it.

That's pretty much how I feel, too, but it leaves the problem of algebra 2 and calculus, neither of which C. will have learned in high school -- and neither of which I want him taking in college since he'll likely be attending a school with kids who are a lot better than he is in math. At this point it is crystal clear to me that there is no reason on Earth to take a math course in college, pay for it, get a bad grade in it, and not learn any math. And I'm thinking the same principle holds true for high school. Why spend a single second of your (child's) life in a non-required math course so he can not learn math?

Last data point: C. did fine on the first test in the class and thought he did well on this test, too. He did great on the diagnostic test going in, and is doing well in physics. His mistakes on this test appear to be mostly "careless errors" (I have a whole new take on the nature of careless error thanks to the SAT) and a failure to follow correct notation, etc. In short, he appears to understand the material, not that I would know.

Of course, if that's the case then he needs more practice - but how do we swing that? The teacher doesn't seem to use a textbook, and I'm not going to be able to scrounge useful practice sets this go-round as I did for the 3 years when C. was in middle school.

(Could I talk to the teacher? Why, yes indeed I could talk to the teacher. But seeing as how talking to a math teacher has yielded exactly zero results over lo these many years, talking to the teacher wasn't my first impulse. Writing a help desk post was my first impulse.)

So...any thoughts?

We had a great, great precalculus tutor last spring at the very end of the school year; if we'd hired him at the beginning of last year, C. might have learned pre-calculus. We could hire him again (I assume) and decree that this year C is actually going to learn pre-calculus, which means we could pay tuition for C. to study bar charts at his Jesuit high school and pay tutoring fees for him to study pre-calculus here at home --- who says Americans have to de-leverage?! If you've got kids in school and you want them to learn math, deleveraging is not for you!

Or....or what?

What else is out there?

He could enroll in a community college precalculus course -- when?

Now? While he's in high school? (While he's in high school commuting 15 miles there and back every day?)

Then take calculus over the summer?

Another question: are there solid precalculus and calculus courses online? I took all of the ALEKS geometry course and part of the ALEKS Algebra 1 course, and as much as I want to like ALEKS, as much as I do like the tone and feel of the site, I don't think ALEKS replaces a good teacher or a good textbook. But do others out there think that might be the way to go?

What about online schools and colleges? I know there are universities that offer online math courses that kids take when they've been expelled or can't physically attend their local schools for some reason. Is that a possibility? Any recommendations?

And while we're on the subject, can anyone out there explain to me how in this country does a smart student with no discernible learning, attentional, motivational, or emotional difficulties whose talents and interests lie in history/social science actually learn some damn math?

What does it take?

Lynn G on whether KIPP kicks kids out

Public schools kick kids out. It is standard policy. They have to provide tutoring and/or pay for alternative placements, but they are quite happy to do that and bill the taxpayers for it. As the public schools struggle to show improvement in test scores, I expect to see more low performing kids shuffled off to alternative programs where their scores won't count against the sending school district.

I've looked at the expulsion and graduation rates at inner city schools, and KIPP does a better job of keeping kids in and getting them to graduation than the public schools they came from. KIPP has a lower expulsion rate than say, the Hartford public schools, where kids are expelled or encouraged to drop out at much higher rates than the charters.

Absolutely.

My $32K per pupil public school has some species of "zero tolerance" policy, which means the administration kicks kids out and pays for home tutoring. e.g.: If a student is caught smoking pot in the bathroom, he's gone. Period. I assume most parents support this policy, but that's beside the point. The point is: if a student in my district steps across the line, he's out.

I suspect my district has a higher rate of student expulsions than KIPP:

With children who had more serious behavioral problems, who would tell a teacher to f*** off without feeling any remorse, the Porch [in-class detention] had little power....Levin was resolved to expel students only in the most extreme circumstances, which, it turned out, happened only once or twice a year, far less than in many regular public schools that forced students to transfer to special programs for discipline problems. Levin and Feinberg considered each student they could not teach a failure on their part. They kept looking for ways to get the number of dismissals down to zero.

