educational opportunity

from No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools by Scott Franklin Abernathy, Chapter 5 Rethinking Assessment:

In education, the idea of focusing on the conditions of production has its roots in arguments in favor of developing "process indicators" of school performance, an approach that recognizes the fact that "schools provide educational opportunity; they do not directly produce learning."

The book goes on to recommend that states not pursue value-added assessment, but focus instead on "devis[ing] a production model of educational assessment" that would involve developing "process indicators of school performance" and would "differ fundamentally from measuring outcomes."

To that I say, How about no.

I have no interest in production models and process indicators. Ditto "school performance" as distinct from student achievement.

Of course, that's because I am not an Assistant Professor of Political Science.

No.

I am a parent.

Your basic parent, 5 or 10 years into his or her public school experience, is interested in one indicator and one indicator only:

What has my child learned in school if anything?

Just to boil it down.

.......

He does have some cool stuff about shirking, though.

More later.

new aphorism !

from the instructivist:

People will not earn a living, they'll learn a living.

I'm adding that to my collection.

I must say, Instructivist has outdone himself. This will be a classic in the Annals of the Revolution.

Should such occur.

.

know your edu-terminology

cognitive demand

I'm disheartened to say that I have, this morning, detected yet another obstacle to student achievement in our public schools: the doctrine of "cognitive demand." (pdf file)

The global economy requires that students be provided learning experiences in algebra, geometry, data representation, and statistics that are high in cognitive demand.

High in cognitive demand appears to mean, simply, that the material being enacted (news flash: curricula are now enacted, not taught) is hard for the students to do.

The term “cognitive demand” is used in two ways to describe learning opportunities. The first way is linked with curriculum policy and students’ course-taking options — how much math and which courses. The second way relates to how much thinking is called for in the classroom. Routine memorization involves low cognitive demand, no matter how advanced the content. Understanding mathematical concepts involves high cognitive demand, even for basic content. Both types of cognitive demand are associated with student performance on achievement tests, but they are not substitutes for each other.

This is simply false.

Nearly 3 years into my math self-teaching project (3 years!) I am here to tell you that actually doing math, in the wake of routine memorization, is often far more difficult than understanding it.

Not that I have profound understanding of arithmetic and Algebra 1.

Nevertheless, I do frequently understand a concept fairly well only to discover (discover!) that I can't begin to use it in -- and forgive me for putting it this way -- real life.

next point

I am as certain as a human being can possibly be that the authors of this white paper would construe the sort of understanding I've been doing as not being high in cognitive load. If I can understand a concept better than I can do the concept, how can the concept be high in cognitive load?

answer: it can't

High cognitive load, by definition, comes from understanding, not doing. (Doing depends upon routine memorizing; otherwise you can't remember the steps). If a student is having a harder time with memorizing-doing than he is with understanding, the curriculum-enacter needs to crank up the level of difficulty of the latter.

Which our curricula and curriculum enacters have done!


I give up

I've been thinking about Robert Slavin's observation that ed schools used to focus on direct instruction and teacher effectiveness, once upon a time.

I have to assume he knows what he's talking about.

Which means.....ed schools used to focus on direct instruction and teacher effectiveness. Once upon a time.

Well, when was that time?

And how did it end?

And why was constructivism the next thing?

I'm thinking that the standards and accountability era, which we can provisionally date to 1983, the year that A Nation at Risk appeared, may be the explanation.

Here's the way I make it out (speaking as a person who is not a historian, obviously):

• prior to 1983: public schools a mess, achievement in decline
• after 1983: public clamor for standards and accountability
  
• ed school response: knowledge can't be "transmitted" from teacher to student, and cognitive psychology proves it: people don't "receive" knowledge but, rather, construct knowledge
  
• therefore: students must discover their own knowledge
  

This last point has always been the sudden leap in logic that unhappy parents and mathematicians (and the National Research Council)^* fail to grok.

There's no logical reason to move from the insight that people construct knowledge to the assertion that students must therefore discover knowledge. (And, as I believe instructivist once pointed out, if you're discovering knowledge you're not exactly constructing it, are you? I mean, if it's just lying around on tables and SMART Boards waiting to be discovered.....it's already been constructed. update: yes, instructivist made that very point. And if you have to construct knowledge, not just discover knowledge, then don't you need something to construct it out of? Like some facts or figures or findings or such?)

I remember learning, at Dartmouth, that people construct knowledge.

No one said a word about people therefore having to discover knowledge. That wasn't the point. The point was that when Person B listens to Person A, Person B will use the stuff inside his head - which is different from the stuff inside Person A's head - to make sense of it.

In other words: communication is Playing Telephone.

So is teaching.

There's no discovering.

There's just noise in the channel.

"Discovering" appears to be an ed school add-on.


it's a plot

So I'm thinking..... the invention of constructivism-as-discovery wasn't simply a mistake.

Constructivism-as-discovery was a defense.

