MO Math Happenings...

A desperate and courageous mom in Camdenton, MO describes to other parents how to get involved in solving their math crisis - and is accused of civil disobedience. Say what?!?

She references a great post, by Oak Norton, entitled
"Educating All Parents To Ensure The Future Of Our Republic"

in case you want to weigh in

Who Will Be Obama's Next Education Secretary?

Then, once you're finished with the Washington Wire, over yonder we have the Wall Street Journal's "CEO Council" advising Barack Obama on the schools. Forty years of reform and it hasn't worked: what is to be done?

Apparently, what is to be done is more of what has been done already. Two of the three bsd's interviewed by the Journal agree that paying "the best teachers incredibly higher salaries — $40,000 to $50,000 more than they currently can make for the very best teachers" will be just the ticket. None of these fellows has checked out the goings-on in school districts where teachers are being paid $40,000 to $50,000 more than they would make elsewhere now, but never mind. Incredible pay for teachers without incredible curricula to teach (curriculum doesn't figure in their thinking) -- sure. Why not?

The third interviewee thinks we should pay teachers incredibly high salaries and train them to "support the development of students" & "help children grow." Music to a parent's ears! Another two, three decades of developmentally appropriate practice and differentiated instruction and those SAT scores are gonna spike.

Speaking of parents, I'm now convinced that in the past one hundred years of education history, parents have so consistently been right, and educationists have so consistently been wrong, that if you really want to know how to fix the schools you should interview 3 people who actually have kids in the schools, or did have.

Reading Rudolf Flesch will do that to you.

Godel, Esher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid

I believe that music is related to math. I also believe that the decline in Latin, real math teaching, and music are related.

According to this article,

"In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding." [Ed: and their math study!]

I have a webpage about how I believe we learn through patterns, and how "Mathematics, language, music, art, and many other facets of our universe are best understood through their orderly patterns."

High School Quest Continues

Just a quick recap. The local school district is moving 9th grade to the high schools next year. Local schools are hosting "parent information" nights this month. My sons attend a very highly rated charter school in town that has a 9th grade and is investigating an extension to the charter to include high school. Here's a report on visit #2 on our HS odyssey. (Visit #1 is here.)


What a difference attitude makes. A week or so ago, husband, 8th grade son and I attended a parent night at another high school in Fort Collins. This principal and his team of 5 counselors spent almost 45 minutes on the academics at the school, then invited everyone to go on a tour hosted by senior year peer counselors.
We learned about:

• AP classes available to incoming freshman and sophomores,
  
• how many credits are required to graduate,
  
• how rigorous the curriculum is,
• how many AP tests taken resulted in scores of 4 or 5,
  
• how the school ranked in Newsweek's annual ratings (top 5%).
  

The principal was humorous, concerned, and confident. (And very tall!) He acknowledged that the school didn't have all the transition logistics completely worked out, but felt they were working towards a strong plan.


Now I realize that AP courses can be controversial (not necessarily rigorous, poor college prep, etc.); however, hearing a principal encourage every student to take at least one class in their school career is pretty powerful. I'm a parent and a teacher. I know the statistics of the general population. In the district, under 70% will continue their education after high school, 40% at a 4 year school.

The slide show consisted of 6 or 7 slides that covered the core courses required at 9th & 10th grades, important dates in the registration process and a "brag" slide about the school awards, rankings, athletics teams.


Clubs were mentioned. The school won 8 of 10 awards for having the most involved student body in the state. (They weren't eligible one year and after 7 consecutive wins, Wells Fargo quit giving out the award.) The principal even mentioned "Lambkin Pride". Yes, the mascot is a lamb. This school is sending counselors to the local jr. highs to discuss student options (as opposed to students) and they have one heck of a prep rally in April that 9th & 10th graders are given special t-shirts for and invited to attend.


I did find it interesting that one counselor who spoke told the audience of 400 that they didn't have time to meet with all incoming 2009-10 students and their parents individually, then the principal promised 20 minutes to anyone who wanted to learn more about the school. (It would help if you came in groups, he quipped.)


When the principal was done, we headed out to find a peer counselor. On our tour around the campus (1/4 mile from gym to theater) we learned that there are 3 main wings, grouped by subject, and each has a computer lab for teachers to use. Not everyone gets a locker. Hardly anyone uses them. The school has sand volleyball pits outside the cafeteria. The main gym holds 2522 people, and so on. My son had no questions. (We were embarrassing him!) One other boy asked if he could wear his baseball hat in classes. (Yes, but some teachers make you remove them.)


We were the last group touring with our peer counselor, Ryan, and he volunteered that he had been a graduate of the same charter jr. high that my son currently attends. He really felt prepared when he came to this school and has whizzed through several AP courses.


I had to ask..."Did you take AP psychology?"
"Next semester, he answered, "It's supposed to be the easiest AP course you can take."


BTW- My son loved this school.

