spelling alone

Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee

Barry G on the Times story

The New York Times ran a story on September 30 about Singapore Math being used in some schools in the New York City area.  Like many newspaper stories about Singapore Math, this one was no different.  It described a program that strangely sounded like the math programs being promoted by reformers of math education, relying on the cherished staples of reform: manipulatives, open-ended problems, and classroom discussion of problems.  The only thing the article didn’t mention was that the students worked in small groups.

[snip]

The mistaken idea that gets repeated in many such articles is that Singapore Math differs from other programs by requiring or imparting a “deep understanding” and that such understanding comes about through a) manipulatives, b) pictures, and c) open-ended discussions.  In fact, what the articles represent is what the schools are telling the reporters. What newspapers frequently do not realize when reporting on Singapore Math, is that when a school takes on such a program, it means going against what many teachers believe math education to be about; it is definitely not how they are trained in ed schools.  The success of Singapore’s programs relies in many ways on more traditional approaches to math education, such as explicit instruction and giving students many problems to solve, in some ways its very success represented a slap in the face to American math reformers, many of whom have worked hard to eliminate such techniques being used.

[snip]

Singapore’s strength is the logical consistency of the development of mathematical concepts. And much to the chagrin of educators who may have learned differently, mastery of number facts and arithmetic procedures is part and parcel to conceptual understanding.  Starting with conceptual understanding and using procedures to underscore it is an invitation to disaster—such approach is making profits for  outfits like Sylvan, Huntington and Kumon.

[snip]

Fortunately, the logical structure and word problems in Singapore’s books are so good it will work in spite of the disciples of reform.  My friend is right.  If the education community wants to think that Singapore Math is student-centered and inquiry-based and the realization of US reforms, let them think it.  For those of us who know better, it will remain our dirty little secret.
Singapore Math Is “Our Dirty Little Secret”

Waiting for Superman

cross posted to the Irvington Parents Forum

Waiting for Superman

Tue, October 12 5:10 || 7:25 || 9:40
Wed, October 13 5:10 || 7:25 || 9:40
Thu, October 14 5:10 || 7:25 || 9:40

Jacob Burns Film Center Theater
364 Manville Rd., Pleasantville, NY 10570
Info-line: 914.747.5555
914.773.7663

============

Hi everyone -

Waiting for Superman is incredible. So moving. Entertaining, too; Geoffrey Canada in particular is riveting. The title comes from a story he tells about the day his mother told him Superman doesn’t exist.

The film follows 5 or 6 children whose families are trying to find good schools for their kids, including one mom who can no longer afford the Catholic school her daughter has been attending. The lottery scenes at the end are excruciating.

Amazingly, the film does **not** give wealthy, white suburban schools a pass. About three quarters of the way in, the film tells us that suburban schools have the same underachievemement problems urban schools do; then we see data showing that the top 5% of U.S. students rank far below the top 5% of students in other countries. Which is true.

Here’s a picture of the suburban girl waiting to see if her number will be called:

Here’s the trailer.

Catherine

What about the US's better students? When asked, Schmidt replied, "For some time now, Americans have comforted themselves when confronted with bad news about their educational system by believing that our better students can compare with similar students in any country in the world. We have preferred not to believe that we were doing a consistently bad job. Instead, many have believed that the problem was all those 'other' students who do poorly in school and who we, unlike other countries, include in international tests. That simply isn't true. TIMSS has burst another myth - our best students in mathematics and science are simply not 'world class'. Even the very small percentage of students taking Advanced Placement courses are not among the world’s best."

TIMSS - Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies

MSMI for schools and homeschoolers?

In the Homeschooling by the Numbers thread, there was much back and forth critical of criticisms of homeschoolers lacking content knowledge--mostly centered around the ideas that a) schools have the same problems, and b) tailoring to one's child is a good thing.

Wrt to the first criticism, that school teachers lack content knowledge, I've created a not-for-profit corporation to address this. MSMI, the Middle School Mathematics Institute, is aimed at parents, teachers and schools serving students in grades 4-8, offering a variety of services to help build the bridge to Algebra 1.