The schools had always been about inputs, not outputs.^** Then, suddenly, the public was demanding that educational inputs actually work.

Under the circumstances wouldn't it be helpful to learn that research in cognitive psychology proves it's not possible for teachers to teach?


what would a real historian say?

Ed has been in Brussels since Saturday, so I hadn't had a chance to run this by him.

But when he called today, I asked if this sort of thing is plausible -- is it the sort of explanation a real historian would come up with and be able to support?

He said that, actually, it pretty much is.

He himself (and remember: he headed the California History-Social Science Project back in the early 90s) had attributed the advent of constructivist doctrine to A Nation at Risk, but for a different reason. He had always assumed that professors of education reacted to educational decline by concluding that the traditional methods didn't work.

But he thinks that in fact my hypothesis could be part of it (meaning you could find evidence to support it if you looked).

Of course, I'm not going to go out and find evidence; I'm just going to assume (provisionally) that it's true.

Which is why I give up.

Other people's wrong ideas are one thing.

Other people's defense mechanisms are quite another. You can't talk a person out of a defense mechanism.

If constructivism is in part or in whole a means of defense against the standards and accountability movement .... then parents are going to have to figure out how to teach their kids math themselves.

Math and everything else under the sun.


^* A common misconception regarding “constructivist” theories of knowing (that existing knowledge is used to build new knowledge) is that teachers should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This perspective confuses a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivists assume that all knowledge is constructed from previous knowledge, irrespective of how one is taught (e.g., Cobb, 1994) —even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.
National Research Council

^** Clowes: So Project Follow Through confirmed what you had already found about the ineffectiveness of those other programs. Yet those programs still are being promoted in teacher colleges and they still are widely used, while Direct Instruction is not. Why?

Engelmann: The answer is really simple, but it's very difficult for most people to accept: Outcomes have never been a priority in public education, from its inception. That's the way the public education system is. The system is more concerned with the experience of the child: "Let the child explore," "Let the child be his or her self," "Don't interfere with the natural learning process," and so on.
Engelmann, interview

learning experiences needed

Another illustration of the principle that if you listen people will tell you what they mean:

In our global economy and democratic society, limiting math education to select students is unacceptable. A recent ACT study provides evidence that college and the workforce require the same levels of readiness in mathematics. One implication: All students require a greater level of “cognitive demand” in mathematics than once was considered appropriate. In other words, high school students need learning experiences in algebra, geometry, data representation, and statistics whether they are planning to enter college or workforce training programs.4

source:
AERA Research Points bulletin (pdf file)

Learning experiences in algebra, geometry, data representation, and statistics.

Oh yeah, that'll do it.


update from Lynn G

Well, this explains why my 9th grader has spent hours and hours drawing, then cutting, glueing, and pasting together a model home of his own design for high school geometry class.

You might expect that he was taught foundational skills for this project (how to use an architectural scale, for example). You might expect that simple architectural and engineering concepts might come up (you know, like load bearing walls, span, stuff like that). You would be wrong.

No, this is an imaginary home, a real world project, that is completely divorced from reality.

But it consumes a tremendous effort, it also consumes instructional time when kids could learn how to do a proof or do geometry.

The amount of geometry used to make the model is on the level of a 4th grader.

But he's getting "learning experiences."

I'm so relieved.

C. (grade 7) had to stay in over lunch this week to finish coloring his math project.

Parents called "Extremists" in Utah

A Superintendent of a Utah school district called parents that opposed TERC Investigations "Extremists" at a city council meeting. TERC has been used since 2000 at these 46 schools. Parental objections appear to have grown to a deafening roar over the years. Now the School system is backing off of TERC, allowing it to "supplement" and giving schools the option of using a more traditional approach. It sounds like different schools will be able to choose different programs or a combination of text books.

I wonder how much they pay their Superintendent? Has he never heard that ad hominem attacks are the weakest defense one could muster?

house for sale

Andrew draws a person

curriculum map

I've been hankering after a curriculum map here in IUFSD.

A curriculum map, a scope and sequence, a topic matrix, a handbook, a course syllabus -- anything of that nature.

I want one.

But when Google Images tossed this up under the heading "curriculum map," I had pause.

I mean, suppose I spend the next 6 months hammering the district, insisting that what we parents need to make the preteaching/reteaching Phase 4 life bearable, is a curriculum map.

And then suppose we actually get one.

And it looks like this.

Or like this.

That would be bad.

Tonight's Everyday Math Assignment

I looked at my fifth grade son's EM homework for the night on adding and subtracting fractions. (They are way behind on their second book, so other fifth grade parents might have seen this before.)

This is a sample.

1/3 + 1/2 = ?

1/4 + 1/5 = ?


The answer to the first is 5/6

The answer to the second is 9/20

Explain what pattern you see.

"Pattern?", you say? Well, don't feel bad. I had to figure out what on earth they were talking about. I finally figured it out. To get the numerator of the answer, you add the two denominators. To get the denominator of the answer, you multiply the denominators. What we have here is rote pattern work that masquerades as understanding.