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.

cranberry on professional development

When I hear, "improving teacher quality," I don't think, "why, more teacher development courses are the way to go!" I think, prune the deadwood, and hire people who can spell, write, think, and have a thorough knowledge of their subject areas. Union contracts don't allow this, of course.

Doctors and lawyers are subject to stringent licensing standards, much more demanding than teacher licensing exams. In order to be accepted to medical school and law schools, candidates must score acceptably on the LMAT or GMAT exams. After their strenuous professional schools, they must either pass the bar exam, or the medical board exams.

As a consequence of professional misconduct, doctors can have their license revoked, and lawyers can be disbarred. This happens upon the basis of duly investigated complaints, on the authority of independent boards.

Measures such as the medical and legal professions have chosen to live under would go a long way towards "improving teacher quality."

By the way, for both doctors and lawyers, the required professional development happens on their own time. Due to the structure of professional partnerships, every day spent in training is a day they're not making money.

Diagnosis diagnosed by Galen Alessi

This is the unedited section of Galen Alessi's classic article, "Diagnosis diagnosed: A systemic reaction" that describes his study of school psychologists blaming the child:

On the completely different theme of values, I agree with Joel Meyers that a dramatic shift in conceptual models is needed in school psychology diagnostic systems. And, I agree that what is required is a switch from an individual to a systemic (ecological) perspective. Perhaps the most important, recent discovery in school psychology in the past 50 years has been that every school pupil interacts daily with teachers, peers, a basal curriculum, parents, and school administrators. Some school psychologists now are suggesting that these factors may contribute to (and perhaps even be the source of) many pupils' school problems. But such school psychologists are only a tiny minority (cf. rump group?), and considered to be egregious radicals by their individually centered colleagues. What makes school psychologists hold so tenaciously to an individually centered conception of behavior? Could it be that giving up this schema would change the professional role in fundamental ways that neither the schools nor school psychologists are prepared to accept?

The major part of the school psychology role involves case studies to determine the sources of learning and behavior problems in school. Not only are school psychologists experts in tracking down factors contributing to such problems, but they also are bound by professional ethics to report the results objectively as they are determined. Parents trust school psychologists not to adopt assessment practices that are inherently biased in ways that could hinder, rather than help, their children. But school psychologists with an individually centered perspective may have adopted naturally, and with the best intentions, inherently biased assessment models.

When a child has difficulty learning or behaving at school, the source of the problem usually can be traced to one or more of five broad areas. First, the child may be misplaced in the curriculum, or the curriculum may contain faulty teaching routines (cf. Becker, 1986; Carnine & Silbert, 1979; Engelmann & Carnine, 1982; Silbert, Carnine, & Stein, 1981). Second, the teacher may not be implementing effective teaching and/or behavior management practices (Becker, 1986; Heller, Holtzman, & Messick, 1982; Paine, Radicchi, Rosellini, Deutchman, & Darch, 1983; Sprick, 1985). Third, the principal and other school administrators may not be implementing effective school management practices (Brookover et aI., 1982). Fourth, the parents may not be providing the home-based support necessary for effective learning. Fifth, and finally, the child may have physical and/or psychological problems that may be contributing to the learning problems.

With several groups of school psychologists (about 50 each), in different areas of the country, I have replicated the following informal survey that highlights the crucial problem with current individually centered diagnostic practices. 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.

At this time, of course, many psychologists raise their hands to protest that all five areas are indeed responsible for problems in cases they have studied, but that informal school policy (or "school culture") dictates that conclusions be restricted to child and family factors. Many feel that they could lose their jobs were they to invoke school-related factors. Certainly, they claim, their professional lives would be made very uncomfortable. Others note that not all evaluations determine that serious problems exist. But the fact remains that no school psychologist in the group had determined that any existing problems were due to school-related factors.

School psychologists, however, appear to have come by their child-as-the-problem biases quite honestly. The bias trail leads back to graduate training programs. Graduate core requirements in school psychology programs usually focus on child factors to the virtual exclusion of school-related factors. Workshop and paper presentations at school psychology conferences share the same restricted focus. Articles in the leading journals focus on child factors.

Textbooks also stipulate the child-as-the-problem bias. An informal survey of a few widely adopted texts on diagnosing reading problems yields the following results. Sources are not referenced out of respect for the authors, but the reader can find similar results by quickly surveying texts off the shelf. The first text devotes 4 pages (7% of total coverage) to school factors related to reading problems, 2 (3%) pages to home factors, and the remaining 55 pages (90%) to child factors. The second text devotes 1 page (4% of total coverage) to school factors related to reading problems, 0 (end p. 149) pages to home factors, and 22 pages (96%) to child factors. A third text devotes 0 pages to school factors related to reading problems, 0 pages to home factors, and 250 pages (100%) to child factors. A fourth text devotes 10 pages (4% of total coverage) to school factors related to reading problems, 9 pages (3%) to home factors, and 237 pages (93%) to child factors. The classic book on reading disability edited by Money (1962) does not include chapters addressing school or home factors related to reading problems. All chapters focus on child factors.

