Posts
My school, a K-8 facility has a mission statement (which I'll paraphrase) that says "All children will be taught in their zone of proximal development". This is a noble sentiment which I fully support and aspire to. Unfortunately, my 7th grade math student's abilities range from 3rd through 11th grade based upon the NWEA Measures of Performance (a highly regarded national evaluation). This enormous dispersion is not new. On the contrary, it is chronic and well aged, like a fine New England Cheddar, and it makes a mockery of our mission statement.
Over the summer, my middle school peers and our administration worked on various schemes to address this conflict in light of reduced resources (teachers) and state/district mandates for a failing school under NCLB regs. It is simply not rational to think that you can teach in a zone of proximal development (ZPD) in a classroom with a nine year spread in capabilities.
The consensus that we reached was to take the middle school model we were working under and blow it up. We proposed to place all middle schoolers (6-8) regardless of age, grade level, or hat size, into cohorts whose memberships were determined by academic readiness and to allow for periodic assessments that would allow kids to migrate as their performance dictated. To the extent that we had the resources to support a number of such 'ZPD pods' we would create as many cohorts as possible and each teacher would take on a range of such groups in shortened, focused, classes.
This proposal was not accepted for a variety of reasons. Some of them had to do with scheduling challenges and some had to do with the MCAS (Massachusetts state testing) mandated NCLB assessments. Bottom line is that only one reason is a legitimate show stopper at the upper reaches of our district. There is a huge fear that if we teach kids in their ZPD, say a 4th grade capable student gets 4th grade curriculum, then they won't do well on their grade level MCAS assessment.
GAAAAAACK! Of course they won't but neither will they do well on the very same assessment if they are forced to spend a year sitting through a 7th grade curriculum that is being delivered 15,000 feet over their poor heads. Worse, if we insist (as is interminably true) in the perversity of a mission statement that is wholly at odds with our delivery system, those very same 4th grade capable students become rancorous sores in the classroom, denying the kind of environment that breeds success for those few students who may be lucky enough to have a repertoire that is in synch with the delivery.
A quarter of the way into the year, we have learned that way too many kids are failing (surprise) to meet the minimal requirements for their grade level standards. In an 'emergency' meeting, we were informed that it was our duty (as teachers) to work together to solve this problem in an innovative, collaborative way. After much discussion it was agreed to come up with a plan to - drum roll inserted here - break up the middle school into 'ZPD cohorts', come up with a schedule, etc.
I'm just a gerbil on a wheel. No! No! Wait. I'm on the wheel and I'm singing "I Am the Walrus". Did you know that John Lennon wrote that song while on an acid trip? He supposedly received a letter from a teacher who was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics. He was amused at this and resolved to write an incomprehensible lyric based on "Through The Looking Glass".
If he was a teacher he wouldn't have needed acid or Lewis Carroll.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
"Are Teacher Colleges Producing Mediocre Teachers?" TIME
TIME article by Gilbert Cruz.
Are Teacher Colleges Producing Mediocre Teachers?
OK, but is there anything constructive or promising here?
The article was based on a speech by Arne Duncan on Thursday to Columbia University's Teachers College. Duncan said:
"By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom,"
"By almost any standard."
{I'll ignore the 21st century remark.]
Then, Cruz quotes David Steiner, New York's education commissioner as saying:
"And if we can't identify the skills that make a difference in terms of student learning, then what we're saying is that teaching is an undefinable art, as opposed to something that can be taught."
"Until recently, Steiner served as dean of Hunter College's School of Education, where he was a vocal critic of the typical ed-school approach, in which teachers-in-training study theories and philosophies of education at the expense of practical, in-the-classroom experience."
Then Duncan is quoted as saying:
"I am urging every teacher-education program today to make better outcomes for students the overarching mission that propels all their efforts."
But what is the "standard" that should be used? It's one thing to argue mediocrity "by almost any standard", but there has to be some agreement over what that standard should be. The only standard that seems to be available is a mix of 50 state standards - all low. Some apologists of bad results complain that the bad scores on the tests mean that the tests are fundamentally flawed or that the schools didn't teach the specific material of any particular question. Apparently, these people are quite capable of arguing the "by almost any standard" position.
But the problem is not just poor implementation and a lack of focus on outcomes. It's philosophy. It's low expectations. The problem is that people disagree on standards. We can't even get started.
