Glen on Daniel Boone

on the subject of using historical documents to teach reading and writing, Glen writes:

I find the writing in Daniel Boone's autobiography interesting. Here is a man who was raised on the frontier in "Indian country," who had some of what today we would call homeschooling but very little formal schooling. His father justified the state of Daniel's formal literacy by saying that his daughters did the writing and Daniel did the shooting.

So what did a frontiersman with nothing but some homeschooling and Bible study write like, back before the state took over the job of education? Here's how his autobiography begins:

"Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. Let these influencing powers actuate, by the permission or disposal of Providence, from selfish or social views, yet in time the mysterious will of Heaven is unfolded, and we behold our conduct, from whatever motives excited, operating to answer the important designs of heaven.

"Thus we behold Kentucky, lately an howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field...."

Using speeches and other historical documents to teach reading comprehension and writing:
In the Event of Moon Disaster: parallelism, cohesion, the semicolon
Karen H recommends the Gettysburg Address for a lesson in parallelism
Jen on teaching the Star Spangled Banner to her 10-year old (and see Comment thread for more)
Glen on Daniel Boone's autobiography

In the Event of Moon Disaster

Another terrific historical document for use in reading and writing classes, particularly on the subjects of parallelism,  cohesion, and punctuation:^* Bill Safire's "In the Event of Moon Disaster." Transcript and image of the original at Letters of Note.

To: H. R. Haldeman
From: Bill Safire
July 18, 1969.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT:

The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:

A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to "the deepest of the deep," concluding with the Lord's Prayer.

Each of the widows-to-be.

Terrifying.

^* Semicolons!

Using speeches and other historical documents to teach reading comprehension and writing:
In the Event of Moon Disaster: parallelism, cohesion, the semicolon
Karen H recommends the Gettysburg Address for a lesson in parallelism
Jen on teaching the Star Spangled Banner to her 10-year old (and see Comment thread for more)
Glen on Daniel Boone's autobiography

onward and upward

The poll...asked human resource professionals to identify the greatest “basic skills” and “applied skills” gaps between workers age 31 and younger compared with workers age 50 and older.

• Basic skills – more than half (51 percent) of human resource managers indicated they find older workers to have stronger writing, grammar, and spelling skills in English;
• Applied skills – more than half (52 percent) of human resource managers said older workers exhibit stronger professionalism/work ethic.

SHRM-AARP Poll Shows Organizations are Concerned about Boomer Retirements and Skills Gaps | 4/9/2012

I've been talking to a Manhattan teacher who has a late-afternoon class in the room where I teach. When she learned that I teach freshman composition, she wanted to know whether I was seeing deterioration in students' writing. She expects the next wave of students to have no writing skills at all, and she wondered whether those kids are already showing up in colleges.

The reason she expects the next wave of students to have no writing skills at all is that Manhattan schools are required to use the Lucy Calkins program. The teacher said that everyone in her school hates the curriculum so much they spend every lunch hour venting, and she herself is desperate to find a job in the suburbs because friends have told her suburban schools "let you teach grammar." There's no escaping Calkins in the city. The principal of a neighboring school tried to get rid of the program and was told to reinstate it or find another position. So the program stayed.

In my experience, suburban schools don't teach grammar, either, although I haven't seen the level of micromanaging here that Manhattan teachers are subjected to. If a teacher in my district wants to teach grammar, and knows some grammar, it's not against the rules. But Manhattan teachers are monitored.  Administrators enter their rooms unannounced to inspect the bulletin boards and observe the mini-lessons, and if teachers are found teaching grammar, they're in trouble. Such is educational reform in the big city.

I shared my Geographical Theory of school quality with her: the closer a school's location is physically to Teachers College, the worse it is.

She said, "Well, imagine how bad things are for us."

and see:
Nightmare from Teachers College
Coach Class by Barbara Feinberg

Stanley Fish on teaching writing in college

Stanley Fish answers the question Isn't the mastery of forms something that should be taught in high school or earlier?

By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all. The exception seems to be Catholic schools. More than a few commentators remembered with a mixture of fondness and pain the instruction they received at the hands of severe nuns. And I have found that those students in my classes who do have a grasp of the craft of writing are graduates of parochial schools. (I note parenthetically that in many archdioceses such schools are being closed, not a good omen for those who prize writing.)

I really want to start a Catholic school. Really, truly. My building used to be a Catholic school; I'd like it to be a Catholic school again.

By the way, I do realize that if I had actually attended Catholic schools as a child I might feel different. But I was raised a flat-footed Methodist, as I think I once heard Huston Smith say on TV, and to me the Catholic Church was magic. The nuns in their black habits, the priests, the Holy water in the doorways and the crucifixes on the wall ---- and the sign of the cross! Oh my.

A couple of years ago I asked my second to oldest sister whether she had liked the sign of the cross as a child, and she said at once and with great enthusiasm, "Of course!" She had been so taken by the Catholic Church she wanted to be Catholic. I had no idea. Were all 4 of us kids having our own private Catholic crush?

Truth to tell, my own Catholic crush wasn't so private. I took piano lessons from the nuns for years, and my parents made arrangements for me to attend the Catholic school one day each school year.

I remember reading somewhere that charter schools copied Catholic schools, and the observation struck me as true. I bet, if you scratched the surface, you'd find a lot of charter founders who as children pressed their noses against the windows of a Catholic school, outside looking in.

Computerized teaching: the feedback gap

Yet another breathless account of the wonders of computerized learning appears in this weekend's New York Times Magazine in an article entitled "The Machines are Taking Over: advances in computerized tutoring are testing the faith that human contact makes for better learning."

The article opens with a scene of an actual human being tutoring a fellow species member. While her tutee works on a problem (calculating average driving speed), the tutor provides lots of interactive feedback. Neil Heffernan, the tutor's fiance, catalogued the various different types of feedback she gave under such categories as “remind the student of steps they have already completed,” “encourage the student to generalize,” “challenge a correct answer if the tutor suspects guessing”). According the the article, Heffernan then "incorporated many of these tactics into a computerized tutor," which he spent nearly two decades refining. Now called ASSISTments, it is used by by more than 100,000 students "in schools all over the country." The article describes the experience of one of these 100,000 students with the program's interactive feedback:

Tyler breezed through the first part of his homework, but 10 questions in he hit a rough patch. “Write the equation in function form: 3x-y=5,” read the problem on the screen. Tyler worked the problem out in pencil first and then typed “5-3x” into the box. The response was instantaneous: “Sorry, wrong answer.” Tyler’s shoulders slumped. He tried again, his pencil scratching the paper. Another answer — “5/3x” — yielded another error message, but a third try, with “3x-5,” worked better. “Correct!” the computer proclaimed.

In other words, it's the same old binary right-or-wrong feedback that nearly every educational software program has been using for decades. As the article notes:

In contrast to a human tutor, who has a nearly infinite number of potential responses to a student’s difficulties, the program is equipped with only a few. If a solution to a problem is typed incorrectly — say, with an extra space — the computer stubbornly returns the “Sorry, incorrect answer” message, though a human would recognize the answer as right.

True, the program is still a work in progress. But what's being refined, according to the article, isn't the feedback. Rather, it's the program's ability to detect when a student is getting bored, frustrated, or confused (via facial expression reading software, speed and accuracy of responses, and special chairs with posture sensors "to tell whether students are leaning forward with interest or lolling back in boredom."):

Once the student’s feelings are identified, the thinking goes, the computerized tutor could adjust accordingly — giving the bored student more challenging questions or reviewing fundamentals with the student who is confused.

Or "flashing messages of encouragement... or... calling up motivational videos recorded by the students’ teachers."

Also being refined is the "hint" feature, which users click on when stumped. Human beings (particularly teachers) track common wrong answers and have other human beings (particularly students) come up with helpful hints. These hints are then incorporated into the next generation of ASSISTments.

