The Miseducation of America

I STILL haven't had a chance to read her book, but found these videos very informative!

Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of Ronald Reagan. While working there she discovered a long term strategic plan by the tax exempt foundations to transform America from a nation of rugged individualists and problem solvers to a country of servile, brainwashed minions who simply regurgitate whatever they’re told.

SAT Critical Reading & Writing Tips

I've started keeping track the SAT lessons that might be helpful to others. The first posts are Critical Reading and Writing tips from my meeting with Erica Meltzer.

The list will be stored here: Solutions

UPDATED with clarification that this example is merely to point out what to look for when reading these sentences for errors.

(Cross posted on Perfect Score Project)

the problem

Even though the Singapore method has won acclaim from researchers, no large urban or suburban school system in the United States has fully embraced it.
D.C.’s Bruce-Monroe school faces challenges as it tries Singapore math method
By Bill Turque, Published: June 6
Washington Post

That is the problem.

When was the last time a large urban or suburban school system embraced methods that have won acclaim from researchers?

Speaking of acclaim from researchers, I opened up my latest issue of Direct Instruction News and spotted the name of the elementary school in my town: the very same elementary school two of our kids attended ... and there it was, inside the pages of a publication about Direct Instruction ----

I was gobsmacked.

Turns out the BOCES program housed inside the school is using SRA programs.

A person on the DI list says some of the BOCES programs have been using SRA programs for 5 years now!

Martha Kolln on new verbs and old

Most of our verbs -- all except 150 or so -- are regular, as are all the new verbs that we acquire. For example, here are two recent acquaisitions:

I faxed a letter to you yesrerday.
I have e-mailed the invitation to our reunion.

Understanding English Grammar 8th edition
Martha Kolln and Robert Funk
p. 68

I guess people can stop worrying about the weird new words being created by texting teenagers.

The new verbs are lots more regular than the old ones.

Excellent SAT Critical Reading and Writing blog

I've spent the last few days picking through every nook and cranny of The Ultimate SAT Verbal blog. I'd say it's the most extensive and accurate SAT Critical Reading and Writing advice I can find.

Any other SAT site suggestions?

(cross-posted on the Perfect Score Project)

men and women and spatial rotation

Abstract: The largest consistent sex difference in human cognition is found on mental rotation tests, which require participants to compare pictures of three-dimensional objects and decide whether they depict the same object or different objects. Across cultures, males score up to one standard deviation higher than females. We administered two standard rotation tests to 123 participants and found that these higher scores likely do not reflect superiority in the process of mental rotation per se, but rather in other aspects of task performance. Our results show that males decide more accurately when two objects are different, a situation in which women are more likely to claim incorrectly that they are the same, and that individual differences in confidence are responsible for part of the male advantage found on this test, whereas differences in spatial encoding ability are not. These results have implications for evolutionary theories of sex differences in spatial cognition.
Christopher F. Chabris: Selected Publications
Hooven, C.K., Chabris, C.F., Ellison, P.T., Kievit, R.A., & Kosslyn, S.M. (2008). The sex difference on mental rotation tests is not necessarily a difference in mental rotation ability. Submitted for publication. PDF file of manuscript

Years ago, I read an article that said Mozart had written 72 drafts of one composition.^*

That struck me as the difference between a genius and a near-genius: the genius can still hear the wrong note after 71 drafts.

I don't understand the difference between spatial encoding ability and deciding that two objects are different. I assume the article will clear that up.

^* 72 or thereabouts

SAT Gender Gap

The College Board Trend Report shows boys scoring higher in math than girls.

I have to believe this is cultural rather than wiring.

Cross Posted on Perfect Score Project

SAT Critical Reading -- What's the Most Effective Way to Improve?

I've just started to look deeply into the SAT Critical Reading section. I often find SAT reading passages to be arduous (putting it generously).

My informal poll left me with the impression that it's not easy to move a Critical Reading score.

Daniel Willingham says Critical Reading strategies can help, but are more of a trick than a skill.

That said, I had a game changing meeting with Erica Meltzer the other day and will be following this up with a post about the strategies she taught me, which I passed on to my son who was very appreciative and said it made that section much better.

In the meantime, you can read her post about How to Study for SAT Critical Reading.

(Cross Posted on Perfect Score Project)

No WUG is too DAX to be ZONGED

Another fabulous grammar puzzle from Language Log:

No WUG is too DAX to be ZONGED.

Does this sentence say that a WUG should be ZONGED?

Or that a WUG should not be ZONGED?

And why haven't I been reading Language Log for lo these many years?

