kitchen table math, the original

10/19/2012: Steve H's Notice for parents new to kitchen table math

The original Kitchen Table Math was cofounded in April 2005 by Carolyn Johnston,^* a mathematician now working for Microsoft, and me, Catherine Johnson.^* I'm a mother, a writer, and a former teacher of freshman composition at the University of Iowa. Later on I taught writing to gifted middle school children in the Johns Hopkins CTY program. That's me in the photo. My husband, Ed Berenson, directs the Institute of French Studies at NYU, where he is a Professor of European history.

Here is the original mission statement.

Carolyn stopped writing posts a year or so later, when she and her husband Bernie went to work for Microsoft, but she continues to be with us in spirit. Their new school, outside Seattle, uses Connected Math.

For reasons unknown, the Kitchen Table Math site froze at the end of 2006. It has remained out of commission ever since, its links slowly decaying. The whole thing could be taken down, but I haven't wanted to do that, so there it sits: unwriteable, unreviseable, and uncommentable.

The idea behind the original ktm was to recruit a group of parents, teachers, and volunteers with whom to brainstorm teaching and "afterschooling." We needed to do this because public schools are doing something else altogether. So, when ktm stopped dead in its tracks, I set up a group blog on Blogger, sent invitations to the regulars, and dubbed the new site kitchen table math the sequel. The first post appeared December 30, 2006.

Today ktm-2 has 64 65 members, a number of whom have, of late, begun to spend as much time reading and thinking about how best to teach children reading, writing, vocabulary, and spelling as they do thinking about math. We've branched out: from the math wars to the reading wars.

More is more!

Update 2/16/2013: For the past two years I've been teaching freshman composition at my local college.  Last summer I attended Morningside Academy's Summer School Institute, and I'm now working with Ed on a writing supplement for his Oxford European history textbook and with Katie Beals on a grammar and writing textbook based in linguistics and precision teaching.

Math in the Blood 4.30.2005 18:25
Now That We're Both Here 4.30.2005 20:30

wit and wisdom of Kitchen Table Math

book-style index ktm-1 (not complete)
search ktm-1 posts
search ktm-1 comments
search ktm-1 by category

archives by month: April 2005 - September 2006
math books (and other) we liked then
other books, curricula, & online resources we liked

A Gift from France, to France



Shadow Syndromes



Animals in Translation



Animals Make Us Human


^* You may have to hit refresh a few times to bring up pages from the original Kitchen Table Math website. And, yes, Carolyn Johnston and Catherine Johnson are two different people.

housekeeping

1.

I don't know what my RSS or Atom info is, or how to find out.

Yes, I could figure out how to find out, but I'd rather somebody who already knows the answer just tell me what it is.

This is my problem with 21st century skills (one of my problems): I see no reason to spend my time inquiring about things everyone else already knows.

I especially see no reason for 5 year olds to inquire into the nature of the alphabetic code, (pdf file) as 21st century 5 year olds are currently doing in their 21st century Kindergartens.

In conclusion: I don't know what my RSS or Atom info is, and if somebody out there does know, please tell me.

Thank you.

2.

I've been chatting with a couple of Contributors about visibility, influence, readership, etc., and it seems to me the time has come to raise the profile of ktm, if possible. Hence: the posting of the Studio City photo along with a thumbnail description of the blog & contact info for me. Performancing (thank you, Mathew) says one needs photos and emails on the front page, which I've always felt was true. A blog needs a real author or authors & a mailing address.

Do we need contact info for Contributors, too?

Happy Chanukah

source: This 'n That

while I was sleeping

It seems I can deal with only one child at a time.

Over the past 4 years, I've lost track of autism and autism research, a subject I used to know by heart.

It's not as if I've been completely out of touch. I did manage to figure out Andrew needed a clicker & a linguist-created program to teach him grammar. (Good results with both thus far.)

But Jimmy has had to fend for himself, just about. (Am currently scheming to teach him how to read after all. He so wanted to learn, back when he was 14. He used to bring me the LeapPad reader and sit beside me on the sofa so I could run the LeapPen over the LeapStories. And for years we tried to teach him sight words, not one of which he learned, not even his name. Now that I know what I know about whole language, I realize that was a hopeless undertaking from the get-go. Jimmy doesn't appear to "see" well; when he was tiny, he couldn't see the elephants at the zoo until they moved or, better yet, pooped. If he couldn't see elephants, how was he going to see laminated words for "salt" and "juice"?)

Anyway, today, taking a stab at clearing off the paper cliffs soaring above my desktop,^* I unearthed an Autism Speaks brochure and decided to check out their web site.

I found this:

Final Emerging Theme from the 2008 SFN [Society for Neuroscience] Meeting

Altogether these research advances demonstrate the ostensible "treatability" of the component features of autism despite varying etiologies proposed (genetic, immunologic, endocrinologic, perceptional). Such results, which have emerged only in the last two years, are rapidly redirecting researchers to an entire new field of research that is energizing the movement for autism treatment. The results also suggest that the complexity of autism will not require one "cure-all" strategy but an arsenal of therapies that is adaptable to the underlying biology of the presenting symptoms in each individual.

Right again!

Treatment-versus-prevention was a debate within NAAR (National Alliance for Autism Research), where I served on the board. NAAR was the first nonprofit devoted to researching "treatment, prevention, and cure" for autism, but most folks there were thinking prevention.

That seemed wrong to me, logically speaking.^** One of the geneticists I'd interviewed had told me that as many as 90 to 100% of the population may carry "autism risk genes." I have no idea whether he would say the same thing today, but that's what he said then.

Well, if 100% of the population carries autism risk genes, good luck getting a test you can do with an amnio.

At least, that's the way it seemed to me.

Treatments and functional cures ought to show up before preventions.

Let's hope they do!


