house

One of the questions in my mind this year, with C. attending Hogwarts, has been: why is the place so happy?

Somehow, the school motivates the kids to work hard and strive, and yet the winner-take-all burnout culture that often exists in high-performing public high schools doesn't exist there.

Why is that?

I don't know the answer, although I think it has to do with the fact that the kids develop a group identity the first day they arrive, when they attend a formal induction ceremony held in a nearby chapel.

In the ceremony a senior escorts each of the new boys up the center aisle of the sanctuary to the chancel, where a priest holding a mace blesses him and presents him with a freshman pin he is to wear on his jacket. Then he joins his mentor group standing off to the side.

I assume the mentor groups are related to the house system in British boarding schools:


the house system

Can competition and camaraderie coexist? They do in Highlands Latin School’s house system.

At first it may seem that competition and camaraderie are at odds, and sometimes they probably are. But in Highlands Latin School’s house system, they seem to go together quite well. A traditional fixture of many British schools, the “house” system has enabled Highlands to accomplish a number of goals that can be elusive for many schools.

The Origins of the “House” System

The house system is widely used in British schools and schools that model themselves after the British system in countries with past British colonial ties, such as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore. The system began in boarding schools, where students actually ate, drank, and slept in individual houses during school terms. The house system still operates this way in prestigious British boarding schools, such as Harrow, Eton, and Winchester College.

But, perhaps because of its obvious merits, the system is now used even in day schools, where the term ‘house’ refers simply to groupings of pupils, with no buildings involved. The houses are usually named after Christian saints or for famous persons historically connected with the school.

[snip]

At Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, the advantages of the house system have been manifold. The houses provide not only an increased sense of identity and belonging, they also provide students with a sense of tradition. Leadership opportunities also abound in the house system.

Highlands, which is an outgrowth of the work of Cheryl Lowe, founder of Memoria Press, has seen a marked change in the attitude of students as a result of the establishment of the houses. “Because of the competition and the identification of each student with a house,” says Martin Cothran, a Highlands instructor and a co-director of the school, “there are constant opportunities to cheer your fellow students on. The positive attitudes of students toward one another and toward the school have been quite amazing since we started our program.”

The sense of tradition is palpable too. The Highlands house system, which is only a year old, already has about it the sense of history.

[snip]

The feature of the houses most popular with students is the competitions. At Bingley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, England, houses compete on the basis of academics, attendance, and sports. Sports competition includes cross country, netball, rugby, and table tennis. At Highlands, students compete in academics, community service, and sports, including dodgeball, soccer, ultimate frisbee, kickball, and volleyball. They also compete in chess and Latin Scrabble.

Academic competition is based on GPA. Houses are given points on the basis of how house teams perform in academic quick recall competitions. Community service points might be given on the basis of which house turned out the most members to sing at a rest home.

House

If I were starting a charter school I'd want it to have a House system.


how to create a virtual culture
Anonymous on competition & "positive compulsions"

Anonymous on competition & "positive compulsions"

Competition used to be a regular part of school: posting the perfect scores on weekly spelling tests, who can get the most math problems done correctly in a given amount of time etc. Then someone decided that was bad, because if there are winners, there are losers. Of course, I'm sure that mainstreaming and heterogeneous grouping were heavily involved in that decision.

BTW, as the parent of several full-time elite athletes, I have observed that when kids get to a certain level they provide their own motivation; the coach's role is to help them increase their fitness, skills and tactics. I have frequently seen this in kids under 12; once instructed by the coach, the kids do significant conditioning and skills work outside of practices. However, athletes are given status and recognition not offered to outstanding students. Unfortunately.

I'm intrigued by this observation.

It relates to something I've been kicking around in my mind: how did I come to be a highly motivated student?

I often wonder whether I would have survived the constructivist schools we have now, and I tend to think the answer is 'no.'

I think the answer is 'no' because a constructivist project-based school wouldn't have given me the steady supply of positive reinforcement my traditional school did. I was a straight-A student & all assignments were what today we called "short timeline." I was positively reinforced so often that studying and all forms of school work became what Eric Hollander calls a "positive compulsion."

more anon


update 3:28 pm

[T]hey don't NECESSARILY have the motivation from the beginning; some do, some don't. If they don't have/acquire it, they don't last long at the elite level. If they don't work on their own, they drop in relation to the kids who do and they get cut from the team. That bothers some people, but not everyone has the same interests. There's a finite amount of time and kids have different priorities. Someone who drops from an elite team to a less-competitive one, so he can spend more time on band/orchestra (or anything else) is making a perfectly rational decision to spend most of his extracurricular time on the activity he likes most. I don't see that as a problem, although some do.

BTW, I have never seen a situation where parents were pushing the kid into a sport he didn't want to do, or to do on at a full-commitment level, that lasted more than short term. You can't make kids get up at 4:00 am two or three days a week for swim practice for very long. Or make a young soccer player work on skills for at least half an hour a day, even if there is practice.

When I taught for Johns Hopkins CTY, we were told that this kind of intrinsic motivation is the hallmark of gifted children. Parents don't force gifted children to practice for hours; the children want to do it.

incentivizing, charting & kids in differentiated instruction classrooms

re: Allison's post "How to Incentivize Them," I'm digging out from under & have just come across a study of coaches using self-charting to incentivize a swim team. The kids on the team were ages 16 to 19.

The present study was composed of two experiments aimed at solving the problems of competitive swimming coaches who described their team's attendance and work rates as poor and irregular. ...All behavioral applications were conducted in the on-going environment by the coaches themselves.

Attendance at training was poor and irregular. Apart from not attending, swimmers sometimes arrived late and left early and in some instances did not enter the water. ...The coaches had attempted to enforce rules of attendance and participation in training. These were implemented by simply stating the rule conditions. ...These attempts failed to improve swim-practice attendance.

The coaches were also concerned with the effect and amount of swimming being done in practices where traditional coaching methods were employed. For the most part, swimmers followed identical programs of work and were directed and encouraged in their efforts by the verbal commands of the coaches. Quite often, swimmers were subjected to arbitrary delays while they waited for further direction. These delays severely reduced the swimmers' work loads and gave them time to behave inappropriately by leaving the water, interfering with others, etc. These behaviors further reduced the productivity of the training session.

The traditional coaching procedures also seemed to reduce the effectiveness of the coaches. They were required to function as directors and supervisors who regulated the swimmers' pool usage. Attempts were made to control inappropriate behaviors. As a result, the coaches were forced to spend less time in more suitable roles, such as improving stroke techniques and attending to individual demands.

Self-administered reinforcing systems appear to possess behavior maintenance possibilities (Glynn, 1970; Malott, 1971). Self-recording techniques modified classroom studying and talking-out behaviors (Broden, Hall, and Mitts, 1971) and academic achievement (Glynn, 1970). In normal subject applications, self-reinforcement procedures have generally been shown to be as effective as experimenter-determined contingencies (Bandura and Perloff, 1967; Kanfer and Duerfeldt, 1967; Marston, 1967). Two studies appear to have direct bearing on the problems involved in this investigation. Hall, Christler, Cranston, and Tucker (1970) demonstrated that being on time for class contingent upon the posting of names on the classroom bulletin board effectively reduced the number of late arrivals in a required classroom situation to almost zero. Rushall and Pettinger (1969) reported that self-recording on "program boards" increased the work output of competitive swimmers in training as much as did deliberate coaching procedures aimed at inspiring greater productivity.

Santogrossi, O'Leary, Romanczyk, and Kaufman (1973) reported that self-evaluation procedures failed to reduce disruptive behaviors in adolescent boys from a psychiatric hospital school. They indicated that the supportive studies for the value of self-reinforcing contingencies generally have used normal subjects and have been conducted only over brief periods of time. Their investigation was undertaken over a longer period than the above referenced studies, and they cautioned about generalizing the evidenced short-term effects of self-reinforcement to longer-term situations. Since the present study attempted to provide permanent solutions to two behavior problems, this caution could be clarified by the evidenced outcomes.

