Posts
I've just left a loooong response on The Gadfly.
If anyone else cares to chime in, that would be great.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Vlorbik's find: abolish high school?
This is a terrific article, I think:
"Let's Abolish High School"
abolish college, too?
And here's Walter Russell Mead:
"Let's Abolish High School"
The first compulsory education law in the United States wasn’t enacted until 1852. This Massachusetts law required that all young people between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school three months a year—unless, that is, they could demonstrate that they already knew the material; in other words, this law was competency-based. It took 15 years before any other states followed Massachusetts’ lead and 66 years before all states did. Along the way, some powerful segments of society staunchly opposed the mandatory education trend. In 1892, for example, the Democratic Party stated as part of its national platform, “We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children.”If this is what differentiated instruction meant, I'd be for it.
Restrictions on work by young people also took hold very gradually. In fact, the earliest “child labor” laws in the United States actually required young people to work. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that laws restricting the work opportunities of young people began to take hold. Those laws, too, were fiercely opposed, and in fact the first federal laws restricting youth labor—enacted in 1916, 1918, and 1933—were all swiftly struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. After all, young people had worked side by side with adults throughout history, and they still helped support their families and their communities in countries around the world; the idea that there should be limits on youth labor, or that young people shouldn’t be allowed to do any work, seemed outrageous to many people.
Eventually, multiple forces—the desire to “Americanize” the tens of millions of immigrants streaming into the United States to get jobs in the land of opportunity, the effort to rescue millions of young laborers from horrendous working conditions in the factories and mines, the extreme determination of America’s growing labor unions to protect adult jobs, and, most especially, the extremely high unemployment rate (27 percent or so) during the Great Depression—created the systems we have today: laws severely restricting or prohibiting youth labor, and school systems modeled after the new factories, established to teach “industrial discipline” to young people and to homogenize their knowledge and thinking.
Unfortunately, the dramatic changes set in motion by the turmoil of America’s industrial revolution also obliterated from modern consciousness the true abilities of young people, leaving adults with the faulty belief that teenagers were inherently irresponsible and incompetent. What’s more, the rate at which restrictions were placed on young people began to accelerate after the 1930s, and increased dramatically after the social turmoil of the 1960s. Surveys I’ve conducted suggest that teenagers today are subject to 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, to twice as many restrictions as are active-duty U.S. Marines, and even to twice as many restrictions as are incarcerated felons.
[snip]
Anthropologists have identified more than 100 contemporary societies in which teenage turmoil is completely absent; most of these societies don’t even have terms for adolescence. Even more compelling, long-term anthropological studies initiated at Harvard in the 1980s show that teenage turmoil begins to appear in societies within a few years after those societies adopt Western schooling practices and are exposed to Western media. Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their “inner adult” emerges.
A careful look at these issues yields startling conclusions: The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.
abolish college, too?
And here's Walter Russell Mead:
Paying for college education is one of the biggest financial worries facing middle class and working families. Fancy liberal arts schools that let your kids live in essentially unsupervised coed dorms while majoring in such helpful subjects as deconstructionist literary theory and Why America Sucks now cost north of $40,000 per year, and even less-prestigious schools that teach more useful subjects can cost as much per year as a round-the-world cruise. Some kids come out burdened with insane levels of debt; others are frozen out of the market.
The liberal answer is that the government should pick up the ever-escalating cost of supporting Ward Churchill and his fellow astronauts of theory in the lifestyle to which they aspire. But maybe there's an alternative.
There is no reason the government should try to prevent American families who value the traditional college experience from paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, but perhaps it could offer an alternative: a federally recognized national baccalaureate (or 'national bac') degree that students could earn by demonstrating competence and knowledge.
With input from employers [ed.: and, one hopes, from actual disciplinary specialists], the Department of Education could develop standards in fields like English, the sciences, information technology, mathematics, and so on. Students would get certificates when they passed an exam in a given subject. These certificates could be used, like the Advanced Placement tests of the College Board, to reduce the number of courses students would need to graduate from a traditional college. And colleges that accepted federal funds could be required to award credits for them.
