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THE CLASSICAL LIBERAL ARTS included logic, grammar, rhetoric, and geometry. Just as today's liberal arts, they were not for the purpose of learning a trade. They served the purpose of education, which, as Albert Einstein once observed, "is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think."
Geometry, moreover, embraced logic, grammar and rhetoric, because it was approached purely verbally. There was no algebra, no symbols for "angle" or "equals." What the student saw, he explained. For geometry is based on looking, and the sensitivity it develops is the essence of science.
In the 4th century B.C., Alexandria in Egypt was the center of culture and learning, and it was there that the Greek mathematician Euclid assembled the most remarkable textbook the world has ever seen: the Elements of geometry and arithmetic. Written in simple, straightforward language, the Elements has been translated the world over, and through the centuries it has been the model for clear and eloquent reasoning. It was the first written work to introduce what is called rigor into mathematics. That same rigor -- What gives us the right to say that we really know? -- is part of the culture of mathematics today, and it is the model followed in theoretical physics. Anyone truly interested in what mathematics is, can have no firmer foundation than Euclid.
Efforts have always been made to express the Elements in the language of each time and place. The pages that follow are adapted from the translation by Sir Thomas Heath (Dover) as well as the edition of Isaac Todhunter (Elibron Classics)...
Lawrence Spector
Friday, July 23, 2010
a liberal art
from The Math Page:
Thursday, July 22, 2010
B and D Quadrant Lessons
This is new to me. Our lower schools are part of the "Model Schools" something or other. A group just returned from their conference at the International Center for Leadership in Education, in Wexford, N.Y. The article in our paper refers to how the new national common core standards "establish rigorous learner expectations that emphasize application and performance,..." This supposedly aligns with our town's commitment to "quadrant B and D learning."
"Quadrant B emphasizes application - students doing real-world work - while Quadrant D concentrates on adaption, which enables students to gain knowledge while developing skills such as inquiry, investigation and experimentation."
However, life goes on. Kids take the 6th grade math placement test and few reach algebra in 8th grade.
"Quadrant B emphasizes application - students doing real-world work - while Quadrant D concentrates on adaption, which enables students to gain knowledge while developing skills such as inquiry, investigation and experimentation."
However, life goes on. Kids take the 6th grade math placement test and few reach algebra in 8th grade.
Common Core [National Education] Standards
I don't agree with Fordham's analysis of Common Core Math Standards. I believe that they are much too weak at the high school level to prepare our children for competitiveness in a global economy. With that said, I thought that readers might be interested to see the Fordham Institute's new report comparing each state's mathematics and ELA standards to Common Core.
The State of State Standards--and the Common Core--in 2010
New York Times Room for Debate Blog, July 21
Will National Standards Improve Education?
[The answer to this question seems to be "NO"]
Contributors
Equalizing Mediocrity, Sandra Stotsky, University of Arkansas
Common Standards Are Helpful, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Century Foundation
Making a Bad System Worse, Neal P. McCluskey, Cato Institute
At-Risk Children Will Benefit, Michael Goldstein, MATCH Charter School
Uniformity Is Not Equality, Alfie Kohn, author
Understandable, but Wrong, Bruce Fuller, University of California, Berkeley
The State of State Standards--and the Common Core--in 2010
New York Times Room for Debate Blog, July 21
Will National Standards Improve Education?
[The answer to this question seems to be "NO"]
Contributors
Equalizing Mediocrity, Sandra Stotsky, University of Arkansas
Common Standards Are Helpful, Richard D. Kahlenberg, Century Foundation
Making a Bad System Worse, Neal P. McCluskey, Cato Institute
At-Risk Children Will Benefit, Michael Goldstein, MATCH Charter School
Uniformity Is Not Equality, Alfie Kohn, author
Understandable, but Wrong, Bruce Fuller, University of California, Berkeley
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Charter Schools and Reality
Fordham Institute has just released a new book detailing the challenges in creating excellence in charter schools. The book, Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines according to AEI's Fred Hess, is uncharacteristically forthcoming in the lessons Fordham learned, especially those it learned the hard way. Fordham not only was a proponent for charter schools, but was itself an authorizer of charter schools.
Hess says that for him, there were 3 takeaways from the book that struck home the most. The first was how having the label "charter" doesn't make something successful. At best, it gives a school the opportunity to create something successful. Second, that charter schools have the same problems with acquisition of power that every other entity has. "They detail how seemingly zealous reformers can quickly morph into defenders of the new status quo, as charter school operators and others find themselves grasping for dollars, resisting accountability, working to stifle competitors, and generally deciding that there’s no need for further change."
But the third (though second in Hess' piece) is the one I wished was more detailed, and what I'll have to read the book for:
" the authors explain the manifold ways in which “the education marketplace doesn’t work as well as we thought—or as some of our favorite theories and theorists assert...In practice, the authors note that atrocious schools can roll comfortably along for years, fully enrolled—undermining blind confidence that the mere presence of parental choice will serve to encourage academic excellence and discipline lousy schools."
I'll posit a couple reasons why "the market" in charters doesn't work to create academic (or necessarily any kind of) excellence (though again, I don't know if this is what Fordham found.)
First, parents make decisions for their children based on what they can observe. But what they observe is extremely limited, and very few of the observables are decent proxies for academic success. In schooling, parents are often unable to ascertain at the end of year (or several years) if the school met their needs that year. Feedback from other parents is extremely limited as well. Few parents are willing to detail to others their observable problems with a school unless it is egregious. Amorphous issues such as fit, or personality, aren't easy to judge for future effect even if they are observable.
This is very different than most markets for goods which have many more observables. Most goods are of much shorter duration, so there is no long term commitment when the goods fails to meet the consumer's needs. Of longer duration goods, few have observables so hidden as in schooling.
Compare to buying a car: even if you keep it for a decade, you know each year whether or not your car met your needs for that year. Problems that are experienced are very likely to be clearly delineated as manufacturer error, service error, customer service problem, so again, the observable feedback loop is closed. If it the car is really terrible, many states have lemon laws to protect the buyer.
In a school, the most likely observables are the cheeriness/safety of the facility, the personality of the teachers, and the happiness of the child. Determining if that happiness is because the child has been fed the intellect equivalent of twinkies every day, or if it's because the child is receiving 3 full balanced meals with just enough morsels of dessert, is another hidden observable.
A second reason why markets don't apply properly is because parental buy-in is very large, so a willingness to confront the problems or errors with the parent's choice is muted. Just as someone doesn't want to read camera reviews after they've made a $500 purchase and find out they made a bad choice, parents may be less interested in admitting the negatives of their child's school when it makes them feel regret about their own choice.
But I'll be getting the book. Perhaps Fordham has learned how to attack these challenges.
Hess says that for him, there were 3 takeaways from the book that struck home the most. The first was how having the label "charter" doesn't make something successful. At best, it gives a school the opportunity to create something successful. Second, that charter schools have the same problems with acquisition of power that every other entity has. "They detail how seemingly zealous reformers can quickly morph into defenders of the new status quo, as charter school operators and others find themselves grasping for dollars, resisting accountability, working to stifle competitors, and generally deciding that there’s no need for further change."
But the third (though second in Hess' piece) is the one I wished was more detailed, and what I'll have to read the book for:
" the authors explain the manifold ways in which “the education marketplace doesn’t work as well as we thought—or as some of our favorite theories and theorists assert...In practice, the authors note that atrocious schools can roll comfortably along for years, fully enrolled—undermining blind confidence that the mere presence of parental choice will serve to encourage academic excellence and discipline lousy schools."
I'll posit a couple reasons why "the market" in charters doesn't work to create academic (or necessarily any kind of) excellence (though again, I don't know if this is what Fordham found.)
First, parents make decisions for their children based on what they can observe. But what they observe is extremely limited, and very few of the observables are decent proxies for academic success. In schooling, parents are often unable to ascertain at the end of year (or several years) if the school met their needs that year. Feedback from other parents is extremely limited as well. Few parents are willing to detail to others their observable problems with a school unless it is egregious. Amorphous issues such as fit, or personality, aren't easy to judge for future effect even if they are observable.
This is very different than most markets for goods which have many more observables. Most goods are of much shorter duration, so there is no long term commitment when the goods fails to meet the consumer's needs. Of longer duration goods, few have observables so hidden as in schooling.
Compare to buying a car: even if you keep it for a decade, you know each year whether or not your car met your needs for that year. Problems that are experienced are very likely to be clearly delineated as manufacturer error, service error, customer service problem, so again, the observable feedback loop is closed. If it the car is really terrible, many states have lemon laws to protect the buyer.
In a school, the most likely observables are the cheeriness/safety of the facility, the personality of the teachers, and the happiness of the child. Determining if that happiness is because the child has been fed the intellect equivalent of twinkies every day, or if it's because the child is receiving 3 full balanced meals with just enough morsels of dessert, is another hidden observable.