Work Hard. Be Nice. by Jay Mathews
page 171

KIPP doesn't do what it does by cherry picking students or kicking students out or having parents sign contracts.

It does what it does through excellent teaching and through the creation of an "authoritative" school culture that keeps kids in line the same way authoritative parents keep kids in line. Lemov calls this culture "warm/strict," and I recognize his account: he is describing the school culture of Hogwarts, my son's Jesuit high school.

the way of proceeding

Thirty-five years ago, the nation's Jesuit high schools were reeling from an identity crisis. Jesuits were leaving both the schools and the Society; social action ministries seemed more relevant than teaching high school. Should the Jesuits continue to run high schools for upper- and middle-class students or focus on serving the poor?

Simultaneously, urban riots slashed enrollments at some inner-city Jesuit schools, and single-sex education seemed to some to be a chauvinistic anachronism. Replacing Jesuits with lay faculty raised tuition. Some of the nation's best Catholic high schools were in danger.

Fast-forward to 2006. The "long black line" of Jesuits is gone, with just a handful of priests and brothers remaining in most of the forty-nine American Jesuit high schools. However, the Society of Jesus is committed to its high schools, because Jesuits now realize that they provide outstanding opportunities for the spiritual formation of young people, says Fr. Ralph Metts, SJ, president of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (JSEA). AMDG still rules at today's thriving schools. Consider these developments.

• Inner-city Jesuit Cristo Rey high schools, where low-income students work for their tuition, are opening rapidly. Two were added to the network in 2006, with more planned.

• Most of the traditional Jesuit high schools are at capacity, with competitive enrollments. This includes inner-city schools once threatened with closing.

• The schools are raising at least four hundred million dollars in capital campaigns alone to upgrade campuses and enhance endowments/financial aid.

• Jesuit schools all over the country are still academically and athletically elite.

What lies behind this turnaround?

That's what I sought to discover in writing this book.

They Made All the Difference: Life-changing Stories from Jesuit High Schools by Eileen Wirth

help desk - usage & mechanics

C's ACT PLAN scores came back. He's at the 96th percentile in reading, 79th in usage/mechanics.

C. taught himself to read in Kindergarten. One day we were meeting with his Kindergarten teacher, being told that he was at risk for dyslexia because his handwriting was so bad (true: bad handwriting is a flag); two weeks later he was reading. On his own.

By the end of the following summer he was years above grade level in reading comprehension, and he stayed there.^* Never once was he assigned a book at his reading level, not until he went to Hogwarts. He's a sophomore now, reading The Scarlett Letter.

Too bad he didn't teach himself mechanics & usage.

Or handwriting. His handwriting is still lousy, in spite of my brief efforts to remediate his handwriting^** before I had to devote full-time to reteaching math.

Speaking of math, he's at the 79th percentile on that.

Basically, he's at the top of the country in the subject he taught himself, 20 points lower in the subjects handled by his school.

He's got his own personal Achievement Gap.


help desk

So what do you think?

I need a workbook/textbook to start drilling usage & mechanics. For math, I'm thinking a daily dose of ALEKS.

Which reminds me: I have to finish up my ALEKS geometry course and then get back to Algebra 1, the course with 333 individual topics.


Any advice?

^* Whether he would have stayed there without MegaWords, I can't say.
^* Handwriting Now by Barbara Getty - terrific

the Jesuits

Every now and again I find myself chatting with some wonderfully cultured and learned person from India or Lebanon or wherever, and it turns out that s/he was educated by Jesuits (this happens enough that I have ceased to be surprised by it).

