kitchen table math, the sequel: back in the game

Thursday, February 14, 2008

back in the game

Hi G --

I learned last week that at least 2 students in the 8th grade Math A class are being tutored by district math teachers. One of the kids in the class told me, "It's sort of like insider trading."

Given the department’s refusal to share curricular materials with parents, I have to agree. When an Irvington parent hires an Irvington math teacher to tutor an Irvington student, that teacher/tutor has access to:

  • class syllabus
  • course scope and sequence
  • teacher’s edition of the textbook
  • answer key
  • solution manual
  • supplemental Glencoe practice workbooks and answer keys aligned to Glencoe Algebra textbook
  • attendance at department meetings; access to informal conversations amongst colleagues, etc.
  • knowledge of material to be covered on upcoming quizzes and tests

The other students and their parents have none of these things. I’ve asked; other parents have asked. The department’s answer has been “No.”

As a result, I’ve been forced to work every homework set assigned this year myself. I finished Homework #73 during the Super Bowl. [update: finished HW #81 tonight]

I’ve had to do this because Irvington teachers do not collect or correct math homework. That might not matter if Irvington math teachers performed frequent formative assessments. But they don’t do that, either.

Instead, homework problems are “gone over” in class and more homework is assigned. If a student “doesn’t understand” a problem covered in class, the onus falls upon him or her to “seek extra help.”

No student is asked to re-do a problem he’s missed.

This system does not work for C. I doubt it works for most students his age, and certainly not for students coming into Math A with so many gaps in their prior knowledge of arithmetic.

To learn math, C. needs to have his homework corrected; then he needs to re-do the problems he’s missed. Simply listening in class as Mr. X “goes over” the homework isn’t enough. Because Mr. X is a good lecturer C., thinks he’s understood Mr. X’s explanation, and I’m sure he has. But “understanding” and “doing” are two different things, and students are tested on the latter not the former. C, has no idea he can’t do a problem until his parent checks to see whether he can — or until he gets it wrong on a test.

“Extra Help,” the district’s stock answer to teaching and learning problems, doesn’t work, either.

It doesn’t work because C., doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Not knowing what you don’t know is typical of all human beings, not just middle school students. Not knowing what you don’t know is so commonplace that Richard Elmore identifies the belief that “students learn by asking teachers questions about things they don’t understand” as one of 5 “common errors of classroom practice.”

(I’ve attached the slides from Elmore’s presentation to the Tri State Consortium.)

For all of these reasons, I am renewing my request for the materials listed above. I would very much appreciate the district providing me with the class syllabus, the scope and sequence, and all relevant answer keys and solution manuals including answer keys to the Glencoe supplementary materials I’ve been able to locate online as Ms. P. advised me to do in our meeting of 12-13-2006.

In that meeting Ms. P. told Ed and me that, “If students need distributed practice, parents can find worksheets online.” I have indeed found Glencoe’s supplementary materials online but the answer keys are not posted.

I hope that I, along with other interested parents, can be provided these materials as soon as possible. If the district is going to outsource core teaching functions to parents, we should have access to the materials we need to perform these functions as best we can.

As a side note, I’ve consulted with the Committee on Open Government on this question. Answer keys fall under Freedom of Information Law.

Thanks very much.

Catherine Johnson



It's been awhile since I've emailed the powers that be.

28 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

previews of coming attractions

Looks like I'm going to have to write a companion email about the situation in Earth Science.

Although we may have been rescued by the appearance of a Leave Replacement, THANK THE LORD.

ElizabethB said...

There should be more board work in class.

When you do problems on a board, the teacher can see at a glance who's having trouble with what and go help them. If the whole class is having trouble, he can stop and re-explain or work the problem with everyone watching. Students who finish quickly and get the correct answer can be asked to go help students who need help.

I've only had a few classes where this actually happened.

Instructivist said...

