Year-End Parent Survey Questions

Here are two of the survey questions I had to answer:

1. My child's school encourages me to be involved with my child's learning.

2. I have the information and knowledge to support my child's learning.

Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
N/A

At least they had a box at the end to include comments. I suggested that they ask parents about tutoring. Then I asked them how parents can support learning if everything goes into a portfolio and never comes home.

Not As Good As You Think

Catherine often writes that "it's worse than you think."

The Pacific Research Institute has a similar idea in their heads.
They have released a new movie, "Not As Good As You Think, the Myth of the Middle Class School"

From their website:

Not as Good as You Think: The Myth of the Middle Class School is a documentary that shatters the myth that “good” schools located in “nice” neighborhoods are shielded from the education crisis that pervades schools in poor, urban areas. Using available data on school performance and interviews with parents, students, principals, and school reformers, Not as Good as You Think confirms every parent’s silent fear: that their financial sacrifice and investment in an expensive home in a “good” school district is not yielding the achievement results needed to get their kids in good colleges and good jobs.

Based on the groundbreaking book Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice released by the Pacific Research Institute in 2007, the film features Lance Izumi, one of the nation’s foremost education scholars and reformers. Not as Good as You Think takes audiences on a tour of America’s best neighborhoods—from the posh areas of Orange County, California, to the hotbed of innovation, Silicon Valley, to the lush green hills of Tennessee—to reveal that schools in America’s middle class and affluent neighborhoods are not adequately preparing kids for higher education, or even operating under widespread corruption. The documentary also explores freedom and choice in public schools by venturing to Sweden, a socially progressive country that has successfully established school choice for all children, no matter the family’s income.

This is a different film than The Cartel, which Catherine posted about here.

You can buy the DVD for $19.95 from the above website.

Maybe we should all try to help set up a screening of the two films? A double feature? I'll bring the junior mints.

A model school's selling points: everything but the math

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field)

A year of activities: Spelling Bee | Talent Shoe | Musical | Science Fair | Fall Festival | 100 Days | Opera Company | Reading Buddies | Spring Concert | Valentine's Dance

So goes the text along the margin of the glossy school newsletter that came home yesterday on the last day of school--along with color photographs of smiling students and staff, and articles about the school and the community.

You'd never know that one of the school's activities was the Continental Math League club, run by yours truly and another parent volunteer, and attended 1 1/2 hours a week from October to March by 20 eager 2nd and 3rd graders.

Especially since, despite the principal's earlier assurances, the information sheet about next year's Continental Math League club (and ways to practice for it over the summer) somehow didn't accompany the above newsletter into students' backpacks.

Concerned that this might happen, I had sent said principal an email reminder the day before the last day. Then, when I bumped into her on the morning of the last day, I'd asked her about the email.

"I deleted it," she said, a big grin on her face.

I guess she's happy it's summer vacation.

-----

For those who are interested in ways to polish up their math skills for Continental Math League, or for any other reason, here's what I spent several hours compiling for students at our school. Perhaps other schools and other principals will find this more worthwhile than ours did:

MATHPRACTICELINKS

Middle Class Entitlement

Children can't survive in our modern world without shoes. It would be a catastrophe to be in a child growing up in the 21st century without shoes. These children would be deeply impoverished, backward, and their futures would be horribly limited.

That's why the government makes and distributes childrens' shoes, because how else would children all be able to have shoes?

What? You suggest that companies should make and --gasp-- SELL shoes? How could you? You must be against the children having shoes to wear! And WHO would supply children shoes if the govt stopped doing so? Which people? How many shoes stores? How would the shoes stores be capitalized? How many brands would there be? What materials would they use? What pricing arrangements would be in place? WHO WOULD REGULATE THE SHOES TO MAKE SURE THEY MET OUR STANDARDS? How would those stores be sure to meet our requirements on sizing and stitching and hiring of shoemakers! How would poor children ever get a pair of shoes?! Suppose a poor person didn't have the money to buy a pair!

I'm paraphrasing and borrowing from Murray Rothbard in For a New Liberty. He isn't speaking of public education per se at this point, but just what happens when someone tries to suggest that the government should get out of a certain services and let the private sector handle them. These questions are absurd about shoes. We KNOW that we have more shoes now, at lower prices, than ever before, and that WalMart, Costco, and Target alone mean that even the poor can afford to buy comfortable stylish shoes for their children.

But what if we applied this to education?

Children need an education! They can't survive without it, and how else would all kids get an education?
What??? You suggest companies could SELL education? Private schools? Private tutors? Who? Which people? How many schools? How would they capitalize them? But but but...what standards would they have? How would we be sure they were teaching what the govt says should be taught? Who would regulate them? How could a poor person ever get an education then! You want to deny the poor an education!

Public schools were created in an era of industrial growth and immigration when a) states wanted to inculcate certain values into all of their populace, including the immigrants' children; b) parents by themselves, particularly poor parents, were viewed as not valuing education on their own enough to educate their children out of poverty; and c) there was an interest in stopping or discouraging the use of child labor (thereby remove competition from the workforce for adults); and d) there was no other entity (but the Catholic Church) massive enough to be able to create a system to educate as widely and deeply as was desired.

The public schools of the current middle class have nothing whatsoever to do with that model. We don't need them to inculcate values--or the values being inculcated don't match up anyway. We absolutely, positively, value education without question. We have moved as a culture to a place where child labor is practically unthinkable. And there are dozens? hundreds? thousands? of entrepreneurial and technical resources now in the private sector that could educate children, even on a massive scale.

Why then do we need public schools at all?

We don't. They are middle class entitlements. The middle class doesn't want to pay for schools, and doesn't feel it should have to. Yet, of course, some of them ARE paying for them, to the tune of 20k plus per student in Irvington and St. Paul, MN, but exactly who bears that burden is probably disproportionately those without school aged children. For others, it's simply the daycare issue--they want taxpayer funded daycare, and schools provide that. How else would they manage? How else could we all conceive of functioning!

The existence of the govt schools at such a low cost drives out the private money. It drives out low cost private schools, and in the end only leaves the boutique ones standing. The same as govt shoes drive out any competition, and leave only the Fendis of the world to purchase. If we had no govt schools, the private sectors--the Green Dots, the Kumons, etc. would still exist, and would expand. The religious schools would exist, and be affordable, too.

But but but! The poor! Who would educate the poor! We need vouchers, see!

No, the private sector could educate the poor; the Church did it in the past; other orgs could do it now. WalMart has done more for the poor getting good shoes than welfare vouchers ever did. If WalMart taught math and reading in DC, do you think poor kids would learn better than they do now? Even so, vouchers for the POOR are a vastly different claim than vouchers for EVERYONE. There is no place else except medicare healthcare, another entitlement for the middle class) where everyone gets covered.

The main argument of school vouchers boils down to this: the government is bad at making shoes that I want! They have the wrong style and they fit badly. They are ugly to boot. I want better choices in shoes!

I know! let's have them still make shoes and give them away, and then also have vouchers so I can buy real private market shoes that aren't ugly and aren't terrible but make the taxpayers pay for them, because they are SOOO expensive, I don't want to do it on my own!

I'm not suggesting we can actually abolish govt schools. And I'm willing to give DC vouchers just because they've got nothing else, even though I see general vouchers as a middle class entitlement that needs to die. But recognizing that the reasons public education was needed in the past have little to do with our current culture can help us to see the real problems we create for ourselves when we come up with convoluted solutions that leave the govt in charge of schools, and keep them in charge of the funding.

Charter schools are a different issue. Charter schools are more like Medicare. More on that later.

21st century skills

Flypaper has decided to try videos ---

Speaking of...school turnarounds from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.

I'm sold!

I've gotten to know Debbie Stier a little bit, and this is what she does at HarperStudio. She sits her authors down on the couch, takes out her Flip camera, interviews them, et voila.