[snip]

This study involved the use of publicly self-recording attendance to reduce attendance problems in a competitive swimming team.

[snip]

The members of the Shannon Heights Sharks competitive swimming team from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada served as subjects. The team, composed of 16 boys and 16 girls, whose ages ranged between 9 and 16 yr, practised eight times per week in a 25-yard pool.

[snip]

A large waterproof display board was constructed, on which each swimmer could indicate his/her cumulative attendance at practice. Spaces were also provided for the recording of each swimmer's present and best attendance records. Prominent spaces were reserved for the posting of the names of those who had the best records. During the experimental conditions, each swimmer indicated attendance at practice by entering a check-mark in the appropriate space. A swimmer who did not satisfy the conditions for attendance had his/her total accumulated checkmarks removed.

[snip]

The measurements were the number of absentees, number of late arrivals, and the number of swimmers leaving early. All interobserver reliabilities were 100%.

[snip]

Under attendance board conditions, the number of absentees was reduced by 45%,. Late arrivals were reduced by 63%, and early departures were completely suppressed. Post checks indicated that the attendance board remained effective in controlling the problems of attendance.

[snip]

DISCUSSION

The attendance board conditions were effective in the overall reduction of the problem behaviors associated with attending swimming training. The group as a whole was enthusiastic about the use of the boards. Many swimmers who had valid excuses for being absent attempted to arrange substitute practices on Sundays and early mornings. After 11 months of use, the record number of consecutive attendances was in excess of 130.

[snip]

The swimmers recorded their own attendance. Two senior squad members supervised the board and its use. Apart from the initial introduction of each experimental condition, the coaches were required to do little in the experiment. Occasionally, after practice they remarked on the progress of individuals. They were relieved of the bothersome task of checking attendance. The procedures demanded that the swimmer focus his/her attention on the task of self-recording. This served as a form of knowledge of progress as the number of consecutive attendances accumulated. The recording procedure was always undertaken with the team in close proximity. The possibility for vicarious reinforcement existed. The various performances of individuals drew a number of reactions from the gathered members. Peer and coach reactions were primarily positive approval and recognition. It was not possible to locate one single event as the reinforcer in this situation.

[snip]

EXPERIMENT II

This study involved the use of publicly self recording training-unit completion to increase work output in a competitive swimming team.

[snip]

A number of reactions to the program boards were gathered. Most of the swimmers in the club appeared to prefer the use of the program boards to the previous coach-directed form of control. One girl, however, stated: "I don't like them. They make me work too hard." A striking incident demonstrated another girl's preference for using the boards. During the reversal procedure, when the board had been removed from her pool lane, she demanded to swim where there was one. When this request was refused, she left practice and did not return for two days.

[snip]

After 12 months, the contingencies were still in effect and the behaviors generated in the study still evident. It would seem that the characteristics of publicly self-recording performance progress in both work output and attendance is a durable reinforcing process.

EFFECTS OF SELF-RECORDING ON ATTENDANCE AND PERFORMANCE IN A COMPETITIVE SWIMMING TRAINING ENVIRONMENT
THOMAS L. MCKENZIE AND BRENT S. RUSHALL1
JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
1974, 73,199-206 NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 1974)

The little girl who went on strike because they took away the charts raises a question for me.

Do kids in differentiated instruction classrooms get enough feedback / positive reinforcement?


applications of behavior analysis to human performance in various sports

How to Incentivize Them

The quality of patient care when focused on the patient, the unresponsive school district, Precision Teaching, business acumen, and Don't Shoot the Dog. The connection is

Incentives Matter.

We need to Incentivize the behaviors we want to see more of.

Behavioral Science has shown us that We Improve What We Measure. Positive Reinforcement works best by measuring successes and rewarding them. But even just charting the results with no other reward improves the outcome for what's measured.

So we better measure the right things.

What outcomes do we want to incent?

Often, we're talking about this at the student level. But what if we turned it around, and instead of using e.g. Precision Teaching just on students, we did it to the teachers? The principal? The School Board?

Seriously, if we want transparency from the school board, can we chart it? What if we kept a celeration chart on the web showing the District' Response Time to a parent's request for data? Just KNOWING the chart is publicly available should have an effect.

Or how about keeping a chart showing number of conversations board members have per week with non ed-speak people? ie.e parents or students?

Or a chart showing the number of conversations had without a lawyer present in the room?

Or a chart showing how many parent suggested curricula/materials/ideas were adopted?

Any other suggestions for what behaviors we want to incentivize? Any suggestions for the metrics to do it?

How about in the classroom, by the teacher? How about at the principal level?

Any chance we could get a school board to adopt putting the celeration chart for their principals/teachers/etc on their web site? That would really make a difference.

how to create a virtual culture

Why do people actually study when they go to college? Why do they complete any assignment? Why in the world does delaying real life for several years while they are young to spend time in serial windowless rooms with tiny desks seem normal? It's not even so much that it's important, because there's little evidence at the time that it's Important enough to forego other activities for several years when those other activities have immediate knowable rewards. Humans simply aren't built to be rational in that way, able to weigh competing hypotheses with accurate probabilities. They need immediate reinforcement and rewards, and the long term rewards of career or salary have little to do with it. The medium term rewards of encouragement, respect, and pride from loved ones is also too far off to have much to do with it.

The (housed-near-campus) university system works, largely, by creating a kind of group delusion that what you're doing in school right now is normal. It works because the majority of your peers are doing the same thing: going to class, going to coffee or the library to study, going home to repeat until done. Breaking out of that cycle would cause concern or worry on your behalf by many; shame or humiliation could come. The system keeps reinforcing as long as a critical mass of people all believes the same way.

Telepresence can't create this. Remote distance learning can't create this. What structures can create enough social capital that someone would do the studying/work necessary to succeed? Family can, especially if the children are housed at home. But if you are on your own, what else can create this level of reinforcement? Of positive reinforcement for studying, and negatively reinforcing punting?

Someone suggested an idea to me, and I thought of another. Both are based on competitions (does this work better for men than women?)

The first is a team, led by a coach that competes against other teams.
The second is a set of individual competitions.

I still see that the second one is more difficult to work on; you need something to force you to buy into the peer group you are competing against. But the first idea has promise.

No one maligns the use of drills in competition sports. But the more interesting aspect is what you owe each other. You wouldn't want to let your team down, so you do the drill. If you don't, your coach benches you. Your individual strengths are pushed, and still you're expected to support each other rather than rest on the other members' skills. Both the intra-team competition and inter-team competition can really motivate, if you really buy into the notion that you're a team.

Now, to me, teams succeed or fail based on their coach. What skills do coaches have that teachers should have but often don't?

Without a coach, though, I think this system fails--it too easily becomes gamed by the students replacing real competition with their own "fake" competition. Someone needs to prevent everyone from just defaulting, and someone needs to reinforce shame and pride when appropriate.

Of course, there's nothing limiting this model only to virtual schooling. Even in real classrooms, team competition could help create a culture of success. How many competitions happen inside a KIPP school?

help desk: Dolciani Algebra 2

I don't follow Dolciani's statement at the top.

At all.


update 5.29.2009



This equation doesn't follow from Dolciani's equation; I wrote it to see whether I would understand Dolciani's statement once I solved it.