^* gross exaggeration
^** I'm also uncomfortable with prevention if it means what it has meant for children with Down syndrome. I'm a little uncomfortable with prevention and cure both, as a matter of fact. See: Harvey

Tracy W on 21st century skills

Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology

As opposed to Shakespeare, who got by just fine by eating his pen and drinking his ink.

• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally

Ah yes, collaboration. Never noted before, except in all the examples of trading across cultures, or working together in hunter-gatherer tribes. The Allies in WWII acheived their success by fighting with each other all the time.

• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes

Sir Issac Newton's work on calculus is being used by global communities to meet a variety of purposes.

• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information

This is a skill necessary for that 20th century skill of flying a plane. Or the 19th century one of driving a car.

• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts

Why do we all need to do this? And what's the difference between critiquing, analysing or evaluating a text?

I also note that science textbooks have often been multimedia dating back before the 19th century (in less fancy language, they include pictures).

• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

Because ethics only started to matter in the 21st century. Never mind all the debates amongst the Ancient Greeks about the good life.

On the whole I think the complexity of the literate environment we handle nowadays has reduced, because of better design of books and newspapers, cheaper printing allowing for more use of white space, typing standardising writing far more than handwriting is standardised, the rise of English as a second language not merely in Europe but in distant places like Asia and countries that were never colonised by the British, and other factors. Also, practice in solving problems cross-culturally has been making this easier - not perfect, but easier. Every case of successful cross-cultural trading makes the next step easier.


21st century skills are visual, not verbal

In my district, the visual is dominant. For the new "environmental stewardship" item on our Strategic Plan, kids were invited to --- wait for it! --- make posters.

For Honors English, students have the option of making posters.

For the new, improved, much more serious, advocated-by-the-PTSA ELA reading plan, the AP photography class is going to take pictures of teachers reading books and hang them in the hallways of the high school.

When you've reached the point where the first response to a request by the PTSA that students be assigned many more good books to read is to make posters of teachers reading books, you've missed the point.

As of this week, I think this is happening because students can't read. Schools are still using whole language repackaged as balanced literacy (whole language with phonics sprinkled in), and very large numbers of students don't read particularly well. A couple of days ago, I came across a personal account written by an attorney who couldn't read as a child -- and who, when he reached 8th grade, I believe -- had a social studies teacher who taught using lots of charts and graphs, which was unusual at the time. Suddenly, he could understand what was going on in class, his confidence rose, and he (somehow) prevailed.^**He was extremely grateful to this man, whom he saw as the special teacher who saved him.

It struck me that, when their students fare better with visuals than they do with print, teachers would be positively reinforced for emphasizing charts, graphs, and images over text. If this were the case (assuming bright, barely reading students really do fare better with charts & graphs), over time teachers would gradually shift towards the visual without being aware of having done so. Slow changes for the worse go unnoticed.

Temple (Grandin) calls this phenomenon: the bad gets normal.


^* Environmental stewardship falls under character education, in case you're wondering, along with "global awareness."
^** I've lost the link - sorry. I found it via Wrightslaw.


visual learning

foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables

you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore

recent comments redux

I've tried various different "Recent Comments" widgets & all of them display the same year-old comments.

Any ideas?

And: how do I report this to Blogger? (I'm sure I can track it down, but I'd rather not spend time doing it if someone knows where to go.)

Thanks --

"about kitchen table math"

What text should we have under "about kitchen table math"?

We need "parents & teachers" for sure, though I believe we've got some non-parent members & a policy type or two....

I want to get writing & reading some place on the front, since we now have lots of folks posting on those subjects.

And we definitely need something about policy & politics. I didn't particularly want to use the word "reform" since I no longer believe that public schools can be reformed in the aggregate. (Some public schools will improve dramatically; some public schools are good now. But can the system be fixed? I've come to believe the answer is 'no.')

Thanks!

Terence Tao

has a blog

here he is on multiple choice tests in math classes

what is rent-seeking, exactly?

Five years ago I started teaching myself economics, using an older edition of The Economic Way of Thinking by Paul Heyne.

[pause]

I suppose it will come as no surprise to anyone who's read Kitchen Table Math for a while to learn that I can no longer put my hands on my copy of the book.

sigh

Anyway, I started teaching myself economics, then had to drop that and start teaching myself math so I could reteach C.

Thus I've been reading the term "rent," "rents," and "rent-seeking" for years now, with only a vague idea of what it means.

So I would like to know, at long last, what it actually means, as opposed to what it vaguely means based in context.

Speaking of rents, or what I take to be rents, folks here have raised the possibility that our schools could receive money to build athletic fields from President Obama's stimulus package.

That doesn't sound too likely to me. I figure the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has got to be way ahead of us in line.

more stuff to do with pop bottles

DIY pop bottle tripods

(and don't forget: sub-irrigation planters)



stabilizing your camera without buying a tripod
sub-irrigation explained at Inside Urban Green
watering in the zone
Christmas and Chanukah presents

Mathematician weighs in on Investigations

In a December 19, 2008 letter to the editor of the Frederick News Post, Steve Wilson, a math professor from Johns Hopkins University, issues a warning "not to the newspaper or to the board or the teachers, but to the parents. If your child goes to a school that uses TERC Investigations, you should understand that it means your child's school has abdicated its responsibility to teach your child mathematics. By doing so, the responsibility now rests with the parents. Good luck."

Such a letter has long been overdue. Hats off to Dr. Wilson.

Update: Independent of his letter to Frederick News Post, Dr. Wilson has been invited to be on a panel with other mathematicians and scientists to talk at Sidwell Friends School in mid January. The topic is on the mathematical skills, background and preparation necessary for success in mathematics and related mathematics fields in college. For those who don't know, Sidwell uses Investigations as well as Everyday Math. Most everyone knows, I think, that the Obama kids will attend Sidwell. And if you haven't seen it, I wrote about this here. And yes, Dr. Wilson intends to talk about Investigations during the panel discussion. Wish I could go but I think it's open only to parents of students who attend Sidwell.

justice & revenge at Costco

Ed and C. were just at Costco, which was jam-packed in anticipation of the snowstorm. Snow began to fall while they were there, and everyone decided to get out at the same time, producing an enormous traffic jam in the basement of the parking structure, where a one-lane ramp is the only way up and out. Four lines of cars were trying to merge onto the one lane of the ramp, and everyone was honking. Which did nothing to speed things along. Ed said it was like trying to get out of Yankee Stadium at the end of a game. In the snow, with honking.