Raise your hand if you see half of the kids applying this pattern to:

1/4 + 2/5 = ?


OK. How about a different pattern for subtracting fractions, like

1/4 - 1/5 = ?

1/2 - 1/3 = ?

The numerator of the answer is always 1 and the denominator of the answer you get by multiplying the denominators.


They conveniently ignore problems like 1/5 - 1/4 = ?, and, of course, any other problem where the numerator is not 1.

What other patterns does EM need to cover all of the bases of adding and subtracting fractions?


I had to spend some time making sure that my son knows the formal rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. I want his understanding to be based on general, mathematical rules, not stupid, error-causing patterns. I wonder what my son thinks when even his teacher tells the students that she is teaching them a method from EM because she has to.

Whenever anyone talks about mastery versus understanding, just think of these patterns. They are classic and show exactly what the fuzzies mean by understanding. When they talk of understanding, they are not talking about mathematical understanding. They are not talking about any sort of understanding that will help students when they get to algebra.

Talk of balance or understanding gives them credibility that is completely undeserved. We need to talk about competence, not philosophy.

good teachers

I can't wait for value-added assessment to come to Irvington:

One study concluded that having a highly effective teacher rather than a teacher of average effectiveness would result in two additional months of academic achievement for a student.

source:
Sanders, W., Rivers, J.C. (1996). Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Students’ Future Achievement. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research Center)
cited by:
Teachers Matter: Evidence from Value-Added Assessments
Research Points Summer 2004 Vol. 2, Issue 2

bad teachers lower scores

Summary of Findings

• Differences in student achievement of 50 percentile points were observed as a result of teacher sequence after only three years.
  

• The effects of teachers on student achievement are both additive and cumulative with little evidence of compensatory effects.
  

• As teacher effectiveness increases, lower achieving students are the first to benefit. The top quintile of teachers facilitate appropriate to excellent gains for students of all achievement levels.
  

• Students of different ethnicities respond equivalently within the same quintile of teacher effectiveness.

"additive and cumulative":

"According to this new study ... bad teachers lower the test scores of their students, and this lowered achievement carries over into higher grades even if the students are subsequently given good teachers." Heartland Institute

In Sanders' words:

[I]t was possible to determine whether teachers from previous grades affected current year scores....[T]he teacher effects are cumulative and additive with very little, if any, suggestion of compensatory effects. An effective teacher receiving students from a relatively ineffective teacher can facilitate excellent academic gain for his/her students during the school year. Yet these analyses suggest that the residual effects of relatively ineffective teachers - from prior years can be measured in subsequent student achievement scores.

Elsewhere Sanders shows that novice teachers aren't as good as experienced teachers.

(surprise!)

Especially in math. (t/k)

Irvington is hiring novice teachers.

Novice math teachers, lots of them.

I'm now hearing that it's not just the Phase 4 kids being tutored.^*

It's the Phase 3 kids, too.

These are bright kids who shouldn't be in Phase 3 to begin with; they belong in Phase 4.

They're getting tutored in Phase 3.

I heard this weekend that the legendary middle school math teacher, who retired at the end of last year thus dooming C. and his cohort to a second year in a row with a teacher who'd failed to teach them effectively in their first year of "accelerated" math, is now tutoring Phase 3 kids.

Fee?

One hundred bucks an hour.

So I'm told.

So instead of offering this teacher a bonus to stay on the job, we sent her off into retirement, hired brand-new novice teachers at greatly-reduced salaries, and threw them into the classroom with no one on hand to mentor, train, or evaluate them.

Et voila.

I'm going into my 3rd summer in a row teaching math at home.

On the other hand, seeing as how I'm entering my Happy Spring phase, part of me is thinking: wow!

This is a kid who has now had 3 years of extremely "ineffective" math teaching (in the 4th, 6th, and 7th grades) and he's still in the game. It's not unusual for him to correct me on a concept or calculation when we're working together; when this happens, typically he's right and I'm wrong.

Next year C. is almost certain to have one of the district's best math teachers. It's entirely possible he's going to show up for class well-prepared.

It's going to be interesting.



^* Phase 4: "accelerated math" (algebra in 8th grad); Phase 3: "regular" math

^**We are reliably told that the middle school teachers like the new principal because he "leaves them alone." I'm sure this is true; we've witnessed firsthand astonishingly insubordinate behavior on the part of teachers towards the principal.

parents are free!

I just noticed this comment on the Post-It note:

Reminds me of the elementary school principal at our school who said, "If parents don't think we're teaching their kids the right things in the curriculum, they should feel free to teach it at home." Oh, thanks for the permission. (And this was before parents could even find any information on the school's curriculum online -- anywhere else.) It IS always worse than you think.

Of course, we here in Irvington still can't find anything about the curriculum online.