A second reason why markets don't apply properly is because parental buy-in is very large, so a willingness to confront the problems or errors with the parent's choice is muted. Just as someone doesn't want to read camera reviews after they've made a $500 purchase and find out they made a bad choice, parents may be less interested in admitting the negatives of their child's school when it makes them feel regret about their own choice.
But I'll be getting the book. Perhaps Fordham has learned how to attack these challenges.
Xiggi on starting & sticking
I love this --
Why is it hard to start and stick to a SAT self-preparation program?Simple answer! Because there is so much “stuff” to read, and most of it is boring and sounds silly. Most of us have been there … Mom and Dad announced that they had a surprise for us. After a successful trip to Barnes and Noble, they slowly unveil the goods: a collection of fat and colorful books printed on cheap paper. Faking some enthusiasm, we grab the books and retreat to our room, hoping to find some peace. However, it is usually short lived as Mom and Dad announce that they expect us to take test Numero Uno on Saturday at 8AM. But, why? Our strong objections are simply rebutted by a stern, “Because so and so told us at the bookstore that it was important to take the test just like they do at the center. Oh well, let’s see what the books contain. Very soon, we are reading about strategies and tricks that ALL sound so simple. After a few pages, battling the desire to fall asleep, we decide to just take one of those simple tests. After all, we are not like Joe Blogg, that bumbling fool who gets tripped so easily. We work our way through the test finding as sole motivation the promise of a great score. Yeah, I’ll show Mom and Dad that I know all this stuff.
A few hours later, despite having gone well over the time limits, we announce to our unsuspecting parents that we may very well be done with the SAT. We give them our test and tell them, “Yep, go ahead, score it”. Mom, knowing better, passes the fat book to dear hubby. To your great surprise, you witness the fatidic apparition of more crosses than check marks. No, no, that can’t be. I am not Joe Blogg. How could I miss the third question? A level 2 question! The verdict comes in at around 550 for the math and verbal sections. Smartly enough, you did skip that stupid writing component. Dad does not seem too surprised and simply whispers, “Better luck next time,” A short week later, after many unsuccessful attempts to read more than twenty pages, the second test yields a similar result. While you avoided the same mistakes, other problems surfaced. That silly Reading Comprehension section just killed you.
Dad, as usual, does not say much, but Mom has a great idea. “Tomorrow, I’ll call those nice people at Prince Something Review or Kal Plan.” You accept this outcome with a degree of relief and are now doomed to sit through thirty to forty hours of organized torture. At least, if you fail, you could blame Mom and Dad.
Xiggi at College Confidential
Xiggi at urbandictionary
Googlemaster on learning from disaster vs success
People don't usually analyze the reasons for success, but they do analyze the reasons for failure. The company I work for has a thing we do called "root cause analysis" and "the five whys" where we dig and dig and dig to try to find the real reason for failure. We don't usually do this for successes. Maybe we should.
- The customer reported a primary key violation on table FOO.
- Why is the customer getting a PK violation on FOO? Because the software is trying to insert two records for the same thing.
- Why is the software trying to insert duplicate records? Because two threads are trying to do the same work.
- Why are two threads trying to do the same work? Because there's a bug that wasn't caught.
- Why wasn't the bug caught before release? Because we didn't test the multi-thread scenario.
- Why didn't we test the multi-thread scenario? We were going to test it, but we ran out of time. (Or, you could branch off in a different direction here and go with "Because we didn't know the software needed to support multiple threads of execution.")
- Why did we run out of time? Because "just a small feature request" was added to the schedule after we did the planning and estimation.
- And so on...
help desk - a girl rides her bike
A girl rides her bicycle to school at an average speed of 8 mph. She returns to her house using the same route at an average speed of 12 mph. If the round trip took 1 hour, how many miles is the round trip.
A. 8
B. 9 3/5
C. 10
D. 11 1/5
E. 12
Xiggi says:
Use a simple formula for average rates ....How did he derive this formula?
(2 x speed1 x speed2) ÷ (speed1 + speed2) or in this case: (2 x 8 x 12) ÷ (8 + 12).
Most everyone will notice that the answer is 2*96/20 or simply 96/10. This yields 9.6 or 9 3/5. The total time to do this, probably 20-45 seconds. Not a bad method to know!
Meet Xiggi.
lgm on school district problems
Up in my area of NY, folks (mainy blue collar [people who] work in NYC gov't agencies and came here for the 'good schools') could care less about charters. They see that concept as a waste of resources that would be better devoted to fixing public school. Essentially, they want the district to be the charter by having the state stop forcing full inclusion and go back to grouping by academic instructional need. Allow test out, allow honors courses, allow slow learner courses, have alternative school, but do not allow the inclusion of violent children, druggies, gang members, emotionally disturbed, mentally ill and severe needs to be an excuse not to offer a year or more's worth of curriculum to each unclassified child each year. They propose that unclassified disruptors/nonparticipants pay the difference in cost between the alternative school and the regular setting.
Additionally, they'd like to fire the teachers who are presenting rather than teaching or are incompetent or abusive. It's been six years since the middle school failed AYP and the taxpayers stopped the 'blame the student' game and funded 'extra help' and rTi. They want to cut costs by having the unclassified students learn the material in the classroom, not from the extra help/resource teacher.
On the other hand, some parents view this proposal as racist or elitist. They work behind the scenes rather than engage in debate at board meetings for continuing full inclusion. Homeschool, homebound, alternative, and private school numbers continue to increase as does the number of hours of 1:1 aides for the emotionally disturbed and behaviorally challenged, and the security guards to remove the violent and disruptive.
Steve H on opposition to charter schools in the suburbs
Our school committee has come out publicly against allowing our kids to go to charter schools because our public (town) schools are rated so well on the state tests. They want it to be a state law. Of course, these tests only indicate the percentage of kids who get over a minimal proficiency cutoff point. They claim that this means they provide a quality education, so kids should not be allowed to go anywhere else.
They see it as their money that they are losing. It's not an argument of marginal costs. They have experience with laying off teachers. It may not be a continuous function, but their argument is more fundamental than that. It's about control. Charter schools challenge that control.
When our son was at a private school (grades 2-5), one parent seemed quite satisfied that it wasn't a charter school that siphoned money away from her daughter's school. However, charter school money is not part of our town's school budget calculations. It's a separate budget category. School funding is primarily driven by the number of kids per class.
We got a certain amount of negative (elitist) reaction when our son was in a private school in the early grades. Now that he is back in the public schools and is headed to high school next year, everybody asks where he is going (because he is a top student). Apparently, it's elitist in K-8, but quite understandable for high school. When we tell them that he is going to the public high school, we get a lot of happy reactions. Perhaps it's a vote of confidence for where they are sending their kids.
the GMAT does not allow calculators
I had no idea.
I was reading through the Manhattan GMAT tutorial on "Fast Math" thinking, "Wouldn't it be even faster to do that on a calculator?" when it came to me: it sounds like they don't allow calculators on the GMAT.
Sure enough.
I was reading through the Manhattan GMAT tutorial on "Fast Math" thinking, "Wouldn't it be even faster to do that on a calculator?" when it came to me: it sounds like they don't allow calculators on the GMAT.
Sure enough.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Bostonian on college readiness & state tests
"College readiness" is not a binary but a continuous measure, as Pondiscio says. Why doesn't New York state have all high school students take the SAT I (reasoning) and three SAT II (subject) tests, report the results on transcripts (including percentile equivalents), and let students, parents, employers, and colleges use the results as they see fit?
State universities should create online calculators predicting a student's chance of graduating based on his SAT scores and high school grades, based on their experience with past students, so that potential students can make informed decisions before enrolling in college.
"disasters teach more than successes"
Is that true?
in the Times
today:
CATASTROPHE The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico on April 22, as indicated in the time code on this photograph.
in the Times
today:Disasters teach more than successes.
While that idea may sound paradoxical, it is widely accepted among engineers. They say grim lessons arise because the reasons for triumph in matters of technology are often arbitrary and invisible, whereas the cause of a particular failure can frequently be uncovered, documented and reworked to make improvements.
Disaster, in short, can become a spur to innovation.
There is no question that the trial-and-error process of building machines and industries has, over the centuries, resulted in the loss of much blood and many thousands of lives. It is not that failure is desirable, or that anyone hopes for or aims for a disaster. But failures, sometimes appalling, are inevitable, and given this fact, engineers say it pays to make good use of them to prevent future mistakes.
The result is that the technological feats that define the modern world are sometimes the result of events that some might wish to forget.
“It’s a great source of knowledge — and humbling, too — sometimes that’s necessary,” said Henry Petroski, a historian of engineering at Duke University and author of “Success Through Failure,” a 2006 book.