Actually, I'm more encouraged by Duncan's arm-twisting in states to force them to open up more charter schools. I can't imagine a top down solution to the problem of education that won't be watered down or manipulated. Either parents have to be allowed to send their kids elsewhere, or schools have to provide parents with choice. TERC or Singapore Math. I don't expect the education world will give up control easily. They will accept (low) accountability and weak standards first.
Are Teacher Colleges Producing Mediocre Teachers?
OK, but is there anything constructive or promising here?
The article was based on a speech by Arne Duncan on Thursday to Columbia University's Teachers College. Duncan said:
"By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom,"
"By almost any standard."
{I'll ignore the 21st century remark.]
Then, Cruz quotes David Steiner, New York's education commissioner as saying:
"And if we can't identify the skills that make a difference in terms of student learning, then what we're saying is that teaching is an undefinable art, as opposed to something that can be taught."
"Until recently, Steiner served as dean of Hunter College's School of Education, where he was a vocal critic of the typical ed-school approach, in which teachers-in-training study theories and philosophies of education at the expense of practical, in-the-classroom experience."
Then Duncan is quoted as saying:
"I am urging every teacher-education program today to make better outcomes for students the overarching mission that propels all their efforts."
But what is the "standard" that should be used? It's one thing to argue mediocrity "by almost any standard", but there has to be some agreement over what that standard should be. The only standard that seems to be available is a mix of 50 state standards - all low. Some apologists of bad results complain that the bad scores on the tests mean that the tests are fundamentally flawed or that the schools didn't teach the specific material of any particular question. Apparently, these people are quite capable of arguing the "by almost any standard" position.
But the problem is not just poor implementation and a lack of focus on outcomes. It's philosophy. It's low expectations. The problem is that people disagree on standards. We can't even get started.
Actually, I'm more encouraged by Duncan's arm-twisting in states to force them to open up more charter schools. I can't imagine a top down solution to the problem of education that won't be watered down or manipulated. Either parents have to be allowed to send their kids elsewhere, or schools have to provide parents with choice. TERC or Singapore Math. I don't expect the education world will give up control easily. They will accept (low) accountability and weak standards first.
Friday, October 23, 2009
First use of the phrase "4th grade hump?"
In the earliest mention of the phrase that I have yet found, it is called instead the “4th grade hump.” For a few years after that, it is called a hump, then it appears as the phrase “4th grade slump.” If you search Google books for the two phrases for various time periods, you find a number of interesting links. Also, over time, there are more and more hits for the phrase.
Here are the phrases, from Edward Dolch, the creater of the Dolch sight words, in his 1948 book, “Problems in Reading.” The first is on p. 56:
There is the famous 'fourth-grade hump,' the sudden difficulty of reading matter that strikes the children without warning. The difficulty keeps on climbing through grades V and VI.
This mention on page 251 also has a very interesting table:
Every word not on the list of 1,000 [most frequent words] was underlined and counted every time it appeared. Therefore a percentage of hard words means a percentage of the running words, that is, the total words read. We are aware that if a word appears a second time it is not now a hard word if it were learned the first time, but there was no way of allowing for this factor.....
The percentages of hard words for the books of each grade were averaged, and then the figures were rounded to the nearest whole number. The result shows the following:
TABLE V
Word Difficulty, According to Appearance on First 1,000 Words for
Children’s Reading as Found in Ten Series Of Readers
Grade
I II III IV V VI
Hard Words (Not on List)
4% 6% 8% 12% 14% 16%
These figures show the well-known “fourth grade hump,” a difference between the third grade books and fourth grade books that is twice the difference between the other grades.
There were several interesting links to later use of the phrase “4th grade slump,” I’ll link to two of them:
- The Trouble With Boys by Peg Tyre, p. 142-143
(The whole thing is interesting, here’s an excerpt:)
Around fourth and fifth grade, another factor comes into play as well. Good readers take a leap forward as they move from learning to read to reading to learn. The curriculum demands it. It’s no longer enough to be able to “sound out” words. Children have to comprehend sentences and paragraphs from history and science books and make inferences from those texts. Kids who don’t make that jump fall into what experts have dubbed the “fourth-grade slump.” They are stuck trying to figure out how to decode the word everglades, for instance, while other kids are learning about the kinds of animals that live in those Florida swamps. It’s an important cognitive leap.
By every measure, the fourth-grade slump hits boys harder than it hits girls.