Cognitive Tutor, a more established software program that is "used by 600,000 students in 3,000 school districts around the country," also limits its feedback to hints and right-or-wrong responses.  And it, too, is being refined based on data from human users:

Every keystroke a student makes — every hesitation, every hint requested, every wrong answer — can be analyzed for clues to how the mind learns.

Ultimately, this data will be put to use not to refine feedback on particular student responses, but to help decide how to space out material and schedule periodic reviews.

But it's carefully tailored feedback on particular responses by particular students that makes human tutoring--the inspiration for all these programs--as powerful is it is.

In my earlier post on Cognitive Tutor, I wrote that programming sufficiently perspicuous feedback for mathematical problems "strikes me as even more prohibitive" than the feedback I labored for years to provide in my GrammarTrainer program. Last night I ran this impression past a mathematician friend of mine who cares a lot about effective math instruction. She emphatically concurs.

When it comes to educational software developers--as opposed to educational software users--there is some somewhat perspicuous feedback on whether their answers (answers to students' educational needs) are on track. As I write earlier, that feedback isn't particularly encouraging.

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field).

writing by ear

On the question of 'picking up' grammar through reading, Jean writes:

I think many people--like you--can learn general grammar rules by reading. I am also one of those people, BUT I have always felt insecure in my writing. There are many fine points that I did not absorb and that I make mistakes in. I have also noticed that my daughter, who reads no more than I did at her age but who is made to do a rigorous grammar course, can read at a higher level than I could at her age.

Reading Jean's comment, I'm thinking ... I probably would have been insecure about the fine points of grammar IF I had ever thought about the fine points, or cared. But I didn't! I didn't think about grammar at all, I thought about writing (comma splice intentional).^*

I write by ear. I don't recall ever consulting a grammar book, not once in an entire career of professional writing. In fact, I didn't even own a grammar book until a little over 10 years ago, when an editor told me that all the editors in New York liked The Grammar Bible. I bought it, but I didn't read it. (Hope to do so one of these days.)

I always wanted to be a writer, from the time I knew what writing was, and I was an obsessive reader (and still am). And I simply never gave grammar a second thought. I learned grammar through reading, and I practiced grammar through writing.

I wish now I had been taught grammar -- sentence diagramming in particular -- as I would have loved every minute of it, and I think formal instruction in sentence syntax would have made me a better writer sooner.

But I wasn't taught grammar, and I learned to write without thinking consciously about grammar and punctuation.

Back to the question of missing the fine points: I distinctly recall, from time to time (especially back when I discovered my affection for the semicolon) not knowing what 'the rules' said to do. But uncertainty about the rules never caused me to think I ought to actually go out and look up the rules.

Basically, I had just one ironclad rule: does it sound right? If it didn't, I rewrote; and I rewrote over and over and over again. One of these days I should count how many versions some of my sentences (and passages) go through. It has to be in the hundreds. Many hundreds, in some cases.

I'm sure that, like Jean, I was making subtle errors all those years. In fact, I know I was. After I finally started to learn the formal rules, just 2 years ago, I discovered one in particular that I hadn't picked up through reading, which is the prohibition against placing a comma between an independent clause & a dependent adverbial clause.

e.g.:

I went home because I felt sick.

not

I went home, because I felt sick.

I had never heard of this rule, and never conceived of it, either. (I had also never heard the rule about using a comma after a FANBOYS, or the rule about not putting a comma after "rule" 2 sentences ago.) Where commas were concerned, I had always followed my own rule, which was to use a comma if it sounded right. So sometimes I used a comma, and sometimes I didn't use a comma, depending.

After I learned the No Commas Before Subordinate Adverbial Clauses rule, I started to follow it .... but then, not too long afterward, I stopped. The rule doesn't work! Sometimes a sentence needs a comma, rule or no rule, and there's an end to it.

All of this said, I feel pretty strongly today that I would have been better off if I had learned formal grammar, including sentence diagramming, in K-12. But that is a subject for another post.

^* The fact that writing is grammar, pretty much, escaped my notice.

Magister Green on how the Greeks and Romans taught

Magister Green on the question of whether you can "pick up" the grammar of writing through reading:

Going back to ancient times, the Greeks and Romans taught their children not rules of traditional grammar but rather the works of the great poets and thinkers who had come before. In particular, emphasis was placed on memorizing and modeling one's own schoolwork on the works of past masters. If we accept that students can learn grammatical rules through exposure as opposed to explicit instruction (which I do accept), the fact that schools in general (public and private) refuse to teach, much less acknowledge, the works of "masters" would go a long way towards explaining why students today know so little of the rules of traditional grammar.

I've been only vaguely aware of the 'copy work' practices of the ancients (and of the Well-Trained Mind people), but I've come to be a fan.

I think Magister Green is right.

One reason students don't write (or punctuate) grammatically today is that they aren't spending enough time reading, studying, and 'mastering' important works under the direct guidance of their teachers.

I think there's probably something missing in terms of fluency training in the early grades, too: possibly just basic fluency practice in writing and punctuating simple Subject+Verb+Object and Subject+Verb+Complement sentences. But I don't know.

I speculate that 'basic fluency training' is missing because C. was reading important works under the direct guidance of teachers in high school (though not before then), yet his writing still had lots of comma splices. I asked him how he finally got rid of them, and he said he thinks his dad just corrected so many of them that he finally started to see them himself.

Which reminds me: I need to get a post up on Morningside and "discrimination training."

Morningside does not seem to teach "grammar" at all, really. They teach writing via sentence combining, and they don't teach sentence parsing or sentence diagramming. Kent Johnson told me he teaches grammar terminology after students have learned to write, and he teaches the terminology at that point because students have to know it for state tests.

I don't know how I feel about that. I gainsay nothing Morningside does; I've seen the results with my own eyes (and in a writing class, too). But the idea of 'withholding' or avoiding the vocabulary of grammar bothers me nevertheless. I wish somebody had taught me how to diagram a sentence back in the day!

On the other hand, I may be looking at it the wrong way. The Morningside program doesn't avoid teaching the vocabulary of grammar so much as it delays formal instruction in grammar.

Maybe that's the right sequence. Reading and writing first, grammar second.

I'm going to come back to this later.

SAT math is puzzle math

Ed and I had an amazing conversation last night with an SAT math tutor. He told us that for him SAT math is super-easy, so easy that the first time he saw the test he wondered whether it was a joke. He estimates that in his years of tutoring he has encountered 20,000 SAT math items: for each item, he instantly knew the answer.

At the same time, he's not adept at other aspects of math, particularly anything to do with spatial reasoning, which predicts success in math, science, and engineering. He has trouble doing problems like this one:

source: Fibonicci - spatial reasoning test

His brain, he said, works exactly like the brains of the people who write the SAT, and nothing like the brains of other people who are good at math. He himself is good at math, spent most of his life writing software for Wall Street and briefly taught math. As to the latter, he told us US math teaching would be much better if schools cut the curriculum by 2/3 and had students learn the remaining 1/3 really well. He'd never read Schmidt and had never heard of mile-wide-inch-deep.^* It just seemed obvious to him that a good 2/3 of US curriculum should go.

Naturally I was keen to know what kind of brain he and the SAT people have, and the answer was: a puzzle brain. He loves, loves, loves puzzles; puzzles are his thing.

That's SAT math, only the puzzles are too easy for him.

A funny moment: he said his ex-wife told him she was reading a book that explained his brain: "You have no right brain at all," she told him, or words to that effect. When he read the list of right-brain characteristics, he agreed.

I wish I'd asked him how he fares on find-the-hidden-right-triangle items specifically.

^* Schmidt: "[A]t eighth-grade [we're] telling teachers to teach 35 topics. Other countries are telling their teachers to teach 10 to 15."

can you 'pick up' the grammar of writing through reading?

