from Mr. Person: parent involvement and the law

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), the parent involvement requirement of NCLB applies only to Title I schools--those schools serving a certain percentage of low-income/minority students (based on census data [10 year? 2 year? I don't know]).

A school can be Title I ELIGIBLE and still not accept Title I funding, which of course exempts it from the requirements.

Of those Title I-eligible schools that accept federal funding in excess of $500,000, no less than 1% (at least $5,000) MUST be spent on parent involvement programs that encourage "the participation of parents in regular, two-way, and meaningful communication involving student academic learning."

Those schools that accept less than $500,000 STILL must spend money on parent involvement and STILL must do so in a way that satisfies the statutory definition of parent involvement, but the percentage that they must spend is not specified (though, presumably, it can't be zero).

From my meeting at the AAP (Association of American Publishers), I learned that the federal government has begun auditing schools with regard to parent involvement requirements.

I have to think that either they're taking the money and spending it on new electronic scoreboards for their basketball courts, or they are spending it on "parent breakfasts" and the like--activities that have more to do with building a rapport with parents (to say it nicely) than they do with addressing the "parent-student vertices of the achievement triangle" (to say it weirdly).

Make no mistake about NCLB's parent involvement requirements, though: (1) They place the ultimate burden of providing for parent involvement entirely on the schools, (2) they require that parent involvement be focused on improving achievement (i.e., anti-cupcake), and (3) parents must be allowed to be decision-makers in that process.

Very interesting - thanks so much for posting.

I should mention, because this is something most of the public seems not to know, that Mr. Person is right: NCLB applies only to Title I schools - and then only to Title I schools accepting Title I funding from the federal government.

At the same time, I've found (I think) that NCLB requirements do put a bit of "moral pressure" on non-Title I schools..... or so it seems to me. I could be wrong.

When you're trying to figure out what the law requires your school to do, you need to look at state law. My school, which is not a Title 1 school, does annual NCLB testing because New York state requires us to do so, not because NCLB requires it.


parent-student vertices of the achievement triangle

That's a good one.

Wanted--A good writing program

I'd like to start my 4th grader on a writing program to give him more practice with all writing skills including creativity, grammar, reasoning, clarity, usage, persuasion and so on. In other words, everything about writing.

He also needs some help with analyzing text, but his other reading skills are good.

I'm happy to consider all recommendations. So far in my research, the one that has jumped out at me is Igniting Your Writing. I'd like not to spend a lot of money.

a child after my own heart

speaking of timers .... (you may have to hit refresh a couple of times)


Scrivener
tea timer for Mac

Scrivener

On the subject of people desperately trying to complete a chapter of their book, Scrivener is great, too.

And then there is my ever-trusty Time Timer.

Time Timer used to work for me.

Unfortunately, I seem to have progressed to the point at which I require an ALARM.

Which Time Timer doesn't have.

Tea Timer for Macs

In case you are desperately trying to finish a chapter of your book, the Tea Timer for Mac computers is a Very Good Thing.

a charter school grows in Brooklyn

A charter middle school that promises a private school mentality in a public school package — read: free — could have Park Slope parents tripping over their strollers to sign up.

Though the application to found the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School has not yet been approved, more than 500 people have already signed an online petition pledging that they would consider applying, with many adding comments such as "We need this school in Brooklyn!" and "Bravo." The school's founders, Luyen Chou and Daniel Kikuji Rubenstein, are both fathers who live in Park Slope, where they said demand is obvious. ....

He and Mr. Rubenstein hatched the idea to build a new middle school, which they hope will eventually extend through high school, during shared car rides to Columbia University's Teachers College [ed.: uh oh] in Upper Manhattan, where both studied independent school administration.

The two administrators said that while most of the city's charter schools are run by people with public school experience, they have different backgrounds. Mr. Rubenstein most recently headed the math department at a K–12 boys school on the Upper West Side [ed.: good], the Collegiate School. Mr. Chou works for a private consulting firm but was first a teacher and then administrator at the East Side's co-ed Dalton School, which is also K–12. Their private school experience makes their application for a charter school special, they said.