Enjoy the Good Things in Your Life: A Conversation with An Oncology Nurse

Random House Sales Rep, Ann Kingman, Talk about Blogging, VEA, and her Favorite New Book

Debbie sent me off the the board meeting the other night with 4 Flips & a tripod so I could tape the proceedings in a form all of us could actually use,^* but I chickened out.

^* long story

Customer Review

Just left this review of Work Hard. Be Nice. on Amazon:

By the end of Work Hard. Be Nice., I found myself weeping in every chapter. I think this book may become a classic.

I hope teachers will include Work Hard. Be Nice. on summer reading lists for upper middle school and high school students. Boys especially may cherish this book given how feminized our public schools have become.

Mike Feinberg and David Levin are teachers, yes, but they are fighters, too. They broke rules and they crossed lines. In this era of character education and "collaborative learning environments," the story of two young men who refused to collaborate with a failed system is strong medicine.

I need to get my Amazon review of Dan Willingham's book written, too. (Preview: 5 stars)

a beautiful book

Work Hard. Be Nice.

It's incredible. By the end I found myself weeping in every chapter.

This book may become a classic.

palisadesk on private schools for the poor

Any idea what the % of students in poor and developing countries go to private v. public schools?

In some "poor and developing" countries" it is 100%, for the simple reason that public schools are a) not available at all, or b) not available in that region, or c) not affordable.

In those cases, however, families often have to select only one child to educate, and that child may have to leave school if the family needs his (it's usually a he) wages or cannot afford the fees.

Many families in my school population have immigrated from countries where public education is not available, period. If available, it is in the cities and not in rural or mountain villages.

An uplifting read on one American's campaign to change this situation is Greg Mortensen's Three Cups of Tea.

private schools for the poor

Allison on trusting schools and doctors

I would say we've reached a point in society that parents should not be willing to simply trust the teacher or school as they would have a generation or more ago.

Fundamentally, there are too many people in the system claiming to be experts who aren't; too many people claiming their credentials give them knowledge they don't have; too many people in the system working at cross purposes with parents; all told, the authorized people can't be assumed to know more about your child's needs than you do.

This is my experience. I would add, too, that while there are some very good public schools (Karen H's high school, for instance) even there I would 'trust but verify' for my own children. I say that because even very good public schools are set up to teach and succeed with cohorts of children, not each individual child across the board. The measurement of success is the group mean.

I believe that "professional learning community" schools -- real ones -- have rejected this model, and I'm planning to get some posts written about "PLCs" soon.


doctors & patients

This isn't just a phenomenon related to schooling. We've reached the same point in medicine--we no longer trust doctors as we once did, or that they are our advocates. We have to be our own advocates. Our model has really shifted--we're expected to partner with our doctors in our healthcare outcomes; we're expected to "partner" with our kids educational outcomes. We've reached it in most of parenting too--we're expected to be far more responsible for our childrens' outcomes than any prior generation of parents; we're supposed to be deeply engaged in their molding (regardless of how possible that is), and we're supposed to be highly active in all levels of their universe. We're not really supposed to leave this stuff up to others anymore.

Now this is interesting because I am old enough to have lived through this history, and I often use the shift in the doctor/patient relationship as a model for what I'd like to see happen between teachers and parents (or administrators and parents).

When I was a child, the relationship between doctors and patients was fantastically hierarchical, and doctors were arrogant - or were certainly seen as arrogant by the grownups around me. "Doctors think they're God," people said. Or: "Doctors aren't God." And: "Doctors shouldn't play God. They're not God."

In short: they do what they do. (I have the sense nurses might still say this, but that's an impression so correct me if I'm off base.)

The most egregious case was that of the terminal cancer patient. Doctors would make the diagnosis, would know that the patient was dying, and would elect not to tell the patient because, in the judgment of the physician, he or she couldn't handle it. As I recall, family members weren't necessarily told, either.

I have no idea how often this kind of thing actually happened, but it was talked about constantly, and it was seen as the ur-case of doctors thinking they were God. Doctor Gods were in the movies, too. I remember a couple of years ago, flipping through channels, coming across an old war movie, maybe from the 1940s. The scene was a military hospital. The doctor comes into the ward, takes a quick look at a soldier's leg, and orders it removed. The soldier screams and begs. "No! No! Don't take my leg! Pleeeease!" Tough luck. Doctor's orders. The leg comes off.

Watching that scene, I marveled. How long has it been since anyone has heard the expression, "Doctor's orders?"

Doctors don't give orders any more. Doctors make diagnoses and prescribe treatment. Patients make the decision whether to comply.

I wish I understood the history of how this changed. I had always assumed that some kind of 'patients' rights' movement came into being and succeeded in changing the relationship between doctors and their patients. However, I'm pretty sure that's wrong; it seems more likely that, as I once read, there was a war between doctors and lawyers and the lawyers won. Which isn't what I would have wished; in a conflict between doctors and lawyers, I'm on the doctors' side. (I don't say that to attack lawyers! Or to imply that malpractice should not exist. It should. I think.)

In any event, the upshot is the partnership Allison describes. Having raised two children with autism, Ed and I have been deeply involved with doctors for many years now; we've been on the cutting edge of psychiatry and, at times, neurology.

Our doctors invariably, with perhaps one exception in lo these many years, treat us as partners in our children's treatment. Moreover, our respective roles are flexible. Any number of times I've come to one of our doctors with studies that have just been published or informal opinions from researchers and our doctor has immediately agreed to a medication trial. Other times, I've raised the possibility of trying a treatment based on something I've read, and our doctor has explained why it doesn't make sense.^* And there have been perhaps two occasions on which Ed and I have decided not to give our kids a test our physician recommended. The tests would have been expensive, difficult to administer, and would not have made any difference to the treatment plan so we decided against. That was not a problem for the physician. In one case, we didn't pursue an experimental med that cost thousands, wasn't covered by insurance, and I think had to be specially ordered from Europe (?) Something like that. That was also not a problem because the relationship is a partnership: our physicians make the recommendations and we decide whether to follow their recommendations -- which we almost invariably do, or we would not be working with that particular physician.

This relationship works. The doctor is the professional; we are the clients and the ultimate deciders. It would be unthinkable for a doctor treating our kids -- or any kids -- to give 'orders.' The doctor's authority is based in his or her knowledge and expertise, not in power to force compliance.

For years, now, I've longed to have the same relationship with my kids' schools that I do with my kids' doctors -- and in fact, in special education, I do have that relationship here in Irvington. My kids' teachers see us as experts on our particular kids; we see them as experts in teaching autistic kids. And, because teaching autistic children, like treating autistic children medically, is not remotely a science, our kids' teachers here have always been interested in what we're doing at home that works. (ha!)

My take on Allison's observation is that she's right: the model has changed. We're supposed to partner with the professionals and experts in our children's lives.

The problem in the education realm is that parents aren't partners. We are subordinates who are expected to work up the chain of command.

That doesn't work.


^* I'm sure patients bringing in stuff they found on the internet is a problem for plenty of doctors. And, of course, from the patient's perspective arrogance hasn't disappeared, either. Recently a young physician contemptuously dismissed my mother when she tried to tell him that whopping big doses of Acai juice had dramatically reduced her blood pressure and thus her need to take blood pressure medicine, a statement easy to confirm with a quick check of her medical history or a phone call to her internist. Or a phone call to her children, for that matter. Hearing her story, her new cardiologist rolled his eyes, turned on his heel, and walked out of the examining room. He didn't come back.

She changed doctors and wrote to Medicare about another problem that occurred on her visit to his office. I got a kick out of that. My mother has diabetes and heart failure; she's come back from the brink of death at least 3 times now. And on her good days she's watchdogging the medical profession. I applaud that.

private schools for the poor

Schools for the poor are the obsession of James Tooley's book, "The Beautiful Tree." An education specialist with a severe case of wanderlust, Tooley had always believed that in developing nations, the upper classes attend private schools while the poor rely on public ones. But during a drive through the slums of Hyderabad, India, in 2000, he came across an unexpected phenomenon: an unending line of small, no-frills private schools catering to poor kids.