I am afraid the board is going the way of the Dodo. In most el schools the board is covered up save for a tiny area and serves as a bulletin board.

The technology frenzy is making things even worse. At Gizmo High teachers are not even allowed to use overhead projectors. Too low tech. Paper is out, too.

See this hair-raising article from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803271.html

Doug Sundseth said...

"When you do problems on a board, the teacher can see at a glance who's having trouble with what and go help them."

There's another issue that might be just as important: when a student has a strong possibility of being called up to the front of the class to demonstrate his knowledge, it tends to focus his attention*.

Fear of public embarrassment is a strong motivator. When you couple it with the possibility of public praise, you have a classic motivational strategy.

* Kind of like an incipient hanging. 8-)

Catherine Johnson said...

I was going to link to that article -- !

Catherine Johnson said...

The teacher does all these things. He puts problems on the board; the kids do them in their seats (not at the board); he calls randomly on them to explain how they did it.

It doesn't work.

He needs to collect and correct the homework and have them re-do the problems they missed.

That's what works.

Or he could follow Gambill's method of giving a quiz at the top of each school period.

Instead of doing these things the school relies on a shadow school of tutors and parents serving as T.A.s for the class.

SteveH said...

"He needs to collect and correct the homework and have them re-do the problems they missed. That's what works."

I agree 100%. It's astounding that math teachers don't collect homework. It's lazy and THEY KNOW they should do it. Waiting for the test to figure out what areas need work is TOO LATE! I ALWAYS collected and went over each paper carefully. I would give a check plus, a check, or a check minus for each homework based on effort. But it was MY job to see what the issues were each day. I would then be prepared to make the most of the time allocated for reviewing the homework. I would NEVER just "go over" the homework. That's lazy teaching. I don't care how many problems that adds up to. That's their job!!!!


"...the onus falls upon him or her to 'seek extra help.'"

OK. Mark the problems you get wrong on the homework and ask for extra help. Does the school require the teacher to provide extra help after school? Does some other group or person do the job? I can't imagine (probably I'm wrong) that the school would allow a teacher to avoid providing extra help, but then make big bucks tutoring. That's unethical.

I suppose that if you pay for tutoring it's OK, but if you ask for too much free "extra help" that means you shouldn't be in the class.

Generally, I didn't like to call students up to the board. It is extrordinarily stressful for many students and it takes time. It would be nice to have some mechanism to get them to prepare more each day, but I liked to give weekly quick quizzes. Students pay attention to quizzes much more than homework.

I never thought of my (college) classes as a tool to build character, love of learning, or to develop their self-learning skills. My goal was to get them to learn the material as easily as possible. It wasn't a game. There were no trick questions. If I wanted them to know something, I would teach it to them and they would see it in their homework. I would cover the material in class, they would do it for homework, I would collect and grade the homework, I would review the problems in the NEXT class, they knew my office hours, and I tested them on exactly what was in the homework. I told them that I was on their side and that I wanted them to succeed.

All teachers should be required to provide "office" hours for extra help. Our school has a "late bus" that leaves one hour later. Children can tell their parents that they will take the late bus and go for extra help. It's quick and simple, with no complex need to arrange something. I had certain students coming in all of the time for extra help. It was no big deal.

Catherine Johnson said...

OK. Mark the problems you get wrong on the homework and ask for extra help. Does the school require the teacher to provide extra help after school? Does some other group or person do the job? I can't imagine (probably I'm wrong) that the school would allow a teacher to avoid providing extra help, but then make big bucks tutoring. That's unethical.

We have Extra Help. The high school offers hours upon hours of extra help.

Extra Help at the middle school is a trickier issue, seeing as how we have guards posted at the door forbidding entry to middle school kids who show up without passes (the Westchester Bomb Squad has apparently recommended this course of action) AND seeing as how when a kid does manage to gain entry to the building teachers aren't necessarily present for Extra Help hours AND seeing as how Extra Help sessions are frequently over-populated AND seeing as how a kid can go to Extra Help, ask his question, AND NOT UNDERSTAND THE ANSWER.