One advantage has to do with management. Like private schools, charter schools often operate outside union contracts, giving administrators more freedom over which teachers to hire and fire and how much to pay them. Private school heads are familiar with those decisions, which Mr. Rubenstein calls among the most important in education.

He said private schools also bring advantages to the classroom. Though he praised some of the city's charter school networks for their measurable successes, Mr. Rubenstein said the schools' styles — which he described as regimented, teacher-centered, and test score-driven — are "not the kind of models I would want to be around." [ed.: sigh]

Private schools, Mr. Chou said, are more holistic. "We want to create a school where we absolutely nail the standardized test, [ed.: !! ] but where the mission of the school is really focused on those larger, loftier habits of mind and habits of heart," he said.

source:
2 Park Slope Fathers Dream Big: A Charter Middle School
By ELIZABETH GREEN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 9, 2007

This development ought to strike fear into the hearts of some of these high-performing districts here in Westchester.

Richard Cohen on the Dems

wow

The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington last week for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded -- one system "for the wealthy, one for everybody else," as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and -- pay attention here -- the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable.

Here's eduwonk:

First it was Richard Cohen, now Ruth Marcus in today's WaPo calls out the Democratic '08ers. Two thoughts on this. First, these columns and the kinds of things you hear from media-types signal, I think, that the political landscape is shifting and the bar for Democrats on serious education proposals is getting higher. That's good. This issue is right in the groove for the party. Second, what about the Republicans? They are no picnic here and aside from a smattering of governors and No Child Left Behind they haven't had a creative national thought on education policy since Charlottesville. In fact, most of their creativity has been spent figuring out creative ways to try to undercut the federal role in elementary and secondary schools.

(Maybe I'll just spend my summer re-posting items from eduwonk & Jay Mathews....)

I do have the feeling that the climate is changing for the Dems. Hope so, anyway.

As for the Republicans..... I dunno. I get the feeling they're planning to sit this one out (on the subject of education, that is).

Not that I know anything about it.

Parent Involvement and the Law

Studies have documented that regardless of the economic, ethnic, or cultural background of the family, parent involvement in a child�s education is a major factor in determining success in school. Recognizing that parents are a child�s first teacher, National PTA has worked with federal legislators to include parent involvement requirements in education laws. Now, numerous laws require meaningful parent involvement, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).National PTA worked with Congress to initiate the PARENT Act, which sought to strengthen the parent participation policies in the ESEA.

In January 2002, the ESEA was signed into law as the No Child Left Behind Act. It authorizes more than 40 programs that provide federal funds to nearly every school district in the nation. This law now includes many of the provisions of the PARENT Act and, for the first time, bases the definition of parent involvement on National PTA�s National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs.

source:
PTA

Interesting.

NCLB also requires schools to develop ways to get parents more involved in their child's education and in improving the school.

today's factoid

86% of the general public believes that support from parents is the most important way to improve the schools.

source:
Rose, Gallup, & Elam, 1997
cited by What Research Says About Parent Involvement in Chidrens Education

This is interesting in light of the fact that only 39% of the general public today says that "lack of parental involvement" is the "biggest problem facing schools" - and only 27% say that increased parent involvement is "one or two [of the] best changes to solve public schools' problems."

I wonder if this is a real change, or an artifact of questionnaire design....

Whatever the case, parent involvement is "hot."


National Network of Partnership Schools (Johns Hopkins)
National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement (PTA)
Project Appleseed

Bake More Cupcakes

Anonymous can't seem to deal with real questions and comparisons of math curricula even though there are lots of threads talking about details.

"Maybe, just maybe, a majority of parents are satisfied with the status quo. There are always a few crusty bitter people who are never happy. I am sure your next target is the health care system, then social security. Endless things to complain about."

"Boo hoo boys, the education system is here to stay. Keep complaining and baking cupcakes!"


There you have it. Everything is fine, so just go away. Marginalized and ignored and still no process or choice. Your tax dollars in action.

Elementary Calculus by Jerome Keisler

here

H. Jerome Keisler's home page

Keys to Quick Writing Skills

The Morningside Academy led me to this book, which is exactly what I've been looking for. Not only does Quick Writing Skills contain sentence combining exercises, it has text reconstruction, too!