One joker jumped the queue, driving outside the lanes of cars to the front of the line, where he started nosing his way in. The drivers up front, who had just spent 45 minutes waiting (and honking) to get to the ramp, were determined to keep him out; people were so ticked-off at the guy that they were rolling down their windows and yelling at him. But he was driving an old, beat-up car and he finally pushed his way in, probably because someone driving a new, non-beat-up car didn't have the sense of conviction it takes to play chicken in the basement of the Costco parking structure.^*

So now he's made it into the front part of the line -- and he won't let anyone else in. The entire huge humungous mass of cars has been lined up and merging and honking for almost an hour, and THIS ONE GUY not only cuts the line but, once he's cut the line, proceeds to violate the norm that says when you finally reach the front of the line you take turns getting onto the ramp.

Ed said people were beside themselves, yelling and gesturing and honking and just basically collectively losing their minds. But of course there was nothing they could do about it; he was where he was, at the front of the line, and he could do what he wanted to do.

Suddenly the woman in front of the guy rolled down her window, leaned out, and snapped a picture of the guy's license plate.

He went nuts! Rolled down his window, started screaming and yelling at her. He was freaking out, Ed said.

The woman rolled her down her window, leaned out, and took his picture again.


^* I have it! I relish playing chicken with line-jumpers. In my car or out of my car. I speak as a person who attended World Fairs at an early age.

Recent Comments?

Any idea what has happened to "Recent Comments"?

For some reason "Recent" suddenly means "Not Recent At All."

At least it does when I bring up the blog.

more on the US News rankings: top 1942 high schools

The new rankings aren't just about the top 200 high schools, according to Standard and Poor's. The entire list is a pick of the top 1942 schools out of 21,069 evaluated:

100 gold
504 silver
1321 bronze
17 honorable mention
1942 total

We analyzed 21,069 public high schools in 48 states using data from the 2006-2007 school year. This is the total number of public high schools in each state that had grade-12 enrollment and sufficient data to analyze primarily for the 2006-2007 school year. A three-step process determined the best high schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all their students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.

The first step determined whether each school's students were performing better than statistically expected for the average student in the state. We started by looking at reading and math results for all students on each state's high school test. We then factored in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students (who tend to score lower) enrolled at the school to find which schools were performing better than their statistical expectations.

For those schools that made it past this first step, the second step determined whether the school's least-advantaged students (black, Hispanic, and low income) were performing better than average for similar students in the state. We compared each school's math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students with the statewide results for these disadvantaged student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than this state average.

Schools that made it through the first two steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step, college-readiness performance, using Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success. (AP is a College Board program that offers college-level courses at high schools across the country.) This third step measured which schools produced the best college-level achievement for the highest percentages of their students. This was done by computing a "college readiness index" based on the weighted average of the AP and/or IB participation rate (the number of 12th-grade students who took at least one AP and/or IB test before or during their senior year, divided by the number of 12th graders) along with how well the students did on those tests. The latter part, called quality-adjusted AP and/or IB participation, is the number of 12th-grade students who took and passed (received an AP score of 3 or higher or an IB score of 4 or higher) at least one of the tests before or during their senior year, divided by the number of 12th graders at that school. For the college readiness index, the quality-adjusted participation rate was weighted 75 percent in the calculation, and 25 percent of the weight was placed on the simple AP and/or IB participation rate. Only schools that had values greater than 20 in their college readiness index scored high enough to meet this criterion for gold and silver medal selection. The minimum of 20 was used because it represents what it would take to have a "critical mass" of students gaining access to college-level coursework.

Top 100
Methodology
NY schools (110 altogether)
Westchester County

Bloomington High School
US New Ranking (ktm post)

the sky is falling

The vote on the Fields bond took place yesterday.

Ed was in DC all day, and when he got to the school to vote, close to poll-closing time at 9, the place was mobbed. There were men in business suits, just off the train, lined up waiting to vote.

He ran into another dad we're very fond of but don't see often, who said that 20% of his firm had been laid off. He expects they'll hit 50% before this is over.

When the results came in, I was horrified. At this point, I am a 'no' vote on budgets and bonds until residents have a voice in our schools, but this.... I've never seen anything like it. I've never imagined anything like it. This is a town that has faithfully passed every budget since we've been here, more than doubling its taxes in 10 years' time. $25K per pupil spending.

And suddenly we have fathers who work all hours of the day and night making it a point to get home in time to vote 'no.'

This morning, though, I saw things less catastrophically. The defeat of the first bond two years ago was a watershed moment, and last night's 'no' has been coming for a time.

The truth is, though, that I can't tell what the vote says about how bad things are, or how much worse things are going to get.

Is your child a word guesser?

Many of us know that poor reading instruction is often disguised as “balanced literacy” (revisit When Phonics Isn't). Schools like to sell it to parents this way because it sounds safe and well, it's balanced. How bad can it be? Throw in a little phonics and it's all good, right? The balance thing appeals to that nagging danger-of-extremes fear. On some level, balanced literacy sounds reasonable.

When parent-teacher conferences are limited to fifteen minutes a couple of times a year and the school is not open to allowing you watch the teacher teach or bring home the reading materials for careful review, how do you recognize the signs of poor reading instruction? How can you tell whether your child is being or has been taught to read the whole-word way?

Jessie Wise of The Well Trained Mind suggests paying attention to how children read.

Children who read by the whole-word method often did not learn to move their eyes from left to right through words and sentences. If you notice that your child’s eyes are wandering all over the page when he is reading, he is searching for clues to guess words.