I'm thinking the answer is 'yes.'

I was given almost no formal instruction in grammar at all as a child, and my years in Spanish class didn't make up for it. Yet when I finally began to learn formal grammar just two years ago, I discovered that nearly all of my writing follows the traditional prescriptive rules of written grammar, up to and including the prohibition against dangling participles.^*

I learned all of the rules by reading. (And writing, but mostly, I think, by reading.)

The question is: if it was easy for me to learn applied grammar by reading, and I think it was, why isn't easy for most students today?

Have to catch a train, so more later.

^* I didn't quite have the who-whom distinction, but close.

palisadesk remembers being taught how to read pronouns

On the subject of pronoun instruction in reading class, palisadesk writes:

I remember being explicitly taught about pronouns and antecedents -- 8th grade, I think. We had to memorize the rule, "a pronoun refers back to the nearest noun that agrees with it in gender, number and case" (or something like that). Then we had lots of assignments where we had to circle or underline the pronoun, go back and find the noun it referred to and circle that, and then draw an arrow arc connecting the two.

It seemed tedious at the time but it cleared up a lot of misconceptions, such as why wasn't a noun nearer the pronoun the antecedent, as in examples like, "Phil passed the ball to Anton. Later, he scored the only goal for the team." "He" has to be Phil, not Anton, b/c both are nominative. Of course if you wanted the goal scorer to be Anton you could connect the two sentences with "who" and delete " he."

Fascinating! I don't remember ever being taught how to understand pronouns in writing.

I think today a writing instructor would probably have to tell students that the "he" in the sentence "Later he scored the only goal..." is unclear. No one teaches the nominative rule today, no one learns it, and no one knows it, including me. I'm pretty sure composition textbooks caution against this kind of reference, and I myself wouldn't use it!

Now that I read palisadesk's comment, I wish I could.

Is this a case of writing conventions changing in reaction to changes in reading instruction?

Asians sleeping in the library

C. just sent me to the website.

major news from the Fed

Scott Sumner on the Bernanke press conference:

1. Bernanke emphasized that monetary stimulus is not like fiscal stimulus, it actually reduces the budget deficit. That’s right.

2. He said it was an 11 to 1 vote. The Fed is clearly behind him and hence the policy has credibility.

3. He kept talking jobs jobs jobs. And he emphasized that the Fed would do pretty much whatever it takes to get some progress on the employment front. Of course by itself that would be a bad policy. But when combined with the 2% inflation target (which he said had equal weight) it’s getting pretty close to NGDP targeting.

4. Speaking of NGDP targeting, Bernanke brought up the idea (without any prompting by reporters) and talked about Woodford’s plan for NGDP level targeting. He didn’t endorse it (how could he when the Fed only recently adopted a 2% inflation goal) but he certainly wasn’t critical of Woodford. I had the impression that if he wasn’t constrained by being head of the Fed right now, he’d be pretty sympathetic to Woodford’s proposal. And why do I have to call it “Woodford’s proposal?”

5. I’ve gotten a lot of criticism from people, even my friends in the blogosphere, for going too easy on Bernanke. Talking about how he’s well-intentioned, etc. I think this press conference shows that my comments were justified. A commenter named Mark C recently sent me a survey by Bloomberg that showed that the vast majority of economists did not think money was too tight, and only 1 out of 66 thought money was far too tight. Even though Bernanke is a Republican, he’s to the left of the mainstream of a profession that votes 70% Democratic. His call for doing whatever it takes to get more jobs was clearly sincere.

Thank God the Bernanke/Woodford policy has failed!
One down, two to go
I think Ben just did it
Is the Fed Really Causing the Sustained Drop in Interest Rates?
Federal Reserve Finally Working Expectations Channel with Open-Ended QE
Build That Apartment Building Now

The Great Recession: Market Failure or Monetary Disorder? by Robert Hetzel
Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History by Milton Friedman

Bernanke press conference

update:
Michael Woodford reacts
David Beckworth: Money Still Matters (Fed measure is wrong) - growth in Germany's M4 Divisia money supply compared to M4 Divisia growth in Eurozone & US

PRESS CONFERENCE: BEN BERNANKE DEFENDS UNLIMITED QE, AS MARKET GOES TOTALLY WILD by Joe Weisenthal and Matthew Boesler
Ben Bernanke Put On An Ingenious Performance Today — Here's What Just Happened by Joe Weisenthal

Rortybomb: Monetary Policy Explained with Animated gifs

PWN the SAT Math Guide Review

The main idea of the book is that "The SAT is not a math test." The implication is that the reader already does well in math and probably wants to get above 600 on the SAT (about 13 errors out of 54). Although students at all levels can learn from the book, it doesn't spend much time on the basics. This is a book for those who want to see what it is about their traditional math education that is not going to get the job done in time. In fact, the SAT specifically tries to get you to solve problems using your traditional (too slow) tools. This means that many of the problems are special cases. Instead of solving equations for x and y, you may have to solve for x+y. Instead of simplifying, you have to know how to manipulate equations into other forms. Instead of pulling out nPr and nCr, it may be easier to revert back to basic counting principles or listing all of the choices. The book does a good job of explaining these other non-traditional approaches, especially plug-in and backsolve.

"PWN the SAT" is not filled up with full practice tests. You are referred to the Blue Book for those, but it gives you a breakdown of each Blue Book question on each test. This is invaluable. You have to practice with real questions and timing, but you need to have a way to analyze what you did right and what you did wrong. The book does, however, give you many practice questions and four 20-question drills at the end. It took me less than a week, a few hours here and there, to do every question with follow-up analysis.

One interesting section is on how to "Be Nimble". I wish he would expand on that because I think you can codify the process better. The idea is that those who automatically dive into a traditional math approach may not have the quickness to come up with alternate approaches. However, I had cases where I immediately knew how to do the problem with a traditional approach (perhaps a little slowly), but spent too much time looking for the shortcut. "Nimble" (changing directions) takes time and that extra time has to be built up from other problems. It would be nice to see a section on how to be faster on the easier problems. These are things like immediately converting from one side to another for a 30-60-90 right triangle. It's easier to be nimble if you have extra time.

I highly recommend this book. Given that you are starting at a reasonable score level, you don't need anything more than this book and the official Blue Book. Beware of third-party tests. You can't "PWN the SAT" using proxy tests. You need to dive right in with the real thing.

Between

Pick a number between 1 and 10.

OK, 10.

Wrong.

Is there an official mathematical definition of "between" somewhere when it comes to integers versus reals? I just got caught on a SAT question when it asked for the number of integers between two points of a sequence. I included the end points. Of course, the choices included both with and without the ends. Also, I got caught on another problem when I selected the wrong choice even though I had the right answer. It's kind of a variation of mis-bubbling.

9th grade students and pronouns

from "The Grammars of Reading" by Eileen Simmons (English Journal Vol. 95, No. 5 May 2006):

One thing I know about my ninth grade students: They come to high school with an extensive background in formal English grammar. They have spent countless hours in elementary school and middle school singing songs and doing worksheets. I'm confident that they passed their grammar tests.

[snip]

My students were actively making meaning from their reading [of The Odyssey] by using rhetorical grammar;^* they were engaging with the text, making connections among words and phrases, and making powerful inferences....

But the progress students were making by charting action and character for difficult passages was not carrying over into their reader-response journals. In spite of my constant admonitions and frequent modeling to "use context--before and after your passage--to read for the answers to your questions," the students were still generating lists of questions without any indication that they were reading for the answers....

In desperation, I pulled out some passages for a directed-response exercise. I gave them a two-column sheet--text in the left column, with a blank right column--and asked them to write their responses in the right column. Once again I told them, "Don't just write questions. Read to find the answers to your questions. That means finding the passage in your book, reading into and out of the passage.^** When I read their responses, I was appalled. Their responses had only a tangential connection to the reading.