Of course, I don't know whether I solved it. It seems to me I've got a problem with cases in which the exponent is an even number - ?

status quo la-la-la

....This makes sense when one considers the basic motive people have to defend and justify the status quo. People have a need to believe in a ‘‘just world’’ that is orderly and predictable and in which people get what they deserve (Lerner, 1980). According to system justification theory, people are motivated to view existing social arrangements as legitimate, even when this justifies their own disadvantaged position (e.g., Jost et al., 2004; Jost & Hunyady, 2002). In fact, those with the least power in a system are sometimes the most likely to support and defend that system (Henry & Saul, 2006; Jost et al., 2003). Research reveals that people actively perform their own cognitive and ideological work to preserve their sense that the status quo is desirable and just (e.g., Haines & Jost, 2000; Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002).

There are psychological benefits to accepting the status quo. System-justifying beliefs and ideologies are palliative in that they decrease negative affect and increase positive affect as well as satisfaction with one’s situation (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Jost et al., 2003). Wakslak and colleagues (2007) demonstrated that system justification leads to a significant reduction in emotional distress, both in general and with regard to moral outrage, guilt, and frustration.
Legitimacy Crisis? Behavioral Approach and Inhibition When Power Differences are Left Unexplained
Pamela K. Smith Æ John T. Jost Æ Ranjini Vijay
Soc Just Res (2008) 21:358–376

These researchers are looking at blacks and women, etc. I'm curious whether they would find similar phenomena in parents whose children are attending public schools.


tactics used to maintain the status quo
Diagnosis Diagnosed by Galen Alessi
on a certain arrogance
inputs & outputs
a rare victory
code of silence
code of silence, part 2

Civil Politics .org

I've just found out about Jonathan Haidt's website, Civil Politics, which is mentioned in a Nicholas Kristof column. The resources page looks interesting.

In keeping with my small-l libertarianism, such as it is, I generally take an all's fair in love and war attitude towards "hyperpartisanship." I figure, let 'er rip.

On the other hand, I don't enjoy hyperpartisanship, especially....

Anyway, it looks interesting.


update 1:37pm

from the site:

To help liberals understand (and be civil to) conservatives:

• Read this paper on the psychological foundations of morality and ideology, by Jon Haidt and Jesse Graham.

• Read Ch. 9 of The Happiness Hypothesis, on the psychological dimension of divinity, which tries to explain what many religious people find objectionable about a purely secular culture.

• Read this book on the moral world of a "religious right" community, interpreted by a sympathetic sociologist (Spirit and Flesh, by James Ault).

• Read this book, one of the founding works of modern conservative thought. (The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. By Russell Kirk).

• Read this article on the lack of ideological diversity in psychology, and why the exclusion of conservatives harms the scientific and pro-social missions of psychology: Redding, R.E. (2001). Sociopolitical diversity in psychology: The case for pluralism. American Psychologist, 56, 205-215.

• Read this essay: What Makes People Vote Republican, by Jonathan Haidt, on Edge.org.

To help conservatives understand (and be civil to) liberals:

• Read this book on how diverse modern societies can keep some of the richness of traditional ways and identities while avoiding the ugliness of identity politics. (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. by Anthony Appiah).

• [we need more here: what essays can transmit the essential insights and compassion of liberalism in a way that conservatives will "get" and not be turned off by? Please send suggestions to haidt at virginia.edu]

I think the answer to "essential insights and compassion of liberalism" conservatives will "get" is probably liberal books on education reform.

Anything by E.D. Hirsch, anything by Siegfried Engelman, "Work Hard. Be Nice.," maybe even John Taylor Gatto.

Teambuilding

OK, next!

I have to sign a form to allow (everyone has to go) my son to go to a one-day adventure/team building camp which will challenge their "own inner strength". "Participants will be exposed to leadership and teamwork concepts through the use of mental and physical training." This will be using a "Low Ropes and/or High Ropes Course" at a National Guard facility. I don't know a thing about these people or what the program is, but I have to sign a form that says it's OK if my son comes home dead or paralyzed.

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if they gave me a detailed description of what they will be doing, but I have nothing. When I talked to someone at the school, she said that she thought there might be a reaction to the "scary" forms. It's my problem, apparently. She did say that it was only going to be the "Low Ropes Course", but that's not what the paperwork says.

So, here we have a program that will try to push kids physically and mentally and to trust others. Kids will feel pressured to not trust their own judgment. Amazingly, this is actually part of a "Counterdrug Program". I'm being pushed mentally and pressured to trust them when I would rather

"just say no."

cranberry on the real world

We also don't want them to ask us how to spell for them. "The teacher won't spell for you" is a steadfast rule made clear to students in the beginning of the school year. It liberates the teacher, who has more important responsibilities, and liberates the students, too!

That once meant that the students were to look up the word in the dictionary. Now, everyone's busy with "more important responsibilities."

Just once in such writings, I'd love to see the glimmerings of the concept that perhaps parents are right when they implore schools to teach proper spelling, grammar, and traditional algorithms. Many teachers progress from college straight into the classroom, without a sojourn in the "outside" world. In the world outside the classroom, spelling, grammar, and penmanship count. Courtesy, good manners, perseverance and punctuality count too. The parents who are able to function in the professions, by and large, would prefer that their children leave school with these old-fashioned skills, because these skills are important.


b-ass ackwards
what do authors do?
Four Blocks by Doug Sundseth
Vlorbik on what authors do
cranberry on the real world
Writing Block
Sifting and Sorting Through the 4-Blocks Literacy Model

Four Blocks by Doug Sundseth

Real-author first-draft technique:

1) Stare at the blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead.

2) Dip your finger in the blood and write a sentence.

3) Repeat until done.

BTW, can somebody recommend a product that will remove blood from a monitor?

8-)

b-ass ackwards
what do authors do?
Four Blocks by Doug Sundseth
Vlorbik on what authors do
cranberry on the real world
Writing Block
Sifting and Sorting Through the 4-Blocks Literacy Model

more is less

What a Texas town can teach us about health care: Costlier care is often worse care.

McAllen [Texas] has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.

[snip]

I gave the doctors around the table a scenario. A forty-year-old woman comes in with chest pain after a fight with her husband. An EKG is normal. The chest pain goes away. She has no family history of heart disease. What did McAllen doctors do fifteen years ago?

Send her home, they said. Maybe get a stress test to confirm that there’s no issue, but even that might be overkill.

And today? Today, the cardiologist said, she would get a stress test, an echocardiogram, a mobile Holter monitor, and maybe even a cardiac catheterization.

“Oh, she’s definitely getting a cath,” the internist said, laughing grimly.

[snip]

Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles. They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents.

[snip]

Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic dominates the scene, has fantastically high levels of technological capability and quality, but its Medicare spending is in the lowest fifteen per cent of the country—$6,688 per enrollee in 2006, which is eight thousand dollars less than the figure for McAllen. Two economists working at Dartmouth, Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra, found that the more money Medicare spent per person in a given state the lower that state’s quality ranking tended to be.

[snip]

That’s because nothing in medicine is without risks. Complications can arise from hospital stays, medications, procedures, and tests, and when these things are of marginal value the harm can be greater than the benefits. In recent years, we doctors have markedly increased the number of operations we do, for instance. In 2006, doctors performed at least sixty million surgical procedures, one for every five Americans. No other country does anything like as many operations on its citizens.

[snip]

I talked to Denis Cortese, the C.E.O. of the Mayo Clinic, which is among the highest-quality, lowest-cost health-care systems in the country. A couple of years ago, I spent several days there as a visiting surgeon. Among the things that stand out from that visit was how much time the doctors spent with patients. There was no churn—no shuttling patients in and out of rooms while the doctor bounces from one to the other. I accompanied a colleague while he saw patients. Most of the patients, like those in my clinic, required about twenty minutes. But one patient had colon cancer and a number of other complex issues, including heart disease. The physician spent an hour with her, sorting things out. He phoned a cardiologist with a question.

“I’ll be there,” the cardiologist said.

