Paying for college is top priority for parents

Is College Worth It? Pew Survey:

In the eyes of parents, being able to pay for their children’s college education is just as important as being able to own a home or live comfortably in retirement. And it’s more important than being able to leave an inheritance to their children....

A parent’s own educational background does not have a significant impact on the importance they place on being able to provide for their children’s educational needs. Parents who never attended college are just as likely as those who earned a four-year college degree to say being able to pay for their children’s college education is extremely important.

The vast majority of parents expect that their children will pursue a college education. Among those with one or more children under age 18, 94% expect at least one of their children will go to college. There are no significant differences across racial or ethnic groups—white, black and Hispanic parents are equally likely to think their children will go to college. In addition, there is very little variance across income groups. While 99% of parents with annual household incomes of $75,000 or higher think their children will go to college, 93% of those with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 say the same, as do 91% of those making less than $30,000 a year. Again, parents’ own educational experience does not seem to influence the aspirations they have for their children. Parents who did not graduate from college (93%) are just as likely as college graduates (97%) to say their children will go to college.

The most surprising part of these results was that parents across the board have high expectations that their children will attend college.  However, these expectations are unrealistic according to the ACT study that found only 24% of high school graduates are prepared to do college-level work.  Colleges are adjusting, with 36% of first-year students taking at least one remedial class.  Meanwhile, high student loan default rates and graduation rates of under 50% suggest going to college is not the right path for everyone.

In a future post I'll address the issue of how many parents have actually started saving for college. 

(Cross-posted at Education Quick Takes)

The Finland Phenomenon on Throwing Curves

The latest post on Throwing Curves is a review and commentary on the recently released Bob Compton film, The Finland Phenomenon, which bloggers Rosemary and Lynn viewed at MIT last week.

Not learning how to write, apparently

Salon has an article from the point of view of a college comp prof re: just what are high school students *doing* in English class these days?

When I ask her why she thinks there's such resistance to prioritizing and teaching writing, given its numerous applications, given its overlap with critical thinking skills, analytical skills, basic communication skills, she hesitates for a moment, then answers in three words: "It's not fun."

Parker on the equal sign

On the subject of American students not knowing what the equal sign signifies, Parker writes:

I told my spouse the other day that I was convinced that many of my chemistry students did not understand what the equals sign meant and therefore they couldn't handle equations. It was just a hunch, but maybe I wasn't crazy. When they rearrange an equation they tend to just move letters around.

I don't know how we could screw up teaching this stuff.

I'm curious about this -- what happens in a chemistry class when students don't understand the equal sign?

damn you autocorrect

have just discovered this -- hilarious!

Autocorrect is constantly tripping me up, but so far it's produced nothing as diverting as the stuff on other people's phones, it seems.

equation

from Science Daily:

Texas A and M University researchers ... have found that not fully understanding the "equal sign" in a math problem could be a key to why U.S. students underperform their peers from other countries in math.

"About 70 percent of middle grades students in the United States exhibit misconceptions, but nearly none of the international students in Korea and China have a misunderstanding about the equal sign, and Turkish students exhibited far less incidence of the misconception than the U.S. students," note Robert M. Capraro and Mary Capraro of the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M.

[snip]

The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes.

"Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer," he explains. "So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.

"This response has been called a running equal sign...

[snip]

The Texas A&M researchers examined textbooks in China and the United States and found "Chinese textbooks provided the best examples for students and that even the best U.S. textbooks, those sponsored by the National Science Foundation, were lacking relational examples about the equal sign."

Students' Understanding of the Equal Sign Not Equal, Professor Says
August 11, 2010

They had me until that last line.

How do Everyday Math and Terc teach the equal sign?

a grave injustice

The interesting thing is that the teacher had tenure. We can fire teachers over personal past history within weeks, but it takes years to fire a teacher with tenure over professional competence.

I have two master's degrees, five years' experience in the nonprofit sector and three years' experience teaching -- and I cannot get a job. Why? Just google me. I'm the "Hooker Teacher" -- at least that's what I've come to be called ever since Sept. 27, 2010, when I found myself on the cover of the New York Post.

"Meet Melissa Petro," the story began," the teacher who gives a new twist to sex ed." The piece describes me as a "tattooed former hooker and stripper" who was "shockingly upfront about her past." Indeed, earlier that month, I'd written an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post that criticized the recent censoring of the adult services section of Craigslist and came clean about my own sex-worker past. Because I was arguing that sex workers shouldn't be ashamed to speak for themselves, I signed my name to it. The New York Post wasn't interested in my politics, however; its interest seemed only in cooking up shock that an elementary school teacher would dare admit such a shady history.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/04/hooker_teacher_what_i_was_thinking/index.html

I mean I wouldn't have minded her as a teacher I think. She had clearly separated her private past from her public present.

My country's elections are finally over; so the NY Post's reporting-with-an-agenda-to-destroy now really sickens me. More than a teacher's hooker past.

tired and overpaid

patentlawyer, Bonnie, and Steve H on careers in computer science and manufacturing--

patentlawyer:

We read this story every few months but most of these "manufacturers" aren't telling the whole truth.

They aren't talking about how they gutted their own training programs in the 80's and 90's, because someone @ the WSJ/Harvard Business School told them to get lean, downsize, rightsize, or out source.

They aren't talking about how automation has really decimated their bread and butter parts and they have to move up to small runs of specialized parts @ high margins to make the money they're used to making.

They aren't talking about how most of their want ads require years of experience and often times a degree.

They aren't talking about how boring it is to work on a lathe for 8 hour stretches.

The reality is that they want experienced people, but they do not want to spend the money to train and retain their employees.

At least in Houston, there are more than enough people that can read blue prints, calculate sin/cos/tang/hyp if necessary. That area of Houston they're talking about is about 10 miles away from NASA and the aerospace/defense contractor hub in Clear Lake City.

We shouldn't have any sympathy for short sighted companies. Nor should we think that the US is in some kind of STEM bind.

There are plenty of out of work born in America engineers now, and plenty of would-be-engineers creamed by grade curves and weed out courses. If you head over to any of the comp sci/it/science/engineering fora, you'll see just how vast and deep the pool is.

