a science of teaching

Allison left this comment on the Troublemaker post, re: the war of ideas:

This "war of ideas" really is where it's at.

I'm in the Twin Cities, MN. Well, specifically, I'm in St. Paul, but the available educational system I'd consider taking my kid to is well over half of the greater Twin Cities metro.

There are over a hundred schools here available to a parent of grammar school or middle schools aged student. There are over two dozen high school options available. The public school system allows you to attend any public school which has space--you lottery in for the most wanted ones, of course, but usually, people get what they want. We also have charter schools. We have magnet schools. We have DOZENS of Catholic schools and at least a dozen other religious schools. We have private non religious schools. And we've got homeschoolers. Tuition ranges from 0-22k for each and every possible grade, preK to 12. I mean, from the outside, this is a mecca of educational opportunities!

And yet everywhere I go, I meet parents desperate to start new schools, pulling their kids out of schools, switching between private, public, and homeschooling mid year, and parents organizing to try and change their schools.

From the outside, it looks like madness: how can NONE of these schools fit the bill? how come NO ONE can find something that works for their kids? If parents just want what works, what is the problem? [ed.: Just like having 5 gazillion cable channels with nothing to watch! Sorry. Couldn't resist.]

For all of these so called choices, the answer is: for the grammar schools: no one here has a school that is excellent academically with a reasonable price point (and the unreasonable price points aren't always better academically either), and some of them still have (regardless of their religious ed or claim of religious culture) terrible problems with bullying, fights, and social problems in the classroom. For the high schools, almost none of them are excellent in all academic subjects. I've yet to hear ANYONE tell me of any high school that was excellent in science here, even though several offer IB and AP courses. I've yet to hear anyone say they have even moderately decent science in the grammar or middle schools, and that includes a magnet school.

Parents keep moving their kids around trying to find something that works for them, but they don't seem to get any traction. That's because, on some level, most of these parents still don't have a way to wage the war of ideas. All they can do it opt in or opt out, and hope something is close enough to work for them.

The ones who start a charter school or a private school are waging a different war--and sometimes, they fail too, because they still don't know how to HIRE people with ideas that work. While my homeschooling and charter schooling friends know about Saxon Math and Core Knowledge, none of them have heard of Direct Instruction or Precision Teaching. They are always reinventing wheels trying to find a way to hire faculty that won't make their school have the same problems as every other school they've got around them.

The war of ideas matters. More than anything else, because without it, we lose the way to communicate what it is we really want

I'm midway through Vicki Snider's book.

Snider says we need "a science of teaching," and she's right.

Now that I've discovered Precision Teaching I realize we already have one; we're just not using it. Nor are we sufficiently developing it. (Snider says, for instance, that we really don't know, yet, how to teach critical thinking.)

I majored in psychology in college, and of course studied behaviorism as part of the major. When Jimmy was diagnosed with autism I learned more behaviorism and used the principles fairly effectively with him. (I would have used them very effectively if I'd learned and practiced more. Behavioral analysis with autistic kids is a major undertaking, and it's long past time for me to refresh my skills. Andrew needs managing.)

In the past 3 or 4 years, dealing with C., I've let my home-grown knowledge and practice of behavioral principles lapse. I became much more focused on cognitive science, which was my area of interest in college.

That was a mistake. My focus, now, is Precision Teaching in particular and learning theory - especially Pryor's work on positive reinforcement - in general.

I've seen big changes around here in just the few weeks since reading Don't Shoot the Dog.

When it comes to Precision Teaching, Americans haven't reached the level of a war of ideas yet. No one's even heard of it.

I'm going to start bugging people around here about Precision Teaching.



Myths and Misconceptions about Teaching: What Really Goes on Inside the Classroom by Viki Snider
A Comparison of Teacher Attitudes and Beliefs about issues Across Conventional and Direct Instructional Schools Vicki Snider and Rebecca Schumitsch (full article here)

call for comment

Jay Mathews on Two Million Minutes.

Column here.

differentiated instruction in action

C's math class has graduated from Glencoe Algebra to Glencoe Geometry, thank God.

I say "Thank God" because last fall my neighbor managed to track down a Teacher Wraparound Edition of Glencoe Geometry, which she's loaned to me.

I do not have a Teacher Wrapround Edition for Glencoe Algebra. I've been working without a net. In order to check C's homework — which I have to do because here in Irvington Union Free School District (per pupil funding: $22,000) teachers stop collecting and correcting homework around grade 3 — I have to work every homework set myself, check my answers against C's, then figure out which one of us is wrong when the answers don't agree, and, finally, after all that is out of the way & my book deadline has receded further into the distance, have C. re-do the problem(s) in question if he's the one who got them wrong.

I have to do all this because the school refuses to supply answers to kids or their parents.

All the answers are belong to us.

For geometry, I have the answers. (The answers, they are belong to me.)

Boy, does that save time.

I work the problems quickly and efficiently, then I check my answers in the book.

If an answer is wrong, I re-do quickly and efficiently. I can afford to be quick and efficient, because I have the answers.

"speed and accuracy": the KUMON mantra. Have I mentioned the fact that KUMON provides the parent with the answer key? The parent quickly checks her children's work, then has them re-do problems they missed.

Without the answer key, I work problems painstakingly, doubting myself at every turn, sometimes re-working because I think maybe the answer could be wrong. From time to time an answer will come out the same wrong-seeming way 3, 4 times in a row, so that's more time, and in the end I still suffer doubt.

Having to work every problem without an answer key is a huge waste of time. A FWOT, actually. As Carolyn used to say.

So glad the paid professionals who teach my kid don't have to do it.


differentiated instruction 'round Glencoe way

Back on topic. The topic being: differentiated instruction.

I think a lot of us have wondered what differentiated instruction actually is when it's taking place inside the black box.

Sure, sure, I know the concept: if you have 20 students in a class, they are taught in 20 different ways. That is the concept here in Irvington, anyway, or so I gather from the Principal's Message in the Main Street School newsletter.

But what does that look like?

What might those 20 different instructional ways be on any given day?

Tonight, looking up the answers in my neighbor's Glencoe Geometry Teacher Wrapround Edition, I noticed that the book includes, in each Lesson, a "Daily Intervention" labeled "Differentiated Instruction."

Here is the Differentiated Instruction for Lesson 1.4 Angles Measures:

Auditory/Musical A metronome is a tool used to keep a constant tempo in music. It is composed of a pendulum that swings back and forth at varying speeds. The fulcrum of the pendulum acts as a vertex of the angle through which the pendulum swings. Demonstrate this by holding two pens at an angle in one hand and tapping another pen between the first two, creating a series of "ticks."

source: Glencoe Geometry Teacher Wraparound Edition
North Carolina Edition, p. 30
ISBN 0078601789

Daily Intervention Number 2: Inferential Thinking Activity

I am going to infer from the above that:

• it is normal for a high school geometry teacher not to know what a metronome is, what it looks like, or how it works
• a differentiated instruction activity is likely to command the attention of all 20 or 30 students in the room, seeing as how it involves the teacher performing a noisy classroom demonstration
• a differentiated instruction activity accompanying a lesson on angle measures doesn't have to have anything to do with angle measures, necessarily
  

I don't think this differentiated instruction thing is going to work out.


update from redkudu:

This is not a differentiated strategy. It is an engagement strategy. This is what I talk about when I say there is such little knowledge about the difference between the two.

That clears things up.

redkudu had mentioned this earlier and I didn't know what she meant.

She's absolutely right.