So, your child's a word guesser. What can you do about it?

The only cure for word guessing is to go back to phonics.

What can you do to break the guessing habit?

If your child persists in this habit, you may have to sit across from him at a small table where you can see his eyes. This will allow you to move your pencil or finger above the line of print, so you will not get in the way of the child’s vision. You may also want to cut a window out of heavy paper that will reveal only one line at a time. Then, have the child run his finger under each word from left to right, sounding out each word as he comes to it. If a common word is too irregular to be easily sounded out, (such as come or said) tell him that word so that the sentence makes sense.

When the child gets to the end of a line, watch his eyes and make sure they move quickly back to the left, looking for the beginning of the next line rather than searching for “words I know.” Some children may even move their eyes down to the end of the next line. Both of these are common errors used by children who have been taught whole-language techniques. Have the child read out loud to you as long as necessary to make sure he gets into the habit of moving from one line to another.

“It is a tragedy that many school-based reading programs actually encourage guessing as a learning-to-read strategy,” say Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading. You might be surprised to find that your child's school uses a reading program that does precisely that.

You may not even realize there's a problem until your reader hits second, third or fourth grade when books have less pictures and the vocabulary becomes more complex and difficult to guess. The sooner you work to break the guessing habit and teach your child to depend upon a well-stocked phonics toolbox instead, the better for your child.

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading
Jessie Wise and Sarah Buffington

JessieWise
Well-Trained Mind

Gladwell on Selecting Successful Teachers

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2008/12/teachers-and-quarterbacks.html

Teachers and Quarterbacks

My latest New Yorker piece, "Most Likely to Succeed" is now up.

A couple of additional thoughts.

In some of the responses to the piece, I've seen some resistance to the idea that choosing NFL quarterbacks and choosing public school teachers represent the same category of problem. There are only a small number of NFL quarterbacks, and we are selecting candidates from a tiny pool of highly elite athletes. By contrast, we need a vast number of public school teachers and we're recruiting from an enormous non-elite pool to fill that need. So, the response has gone, it's apples and oranges.

Precisely! But of course non-symetrical comparisons are far more interesting and thought-provoking than symetrical comparisons. If I wrote a piece about how finding good point guards in the NBA was a lot like finding good quarterbacks in the NFL, the comparison would be exact. And as a result, it would be relatively useless. What new light does the addition of a second, identical example shed on the first?

Link to the New Yorker piece: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell

teach your babies to spell, part 2: spelling a word helps you learn its meaning

Teaching children how to spell new vocabulary words helps them learn the meaning of the word:

In summary, the results of both experiments yield several important findings. Elementary school students learned and remembered the pronunciations and meanings of new vocabulary words better when they were exposed to written forms of the words during study periods than when they only heard and repeated the words.

note: Fluenz is based on this principle. Using Fluenz, you never hear a word without also seeing -- and practicing -- how to spell and type it.


good readers versus poor readers

Higher level readers outperformed lower level readers, and the advantage provided by seeing written words over not seeing written words was much greater among higher readers than among lower readers.

Bear this in mind: strong readers learn from print.

The present findings show the importance of students’ acquisition of strong orthographic knowledge to benefit vocabulary learning. Fifth graders with better orthographic knowledge outperformed those with weaker knowledge on the training measures as well as on the posttests. Most impressive were the increasingly large gains over trials that higher level readers made when the pronunciations of words were learned with spellings compared to the gains made with no spellings and compared to the gains made by lower level readers (see Figure 2). The fact that higher level readers showed a much steeper slope in learning the pronunciations of words with spelling aids than lower level readers suggests a Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986), with the rich getting richer in expressive vocabulary during the course of learning as a result of superior orthographic knowledge.

If you are lucky enough to have a child who is a strong reader, this may be a problem because attention to the written word appears to be ebbing in public schools. Here in my own district, $25K per pupil funding, posters reign supreme. Posters in Spanish, posters in math, posters in Honors English at the high school. So many posters! The "kick-off" for the new Strategic Plan, which includes environmental stewardship as a character ed goal, is -- you guessed it -- a call for posters. About the environment.

So few books are assigned that the PTSA has filed an official proposal with the administration and school board asking that district schools require students to read good books and plenty of them. The administration responded at once with a plan to have the AP Photography class take staged photographs of teachers reading books, which will be posted throughout the halls of the high school. Some photos will be "authentic," meaning teachers will be captured reading books they are actually reading in real life; others will have a humorous slant, which apparently means they'll be reading books they aren't reading in real life. (Shakespeare? The Bible? The telephone directory?)

Parents are going to have to put together their own afterschool reading programs, I fear.


the NCTM on 21st century literacy

In the 1990s, the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association established national standards for English language arts learners that anticipated the more sophisticated literacy skills and abilities required for full participation in a global, 21st century community. The selected standards, listed in the appendix, served as a clarion call for changes underway today in literacy education.

Today, the NCTE definition of 21st century literacies makes it clear that further evolution of curriculum, assessment, and teaching practice itself is necessary.

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

The Definition of 21st Century Literacies

These are the people calling the shots.


a comment from a reviewer of Rosenthal's & Ehri's study:

The research conducted in this study makes a significant contribution to reading theory and practice in that it ties together the orthographic/phonological system with the meaning system in ways not previously thought. The researchers show quite clearly that students who see the spellings of words actually learn the meanings of the words more easily. This is quite a remarkable finding. I know of no research on vocabulary learning or vocabulary instruction that rests on such a claim. The emphasis in the vocabulary literature is on learning the meanings of words, not on the value of seeing the words and tying together knowledge from the different systems. Because of this connection, the research makes a significant contribution to reading theory and also has specific and practical application to everyday practice in a way that few research studies do.

