"Wasting time in school"

Have just this moment stumbled upon a UK education blog: Wasting Time in School."

Check out this post.

Brilliant.

This reminds me of that business idea we all had a while back, doing school projects for beleaguered parents.

Thought experiment: since the parents are already doing the projects & everyone knows it....wouldn't a School Project Business be legit in a way a term-paper business is not?

I think it might.

Gone fishing (and did NCLB work?)

In Princeton, NJ, waiting for our room to be ready.

While I wait I'm looking at NAEP scores, and wondering.

Are we seeing evidence that No Child Left Behind worked?

• Compared to the first assessment in 1971 for reading and in 1973 for mathematics, scores were higher in 2012 for 9- and 13-year-olds and not significantly different for 17-year-olds.
• In both reading and mathematics at all three ages, Black students made larger gains from the early 1970s than White students.
• Hispanic students made larger gains from the 1970s than White students in reading at all three ages and in mathematics at ages 13 and 17.
• Female students have consistently outscored male students in reading at all three ages, but the gender gap narrowed from 1971 to 2012 at age 9.
• At ages 9 and 13, the scores of male and female students were not significantly different in mathematics, but the gender gap in mathematics for 17-year-olds narrowed in comparison to 1973.

About NAEP
NAEP Summary

the "triple dissociation" and slow and fast readers

re: We can see just 7 or 8 letters at a time

The NYU reading-speed study, which has come up a couple of times on ktm, found a "triple dissociation" amongst three contributors to reading speed:

• Decoding by phonics (62% of reading speed)
• Whole-word recognition (16% of reading speed)
• Word-prediction via knowledge of grammar and context (22%)

"Triple dissociation":

Surprisingly, the effects of the knockouts on reading rate reveal a triple dissociation. Each reading process always contributes the same number of words per minute, regardless of whether the other processes are operating.

I've just this moment realized the implications of the triple dissociation they found:

1. If students don't know phonics, they can never read quickly enough to do college-level reading,  which requires at least 200 wpm. 
2. Students who don't know the grammar of written English well, will be significantly slower readers than students who do. ("Know" in the procedural sense of being able instantly to comprehend grammatical structures such as appositives and relative clauses and anaphora and the like.)
3. Until you have substantial background knowledge in a subject, you will be a slow(ish) reader in that content area. 

I'd love to know how that 22% is distributed between grammar and background knowledge. The researchers did not test to see how grammar and background knowledge

Source:
Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation by Denis G. Pelli mail, Katharine A. Tillman

We can see just 7 or 8 letters at a time

I've always wondered about this:

Let us consider the behaviour in which you are currently engaged – namely, reading these words. What exactly is your brain is doing right now? What kind of behaviour is reading and what must the brain do in order to achieve it?

[snip]

Reading, when reduced to the rather prosaic level of motor actions, depends on the brain’s ability to orchestrate a series of eye movements. Now, as you read these words, your brain is commanding your eyes to make small but very rapid (about 500° per second) left-to-right movements called saccades (right-to-left or up-and-down for some other written languages). You are not consciously aware of it, but these rapid movements are frequently interrupted by brief periods when the eyes are fixed in position. Watch someone reading and you will see exactly what I mean. You’ll notice that the eyes do not sweep smoothly along the line of text, rather they dart from one fixation to another. It is only during the fixations, when the eyes dwell for about a fifth of a second, that the brain is able to examine the text in detail. Reading is not possible during the darting saccadic movements because the eyes are moving too quickly across the page. You are not aware of the blur and confusion during a saccade because fortunately there is a brain mechanism that suppresses vision and protects you from visual overload.

Reading is only possible between saccades, not only because the eyes are then stationary but also because gaze is centred on the retina’s fovea. The fovea is the only part of the retina specialized for high acuity vision (see Chapter 5), but it scrutinizes a very small area of our visual world. As a literal rule of thumb, foveal vision is restricted approximately to the area of your vision covered by your thumbnail held at arm’s length. It is a small window of clear vision within which you are able to decipher just 7 or 8 letters of normal print size at a time. The task for the brain is to generate a precise series of motor commands to the eye muscles which ensure that at the end of each saccade your high acuity vision is fixed on that part of the text you need to see most clearly next. As your eyes approach the end of a line, the brain generates a carriage return. Of course the return saccade must be to the left, of the correct magnitude and associated with a slight downward shift in gaze in order to bring the first word on the next line onto the fovea.

I have considered only the simple case of the brain directing eye movements alone, as if nothing else affects gaze direction. But of course the relative positions of the eye and page are affected continuously by head, body, and book motion. Thus the brain must continually monitor and anticipate factors affecting the future position of your eyes relative to the text. The fact that you can effortlessly read on a moving train while eating a sandwich is evidence that your brain can solve this problem quite easily. Importantly, it is done automatically and on an unconscious level without you having to think through every step. If you had to consciously think about the mechanical process of reading, you would be illiterate!