- observation made by a colleague & friend of Ed's when told that C. would be enrolling in Hogwarts

God's soldiers

Voltaire, eager to undermine the claims of conventional religion by contrasting the infighting of the Catholic Church with the sedate purity, unity and rationality of the students of Euclid, boasted that there were no sects among geometers. This, with the arrival of non-Euclidean geometry in the next century, would prove to be overly optimistic, but more important, invoking geometry as some kind of antithesis of revealed religion was a rhetorical mistake. After all, some of the best geometers of the past two centuries (including Christopher Clavius, the author of the preeminent early-modern version of Euclid's Elements; including Fracois d'Auilon; including Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri, author of books which, after a period of long neglect, would help lay the basis for non-Euclidean geometry) were Jesuits.

God's Soldiers: Adventure Politics, Intrigue, and Power -- A History of the Jesuits
by Jonathan Wright
p. 193-194

military schools

Only in the military?

After my first visit to Hogwarts, on Sports Orientation Night, I came away thinking the place felt like a "happy military school." As it turned out, that was by design; the principal told us so on Family Orientation Day. I've forgotten how he put it, but the gist was that Jesuit schools have much in common with military schools.

Loyola himself, of course, was a soldier.

My point: happy military schools work.

Knowing what I do now, I take issue with this observation:

Behavioral problems are not an issue [inside military schools] due to the values students are taught at home.

I would wager a very large sum of money that a person who has actually taught in a military school would read this passage and hoot.

Your typical classroom pits 20 to 30 kids against 1 adult. That's not quite the Battle of Thermopylae, but close enough.

Kids in groups are like dogs in packs^* (I say that with affection for kids and dogs): they rev each other up, and beyond a certain point parents can't control their kids from home no matter how sterling their values. It is the school's job to keep order and a cheerful spirit.

Most schools don't: because of political correctness that dictates "radical inclusion;" because ed schools don't teach classroom management skills; because public schools seem to believe that classroom discipline begins and ends in the home.

It doesn't. The public schools in my district, where the school population is upper middle class children from well-organized families, are safe and reasonably orderly, but there are constant complaints about disrupted classrooms, kids not being able to hear because of commotion made by the 'hyper' kids, etc. At the high school, students and parents have been told that disruptive kids in honors courses "don't deserve to be in the class."

I think it's unlikely that military kids are better behaved than kids in my district when they're not under their parents' direct supervision, and I credit military school personnel, not military parents,^** with the orderly environment inside military schools.


^* "In 2008, 39% of the fatalities involved multiple dogs."

^** Not a criticism of military parents or anyone else. All I'm saying is: if a parent isn't inside the classroom, he isn't the one keeping order.

Mike Schmoker on time & buckets

About a year ago I finally figured a couple of things out:

a) the existence of 'real' school reformers (i.e. people who have actually done it)

and

b) their names & books.

Mike Schmoker is one of my favorites within this small group. (Richard DuFour is another.)

I haven't managed to get their work posted in a systematic way, but I intend to.

For now, here is Schmoker on the subject of lengthening the school year:

Suppose you find that your bucket leaks. Does that mean you need a bigger bucket? Not necessarily; you may just need one that doesn’t leak. With the best of intentions, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are renewing the call for a longer school day and year—for a larger bucket. I believe this is premature.

Like most “structural” (vs. substantive) reforms, this one will consume our time and political energy, even as it postpones our encounter with a more vital, less costly opportunity: making good use the huge number of hours that currently “hide” within the conventional school day and year. If we recovered this time and properly redirected it, the impact on student learning would be greater than any reform ever launched.

There are, in fact, two to three months of learning time waiting to be recaptured within the existing school year. And though our communities and school boards might be surprised to hear it, a majority of educators are aware of this.

In the last few years, I have asked several hundred audiences of teachers, administrators, and union representatives the following question: Would you agree that almost all “worksheets” are a lamentable and unnecessary use of instructional time?^* More than 90 percent of them agree unreservedly, by show of hands. Then I ask them to pair up and discuss what proportion of the school day or year students spend filling in such worksheets. After some give and take, the average response I get is a minimum of 25 percent to 30 percent—the equivalent of an entire grading period. More than two months.