Curious, I went back through the stack of papers and a lightbulb went on.

Pronouns. They weren't connecting the pronouns to their antecedents.

Back in the classroom, I announced my discovery and asked students to list personal pronouns I didn't want case, person, or number--just a list of pronouns In all four ninth-grade classes, the room became deathly still. Students looked at me with terrified eyes. Grammar 4 was rearing its ugly head.

"Think about the grammar songs you learned in middle school," I said.

Reading Ms. Simmons' article, I am making my own powerful inference, which is that apparently, inside K-12 English classes, "reader response" means "generating" a list of questions because the teacher told you to.

In this case, generating a list of questions about a work of literature -- The Odyssey -- you can't begin to fathom.

Here's the way things worked back on my home planet:

• Teacher assigns reading
• Students do reading 
• Teacher asks comprehension questions
• Students answer comprehension questions
• Teacher checks answers & makes sure students understand the reading
• Students ask questions about things in the reading they don't understand
• Teacher answers questions about things in the reading students don't understand 
• Serious discussion and analysis begin when the preceding activities have been successfully completed

I don't remember how home-planet teachers handled pronouns and antecedents. Wish I did. I'm guessing teachers didn't handle pronouns and antecedents at all. Instead, teachers gave students reading passages geared to their reading level, and students just gradually and naturally picked up the connection between pronouns and antecedents as they went along. (Did teachers explicitly teach pronouns and antecedents to students who didn't pick the connection up naturally? I'm guessing most did not, but again I don't know.)

The students in Ms. Simmons' class clearly are not prepared to read The Odyssey. I'm not prepared to read The Odyssey, and I am a person who scores 800 on SAT reading. I read The Odyssey along with Chris, the summer before he entered his Jesuit high school. I loved the book, but I didn't have an easy time of it.

^* By "rhetorical grammar," the author means picking out the 'action verbs' in a passage (mostly, but not always, the action verbs in the independent clauses) and figuring out who (mostly who, not what) performed the action. 

^** Do students know what this means?

Andy!

woo hoo!

5+2: the canonical sentences

source: John Seely's Grammar for Teachers, a short, succinct, clear, and useful distillation of Quirk and Greenbaum.

Teaching English composition, I now start with these three 'canonical' sentence patterns:

SV
SVO
SVC

For the SVC and SVO patterns, I use Phyllis Davenport's ur-sentences:

SVC: Something (or somebody) is something.
SVO: Something (or somebody) did something.

For my 'core' SV examples I like:

Rex barked
Jesus wept.^*

From the first three, I move on to:

SVOO
SVOC

And from there to:

SVA
SVOA

Spelled out, using John Seely's examples:

SV: Subject+Verb
Elephants exist.

SVO: Subject+Verb+Object
Elephants like grass.

SVOO: Subject+Verb+Indirect Object+Direct Object
Elephants give children rides.

SVC: Subject+Verb+Complement
Elephants are animals.

SVOC: Subject+Verb+Object+Complement
Elephants make children happy.

SVA: Subject+Verb+Adverbial
Elephants live here.

SVOA: Subject+Verb+Object+Adverbial
The elephant thrust him away.

In these sentence patterns, all "sentence slots" -- S, V, O, C, A -- must be filled. If a slot is not filled, the sentence becomes "grammatically incomplete."

I've written "5+2" because the final two patterns - SVA and SVOA - are, in Seely's words, "much less common": "They only occur with a very small number of verbs, but they are important."

Seely's book is fantastically helpful. I've been using the iPad version, but I may order a hard copy, too.

^* John 11:35

people talking

A sample stretch of talk

...speakers are sitting at the dinner table talking about a car accident that happened to the father of one of the speakers

< speaker 1 >  I’ll just take that off. Take that off.
< speaker 2 >  All looks great.
< speaker 3 >  [laughs]
< speaker 2 >  Mm.
< speaker 3 >  Mm.
< speaker 2 >  I think your dad was amazed wasn’t he at the damage.
< speaker 4 >  Mm.
< speaker 2 >  It’s not so much the parts. It’s the labour charges for
< speaker 4 >  Oh that. For a car.
< speaker 2 >  Have you got hold of it?
< speaker 1 >  Yeah.
< speaker 2 >  It was a bit erm.
< speaker 1 >  Mm.
< speaker 3 >  Mm.
< speaker 2 >  A bit.
< speaker 3 >  That’s right.
< speaker 2 >  I mean they said they’d have to take his car in for two days. And he says All it is is s straightening a panel. And they’re like, Oh no. It’s all new panel. You can’t do this.
< speaker 3 >  Any erm problem.
< speaker 2 >  As soon as they hear insurance claim. Oh. Let’s get it right.
< speaker 3 >  Yeah. Yeah. Anything to do with
< speaker 1 >  Wow.
< speaker 3 >  coach work is er
< speaker 1 >  Right.
< speaker 3 >  fatal isn’t it.
< speaker 1 >  Now.
Teaching about talk – what do pupils need to know about spoken language and the important ways in which talk differs from writing?
in: Spoken English and the question of grammar: the role of the functional model

I've been digging into some of the literature on talking vs writing.

re: the conversation above, I am struck by the fact that everyone knows what everyone else is talking about.

How?^*

Student writers have to achieve the same effect with readers they can't see, a tall order. Professional writers have to produce a steady stream of sensible-seeming thoughts and images inside the minds of readers they can't see, don't know, and will never meet.

How does that happen?

The answer is: via cohesion devices.

But how do cohesion devices work? Are the cohesion devices used in writing direct analogues to the cohesion devices used in speaking? (And what are the cohesion devices in speaking, anyway? I'm not sure, exactly.)

What are the best devices; when do you use which ones; and how do you teach them to students?

I'd like to know.

I'm reading Vande Kopple next. Then Halliday and Hasan, Kolln, and Dillon.

^* ESP?

tornado watch

Not quite the drama of Hurricane Irene, but still.

summer re-boot

After declaring Summer over, I'm declaring it back on again. Chris is home for the weekend, and Ed has scored some reasonably-priced tickets to the Open final.

So summer's end happens Monday.

We're lolling on sofas in the family room, watching World's Worst Tenants.

Bliss!

pop quiz

So....two hours into my first Blackboard sojourn, I am stymied.

I cheered up when I finally located a document titled Help for Instructors, which I have now downloaded.

QUESTION: How many pages does the Blackboard manual contain?

No peeking.

I wonder how long the Smartboard manual is.

Being Tough on Tough

Though I haven't read it, I honestly don't get what the big deal is about Paul Tough's new book, How Children Succeed. From what I gather from various reviews and interviews, Tough's Big Idea is that persistence and curiosity matter more than IQ does for success. But was there ever a time or place when this statement wasn't obvious? Of course IQ means little if you don't apply yourself; of course intelligence leads nowhere interesting if you lack curiosity. Does anyone--especially in this Emotional Intelligence-obsessed world of ours--really think that the successful people out there--even the genuises--achieved what they did primarily because of their IQ scores? Didn't Malcolm Gladwell already write a book back in 2008 on the findings that what makes an expert is 10,0000 hours of practice? What is it about Tough's book that's garnering so much attention?

A slightly different take on Tough's Big Idea is voiced by Joe Nocera in today's New York Times:

Tough argues that simply teaching math and reading--the so-called cognitive skills--isn't nearly enough, especially for children who have grown up enduring the stresses of poverty. In fact, it might not even be the most important thing.

Notice how quickly Nocera slips from the obvious--that teaching teach math and reading isn't nearly enough--to the ridiculous. To say that learning to read and do math might not be the most important elements of success is like saying that adequate food and shelter might not be the most important elements of staying alive (after all one must also breathe oxygen). When it come to essential elements, it's pointless to quibble over what's most important.

