question

This is a copy of an email I sent out to my local math list shortly before the last algebra test:

I found a nice group of “linear function” word problems today (answers included - pdf file).

The kids in Math A are doing these problems. They aren’t classic Algebra 1 word problems, so if your child needs extra practice they’re not easy to come by.

As I understand it, algebra 1 used to be focused on setting up and solving linear equations. The classic Algebra 1 word problems were number problems, consecutive integer problems, distance problems (2 trains leave a station), coin & age problems, & mixture & work problems.

Today algebra 1 tends to be focused on the idea of linear functions. That’s why our kids did all those “function machine” problems back at the Main Street School. In a linear function problem you are given a pair of “solutions” and asked to write an equation to model the situation. My favorite linear function word problem thus far is the Celsius – Fahrenheit conversion:


The graph of an equation to convert degrees Celsius, x, to degrees Fahrenheit, y, has a y-intercept of 32°. Given that water boils at 212°F and at 100°C, write the conversion equation.


To write the equation you use the two coordinated pairs you already know:

When Celsius is 0 degrees, Fahrenheit is 32
When Celsius is 100 degrees, Fahrenheit is 212

These two points are coordinated pairs on the graph of the function:

(0,32)
(100,212)

You derive the slope of the linear equation from these two points; then you plug in one of the coordinated pairs and derive the y-intercept; et voila.

y = 9/5 x + 32

Or:

F = 9/5C + 32

I've never been able to remember how to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit, and knowing how to use the two known conversion points to produce the formula is great.

I'm curious about people's reaction to this shift in content. One of our regulars is skeptical; he sees this as a move to turn algebra into statistics. Another sees this as another instance of pushing advanced topics lower down in the curriculum. Functions used to be introduced in calculus; now kids see "function machines" in 3rd grade. (And, of course, both motivations could be involved - both and more.)

Any thoughts?

Teaching to the Test

What is SO important that it makes flunking these questions OK? What part of these questions does not relate to understanding? Why would you need parent involvement or even homework to pass the NAEP test? Do schools have any way of determining if they screw up rather than the kids?

From NAEP 2007 Sample Math Questions and Results - 4th Grade

9. On the chart, circle all the numbers that have 4 as a factor.

1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15

Did you use the calculator on this question?

37 percent correct.

- - -

13. Mark's room is 12 feet wide and 15 feet long. Mark wants to cover the floor with carpet. How many square feet of carpet does he need?

Answer: _____________ square feet

The carpet costs $2.60 per square foot. How much will the carpet cost?

Answer: $ _____________

Did you use the calculator on this question?

24 percent correct.

- - -


14. There will be 58 people at a breakfast and each person will eat 2 eggs. There are 12 eggs in each carton. How many cartons of eggs will be needed for the breakfast?

A) 9
B) 10
C) 72
D) 116

Did you use the calculator on this question?

20 percent correct.

- - -

15. Ben bought 4 items at a bake sale and added their cost on his calculator. The total cost read 1.1 on the calculator.

What amount does Ben need to pay?

A) 11 cents
B) 1 dollar and 1 cent
C) 1 dollar and 10 cents
D) 11 dollars

Did you use the calculator on this question?

29 percent correct, in spite of the fact that they push calculators and understanding.

- - -

2. What number is 10 more than 5,237?

A) 5,238
B) 5,247
C) 5,337
D) 6,237

81 percent correct. Still about 20 percent got this wrong, and this is 4th grade.

- - -

This is not about constructivism, understanding, IQ, or SES. They complain about teaching to the test, but then what on earth do they want to teach that's more important? It should take them no more than 50 percent of class time to get kids to master this material - no homework required. Do schools think that these kids are stupid? At what point can you stop blaming external causes?

Teachers think that the problem with education is what walks into their rooms. They see kids who haven't mastered previous material and they can't imagine how they are going to fix that. The real problem is how did these kids get there in the first place. It used to be that social promotion was a last resort. Now, it's promoted as a normal part of (Everyday Math) spiral mastery. They are making the problem worse and getting nothing in return.

rightwinprof clears that one up

The first position in a sentence is topic position (this, by the way, is a pan-linguistic phenomenon), that is, the position of primary focus (focus is actually different from topic, but the distinction isn't relevant here). So "John went swimming" is about John, because John appears in topic position. We can, in English, shift something other than the subject to topic position when we want to make it, and not the subject, the topic of the sentence. This is called dislocation: "But as for Mary, John left her at the party." We also use cleft sentences to place something other than the subject in topic position, and make it the topic of the sentence. A cleft sentence looks like: "It was Mary John left at the party." Jefferson masterfully controls the topic throughout the document, and shifts it from section to section, beginning with the abstract, moving to King George III, and ending with the colonists. It's particularly effective in the long section of grievances, all of which begin with "He," meaning, of course, George III, even when the perpetrators of those wrongs were, in fact, other parties (ultimately, yes, Georgie was responsible).

Actually, to see what I was talking about wrt grammar and rhetoric, see Joseph Williams's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (am I imagining it, or didn't you say you had ordered it?) He has an excellent section on using topicalization to create coherence.

I do have Joseph Williams' book (haven't read much thus far) -- it is fantastic.

My neighbor thinks so, too. I got it for her for Christmas.

Two Resources for Math Facts Mastery (1) Video Game, Timez Attack, (2) Re-introduction to Dave Marain's MathNotations Blog

Review from Math Notations


Here's the heart. of his review.

Having seen dozens of computer learning software products both online and on CD-ROM, I've reached the point where I can rapidly identify quality and Timez Attack is quality in every sense. I decided to email Ben Harrison, the president of the company, and share my thoughts about his product, the only item his company sells at this point. I explained that I would like to write an objective review of Timez Attack for MathNotations after I had an opportunity to try it myself and to observe a child using it. I asked him if he would be willing to give me access to the full version and he agreed. I haven't had time to thoroughly play around with this new version, but my son has been on it for about a week and he likes it. To derive the maximum benefit of this software, I feel I need to establish consistency for him to be on it for at least 15-30 minutes a day for about a month but that has not yet happened. I already see better retention but he is still only on a beginner level.

Here's the BigBrainz homepage:

http://www.bigbrainz.com/index.php

Repetition is the key to mastery, so this does look really promising. The "starter version" is free.

MathNotation is maintained by Dave Marain

Look for fully developed math investigations that are more than one inch deep, math challenges, Problems of the Day and standardized test practice. The emphasis will always be on developing conceptual understanding in mathematics. There will also be dialogue on issues in mathematics education with a focus on standards, assessment, and pedagogy primarily at the 7-12 level through AP Calculus.

Previous mentions of Dave Marain & MathNotations at KTM:

Interview with Lynn Arthur Steen one, two and follow up commentary: one two

Ed Schools: Help or Hindrance?

“Evidence indicates that the traditional or teacher-centered approaches are more effective in helping students achieve academic goals than the learner-centered or “progressive” approaches.” -- George K. Cunningham

Wow, he actually said it.

George K. Cunningham's paper, Education Schools: Helping or Hindering Potential Teachers? is significant and if you're a parent, educator, or administrator it's worth your time. I promise.

If you're an education school student, please, please read it. Challenge the establishment, question authority, and dare to take the road less traveled. Come on, be a rebel and turn in an ed school research project about Project Follow Through, direct instruction, or precision teaching! Just think of it as retro-chic.