There are isolated and recent exceptions to this long-standing bias. Carnine and Silbert's (1979) reading text devotes almost no space to the discussions of child factors (other than pres kills) and close to 100% of coverage to school-related factors (teaching and instructional management). The Silbert, Carnine, and Stein (1981) mathematics text follows this same general formula.

The widely adopted textbooks, however, also may have come by the childas-the-problem bias honestly. Texts cannot review school factors unless researchers select those kinds of factors to study. Perhaps the proportions of pages included in these texts represent fairly the amount of research available in each respective area.

A comprehensive review by Arter and Jenkins (1979) of process models for explaining and treating learning problems indicates how extensively the childas-the-problem bias pervades our research and practice. The continued wide use of such process models, in spite of clear evidence that they not only are invalid but also ineffective, indicates the persistence with which such biases are held. Coles (1978) presented an extensive review of the research on learning disabilities. He noted with some surprise that of the approximately 1,000 studies reviewed, not one examined the relation between school factors and learning disabilities. Most studies examined child factors, some home factors, and a few both child and home factors. Coles suggested that such an extensive research literature focusing on child and home factors, to the exclusion of school factors, could be interpreted as pointing to some kind of conspiracy by researchers against examining school factors as they relate to school learning problems.

Educational researchers, however, also may have come by the child-as-the-problem bias honestly. Perhaps school administrators (or teacher unions) are reluctant to permit researchers to study school factors as they relate to learning and behavior problems. Perhaps researchers are only approved for projects that focus on child and home factors. Reports from school psychologists in the informal surveys just cited seem to support this interpretation.

Recently, however, educational researchers have produced very valuable data on school factors and learning (cf. Becker, 1986; Brookover et aI., 1982; Carnine 1978; Heller, Holtzman, & Messick, 1982). As this body of research grows, school psychologists will increasingly face the burden of deciding whether they work for the schools or for the children, in cases where the interests clash.

We end with a discussion of the ethical burdens on school psychologists to be forthright and honest when reporting their findings. Are we really helping children by concluding that children alone are responsible for educational problems? Are we helping the school system at the expense of the children? How do we balance the rights of those who pay for our services against the rights of those who receive our services, when interests clash? Is the role of the school psychologist to label children to help schools avoid improving faulty educational practices, or to help schools improve faulty educational practices to avoid labeling children?

In this social context, I think Joel Meyers's proposed model will benefit school psychology if the ecological and systemic aspects are embraced. I think it will be transformed into "old wine in new bottles" if emphasis is refocused exclusively on the individually centered aspects (e.g., cognitive factors).


REFERENCES
Alessi, G. J., & Kaye, 1. G. (1983). Behavioral assessment for school psychologists. Stratford, CT: National Association of School Psychologists Publications.
Arter, 1., & Jenkins, 1. (1979). Differential diagnosis-prescriptive teaching: A critical appraisal. Review of Educational Research, 49, 517-555.
Ashlock, R. (1986). Error patterns in computation: A semi-programmed approach (4th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Becker, W. (1986). Applied psychology for teachers: A behavioral cognitive approach. Chicago, IL: Science Research Associates.
Brookover, W., Beamer, L., Efthim, H., Hathaway, D., Lezotte, L., Miller, S., Passalacqua, J., & Tornatzky, L. (1982). Creating effective schools: An inservice program for enhancing school learning climate and achievement. Holmes Beach, FL: Learning Publications.
Carnine, D. (1978). Analysis of achievement data on six cohorts of low-income children from 20 school districts in the University of Oregon Direct Instruction Model: Appendix A, formative research studies on direct instruction. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Follow Through Project.
Carnine, D., & Silbert, 1. (1979). Direct instruction reading. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Coles, G. (1978). The learning disabilities test battery: Empirical and social issues. Harvard Educational Review, 48, 313-340.
Engelmann, S., & Carnine, D. (1982). Theory of instruction: Principles and applications. New York: Irvington.
Heller, K., Holtzman, W., & Messick, S. (Eds.). (1982). Placing children in special education: A strategy for equity. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Money, J. (1962). Reading disability: Progress and research needs in dyslexia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Monteiro, M., & Heiry, T. (1983). A direct instruction supervision model. Direct Instruction News, 2, 8-9.
Paine, S., Radicchi, 1., Rosellini, L., Deutchman, L., & Darch, C. (1983). Structuring your classroom for academic success. Champaign, IL: Research Press.
Silbert, J., Carnine, D., & Stein, M. (1981). Direct instruction mathematics. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Sprick, R. (1985). Discipline in the secondary classroom: A problem-by-problem survival guide. West Nyack, NY: Center for Applied Research in Education.
Ysseldyke, 1., & Christenson, S. (1987). TIES: The Instructional Environment Scale. Austin, TX: PRO:ED.