In interviews Tough is careful to admit that, while schools need to do more to encourage persistence and curiosity, there are no clear studies on how to do this. Refreshing though this caveat is, it, too, raises the question of what this book has to offer that's new and plausible, or at least useful.

There is one disturbing answer to that last question. To the careless reader who approaches the book from the perspective of the dominant educational paradigm, it offers yet another reason to water down academics in favor of "the whole child." The connections between grit and academic rigor, and between curiosity and well-taught academic subjects, should be as obvious as the inherent importance of grit is. Indeed, I'm guessing these connections are obvious to most people. But they clearly aren't obvious to many of those wielding the greatest power over whether or not our children succeed.

desperately seeking anaphora

At Morningside Academy I learned that many students have difficulty understanding anaphora, which I am (presently) defining as any expression in a text that:

• refers back to something earlier in the text (the antecedent)
• often possesses a meaning that can't be found out by looking the word or words up in a dictionary

e.g.:

But shortly afterwards both Androcles and the Lion were captured, and the slave was sentenced to be thrown to the Lion, after the latter had been kept without food for several days.
source: Tales of Wonder From Many Lands: A Reader for Composition by Howard Canaan and Joel N. Feimer

"Latter" refers to the Lion, and a dictionary can't tell you that.

Yesterday, in class, I found that most of my students were thrown by this passage. I assume the same has been true of students in all of my previous classes, but I never picked up on it. (aaarggh)

This sentence was a problem, too:

Some holidays are greatly overrated, Valentine's Day is one of them.
source: Hunter College Reading/Writing Center Grammar and Mechnics

Nearly all of the class thought this sentence was correctly punctuated, and not because they had no idea what a complete sentence (or clause) is. (I was pleasantly surprised on the 'what is a complete sentence?' front.)

My students easily pegged "Some holidays are greatly overrated" as a complete sentence, but they vehemently denied that "Valentine's Day is one of them" could be complete because it doesn't make sense on its own. I do mean vehement. I had the same reaction from the rising 8th grader I worked with last week.

From the get-go, two falls ago, when I returned to the classroom, I've been trying to teach my students how to write cohesive prose. Writing cohesive prose means connecting sentences to one another, and connecting sentences to one another means using anaphora.

But now I'm going to be paying close attention to anaphora in reading comprehension, too.

Meanwhile, turns out Erica M. has been dealing with this issue forever:

Catherine, that is EXACTLY the kind of sentence my students have trouble with. That's why I do so many "is it a sentence or not?" drills with my students. They can't tell. Even kids at $40,000/year Manhattan private schools (especially kids at $40,000/year Manhattan private schools!) just can't figure it out. They can't separate grammar from context. That's why they write endless comma splices. I have one student right now, a very bright rising senior at a notoriously progressive Manhattan private school, whom I recently spent an entire session just doing "is it a sentence or not?/punctuate the comma splices" with, and the next practice SAT she took, she still got loads of them wrong! I'm going to keep having to write her drills. I bet that in her entire education, no one has ever made her do this. What disturbs me, though, is that her teachers have apparently looked past the problem for years.

and see:
All good writing consists of good sentences properly joined.

Can you spell 'hegemony'?

from the Times:

Catholic schools have been bleeding enrollment and money for years, and many have been forced to close. But some, like St. Stephen of Hungary, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, have found a way to thrive — attracting a more affluent clientele by offering services and classes more commonly found in expensive private schools.

Selling points include small class sizes and extracurricular activities beginning in the youngest grades. And by often charging far less, these schools have been able to stabilize themselves and even grow.

“Our competition or our standard isn’t another good Catholic school,” said the Rev. Angelo Gambatese, the pastor at St. Stephen of Hungary church, which shares a building with the school. “It’s the best independent schools in Manhattan, and we intend to achieve the same level of performance that they do, academically, developmentally.”

[snip]

While 70 percent of the students are Catholic, a figure that has not changed, it has a more Franciscan focus on kindness and respect rather than papal edicts, which makes it more palatable to families not traditionally in the Catholic school market.

“I don’t feel like it’s holy rollers over there,” said Richard Sher, a parent of two at the school who is half Jewish, half Protestant.

Mass is every other week; the homily is more of a discussion than a lesson. When Father Gambatese talked in May to the youngest students at Mass about Adam, he wondered why Adam asked God for more humans. “He wanted people to talk to and play with,” Sabrina Vidal, 8, said. “Yes!” Father Gambatese said. “Don’t you get tired of hugging a lion?”

St. Stephen offers the kind of extras found at far more expensive schools, like French for 3-year-olds, violin for fourth and fifth graders, and iPads for sixth to eighth graders. But some parents, Catholic and non-Catholic, said they were also drawn to the discipline and values-based approach at St. Stephen, elements that have fallen out of fashion at most nonreligious schools.

“We were looking for structure, and that’s what we got,” said Deirdre O’Connell, a parent who works in banking.

In Katherine Peck, the entrepreneurial 33-year-old at the heart of St. Stephen’s revitalization, the parents also got a principal schooled in progressive teaching. Classrooms are no longer teacher-focused, with students at desks, but student-centered, with children at tables. Students have publishing parties every month to showcase their writing, textbooks have been de-emphasized in favor of hands-on learning and every classroom has an interactive projection system.

Mrs. Peck, who is Catholic and attended Teachers College of Columbia University, said Catholic schools gave her more flexibility than the public schools where she had taught. (She also taught at the Epiphany School before coming to St. Stephen.) “Everything I was doing at Teachers College, I could do in the classroom,” she said, compared with the public school where she said everyone had to teach from the same page.

To Survive, a Catholic School Retools for a Wealthier MarketBy JENNY ANDERSON | New York Times | Published: August 19, 2012

I need to start a Catholic school. A real one. A real Catholic school, only with precision teaching.

Of course, I'm not Catholic. So I wouldn't be anyone's first choice to start a Catholic school. Also, the Catholic Church isn't starting new schools, not here in Westchester County anyway. The church is closing them.

Yesterday I taught my first class (freshman composition) in Victory Hall, a building that up until two or three years ago housed a Catholic girls high school. I love teaching in Victory Hall, and I was happy to be assigned a room there again. The place has an aura.

Jimmy's group home, originally built to serve as a convent, has an aura, too.

But when I arrived at Victory Hall, I discovered that I wasn't teaching in the building itself; I was teaching in one of the ancient modulars out back. I didn't even know the modulars were there, and now I'm teaching in one.

Catholic schools used to have so many students they had to buy trailers to expand the plant.

Now they're all going or gone.

Ed has often asked how much longer Chris's Jesuit high school can hold out. It's housed on the same campus with a major education school, and major education schools have no truck with the Jesuit tradition.

and see:
cultural hegemony

good writing

All good writing consists of good sentences properly joined.

- Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg in Higher Lessons in English. A work on English grammar and composition, in which the science of the Language is made tributary to the art of expression. Revised edition, 1896.

I've been talking to Katharine Beals about writing instruction, grammar, and the sentence. (Here's Katharine's post on the erasure of the sentence).

At least since the 1980s (the 1980s again!) writing instruction has been about process, not sentences: process, voice, and the production of personal narratives and opinion pieces. Pick up nearly any college composition textbook and you will find in its pages a slew of sample student essays all written in the first person, with discussion of the sentence pushed to the back of the book. There you will find "sentence fragments" and "run ons" and "misplaced modifiers" bundled together in a chunk of pages devoted to grammar and punctuation. The sentence, in today's writing class, is mostly a source of error.

Of course, "process writing" seemed wrong to me from the get-go. I myself never, ever 'free-write,' and since I actually am a writer, I feel I'm on solid ground drawing the conclusion that 'free-writing' is a waste of instructional time.