Fifteen minutes later, he was. They mulled over everything together. The cardiologist adjusted a medication, and said that no further testing was needed. He cleared the patient for surgery, and the operating room gave her a slot the next day.

The whole interaction was astonishing to me. Just having the cardiologist pop down to see the patient with the surgeon would be unimaginable at my hospital. The time required wouldn’t pay. The time required just to organize the system wouldn’t pay.

The core tenet of the Mayo Clinic is “The needs of the patient come first”—not the convenience of the doctors, not their revenues. The doctors and nurses, and even the janitors, sat in meetings almost weekly, working on ideas to make the service and the care better, not to get more money out of patients. I asked Cortese how the Mayo Clinic made this possible.

“It’s not easy,” he said. But decades ago Mayo recognized that the first thing it needed to do was eliminate the financial barriers. It pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible.

No one there actually intends to do fewer expensive scans and procedures than is done elsewhere in the country. The aim is to raise quality and to help doctors and other staff members work as a team. But, almost by happenstance, the result has been lower costs.

“When doctors put their heads together in a room, when they share expertise, you get more thinking and less testing,” Cortese told me.

[snip]

The Mayo Clinic is not an aberration. One of the lowest-cost markets in the country is Grand Junction, Colorado, a community of a hundred and twenty thousand that nonetheless has achieved some of Medicare’s highest quality-of-care scores. Michael Pramenko is a family physician and a local medical leader there. Unlike doctors at the Mayo Clinic, he told me, those in Grand Junction get piecework fees from insurers. But years ago the doctors agreed among themselves to a system that paid them a similar fee whether they saw Medicare, Medicaid, or private-insurance patients, so that there would be little incentive to cherry-pick patients. They also agreed, at the behest of the main health plan in town, an H.M.O., to meet regularly on small peer-review committees to go over their patient charts together. They focussed on rooting out problems like poor prevention practices, unnecessary back operations, and unusual hospital-complication rates. Problems went down. Quality went up. Then, in 2004, the doctors’ group and the local H.M.O. jointly created a regional information network—a community-wide electronic-record system that shared office notes, test results, and hospital data for patients across the area. Again, problems went down. Quality went up. And costs ended up lower than just about anywhere else in the United States.

Grand Junction’s medical community was not following anyone else’s recipe. But, like Mayo, it created what Elliott Fisher, of Dartmouth, calls an accountable-care organization. The leading doctors and the hospital system adopted measures to blunt harmful financial incentives, and they took collective responsibility for improving the sum total of patient care.

The Cost Conundrum
by Atul Gawande
June 1, 2009
The New Yorker

When the needs of the patient come first, medical care costs less.

Judging by the amount of money charter & parochial schools spend to educate children, compared to the amount public schools spend to not educate children, I'd say that principle will turn out to be true of schools, too.

indentured service

a reader left this comment:

I live in the area of the Webster Magnet School. Although my kids do not attend that school, I have had a snootful of service learning projects assigned to my kids throughout the years. We have partnership schools in the suburbs where kids get together to "make friends" with kids in other areas of the city. I'm all for Feed the Children, but my daughter's class has been working on this project for the last 3 weeks, taking a field trip to the center. "Let's not teach history or proper English, let's teach service." The kids miss a lot of instructional time doing these projects. No wonder my husband and I are so tired. We have to teach them school subjects after they get home from school.

I feel I can't say anything negative about these programs because it is just not politically correct. Teachers love them. The principal loves them. Parents love them. "They are soooo good for the students and the community. A good way to build community in the school." I think it turns kids off to volunteerism.

Hogwarts has some service trips that are fantastically fun, I'm told: especially the summer trip to Tennessee, where I think the kids help build houses.

I don't begrudge a Catholic school having a service requirement -- it's a Catholic school, after all. It's supposed to have a service requirement. The Jesuit motto is "Men for others," and that is what they teach.

One of the things I like about the service requirement in a Catholic school is that often a student's service is given to the school. In a wealthy public school that might get on my nerves, but in a Catholic school operating on a shoestring, I like it.

help desk - How to Measure Anything

Does anyone know anything about this book?

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business by Douglas W. Hubbard

James Fallows software recommendations

Just saw this comment on David Allen's blog:

I have used and even written about Personal Brain. It is intriguing, but at least for my kind of work (text heavy, lots of reference material) I find that it doesn't scale very well. But it is so distinctive and interesting that it's certainly worth a look. I find MindManager better/easier for graphically-oriented organizing, and a normal outliner, including the not-quite-normal but useful BrainStorm, to work better with straight text. And, of course, Zoot to keep track of large-volume reference material.

I use Inspiration for thinking and outlining and I love Scrivener's for writing (and for keeping everything in one place).

I'm going to check out Zoot.

What I need is ONE piece of software that keeps everything in the same 'document': notes, to-dos, research, factoids, and whatever it is I'm writing.

Scrivener's comes very close.


mind mapping templates available for download

what do authors do?

Letting children see what adults and good writers do when they need a word they can't spell is important. Authors don't stop their writing and look up a word. They keep writing and spell the word as best they can. Then they hope that spell check will find and fix it. If not, they depend on their editor to be sure everything is correct before going to print!

Writing Block

First of all

First of all, authors can spell.

I once asked Barry Seaman about this. Barry, I said, do editors ever deal with writers who can write but can't spell? He said, basically, No. We happened to be sitting in the audience of a spelling bee at the time, along with Bob Massie, the third member of our team, waiting our turn to compete. Bob said he couldn't spell, but I am here to tell you he's wrong. He can spell.

On the other hand, not one of us could spell flokati. Flokati, come to find out, is not spelled floccati. The correct spelling is flokati. With a k.

Still and all, when 3 authors hear 'floh-kah-tee' and spell it floccati, that is what we call the exception that proves the rule. Authors can spell.

The reason authors can spell is that Learning to Read and Learning to Spell Are One and the Same, Almost. All authors can read; therefore all authors can spell.

True: spelling is harder than reading. But authors are really, really good readers.


And second

Second: supposing an author is steaming along writing stuff down -- lots and lots of stuff, just like they do in Writing Block -- when all of a sudden, out of the blue, she needs to spell the word flokati and she can't remember whether flokati is Greek (with a k) or Italian (with a double-c).

What does she do?

She stops writing and looks up flokati.

The reason she does that is that she is not steaming along writing lots and lots of stuff down. She is sitting in agony eeking ekeing or eking^* out one word, then another word, then possibly another, then hitting back space-delete and starting over again, and that's on a good day, after her 14-year old son has tipped her off to the existence of an Application for Macs that turns off the internet so she can't check her email or read or write a blog about education.

Your choice: write a coherent paragraph about the impulsive-compulsive dimension that other human beings will pay money to read, or look up the word flokati in the dictionary.

I'm taking a poll.

b-ass ackwards
what do authors do?
Four Blocks by Doug Sundseth
Vlorbik on what authors do
cranberry on the real world
Writing Block
Sifting and Sorting Through the 4-Blocks Literacy Model

^* thank you, Jean

the tunnels

amazing photos from Vietnam

b-ass ackwards

advice for teachers from Four Blocks implementer, Cheryl Sigmon:

All at once, I've been besieged by emails concerning spelling in the Writing Block at upper grades. Nancy, a fourth grade teacher in New York, who's enjoying her move to Four-Blocks wrote, "Cheryl, do you think it's important that we misspell words in our model writing daily? It really makes me cringe every time I misspell something, and I'm worried that my students may begin to pick up bad habits from the misspellings I'm modeling. I don't think I can continue to go against my better judgment to spell words correctly! What do you suggest?" Also, Cathy, a curriculum specialist,¹ wrote to ask, "How do you respond to a group of teachers who feel it is of the utmost importance to spell everything correctly when writing in front of the students? These are 4^th and 5^th grade teachers if it makes a difference."