Bonnie:

Actually, in CS, enrollments have plummeted in the last few years, to the extent that CS departments are being closed. However, I agree with you on the role of companies. The reason students chose not to major in CS is that they saw their parents laid off from their tech jobs, forced to train their replacements in India (and I know several people personally that had to do that, including my husband). Companies refuse to invest in training or education for their technical employees, instead figuring they can be replaced once their 10 year technical lifespan has expired. Kids saw this happen, and decided that they would rather major in finance, where they can actually be paid well. 

Steve H:

I agree with patentlawyer. I've seen this argument before, and once again, it's not clearly defined. I deal with many companies that bring in computer-aided design and CNC technology. There is more demand than supply. Companies don't like to train because they see these people move on to better paying jobs. Why pay to train someone in SolidWorks who will immediately leave? Just demand that education provide them ready to go. But what, exactly, are these skills? It's not trigonometry.

"Manufacturers say the U.S. education system doesn't produce enough students strong in math, science and engineering."

People with science, math, or engineering degrees won't fill these positions, and companies can train bright high school graduates to meet this demand.

Let's say that a company buys a CNC cutting machine and it comes with a program that nests geometry and generates the G-code to drive the machine. Is this taught in school? Also, where does this geometry come from, a 2D CAD drawing program, a 3D solid modeling program, or a surface modeling program like Rhino? Do they teach these programs in school? You don't learn this in high school geometry. Do schools teach the issues of geometry transfer that cost companies so much time and money?

Look at the skills that companies have in their job ads. Do they say "trigonometry"? Do they ask for people who have critical thinking skills? No. They want specialized skills that are rarely taught in schools. That's why our local vocational school (which offers college degrees) is so popular. They teach these applications and skills. Companies should ask for more vocational schools.

How many job ads say that they are looking for those who had good grades in trig and that they will train. No, you see ads with very specific software or machine skills required, loaded with all sorts of product names (like MasterCAM) and acronyms. Companies might want critical thinking skills, but what they have in the ads are specific product skills. That's why older workers are vulnerable. Companies don't care about general educational background. They care about the latest products and skills. It doesn't matter how experienced you are if that experience is with DEC's VMS. If you don't manage your career carefully, you will end up on a legacy path where the company will not pay for training. One company where my wife worked made a comment about how people over 40 are tired, overpaid, and don't know the latest technology.

the return of bubbling errors

arrgh

In honor of his first go at the SAT this morning, C. and I took a math section from the Blue Book last night.

C.'s score jumped to 670 (he was scoring as low as 550 in January), and I would have jumped to 750 or thereabouts if I hadn't made another freaking bubbling error.

I thought I was done with those.

The one question I missed fair and square was in the careless error dumb mistake category.

Speaking of dumb mistakes, I've now taken so many SAT math sections that I can distinguish between careless error and dumb mistake.

careless error: you misread the question
dumb mistake: you misinterpret the question

21% correct

PWN the SAT links to an SAT math question only 21% of respondents got right.

academic skills or academic content?

In the new Education Week, word that the AVID program, which apparently teaches -- or attempts to teach -- critical thinking has not panned out in Chicago:

In a report set for release in the fall and previewed at the American Educational Research Association convention in New Orleans in April, researchers analyzed how AVID, a study-skills intervention for middle-achieving students, played out in 14 Chicago high schools. They found AVID participants in 9th grade gained little advantage that year over peers not taking part in the program, and remained off track for graduation and college.

[snip]

Doug Rohrer, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, found the CCSR study more rigorous than prior AVID research.

In a September 2010 analysis, the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse found only one of 66 AVID studies met its quality standards. Based on that study, the clearinghouse found AVID had “no discernible effects on adolescent literacy.”

[snip]

“The critical question in my mind,” Mr. Rohrer continued, “is whether AVID is better than requiring students to go to another class, such as an extra dose of math or writing. Learning how to take notes is a fine strategy, but it might not help you in Algebra 2 if you haven’t learned Algebra 1.”

You can't think critically about algebra if you don't know algebra.

Here is Daniel Willingham on the subject (pdf file):

After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhortation, and little improvement, maybe it’s time to ask a fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually be taught? Decades of cognitive research point to a disappointing answer: not really. People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it in any situation. Research from cognitive science shows that thinking is not that sort of skill. The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge).

Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?
American Educator
Summer 2007

a really big class size

from the Ed Week article on Reasoning Mind:

The Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, recently awarded a $742,996 grant for a pilot program of Reasoning Mind, which will test whether one Reasoning Mind-trained teacher can affect the math scores and proficiency of 250 students using the program in different grades at several schools.There will be nine teachers trained, responsible in total for 2,250 students.

Reasoning Mind

Are any of you familiar with Reasoning Mind?

The Compton students are using Reasoning Mind, an online-based math program modeled on a Russian math curriculum and developed by a nonprofit organization of the same name. The program is currently used at 165 public, charter, magnet, and private schools around the country by more than 20,500 students. Most of the schools and districts using the program, like the 26,000-student Compton district, have high percentages of minority and economically disadvantaged students, and are in communities whose schools qualify for federal Title I funding.

In the Compton schools alone, 1,170 students use Reasoning Mind in the district’s, or ASES. Because of state curriculum requirements, Compton students can use the program only in an after-school setting, not in their day classes as preferred by Reasoning Mind. But even in this environment, where daily attendance can be variable and retention uneven, the Compton students have seen notable results in improved math scores and general math proficiency the past 2½ years.

[snip]

The program is the brainchild of Alex Khachatryan, a Russian mathematician and scientist who created Reasoning Mind in 2002 after finding his son’s math education disappointing when the family immigrated to the United States. With the help of others, Khachatryan adapted a pencil-and-paper Russian math curriculum into an interactive Web-based program for American students. The program, which starts introducing some algebra and geometry concepts as early as 2nd grade, is designed to teach students in ways that the best teachers teach: adjusting content based on how students respond to the material in real time, and building on knowledge from the previous year’s studies.

“To really learn math, it’s not enough to solve simple, routine problems,” Khachatryan says.

“The reason why Reasoning Mind works so well,” he adds, “is that it brings together several important things: nonstandard problems to develop thinking skills, lots of interaction between students, individual attention from the teacher, and a solid, coherent curriculum.”