2. The Reading Crisis: Why Poor Children Fall Behind by Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin, p. 143
As predicted by the theoretical model of reading used for our study (see Chapter 1), the students’ scores started to slump at about grade 4. For the below-average readers, the slump began early (in grade 4) and was intense. By grades 6 and 7, they were reading almost two years below grade level on all the reading tests. For the above-average readers, the slump began later (around grade 6) and was less intense. Many of the above-average readers were still reading on grade level or above in the sixth and seventh grades on some of the reading tests.The slump started earlier on some tests than on others.
The first to slip was vocabulary.
If you teach properly, with a good phonics method and less than a dozen sight words, there are few "hard words;" disadvantaged elementary children (including several 1st graders) taught with Webster's Speller were able to sound out what Dolch called "hard words," but Webster called "easy words of X syllables."
Here are some "easy words of 3 syllables, accented on the first and third"
O-VER-TAKE, IN-COR-RECT, IN-TER-MIX
and "easy words of 4 syllables, full accent on the first, and the half accent on the third"
MIS-CEL-LA-NY, OB-DU-RA-CY, PUR-GA-TO-RY
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Euclid's Postulates and Definitions
Euclid's Elements has 13 books. Book 1 starts with definitions.
Here are the first few:
1. A point is that which has no part.
2. A line is a breadthless length.
3. The extremities of a line are points.
4. A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.
5. A surface is that which has length and breadth only.
The main problem is that modern language and his language are a bit confusing. We don't use "extremities".
The definition of straight line above might not be clear unless you already know what a straight line is.
But in total, Euclid defines: point, line, straight line, surface, plane, plane angle, right angle, perpendicular angle, obtuse angle, acute angle, boundary, figure, circle, center, diameter, semicircle, equilateral triangle, isosceles triangle, scalene triangle, square, rhombus, trapezoid, parallel.
The 5 postulates are (in his words)
1. [One can] draw a straight line from any point to any point
2. [One can] produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
3. [One can] describe a circle with any center and distance.
4. All right angles are equal to one another.
5. If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, athe two straight lines, if produce indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.
In modern terminology, we usually list the first postulate as "two points determine a line". The fifth one is often rewritten to say "parallel lines don't intersect"; it's the most famous for being the one that makes the geometry described here planar--remove that postulate, and look at the lines of longitude on the globe.
So why are these postulates not definitions? The fifth one is complicated enough to be phrased as an "if-then", so it's probably reasonably clear why that's not a definition.
But why do we need to postulate a line or a circle, rather than define it?
Postulating a circle means we postulate its existence. We could just define a circle or a line, but it doesn't mean that such a thing with those properties as defined exists.
And we can't prove that those things exist, either. We have to assume them. This may be the oddest thing to a young student. "WHAT do you MEAN a circle doesn't EXIST? Look, I can draw one." (The standard answer to this is that any drawn circle is actually imperfect--doesn't have constant radius, doesn't have a boundary of no thickness, etc. This is typically a deeply unsatisfying answer. You could then tell him about the REAL constructivists: mathematicians who tried to construct all of math using the actual constructed "non platonic" geometry they could realize...but that's for another day.)
But this is where constructions come from, and this is what they were for. The answer to the above complaint is that you can actually CONSTRUCT everything you're asked to prove using just three things: a straight edge, a compass, and a pencil.
That is what it means to say "postulate a circle": it means "give yourself a compass to create a circle out of thin air." Same with "postulate a line: "give yourself a straight edge", and "postulate a line segment" : "give yourself a pencil to mark points on your line.
Then, the postulates have real meanings, because you can create everything else from those devices. Equilateral triangles are defined, but their existence is proved--and can be proved by construction from just the above three tools. Same with regular polygons, various congruent angles and lines, etc.
The idea that you start with 24 postulates is really really depressing, since it undermines everything beautiful about geometry that could be seen by construction.
Here's a link to Euclid's books. It contains all of the propositions and hyperlinks to the proofs.
Sometimes it's difficult to see the great truth he proved geometrically because of his wording and naming conventions. (Would you recognize his proof of the factoring of (x^2 -1) ?) But reading this might show you what you need to know and what's superfluous. And it will show you how to prove 19 of those postulates...
Here are the first few:
1. A point is that which has no part.
2. A line is a breadthless length.
3. The extremities of a line are points.
4. A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.
5. A surface is that which has length and breadth only.
The main problem is that modern language and his language are a bit confusing. We don't use "extremities".
