Combatting the Disbelief

One of the major problems I see whenever someone is trying to change the curriculum at their local school is that only a tiny percentage of parents really knows how bizarre the curriculum is, how far off the standard map it is from their own upbringing. And if, for example, I try to tell other parents, they simply do not believe it, and I lose all credibility.

Even my own husband doesn't believe it-- "They don't teach stacking??? Come on! That's hogwash." The list of topics I claim not covered is so deep and so wide, I must be exaggerating.

Even when you're talking to parents whose kids are in the same classroom, they seldom believe it. Even when these parents are college educated in the sciences or engineering themselves, they don't seem to coherently examine the whole arc of a school year (or years) to notice what's missing. They seem to assume that things are fine--until middle school is reached, at the earliest.

So, how is this best combatted? Handing someone a textbook and saying "go ahead, try to find stacking" doesn't work, as most won't see that as proof of anything. There's no way to show the overall year in, year out deficiencies by looking at one text, either. So what can work? What can help other parents to see how far from their common expectation the current curriculum is, while still saving one's credibility?

An Education Obamanation

Indentured servitude by any other name for middle and high schoolers, and taxpayers covering a tax free $40 an hour wage to every single college student.



The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

-------------
UPDATE: Gosh, this is a LOT better than the original!
The original is cached here:

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:f_Q-RMW-DJoJ:www.change.gov/americaserves/+http://change.gov/americaserves/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

It said (emphasis mine):


Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

And it didn't even mention the $4000...

TIME on Secretary of Education

Thus far I've only skimmed the article far enough to find this:

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND

Current position: Top Obama education adviser

Why she could be tapped: Her day job is professor of education at Stanford, but for the past year, she has been a key voice defining Obama's positions on issues such as school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

Why the job will go to someone else: Darling-Hammond is not popular among education reformers, particularly those to the center-right. That's because her views on issues such as merit pay vs. teacher tenure are more conventional than even Obama's. So if the President-elect really wants to shake things up on the education front, Darling-Hammond won't likely be his choice.

Who Will Obama Pick as Secretary of Education?

Back when I've read the whole thing....

update:

Here's good news, assuming it's true:

Why the job will go to someone else: Hunt has not been especially outspoken on how to expand charter schools and other alternatives to traditional public schools, which appears to be a priority for the Obama team.

GRE scores in 28 fields of study

here

from Greg Mankiw's blog

What is "Public Administration," exactly?

Secretary of Education

Lots of fun stuff at Flypaper:

Reader Contest
Cheers and Frets

And, a Concerned Parent find at the Chronicle of Higher Education: Obama's Possible Candidates for Secretary of Education.

Colin Powell is on the list!

I'm pretty sure Colin Powell would be fine by me, assuming he didn't round up the usual suspects and hand "execution" of policy over to them.

I don't remember whether I've mentioned this, but on my second visit to Hogwarts, back in the spring, I realized that the place felt like a happy military school, or what I imagine a military school to be. I've never visited a military school & don't know anyone who's attended one. Nevertheless, I had a distinct sense of "military-ness": really, really fun military-ness.

Then this fall, when we attended the all-day Family Orientation, the principal told parents that the Jesuits in general and the school in particular have a military cast. I don't recall his exact words, but that was the jist. He told us about the life of Loyola, who was a soldier, and pointed out that the head of the Jesuit order is the "Father-General."

So: quasi-military schools for America's over character-edded boys!

And possibly for America's over character-edded girls. Why should boys have all the fun?


About Face! A Case for Quasi-Military Public Schools
Mayor Daley letter re: military academies

teach your babies to read

European languages are written in an alphabet, because they cannot be written any other way. This is a fact, and there is nothing we can do about it. The evidence reviewed in this book shows that when you follow the principles by which writing systems are constructed and teach the English writing system appropriately, 4-year-olds can easily learn to read in about 10 to 12 weeks. It makes no sense to continue teaching reading the way we do.

Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading
by Diane McGuinness
p. xv

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann
funnix
Headsprouts
Reading Instruction for Children Who Are At Risk or Have Disabilities by Mary Damer
The Phonics Page
Don Potter
I Speak of Dreams
National Right to Read Foundation
Children of the Code
Reid Lyon

Obama!

Wow!

First black president. Amazing.

Of course, I wouldn't have minded having the first woman in the White House, either. I say that as a person without a Party.