Received April 9, 1987 Final Acceptance April 13, 1987

Requests for reprints should be sent to Galen Alessi, Western Michigan University, Department of Psychology, Kalamazoo, MI 49008.
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY, 3(2),145-151 Copyright @ 1988, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. pp. 148 – 151

Siegfried Engelmann on Galen Alessi (short)
Siegfried Engelmann on Galen Alessi (longer)
Engelmann on inputs versus outputs
Mothers from Hell 2

top ten!

Mathew's in it!

And Ken is now officially a respected independent blogger! (scroll down)


trip down memory lane

First time any of us "met" Ken was September 27, 2005, when he left his famous Comment re: engineering school and engineering school wash-outs.

Tour de force

more horselaughs in Singapore

It’s odd, really, when a parent questions the merits of a planned early dismissal or a community member derides a teacher professional development day. Rarely have I heard an open-heart surgery patient complain about the time doctors spend at conferences and professional development programs.

Another teacher professional development day? Lose another day of class time? Can we afford this?
by Peter J. Negroni

visual learning

foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables

you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore

Mathway

From Massachussetts high-school math teacher Mr. D:

Mathway is a website where you can type in problems ranging from basic math to Calculus and not only get the answer, but a step-by-step explanation. All of the key vocabulary words in each explanation are linked to an online glossary. You can graph answers on the coordinate plane when needed as well.

This should be on every students' list of sites to use for homework help, as well as a great self-directed way for students to check their own work. You could do anything from a set of problems, project or test and then have students correct everything themselves and get detailed explanations all from one website. It's fantastic.

You might check out the rest of Mr. D's blog as well.

14-0 Hogwarts

Oh my gosh, this is fun!

Hogwarts is on TV playing its traditional Thanksgiving game against its traditional rival, another Jesuit high school in Manhattan. The traditional rival is expected to win, mostly, I gather, due to "Famous Seamus," the running back who is so good he's rated 6th in the country.

Nevertheless, Hogwarts, at half-time, is ahead 14-0 -- they just scored a touchdown on a 60-yard reception with 18 seconds left to go in the half.

We're going to the game next year!

Ed and I are having another of our near-daily Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more^* experiences. E.g.: I have never known a person named Seamus. I have never even been briefly introduced to a person named Seamus.

Of another player, a sophomore on the Hogwarts team, I believe, the announcer just told us that he is 6'1" and 240 pounds; his mom is the arm wrestling champion of New York state.

Magic.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


^* For passersby, I am Scots Irish Protestant, grew up on a farm in central Illinois; my husband, who is Jewish, comes from Levittown, PA. I don't know about Ed, but where Hogwarts is concerned I feel as if I've stepped off the planet I was on and landed on the planet I wasn't on. A fun planet.

the Hogwarts suite

inside the black box

I asked the union lackey about ATRs [Absent Teacher Reserve]. He said, they just got a great deal from the DOE. Smart principals will hire them in a minute. I reminded him of the fact that principals do not like experienced teachers, that they don't like teachers that think and have minds of their owns. Years ago, principals hid vacancies whenever they could. No one wanted a veteran teacher who would not jump when told to. He said smart principals did not think like that. I said the smart ones were few and far between. He just kept talking about the one smart principal he used to work for.

Pissed off teacher

Speaking of inside the black box, When Galaxies Collide is back!

pissed off teacher & Regents

Steve H:

Schools have to see exactly what parents are doing at home. This is not difficult information to obtain. Schools have to look at exactly why some kids do well and some kids don't. However, parent-supported kids are the best excuse for schools. They don't want to know this information.

pissed off teacher:

That is the understatement of the year. This term I am teaching geometry to kids with no algebra skills and kids who have trouble reading. The poor kids are frustrated beyond hope.

But, NCLB says every child must take this stuff.

My old principal changed grades of every kid who squeaked by with a 65 on the regents from failing to passing and my school is in a real mess because of this.

Ed is friendly with a former TFA teacher who was formally reprimanded twice for refusing to cheat on the state tests (not in New York state). Robert Cox has a post on How cheating on high-stakes tests works.

that was quick

Superintendent: Schools may need a bailout too

questions t/k

Hi everyone -

I have some questions.

Which I'm going to send by email.

Just as soon as I finish putting together a list with all 64 emails on it.

Back in a bit.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Have a wonderfully restful next couple of days.

Enjoy friends and family and cherish time spent together.

It keeps us grounded and able to deal with all of the other stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not Smarter than a Fifth Grader after all

Educator, Game-Show Winner Declares Bankruptcy: Despite Declaring Chapter 7, Ga. Schools Boss to Give Away $1M Game-Show Prize

From ABC News:

Kathy Cox, the Georgia state schools superintendent who recently won $1 million on the TV game show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?," declared bankruptcy last week, another victim of the housing crisis. A spokesman for Cox said she will uphold her promise to donate her winnings to two schools for deaf children and a school for the blind, despite declaring personal bankruptcy with more than $3.5 million in liabilities and less than $650,000 in assets -- which is separate from her winnings.