These are engagement strategies, pure and simple -- although they are labeled with the type of learner the "strategy" is supposed to address (auditory/musical; ELL; etc.)

What a mess.


update 2-13-2008: Steve H analyzes the US News & Newsweek rankings of high schools in the Comments thread.


woo hoo, Friday edition
differentiated instruction in action
can you FOIL the answers?
the Gambill method

Troublemaker

from Chester Finn's new book:

Governor Lamar Alexander's "Better Schools Program" was presented to the Tennessee legislature in January 1983 as the centerpiece of his second-term agenda. It had multiple elements, of which the boldest and most contentious was a "career ladder" for teachers--in effect, a merit pay plan.

I was thrilled to be a member of the governor's brain trust, batting out memos, drafts, talking points, explanations, and questions-and-answers on my Vanderbilt typewriter, and joining innumerable meetings at the statehouse and executive mansion. I also relished introducing Lamar to Al Shanker--we lunched at the Baltimore airport during a day trip via state plane--who responded with interest to the governor's "master teacher" plan, wrote supportively about it in his New York Times column, and invited Alexander to address the AFT convention later that year.

After much arm-twisting, compromising and revising, legislators agreed to key parts of the "Better Schools Program," including the contentious career ladder. Lamar thus won his spurs as an "education governor," among the first such. But neither of us fully appreciated the rubber-band-like nature of k-12 policy and how it yearns to snap back into its previous shape as soon as the tension eases. Once Alexander's term ended, the Tennessee Education Association and its allies began to "revise," "improve," "make fairer," and generally erode the performance-pay scheme and other prickly parts of his plan.

Any lasting policy change in education, I was coming to realize, must include a vigorous "war of ideas" because the broader political culture either subscribes to obsolete beliefs or has delegated responsibility to a priesthood that stubbornly clings to them. Just as important, however, is Alexander-style political leadership--astute, brave, goal driven, results oriented, and relentless. Yet even with those assets in place, a leader's boldest reforms are apt to prove transitory once he/she leaves the scene and the establishment strikes back.

I'm going to have to get the book.

Probably Al Shanker's book, too.


tattoo this to your forehead

Any lasting policy change in education, I was coming to realize, must include a vigorous "war of ideas" because the broader political culture either subscribes to obsolete beliefs or has delegated responsibility to a priesthood that stubbornly clings to them.

Not to be grandiose about it, but what we do here at ktm-2 -- what the whole crew of bloggers and web sites linked to on the sidebar do -- is important.

The war of ideas needs boots on the ground, and we're the boots.

help desk - how to study geometry

If you've got a minute, which you don't, let us know what you think of these Amazon reviewers' advice on how to study geometry.

Thanks!

dual enrollment

benefits of dual enrollment

Schaum's outlines

from Allison --

Ever hear of Schaum's Outlines?

Have they gone the way of the dodo? Why did Barron's replace them--were they bought out, or is it name recognition?

I made it through college because of Schaum's Outlines. They just had problem after problem after problem, plus all solutions, so you could just do the problems over and over and over until you got it.

Friends of mine from S. Korea and India say all of their math and science college courses were taught with Schaum's as the textbooks.

If I'm remembering correctly, Allison went to Cal Tech. (Is that right?)

update: wrong

Allison attended MIT.

I'm becoming a loyal customer of Schaum's today.

how to bypass high school

an email from my sister:

Speaking of just sending C. to community college and being done with it...as you know that's what we are doing with M. out here in California. She's halfway through her first year of high school and hates it. The solution: we will homeschool her through one of the zillions of charter schools until she turns 16. [ed. note: My sister isn't talking about homeschooling as the rest of us know it. I believe the CA term is "independent schools." I'll check. Better yet, I'll get her to explain!]

What the home schooled high school kid does is enroll in the local community college. During what would be her 10th grade year, she will be working on UC general education requirements. JCs are designed to meet needs of very basic learners on up, so high school kids can complete the necessary pre-reqs (tranlation: high school level classes) needed should they not test into the college level class.

Now there's a bit more to this. At 16, M. will proficiency out of high school. A proficiency is a bad thing if that's all you plan to do as it ranks below the GED. Essentially, to pass, all a student needs is a pulse. Why proficiency out? If he proficiencies out of high school, the youth is free to enroll full time in college (prior to proficiencying out of high school, students are limited to 11 units a semester; plus you do have to play some games with the charter school that get tedious).

Now, why this plan?

First of all, you avoid high school craziness.

Second, you avoid all the stress of AP, SAT testing, etc. You see, what parents don't realize, or seem to disbelieve despite admissions officers stating this fact, is that transfer students do not submit high school transcripts. All that matters is your college record along with any unique entry requirements in the school/major of choice.

Third, if you've got a mature kid, they get a jump on college. At 18 when Michelle's friends are graduating from high school, she will be ready to transfer into the UC system as a junior.

Fourth, it's a huge money saver. CC classes are $12 a unit (and for homeschool students that fee is waived; plus the homeschool charter pays for many of the college textbooks). Additionally, we'll save $27,000 a year (tuition/housing at UCLA) for the two years Michelle attends the local CC fulfilling the general education requirements she would have had to take during her first two years at UCLA.

Fifth, admissions officers at the universities will tell you it's easier to get accepted as a transfer than a freshman.

I tell you, this is a huge discovery. I asked the admissions officer at our CC why tons of high school kids weren't flocking in and her exact words were, "It's because their parents can't wrap their heads around the concept." She said she will tell parents what I just spelled out here and they don't believe her. Parents are that engrained in the belief that their kids must suffer through high school and take those AP classes.

Classic example: Michelle's dear friend is going to enroll in a $37,000 a year boarding school in the Bay Area as a 10th grader. He hates high school and figures this will solve his problems and be his ticket into college.

Of course, our plan isn't for everyone. You do need a level of emotional maturity that some kids don't have. But, it really should be an option seriously considered.

I'm trying to figure out how this might work here in New York state where we don't have an independent study option that I know of. I should see whether we have any kind of proficiency-ing out option.

What I also don't know is whether kids can take the Regents exams on their own. As far as I can tell, your school district controls the tests - but that can't be, right? Homeschooled kids would have to be able to take Regents.

I wonder if Chris' guidance counselor knows.

Learning & The Brain Conference in SF, Next in

I have come back from the Learning and the Brain conference every day with noble intentions of transcribing my posts into meaningful summaries of what I have heard and what I have learned....only to fall asleep over the computer. As I am now, and it is only 8:45.

If you are interested in the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and education, you might want to join the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society:

The mission of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES) is to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration in biology, education and the cognitive and developmental sciences. Science and practice will benefit from rich, bi-directional interaction. As research contributes to usable knowledge for education, practice can help to define promising research directions and contribute to the refinement of testable hypotheses. The Society invites researchers and practitioners at all levels of education to explore the questions and proposed solutions that emerge at the intersection of mind, brain and education. We seek to create environments where ideas are welcomed and at the same time critically and rigorously examined.

The Society’s principal goal is to foster dynamic relations between neuroscience, genetics, cognitive science, development, and education so that each field benefits from and influences work in the others, including questions asked, phenomena addressed, and methods employed.

The next Learning and the Brain conference is April 26-29 , 2008, in Cambridge, MA, which is more focused on brain plasticity and adult learning. Go check it out.

making every possible mistake

I'm a new soul.
I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit ‘bout how to give and take.
But since I came here…..felt the joy and the fear.....finding myself making every possible mistake.

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

I'm a young soul in this very strange world hoping I could learn a bit ‘bout what is true and fake.
But why all this hate?
Try to communicate.
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make.