But the certificates would be good for something else as well. With enough certificates in the right subjects, students could get a national bac without going to college. Government agencies would accept the bac as the equivalent of a conventional bachelor's degree; graduate schools and any organization receiving federal funds would also be required to accept it.
Subject exams calibrated to a national standard would give employers something they do not now have: assurance that a student has achieved a certain level of knowledge and skill. It is the easiest thing in the world today to find English majors with BA degrees from accredited colleges who cannot write a standard business letter. If national bac holders could in fact perform this and other specific tasks that employers want their new hires to perform, it is likely that increasing numbers of employers would demand the bac in addition to a college degree. Students who attended traditional colleges would increasingly need to pass these exams to obtain the full benefits of their degree.
For students from modest or low-income homes, as well as for part-time students trying to earn degrees while they work full time jobs or raise families, the standards would offer a cheaper, more efficient way to focus their education. Students could take prep courses that focused on the skills they actually needed to do the jobs they sought. Parents could teach their kids at home. Schools and institutes could offer focused programs. Public records could show how well students performed on the exams, offering students and parents far more accountability and information than they now get.
Such programs would be both cheaper and more flexible than conventional college degree programs. The contemporary American college is solidly grounded in the tradition of the medieval guilds. These guilds deliberately limited competition to keep fees high. In the best of cases, guild regulation also protected consumers by imposing quality and fairness standards on guild members. Few observers of American education today would argue with straight faces that the quality of undergraduate education is a major concern of contemporary guilds like the American Association of University Professors. Colleges today provide no real accounting to students, parents, or anybody else about the quality of the education they provide. No other market forces consumers to make choices on so little information.
One consequence of this poorly functioning market is to grossly exaggerate the value of "prestige" degrees. Especially these days, a lot of kids work very hard in Ivy League colleges, but others still major in booze and other diversions. Meanwhile, there are plenty of kids studying at, say, Regular State University, where they work very hard at demanding courses under tough professors. A national bac exam would allow these kids to compete on a level playing field against the Harvard and Yale grads; employers could look at the scores and see for themselves which kids knew more.
Less unearned privilege for Harvard, more opportunity for Regular State....
As a Yalie myself and a part-time college professor to boot, I find these ideas a bit unsettling. But to voters worried about paying for education, resenting the advantages that prestige diplomas confer on a handful of mostly privileged young people from well-to-do families, and conflicted about the lack of practical focus, educational coherence, and moral guidance found at so many colleges today, an alternative route to a college degree might seem like a helpful idea.
And, by the way, to hardworking immigrants slogging through night school, to working single mothers trying to improve their lives and their kids' prospects, and to many other Americans who don't have the time or money for frills but urgently need a serious college degree, these reforms would open the door to a better life.
By setting open standards for the national bac, and by allowing anybody to offer the service of preparing students to take the exams, Congress could break the guilds' monopoly on education. A century ago higher education was still a luxury, and it scarcely mattered that it was offered only by arcane guilds in a system that took shape in the Middle Ages. But today many people of very modest means need a BA-equivalent degree to succeed in the workplace.
The power of the guilds in the goods-producing industries had to be broken before the factory system could provide the cheaper goods of the industrial revolution. The service and information revolutions require the breakup of the knowledge guilds: The professoriat is a good place to start.
experimenting with students' lives
The proposed changes to Scarsdale High's curricula (pdf file) are, admittedly, an experiment:
I served on the board of the National Alliance for Autism Research for seven years. The IRB process is stringent, intricate, and time-consuming. I don't know whether it's correct to say that this is as true of research involving animal subjects as it is for human subjects, but I do know that animal research is also closely scrutinized by IRB boards. As I recall, we rejected at least one project due to animal welfare issues. (I could be remembering this incorrectly; it's possible we sent it back for revision. My memory, however, is that we decided not to fund.)
question:
How much time and energy has the administration of Scarsdale devoted to meeting IRB requirements?
answer:
None.
Schools are not required to obtain permission from parents or undergo IRB review in order to conduct research using their students as human subjects.