The whole idea that the same teacher who didn't make the concept clear in class will now make the concept clear outside of class is problematic in our situation.

The other problem is that the kids' homework isn't collected and corrected. They may or may not know which questions they got wrong after seeing the homework "gone over" in class.

Another thing: middle school aged boys tune out. Once an assignment's date is past, it's "history." C. has routinely assumed that if he didn't get an assignment done (this has happened occasionally), there is no reason to do it now because the date has passed. That's the way many kids this age think.

Our school does nothing to work with the natural maturity level of the kids.

If the kids aren't "mature" -- mature meaning they can function as a well put together high school kid would function -- then they don't deserve to learn.

The fundamental requirement for accelerated work in our school is that a child "be proactive in seeking extra help."

How many boys are "proactive in seeking extra help"?

Few. Boys this age (I'm quoting Leonard Sax here) pride themselves in NOT seeking extra help, while girls like to "affiliate" with teachers by asking questions.

Our boys, in this district, have to act like girls.

If they don't, too bad. They don't get to learn.

BOYS DON'T LIKE TO ASK QUESTIONS

GROWN MEN DON'T LIKE TO ASK DIRECTIONS.

Extra Help is the primary means through which our school transfers responsibility for teaching and learning to families.

The school has no obligation to provide effective classroom instruction.

If kids aren't learning in class -- doesn't matter.

They can Seek Extra Help.

Catherine Johnson said...

I suppose that if you pay for tutoring it's OK, but if you ask for too much free "extra help" that means you shouldn't be in the class.

Right.

That's what they assume.

Our school bases nothing on student ability.

They've got a school jam-packed with bright, capable students and they assume the kids are incapable of learning algebra in 8th grade.

One teacher -- I've quoted this before -- told a friend of mine that only 10% of the student population here should be allowed to take Math A in 8th grade.

80% of KIPP kids pass Math A Regents at the end of 8th grade, but only 10% of our kids should even be allowed into the class.

The fact that kids in Math A need a boatload of Extra Help is "proof" they don't belong.

Catherine Johnson said...

Steve - if you have time, tell us more about Extra Help - did it work, etc.

I'm curious about the effects of Extra Help in a situation that's different from ours.

From what I've seen here, if you've got lots of kids needing Extra Help that is a red flag on the teaching and/or the curriculum.

My school assumes that if you've got half the class traipsing in for Extra Help (or hiring tutors) that is evidence that these students aren't able to do the work.

It's the student who "doesn't understand."

Catherine Johnson said...

We had a VERY contentious meeting with the Earth Science teacher & the chair of the science department.

THE CHAIR

This is the woman who chairs the entire science department, grades 6-12.

C's grades in Earth Science range from A to F.

Their explanation: it's him. He's not up to the course.

Their solution: Extra Help.

They were pretty surprised when we told them Extra Help doesn't Help.

Extra Help, in my district, is sacrosanct.

It's on par with small class size.

When you've got this much Extra Help you know the kids are learning.

Catherine Johnson said...

Did I ever mention that we sent C. in for Extra Help in math every single week for 6 months straight back in 6th grade?

It didn't help.

Catherine Johnson said...

It was pretty funny, because the teacher kept telling him "not to come in if you don't need help."

This was the teacher.

His grades were sinking to the C range and she's telling him not to come in if he doesn't need Extra Help.

The next year, in December, we had our near-shouting match with the math chair (yes, we have had intensely contentious meetings with the CHAIR of math and the CHAIR of science!).

She said, "If C. doesn't come in for Extra Help there's nothing I can do."

We said, "We sent him in for Extra Help for 6 months and the teacher told him not to come."

I wish you could have seen the look on her face.

She was actually rendered speechless.

Catherine Johnson said...