The definition of straight line above might not be clear unless you already know what a straight line is.
But in total, Euclid defines: point, line, straight line, surface, plane, plane angle, right angle, perpendicular angle, obtuse angle, acute angle, boundary, figure, circle, center, diameter, semicircle, equilateral triangle, isosceles triangle, scalene triangle, square, rhombus, trapezoid, parallel.
The 5 postulates are (in his words)
1. [One can] draw a straight line from any point to any point
2. [One can] produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
3. [One can] describe a circle with any center and distance.
4. All right angles are equal to one another.
5. If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, athe two straight lines, if produce indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.
In modern terminology, we usually list the first postulate as "two points determine a line". The fifth one is often rewritten to say "parallel lines don't intersect"; it's the most famous for being the one that makes the geometry described here planar--remove that postulate, and look at the lines of longitude on the globe.
So why are these postulates not definitions? The fifth one is complicated enough to be phrased as an "if-then", so it's probably reasonably clear why that's not a definition.
But why do we need to postulate a line or a circle, rather than define it?
Postulating a circle means we postulate its existence. We could just define a circle or a line, but it doesn't mean that such a thing with those properties as defined exists.
And we can't prove that those things exist, either. We have to assume them. This may be the oddest thing to a young student. "WHAT do you MEAN a circle doesn't EXIST? Look, I can draw one." (The standard answer to this is that any drawn circle is actually imperfect--doesn't have constant radius, doesn't have a boundary of no thickness, etc. This is typically a deeply unsatisfying answer. You could then tell him about the REAL constructivists: mathematicians who tried to construct all of math using the actual constructed "non platonic" geometry they could realize...but that's for another day.)
But this is where constructions come from, and this is what they were for. The answer to the above complaint is that you can actually CONSTRUCT everything you're asked to prove using just three things: a straight edge, a compass, and a pencil.
That is what it means to say "postulate a circle": it means "give yourself a compass to create a circle out of thin air." Same with "postulate a line: "give yourself a straight edge", and "postulate a line segment" : "give yourself a pencil to mark points on your line.
Then, the postulates have real meanings, because you can create everything else from those devices. Equilateral triangles are defined, but their existence is proved--and can be proved by construction from just the above three tools. Same with regular polygons, various congruent angles and lines, etc.
The idea that you start with 24 postulates is really really depressing, since it undermines everything beautiful about geometry that could be seen by construction.
Here's a link to Euclid's books. It contains all of the propositions and hyperlinks to the proofs.
Sometimes it's difficult to see the great truth he proved geometrically because of his wording and naming conventions. (Would you recognize his proof of the factoring of (x^2 -1) ?) But reading this might show you what you need to know and what's superfluous. And it will show you how to prove 19 of those postulates...
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
gone fishing
Have been in Evanston since Friday - my mom has rallied!
Back to Irvington on Thursday & will be checking in & out & reading posts ---
Back to Irvington on Thursday & will be checking in & out & reading posts ---
Monday, October 19, 2009
World Origami Days
Celebrate World Origami Days, 24 October - 11 November: www.origami-usa.org/wod
Share the joy of folding! See the connections to mathematics.
Visualize the possibilities: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/03/origami
The first two sentences from the article:
"Anything can be made with origami—from birds and bugs to stents and space telescopes. It’s just a matter of math."
Cheers!
Patsy
Share the joy of folding! See the connections to mathematics.
Visualize the possibilities: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/03/origami
The first two sentences from the article:
"Anything can be made with origami—from birds and bugs to stents and space telescopes. It’s just a matter of math."
Cheers!
Patsy
Saturday, October 17, 2009
speaking of newbies
Here is a Wall Street Journal blogger, new to the public schools, taking parents to task for overinvolvement in their kids homework:
Elementary schools offering 'math workshops' is marketing to parents.
Two different things.
With even young children socked with an hour or so of nightly homework and older children facing much more, some parents give into the temptation to cut corners. They buy textbooks and even take courses themselves so they can pitch in,....Parents taking courses themselves so they can pitch in is me working my way through Saxon Math so I can teach my kid fractions, algebra, & beginning geometry.
Elementary schools offering 'math workshops' is marketing to parents.
Two different things.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Sample Geometry assignments
I posted about my son skipping out of geometry earlier on this blog. (Thanks to all who commented!) Both my 8th & 9th grade sons
These were Wednesday's homework assignments. The first two pages are from the book: Geometry by McDougal Littell (2004 version). They were the 8th grader's homework assignments.