A ktm commenter left this link a couple of weeks ago:
Committee on the Use of Human Research Subjects: Exemptions
These 19 curricular projects have essentially been experiments.
Second, for at least the first five years after SATP is initiated, the school will solicit feedback from college and university admissions officers during and following each admissions cycle, with the aim of determining how the program has affected student access to the colleges and/or Scarsdale students’ attractiveness as candidates.
Third, the school will conduct cohort studies of students for at least the first five years after the SATP is initiated, in order to understand the program’s impact on their success in college and on their college experience more generally.
I served on the board of the National Alliance for Autism Research for seven years. The IRB process is stringent, intricate, and time-consuming. I don't know whether it's correct to say that this is as true of research involving animal subjects as it is for human subjects, but I do know that animal research is also closely scrutinized by IRB boards. As I recall, we rejected at least one project due to animal welfare issues. (I could be remembering this incorrectly; it's possible we sent it back for revision. My memory, however, is that we decided not to fund.)
question:
How much time and energy has the administration of Scarsdale devoted to meeting IRB requirements?
answer:
None.
Schools are not required to obtain permission from parents or undergo IRB review in order to conduct research using their students as human subjects.
A ktm commenter left this link a couple of weeks ago:
Committee on the Use of Human Research Subjects: Exemptions
Research that isGenerally applies to the study of teaching methods, strategies, and curricula in the process of education. If individuals may be identified directly or indirectly, file for Expedited Review.
- conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, and
- involves normal educational practices.
FERPA and PPRA also regulate research in school settings and limit information that may be gathered from schools and minors without subject or parental consent.
These 19 curricular projects have essentially been experiments.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
stickiness
I mentioned this book a few weeks back, and am finally getting a link posted:
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
It's terrific.
the website
Made to Stick in TIME Magazine
Made to Stick in U.S. News
U.S. News
It seems to happen every day. A meeting is called to outline a new strategy or sales plan. Down go the lights and up goes the PowerPoint. Strange phrases appear—"unlocking shareholder value," "technology-focused innovation," "maximizing utility." (What does that mean?) Lists of numbers come and go. Bullet point by bullet point, the company's goals float across the screen.
I think we can all agree that concepts like "technology-focused innovation" are not made to stick.
Of course, I would have said the same thing about activating prior knowledge and constructing your own knowledge.
So don't listen to me.
thinking, not teaching, in Scarsdale
Tex reminded me of this line from the Trailblazers implementation story:
Teachers are continuing to shift their emphasis from teaching material to focusing on children's thinking and learning.
constructivist coup in Scarsdale
Proposal for Advanced Topics Implementation
Ed is reading it now: "This is an unbelievably radical document."
It's also, for my money, one of the most fatuous.
Here's Jay Mathews.
The middle school model comes to Scarsdale High.
more later
Ed is reading it now: "This is an unbelievably radical document."
It's also, for my money, one of the most fatuous.
Here's Jay Mathews.
The middle school model comes to Scarsdale High.
more later
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Doug on rebuttable presumptions and other things
Second, anyone who would use the phrase, "we have been inserviced on", in a discussion of the teaching of language must be considered presumptively untrustworthy. There is a more-widely understood synonym of "inserviced on" that one might expect a teacher to know and use: "taught".
Willfully and egregiously bureaucratic phrasing of this sort raises a rebuttable presumption of a willfully and egregiously bureaucratic mind. I contend that presumption has not been rebutted in this case.
Damn straight.
school boards behaving badly
A picture is worth a thousand words.
It's all here.
The silencing of parents and taxpayers.
The righteous rejection of accountability (a school superintendent who cannot be criticized "in public").
The standing rule that parents can speak for themselves only,* followed by the dismissal of parent concerns as merely "personal."
And, finally, the core belief that school personnel possess a natural right to do what they want to do.
No matter what.
that said .....
That said, I'll add that I've seen nothing as bad as this in Irvington. Not even close.
Of course, I also haven't seen anyone with the ba*** to ask whether the Board is planning on rehiring the superintendent right in the middle of a board meeting.