While Cunningham examines the University of North Carolina in his January 2008 paper for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, it is clear that education schools across the nation are entrenched in the same progressive/constructivist rhetoric he frowns upon. As a result, this rhetoric rules the day in most public school classrooms and our children are paying dearly for it.

“This advocacy of rhetoric as opposed to practical learning leads education students into realms far afield from normal education as most people understand it. It leaves precious little time to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

I posted lots more about it here. Instructivist commented how enormously important Cunningham's paper is. I certainly agree.

"Do Public Schools Hire the Best Teachers?"

3. Public schools do not exhibit a marked preference for teachers whose academic backgrounds signal strong cognitive ability and command of subject matter. Analysis of the experiences of new college graduates during their first year on the labour market shows that graduates of more selective colleges are no more likely to succeed in obtaining a teaching position (if they seek one) than are applicants from the least selective schools.7 Among applicants for secondary school positions, an education degree is as helpful as a subject area degree. While it is true that schools are more likely to hire graduates with good college grades, there is no adjustment for the overall quality of the institution at which those grades were earned.

[snip]

2. Changing the incentives facing school administrators might lead them to reconsider their priorities when hiring new teachers. The private sector, despite paying salaries substantially below those in most public school systems, employs disproportionately many teachers with strong academic records. This appears to be due, in part, to the greater emphasis on academics within these schools. Increased parental choice in the public sector might have similar results.

by Dale Ballou (pdf file)

I've always wondered why, here in Westchester, Ivy Leaguers & people with Ph.D.s, etc., are teaching for lower pay in private schools instead of for higher pay in the public schools.

2 to 1

I love it!

The average ed school, we found, has a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82 percent more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: almost twice as many courses are social as mathematical. At the University of Minnesota, the ratio is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and descriptions contain the word “multiculturalism” or “diversity,” while only three contain the word “math,” giving it a ratio of almost 16.
Adding Up To Failure

Two years ago I looked at every single book on sale in the education section of the NYU bookstore. There were 3 books on teaching math. Out of dozens.

Of course, given the kind of math textbook an ed school is likely to assign, it may be just as well.

Honor without Honor

Our local Middle School (Grade7 & 8- Monroe, CT) publishes the names of students who make up the honor and high honor roll each semester.
It's a long list.
Actually, it is so long that I decided to count them. It turns out that 69% of the student population is either an honors or high honors student.
What was that quote about everyone being above average? Either that or Monroe is the new Lake Wobegon.
Has anyone else seen such a blatant example of "the walk to the center"? Or I am missing a big piece of this somehow?

here's my question

I was just reading the comments on the Ted Kennedy & parental involvement thread (guffawed over this one from Steve: Darn those pesky tests that check only for an absolute minimum of knowledge and skills).

I've been wondering about something since I read Kennedy's op-ed.

What is going on with the whole "parent involvement" meme anyway? Why is it there? What makes it so important that Ted Kennedy would bring it up? To whom is he speaking?

As I understand it, NCLB was the result of a lot of horse-trading back and forth between Dems & Republicans.

So is it correct to conclude that the parent involvement section of the law originated in one party and not the other?

And, if so, which party?

Or is this one of those t.s. for the voters issues on which the two parties see eye to eye?

In short: what is "[NCLB] doesn't involve parents enough in helping their children succeed" doing in the middle of a Ted Kennedy op-ed in the Washington Post?

I need a magic decoder ring.


meanwhile, back on the ranch

Most parents have no clue that parent involvement is a current edu-world obsession. I didn't know it, either, until Vicky S pointed it out to me one day.

My own school district includes a line in its job ads saying we "welcome parent involvement." Every one of our ads announces this, along with "equal opportunity employer" or however it's phrased these days.

We are so keen on parent involvement that the middle school is now in its second year of deliberations over the question of how to increase parent involvement in the school. So far all they've come up with is that a couple of parents will be allowed to go along on the one field trip they have each year.

We aren't allowed inside the classrooms; we aren't allowed inside the school dances; we aren't allowed to attend school assemblies; by union contract teachers don't hold parent-teacher conferences; email responses are spotty at best; the principal has refused to share requested documents on the middle school model; the math chair refuses to give parents of "struggling" students the answer key so they can have their kids to do extra problems; both of the middle school principals we've had in our 3 years here have cautioned parents on their language and attitudes; numerous parent protests over repeated use of group punishments have been ignored; etc., etc.

But the district still can't figure out a way to foster parent involvement in the middle school.

Fluff, fluff, and more fluff

I don't mean to piggyback on Karen's post, but this writing gig has brought me into contact with some writing folks here, and I lunched with a couple of them today. The conversation was . . . interesting.

Process writing is like constructivism, collaborative work, and a whole slew of other things: It is a powerful pedagogical tool when done in the right circumstances, and with the right amount of guidance. So it's quite possible for me to sit down with these people and have a conversation about teaching for, oh, about fifteen minutes before hitting a logjam -- like the one today.

We were having a perfectly nice lunch, when one popped up with (this is from memory), "Oh, I just read an article proposing that we teach grammar! Some people are so stupid!"

I planned to keep my mouth shut, and I would have, except that the other three, like a Greek chorus, chirped their agreement -- not with her point about teaching grammar, but that anybody who thought teaching grammar might be a good idea has to be a stupid dolt.

I have been in these conversations before, and I know how not to disagree in these contexts. So I said, "But how do you analyze texts and talk about how they were written and why without grammar as a common language?"

Like I said, I've had these discussions before, and usually, bringing up that point leads to further, productive, and often interesting, discussion. But not today. The three just looked at me for a minute, and then one said, "What do you mean?"

Given that we had just done the Declaration of Independence in class so it was quite fresh in my memory, I told them what we had done. "Jefferson uses topicalization, active/passive voice, and topicalized cleft sentences, etc., etc., etc., in addition to choosing when to use personal pronouns and not to, etc., etc., etc., to shift the focus from the abstract, to King George III, to the Colonists. If students don't know what topicalization, or voice, or cleft sentences, or pronouns ARE, how, exactly, do you talk about how the document was written? Indeed, how do you talk about how ANY text is written if you have no common concepts to which you can refer? Sorry, but I don't see how you can approach a text even superficially without some shared understanding of grammar."

These three had no idea what I meant -- and they're all English composition teachers. I'm pretty cynical, but I was floored. I have had many conversations with many English composition folks, and nearly all of them are flaky, but never have I encountered any who were such clueless nitwits as these three. They just looked at me with their mouths hanging open. They didn't have even a syllable in response, because they had no idea what I was talking about. None.

To try to gloss over the rather uncomfortable situation, I asked them, then, what they did in their classes. That did get us past their unease, but it made me squirm. "Oh, we talked about the article in Time Magazine," and "We talked about the essay we're going to write about abortion," and "We talked about plagiarism."

Not sure that they weren't just incapable of expressing themselves precisely, I pressed. Yes, they all talked. That's what they did in their English comp classes. They talked. So what, exactly did they talk about? What was the topic of the article in Time? Why is it misogynist to oppose abortion? What is plagiarism? That's what they did in class.

The English comp/ESL writing split used to be rhetoric (that is, writing, and textual analysis) v. grammar correction. Now, it seems that it's meaningless fluff v. rhetoric. But what I can't get out of my head is that these three didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I find that amazing -- and depressing.