Tooley began seeking out and finding private schools for the poor across the developing world, interviewing students, principals, parents and officials in China, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Somaliland and beyond. Parents everywhere cited similar reasons for paying the small fees for private schools rather than sending their kids to state schools. For some, especially in rural areas, the public schools were too far from their homes. To others, teachers and administrators in private schools seemed more attuned to their concerns. And despite the foreign aid and state spending on public school facilities, many parents simply felt that their children learned more in private schools. "What's the point of having such nice buildings," asked a mother in a fishing village in Ghana, "if learning doesn't go on?"

The officials Tooley encountered in his travels often denied the existence (much less the superiority) of private schools for low-income children. "There are no private schools for the poor," a bureaucrat in China's Gansu province told Tooley, "because the People's Republic has provided all the poor with public schools. So what you propose to research does not only not exist, it is also a logical impossibility."

Undeterred, Tooley spent years surveying private schools across the developing world. He found that, on average, they had smaller class sizes, higher test scores and more motivated teachers, all while spending less than public schools. With the zeal of a convert, Tooley invokes the market's "invisible hand" to explain why private schools perform better: When parents pay the fees that keep a school afloat, he reasons, the school becomes more accountable to them. Tooley blasts development experts for recognizing the problems with public education and still insisting that more investment in public schools is the way to go. "Why wasn't anyone else thinking that private schools might be part of a quicker, easier, more effective solution?" he asks.

Schools, Weddings and Funerals on $2 a Day
By Carlos Lozada
Friday, June 19, 2009 8:27 PM

via Cato

The Arlington Algebra Project & e-math instruction

These look like terrific resources:

The Arlington Algebra Project

eMath Instruction


Thanks to Kate!

Fear of Knowledge

Of the three constructivist theses before us, the most influential is the thesis of fact-constructivism—which is somewhat surprising given that it is also the most radical and the most counterintuitive. Indeed, properly understood, fact-constructivism is such a bizarre view that is it hard to believe that anyone actually endorses it. And yet, it seems that many do.

According to fact-constructivism, it is a necessary truth about any fact that it obtains only because we humans have constructed it in a way that reflects our contingent needs and interests. This view stands opposed to fact-objectivism, according to which many facts about the world obtain entirely independently of human beings.

[snip]

Fact-constructivism would seem to run into an obvious problem. The world did not begin with us humans; many facts about it obtained before we did. How then could we have constructed them? For example, according to our best theory of the world, there were mountains on earth well before there were humans. How, then, could we be said to have constructed the fact that there are mountains on earth.

One famous constructivist, the French sociologist Bruno Latour, seems to have decided to just bite the bullet on this point. When French scientists working on the mummy of Ramses II (who died c. 1213 BC) concluded that Ramses probably died of tuberculosis, Latour denied that this was possible. “How could he pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch in 1882?” Latour asked. Latour noted that just as it would be an anachronism to say that Ramses died from machine-gun fire so it would be an anachronism to say that he died of tuberculosis. As he boldly put it: “Before Koch, the bacillus had no real existence.”

Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism
by Paul Boghossian

Barry on retrofitting a bad curriculum

However, the question still remains: if you've got a 'lemon,' in the form of an ineffective school or curriculum, then what?

Well, what did you do? You taught your son at home. That's reteaching but can also be called tutoring. I did the same with my daughter. Was it effective? I think so, but I resented having to do it. I got spoiled when my daughter had good teachers in 7th and 8th grades in math. I felt guilty not going through the work with her until I realized that "normal" mean the child understands it by going to school and learning it.

When things are abnormal, after a while it gets to be too much. If there's a good private school around and the parents can afford it, that's the option some seek (as you did).

In terms of other students I tutor, as Anne Dwyer said, if you can identify weak areas that are holding up learning, yes it's effective. In terms of retrofitting a bad curriculum, it's just about impossible as an independent tutor. The parents would have to be willing to have their child take an alternative course. In essence, that's what parents are doing when they send their children to Kumon or Sylvan, etc. Those are schools. So the child is put in the position of going to school twice, and the parents penalized by having their taxes go to waste, and having to shell out more money for the learning centers.

retrofitting a bad curriculum: that is a fantastically useful phrase.

That's a basic public school concept: we'll spend millions on this lousy math curriculum the parents can't stand and we'll "supplement."

Win - win!


Welcome to Grand Canyon

how many tutors in Palo Alto?

Anonymous posts a link:

Almost 60 percent of Palo Alto parents supplement their children's math education through private tutors, extra workbooks and other means, mostly because they feel Palo Alto classes aren't challenging enough, according to results of a district survey released this week.

The district conducted an online survey of about 1,200 elementary school parents, and will compare its results with another survey taken next spring, after students have spent a year learning the district's new Everyday Mathematics curriculum.

During the debates over the controversial Everyday Math program, adopted as the district's new curriculum in April, many parents said Everyday Math is confusing and doesn't teach basic math skills. Parents frequently said they would have to supplement their children's math education.

Under the current curriculum, 62.8 percent of parents said their children don't need extra help in math, the survey says. But 57.2 percent said they provide supplemental math work anyway, mostly in the form of extra practice materials like workbooks or software, or regular math tutoring by a sibling or parent.

About 6.5 percent of parents said they hired a private math tutor, and 21.6 percent said their children attend a private math program like Kumon or Score.

A majority of parents who supplement their children's math education — 51 percent — said a "main reason" they do so is because their child needs to be more challenged in math, and 42.9 percent said a main reason was because their child enjoys math.

Former school board member Mandy Lowell, who has been critical of the district's adoption of Everyday Math, said boredom with math has been a "perennial problem" here. Palo Alto students are the sons and daughters of engineers and scientists who enjoy math, and have passed their love for the subject on to their children, she said, but the program focuses more on "supermarket math."

Most Palo Alto parents supplement kid's math, saying subject is too easy

They do what they do.

Anne Dwyer on what tutoring can achieve (& who needs tutoring & why)

Ok, here's what I see from the trenches.

First, I think I see the big picture because I:
have a special ed student in pre algebra
have a daughter in regular 6th grade math
teach remedial math in college
tutor bright but struggling high school boys in math
have just finished 8 credits of graduate mathematics

I could write a whole long post, but I'd get bored in the middle and delete it. So here goes with the conclusion:

1. Certain school districts (mine) believe in good curricula and qualified teachers. (see the exception below) This combination makes all the difference in the world. The highly qualified teachers know what the students need to learn in math, and will find a way to do the direct instruction. (The exception in my district is, of course, elementary school.)

2. I have tutoring students in other districts who use good curricula but have poorly qualified teachers and students in districts with highly qualified teachers and poor curricula. The boys I am tutoring had a very solid foundation in basic math and are still struggling. The good news is a good tutor can fill in the holes quite easily.
very small.

3. All of my professors at the university that I attend use the direct instruction method. They go over every proof in the book in detail (even though the proof is in the book) and they give solutions to every problem they assign.

Former Public School Teacher

Non-renewed, forced out.

This means that you are made to feel so uncomfortable in your position that you look for another job and you are unable to even get an interview at another school in one of the 15 largest districts in the country. So you move to another district, lose the "tenure" and then are non-renewed due to budget cuts and mostly disagreement with teaching fuzzy math.

I taught at one of the states way down there on the list of funding. I think it's 49 or 50. I was doing fine until I had a daughter. Then I started looking at every kid like she was my own. I'm not proud of that fact, but at least I finally saw the light. That's when things started going wrong. It also coincided with Everyday Mathematics being adopted by the district. I saw gifted kids in the 6th grade who couldn't multiply and divide. Kids who should have been able to move up to algebra in the 7th grade. I had work to do. I had to re-teach them everything from 4th and 5th grade and do 6th and pre-algebra so they could be where they should be.

