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If you wanted to make a real impact on improving K-12 education, and someone gave you one million dollars to do it with* - what would you do?
And I'm not talking here about what you would do as a school or district official: I'm talking about KTMII participants. Informed parents. Outside agitators.
Would you create your own school to show how it should be done? Would you launch a public engagement campaign in your district to empower other parents? Would you buy ads across the country to let people know about Singapore Math and Direct Instruction? Would you underwrite a voucher campaign? Would you spend it lobbying public officials to make changes you think should be made? Or what?
A million dollars isn't what it used to be - you have to pick your battles and leverage that investment to the extent possible.
So what would you do - and why?
* No, I do not have a million dollars to give you - this is just a thought exercise to see where there greatest points of leverage in school improvement might be.
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32 comments:
"Would you create your own school to show how it should be done?"
It would take more than money, but I would start a private urban school; not so much to prove anything, but to use the money to allow at least some kids to get out. The proof will take care of itself.
I wouldn't do a damn thing with the school system, that's for sure. I'd like a center where families (from babies to great-grandparents) were welcome to come for coffee, play or study time. It might have a library full of curriculum and resources. It might also host group activities (Community math club or something)or talks about things like parenting, homeschooling or heck, lunar eclipses.
Something that would challenge the model and monopoly of the local school.
Hey, you asked.:)
I would pay more money to skilled teachers in high demand subject areas - math and science - so that someone with a degree in chemical engineering would make as much teaching as they would in their own field. Why on earth does a physics teacher earn then same money as a gym teacher????
I would spend it on a PR campaign promoting alternatives to public school (homeschooling, vouchers, trade schools). I would lobby for lowering compulsory education age to 14 (8th grade). Too many kids have given up by the age of 15 and they are being warehoused.
--Why on earth does a physics teacher earn then same money as a gym teacher????
In many districts, they have the same qualifications. And in truth, in many districts, teacher are quite well paid, at least by the end of their career. But the real issue is supply and demand.
There is an oversupply of district-acceptable teachers, even for math and science, whether or not you consider them acceptable. There is precious little demand for any rare skills to fulfill being a teacher. The districts don't require it. They don't restrict to it, they don't even know how to quantify those skills the way the engineering professions do. So there's nothing special or rare about being a teacher, you just need an ed degree, and anyone can get an ed degree. And TfA and others circumvent the credential or cert or ed degree, too, so again, not rare. If you don't have rare skills, and there's no dramatic demand for the skills you do have, as any one else can satisfy them, then you won't be paid very much.
I've been reading Prof. Wu's writings on mathematics education, (it's all at math.berkeley.edu/~wu)
and the more I read it, the more I realize that educating math teachers is a desperate need, and Singapore Math and the rest of the positive texts out there won't fix the lack of understanding and incoherence presented to our students because the teachers themselves lack understanding and feel fear at math's incoherence.
Given a million bucks, I'd start a business providing math ed to math teachers. 1 million is probably not enough to start a school, see, and I'd still need math teachers, but I wouldn't be able to find them. So what if instead, I instructed them, improved them? could I get grants or fed or state funds to do it? Probably. could I get teachers to do it? I don't know. But I'd start there, because I now think that agitating for better math instruction isn't going to anywhere unless you've got someone able to actually DO better math instruction, when you've finally won a battle.
incidentally, Wu's writings make me worry more about homeschooling. No doubt, homeschooling is better than a lot of terrible options are, and the more that education is dismal, the more that homeschooling isn't any worse, no matter how poor it is. But for mathematics, having teachers who understand WHY the rules are true, why the rules are coherent, is too important. Singapore Math works great paired with bright kids who can figure it out on their own, or paired with good teachers or parents who know the material. But Singapore Math and a teacher who is afraid of fractions is still not really going to work to help the struggling students.
" incidentally, Wu's writings make me worry more about homeschooling. No doubt, homeschooling is better than a lot of terrible options are, and the more that education is dismal, the more that homeschooling isn't any worse, no matter how poor it is. But for mathematics, having teachers who understand WHY the rules are true, why the rules are coherent, is too important. Singapore Math works great paired with bright kids who can figure it out on their own, or paired with good teachers or parents who know the material. But Singapore Math and a teacher who is afraid of fractions is still not really going to work to help the struggling students."
IMHO, Singapore Math is pretty straight forward to me and I'd say most have used it without the Sonlight Home Instructor guides for grades K-6 or additional "teacher training." I go over the textbook with my kids and let them do the workbook exercises on their own.