For teachers, we offer intensive workshops, known as "institutes" that teach the math behind the school mathematics that teachers are teaching. It teaches the foundational pieces to help teachers understand that math is meant to be coherent and precise, and they must teach it that way as well. For schools, we help them to move away from their textbooks-as-curricula, and understand that nearly all available textbooks have incredibly great deficiencies, so great that only a very skilled teacher will be able to overcome them, We then help schools to address their standards and curricula to raise the difficulty and mathematical maturity slowing over those grades so students are prepared for algebra. For parents, we over free talks and pamphlets to help navigate what a good mathematics education would look like for their children.

One group I've not reached out to, even though I have many contacts in that group, is the homeschooling community. Should I? How? I'm happy to reach out to them as I do parents, but I haven't tried involving them as teachers.

My last institute was 5 full days. My next is going to be 9. It takes that many days just to begin to start to teach what mathematical reasoning looks like, even to experienced elementary math teachers.

I find that they homeschoolers I know are even less likely to find the time to attend such an event. One day workshops every month aren't enough. None of the homeschooling mothers I know, even if they are willing to afterschool Singapore, are willing to essentially take a course in learning elementary math if it required meeting weekly.

Am I pitching it wrong? Is there something I can do to reach them? I'm willing to admit that I must be all things to all people, but what would it take to get to them?

I already have to thread the needle--positioning MSMI as supporting teachers in a way that makes them not feel attacked for lacking content knowledge, but instead, supportive of their being asked to teach more and more sophisticated math. I have to reach administrators and tell them that their textbooks are terrible and teachers don't have the knowledge they need to do what their state has asked them to do, and they've basically been given no other options, since all US textbooks are terrible and elementary teacher certs don't require any math. I have to help parents to feel empowered even as I sound the alarm about their child's math program.

That's a lot of defensiveness to dance around. And yet, in homeschoolers, it seems even higher. So even as they admit to me that they don't know any math, and their children know more than they do, they don't want to learn more.

What should I do? How could I reach them? What would it look like?

onward and upward

party on

"University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers," he says, "selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it's not a consumption decision, it's an investment decision. Actually, no, it's a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are four-year parties."

Technology = Salvation

slippery slope

…[I]f once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

Thomas De Quincey, "Second Paper on Murder"
via Fallacy Files

let's not and say we did

In Michigan’s Wayne County, prosecutor Kym Worthy plans to meet this month with the Detroit City Council to discuss an ordinance she’s proposing to require parents to attend conferences. The most severe penalty would be three days in jail. It troubles her when she hears of Detroit schools that have 300 students, and just two parents will show up for conferences. A lack of parental involvement often leads to truancy, which leads to crime, says Ms. Worthy. She knows her proposal may be challenged by civil libertarians, “but at least we’ll get the conversation started.”

How Would You Grade Parent-Teacher Conferences
by Jeffrey Zaslow
Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2010, 9:40 AM ET

That's going to be one short conversation.

Number one: yes, indeed, civil libertarians are going to object. Strenuously.

Number two: do they teach logic in law school?

Number three: perhaps prosecutor Kym Worthy should ask teachers whether they want parents showing up for parent-teacher meetings on pain of arrest and incarceration.

And that pretty much covers it.

Next.

let's not and say we did
let's not and say we did, part 2
let's not and say we did, part 3

iParent

Now that my son is in high school and getting real grades (not vague 1-5 and 6-10 rubric scores), I'm much happier. On top of that, I get to check all of his grades online at iParent. The high school apparently laid down the law and told teachers to get the grades uploaded as soon as possible. In fact, there were a couple of times when I knew his test scores before he did. This is quite different from middle school where I never saw a lot of work, let alone the grades. The weightings are all there and the current grade is given.

I expected grading in high school would be better defined and defendable, what with the importance of GPAs. At the open house last week, almost all of the teachers talked about grading and how grading in the different classes are coordinated. In math, they decided to reduce the weighting of math homework to just 5% because they felt that too many were using homework to pull out a passing grade. There is a sense that they really spend time on the issue. I never felt that way in K-8. It now seems like many more parents and kids are paying attention.

are we having fun yet?