School motto:

Irvington Union Free School District
Where policies and practices are shrouded in mystery

A Whole Saturday Of Whole Language

I just got back from eight hours of whole language hell. I volunteered with a private unaffiliated organization that teaches illiterate adults how to read but it turned out that there were two groups under one umbrella organization: one that uses phonics, one that uses whole-language and I signed with up with the wrong group.

At the beginning of an all-day training session, the trainer asked us who had been taught phonics as a child. Fourteen of the fifteen trainees raised their hands. She repeated over and over again the motto, "Phonics is no fun." She went out of her way to convince us that knowing phonics contributes nothing to reading success. Here is how she did it. She began by showing us a paragraph of nonsense words on an overhead projector that was very similar to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky so I'll just use that to replicate the activity:

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came
whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

After one of the tutors-to-be read the passage aloud to the class the trainer asked us comprehension questions such as, "What did the Jabberwock do through the woods? What kind of woods were they? What sorts of thoughts did Jabberwock have? And to be honest, the passage she used was almost entirely nonsense words so the answers to the questions had to use them as well. One could easily tell by the morphemes what was a noun or verb, but they were not real things. I didn't follow the comprehension questions as she asked them and had to look back at the passage, (which was much longer than the above) to find the key words. Meanwhile, one student was quickly and vociferously answering all the questions which were fired off in rapid succession; the rest of the class was very quiet. Victory in hand, the trainer triumphantly announced that even though we used our knowledge of phonics to say the unknown words in the passage, and even though we successfully answered her reading comprehension questions (all one of us, actually), that our failure to identify the meaning of the individual words was proof that phonics doesn't work.

She was so pleased with this air tight proof.

No one said a word.

Then she gave us a paragraph which appeared to be a bunch of techno-garble, and this was supposed to show how "knowing the words" doesn't work either. (It was actually a passage on material atomism by Bertrand Russell, and I wondered if this wasn't intentional since he was the inventor of the "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination" phrase that's inflicted on college students in any sort of classroom discussion on how nonsense phrases can be grammatical.) A very sweet white-haired older lady sitting next to me started slowly sifting through the meaning out loud, and it became clear to me that she had some background in either philosophy or linguistics. Simultaneously, I recognized it as Bertrand Russellish...and after hearing us collaborate, the trainer abruptly interrupted us within only 30 seconds to announce that the failure of the class to extract meaning from the passage was another successful demonstration. The white-haired lady and I were still talking to each other so I missed the trainer's specific point on that one.

There was yet another demonstration about how whole language worked and phonics was pointless. In a given normal English paragraph several words were replaced with what was supposed to be nonsense symbols. She told us the meaning of those words and then held up a card with those words on them and asked us to tell her what the word said. The class obliged and parroted back the words and this was then pronounced more proof that whole language worked. Then she did something really sneaky, she held up two cards with words which were not in the passage and that we hadn't seen before. What did they mean? No one could answer. Except, the "nonsense" symbols were Attic Greek and so were the words. Because I have studied Attic Greek I was able to call out the English meaning of one of the cards that no one was supposed to know. (I never imagined that studying this language would pay off in such a delicious way--although trivia. It was a beautiful Myrtle moment.) The trainer ignored my out of turn response and told the class that these words, the meanings to which they couldn't identify, were proof that words can't be learned outside of "the whole context". I didn't come there for a confrontation so I didn't say, "But I learned all those words from vocabulary lists and I learned to read Attic Greek by studying rules of how it's pronounced." Nope. I kept my mouth shut. The white-haired old lady nearly high-fived me.

Turned out she's a retired public school reading specialist with a couple of decades of experience under her belt.

And now the punchline: The trainer was proud of the fact that she had three successes in five years. I've had three successes as well with my own three children who are reading at grade level thanks to phonics. That gives me a 100% success rate.

Next Saturday we'll learn how to teach ESL to Mexican immigrants. Since I can speak Spanish and I've taught ESL this should be interesting.

preteaching not reteaching

I've had a revelation.

For two years now a lot of us have been saying reactive teaching is bad. (hit refresh a couple of times if the page doesn't come up)

That's why I've been attempting to teach a separate, coherent curriculum here at home.

Unfortunately, teaching a separate, coherent curriculum here at home is not happening. Christopher is too old, has too much other homework to do, is too defiant and independent, etc. I'm sure there are other parents who could make this work, but seeing as how it is now April and C. has made his way through only 20 lessons in Saxon Algebra 1/2, obviously I'm not one of them.

So I've been teaching reactively all year long. It's been the standard Phase 4 Survivor show, two parents trying to keep their kid alive in "accelerated" math in Irvington. Reteaching at night, correcting C's homework and having him re-do problems he missed (never, ever done at school), pulling problems for extra practice from 10 different textbooks & workbooks, Googling for more problem sets when the workbooks don't have what I need, spending hours creating my own problem sets targeted to the material Ms. K has taught.

Two years of this.