The homeschooling parents I run with would say that they are capable of relearning/learning K-12 math skills. If not there are plenty of college-level math instructors who are putting out programs (i.e Thinking Textbooks, Videotext, etc) for them to choose from. I've heard more teachers proclaiming that they hate math or were weak in math than parents that home school. Many parents home school because of the fuzzy math curriculums in ps. I'd be hard pressed to find a parent looking for a fuzzy math program to teach. The closest thing you would get would be someone use Math-U-See or Right Start. Seems like home schoolers struggle with teaching spelling more than any other subject.
What a great question! I've thought about it for a while, and I think if I had a million dollars I'd provide free bussing to the most successful charter schools so as to make them more accessible to *all* children (in the words of our dear educrats). Charter schools are a very effective alternative to district-controlled public education, but the transportation barriers keep it an option for only the privileged few.
Well, to change the question a bit, if I could do anything to change the current education establishment, I would start an Ed. school based on Direct Instruction and/or Precision teaching.
I do think Ed Schools are the ideological font of what is wrong with U.S. education today.
Unless their position is challenged, not much is going to change.
You don't really have to have a million dollars...the internet has some powerful things you can do for cheap or for free.
Don Potter is working on a series of YouTube videos promoting Blend Phonics, a free phonics program that is excellent, he has copies of it on his website (donpotter.net). Search DonLPotter on YouTube.
I'm trying to spread word of cheap and free phonics and spelling programs like my phonics and spelling lessons and Webster's Speller on dyslexia forums (most of these poor children aren't really dyslexic, they've just got symptoms of dyslexia from too many sight words. I know, I've tutored many "dyslexic" children and so far haven't met a single one who wasn't taught with sight words.)
I also am trying to promote Webster's Speller (an outstanding program that teaches spelling and phonics at the same time, and is more powerful than any other phonics program out there. You have a child reading multi-syllabic words in only a few months because it is based on syllables and the spelling word reinforces the phonics information in an amazing way.) I'm promoting it on homeschool sites and to anyone else who might care to listen!
I have a web page of ideas about fixing the reading program: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/fixproblem.html which includes a link at the end to Don Potter's campaign to spread Blend Phonics: http://donpotter.net/Blend%20Phonics.htm
That being said, with $500,000, I'd send copies of Leapfrog's $10 DVD "Talking Letter Factory" to every household with children in 2 of the worst off inner-city school districts of medium sized cities. Within a few years, you would see a difference in reading test scores. Just a little phonics knowledge goes a long way (not that I'm advocating that as a teaching method, mind you, I'm just saying.)
With the other $500,000, I'd train up a bunch of teenagers and teach them to teach Webster's Speller to an entire inner city school district. Nothing like being shown up by teenagers to get people's attention. Plus, they work for cheap and have a bunch of energy. As a follow on, they can use M.K. Henry's Words (breaks up words by greek, latin, and anglic origin for phonics and spelling study) and for struggling students, additional phonics programs until they get it. (With enough repetition, even students that have driven me crazy have eventually gotten it.)
I like Ben Calvin's Ed School idea--but I'd make sure they take some science, statistics, and a foreign language as well. Also, an accurate history of education class, so they can see that all these "new ideas" are really just bad old ones resurrected. Better yet, do away with Ed Schools and just have a few courses in how to teach and the history of education, it's easier to teach how to teach than to teach a subject. I went to the Air Force Academy, almost none of my instructors there went to ed school, that was some of the best teaching I've encountered, although there were a few who were not good teachers, but they all knew their subjects and were passionate about their subject and learning.
I do think Ed Schools are the ideological font of what is wrong with U.S. education today.
Unless their position is challenged, not much is going to change.
Agreed. Absolute monopoly on teacher training and certification + near monopoly on schools and curriculum = intractable problem.
Can't teach in a public school until you've been thoroughly brainwashed. This is America?
Teachers over 40 or 50 who haven't been brainwashed are fewer and farther between. True "school choice" isn't available to most families b/c (1) there really is no difference between the supposed choices--curriculum, standards, etc. are all the same--and/or (2) choice can't be exercised by those without money or transportation.
The question I'm mulling over right now is: are our limited energies and resources better spent working inside the system or outside the system?
More specifically, is it time to stop trying to work through school boards, principals, curriculum committees, etc. and concentrate efforts onto charter and private options--those options that exist outside the district-controlled public school system. The argument against this is: if you continue drain off human and financial resources from the districts, they will implode.
Personally, I continue to put my energies into the public schools but have moved my children to private/charters. Does this make sense??
Am I ready to say: let the the district schools implode and we'll pick up the pieces? And who would "we" be? Foundations? Entrepeneurs?
I love this question!
I would start a school.
No question.