Our lack of conscious awareness of underlying brain processes can also be illustrated by reflecting on the subjective experience that the comprehension of written material represents. While reading we are not conscious of the fragmented nature of comprehension imposed by underlying move—stop—move—stop activity of the eyes I’ve just described or by the fact that only 7 or 8 letters can be deciphered at each stop. On the contrary, our strong subjective impression is that comprehension of the text flows uninterrupted and moreover that we can read several words or even whole sentences ‘at a glance’. That this is not the case can be illustrated by reading a sentence containing a word that has more than one meaning and pronunciation. For example, the word tear has two very different meanings and pronunciations in English – tear the noun of crying and tear the verb of ripping apart. Clearly such word ambiguity complicates the brain’s task of providing you with an uninterrupted comprehension. If for instance the word tear occurred at the beginning of a sentence its meaning might remain ambiguous until the subject of the sentence appears later. Because you cannot read the whole sentence at a glance your brain may be left with no option but to choose one of the alternative meanings (or sounds, if you are reading aloud) of a word and hope for the best.

While we cannot read whole sentences at a glance, the brain does recognize each word as a whole. What is quite surprising however is that the order of the letters is not particularly important (good news for poor spellers). That is why you will be able to read the following passage without consciously having to decode it.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aer, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht eth frist dan lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset cna be a taotl mses and yuo can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

The Brain: A Very Short Introduction by Michael O'Shea

The NYU study of reading speed (found that reading happens at 3 levels:

• Decoding (phonics): 62% of reading speed
• Whole word: 16% of reading speed
• "Sentence or story context": 22% of reading speed

And see:
How many words can readers predict?

Life is a just a bowl of cherries

More fun with Common Core.

A few days later, though, the mood [in Ms. McNair-Lee's 8th grade English class] is more somber. In a lesson about figurative language, students are analyzing how authors compare nouns. They're mulling a quote from Lois Lowry's The Giver: [Reading Level: Grade 6] "It was as if a hatchet lay lodged in his leg, slicing through each nerve with a hot blade."

But they're tongue-tied when Ms. McNair-Lee asks if the quote compares two nouns. Finally, a boy from the front table, where Mikel sits quietly, ventures that it compares "hatchet" and "hot blade."

She takes them step by step through another quote, "The rain sounded like bullets." Does it use literal references? she asks. No, one student says, they're not actual bullets. Does it compare nouns? Yes. Does it use "like" or "as"? Yes. They're getting it. Could it be literal? No. Is this an example of a literary device? Yes, a half-dozen students say.

What kind of literary device is this? Ms. McNair-Lee presses. "Simile," says a small voice at the back of the room. The teacher remembers a question from the last interim assessment, asking students to identify the literary devices in the cited text passage. She anticipates something similar on the year-end test. "Simile," she says, smiling and nodding.

Moments later, a stumbling block: No one can identify the verb in a short sentence: "Life is a dream."

Ms. McNair-Lee resorts to a physical demonstration. She calls two students up front and has them stand on either side of her: the subject and the object. In the middle, she's the verb.

"The subject is the one doing the action," she reminds. "The verb is the action." Her frustration is tangible.

Into the Common Core: One Classroom's Journey by Catherine Gewertz | Education Week | Published Online: June 4, 2013

First of all, hoo boy.

Whatever happened to "state of being"?

Or  "subject complement"?

And forget linguistics-based grammar, which was developed in the 1950s, I think, and is a lot easier to understand than traditional grammar. For me, at least.

As far as I can tell, the action-versys0state of being explanation of verbs was always confusing to a lot of students, but it had to be better than "The verb is the action" alone. (Didn't it?)

What 'action' is the verb "is" "doing" in "Life is a dream"? (And yes, the words "It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is" are running through my mind at this moment, I admit!)

If you're an 8th grade ELA teacher teaching "close readings" and you don't know what a copula is, look out below.

Somebody better write some decent curriculum pronto. Most K-12 teachers have come out of the same public school system they are now supposed to improve via close readings of informational text. These teachers weren't taught grammar (nor was I); now they're supposed to teach students how to analyze an author's use of language---?

How is that going to happen?

I'll tell you how it happened for me, teaching at my college. After I was hired to teach freshman composition, I spent hours and hours (and hours) crash-coursing myself in grammar and linguistics, that's how. I'm still working on it. And I started with the advantage that I am a writer who has a Ph.D.; I've spent my entire adult life doing 'close readings' of the kind Common Core is talking about. Thirty-year old teachers teaching full days and raising families at night and on weekends aren't going to be able to do what I've been doing.

I was worried about Common Core giving students work that's way over their heads.

Now I'm worried about the teachers.