Web-Based Russian Math Curriculum Shows Positive Results
By Nora Fleming
Published Online: March 14, 2011
Published in Print: March 17, 2011, as Tailoring Mathematics for Young Minds
Education Week

Indiana

lots of changes in Indiana schools

sounds good to me, but the folks at Cato take a dim view...

calculus in prison

from the WSJ article on factories lacking skilled workers:

While community colleges and technical schools struggle to keep up with demand for skilled workers, some prisons are trying to help. At California's San Quentin prison, the machine shop offers training to prepare prisoners to pass exams demonstrating skills in such areas as operating computer-controlled lathes and mills. Some inmates get classes in calculus and trigonometry to help them work with machinery.

MAY 6, 2011
Help Wanted on Factory Floor
by James R. Hagerty

math in factory work

In the Wall Streey Journal today:

U.S. manufacturing companies, long known for layoffs and shipping jobs overseas, now find themselves in a very different position: scrambling for scarce talent at home.

Large and small manufacturers of everything from machine tools to chemicals are scouring for potential hires in high schools, community colleges and the military. They are poaching from one another, retraining people who used to have white-collar jobs, and in some cases even hiring former prisoners who learned machinist skills behind bars.

[snip]

Third, the U.S. education system isn't turning out enough people with the math and science skills needed to operate and repair sophisticated computer-controlled factory equipment, jobs that often pay $50,000 to $80,000 a year, plus benefits. Manufacturers say parents and guidance counselors discourage bright kids from even considering careers in manufacturing.

"We get people coming in here all the time who say, 'I can weld,'" says Denis Gimbel, human-resources manager at Lehigh Heavy Forge Corp., of Bethlehem, Pa., whose products include parts for ships. "Well, my grandmother could weld." He needs people who understand the intricacies of $1 million lathes and other metal-shaping equipment.

Manufacturers have anticipated for years that baby-boomer retirements would create difficulties. Among those who have tried to get ahead of the demographic curve—with mixed success—is Jeff Kelly, chief executive of Hamill Manufacturing Co., a family-owned company near Pittsburgh that cuts metal into parts for ships and machinery.

Hamill doesn't have any button-pushing work. The 127-employee company is constantly resetting its mills and lathes to produce small numbers of parts to meet precise and ever-changing specifications. There are no long, routine production runs.

One morning in late April, Trent Thompson, a 20-year-old Hamill apprentice wearing shredded jeans and a black baseball cap, was assigned to drill three holes in a piece of carbon steel about the size and shape of a hockey puck. To make sure he was spacing the holes exactly right, he scrawled a triangle and some trigonometric calculations on a notepad. Even a tiny error would mean wasting about $400 of metal.

[snip]

In another corner of the factory, Bill Schaltenbrand, 59, was cutting bigger, more complicated parts. A computer had worked out where he should drill and cut, but Mr. Schaltenbrand, a 40-year veteran at Hamill, does his own math to double-check the plans. Computers, he says, sometimes "punch out stupid stuff." Part of Mr. Schaltenbrand's skill is reading blueprints with myriad numbers and symbols that would baffle most people.

[snip]

Bayer has had particular trouble filling positions in such areas as chemical-process technology at its plastics plant in Baytown, Texas, near Houston. A decade ago, Mr. Babe says, a job opening typically would attract 100 applications. "These days I get about 10," he says. After screening, Bayer often finds that only a couple are qualified. Some jobs have been open six to nine months.

"This place is five acres, and it's three stories tall," says Donny Simon, 55, who has worked in the plant since 1988. It takes time to understand how all the pipes, valves, pumps and feedstock tanks work together and how to avoid explosions or other accidents. Technicians need basic math and science for such tasks as calculating the rate at which dyes and stabilizing agents need to be added for specially ordered batches of plastics.

[snip]

Manufacturers say the U.S. education system doesn't produce enough students strong in math, science and engineering. About 5% of bachelor's degrees awarded in the U.S. are in engineering, compared with an average of about 20% in Asia, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation. In the most recent comparison of math and science test scores of 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, American students trailed far behind those from China, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany.


Help Wanted on Factory Floor

By JAMES R. HAGERTY
May 6, 2011
Wall Street Journal

and see:

blue collar
The Race between Education and Technology

wild goose chase

hilarious!

What Can I Do to Help My Child with Math When I Don't Know Any Myself?

Debbie Stier told me about Tahir Yaquoob's book What Can I Do to Help My CHild with Math When I Don't Know Any Myself? 

My copy came in the mail today, and the book is fantastic.

So wish I'd had it when C. was in 5th grade.

Or when C. was in Kindergarten for that matter.

Here's his website.

if grocery stores were schools

in today's Wall Street Journal:

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.

No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.

Of course, the quality of public supermarkets would play a major role in families' choices about where to live. Real-estate agents and chambers of commerce in prosperous neighborhoods would brag about the high quality of public supermarkets to which families in their cities and towns are assigned.

[snip]

Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for "supermarket choice" fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.

Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers' poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
By DONALD J. BOUDREAUX
MAY 5, 2011

Having now spent a vast portion of my adult life dealing with public schools and the politics surrounding public schools, I believe every word of this!

Help Desk question: Can parents affect a curriculum change at a school?

I'm looking for success stories of parents affecting the math program taught in an elementary school.
I'd like to provide some encouragement to a commenter on my blog, who asked:

How does one get their school district to consider changing over to Singapore Math?

Most of the schools I have worked with have had teacher-led math curriculum initiatives. Does anyone have examples of parent-initiated changes to share?

Steve H on the Race

Speaking of the Race to Nowhere, Steve H writes:

At any level, there will likely be students who work harder than you do. This only matters because the top colleges pick those kids. A parent I know has most of her kids at Phillips Andover, with the goal being an Ivy League school. Does a high school think that competition will go away if they eliminate AP classes?

I like AP classes because it forces some sort of rigor on high schools, but I don't like the AP arms race. These are two separate issues. The arms race has to do with supply and demand at colleges. A senior I know is taking 5 AP classes even though she will be going to a college that is ranked only about 90th for liberal arts colleges. IB doesn't help. It's actually worse in terms of commitment. With AP, you can choose what you want to do.

Even if the demand goes down and the college SAT cutoffs are reduced, there will still be the same percent of students stressed out about getting into their first choice colleges. Is supply and demand the problem of K-12 education?

There are also the problems of curriculum and how well classes are taught. Students can be stressed by working very hard, but be quite happy when they get into the college they want. Students can also be stressed when they find out that all of their hard work didn't prepare them properly.