Two memories of this math controversy in SCASD never fail to make me chuckle when I think back on them.  The first was a comment posted on the CDT site after the Ed Mahon wrote his first article on the subject, entitled “The Great Math Debate”.  The commenter wrote, “If you say ‘math debate’ over and over again, it sounds kind of funny.”

The second one happened at a math information session for parents last spring.  The district curriculum staff were telling the parents how much fun Investigations was for their children, and a parent raised his hand and said, “You know, it’s okay if my kids don’t have so much fun if they learn some more math.  They have plenty of fun at home.”

Parents for Quality Math Education

student loans

The privately held Drake College of Business, which trains people to be medical and dental assistants, relied on taxpayers for 87 percent of its revenue in 2007. Almost 5 percent of the student body at its Newark, New Jersey, branch is homeless, says Jean Aoun, director of admissions and student services there. Late in 2008, it began offering a $350 biweekly stipend to students who show up for 80 percent of classes and maintain a “C” average.

“It’s basically known in the community: If you’re homeless, and you need some money, go to Drake,” says Carmella Hutson, a case manager at the Goodwill Rescue Mission in Newark, where about 20 clients have enrolled at Drake in the past two years. “It would put money in my pocket, help me buy a car,” adds Jerome Nickens, 45, who lived at the mission when he talked to a Drake representative but decided not to enroll.

Homeless High School Dropouts Lured by For-Profit Colleges

college tuition

my money blog

[T]uition has been been increasing annually (7.88%) at more than three times the rate of inflation (2.37%) since 1978.

 Carpe Diem


You can't attribute the fantastic increase in college tuition to special education.

Or to unions, for that matter.


This has got to be a big part of it:

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act was enacted in 2005 to include private student loans as one of the 10 debts that can't be forgiven.

Robert Siegel talks with Stephen Burd, senior research fellow in the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, who says federal loans had long been included in this list, but private loans were included in 2005 because lenders had been reluctant to take on the risk of student loans.

Now that lenders have no risk, Burd says, student loans have become a very lucrative business.

2005 Law Made Student Loans More Lucrative

algebra I and optics...

Solve for x, given k = x + 1/x and that k is fixed.

This is a reduced and massively rearranged derivation of the lens equation, when the separation distance between an image and object is known, and the focal length of a lens known and fixed at a single value. x = d_o / d_i. (Or due to symmetry, it could just as well be the other way round.)

Mathematica kindly pointed out (as it solved the equation for me) that you could write it this way:

k = x + x^-1

which resembles a quadratic equation, oooh. kinda. In real life you already know every k (= S/f -2) determines two solutions from experiment, but I was trying to decide how symmetric the ratios theoretically were.

Algebraic equation solvers tell me the solution has approximately the same form as quadratic roots, taking the form p +/- sqrt(q). Kinda. The general solution is x = 0.5 [ k +/- sqrt(k² -4)]

Unlike most quadratics though, there is a gaping asymptote, and the function y=k rapidly changes from -inf to +inf as x passes from -c to c, where c is a number arbitrarily close to zero. When x is large, k is approximately x; when x is small, k is approximately 1/x.

I puzzle in my head how to solve it algebraically on paper -- this college student who has (up to this point) taken Calc III, linear algebra, and the mess of multiple equilibrium scenarios that tricky chemistry professors throw at you. How do you algebraically solve "inverse-order" polynomials? I mean, this equation should be simple to solve, right?

schoolbook simplification

a. Between 1860 and 1991, American publishers produced readers for the same grade at widely divergent LEX levels (e.g., in 1968, first grade readers were available between -68 and -31).

b. The most difficult readers were generally published before 1918. By modern standards, Professor McGuffy’s pre- and post- Civil War readers were very difficult.

c. After World War I, mean reader LEX levels for all grades were generally simplified.

d. After World War II, mean levels of readers for all grades but third became even simpler. These were the books used by the Baby Boomers and successive cohorts.

e. School publishers in Great Britain did not simplify heir first grade readers after World War II, implying that there was no compelling educational reason for American publishers to further simplify their readers.

f. Today’s mean sixth, seventh, and eighth grade readers are simpler than fifth grade readers were before World War II.

g. Sentences were also shortened, from about 20 words before World War II to about 14 words now in Grades 4—8.

h. Texts for grade x + 1 are typically more difficult (lexically) than those for grade x. When the early readers in a series are simplified by a publisher, so too (generally) are the readers for later grades.