The comments get ugly.

Core Knowledge Conference

Catherine Johnson said...

oh my gosh --- how did the Core Knowledge conference go???

Last week was the National Core Knowledge Conference in Anaheim. My company shared a booth with singaporemath.com, so I didn't attend many of the sessions. (However I got plenty of feedback from teachers.)

I had high expectations for this conference. First off, there hasn't been a national conference since February, 2007 and secondly, I saw Liping Ma was presenting. (Yeah!!)

Attendance was around 1500, That's about half the attendance of the D.C. conference in 2007. We had less than 100 people visit the booth in the three days the exhibition hall was open. That's ok, they were people who were truly interested in Singapore Math. Liping Ma's session had 30 or so attendees, less than ours and she's FAMOUS! She was a bit disorganized and flustered. It wasn't her best presentation, but anything she talks about is A-o.k. with me. (During the session, my business partner sat there next to me saying "um-hmm", "yes", "absolutely" under her breath. If she had dropped to her knees and shouted "hallelujah", I wouldn't have been surprised.)

Liping Ma discussed curriculum and how the entire curriculum in China supports the fact that: "fractions build on whole numbers, period." With her permission, I'll share her powerpoint slides next week.

The rest of the conference (math-wise) was a disappointment. Dr. Frank Wang gave the same presentation he has given since I started attending the conference 5 years ago. He tells the same jokes and whips out the same newspaper picture of him as a student sitting with John Saxon (Want to know why his legs were crossed?) You can view his Dr. Frank's Math minute videos.

Not that Dr. Wang was the only repeat presentation. It seems like the same 8-10 people present the same thing each year. (Nathan Levy, Dennis Denenberg, Jim Weiss, Poetry Alive, Sheila Offman Gersh, Alex Fillipenko and of course the Hirschs) I didn't attend, however heard many teachers discussing Ruby Payne's keynote "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". "Depressing" was the consensus. Teachers come to the conference to be inspired, not to feel inadequate.

The best keynote speeches of the last several years? In my opinion: Jack Prelutsky and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Next year's conference will be held at Disneyworld. Not my first choice, especially after attending in D.C., San Antonio & Philadelphia - great American cities rich with Core Knowledge-friendly history.


Final thoughts. Was attendance down this year because of the economy? Districts tend to plan for these pretty far out. We used to schedule a break for students around the conference so that teachers could attend. Will this economy affect the NCTM conference next spring. We aren't presenting and are debating whether to get a booth. (They are pricey!)


FYI- Our session: Core Knowledge meets Singapore Math: Integrating word problems throughtout the curriculum received great reviews!

block scheduling comment

from Anonymous:

The school my 3rd child attended as a freshman and sophomore had block scheduling and he hated it. He said that half of the period was almost always wasted, except for the (occasional) science lab. My brother taught in a high school (which his children attended) which switched to block scheduling and he says the same thing. The only way enough material can be covered is to rely on the lecture format, and most of the students cannot/will not keep up with the pace or absorb the content. There is also a significant issue with retention/continuity, especially in math and foreign languages. When we moved out of that area, one of the major factors in choosing where to live was the need to avoid districts with block scheduling.

I hear the same thing from everyone.

And from Chem Prof:

I'd second the rejection of block scheduling. I advise incoming college freshmen, and those words fill me with dread. Students who theoretically have taken calculus wind up placing into precalc consistently, because they remember almost none of it. The same thing is usually true for science coursework. Worse, if they have math in a fall block one year and a spring block the next, it can be 18 months with no math class, so they just wind up reteaching everything they learned already.

Basically, block scheduling is a way to have lots of wasted time for projects, but they really only cover one semester of material in one semester. There may be exceptions, but I haven't seen them.

"You can't cram math."

Or anything else.

Direct Instruction Featured in City Journal: "How to do Pre-K right"

About City Journal:

City Journal is the nation’s premier urban-policy magazine, “the Bible of the new urbanism,” as London’s Daily Telegraph puts it. During the Giuliani Administration, the magazine served as an idea factory as the then-mayor revivified New York City, quickly becoming, in the words of the New York Post, “the place where Rudy gets his ideas.” The Public Interest goes further, calling City Journal “the magazine that saved the city.”

But City Journal is a national, not just a local, force, with a readership that spans the U.S.—and an especially enthusiastic audience in the nation’s capital. The country’s most thoughtful journalists are among the quarterly magazine’s subscribers, as are top businessmen and financiers. City officials from coast to coast are loyal fans, and mayors from Milwaukee’s John Norquist to Oakland’s Jerry Brown happily acknowledge City Journal’s influence on their own thinking and policy. Newspapers across the land, from the Wall Street Journal to the San Diego Union-Tribune, regularly print adaptations of City Journal articles, disseminating the magazine’s influence to millions of readers.