Of course, this doesn't say anything about the kids at the middle and lower end. I find it odd that when many see problems in high school, they think that the problem to fix is in high school. They translate everything into one problem to solve. Even in K-6, I see solutions based on remediation and not finding the source of the problem.

If the problem is overstressed students (not bad classes or curricula), then don't push them. Tell them not to take so many AP classes and do so many activities. Our son is not at Phillips Academy, but we don't ignore the game. It's my job to help him find the right balance. It's the school's job not to waste his time.

and just like that, you hate math

email from redkudu: 

Charles Benoit's YA novel You is written in second person. According to the book jacket, Benoit is a former high school teacher and Edgar-award winning author of adult mysteries. I see the "former high school teacher" all over this book, which is unrelentingly grim, but worthwhile. The main character is a high school boy who has this to say about math:

Math.

It's your favorite subject. Which surprises you.

[snip]

You like it because either you're right or you're wrong. Not like social studies and definitely not like English, where you always have to explain your answers and support your opinions. With math it's right or it's wrong and you're done with it. But even that's changing, with Ms. Ortman up there at the whiteboard saying how this year you'll be writing something she calls Mental Notes, which explain how you solved the problem and support your answer, saying that having the right answer isn't as important as explaining how you got it and bam, just like that, you hate math.

related: students must struggle

"owning" the content

From an edutopia post entitled Project-based learning made easy:

Academic Rigor -- Ask a Question

In addition to mapping from state content standards, we use inquiry as driver for almost all projects, units and lessons. A physics teacher who has a solid lab unit on bridges need only change the focus. Instead of a recipe lab that produces structurally strong bridges, she can ask the students the question, “What is the best structural design to produce the strongest bridge?” She can teach the content as she always has but now students will need to apply that knowledge to their bridge design. Not all of the bridge designs will be strong but many will. Most importantly, the students will own the content because they applied it.

I don't exactly understand what this passage means, possibly because I don't know what happens in a "recipe lab."

Do teachers teaching "recipe labs" not ask questions?

And if the teacher teaches the lesson the way she has always taught the lesson, i.e. as a recipe, how does explicitly asking the question "What is the best structural design to produce the strongest bridge?" transform the activity into a project instead of a recipe?

And what does own the content mean?

If own the content means remember the content, it's rare to remember content you've practiced just once.

If own the content means understand the content, the same principle applies: once you forget the details of what you did, you may still have a feeling of understanding, but if you had to explain the concept to another person you couldn't do it.

I know this from long personal experience.

The feeling of understanding is not the same thing as understanding.

Anonymous on Race to Nowhere and over-work

Anonymous writes:

This movie was shown in our district courtesy of our PTO. The re-cap in the local paper confirmed what a friend told me about the event: the discussion hosted afterward quickly ended up in favor of less AP classes. Parents wanted to ditch AP and Honors class in favor of more vocational and elective type classes. This would be more an annoyance than a serious concern if I didn't live in a district that has already eliminated gifted ed and doesn't support ability grouping until middle school. Eliminating AP classes is just one more way to take away opportunities for the motivated, the gifted, and/or the plain 'ole hard-working kid.

However, I do think the message may be partially right. Our kids are working too hard-- they're spinning their wheels for all the wrong reasons: poor curricula, lack of ability grouping, constructivist classrooms, lack of pedagogical content, and other issues often discussed on this website. It's really hard to waste time of a group project or power point presentation and then wonder why the SAT and ACT questions are so challenging, why you now need to hire a tutor, or why you're going to have to give up that dream of becoming an engineer because you never developed the requisite skills. Not having the proper foundation means you're going to have to work really, really hard to make things happen... and sometimes, it's just so difficult you just give up.

The peril to AP classes is a real worry to me. My district would clearly like to eliminate them (although I'm guessing they'd be interested in replacing AP with IB).

I wish I'd filmed the three college presentations we've attended. It's all AP all the time; colleges want to see AP courses on transcripts.

They make no bones about it.

Bin Laden

New York Times

You should go look at the New York Times front page right now -- amazing.

Google is not a curriculum

I mentioned the other day that our interim curriculum director recently told the community that: "We're getting away from textbooks."

In practice, "we're getting away from textbooks" means the curriculum is Google. Teachers Google lessons and download them from the internet.

I've been observing the Googleization of the curriculum for years now, but I was surprised to discover that even some textbooks have turned into Google.

peer review - con and pro

In the midst of a conversation about peer review (here and here), I happened onto a critique of peer review I though I'd post:

ABSTRACT
The US Supreme Court has recently been wrestling with the issues of the acceptability and reliability of scientific evidence. In its judgement in the case of Daubert versus Merrell Dow, the Court attempted to set guidelines for US judges to follow when listening to scientific experts. Whether or not findings had been published in a peer-reviewed journal provided one important criterion. But in a key caveat, the Court emphasized that peer review might sometimes be flawed and therefore this criterion was not unequivocal evidence of validity or otherwise. A recent analysis of peer review adds to this controversy by identifying an alarming lack of correlation between reviewers’ recommendations.

Something rotten at the core of science?
by David Horrobin

Peer review has its problems, some of which I became aware of several years ago, when Ed and I learned that autism researchers doing behavioral research were being defunded, apparently in favor of funding researchers studying the brain and biology.^* Peer review was involved.

Nevertheless, I do want K-12 curricula to be peer reviewed by specialists in the fields being taught.

Here's a case of a history textbook that was given no peer review:

Another historical malpractice foisted upon American school children came to light in Virginia last week . Once again it comes down to whether the standards of history as a discipline mean anything in the context of elementary and secondary history education.  Few of us would trust our children’s dental care to a historian.  Nor do we assume that anyone who has written a book can write a math textbook, regardless of their educational credentials.  But too often history seems different, subject to lower standards and inadequate review.

[snip]

The case at hand is straightforward.  Our Virginia: Past and Present  (Five Ponds Press, 2010) was approved by the Virginia Board of Education without a single historian involved in the review process. Fortunately an alert historian reviewing her daughter’s assignments noticed the glaring error: a statement that “thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson.”  It’s not true.  The reference to Jackson’s army is a total fabrication, and the broader reference to the Confederate army ignores the fact that slaves were forced into service and that there are no data available in any archive to document the statistic. 