Of course - ranting on! - it's true C. didn't belong in the class.

That's because of the class, not C.

He's slowly working his way up to grades of A in Math A this year.

Well, he and I are working his way up.

I'm the course T.A.

Anonymous said...

Generally, I didn't like to call students up to the board.

Thank you, Steve.

Math teachers who love to send students to the board will lose the strugglers in a heartbeat. I dreaded my algebra teacher in high school because he loved to have everyone up at the board, and he loved to make fun of them if they messed up.

This same teacher also won favorite teacher awards all of the time, but he was a nightmare to the kids who needed the most help.

It was a torturous experience because you were so embarrassed that others might think you were an idiot. Of course, half the class was just breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn't been called.

No math learned on those days, that's for sure.

Susan S.

SteveH said...

"Our school does nothing to work with the natural maturity level of the kids."

I found that the private school my son went to was better (not great) about not letting kids fall through the cracks. I've heard this from other people. The private prep high schools are supposed to be all about this; no sink or swim. That's the biggest complaint about public schools. Sink or swim. You CAN get a good education at public schools, but don't expect the schools to give you much help. (So we are saving a bundle of money, gritting our teeth, and trying to figure out how to get that to happen.)

You know, this is really backwards. Public schools are supposed to be the ones to provide the path out of poverty. And now they require more parental and tutoring support than when I was growing up. There was still the issue of sink or swim when I was growing up, but now it's just character building.

A huge (!) issue for my son right now is having a clue about planning and how long it will take to do his homework. He is not goal oriented. He is task oriented. He has a task to do, he sits down to do it, and he has no sense of time. I imagine that many, many kids never get homework done because of this. They don't know how to prioritize and crank out the work. They don't know what's important and what isn't. If they don't get lots of help from parents, they're screwed.

I just read another article about how parents can help their kids with homework by providing a nice desk, a quiet location, and a regular time period. Baloney! They need much more than that. They need constant supervision and help. Some feel that parents should not micromanage their child's homework. I agree, but how do you get to that point, by letting them fail over and over?

Some people think these things happen magically. One parent told me that her daughter changed completely when she forced her to stay up to the middle of the night to finish a project she put off until the end. She never did that again. Would it have been better to let her fail? What if failing just increased her "screw it" attidude? "Tough Love" might be a proper approach to use in some cases, but it's not the first thing I would try, especially when you don't teach the child the proper skills in the first place.

SteveH said...

"The whole idea that the same teacher who didn't make the concept clear in class will now make the concept clear outside of class is problematic in our situation."

Yes, this is a problem. The school could solve this (and save money) by having a separate core group of teachers (parents?, tutors?) available every day after school. Easy access to these teachers is another issue, but one that could be solved.

This would also benefit the school because they could get independent feedback on problem areas and/or teachers. In the after-school SSAT class I teach, you would be surprised at all of the comments I hear. If I was there more often, I could piece them together. Right now, some of them seem to be just too incredible.

SteveH said...

"Steve - if you have time, tell us more about Extra Help - did it work, etc."

This was a small, private college which had a number of programs to "catch" students. I didn't have to do it all myself. It was the job of all teachers to identify students at risk or who have changed behavior; the sooner, the better. These sorts of problems had more to do with issues unrelated to whether the student could understand the material.

In some cases, however, students wouldn't come in for extra help, and I couldn't force them. The school didn't want it to get to the point where I would have no choice but to flunk them, so they wanted early information. They could look at the whole student to see if there were other ways to help.

I only dealt directly with students who had problems with the course. The school also had independent tutoring groups. Many kids liked to be tutored by other kids.

I guess my position is that education is not about sink or swim, or tough love. Those may be useful in the end, but I don't like learning by (threat of) failure. Success breeds success. Failure breeds failure.

There have been many times with my son that I have had the choice of letting him fail (not being prepared or not getting his homework done) and I have almost always chosen the path of not letting him fail. It's a fine line. You think that maybe one dramatic failure will change everything. Roll the dice. It could change everything in the wrong direction.