Then, last week for some reason, instead of reteaching whatever it was Ms. K had covered in class that day, I taught the next thing.

Actually, I remember now why this happened.

Christopher came home from school and said they'd started learning about linear equations. For months I had been dreading this moment. The topic is so intricate, with so many moving parts, that I simply could not imagine how on earth C was going to learn linear equations in this course.

C. told me they'd learned slope.

yikes

What about slope, per se? I asked.

Ms. K had taught the formula for finding the slope from two points:

slope = y₂ - y₁ / x₂ - x₁

That seemed like a bit of a strange place to start - shouldn't one begin by showing kids what the slope is on a coordinate plane and how to count squares to determine rise and run, then setting up the ratio slope = rise / run?

I don't know. Maybe math brains do better with symbolic abstractions than with the "visual aid" of the coordinate plane..... ?

In any case, C. had the formula down cold, but of course had no idea whatsoever what it meant and didn't care to know, either. This is one of the many ironies of our situation. The school speaks only of the kids "understanding" math, never of the kids "doing" math, but I'm the one teaching understanding, or trying to. The accelerated math course is purely procedural.

Memorize this, memorize that.

So naturally I sat C. down and made him watch me graph some linear equations; then I showed him how to determine "rise" and "run" on the graph and taught him the mnemonic device I came up with when I was trying to teach myself this topic:

rise / run sounds like "raisin," or "raise" / (r)un

Then I gave him a few graphs and had him practice finding the rise, the run, and the slope on each one.

In my own mind this was just another off-the-cuff session of reactive teaching, nothing new.

C., however, recognized at once that we'd crossed a line. I was teaching something Ms. K had not.

He didn't like it. "She isn't going to teach that! That's not what we're doing!" etc.

But the next day C. came home and, when I asked what they'd done in math, said cheerfully, "Oh, she taught us that thing you showed me last night and I already knew how to do it."

That was a first. In math, C. is never the kid who knows more than the other kids. Except on the subject of unit multipliers, of course. C. is the only child in his class who has been taught unit multipliers outside school. On the two occasions Ms. K has taught unit multipliers, C. has had the satisfying experience of being the most mathematically advanced kid in the room. I owe this to Kitchen Table Math. I'd never even heard of unit multipliers until Dan K brought them up on the old site and everyone else chimed in.

After that I taught unit multipliers to myself (they're in Saxon 8/7) and then to Christopher.

C.'s homework that night was more of what he'd done the night before with me and then again in class with Ms. K, so there wasn't any reason to go over it again, and it was obvious he was going to be able to do his homework quickly.

So I decided to teach the next thing.

I didn't know what the next thing might be in his class (curriculum map, anyone?), but it occurred to me that it didn't really matter. Whatever it was, I'd be close enough.

So I decided to give him some linear equations in standard form and have him practice converting them to slope-intercept form.

Bingo.

She taught that next.


priming

At that point it became blindingly obvious to me that what I was doing is called "priming" by behaviorists, and that, furthermore, priming is what I should have been doing all along.

Priming means, essentially, that you pre-teach the material before the classroom teacher teaches it. It's a classic method in special ed, I believe.

So that's what I'm now doing. I could kick myself for not thinking of this sooner.

Priming is a classic mode of creating the conditions for success, as opposed to trying to ward off looming failure, which is what a lot of reactive teaching and tutoring amount to.

With priming you could probably get tremendous bang for your buck so long as you had a teacher willing to tell you what's going on in class. (It's possible Ms. K would do so, but she can take weeks to answer an email so I probably won't bother asking.)

You teach the material one-on-one, which means you can give your child the exact explanation and practice he needs.

Then, when the teacher teaches the material, your child is ahead of the game, he can easily follow the classroom instruction, and he benefits from a second "dose" of practice. Priming means that classroom instruction suddenly becomes far more effective simply because the student possesses knowledge to build on and consolidate.

The tutoring happens before the student needs it.

We did this for just 3 days in a row last week: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

On Thursday C. had a quiz that he forgot was coming up, forgot to tell me about, and forgot to study for.

sigh

He finished 10 minutes early and had time to check his answers.

It'll be interesting to see how he did, but I'm expecting some kind of B, and I wouldn't be surprised by a low A.

So this is the new regime.

Priming.

I'm curious to see whether priming -- priming under conditions of zero communication with the classroom teacher, that is -- will be a big improvement over the after-the-fact reactive teaching I've been doing.


preteaching not reteaching
success!
success, part 2
more preteaching results in the offing
preteaching saves the world
preteaching wonders of the world

Harvard law of animal behavior

Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damned well pleases.

source:
making sense of change
Variability in Brain Function and Behavior

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings?

Apparently, the answer is yes.