Text reconstruction turns out to be the term for the method Ben Franklin used to teach himself to write. (scroll down - you may need to refresh your browser if the page doesn't load at first)

This is going to be fun.

..................................

I also ordered a copy of Why Johnny Can't Write.

Because I've never really liked Peter Elbow.

Or Lucy Calkins.

.....................................

There may be a copy of William Strong's Sentence Combining: A Student Workbook in my future, too.

.....................................

update 8-5-2007:

Keys to Quick Writing Skills hasn't appeared, but Analyze, Organize, Write Revised Edition by Arthur Whimbey & Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins ISBN: 0-8058-0082-4 and Sentence-Combining Workbook by Pam Altman, Mari Caro, Lisa Metge-Egan, Leslie Roberts ISBN 1-4130-1977-3 both have.

Terrific.


page samples at the end of this pdf file
(very) brief summary of research on sentence combining

help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction
expert advice on teaching writing from Joanne Jacobs
eureka
more from Joanne Jacobs
doctor pion on writing a precis and critical reading
first crack at editing exercise
home writing program in place, for now
why kids should do text reconstruction
results of sentence combining exercise

Vlorbik has a blog!

wow!

Vlorbik has a blog!

Plus I see that he's been updating his old blog, which I thought was frozen....

getting used to it

my favorite sayings re: math

'I'm a professional mathematician, and I myself very often use mathematical methods that I understand only imprecisely,'' he said. ''It is while I use them that I begin to understand. After a while, the use and the understanding are mutually supporting.''

source:

The New, Flexible Math Meets Parental Rebellion (scroll down)

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS (NYT)
2403 words

Published: April 27, 2000


In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
John von Neumann
(from Vlorbik)

John Saxon & Carolyn say the same thing....

I looked these lines up again today, because I'm pretty sure they illustrate the fundamental insight of precision teaching.

hobby teaching

at joannejacobs

paying for arithmetic twice

I'm supposed to be working (aack! aack!) but instead I'm posting this factoid:

Families spend $283 million to pay for their children’s remedial courses in community colleges alone!

So Crazy It Just Might Work...

Norm Geras picks up on the story of a Scottish town that, in ten years, has managed to almost entirely eliminate childhood illiteracy:

When the project was launched, West Dunbartonshire had one of the poorest literacy rates in the UK, with 28% of children leaving primary school at 12 functionally illiterate - that is, with a reading age of less than nine years and six months. Last year, that figure had dropped to 6% and, by the end of this year, it is expected to be 0%. In all, 60,000 children have been assessed, and evaluations show that children now entering primary 3 have an average reading age almost six months higher than previous groups. In 1997, 5% of primary school children had "very high" scores on word reading; today the figure is 45%.

How did they do it? The answer is even more shocking than the results:

Synthetic phonics, where children learn to sound out the single and combined sounds of letters, has been at the core of the scheme but it has not been the only factor. A 10-strand intervention was set up, featuring a team of specially trained teachers, focused assessment, extra time for reading in the curriculum, home support for parents and carers, and the fostering of a "literacy environment" in the community [emphasis added]

Let's see - a scientifically-based reading curriculum, frequent assessments, extra time for reading, and support for parents... It's just too bad that there is no bipartisan effort to implement those ideas here in the US.

Naturally, educators are offering their complete support for such an effective program.

Postscript: as a lifelong learner, I'm always glad to learn a new word.

hamster boy!

"OK, hamster boy"

milestone, part 2

Ed says Madonna is starting to look like Michael Jackson.


missing Andrew, and a milestone

how fast to do story problems?