Whoa.
I wonder what the school board will make of this parent?
If they're smart, they'll realize she is trouble-with-a-capital T.
She's not the only one.
Back to Irvingtonland, I gather there are quite a few parents in town who want to see the district move to something more akin to a business model.
Good idea! (I think.) In the business model -- not that I know anything about the business model -- I believe folks have the expression, "Make it go away."
That's what this school board needs to do with this superintendent -- and with this parent.
[ ummmm..... I'm not saying the parent should "go away." I'm saying the problem this parent represents should go away. ]
The superintendent needs to move on to another district; the board needs to move on to other business. They need to dump TERC, Connected Math, and whatever constructivist text they're using in the high school (I assume this parent was exercised about something to do with TERC, though I don't know) and be done with it.
Make it go away.
School boards and administrators need to develop street smarts.
Yes, on paper it says that boards and administrators wield absolute power.
But in reality no one wields absolute power, not even the most brutal totalitarian dictators (something we'd all know if our schools taught history instead of social studies).
Administrators and school boards need to start horse trading like the rest of the world.
update
Actually, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators who know how to horse trade, and who do horse trade.
Or, perhaps more likely, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators with the political good sense to pick and choose their battles.
Probably school boards, too.
That's not what we see in this video.
________________
* hit refresh a couple of times if page doesn't appear
It's all here.
The silencing of parents and taxpayers.
The righteous rejection of accountability (a school superintendent who cannot be criticized "in public").
The standing rule that parents can speak for themselves only,* followed by the dismissal of parent concerns as merely "personal."
And, finally, the core belief that school personnel possess a natural right to do what they want to do.
No matter what.
that said .....
That said, I'll add that I've seen nothing as bad as this in Irvington. Not even close.
Of course, I also haven't seen anyone with the ba*** to ask whether the Board is planning on rehiring the superintendent right in the middle of a board meeting.
Whoa.
I wonder what the school board will make of this parent?
If they're smart, they'll realize she is trouble-with-a-capital T.
She's not the only one.
Back to Irvingtonland, I gather there are quite a few parents in town who want to see the district move to something more akin to a business model.
Good idea! (I think.) In the business model -- not that I know anything about the business model -- I believe folks have the expression, "Make it go away."
That's what this school board needs to do with this superintendent -- and with this parent.
[ ummmm..... I'm not saying the parent should "go away." I'm saying the problem this parent represents should go away. ]
The superintendent needs to move on to another district; the board needs to move on to other business. They need to dump TERC, Connected Math, and whatever constructivist text they're using in the high school (I assume this parent was exercised about something to do with TERC, though I don't know) and be done with it.
Make it go away.
School boards and administrators need to develop street smarts.
Yes, on paper it says that boards and administrators wield absolute power.
But in reality no one wields absolute power, not even the most brutal totalitarian dictators (something we'd all know if our schools taught history instead of social studies).
Administrators and school boards need to start horse trading like the rest of the world.
update
Actually, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators who know how to horse trade, and who do horse trade.
Or, perhaps more likely, there are probably plenty of savvy administrators with the political good sense to pick and choose their battles.
Probably school boards, too.
That's not what we see in this video.
________________
* hit refresh a couple of times if page doesn't appear
Ken De Rosa in debate on whole language at Edspresso
Ken De Rosa who is familiar to readers of KTM II and his own D-Ed Reckoning can be read in action now here as he takes on Nancy Creech, a whole language teacher from Oxford Michigan. For those looking for a fight on the order of Rocky Balboa vs Apollo Creed, this would not be the place in my opinion. Ken's arguments and command of facts makes it look more like Bill Clinton vs Lyndon Larouche. I'll let you figure out who's who.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Common Algebra II Test
Nine States announced that they will give a common test for algebra II starting next year. Achieve.org is helping design the test.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island will share standards and the tests, and are expected to release scores on the test to colleges.
Apparently, this is being driven by the recent research that showed students that pass algebra II are more likely to succeed in college. U.S. News carried this article today.