But I became more convinced that the process approach is misguided after working with Kerrigan's X-1-2-3 method, which gives novice writers a method of building an essay on a stack of sentences with identical subjects and identical sentence structure (Subject-Verb-Object or Subject-Verb-Complement). e.g.:

X Power corrupts.
1 It corrupts the weak.
2 It corrupts the strong.
3 It corrupts all the relations between the two.

By the time I returned to the classroom to teach freshman writing, I had begun to feel that the sentence is key. Not just because sentences -- not words -- are the raw material of writing, but because the sentence is the essay in some sense. The essay makes an argument, and a sentence is an argument.

The sentence is an essay in miniature.

and see:
Cost of College on William J. Kerrigan's X-1-2-3 method

today's factoid

All but five states no longer require the teaching of cursive handwriting in public elementary schools.
With Pen in Hand, He Battles On
By GENA FEITH | September 3, 2012, 4:38 p.m. ET

Another executive decision from central administration.

Oh well. It's not as if handwriting matters, or anything.

what paradox?

ABSTRACT

Chinese classrooms present an intriguing paradox to the claim of self-determination theory that autonomy facilitates learning. Chinese teachers appear to be controlling, but Chinese students do not have poor academic performance in international comparisons. The present study addressed this paradox by examining the cultural differences in students' interpretation of teacher controlling behaviors. Affective meanings of teacher controlling behaviors were solicited from 158 Chinese 5th graders and 115 American 5th graders. It was found that the same controlling behaviors of teachers had different affective meanings for different cultural groups (Chinese vs. American) and for groups with different levels of social-emotional relatedness with teachers (high vs. low). Chinese children perceived the behaviors as less controlling than American children and, in turn, reported that they were more motivated in their teachers' class than American children. Regardless of culture, children with high social-emotional relatedness with teachers perceived the behaviors as less controlling than children with low social-emotional relatedness with teachers. It was also found that internalization mediated the relation between social-emotional relatedness and children's learning motivation in both cultures. The findings revealed cultural differences as well as similarities in the psychological process of internalization.
The Chinese Classroom Paradox: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Teacher Controlling Behaviors
Zhou, Ning 1; Lam, Shui-Fong 1; Chan, Kam Chi 2
Journal of Educational Psychology
Publish Ahead of Print, 19 March 2012

High discipline/high joy.

The secret of success.

The Jesuits figured it out 400 years ago.

US public schools forgot it back in the 1960s, I think. The 60s, or maybe not 'til 1985.

update 9/11/2012:
Doug Lemov on warm/strict
all Teach Like a Champion posts

Why rich suburban school districts are the wrong choice for 90% of the kids attending them

ABSTRACT

Being schooled with other high-achieving peers has a detrimental influence on students' self-perceptions: School-average and class-average achievement have a negative effect on academic self-concept and career aspirations-the big-fish-little-pond effect. Individual achievement, on the other hand, predicts academic self-concept and career aspirations positively. Research from Western and developed countries implies that the negative contextual effect on career aspirations is mediated by academic self-concept. Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 (a total of 398,750 15-year-old students from 57 countries), we test the generalizability of this mediation model in science using a general multilevel structural equation modeling framework. Individual achievement was positively related to academic self-concept (52 countries) and career aspirations (42 countries). The positive effect on career aspirations was mediated by self-concept in 54 countries. The negative effects of school-average achievement on self-concept (50 countries) and career aspirations (31 countries) also generalized well. After controlling for self-concept at both the individual and the school level, there were significant indirect contextual effects in 34 countries-evidence for mediation of the contextual effect of school-average achievement on career intentions by academic self-concept.
Big Fish in Little Ponds Aspire More: Mediation and Cross-Cultural Generalizability of School-Average Ability Effects on Self-Concept and Career Aspirations in Science
Nagengast, Benjamin 1 2; Marsh, Herbert W. 2 3 4 | Journal of Educational Psychology |
Publish Ahead of Print, 9 April 2012

Absolutely true.

Absolutely true.

I have seen the damage in my own child and in the children of other parents here and in neighboring towns where I tutor.

To this day, C. sees himself as stupid in math. Stupid. Not: OK in math, really good in verbal. Stupid. Can't do math.

When you're a little fish in a big pond AND YOU ARE A CHILD, WITH A CHILD'S BRAIN, AND A CHILD'S BLACK-WHITE WAY OF PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER, that's what you think.

Maybe I'll strike those all-caps later, when I read this again.

But maybe I won't.

AND SEE:
nominally high-performing schools
grade deflation and winner-take-all "star schools"

thought for the day

I want to open a Catholic school.

Seriously.

teaching math facts: equivalent sums or iterative grouping?

ABSTRACT

This experiment tested the hypothesis that organizing arithmetic fact practice by equivalent values facilitates children's understanding of math equivalence. Children (M age = 8 years 6 months, N = 104) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions: (a) equivalent values, in which problems were grouped by equivalent sums (e.g., 3 + 4 = 7, 2 + 5 = 7, etc.), (b) iterative, in which problems were grouped iteratively by shared addend (e.g., 3 + 1 = 4, 3 + 2 = 5, etc.), or (c) no extra practice, in which children did not receive any practice over and above what they ordinarily receive at school and home. Children then completed measures to assess their understanding of math equivalence. Children who practiced facts organized by equivalent values demonstrated a better understanding of math equivalence than children in the other 2 conditions. Results suggest that organizing arithmetic facts into conceptually related groupings may help children improve their understanding of math equivalence.
It Pays to be Organized: Organizing Arithmetic Practice Around Equivalent Values Facilitates Understanding of Math Equivalence.[Article]
McNeil, Nicole M. 1; Chesney, Dana L. 1; Matthews, Percival G. 1; Fyfe, Emily R. 1; Petersen, Lori A. 1; Dunwiddie, April E. 1; Wheeler, Mary C. 1
Journal of Educational PsychologY | Publish Ahead of Print, POST AUTHOR CORRECTIONS, 25 June 2012

grade-skipping & STEM

ABSTRACT

Using data from a 40-year longitudinal study, the authors examined 3 related hypotheses about the effects of grade skipping on future educational and occupational outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). From a combined sample of 3,467 mathematically precocious students (top 1%), a combination of exact and propensity score matching was used to create balanced comparison groups of 363 grade skippers and 657 matched controls. Results suggest that grade skippers (a) were more likely to pursue advanced degrees in STEM and author peer-reviewed publications in STEM, (b) earned their degrees and authored their 1st publication earlier, and (c) accrued more total citations and highly cited publications by age 50 years. These patterns were consistent among male participants but less so among female participants (who had a greater tendency to pursue advanced degrees in medicine or law). Findings suggest that grade skipping may enhance STEM accomplishments among the mathematically talented. (C) 2012 by the American Psychological Association
When Less Is More: Effects of Grade Skipping on Adult STEM Productivity Among Mathematically Precocious Adolescents.
Park, Gregory 1; Lubinski, David 1; Benbow, Camilla P. 1 | Journal of Educational Psychology | Print ahead July 9, 2012

My dad skipped a grade when he was a child. My mom always thought that was a mistake; she attributed his social awkwardness to that event.

Later on we all attributed it to what we believe to have been his undiagnosed Asperger syndrome.

Why aren't educational games any better?

I saw this article, and thought it was a terrific explanation why it's hard to find video games that are both compelling and educational.  (This link is for Myth 3. . . the whole series hasn't been published)

get the MESAG, part 2

Back from the Open, so summer is officially over, as opposed to emotionally over, which it was the instant Chris set foot inside his dorm.

Hate the empty nest! hate! hate! hate!