[I]n regular classrooms we learned that students need to be able to write answers to between 70 and 90 simple addition problems per minute in order to be able to successfully and smoothly master arithmetic story problems. However, some students seemed to level off at around 20 or 30 problems per minute, and no amount of reward or encouragement seemed to help. Some of our colleagues (Starlin, 1971; Haughton, 1972) decided to check how many digits those students could read and write per minute—critical components of writing answers to problems. As you might guess, they were very slow, which held down their composite performance. With practice of the components on their own to the point of rapid accurate performance (for example, reading and writing digits at 100 per minute or more), students were able to progress smoothly toward competence on solving the written math problems.

source:
Doesn't Everybody Need Fluency?
Carl Binder

it's always worse than you think, part 5

There is so little current interest in major learning gains in public schools, however, that we can't even get the standard celeration chart in wide use (Watkins, 1988).

source:
Precision Teaching's Unique Legacy from B. F. Skinner (pdf file)
Ogden R. Lindsley, Ph.D.
Journal of Behavioral Education
Vol. 1, No. 2, 1991 p. 259

This probably has something to do with the fact no one's ever heard of the things.

it's always worse than you think, part 4

from today's Sun: ($)

The announcement of a new secondary school, to be opened in September 2009, a school "that will use game design and game-inspired methods to teach critical 21st-century skills and literacies," bears comment.

This new "Fun and Games School," as I have named it (it has no official name as of now), is sponsored by a non-profit group, the Gamelab Institute of Play, "that leverages games and play as transformative contexts for learning and creativity.”

How will this new school do this? "By bringing non-traditional audiences of all ages into the innovative space of game production and play … the school will explore new ways of thinking, acting, and speaking through playing and making games in a social world. Students call themselves writers, designers, readers, performers, teachers, and students. The Institute calls them gamers (their italics)."

I call them "guinea pigs" in yet another crazy experiment to see how we can avoid actually teaching children real academic content. But these are not guinea pigs. They are real children, who have just one shot at getting a quality education. Who will pick up the pieces when that chance is lost in this sea of jargon?

It should come as no surprise that one of the sponsors of this insanity is the group that I call the "permanent government" of New York City's education establishment, New Visions for Public Schools. They brought you the High School for Peace and Diversity, the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, and the new Khalil Gibran School for Arab Culture and Language.

In little more than two years, as Joel Klein will be packing up his personal effects from his cubicle in the Tweed Courthouse, New Visions will still be in charge, just as they were when Chancellor Quinones was nominally running the show, as well as Chancellor Fernandez, Chancellor Cortines, Chancellor Crew, and Chancellor Levy.

Somehow, as Mayor Bloomberg was railing against the failed public school system, purged the superintendents and the principals, and closed and sold the building at 110 Livingston Street, he managed to pass over the individuals who had really set the direction of the school system for well over a decade before the mayor took control.

Joining in with New Visions is the John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation, which kicked in $1.1 million for "planning and development." They are the same institution that designates its grant recipients as "geniuses." Presumably they will do the same for the students in their latest school, where "students will design games and game-inspired materials, learn about the history and culture of games and play, build communities, and produce knowledge around the materials and relationships that result."

That is a quote from the press release announcing the school, which goes on to say: "Such an approach allows young people to explore the learning space of games and game driven pedagogy and gives them a platform on which to build the technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills they need to graduate from high school prepared for college and the world of work.”

Wolf concludes with word that the AMA is considering classifying video game addiction as a form of mental illness. Having talked to Eric Hollander about "internet addiction," I'm sure video game addiction exists.

Possibly in this house, I fear.

................................

We're in luck!

Heather Chaplin reports on the new idea of gaming literacy!

reading recommendations

Perhaps the best summary of the fluency literature can be found in two articles: Kubina, R.M. & Morrison, R.S. (2000), Fluency in Education (pdf file); and Binder, C. (1996), Behavioral fluency: Evolution of a new paradigm. The Binder article can be found at Binder Riha Associates.

source:
One-Minute Fluency Builders Series: Research Base & Evidence of Effectiveness (pdf file)

One Minute Fluency Builders

right up my severely time-constrained alley

Ridiculously expensive, though.

Here's the whole series.

Expensive or not, the Algebra 1 book is tempting. I'm also wondering whether I ought finally to spring for the Mad Minute book Susan told us about a year or so ago.