This seems like a great idea. Now I need to lobby my State Dept of Ed to join in. If the colleges find it useful, I hope it puts pressure on many more states to join the group.
Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island will share standards and the tests, and are expected to release scores on the test to colleges.
Apparently, this is being driven by the recent research that showed students that pass algebra II are more likely to succeed in college. U.S. News carried this article today.
This seems like a great idea. Now I need to lobby my State Dept of Ed to join in. If the colleges find it useful, I hope it puts pressure on many more states to join the group.
new math blog!
Math Concepts Explained
This is serendipity. Christopher began a unit on functions today!
update
For some reason I'm having a terrible time posting sidebar links to other Blogger blogs.
I'll keep trying...
If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.
This is serendipity. Christopher began a unit on functions today!
update
For some reason I'm having a terrible time posting sidebar links to other Blogger blogs.
I'll keep trying...
If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.
down the rabbit hole
from The College Puzzle
This decline comes on top of the twenty-year decline in SAT scores that took place between 1963 and 1980.
in a nutshell
My sister-in-law, who is a superb elementary school teacher, told me on this trip that in her district the K-5 teachers "have it together."
She sees a problem with teachers and teaching in the upper grades, which, given her description of her high school child's experience, sounds right to me.
I'm thinking....SAT & ACT scores haven't declined significantly during these 13 years, have they?
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released the grade 12 results recently. The results in Reading demonstrate a decline between 1992 and 2005. The results do not bode well for aspirations of higher academic readiness, college preparedness and college success.
[snip]
The results found that the reading skills of 12th graders tested in 2005 were significantly worse than those of students in 1992, the first time a comparable test was given, and essentially flat since students took the exam in 2002. The share of students lacking even basic high school reading skills -- meaning they could not, for example, extract data about train fares at different times of the day from a brochure -- rose to 27 from 20 percent in 1992. The share of those proficient in reading dropped to 35 from 40 percent in 1992.
Yet, high school graduates in 2005 had studied more than their counterparts in 1990, averaging 360 more hours of classroom instruction during their high school years, the transcript study showed. Their grade point average was a third of a letter grade higher than in 1990, and more students were taking foreign language and other courses aimed at preparing them for college.
[snip]
The bottom line is that high school students are taking harder courses and earning better grades yet reading at significantly lower levels than their peers did 13 years ago.
This decline comes on top of the twenty-year decline in SAT scores that took place between 1963 and 1980.
in a nutshell
- Average SAT verbal scores fell from a high of 478 on the verbal portion in 1963-1964 to a low of 424 in 1980, where they have essentially remained for 27 years.
- In 1995 the College Board recentered SAT scores, adding approximately 70 points to verbal scores. (SAT individual score equivalents here)
- The new NAEP 12th grade scores "demonstrate a decline between 1992 and 2005."
- Percent of students lacking basic high school reading skills rose from 20 percent in 1992 to 27 percent today.
- A high school student who lacks basic high school reading skill cannot "extract data about train fares at different times of the day from a brochure."
- The share of those proficient in reading dropped to 35 from 40 percent in 1992.
- smoking more and enjoying it less: "high school graduates in 2005 had studied more than their counterparts in 1990, averaging 360 more hours of classroom instruction during their high school years."
- grade inflation: GPA for 2005 12th graders "was a third of a letter grade higher than in 1990, and more students were taking foreign language and other courses aimed at preparing them for college."
- smoking more and enjoying it less, part 2: "number of students who took 4 years of English is up from 40% in 1990 to 68%"
This is alarming because many states, including California, have been making significant gains at elementary grades, and it doesn't show up here in 12th grade.
My sister-in-law, who is a superb elementary school teacher, told me on this trip that in her district the K-5 teachers "have it together."
She sees a problem with teachers and teaching in the upper grades, which, given her description of her high school child's experience, sounds right to me.
The bottom line is that high school students are taking harder courses and earning better grades yet reading at significantly lower levels than their peers did 13 years ago.