My son responds wonderfully to positive reinforcement. I've seen it from when he was little. He is a good student and now he expects it and works harder because of it. He still has lots of issues, but I'm (struggling) to take the long term approach to solving them. Some carefully selected failures might be useful along the way, but sink or swim is not my approach to raising my son.

SteveH said...

"Did I ever mention that we sent C. in for Extra Help in math every single week for 6 months straight back in 6th grade."

Extra help won't solve it if there is a problem with the curriculum or teacher. Of course, the school will point to all of the kids who are doing well. To cap it off, they will think that only a certain percent of kids belong in the class. It's a no-lose position.

I don't know how to change that. It's the classic Everyday Math defense. Spiraling mastery allows eveyone to progress at their own speed. If they don't get to algebra in 8th grade, then it's not the school's fault, by definition.

Catherine Johnson said...

I found that the private school my son went to was better (not great) about not letting kids fall through the cracks. I've heard this from other people. The private prep high schools are supposed to be all about this; no sink or swim. That's the biggest complaint about public schools. Sink or swim.

I'm going to get a post up about this.

We've just made the private school rounds & it was a different world.

If I had to pick one fundamental difference it would be: no sink or swim. (This isn't true of all private schools, obviously.)

The school takes responsibility for the students.

I wrote a long comment on redkudu's new blog (which everyone should be reading, btw) - will get a link to it.

Catherine Johnson said...

In the after-school SSAT class I teach, you would be surprised at all of the comments I hear. If I was there more often, I could piece them together. Right now, some of them seem to be just too incredible.

If you can, you should fill us in.

ElizabethB said...

SteveH said, "Generally, I didn't like to call students up to the board. It is extrordinarily stressful for many students and it takes time. It would be nice to have some mechanism to get them to prepare more each day, but I liked to give weekly quick quizzes. Students pay attention to quizzes much more than homework."

You need more boards!

Both these classes had whiteboards all the way around the room so every single student could work on the problem at once. It was not stressful because people weren't staring at your poor work, they were doing their own poor work! (Except for those few brilliant naturals, and they were sent to help whoever was doing moderately bad once they finished. The person having the most trouble would be helped by the teacher.)

I learned so much more in each of those classes because of the board work.

General format: teach for 20 - 30 minutes, do 2 -3 board work problems, teach the harder versions of the concept, do another board problem or two.

Catherine Johnson said...

re: calling kids to the board - C's teachers (both of them) are fantastically positive & upbeat with the kids -- and from afar they seem able to deal well emotionally with the kids who are struggling.

C. told me a great story from the beginning of the year.

The teacher was going down the roster of names & he came to the name of one of the most brilliant kids in the school --- who has also had pretty severe problems, I would say. FROM AFAR (I don't know this & haven't spoken to his folks) I would say this kid is just "too smart" and "independent-minded" for any middle school given the nature of middle school culture.

(I don't know how to talk about this, but everyone probably knows the kind of child I'm talking about. When you combine high intelligence - and this kid strikes me as highly gifted - with "independence" you've got trouble in the public school context. At least, that's my feeling. I could be wrong.)

OK, back on topic.

This boy is in C's math class.

So the teacher was reading down the list of names and he got to this kid's name, and said, "X.X. I've never heard anything bad about you!"

That sounds awful in prose, but given the way this teacher handles the kids I think it was probably great. In one moment the teacher acknowledged this kid's reputation, signaled that it was nothing he couldn't handle, and dismissed it.

From afar, it sounds to me as if this teacher manages to make the "C" kids feel OK.

That's major.

Catherine Johnson said...

You CAN get a good education at public schools, but don't expect the schools to give you much help.

I suspect that, increasingly, this is not true.

Think about all of redkudu's observations on the amount of coloring going on in high school.