Precision teaching, liberal arts disciplines.
Money back guarantee if we're charging tuition.
Actually, I'd probably see if I could open a new branch of Morningside here, only not as a SPED school.
Steve H always said, from the beginning, that you need to put Singapore's books side-by-side with ours. It's the contrast that tells people what's wrong, better than we can through argument and protest.
Having just visited 6 private schools in a row, I can tell you that he's right: seeing how good private schools do things is revelatory.
It's revelatory even to someone like me who already believes in teaching to mastery & accountability, etc.
I would start an Ed. school based on Direct Instruction and/or Precision teaching.
Just saw this!
I'm changing my vote.
I would start an ed school based on direct instruction and precision teaching.
I would lobby for lowering compulsory education age to 14 (8th grade). Too many kids have given up by the age of 15 and they are being warehoused.
I agree, absolutely.
Lower the age of graduation.
It's terribly damaging keeping kids in public schools 'til 18.
True for many high-end kids, too.
One of the tutors around here told a friend of mine, "I tell my clients [h.s. kids in wealthy schools] just try to get through it."
He/she was talking about wealthy schools in general, not about my school in particular.
Our high school is probably a more emotionally benign place than a lot of others, in fact.
Parents universally say so, and I believe them.
Our high school has one of the best attendance records of schools anywhere. The principal says that's a proxie for things like "good atmosphere" etc. and I'm sure that's the case.
btw, I would say that there is a movement on now to shorten public school.
One of the major high school reforms people are pushing is college-courses-by-junior-year.
By "college courses" people mean courses taken at college, not AP courses.
There are a couple of names for the movement, one being "dual enrollment." Can't remember the other at the moment.
I'd like to see C. taking college courses by junior year (at a local community college & the lowest level courses obviously....)
---The homeschooling parents I run with would say that they are capable of relearning/learning K-12 math skills. If not there are plenty of college-level math instructors who are putting out programs (i.e Thinking Textbooks, Videotext, etc) for them to choose from.
This has a lot to do with the crowd you run with.
I'm in the Twin Cities. I'm a scientist. I have a math ugrad degree from MIT, and a MS from Cal in computer science. I've met a couple dozen homeschoolers here, almost always through the religious folks I know here. I am the ONLY ONE of them comfortable with math. They largely use Saxon and Singapore math, and I don't doubt that's for the best, but still, they don't get WHY the math is true.
I'm positive they are no worse than 90% of the teachers out there, and 100% of the teachers given their available financial options. But that doesn't mean it's good enough.
--I've heard more teachers proclaiming that they hate math or were weak in math than parents that home school.
Again, this is based on your crowd. I've heard the same from parents, here that I've heard from teachers. They are honest that they are afraid of math, and are doing their best to overcome it. But that doesn't mean they can. Again, for the bright students, that might not matter. But for the struggling students, it does.
--Many parents home school because of the fuzzy math curriculums in ps.
Well, while I fit this claim, I'm a singleton set of 1 in this community as far as I can tell. The parents I know here are looking for values they prefer, a culture they prefer, and some rigor in the liberal arts. They are afraid of what they see in various schools here, and they think they can't do worse at home. Again, I don't argue with that claim. But that's a low bar.
-- I'd be hard pressed to find a parent looking for a fuzzy math program to teach.
But that's not the same as being prepared to teach a real math program. If you don't understand proof by contradiction, then all the singapore like books in the world won't really help you explain it to your struggling student.
That said, though, I wonder how the issue translates to other subject material. To what extent do you really need to know english grammar and rhetoric to teach it well? I think the demise of those subjects has been so thorough that few of us knew they were ever taught rigorously, and don't know what we're missing. Again, we think we're no worse than the current crop of teachers. True, but should that be our standard?
Again, we think we're no worse than the current crop of teachers. True, but should that be our standard?
I struggle with this everyday and lose sleep about it at night. I know my daughter is learning more with me than she was in school and that she is now challenged at an appropriate and more rigorous level. However, how long can I sustain that pace? What would it be like if she were taught by content experts as opposed to a jack-of-all trades with well researched, solid content resources?
You're right though. While it's the best she's got, it may not necessarily the very best of all possible worlds. That is unfortunate indeed.
Our standards should be much, much higher than they currently are but we do the best with what we've got. At this point, I'm her best bet.
Well....it's too late for me to dive in, but I will say that I have grave doubts about my own math teaching and I've worked hard at it (and had help from everyone here).
"Grave doubts" is the wrong word, actually. I don't have grave doubts.
What I have is the recognition that my 2 years of attempting to remediate my child's poor math education in public school in no way equal what he should have had.