Whimbey on grammar

A favorite passage of mine, from Arthur Whimbey's Teaching and Learning Grammar: The Prototype-Construction Approach. I was thinking I'd posted it before, but haven't tracked it down.

When I was in the 9th grade at Brooklyn Technical High School, my English teacher stood at the board and said, ‘Your textbook defines a verb as a word that describes an action or state of being.’ On the board she wrote: A verb describes an action or state of being.

Next she wrote this sentence on the board:

Eating custard pie, Peter is a picture of happiness.

Then she called on me to identify the verb in the sentence.

It seemed clear to me that eating expresses an action, so I answered, ‘Eating.’

To my surprise the teacher said, ‘No, eating is not the verb.’

I protested, ‘But the book says a verb is an action word. Eating is an action.’

The teacher responded with what was to her an apparently clear explanation: ‘Yes, but eating is a participle, not the verb in this sentence.’

I had no idea what a participle was, but I began looking for another action word in the sentence—without success.

Sensing my frustration, the teacher offered a hint. ‘Remember that a verb can describe a state of being.’

State of being, I thought. What is a state of being?

Scanning the sentence to find a word expressing a state of being, I considered happiness. Happiness seemed to express a state of being. I figured that if I knew what a verb was, I would be in a state of happiness. Unsure but hopeful, I asked, “Is happiness the verb?”

‘No,’ came the judgment.

After another minute or so, the teacher answered her own question:

‘The verb in this sentence is is.’

But it didn’t matter. Grammar made no sense to me, and I dismissed it as something I would never understand.

Whimbey, Arthur and Linden, Myra J. Teaching and Learning Grammar: The Prototype-Construction Approach. Chicago: BGF Performance Systems, LLC, 2001. Print. (4-5).

Ability Grouping makes a comeback

From the New York Times: Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor in Classroom

It was once common for elementary-school teachers to arrange their classrooms by ability, placing the highest-achieving students in one cluster, the lowest in another. But ability grouping and its close cousin, tracking, in which children take different classes based on their proficiency levels, fell out of favor in the late 1980s and the 1990s as critics charged that they perpetuated inequality by trapping poor and minority students in low-level groups.

NYC is struggling with how to teach GT students.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker who is running for mayor, has proposed expanding the number of gifted classes while broadening the criteria for admission in hopes of increasing diversity. (The city’s Education Department has opposed the proposal, saying that using criteria other than tests would dilute the classes.)

And teachers?

Teachers and principals who use grouping say that the practice has become indispensable, helping them cope with widely varying levels of ability and achievement.

Elementary School teacher Jill Sears:

My instruction aimed at the middle of my class, and was leaving out approximately two-thirds of my learners,

The comments are interesting.

Commenter SGC:

You need not "teach to the middle". If you aim high with your expectations and impose rigor and high standards in the classroom, most students can achieve and succeed regardless of "so-called" ability.

Enjoy.

News you can use

For the past 30 years, philosophers have debated whether zombies could exist (Kirk, 1974a).
Chapter 13: What zombies can't do: What zombies can’t do: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to the irreducibility of reflective consciousness
Matthew D. Lieberman
Lieberman, M. D. (2009). What zombies can't do: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to the irreducibility of reflective consciousness.
In J. Evans & K. Frankish (Eds.) In Two Minds: Dual Process and Beyond (pp. 219-316). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

I did not know that.

Stephen Colbert's tribute to his mother

This is exactly the way I feel about my own mother, and about my mother's death:

Stephen Colbert pays tribute to his mother on "The Colbert Report."

Good charter high schools in NYC?

Any recommendations?

sticky

At the other blog....

Deeper shmeeper

Fabulous post by Tom Loveless:

Deeper Learning is the current term for an old idea. The notion is that schools spend too much time focused on the acquisition of knowledge, especially knowing facts. In the past century, several alternatives have arisen to dethrone the prominent role of knowledge in schools: project-based learning, inquiry and discovery learning, higher-level thinking, critical thinking, outcome based education, and 21st Century Skills. Now it is deeper learning.

These ideas represent a variety of approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. They are not all the same, but they share one characteristic. All are advertised as transcending, and therefore superior to, academic content organized within traditional intellectual disciplines.

The Banality of Deeper Learning

"21st century skills" are gone?

Really?

That was quick. At least, it seems quick. I was just hearing the words "21st century skills" for the first time in 2005. Eight years ago.

What is the life-cycle of K-12 jargon, anyway?

AND SEE:
Why students have to memorize things

Common Core la la la

Priceless.

Best productivity app ever

Workflowy

• How I use Workflowy
• Workflowy review
• Workflowy review at PC Magazine
• A violin teacher using Workflowy to communicate with pupils

Looking at the "How I use Workflowy" post, I realize I have forgotten everything about GTD (Getting Things Done).