I find this fascinating (I don't seem to be able to cut and paste, so take a look at this page):

[C]hildren who enroll in first grade at a young age learn more in school and eventually earn more in the labor market than children who enroll in school at an older age. Early enrollment in first grade increases eventual wages partly because children who enroll earlier stay in school longer, and partly because children who enroll earlier learn more even when they have the same amount of schooling as children who enrolled when they were older. Compulsory school laws provide a source of variation in enrollment age that is not associated with characteristics of parents or characteristics of children other than their birth date. This allows one to compare children who are identical in all ways other than the age at which they started school.

This is fascinating, because I've always thought the oldest kids in a class have the advantage - and I still think they do in terms of "social dominance," for want of a better term.

Of course maybe I'll discover I'm wrong about that, too.

Christopher is one of the younger kids in his class, in part because he was a preemie. His due date was the end of September; he and Andrew were born in mid August. (Those missing weeks count; don't let people tell you otherwise.)

I've always felt slightly guilty about putting him in school when we did. We based the decision entirely on the fact that Andrew was autistic and needed to get into the school system the minute he became eligible by age. Christopher was along for the ride.

Of course, we might have put him in school at age 5 anyway; I imagine Ed would have pushed for it. But I'm pretty sure I would have been tempted to hold him back and give him the "natural advantage" of being one of the oldest kids in the class instead of one of the youngest.

Now I'm thinking I was completely wrong.

I'm thinking I was completely wrong because in fact C's entire class is bizarrely young - he has an amazing number of friends with birthdays in October and November. These kids - all boys - were age 4 for months after entering Kindergarten.

And the funny thing is, this particular class may be pretty smart, judging purely by the fact that they earned the highest scores in all of Westchester County on the ELA last year. (They also had two hours of ELA instruction, so none of this may mean anything.)

In any case, I think it's fair to say they're certainly not less intelligent as a group than any of the other classes.

You can find the original paper online; Fordham Foundation writes about it here.


update

oh no!

confusion and dismay!

I was thinking there was some rational reason why I thought redshirting boys was a good idea.

Apparently there is. (hit refresh a couple of times if the page doesn't open)


[pause]

sheesh

This is exactly what I see in my school, where placement in accelerated and Honors courses is predicated on "maturity":

Paula Barnsley, while attending a Lethbridge Broncos junior hockey game in the early 1980s, apparently lost interest in the spectacle in front of her and began to read the game program. Paula noticed that most of the players were born in months that fell at the beginning of the calendar year. This began a twenty-year (so far) collaboration on relative age between Paula's husband, Roger (now President of the University College of the Cariboo), and myself. ....

[snip]

The relative age effect, is strikingly evident in activities that are competitive and where performance is highly correlated with age and maturity. As noted above, the relative age effect in sport was first noted among elite level ice hockey players. These findings demonstrated that for major junior leagues and the National Hockey League, player birth dates decreased in frequency from January through December. It was theorized that this relative age effect arose from the consequences of grouping young boys for entry into organized minor hockey, thereby producing a one-year age range for the participants. As size, speed, and coordination are highly correlated with age, older players within the age-group will, on average, show superior performance. Thus, it can be said that maturity had been mistaken for ability by coaches, peers and the individuals themselves. The resulting expectations that are created for individual children creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that provides age-advantaged children with greater self-confidence and regard by others. .... Predictably, the relative age effect has also been found in other competitive sports such as baseball,⁴ world class soccer,⁵ and American football.⁶ Some of our work has shown that the effects extend to emotional development⁷ and suicide.⁸world class soccer,⁵ and American football.⁶ Some of our work has shown that the effects extend to emotional development⁷ and suicide.⁸

Also to placement in accelerated and Honors courses in my school district!

I've never told this story, and I'm going to tell it only sketchily now, but earlier in the year I was taken to task when I protested that the middle school was restricting enrollment in the Earth Science course to "the smartest kids."^*

"The smartest kids" was a very wrong thing to say.

Irvington does not track by ability.

Irvington tracks by maturity.

When I came home and told Ed he said, "It's the same thing."

It's not the same thing, of course.

What he meant was: they're tracking by biology no matter what they call it.

hmmm....

Here's more:

[S]chool children with a relative age advantage are more likely to show higher achievement, to be placed in programs for gifted children,⁹ and to be placed in more challenging educational streams or classes.^10,11 Children with a relative age disadvantage, are more likely to be retained ("failed") for an additional year in the same school grade,¹² to be referred for psychological assessment,¹³ and to be placed in a specialized group or provided with a diagnostic label for remedial instruction.^14,15 As a consequence of these findings, many have suggested that parents should postpone school entry for those younger children whose birthday places them near the "cutoff" for their age group. The result of such action would place the children in question among the eldest of their eventual classmates, rather than the youngest. This contradicts an earlier tendency of parents to try and arrange early admission for children who were actually too young to make a particular cutoff.¹⁶

Have I completely misunderstood the first paper?

Didn't it say that the kids who entered school young learned more per year even when they had the same amount of schooling as the kids who entered school at an older age?

Yes, I think it did.