I wonder what this means in terms of the country's "identity?" I was asking Ed the other night whether other countries have to stop calling us "racist," and he said yes. (Really?)

I'm not crazy about the idea of "transformational" leaders, but will the fact of the country's having elected Obama affect how Americans see themselves?

And if so, will that be transformational?

I have no idea!

This is amazing -----


update 11:55 am

change

kitchen table math, election edition

Economist Edward Glaeser on the campaign I wish we'd had:

[I]n this hopeful season of presidential change, even economists need to be for something. Some of my colleagues labor to improve healthcare; others fight for tax reform. My dream is that one, or both, candidates will make human capital the centerpiece of their campaign.

More than 70 percent of Americans routinely tell pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction. America will not change course just by electing a new president, no matter how much charisma or character that leader might have. America's future will instead depend on the skills of its citizens. In a remarkable new book, my colleagues Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz make a compelling case that America's 20th-century achievements owed much to our nation's once-robust investment in education, and that since the 1970s the growth in that investment has slowed dramatically.

[snip]

Education increases the ability to deal with innovation, so that investing in skills today will make Americans better able to weather the storms of future technological changes.

[snip]

The case for governmental investment in education reflects the fact all of us become more productive when our neighbors know more. The success of cities like Boston reflects the magic that occurs when knowledgeable people work and live around each other. As the share of adults in a metropolitan area with college degrees increases by 10 percent, the wages of a worker with a fixed education level increases by 8 percent. Area level education also seems to increase the production of innovations and speed economic growth.

American education is not just another arrow in a quiver of policy proposals, but it is the primary weapon, the great claymore, to fight a host of public ills. One can make a plausible case that improving American education would do as much to improve health outcomes as either candidate's health plans. People with more years of schooling are less obese, smoke less, and live longer. Better-educated people are also more likely to vote and to build social capital by investing in civic organizations.

Alas, a presidential campaign in which human capital figured prominently was not to be.

Meanwhile, here is Gene Expression discovering that more people should be attending college, not fewer:

The first observation here is that educational degrees, whether they confer skills or credentials, are more important to income than IQ when minimum thresholds are met.....Higher IQ generates the biggest pay-off differences between those with advanced degrees, which is consistent with IQ increasing in importance as jobs become more complex. Third, merely earning a Bachelor's degree is a golden ticket. People with average and below average IQs are getting just as much of a financial return out of their 4-year degree as those above the 85th percentile. This suggests many more people of marginal ability should be seeking a Bachelor's degree, not less. Fourth, the two lines for junior college and trade occupations overlap substantially, as we would expect if most people in trade occupations went to trade school. Fifth, and most directly related to Murray's argument, people with 4-year degrees earn much more than people with 2-year degrees and trade jobs at every level of IQ. Average IQ people will get a much, much larger monetary reward from completing a 4 year school than a 2 year school. So the BA is far from being a "meaningless credential" when it comes to "chances of making a good living".

It's possible people with average IQs who complete college are exceptional in other ways. But there is no other empirical evidence that vocational school is better at generating income for those <85th>Again we find that IQ shows no relationship to income for those with a BA, and, in fact, those with lower IQs might profit the most.

the future

Since I'm amongst those who think it's going to get worse before it gets better, it strikes me that it may be possible to make some predictions.

I believe education -- especially a liberal education -- makes you "smarter." Ed has always said that an education in the liberal arts disciplines teaches you how to think, so I'm going to go with that as a working hypothesis as to what it is a liberal education does for a person, regardless of IQ.

U.S. public schools in my neck of the woods are doing everything in their power to abandon the liberal arts in favor of the 21st century skills. I assume our national "progress" in this direction will accelerate under the next president regardless of which candidate wins office.

What does that mean in terms of real children and what becomes of them?

I think the answer can be found in the population of children being pulled out of the public schools for homeschooling or for enrollment in private, parochial, or charter schools.

For instance, Ed and I were trying to figure out, the other day, whether future presidents will be more likely to have attended private schools, as Obama and McCain both did, than they were in the recent past.

Another possibility: Ed suspects there may be, now, an increase in the percentage of private school students being accepted by highly selective colleges as compared to twenty years ago.