When I was anonymous at school I wasn't bothered, but I got so excited by the changes that I started talking about it. The beginning of the end was the first week of October 2006.

I wish that I had quit first instead of them "quitting" me. I am starting to realize that I don't want to work in the system anymore. My daughter does Kumon, because I want other teachers for her besides me. Her Kumon teacher is from India. We will begin ALOHA abacus training, another teacher from India, next month. I hope to begin teaching abacus in the near future.

I know that the emotion and frustration you are reading here are not very productive, but I have been dying inside for a long time.

Signed
Former Public School Teacher

This is an atrocity.

chemprof on what tutoring can achieve

I'll semi-agree with Kate. A few years ago, we implemented tutoring by the course TAs for students who were really struggling, usually because of inadequate preparation or miserable math skills. We found we had to put in a "miss two sessions and you lose your slot" policy, as struggling students also often blew off the tutoring session, partly I suspect because it was free.

Tutoring can work really well for a student who needs to see the material again, and who comes to the session having looked over her notes and with questions. There, I've seen 30-60 minutes with the tutor each week changing a low C into a mid-range B (or even in one extreme case, a student who had failed twice ending up with an A!) It can be nearly useless for a student who comes with nothing, hasn't looked at anything, and isn't even sure where to start. Of course, I'm also talking about college students, where "taking responsibility for your own learning" is actually appropriate!

I'm very interested in this question - thanks so much for taking the time to comment.

Based entirely in personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that tutoring is 'bad' -- i.e. it's a bad model for learning (& teaching). It's like buying a lemon and then taking it to the shop a whole lot.

However, the question still remains: if you've got a 'lemon,' in the form of an ineffective school or curriculum, then what?

How well can tutoring work when there's no other option?

Kate on teaching & tutors in an affluent district

I teach in a district with many wealthy families.

Some of the teachers at my school drive very nice cars. They are all married to someone who makes alot more than we do.

Some parents would hire a tutor whether their child needs it or not. They feel like if they don't, they're not doing everything they can. 

I don't think tutors are particularly helpful, for several reasons.

In my experience the main benefit of a tutor is that it compels students who tend to blow off/copy assignments to sit and focus on math for at least an hour a week.

I prefer my students not get tutored because they sometimes cop an attitude in class like they don't have to pay attention, because the tutor will teach it to them later. (This is not very many students...just an obnoxious, overprivileged few.) Overall it sends a message that parents don't trust teachers to get the job done.

All that being said, most of my students don't have tutors. They participate in learning activities and complete the work I ask them to, and we get good results.

Thanks, Kate!

(Back in a bit - I promised myself I would do "first things first" this morning. Sure, I've already broken that promise, but that's why God invented the mid-course correction.)

Scarsdale runs amok

A Scarsdale Education for the Future (pdf file)

It's getting to be time to tell my Holland story.

are parents rational?

Steve H. needs to hie himself over to Dan Willingham's blog right this minute and share his wit and wisdom re: parents and their ability to think as clearly as a person who has obtained a professional administrative services credential.  

Wolfram Alpha

The long-running debate over whether students should be allowed to wield calculators during mathematics examinations may soon seem quaint.

The latest dilemma facing professors is whether to let students turn to a Web site called WolframAlpha, which not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. In other words, it can instantly do most of the homework and test questions found in many calculus textbooks.

The new tool will be a bane to teaching, some professors say—but others see a blessing.

WolframAlpha was created by Stephen Wolfram, an entrepreneur who invented Mathematica, one of the first computer math engines. His new site debuted last month to much media fanfare and, like Google, provides answers to questions typed into a simple search box. It is free and already boasts millions of searches.

A Calculating Web Site Could Ignite a New Campus 'Math War'
by Jeffrey R. Young

I need WolframAlpha for proofs.

A New Online Computation Engine Shakes Up Math

United States for World Class Math

Just in: a website for people like us who want a seat at the table when it comes to national math standards:

United States Coalition for World Class Math

Check out their Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards:

1. All students should be expected to master foundational concepts and skills – especially in arithmetic – that are prerequisite to an authentic Algebra I course in a logical progression from grade to grade in the elementary and middle school years. The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) should be the guiding document describing appropriate mathematical content.

2. The K-7 standards should be designed to prepare as many students as possible for an authentic Algebra I course in Grade 8. K-7 standards should be based on the "Critical Foundations of Algebra" described on pages 17-19 of the NMAP’s Final Report. Standards for authentic Algebra I and Algebra II courses should be based on "The Major Topics of School Algebra" described on pages 15-16 of the NMAP’s Final Report.

3. Standards-based alternatives could be written for less prepared students and alternate paths after algebra and geometry for high school students, depending on student achievement, interests, and career goals. For example:

a. The standards document could outline the possibility of a two-year course spanning Grade 7 and Grade 8 based on Grade 7 standards for students who, at the end of Grade 6, are judged to need more time to master foundational concepts and skills for Algebra I.

b. The standards document could outline a two-year course spanning Grade 8 and Grade 9 based on authentic Algebra I standards for students completing Grade 7 who are judged to need two full years to master Algebra I standards.

4. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, "a focused, coherent progression of mathematics learning, with an emphasis on proficiency with key topics, should become the norm in elementary and middle school mathematics curricula. Any approach that continually revisits topics year after year without closure is to be avoided." Placement of the standards should reflect the grade level at which mastery is expected, and standards should not be repeated from year to year.

a. The sequence of the standards should be logical and hierarchical, following the structure of mathematics itself and should be modeled after the strong standards in California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.

b. "Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations" (pages 19-20 in the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s Final Report) and recommendations from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Curriculum Focal Points should be used for grade level placement.

c. Concepts and skills, once mastered, should be used in subsequent years with a minimum of review.

5. In order to focus on building solid foundations for the more advanced mathematics – including algebra – that occurs in Grades 8-12, extraneous topics including aspects of geometry such as tessellations, nets, statistical approaches to geometric properties, much of data analysis, probability and statistics, and non-algebraic concepts such as pattern recognition should not be present in the K-7 standards.

6. In Grades K-7, the distribution of content by strand should be stated explicitly as percentages at each grade level and should change as students move up through the grades.

a. Early grades should concentrate on the arithmetic of whole numbers and measurement, with a limited amount of geometry and graphing. Certain aspects of algebra, as well as preparation for algebra, should be present from the earliest grades, as is the case with the California and Massachusetts standards.

b. Students should be expected to acquire automatic recall of basic number facts at least to 10 x 10 and 10 + 10.

c. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard algorithms of whole-number arithmetic in the early elementary grades (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and long division).

d. Students should be expected to understand and use the standard definitions for operations with fractions in conjunction with the standard algorithms of whole number arithmetic to compute sums, differences, products and quotients of fractions, including fractions expressed as decimals and percents.

e. The algebra strand gains emphasis in the middle grades, focusing on the content specified by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

7. The organization of the standards should change at Grade 8.

a. In grades K-7, standards should include multiple strands of mathematics, with their relative weight appropriately adjusted through the grades.

b. For algebra and beyond, standards should be given for a single-subject course sequence (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-calculus, etc.) and their components re-ordered for alternative integrated mathematics courses. The standards for the Geometry course should require students to do proofs and to understand postulates, theorems and corollaries.

8. Mathematical problems should have mathematical answers.

a. In general, students should learn techniques for problem solving that can be applied to many contexts. Problems should be contextualized in the "real world" only when the context is sensible and relevant and contributes to an understanding of the mathematics in the problem.

b. Standards documents should include example problems. The level of difficulty of these problems should reflect mathematical complexity rather than non-mathematical issues.

9. K-12 math standards should meet the criteria specified by the American Federation of Teachers. They should be:

a. Clear and specific enough to provide the basis for a common core curriculum.
b. Rooted in the content of mathematics.
c. Clear and explicit about the content and the complexity students are to learn.
d. Measurable and objective.
e. Comparable in rigor to the standards of A+ countries, with grade-level specificity.