From the Sopris West marketing paper:

Precision Teaching: The first and perhaps the most influential concept that helped shape One-minute Fluency Builders was originated by Ogden Lindsley, who invented the term Precision Teaching and later helped provide the framework used in our current work. Lindsley, a student of B.F. Skinner at Harvard, borrowed about five tenets from methods of experimental analysis of behavior developed by Skinner in his laboratories (Lindsley, 1971a, 1971b). These include: (a) the learner knows best, (b) direct and daily observations, (c) the use of frequency as a universal measure of behavior, (d) a standard chart for the evaluation of learning patterns, and (e) the systematic description and analysis of environmental conditions that influence behavior. White (1986) described Precision Teaching as a set of procedures for deciding if, when, and how an instructional program might be improved to facilitate pupil learning. Precision Teaching (Lindsley, 1972; White, 1986), as used in classrooms, is not so much a method of instruction as a precise and systematic method of evaluating instructional tactics and curricula.

Frequency/Rate: In the 1930s, B.F. Skinner (1968) claimed the use of frequency as a “universal measure of behavior.” This became one of his major contributions to science. In its simplest form, frequency is the count of a specific behavior (e.g., number of correct answers in math facts) in a given period of time (e.g., one-minute). This is opposed to percent correct, which does not require the dimension of time, frequency or rate and incorporates both an element of count, as well as time (e.g., 145 words per minute).

One-Minute: Short (one-minute) units of time have been highly correlated with reliable, valid and high stakes measurements (Davidson & Towner, 2001), as well as a functional and workable metric for practitioners to us in classroom environments. In the One-Minute Fluency Builders model, timings using 60 seconds fit not only into a unit of time common to reading and math, but lend themselves to a convenient recording format, as well. Proponents of Curriculum Measurement (Howell et al. (2000); Marston et al. (1984), along with precision teachers (Haughton 1972; Kunzelmann et. al. (1970); Starlin, 1972) have embedded one-minute timings as a standard measure of academic performance in most of their studies. Finally, a research-based publication called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) (Good, R., et al., 2004), has emerged which uses one-minute timings for assessment, progress monitoring and decision-making in reading.

Fluency Sheets: As Binder (1996) points out, precision teachers have been slicing curricula into sequence and finer components as a curriculum design practice for decades (Starlin, 1972; White & Haring 1976). The idea of curriculum sequencing led early designers to generate thousands of one-minute skill sheets, so that each sheet built a prerequisite skill for the next (Howell & Kaplan, 1979; Starlin and Starlin, 1973). Over 10,000 of these skill sheets were developed during a project in the state of Washington in the late 1960s. The Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma Project (SST), developed sequenced practice sheets in reading, math, handwriting, spelling and grammar, provided the impetus for the Great Falls Precision Teaching Project (Beck & Clement, 1991). This led to the further development of an additional 2000 sequenced skill sheets in the areas of science, map skills, social studies, vocational skills, etc. Sopris West Educational Services offers these as part of the One-Minute Fluency Builders Series in a bank of over 1500 skill sheets (Beck et al, 2004).

10,000 separate skill sheets?

plus another 2000?

jeez

I'm thinking I should slap an Educators Beware warning across the face of this post. I don't want graduates of Columbia Teachers College reading things like "10,000 skill sheets" in a state of low blood sugar.

.........................

So..... I'm wondering if there's some way to repackage this product as 10,000 embedded critical thinking skills for the 21st century?

Aims: For several decades, the Effective Schools Research has cited setting high aims or goals for students as a necessary step in creating expectations in reading, math, language-arts, and other basic skills. Kubina (2000) demonstrates that setting fluency and performance standards is the major component in helping students move to a true level of mastery. Eric Haughton (1972) is perhaps the one person who has had the most influence on establishing high aims. Haughton, along with Binder (1991), Starlin, (1971), Johnson & Layng (1992) and Beck (1979), has provided fluency data that has helped set aims benchmarks for the field. A strong argument has been made, and research again supports, that when students reach these standards, they are able to remember and apply the skill across different environmental settings.

This last is the money line, the claim that learning a component concept or skill to fluency, not just "mastery" defined as 80 - 90% correct, makes it easier to remember the concept or skill and to generalize it to novel material.

For constructivists, generalization is the Holy Grail, even though they don't use the term all that often. Nevertheless, that's what they're talking about. Generalize means "make connections"; generalize means "creativity"; generalize means "21st century skills."