Or take Catholics and evangelical Christians, groups with fairly large numbers of children attending parochial schools or being homeschooled, comparatively speaking. Will we see these children moving ahead of their public school peers in terms of educational attainment and income? (Do we see it now?)

Another group: professors' kids. Professors are one unhappy group where public schools are concerned. Thinking back, we've known very few professors who've sent their kids to public school. We were the last holdouts in our circle, and now we're gone, too.

Last but not least: glancing through a couple of parents' lists, it struck me that political conservatives may be leaving the public schools in larger numbers than centrists or liberals. It's just an impression, but it would make sense. Centrists and liberals can put up with a certain amount of global awareness and environmental stewardship in lieu of college preparation on the district Strategic Plan.^* But political conservatives, it seems to me, are going to get their fill of this stuff sooner rather than later.

Many -- perhaps most -- students being pulled out of 21st century public schools for private, parochial, charter, or home schools are going to be better prepared for college, which means they'll be accepted by more competitive colleges, which means they'll be in line for acceptance by more competitive graduate programs. And that's where the action is. ^**

Point is: it's a safe bet within-group inequality will continue to rise. The question is: who's in the groups within the groups?

Which students will leave the public schools in the coming years, and which will stay?


^* Tomorrow, Election Day, my school board will vote to adopt a 20-page Strategic Plan that sets goals for environmental stewardship, global awareness, media literacy, 21st century skills, and wellness, but does not mention college preparation.

^** "Demand for those who graduated from more selective institutions as well as those with post-B.A. degrees is still soaring and they are doing spectacularly well." p. 302 The Race Between Technology and Education

Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been

Internet Required for Homework?

There's an organization in Readington, NJ called ReadingtonParents.org, (here's the page on constructivist math -- sound familiar?).

Anyway, one of the parents involved, John Painter has a blog associated with the organization, Readingtonparents.org Editor's Blog. He recently posted an essay on the various pitfalls of assigning homework that requires the internet. Here's the opening paragraph:

One recent survey of K-12 teachers indicated that 77% of them assign homework which requires the internet. My experience with my own kids certainly backs that up. Unfortunately, these assignments not only require an internet connection, but also direct parental supervision. Most (if not all) of these assignments are based on a simplistic or erroneous understanding of internet technology, or they put an undue burden on parents to provide expensive infrastructure and safety monitoring.

Since I'm not involved with the daily homework grind anymore (except for myself) I found his comments eye-opening.

What Goes into A Thrilling Performance: Dalton Sherman, Age 10, Motivational Speaker

At 10, Dalton Sherman is a speech-making pro. Since winning a big oratory competition in Dallas last January, he’s performed at numerous churches and events all over Dallas. He even opened an event for famed poet Maya Angelou.

Here's a kid who has found his passion: public speaking. A video of the presentation Sherman made to 17,000 teachers of the Dallas Unified School district is making the rounds.

Take note of what Sherman did to prepare:

• His school (Charles Rice Learning Center) has an oratory program, in which Sherman participated
• Dallas has an oratory competition that Sherman won earlier in the year.
• After Sherman won the Gardere MLK competition, Dallas Independent School District contacted the Sherman family to ask if Sherman would address the teachers
• His presentation was written by the district
• His mother and his oratory coach worked with him all summer to prepare for the convocation speech in August.
• Sherman gave the whole speech to live audiences throughout the summer.

In short: preparation, drill, more preparation, and more drill.

Think about that, constructivists.

Halloween at Hogwarts

C., home from the train station, reports that the school has been in an uproar, due to today being “Initiation into the Bloods Day” or some such.

Initiation into the Bloods, C. tells me, requires candidates for gang membership to run up to perfect strangers on the street and slice open their faces with a knife, starting just below the ear lobe and carving down to the corner of the mouth.

Plus which, “Nine women were raped in Queens!”

“9 women were raped in Queens?” I said.

“Yeah, or Brooklyn.”

Everyone was scared, C. reported, and the boys had all planned to run to the train station after school instead of walking as they normally do. In the event, however, C. and his friend chose to walk, mostly because C’s other friend, an Irish boy from a semi-rough neck of the woods, told him the Bloods business was all a bunch of cr**. On the strength of that opinion, C. opted to walk, and lived to tell the tale. Good news!