So where did author Joy Masoff (not a historian) get her information?  From the Internet.  More specifically, from the web site of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.  And even more specifically from a page that claims Frederick Douglass as the source for the statistic, but can’t even get his name spelled right.  The relevant quotation from Douglass is taken out of context, and there are no corroborating sources. 

Historical Malpractice and the Writing of Textbooks
By James R. Grossman Malpractice
October 25, 2010

The disciplines are disciplines: they are fields of study with established bodies of knowledge, rules of evidence, and modes of analysis.

A professional historian possesses knowledge and expertise the rest of us don't possess, and that is the knowledge we send our kids to school to acquire. At least, that is the knowledge I sent my children to school to acquire.

History textbooks should be vetted - or preferably written - by historians, math textbooks by mathematicians, and science textbooks by scientists.

That's not to say K-12 teachers should have no involvement; teachers are the people who can tell us whether a textbook is working with students. If a K-12 teacher writes a textbook that's vetted by disciplinary specialists - then great!

I think parents should have a vote on their children's textbooks and curricular materials, too, though in my dream world we wouldn't need to exercise it.



Rethinking Peer Review
The Editors of The New Atlantis, "Rethinking Peer Review," The New Atlantis, Number 13, Summer 2006, pp. 106-110.

^* I no longer remember all the details, and my understanding of what was going on may have been wrong. However, I do recall accurately that behavioral researchers were losing funding at the time. I don't know whether that is true today.

Bonnie on peer review and textbooks in computer science

Bonnie writes:

Peer review in computer science is very weird, because unlike other fields, we mainly publish in conferences rather than journals. It is a huge issue at tenure time because tenure committees assume that conference publications are meaningless - and they are in most fields - but not in computer science. Most of our conferences have acceptance rates of around 25%, and the top conferences are below 10%. That is where the peer review is happening in our field.

But that is research peer review, and I thought we were talking about textbooks. In CS, there are textbooks for certain "standard" courses - intro to programming, databases, operating systems, theory of computation, and a few others. The only real churn that I see is in the intro to programming area, because every time a new programming language hits the scene, you get 10 new books doing CS 1 and 2 in that langauge. In databases and operating systems, the same 3 or 4 authors have dominated for 20 years, issuing edition after edition of their book. So in reality, professors adopt the textbook, which isn't purchased or read by most of the class anyway, and then add lots of their own material. For courses that have no reasonable textbook - for example, everyone is adding courses on Android programming right now - we simply have the students buy a book aimed at professional developers, or cobble together notes on our own.

And here is Allison on peer review in mathematics.

The opposition

The Wall Street Journal has an op ed on Race to Nowhere today:

Directed by parent and first-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles, "Race to Nowhere" is marketed through a kind of partnership with local schools. The film suggests that if there are problems in American education, they are largely due to standardized tests, overambitious parents, insufficient funding, and George W. Bush. It also offers possible solutions, which include abandoning testing and grading and giving teachers more autonomy. 

[snip]

Parents in New Jersey suburbs have received numerous emails about the film and its upcoming show times from parent-teacher associations. Ms. Abeles and the schools split the revenue from ticket sales, but the director told the crowd in Bergen County that she is holding off on a DVD retail release while she explores a possible broadcast on PBS. She also said she is moving full speed ahead to hire companies in Washington to lobby for policy changes suggested in the film.

[snip]

Ms. Abeles argues that U.S. education is focused too much on giving kids "things to memorize and regurgitate," instead of developing the critical thinking skills that will be most useful in solving problems and thriving later in life.

Jeanne Allen, who leads the Center for Education Reform in Washington, reports that her sister back in Bergen County is one of those Jersey parents receiving a blizzard of email pitches to see the movie. Ms. Allen says that if U.S. tests are flawed it is because they demand that kids memorize too few facts, not too many. "You can't teach critical thinking," she says. She argues that kids cannot possibly develop problem-solving skills without a base of knowledge. How can one analyze a piece of literature, she asks, without knowing any vocabulary? Can students solve math problems without being able to multiply and divide?

Whether Ms. Abeles is ultimately advocating necessary reform or simply the latest educational fad, anything that changes the subject from unfunded pension liabilities is probably good news for the New Jersey teachers union. But that doesn't mean all the state's teachers will be thrilled if Ms. Abeles is successful.

Some of the most passionate advocates for rote memorization of critical facts can be found among the faculty in New Jersey public schools, a state that has traditionally scored highly on the standardized tests that may be going out of fashion. To put it another way, New Jersey may have more to lose from another nationwide shift in educational policy than states that are consistently ranked near the bottom.

Do American Students Study Too Hard?
By JAMES FREEMAN
APRIL 30, 2011

...she is moving full speed ahead to hire companies in Washington to lobby for policy changes suggested in the film...

Well, more power to her - but what about parents and teachers who like memorization and standardized tests?

We're out of luck.

For me, this is further evidence that we simply must have choice. Let the teachers and parents who want critical thinking without memorization have critical thinking without memorization.

Let the teachers and parents who want memorization and knowledge have memorization and knowledge.


critical thinking without content

In a recent comments thread, I mentioned visiting a Cambridge Pre-U Global Perspectives class at a local high school. The teacher and principal told us proudly that the class was "not content-rich." That was the selling point. Not content-rich.

All of the other courses the school offered, they said, were content-rich. This was a bad thing. In the content-rich classes, they said, students memorized but did not think. In Global Perspectives, students engaged in "critical thinking" and did not memorize.

So what happens in a class that is content-poor?

Students Google op-eds and feature stories and look for "bias."

For me, the idea of spending a year and a half (the course consumed 3 semesters and replaced English) Googling op-eds and looking for bias is almost unspeakably drear: not enough to keep the mind alive.

But the principal loved it, and the two team teachers loved it, and the other parent in our group loved it.

So let them create and attend the schools they believe in, and let the rest of us create and attend the schools we believe in.

Live and let live.


Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? (pdf file)
Dan Willingham

SAT resources

at Perfect Score Project

in the land of steady habits

(I learned the phrase "land of steady habits" from LG)

A math teacher, José Rios, used to take a day or two on probabilities, drawing bell-shaped curves on the blackboard to illustrate the pattern known as normal distribution. This year, he stretched the lesson by a day and had students work in groups to try to draw the same type of graphic using the heights of the 15 boys in the class.