The ability to generalize (also called "transfer" or "learning transfer") seems to mean two things in particular:

a) the ability to recognize novel material, settings, or problems as instances of prior knowledge
b) the ability then to apply one's prior knowledge to the novel material, setting or problem

I'm feeling a need for 12,000 one-minute worksheets.

............................

p.s. those of us with SPED kids probably ought to be looking into precision teaching. Lots of good material on SPED children and accelerated learning through precision teaching.

Skinner & the need for speed

Precision Teaching inherited "rate of response" and "cumulative response recording" from B. F Skinner. This legacy is unique since Precision Teaching is the only instructional system derived from Skinner's work to use his monitoring method exclusively. Other instructional systems adopted Skinner's descriptive language, reinforcement strategies, response shaping, and stimulus fading strategies, but not his behavior monitoring methods. This is surprising because Skinner considered rate of response and the cumulative response recorder to be his major contributions (Skinner, 1976).

Precision Teaching's Unique Legacy from B.F. Skinner (pdf file)
Ogden R. Lindsley

I'm hoping I don't have to learn what logarithms are before I figure out how to use a "standard celeration chart." I'm going to be learning logarithms pretty soon here, but.... I'd just as soon not wait.

On the other hand, I'm not sure there's anyone out there who can tell me exactly how fast C. ought to be doing FOIL calculations. So am I really going to make good use of $80-bucks worth of standard celeration charts from Sopris West?

(free charts here)

Don't answer that.

why fluency teaching won't be coming to a school near you

As the conception of learning and hence good teaching has gradually shifted from a “behaviorist” to a more “constructivist” view, in line with emerging research, many educators have developed their own personal views of what constitutes good practice.

source:
Teacher Evaluation: To Enhance Professional Practice
Charlotte Danielson & Thomas L. McGreal

There you have it.

Knowledge isn't a "behavior."

It's a "construction."

Fluency teaching comes straight out of behaviorism. (Rate of response: A Legacy for Teachers and Students from Skinner through Lindsey)

need for speed

"...Perhaps the most telling data set, one that I and others have shared hundreds of times since we gathered them in (Bea) Barrett’s lab (Barrett, 1979; Binder, 2003), shows ranges of correct responses per minute on simple pre-academic component tasks that we were teaching adolescents then labeled “mentally retarded.” We were also working with young elementary school students and a group of professional adults. In 11 of the 16 skills, all of the professional adults completed more correct per minute than all of the regular children and all of our handicapped students. These data reflect what you’d notice if you spent a few minutes with these people. But if we only use percentage correct, as in most classrooms and training programs, we’d think these three groups performed exactly the same, because they were all 100% correct!

We have to let this sink in. In my view, our educational and training programs fail to produce competence in large part because the measurement systems they use cannot discriminate between competence and incompetence. All of us have been trapped in the percentage correct box since childhood, unconsciously thinking that 100% is the best we can do. Rate of response shows us an entirely different picture that allows us to make better decisions..."

source:
Learning, Teaching, and an Evolutionary Imperative
by Carl Binder
Precision Teaching: Why Fluency Matters

I'm sure this is right.

Which leads me to the realization that my preteaching triumph may not have been a preteaching triumph at all.

It may have been a fluency triumph. At the same time I began preteaching math lessons to C., I also began making him practice for speed.

I didn't have a theoretical reason for doing this. It was pure pragmatics. Ms. K's tests are huge, so I figured we could "buy" C. extra points through sheer speed, which would give him more time to sweat over the problems he didn't (immediately) know how to do. So every night I would insist that C. do a set of problems as quickly as possible; then I'd make him do the same or a similar set the next night & do them faster. I've kept this up ever since, pretty much.

His grades on math tests shot up, and I thought it was the preteaching.

But now I'm thinking that while the preteaching helped in class, it was probably the timed practices that helped on tests.


claims for fluency

• knowledge and skills mastered to fluency are remembered better than knowledge and skills mastered only to 80 to 100% accuracy
  
• knowledge and skills mastered to fluency are easier to combine into "composite" or complex knoweldge and skills under guidance of a teacher
  
• knowledge and skills mastered to fluency are more likely to combine into composite skills spontaneously, without further instruction, through the process called contingency adduction

source:
"The Shame of American Education" Redux

I'm thinking fluency may be the missing link in a lot of thinking about when and how students finally start making those all-prized connections amongst fragmented concepts & skills.