Fun With Writing

My ninth grader gave me a worksheet from her English Composition class (she thought I would like it, and she was right). That day's class had focused on writing concisely: how to combine sentences and make sentences stronger, etc. What I liked was that the exercises illustrated the lesson in a humorous way. I thought it would be fun to share a few of the examples:

The funeral director has doubts.
The doubts are grave.
The doubts are about Mortimer.

Combined sentence: The funeral director has grave doubts about Mortimer.

The baker kneaded dough.
The baker was hard-working.
The baker wanted to avoid bankruptcy.

Combined sentence: The hard-working baker kneaded dough to avoid bankruptcy.

more, more parent involvement

I am not supposed to be here.

I am supposed to be upstairs going over C's algebra homework^* and then, somehow, doing something about Earth Science. Also I have to get him going on tonight's Vocabulary Workshop & percent problems from Singapore Math.

So I'm supposed to be upstairs.

I'm not upstairs because I've just read this op-ed from Ted Kennedy on how to fix NCLB and when I saw this passage, I couldn't resist bopping over here to post:

[NCLB] doesn't involve parents enough in helping their children succeed.

When I saw this all I could think was: I am so lucky to live in a district where parents are involved every single day in helping their children succeed!


^* Have I mentioned I've done every single algebra assignment this school year? Because the chair of the department refuses to give parents the answer key?

I believe I have.

The Rubber Room

You've got to see the trailer for this documentary to believe it.

The Rubber Room

I dare you to keep from shaking your head in disbelief.

Possibly More Than You Want To Know About Private Schools

Originally posted at I Speak of Dreams January 5, 2005

Are the Challenger Schools "private schools"? What's the difference between traditional parochial schools and Sacred Heart schools? What makes a school a "private school", anyway? How are they different from public schools? Are all private schools better than public schools?

In the United States (at least in some circles) "my kid goes to private school" has become a chant of status. However, not all private schools mean "highly selective institution of highly rigorous and demanding curriculum".

The penultimate question, "How are they different from public schools?" is the easiest to answer: Governance, Fees, and Selectivity.

• Governance: Public schools answer to the public, and have a complex layer of administration, including state-wide, county, and local (district) layers of managment, some of which are appointed and some of which are elected. A good description of elected school boards.
• Fees Government schools may charge minor fees (an example being participation fees in a program such as music) but the cost of education is borne by the government. Private schools, on the other hand, typically cover costs by charging fees (tuition) and in the case of not-for-profit schools, also soliciting donations from the community.
  
• Selectivity Essentially, government-run K-8 schools on the whole are not selective (in the sense of refusing to enroll students who do not meet performance or familial criteria) although they may have an admissions cap, and therefore a process for reducing the number of students who apply. Private schools may, on the other hand, set any number of limitations on the type of student they will accept.

Non-government schools have one of three types of governance: answering to a religious body; a for-profit structure, or a self-perpetuating, independent board.

The "private school" universe should be properly segmented into

• RELIGIOUS
• Parochial schools of the Roman Catholic Church
• Doctrinally strict Roman Catholic educational institutions independent of a parish
• Religious-affiliation schools requiring (or putting a strong emphasis on) attendance at a given church, membership in a given sect, or a recommendation from an approved pastor
• Religious-affiliation schools associated with a particular religion or sect, but which accept non-members of that sect (an example would be the Sacred Hearts, and schools run by the Sisters of Mercy and other teaching orders. In other words, these schools have a religious core and include a religion curriculum, but have humanist values and accept students of all (or no) religion.


• PROPRIETARY OR FOR-PROFIT-- Unlike religious and independent schools, tuition includes a profit for the proprietors. Typically there is no board of directors, but a manager or owner (examples include the Carden Schools, Challenger Schools, http://www.challengerschool.com/ Chancellor Beacon: http://www.chancellorbeacon.com/aboutUs/default.asp.
• Stand-alone
• Chain or franchise


• INDEPENDENT--Truly independent schools, usually with membership in the National Association of Independent Schools Independent schools are non-public, not-for-profit, pre-collegiate institutions governed by boards of trustees. There are about 2,000 of these.

But What Does This All Mean?

First of all, what schools are we talking about here? I am restricting this discussion to kindergarten through 12th grade--elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. I am also restricting this discussion to schools for the more-or-less neurotypical--in other words, this discussion is not about schools specializing in education for dyslexics or people with autism or any other specialized population.

If there are these different kinds of schools, who determines if they are any good? There is a process called accreditation, which does and does not answer the question. In other words, if a school is not accredited, it may mean: 1. It is too young to go through the process; 2. The school declines to participate; or 3. The school won't meet the criteria.

(There are some very fine schools (Peninsula, on the San Francisco Peninsula, comes to mind) that have never sought accreditation for philosophical reasons.

What is Accreditation?

The United States has no centralized authority over educational institutions, whether public or private. To insure a level of quality in educational institutions and programs, there is a voluntary, peer review program, known as "Accreditation". This system has evolved over time. As it is used now, it tends to mean that the school has publicly announced some goals and has accepted some standard operating procedures, and has a plan for meeting those goals and certifying the procedures are being followed. A full description can be read at WASC's Accreditation Overview page.

There are six regional associations that accredit public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the United States: WASC(California, Hawaii, and the Pacific);, SACS(the American South), NEASC(New England); MSA (Middle States); NCACASI (North Central); and NAAS (Northwest).

The Council for American Private Education (CAPE) is a coalition of national organizations and state affiliates serving private elementary and secondary schools. There are 27,000 private schools in America; in fact, one in four of the nation’s schools is a private school. More than six million students attend them. CAPE member organizations represent about 80 percent of private school enrollment nationwide.

The National Independent Private Schools Association is an association of propriety elementary through high school institutions ineligible to join the National Association of Independent Schools.

Another type of private school is the proprietary academic school organized as a for-profit corporation. There are about 1,000 in the country, according to Jim Williams of the National Independent Private Schools Association.

"We are the tax-paying schools," Williams says. "Most schools start with an idea, the vision of someone. Many of the people who start proprietary schools are disenchanted public-school or disappointed independent-school teachers who don't want to deal with a board of directors or a school board." He points out that most of the elite prep schools of the 19th century began as proprietary schools with fees paid to headmasters. "People who get involved with proprietary schools are pleased with what they see," Williams says.

Other on-line sources of information

Private School FAQs from Robert Kennedy

A Partial List of Associations

• Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) strives to enable and equip Christian educators and schools worldwide to effectively educate children and young people with the mind of Christ. An evangelical Provides accreditation and other services.
  


• Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Educationis to promote excellence in Jewish education across the spectrum of Jewish life.
  


• Friends Council on Education founded in 1931, promotes the theory and practice of Quaker education, supports Friends schools in maintaining their values-based learning environments, and provides a professional development network for educational issues, philosophy and practice in Friends schools.


• National Association of Episcopal Schools.


• National Association of Independent Schools Serves schools that are established (in operation for at least 5 years) independent (not part of a larger organization such as a church) are not for profit (i.e., not proprietary) are accredited. and demonstrate financially sound operations and nondiscriminatory hiring and admissions practices.
  