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

This is a happy end.
'course you don't understand.
Everything you have done......
why's everything so wrong?

This is a happy end.
Come and give me your hand.
I'll take you far away.

[Refrain]:
I'm a new soul I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit ‘bout how to give and take. But since I came here…..felt the joy and the fear…..finding myself making every possible mistake.

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la....

I am moved by this song.

Given that it's the number 1 download on iTunes, that's me and everyone else, I guess.

woo hoo! (Friday edition)

C. earned 36 out of 34 points on his math quiz this week.

A+

Sure takes the sting out of the 79 he got on his midterm a couple of weeks back. (Can you say "mixed review"?)^*

This week's test included the following problems:

One year ago, the average price of a h ome computer system was $1500. Today, the average price is $1100. By what percent has the average cost of a home computer system decreased?

and

Lauren bought organic crackers for $4 after receiving a 25% discount., What was the original price of the crackers?

Seven months ago, in July, C. had no idea how to figure a 10% discount. Five months ago he began this school year with a D- on his first math test.

C+ first quarter grade.

B- second quarter.

More recently: scattered As on quizzes.

Now this.

He's going to make it.

Knock on wood.


tutors and more tutors

I keep hearing about tutors. Lots of kids in the class, it seems, are being tutored. More and more as the year goes along, I gather. C. says one of his pals "has a whole brigade of tutors."

Swell.

This week I learn that at least 2 of the kids are being tutored by other math teachers in the school.

Hiring a math teacher in the school to tutor your child is definitely a good idea, because a math teacher from the school comes to tutoring sessions equipped with:

• class syllabus

• course scope and sequence

• teacher’s edition of the textbook

• answer key

• solution manual

• supplemental Glencoe practice workbooks and answer keys aligned to Glencoe Algebra textbook

• attendance at department meetings; access to informal conversations amongst colleagues, etc.

• knowledge of material to be covered on upcoming quizzes and tests

As C. said when he mentioned the teacher-tutors of Irvington, "It's sort of like insider trading."

Yes, it is, son.

Poor C. He has no one but his mother to help, and I don't have any of these things. No syllabus. No scope and sequence. No answer key. And certainly no aforeknowledge of what's going to be on the test. ^**

It's not that I haven't asked for these things. I have. I've asked. I've asked repeatedly.

I don't have them.

Because I don't have any of these things, and because math teachers here in Irvington ($22,000 per pupil funding) don't collect or correct math homework, I have had to work every homework set myself so that I could correct C's homework.

I finished Homework #73 during the Super Bowl.

After I complete each assignment, C. and I compare notes, figure out which one of us got the wrong answer when our answers differ, and then re-do the problems we missed.

My situation reminds me of Ginger Rogers.

She did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and wearing heels.


^* more on this subject anon

^** It's possible the other kids' teacher-tutors don't have aforeknowledge of what's going to be on the test, either. But how would I know?


can you FOIL the answers?
woo hoo, Friday edition
differentiated instruction in action

code of silence, part 2

more on why parents don't criticize their schools:


from Molly:

I have 2 in public school and 1 who now homeschools.

Once I pulled out of the neighborhood school, I suddenly started hearing all sorts of misgivings from other parents. It was as if they felt it was "safe" to talk to me about how they really felt about the school after I made my feelings public. Parents are concerned, but think that everyone else is happy with the school so they must be wrong.

from Tex:

Many people see their own kids as the problem, NOT the school. That attitude was enormously appealing to me. However, when I began to see the nonsense that sometimes passes as teaching, I changed my tune and started to consider that the school was not holding up their end of the bargain. I began to call them on it, and their response has been to do nothing differently. And, to sometimes ignore me.

Sense of futility.

and:

People who don't have kids in the schools need to get involved.

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, I think people who don’t have kids in the schools usually cannot know the problems as well as the parents with school kids. They’re not as motivated and they view it as someone else’s problem. Of course, their protestations are often discounted by the powers that be and by the other parents.

Steve H on the same subject:

Many of the best advocates for change did have kids in the public schools. They got fed up and went elsewhere. Now they wash their hands of the problem.

Twenty to twenty-five percent of the kids in our town go to other schools. Some of the parents worked very hard to get the public schools to change or offer alternatives. They wouldn't. Now, these parents are accused of wanting an "elite" education and dismissed out-of-hand. The schools know that this is not true.

They just want to do what they want to do, and they try to focus all arguments on money. They would do more, but they just don't have the money.

concerned parent:

Of course, I know of a few people who do. We are, of course, the exception. People move here for the schools. It would never cross their minds that homeschooling would be an option-- a very good option, in fact.

Strangely enough, my daughter is promoting the value of homeschooling whenever she can. She has friends begging their parents to homeschool them. When parents hear all the interesting things my daughter has to say, how eloquently and coherently she can present her ideas, and that she is not socially dwarfed by being educated at home, whatever stereotypes they may have had about homeschooling are challenged.

In some way, this may open up a dialogue between parents are their own children about what is going on in school and what they are learning (or not learning). It just may cause parents to take pause and re-evaluate what's happening in our schools with a more critical eye.

I love it!

Excellent.


homeschooling in the D.C. area:

In the Washington, D.C., area, which is probably just as affluent as that of the above poster, homeschooling is very popular, attracting people of diverse educational philosophies. Many of the posters on this blog would be candidates for homeschooling. My wife and I homeschool our two daughters.

That is very encouraging to hear.

another student taking ownership of his learning

more from Amazon.com:

Barron's Regents Exams and Answers : Earth Science is one of the most valuable tools in studying for the New York state regents exam in Earth Science. It has many of the past regents to practice from, answers explained, and tips for when you take the regents. In the answers explained section it will tell you why the answer is right and even why other answers are wrong! I got a 95 on the regents with the help of this book. If you are taking Earth Science I would highly recommend that you get this book.

Why have teachers at all?

Just buy the kids a bunch of Barron's test prep books and tell them when and where.


a student taking ownership of his learning
another student taking ownership of his learning

a student taking ownership of his learning

from Amazon.com:

I reccomend that the best way for studying for the regents is taking practice tests after practice tests. You soon to being to basically memorize the questions on it. I got a 98 on the regents and tauight myself the whole course.

Sold.


a student taking ownership of his learning
another student taking ownership of his learning

book club - Don't Shoot the Dog - money for grades

I've finished Don't Shoot the Dog - amazing.

Life-altering.

And, best of all: will get a 13-year old to do math with his mother!

Have been trying to steal time to write posts about the book, and then for some reason was inspired to compose what should have been a first post here as a Comment on Ken's blog instead.

subject: "extinguishing" a behavior you don't like by putting the behavior on cue.

Code of silence?

In a comment that Catherine pulled out, I suggested that it's practically taboo for people to talk critically about the school their children attend. (Obviously that's not the case at KTMII, but this group is the exception to the rule.)

The question is - why?

Why is it that people are so accustomed to talking openly about every service they receive - cable, air travel, house painting, phone service, retail, etc. - except for public education?

If you have a problem with most services, you complain to the service provider, and you're not afraid to talk with other people about your experiences. But that doesn't happen in education. Again, why?

Is it a sense of futility? Are people afraid that their children will be punished somehow because their parents are rabble-rousers? Do people feel outmatched - on the wrong side of "the expert advantage"? Is it because people don't have any hard proof on which to base their arguments? Is it just because that's how it is - there's community pressure to hold your tongue? Or is it something else?

Why?

Non-linear Rubric Grading

After two semesters, here are the results of 4 tests and 1 quiz.