Taking Lessons From What Went Wrong
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 19, 2010
Robert Pondiscio on college readiness
at the Irvington Parents Forum:
It seems to me that there is an obvious and probably unresolvable tension at work here. Tie a high school diploma to a high and meaningful standard and you will have boxcar numbers of children who will not measure up now or in the foreseeable future. Keep it low and you're essentially misleading a similar number to believe they have achieved a level of preparedness they have not. Advocate for a two-tier system, and you risk (as others have noted) a return to the bad old days.
At present, "college ready" is little more than a bumper sticker. The fact that only one in four kids (as based on the most recent ACT results) are prepared to do c-level college work in all tested subjects is ample proof that it's not an operative goal for high schools anywhere. Given the range of colleges, it's a slippery concept. Harvard ready is not the same as Hostos ready. The only possible solution of which I can conceive is for state assessments to give families meaningful feedback not on the equally ephemeral concept of "on grade level" but whether or not a child is on track for acceptance within that state's university system--and guarantee a seat if so. New York can't say I'm Harvard material. But they certainly should be able to say if I'm SUNY material.
New York report is out
Regents Approve Scoring Changes to Grade 3-8 Math and English Tests
July 19, 2010
To help inform the Regents deliberations, the Department – together with testing experts Daniel Koretz and Howard Everson (both are members of the State’s Technical Advisory Group) and CTB/McGraw-Hill, the state’s assessment contractor – conducted a series of studies and surveys concerning student cut scores and student proficiency. Among their findings were the following:
- Nearly a quarter of students in all New York State two and four-year institutions of higher education take remedial coursework;
- Students taking more remedial courses in their first year of college are less likely to persist in higher education;
- Students who score below an 80 on their math Regents exam have a much greater likelihood of being placed in a remedial college course;
- Students who score above an 80 on their math Regents exam have a good chance of earning at least a C in college-level math;
- Students who score at least a 75 on their English Regents exam have a good chance of earning at least a C in Freshman Composition;
- Institutions of higher education around the state consider a score of 75-85 on Regents exams to be the bare minimum for college readiness;
- Students at the current Level 3 proficiency standard on their 8th grade math exam have less than a 1 in 3 chance of earning an 80 on their math Regents;
- Students in high need districts at the current Level 3 proficiency standard on their 8th grade ELA exam have about a 50-50 chance of earning a 75 on the English Regents;
- Students scoring below 80 on their math regents and below 75 on their English Regents exams have a high likelihood of scoring below 500 on the SAT.
Monday, July 19, 2010
before we implement
I just noticed this editorial comment at the head of McCallum's paper on "encouraging classroom discussion of scientific papers":
Clearly, this man has never attended ed school.
The technique proposed by Malcom McCallum to encourage discussion of scientific papers is one of the many creative ideas that ecology teachers have developed to engage our students. While Malcom was able to use some creative assessments as well as his observations of students to support his conclusions, I would encourage everyone to consider how we could measure learning gains before we implement new or novel teaching techniques.
Dr. William Bromer
editor of Ecology 101
Clearly, this man has never attended ed school.
college teaching - class discussion
Terrific write-up of a paper on college teaching:
Dr McCallum describes a common classroom situation: trying to get the students to actually read a scientific paper. You'd be surprised to learn that this is not as easy as it sounds, because reading and understanding a scientific paper is difficult. In these classes, the professor would assign a paper or series of papers and one student would act as the presentor of the paper while the others were the student "presentees." To ensure that the "presentees" also read the paper instead of passively sitting in the classroom or texting their friends, the professor would either reward or force student questions and discussion. To do this, some faculty awarded points for each question asked. Others asked questions about the paper on exams. Frequently, "participation points" would be awarded to force individual participation.
"In fact, the many different angles used by professors in my many classes all ended the same way," writes Dr McCallum in his paper. "Inevitably, a growing number of students did not read the papers unless they were the presenter."
To engage all his students, Dr McCallum devised and tested an innovative method in the two-hour lab section for his senior-level environmental physiology class. The design worked like this: Dr McCallum brought two copies of 10 different manuscripts on critical thermal maxima. In this case, almost all of these manuscripts were by Victor Hutchison, and they were very similar except for the organism involved. Only one of the manuscripts was a review paper. In a classroom of 20 students or less, each student was given a different manuscript. Only a few students had a duplicate paper, so almost everyone was responsible for their own article. Then, the students were given roughly 15 minutes to read their paper in class. At the end of that time, Dr McCallum asked if everyone was done. If anyone was not done reading, they were given a little more time to finish.
After everyone had finished reading their paper, Dr McCallum randomly asked one student to briefly describe what their paper was about. After they had done this, Dr McCallum asked the other student who had that same paper if the first student's iteration followed their understanding. Invariably, the second student had things to add or ask. Then Dr McCallum randomly asked a student with a different paper to compare what they read in their manuscript to what the other two students presented. If a second student had read the same paper, Dr McCallum then asked that individual if s/he had anything to add. Then, Dr McCallum asked the presenters of the first paper if they felt that the comparison was accurate and to explain why (or why not). Dr McCallum found that continuing this scenario through approximately four papers led to a fluid discussion where only an occasional question from the professor was necessary to stimulate further participation Figure 1:
The result of this model was not only to circumvent many lazy student behaviors, but also to improve reading comprehension by familiarizing students with how to read, process, and evaluate complex scientific manuscripts in a short period of time. To test this hypothesis, Dr McCallum included a 10-point short-answer question on an exam that asked students to discuss the topic of the papers that were discussed in class. He found that almost all of his students had at least a working knowledge of the topic and 65% earned at least 7 points on this question. When compared to the more traditional "presenter-presentee" scenario used during the previous semester, only 33% of the students earned at least 7 points on a similar question.
But even more interesting was that Dr McCallum's students' GRE, MCAT, and ETS major field exam scores increased significantly. For example, the class averages for raw section scores in the ETS major field test in biology increased 12% from the previous year and 50% relative to students taking the same classes with other instructors within one year of introducing this technique. Additionally, the number of students entering graduate and medical school also rose.
Parrots, People and Pedagogies: A Look at Teaching and Education
McCallum, M. (2010). A Method for Encouraging Classroom Discussion of Scientific Papers. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 91 (3), 363-366
instapaper
A few years back, C. moved into my then-office to sleep because Andrew had gotten too noisy to share a bedroom with. Since I never managed to get my computer shut down by bedtime, Ed and C. eventually developed a guessing game re: how many windows Mom has open on her iMac. It was always many dozens. Many, many dozens.
I think my life is about to change.
I think my life is about to change.
political opposition to suburban charter schools
re: "Is there a political movement against charter schools for suburban kids?"
gasstationwithoutpumps:
anonymous:
gasstationwithoutpumps:
Actually there is political opposition to charter schools from other than the public school officials. In my town, there is one of the best public charter high schools in the country (probably the best lottery-admission charter high school). The demand for the education it provides is high, with the chance of winning the lottery and getting it varying from 0 to 15%, depending on which grade you are trying to enter at.
It is continually being attacked as being "elitist" (despite the lottery admission).
anonymous:
I've seen political opposition to charter schools from parents who feel that any school choice (whether charter or magnet) diminishes the local neighborhood school. They want those families to stay and devote their time and energy to improving the neighborhood school. There are plenty of people who feel that any school other than the neighborhood school is inherently elitist.Glen:
Yes, it does: the teachers' unions, the politicians whose elections are paid for by the teachers' unions, and throngs of "progressives" who believe that progress means closing loopholes of liberty that threaten to grow and weaken state control over education.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have no shortage of "activists" who tell me that this "charter school business" is just the latest right-wing attempt to "destroy public education," "undo all the progress we've fought for for so long," "go backwards from a social justice curriculum to a right-wing traditional curriculum," and "maintain the status quo of oppression."
In an enlightened, progressive area like the Bay Area, a lot of people see any reversion of decision-making power from the state back to individuals, such as choice in any form in public schools, as the opposite of what they mean by progress.
middle class kids & charter schools
In today's Wall Street Journal
:
Either that, or they learned all the wrong lessons.
question
Is there a political movement against charter schools for suburban kids?
I think not. I take it back.
:New Jersey is preparing to announce the confirmation of at least six new charter schools this week, but proposed charters in Princeton, Teaneck and Flemington won't be on the list, dealing a blow to a movement to widen school choice to affluent districts.Assuming this is the same Princeton Regional School District that fought the founding of the Princeton Charter School tooth and nail, I think it's safe to say the district learned nothing from that experience.
A zoning technicality tripped up the Princeton International Academy Charter School, a Mandarin-immersion program that faced strong opposition from the three school districts whose students it would serve. When nearing an already-extended July 15 deadline for the state to approve the school's certificate of occupancy before granting final approval of its charter, the districts raised legal questions about the charter's variance request to occupy a Plainsboro seminary building.
