Can we clone her?

Excerpts from an article entitled "Head of the Class" by long-time science teacher, principal and college professor Louse Butler, author of Beating the Bell Curve, in the August 2009 Mensa Bulletin (emphasis--and any typos--mine):

On entering education:

The politics of education was a disappointment and a shock to me. Our boards of education are purely political entities, state boards of education even more so. The two largest teachers groups, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, are nothing but political organizations. Throw in the colleges of education [which] are populated by frighteningly political professors, and you have lots of people in power with plenty of axes to grind, many of which bear only tangentially on education. Our schools should be places where barriers are removed and doors of opportunity are opened through the common denominator of knowledge, but they should never be tools of social engineering.

On science education in the US:

There are too many people in education who think that science and math are elite subjects. They think they are too difficult for the average student and therefore are not to be emphasized in curriculum or in practice. These people are wrong. Science and math not only provide essential information, but they give us a logical and critical way of thinking. Science is a process of thought as much as it is a body of knowledge Science and math should be part of all instruction, enhance all instruction, and clarify all instruction. Sadly, the same people who want to reserve science for the few are the same people who don't want us to teach phonetic reading, civics, or geography.

Right. Science and math, as disciplines and over time, promote the development of critical thinking. Critical thinking cannot be taught in a vacuum.

And essential information to boot!

Where would she like science curriculum to go?

I can tell you where [it] shouldn't go. The consolidation of science curriculum into general science instead of its component disciplines is nothing more than a dilution of scientific knowledge to accommodate the shortage of qualified science teachers. We saw the same think happen when "social studies" was substituted for the real disciplines of history, geography, civics, and economics [ed: right, Catherine?]. And look what a mess that has turned out to be!

On the state of education in the US in general:

The drop out rate of first-year teachers is ridiculously high. The children don't seem to want to learn, and their behavior runs from difficult to outrageous. Our schools have, frankly, fed their students a load of manure. At the very least, the first-year teacher feels that their training doesn't reflect the real world. They become disillusioned, frustrated, and angry with themselves and the system and they quit. It is a terrible waste of time and talent. Show me a teacher who went into education just because they love children, and I'll show you a person who will be found bound, gagged, and abandoned in her closet by a group of third graders some time in mid-September. What you have to love is knowledge.

Bingo.

I see school systems that seem to have decided their first and only function is educating their students in a rigorous and challenging curriculum, and those systems are beacons of light in a dark night. It is interesting that these positive changes seem to be all in small and isolated spots. There aren't any "big course" corrections coming out of our colleges of education.

On why education in the US has slipped:

Part of the problem is teacher preparation. Another problem is our decision to excuse poor performance instead of correcting it. Starting in the 1970s, there was a "feel good" movement that pushed for a mea culpa for the world's ills by giving students a pass on anything that might make them feel challenged. What we got was a generation that was very comfortable with failure. We are having a hard time recovering from that, because the students who grew up with that are now teaching the next generation of teachers.

That's the most concise synopsis of the main problem I've ever seen.

On what the next generation of children can expect:

If we are going to compete with students in the emerging nations, especially in Asia, we are going to have to stop using schools for social experimentation and return to using them for education. We are going to have to accept that students must be reading fluently by third grade. They must be ready for algebra in eighth grade.

On how to reach students in mixed ability classrooms:

Many theorists in the educational community will be shocked to hear me say that I reached all of my students by teaching to the top of the class. You put in plenty of safety nets to catch the students who need extra help, but the forward direction of the class should always be the top. By doing that, you make sure you reach the students who will return the biggest bang for the buck, and you make success the standard. The key is to assume that most of your students can achieve the same standard. You help everyone, but hold no one back. . . Not that my class was a democracy. I was in charge, and any one who doesn't think that children need a leader hasn't tried to organize so much as a rock fight.

Wow. If we had 100,000 Louise Butlers, just imagine where US education would be!

are we having fun yet? discipline in a constructivist classroom

Mary Damer & Elaine McEwan on the other problem with constructivism:

Research supports the underlying thesis of our problem-solving process: the heart of successful behavior management is good instruction. Effective teaching becomes an even more essential variable for managing student behavior when one or more of the following conditions is present: (a) a student has a particularly chaotic home environment, (b) a student’s learning problems are extensive and complex, or (c) a student’s behavior is especially impulsive.

If Carla, the fourth grader who was constantly in your office last year poses no problem in fifth grade, chances are that her teacher this year is more skillful. If you observe Carla, you are likely to see her current teacher employing teaching methods that reflect the most valid research practices. Whenever you have a teacher on your staff who is complaining that a student who posed no problems last year is now a noncompliant rule-breaker, take a close look at that teacher’s instructional methods. You may find important clues to the student’s sudden misbehavior in the quality of the teacher’s instruction.

Instructional practices derived from specific curriculum designs can also directly affect student behavior. Many of the constructivist curricular innovations of the past 10 years that were created to develop hands-on cooperative learning, and student-centered environments often produced unintended results for children who are distractible, impulsive, or less motivated toward school.