29/35 = 83% - A rubric grade of 3

39/45 = 87% - A rubric grade of 3

11/12 = 92% - A rubric grade of 4

31/33 = 94% - A rubric grade of 4

41/42 = 98% - A rubric grade of 5


All of the questions were simple problems that were either right or wrong. There was no partial credit.

The teachers say that a 3 is supposed to be "Meeting Expectations", as defined by the state, but clearly, an 87% is much better than that. Many kids think a 3 is a 'C'. A 4 is clearly an A, and a 5 is an A+, although one teacher said that a 5 is really more than an A+. You have to show "critical thinking" that goes beyond the assignment definition. So, to get a 5, you have to do more than what they tell you to do, but they won't tell you what that is. They added the 5 in the last few years. I guess that's their solution to giving more to the capable students ... but it's up to them to figure out what that is. The other benefit of this is that if students don't get 5's, then it's not the school's fault, and parents can't complain that they aren't doing enough. Adding 5's didn't mean that teachers had to do an ounce more work.

If kids don't master the material when they are young, then it's a developmentally appropriate issue. When kids do poorly when they get older, then they aren't taking responsibility for their own learning. It's a no-lose situation for them. That's why they like Everyday Math. No expectations of mastery when they are young and then flunk them when they struggle with the Math Boxes in sixth grade.

Smileyface

neat

Somebody on the animal ethology list linked to his page. Haven't read yet; apparently he was an assistant to Konrad Lorenz.

Fun with decimal conversion

I am tutoring a supersmart, high-SES seventh grader, and his class is converting repeating decimals to fractions using algebra. This is in a Chicago public school in a "gentrified" neighborhood.

Now, I have been happily converting repeating decimals of the type 0.3333..., 0.6666..., 0.232323... and 0.753753753... for a while using algebra. I was initially thrown when the decimals he was given for homework were of the type 0.244444..., 0.3020202... and 0.4213213213. I hadn't encountered those before.

I thought some KTM readers might enjoy trying their hands on those.

your worst nightmare

Walk into one of those churches on a typical Sunday morning, and you will find only a few, startling islands of brown or blond hair amid a sea of gray. Almost 20 percent of the population is over the age of 65.

[snip]

The former Midlakes Middle School, which sits in neighboring Phelps, has transmogrified into “Vienna Gardens,” a private independent-living facility where my grandmother now lives. The bones of the schoolhouse are still clearly visible under the carpet and overstuffed couches that line the halls; the residents take their meals in the cavernous former gymnasium.

source:
No Country for Old Men
by Megan McArdle
"The Baby Boomers’ retirement will change the texture of society in ways we’ve scarcely begun to contemplate. A dispatch from America’s coming silver age."

Clearly we need a living will-type document people can use to inform their adult children they do not wish to live in a former middle school no matter how demented they may be.

what Brett would do with $1,000,000

I just remembered that I had not included my own answer to the question.

I would divvy it up into piles of $200,000 each so I could sustain my work for five years. I would identify a smallish district (10-20 schools) and begin a long-term, community-wide campaign to engage parents as customers of public education.

For some reason, talking about public education in anything less than uncritical terms has become taboo - which is ridiculous. It's our money and our kids - they exist to serve their communities.

Remind parents that they have an eminent right to demand accountability, performance, and responsiveness. With a five-year funded effort, you should be able to influence public opinion and ultimately the local elections process. Once you have a community and school board full of people with a consumer mentality, you'll see the public start to take the reins again of this public service.

Verrrry interesting.

Brett's right; speaking ill of one's school is taboo, or close to. The idea of putting some resources into engaging parents as customers rather than fundraisers and loyal fans -- yup. I'm on board for that one.

Steve H on schools and assumptions

. . . . This relates to a main theme I have been pushing for years; education based on individuals rather than statistics. I can understand that the government wants to improve averages (statistics), but this comes at the expense of individual educational opportunities. As long as education is based on statistics, the affluent will provide the needed opportunities and the poor will get the baseline.... It's nice that psychologists will add some real science to the debate, but it's not the solution.

Years ago, I had a discussion with a member of our school committee who really liked the idea of IEP's for all students. I thought it odd at the time because she was a major proponent of mixed-ability, child-centered learning. I guess she thought schools could have it both ways. Differentiated Learning sounds nice, but most schools use it as cover for their fundamental belief in mixed-ability learning. As I mentioned long ago, our school started calling it Differentiated Learning instead of Differentiated Instruction because the teachers don't instruct and they want the kids to take responsibility for their learning.

How can psychologists set a baseline for instruction when schools do not believe in instruction? Will it be a baseline for instruction just to meet NCLB? [ed.: the answer is yes]

What's missing from this discussion are parents and their opinions of what constitutes a good education for their individual children. I emphasize the word opinions because this is not the domain of ed school graduates or psychologists, who now seem to be playing the statistical baseline game.

I would rather see psychologists stick with the individual. I'd rather see psychologists define what is an expected learning level for individual children. But what I would really like to see is schools assuming that all kids can get into Harvard (no matter what a psychologist says), not that all kids can get over the minimal NCLB requirements, or what they call "all kids can learn."

I may have to tattoo this onto my forehead.

My own district, which includes parents who attended Harvard themselves, scorns the very idea that a parent might wish his child to follow in his footsteps.

"Don't push your child."

"Every child has his place."

"Parents need to let go."

"Let your child self-advocate."

etc.

Richard Elmore posts coming right up.

The rich really are different from you and me. Rich school districts, too.

in Times Square

C. says there will be pandemonium at the middle school today.

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

jeez

I think these Times Square revelers better do a group reflection.

go Giants

woo hoo

"I don't know if he did get rattled, but he had grass stains."

on a certain arrogance, part 2

A couple of years ago I posted this passage from Siegfried Engelmann's The War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse summarizing Galen Alessi's classic study of school psychologists:

I didn't post the full passage, however, which I re-read last night. The full passage has to do with arrogance. Seeing as how Concerned has raised the subject, I thought I'd chime in:

Diagnosis Diagnosed: A Systemic Reaction, Professional School Psychology, 3 (2), 145-151


Galen Alessi wrote an article in 1988 in which he diagnosed diagnosis. He asked 50 school psychologists to indicate how many cases they referred during the year. The average was about 100 per psychologist; so the group provided information on about 5000 kids. Alessi next tried to determine the different causes of the kid's learning problems. How many of the kids had the learning problem because of inappropriate curriculum? How many had learning problems because of poor teaching, or because of school administration problems? How many kids had problems because of home problems, or because there was some defect in the kid?

The percentages came out something like this:

• The curriculum caused 0% of the referred problems:

• The teaching practices caused 0% of the referred problems;

• The school administration caused 0% of the referred problems;

• The home environment caused 10-20% of the referred problems;

• The child caused 100% of the referred problems.

The results tend to leave little doubt about whether the school psychologists work for the schools or the children. It further leaves no doubt that the sorting machine is alive and well. Consider the presumed infallibility of the schools suggested by this outcome. Not one of 5000 failures is presumed to be caused by school practices.

[snip]

The arrogance of many administrators is not apparent in their personality. They may appear thoughtful, concerned, and open to suggestions. Their arrogance is in their decisions and their actions. Their actions reflect a fundamental lack of important values. Galen Alessi alluded to the problem with school psychologists: “Mere logic and research data will not change the role of school psychology, because the problem is not one of science but of values.”

Source: War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse by Siegfried Engelmann, page 65-6

I hadn't thought about the arrogance this betrays.

100% infallibility!