That, in turn, postponed a zoning hearing that could have given the school its certificate of occupancy. Last week, the commissioner of education declined the school's request for another extension, forcing dozens of families to find an alternative for the upcoming school year.
[snip]
At the heart of these New Jersey cases is the question of who can and should be served by charter schools, which receive public money but can be run privately. School-choice advocates assert that charters should be open to parents who want something different from what public schools offer. They argue that demand alone should be the test.
Those who oppose charters in high-performing areas—a group that often encompasses the public-school districts themselves—say that charters are only viable in urban areas where parents are faced with failing schools. "Within the public-school system, we need more definition around the circumstances and conditions for when choice is necessary," said Judith Wilson, superintendent of the Princeton Regional School District, who called the Mandarin-immersion school a "narrowly defined option."
About 160 families in the Princeton area wanted that choice, despite the district's argument that language immersion is a luxury amid budget cuts. Lydia Grebe, a nurse practitioner who moved to Plainsboro two weeks ago to send her daughter to second grade at the new charter school, is one of them.
"This is being ripped away like a Band-Aid," she said. "I'm stunned."
Charters Derailed in Areas of New Jersey
By JOY RESMOVITS
JULY 19, 2010
Either that, or they learned all the wrong lessons.
question
Those who oppose charters in high-performing areas—a group that often encompasses the public-school districts themselves—say that charters are only viable in urban areas where parents are faced with failing schools.Does the group "those who oppose charters in high-performing areas" include anyone other than "public-school districts themselves"?
Is there a political movement against charter schools for suburban kids?
Cassy T takes technology
The first day of ed school, the advisor/professor told students that we should expect to be studying for 30 hours for the 15 credits we were taking that semester. The students revolted! They simply could not believe the courses would take so much time. Most of us also had FT jobs teaching.
FYI- I was required to take a technology course in which the culminating assignment was a powerpoint e-portfolio. This was 7 years ago. No wikis then.
I don't even know what a Powerpoint portfolio is.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Gladwell on Kaplan
From the moment he set up shop on Avenue K, Stanley Kaplan was a pariah in the educational world. Once, in 1956, he went to a meeting for parents and teachers at a local high school to discuss the upcoming S.A.T., and one of the teachers leading the meeting pointed his finger at Kaplan and shouted, “I refuse to continue until THAT MAN leaves the room.” When Kaplan claimed that his students routinely improved their scores by a hundred points or more, he was denounced by the testing establishment as a “quack” and “the cram king” and a “snake oil salesman.” At the Educational Testing Service, “it was a cherished assumption that the S.A.T. was uncoachable,” Nicholas Lemann writes in his history of the S.A.T., “The Big Test”: The whole idea of psychometrics was that mental tests are a measurement of a psychical property of the brain, analogous to taking a blood sample. By definition, the test-taker could not affect the result. More particularly, E.T.S.’s main point of pride about the S.A.T. was its extremely high test-retest reliability, one of the best that any standardized test had ever achieved. . . . So confident of the S.A.T.’s reliability was E.T.S. that the basic technique it developed for catching cheaters was simply to compare first and second scores, and to mount an investigation in the case of any very large increase. E.T.S. was sure that substantially increasing one’s score could be accomplished only by nefarious means.
But Kaplan wasn’t cheating. His great contribution was to prove that the S.A.T. was eminently coachable—that whatever it was that the test was measuring was less like a blood sample than like a heart rate, a vital sign that could be altered through the right exercises. In those days, for instance, the test was a secret. Students walking in to take the S.A.T. were often in a state of terrified ignorance about what to expect. (It wasn’t until the early eighties that the E.T.S. was forced to release copies of old test questions to the public.) So Kaplan would have “Thank Goodness It’s Over” pizza parties after each S.A.T. As his students talked about the questions they had faced, he and his staff would listen and take notes, trying to get a sense of how better to structure their coaching. “Every night I stayed up past midnight writing new questions and study materials,” he writes. “I spent hours trying to understand the design of the test, trying to think like the test makers, anticipating the types of questions my students would face.” His notes were typed up the next day, cranked out on a Gestetner machine, hung to dry in the office, then snatched off the line and given to waiting students. If students knew what the S.A.T. was like, he reasoned, they would be more confident. They could skip the instructions and save time. They could learn how to pace themselves. They would guess more intelligently....The S.A.T. was a test devised by a particular institution, by a particular kind of person, operating from a particular mind-set. It had an ideology, and Kaplan realized that anyone who understood that ideology would have a tremendous advantage.
Examined Life
Malcolm Gladwell
The New Yorker
December 17, 2001
"To say you can’t improve scores is to say you can’t improve students"
Speaking of SAT prep, I came across an obit for Stanley Kaplan, who died last year. It's a beautiful story.
From the Times obit:
Kaplan Inc.
Stanley Kaplan loved to teach.
Stanley H. Kaplan: Test Pilot: How I broke testing barriers for millions of students and caused a sonic boom in the business of education
From the Times obit:
Stanley H. Kaplan, a businessman and teacher who carved out a lucrative niche in the world of for-profit education and made test-preparation classes a rite of passage for students across America, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 90 and had homes in Manhattan and Boca Raton, Fla.
Propelled by his students’ success on the SAT and other standardized exams — and by the enormous growth in standardized testing — Mr. Kaplan transformed the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center from a tiny tutoring operation in his basement in Brooklyn in the late 1930s into a nationwide test-preparation company.
Along the way he successfully challenged the College Board's denials that coaching could significantly improve student scores and convinced the Federal Trade Commission that his claims of helping students were valid.
“To say you can’t improve scores is to say you can’t improve students, and I disagree with that,” he told The New York Times in 1979.
By November 1984, when Mr. Kaplan, then 65, sold his business to the Washington Post Company for $45 million, it had more than 120 teaching centers and nearly 100,000 students.
Today, Kaplan Inc. is a diversified education company and the Post Company’s largest business, recording $2.3 billion in revenue last year.
Mr. Kaplan did not start out with a strategic plan to build a business. He began by preparing students for the New York State Regents exams. But when a student showed up in 1946 asking for help on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (as the SAT was then called), he saw an opportunity. And when students later sought his help on medical school exams, he signed them on, too.
For decades his services remained local, marketed to Roman Catholic schools and to yeshivas. Most students arrived by word of mouth. But he gradually began to attract students from around the country.
[snip]
Despite his growing success, Mr. Kaplan faced resistance from the College Board, which continued to assert that gains from test-preparation courses were minimal. Opposition was so strong, Mr. Kaplan recalled, that some students felt a need to register under false names, like Jane Doe and Albert Einstein.
In Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper refused to run his advertisements, and the university denied his requests to hang posters and rent rooms for his courses. He called the opposition “elitist” and distributed T-shirts on campus. Students flocked to his classes.
[snip]
Despite the criticism, Mr. Kaplan was convinced of the value of his teaching, which both reviewed subject material and offered strategies for taking tests. Indeed, in 1979 the F.T.C. found that test preparation by Kaplan and other companies could improve students’ scores.
[snip]
The son of Jewish immigrants from what are now Belarus and Latvia who did not attend college — his father ran a plumbing business, and his mother helped out — he grew up in a household that valued education.
In his autobiography, Mr. Kaplan wrote that he was sure that when he and his brother and sister were born, his mother “swatted us on the backside and pronounced with conviction, ‘You’re going to college.’ ”
He said he performed well in school because he “strove to please” his mother, a perfectionist who directed his kindergarten class in a Mozart minuet, complete with powdered wigs, velvet coats with tails and long gowns.
[snip]
Although he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and second in his class at City College in 1939, he was unable to get into medical school. “I was Jewish, and I attended a public college,” he wrote. “I had a double whammy against me.”
That experience made him a champion of standardized tests when others attacked them. If there had been a medical school admissions test, he said, he could have shown the medical schools that he was the equal of students from private universities.
He began to turn his sideline in tutoring into a formal business. He created worksheets and review tapes and laced his classes with jokes and repetition.
In 1943, after he complained about errors in Barron’s test preparation books, the publisher invited him to help write and edit the books. Seeing it as a good way to promote his own business, he wrote 16 study guides for the New York State Regents exams.
As the business grew, it remained at heart a family enterprise. At one time or another his mother, his wife, his older brother, his three children and his father-in-law helped out, and he ran the business from his home until 1957.
[snip]
Mr. Kaplan claimed to have discovered his affinity for teaching at the age of 9. “While other children played doctor, I played teacher,” he wrote in his autobiography. He said he often volunteered to help classmates with their schoolwork. If they refused, he sometimes offered them a dime to “just sit down and listen.”