I then say, “Gee … and I haven’t even mentioned movies.” This invariably provokes honest, almost relieved laughter. In the right setting, educators are refreshingly frank—and concerned—about the actual curriculum, which is starkly different from what the public (and many policymakers) imagine. Teachers and administrators know that the actual taught curriculum is rife with time-killing routines, worksheets, and often full-length films that add little or no value to the school day. Most interesting perhaps is that once educators have a chance to add it all up, they see that changes would add about 30 percent more learning time annually for almost every school in America. And it would cost us nothing.

We’ve known for decades that large chunks of class time are spent on ill-conceived group activities, on settling in or packing up at the beginning and end of class. Moreover, there has been an alarming increase, at all grade levels and in all subjects, of what the reading expert Lucy McCormick Calkins^** refers to as classroom “arts and crafts.”

[snip]

Many parents suspect that some of this goes on in schools, but they hope against hope that it is rare or occurs only in low-scoring or inner-city schools. Would that this were so. I recently found these activities to be as, or more, prevalent in schools with their state’s highest academic designation. The fact is, students in most schools spend days at a time in academic classes on questionable group “projects,” on drawing and painting, making banners, castles, book jackets, collages, and mobiles. All of this is in addition to worksheets and movies.

[snip]

With a new administration and secretary of education in Washington, this would be an excellent time to honestly, and at long last, come to terms with how time is spent in schools. Then we would be in a better position to decide how much time and energy we should expend in fighting for longer school days and shorter summers.

Do We Really Need a Longer School Year?

Education Week
Vol. 28, Issue 36
Published Online: July 7, 2009

A friend of mine here in Irvington learned this week that in 8th grade science students could fulfill one assignment by writing a song.


^* I'm not necessarily one with Schmoker on this point.
^** I do not include reading expert Lucy McCormick Calkins in the real school reformer group. In fact, I do not include Lucy McCormick Calkins in the reading expert group.

why parents pay for Catholic school

C's summer assignments from Hogwarts:

• read the first 15 chapters of the AP Euro textbook
• read & outline the first 6 chapters of the AP bio textbook
• watch Franco Zefferilli's Jesus of Nazareth
  
• read 3 books for English
• read 1 book on dealing with stress (guidance assignment)
  

Here's what Lefty's going-into-7th-grade son will be doing:

A Mathematical Scavenger Hunt at the Library

Go the the city library--either the main library or a branch library. Do the following activities and record all of this information in an attractive booklet or on a poster. Plan ahead since you may need more than one visit to do everything on the list

1. Draw a sketch of the front of the library on 8.5 X 11 paper. Show the windows and doors. Estimate the width and height of the building and show these dimensions on your sketch. Explain the strategy you used to make your estimate.

2. Go to a room in the library. Make a sketch of the floor plan of the room. Estimate the length and width of the room. What is your estimate of the area of the room? Explain the strategy you used to make your estimate

3. Find a section of the books that you like. Write down the types of books you chose. Place your forearm along the shelf and count how many books there are from the tip o your elbow to the tip of your fingers.

4. Estimate the number of books in this room. Explain what strategy you used to come up with your estimate.

5. Find a chart showing the Dewey decimal numbers for the categories of books in the library. Copy the information to the chart.

6. If you do not already have one, sign up for a library card.

7. Check out a non-fiction book that you would like to read. List its title, author, and Dewey decimal number.

Bring the project to school on the first day. Your teacher will use the data you have collected for class.

Left offers a suggested summer assignment for her school's teachers.

house

One of the questions in my mind this year, with C. attending Hogwarts, has been: why is the place so happy?

Somehow, the school motivates the kids to work hard and strive, and yet the winner-take-all burnout culture that often exists in high-performing public high schools doesn't exist there.

Why is that?

I don't know the answer, although I think it has to do with the fact that the kids develop a group identity the first day they arrive, when they attend a formal induction ceremony held in a nearby chapel.