[snip]

First of all, teachers certainly don't want kids to think they can't spell! Our worst nightmare is that Johnny will go home and tell his parents, "My poor teacher can't spell a lick when she writes in front of the class!" Then, of course, the parents are either on our doorstep the next morning or in the principal's office wanting our teaching certificate revoked! In a minute, we're going to be sure that everyone understands why we model misspellings² in front of our students.

[snip]

Next, as far as teachers feeling that they must always spell every word correctly in their model writing, I feel that puts unnecessary stress on the teacher and that it might even be counterproductive to what we've trying to accomplish with students as writers. I would never want to give students at any grade level the impression that perfection is a goal of first draft writing. There are many opportunities in later drafts to edit our work. When producing the first draft, fluency in our writing---getting down our ideas---is the objective. I want to model for my students how to "overlook" possible misspellings by putting down my best guess and circling the word. The circling gives students "permission" to keep writing and provides a marker for returning to correct words they've had to guess.

What we're modeling isn't misspellings. We're actually modeling strategies for how to handle misspellings while we're getting our ideas on paper. Just as we teach students what to do when they come to a word they don't know when they're reading, we also teach students what to do when they come to a word they can't spell in their writing. We want them to be cognizant of the high frequency words they know, the many word patterns, and the meaningful word chunks---all of which will help them make a reasonable guess about the spelling of a word they want to use. We don't want to teach students that they should stop and look up words in the dictionary or the thesaurus during rough draft writing. The rough draft stage of writing is not the appropriate time to do so. That's done in later drafts when editing. We also don't want them to ask us how to spell for them. "The teacher won't spell for you" is a steadfast rule made clear to students in the beginning of the school year. It liberates the teacher, who has more important responsibilities, and liberates the students, too!

Sifting and Sorting through the 4-Blocks Literacy Model by Cheryl M. Sigmon

So we've got grade school kids writing & rewriting multiple "drafts" before they can spell.

Typical.

Here's a question.

Do you think there's a writer on the planet who makes his best guess about how to spell a word, writes that down, circles it, and comes back later to figure it out when he is "working on a further draft?"

Even when he's writing by hand?

I don't.

As to teachers who have "more important responsibilities" than telling students how to spell a word, I guess that explains the 5 years my household has now devoted to Megawords.


b-ass ackwards
what do authors do?
Four Blocks by Doug Sundseth
Vlorbik on what authors do
cranberry on the real world
Writing Block
Sifting and Sorting Through the 4-Blocks Literacy Model

¹ I'm against curriculum specialists
² it's not like we don't have numerous studies demonstrating The Negative Impact of Seeing Misspelled Words or anything

Saxon Geometry

R. Johnston says:

For years a succession of Saxon publishers has honored the view of series creator John Saxon that (1) Geometry should not be a separate course, but instead, middle and high school students should be exposed to Geometry in bits and pieces across several years of their math studies, and (2) that the traditional core of classical Geometry, Euclidian logic and specifically "two column proofs," are unimportant. (Yes, there is a lesson on proofs in the Saxon Algebra 2 text, but if you blinked, you missed it.)

For just as many years, teachers have bought a Geometry text from another source (Jacobs in our case), depriving the Saxon publisher of a business opportunity and interrupting the instructional flow of students raised on Saxon. At last, the Saxon publisher du jour, Harcourt, has introduced this new text. It is excellent. It presents all of the traditional content, and presents it well, preserving the Saxon method of presentation, nightly problem sets, and continuous cumulative review.

John Saxon is turning over in his grave, but the students he has indoctrinated in a 13-year sequence of consistent instruction and practice no longer have to take a year off.

What do you know about Saxon Geometry?

point of information: I'm pretty sure the Saxon books have had only one publisher apart from Saxon himself.

Freedom

C. has been using Freedom for a few weeks.

Every once in a while he rigs it so Andrew can't get on the internet, either. The other night we heard a cry of outrage from the basement & C. said, "I put Freedom on." He and Christian thought that was hilarious.

I'm signing up tonight, when C. is here to oversee the proceedings.

Invisibility Cloak does something similar for PCs.

Teachers with disabilities

The Onion nails it:

"Rather than punishing our teachers or kicking them out, we give them a gold star every time they do something right," Zicree continued. "If they write the correct answer to a math problem on the board, they get a gold star. If they volunteer to read aloud during English class, they get a gold star. You'd be amazed what a little positive reinforcement can do. Some of our teachers† have even stopped drinking in their cars during lunch."

Enjoy!
Report: Increasing Number Of Educators Found To Be Suffering From Teaching Disabilities

the years

C. has just 4 school days left of his first year at Hogwarts.

Last fall the principal told us, "There will be some long days and long nights, but the years will go by in a blink."

We didn't have any long days or long nights at Hogwarts; we seem to have left those behind, in our public school.

And so the year has gone by in half a blink.

liberal education

a useful comment on Lane Wallace's defense of the humanities:

To my mind the only real liberal arts degrees are ones awarded by actual liberal arts universities or colleges. I studied music theory and 19th century intellectual history for my BA but I was also required to take courses in literature, foreign languages, social sciences, mathematics, and hard sciences in order to graduate. All told out of I think 32 courses over 4 years. I think about 12 had to come from specific learning areas outside your own major(s) and meet certain criteria. My partner who has a hard science degree (molecular biology and bio-chemistry) similarly had to take courses in humanities, arts, social sciences, etc. That is to my mind what a liberal arts degree actually is. We both graduated with BA's. And in addition to our majors we graduated with the ability to converse intelligently on a variety of topics, and more importantly to critically analyze, to write proficiently, and to question. That is the actual point of a liberal arts degree whether you choose to study science or humanities.

It bears repeating

Thanks to Vlorbik, I've revisted one of my favorite Rafe Esquith quotes. I just don't get tired of reading it. I hope you won't either.

"Many people in the public schools want certain things done for economic or political reasons. Frequently, teachers attending staff development meetings are taught not by master teachers but by publishing-company employees. Why do fifth-grade teachers need hours of instruction before they can use a fifth-grade math book? Book publishers don't go to bed at night worrying that Johnny can't read; they worry about sales and profits. If our teachers can't teach, they're unlikely to be reformed by textbook publishers.

My school currently has two literacy coaches-- former teachers-- who constantly beg me to use their materials with my children. When these coaches try to convince me about their approaches, they rarely rely on arguments about improving reading. At the end of the last school year, my fifth-graders scored in the ninety-first percentile in national tests while the rest of the school scored in the forties. The coaches know this, so why do they want me to change my methods? They want to satisfy their boss, who wants to please his boss, who wants to impress her boss-- administrators all. It's insulting (and boring) to listen to them drone on about how to use their books.

The same song-and-dance routine accompanies the promotion of the latest new-and-improved math textbook. Seriously, how many ways can you teach a child his multiplication tables? Arithmetic hasn't changed. If a math text is so complicated that the average fifth-grade teacher can't understand it without hours of instruction, then there's something wrong with the book, the teacher, or both. These companies interfere with creative and effective teachers. If we want Johnny to calculate better, we need to hire better teachers, not buy newer textbooks."

--Rafe Esquith, An actual classroom teacher
excerpted from There Are No Shortcuts

Vlorbik also suggested that I watch the movie: The Hobart Shakespeareans. It's now at the top of the queue.

The Paved Mind

This is fun. Ed was reading the paper yesterday when he realized Animals in Translation had been mentioned on the editorial page: The Paved Mind by Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times, May 22, 2009.

Klinkenborg is talking about perception but he could just as easily be talking about mastery & automaticity.