Still and all, C., as soon as he got home, was off to consult Christian (hometown: Yonkers) on the matter of Bloods initiation rites and the 9 women raped in Brooklyn or Queens. Unfortunately, Christian is out with M., trying to take Jimmy to his program, and they’re stranded in Greenburgh because nobody’s there. Ed is dealing with that.

So we all await word on the Bloods and the fate of Jimmy’s program.

On the train home, C. sat across from 3 Irvington moms who were chatting about their kids’ YouTube videos and also about Village plans for the police to scare everyone straight. On Halloween, Irvington kids on Main Street get rowdy with shaving cream, and Irvington police always have the situation well in hand. That's what makes it exciting, really: knowing the kids and the police will both be there, along with the moms and dads escorting their smaller children to people's houses, knowing that the older kids will get rowdy and the police will prevail.

I know this because I spend every Halloween night in downtown Irvington with my friend P. Last year’s excitement was the news that J. had been picked up by the police and taken home in the back seat of the police car. A likely tale, I thought, but since half the kids in town claimed actually to have seen J. riding in the back seat of the police car, who was I to argue?

We found out the next day that J.’s parents hadn't let him go out for Halloween, so I was right after all.


update

M. and Christian are back sans Jimmy, so the program must be happening.

re: the Bloods, Christian had this to say: "Oh, you heard about that? They said the same thing at my job, too. Supposedly the Bloods are going to be slashing 38 people tonight for initiation. 'Cause New York gangs suck."

On that note, Happy Halloween!

Latin vs Spanish

Please tell Juan to recycle the plastic.

or

The centurion bravely slaughtered the barbarian.

choose one

Well....we may laugh (ha ha!) but, judging by events unfolding here in my own leafy suburb, twenty-five years from now we'll look back fondly on the days of Please tell Juan to recycle.

Twenty-five years from now schools will be teaching the critical languages and nothing but.

phinally!

Have I mentioned Ed's a Phillies fan?

woo hoo!

Frederick Education Reform - for your school board, paper, & PTSA

I think the PowerPoint presentations at Frederick Education Reform are probably the single most important and most potentially effective grass-roots reform documents I've ever come across. These parents have managed to pull the whole thing together: not just the math wars but the reading wars and the education wars, too.

I'm going to forward several to my school board, the PTSA, and the local newspapers.

Seven Styles of Learning

I can't believe it.

My son came home today and told me that his (seventh grade) science teacher talked to them about seven styles of learning. I guess this was to justify having them draw pictures of science definitions. My son already has about 100 3 X 5 index cards with pictures from sixth grade science. I suppose I should be happy that they expect them to learn definitions, and that the seventh grade science teacher will not grade the artwork, but this adds to the book dust cover he has to draw for language arts and the diorama he has to do for social studies. Only in math does he have regular homework. All of the other classes have projects. (He has math with me, but that's another story.)

Linguistic learner
Logical/mathematical learner
Spatial learner
Musical learner
Bodily/Kinesthetic learner
Interpersonal learner
Intrapersonal learner

"Everybody has a preferred learning style. Knowing and understanding our learning style helps us to learn more effectively. Through identifying your learning style, you will be able to capitalize on your strengths and improve your self-advocacy skills."


Did you ever notice that they don't let kids decide on and use whichever style works best for them. Everyone has to do the artwork. Everybody has to work in groups. What about the poor intrapersonal learner who is no good in art and likes to work by himself? Tough s***. What about my son, who is extremely good in music. What the heck does that mean?

The school hands out questionnaires about this each year and I just throw them away. I try to ignore it, but this learning style formality is really getting annoying! Parents can't say anything about it because that would be questioning their competence.

Of course, drawing a picture for a definition should help one with memorization, but one can always trade speed for understanding. It's not as if they are covering more material using these techniques. They are slowing down. It took my son a lot more time to draw the science pictures last year (20+ minutes each) than it took him to memorize the definition.

Even if you believe that each child has a preferred learning style, schools really don't care. Everyone does art and works in groups.

How does it all stack up?

A parent and I recently started up a Continental Math League team at our school, which uses Investigations math.

The response?  Enthusiasm from students and parents; skepticism from teachers.

Specifically, about "stacking." (Today's word for how we used to add, subtract, and multiply numbers by placing one number on top of the other.)

Kids love it. And not just the ones on our team. As as friend writes:

When I showed one of my sons how I had learned addition, i.e. the "stacking" method, he was very impressed. "Wow, that's so cool! That works great! I wonder if my math teacher knows about this?" was his innocent comment.