In the ceremony a senior escorts each of the new boys up the center aisle of the sanctuary to the chancel, where a priest holding a mace blesses him and presents him with a freshman pin he is to wear on his jacket. Then he joins his mentor group standing off to the side.

I assume the mentor groups are related to the house system in British boarding schools:


the house system

Can competition and camaraderie coexist? They do in Highlands Latin School’s house system.

At first it may seem that competition and camaraderie are at odds, and sometimes they probably are. But in Highlands Latin School’s house system, they seem to go together quite well. A traditional fixture of many British schools, the “house” system has enabled Highlands to accomplish a number of goals that can be elusive for many schools.

The Origins of the “House” System

The house system is widely used in British schools and schools that model themselves after the British system in countries with past British colonial ties, such as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore. The system began in boarding schools, where students actually ate, drank, and slept in individual houses during school terms. The house system still operates this way in prestigious British boarding schools, such as Harrow, Eton, and Winchester College.

But, perhaps because of its obvious merits, the system is now used even in day schools, where the term ‘house’ refers simply to groupings of pupils, with no buildings involved. The houses are usually named after Christian saints or for famous persons historically connected with the school.

[snip]

At Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, the advantages of the house system have been manifold. The houses provide not only an increased sense of identity and belonging, they also provide students with a sense of tradition. Leadership opportunities also abound in the house system.

Highlands, which is an outgrowth of the work of Cheryl Lowe, founder of Memoria Press, has seen a marked change in the attitude of students as a result of the establishment of the houses. “Because of the competition and the identification of each student with a house,” says Martin Cothran, a Highlands instructor and a co-director of the school, “there are constant opportunities to cheer your fellow students on. The positive attitudes of students toward one another and toward the school have been quite amazing since we started our program.”

The sense of tradition is palpable too. The Highlands house system, which is only a year old, already has about it the sense of history.

[snip]

The feature of the houses most popular with students is the competitions. At Bingley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, England, houses compete on the basis of academics, attendance, and sports. Sports competition includes cross country, netball, rugby, and table tennis. At Highlands, students compete in academics, community service, and sports, including dodgeball, soccer, ultimate frisbee, kickball, and volleyball. They also compete in chess and Latin Scrabble.

Academic competition is based on GPA. Houses are given points on the basis of how house teams perform in academic quick recall competitions. Community service points might be given on the basis of which house turned out the most members to sing at a rest home.

House

If I were starting a charter school I'd want it to have a House system.


how to create a virtual culture
Anonymous on competition & "positive compulsions"

indentured service

a reader left this comment:

I live in the area of the Webster Magnet School. Although my kids do not attend that school, I have had a snootful of service learning projects assigned to my kids throughout the years. We have partnership schools in the suburbs where kids get together to "make friends" with kids in other areas of the city. I'm all for Feed the Children, but my daughter's class has been working on this project for the last 3 weeks, taking a field trip to the center. "Let's not teach history or proper English, let's teach service." The kids miss a lot of instructional time doing these projects. No wonder my husband and I are so tired. We have to teach them school subjects after they get home from school.

I feel I can't say anything negative about these programs because it is just not politically correct. Teachers love them. The principal loves them. Parents love them. "They are soooo good for the students and the community. A good way to build community in the school." I think it turns kids off to volunteerism.

Hogwarts has some service trips that are fantastically fun, I'm told: especially the summer trip to Tennessee, where I think the kids help build houses.

I don't begrudge a Catholic school having a service requirement -- it's a Catholic school, after all. It's supposed to have a service requirement. The Jesuit motto is "Men for others," and that is what they teach.

One of the things I like about the service requirement in a Catholic school is that often a student's service is given to the school. In a wealthy public school that might get on my nerves, but in a Catholic school operating on a shoestring, I like it.

the years

C. has just 4 school days left of his first year at Hogwarts.

Last fall the principal told us, "There will be some long days and long nights, but the years will go by in a blink."