Speaking of mastery, the Spring 2009 Direct Instruction News has an article by Engelmann on "Mastery & Rate of Learning." I'll get passages posted shortly.


automaticity theory

Steve H on the GI Bill

After Crimson Avenger asked how school districts are responding to the stimulus bill, Steve H commented:

I was just thinking about the GI bill after WW II. If they really want to help kids, give the money to them and not the schools. You will get a lot more effort per dollar. A lot more school improvement will happen when kids and parents start paying attention and expecting more.

I agree.

How about a little history this summer?

If you're looking to infuse some history into your child's summer study plans, I have a great recommendation for you. History Odyssey by Pandia Press (the people with the great history timeline) has put together a very nice world history curriculum that brings together literature, history, and geography. The courses are divided into four periods: Ancients, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern.

The best part is that you can download the initial lessons from each of the levels in a new try-before-you-buy feature that you really can't go wrong with.

Here's what you get in the trial PDF absolutely FREE:

• table of contents
• introductions
• applicable worksheets
• applicable maps (for History Odyssey)
• applicable appendices
• first several lessons (enough of the course to keep you busy for several weeks)

Level 1 (1st - 4th grade)
Level 2 (Grades 5 and up)
Level 3 (Grades 9 and up)

If you visit the Pandia Press website, you can review the table of contents/course outlines, lesson samples, and book & supply lists for each of the levels. Many of the literature and reference books should be available in your local library. This is my second year of using History Odyssey with my children and I've not been disappointed yet. My hope is that you won't be either.

I highly recommend you download the free trial PDFs and think about how you might use this to enrich your child's summer study plans. If you like it like I think you might, you'll be back for more.

http://www.pandiapress.com/

change

from The Rivertowns Enterprise, 5-22-2009:

Camp told the Enterprise on Wednesday morning that she was pleasantly surprised¹ by her first-place showing and attributed the support she received to the large-scale door-to-door campaign she ran, covering, in her estimation, about 80 percent of the community.²

"I believe the school system is too expensive and there needs to be more improvement in academics--they're not what they should be," said Camp.

Among her first priorities Camp said is to recommend the district eliminate the Math Trailblazers at the elementary level, which some parents³ have criticized. She vowed to "spend taxpayers' money like I spend my own -- very carefully."
p. 18

This election, 5 candidates ran for 2 seats; the board president and her running mate were challenged by 3 reform candidates. 1500 people cast votes for BOE, and Robyne's total was 801. John Dawson, also a reform candidate & a teacher in Yonkers, received 621.

Robyne was the only candidate of the 5 who was not endorsed by a newspaper.


¹ pleasantly surprised = stunned
² a force to be reckoned with
³ many parents

Journal News endorsements
Unfair description of Irvington voters
Irvington Budget approved; stricter bus limits defeated; board president ousted

Dimensional Analysis

We've talked about this subject in the past, but I thought I would bring it up again.

While working with my son, I've been trying to get him to look at units carefully, but unfortunately, I don't get a lot of help from his Glencoe Algebra I textbook ("units" is not even in the index). It's not as if they think that units are unimportant, but they don't go into details. For most problems, they take care of themselves if you think about it a little bit, so my son doesn't like it when I try to get more formal.

For example, if they talk about 60 miles per hour, I try to get him to think of it as

60 * 1 mile / 1 hour

where the units can stand alone and are multiplied and divided just like regular numbers. I don't want him thinking that there is a units called "miles per hour". I want him to treat units like numbers, and manipulate them like numbers. The base units are "miles" and "hours"; distance and time.

This came up when we were doing some more complicated D=RT problems. When problems are simple, units are simple. When problems get complicated, then units can cause your brain to explode. I told my son that units are your friends. They can tell you if you are trying to add apples with oranges.

Therefore, I've been pushing the idea that units are just like factors that are multiplied and divided and squared. If you calculate the area of a rectangle, you might multiply 5 ft times 7 ft. I want him to look at it like this:

5*(1 ft) * 7*(1 ft)

Where the units are separate and can be manipulated like numbers. I told him that after a while, he can think of "1 ft" as simply "ft". Since everything is multiplied together, you could think of it as:

5*7 * ft*ft

or

35 *(1 ft)^2


By now, he is annoyed and wondering why this formality is necessary. I explain that if he keeps the units with the numbers at all times and multiplies and divides them just like the numbers, the units will tell him if he is making a mistake. This is hard to justify with easy problems where the units are obvious, but you don't want to wait until the problems get difficult to add in these concepts of units.

I also explained to him that if you talk about something like moment: weight times distance, you can get "ft-lbs" for the units. I told him that the dash is commonly used, but it really means multiply. If you want the moment generated by a 60 lb. child 5 ft out at the end of a seesaw, then you would calculate moment by multiplying the two together:

60*(1 lb) * 5*(1 ft.)

which would give you

60*5 * lb *ft

or

300 ft-lb

But it really should be thought of as

300*ft*lb


Also, if you look at units as things you multiply and divide, then it's easy to see how to convert units using identities. If you want to convert 10 feet per second to miles per hour, you start with:

10 * ft/sec

I can multiply this by 1 and not change it (1*a = a). I also know that

3600 * sec = 1 * hr

I can rewrite this as:

(3600 *sec) / (1*hr) = 1

Or, I could invert it to get:

(1*hr) /(3600 *sec) = 1


I can then use this as my "1" to multiply the 10 ft/sec. So:

10 ft./sec * (3600 sec)/(1 hr)

To get:

10*3600 * (ft * sec) / (sec*hr)

Since the units are all multiplied and divided, I can "cancel out" the sec/sec because anything divided by itself is just 1, and then get:

36000 ft/hr

This kind of formality might seem unnecessarily difficult because we are only half way there, but once you practice it a bit, it becomes easy. It is also very necessary when the problems and units get much more complex.

For example, how about the mass unit called a slug?

1 slug = 1 lbf*sec^2/ft

Where lbf is pounds(force) or a weight. If you don't know how to formally deal with units, you will be lost.

concerned parent on Everyday Math & tutoring

"Parents are shelling out money for their kids because of such programs."

This is the problem. I live in a high SES town where the parents volunteer in the classroom, help with homework, read to their kids each night, make sure their kids get to school on time, and purchase a copy of the Everyday Math reference book to keep at home and help with homework.

Many of these same parents still shell out $80/hour (cash) to the teachers to tutor their child on the side; or they send their child to Kumon, Huntington, or Sylvan because their child just isn't getting EM. These parents are convinced there's something wrong with their child even though their child is trying to pay attention in class and diligently doing all the work.

In these cases (I know of many), there should definitely be an option to support the child because they all don't have access to a teacher like Cheryl or to Singapore Math, for example. They get the teacher they get (who may have little if any interest of content knowledge when it comes to mathematics) and are subjected to ill-conceived curricula such as Everyday Math. Who lobbies for these children?

In these cases I would rather see taxpayer money go to effective tutoring than to pay for teacher in-service or a math coach who lacks advanced math content knowledge and is merely a cheerleader for the math curricula d'jour.

where have I been?

So....yesterday I stumbled across this fantastic blog devoted to Singapore Math.

Then today I was reading the Grade 4 Word Problem on the new blog.

Then....after clicking around some more...I discovered that: the great new blog is written by Cassy T. The way you can tell is: it says so on the top of the blog.

So now I'm praying Cassy's blog hasn't been around for MONTHS.

[pause]

And I find that: YES!

IT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR MONTHS! Since February 19, 2009 to be precise.

Remind me never to get involved in a school board campaign again.

Intellectual DNA

I've just left a comment at Robert Pondiscio's post "In Defense of the Liberal Arts" at the Core Knowledge blog:

I had a revelation not too long ago re: the liberal arts disciplines (including math, science, philosophy, rhetoric).

The disciplines are the intellectual DNA of the professions.

Law and medicine are called the "liberal professions" because they derive from or are descended from the liberal arts disciplines. If you've had a liberal education, you're at a tremendous advantage when it comes to learning a liberal profession.