He's still "in the game"; my prediction, at this point, is that he'll be able to do college math when he gets to college.
I also think he's had some "extras" from me simply because I've been so engaged in the subject & have been teaching it to myself. Not infrequently I'll have an insight or a revelation that I can pass on to him. But even these "extras" are things a really good teacher would know how to weave into a class.
There is no substitute for expertise and experience.
That's what it comes down to.
One more thing: I'm done.
I'm actually doing an amazingly decent job of teaching myself earth science so I can teach earth science to my kid.
But earth science is a cooked-up course for high schoolers. It's a cool cooked up course, but cooked up it is.
I don't want to spend the next 4 years (re)teaching physics, chemistry, algebra 2, etc.
I probably couldn't do it even if I wanted to.
We've got to get to a school where the teachers do the teaching - and when I say "the teachers do the teaching" I mean "the teachers do the teaching and the kid gets mostly As and a sprinkle of Bs without tutoring."
I did read one encouraging passage in Karen Pryor (Don't Shoot the Dog).
She said that you can get an OK teaching job done sloppily if you spend enough time at it.
Precision teaching is another thing altogether.
But sloppy, inefficient teaching can produce the same results, or close.
That's what I've relied on. Sweat equity.
It hasn't been pretty, but the results aren't bad.
I'm changing my vote back.
I'm starting a precision teaching school for the masses. Not just LD-ADHD, etc.
Catherine,
Have you read Prof. Wu's papers? His pedagogy and curriculum materials for teachers might REALLY help you to ground some ideas for yourself so you don't have to keep reteaching yourself as much as you just get a coherent framework, and can work from there to re-sort the information you know but can't really grasp when you need to explain something.
Wu, like Garelick, does yeoman's work. Wu's in the battle to teach the math teachers, elementary and high school. He still has hope, hasn't given in. His perspective is really enlightening to me, and might be to you. He explains what's wrong with how fractions are taught, with how long division is taught (or not taught) etc. He has written specific chapters of books designed to make elementary math teachers unafraid.
math.berkeley.edu/~wu
And you're right, this is why precision teaching and direct instruction matter. Because those of us as concerned parents can't just keep reinventing sloppy wheels in our own minds and hoping to pass it on to a handful of students. We need the economy of scale.
Wu is terrific.
His papers (book chapters, really) were slightly over my head when I started out, although I did read quite a bit of his work & I gained some useful insights.
(Fractions can or should be taught as a number on the number line - who knew?)
Must get back to him.
The book that was hugely helpful to me in terms of providing a coherent framework for arithmetic, believe it or not, was Liping Ma's Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. I studied that book as intensively as I studied Umberto Eco's Theory of Semiotics in grad school (FWOT).
I also worked my way carefully through a good bit of
Parker & Baldridge (copies of P&B currently available for $18 at Amazon); I think Aharoni's Titlehttp://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2005/aharoni.htm Arithmetic for Parents is probably brilliant. Will get to it one of these days. His article in American Educator was fantastic.
"reinventing sloppy wheels in our own minds" is exactly what I've done
Now, I do think that if I'd been able to homeschool, C. would be at the top of the U.S. standardized test scales on math at this point, which is where he is on reading comprehension. (He was in the 88th percentile on ITBS math last year; his ISEE scores this year probably put him in the same range.)
My teaching wouldn't have been as good as that of an experienced teacher with expertise in the subject, but it would have been the next best thing -- and I would have been working one-on-one with a capable student.
But the amount of work I've had to undertake to do this has been huge. I've been teaching two people: my kid, and me.
The "future" of homeschooling, I tend to think, will lie in cooperative & collaborative homeschooling, with different parents handling different subjects - or parents & parent groups hiring specific teachers.
This is done at the high school level now (I'm sure it's being done in K-8, too).
I can envision employment agencies putting parents together with teachers the same way agencies put schools together with parents; I can also envision community college-like institutions that provide athletic facilities, labs, and pep assemblies (!) but act as advisors to parents and kids rather than authorities and deciders. (I got this idea from Ben Calvin, btw. A couple of years ago I described to Ben in an email the reforms I'd like to see and he said, "You're talking about a community college for K-12." Perfect!)
economies of scale for sure
The "future" of homeschooling, I tend to think, will lie in cooperative & collaborative homeschooling, with different parents handling different subjects - or parents & parent groups hiring specific teachers.
YES. This is what I so desperately wish for.
Arithmetic for Parents
I finally have an answer to the million dollar question...
I'd give the $$$ to Redkudu at Catching Sparrows!