Funny thing is, the Fordham post mentions the early schooling is good paper and Freakonomics in the same breath.


relative age studies


<sup>* Only kids scoring in the top 10% of the country on the CTBS general science scale can be confident they'll do well; kids scoring in the top 80% of the country will find the course difficult but can handle it; kids scoring in the top 70th percentile of the country probably shouldn't try it and probably won't get tapped to take it anyway, saving them the trouble of taking it and failing.

This is Earth Science we're talking about. Which, as a friend of ours pointed out, isn't even a field.</sup>


relative age effect
high school leadership, wages, and relative age
redshirting kids
redshirting & tournament settings

Barry on Singapore

Singapore’s students were not always number 1 in the world in math. Its current math program was designed in 1992. Prior to that, the program used was one developed in 1981 that was focused primarily on content and computation, but not so much on problem solving. The economic situation of Singapore along with Singapore’s performance on an international math and science tests called SISS, given in 1983 led to the development of the new math series. In the SISS exam Singapore came in 16th among the other countries.

Prior to the 70’s, the education system had suffered from overcrowded schools—classes with 60 students were not uncommon and many schools used to run in 2 to 3 shifts. Teachers were not paid well, and there was a serious shortage of qualified math teachers. One key in building the labor workforce—one of the only natural resources Singapore offers—was to build a better education system. The education system was revamped in the 70’s, providing benefits for in-service and pre-service teachers and requiring that all classes be taught in English. Now many teachers are university graduates, and many math teachers in grades 7 through 12 are math majors. The change in the mathematics curriculum, brought about because of performance on SISS, was also a part of this overall change.

I believe this is the link for the extended version of Barry's Education Next article, "Miracle Math."

An A-Maze-ing Approach to Math is on its way to becoming a classic.

Life-Long Learning.

Every morning two of my 8th grade students wait for me at the door. They are Chinese girls, smart, polite, accurate and habitually hardworking. They wait for me just to talk, even if they don't have me 1st period. These two are always hungry for lectures and they like how I teach - honey in my ears, because I teach differently, no inquiry/discovery/activities/projects, close to DI model - exactly how I was taught back in my days.

This week 8th graders are taking their Intermediate Level Science Test Part A: Hands-On. I don't care about this test with these kids - I teach them 9th grade curriculum in Living Environment, and in June they will take the Regents exam. However , I prepped the kids for this test in 2 hours.

One of the girls told me today, that her parents gave her 2 options for this summer: a)go back to China and attend a summer school there "because American education sucks" or b)stay here and get a job for the summer, because "you need to learn life". She decided to go back to China, and I agree with it. Go and learn. And compare.

When I was in upper grades in school and in the Vet. School, my father said to me ," This is the time for you to study, use it - to gain knowledge; gain as much as you can because you never know what will be useful later in life, and it's never too much of knowledge." I am grateful to him. By age 21 I graduated from the vet school and got a job. (15 years of schooling - done!)I was married for 3 years by that moment (my husband was also a student) but my parents fully supported us. Of course, I went to college in NYC as well, but it's much more difficult to enjoy and spend time on studying when you need to work, to raise a child, to run the household...

I've got into an argument with my son's teacher recently - she doesn't "require" children to do something specific rather letting them to choose. Of course, my son chooses the easiest books, and NEVER chooses writing as an activity - he doesn't like it and tries to skip it as often as possible. At home, I make him to sit and work on writing, phonics, and math using the Russian math books instead of EM (which is CONTRADICTING with the method of teaching used by Ms. B). She said that by pushing him I kill his joy from learning, and - he is going to be a life-long learner, he has the whole life to learn...
Silly me: I want him to be done with formal schooling by 22 - and earn his living!
Now, is it possible? 5+13+4+2(masters?) =24 That be the optimal case...
What did I have: 6+10+5 =21

I'm taking bets

School reform proceeds apace in New York City.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein unveiled new details yesterday about how the city school system will be organized once the 10 regional superintendent offices are abolished in September as part of the Bloomberg administration’s latest restructuring of the bureaucracy.

The reorganization is a sort of inversion of the city school administration. Instead of the traditional model in which principals work directly for a superintendent, each of the city’s more than 1,400 principals will choose a “school support organization” to work with their schools, and will pay these groups out of the school’s budget.

“Until now many educational decisions were made outside of the schools and classrooms,” Mr. Klein said during a news conference at Education Department headquarters.

Principals will have a menu of choices, at various prices, Mr. Klein said. At the low end, principals will pay $29,500 to join the so-called “empowerment network,” in which they are largely freed from oversight in exchange for agreeing to meet performance targets that include higher test scores.

At the high end, schools can choose to contract with the Success for All Foundation, a private nonprofit company based in Baltimore that offers a “whole school reform” model at a cost of up to $145,215, depending on enrollment. Smaller schools will be able to contract with the Success for All for as little as $44,694.

I don't quite grok this.....

In fact, I don't grok it at all. If someone wants to explain it to me, I'm all ears.