The schools involved in this study have never, in 5000 cases of school failure, been at fault. Perfection has been achieved.

Years ago, when C. was first in school, I noticed that our district never admitted error. Ever. Not admitting error was a principle.

Very often, though, when a problem was brought to someone's attention, the school would publicly deny it but then privately fix it. I always thought that was fine. The school was responsive in its way.

Today, given what we've seen in the middle school, I've changed my view. Schools need formal, public mechanisms for identifying error, admitting error, and working with parents and students to remediate errors in teaching, curriculum, and/or administration.

I think I've mentioned my friend who sends her children to a private school down south a ways. The school gives the kids standardized tests 4 times a year, then meets with parents to go over the results. If a student has fallen behind in an area the school tells his parents why they believe this has occurred.

This means telling parents whether or not other students have been having the same problem.

If a child is the only one having a problem (this will be a true statement as opposed to the non-true statement that is routinely made or implied to parents in public schools), the school says so and tells the child's parents what steps the school is taking to bring him or her back up to speed. I remember one spring my friend's older child had lagged in usage of personal pronouns. This was a bright and capable child, so the school gave the family a packet of worksheets for their child to do over the summer. They said that was all it would take, and that was all it took.

If all of the kids, or a large portion of them, have fallen off the track in a particular area the school says so and explains what they are doing to bring everyone back up to speed.

All schools should function this way.

If a student is having a problem the school should:

• know the child is having a problem
  
• remediate the problem at once
  
• analyze the situation to see why the problem developed
  

That is not what happens in public schools.

Instead, in public schools the child develops a problem and the teacher grades his work accordingly. Parents find out when the report card comes home. If the district sends out Interim Reports parents can get the bad news sooner instead of later.

And that is that.

If the parents care to contact the teacher or the school, fine. If not, that's fine, too.

In either case, the solution will be Extra Help, which the child and/or the parent will be responsible for "seeking."

If Extra Help doesn't work, there's nothing more to say.



Galen Alessi on the odds

First, the psychologists were asked whether all agreed that each of the just-mentioned, five factors may play a primary role in a given school learning or behavior problem. They almost always agreed. Next, they were asked for the number of cases each had examined in the past year to determine the source of learning problems. The answer was usually about 120. Using 100 as a round number, multiplied by the group size of 50, yields about 5,000 cases studied by the group in the past year.

At the next step, the group was asked for the number of psychological reports written that concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to curriculum factors. The answer was usually none. All cases out of 5,000 examined confirmed that their schools somehow had been fortunate enough to have adopted only the most effective basal curricula.

When asked for the number of reports that concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to inappropriate teaching practices, the answer also was none. All cases out of 5,000 examined proved that their districts had been fortunate enough to have hired only the most skilled, dedicated, and best prepared teachers in the land.

When asked how many reports concluded that the referred problem was due primarily to school administrative factors, the answer again was none. All cases out of 5,000 examined demonstrated that their districts had hired and retained only the nation's very best and brightest school administrators.

When asked how many reports concluded that parent and home factors were primarily responsible for the referred problem, the answer ranged from 500 to 1,000 (10% to 20%). These positive findings indicated that we were finally getting close to the source of educational problems in their schools. Some children just don't have parents who are smart, competent, or properly motivated to help their children do well in school.

Finally, I asked how many reports concluded that child factors were primarily responsible for the referred problem. The answer was 100%. These 5,000 positive findings uncovered the true weak link in the educational process in these districts: the children themselves. If only these districts had better functioning children with a few more supportive parents, there would be no educational difficulties.

As an addendum, I offered informal data collected in local Individual Educational Planning Committee (IEPC) meetings that suggest that family factors are invoked most often when the parent does not attend the meeting or if the parent is involved in a way deemed inappropriate by the school staff. Otherwise, child factors alone seem to carry the explanatory burden for school learning and behavior problems.

One does not need complex statistical analyses to know that these results are significant beyond the .0000001 level. The set of all cases studied by these school psychologists comprises a needs assessment for their districts. And, the results indicate clearly no need to improve curricula, teaching practices, nor school administrative practices and management. The only needs involve somehow improving the stock of children enrolled in the system, and some of their parents. But, it is equally unclear how school psychologists can help resolve this kind of problem. School psychologists seem to define school problems in ways that cannot be resolved.

Wait!

I know the answer to that!

Extra Help.

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

Until schools agree to connect teaching with achievement -- inputs with outputs -- and to do so publicly, matters will not improve.

weird synchroniticy

I suppose synchronicity is always a little weird, but this is especially so.

I'm working on my chapter on chickens, and had just written these words:

This reminds me of a talk I heard Earl Butz, who was the Secretary of Agriculture XXXX

Then I hit Google because I couldn't remember which president Earl Butz served under and discovered this headline:

Earl Butz, Ex-US Agriculture, Dies at 98 (Upate1) - 38 minutes ago

creepy

On a Certain Arrogance

"Unmindful of the lessons of educational history, regardless of the universal rules of logic, they proclaim the validity of untested theories and untried ideals, and denounce as traitors and maligners all who do not agree with them.

It was so comfortable to imagine that, thru interesting reading and thru story-telling and thru counting the petals of flowers and the legs and ears of animals, and writing about them, children could learn arithmetic, and composition and grammar, and that those tiresome drills to which old-fogy teachers and superintendents pinned their faith could be neglected with impunity! Hence thousands of teachers followed this new will-o'-the-wisp. The results were most deplorable."

William Henry Maxwell
On a Certain Arrogance in Educational Theorists
February 1914

We're closing in on a century since Maxwell was brave enough to call out the "educational theorists" and yet, here we are in very much the same place. I find it ironic that the pedagogy schools of education and public school administrators laud as progressive, cutting edge, and 21st century was outdated even one hundred years ago.

Ed schools have institutionalized the arrogance that Maxwell found "most deplorable". The poor man must be spinning in his grave.


on a certain arrogance, part 2

news to me

instructivist looked up the top 100 teacher salaries in the state of Illinois:


Top 100 Teacher Salaries
2006 search results.

Bode Jeanne E $441,612 CARY CCSD 26

Morrison Donna M $439,803 BELLWOOD SD 88

Schackmann Deborah K $329,404 SOUTH EASTERN SP ED PROGRAM

Marszalek Christine D $174,403 LOCKPORT TWP HSD 205

Hall James W $170,172 LOCKPORT TWP HSD 205

Gonsiorowski Marvin $165,370 LEMONT TWP HSD 210

Vallicelli Richard E $164,232 LEYDEN CHSD 212

Swords Robert G $163,327 LEYDEN CHSD 212

Martinez Lino $163,184 ADLAI E STEVENSON HSD 125

Wolter James H $163,144 NORTHFIELD TWP HSD 225

Sincora Craig D $162,432 ADLAI E STEVENSON HSD 125

Weber Peter W $161,622 ADLAI E STEVENSON HSD 125

Vanderschoot Gerard $161,502 LEMONT TWP HSD 210

Dezurko Steve $160,729 LEYDEN CHSD 212

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

I wonder if these folks grade on a curve.

SAT lollapalooza

right here

lots of good stuff

Question of the day

If you wanted to make a real impact on improving K-12 education, and someone gave you one million dollars to do it with* - what would you do?

And I'm not talking here about what you would do as a school or district official: I'm talking about KTMII participants. Informed parents. Outside agitators.

Would you create your own school to show how it should be done? Would you launch a public engagement campaign in your district to empower other parents? Would you buy ads across the country to let people know about Singapore Math and Direct Instruction? Would you underwrite a voucher campaign? Would you spend it lobbying public officials to make changes you think should be made? Or what?