  
• NAPCIS--this is a relatively new which serves to support and accredit private (not associated with a parish) Catholic K-12 schools, typically more orthodox than NCEA schools


• National Catholic Education Association an association of all Catholic schools, to improve both secular and theological education.


• National Lutheran School Association, provides an accreditation service for Lutheran schools.


• Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE)
exists to provide information and tools for improvment to Jewish schools.


• Solomon Schechter Day School Association provides guidance and support to Jewish day schools in the Conservative tradition.
  

How Do You Choose A School?

That is a huge subject. About Private Schools 101 has a pretty good start. NAIS has a thorough, online parents' guide.

Disclosure: I have been active in independent schools for the last 23 years, as an alumna, a volunteer fundraiser, as a board member, as a member of board committees, and as a parent. I do not believe that education is an either-or choice. Having a diverse set of schools to choose from enriches the community. I believe that the school's governance and fee structure (independent school or private school) is no guarantee of educational quality.

private school testing & enrollment

For those of you who haven't looked into private schools, the ISEE test, along with the SSAT, seem to be the two standardized tests all the kids take. Students applying to Catholic high schools take the TACHS. (I don't know anything beyond this, and would certainly appreciate hearing from anyone who does.)

I'd been wondering how many kids take the ISEE each year, so this morning I called the office.

The woman who answered said that approximately 42,000 students take the ISEE each year. The test covers grades 5-12 and the 42,000 figure includes all students who take it in all grades. I assume that the largest number is probably 6th graders, but I don't know.

The SAT is taken by around 1.4 million high school seniors each year.


private school enrollment

Last spring Ed asked a visiting admissions officer from Dartmouth what percentage of the student body attended private schools.

His answer was 30%.

NCES gives the following figures for private school enrollment across the country:

Among the 28,384 private schools in existence in 2003–04 there was considerable diversity as to orientation and affiliation. Of the three primary types of private schools—Catholic, other religious, and nonsectarian—other religious schools were the most numerous, followed by Catholic schools, and then nonsectarian schools, representing 48, 28, and 24 percent, respectively, of all private schools.

[snip]

An estimated total of 5,122,772 students were enrolled in the nation’s private schools in the fall of 2003, a decrease of 218,741 from the estimated total of 5,341,513 students enrolled in the fall of 2001.

Private school students represented approximately 10 percent of the total public and private elementary and secondary enrollment in the United States in 2003–04.


Assuming I've done my math right, these are the figures I come up with for 2007 (from CAPE):

• total number of U.S. students: 55,863,247
• total number of U.S. students enrolled in private school: 6,536,000 - 11.7% of all US students
• total number of U.S. students enrolled in Catholic Schools: 3,019,632 - 5% of all US students (46.2% of all private school students)
• total number of U.S. students enrolled in nonsectarian schools: 1,173,480 - 2% of all US students (18% of all private school students)
  

Loveless report on private school conundrum (pdf file)

The second section’s study of public and private school enrollment is precipitated by another oxymoron. Public opinion polls consistently show that the public considers private schools superior to public schools. Yet private school enrollment peaked around 1960 and has declined since then. People express a belief in public opinion surveys that they apparently contradict when selecting schools. What is going on?

[snip]

Most people assume that private schools are better than public schools. More than half of the respondents to a 2004 Kappan Poll said they would send their children to a private school if vouchers were available covering the full tuition. This section of the Brown Center Report is about two trends in private school enrollment that do not make sense in light of the public’s perception of private school superiority. The first is that private schools’ share of students peaked in 1959 and has subsequently declined. If private schools are so good and public schools so bad, why have private schools lost market share to public schools over the past few decades? And how could this happen at the same time that several well-crafted, well-publicized studies by eminent social scientists documented the virtues of private schooling? The second mystery has to do with the grade levels at which private schools lose students—in the transition to high school. Why are parents leaving private schools for public schools at precisely the time in a student’s career when academic achievement means so much for college admission and later prospects in life?


The Private School Advantage

In 1982, James Coleman published studies of private and public schools that rocked the foundation of the public school establishment. One of the most prominent social scientists of his era, Coleman presented data from “High School and Beyond,” a massive national study of students who were tenth graders in 1980 and in twelfth grade two years later. The headline finding was simple: private schools are better than public schools. Students attending private high schools, in particular Catholic schools, gained about one grade level more on achievement tests than students attending public schools. Critics charged that Coleman had not taken into account the self selection of private school students—that is, that kids in private schools may be better students initially or have parents more committed to education than the typical student. After all, parents go to a lot of trouble to send their kids to private schools, most notably, by paying private school tuition and supplying their own transportation despite having already paid taxes to fund public schooling. Coleman retorted that he had statistically controlled for selection bias so as to make a legitimate comparison.

Later studies also praised private schools. Bryk, Lee, and Holland found that Catholic schools not only produce higher achievement scores, but they also serve “the common good” by boosting the education of poor and minority children. Building on Coleman’s work, Bryk, Lee, and Holland estimated that minority students in Catholic high schools learn twice as much mathematics as their public school counterparts

[snip]

These explanations rely on theories that depict parents as making rational choices when deciding where to send children to school. Favoring schools with a strong mission, seeking a rigorous curriculum that prepares students for college, rewarding quality when selecting from a market of schools—all of these phenomena hinge on what social scientists call “rational actors”—parents deciding to send their kids to private schools for clear, understandable reasons. Such behavior makes private-public enrollment trends mysterious, since they do not look rational if private schools offer a superior education.

[snip]

The private school share peaked at 9.3 percent in 1960. Since then, it eased to 7.7 percent in 2000 (and 8.0 percent in 2004, not shown in the table). The public school share of 14- to 17-year old enrollment grew from 74.1 percent in 1960 to 83.5 percent in 2000. So this is interesting. At the same time distinguished scholars published study after study documenting the advantages of private over public schooling—with an emphasis on high school— parents were increasingly more likely to enroll their 14- to 17-year-old children in public schools, not private schools. The ratio of enrollments favoring public schools grew from about 8 to 1 in 1960 to more than 10 to 1 in 2004. High school enrollment is indeed the culprit in the loss of market share.

[snip]

The famous studies documenting a private school advantage relied almost exclusively on high school test scores, and yet high schools are where private sector enrollment declines the most. Enrollment patterns in recent years pinpoint that the drop off is occurring at the beginning of high school.

[snip]

Why are private schools losing high school students to public schools? Part of the answer is found in the difficulties faced by Catholic schools.

[snip]

Factors other than religion also play a role. The fact that high school is the time when parents shift from preferring private to public schooling suggests something also may have changed related to child rearing. What has probably changed—and this point is admittedly speculative—are attitudes toward the schooling of teenagers. Parents offer their children more choices today and more say in schooling. Once children enter adolescence, they may prefer to go to school where kids in their own neighborhood go, not to a school across town. Moreover, parents want schools to offer more than academic learning. Social skills and “well-roundedness” are also very important. In a 1996 Gallup Poll, parents were asked to pick between the following: their oldest child being a straight-A student with only a few friends and extracurricular activities or a C student with a lot of friends and activities. By a two to one margin, they picked the busy, socially active C student. Perhaps all of the studies documenting higher test scores in private schools are identifying an attribute that parents find attractive but not decisive in selecting schools.

Council for American Private Education

"F" for Failure
The NCES Private-Public Study

"she doesn't know a G-d thing"

Evan Thomas at the AHA conference.