Interesting. The violin teacher is using Workflowy to assign and monitor practice.

One more reason to homeschool

The court held 9-5 that despite compulsory education laws the school did not have a "special relationship" with its students that would give rise to a duty to protect them from harm from other students.

District Not Liable in Student Bullying, Appeals Court Rules
Mark Walsh | June 06, 2013

Apple wins $50-million dollar LA contract (half-billion eventually)

Apple Recommended for Major L.A. Schools Tech. Contract
By Sean Cavanagh on June 14, 2013 8:00 AM

Apple Inc. has been recommended to receive a lucrative contract from the Los Angeles Unified School District to begin implementing one of the most ambitious education-technology projects in the country, with the city's school board scheduled to vote on the issue next week.

A selection committee that reviewed applications for the project has called for the board to vote at its meeting Tuesday to select the Silicon Valley company from the 13 proposals submitted for the project, according to a report to be presented to the panel.

If approved, the decision would award Apple $30 million to begin a project to provide the nation's second largest school district with one computing device for every student and teacher in 47 schools. But the contract could eventually prove much larger, because the district has called for eventually providing a device for every student in the 660,000-student system, a project expected to cost $500 million.

And a chicken in every pot!

Common Core la-la-la

In a memo to the board, Mark Hovatter, the system's chief facilities executive, said the initial phase of work will include providing computing devices, storage and charging stations, a learning management system, upgrades to local area networks, and other services. The overall scope of the first phase of the technology project is expected to cost $50 million.

All of the work is designed to support the district's transition to implementing the Common Core State Standards, and the creation of an "individualized, interactive, and information-rich learning environment," he said.

Heck.

Half a billion dollars is cheap if you're expecting high school kids to tell you who is to blame for Romeo and Juliet's deaths. You can't get a learning outcome like that with paper and pencil. No way.

APPR Q&A

A friend of mine estimates that my tiny district is going to spend around $1 million on APPR alone.

My entire state has gone crazy.

Crazier.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2

Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
English Language Arts Standards » Reading: Literature » Grade 11-12

hmmmmm

Assuming this means what I think it means, I am not seeing the value of Standard CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2.

Off the top of my head, it strikes me that a work of literary nonfiction sufficiently sophisticated to be amenable to "thematic analysis" is going to be quite difficult for most students to read and comprehend, let alone identify not one but two themes, and analyze how the two themes interact and build on one another to produce a complex account, providing an objective summary of the text in the process.

(And does an objective summary of a text ever involve extended analysis of themes?)

Also....themes?

In nonfiction?

I'm sure essays have themes (they must, right?), but I don't personally think of essays as having themes. I think of essays as having arguments. Arguments and evidence.

I have no idea what this standard means.

Or what a successful analysis of the way two themes interact and build on each other to produce a complex account would look like.

School is going to be so not fun if teachers actually try to teach these things.

How many Common Core standards are there?

According to Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, more than 1,300.

Drear

I've finally tuned in to Common Core a bit, mostly because I've been chatting with a Common Core person here in my town, who directed me to NYC's Tasks, Units & Student Work.

So today I took a quick look at NYC's sample ELA Tasks and Units and saw only one sample Task, across all 14 grades (Pre-K through Grade 12), that had anything whatsoever to do with fiction: Grade 9 Literacy in English Language Arts: Who Is to Blame for Romeo and Juliet’s Death.

It's always worse than you think!

Number one, Romeo and Juliet is too hard for 9th grade students to read, especially 9th grade students who've just spent 9 years reading "informational text" and writing "calls to action."

But, number two, even if 9th-grade students could read Romeo and Juliet, there is no earthly reason for anyone to undertake a "Task" that involves answering the question "Who Is to Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?"

Real English professors don't assign Tasks requiring students to figure out "Who Is To Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?" (Real English professors, in my experience, don't assign Tasks at all. They assign papers.)

Real English professors don't assign Tasks requiring students to figure out "Who Is To Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?" because Romeo and Juliet is a play, not a feature story in the New York Times. Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters; they don't actually exist.

Who is responsible for Romeo and Juliet's Death?

You got me.

William Shakespeare, maybe?

If this is Common Core, public school is about to turn into 13 years of SAT reading.

Thirteen years of SAT reading is nobody's idea of a good time. Let us pray that our policy elites do not manage to lengthen the school year before Common Core passes from the stage.

What actual English professors think students in English classes should write about:
Norton: Writing About Literature
Norton: Identifying Topics
English paper thesis statements 

The complete list of sample ELA tasks and units.

Onward and upward

Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.

The number of kids behind the 8-ball is the highest in years, CBS2′s Marcia Kramer reported Thursday.

Officials: Most NYC High School Grads Need Remedial Help Before Entering CUNY Community Colleges | Basic Skills Like Reading, Writing And Math Need To Be Re-Learned | March 7, 2013 10:55 PM