The Mnemonic Value of Orthography for Vocabulary Learning
Julie Rosenthal and Linnea C. Ehri
Journal of Educational Psychology
2008, Vol. 100, No. 1, 175–191

Mary Damer on masked deficits & poor spelling in high-performing students

At least 30 - 40% of readers who have learned to read with balanced literacy or whole language will learn the code for themselves through natural reading and a bit of haphazard phonics thrown in, but that doesn't always mean that those students will necessarily be fluent readers. I've been having discussions with young campaign workers in their mid to late 20's, almost all of whom have gone through whole language/balanced literacy. These days I don't mince words anymore and am blunt: "Your generation was screwed." They readily agree. One English professor at OSU told me that she no longer can teach Dickens because the sentences are too long (i.e. readability level too high). If any group of college students were immersed in whole language, it's in Ohio where sight word reading is still the predominant method of instruction and often taught as the "literacy collaborative."

The 20-year olds want to talk about their reading experiences, and those who struggled always start by saying, "I'm not stupid, but........." Basically they fall into four camps.

1. The "I can learn to read naturally" readers (among the lucky 30 - 40% of all students) who broke the code for themselves or had parents who as they read to them did some sounding out as they went along: These adults don't understand what the big deal about reading instruction is because it was so easy to learn to read (unfortunately, this is the group of people that I suspect usually become general education literacy professors.) Because these individuals had no systematic phonics, some of them never learned the more difficult phonetic spelling letter-sound associations and have had to rely on memory for spelling rather than automatically writing an e when a word has that sound as a regular spelling pattern. As an adult, having to rely on visual memory of words leads to poor spelling. Thus for a portion of these folks, their poor spelling as adults reflects the lack of adequate phonemic awareness and phonics instruction.

2. The "I can learn to read naturally" readers (among the lucky 30 - 40% of all students) who broke the code enough to be successful until they hit law school or medical school where the words were so "big." The kids I talk to made it through school often with high grades, but it was painful and remains so. They talk about having to use rulers under the sentences and sounding out loud. When I remark that reading so slowly must make it difficult to comprehend the text, they look at me as if I’m a sage. How did I know that? Everything takes twice as long for them. These were the WL/balanced literacy kids who needed the fluency and advanced word reading (advanced phonics skills) practice when they were younger.

3. Another group of readers we can refer to as the "minimal strugglers" (approx. 30 - 50% of all students) will start to struggle by the middle of first grade in reading if they do not have systematic phonics that is well taught, but their parents of means get them early phonics tutoring. Because of the tutoring, they eventually read at grade level. It's interesting that these individuals still feel like failures in reading because they had to have this additional help. We can't forget that the trauma of failure starts young. In high poverty areas, group 2 can be as large as 50% of the school population and unfortunately, those children usually don't get the outside phonics tutoring and so do not develop grade level reading skills. If they haven't had outside phonics tutoring, these readers will look more like the following group by grade 4 when their test scores start to plummet.

4. For a final 20 - 30% of readers, learning to read is the most difficult task they will ever have and only well-taught systematic and explicit phonics in the early grades (usually until the student reaches 3rd grade level reading) will get them past a fourth grade reading level as adults. These readers who are always reading way below grade level by fourth grade if they received WL or balanced literacy reading instruction didn't make it as far as the kids I was talking to. They are already filling up the prisons in disproportionate amounts; they are working menial jobs; the brightest are entrepreneurs where they can hide their lack of reading. Out of this group, only 5 - 10% have true dyslexia. The rest have dysteachia.

Thus when you give that nonsense word test to whole language readers, those in the first group and some in the second will be able to meet the test benchmarks although there will usually be some errors for a few letter-sound combinations. Group 3 may do fine with the easier nonsense words and then start to slow down and make more errors as the multi-syllable ones are introduced. Depending on age, group 4 will struggle from the first nonsense word.

Mary Damer

Mary's books:
Reading Instruction for Students Who Are At Risk or Have Disabilities
Managing Unmanageable Children: Practical Solutions for Administrators (coauthor: Elaine McEwan)

Why Johnny Doesn't Like to Read by Elizabeth Brown
Who Needs Phonics?

reading tests explained - Wrightslaw
free reading tests & instructions - Hepplewhite (scroll down)
DIBELS explanation of nonsense word fluency (all DIBELS tests are free)
On Phonics (The Phonics Page)
Phonics Page reading tests (including a test for high school reading)
Don Potter's Education Page (very rich; contains programs long out of print; phonics, reading, lessons, articles, etc.)
Computer Assisted Learning

Christmas & Chanukah presents

Wet Pots from Plow and Hearth


I love these things! I've been trying to keep house plants for years, with numerous plant casualties to show for it. Now, thanks to Wet Pots, I have three healthy, thriving plants in the near-dead of winter.

[pause]

Hmm.

Just checked my asparagus fern, which emerged from three years of suspended animation as soon as it moved to a Wet Pot, and it's not looking quite as perky as it was last week. Will keep an eye on the situation.

The Wet Pots are less expensive versions of the Eva Solo "sub-irrigation" pot I've been lusting after for some time now.

I wonder whether the Eva Solo pot might work better seeing as how the ceramic pot isn't fully submerged in water. The potting mix in the Wet Pots always feels wet to the touch.

Is that bad?



The one problem with the Wet Pots is that they're awkward to keep filled if you don't have a watering can with a long, skinny spout. I used to have just such an item, but it's gone missing. So I use a mixing funnel from Clean Team when I refill the outer container.




I think I'm going to try a watering ball with the one fading plant we have that's too big for a Wet Pot. I assume it works on roughly the same principle as the Wet Pot & the Eva Solo.




from Plow and Hearth

The reason to possess - or create - one of these pots isn't primarily convenience, though they are quite convenient.

The reason to possess or create such a pot is that sub-irrigation planting is the way to go.


Inside Urban Green
Leafy Life
one, two, and three-liter pop bottle planters (photos & instructions)
making a self-watering [sub-irrigation] container (pdf file) - probably more complicated than need be
simple sub-irrigated planter
All Hail this Humble Container

Paul is back!