We didn't have any long days or long nights at Hogwarts; we seem to have left those behind, in our public school.

And so the year has gone by in half a blink.

cranberry on advisories in private schools (& building good habits)

In my other child's private school, the advisor is a great system. It's one of your child's teachers. If you think your child is developing a social or academic problem, you raise the issue with your child's advisor. This is marvelous, because it provides a listener for the parent, who may very well have a legitimate complaint about the other teacher. Let's say, a child feels that the homework is assigned, but not collected, by a new teacher. The child's advisor can speak with the new teacher, encouraging him to collect the homework. The parent is not left in the position of having to complain either to the teacher, or to the principal, neither good options. As a parent, I don't want to make a stink about a small problem. In the public school, though, I've seen small problems balloon into huge problems, because there are no avenues for parents to provide rational feedback on their child's academic experience.

Hogwarts has "mentor group," which is similar -- although they don't seem to invite parents to talk to mentors, particularly.

C's mentor keeps track of the kids' grades and intervenes if grades start to slip. She also is a bear (that's a good thing) on the issue of kids using their planners. She checks their planners every day to see if they've written down their assignments; if they haven't, she has them do so.

She is building a habit. She isn't just haranguing the kids on the importance of being organized (which is what public schools do & what I've often done myself), she is teaching them how to be organized, and she is giving them practice each and every day until using the planner becomes automatic.

We have only recently realized our job as parents isn't just to produce a "good kid" and a good student, our job is also to build good habits. In the past couple of years, as C. has gotten older and more responsible, Ed and I have both taken to scolding him about his messy ways. We find his stuff all over the house, we get mad, we remonstrate.

That's not the way to do it.

We need to set a time each and every day when we have him do a quick clean-up of his room and his desk, and we need to keep doing this until it becomes second nature for C. to do a quick clean-up of his room and his desk.

Speaking of building habits, a commenter recommended Glenn Latham's The Power of Positive Parenting awhile back. I've only dipped into it, and don't know what he has to say on the subject of teaching kids to clean up their rooms and use their planners, but it is a fantastic book.

Wonderful.

middle school advisory

Rules of Discernment

What shall we do? We should not do anything wicked and we should not do anything absurd. Between these boundaries lie a vast number of possibilities. 

What Is Ignatian Spirituality? by David L. Fleming, SJ

p. 89

I love the Jesuits.

Book of Proverbs

For homework this weekend, C. had to pick out 10 proverbs he likes. 

Here's the list:

25:15 With patience a judge may be cajoled: a soft tongue breaks bones.

25:16 Eat to your satisfaction what honey you may find, but not to excess or you will bring it up again.
25:24 Better the corner of a loft to live in than the house shared with a scolding woman.
26:4 Do not answer a fool in the terms of his folly for fear you grow like him yourself.
26:11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool reverts to his folly.
26:17 Like catching a stray dog by the tail, so is interfering in the quarrels of others.
27:3 Heaviness of stone, weight of sand, heavier than both: annoyance from a fool.
27:15 The steady dripping of a gutter on a rainy day and a scolding woman are alike.^*
29:3 The lover of Wisdom makes his father glad, but the patron of harlots fritters his wealth away.
29:13 Poor man and usurer are found together, Yahweh gives light to the eyes of both.

I asked him what the last one means.

He says he doesn't know.

^* I learned from my Fluenz lesson this afternoon that the Spanish word for wife - esposa - also means handcuffs.

Jingle Bells in Latin

Jingle Bells in Latin

Nantes per nives
in apertā traheā
trans agros imus
omnes ridentes. (ha! ha! ha!)

Tintini tintinnant.
Animose sic
Lætissimi nos canimus
Canticum hac nocte.

(O!) tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus!
O tantum est gaudium dum vehimus in trahā!
Tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus!
O tantum est gaudium dum vehimus in trahā!