Watch it all. You must. Incredible.

at the AHA

Ed just came in, back from the AHA conference.

Everyone there -- everyone -- is deeply unhappy with his public school.

Across the board. They're all living in high-performing districts.

how to fix a learning problem, calculus edition

another palisadesk resource:

Tool skills are the most basic elements of more complex skills. For example, in order to build fluency in oral reading, one must be able to say sounds and words quickly. In order to build fluency in composition, one must be able to copy letters and words quickly. Although early studies in perceptual-motor learning demonstrated that fluency in task parts makes fluency on complex tasks that contain these parts easier to achieve (e.g., Gagne & Foster, 1949), it was not until the late 1960s that Eric Haughton studied such relations in education. Haughton (personal communication, August 1978) found that college students having trouble in calculus could improve their performance by building fluency on very basic elements, such as saying and writing numbers and math facts. Haughton (1971, 1972, 1980) reported that a program of tool skill building improved underachieving students' math performance to the level of their competent peers, whereas an arbitrary reward system, increasing the potency of consequences, and extensive practice in math at the students' grade levels all failed to improve their performance. Again, the presenting problem is not always the problem to solve.

source:
Breaking the Structuralist Barrier
Literacy and Numeracy With Fluency
Kent R. Johnson
T. V. Joe Layng
American Psychologist 1992 47(11) pp. 1475-1490

the presenting problem is not always the problem to solve

off the Titanic

from Palisadesk:

A friend whose child attends a "good" (high-scoring, upper-SES, non-diverse) school had a chid who, in middle second grade, was still a total non-reader. School did not find this a problem. Child and parent did not agree.

I tested him myself: no phonological issues, extremely high verbal aptitude, outstanding vocabulary. Parent read to him, took him to library, bought him books.

Nada.

Just wait, school says. He will read when he is ready.

Ever my cheerful self, I suggested maybe this mystical readiness might materialize around the time Medicaid kicked in. Meanwhile, perhaps we should give "development" just the teeniest push? After all, we don't see many teenagers in diapers, do we? They would probably "naturally" develop continence. Doesn't stop us from toilet-training toddlers.

Following a curriculum wasn't something the mother was confident with. So I suggested the online instructional program Headsprout Early Reading. Kid started it in January. He was at a Kindergarten level. He learned quickly. I told mom, you watch, no one in school will notice. And when they finally do, they will NOT want to know what you are doing. They will take all the credit!

Sure enough, in March he had come up 20 levels on the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) and was at grade level. Mom tried to tell the school about Headsprout (developed on DI and PT principles). Of course, no one was interested -- they said, "Oh, it just finally all 'clicked'." Oh sure. But I felt a warm glow (the more so since I didn't do any of the work!!)

I did do some of the work on a kid at school. I first noticed her when I was on recess supervision duty. She was young for first grade, only five, and unprepossessing in appearance -- Coke-bottle glasses, somewhat clumsy where gross motor movement was concerned, often solitary and engrossed in her own interests. I went up to her on one occasion as she was scrutinizing the ground and putting sticks carefully in some sort of order. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm testing my hypothesis," came the reply. Whoa! I thought. She was in fact putting obstacles in the way of ants and predicting what they would do. But her language got my attention. This is a largely ESL school where "He gots mines" is the normal level of oral expression at age 5. I started to pay attention to this child, who had intriguing ideas, loved to play with words and concepts, socialized well and had lots of friends but happily went her own way as needed. Teachers liked her, but no one thought she was bright. She was on an IEP in third grade -- could not read or write. I was L.A resource teacher that year and manipulated things so she got into my sub rosa Reading Mastery group. Zoom! By Christmas she was in RM V (fourth grade level). The following year, we were pressured to nominate some kids for screening for the Gifted program. Of course teachers insisted we had no gifted students. I nominated Miss Hypothesis Testing. Big flurry -- "You can't nominate her! She had an IEP! She must be LD!"

Nonsense, I said. She is not LD. She is gifted. Wanna put some money on the line? How about $500?

I had no takers. But I did get her tested. Later in the day, I saw the psychologist in the hall. She wore a peculiar expression.

"I've been testing a lot of kids, because there's a push on to find kids in these low-performing schools who qualify for the gifted program (have to be 99th percentile on the WISC). But, the kids nominated at these schools are nowhere even close. Until today -- your little M. is off the charts! Wow! How did you know??"

I had a wicked thought and just said, "It takes one to know one," and sauntered on. But I had that warm glow again -- reactivated recently, when I found out that that same child is now in the first cohort at our new high school gifted program. Later, I did pump the psychologist for information. Would M have qualified for the gifted program if she still had reading and writing skills at a K level in 4th grade?

No, the psych said. She would qualify for an LD class.

I felt like I had just pulled somebody off the Titanic. It's a great feeling, I'll bet waaay more so when it's your own child. These truly are life-changing milestones.

milestone

C. arrived home in high spirits this afternoon.

"I'm not the dumb kid in math any more," he said.

And he's not. "Mr. P. gave us a really hard problem and I knew how to do it. And I could explain it."

It's all been worth it.

Every single minute.

Tease

Does anybody have a current subscription to City Journal? I stupidly let mine lapse (again), and the homepage keeps taunting me with the promise of a forthcoming Sol Stern piece entitled, "School Choice Isn't Enough: Instructional Reform Is The Key To Better Schools."

Of course, not reading TFA has never stopped me from opining before, so allow me just add that while I agree in theory, but in practice, instructional reform is likely impossible without choice.*

* This is the classic argumentation template for students who skipped the reading. "While I agree in theory, I think actual implementation would be rather difficult." The funny part is this was usually my conclusion after I eventually did the reading, which is probably why it worked.

"the secret to raising smart kids"

I can't even keep up with all the links and book recommendations palisdesk & Liz Ditz have left! (Am currently searching for their posts on motivation. How is it that I have distinct memories of having recorded the URLs in my Scrivener program -- not only of recording the URLs, but of checking repeatedly to make sure I had recorded the URLs? If there's the faintest chance that my Scrivener program has gone buggy on me, that could be a very bad thing.)

When he was not quite into his teens, John Mighton Vic 7T8 read his older sister’s psychology textbook on gifted children and came to a crushing conclusion: his chances of being a genius were slim to none. He just didn’t have the spontaneous brilliance and long list of natural abilities apparently required of whiz kids. He was a child who read widely, voraciously and beyond his age range. He had believed that one day he would travel in time and write great literature. Yet this harsh encounter with the prevailing authorities on intelligence changed him, and it was years before he fully regained his confidence as a student. Fortunately, in the last two decades the playwright, mathematician, educator, social activist and philosopher has more than made up for any lost time.

Mighton says he was an “erratic student” right into his early undergraduate years at Vic. “I think I was subconsciously afraid of meeting my limitations, so sometimes I wouldn’t work very hard or would give up on things. I thought if you ever had to struggle at something you just didn’t have it in you.” His intellectual interests always ran deep and wide, however, covering everything from drama to science fiction. Studying philosophy at Vic seemed like the best choice, he says, because it allowed him to explore fundamental questions that sprung up in all his pursuits. Even so, he only began to get serious about his studies towards the end of his degree, thanks to what he calls “phenomenal professors” who engaged and challenged him.