Consider the following observation notes based on a classroom observation of two sixth graders in a math class. [NOTE: the two 6th graders she mentions here are the two children having behavior problems, and for whom the behaviorists have been called in]

The students are seated five to a table. They are manipulating small blocks into patterns in order to invent a method of multiplying fractions. Only two students in the class appear to have understood the concept. Other students in the class seem confused and frustrated. The teacher is unable to assist the students who are having difficulty and still monitor the other students. The instant she pauses to provide assistance to one table of students, a craps game begins on the other side of the room with several students exchanging pennies for the blocks they are now flicking across a finish line. One of the two referred students is walking around the classroom, seemingly to avoid the assigned task; the other unmanageable student has lined up his blocks like a train.

The frustration and lack of structure engendered by this activity have created multiple, predictable triggers to unmanageable behavior. No behavior intervention plan will succeed in a classroom where the assigned task is as frustrating as this one is, and the activities are as unstructured as these activities are.

Managing Unmanageable Students: Practical Solutions for Administrators
by Elaine K. McEwan & Mary Damer
p 13-14

note: "the last 10 years"

The book was published in 2000.

Twenty years of hands-on collaborative group learning.

A friend of mine was saying the other day that the hottest major in the college where she teaches is Communications.

I wonder if those two facts are related in any way.


CNN: 10 most popular majors
Niki Hayes on classroom discipline

“Low threshold, high ceiling” – Is this a good thing?

In reviewing the website of the new math program just adopted by our school (aargh, more on that later), I came across this:

Think Math! materials are designed to have a “low threshold” and a “high ceiling.” In other words, students can approach any Think Math! activity from where they are at the moment and still succeed, learn, and be challenged.

My first impression was that this was not a good thing. It seemed to indicate this program was not organized in a cumulative, logical format that would require a mastery of the previous lesson in order to succeed in the subsequent lesson. In other words, “just jump in any time, because the program skips around topics.” If a student doesn’t fully learn the material (low threshold), that’s fine. On the other hand, if a student completely masters the lesson (high ceiling), well, all the better. Meanwhile, the gap between the slower learners and the faster learners will continue to widen.

And, for assessment purposes, I would imagine that clearing the “low threshold” constitutes “meeting standards”. This would ensure that no child is left behind.

I also found this description.

Problems that can be adapted for multiple ability levels provide a way to engage every student in a class. These problems are sometimes referred to as "low threshold, high ceiling" problems because all students can understand the problem and solve some part of it (low threshold), but even the highest-ability students in the class will not easily complete it (high ceiling). Rich problems can also be extended to allow students to explore more mathematics.

It seems all about heterogeneous grouping, engaging the students at all costs and low expectations. What’s the good part about this that I’m missing?

Meeting With The Principal

About a week ago, I noticed a one-line notice on the reverse side of my daughter's 5th grade newsletter letting us parents know that COGAT testing results were available if a parent sends in a written request.

I don't always read these newsletters, especially at the end of the year when nothing is going on in the classroom anyway, but I read this one because I knew there was a field trip coming up that I'm chaperoning and I couldn't figure out the day it was on (I'm sure I'll get a couple more notices home about the field trip though).

However, I suspect this one line in a multi-page newsletter is all the notice most parents will get that 1 - IQ testing was done, 2- you need to make a written request for the results or you'll never see them.

It's even worse than that, because the notice only said "COGAT" and unless you know what that is, you wouldn't know that your child had an IQ test available. This feels dishonest to me. We are so worried about equity and down-playing of intelligence differences, that the school is going out of its way to make it difficult for parents to find out a piece of information that many will find valuable and helpful. But the school doesn't like IQ testing and they don't like kids being labeled "smart" so they try to hide the information and put up hurdles to getting it.

Well, I made my written request. Rather than just give me the results (which is all I wanted), I had to have a meeting with the principal where she would give me a copy. Another hurdle.

At the meeting, the principal expressed her amazement that my child's IQ score had risen 21 points in 2 years. She felt this was an indication of their fabulous job teaching her and of getting her to care about school.

I had a different take. My kid has a mild ADD diagnosis and hated 3rd grade. I think a distracted, bored kid doesn't do well on group tests. We've had lots of independent testing done recently, and shared all of that information with the principal, so this should not have come as a huge shock. I don't know what her IQ is, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the school's measurement system -- 21 points in 2 years? Something is wrong here. IQ doesn't shift that much no matter what you are doing in school.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good time to ask about class composition for next year (6th grade). They remain committed to heterogeneous classes with differentiation.

I made a pitch for clustering and flexible ability grouping. I decided to try Catherine's approach to forcing slow change -- I'm going to repeat "cluster" and "flexible ability grouping" at every opportunity and expound at length if given the opportunity.

I remarked -- the research is unequivocal. Flexible ability grouping boosts achievement for all students. Heterogeneous classrooms and differentiation have not worked.

Now I need to find the research. I've got some of it here, but I need to just keep chipping away at this. Clustering and flexible grouping will not solve all the problems (a better curriculum might help too), but it would be progress.


update - from Catherine

The La Salle post describing La Salle High School's "student assignment" policy may be a good place to start.

We're probably going to urge our own district to adopt La Salle's policy.

Tom Loveless' book on tracking is probably the best summary of the research; The War on Excellence also has a summary (I'll post some of it).