Here's the meat of the "How to do pre-k right" article

The strongest case against spending even more public money on preschool is the disappointing return on such investments so far. Well-designed evaluations of Head Start and state-run programs have found that children attending them show only modest gains in academic or social skills—and none that endure for long—compared with peers who stay home or go to child care. A large-scale study of Head Start by the Department of Health and Human Services compared the progress of about 5,000 three- and four-year-olds, all from poor families, some enrolled and some not enrolled in the program. Children in Head Start did no better than the control group on assessments of the skills that best predict academic success, including oral comprehension, vocabulary, and math. Both groups remained on average far below national norms in every important measure of cognitive ability. The most rigorous studies of state programs likewise have yet to demonstrate that the academic gains from pre-K show up later in the form of improved scores on states’ early elementary school reading tests, typically given in third or fourth grade.

This persistent failure deserves some sympathy. In their 1995 book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley quantified a language deficit in young children from welfare families so vast that it’s hard to conceive how even the best preschool might erase it. By age three, the authors found, children from families headed by parents who were professionals had heard, on average, over 8 million more words than children from welfare families. The kids themselves had spoken over 4 million more words than the welfare children. The oral vocabularies of the professional-family kids exceeded those not just of the children but of the parents of the welfare families. This astonishing language gap has grim consequences: follow-up studies showed that it correlates closely with large deficits in vocabulary and reading ability at age nine—which, in turn, correlate with large deficits in the reading ability, and consequent prosperity, of adults.

We should temper our compassion for the overwhelmed Head Start and pre-K teachers, however, by recognizing that they have not only failed to close the education gap but have done much over the years to widen it. Like those who practiced medicine 200 years ago, most early-childhood educators demonstrate little regard for scientific findings and base their classroom efforts on theories and personal preferences that empirical evidence has repeatedly contradicted.

Central to the typical early-childhood educator’s worldview are three ideas: that it’s better for young children to learn through play than through work; that children learn best and are happiest when they can help direct the pace and content of their own learning; and that a child’s mental abilities develop at a natural pace that adults cannot do much to accelerate. If a child fails to learn something, it’s not because the teaching is faulty, in this view; it’s because the child is either “learning disabled” or not yet “developmentally ready” to learn it—a notion derived from the theories of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who believed that mental abilities developed in age-determined phases.

From these premises flow a host of others. Pre-K teachers learn that it’s not “developmentally appropriate practice” to seat children at desks; to give them worksheets; to make them work to master the alphabet, letter sounds, and math; to assess their academic skills (medical, dental, and nutrition assessments are okay); and to group them by skill level for instruction (because all children should receive equal treatment and because children learn as much from one another as they do from adults). Many things that parents would call common sense are, for the preschool professional, high-risk activities.

No amount of contrary data has been able to dislodge this constellation of beliefs, which afflicts not just pre-K but elementary education as well. The largest experiment ever to compare different approaches to instruction in the early grades, sponsored by the federal government in the 1970s and known as Project Follow Through, tracked more than 75,000 K–3 students. It found that only one of the nine methods examined—the one least in keeping with educators’ traditional views—had consistently accelerated the academic achievement of poor children. The least successful approaches all shared the prevailing ideas. And if an approach fails in kindergarten, you can bet that it will fail in pre-K, too.

But Follow Through’s results proved too unpopular for the government to act on. Hence the same flawed ideas continue to absorb public funds and drive the training, accreditation standards, and state policies that shape today’s Head Start, pre-K programs, and elementary education. One can infer their ongoing failure from the lagging academic performance of children from poor families, nationally and in states like Georgia and Oklahoma, which have funded universal pre-K for years.

The one approach that Follow Through found had worked, Direct Instruction, was created by Siegfried Engelmann, who has written more than 100 curricula for reading, spelling, math, science, and other subjects. Engelmann dates DI’s inception to an experiment he performed at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the summer of 1964. He took two groups of three- to five-year-olds—one white and affluent, one black and poor—and tried to teach them “sophisticated patterns of reasoning. . . . things that Piaget said couldn’t be taught before the age of formal operations—around 11 or 12.” These things included concepts like relative direction (A is north of B but south of C) and the behavior of light entering and leaving a mirror. Both groups learned what Piaget said they couldn’t at their age. But to Engelmann’s consternation, the affluent kids learned faster. He traced the difference to a severe language deficit in the African-American group (the deficit that Hart and Risley later quantified) and resolved to figure out how to overcome it.

Engelmann and two colleagues, Carl Bereiter and Jean Osborn, went on to open a half-day preschool for poor children in Champaign-Urbana that dramatically accelerated learning even in the most verbally deprived four-year-olds. Children who entered the preschool not knowing the meaning of “under,” “over,” or “Stand up!” went into kindergarten reading and doing math at a second-grade level. Engelmann found (and others later confirmed) that the mean IQ for the group jumped from 96 to 121. In effect, the Bereiter-Engelmann preschool proved that efforts to close the achievement gap could begin years earlier than most educators had thought possible. The effects lasted, at a minimum, until second grade—and likely longer, though studies on the longer-term effects weren’t performed.