His schoolteachers recognized his talent, too. His algebra teacher often sat in a big chair in the corner while Mr. Kaplan led the class. And when he was in 10th grade — he was 14 — his school offered him 25 cents an hour to tutor other students.
He was also an instinctive entrepreneur. As a youngster, he noticed that his friends often borrowed books from his house. He decided to create a lending library, setting up an office in the playroom, issuing library cards and charging two cents a week per book. Some weeks he made as much as a dollar. These instincts continued to be reliable as he built his test-preparation enterprise.
Stanley Kaplan, Pioneer in Preparing Students for Exams, Dies at 90
By KAREN W. ARENSON
Published: August 24, 2009
Stanley Kaplan loved to teach.
Stanley H. Kaplan: Test Pilot: How I broke testing barriers for millions of students and caused a sonic boom in the business of education
help desk - SAT reading & essay books
I have a terrific stack of SAT math books (will post).
Does anyone out there have recommendations for SAT reading & writing prep?
Does anyone out there have recommendations for SAT reading & writing prep?
progress report, part 2 & help desk
I started working on "SAT math" in earnest on 6-21-2010. At that point I was barely breaking 600 on practice tests.
Today - 7-18-2010 - I answered all of the questions in "score bands" 600-690 and 700-800 posted on the SAT Skills Insight page.
results:
600-690 range:
40 questions
39 correct
(I missed a circle question because I have yet to review circles.)
700-800 range:
30 questions
20 correct
help desk
Question number 1 in Skill Group 6, Score Band 700 - 800
The graphs of the functions
and 
are lines, as shown in the figure above. If 
for some constants 
and 
, which of the following could define the function 
?
I'm stumped.
Today - 7-18-2010 - I answered all of the questions in "score bands" 600-690 and 700-800 posted on the SAT Skills Insight page.
results:
600-690 range:
40 questions
39 correct
(I missed a circle question because I have yet to review circles.)
700-800 range:
30 questions
20 correct
help desk
Question number 1 in Skill Group 6, Score Band 700 - 800
The graphs of the functions
and are lines, as shown in the figure above. If for some constants and , which of the following could define the function ?I'm stumped.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
"awful to be 18 and not have choices"
I was already a devoted fan of David Steiner before he was appointed New York state's Commissioner of Education. I'm rapidly becoming a devoted fan of Meryl Tisch, too.
In today's Wall Street Journal
:
In today's Wall Street Journal
:Acknowledging that a New York state high-school diploma doesn't mean a student is necessarily ready for college, the chancellor of the Board of Regents said she envisions the state providing two types of diplomas in the near future: one that is marked "college-ready," and one that is not.
There is no formal proposal yet to do so, but Merryl Tisch, the chancellor, said the move would be a natural extension of a broad effort by the Regents to toughen up academic standards. Those efforts are fueled by increasing evidence that even while New York students have been showing marked progress on state tests, their performance on national tests has stagnated.
"It's awful to be 18 and not have choices," Ms. Tisch said.
Nearly a quarter of students in all New York state two- and four-year colleges need to take remedial course work, according to John King, the state education department's deputy commissioner. Students taking remedial courses in their first year of college are less likely to graduate, he said.
According to research by the Department of Education, students who scored below an 80 on their math Regents exam have a much higher likelihood of being placed in remedial college courses. Students only need a 65 to pass the math Regents test in New York.
Regent Eyes New Diploma
By BARBARA MARTINEZ
JULY 17, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
college students studying less
Interesting story in the Globe:
I wonder if there's been an upsurge in poster assignments. A friend of mine says he's pretty sure there has been ---
According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours.
The decline, Babcock and Marks found, infects students of all demographics. No matter the student’s major, gender, or race, no matter the size of the school or the quality of the
SAT scores of the people enrolled there, the results are the same: Students of all ability levels are studying less.
“It’s not just limited to bad schools,” Babcock said. “We’re seeing it at liberal arts colleges, doctoral research colleges, masters colleges. Every different type, every different size. It’s just across the spectrum. It’s very robust. This is just a huge change in every category.”
[snip]
One problem is that they’re arriving in college with increasingly troubled study habits. According to survey data gathered by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, or CIRP, the largest and longest-running study of higher education in the United States, incoming college freshmen have reported declining study habits for at least two decades. By 2009, nearly two-thirds of them failed to study even six hours a week while seniors in high school — a figure that has risen steadily since 1987.
Once they get to college, the figure improves, but there are many students today who appear to be doing very little whatsoever. In one CIRP survey subset last year, analyzing predominantly private institutions considered to be mid-level or high-achieving colleges, some 32 percent of college freshmen somehow managed to study less than six hours a week — not even an hour a day. Seniors studied only slightly more, with nearly 28 percent studying less than six hours a week. And other surveys of today’s students report similarly alarming results. The National Survey of Student Engagement found in 2009 that 62 percent of college students studied 15 hours a week or less — even as they took home primarily As and Bs on their report cards.
[snip]
[A]ccording to their research, the greatest decline in student studying took place before computers swept through colleges: Between 1961 and 1981, study times fell from 24.4 to 16.8 hours per week (and then, ultimately, to 14). Nor do they believe student employment or changing demographics to be the root cause.... study times are dropping for everyone regardless of employment or personal characteristics.
[snip]
One theory, offered by Babcock and Marks, suggests that the cause, or at least one of them, is a breakdown in the professor-student relationship. Instead of a dynamic where a professor sets standards and students try to meet them, the more common scenario these days, they suggest, is one in which both sides hope to do as little as possible.
“No one really has an incentive to make a demanding class,” Marks said. “To make a tough assignment, you have to write it, grade it. Kids come into office hours and want help on it. If you make it too hard, they complain. Other than the sheer love for knowledge and the desire to pass it on to the next generation, there is no incentive in the system to encourage effort.”
What happened to studying?
By Keith O’Brien
July 4, 2010
I wonder if there's been an upsurge in poster assignments. A friend of mine says he's pretty sure there has been ---
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
more from New York
A new report is spurring New York state to overhaul the way it defines academic proficiency for public-school students -- a massive change that could suddenly label tens of thousands of kids as being below grade level.
[snip]
Among older kids, the study found that those who did just well enough on their high-school math Regents to graduate -- scoring at or slightly above the passing grade of 65 -- had a less than 5 percent chance of getting placed in the easiest for-credit math course offered to CUNY freshmen.
Hiking class standards
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
New York Post
Posted: 4:39 AM, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Quinni Diagnostic Grammar Test
Professor Susan Daily
Quinnipiac University School of Law
I missed one and learned something I didn't know.
Quinnipiac University School of Law
I missed one and learned something I didn't know.
stop the madness
Terrific article on educational technology in the business section of the Sunday Times:
Why is it parents know these things and schools don't?
My own district now has a plan in place to wire the entire high school (& middle school? - I've forgotten) for internet access. I didn't pay close attention to the various presentations and pitches on the subject, but the idea seems to be that kids will never, ever get onto porn sites at school because we'll be buying some kind of super-duper firewall that cannot be beaten. Plus we'll have, as I recall, a central Screen of some sort that allows a central Employee of some sort to monitor every single site every single person in the building(s) is currently logged onto. (So....is this a full-time employee? With tenure? And step increases?)
We "need" this new technology because high school students need to bring their laptops to school to do online research during school hours.
The school will deal with the problem of students surfing the web in class by not allowing students to use their laptops in class. At least, I think that's the idea.
But of course some of the 504C kids have accommodations that specifically allow them to use a laptop to take notes, so how does the school prevent those kids from surfing the internet during class?
digital divide redux
technology immersion redux
MIDDLE SCHOOL students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.
Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is the co-author of a study that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers.
“We found a negative effect on academic achievement,” he said. “I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren’t surprised, given their own experiences with their school-age children.”
Why is it parents know these things and schools don't?
My own district now has a plan in place to wire the entire high school (& middle school? - I've forgotten) for internet access. I didn't pay close attention to the various presentations and pitches on the subject, but the idea seems to be that kids will never, ever get onto porn sites at school because we'll be buying some kind of super-duper firewall that cannot be beaten. Plus we'll have, as I recall, a central Screen of some sort that allows a central Employee of some sort to monitor every single site every single person in the building(s) is currently logged onto. (So....is this a full-time employee? With tenure? And step increases?)
We "need" this new technology because high school students need to bring their laptops to school to do online research during school hours.
The school will deal with the problem of students surfing the web in class by not allowing students to use their laptops in class. At least, I think that's the idea.
But of course some of the 504C kids have accommodations that specifically allow them to use a laptop to take notes, so how does the school prevent those kids from surfing the internet during class?
digital divide redux
In the United States, Jacob L. Vigdor and Helen F. Ladd, professors of public policy at Duke University, reported similar findings. Their National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, “Scaling the Digital Divide,” published last month, looks at the arrival of broadband service in North Carolina between 2000 and 2005 and its effect on middle school test scores during that period. Students posted significantly lower math test scores after the first broadband service provider showed up in their neighborhood, and significantly lower reading scores as well when the number of broadband providers passed four.