A million dollars isn't what it used to be - you have to pick your battles and leverage that investment to the extent possible.

So what would you do - and why?

* No, I do not have a million dollars to give you - this is just a thought exercise to see where there greatest points of leverage in school improvement might be.

who am I, college edition

I love Michele Hernandez. Even if she can't add.

You'll notice that most colleges have you start by filling in your parents' college backgrounds and professions. I know that when I filled in these boxes, I was convinced that the admissions committee would be impressed by my parents' backgrounds and jobs. I thought I would get "extra points" because I came from a family that valued education. In fact, I thought the committee would see that I had a good chance of succeeding since I came from a successful family. I could not have been more wrong.

The main reason colleges ask this question is to see if you qualify as a "legacy" at their college, meaning that either your mother or father graduated from their school (see chapter 12 for more details). Another reason is to see if you have come from a much less sophisticated background and therefore would have lower standardized test scores and perhaps a less polished application. What these questions are not there for is to impress the reader, some of whom have been known to harbor grudges against kids who "have it easy." It's a matter of preconceived notions and expectations, as well as personal biases.

If an officer is reading the application of a student from Groton whose father went to Harvard Medical School and is the chief neurosurgeon at a major hospital and whose mom has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is in private practice, he starts out by expecting a lot of the student. Clearly, the student comes from a family where there has always been enough money to put a child in the finest nursery schools, kindergarten, after-school activities, and so on. Undoubtedly, they have been able to afford private tutors for both standardized tests and high school subjects. If the officer then sees that this applicant has mid-600 SAT scores, a B high school average, and has been involved in extracurricular activities such as lacrosse, sailing, and horseback riding, he is bound not to be very impressed. The officer's thoughts would run as follows:

He has had every possible advantage and still only managed mediocre [by Ivy League standards, that is] grades and scores and has never really gone beyond the classroom to seek additional academic challenges.

Now let's look at a student with similar achievements from a totally different background. The first thing the officer sees about Susan is that neither parent went to college; her father is an auto mechanic and her mom is a postal clerk. She goes to a poor inner-city high school where only 15 percent of the population goes on to four-year colleges. Before the officer even starts reading her application, he mentally adjusts his expectations and attitude. No need to feel threatened or jealous of the advantages she might have had. Despite her background, and the fact that she could not afford SAT prep courses, she was always a reader from early childhood. She scores 660 on the verbal, 650 on math, and ends up ranked tenth in her class of 110 students (let's say she earned mostly A's, with a few B's), taking the hardest course load available to her. She is captain of two athletic teams, has done significant community-service work, and teachers say she adds that extra spark to class discussions. Susan would get the vote of any highly selective admissions committee because she rose to the top with limited resources and managed to stand out. The readers can feel good, thinking that they are helping out someone less fortunate by giving her that ticket to an Ivy League school so she can succeed in life.

Some of you may take my advice too much to heart and be tempted to lie or invent. I am not suggesting that path. I am a firm believer that the cream always rises to the top and the best kids shine, no matter where they are from. What I am saying is that you don't need to be overly specific. You have to state where your parents were educated, but when it comes time to put down their jobs, you might want to be somewhat vague. For example, if your father is the president and CEO of a big-name investment bank, the committee is going to be expecting quite an amazing applicant, one who has gone beyond his comfy lifestyle to make himself known. You might just write down "banker" for occupation. It's not a lie, but at the same time, it doesn't create such a high expectation in terms of wealth and privilege. Rather than saying "chief neurosurgeon," why not just M.D.? Rather than "chief partner in a major law firm," just put "lawyer." I'm not suggesting you deceive the readers; rather, I'm proposing that you be modest and exercise a level of humility in both your personal part of the application and the description of your parents' jobs.

A is for Admission
Chapter 1

So . . . is author out? And if author is out, then what?

I'm pretty sure housewife-blogger, while admirably non-hoity-toity, doesn't lower expectations in quite the way postal clerk might. Housewife-blogger, in fact, could be just as annoying in its way as neurosurgeon dad.

Maybe I'll have C. put down math warrior when the time comes.

inflexible knowledge redux

Another example of inflexible knowledge.

C. and his friend J. were assigned a "digit word problem" for homework. Example:

The sum of the digits of a two-digit number is 7. When the digits are reversed, the number is increased by 27. Find the number.

source: purplemath

Neither of them had a clue how to do it. (I think digit problems had been taught in class that day for the first time. They'd both seen 1 or 2 worked examples.)

I tried to teach it by writing the number 23 and then, below that, writing a variable for each digit, then asking them something wildly imprecise like, "What would you have to do to these variables to get them to equal 23?"

Actually, as I think about it now, I don't know what words a person educated in mathematics would use to express this, so maybe you all can fill me in.

In any case, they did get the idea they were to let x equal 2 and y equal 3, and they were to write an equation using these values for x and y that would equal 23.



Looking at this arrangement of numerals and variables didn't help.

J. said, "x + y?"

"That's 5," I said.

"x times y?"

"That's 6."

They were stumped.

This is a classic case of inflexible thinking, for two reasons.

First of all, they've seen "plus" and "times" more often than they've seen 10x + y. Confronting a novel problem, their brains went straight to the more familiar instead of the less familiar.

Of course, that's what a brain ought to do: When you hear hoof beats on the bridge don't think of zebras.

The problem was that, pace Willingham, once they figured out the hoof beats weren't made by horses they didn't think of zebras next.

Both boys know how to set up word problems using letter variables; both boys are proficient (or close to) at solving number and consecutive integer problems. They can set up and solve coin problems, distance problems, and age problems; they can also set up and solve simple linear function problems.

They've been writing algebraic expressions for at least a couple of years.

And they were stopped cold by a simple digit problem.

I wish I'd taken notes on what I did next. I think I said something like, "What is the 2?" (That's imprecise, too, right? What's the correct language there? "What value does 2 represent"?)

I don't think I had to go as far as to remind them of the base-10 place system, but, on the other hand, maybe I did and I'm repressing it.

In any case, the moment it dawned on them that the key was recognizing the 2 as 20 they could both set up and solve digit problems rapidly and efficiently.

Knowledge transfer and generalization are core, unsolved problems in education.

update: Looking at this now, I think I should have had them start with the "3" and write an equation using y alone, then had them write an equation using x and 2 (or 20). If I wasn't simply going to show them a worked example myself (should I have? I don't know) I needed to break this down into the smallest, simplest possible steps. And I should have started with the ones digit, not the tens.

I think.


cumulative practice and problem solving

Speaking of which, I keep promising to write a post about one of the three most valuable papers I've ever read on the subject of teaching math:

The Effects of Cumulative Practice on Mathematics Problem Solving
Kristin H. Mayfield and Philip N. Chase

Here is the introduction:

Over 35 years of international comparisons of mathematics achievement have indicated problems with the performance of students from the United States. According to the latest international study, the average score of U.S. students was below the international average, and the top 10% of U.S. students performed at the level of the average student in Singapore, the world leader (Wingert, 1996). In addition, recent tests administered by the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that 70% of fourth graders could not do arithmetic with whole numbers and solve problems that required one manipulation. Moreover, 79% of eighth graders and 40% of 12th graders could not compute with decimals, fractions,
and percentages, could not recognize geometric figures, and could not solve simple equations; and 93% of 12th graders failed to perform basic algebra manipulations and solve problems that required multiple manipulations (Campbell, Voelkl, & Donahue, 1997).