American readers were rewritten after World War II for many reasons: to modernize their content and graphics; to incorporate principles from research in education, psychology and linguistics; to emphasize new kinds of social relations; and to respond to television, which was fast becoming an unprecedented rival for students’ attention. Those considerations required that readers be changed but not that they be simplified. Chall (1967) described the justifications given at the time for simplifying schoolbooks; they were to increase their accessibility for students and raise the level of reading success.

The extent of this simplification is notable. Apart from one extraordinarily simple text (LEX = -75), most first graders in the Baby Boom era used readers whose LEX levels were between -53 and -65; that is, on average, first grade readers were 12 LEX units less difficult than the readers used by their parents and grandparents between World Wars I and II and 15 LEX less difficult than the texts used by students in the same grade in Britian — where the students were a year younger in age. Since the empirical range for LEX is about 140 units, a 12 LEX simplification represents 9% of the empirical range. Workbooks are also designed by the same publisher as the readers and are used in conjunction with them. Given the workbooks’ format, we cannot measure their LEX levels. It is unlikely the publishers would make the workbooks harder than their own reader for the same grade level.

In simplifying the readers’ patterns of word choice, the publishers also shortened sentence length (Figure 5). From the fourth grade on, the average sentence length was contracted by about 6 words — this is the equivalent of dropping one to two clauses from every sentence. This reduced the students’ experience in working out the meanings of more complex sentences.

Widespread objections from teachers and parents, and media publicity over the simplified, often dull, Dick, Jane, and Spot-like readers, caused most publishers to acknowledge that they had oversimplified their first and second grade readers. In the 1963 —1991 era, the mean LEX levels for those grades was restored to pre-Worid War II levels — and without ill effects. While they made those early texts harder, the publishers made the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade readers even easier — to the point where these are now at their lowest level in American history.

Schoolbook Simplification and Its Relation to the Decline in SAT-Verbal Scores
Donald P. Hayes, Loreen T. Wolfer, Michael F. Wolfe
American Educational Research Journal
Summer 1996, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 489-508

schoolbook simplification & the 50-point drop in SAT scores

I'm sure I've posted this before, but it bears repeating:

The 50+ point decline in mean SAT-verbal scores between 1963 and 1979 is widely attributed to changes in the composition of the test-takers. Several inconsistencies in that explanation are identified. That explanation also ignores the pervasive decline In the difficulty of schoolbooks found by analyzing the texts of 800 elementary middle, and high school books published between 1919-1991. When this text simplification series is linked to the SAT verbal series, there is a general fit for the three major periods: before, during, and after the decline. Long-term exposure to simpler texts may induce a cumulating deficit in the breadth and depth of domain-specific knowledge, lowering reading comprehension and verbal achievement. The two time series are so sufficiently linked that the cumulating knowledge deficit hypothesis may be a major explanation for the changes in verbal achievement. Only an experiment can establish whether this is causal, so we describe a simple, low-cost experiment schools can use to test how schoolbook difficulty affects their students’ verbal achievement levels.

Schoolbook Simplification and Its Relation to the Decline in SAT-Verbal Scores
Donald P. Hayes, Loreen T. Wolfer, Michael F. Wolfe
American Educational Research Journal
Summer 1996, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 489-508

cumulating knowledge deficit...

junket

The perennial issue of foreign language instruction in the early grades is alive once again in my district. I say "perennial" because, where foreign language instruction in the elementary grades is concerned, administrators are perennially against it while parents and interested bystanders are perennially for it.