The Duke paper reports that the negative effect on test scores was not universal, but was largely confined to lower-income households...
technology immersion redux
The state of Texas recently completed a four-year experiment in “technology immersion.” The project spent $20 million in federal money on laptops distributed to 21 middle schools whose students were permitted to take the machines home. Another 21 schools that did not receive funds for laptops were designated as control schools.Technology immersion has nothing to do with self-directed learning. Seriously.
[snip]
At the conclusion, a report prepared by the Texas Center for Educational Research tried to make the case that test scores in some academic subjects improved slightly at participating schools over those of the control schools. But the differences were mixed and included lower scores for writing among the students at schools “immersed” in technology.
[snip]
Catherine Maloney, director of the Texas center, said the schools did their best to mandate that the computers would be used strictly for educational purposes. Most schools configured the machines to block e-mail, chat, games and Web sites reached by searching on objectionable key words. The key-word blocks worked fine for English-language sites but not for Spanish ones. “Kids were adept at getting around the blocks,” she said.
How disappointing to read in the Texas study that “there was no evidence linking technology immersion with student self-directed learning or their general satisfaction with schoolwork.”
When devising ways to beat school policing software, students showed an exemplary capacity for self-directed learning. Too bad that capacity didn’t expand in academic directions, too.
Monday, July 12, 2010
time with children
Don't ask me how it happened, but recently, in my travels, I came across the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey. To analyze American Time Use, the Bureau uses an Activity Lexicon (pdf file), a 39-page list of things people do.
Under sleeping, for example, the Bureau includes the following options:
sleeping
waking up
falling asleep
dreaming
dozing off
cat napping
napping
getting some shut-eye
getting up
dozing
Not sleeping is also a possibility:
insomnia
lying awake
tossing and turning
counting sheep
Two and a half pages are devoted to subcategory 01: Caring For and Helping HH Children.* Reading the list gave me a happy feeling:
01 Physical care for hh children
02 Reading to / with hh children
03 Playing with hh children, not sports
04 Arts and crafts with hh children
05 Playing sports with hh children
06 Talking with/listening to hh children
And so on. Time with children.
Subcategory 02 -- Activities Related to HH Children's Education -- brought me up short:
01 Homework (hh children)
helping hh child with homework
signing hh child's homework log
reviewing hh child's homework
checking hh child's homework for completion
helping hh child with a school project
picking up hh child's books/assignments
quizzing hh child before a test
and:
02 Meetings and school conferences (hh children)
observing hh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of hh child
attending hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of hh child
attending hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with hh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of hh child
meeting with hh child's tutor
talking with teachers of hh child
attending hh child's school open house
attending a PTA meeting
meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child
and:
04 Waiting associated with hh children's education
waiting to meet with hh child's teacher
And that's it, the entire list apart from a one-line subcategory dedicated to home schooling of HH children. Six categories for helping with HH child's homework, 2 categories for dealing with HH child's tutor, another 4 categories for spending time on HH child's other school-related challenges and traumas (meeting with principal of hh child; meeting with school psychologist of hh child; meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child...) Plus an entire category consecrated to time spent waiting to meet with hh child's teacher. Talk about fresh hell.
Where are the good parts?
Where is the "hh children's education" equivalent of "listening to hh child sing/recite" and "hearing about hh child's day," both of which appear under the heading "Caring For and Helping HH Children"?
Where is subcategory 05: discussing school's program to accelerate hh child's learning with school personnel?
Or subcategory 06: vetting hh child's merit aid award offers with admissions officers?
Tutors come up elsewhere in the lexicon as well. Under "Telephone calls to / from paid child or adult care providers," the Bureau lists three activities:
talking on phone to day care provider
talking on phone to a tutor
talking on phone to a babysitter
Tutors crop up again under Childcare Services:
01 Using paid childcare services
hiring a nanny or babysitter paying for lessons, instructions
paying for daycare
paying for tutorial services
checking out daycare facility
hiring a tutor
paying for summer camp
paying for after school care program
talking to / with the daycare provider
meeting with daycare providers
talking to / with the camp counselor
talking to / with babysitter
Finally - and this took me by surprise - tutors appear in Category 04, Subcategory 02: Activities Related to Nonhh Children's Education. In Category 04 we find the American people engaging in all of the aforementioned parental Activities on behalf of other people's children:**
observing nonhh child's class
meeting w/school speech pathologist of nonhh child
observing nonhh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with nonhh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of nonhh child
meeting with nonhh child's tutor
talking with teachers of nonhh child
attending nonhh child's school open house
attending PTA meeting
I wonder what Activities Related to HH Children's Education will look like in 2020?
I'd like to see a new activity on the list: visiting private, parochial, charter, and public schools to decide where to spend your child's tuition vouchers.
* HH = household
**see Anonymous for an explanation
Under sleeping, for example, the Bureau includes the following options:
sleeping
waking up
falling asleep
dreaming
dozing off
cat napping
napping
getting some shut-eye
getting up
dozing
Not sleeping is also a possibility:
insomnia
lying awake
tossing and turning
counting sheep
Two and a half pages are devoted to subcategory 01: Caring For and Helping HH Children.* Reading the list gave me a happy feeling:
01 Physical care for hh children
02 Reading to / with hh children
03 Playing with hh children, not sports
04 Arts and crafts with hh children
05 Playing sports with hh children
06 Talking with/listening to hh children
And so on. Time with children.
Subcategory 02 -- Activities Related to HH Children's Education -- brought me up short:
01 Homework (hh children)
helping hh child with homework
signing hh child's homework log
reviewing hh child's homework
checking hh child's homework for completion
helping hh child with a school project
picking up hh child's books/assignments
quizzing hh child before a test
and:
02 Meetings and school conferences (hh children)
observing hh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of hh child
attending hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of hh child
attending hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with hh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of hh child
meeting with hh child's tutor
talking with teachers of hh child
attending hh child's school open house
attending a PTA meeting
meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child
and:
04 Waiting associated with hh children's education
waiting to meet with hh child's teacher
And that's it, the entire list apart from a one-line subcategory dedicated to home schooling of HH children. Six categories for helping with HH child's homework, 2 categories for dealing with HH child's tutor, another 4 categories for spending time on HH child's other school-related challenges and traumas (meeting with principal of hh child; meeting with school psychologist of hh child; meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child...) Plus an entire category consecrated to time spent waiting to meet with hh child's teacher. Talk about fresh hell.
Where are the good parts?
Where is the "hh children's education" equivalent of "listening to hh child sing/recite" and "hearing about hh child's day," both of which appear under the heading "Caring For and Helping HH Children"?
Where is subcategory 05: discussing school's program to accelerate hh child's learning with school personnel?
Or subcategory 06: vetting hh child's merit aid award offers with admissions officers?
Tutors come up elsewhere in the lexicon as well. Under "Telephone calls to / from paid child or adult care providers," the Bureau lists three activities:
talking on phone to day care provider
talking on phone to a tutor
talking on phone to a babysitter
Tutors crop up again under Childcare Services:
01 Using paid childcare services
hiring a nanny or babysitter paying for lessons, instructions
paying for daycare
paying for tutorial services
checking out daycare facility
hiring a tutor
paying for summer camp
paying for after school care program
talking to / with the daycare provider
meeting with daycare providers
talking to / with the camp counselor
talking to / with babysitter
Finally - and this took me by surprise - tutors appear in Category 04, Subcategory 02: Activities Related to Nonhh Children's Education. In Category 04 we find the American people engaging in all of the aforementioned parental Activities on behalf of other people's children:**
observing nonhh child's class
meeting w/school speech pathologist of nonhh child
observing nonhh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with nonhh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of nonhh child
meeting with nonhh child's tutor
talking with teachers of nonhh child
attending nonhh child's school open house
attending PTA meeting
I wonder what Activities Related to HH Children's Education will look like in 2020?
I'd like to see a new activity on the list: visiting private, parochial, charter, and public schools to decide where to spend your child's tuition vouchers.
* HH = household
**see Anonymous for an explanation
Saturday, July 10, 2010
projects we have known and loved
The numbers are imprecise, but according to a 1988 report by the National Council of Teachers of English, her novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," was required reading in three-quarters of America's high schools. Since its publication 50 years ago this summer, it probably ranks just behind "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," with American high-school students not only required to read the book but to tackle related projects. These range from drawing the courthouse where Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, was defended by Atticus Finch, to writing articles for the Maycomb Tribune recounting the trial, and recasting the movie with contemporary actors. (In 2006 my daughter, attending a public high school in New Jersey, cast Kevin Kline as Atticus and Abigail Breslin as his young daughter, Scout.)