This is Why I Play the Lottery
Another question of the day could be: If you are not afraid to daydream, what would your ideal school be like? Curriculum, treaching methods? Would you consider flexible ability grouping after certain grades?
What puzzles me is why all these wealthy philanthropists who pour fortunes into public schools don't hit on the brilliant idea of starting their own schools?
I once read about a rich fellow who wanted to give millions to the Detroit schools and was rebuffed because he wanted to set conditions. Why bother? Start your own schools.
Another fun question, almost as fun as the first!
I'd teach all in Spanish and teach phonetic reading in Spanish by syllables and spelling for K and 1st grade, then switch to English with a bit of Latin and Spanish study each year, studying Webster's Speller for phonics and spelling until at least 3rd grade., maybe through 6th, then a switch to M.K. Henry's Words which focuses on the Greek/Latin/Anglish roots of words for spelling, phonics, and word study.
I'm not sure the best mix of Latin and Spanish--I know you wouldn't want to do both each day, you would have to experimenting and see what was best, a week of each, month of each, or a quarter of each, etc. Also a rigorous study of Latin grammar like they used to do, followed by English and Spanish grammar. You can't really understand grammar until you have a framework of at least two languages to compare. The best grammar book I ever read (and the only one that actually made any sense to me) was called "English Grammar for Students of German." They have versions of this book for several different languages.
For science, I like the idea of KOGs: http://gravitashomeschool.wordpress.com/
For math, real math, overlearning of basic facts, and more board work. I had an Engineering Mechanics class my freshman year at the Air Force Academy, you were put in a basic class at first then broken up into 3 groups. My first instructor was awesome and had us do a lot of board work, instantly correcting our mistakes. He would teach for 20 - 30 minutes, then we'd do some board work, then he'd teach a bit more, then we'd do more board work. I did really well (too well!) and advanced into the top class. My instructor was not quite as good and we didn't do any board work. By the time I realized that I didn't really understand Engineering Mechanics, it was almost too late to recover. However, with the help of some friends and a lot of work and very small writing on the 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper we were allowed to bring into the final exam, I passed.
I also would have the students all learn to tutor other students and take turns teaching things. Even a K or 1 student can teach a child a year younger to sound out cat if they have been taught correctly. You learn things at a whole new level when you learn them well enough to teach them, and when you're forced to try to come up with different ways to explain them. I would try to pair up schools to help out inner-city schools with a need for more tutoring.
I would also bring in outside people to teach things in their area of expertise. One of the most useful skills I learned from a drafting class I took in high school--they taught how to neatly write in all uppercase with special drafting style letters that are designed for legibility. You could bring in draftsman and engineers trained in this type of thing to teach.
Also, less useless field trips and more beneficial field trips. The only field trip where I learned anything was one that we prepared all semester for in Thermodynamics. After learning about heat transfer, condensers, turbines, generators, etc, we went to a coal powered electricity plant and saw actual turbines, condensers, etc. at work in a plant. The guy who led the briefing knew what we had learned and tailored his talk to our understanding.
More real books history books, less history textbooks that are dry and written by committee. School almost killed my desire to learn history. After a few years break from reading anything historical, I have now learned to enjoy reading about history through books like 1776, biographies, etc. I'm now reading Albion's Seed thanks to a recommendation from here--thanks, I'm enjoying it!
I just remembered that I had not included my own answer to the question.
I would divvy it up into piles of $200,000 each so I could sustain my work for five years. I would identify a smallish district (10-20 schools) and begin a long-term, community-wide campaign to engage parents as customers of public education.
For some reason, talking about public education in anything less than uncritical terms has become taboo - which is ridiculous. It's our money and our kids - they exist to serve their communities.
Remind parents that they have an eminent right to demand accountability, performance, and responsiveness. With a five-year funded effort, you should be able to influence public opinion and ultimately the local elections process. Once you have a community and school board full of people with a consumer mentality, you'll see the public start to take the reins again of this public service.
I like John Hattie's work on ranking the effect sizes of different educational interventions from 200,000 or so research studies:
1 Direct instruction .93
2 Reciprocal teaching .86
3 Feedback .81
4 Cognitive strategy training .80
5 Classroom behaviour .71
6 Prior achievement .71
7 Phonological awareness .70
8 Home encouragement .69
9 Piagetian programs .63
10 Cooperative learning .59
11 Reading programs .58
12 Quality of teaching .55
13 Study skills .54
No surprise to see direct instruction squarely at the top. Some of the descriptions need some unpacking, it is worth looking at his work in more detail.
it is also very interesting to see which things have negligible benefits: eg team teaching, ability grouping, class size, grade retention
There are various versions of the same analysis around if you google his name.
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