“Eventually, they figured out they couldn’t because the sample was too small,” Mr. Rios said. “They learned that the size of the sample matters, and I didn’t have to tell them.”

In three years, instruction in most of the country could look a lot like what is going on at Hillcrest, one of 100 schools in New York City experimenting with new curriculum standards known as the common core.

Forty-two states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have signed on to the new standards, an ambitious set of goals that go beyond reading lists and math formulas to try to raise the bar not only on what students in every grade are expected to learn, but also on how teachers are expected to teach.

A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought
By FERNANDA SANTOS
New York Times April 24, 2011

I don't recall the Common Core standards "expecting" teachers to spend three days teaching what they used to teach in one or two.

Unless I'm missing something, which I could be.


Richard Elmore on time

chemprof on college curriculum

on the subject of college professors writing curriculum:

[F]aculty in the sciences do develop curriculum in that they set the topic order and that they often ignore the textbook's order (I think the order in most Gen Chem books is awful, as an example).

However, for a lot of classes, there is a national curriculum or at least a consensus in the field. Someone who taught a class called general chemistry who decided to skip stoichiometry or gas laws would be doing his/her students a serious disservice, as would someone who decided to skip kinematics in physics. That may not be as true in upper division classes, though, where there is often less agreement about exactly what needs to be taught.

portfolio districts

Jal Mehta writes at Education Week:

I see three reasons to support a portfolio district type model, whereby schools are freed from many top down regulations, parents are given choice across public schools, and the role of the district and state is to support this system of schools rather than to run a school system.

Mehta cites Mapleton Public Schools as a portfolio district. Looks like they've got at least one "back to basics" school.

A friend tells me that Louisville, Kentucky had a portfolio system in the 1960s.

Why Connecticut Schools are Lagging

Throwing Curves has a new post on Why Connecticut Schools are Lagging. For those of us that follow CT education policy, this comes as no surprise. Still, it is nice to see new news sources picking up on what we've know so long.

Tiger Mothering on the Daily Show

In case you missed it. Enjoy and don't forget your chopsticks.

The Daily Show - Tiger Mothering
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Michael Goldstein on teacher choice and micro-schools

terrific post by Michael Goldstein on teacher choice: teacher choice in the sense of teachers making choices

I like the idea of micro-schools especially:

Those who want to cut loose administration entirely, and run their own "micro-charter" -- which could be as small as two teachers and, say, 40 kids. Let's make up some numbers. A number of large cities spend $15,000 per student per year, and often allocate charter schools 20% less. So let's work with a number like 40 kids * $12,000 = $480,000 annual budget.

If two skilled buddy teachers chose to run their own little "log cabin school," they would: pay an organization to manage the "back office" stuff (everything from insurance to payroll to inspections to compliance); rent two single classrooms from a church; buy supplies and books and computers off Amazon; maybe snag a couple of student teachers from a nearby college; and perhaps pay themselves $100,000 per year.

a fact you might interesting

The Singaporean general elections are going to be held 7 May 2011. The Opposition is contesting every seat except 5 seats in Tanjong Pagar GRC (there are 87 total) because the Elections Department, a subset of the Prime Minister's Office, disqualified the Opposition for being 35 seconds late [the team had to raise the minimum funds on short notice].

Friends from Singapore who study at my school who I thought were apathetic (because they were rich, well-off, finance students who celebrated the good life) have been surprisingly energised. People I long thought would never care about democracy and political progress are now chatting excitedly. Long-standing ministers from the PAP, used to no-contest elections or easy victories, may be facing some of the hottest political contests of their careers.

Friendships are being forged across the country and across the internet. The Opposition coalition holds a wide array of parties (SDA, SDP, WP, RP, etc.) working together. My friends and their friends, either going into or are who already have been in fields such as law, journalism, finance and the like -- previously reliably supported the PAP, or previously did not get to vote at all due to election walkovers.

thank you facebook, I guess?

When this all ends, the Opposition better have more than two elected seats. (The number of seats it had last election.)

deliberate practice

Debbie Stier just pointed me to this terrific passage on the nature of deliberate practice:

What separates experts from the rest of us is that they tend to engage in a very directed, highly focused routine, which Ericcson has labeled "deliberate practice." Having studied the best of the best in many different fields, he has found that top achievers tend to follow the same general pattern of development. They develop strategies for consciously keeping out of the autonomous stage while they practice by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on their performance. In other words, they force themselves to stay in the "cognitive phase."

Amateur musicians, for example, are more likely to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros are more likely to work through tedious exercises or focus on specific, difficult parts of pieces. The best ice skaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land less often, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they've already mastered. Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.


Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
by Joshua Foer

The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance (pdf file)
K. Anders Ericsson
Psychological Review 1993, Vol. 100, No. 3. 363-406

gone fishing

We're visiting SUNY Binghamton tomorrow.

Back Wednesday!

A really bad idea I hadn't heard of

In today's Wall Street Journal:

Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican of Orange County, introduced a measure mandating that school textbooks of all subjects be authored by current or former New York schoolteachers. The bill memo says that such a law would help "provide equal and balanced learning opportunities for K-12 students" and cut down textbook costs by up to 80%.

No Elephant in the Room With These Laws
by Jacob Gershman
APRIL 25, 2011

A law that would actually make it illegal for New York school districts to adopt Singapore Math.

Or any textbook written by an actual mathematician.

fun SAT Question of the Day

What is the largest possible integer value of n for which 5ⁿ divides 50⁷?

(A) 2
(B) 7
(C) 9
(D) 10
(E) 14

help desk - probability

from Art of Problem Solving Introduction to Counting and Probability by David Patrick, p. 128:

8.2.4 A penny, nickel, and dime are simultaneously flipped. What is the probability that heads are showing on at least 6¢ worth of coins?

I can do this by brute force, but I don't see the math.

Teachers don't want to be blamed

The Blame Game -- from the School Institution Point of View

Throwing Curves reviews an article in the current issue of The Nation: Teachers are not the Enemy.

survey

If you have time to answer, that would be great!