6 in 10 people get this one right.

Dedicated Teacher on differentiated instruction

Dedicated Teacher writes:

I agree that differentiated instruction^* presents a tremendous challenge to the classroom teacher. I currently teach at a school that has time built in for differentiation in reading, but I've been trying to devise a plan to implement the same practices in math, but I just don't have enough instructional time in the day. When I do try to work with a small group of students, I find that the others do not engage in anything meaningful or that I can't teach the small group because I'm having to constantly intervene with the other groups. I find that my differentiation comes when I'm sitting with a couple of children at recess reteaching a concept or by keeping students in during Music or P.E. This not only keeps them from their much needed recess, but I'm often giving up my much needed planning time. If you come up with a way to make differentiated instruction work....let us all know.

^* the arithmetic of differentiated instruction

writing = sentences

In her book The Writing Life (1989) Annie Dillard tells the story of a fellow writer who was asked by a student, "Do you think I could be a writer?" "'Well,' the writer said, 'do you like sentences?'" The student is surprised by the question, but Dillard knows exactly what was meant. He was being told, she explains, that "if he liked sentences, he could begin," and she remembers a similar conversation with a painter friend. "I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, 'I like the smell of paint.'" The point, made implicitly (Dillard does not belabor it) is that you don't begin with a grand conception, either of the great American novel or a masterpiece that will hang in the Louvre. You begin with a feel for the nitty-gritty material of the medium, paint in one case, sentences in the other.

But wouldn't the equivalent of paint be words, rather than sentences? Actually, no, because while you can brush or even drip paint on the canvas and make something interesting happen, just piling up words, one after the other, won't do much of anything until something else has been added. That something is named quite precisely by Anthony Burgess in this sentence from his novel Enderby Outside (1968):

And the words slide into slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.

Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere.


How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One
Stanley Fish
page 1 - 2

Until this year, I did not know that the sentence is the basic unit in writing.

Not the word.

That's 'cause I was educated by wolves.

help desk - grammar

Inspired by an SAT question C. and I answered yesterday --

All of the editors at the magazine agreed.
All the editors at the magazine agreed.

What happens grammatically when you omit the preposition ('of')?

In the first sentence, 'all' is the subject.

Is 'all' the subject of the second sentence, too? Is the preposition ('of') implied?

Or does 'all' become an adjective modifying 'editors,' making 'editors' the subject of the sentence?

teach the sentence

Close on the heels of Katharine's post about reform writing and Debbie's on the lost art of sentence diagramming, I came across this study mentioned on Language Log:

Research into grammar by academics at Northumbria University suggests that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences.

[snip]

The project assumed that every adult native speaker of English would be able to understand the meaning of the sentence:

"The soldier was hit by the sailor."

Dr Dabrowska and research student James Street then tested a range of adults, some of whom were postgraduate students, and others who had left school at the age of 16. All participants were asked to identify the meaning of a number of simple active and passive sentences, as well as sentences which contained the universal qualifier "every."

As the test progressed, the two groups performed very differently. A high proportion of those who had left school at 16 began to make mistakes. Some speakers were not able to perform any better than chance, scoring no better than if they had been guessing.

Dr Dabrowska comments: "These findings are ground breaking, because for decades the theoretical and educational consensus has been solid. Regardless of educational attainment or dialect we are all supposed to be equally good at grammar, in the sense of being able to use grammatical cues to understand the meaning of sentences.

[snip]

The supposition that everyone in a linguistic community shares the same grammar is a central tenet of Noam Chomsky's theory of universal grammar. The theory assumes that all children learn language equally well and that there must therefore be an underlying common structure to all languages that is somehow "hard-wired" into the brain.

Dr Dabrowska has examined other explanations for her findings, such as limitations to working memory, and even so-called "test wiseness," but she concluded that these non-linguistic factors are irrelevant.

She also stressed that the findings have nothing to do with intelligence. Participants with low levels of educational attainment were given instruction following the tests, and they were able to learn the constructions very quickly. She speculates that this could be because their attention was not drawn to sentence construction by parents or teachers when they were children.

Many English Speakers Cannot Understand Basic Grammar
ScienceDaily (July 6, 2010)

Turns out grammar needs to be taught.

pop quiz, part 5

How many people do you think answer this question from the Wason test correctly:

[Four] cards are placed on a table to show 3, 8, red and brown....The rule is: “If a card shows an even number on one side, then it is red on the other.” Which cards do you need to turn over to tell if the rule has been broken?