10. Standards documents should appropriately emphasize the attainment of procedural fluency. Students must be competent in performing all K-7 tasks without using a calculator.

11. Standards documents should only address mathematical content; language pertaining to pedagogy should be excluded.

12. As emphasized by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, mathematicians should be included in greater numbers, along with mathematics educators, mathematics education researchers, curriculum specialists, classroom teachers, and the general public, in the standard-setting process and in the review and design of mathematical test items for state, NAEP, and commercial tests.


CO Coalition for World Class Math
CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

Portfolios and Finals

I need to know if this is common for middle school. Work gets done, stays in portfolios at school and then comes home at the end of the year. It's too late to learn from the material or to question the result. One of those portfolios came home with my son today. It was for a thematic project that covered many subjects and was completed months ago. He had to give himself a rubric grade,so he gave himself a 4 out of 5. I'm sure his friends gave themselves a 5.

However, our school uses a nonlinear rubric grading system where a 5 is something like an A+, or more, if you ask some teachers. He brought home a final test today where he got 128 out of 130 questions correct. He got a 4. The teacher told them that only those (one student) who got a perfect score received a 5. On top of that, they are not allowed to bring home the test, just the first page of the answer sheet showing the grade. Parents have to sign this page and send it back. In math, the teacher wasn't going to tell them their grades on the final. They had to ask. And forget about seeing the test or bringing it home. Apparently, they reuse tests. I find that astounding.

I told the principal earlier in the year, in a firm but nice way, that I want all homework and tests graded in a timely fashion and sent home. Apparently, that can't or won't happen. I also asked her about some related impossible 5 issues and grades and she said that it really doesn't matter. The high school won't know about the grades. Ha, ha, ha.

Then there are issues with teachers using grades as weapons against kids. They tell the class who got what grade. This isn't across the board, just selective. The school makes a big deal about their bullying policy, but they should add a section on bullying by teachers. My son didn't want to bring in a note for PE class due to a sore ankle because the gym teacher would call him a baby. He's seen it happen to other kids. That reminds me. That low/high ropes session he went to a while back wasn't about teambuilding. It was about boot camp work versus punishment. It was at a National Guard facility. All of the kids were given stupid names by the drill sergeants and had to do push-ups if they did something wrong. They had to do things in teams just like how new recruits have to do things in teams.

the unwritten rule

from Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker:

Education has developed its own ... tradition of unwritten rules or norms that impact the day-to-day workings of schools across the United States. Like baseball, these norms are not only unwritten, they are largely unexamined. They simply represent "the way we do things here." Someone entering the profession as a new teacher in a traditional school will soon discover the unwritten rules, the way things are to be done. If those rules or norms were written, here is what they might say:

[snip]

Our job is to teach, and the students' job is to learn. [italics mine]

Hence: tutors.


lgm on upstate NY
it's good to be rich
all things PLC

upstate New York

from lgm:

Here (upstate), the norm is that homework or classwork is checked by the teacher, but if it shows lack of concept/mastery understanding, there is no reteach unless student qualifies for specialist help. If the parent doesn't and the child is unclassified, the child will be dropped in to a lower section at the end of the unit (gr. 4-5) or the year (K-3). When he falls behind far enough he'll qualify for specialist help via RtI. The in-the-know parents just hire the tutor or do it themselves rather than let the student fall that far behind.

Also, is Scarsdale teaching for excellence or 'for the pass'? I notice here that the info needed in math to perform at the '4' level on the grade level state exams is not taught in class. One has to afterschool with a quality curriculum.

Here, 3rd graders do write a 'research paper' in class. The topic is 3rd grade friendly and most can do it. It reminds me more of a five paragraph essay than a paper.

I would like schools to teach kids how to write book reports.

Then I'd like schools to assign book reports.

Thank you very much.

if you're raising a shy and/or sensitive boy

two words: guitar lessons

Indexed (see: back cover)

Optimism

From a post entitled: Teachers can save the economy:

Barry G on learning physics in high school

We had a bit of physics in 8th and 9th grades. My first real course was as a senior in high school. The teacher was very good and I was totally amazed by the subject. Although it was not calculus-based, it did use trig which we were studying at the time, and math and science merged very nicely. I still remember the lecture on the derivation of the formula for distance of a uniformly accelerating body, relating it to the "area under the curve" which in this case was a straight line, and thus was the area of a triangle. I wondered why he called a straight line a "curve", and the next year in freshman calculus, it again all made sense, when we learned integration.

I can't wait to learn calculus.

Or physics.

Speaking of subjects I intend to learn, The Teaching Company has high school courses. I ordered the chemistry course. ^* I'm thinking of asking C. to work through as much of it as he can next summer, before he takes chemistry at Hogwarts. (He's taking AP biology next year, when he'll be a sophomore.)

I have Nature of the Earth, too, and Building Great Sentences, which is fantastic. Building Great Sentences is so fantastic that the other night, when Ed and an attorney friend were discussing the critical importance of writing short sentences, I rolled my eyes.

"You don't try to write short sentences?" Ed asked.

"No," I said curtly, leaving the men to wonder why.

While it is true that I personally have not read Strunk & White, I have listened to two lectures from Building Great Sentences, and thus feel confirmed in my view that short sentences are neither here nor there.


^*"This course was an absolute joy."

Scarsdale tutors

I was just talking to a guy who is related to a Scarsdale grade school teacher.

Scarsdale teachers start tutoring Scarsdale students for pay as early as second grade.


Scarsdale tutors, part 1

Richard on Physics First

I have a quote on my teaching room along the lines of .......

"There are three physics courses taught at most universities: physics with calculus, physics without calculus and physics without physics."

It sounds like Physics First could be a prerequisite for "physics without physics."

Speaking of physics without calculus, is this calculus without calculus?

I've been cruising this course for a long time....

Damar the starling bird

Cognition and Language Lab via Grrlscientist

I think I've mentioned a couple of times that I came out of Animals in Translation thinking if there is one critter as smart as people or smarter, it's birds. There might be others, of course. There might be lots of others. But birds were the ones that were hard to ignore.

Funny thing: The Birds was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid.

Physics First?

"To teach her students about velocity, teacher Ethel Locke set them loose in the halls of Woonsocket High School with marble launchers.
Through trial and error, the students discovered that their marbles achieved the longest arcs if they were launched at an angle halfway between the floor and the ceiling. If they set the launchers at higher or lower angles, gravity pulled the marbles to the floor at shorter distances."

Physics no longer a junior member

"Pausing from the task at hand, Devon confided that he liked physics better than he thought he would. Ordinarily, he said, it 'is not a class you would like.' "

That's because it isn't physics.

How about deriving the equations you need from g=32.174 ft/sec^2 and analytically calculating that angle.?

Does anyone have any experience with Physics First? The story claims that this order has "nearly doubled" the demand for AP science courses in physics, biology, and chemistry. They must have another senior-level AP physics course. This means that kids would take two physics courses in high school?

it's good to be rich, part 2

Six-figure teachers aren't going to fix public schools.


It's good to be rich, part 1

The Cartel

Bob Bowdon’s documentary “The Cartel” about what’s wrong with education looks even better on the big screen. I attended the premiere in Teaneck Saturday. I saw an advanced copy on dvd so I could write a column about it. That allowed me to pay more attention to the audience reaction when the film was viewed by it for the first time. It commanded attention. There was no talking to each other or texting. Only one person I saw left a seat temporarily. The audience was spellbound at the jaw-dropping corrupti0n and waste that has resulted in New Jersey’s property taxes being the worst in the nation and our kids getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. The audience laughed as the NJEA president tried to explain why tenured teachers seldom are fired no matter how bad they are. They snickered at Corzine’s education commissioner, Lucille Davy, who couldn’t explain why charter school applications are turned down. They saw Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts tell reporters there are no sacred cows in Corzine’s budget then saw Corzine brag about adding more education money, probably headed for some rat hole.