While completing an MA in philosophy at McMaster University, Mighton read another book that changed his life – this time for the better. It was the collected letters of Sylvia Plath to her mother. “After reading her letters I realized that she taught herself to be a writer by sheer determination,” he says. “Nobody had ever told me that you could actually learn a craft, so it came as a real revelation.”

[snip]

But it wasn’t until after he had succeeded in playwriting that he felt ready to pursue his lifelong fascination with mathematics. His first step into the discipline was answering an ad seeking math tutors. He landed the job and was soon teaching himself long-forgotten math concepts the night before he had to teach them to his students. Many of the kids he tutored were far behind grade level and barely understood basic concepts when they arrived, but his careful instruction and consistent encouragement produced dramatic changes in their performance. He saw it as further proof that, instead of being innate and unchangeable, intelligence and ability are quite plastic.

The excitement of this discovery led Mighton to establish a not-for-profit organization called JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) in 1998.

[snip]

At its core, JUMP is about demystifying math and rebuilding confidence in kids. Mighton says the majority of JUMP students have been told, explicitly or implicitly, that they will never be good at math, and they have come to believe it. This, he says, is the dangerous power of the Myth of Ability. “JUMP starts by breaking down very basic concepts and giving kids lots of praise for the simplest accomplishments, because many of them have had their spirits broken by the system and need a sustained period of success. Children are naturally passionate about learning if you don’t make them feel awful and if they think they are meeting challenges.” Many JUMP students move up into academic streams at school and several have gone on to graduate studies. One even did a doctoral degree in math.

I have his book, but haven't read it (may have to move it up to the top of the heap). What I loved about Mighton, back when I first heard about him on the old site, is that he starts with fractions.

I like a math tutor with chops (homage to Carolyn).

and.... an aside: reading your big sister's psych textbook and concluding you're not a genius and can't be a writer strikes me as just the kind of boneheaded thing a gifted kid would do.

I say that with affection.


Carole Dweck on raising smart kids

I first began to investigate the underpinnings of human motivation—and how people persevere after setbacks—as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists Martin Seligman, Steven Maier and Richard Solomon of the University of Pennsylvania had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the researchers found, an animal often remains passive even when it can affect change—a state they called learned helplessness.

People can learn to be helpless, too, but not everyone reacts to setbacks this way. I wondered: Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.

In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easy problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

[snip]

Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. Like Jonathan, such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.

The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that. Because slipups stem from a lack of effort, not ability, they can be remedied by more effort. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating; they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set, we predicted, were destined for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.

[snip]

How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”

We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

My neighbor says psychologists used to believe that the most functional worldview was for a person to blame his failures on factors outside his control while taking credit for success. I'd forgotten that, but now that she's reminded me I believe I do recall Martin Seligman making this argument.

Given that context, Dweck's research is quite radical. She's saying it's just as bad to attribute your successes to innate ability as it is to blame your failures to lack of innate ability. You don't want to go around thinking you're smarter than everyone else.

I believe this absolutely. I was raised on a Midwest farmer ethic of hard work and no bragging; it was so out of bounds to be special in any way that we kids were directly told we weren't special on more than one occasion. We were expected to be hardworking, fun-loving, and uncomplaining.

That upbringing has stood me in good stead for lo these many years.


bonus points

homework and intelligence at 11D (thank you to Amy Pruss)

and

Practice Makes Perfect on the Blackboard (pdf file)

Regina's precision teaching site

precision teaching wiki

mark this down!

Steve H on collective homeschooling

If the money followed the child, many more local schools would pop up. Some would evolve from home schoolers, and some would evolve from groups of willing parents. After a period of rapid growth and change, I would expect a certain amount of consolidation so that buildings could be bought and economies of scale could be achieved.

I've talked with other parents about doing what amounts to a collective homeschool (even without money from the town or state). Each parent would contribute money, teaching, and/or effort in some way or other. When I talk with other parents about this idea, you can see the wheels turning. Some of them are sending their kids to private K-8 schools costing $15,000 - $20,000 and the schools expect more money and effort from them.

Just imagine if the KTM parents lived near each other. Imagine 10 kids (for example), a budget of $150,000 per year, and complete control over the curriculum. You could probably finish all of the direct instruction by noon. Homework would be completed after lunch. Imagine the possibilities. Invest in a small bus. Think of the field trips.

I've had some variant of this thought many times. My only caution is that I would want to keep things as informal as possible, which means I would want to avoid forming an actual school at least to start.

I say this because of our experience sending Jimmy and Andrew to a charter school founded by a group of dedicated, highly educated parents who knew exactly what they wanted (in their case a state of the art behavioral program for autistic kids). The whole enterprise turned acrimonious. Extremely so. Basically a founder syndrome issue.

That's not to say that charter schools aren't a good thing, or that charter schools started by parents who know what they're doing are doomed to open warfare. Not at all.

It is to say that if I had the good fortune to be teamed up with a group of like-minded parents I personally would be happiest starting with limited commitments and going from there.

Steve's right: we'd get through the curriculum fast -- and we could have great field trips in the afternoon!

Ed, a couple of months ago, decided that we need an "afterschool cooperative" that would recruit parents to tutor, reteach, preteach, etc. as needed. I think such a thing is highly feasible although I don't believe it would make up for simply having a great school dedicated to teaching the liberal arts disciplines to mastery to begin with.

more from teacher burn-out comments

88.

January 2nd,
2008
2:06 pm

Retired now, I taught in high school, in university, in medical school; and eventually, directed biotech research. By far and away, my brief career teaching high school biology was the most difficult and the least rewarding. Admittedly, high school students span a much greater range of ability and motivation, but I found students the least of the problem.

I taught in a public high school and in a large, very sophisticated private high school. The latter more nearly resembled university teaching. The public high school hovered on disaster every day. In retrospect, I cannot imagine anyone enjoying a rewarding career at such a place. Those who coped best were, in my observation, the least stimulating teachers and the least committed to student growth.

Unintentionally, we have made our public schools into service institutions for the poor, for the disadvantaged, for the disabled, and for the unruly. In the name of “Égalité”, we have driven into private schools the serious and capable students whose parents can afford it. We have made social development more important than learning. We have made teachers responsible for the financial and career success of our children, while demanding they also instruct in manners and keep order. We have created an educational system that produces students inferior in attainment to those from almost every other developed country, as measured by every method.

Here is the best measure of our failure: When I was a PhD student in the 1960s, foreign students in graduate science departments across the country numbered less than 20-percent. Most of that minority of foreign students remained after graduation, making their skills available to the United States. Today more than 60-percent of science graduate students are foreign students, and a diminishing number remain after graduation. My colleagues still teaching complain they cannot find enough qualified American students.

I should note that when I directed biotech research most of my senior scientists came from England, Poland, Israel, and Germany; my junior scientists were most frequently former high school science teachers who were “burnt out” or who simply could not afford to continue teaching.

We cannot change the disaster of our public schools until we decide the very most important goal of school is education; until we devote our greatest resources to our best students; and, until we reward our best teachers with the same salaries and respect we accord to lawyers, stock brokers, and sales people.

— Posted by Wayne Lanier, PhD

He's right about graduate students.