And how many people would you expect to get the answer right on this one:

“If you borrow the car, then you have to fill the tank with petrol.” Once again, you are shown four cards, one side of which says who did or did not borrow the car and the other whether or not that person filled the tank:

Dave did not borrow the car
Helen borrowed the car
Brianne filled up the tank with petrol
Kirk did not fill up the tank with petrol

Does learning math make you more likely to know the answer?

Or, alternatively, does being able to answer these questions make it easier for you to learn math?

I'll put the percent-correct in the comments.

Here is Language Log on the Wason test. (Haven't read yet.)

Impostor Questions

Any thoughts as to whether or not it's helpful (or harmful) to use non-College Board material when studying for the SAT?

I'm suspicious, and they feel like impostors (though there are notable exceptions, including PWNtheSAT and UltimateSATVerbal), but I'm open to the possibility that these impostors make the knowledge more flexible.

Thoughts? Experiences?

(Cross-posted on Perfect Score Project)

Best Wishes in Your Search for Truth

Truth in American Education

Americans rightly have voiced these concerns that we address:

■Operating outside of the system of checks and balances that Americans rely on is dangerous to our freedoms. They are an affront to parents’ rights, the 10th Amendment and our tradition of local control over education.
■The mixing of public, corporate and foundation money without proper accountability is troublesome, as taxpayers contribute a significant portion of education funding.
■A one-size-fits-all set of national standards, curriculum and testing controlled by a few will affect us all.
■Impacts to public school, private school and home school education will be felt, as mandates increase and curriculum choices will diminish.
■Students are not widgets and require individualized learning. More top-down control is not in the best interests of educating individual students.

Truth in American Education provides information to parents, taxpayers, school board members, educators and legislators who are concerned about these issues. At the heart of it, the disposition of these issues will determine whether the federal government and elite, special interest groups have the right to form the hearts and minds of children and whether we will reject, or affirm, the concepts laid down by our founding principles.

$39,000 for tuition - $35,000 for tutors

Siddharth Iyer spent eight Mays cramming for finals, first at Stuyvesant High School and then at Columbia University.

Nine years later, it is still crunch time for Mr. Iyer, a top tutor at Ivy Consulting Group, as his clients face a deluge of end-of-year exams. “He’s been prepping my son all week,” said the mother of one, a senior at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, speaking on the condition that she not be named because Riverdale discourages both tutoring and talking to reporters.

“Prepping” — in this case for an oral exam in Riverdale’s notorious Integrated Liberal Studies, an interdisciplinary class laden with primary sources instead of standard textbooks — did not start the week before the exams, the mother pointed out. She said she had paid Mr. Iyer’s company $750 to $1,500 each week this school year for 100-minute sessions on Liberal Studies, a total of about $35,000 — just shy of Riverdale’s $38,800 tuition.

Last year, she said, her tutoring bills hit six figures, including year-round SAT preparation from Advantage Testing at $425 per 50 minutes; Spanish and math help from current and former private school teachers at $150 an hour; and sessions with Mr. Iyer for Riverdale’s equally notorious interdisciplinary course Constructing America, at $375 per 50 minutes.

Push for A’s at Private Schools Is Keeping Costly Tutors Busy
By JENNY ANDERSON
Published: June 7, 2011

Elite New York schools like Riverdale and Dalton hire teachers with Ph.Ds -- not Ed.Ds^*-- in the fields they teach. Very likely, what has happened here is that these teachers have created advanced college-level courses high school students can't handle.

We need micro-schools.

^* When we looked at private schools 3 years ago, we found that the math teachers in nearly every private school had Masters degrees in education, not math.

diagramming the Preamble

redkudu left a link to this diagram of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, and I had to post it:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Lost Art of Sentence Diagramming

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences. --Gertrude Stein

After reading this amusing article in the American Educator, I think sentence diagramming has a bad rap. It sounds like fun.

(Cross Posted at Perfect Score Project)

a bad economy depresses math scores

Given the magnitude of the recent recession, and the high-stakes testing the U.S. has implemented under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), it is important to understand the effects of large-scale job losses on student achievement. We examine the effects of state-level job losses on fourth- and eighth-grade test scores, using federal Mass Layoff Statistics and 1996-2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1% of a state’s working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state’s eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2% of its workers (a magnitude observed in seven states) likely sees a 16% increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB.

Children Left Behind: The Effects of Statewide Job Loss on Student Achievement
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, Dania V. Francis, Christina M. Gibson-Davis
NBER Working Paper No. 17104
Issued in June 2011
NBER Program(s): CH

Here's the Curious Capitalist: Is the Economy Hurting Your Kid's Report Card?.