C.'s Latin class is going to go caroling through the halls of Hogwarts. In Latin.

(Sorry to be missing in action - lots going on here. For the next post).

Larry Cuban on technology in the schools

Larry Cuban (author of Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom): U.S. school reformers have a tradition of overselling and underusing technological innovations. Thus the chances of widespread adoption in schools of new classroom technologies in the next decade are in the 70 to 90 percent probability range, but the probability of routine use in most schools for instruction is much lower, in the 10 to 20 percent range.... Regardless of what technological enthusiasts predict, no “revolutions” in technology use have occurred in U.S. schools and classrooms....

[snip]

Slight increases in home schooling may occur—say from 1.1 million students in 2003 to 2 or 3 million by the end of the decade. The slight uptick would be due to both the availability of technology and a far broader menu of choices for parents. Online college curricula and offerings from for-profit entrepreneurs give home-schooling, anxious college-driven, and rural parents new options. [ed.: Anxious college-driven parents, you say. Well, maybe if someone listened to anxious college-driven parents once in a while, we'd have fewer SMARTBoards and more college preparation.]

[snip]

In tracking such technological innovations as film, radio, television, videocassettes, and desktop computers over the past half century, I found a common cycle. First, the promoters’ exhilaration splashes over decisionmakers as they purchase and deploy equipment in schools and classrooms. Then academics conduct studies to determine the effectiveness of the innovation as compared to standard practice; they survey teachers and occasionally visit classrooms to see student and teacher use of the innovation. Academics often find that the technological innovation is just as good as—seldom superior to—conventional instruction in conveying information and teaching skills. They also find that classroom use is less than expected. Formal adoption of high-tech innovations does not mean teachers have total access to devices or use them on a daily basis. Such studies often unleash stinging rebukes of administrators and teachers for spending scarce dollars on expensive machinery that fails to display superiority over existing techniques of instruction and, even worse, is only occasionally used.

Few earnest champions of classroom technology understand the multiple and complicated roles teachers perform, address the realities of classrooms within age-graded schools, respect teacher expertise, or consider the practical questions teachers ask about any technological innovation that a school board and superintendent decide to adopt, buy, and deploy. Is the new technology simple to use? Versatile? Reliable? Durable? How much energy and time will I as a teacher have to expend to use the new technology for what net return in enhanced student learning? Will the innovation help me solve problems that I face in the classroom? Providing teachers with economic or organizational incentives to use technology won’t answer these practical questions. Were policymakers, researchers, designers of the innovation, and business-inspired reformers to ask and then consider answers to these questions, perhaps the predictable cycle might be interrupted. [ed.: or -- and here's a thought -- policymakers, researchers, designers of the innovation, and business-inspired reformers could ask parents and taxpayers whether they feel like shelling out $4000 for SMARTBoards when a $400 data projector would serve]

[snip]

...tax-supported schools are expected to convert children into adults who are literate, law abiding, engaged in their communities, informed about issues, economically independent, and respectful of differences among Americans. [ed.: so....if a parent had written that list, would you expect to see the words "well-educated" on it? or "able to spell"? or, perhaps, "able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide without using a calculator"?] Schools are held publicly responsible for achieving those ends [ed: wrong again]

[snip]

It is a mistake to assume that if schools just adopt classroom technologies, academic achievement will improve, teaching will change dramatically, and students will be better prepared for the 21st-century workplace. Evidence for each reason to adopt technology is at best skimpy and at worst missing altogether.

Virtual Schools
by John Chubb, Terry Moe, and Larry Cuban
Education Next
Winter 2009
vol. 9, no. 1

When we toured private schools last spring, we found that the better the school, the less the reliance on technology, generally speaking. Dalton didn't have a single SMARTBoard. [see Anonymous, in Comments below]

The principal of Hogwarts told us that they've been considering investing in technology for the school, but so far they haven't seen anything to convince them that the benefits justify the costs.

Then he said a pencil is technology.