I'm thinking....SAT & ACT scores haven't declined significantly during these 13 years, have they?
speechless
Googling the phrase "homework gap" this morning, I came across this piece of advice to teachers about how to assign homework:
Apparently, we have now reached the point at which teachers can require that parents teach their kids, but parents cannot require that teachers teach their kids.
Be careful about parent involvement. Consider the time and skill resources of parents when requiring their involvement. [emphasis added]
Apparently, we have now reached the point at which teachers can require that parents teach their kids, but parents cannot require that teachers teach their kids.
Monday, April 9, 2007
predatory reading
from Bowdoin:
Reading scholarly material requires a new set of skills. You simply cannot read scholarly material as if it were pleasure reading and expect to comprehend it satisfactorily. Yet neither do you have the time to read every sentence over and over again. Instead, you must become what one author calls a "predatory" reader. That is, you must learn to quickly determine the important parts of the scholarly material you read. The most important thing to understand about a piece of scholarly writing is its argument. Arguments have three components: the problem, the solution, and the evidence. Understanding the structure of an essay is key to understanding these things. Here are some hints on how to determine structure when reading scholarly material...
how to ask good questions
This page seems pretty good:
1. Good questions require thought and research. It is easy to pose a question like "should the atomic bomb have been dropped on Japan?" Such a question is simply an opinion question: it requires no research or special understanding into the problem. One way to begin framing better questions is to steadily add facts into the stew. These complicate your argument, basing it on solid historical premises (which of course you would need to prove in an essay). Think in terms of "givens." For example:
2. Explore premises and make them explicit. The questions above are not quite explicit enough. For example, so what if many in the United States were racist towards the Japanese? What does that have to do with the legitimacy of dropping the atomic bombing?
- Given that the Japanese military establishment had vowed to fight to the bitter end, should the United States have dropped the bomb on Japan?
- Given that the United States' government was becoming increasingly concerned with post-war struggles with the Soviet Union, should the United States have dropped the bomb on Japan?
- Given that many in the United States expressed what may be called racist views of the Japanese, and in fact interned Japanese Americans in concentration camps during the war, should the United States have dropped the bomb on Japan?
- Given that the United States had already embarked on an extensive and deadly campaign of carpet-bombing Japanese cities (like Tokyo), should the United States have dropped the bomb on Japan?
[snip]
3. Keep going. Even these questions can be further broken down:
Did racism lead the U.S. to drop the bomb on Japan when it would not have done so on Germany? How exactly did American views of the Japanese and Germans differ? How could such popular cultural views have influenced a foreign and military policy thought to be rational?
[snip]
As you can begin to see, once you start thinking about it, one simple question can lead to a huge chain of questions. Remember, it is always better to keep asking questions you think you cannot answer than to stop asking questions because you think you cannot answer them. But this can only happen when you know enough about your subject to know how to push your questioning, and this depends on reading and understanding the assigned material.
helpful pedagogy or hellish event?
I've been cruising writing across the curriculum websites. (scroll down)
a history professor explains how he grades papers
fact, argument, etc.
writing in the disciplines at Cornell
The WAC Journal (all articles online)
WAC bibliographies
writing across the curriculum at George Mason
sample college English papers
Bowdoin: writing history papers (terrific)
a history professor explains how he grades papers
fact, argument, etc.
writing in the disciplines at Cornell
The WAC Journal (all articles online)
WAC bibliographies
writing across the curriculum at George Mason
sample college English papers
Bowdoin: writing history papers (terrific)
"vacation" over
Ed spent 2 hours helping with homework last night.
Easter Sunday. Two hours.
He had to spend two hours helping with homework because once again C's ELA assignment was over his head.
He was to do a "quote analysis," but he doesn't have the necessary skills to do a quote analysis on his own.
For one thing, he has no idea how to select an appropriate quotation to analyze. This is a highly sophisticated skill [see below].
Nor does he understand what his reader does and does not know; he doesn't know what he should explain and what he can assume. He doesn't know that he should be thinking about these things, either.
He simply has no idea how to write expository prose -- and, of course, he's spent practically no time reading expository prose. He spent 5 years in K-5 writing personal narratives (an approach to writing instruction that now appears to be installed as permanent practice K-5 here in Irvingtonland). And that's about it.