The question of Mandarin keeps cropping up, too.

Looking for articles on edu-junkets to China, I found this:

Top San Francisco schools officials, who will consider expanding Mandarin language programs later this summer, quietly accepted a free trip to China recently to visit schools and meet with government officials who hope to persuade U.S. educators to expand Chinese curriculum.

Interim Superintendent Gwen Chan, five school board members and four principals made the unannounced trip from June 28 to July 4, spending time in Beijing and visiting schools across several provinces.

A staff member from the district's "multilingual programs department" also joined the entourage, which included about 400 schools officials from across the United States.

"This trip is not costing the school district any money," said Chan, whose first job in the district nearly 40 years ago was teaching Mandarin. "It is a goodwill and educational journey to promote Chinese immersion programs."

The Chinese government picked up the tab as part of its efforts to persuade U.S. schools to teach Mandarin, the official language of China.

[snip]

The San Francisco contingent -- including board members Mar, Jill Wynns, Dan Kelly, Norman Yee and Eddie Chin -- said they found the trip inspirational.

"I feel it helps us understand a significant portion of our student body,'' said Mar.

Wynns said there was great value in seeing another society, "especially one from which so many of our students have come.''

The trip included excursions to the Great Wall of China and Tiananmen Square in addition to a speech by the Chinese minister of education in the Great Hall of the People.

Even though five elected school board members traveled together without a public announcement, Wynns said the trip did not violate California's open-meeting law known as the Ralph M. Brown Act because no official business was discussed.

Kelly put an even finer polish on the point:

"You could say it was a junket," he said. "Totally a junket. We did no real work at all."

China trip for top schools officials
- Jill Tucker, Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, July 13, 2006

A: The point of junkets is to get junketeers to spend money. There is no free junket.

B: Open Meetings law applies to any gathering of a majority of the board. A special exception for junkets does not exist.

Good thing the Fed Govt is paying for more teachers

on the Ku-Klux Plan

at zero out of five

the best things in life are free

protractors for some, miniature American flags for others

Audacious Idea #2: Placement by mastery, not age

My apologies to Gas Station Without Pumps -- I forgot a direct link to the post Placement by Achievement, which is http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/placement-by-achievement//

Somehow I got from Megan Golding's audacious idea (see here) to the blog Gas Station Without Pumps's discussion of eliminating age-based grade level instruction in math, and instituting placement by achievement.

This approach to placing kids has long been popular with parents of gifted children (though for some reason not with school teachers and administrators). It has gone by many names (subject acceleration, readiness grouping, grouping by ability or skill or mastery, … ). I prefer the name placement by achievement, since we are not accelerating students but letting them move at whatever velocity best suits them, and we can’t measure “readiness” but only what has already been achieved. Ability is not the point, achievement is. I guess that “grouping by mastery” is ok, but “mastery” seems to me a more cumbersome word than “achievement” and “mastering” a subject seems to me appropriate for post-baccalaureate studies.

Personally I prefer "placement by mastery", but reasonable people may differ.

In another post, GSWP discusses the recent article by Bill Evers and Ze'ev Wurman, advancing the idea that the California state math standards are superior to the proposed Common Core standards. (I believe California adopted the Common Core standards -- if Evers and Wurman are correct, look out, afterschooling! -- but I digress).

GSWP goes on:

My opinion is that the whole notion of age-based grade levels is wrong and twiddling with the standards won’t fix that. There is value to having standards that all schools and curricula must meet, but I wish that the standards were not labeled with grade levels. There are students ready for algebra long before 8th grade, and students who are barely ready for it by the end of high school. Having students progress through the standards based on mastery, rather than age, would be greatly helped by not labeling the standards with grade levels.

One specific criticism of the Common Core that Evers and Wurman raise, that there is a big jump at 8th grade because the K–7 standards are too weak to provide sufficient support for the 8th grade algebra standards, is probably a valid one and should certainly be considered by the State Board.

Discussions on the Common Core:

• Alternative to the Common Core
• Professor Milgram's Full Review of Grade Level Common Core Math Standards