I've believed for some time now—because I think I've lived it—that a solid grounding in the liberal arts disciplines turns you into a fast learner in the world of work. Siegfried Engelmann has a terrific new article out on the ways in which teaching to mastery increases the speed of learning. A central reason why disadvantaged children are slower learners when they begin school than advantaged children is that they lack the prior knowledge middle and upper-middle class parents take for granted.

It seems likely to me that, for adults, a liberal education is the equivalent of the "prior knowledge" advantaged children bring to Kindergarten. A student who graduates college with a "survey" knowledge of the liberal arts disciplines combined with a major in one discipline brings a vast store of prior knowledge to the world of work (and family & politics & religion—)

I'll get passages from Engelmann's article posted soon, I hope.

Everyday Math causes hoarding in Anchorage

Yesterday was the last day of school at my local elementary.  Today, I went to pick up some stuff and to say bye to all of my kids teachers.

I spoke to four teachers cleaning out their classrooms.  Every single one of them was in the process of hoarding math text books and scavenging worksheets to help supplement their forced transition into Everyday Math next year.

Of course when the subject of Everyday Math came up while I was talking to two of them, I started my rant.  "Your preaching to the choir" was their exact response.

My kids 3rd grade teacher was talking about how she was taking a class in Everyday Math this summer.  As a 30 year teacher, she told me how she has been through this before.  She said that she talks about she addresses the alternate algorithms like she is required to do, but then says "Now let me show you a better way" and continues to teach like she always has.

My kids future 6th grade teacher had already talked with the middle school pre-algebra teacher about what sort of things she needs to supplement to ensure they are ready for middle school math.

On the way out I ran into the Principle, and made a comment about EM.  "Oh I love Everyday Math" was his response.

Strange how the response varied so much between the teachers and the administration.

On another math related note, all three of kids scored advanced in math on their Standards Based Assessment (SBA) end of year tests.  My 5th grade son managed to score a 600 out of 600.  The only perfect score in any subject in the whole school.  Of course next year, all three of them will be taking EM.  At least my son qualified to take pre-algebra at the middle school next year, so I won't totally be working on my own on my EM insurgency.

p.s. sorry I haven't posted in a while :)

Internet4Classrooms

The speech therapist at school told us about this site: Internet4Classrooms.

Apparently it has short reading passages with comprehension questions following, which is what I need for Andrew.

Looks good so far --

due process for parents of general education kids

from Barry G:

As people think about lobbying their Congressman/Senator, it might be good to have some outlines in hand for legislation that offers parents due process for general education. One thing that SPED [special ed] laws allow is, for example, testing. If a parent requests their child be tested to determine possible LD or other problems and to determine the need for an IEP, the school must comply. If they do not, the parent has the right to have the child tested by a firm of their choosing, and if the results show the child has problems, the school then has to reimburse the parents for the cost of the testing. And in fact, upon initial request, the school has 60 days to make a determination of whether the child qualifies for an IEP.

We need laws that allow parents to be recognized. Parents should have the right to have their child tested in math, English etc using say ITBS. If the results show the child is doing poorly, the parents can be reimbursed for the cost of testing and also reimbursed for tutoring, or using Sylvan, etc. Rough idea, I know, but you get the gist. Any thoughts?


SPED: special education
LD: learning disabilities
IEP: Individualized Education Plan (for SPED kids only)
ITBS: Iowa Test of Basic Skills [parents of general education kids can order the test & give it to their children themselves, which I did one year - around $40 - ask me if you want details: cijohn@verizon.net]

Singapore Math comes to Dobbs Ferry

Westchester Math Lab

Walking distance from my house.

speaking of SAT scores...

Colleges Acknowledge SAT and ACT Score Cut-Offs in Admissions

This is news only because journalists continually write articles quoting college admissions officers saying SAT scores don't matter, or are going out of style, or are used holistically, or are "optional," or god-knows-what.

Trust nothing a college admissions officer tells a newspaper.

Some of the comments are great.

I was “waitlisted” at two of my top schools and when I called to follow-up, I was told point blank it was for my SAT scores. Sorry, but I have a hard time buying the holistic bit. Particularly given the number of applications some of these schools receive. They need to have an initial filter; test scores give it to them.

On a related note, I was also shown a list of applicants, while applying to grad school, and they were sorted by GRE score. Again, the person who showed me the list said, point blank, we sort first by scores.

— erin


When my first child and oldest daughter was readying to choose a college, I asked the admissions department of my alma mater whether she should apply. I was told, first, before any other topic was raised or question was asked, that the college board cutoff was such and such–about fifty points higher than my daughter’s score.

She had gone to a pricey progressive private high school, where her grades were not bad, though not straight As. She did well in English, but also in biology and math–her only really weak course was chemistry.

Her guidance counselor, a Harvard graduate, was unable to interest the admissions departments of any major ivy league school in considering my daughter.

I asked the college admission department if a legacy mattered at all. “Somewhat,” I was told. Eventually, my third child was admitted, but he made the board score cut.

This practice has at least one side effect that has not been well understood. It is actually part of the decline of the humanities in American colleges and Universities, because the boards emphasize quantifiable ability–obviously so in mathematical skills, but still true in the “verbal” part of the exam: what else could such an exam do but quantify? Even the writing exam is graded, not on quality of the writing, but on quatifiable features, e.g. whether it has topic sentences at the beginnings of paragraphs (a custom universal in America but nowhere else, and only due to college entrance exams, including AP English), whether it has a standard three-paragraph form, whether it has an intro and a conclusion, and so on. THe content can be invented; can be virtually nonsense, but the template of the essay form to which all high school English writing is now taught can be measured, counted, and scored. Likewise the multiple choice questions which test for information processing ability only. There is no way to build a standardized test for humanitas.

— droll


Our child is a high school senior. He scored very well on his ACT but his cumulative GPA at the time of applications was just below 2.5. He was, nonetheless, offered scholarships and entrance into honors programs at different schools. You don’t need to convince me that these test scores are really where it’s at.

— jay


Having retired from the college counseling field, I recall when it became non-PC to use a single test score as a cutoff for admissions. There was some discussion of this being racist and not being the purpose for which tests were standardized (and thus leaving schools open to lawsuits). So colleges were coached to say they viewed test scores as “only one factor in a holistic assessment.” It my observation that some college admission teams actually employ holistic assessment and some only pretend to do so. Some admissions staffers value test scores because they value tests but don’t know an instrument’s limitations; others are racists. It’s hard to discern who is who isn’t it?

— George


The holistic approach apparently does not apply to the NJ state schools. My sister’s twin daughters did not do well on the SATs, but they each have excellent gradepoints, extra-curriculars, outside jobs, sports, and stellar course grades for the college courses they have taken in their junior and senior years of high school. They and my sister were each told flat out that it was meet the cut-off score or we don’t look any further. Luckily, the non-state schools that they each applied to accepted them(2 acceptances each). I wonder if this policy is linked in any way to the budgetary issues in NJ government?

— Jim McNerney


I have had years of experience at graduate school admissions for my department. First, the TOEFL had an institution-imposed minimum for admission, and experience told us that it was too low. Also, there is doubt about testing conditions in some countries.

Second, we came to understand that there are only three scores on the General portion of the GRE: high, middle, and low. Enough students take the GRE more than once, so we were able to see the variances in scores not attributable to additional education.

Third, subject-area GRE scores are useful. Since we did not require them (but were encouraged), when good scores showed up we regarded applicants as confident in their disciplinary knowledge.

Fourth, general and major GPAs are unreliable because they depend on the standards in place where they were earned. From less-highly-regarded institutions, applicants may have perfect GPAs, stellar letters of recommendation, and miserable GRE scores. When admitted, their failure rates were high, unless they dug in and made up for what they had not learned. OK GPAs from top institutions, or from students who had lots of jobs to get through college, were treated as just fine, and that’s mostly how they turned out.