The second two pages are the first 2 of 3 created by the 9th grader's geometry teacher. The school uses the newest version of Prentice-Hall Geometry & Algebra 2 books. The pages were a take-home quiz and he could work with partners. Just the first 26 questions.
I see more challenging problems in the 6B Singapore Math workbook.
The older son starts Algebra 2 on Monday. He's already read through the first few chapters that he's missed and over the weekend we'll be working problems similar to what he did last year in Paul Foerster's Algebra.
(FYI- I didn't check my son's work, he did the assignment in 10 minutes in the car. He asked me to black his name out. - Anyone want to talk about years of failed handwriting instruction?)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Barry G at Room for Debate
The recently released national math test scores for 2009 are part of a growing body of lackluster results nationwide since the inception of the No Child Left Behind law. The exam, which has been deemed the “gold standard” of testing is hardly what one would call challenging with respect to math, and yet even so, the scores are barely indicative of a pulse.
With the prospect that all students may not achieve proficiency by 2014, finger pointing naturally ensues. Some will contend that we need to go to “authentic testing” that measures how well students use prior knowledge in new situations. This would take the form of open-ended, generally ill-posed problems that allow students to gain points just for attempting to guess an answer. With process trumping content, students would surely show gains, but in the end we still have to ask whether the intents of No Child Left Behind will have been realized. And the answer would most likely be a resounding “no,” though everyone would feel good about the test scores.
What is needed is not another test, but sound mathematics instruction that stresses content over process. The education establishment needs to understand that even process is based on skills and exercises, and a logical sequence of topics whose mastery builds upon itself. We need solid math curricula and textbooks that are based on the premise that procedural fluency leads to conceptual understanding. Problem solving does not exist independently of exercises. The belief that content-based math teaches only definitions and procedures needs to be abandoned.
With the prospect that all students may not achieve proficiency by 2014, finger pointing naturally ensues. Some will contend that we need to go to “authentic testing” that measures how well students use prior knowledge in new situations. This would take the form of open-ended, generally ill-posed problems that allow students to gain points just for attempting to guess an answer. With process trumping content, students would surely show gains, but in the end we still have to ask whether the intents of No Child Left Behind will have been realized. And the answer would most likely be a resounding “no,” though everyone would feel good about the test scores.
What is needed is not another test, but sound mathematics instruction that stresses content over process. The education establishment needs to understand that even process is based on skills and exercises, and a logical sequence of topics whose mastery builds upon itself. We need solid math curricula and textbooks that are based on the premise that procedural fluency leads to conceptual understanding. Problem solving does not exist independently of exercises. The belief that content-based math teaches only definitions and procedures needs to be abandoned.
several interesting comments on CSMP
I'd pull all of these comments up front but it's getting late & I've got to pack.
Several commenters used the CSMP curriculum with their own kids; one explains what the curriculum was, where it came from, etc.
Meet the parents
from Magister Green:
My personal favorite moments come when our beloved administrators (who have advanced degrees in Education, natch) insist that the key to getting parents and families on board with new educational practices (read: Fad of the Moment) is "educating them." We need to "educate" the parents about what these new practices (fads) are all about and, should parents or even other teachers (!!) express reservations, well...they just need more "education"! The underlying principles and assumptions of these new fads are never questioned since, of course, they come from "experts" who have done "studies", so we all should just shutu....err, educate ourselves.My district uses the expression "marketing to parents."
inside the black box
from RedKudu:
Parents who don't know the right questions to ask, or even that there ARE questions to ask are at the mercy of what the schools tell them. Parents are spooked by direct instruction because of what they are told about it by teachers who don't know any better - it's rote repetition, it's drill 'n kill. No wonder, with those labels, it doesn't come across well.
I think I told these stories once before, but they're so recent they're worth retelling.
1. Our new math facilitator at the school divulged to me (reading and English teacher) that her 1st grader's teacher told her they "just don't teach phonics, because it's so wrong." Luckily, she's savvy enough to have been teaching her daughter phonics on the sly.
2. Another math teacher told me his two elementary aged sons, in the same grade with different teachers, are learning different things in reading. One is bringing home sight word lists every night, the other brings home nothing. I told him I disagreed with sight words before phonics because it taught kids to see words as images, rather than units of meaning. You should have seen how wide his eyes got - "I never thought of it that way." He gets it, because the same thing is happening with our high school math students.