So his idea of analyzing a quotation from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was to inform the reader that the boy in the story reminds him of Andrew.
Then, after that, he wanted to talk about the (autistic) character's feelings.
Of course, that will probably turn out to be what he was supposed to do, and Ed will have racked up another B- in middle school. He's probably got it coming. Christopher opened his analysis with a sentence that went something like, "The quotation tells about the character," and Ed made him get rid of it. C protested, saying he's supposed to start his paragraph with an introductory sentence; Ed said C.'s introductory sentence wasn't a very good introductory sentence.
I can see where that's headed.
Ed is sooooo annoyed.
This is a person who has spent his entire career teaching and refining his teaching. In particular he has spent years of his life figuring out what a good assignment is and is not.
A good assignment, according to Ed, is first and foremost an assignment a student can actually do.
Of course, you don't have to be a college professor to figure that one out.
A good assignment, he says -- and you do need to be on top of your game to figure this one out -- does not simply send a student off into the night to "write a paper." Or, in C's case, to perform a "quote analysis."
Undergraduate students, even very bright, accomplished students, aren't academically ready to choose their own topics; nor are they adept at shaping a topic once they've chosen it.
Just to put in my own two cents: finding and shaping a book topic is HELL. I've been a professional writer for years, and it still takes me months to home in on a topic. Finding and shaping a topic is never going to be easy for me.
So why would you send 12 year olds off to find their own quotes to analyze?
Ed says the teacher needs to have all the kids read the same book -- or choose one from a small selection of books. Then she needs to select the quotes herself. Here, too, she could offer choice; she could choose a handful of telling lines from the handful of novels she's provided. If the object is to give kids choice so as to allow them to activate prior knowledge and whatnot, she can do this by providing limited choice.
Ed always gives his students suggested topics. He is a professor European history at NYU; his students are smart and reasonably-to-very-well prepared to do college work. Also, none of them is 12.
Nevertheless, Ed does not expect them to choose their own topics.
Last year, after listening to me talking about formative assessment, he decided to give his students explicit instruction in writing history papers.
He told his students how long their papers should be and how many subtopics would be too many. He wrote model introductory paragraphs; he looked over the students' introductory paragraphs if they wanted him to and told them how to revise.
In one semester his students went from grades of C and B- to grades of B+ to A.
None of this professional expertise is of the slightest interest to our district. Ed is a parent, and the views of parents are foolish, old-fashioned, and plain wrong by definition. I believe I mentioned that one of our administrators recently said to him, after Ed pointed out that he had been a "disciplinary specialist" for 25 years, "Did you ever think that might be your problem?"
logic alert: Well, suppose that is his problem. So what? Everyone else around here has the same problem. Everyone wants his kids to go to college; Ed is a college professor. What Ed has to say about what college professors are looking for in a college paper ought to, at a minimum, arouse some curiosity.
You'd think.
Twiki fiasco
Some of you probably remember that I wrote up a detailed post about all this last year; then Twiki lost it. So I'm going to interview Ed soon and rewrite it.
I have to get to this, because it's obvious the middle school is fixing to implement a writing workshop model next year. I'm going to campaign for a "prep school model" or maybe a "writing in the disciplines" model, in lieu of or in addition to the writing workshop model so dear to our administrators' hearts.
(Naturally we'll be expected to cough up more money to fund the model; there's a second teaching-learning facilitator on the budget. We hired our first last year; the super said an evaluation would be performed of the first one, but that seems not to have happened. Instead we are receiving glowing backpack letters about our fourth and fifth-graders workshopping their writing under the watchful eye of teaching-learning facilitator number one.)
Memoirs, ahoy!
Easter Sunday. Two hours.
He had to spend two hours helping with homework because once again C's ELA assignment was over his head.
He was to do a "quote analysis," but he doesn't have the necessary skills to do a quote analysis on his own.
For one thing, he has no idea how to select an appropriate quotation to analyze. This is a highly sophisticated skill [see below].