These statistics reveal students’ deficits in the fundamental skills of mathematics as well as mathematical reasoning and problem solving. Indeed, poor problem-solving skills have been targeted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (Carpenter, Corbitt, Kepner, Lindquist, & Reys, 1980; Carpenter, Kepner, Corbitt, Lindquist, & Reys, 1980; Kouba et al., 1988; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989, 2000). Thus, it seems appropriate that current behavior-analytic research in mathematics education should address problem-solving skills as well as basic mathematics skills (e.g., Wood, Frank, & Wacker, 1998).

I'm hoping I can get to this later on today.

But first -- must write chickens chapter!

SAT question of the day

SAT question of the day

Vicky S just reminded me of these questions; I've been subscribing to them for awhile now, too.

So today I'm going to subscribe for C.

I'm sure he'll be pleased.

Michelle Hernandez on admissions & SATs

The most obvious result of recentering is the fact that what used to be considered an unusually high score on the SAT I is now just an average score. To be exact, for years a combined score of 1,400 was considered the dividing line between normal scores and extremely high scores for highly selective colleges. This si no longer the case. The average combined score for the admitted class of 2000 at Dartmouth was over 1,410. In fact, for the class of 2000, the average scores of all 11, 400 applicants who applied to Dartmouth (this includes all the weakest applicants in the pol) was 662V, 677M, almost 1,340 combined. For the class of 2001, the average was even higher: 664V, 683M.

While it used to be extremely rare to see students with verbal scores over 700 (remember, only 1 percent of all students taking the unrecentered test scored over a 700, and those students could not have missed more than three or four questions on the whole test to achieve that score), now it is much more common. In fact, half of the members of the class of 2000 scored over 710 on the verbal section, about the same number who scored over 710 on the math section.

Here is an SAT I breakdown of the acceptance rates at Dartmouth for the class of 20000:

Verbal SAT Math SAT
399 or less 0%
400-499 1.6%
450-499 4.1%
500-549 5.4%
550-599 7.5%
600-649 10.1%
650-699 14.8%
700-749 28.2%
750-800 52.2%

Math SAT
399 or less 0%
400-499 2.4%
450-499 6.3%
500-549 5.4%
550-599 7.1%
600-649 9.5%
650-699 15.1%
700-749 24.4%
750-800 44.0%

All these statistics taken together mean that parents, students, and counselors need to readjust their standard for excellence dramatically in terms of scores. When a college counselor or a parent calls an admissions officer to ask whether or not a student has a chance of being admitted, he usually starts out by announcing that the student has very high SAT I scores. The problem is, when the officer asks what he means by "very high," he usually says, "Over fourteen hundred," which, as we have just seen, is not only not "very high"; it is actually below the class average.

[snip]

It is still, as it has always been, more impressive to see high verbal scores than high math scores, since most students at the highly selective colleges will be doing much more writing and reading than math. Verbal ability is still a good indicator of how strong a reader the student is. The ability to read well will ultimately have a bigger impact on most college students than the ability to do SA I math very well, especially since the level of SAT math is not particularly high. There are many students who do terribly on the SAT I math and yet who manage to get the highest score of 5 on the AP calculus exam. If any math is useful at the college level, it is calculus, not the basic math covered on the SAT I. Therefore, SAT I scores of 750 V, 630M would be much more impressive for most highly selective colleges than a 640V, 780M, even though the latter score has a higher combined total by forty points.

The final point I want to make about interpreting SAT I recentered scores is that because most admissions officers are not gifted in math, there is still the tendency to use the 700 cut-off as the magic number between good and excellent scores, even though, as we have seen, the averag score is over 1,420 combined....Remember probably 99 percent of all current admissions officers took the old SAT I, the nonrecentered test. In their own personal histories, 1,400 has always been a high score. It is extremely difficult to consider applicants under a totally different system from the one you had in high school. [Hernandez' book was published in 1997, so this is 10 years ago.]

[snip]

Oddly enough, and I saw this during my last two years in admissions, officers still respond to any scores over 700 by saying that they are strong, whereas if the scores are in the mid to high 600s, they tend to refer to them as average. This is simply not accurate. In Ivy applicant pools, a 700V, 700M is now an average, even below-average, score, although some officers will not be able to draw the correct conclusion when analyzing student scores.

Despite this inability on the officers' part to be 100 percent accurate in interpreting your scores 100 percent of the time, they will undoubtedly improve as the years go on and they see years' worth of recentered scores. In the meantime, all applicants should be aware of the reality of SAT I, which is that if you want to stand out in the Ivy applicant pool, you should aim for a combined score of about 1,490 or higher, or at least a verbal score over 730 or so, which would allow you to have a modest 650 math score and still look strong in the applicant pool

source:
A Is for Admissions: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges
by Michele A. Hernandez
pp. 46-49

Is she right about SAT-level math?

That strikes me as wrong -- at least based in the fact that I constantly see algebra called the "gatekeeper to advanced courses in math," etc.

Hernandez was an assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth. She's a high end college counselor now. Mathew says she's fantastic, and her books are terrific.

Garrison Keillor and NCLB

Of all the people who could be expected to defend NCLB, I never would have included Garrison Keillor on that list. Yet here he is, on Salon.com.

The heart of it:

Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about theories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.

There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, especially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.

Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted and will read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson; it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter. The No Child Left Behind initiative has plenty of flaws, but the Democrats who are trashing it should take another look at the Reading First program. It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children. Life is not a scrimmage. Grown-ups who stick with dogma even though it condemns children to second-class lives should be put on buses and sent to North Dakota to hoe wheat for a year.

Who’d a thunk it?

Hat tip to Alexander Russo at This Week in Education.

not your father's SAT

I probably won't be able to find his comment now, but I believe lrg has raised the question of whether student performance and school quality have in fact declined over the years or whether performance has remained the same while expectations have risen.

The answer is that performance has declined at all levels, including the top, although -- and this will strike most of us around here as ironic -- I think it's possible that performance in math may actually have risen in students who take the SAT. There is no question that performance on reading tests has declined across the board.

I spent quite a long time wondering about this issue myself. Had American schools really declined or did people just think they had? I became especially curious about this question after reading an edu-blogger's post saying that American schools "serve rich white kids well." (The original post seems to have been deleted from the blogger's archives.)

That struck me as wrong, but I didn't know.

For quite awhile I was on the lookout for evidence concerning advantaged white students, a phrase I prefer to "rich white kids." Eventually I learned that this question had been asked and answered. The decline is real. It started in 1969 and ended in the early 1980s.

Best sources for a quick trip through what has taken place:

Verbal, Math and Combined scores 1962-2001

SAT scores were "recentered" in 1995. Today's SAT-V scores are roughly 70 to 80 points higher than the same score prior to 1995: SAT I Individual Score Equivalents.

Best primer on decline in student achievement: Waiting for Utopia


decline at the top

The recentering of SAT scores is a major factor in suburban parents' perception that their children are attending high-quality schools. No one in the wider public knows the scores have changed -- and school districts don't make a habit of filling parents in on the real value of a 600 on the SAT-V.

A 600 today was a 520 in 1994. Same test, same raw score, different conversion formula.

No one knows. Parents "read" their kids' scores through the filter of their own scores back in the day.



more on SAT-M later

also see:
The Seeds of Growth

drive-by

The nonprofit National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) reports that, despite many calls for performance pay coming from state capitals, only 14 states require school systems to evaluate their public school teachers at least once a year, while some are much more lax than that. Tennessee, for example, requires evaluations of tenured teachers only twice a decade.