The school also found that kids enjoyed learning “hard things” from adults and gained confidence as they gained skills. The key was to design the instruction carefully enough so that it worked even for the disadvantaged child—and to blame (and judiciously revise) the instruction, not the child, when the instruction failed. This approach in turn meant trampling the most sacred myth of the profession: that teachers always know best how to teach their kids, and hence deserve wide latitude in the classroom. Unlike other curricula, Direct Instruction programs tether teachers to a tightly scripted sequence of interactions. Engelmann’s field testing found that the scripts were the best way to prevent teacher miscommunications that could confuse the student. The scripting also improves efficiency: DI lessons consume an hour at most of the preschool day.

Engelmann’s results at the University of Illinois were replicated during the 1970s and 80s at nine sites across the country. Yet despite these successes, DI has faced little but scorn, neglect, and incomprehension from the educational establishment. Few education schools teach Direct Instruction techniques, except for special-ed classes, and few preschools or K–12 schools use DI curricula. None of the early DI preschool sites survived the whims of changing leadership, and Engelmann says that he knows of 200 places that improved student achievement after adopting DI, only to relapse after a new principal or superintendent capriciously dropped the program.

One site that has endured is Hampstead Hill Academy, a public charter school (pre-K to grade 8) operated by the Baltimore Curriculum Project, a nonprofit organization specializing in Direct Instruction. Stephanie Brown has taught DI math, reading, and language curricula there for ten years, the last five in all-day, state-funded pre-K. Eighty percent of her students come from poor homes, more than half are African-American or Latino, and one-third are immigrants still learning English. Many arrive not knowing how to hold a pair of scissors, use pronouns, speak in complete sentences, or follow simple directions. By the end of the school year, they have learned to sort objects into classes, identify opposites, recognize logical absurdities, use synonyms and if/then statements, create definitions for objects, read simple sentences, and do simple addition problems.

Brown breaks the rules of her profession. In the first months of school, she teaches her four-year-olds to sit at desks, work independently on exercises with pencil and paper, and concentrate for up to 30 minutes at a stretch (twice each morning) as she delivers the fast-paced DI lessons, one each for language and math. During DI time she breaks the class into three groups, arranged by skill level, to teach them more efficiently. She corrects mistakes quickly, firmly, and consistently.

“We’re going to start off with something really hard, but I think you can do it,” Brown says, beginning a math lesson that I observed in June. Seven children sit in a semicircle around her. Nine others are at their desks, cutting out, coloring, and ordering pictures of the life stages of a butterfly. Two others get extra practice on a language lesson with Brown’s assistant near the door.

“Read this,” Brown says, pointing at the “+2” written on the blackboard. “Everyone, get ready.” Following the script, she signals with her hand, and seven voices in unison say: “Plus two!” The simultaneity of response, a feature of all DI programs, instantly lets her know whether all her students are learning what she is trying to teach without having to take the time to call on each one individually.

“Very good! Plus two means the number that is two more. So, four plus two equals what number? Everyone . . .”

“Six!” they all shout.

The lesson lasts 20 minutes, after which the children return to their clusters of desks and five others take their place for a lesson from “Language for Thinking,” another DI curriculum. The transition takes no more than a minute. Each DI lesson reinforces and extends several strands of knowledge and skills that the children have learned in earlier sessions. Today’s language lesson includes work on the calendar, verb tenses, absurdities, questioning skills, definitions, opposites, and articulating descriptions.

“Get ready to answer some questions about a pair of scissors,” Brown starts. “Can you use a pair of scissors to cut paper?”

“Yes!”

“Can you use a pair of scissors to cut string?”

“Yes!”

“Can you tear scissors into little pieces?”

(Laughter.) “No!”

“Listen to this story and figure out what’s wrong with it. There was a woman. She wanted to wash the dishes, so she got out a broom.”

She calls on a little girl who points out the absurdity.

The least advanced group comes up for a lesson in “Language for Learning,” the program Engelmann wrote to address the language deficit in poor children. The focus today is on calendar facts, opposites, and similarities.

“Name the 12 months of the year,” Brown says.

The group answers correctly in unison.

“The story made us feel sad. Now say the sentence that tells the opposite.”

“The story made us feel happy.”

“I’m thinking of a broom and a hammer. How are they the same?”

One girl answers: “They both have handles.”

“Very good. How are they different?”

A boy says: “A hammer hurts you when it hits you, and a broom doesn’t."

Brown does DI lessons in the morning when the children are fresh. The rest of the day is devoted to standard pre-K fare: art, music, free play, gym, story time, and theme-based centers where students get to choose their activities, such as playing with blocks or kitchen utensils. “The children aren’t stressed out—they feel like the smartest kids on the planet,” Brown says. “Even the ones with behavior problems—it settles them.”