What 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Isn't
By ALLEN BARRA
JUNE 24, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
score inflation in NY
Over the last few years, student performance has soared on math and English tests across New York State, with the most dramatic improvements evident in urban districts such as Buffalo, leading many to celebrate the progress.
But now, state education officials say the progress may not have been quite what it seemed.
Weaknesses in the state’s testing and scoring systems over the last several years created what Education Commissioner David M. Steiner equates to systemic “grade inflation.”
- Students who score at the “proficient” level in middle school math, for instance, stand only a 1-in-3 chance of doing well enough in high school to succeed in college math, he said.
- Students begin getting “inflated” test scores before they hit high school, state officials said. A student who scores a 3 on a state math test — which is considered “proficient” on the scale of 1 to 4 — stands only a 30 percent chance of getting an 80 on the high school Regents math exam, they said.
- ...a student who scored at the proficient level on a state test in 2006 was in the 45th percentile on the national test, meaning that 55 percent of students in the country scored better. In 2009, the same score on the state test would land a student in the 20th percentile on the national test, meaning that 80 percent of students nationwide scored better.
The state Education Department recently asked a group of experts, led by Harvard University’s Daniel M. Koretz, to determine how closely eighth-grade scores correlate to high school Regents exam scores — and how well those Regents exam scores correlate to success in college.
Flawed tests distort sharp rise in scores by students
By Mary B. Pasciak
Updated: July 06, 2010, 11:42 pm / 19 comments
Published: July 07, 2010, 6:35 am
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Tension...
I've posted something to another blog that I thought might also be appropriate for KTM. This community has always felt very comfortable to me, but also challenges me to think! Posters and commenters have focused on educational issues [SteveH just nailed it!] rather than "politics"...
Anyway, HERE it is!
Have a wonderful day!
ps-Catherine, I'm not sure how to tag it, so please feel free to do so if you wish.
Anyway, HERE it is!
Have a wonderful day!
ps-Catherine, I'm not sure how to tag it, so please feel free to do so if you wish.
Forget Grade Levels?
I saw this in our paper yesterday.
Forget grade levels
It's interesting to see how ed school thought can be spun any which way.
"The current system of public education in this country is not working" said Superintendent John Covington. "It's an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills."
Students progress through school only if they allow them to progress. When I grew up, kids were held back or had to go to summer school. Apparently, since then, they've moved to an "industrial, agrarian kind of model". This is really stupid thinking.
With this new model, are they going to continually keep kids in second grade if they don't pass the proficiency test? Speaking of which, I assume that these are minimal grade level state tests. However, it might force schools to actually try to get kids to pass the exam and not just "trust the spiral". It will force them to deal with the issues sooner rather than just pass the problems along and then blame the kids or parents or poverty.
"This system precludes us from labeling children failures," Covington said. "It's not that you've failed, it's just that at this point you haven't mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level."
What about the 12 year old who still hasn't gotten past the 2nd grade material? What about differentiated learning? That's not a "factory model". However, both models have the same core philosophy. The onus for learning is on the kids and there is no direct teaching. At least the approach descrbed here allows kids to accelerate out. I don't know what they are accelerating to or around, but it at least forces schools to define what is required knowledge and skills for each grade. Unfortunately, we know what those standards are.
"Greg Johnson, director of curriculum and instruction for the Bering Strait School District in Alaska, recalled that before the switch there were students who had been on honor roll throughout high school then failed a test the state requires for graduation."
Incompetence. How is that going to change with the new model? They will show kids the state tests for each grade and leave it up to them to meet the low cutoffs. Then they will have kids who meet the low state graduation requirements when they are 14. What next? They will have kids stuck as sophomores. What next?
Will they have low and high grade level standards, not just pass/fail cutoffs? What will high grades mean for kids? Will they properly map the math required (and test grades) for algebra in 8th grade back to Kindergarten?
At least this model forces schools to deal with these issues. With differentiated instruction, their heads are completely in the sand - or somewhere else.
Forget grade levels
It's interesting to see how ed school thought can be spun any which way.
"The current system of public education in this country is not working" said Superintendent John Covington. "It's an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills."
Students progress through school only if they allow them to progress. When I grew up, kids were held back or had to go to summer school. Apparently, since then, they've moved to an "industrial, agrarian kind of model". This is really stupid thinking.
With this new model, are they going to continually keep kids in second grade if they don't pass the proficiency test? Speaking of which, I assume that these are minimal grade level state tests. However, it might force schools to actually try to get kids to pass the exam and not just "trust the spiral". It will force them to deal with the issues sooner rather than just pass the problems along and then blame the kids or parents or poverty.
"This system precludes us from labeling children failures," Covington said. "It's not that you've failed, it's just that at this point you haven't mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level."
What about the 12 year old who still hasn't gotten past the 2nd grade material? What about differentiated learning? That's not a "factory model". However, both models have the same core philosophy. The onus for learning is on the kids and there is no direct teaching. At least the approach descrbed here allows kids to accelerate out. I don't know what they are accelerating to or around, but it at least forces schools to define what is required knowledge and skills for each grade. Unfortunately, we know what those standards are.
"Greg Johnson, director of curriculum and instruction for the Bering Strait School District in Alaska, recalled that before the switch there were students who had been on honor roll throughout high school then failed a test the state requires for graduation."
Incompetence. How is that going to change with the new model? They will show kids the state tests for each grade and leave it up to them to meet the low cutoffs. Then they will have kids who meet the low state graduation requirements when they are 14. What next? They will have kids stuck as sophomores. What next?
Will they have low and high grade level standards, not just pass/fail cutoffs? What will high grades mean for kids? Will they properly map the math required (and test grades) for algebra in 8th grade back to Kindergarten?
At least this model forces schools to deal with these issues. With differentiated instruction, their heads are completely in the sand - or somewhere else.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
full stop
Our school system has solved their efficiency problem by not only slowing gifted students but seemingly requiring them to stop all forward momentum. No acceleration and no 'enrichment' either. If you're done with an assignment alphabetize folders or tutor another student.
-Lisa
Same here. When full inclusion came six years ago, enrichment and in-class ability grouping were totally canceled in the elementary. Nothing above grade level can be offered. The old practice of going to a different class or grade to join an appropriate reading group was ended. If the student is done, s/he can read, draw, or navel gaze.
-lgm
My own district replaced the SRA math series with Math Trailblazers 6 years ago, eliminating achievement grouping as part of the package. Since Trailblazers moves more slowly than SRA, this meant that the advanced students were doubly decelerated. They lost their accelerated curriculum and they were now learning less in the regular curriculum than the non-accelerated kids had learned in the past.
Recently the superintendent told the school board that Trailblazers is built for and depends upon heterogeneous grouping; if you're going to have Trailblazers you can't have grouping and if you're going to have grouping you can't have Trailblazers.
So naturally she's committed to Trailblazers.
Friday, July 2, 2010
testing
ok, I'm writing a blog post about a book sold on Amazon: Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo.
hmmm
Interesting.
hmmm
Interesting.
my thoughts exactly
You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices
by Swen Nater, Ronald Gallimore, Bill Walton (Foreword), Jim Sinegal (Foreword)
basic skills
BEDFORD, Ohio — Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.
Plenty of people are applying for the jobs. The problem, the companies say, is a mismatch between the kind of skilled workers needed and the ranks of the unemployed.
[snip]
Here in this suburb of Cleveland, supervisors at Ben Venue Laboratories, a contract drug maker for pharmaceutical companies, have reviewed 3,600 job applications this year and found only 47 people to hire at $13 to $15 an hour, or about $31,000 a year.
The going rate for entry-level manufacturing workers in the area, according to Cleveland State University, is $10 to $12 an hour, but more skilled workers earn $15 to $20 an hour.
All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs. It is now struggling to fill 100 positions.
Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: July 1, 2010
Here's Tyler Cowen:
Currently political debate is focused on the short-run employment issue, but a lot of the problem is probably long-run in nature.I'd love to see that test.
One simple hypothesis is that a lot of workers weren’t producing much value, but firms were willing to carry them in good times. When bad times came, firms cut them loose and also took greater trouble to identify them in the first place.
Stimulus alone won’t give those workers jobs because, as it stands now, their labor simply isn’t worth very much. The longer-term issue is how to improve the American educational system. This includes creating a culture where more parents value education, school choice is more available to bypass dysfunctional local systems, and teachers are more subject to incentives to encourage effectiveness.
President Obama does want to make progress on all those fronts, but it’s not a battle which can be won mainly at the federal level. We need to have a culture which simply does not tolerate bad local school districts. We’re a long way from that, so we need to focus on more than just the short-term alone.
June 24, 2010, 6:20 pm
Can Obama Create More Jobs Soon?
By THE EDITORS
I wonder if they're using Accuplacer?