Anyway, getting back to my interrupted post on precision teaching, when you learn something to fluency, you "get the MESAG":

Maintenance	"You never forget how to ride a bicycle." When you learn content or skills to fluency, you remember them.
Endurance	This one surprised me. Fluency in content and skills means you can perform the content or skill for as long as you need to perform them. You have stamina.
Stability	Another surprise, rife with implications for our ADHD epidemic. Fluent knowledge and skills  are impervious to distraction. A noisy classroom has no effect on skills a child knows so well he can do them in his sleep. If he can do long division in his sleep, he can do long division inside Penn Station.
Application	Transferring semi-old knowledge to new contexts is hard. My favorite story re: transfer of knowledge is the little autistic boy whose parents and teachers spent months painstakingly teaching him to butter his bread. Finally he learned! Everyone was happy until, a few weeks later, they discovered that the little boy had no idea how to spread peanut butter on bread. Spreading butter on bread and spreading peanut butter on bread were two different things, and they had to start all over again. Fluency allows you to apply your bread-buttering skills to peanut-buttering bread. Autistic children, by the way, are rarely taught anything to fluency. "Discrete trial" teaching puts a ceiling on the number of repetitions a child can do in a minute. 80% correct does not equal fluency.
Generativity	Fluent knowledge and skill "repertoires" readily recombine to produce new skills that don't have to be directly taught.

Is fluency the magic that makes inflexible knowledge flexible?

why there are no child prodigies in literature, history, or philosophy

Abstract: Writing skills typically develop over a course of more than two decades as a child matures and learns the craft of composition through late adolescence and into early adulthood. The novice writer progresses from a stage of knowledge-telling to a stage of knowledge-transforming characteristic of adult writers. Professional writers advance further to an expert stage of knowledge-crafting in which representations of the author's planned content, the text itself, and the prospective reader's interpretation of the text are routinely manipulated in working memory. Knowledge-transforming, and especially knowledge-crafting, arguably occur only when sufficient executive attention is available to provide a high degree of cognitive control over the maintenance of multiple representations of the text as well as planning conceptual content, generating text, and reviewing content and text. Because executive attention is limited in capacity, such control depends on reducing the working memory demands of these writing processes through maturation and learning. It is suggested that students might best learn writing skills through cognitive apprenticeship training programs that emphasize deliberate practice.
Kellogg, R.T. (2008). Training writing skills: A cognitive developmental perspective. Journal of writing research, 1(1), 1-26

Is Handwriting Causally Related to Learning to Write?

The contribution of handwriting to learning to write was examined in an experimental training study involving beginning writers with and without an identified disability. First-grade children experiencing handwriting and writing difficulties participated in 27 fifteen-min sessions designed to improve the accuracy and fluency of their handwriting. In comparison to their peers in a contact control condition receiving instruction in phonological awareness, students in the handwriting condition made greater gains in handwriting as well as compositional fluency immediately following instruction and 6 months later, The effects of instruction were similar for students with and without an identified disability. These findings indicate that handwriting is causally related to writing and that explicit and supplemental handwriting instruction is an important element in preventing writing difficulties in the primary grades.

Is handwriting causally related to learning to write? Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers.
Graham, Steve; Harris, Karen R.; Fink, Barbara
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 92(4), Dec 2000, 620-633

"Do Academic-Track Schools Make Students Smarter?"

ABSTRACT

Prior research has shown that quantity of schooling affects the development of intelligence in childhood and adolescence. However, it is still debated whether other aspects of schooling-such as ability tracking or, more generally, school quality-can also influence intelligence. In this study, the authors analyzed intelligence gains in academic- and vocational-track schools in Germany, testing for differential effects of school quality (academic vs. vocational track) on psychometric intelligence. Longitudinal data were obtained from a sample of N = 1,038 Grade 7 and 10 students in 49 schools. A nonverbal reasoning test was used as an indicator of general psychometric intelligence, and relevant psychological and social background variables were included in the analyses. Propensity score matching was used to control for selection bias. Results showed a positive effect of attending the academic track.

The Differential Effects of School Tracking on Psychometric Intelligence: Do Academic-Track Schools Make Students Smarter? Becker, Michael 1 2 3; Ludtke, Oliver 4; Trautwein, Ulrich 5; Koller, Olaf 6; Baumert, Jurgen 2
Journal of Educational Psychology | 104(3):682-699, August 2012

Salman Khan on 60 Minutes shortly

7pm Eastern time.

"He built a platform that could completely change education."

I'm taking the other side of that bet.

get the MESAG

Another dispatch from my two weeks at Morningside's Summer School Institute:

"Get the MESAG" is Morningside's acronym for the results of fluency: get the MESAG.

Maintenance
Endurance
Stability
Application
Generativity

More tomorrow ---

let them eat iPads

I've been talking to a teacher in Manhattan who seconds Barry's argument re: the destruction of education and the preservation of inequality via technology. The more 'technological' the school, she says, the worse it is, especially when the word 'technology' and/or its synonyms appear in the school's name.

She told me about a school so bad the city was going to close it and then re-open it as the Creative Digital Minds High School. (Of course, the original name appears to have been High School of Graphic Communication Arts, which isn't a whole lot better. Although the phrase "graphic communication arts" does signal, to me, an actual skill.)

Apparently the closing-and-reopening scheme is on hold for the time being.

I think somebody should start a brand new school & call it Old School.

Chart of proposed name changes for 24 struggling schools

Mumford High, RIP

A beautiful piece from Barry on The Destruction of Education and the Preservation of Inequity:

From the fall of 1964 through June 1967, I attended Mumford High School in Detroit.... My brother and sister also attended Mumford and graduated in 1962 and 1958. As I write this, Mumford is in the process of being demolished. The demolition is part of the $500 million Detroit Public Schools Capital Improvement Program started in 2009. Because of a shrinking student population, the state is in the process of shutting down almost half the schools in Detroit. The school district is attempting to sell the shut down schools for redevelopment, an effort that has earned over $10 million since 2009.

But although Mumford is being destroyed, a new version of the high school has been built on what had been the original Mumford’s athletic field. The new school cost $52 million to build, secured by a bond issue in a city where almost half of its schools have been shut down. From the web page for the new Mumford, it is described as a “LEED Silver Certified state-of-the-art facility and will offer academic core areas, a high-tech media center, modern science laboratories, a courtyard student quad, and a community health clinic.” Mumford is one of 15 schools that has been taken out of the Detroit Public School system and assigned to Michigan’s Educational Achievement Authority–a statewide district set up for managing struggling schools. The new Mumford will open in the fall.

For those of us who grew up in a city that was at one time vibrant and had one of the best school systems in the country, it has been difficult to watch its decay.

[snip]

It is fairly easy to dismiss the decline of education in Detroit on its failing economy and its accompanying social ills and even for some to make sweeping accusations about the low cognitive ability of Detroit’s student population. But the decline of education is not limited to Detroit. It has been happening across the U.S. for quite some time, although not as catastrophically as in Detroit. The vision of education in this country for many decades has been education and equity for all. In fact, the history of the equity problems and their solutions in the U.S. has its parallels in the history of education in Detroit. It is a story of how the fight to eliminate inequity in education has actually increased it.

[snip]

During the period of the 50’s and early 60’s, Mumford had been one of the premier high schools in Detroit, competing with Cass Tech—a magnet school in the downtown area that had admission requirements—for the academic achievements of its students. Mumford was located in northwest Detroit which was a mix of working class, middle and upper middle class neighborhoods. Though predominantly Jewish, the northwest section was also home to upper middle class African Americans who attended Mumford (Graham; 1999).

[snip]

Mirel (1993) (an education professor at University of Michigan who has done much research in the history of the Detroit Public School system) points out that during the depression of the 30’s in Detroit as in the U.S as a whole, the push in education was to keep graduation rates steady and prevent drop outs. With the deficit of work, the thinking was that it was better to have young people in school than out with nothing to do. The general curriculum in Detroit at that time was experiencing a large number of failure rates. To keep the students off the streets, courses were made easier. “Descriptive” science courses were introduced in lieu of lab-based courses and focused on useful topics such as how vacuum cleaners worked. “Relevance” was the watchword just as “engagement” is now. Topics such as traffic safety were woven into classes such as civics, and schools offered courses in personal standards, focusing on topics such as diet, dress, etiquette and personal hygiene. Girls were offered courses on “Appearing to Advantage, “Homemaking”, “Use of Leisure Time” and “Bride and Trousseau”.