Ed says that the Physics graduate program at NYU has under 10% enrollment U.S. students.

from the TIMES

Love this comment on the TIMES article about parents causing teacher burnout:

69.
What this article is NOT saying is that students are not being prepared to go into college courses. I graduated at the top of my high school class in 2003 and had to take 2 remedial math courses before I was able to get up to college level algebra. What were my teachers teaching me that I couldn’t place into college level math? They were teaching me the bare minimum. Don’t get me wrong, teachers have the hardest jobs of all, but when they become cynical because of criticism, then they need to get out of the business. I paid for my remedial courses, how about my high school teachers reimburse me for it? Parents should be involved, my parents assumed that I was getting a good education at a good high school, they were wrong. Parents need to start attending school board meetings, addressing the issues that need to be addressed. If teachers don’t want to deal with parents, then get a new job, because kids and just that, they are kids, and they need their parents to speak up for them.

Unfortunately, attending school board meetings & addressing issues that need to be addressed does not result in one's school taking responsibility for teaching math.

"gadget of the week"

Barron's has an online review of the StressEraser.

For the record, I don't agree with the guy. Ed doesn't have a Blackberry (neither do I) & the StressEraser works for him; in fact our kids' doctor, Eric Hollander, recommended it for sleep. Ed and I both find the reviewer's recommended alternative, a glass of wine, to be far less effective for sleep than the Stress Eraser.

I should add that I'm not sure the Stress Eraser is all that great for stress per se. Ed uses it for sleep, which is what I've used it for a couple of times. Once or twice I tried using it for stress but while I felt zoned out and calmly vague as I was using the thing I didn't feel particularly zoned out or calmly vague once I turned it off and got back to work (or back to avoiding work, whichever).

What the Stress Eraser is really good for is training. I can see physicians and health clubs using the thing to teach people how to breathe themselves to sleep at night. Once you learn you can do it without the feedback; the reviewer is right about that.


you heard it here first (possibly)
StressEraser on YouTube
a possible case of buyer's remorse
gadget of the week

Teacher Burnout: Blame the Parents

From the New York Times Wellness Channel:

Teacher Burnout

While the data come from German schools, the researchers note that many of the demands of teaching, including disruptive students, high expectations from school officials and close scrutiny from parents, are universal.

The issue of teacher burnout is important because American schools today are experiencing high levels of teacher turnover as baby boomers retire and new teachers leave the field. According to the most recent Department of Education statistics available, about 269,000 of the nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers, or 8.4 percent, quit the field in the 2003-2004 school year. Thirty percent of them retired, and 56 percent said they left to pursue another career or because they were dissatisfied. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future has calculated that nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone.

Here are some sample quotes, but you should go read the whole shebang (128 at last count)

• Parents with complaints should be restricted to the principal’s office, and not allowed to barge into classrooms. A parent who interferes with classroom teaching should be required by law to spend 5 days in jail. Taken to jail from the classroom in handcuffs by police.
• I have been far more affected by administrators who leave the teaching ranks after a couple of years without ever realizing what becoming a teacher requires or who fail to work with and inspire teachers.
• Quite often parents come to school to fight, not for their children, but to win the battles they lost when they were young. The sense of entitlement, joined with self-righteous anger and administrators who fear nothing more than a phone call to their boss leave teachers with little choice but to “try to make overly demanding parents happy.”
• In our neck of the woods, the most difficult part of teaching in dealing with indulgent parents who don’t necessarily want to put in the time to actually be involved with their kids’ education, but, blame the teacher when the kid fails to perform.
• Parents are just as bewildered and concerned as teachers as to how to deal with the maelstrom into which their children have been dumped, and the disappearing resources.
• I often would say that if the children boarded at the school Monday through Friday, what a difference we would see in attitude AND results.
• What about parent burn-out caused by non-responsive and arbitrary teachers and administrators? This works both ways!
• If parents get involved, it’s their fault teachers are burned out. But if they’re not involved, it’s their fault the teachers can’t teach their students to read. No matter what happens, it’s always the parents’ fault - apparently expecting teachers to teach kids is an unreasonable expectation; it is up to the parents to make the teachers’ classrooms run well.
• In my 36 years teaching elementary grades, demanding parents have rarely been a problem. In fact, I’ve enlisted parents as classroom helpers and am extremely grateful for the time and support they have contributed. The BIG problem has been and continues to be the idiocy of state and district bureaucracies, whose infinite wisdom declares that even schools with good test scores enter “Program Improvement” status so we can boost the numbers.

down the rabbit hole

A friend of mine reports that one of the K-5 teachers explained to parents why they give kids math homework they don't know how to do.

When the kids try to do the problems and fail they come to school the next day really wanting to find out how to do them.

Of course, I have a different theory as to why kids in a "high-performing" district would be routinely given assignments that are over their heads.

Sigh. Misunderstanding Scripted Learning [whiny voice] AGAIN!

One of the most important things I gathered from the Direct Instruction literature is that is isn't scripted lessons, it is a script for lessons that have been tried, tested, debugged, tested again, further debugged, [repeat ad nauseum until you have a program that has a X% rate of success upon delivery] plus effective training of teachers in script delivery plus constant, rapid testing and feedback to students that make a scripted program effectove

[sidebar: Ken deRosa had an excellent summary, from Engelmann's The Outrage of Project Follow Through: how this works in practice"]

These quality-control features are what is missing from the conversation about "scripted lessons", which are often depicted as "teacher proof".

Sheesh. Would any theater-goer think of a play (which after all, is a script) as "actor-proof"? Haven't they ever been to a wooden production?

It is the "phonics vs. whole language" argument, all over again. Frankly, if I had a child in k-3, I'd prefer a semi-competent whole-language teacher, who was at least reading good stories, over a lousy phonics means workbooks and illogical teaching and drill teacher. At least I could supplement my kid's reading mastery with good phonemic extra-curricular teaching, rather than trying to erase the wrong approach and start over.

But wait. I got away from the point of this post.

The point of Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching is that both approaches are continually refined, based upon accurate* assessment. I can sit at home all I want, and come up with a clever, creative lesson plan (which might well be wonderful based on thought experiments) but until I use the lesson plan, and then test what of the concepts in the plan the students have mastered, on actual students...it is just pie in the sky.

NYC Educator has some doozies from classroom teachers on script-hating.


=====
*another time we will talk about how malformed multiple choice questions have nothing very little to do with getting an accurate picture of what your students have or have not mastered.

The future of education

This post summarizes a more detailed series of posts at my blog – go here to see the first of five on this subject.

It’s the start of a new year, a time for considering the future and making plans accordingly. For those of us who work with the public education system in one way or another, it might be helpful to reflect on how the system might change over the next several years so we’re ready for it.

Consider how the following major trends are going to shape public education in the future:

More kids, different kids

• According to NCES, “school enrollment is projected to set new records every year from 2006 until at least 2014, the last year for which NCES has projected school enrollment.” We’re currently at 55.1 million, and will creep up to a projected 56.7 million in 2014.
• In the year 2000, whites made up 69.9% of the total US population, with all other groups comprising 30.1%. We are on a track towards an even split by the year 2050, with whites comprising 50.1% of the population, and all other groups making up 49.9% (see here). Due to fertility rates, diversification is happening more quickly in the schools: by 2020 approximately 40% of school-aged children will be from minority groups, and by 2025 we can expect to see that the child population will comprise 15.8% blacks, 23.6% Hispanics, 1.1% American Indian/Native Alaskans, 6.9% Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 52.6% whites.
• In addition to racial/ethnic diversity, it is reasonable to assume that the special education population will continue to grow, given that it has seen steady growth from 8.3% in 1976/77 to today’s 13.7% (see here).