There were the kids crying because they lost out in the lottery to get one of the open seats at a good charter school. They laughed as the film demonstrated if car manufacturers were assigned districts like schools some people would have no choice but to buy a Yugo.

This film is like a sharp stick in the eye. It should be seen by anyone who votes or pays taxes in New Jersey or plans to. More than that, it should be seen by Davy, Corzine and the members of the Legislature who stand behind this fraud of a “thorough and efficient system” of education.

‘The Cartel’ is a must see
by Bob Ingle

The Cartel
A Feature Documentary on How American Public Education Primarily Serves Its Employees, Not Its Children

it's good to be rich

I was out for a run with C. and the dogs, and, since we don't have sidewalks, passing cars were having to stop so I could clear the dogs off to the side of the road.

After a late model European sedan slowed for us, C. said, "That was Ms. Xxxx."

Math teacher in the district.^*

"Really?" I said. "She's probably here to tutor somebody." I was joking.

"She tutors so-and-so," C. said matter of factly.

Sure enough. When we got to so-and-so's house, there was the late model European sedan parked out front.

Funny how you can search far and wide in the effective schools literature and never find an expert recommending that teachers set up shop as private tutors for their own district's students.


^* for passersby: roughly 1900 children in K-12, per pupil spending $26,718 rising to $27,722 next year

Dan Brown on the Challenge Index

Scoring high on Mathews's Challenge Index has created an incentive for schools across the country to push students who have no shot at passing the exams into these high-intensity classes. On a large scale, kids reading below grade level are taking classes designed for above-grade-level students. You've got students that have great difficulty reading young adult books or writing complete sentences being assessed on independently reading novels like Jane Eyre and composing analytical essays on Bronte's style.

The argument that Mathews makes in an accompanying Newsweek piece is that AP classes are healthy "shock therapy" for lower-performing college-bound kids. I see his argument that a rigorous environment can be a motivator for some striving, low-skilled students to bump up their effort.

However, the widespread pushing of AP courses on struggling students -- with rewards of high scores on the "Challenge Index" -- is not in many students' best interest. I expect Mathews would view me as a stodgy defender of the status quo while he casts himself as a bold innovator. At least he quotes one dissenting voice from Professor J. Martin Rochester:

"Having failing students take AP courses as a solution to their academic struggles is like promoting a poor-hitting minor-league ballplayer to the New York Yankees in the hope that it will jump-start his career if he faces major-league pitching."

I'll go one better on the sports analogy; let's take the Boston Marathon. If you want to have a shot at finishing those 26.2 miles, let alone compete for a decent finishing place, it takes long-term training and serious dedication. If you are short on one of those two qualities, a surplus of the other may suffice to get you over the finish line. If you've got neither -- you're not in shape and you don't really want to do hardcore distance running -- then your school does you no favors by pressuring you to sign up for the race.

Newsweek's Top High Schools List is Off Base

I'm a huge fan of Martin Rochester.

I'm of two minds on the Challenge Index.

In fact, Mathews singlehandedly opened up Advanced Placement courses to disadvantaged kids.

He may have singlehandedly opened up Advanced Placement courses to advantaged kids caught in the sorting machine.

Now that it's become crystal clear that the original Challenge Index has served its purpose and, in my view, run its course, he's added the Equity and Excellence score.

Fair enough.

Speaking of Jay Mathews, go read Work Hard. Be Nice. Right now.

Wonderful!

Challenge Index gives percent passing!

For years, people have been hounding Jay Mathews about his Challenge Index, which measures percent of graduating seniors taking AP tests. Taking, not passing. The Challenge Index measures only percent of graduating seniors taking AP tests. Mathews set the Challenge Index up this way in order to persuade schools to allow disadvantaged students, who had a high likelihood of failing the test, into AP courses.

That tactic succeeded brilliantly, particularly in wealthy suburban schools like mine, which presumably adopted open enrollment sometime after the Challenge Index came into being. In the years that I've been reading the list, Irvington High School has typically ranked amongst the top 200 high schools in the country. Of course, since nobody reads the fine print, people assumed the Challenge Index was actually an Achievement Index: a ranking of how well students do on the test.

Last year Mathews finally bowed to reality:

The minute I saw that Coolidge High School in the District had given a startling 750 Advanced Placement tests last May, and that only 2 percent of those exams had received passing scores, I knew I was in trouble.

[snip]

Some readers have argued that the Challenge Index is an invitation to unscrupulous principals to stuff students into AP and create a false aura of academic success, but I don't think that is possible. Teachers, parents and students have to accept the AP courses as valid, as many of them have at Coolidge. A principal who tried such a scheme without community support would soon be looking for another job.

Why I Changed the Challenge Index
Jay Mathews
Thursday, December 11, 2008; 9:45 AM

That second paragraph doesn't hold for affluent school districts, where you have winner-take-all placement mechanisms (scroll down) that produce an enormous pent-up demand for AP courses in college-bound students who have been tracked out of Honors. In that case, when a principal decides that AP courses will take all comers, the community assumes that pushy parents have pressured the school into letting unprepared students take AP courses they don't belong in.

When students fail the AP test, that is confirmation that pushy parents have had their way with the principal.

This year, the Challenge Index includes a new number for "Equity & Excellence": the percentage of all graduating seniors, including those who never got near an AP course, who had at least one score of 3 or above on at least one AP test sometime in high school. Irvington's Equity & Excellence figure is 58. Our ranking this year is #241. Meanwhile Hastings, two towns over, has 73% of graduating seniors passing at least one AP test in their high school career & a ranking of 353.

More than 90% of Irvington graduating seniors enroll in college; 58% pass one AP test in their high school years.

bonus factoid: Scarsdale has 60% of graduating seniors passing at least one AP test without offering any AP courses for the past two years. I hate to even imagine how much more tutoring those parents are paying for (scroll down).

Our Country Deserves Better Than This!

From Jay P. Greene's Blog - Sandra Stotsky tells us what’s what:

“If another country wanted other countries to respect its educational system and the reforms it was trying to make, who would it choose to lead such an important professional project as the development of its national standards in mathematics and in the language of its educational system itself? In any other country in the world, one would expect a distinguished mathematician at the college level to be asked to chair the mathematics standards-writing committee–someone who commands the respect of the mathematics profession (and obviously is an expert on mathematics). For the language standards-writing committee, one would likewise expect an eminent scholar in a college-level department–someone whose command of the language and understanding of the texts that inform the development of this language could not be questioned. If the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers had thought about national pride (and national need) as well as academic/educational expertise, then all of us would respect the Common Core Initiative and look forward with eagerness to the drafts the NGA and CCSSO have promised to make public in July.

These two organizations could have followed, for example, the exemplary procedures followed by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, on which I had the privilege to serve. The Panel was chaired by the former president of one of the major universities in the country, all Panel members were identified at the outset, their qualifications were made known to the pubic, their procedures were open to the public and taped as well, and the final product was hammered out in public, after dozens of reviewers provided critical comments.

But instead of choosing nationally known scholars to chair and staff these committees–to assure us of the integrity and quality of the product–the NGA and the CCSSO have, for reasons best known to themselves, treated the initiative as a private game of their own. The NGA and the CCSSO haven’t even bothered to inform the public who is chairing these committees, who is on them, why they were chosen, what their credentials are, and why we should have any confidence whatsoever in what they come up with.

One person has announced on his own to the press and to a state department of education that he is chairing the mathematics standards-writing committee. He has not been contradicted by anyone at NGA or CCSSO, so we must assume he’s for real. It turns out he is an English major with no academic degrees in mathematics whatsoever. No one has yet announced on his/her own that he/she is chairing the English standards-writing committee. One wag has already wondered whether this person might be a mathematics major with no academic degrees in English. But it’s possible the sad joke in mathematics is not being repeated in English.

This country deserved better for a project of such national importance.”