SAT prep and merit aid survey

sage on the stage

“The sage on the stage” versus “the guide on the side” is how the debate is often framed. Proponents of the former ruled the education roost throughout the 19th century, but in the 20th century a child-centered doctrine, developed by John Dewey in the gardens surrounding the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, then refined at Columbia University’s Teachers College, gained the high ground, as “inquiry-based” and “problem-solving” became the pedagogies of choice, certainly as propounded by education-school professors. In recent years, the earlier view has staged something of a comeback, as KIPP and other “No Excuses” charter schools have insisted on devoting hours of class time to direct instruction, even to drill and memorization.

Eighth-Grade Students Learn More Through Direct Instruction
by Paul Peterson
Education Next
Summer 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 3

On the question of sages on stages versus guides on sides, we critically need parent choice.

You shouldn't have to pay private or parochial school tuition to get a teacher-centered classroom for your kids.

anonymous and Allison on choosing 2 out of 6 vs choosing 4 out of 6

I mentioned in a comments thread the fact that I'm having a very difficult time grokking the idea that the number of ways you can choose 2 items out of 6 is the same as the number of ways you can choose  4 items out of 6.

Why does ₆C₂ = ₆C₄?

Here is Allison's explanation of the specific problem I was asking about.

And here is Anonymous explaining why ₆C₂ = ₆C₄:

Image you have six balls (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, for example). You also have a box.

6C2: I have six balls, and I am choosing which two balls to put in the box.

6C4: I have six balls, and I am choosing which four to leave out of the box.

Thus, the combination "I put red and orange in the box," is the same way of splitting up the balls as "I leave yellow, green, blue, and purple out of the box." Counting the ways to put two in the box is the same as counting the ways to leave four out of the box. 

chemprof on parents and choice

re: the proliferation of global-themed charter schools, chemprof writes:

I don't have a problem with parents choosing a charter that I wouldn't choose for my own kid, anymore than I have a problem with parents choosing progressive private schools. I do have issues with these kinds of content-free methods taking over neighborhood schools when I don't have the option of sending my own child elsewhere. I think most of us are clear that many parents have different goals for their kids, but with the current neighborhood school system, there is no room for multiple approaches, and when charters are limited, then that's all you have.

That is exactly the way I feel.

I have no desire to force other parents to embrace the kind of school I want for my child. None!

But, by the same token, I feel strongly that other parents should respect and support my family's values and goals for our child.

After writing and moderating the Irvington Parents Forum for several years now, I believe that parents can't all be happy with the same schools.

Since we all have to pay the same taxes, I believe parents should support each other's choices, and for me supporting each other's choices means supporting charter schools, tax credits for private and parochial school tuition, and funding for homeschooling.

I realize there are different ways to configure a system based on parent choice, but my essential point remains the same: parents in my group need to be able to send their children to traditional, teacher-centered, content-rich schools without having to pay private tuition.

not puzzling, and not a paradox, either

Barry spotted this Thursday session (pdf file) at the NCTM's upcoming 2011 Annual Meeting:

The Chinese Paradox: How Traditional China Trumps U.S. Reform Attempts
(General Interest) Session

Using video of urban Chinese math classes and professional development, the speaker will explain the puzzling paradox for how seemingly traditional Chinese educational methods—large, teacher-centered, lecture-based classes; exam-driven curricula; and so on—produce students who excel over their U.S. peers, despite the United States’s recent reform attempts initiated by NCTM.

Thomas Ricks
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

The success of large, teacher-centered, lecture-based classes where students learn exam-driven curricula is not a puzzling paradox to me.


seemingly?

I'm wondering about that word seemingly.

seemingly traditional Chinese educational methods

I'm wondering whether Thomas Ricks is going to resolve the paradox by arguing that Chinese educational methods are only seemingly traditional.

I hope not.



Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning Series)

help desk - balls in boxes

from Art of Problem Solving's Introduction to Counting and Probability:

5.16 How many ways are there to put 4 balls in 3 boxes if:
(b) the balls are distinguishable but the boxes are not.

I don't understand the part of the solution that explains how many ways you could put 2 balls in one box, 2 balls in another box, and 0 balls in a third box:

(2,0,0): There are 4C2 = 6 ways to choose the balls for the first box, and the remaining go in the second box. However, the two pairs of balls are interchangeable, so we must divide by 2 to get 6/2 = 3 arrangements.

To me, it seems like there would have to be 6 ways to choose 2 balls from balls 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the first box:

1,2
1,3
1,4
2,3
2,4
3,4

What am I missing?

For the option of (2,1,1), the solution is 6, not 3:

There are 4C2 = 6 options for picking the two balls to go in one box, and each of the other two balls goes into its own box.

I don't see how (2,0,0) is different from (2,1,1) when the boxes are indistinguishable.

Clifford Stoll at TED

In Defense of Clifford Stoll

wrong turn

at the Reason Foundation:

reason: What is at the very top of your education reform list?

Jeb Bush: Applying digital learning as a transformative tool to disrupt the public education system, to make it more child-centered, more customized, more robust, more diverse, and more exciting.

Here is my prediction: online learning is not going to save us.

I'm pretty sure.

I would like online learning to work. (I think.) I just don't expect that it's going to work, partly because it hasn't worked (well) for me or for anyone close to me, and partly because distance learning was an expensive flop when colleges tried it in the 1990s (see pages 98-99).

This brings me to my beef with education reformers who are advocating "technology": if they don't have an argument as to why technology is going to be "transformative" this time around, then they don't have an argument.

That's not to say they're wrong; maybe this time will be different. But I have yet to hear a reformer explain why this time will be different, and that's a problem.

They are not reckoning with the evidence against their position.



High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian 




Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom

 

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? 

The Computer Delusion by Todd Oppenheimer 


In defense of Clifford Stoll

Virtual Schools at Education Next

Chisenbop tutorial

just posted to the precision teaching list: Chisenbop tutorial

help desk - sine and arcs and circular functions

From Dolciani's Algebra and Trigonometry, Chapter 13-2 Circular Functions, p. 555:

sin s = y
cos s = x
tan s = sin s/cos s if cos s ≠ 0
cot s = cos s/sin s if sin s ≠ 0
sec s =1/cos s if cos s ≠ 0
csc s = 1/sin s if sin s ≠ 0

s is the length of an arc of a circle.

This may be asking too much, but I need help.

I have never seen sine, cosine, tangent, etc. applied to an arc. I've only learned sine and cosine in relation to angles in a right triangle.

I've looked back through chapter 12, but I don't see a section that explains this. I'm sure it's there, but it's not obviously there, and I'm in a hurry, sad to say.