NCLB

• While the particulars of No Child Left Behind may change somewhat during the reauthorization process, the fundamental concepts on which it is built – equity (educating every child) and accountability – are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Advancing these two concepts in tandem, by requiring that achievement reports include disaggregated data (so we can track the performance of each subgroup), means that we can’t mask or hide our progress.
• It’s a major change because, while we’ve always talked about the importance of educating every child, we haven’t really done it. The gap between different student groups has been with us for decades, and has not changed significantly for quite some time. Another indication of our lip service in this area is the difference in dropout rates by race/ethnicity, with recent calculations indicating that 75% of white students graduate high school, but only 50% of African-American and 53% of Hispanic students do so.

School Finance

• Average per-student expenditures have increased dramatically in the past 40 years, from $3400 in 1965 to $8745 in 2001 (in constant dollars). This almost certainly cannot continue.
• In the short term, revenues will be pressed by the subprime mortgage crisis: state and local education funding is fueled in part by property taxes, and some experts predict a 15% peak-to-trough adjustment in home prices in the near term. Twenty states are already having to revise their 2008 budgets as a result.
• In the long term, we’re about to see a record number of people moving into retirement age: in 2000, we had 35.1 million people ages 65+, or 12.4% of the population; in 2050, we’ll have 86.7 million in that age group, or 20.6% of the population. These are people who were formerly paying into the system (income taxes), and are now going to be pulling out (in services). And this powerful voting group is less likely to support education funding.
• The rise in retirement will fuel an increase in the costs of Medicaid to the states, which shoulder approximately 43% of the cost of this program. Medicaid currently accounts for 22% of state spending (up from 8% in 1985), and recently surpassed K-12 education as the most expensive item on state ledgers. And it’s growing at 6% annually, twice the rate of inflation.
• While revenues are about to be pressed, expenditures are set to grow significantly. Education is a manpower-intensive business, with 6 million employees currently in the system. First, consider that states have not set aside enough money to cover the retirement benefits of employees (current retirement programs are underfunded by $731 billion). Then consider the rising cost of health insurance, coupled by the fact that many teachers receive full coverage not only for themselves, but for spouses and children as well. As one administrator said, the rising cost of health insurance “is the single most important issue facing districts nationwide."

What does all this mean? It means we’re going to have more kids than we’ve ever had before, and that the population will increasingly be made up of the kids we haven’t done a great job with in the past. We’re making a commitment to teach them all, and have a system in place to see whether we’re actually doing that, so it’s going to be a lot tougher to gloss over any shortcomings. And this is all happening at a time when budgets will either stagnate or even shrink due to major economic forces.

Thoughts?

the misbehavior of organisms

Do yourself a favor and start your year by reading Keller & Marian Breland's The Misbehavior of Organisms.

There seems to be a continuing realization by psychologists that perhaps the white rat cannot reveal everything there is to know about behavior... However, psychologists as a whole do not seem to be heeding these admonitions....

Perhaps this reluctance is due in part to some dark precognition of what they might find in such investigations, for the ethologists Lorenz (1950, p. 233) and Tinbergen (1951, p. 6) have warned that if psychologists are to understand and predict the behavior of organisms, it is essential that they become thoroughly familiar with the instinctive behavior patterns of each new species they essay to study. Of course, the Watsonian or neobehavioristically oriented experimenter is apt to consider "instinct" an ugly word. He tends to class it with Hebb's (1960) other "seditious notions" which were discarded in the behavioristic revolution, and he may have some premonition that he will encounter this bete noir in extending the range of species and situations studied.

We can assure him that his apprehensions are well grounded.

What I need now are Marian Breland Bailey's thoughts on the instinctive behavior patterns of 13-year old boys.

academic motivation

Good observations and resources from Liz & palisdesk in the comments thread.

I'm thinking about motivation this year for a couple of reasons. The first has to do with my determination to:

a) commit every last word of Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog to memory

and

b) apply it

and

c) do same with David L. Watson's Self-Directed Behavior.

Looks like I'll also have to spend time slogging through the 2nd edition of John Cooper's Applied Behavior Analysis thanks to last week's Barnes and Noble Promotional Gift Card snafu.^*

My second reason has to do with the question: how does one convince a teenager that staying in school is a good idea?

I don't know the answer to that. I don't even know where to begin.

............................

^* sauve qui peut alert: B&N Promotional Gift Cards do not cover textbooks, & customer service reps are apparently unable to cancel as yet unplaced orders for textbooks. Promotional Christmas Gift Cards are a risky proposition, I conclude. On the other hand, my efforts to spend this season's $50 Garnet Hill Promotional Gift Card without purchasing a $100-item at full price sans Promotional Discount seem to have met with success. So that's something.

An ode to progressive education.

Who can compete with all that fun as educators prepare the young for their world? See the kiddies happily dancing into the world of tomorrow.



Meet Kilpatrick, Bagley (a critic of progressive education) and Dewey himself. I think this video is from the 40s.

1 is the loneliest number

Just got this from Liz Ditz:

How parents with issues are viewed by schools

1 parent with an issue = A nutjob
2 parents with the same issue = A nutjob and a friend
3 parents with the same issue = A trio of troublemakers
5 parents with the same issue = “Let’s have a meeting”
10 parents with the same issue = “We’d better listen”
25 parents with the same issue = “Our dear friends”
50 parents with the same issue = A powerful organization

Based in personal experience I agree with this list up to the number 5. After that my modification would run something like:

10 parents with the same issue = “Let's have another meeting”
25 parents with the same issue = “Let's take a survey”
50 parents with the same issue = "Let's have a Community Conversation"

ktm1 - wit and wisdom

instructivist just reminded me of the old Wit and Wisdom page.

It's great.

bigger & better

Lots of cool brain stuff at New Scientist.

Maybe I'll just forget the Book Club and spend my time hanging out on the web doing exercises intended to increase my working memory. (Sorry - I didn't write down the source that put me onto those two sites, but I remember it being serious.)

UNTIL recently, a person's IQ - a measure of all kinds of mental problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal reasoning - was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by genetics. But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could boost your IQ too.
Working memory is the brain's short-term information storage system. It's a workbench for solving mental problems. For example if you calculate 73 - 6 + 7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work out the answer. And the amount of information that the working memory can hold is strongly related to general intelligence.
A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory may grow in response to training. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 75).
Perhaps more significantly, when the group studied children who had completed these types of mental workouts, they saw improvement in a range of cognitive abilities not related to the training, and a leap in IQ test scores of 8 per cent (Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol 44, p 177). It's early days yet, but Klingberg thinks working-memory training could be a key to unlocking brain power. "Genetics determines a lot and so does the early gestation period," he says. "On top of that, there is a few per cent - we don't know how much - that can be improved by training."

As far as I can tell, the idea that working memory is highly related to IQ is solid and not likely to be significantly revised any time soon. I have the impression that, for awhile there, neuroscientists were thinking that IQ might actually be working memory, but that hypothesis seems to have been abandoned.