A while back we had a vertical meeting with math teachers from grades 4-8. The agenda was to familiarize ourselves with the standards for fractions outside of our own grade levels. The facilitators cut all the relevant standards into little strips, removing any identity as to the grade levels they came from. Our job was to put them back together again in the proper 3-8 sequence.

It couldn't be done except at a gross level. Each year, and within each year as well, there are nuances on the nuances on the nuances. It was a good exercise in cross polination. In hind sight it was also a dramatic demonstration of the ridiculous nature of those standards. If the teachers charged with delivering them can't see clear annual goals then how can the kids?

I have our cities math curriculum from 1958 (I was in middle school then) and it reads precisely like the A+ international standard in the link. Interestingly, it is riddled with demands for mastery at key milestones, something that is totally absent in our present day constructivist, spiral curriculum.

Funny how 50 years of 'research' has taught us how to do what we already forgot.

And here's Barry:

Also funny how the math of 50 years ago is said (by those pushing reform math) to have failed large numbers of students.

That is funny!

data driven loops and noise
data driven instruction redux

spaced repetition

Someone posted a link to Mnemosyne, an online experiment in efficient memorization, on the Direct Instruction listserv. Sounds exciting, but unfortunately I have don't have an Intel Mac.

Here's Mnemosyne on spaced repetition:

Spaced repetition

When you have memorised something, you need to review that material, otherwise you will forget it. However, as you probably know from experience, it is much more effective to space out these revisions over the course over several days, rather than cramming all the revisions in a single session. This is what is called the spacing effect.

During the past 120 years, there has been considerable research into these aspects of human memory (by e.g. Ebbinghaus, Mace, Leitner and Wozniak). Based on the work of these people, it was shown that in order to get the best results, the intervals between revisions of the same card should gradually increase. This allows you to focus on things you still haven't mastered, while not wasting time on cards you remember very well.

It is clear that a computer program can be very valuable in assisting you in this process, by keeping track of how difficult you find an card and by doing the scheduling of the revisions. Let's see how this works in practice in the Mnemosyne program.

I still haven't gotten around to trying Wozniak's SuperMemo -- which I need to do for math and for Spanish.

This year's self-improvement projects, fyi:

• Dolciani Algebra and Trigonetry Structure and Method Book 2 ISBN: 0-395-07725-8 (I'm tracking C's class at Hogwarts)
  
• Fluenz Spanish (love it! This educational telepresence idea may have promise -- )

Last school year I worked through all but the last 10 lessons of Saxon Math Algebra 2 3rd edition. Am now relearning the same material in Dolciani & it's great.

I'm thinking that if you're going to teach yourself math, two textbooks are better than one.

Am also limping along through GrammarTrainer with Andrew. I say "limping" because I'm not remotely keeping to a schedule. The program is fantastic. I strongly recommend it.

In case you need help with the transition to digital cable.

Wuh-wuh-wuh why we have computer class.

uh-oh, part 3

I should not be looking at stuff like this.

Diane Ravitch on coherent curriculum in MN

from Flypaper:

I would point out that Minnesota showed dramatic gains on TIMMS not because of “new, more rigorous standards,” but because of that state’s decision to implement a coherent grade-by-grade curriculum in mathematics. William Schmidt took the lead in developing that curriculum (pdf file) and deserves to bask in glory for what he has done for the children of Minnesota. That is the most important lesson of 2007 TIMSS for the United States.

I'd love to hear more about this.

TIMSS Results

TIMSS has been released.
View a quick chart here: Average mathematics scores of fourth- and eighth-grade students, by country: 2007

Singapore moves to #2 at fourth grade and #3 at eighth grade in Mathematics. The U. S. improves. (Hello reform math?)

Singapore stays #1 for Science.

When looking at the trends in average mathematics scores of fourth grade students from 1995 to 2007, the U.S. score increases by 11 and Singapore by 9 . At the eighth grade, the U.S. improves by 16 and Singapore drops by 16.

Big jump by England too!

More analysis later.

US News Best High Schools 2008

Top 100

state by state statistics

states (find your school here) & best high school search page

New York & New York search

methodology

A three-step process determined the best high schools. The first two steps ensured that the schools serve all their students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. For those schools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work.

Note: college-level work.

Not 21st century skills.


Westchester County:

Blind Brook High School - Gold #87 of 100
Rye Brook, NY

Bronxville High School - Honorable Mention
Bronxville, NY

Byram Hills High School - Silver
Armonk, NY

Edgemont Junior-Senior High School - Gold #51 of 100
Scarsdale, NY

Hastings High School - Honorable Mention
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY

Horace Greeley High School - Gold #46 of 100
Chappaqua, NY

Rye High School - Honorable Mention
Rye, NY

Saunders Trade & Technical High School - Bronze
Yonkers, NY

Scarsdale Senior High School - Gold #92
Scarsdale, NY

Yonkers High School - Gold #37 of 100
Yonkers, NY

update to Bloomington High

here

TIMSS Results Tomorrow

2007 TIMSS results will be released tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if Singapore students remain at the top. In 2004, Singapore implemented the "Teach Less, Learn More" initiative. From the MOE website:

"TLLM would mean less dependence on rote learning, repetitive tests and a ‘one size fits all’ type of instruction, and more on experiential discovery, engaged learning, differentiated teaching, the learning of life-long skills, and the building of character through innovative and effective teaching approaches and strategies."

Sounds a lot like some American mathematics programs.

The Singapore based materials used in the United States haven't been used in Singapore since 2001 and this will be the first TIMSS to truly gauge the effectiveness of the newer materials.

My guess is that Singapore will continue to be a mathematical powerhouse. There is so much more behind their success than bar model drawing and books.

Houghton Mifflin's Great Source division may be very eager for these results. They have creatied an Americanized version of the materials currently in use in Singapore that is expected to be available next fall. Tomorrow's results may impact the perception of their program.