Direct Instruction rests on key findings in educational research. Children, particularly from poor homes, need lots of oral practice to master language and reading, studies have shown—hence the high number of responses-evoked-per-minute built in to DI curricula. Research has also confirmed that it’s possible to teach three-year-olds to hear and manipulate the individual sounds, known as phonemes, that make up words. Further, by three, most can learn to distinguish words that rhyme, and by four, they can understand the concept “letter” (that marks on a page correspond to specific sounds), learn the alphabet, and hear alliterations and syllables. Most middle-class children acquire these essential “pre-reading” skills—known collectively as phonological awareness—in the normal course of their upbringing. Most children in poverty and children with hearing deficits must be taught them explicitly, as DI does.

But the most significant—and least appreciated—research finding that justifies DI’s intensive, prescriptive approach remains Hart and Risley’s data on the language gap. “Time is the great enemy of the at-risk child,” Engelmann says. “He must learn more in less time, he is less experienced at learning, and he needs more practice. You can’t reproduce the form of the middle-class upbringing; you’ve got to try to reproduce the function. That means teaching kids the fast way.

The great stone in the road to a better preschool, in fact, is the dominance of pedagogical programs that don’t show teachers how to teach oral language and phonological awareness the fast way. The most popular, Creative Curriculum, controls about half the Head Start market. Another big seller is High/Scope. Absent major changes in how curricula get developed and approved for use in schools, these giants are about as likely to lose significant sales to the likes of DI as Budweiser is to get beaten by a microbrewery. So far, none of the 38 states funding pre-K has interfered with local decisions about curricula by, say, posting a list of programs that have passed rigorous field tests (or even by requiring such tests)—let alone by requiring districts that take state money to use them. Likewise, none of the studies of state pre-K programs has even compared the effects of competing curricula on student outcomes.

The other hole in the nation’s pre-K system is assessment, still a dirty word in most pre-K circles. Congress eliminated the Head Start National Reporting System, a series of cognitive tests given twice a year to Head Start children, after critics argued speciously that the tests ignored socio-emotional development and that the questions weren’t age-appropriate. Of the $3.72 billion spent by states last year on pre-K, almost nothing went to assessing children’s cognitive functioning or monitoring their progress against established norms. Without such data, states cannot set meaningful performance standards, much less hold districts accountable for meeting them.

Indeed, the nonprofit National Institute for Early Education Research doesn’t even include assessment in its ten-item Quality Standards Checklist, a popular tool for judging state pre-K programs. This is like appraising a painting with your eyes closed. The better curricula, DI included, build checkups in to their programs—another reason many educators don’t like them.

If the early-childhood education industry has persuaded states not to assess preschool children, monitor their progress, prescribe rigorously field-tested curricula, and evaluate the impact of individual preschools on student achievement—and if the state agencies don’t know how to do these things any better than the pre-K field from which their leadership is largely drawn—what can we expect the states to do to make early-childhood education more educational? Not much at this stage.

None of the bills in Congress is likely to increase rigor. Hirono’s Pre-K Act and Clinton and Bond’s Ready to Learn Act would support state plans that require “culturally and linguistically appropriate” curricula that meet the child’s “developmental needs” and are taught by teachers with degrees in early-childhood education or related fields. Either proposal would thus probably wind up spending a fortune perpetuating the fanciful doctrines that still dominate early-childhood education programs: the root of the weed.

The good news is that there are data-driven educators scattered in schools across the country, and even within a few state education agencies, who would be natural allies in a crusade for better pre-K. Alabama, Washington State, Arizona, and the federal Bureau of Indian Education have all built strong leadership in Reading First, the federal program targeted at poor children in K–3 that requires teachers to use research-backed practices. Officials there could gradually extend the use of effective curricula to pre-K. Another way to find allies is to ask vendors of the better curricula for sites that are doing well with their products. Bremerton School District in Washington State and Versa Reece Academy, a public school in Houston, both operate rigorous, data-driven preschool programs for poor children. But such areas remain in the minority.

If the philanthropists now investing in pre-K (more than $1 billion per year, by some estimates) want to try something radical, they might start a preschool modeled on Paul Weisberg’s now-defunct Early Childhood Day Care Center for at-risk kids in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Using teachers who didn’t even have a college education, Weisberg ran a DI preschool that produced impressive student achievement gains in reading and language for a decade, vividly demonstrating that what pre-K providers need most is good training in good curricula, not (as governments are now hearing) degrees in early-childhood education.

Even teachers with fallacious assumptions want to succeed and are generally eager to learn new ways to help their kids. Wise policymakers can promote the ways that work, and wise parents can insist that teachers use them. We cherish our myths about childhood. We must cherish our children even more.

Shepard Barbash is a freelance writer and former education advisor to the Atlanta Public Schools. His most recent book is Changing Dreams.