Not that I don't think complicated management schemes the public has no hope of comprehending aren't a good thing.

I'm sure they are!

moving right along...

Here's the section that caught my eye:

Principals are being asked to choose among three options....

Officials expect that the learning support organizations, because they are run by veterans of the city school system, are likely to attract the largest number of principals.

Kathleen M. Cashin, now the superintendent of Region 5 in Brooklyn and Queens, is offering a “Knowledge Network” group that will help schools impose a “content rich” curriculum, focused on crucial facts that students need to know in science, literature, history, the arts and music, at a cost of $42,438 per school.
update: Cashin ended up with 7% of the schools

Laura Rodriguez of Region 2, in the Bronx, is offering the “Leadership Learning” support organization, which will focus on strengthening the skills of principals and assistant principals, at a cost of $55,000 per school.

Judith Chin of Region 3 in eastern Queens has created the “Integrated Curriculum and Instruction” group, which promises to help schools develop a multidisciplinary “thinking curriculum,” at a cost of $47,500 per school.

And Marcia V. Lyles of Region 8 in Brooklyn is offering the “Community Learning” support organization, which will focus on partnerships with communities and families. Dr. Lyles has set three price levels: basic for $33,750; premium for $39,850; and elite for $66,675. Failing schools needing the most help will pay the highest price.

Do families get any choice about whether their kids spend the next 4 years of their lives in a thinking curriculum?

Not that the rest of us have any choice, but still.

Doesn't this scheme sound familiar?

My money's on Kathleen. Kathleen and Success for All.

update: forget Success for All. They got 0%. Nice to know that one of the two whole school reform models that actually works won interest from zero schools in Manhattan.

CSRQ report

Reading First

today's press release

alert the vice president

I wonder if Lynne Cheney is aware that the DOE is telling parents not to subvert fuzzy math.

MATH HOMEWORK TIPS FOR PARENTS

• Encourage your child to use a daily math assignment book.

• Follow the progress your child is making in math. Check with your child daily about his homework.

• If you don't understand your child's math assignments, engage in frequent communication with his or her teacher. [ed.: good one!]
  

• If your child is experiencing problems in math, contact the teacher to learn whether he or she is working at grade level and what can be done at home to help improve academic progress. [ed.: If students need distributed practice, parents can find worksheets online.]

• Request that your child's teacher schedule after-school math tutoring sessions if your child really needs help. [ed.: been there. done that.]
  

• Advocate with the principal for the use of research-based peer tutoring programs for math. These tutoring programs have proven results, and students really enjoy them. [ed.: aarghhhy]

• Use household chores as opportunities for reinforcing math learning such as cooking and repair activities. [ed.: aarghhh]

• Try to be aware of how your child is being taught math, and don't teach strategies and shortcuts that conflict with the approach the teacher is using. Check in with the teacher and ask what you can do to help. Ask the teacher about online resources that you can use with your child at home. [ed.: aarghhh, aarghhh]

• At the beginning of the year, ask your child's teacher for a list of suggestions that will enable you to help your child with math homework. [ed.: how about no]

file under: the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing

from the same source:

Find out whether your child's teacher is highly qualified and whether the school follows state standards for mathematics instruction. Ask the school principal for a school handbook or math curriculum guide. If your school doesn't have a handbook, ask the principal and teachers questions such as the following:

• What math teaching methods and materials are used? Are the methods used to teach math based on scientific evidence about what works best? Are materials up to date?

• How much time is spent on math instruction?

• How does the school measure student progress in math? What tests does it use? How do the students at the school score on state assessments of math?

• Does the school follow state math standards and guidelines?

• Are the math teachers highly qualified? Do they meet state certification and subject-area knowledge requirements?

If you have not seen it, ask to look at the No Child Left Behind report card for your school. These report cards show how your school compares to others in the district and indicate how well it is succeeding.

so.... Don't interfere with the math instruction on offer at your kids' school, but do grill your principal to within an inch of his life about the curriculum, the research base, and teacher qualifications.

I'm sure that'll work.

The Feds must resolve disputes amongst the warring parties by lopping white papers in two & assigning half the pages to one camp, the other half to the other camp.

Party number one gets to write Homework Tips on page 5; Party number two gets to write the Homework Tips on page 11.

[pause]

I wish my school had a handbook.

Or a math curriculum guide.

Or anything in writing at all.

[pause]

Of course, we do have a handsome set of form letters.

Hard to say which one's my favorite.

if you listen

Ed always says that if you listen people will tell you what they think.

After he read the list of "tips" he pointed out that the list assumes the school isn't going to be teaching your kid any math.

Three of the tips are about peer tutoring and "extra help."

Note that peer tutoring is research based while extra help is not.

This has been our experience.

Extra help doesn't help.

[pause]

This weekend I discovered that one of C's friends, who is in the regular track and shouldn't be is being tutored by a high school student.

This is my middle school.

Very bright kids are a) in the slow track and b) not learning math there, either.