Tutoring and an attempt to clone myself

They're making new remedial students faster than I can tutor them.

This past year, I taught 2 classes of remedial reading with the help of volunteers from my church. While teaching the second class, I made highly scripted, idiot proof instructions at the request of the volunteers I was working with so they could continue on with the program after my move to Santa Monica, California this summer.  (They specifically wanted idiot proof, and said the more scripted and idiot proof, the better!)

They are now complete and posted on my new "How to Tutor" page.  The idiot proof instructions are about halfway through, in this paragraph:

Your number one task is to get them to stop guessing and start sounding out each and every word from left to right. Nonsense words are key, they help prevent guessing. Here is a free website that generates nonsense words. Syllables are also helpful, I would use the Blend Phonics Reader (it helps show how guessing is a bad strategy by showing words with similar configuration together) followed byWebster’s Speller. Here is a step by step guide to using Blend Phonics that also adds in syllables, spelling and phonics rules, syllable division rules, and syllable division exercises. There are also readings from Hebrews 12 that can be added to show progress through the program.

In a further attempt to clone myself, I have started a joint blog with Don Potter where people can share their phonics teaching experiences, whether they teach 1 or 100 students. The volunteers I worked with actually came up with a lot a great ideas, especially the ones with 3 or more children/grandchildren, they are wise in the ways of children!

A quick rundown of their most effective ideas:

1. Banning pencils and switching to oral spelling (10% of the children were taking notes usefully, the rest started drawing and stopped listening.)  The oral spelling was also much quicker and prone to peer pressure to be involved.
2. Switching from a long teach/small group work cycle to a cycle of 1-2 minutes of teaching and 3 to 5 minutes of working with 2 or 3 students for each volunteer.
   
3. Parent involvement.  The last class, parents were part of our volunteers.  (They could opt to either work with their own children or other children, their preference.)  This taught them how to work with their children at home on their own and also let them see the phonics in action.  The best improvement I've seen from any student in my 15 years of remedial phonics tutoring came from a student whose mom worked with her diligently on the days we did not meet--she was reading 3 grade levels above her grade level when we finished!
   

It's really easy to tutor.  Sixteen year old girls used to teach all their students to read while teaching the rest of the R's to their other students, and they didn't even have idiot proof instructions!  (Of course, they would have seen it taught 5 or 6 times in their one-room schools.)

It's great to see the students change as their self-confidence improves and they learn to read well.  It's also easy to make big changes with Webster's Speller.  Using Blend Phonics and the Speller in two 2-month courses, twice a week for 90 minutes, had the spring and fall classes we taught improving, on average, 2.3 and 1.5 grade levels per student!

(If you were wondering at my lack of posts, I was tutoring, making idiot proof instructions, and homeschooling my daughter.  It's now summer and my idiot proof instructions are complete. Of course, now we're moving, there's always something...)

Singapore is Working--last chance to buy your CWPs

We switched to Singapore math in January.  I've seen a big improvement in my daughter's mathematical thinking since the switch.

We hadn't even gotten to multiplication yet, when a few months ago I asked her on a whim, how much is four 4's?  She came back with 16 very quickly.  

I asked her how she knew, and she said I'd taught her.  I said, "I did, how?"

She replied, "You taught me that 4 + 4 = 8 and 8+ 8 = 16."

We have since done a bit of multiplication, but I'm still impressed.  Seeing the program being used makes me realize even more how different it is, and how well designed it is.  It doesn't look that different until you really scrutinize it, and its full worth doesn't come out until you have used it.  It is even more apparent how well it works if you used a regular math program first. 

I just bought all 6 years worth of Challenging Word Problems, as CassyT posted, they are being discontinued soon.  I also bought next year's 2nd grade math.

After last summer's exodus of math facts from the brain, this summer we're  doing Right Start math games a few times a week to keep the math facts from jumping out of the brain and running off somewhere.  It is a fun way to review math facts, we're enjoying it so far!

"complaints can improve your school"

I'm pretty sure I would kill to have this person running my district:

Here are a few tips on do-it-yourself complaint resolution. Or consider this advice that will help to avoid hiring an expensive consultant to tell you what is wrong in your school or district.

• Seek complaints. Ask for the compliments and the bad stuff. Don’t become defensive when you hear bad news. Instead, probe for the exact nature of the problem, the resolution sought and ideas for how to accomplish this. A well-stated problem in operational terms can really help get a resolution under way.

• Let the person closest to the problem attempt to resolve the problem prior to your intervention. I always tell the educators with whom I work that I support them. However, I also let them know if they have made a mistake they need to get on top of fixing it or apprise me of the situation so I can attempt to resolve it (or at least get into damage-control mode).

I advise educators that if a school constituent calls me with a complaint, the first thing I will do is ask if he or she has contacted the educator in question. If not, then I probe for further information and ask the constituent if I can have the educator call him or her. If a resolution is not reached, the constituent is to call me back. In 99 percent of the issues, I never hear from the constituent again.

At the same time, the educator feels supported because I have allowed him or her to resolve the problem. The educator understands if he or she doesn’t resolve the problem, then I will do so because if I don’t, the problem will go over my head and someone on the school board or in the local news media will resolve it — and probably not to our satisfaction.

• Do something. It’s not good enough to hear a complaint and then agree with the complaint. If you can’t do anything, chances are the complainant will find someone who will.

The most effective job you can do is to listen dispassionately and objectively. Is the complaint reasonable? Is it coming from a reasonable person who has not gone off the deep end because his or her child has ADHD or SAB (simply annoying behavior)? You must be the professional who provides advice on dealing with a difficult child or educator instead of throwing up your hands and blaming someone else.

Find resources, find help, find solutions. You won’t have just one ADHD or SAB student in your schools nor will you have just one difficult employee so find help for the parents, and you will find help for your employees and yourself at the same time.

• When you don’t know how to solve the complainer’s problem, simply ask, “How can we make this right?” Not only will you get a solution that the constituent will agree with since he or she is suggesting it, but there’s a good chance this idea of how to make things right will require less work or worry on your part than what you would have come up with minus the input.

Systemic Answers
• If there’s a pattern to the complaints, then address the pattern. A systemic problem needs a systemic approach to resolution. You are the one to be able to see a recurring complaint that your team and you can address. Adopt the attitude of fixing the problem rather than living with it.

• Find ways to have your employees adopt a schoolwide culture of using complaints as a way to improve practice. State it in your mission or school district goals, but constantly press for this way of seeing school operations from everyone in the system (from central office to principals, teachers, custodians, etc.). Constantly model an appreciation for complaints and resolving them by using this same approach with your employees, and point out what you are doing. Do not make problems your problems but our problems, and remember to get the complainers to help resolve the problem.

When you start to look at complaints as an opportunity to improve your organization rather than an attack on your organization, then you will (after a brief moment of regret and irritation) take your organization to a new level of performance. Wouldn’t it be nice if when community members left your schools they remembered their experience with schools as one of the best of their lives?

Embracing complaints will help you to make a positive difference in the lives of our students. And that is, after all, why we are all here.

Complaints Can Improve Your Schools
by Jan Borelli
The School Administrator May 2009

My district requires parents to "work up the chain of command." That's the way the superintendent always puts it: work up the chain of command.

Our school board has actually adopted a Code of Conduct for parents requiring that we work up the chain of command:

B) PARENTS
A cooperative relationship between home and school is essential to each student’s successful development and achievement. To achieve this relationship with school, parents have a responsibility to insist on prompt and regular attendance by their children and to ensure that they are prepared to participate and learn. Parents are expected to show an enthusiastic and supportive attitude toward school and education and recognize that they and the school are jointly responsible for their children’s education. In addition, parents are expected to teach their children self-respect, respect for the law, respect for others as well as respect for public property. It is their responsibility to ensure that their children are aware of and abide by all district policies, rules and regulations. Parents are expected to follow a process for effective communication with school, which includes first addressing any concerns with the individual teacher involved and then his/her immediate supervisor before involving any other parties. Parents should also be aware that they are responsible for any financial obligations incurred by their children in school. This includes lost books, damage to property, etc.