We are seeing a phenomenon that worries us enormously.

High-performing districts like ours feel they should be teaching critical thinking and analysis, not content.

The result is that students are being given large, time-consuming writing assignments that no college professor would give.

I think I mentioned the "create an exit strategy for Iraq" assignment.

We have also seen h.s. assignments requiring high school students to write papers comparing a 1950s novel to a 1980s movie.

No college professor wants to see such "non-comparison comparisons" and if our kids go to college and write papers like this they'll be in trouble.

The "non-comparison comparison" issue is, we now suspect, important.

The drive to create "interdisciplinary" assignments results in "non-comparison comparisons."

Ed came up with this phrase when we were discussing it one day. He'd just read a terrific dissertation (in history, obviously) discussing the issue of comparative history. In the past, I gather (take this with a grain of salt), comparative history has been frowned upon. This graduate student was laying out the conditions under which you can do comparative history -- the conditions under which a comparison is valid and useful.

As Ed described it to me, it sounded as if this new historian was saying that good comparative history is like good science: you hold all but one or two variables constant.

The interdisciplinary assignments we're seeing have zillions of variables. With the book-movie comparison, you have a book and a movie (a lot of different variables there); you have different time periods; you have different storylines -- what is the point of the comparison?

What do you learn by doing it?

Constructivists believe in the interdisciplinary.

They reject the liberal arts disciplines as artificial and intellectually indefensible.

All new high school teachers have been taught this.

Catherine Johnson said...

A huge (!) issue for my son right now is having a clue about planning and how long it will take to do his homework. He is not goal oriented. He is task oriented.

Right.

That is a problem for me to this day - and I write books.

Kids MUST be taught these skills --- and not just taught, but given practice.

We are now taking over ALL of the time management issues in C's life. (Which is ludicrous given how bad I am personally at time management.)

He does have one VERY hard-working teacher who does this for the kids, I will add. Parents say that this teacher's students do better than others when they get to high school & I believe them.

Catherine Johnson said...

I just read another article about how parents can help their kids with homework by providing a nice desk, a quiet location, and a regular time period. Baloney! They need much more than that. They need constant supervision and help.

Right.

Right, right, right.

It is CONSTANT.

And the constant effort parents are putting into this is scorned as over-involvement, etc.

(Again, I should add that the teachers who are putting major effort into the kids - like the social studies teacher - do NOT scorn major parent involvement at the level of scheduling & timelines, etc.)

The negativity happens at the level of administration, district, etc.

SteveH said...

"If I had to pick one fundamental difference it would be: no sink or swim. (This isn't true of all private schools, obviously.)"

A friend of mine teaches at a fancy prep school. He says that at the honors or AP level, there is little content difference between a good prep school and a good public high school. He says that the main difference is in support. He would consider having his son go to the public high school. But then again, he gets free tuition because he works there. By the way, that's a BIG thing for some parents around here. Get some sort of job at the prep school and get free tuition for your kids. I hear that some prep school are really cutting back on this.

SteveH said...

You CAN get a good education at public schools, but don't expect the schools to give you much help.

"I suspect that, increasingly, this is not true."

Well, this is a big question, isn't it. How can we answer it?

I have been assuming that AP courses keep high schools from going off to LaLa Land. I know there are issues with AP classes, but what are they?

Some schools allow open enrollment, but does this water down the course and make success more dependent on the student? I would also assume that the quality of the AP course expectations varies with the topic. How is the AP History content regarded? Others? I'm not looking for perfection. I'm just looking for outside forces that prevent high schools from becoming one big thematic portfolio.

So, the question is:

Can students still get a good education from a public high school? How is this done? What do you have to look out for? What do parents have to do to make sure this happens? Our high school guidance section warns parents that they have to start thinking about this by 7th grade for math, reading, writing and foreign language.


Obviously, my brain and first-hand experience has not progressed past middle school. What do I need to know to find the best path through high school?