The Race Between Education and Technology
momof4
It doesn't say anything good about ed school that only one basic science course is required. BTW, as first-graders in the mid-50s, my class learned parts of plants, plant nutrition, photosynthesis, heliotropism etc. Why am I not surprised that global warming is part of this curriculum? I also agree with the last comment about the inefficiency of this approach, but efficiency seems to be fighting with mastery for last place in the pantheon of ideas that concern the ed system.I love that: efficiency fighting with mastery for last place.
In my experience it's no contest. Mastery is last and efficiency isn't even in the running.
Public schools are almost anti-efficiency at all levels: in hiring and spending as well as teaching and learning.
That's why public schools are happy to slow the progress of gifted students by substituting enrichment for acceleration.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
edspeak
At other times, the board is moved to the front of the room, and students take turns solving math problems, sorting items into groups and matching words with their meanings.In my world, the set consisting of students who spend class time "solving math problems" does not intersect with the set consisting of students whose teachers ask them to "sort items into groups."
letter to the editor quoted in:
The Great Whiteboards Debate Rages On
Anthony Reborda
Education Week
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
definition
constructivist classroom: A classroom in which the teacher uses pedagogical methods that are based on the constructivist theory of learning. The constructivist theory holds that the student is the center of learning, and the teacher should act as a facilitator of the student's learning, not as an instructor. The constructivist classroom takes many forms, but at heart it is based on the belief that the student is the one who does the learning and therefore must take responsibility for his or her own learning.In the public schools: constructivism.
EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon
by Diane Ravitch
p. 58
constructivism
Constructivist theory posits that children build new information onto preexisting notions and modify their understanding in light of new data. In the process, their ideas increase in complexity and power. Constructivist theorists dismiss the idea that students learn by absorbing information through lectures or repeated rote practice.
Education Week Guide to K-12 Terminology
p. 23
In the great charter schools: Lemov's Taxonomy.
TERC
Candace Chick is the first to admit that she’s not an expert in science. Far from it, the teacher at the Samuel W. Mason Pilot Elementary School in Roxbury, Mass., only took one basic science class during her undergraduate and graduate studies and, until recently, quaked at the idea of teaching the properties of matter to her fifth-grade students. “I have always been insecure about science,” she says. “It is not one of my strengths.”
But now, she is positively ebullient about the progress both she and her students have made in the subject. Her class has been investigating molecular change, conducting hands-on experiments, and watching computer simulations. The students’ knowledge has grown deeper than simply being able to define terms like “condensation” and “evaporation.” They readily discuss their ideas and frequently engage in polite, intellectual arguments that influence each others’ learning. “Their knowledge isn’t, ‘Oh, there is a puddle on the sidewalk and when the sun comes out it evaporates and goes magically into a cloud and then it comes down again when it rains,’’’ Chick explains. “They understand how those molecules start to move and bounce around like mad as they evaporate. They really understand this in a way that they didn’t before.”
Chick’s class just completed the third year of a research endeavor called The Inquiry Project, a partnership between teachers, TERC, and Tufts University that teaches concepts like weight, volume, and density in grades 3–5 to lay the foundation for later introduction to molecular theory. In third grade, students begin exploring materials and then move on to investigating weight and volume, using density cubes and balance scales, among other tools. They proceed from comparing the “felt weight” of cubes made from different materials to measuring actual weight on a balance scale. They ask questions along the way. Can two objects of the same size weigh different amounts? Does a tiny piece of clay have weight? The students are asked to discuss their findings at every step: the goal of this “productive talk” is to lead to deeper understanding.
Chick worked with an Inquiry Project coach, who not only helped her overcome her inhibitions about science but also encouraged her to lead productive class discussions.
[snip]
The goal is to shift the students’ way of thinking from what Anderson calls “force-dynamic reasoning” to what he terms “scientific discourse.” Force-dynamic reasoning, typical in elementary school, is a way of viewing the world in terms of “actors” with purposes. For instance, the main purpose of a tree (the “actor”) is to grow, and in order to grow, it needs water, air, sunlight, and soil. However, the scientific explanation is that the tree uses the sun as an energy source to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose, which is the building block of the tree. “The scientific story is one of transformation of matter and energy,” Anderson explains. “If we are interested in preparing kids to think about carbon in our atmosphere and in our various environmental systems and how it effects global warming, we have to make the transition from force-dynamic reasoning to scientific reasoning, where they are thinking about matter and energy.”
The fourth-grade curriculum outlines a pathway toward that transition in thinking. It’s not about memorizing definitions of, say, photosynthesis, but about actually transforming how students think. Students begin by watching time-lapse videos of plants growing. They then grow plants under different conditions—with or without water and light. They measure the results over time and ultimately determine that plants need water, air, and light to grow. They then examine plants on a microscopic level and learn about their cellular makeup, which leads to an exploration of how plants make their own food and where they store it.
Through tending the plants and watching them grow, students can begin to view the plants not as actors, but as part of an ecosystem. Anderson and his colleagues are still generating data on what works, but the goal is for the students to understand basic underlying principles of science, such as conservation of matter and energy. “Facts alone,’’ he says, “are not enough.’’
Learning Progressions in Science
By PATTI HARTIGAN
Harvard Education Letter
Volume 26, Number 4
July/August 2010
I'm wondering what exactly these 4th grade students know about photosynthesis at the end of the school year.
Cheryl on the Khan Academy
I l-o-o-o-v-e Khan Academy. I teach 4th grade, and I have my students use it for differentiated reinforcement of concepts that they need extra help/practice with. We have 1-1 netbooks, so it's easy to do.
Lsquared on math knowledge and teachers
... I believe that studies have shown that math knowledge positively correlates with teaching ability for secondary teachers, but not necessarily for elementary teachers.I'm surprised to learn that 1/8 of students taking Lsquared's class are math minors.
On the other hand, as someone who teaches math to future elementary teachers, there are some who I'm convinced will make better teachers of elementary math than others, and often (though not always) they are good at math in general. Of the ones that I privately think to myself--I would be delighted for my child to be in his/her class, maybe 1/3 of them are math minors, as opposed to maybe 1/8 of a typical class being math minors...And there are a few mathematicians (not at the university where I teach now) who I'm not sure should be teaching math to college students, much less elementary students, because they have no talent or interest in figuring out how learners think.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
listmania
Have I mentioned that I collect Listmanias?
Well, I do.
This week's find: best listmania on SAT prep I've seen thus far.
Thanks to Tertullian, I've spent the past two days reading The Talent Code and Arvin Vohra. Arvin Vohra's book is a revelation, especially the part where he advises parents to use Everyday Math after explaining the importance of a coherent, hierarchically organized curriculum and extensive memorization of math facts and formulas from an early age.
Say what?
The Asian Method
Well, I do.
This week's find: best listmania on SAT prep I've seen thus far.
Thanks to Tertullian, I've spent the past two days reading The Talent Code and Arvin Vohra. Arvin Vohra's book is a revelation, especially the part where he advises parents to use Everyday Math after explaining the importance of a coherent, hierarchically organized curriculum and extensive memorization of math facts and formulas from an early age.
Say what?
The Asian Method
lgm on where to start in Singapore Math
Start at the beginning. A big key is practicing number bonds until you know them so well that the possibilities just pop up automatically when you see a number. The mental math practice is worthwhile too.
Number2.com
I'm beginning to think there may be something to the disruptive technology argument.
First the Khan Academy ("my goal is to cover everything") and now Number2.com, which C. found while I was in Minneapolis, attending msmi2010.
C. likes it because when he can't solve a problem, Number2 gives him a hint instead of the answer.
In theory, the text prep books could do that, too, but they don't.
First the Khan Academy ("my goal is to cover everything") and now Number2.com, which C. found while I was in Minneapolis, attending msmi2010.
Number2.com is the only website that offers students access to comprehensive free online test preparation courses for the SAT, ACT, and GRE. How do we do it? Number2.com earns revenue from sponsorships and licensing.
The company was founded by professors and graduate students who wanted to make high quality test preparation universally accessible. In 1999 Eric Loken and Josh Millet were graduate students studying for their PhDs at Harvard University when they began teaching free SAT prep classes in the Boston area. Seeking to expand their services to the Internet, they teamed up with Vincent Crespi, a professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University, who had created a test prep website called Number2.com in 1995. With the help of a great technologist, Filip Radlinski, they launched a new version of the site in September, 2000. Eric and Josh now also run an employee testing company.
Since 2000, over 2 million students have enrolled in Number2.com's online courses, and the web site now receives over 50 million hits per month. In 2002 Number2.com was acquired by Xap Corporation....
about Number2
C. likes it because when he can't solve a problem, Number2 gives him a hint instead of the answer.
In theory, the text prep books could do that, too, but they don't.
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