Yes, she does, and she doesn't like it. At least if she resembles the teacher who approached me after math practice yesterday and recounted the dismay she felt when she caught one of her students stacking numbers, thus abandoning the more "meaningful" and "faster" way he used to solve problems.

My co-coach and I tried to explain that the Continental Math League numbers are big enough, and random enough, that Reform Math's methods aren't faster and more meaningful, but inefficient and confusing. It's one thing to add 48 and 39 by reasoning that:

48 is 2 less than 50, and 39 is 1 less than 40, so add 40 and 50 and get 90 and then count backwards by 3 and get 87."

But take one of the problems we did at Continental Math League practice yesterday: 825 - 267. Restricting myself to the kinds of calculation that these second and third graders are able/expected to do in their heads, here's the most efficient non-stacking method I can come up with:

The closest friendly number to 825 is 800, and the closest friendly number to 267 is 250. 825 is 25 more than 800. 250 is 10 more than 260, and another 7 gets you 267. 10 plus 7 is 17. So 267 is 17 more than 250. So subtract 250 from 800. Well, 800 minus 200 is 600, minus 50 more is 550. Then subtract 17 from 25 by counting up from 17. Seventeen plus 3 more is 20 plus 5 more is 25. 3 plus 5 equals 8. Add 8 to 550* to get 558."

*By this point in the problem, how many people remember what they should be doing with this 8?

Anyone with a more efficient non-stacking method for subtracting 267 from 825 (no calculators allowed!) is invited to share it here.

(Cross posted at Out in Left Field).

Sum Swamp--fun adding and subtracting

We recently ordered "Sum Swamp," an addition and subtraction game, from Amazon. It is helping with basic math facts, and also covers odd and even. It's a fun game, and very cute. It only has two 6-sided dice, however. I'm planning on buying two 10-sided dice to make it cover all the basic addition and subtraction facts.

There is an "endless loop" where you have to land on the exit to get out. For a shorter game, we don't make the endless loop endless. You could play with multiplication as well, and then either add the digits or for any answers 10 or over, divide by 10 and round to the nearest number.

We lost a bit of math knowledge this summer, this game will be a fun way to keep up basic math facts during holidays.

Now, if I could only find a fun DVD! Something along the lines of Leapfrog's "Talking Letter Factory" for letter names and sounds would be great. Unfortunately, leapfrog's math circus doesn't teach much, although it is cute.

21st century skills

from Susan S



That's what I call a race between education and technology.

One small answer to the engineering gap?

Johnny Chung Lee made the NYT today .
My favorite part of the article, on building an interactive whiteboard with a wii remote:

An after-school Lego robotics club for fifth graders at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School in Williamsburg, Va., built a Wiimote whiteboard in four one-hour sessions. “Once it was done, the kids were so excited,” recalls Kofi Merritt, then the school’s computer resource specialist, who suggested and advised the project. “They recognized themselves as innovators and demonstrated the whiteboard in classroom after classroom.”

Lee provides specs and instructions for all his inventions free online. What a great way to introduce students to engineering as the U.S. engineer gap is growing.

According to Sheila Riley of the EE Times:

The population of experienced engineers is aging, he (Albert Helfrick, chair of electrical and systems engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University said. "There's a serious problem in our country with people like me: gray-haired people who could retire tomorrow," he said. If large numbers do retire, the U.S. faces a severe engineering shortfall.

Joe Sciabica, executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory, agrees:

"We are facing a crisis in this nation," Mr. Sciabica said, referring to a loss of technical talent and experience as an aging workforce of scientists, engineers and mathematicians prepares for retirement.

"What alarms me more is that the professors to teach the next generation are also retiring," he added.

Looks like loss of quality teaching isn't just an ed school issue.

I'll take a piece of that action

…it is possible for students to construct for themselves the mathematical practices that, historically, took several thousand years to evolve…

source: A Constructivist Alternative to the Representational View of Mind in Mathematics Education Author(s): Paul Cobb, Erna Yackel, Terry Wood Source: Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 2-33; p. 28.

I've posted this line before, but had always drawn it from secondary sources. So I had wondered whether perhaps the authors had been misquoted.

Nope.

This is the precise claim Cobb, Yackel, and Wood are making. In these exact words.