More later.


preteaching, not reteaching
success
success, part 2
more preteaching results in the offing
preteaching saves the world
preteaching wonders of the world

Care Trak

Our new Care Trak system came in the mail today.

Ed is playing around with it in the living room right now. "This is amazing. We can take this on trips."

We're about to find out whether there is a technological solution to Andrew.


respite
missing Andrew
CareTrak
lost

yikes

This is scary. (via eduwonk)

Do I need to be backing everything up?

Everyday Math and the "decimal debacle"

and another letter....

You can read many more wonderful letters from students here.

The following is the reply from UCSMP Everyday Mathematics Center:

Dear UCC Students:

Thank you for your letters postmarked January 12, 2006. In your letters, you pointed out that the numbering system used for the lessons in Fourth Grade Everyday Mathematics is incorrect if those numbers are interpreted as decimals.

[snip]

In the first edition of Everyday Mathematics, we numbered lessons consecutively, starting with 1, and running through the final lesson. This system was correct in terms of counting, but made it difficult for teachers to tell which unit a lesson was in without consulting the table of contents in the teacher's manual. [...] Many computer software manuals and other types of instruction manuals use similar systems for page or chapter numbering, so we hoped that this system would be familiar to teachers.

But, as you noted, although we don't mean them as ordinary numbers, "4.1" and "4.10" look like ordinary numbers. We mean them as identification codes, similar to the numbers you see on license plates or bar codes.

[snip]

The "error" of the lesson numbering has been reported to us several times. We will definitely change it in any future edition of Everyday Mathematics. But the economics of publishing does not permit us to change it in reprints of the current edition, since every page, and hence, every printing plate, would have to be redone.

It is very exciting to hear that you are noticing and questioning the way numbering is used. We are very proud that Everyday Mathematics students would be so observant and articulate and we hope that you will continue to use mathematics to interpret and question what you see in the world around you.

Observations:

1. It was more important to accomodate the teachers than the students.

2. They could have easily numbered the lessons 4.01, 4.02 a through 4.10, etc. as Ilya clearly pointed out in his letter.

3. That these students are so "observant and articulate" has little if anything to do with Everyday Math, and much more to do with Ms. Harper, the teacher who actually had her students write letters to the publisher about the decimal debacle.

4. The Everyday Math folks said they would definitely change it in the future edition. They happen to have just published a brand-spanking new 2007 edition. So, did they change it?

missing Andrew, and a milestone

While we were eating hamburgers on the picnic table, C. volunteered that he had "kind of" missed Andrew.

Then Ed and I said we had kind of missed Andrew, too.

We all missed Andrew. Jimmy was up half the night last night, almost certainly because Andrew wasn't here. Plus earlier in the evening Ed and I had gone off to the movies alone, without leaving an adult in the house, for the first time ever. For Jimmy, that was too much.

But we did it. C. turns 13 in August; he's old enough to stay with his fully grown autistic brother for 3 hours.

On the other hand, I figured he wouldn't make it through the evening without calling us, & he didn't. In the middle of the movie's final scene, Ed's cel phone buzzed.

It was C., wanting to know "where we were."

We're at the movies.

Where we told you we'd be.

fyi: if you're looking for a movie to see on the first occasion of your child serving as babysitter for a younger sibling (or for an older, disabled sibling), Live Free or Die Hard is the one. It's a sweet film, an action movie that has pretty much nothing to do with the action movie genre. What it really is, is a film about Erik Erikson's 7th stage of psychodevelopment in a post 9-11 world disguised as an action movie. The title could have been, Don't Worry, the Kids Will Be Alright.

In the movie the guy from the Apple commercial plays the guy from the Apple commercial, and Bruce Willis plays the Windows guy.

The bad guy is the least menacing bad guy in any action film ever (message: our kids aren't actually facing Armageddon) and Bruce Willis gets his daughter and the Apple guy straightened out and on the right path with only a couple of non-hairraising close calls.

The U.S. government is sometimes bumbling, but not evil; the FBI and the police could use a weekend respite care program for the entire country but they're not going to get one, so that's fine, too.