This pattern continued long past the depression, past World War II and into the 50’s and 60’s, during which time the influx of African Americans from the south into Detroit continued because of the well-paying factory jobs. Curricula in high schools had evolved into four different types: college-preparatory, vocational (e.g., plumbing, metal work, electrical, auto), trade-oriented (e.g., accounting, secretarial), and general.

[snip]

During the period of the 50’s and early 60’s, Mumford had been one of the premier high schools in Detroit, competing with Cass Tech—a magnet school in the downtown area that had admission requirements—for the academic achievements of its students. Mumford was located in northwest Detroit which was a mix of working class, middle and upper middle class neighborhoods. Though predominantly Jewish, the northwest section was also home to upper middle class African Americans who attended Mumford (Graham; 1999).

[snip]

Northwest Detroit started to experience the phenomenon of white flight starting in the late fifties. The flight began in the twenties, starting in a more central area of Detroit—an area that would be the site of the riots to occur in the summer of 1967—that had also been predominantly Jewish in the 20’s through the 40’s. The flight’s trajectory continued and by the 60’s included northwest Detroit where I was living, and would continue to the suburbs. The demographic of Mumford was changing as well. According to Mirel (1993), 22 percent of black students were in the general track by 1967 with whites making up only 2 percent of the general track despite it being one of the most academically oriented high schools in the city.

After graduation, most boys who were in the general and vocation tracks in Detroit were drafted and sent to Viet Nam. Boys in the college prep track who went on to college, on the other hand, were given a draft deferment status which students in the general and vocational tracks did not receive. The role of the draft policies at the time of Viet Nam played no small part in contributing to the recognition of inequity between white and blacks.

[snip]

The summer of 1967 brought the riots that ultimately escalated the white flight to the suburbs, and brought in its wake racial rifts from which some say Detroit has never recovered. In the years shortly following the riots, there were efforts to decentralize and desegregate schools—met with protest from the white communities that would be affected. A friend of mine attended Cooley High School (located a few miles away from Mumford). In 1968 he witnessed a race riot that occurred at the school in April of that year, shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated. He described it as follows:

“It really was a travesty, particularly in that the kids fighting were the ones in tech programs, being streamed into Viet Nam. Cooley was half black, half white and a powder keg as long as I was there. I went back to visit a year after I graduated — the white exodus occurred and Cooley had become almost entirely black. Achievement was up, violence was down — it had transformed into a 50!s middle class school.”

My friend’s description is apt in a way that he may not have realized when he wrote it. To his eyes, achievement looked like it was on the rise as it did in many schools. Change had in fact come to Northern to address the protest of a few years back and it came to Cooley, Mumford and other predominantly black schools in Detroit. But the change came in the form of more “relevance”, focusing on black history, black culture, the arts, dance, and creative writing.

[snip]

The reforms in the Detroit schools were consistent with reforms brought about across the U.S. during the 60’s and 70’s, by the prevalent radical critics of schools at that time.... “Traditional” schooling was seen as an instrument of oppression and schools were recast in a new, “hipper” interpretation of what educational progressivism was supposed to be about. In moving away from the way things were, the education establishment’s goal was to restore equity to students rather than maintaining the tracking that created dividing lines between social class and race. The end product however was a merging of general track with college prep with the result that college prep was becoming student-centered and needs-based with lower standards, and less homework assigned. Classes such as Film Making and Cooking for Singles were offered, and requirements for English and History courses were reduced if not dropped. Social class and race were no longer a barrier for such classes as evidenced by the increasing numbers of white students who began taking them. With the requirements for graduation being diminished in the “general” track as a result of the student-centered fad, this track saw an increase in students from 12 percent in the late 60’s to 42 percent by the late 70’s. (Ravitch, 2003).

[snip]

Currently, high schools have an honors/AP track, and a general track. The general track consists of less rigorous courses and represents a lower level of education. Qualification for the honors/AP track starts before high school, and in elementary and middle schools, there is also a two-tier system. The higher tier (starting at about third grade) is the gifted and talented track. In general, this track provides teacher-directed traditional instruction at or above grade level. For students who do not qualify (and the criteria for qualifying vary, with differing definitions of what constitutes “giftedness”), they are placed in classes with students of varying abilities. As such, they are subjected to a one-size-fits-all curriculum that involves student-centered group activities, and project-oriented approaches to learning. This educational approach is guided by an undying faith led by the educational establishment that all we need to do is teach students how to learn, how to think critically and that facts and content are things they can look up (on Google) on a “just in time” basis whenever they really need to know. For many students, the approach is a guarantee that they will not be able to handle honors or AP courses in high school.

The elimination of inequity and tracking, therefore, has evolved to a two track system starting in lower grades and continuing on in high school. Those students not considered “smart enough for the gifted programs” are consigned to the lower track.

[snip]

In the meantime, there is a push for more technology in the schools, as if SmartBoards in every classroom and an iPad for every student is the answer. The tearing down of Mumford and the building of a state-of-the-art high school are indicative of what education has now become.

The complete article here.

off-topic: Michael Woodford endorses NGDP-targeting today at Jackson Hole

Sorry -- again -- to be so absent. I went straight from empty-nest trauma (hate the empty nest!) to a 5-day "precision teaching practicum" Erica M helped put together...and the days have gone by.

Looking forward to getting back to ktm, but before I do, I'm posting news from my other preoccupation in life: NGDP level targeting.

Until now, the campaign for NGDP level targeting has been mostly a David-and-Goliath affair. But with Michael Woodford's endorsement of NGDP-targeting today at Jackson Hole, that may have changed.

Bloomberg has also endorsed.


The merry band (alphabetical order):
David Beckworth
Lars Christensen
David Glasner
Joshua Hendrickson
Marcus Nunes: Historinhas
Evan Soltas
Bill Woolsey
Matthew Yglesias: Michael Woodford Makes The Case For NGDP Targeting

Academic Sways Central Bankers
Market Watch: Columbia University’s Woodford is key presenter at Jackson Hole

The Great Recession: Market Failure or Monetary Policy Disorder? by Robert L. Hetzel 

Another School Year - Any Surprises?

Our first day of school was canceled due to a strike by the service workers union. Of course this issue existed back in June, and of course everyone knew it will have to be decided in the courts, but there they were the night before trying to come to an agreement which both sides knew would never come. If the town canceled school the night before, the workers were prepared to show up for work the next day, so the town decided to wait until they saw the picket signs the next morning. By the time that happened, some kids were already on their busses. The union then claimed that the pickets were only informational. In then end, it didn't matter. The town went to court and the workers went back to work the next day, as everyone knew they would. This drama was supposed to get more parents on the side of the union? The problem has to do with outsourcing of the janitorial staff. This reminds me of some of the things Catherine was talking about in terms of controlling costs. It's tough to get back what you've given away for many years.

The other surprise was the real effect of cutting two busses. This meant longer routes and a need to move the earliest pickup back 10 min to 6:20am. It also meant that school would start 10 minutes earlier in the high school and the elementary school kids would get out 10 minutes later. They forgot to talk about that when they were cutting costs in the spring.

My son (junior) likes his teachers, but the intro talks by his AP teachers give him the impression that their goal is to teach these lazy kids all about hard work. This seems to be a common control meme in high school. Although the school pushes AP classes, one of his teachers claimed that they were in the class because either they thought very highly of themselves, or because their mommies and daddies told them to take the course.