Is there a short way anyone can explain to me how we get from sine, cosine, angles, and SOHCAHTOA to sine, cosine, and arcs?

Is there a website that has a succinct and lucid explanation? 

And is there a book you like for self-teaching trigonometry and algebra 2? (Do we know what book(s) homeschoolers use?)

I need a royal road to circular functions.

Digital Education at Throwing Curves

An attempt to take a serious look at the growth of technology-based instruction in the classroom:

Technology, digital natives, and the future of education

practice, practice, practice

C. and I just took Section 3 of Test 3 in the CollegeBoard online course.

20 questions, 25 minutes

C. missed one and skipped two; I skipped one (which C. got right!)

If we made the same score on the other 2 sections, C. would have a score of 670, and I would be at 750.

In January, C. was scoring in the upper 500s, and I was scoring in the low 600s. (Forget January; I'm pretty sure we were both bombing the test as recently as March. Must find my notes...)

Ed's goal for C. is a 2100, but I'd like him to break 700 on all 3 tests.

James Tanton on quadratics

I just interviewed Philip Keller, and he pointed me to James Tanton's website and books.

His Guide to Everything Quadratic has finally answered my burning question about the term "quadratic":

The prefix quad- means “four” and quadratic expressions are ones that involve
powers of x up to the second power (not the fourth power). So why are quadratic
equations associated with the number four?

Answer: These equations are intimately connected with problems about squares and quadrangles. (In fact, the word quadratic is derived from the Latin word quadratus for square.) Questions about quadrangles often lead to quadratic equations. For example, consider the problem:

A quadrangle has one side four units longer than the other. Its area is 60 square units. What are the dimensions of the quadrangle?

If we denote the length of one side of the quadrangle as x units, then the other must be x+4 units in length. We must solve the equation: x(x+4) = 6, which is equivalent to solving the quadratic equation x^2 + 4x - 60 = 0.

Solving quadratic equations, even if not derived from a quadrangle problem, still
involves the geometry of four-sided shapes. As we shall see, all such equations can
be solved by a process of “completing the square.” 

chemprof on merit aid, part 2

chemprof writes:

[M]erit aid is all part of "enrollment management." The goal is to attract strong students, partly because that helps with rankings but largely because of cohort effects. Schools with a core of strong students are more attractive to other strong students, who want to be in classes with other students at their own level. For less competitive schools, managing this is a tricky problem.

...I'd agree that knowing the [specific] criteria [for merit aid] would be interesting, but I don't know that you'd be able to make much use of it. ... [W]e are typically told we can offer 8 scholarships and there might be 30-40 students who admissions has targeted as possibilities (based on stated interest and their general ranking). Picking the 8 is a matter of reading the files and talking to admissions, and nothing about criteria or the decision making process is ever written down!

Oh, and our admissions department ranks every file on a 1-5 basis where 1 is highest. However, the faculty have often thought they overlooked strong students (as 2 or 3 ranked), because those students had fewer extra-curriculars or were otherwise less interesting to admissions. 

chemprof on merit aid and an upper cut-off

re: merit aid, chemprof writes?

The big thing to know as a parent is that the major opportunity for aid happens when students enter college. There is less merit aid available for transfers at most places, even if they admit a lot of transfers, and if you aren't awarded merit aid on entrance, there is usually no mechanism for getting an award later. 

[snip]

For our science scholarships, we look at math SATs, and typically give them to students whose math SAT is 650-700. Why an upper cutoff? Because we've found that students above that are using us as a safety school, and might come if they get a major merit award but not if they only get a smaller one. But if someone was at 710 and admissions was really excited about them, we might push things around a bit.

help desk - even and odd functions

5. Determine whether each function is even, odd, or neither.
a. f(x) = x^4 = 3x^2 + 5
b. g(x) = 2x^2 + 6x + 4

Algebra and Trigonometry Structure and Method
Dolciani

First draft of New York teacher evaluation regs available for comment by the public

The first draft of the New York teacher and principal  evaluation regulations has been posted online for comments from the public.  It looks like it might be a slog to go through the 40-page document, but the six-page summary is here.  The deadline to submit comments is Friday, April 29.

In my first look at the proposal, it hit me that I probably oppose any evaluations based on New York state tests.  "Something fishy" about New York State Regents scoring
 

DRAFT REGULATIONS FOR TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL EVALUATION POSTED FOR COMMENT

Last year, legislation was enacted requiring an annual performance evaluation of all teachers and principals. These evaluations will play a significant role in a wide array of employment decisions, including promotion, retention, tenure determinations, termination, and supplemental compensation, and will be a significant factor in teacher and principal professional development. The Regents Advisory Task Force on Teacher and Principal Effectiveness -- composed of teachers, principals, superintendents of schools, school board representatives, school district and BOCES officials, and other interested parties -- has been meeting regularly since September 2010. And the Board of Regents has discussed various topics related to the evaluation system at its meetings in January, February and March 2011.

Earlier this month, at the Regents April meeting, the Task Force submitted a comprehensive report containing recommendations for implementing the evaluation system in New York. . . . . The draft regulations will be on the Regents agenda at their meeting in May.

Cross-posted at Education Quick Takes

sage on the stage bests guide on the side

new study

from the press release:

[P]rominent organizations such as the National Research Council and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, for at least the last three decades, have “called for teachers to engage students in constructing their own new knowledge through more hands-on learning and group work.”

Harvard Study Shows that Lecture-Style Presentations Lead to Higher Student Achievement

Thirty years.

merit aid at the University of South Carolina

anonymous writes:

The University of South Carolina has an extensive Honors College, which offers upper-division classes in a wide variety of fields, in addition to the more usual freshman-sophomore ones. All Honors College courses are taught by professors (no TAs) and the classes are small - my son and his wife had classes as small as 4 students (2 grad, 2 undergrad) and few above 20-25. An Honors College degree requires a senior thesis. The last I heard, the Honors College required at least a 1400 SAT, but most Honors College students receive merit scholarships - for out-of-state students, such scholarships qualify them for reduced tuition (essentially the in-state rate). The campus is right in Columbia, and the housing on the historic Horseshoe is reserved for Honors College students. It's not a big brand name, but the opportunity for a great education is right there and the Honors College faculty want to help their students with special programs, internships etc.