C) SCHOOL PERSONNEL
School personnel play an important role in the education of students. In view of this, it is incumbent upon all school personnel to promote a climate of mutual respect, treat students in an ethical and responsible manner, and demonstrate desirable standards of behavior through personal example. All school personnel are expected to report violations of the Code of Conduct to a building administrator. Violent behavior shall be reported immediately.

Irvington Code of Conduct
Policy 7310
Adopted by the Board of Education July 2, 2001
Revised and Adopted by the Board of Education July 1, 2008

Notice that the Code for parents is twice as long as the code for school personnel.

That's because parents don't have a union.

p.s.: The board's Code of Conduct for parents is legally unenforceable. I asked a lawyer. A lawyer for a school board, in fact.

Students Give Group Assignments a Failing Grade

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

"STUDENTS GIVE GROUP ASSIGNMENTS A FAILING GRADE

At a conference on teaching at colleges on Saturday,
three undergraduates made a plea: No more group
assignments -- not unless they will be graded fairly. . ."

The conference in question is the sixth annual Teaching Professor conference, an event sponsored by Magna Publications, a Wisconsin publisher of higher-education newsletters.

Of course the problem is (right, everyone?) that those darn ol' instructors just don't know how to design group projects well.

The article cites a 2004 paper in the Journal of Student Centered Learning entitled “Turning Student Groups Into Effective Teams,” suggesting that students rate the “team citizenship” of each member of their group, and that those ratings in turn be used to help determine each student’s individual grade.

Yeah right. Now that sure sounds like an improvement, doesn't it?

desperately seeking YouTube

I desperately need a copy of the French Open LaCoste commercial on YouTube.



This is the song, not the ad.

Crimson Wife on homeschooling vs afterschooling

My kids are zoned to attend one of those "nominally high achieving" but actually mediocre schools. Since I'd have to "afterschool" them to make up for the school's academic deficiencies, I don't see the point in enrolling them in the first place. So we homeschool, and free up our afternoons for a mix of organized activities and unstructured free play.

My question to Crimson Wife: how did you know?

I'm always amazed by people who manage to figure things out years before I figure things out.

Not that that should be amazing.

But, still.

14

Allison on liberal education

I want my kids to be able to understand the world they are in, how it came to be that way, and which parts are mutable, which immutable. I want them to be able to recognize truth from falsehood. I want them to want to find out more truths, as well. I want them to be able to communicate well enough to convey their ideas, their opinions, and their knowledge to others. I want them to experience joy.

That means they need to be able to think and reason. All of that means they need to know science, math, history, literature, rhetoric, art, and philosophy, as well as some economics, some engineering and a few other things. That's why I want the liberal arts education.

RMD on different parents wanting different things

"And different parents want different things. Some parents want a well-rounded type of education that teaches solid academic skills but also leaves room for art, music, socializing, etc. Others want just the academic rigors and still others want a more artsy kind of education. "

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. However, since most parents are ill-informed about what is really needed to succeed (including me), there is much more disagreement than there otherwise might be. (As a side note, I don't believe this is because parents aren't smart and capable, but because there is so much bad information. Also, we all tend to make decisions based on our personal observations rather than what some study says . . . look at fad weight loss supplements people ingest, despite the poorly supported claims, that end up being very unhealthy.)

For quite a while now, I've suspected this is true: if the realm of education were less muddled, there would be less disagreement.....amongst parents, at least.

I don't know whether it's true - but if I had to 'put my nickel down,' as a sonogram technician once said to me, I'd put it on RMD's analysis.

Green Dot

I'm midway through the New Yorker article on Steve Barr and Green Dot -- wow.

Barr was born in 1959, just south of San Francisco, and lived with his mother in Monterey, near the military base, where she worked as a dental assistant and a cocktail waitress. When he was six, he and his younger brother spent a year in foster care. Later, they made their home in a trailer in Missouri, before moving back to California.

In school, Barr was a good athlete, and popular. Every teacher knew his name. His brother, Mike, was quiet and overweight. Mike tried playing in the band for a while. ("Why do you give the chubby kid a tuba?" Barr asked, sighing. "Do you know how hilarious it is seeing a chubby kid try to get on the bus with a tuba?") But soon Mike got lost in their large high school. Steve graduated, and went on to the University of California at Santa Barbara. Mike dropped out, and never really settled into an adult life. Eventually, he was in a motorcycle accident. After a series of surgeries, he lost his leg. He won a settlement, but that attracted the wrong friends. "You take a poor kid who has problems and give him a lot of money . . ." Barr said. When Barr was thirty-two, Mike died of a drug overdose. His mother died shortly afterward, and Barr began to drift.

He discovered charter schools by accident. When President Clinton went to San Carlos to visit California's first charter school, Barr tagged along, and encountered the school's founder, Don Shalvey, and a Silicon Valley businessman, Reed Hastings, who had just founded Netflix. Shalvey and Hastings were about to draw up a ballot initiative that would increase the number of charter schools in California. Barr decided to help. "He came out of nowhere," Hastings said. And he brought a very different approach. He persuaded them, for instance, to try to make peace with the California Teachers Association. "He helped us realize we were perhaps overly simplistic in demonizing the union as the enemy," Hastings said. "It turned out C.T.A. was open to a stronger charter law."

As Barr worked on the campaign, he started to think about his own years in school, and his brother's. High school, he decided, was the point where their lives diverged. When the charter-school measure passed, he broke up with his girlfriend, moved out of their apartment, gave up his convertible, and rented a decrepit place in Venice, sight unseen. He moved in on Christmas morning, to a room strewn with needles, vomit, and feces. "I'm thirty-nine, I'm alone," he said. "Merry fucking Christmas." He tied his chocolate Lab, Jerry Brown, in the corner, put on the Harry Belafonte album his mother used to play every Saturday morning, when they did chores together, and scrubbed the apartment.

A year and a half later, he opened Animo Leadership Charter High School, near Lennox. (He said that in Spanish animo can mean "courage" or "valor," but he prefers a Mexican surfing buddy's translation: "Get off your ass.") He hired five of his seven teachers straight out of college and rented classrooms at a night school. When one of the teachers quit in the first couple of weeks, he replaced her with his office manager. Barr worked mostly without pay for the next few years, spending the last of his savings and his brother's settlement, and doing such damage to his finances that Costco revoked his membership. He pitched in a lot himself. "Maybe the most fun I had was going to test-drive school buses," he said.

And he starting a surfing club. "There were a handful of kids at the school who were really fricking cool but weren't being reached somehow," he said. "There was a kid named Ricky. He was smart, charismatic. All the girls loved this guy. There was another girl named Stephanie, who I think had a crush on Ricky." They agreed to find twenty-five kids who would show up before school, at 6 A.M.

"We were driving to the South Bay, Manhattan Beach. It was real quiet," Barr recalled. "Halfway out there, one of the kids said, 'Mr. Barr, do you have to know how to swim to surf?' " Half the kids couldn't. Barr put his head in his hands and laughed.

"The Manhattan Beach school system, they actually have surfing in gym class, so you have all these blond-haired, blue-eyed kids in the water," Barr continued. "And here come these kids from Lennox. The Lennox surf team." He mimicked a slow, tough walk. "Their gear's a little off, you know, they're all Latino, and a couple of black kids. I remember them getting triple takes."

At the end of its first chaotic year, Barr's school beat Hawthorne High School in every measurable outcome. "When the scores come out, I have to call Shalvey"--Barr's charter-school mentor--"and ask him, 'Are they good?' " Barr said. " 'Cause I don't fucking know. I don't know how to read test scores." The night school eventually moved, and Animo Leadership took over the entire campus. Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked it among the top hundred public high schools in the country.

I'm in the thick of the part where he takes over Lock High School ----