[snip]

Teachers union contracts dictate the professional requirements for teachers in most school districts. But the NCTQ study found that only two-thirds of them require teachers to be evaluated at least once a year and a quarter of them require evaluations only every three years.

The evaluations themselves are typically of little value—a single, fleeting classroom visit by a principal or other building administrator untrained in evaluation wielding a checklist of classroom conditions and teacher behaviors that often don’t even focus directly on the quality of teacher instruction. “It’s typically a couple of dozen items on a list: ‘Is presentably dressed,’ ‘Starts on time,’ ‘Room is safe,’ ‘The lesson occupies students,’ ” says Michigan State University Professor Mary Kennedy, author of Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform, who has studied teacher evaluation extensively. “In most instances, it’s nothing more than marking ‘satisfactory’ or ‘unsatisfactory.’”

It’s easy for teachers to earn high marks under these capricious rating systems, often called “drive-bys,” regardless of whether their students learn.

source: Rush to Judgment: Teacher Evaluation in Public Education
by Thomas Toch and Robert Rothman

My favorite was the department chair who told me that so-and-so was "an excellent teacher" because Department Chair had visited so-and-so's classroom and "all the students understand."

We were in the midst of a conversation about the fact that my own child, a member of so-and-so's class, manifestly did not understand.

That didn't affect Department Chair's evaluation because "he's the only one"^* and "you're the only parent complaining."^**

Principal concurred. "So and so is a fine young teacher. I've visited so-and-so's class many times."

That was it.

I've visited the classroom. They didn't even look at the freaking bulletin boards, for God's sake.


^* He wasn't.
^** I wasn't.

food fight!

Is School Choice Enough?

from Hirsch's take:

The choice movement is a structural approach. It relies on markets to improve outcomes, not venturing to offer guidance on precisely what the schools should be teaching. Such guidance would go against the “genius of the market” approach, which is to refrain from top-down interference with curriculum. Stern shows—rightly, I believe—that this is a fundamental failing of the choice movement.

But market-based “choice” is not the only structural reform of the recent past that has ignored substance. The government-funded “whole-school-reform” project was another metastructure that essentially said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” not concerning itself with what kinds of flowers. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law uses carrots and sticks to induce gains in reading and math. But it, too, is a structural approach, grandly leaving to states the details about what is taught and learned. The one area where the law does opine on substance—regarding the teaching of phonics—is the one area where genuine improvement has taken place in the earliest grades.

Let’s not forget the structural approach of the state-standards movement, either. Though state standards are, in my view, potentially the most promising reform project, they decline to offer guidance on the substance of what is taught and learned in the language arts, the most important area of early schooling.

[snip]

And then there’s the structural orientation of the dominant theories within the educational establishment—that activities, rather than “mere facts” or a “rote-learned” academic curriculum, will induce academic progress, and that children’s natural development will allow them to gain or “construct” the needed knowledge.

All of these ideas leave the grade-by-grade specifics of the curriculum to be determined by some quasi-divine agency—the magic of the market, the wisdom of the locality, the nature of the child—in short, not mere policy makers, but somebody or something else.

Yet the grade-by-grade core substance of the curriculum is what schooling is.

I alternate between the Sol Stern camp and the wild-eyed radical John Taylor Gatto give the money to the homeschoolers and let's be done with the whole thing camp.

Let a thousand homeschools bloom.

That's what I say.

Depending on the day and the hour, of course.

Kindergarten Math in the Twilight Zone

My kindergartener received her report card yesterday. So, what do they grade a five year old on in math these days? Just take a look at the expectation for January:

Applies Understanding of Number Concepts and Basic Operations
Uses one to one correspondence to count objects
Identifies numerals 0-20
Writes numeral 0-20
Counts 0-70
Counts backward 10-0

Applies Mathematical Thinking and Reasoning
Sorts and classifies objects
Recognizes, reproduces and extends patterns
Understands estimation
Performs data collection and creates simple graphs

This is NOT the expectation for January:

• Counts 0-115
• Counts backward 20-0
• Understands the meaning of addition
• Understand the meaning of subtraction
• Recognizes penny, nickel, dime and quarter
• Tells time to the hour

Students aren't expected to know that until June.

This is life in the world of Everyday Math. It's like another plane of reality where it's more important for a five year old to learn how to estimate, collect data, and create graphs than it is to learn how to add, subtract, count coins, tell time or count backward. Actually, the expectation isn't even that these kindergarteners will enter first grade actually adding and subtracting, it's enough that they "understand the meaning" of adding and subtracting.

Yes folks, the problem with Everyday Math begins as early as kindergarten and will haunt your children each step of the way.

Then they wonder why parents get upset.

Cross posted at Mindless Math Mutterings.

down for the count, possibly

Came home from Fordham Prep yesterday (much to report) to find that our internet router (or whatever it's called....) is kaput so my internet access is iffy. At the moment I'm pirating my neighbor's network, so we'll see.

Back for sure sometime Wednesday.

"Orton-Gillingham for Math": "Making Math Real" -- Introductory Post

Making Math Real

http://www.makingmathreal.org/

I just finished the 2-day, 14-hour introduction:

http://www.makingmathreal.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=57

My brain is either fried or overloaded. Lots more sympathy for kids whose learning styles aren't supported in the classroom.

[Aside: hush!--already about the "learning styles". I agree that lots of the edu-babble about learning styles is content-free. However -- I sat, listened, and wrote for 120-minute blocks, about a subject that I am deeply committed to. I'm an adult with a well-honed capacity for taking in new information by listening, and retaining new information by writing. By minute 90, I was overloaded. You go shadow your kid throughout her school day and see how well you could keep up. /Aside]

Making Math Real (MMR) isn't a math curriculum, it is a specific, structured approach to math instruction.

A good analogy is:

Orton-Gillingham approaches to reading = MMR approach to arithmetic and mathematics.

The training is expensive.

Question: Is it worth it?
Answer: If your district is using Everyday Math (or other purely constructivist math curricula), it is definitely worth it to offset the fog of confusion EDM engenders in many kids, with or without LDs.

It may also be less expensive in the long run than putting your kids in Kumon, Sylvan, or other after-school remediation/tutoring programs.

Here's a description from the MMR website:

Multisensory structured methodologies deliver all instruction via the three processing modalities: visual, auditory and kinesthetic-motoric. Students who are struggling experience processing difficulties in either one or more of these processing modalities. Best instructional practices require linking all incoming information across the three channels to maximize successful processing.

Structured curriculum means starting with the simplest elemental foundation and building developmentally in an incremental and systematic progression from the concrete to the abstract. The most powerful aspect of a multisensory structured program is that each current activity and lesson builds the essential developmental tools for success at the next level thereby reaching the full diversity of learning styles and educational needs in all classrooms.

Schwablearning.com was a great source of discussion and information -sharing for non-standard kids. Here are links to previous discussions of Making Math Real on the parent-to-parent board (listed in chronological order):

• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=3601
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=4982
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=15320
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_discussion.aspx?thread=18313
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=19498
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=24091
  
• http://www.schwablearning.org/message_boards/view_d iscussion.aspx?thread=25871

BTW #1: , as part of the class, I am now "bombproof" on my 13 multiplication facts, thanks to the "nine lines". I'd lay it all out for you now...but I am totally used up, cognitively.

And actually, I'm kind of appreciative of that experience -- because, for some of our kids, they are "totally used up, cognitively" before the end of the school day. That doesn't happen so often for us as adults.

BTW #2 -- being "cognitively tapped-out" is why I think homework in k-3 is stupid a waste of the (a) teacher's, (b) student's (c) parent's time and energy.