Take a TIMSS test!

Bad Is Stronger Than Good

The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.

Bad Is Stronger Than Good Roy F. Baumeister and Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finknauer, Kathleen D. Vohs. Review of General Psychology 2001, Vol. 5 No 4, 323-70.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that only one book has been written on the subject of positive reinforcement.

Singapore Assessments

Comments from Paul B. pulled from a post on Obama's possible education secretary choices:
Paul B said...

The Singapore assessments are very very good in a lot of ways.

First, they ask really 'clean' questions. When a student gets it wrong you know precisely what their misconception is. I don't have to guess at two or three possibilities...

Second, they have a way of probing very efficiently to a deep level...

Third, they seem to use the absolute minimum of language and never waste time showing off the tester's literary acumen...

Fourth, they don't waste time with milktoast problem sets...

Lastly, they are very comprehensive and synchronous with the natural hierarchy of mathematical concepts...

And oh yeh, as long as I attribute the test it is free, wonderfully formatted, and readily accessible at their website.

December 6, 2008 4:41 PM
Paul B said...

One more thing I forgot to mention...

I used 4A thinking, incorrectly, that this would give me a normal distribution (based on what I thought I knew about their abilities). I was floored by the skew. I think some of it was due to their tendency to give up in the face of minimal challenge, yet even this tells me something.

Paul's comments bring up some challenges we're seeing with some of the Singapore Math materials available in the U.S.

The following information on assessment on Singapore testing comes from Teaching Primary School Mathematics: A Resource Book edited by Lee Peng Yee (ISBN: 978-007-125855-5) and is considered typical of what test scores mean in Singapore schools. I verified this also with my contacts at the National Institute for Education. I'm awaiting confirmation from the publisher if the Primary Math Standards Edition Tests books are written to this marking scheme.

Primary Grades 1 - 4
Mark Range followed by a brief description of capability.

85 % to 100% - The pupil is able to solve unfamiliar problems.

70 % to 84% - The pupil is able to solve problems but has some difficulty with unfamiliar ones.

50 % to 69% - The pupil can complete basic computations and routine tasks.

Below 50% - The pupil cannot complete basic computations and routine tasks to a satisfactory level.


Primary Grades 5 to 6 - regular track
Mark Range followed by a brief description of capability.

97 % to 100% - The pupil is able to solve unfamiliar problems including unguided ones.

75% to 90% - The pupil is able to solve unfamiliar problems including some unfamiliar ones with some guidance.

60% to 74% - The pupil is able to solve familiar problems.

50% to 59% - The pupil is able to solve some basic familiar problems.

36% to 49% - The pupil is able to do basic computation and routine tasks.

20% to 34% - The pupil is able to do basic computation and routine tasks at a lower primary level.

Below 20% - The pupil is not able to do even basic computations and routine tasks to a lower primary level.

The chapter on writing assessments from the book also includes information on what an effective assessment item should look like, how to write a table of specifications and planning unit tests. Teachers are taught how do write assessments in Singapore and rarely rely on publishers' provided ones.

I had a semester class at NAU as well on writing effective assessments. I think the big difference is that I rarely, if ever, had time in my school day to sit down and write my own unit tests with a TOS, so I just used the ones in the Singapore books.

FYI - The Teaching Secondary School Mathematics: A Resource Book is good also!

Singapore Math Placement Tests

New Rochelle Schools Censor "Girl, Interrupted" by Tearing Out Pages

Susanna Kaysen's harrowing memoir, Girl, Interrupted, may have inspired Angelina Jolie to deliver an Academy Award-Winning performance in the film adaptation staring Winona Ryder but all the book inspired in New Rochelle, NY was an act of book mutilation intended as censorship.

After an as-yet-to-be-identified person complained, school officials took books from students, ripped pages deemed "inappropriate" out of the book and then returned them to befuddled students.  School officials declined repeated requests for comment on the incident.

The National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression have condemned the school's actions.

The pages removed from the book (pages 64-70) contain a scene where the rebellious Lisa (played by Angela Jolie in the movie) encourages Susanna (played by Winona Ryder) to break up with her boyfriend and circumvent hospital rules against sexual intercourse by engaging in oral sex with a fellow patient at a Massachusetts mental hospital where the story is set.

Read the whole disgraceful story here.

UPDATE:

Facing Firestorm of Criticism, New Rochelle Schools Relent on "Girl, Interrupted" Censorship

Another victory for free speech, still no explanation of the district's book challenge policy or who exactly challenged the book.

a high school we know and love

Congratulations Bloomington High School!

Goldin and Katz have this to say of the schools of the Midwest in The Race between Education and Technology:

From 1910 to 1940 secondary schools mushroomed all over the nation and youths began to go to high school in ever-increasing numbers fo learn skills for life, not necessarily just for college. Certain parts of the nation experienced the high school movement earlier than others and were educational leaders. The state in the West North Central portion of the United States were among the leaders and one of them--Iowa--figures prominently in our analysis.
p. 72

and:

[T]here has been remarkable persistence in the leading and lagging states from the end of the high school movement until today...The persistence of educational excellence is demonstrated by graphing the high school graduation rate by state in 1938 against n index of educational performance by state in the 1990s, where the index incorporates high school graduation rates and various achievement test scores. The raw correlation of the two variables by state for 1938 and the 1990s is 0.72.
p. 343

Path dependency. The Midwest started out ahead and they're still ahead today.

Unlike the country's education system as a whole, which started out miles ahead of the rest of the world and has now fallen behind.


update 12.8.2008

from a parent whose kids have attended Bloomington High School (& long-time ktm commenter & member):

I haven't had a chance to review the report at length, but my preliminary read is that it seems to mean that our district has taken to heart the challenge/mandate to leave no child behind. Thirty percent of our district's student population is African American or Hispanic; forty percent qualify as disadvantaged. What I think the bronze medal status means is that our district is making strides in educating "harder to educate" populations. The data comports with what my own sense of what has been happening in our district in recent years.