It's a coming of middle age movie for the baby boom generation. Wonderful reaction shot from Willis when the villain wipes out his 401K with a couple of strokes on the keyboard: in that moment the baby boomers turn into the tough old goats no one imagined they would be. When the villain offers to restore John McCain's 401 if he shoots the Apple guy, you see the first glimmer of a collective idea that maybe the Woodstock generation was onto something after all. Willis' manic laugh when he shreds one of the Parkour acrobats (whom he calls "hamster boy") in some kind of human-sized, meat-grinder-thingie made the whole theater burst out laughing, too. Live free; let the bad guys die hard.

Manic bust-ups aside, the movie's grownups are generally stressed and their patience is shot, but they are on their game. If they have to stay on their game 'til they drop, they'll do it.

But that's probably not the way things will go, because the skills our kids have picked up from 20 years of Xbox will save the world. Watching Live Free, you almost believe it.^*

A sweet movie, and a happy ending.

.........................

Transformers is great, too. While I'm on the subject.

respite
missing Andrew
Pick Your Poison: Fists or Fireballs
CareTrak


^*see: final scene of movie trailer

EM and special ed

from anonymous:

My daughter is classifed with a learning disability in math. It has never been established to my satisfication that she actually has a disability. But she was doing horribly with Everyday Math, so I agreed to classify her because she needs the help.

This year, I worked with her using Saxon and Kumon, and she scored advanced proficient on state standardized tests.

The school thinks that she is disabled. The school will not even consider the possibility that she's just a weak student who is completely befuddled by Everyday Math.

She has attention issues as well, but do these issues amount to Attention Deficit Disorder? I don't know. The doctors think she has ADD, but they don't think it's a severe case.

If we were poor, my daughter would be so far behind right now, she would never catch up.

Christian (attended Mamaroneck schools until junior high, then went to school in Yonkers) was classified SPED for his entire school career. He's one of the smartest people I know; his reading tests college level and clearly is college level.

His math tests end-of-3rd grade on the Saxon Math placement tests.

autism and anorexia

While I'm on the subject of autism, I came across a fascinating article on autism and anorexia on the BBC.

Girls with autism may not be identified because they do not show traditional signs of the disorder, an expert warns.
Children with autistic spectrum disorders have poor social and communication skills.
Hyperactivity, and interests in technical hobbies have been seen as characteristics of the disorder.
But Christopher Gillberg, of the National Centre of Autism Studies, said girls were often passive and collected information on people, not things.

Around 535,000 people in the UK are estimated to have autistic spectrum disorders.
The number of boys diagnosed is much greater than the number of girls, but Professor Gillberg said the difference in incidence may not be as great as currently thought.

'Outsiders'
His theory is partly influenced by studies which did not find what they were expected to.
Researchers had looked at the male X chromosome, to see if genetic faults there could influence a boy's risk of developing the condition.
But no conclusive link has been found.
Professor Gillberg said: "Scientists had been very surprised that, so far, so little has come out of research into the X chromosome.
"But it may be that girls present differently to boys.
"The number of females with autism spectrum disorders may be under-diagnosed."
He said studies, including one his team had carried out into women with anorexia who were also autistic, as well as his own clinical practice, had shown the gender difference.
He added: "Autism may be behind many cases of anorexia. A girl may be withdrawn and uncommunicative, without attracting attention, but when she develops a calorie fixation it becomes a serious problem.
"Counting calories may be a manifestation of autism.
"I've seen quite a number of cases where the anorexia has become completely entrenched because people haven't understood that underlying the eating disorder is autism."

I find that incredible. Anorexia as an obsession with counting calories!

Eating disorders are extremely common in autism. Andrew has a fairly severe eating disorder (though it wouldn't be due to counting calories. He may have had it since birth.) For years he was horribly thin; these days he's gained weight due to meds, though the weight gain has stopped, thank God.
I remember years ago asking Ed Ritvo whether girls were simply underdiagnosed because they appeared shy instead of autistic. I was thinking of the actress Daryl Hannah, who had an autism diagnosis as a child, but who seemed autistic to me as an adult, too.

He said it was possible.

Gillberg is a major researcher in the field.