Nor does he understand what his reader does and does not know; he doesn't know what he should explain and what he can assume. He doesn't know that he should be thinking about these things, either.
He simply has no idea how to write expository prose -- and, of course, he's spent practically no time reading expository prose. He spent 5 years in K-5 writing personal narratives (an approach to writing instruction that now appears to be installed as permanent practice K-5 here in Irvingtonland). And that's about it.
So his idea of analyzing a quotation from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was to inform the reader that the boy in the story reminds him of Andrew.
Then, after that, he wanted to talk about the (autistic) character's feelings.
Of course, that will probably turn out to be what he was supposed to do, and Ed will have racked up another B- in middle school. He's probably got it coming. Christopher opened his analysis with a sentence that went something like, "The quotation tells about the character," and Ed made him get rid of it. C protested, saying he's supposed to start his paragraph with an introductory sentence; Ed said C.'s introductory sentence wasn't a very good introductory sentence.
I can see where that's headed.
Ed is sooooo annoyed.
This is a person who has spent his entire career teaching and refining his teaching. In particular he has spent years of his life figuring out what a good assignment is and is not.
A good assignment, according to Ed, is first and foremost an assignment a student can actually do.
Of course, you don't have to be a college professor to figure that one out.
A good assignment, he says -- and you do need to be on top of your game to figure this one out -- does not simply send a student off into the night to "write a paper." Or, in C's case, to perform a "quote analysis."
Undergraduate students, even very bright, accomplished students, aren't academically ready to choose their own topics; nor are they adept at shaping a topic once they've chosen it.
Just to put in my own two cents: finding and shaping a book topic is HELL. I've been a professional writer for years, and it still takes me months to home in on a topic. Finding and shaping a topic is never going to be easy for me.
So why would you send 12 year olds off to find their own quotes to analyze?
Ed says the teacher needs to have all the kids read the same book -- or choose one from a small selection of books. Then she needs to select the quotes herself. Here, too, she could offer choice; she could choose a handful of telling lines from the handful of novels she's provided. If the object is to give kids choice so as to allow them to activate prior knowledge and whatnot, she can do this by providing limited choice.
Ed always gives his students suggested topics. He is a professor European history at NYU; his students are smart and reasonably-to-very-well prepared to do college work. Also, none of them is 12.
Nevertheless, Ed does not expect them to choose their own topics.
Last year, after listening to me talking about formative assessment, he decided to give his students explicit instruction in writing history papers.
He told his students how long their papers should be and how many subtopics would be too many. He wrote model introductory paragraphs; he looked over the students' introductory paragraphs if they wanted him to and told them how to revise.
In one semester his students went from grades of C and B- to grades of B+ to A.
None of this professional expertise is of the slightest interest to our district. Ed is a parent, and the views of parents are foolish, old-fashioned, and plain wrong by definition. I believe I mentioned that one of our administrators recently said to him, after Ed pointed out that he had been a "disciplinary specialist" for 25 years, "Did you ever think that might be your problem?"
logic alert: Well, suppose that is his problem. So what? Everyone else around here has the same problem. Everyone wants his kids to go to college; Ed is a college professor. What Ed has to say about what college professors are looking for in a college paper ought to, at a minimum, arouse some curiosity.
You'd think.
Twiki fiasco
Some of you probably remember that I wrote up a detailed post about all this last year; then Twiki lost it. So I'm going to interview Ed soon and rewrite it.
I have to get to this, because it's obvious the middle school is fixing to implement a writing workshop model next year. I'm going to campaign for a "prep school model" or maybe a "writing in the disciplines" model, in lieu of or in addition to the writing workshop model so dear to our administrators' hearts.
(Naturally we'll be expected to cough up more money to fund the model; there's a second teaching-learning facilitator on the budget. We hired our first last year; the super said an evaluation would be performed of the first one, but that seems not to have happened. Instead we are receiving glowing backpack letters about our fourth and fifth-graders workshopping their writing under the watchful eye of teaching-learning facilitator number one.)
Memoirs, ahoy!
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