I have not seen a corresponding decrease in the quality of education for students at the higher end of the spectrum. This is not to suggest that all is perfect (far from it); but good news is always welcome, and this recognition was most definitely good news.

Here is a link to the full report

Our high school hosted a speech tournament yesterday, and we took a turn at concessions (which is our speech team's primary fundraiser). There was a positive buzz about the ranking amongst the parents who were volunteering.

Congratulations, Bloomington High.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been

Jingle Bells in Latin

Jingle Bells in Latin

Nantes per nives
in apertā traheā
trans agros imus
omnes ridentes. (ha! ha! ha!)

Tintini tintinnant.
Animose sic
Lætissimi nos canimus
Canticum hac nocte.

(O!) tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus!
O tantum est gaudium dum vehimus in trahā!
Tinnitus, tinnitus, semper tinnitus!
O tantum est gaudium dum vehimus in trahā!


C.'s Latin class is going to go caroling through the halls of Hogwarts. In Latin.

(Sorry to be missing in action - lots going on here. For the next post).

MO Math Happenings...

A desperate and courageous mom in Camdenton, MO describes to other parents how to get involved in solving their math crisis - and is accused of civil disobedience. Say what?!?

She references a great post, by Oak Norton, entitled
"Educating All Parents To Ensure The Future Of Our Republic"

in case you want to weigh in

Who Will Be Obama's Next Education Secretary?

Then, once you're finished with the Washington Wire, over yonder we have the Wall Street Journal's "CEO Council" advising Barack Obama on the schools. Forty years of reform and it hasn't worked: what is to be done?

Apparently, what is to be done is more of what has been done already. Two of the three bsd's interviewed by the Journal agree that paying "the best teachers incredibly higher salaries — $40,000 to $50,000 more than they currently can make for the very best teachers" will be just the ticket. None of these fellows has checked out the goings-on in school districts where teachers are being paid $40,000 to $50,000 more than they would make elsewhere now, but never mind. Incredible pay for teachers without incredible curricula to teach (curriculum doesn't figure in their thinking) -- sure. Why not?

The third interviewee thinks we should pay teachers incredibly high salaries and train them to "support the development of students" & "help children grow." Music to a parent's ears! Another two, three decades of developmentally appropriate practice and differentiated instruction and those SAT scores are gonna spike.

Speaking of parents, I'm now convinced that in the past one hundred years of education history, parents have so consistently been right, and educationists have so consistently been wrong, that if you really want to know how to fix the schools you should interview 3 people who actually have kids in the schools, or did have.

Reading Rudolf Flesch will do that to you.

Godel, Esher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid

I believe that music is related to math. I also believe that the decline in Latin, real math teaching, and music are related.

According to this article,

"In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding." [Ed: and their math study!]

I have a webpage about how I believe we learn through patterns, and how "Mathematics, language, music, art, and many other facets of our universe are best understood through their orderly patterns."

High School Quest Continues

Just a quick recap. The local school district is moving 9th grade to the high schools next year. Local schools are hosting "parent information" nights this month. My sons attend a very highly rated charter school in town that has a 9th grade and is investigating an extension to the charter to include high school. Here's a report on visit #2 on our HS odyssey. (Visit #1 is here.)


What a difference attitude makes. A week or so ago, husband, 8th grade son and I attended a parent night at another high school in Fort Collins. This principal and his team of 5 counselors spent almost 45 minutes on the academics at the school, then invited everyone to go on a tour hosted by senior year peer counselors.
We learned about:

• AP classes available to incoming freshman and sophomores,
  
• how many credits are required to graduate,
  
• how rigorous the curriculum is,
• how many AP tests taken resulted in scores of 4 or 5,
  
• how the school ranked in Newsweek's annual ratings (top 5%).
  

The principal was humorous, concerned, and confident. (And very tall!) He acknowledged that the school didn't have all the transition logistics completely worked out, but felt they were working towards a strong plan.


Now I realize that AP courses can be controversial (not necessarily rigorous, poor college prep, etc.); however, hearing a principal encourage every student to take at least one class in their school career is pretty powerful. I'm a parent and a teacher. I know the statistics of the general population. In the district, under 70% will continue their education after high school, 40% at a 4 year school.

The slide show consisted of 6 or 7 slides that covered the core courses required at 9th & 10th grades, important dates in the registration process and a "brag" slide about the school awards, rankings, athletics teams.


Clubs were mentioned. The school won 8 of 10 awards for having the most involved student body in the state. (They weren't eligible one year and after 7 consecutive wins, Wells Fargo quit giving out the award.) The principal even mentioned "Lambkin Pride". Yes, the mascot is a lamb. This school is sending counselors to the local jr. highs to discuss student options (as opposed to students) and they have one heck of a prep rally in April that 9th & 10th graders are given special t-shirts for and invited to attend.


I did find it interesting that one counselor who spoke told the audience of 400 that they didn't have time to meet with all incoming 2009-10 students and their parents individually, then the principal promised 20 minutes to anyone who wanted to learn more about the school. (It would help if you came in groups, he quipped.)


When the principal was done, we headed out to find a peer counselor. On our tour around the campus (1/4 mile from gym to theater) we learned that there are 3 main wings, grouped by subject, and each has a computer lab for teachers to use. Not everyone gets a locker. Hardly anyone uses them. The school has sand volleyball pits outside the cafeteria. The main gym holds 2522 people, and so on. My son had no questions. (We were embarrassing him!) One other boy asked if he could wear his baseball hat in classes. (Yes, but some teachers make you remove them.)


We were the last group touring with our peer counselor, Ryan, and he volunteered that he had been a graduate of the same charter jr. high that my son currently attends. He really felt prepared when he came to this school and has whizzed through several AP courses.


I had to ask..."Did you take AP psychology?"
"Next semester, he answered, "It's supposed to be the easiest AP course you can take."


BTW- My son loved this school.