— Leading Edge Boomer

preparation for College Admission Exams

SAT Question

I started reviewing typical math questions in a SAT test prep book I have. My reaction is that preparation would make a VERY big difference. I think I will have to put together my own simplified list of things you have to know automatically.

However, I read in this book that when you apply to college, they get to see ALL of the scores from all of the times you took the test. They said that some colleges will average the scores and not just take the highest ones. I was thinking that I would have my son start taking the test several times to get him up to speed. The book said that this isn't the best thing to do. You're better off practicing at home and then taking the test. If the results are about 100 points (total) below what you get in practice, only then should you take the SAT a second time.

Haven't been there and haven't done that.

When I was in school, I took the PSAT and the SAT once, with absolutely no preparation.

election

Camp & Dawson

Robyne Camp Answers to 10 Questions

John Dawson: Answers to 6 Questions

Community Service

Is it now common for schools to require community service? What are some examples of how this works? I don't see anything explicitly required by our schools. This came up because my son was asked to play the piano at a special meeting in another town. In the course of the conversation, the person (who was a high school teacher in the other town) said that they would give him a letter of community service. My first reaction was irritation. My son would (should) make the decision without that carrot dangling in from of him. Of course he said yes, but when I mentioned the community service angle, he wasn't surprised. He said that they push that all of the time at school, although he didn't think it was mandatory for our middle school.

Philosophically, all of this bothers me. I always remember what Ollie North's lawyer said during the Iran-Contra scandal:

"I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the lawyer. That's my job.”

That's how I feel. I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the parent. That's my job.

I don't want my son always looking for an angle or for something to go on his resume, but I can see the changes taking place.

Castles in the air

I was at a meeting recently with several district-level administrators from around the country, and the discussion turned to the current financial situation. Either I’m completely naïve about the realities of school funding, or they’re in denial about the current state of affairs. I still don’t know which is closer to the mark.

Given the state of things, one would expect administrators to look at the $100 billion in stimulus funds as a temporary reprieve: a two-year window to get their houses in order before feeling the full effect of the financial downturn. It should allow for a softer landing.

But there was no talk of reducing expenses, finding efficiencies, or eliminating programs. Instead, the primary focus was on using that money for teacher training, with new data systems a secondary interest. There weren’t many specifics available: some wanted to focus teacher training on RTI or on target areas (reading and math), and the discussion around data systems was very general (ie, “must be easy to use,” etc. - nothing that would be helpful in actually building or customizing a system).

While the Department of Education has repeatedly said that the stimulus funds are a one-shot deal, these administrators were convinced that all they had to do was show some kind of progress – however they chose to define it – and the money would be renewed. I haven’t heard anything about continuation of funds from any other source, but these folks were certain that as long as they moved the needle in some way, the money would keep flowing.

In fairness to them, the guidance for use of the stimulus funds is focused on academic outcomes, and that’s the framework they have to operate in. But the expectation for renewal was totally new: first time I’ve heard that anywhere, yet there was a clear expectation among everyone there that it would happen. And a clear lack of planning for what would happen if it didn’t.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thinking? Any signs as to how your districts are dealing with the stimulus money or the financial situation in general?

letter to the editor, part 2

Letters to the editor are becoming a specialty around these parts.

I love the line about parent expectations & artificial turf.


update 9/5/2009

The LoHud link no longer works. Here's the full text of the letter:

Unfair description of Irvington voters

MAY 18, 2009

I was taken aback by the denigrating tone of your May 11 endorsement of Irvington school board candidates. The editorial betrayed a disturbing ignorance of local issues when it sniped at Irvington residents, caricaturing them as wealthy "movie and media stars," and conveyed irony that residents expect "... students to continue to perform with the best of them," despite an unwillingness to spend large sums for artificial turf fields.

The editorial's focus on dollars and cents misses the central point that Irvington residents - the majority of whom happen to be middle- and upper middle-class - have been rankled for years by a district administration that repeatedly ignores or belittles parents' concerns about the uneven quality of academic programs; implemented a controversial new math curriculum despite overwhelming community opposition; and has overseen the installation and replacement of four different middle school principals in less than six years. In this context, residents were understandably angry to discover that district expenditures have risen above $26,000 per student - the second-highest level in Westchester County.

Contrary to what was implied by your editorial, I am proud to be a member of a community that uniformly and vigorously supports its public schools. If we didn't, we would have walked away from these battles long ago.

Kathy A. Kaufman
Irvington

And here is the Journal News endorsement to which Kathy was responding:

Our recommendations for Irvington school district
May 11, 2009

It would be so easy to lapse into assumptions when talking about Irvington. The pricey restaurants, the movie and media stars, the big houses - while taking stock of these things, the casual observer might easily conclude that the locals just throw money around. Members of the Irvington school board could set you straight on that one.

Twice in as many bond votes, district voters rejected propositions to spend millions to renovate athletic fields - this despite the pleas of so many disenfranchised (or so they said) young people. The last vote, in December, wasn't even close. A $6 million bond failed by nearly 1,000 votes. Additionally, from where this Editorial Board sits, it seems the public discourse over school funding here has taken on a harder edge. At the same time, district residents expect Irvington students to continue to perform with the best of them.

Among the five candidates running for school board, we think two offer district residents the best opportunity to reach both those aims - Tanya Hunt, the board president, and Kevin Swersey, a challenger. Hunt, a full-time mom and former press secretary to members of Congress, has been on the board since 2006. She knows the district inside and out; she was an active PTSA and Irvington Education Foundation volunteer before joining the board.

As board president, she has led the district through what doubtless has been one of the toughest budget deliberations in years. The $51 million budget before voters May 19 would increase spending less than 1 percent; taxes would rise 0.2 percent. Ten positions would be axed. Another ballot question aims to cut transportation costs. "I believe it is critically important in these difficult times to have school board leaders like me who intimately understand the complexities of governing and running a school district," Hunt replied to our questionnaire. We agree.

Swersey is a fine wine consultant. He has served minimal duty as a volunteer - it used to be that everybody running in Irvington had extensive volunteer experience. More recently, though, Swersey has worked hard on his own to drill into the school budget, pressing for answers, probing for savings and efficiencies, holding officials accountable. Whether Swersey actually "has the goods," so to speak, is another matter. In this economic climate, however, it is painfully clear that what district residents want is someone who will press for answers - and keep pressing. We think Swersey, better than the other challengers, would fill that bill.

Also on the ballot are John Dawson, a teacher in Yonkers; Paul Janos, the former Tarrytown mayor; and Robyn Camp, a lawyer.

A Journal News editorial

Robyne Camp won with 53% of the vote.

She was the only candidate of the 5 who was not endorsed by a newspaper.

One Step Ahead of the Train Wreck

Barry Garelick has a great new article in EducationNews.org!

SAT Question of the Day

This is the question of the day from the College Board


"The following sentence contains either a single error or no error at all. If the sentence contains an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed to make the sentence correct. If the sentence contains no error, select choice E."


The Sun has been shining for "nearly" five billion years and is thought "that it has" sufficient thermonuclear fuel in its core "to shine" "for about" another five billion.

A "nearly"
B "that it has"
C "to shine"
D "for about"
E no error


[Ed. My question is how do you define "error" in writing?]



Correct Answer: B

Here's Why:

The error in this sentence occurs at (B), where there is awkward and unidiomatic phrasing. The awkward “that it has” should simply be “to have.”

Question Type: Identifying Sentence Errors (Writing)

[Ed. Too bad they don't give hints on the test.]

"Hint - Look for awkward or wordy phrasing."


[Ed. Awkward or wordy phrases aren't "errors" to me. This tells me that SAT prep can make a huge difference.]