This has got to stop.
I think I told these stories once before, but they're so recent they're worth retelling.
1. Our new math facilitator at the school divulged to me (reading and English teacher) that her 1st grader's teacher told her they "just don't teach phonics, because it's so wrong." Luckily, she's savvy enough to have been teaching her daughter phonics on the sly.
2. Another math teacher told me his two elementary aged sons, in the same grade with different teachers, are learning different things in reading. One is bringing home sight word lists every night, the other brings home nothing. I told him I disagreed with sight words before phonics because it taught kids to see words as images, rather than units of meaning. You should have seen how wide his eyes got - "I never thought of it that way." He gets it, because the same thing is happening with our high school math students.
This has got to stop.
the natives are restless
You can vote to "Recommend" your favorite comments on the story. Amy got my vote.
Speaking of Everyday Math, remember this?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
CSMP
I think our district used this curriculum for a time. I assume this is the same one.
A friend of mine told me that his child had CSMP in 2nd grade. Six students in the class went on to take BC calculus in high school, a very high proportion. (A couple of years ago we had 12 students taking BC calculus out of a class of perhaps 150. In other years I believe we've had as many as 20 students in BC.) There were no more than 23 students altogether in the class, which was not tracked.
A friend of mine told me that his child had CSMP in 2nd grade. Six students in the class went on to take BC calculus in high school, a very high proportion. (A couple of years ago we had 12 students taking BC calculus out of a class of perhaps 150. In other years I believe we've had as many as 20 students in BC.) There were no more than 23 students altogether in the class, which was not tracked.
parents ageing out
palisadesk is on a roll:
As for parents changing the system -- good luck with that. Bureaucracies, especially large and monopolistic ones, are notoriously impervious to customer complaints. Those in charge know that even the most militant parent will "age out" of the battle in a decade or less, and a new crop of starry-eyed, or simply naive, customers will present themselves.
palisadesk on clueless consultants
How can they do that when they don't seem to be able to think themselves?
This contradiction has variously amused and enraged me, but it seems to be a systemic problem. As a "school in need of improvement" we have had cadres of experts come in purporting to teach us how to teach "higher order thinking skills." It is no exaggeration to say these gurus were so thick they would have been challenged to suggest a way to evacuate a phone booth.
I keep remembering the interesting data point from ETS that those who go on to get graduate degrees in Educational Administration have a mean GRE Verbal of 419 -- meaning a goodly number were well below that. A GRE score of 419 loosely correlates to an IQ of 90.
Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, folks.
This contradiction has variously amused and enraged me, but it seems to be a systemic problem. As a "school in need of improvement" we have had cadres of experts come in purporting to teach us how to teach "higher order thinking skills." It is no exaggeration to say these gurus were so thick they would have been challenged to suggest a way to evacuate a phone booth.
I keep remembering the interesting data point from ETS that those who go on to get graduate degrees in Educational Administration have a mean GRE Verbal of 419 -- meaning a goodly number were well below that. A GRE score of 419 loosely correlates to an IQ of 90.
Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, folks.
speaking of boys
Nine-year-old girls score 7 points higher than boys of the same age in reading, according to long-term trend data for NAEP. For 13-year-olds, the gender gap is 8 points. For 17-year-olds, the gender gap is even wider, 11 points, and has remained about the same since 1971, when the test was first given. In 1971, 17-year-old girls scored 12 points higher than boys that age in reading on NAEP.
University officials attest to those deficiencies sticking to many young men as they age. “Overall, our female students coming in [to the university] are better readers [than male students]," Tracy Fitzsimmons, the president of the university, told conference attendees. “They are better writers.”
Authors Share Tips on Getting Boys to Read
By Mary Ann Zehr
Education Week | July 2, 2009
Judith Kleinfeld says there isn't a literacy gap in home-schooled children.
per pupil spending in private schools
I'd been meaning to get this posted for a while now:
Full report here.
to do
The report finds that, on average, independent private schools spend $15,000 per pupil, Hebrew schools more than $12,000, and Roman Catholic schools $7,743, based on data from the 2006-07 academic year. U.S. Christian schools identified with one of two major associations, the Association of Christian Schools International and the American Association of Christian Schools, spend $5,727 on average.
Private Schools
Education Week | August 25, 2009
Full report here.
to do
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Amy from Iowa