projects we have known and loved

from Barry Garelick:

Not only is the tissue box assignment real, but elsewhere in her book Katharine talks about how in language classes, kids have to make posters about their family. My daughter had to do a family tree chart with photos for her Spanish class. The teacher lost the poster, and called my daughter at home to ask her to do another one, and said it was important for her grade. (!!) My daughter, who didn't like the assignment to begin with was infuriated to have to do it again, and all because the teacher had lost the first one. The sadder aspect of all this is parents get drawn in to the "this project is worth a lot of points for your grade" type thinking, and are afraid to make waves by telling the teacher that the student is NOT going to do this; please give an alternative assignment.

For English class in 8th grade, the teacher gave the students a choice of projects for Lord of the Flies. One was a standard book report. Others included designing a T shirt about the book. My daughter hated the alternatives and chose writing the book report. And she is not fond of writing!

I'm reading Katharine's book right now and have nothing but praise for it. I am going to recommend it to several teachers I know at George Mason's ed school. I really think it should be required reading.

Googlemaster on the German tissue box

re: the German tissue box assignment:

That's awful! I can't decide whether I would refuse to turn one in or create one with variations of "Dies ist die dümmste Idee überhaupt" all over it.

help desk

If 20 percent of x equals 80 percent of y, which of the following expresses y in terms of x?

(A) y = 16% of x
(B) y = 25% of x
(C) y = 60% of x
(D) y = 100% of x
(E) y = 400% of x

The Official SAT Study Guide 2006
p. 550

I absolutely cannot do this question, and I don't know why.

cranberry on how politics work

There's nothing wrong with public debate about the manner in which a town or city chooses to spend the majority of its budget.

Those who want to change public schools for the better are forced to use the bottom-up process. The internet makes this much more effective, as it's no longer possible for administrators to placate the discontented with different answers for different people. When parents can compare the answers they received online, with parents in other grades, it's no longer possible for school system insiders to "manage the message."

This is something I don't think I've ever posted, here or on the Forum: there were unnamed others who co-founded the Forum with me, one of whom gave me the "theory of the listserv." Which had to do with the fact that whenever a parent approached the administration about a problem, she was told, "Your child is the only one having a problem."

And/or: "You are the only parent complaining."

Once parents began posting on a public listserv, this parent said to me, "They'll know that we know that they know."

Miscommunication and distrust arise when people notice that they've been told different things, and when committees are thanked for their input, are patted on the head, and then the committees must watch their recommendations put on a shelf and ignored.

A top-down solution would need the superintendent's support. The choice of a superintendent falls to the school board. The only way to influence the school board is to influence its composition. The only way to influence its composition is to convince enough voters of the necessity for change. That process is bottom-up. It always has been. The internet has made it easier to reach and organize voters.

Right!

Outside grass-root politics, there is no way to induce a wealthy public school to provide direct instruction in synthetic phonics and "traditional" math. At least, none that I've seen or experienced. Public schools aren't collaborative, and they don't see parents as valued customers or clients. They do what they do.

So democratic politics is the only avenue to reform, but one difficulty is that affluent public schools (perhaps all public schools?) see themselves as existing outside the political realm; dissent is illegitimate. Heck, affluent public schools, at least in my experience, see school boards as illegitimate. I've spent the past year listening to our administrators mock, disrespect, and even denounce the most independent member of the board, a woman who ran on a reform platform and won.

More from cranberry:

I should add that by the time any school reform efforts bear fruit, the original malcontents' children have left the system, either by graduating or changing to private schools.

Exactly.

This is everywhere the case, including in the youth sports organizations, I'm told. The powers that be wait for the troublemakers to age out of the system.

That is an anomaly in my town, where more than a few people whose children have graduated are politically engaged in reform efforts. Another anomaly: voters whose primary concern is extremely high school taxes and spending are allied with voters whose primary concern is student achievement. For some voters, those two concerns are different faces of the same problem: they are convinced that too much spending on the wrong things lowers academic quality.

It's not a perfect process, by any means. I think in most years, school administrators tend to get what they want. People who don't have children in the system only start paying attention when money gets tight.

The state and federal government also get involved. At present, our state is proposing to drop standards which are thought to be the best in the nation for standards which have not yet been set (and thus, can't be compared.) I'd love to be able to act in a top-down way on this. As a single citizen, though, it's just not possible.

Without political organization, parents don't have a voice.

revolution

"A revolution takes time to settle in." ~Lanza del Vasto

(thanks to Concerned CT Parent)

Engineering Project Lifecycle

1) Enthusiasm
2) Disillusionment
3) Panic
4) Search for the Guilty
5) Punishing the Innocent
6) Rewarding those not involved

(thanks to Mark Roulo)

sequence

First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

-Ghandi

(thanks to Mark Roulo)

national standards

Jay Greene:

But perhaps the strongest objection to national standards that we have repeated at JPGB (here, here, and here) is that even if the current set of proposed national standards is an improvement for some states (and less good than others), there is strong reason to fear that people opposed to sensible, rigorous standards will gain control over the newly created national standards infrastructure and be in a position to impose their nonsense on everyone. Remember that teacher unions, ed schools, and other opponents of tough standards that might expose the shortcomings of schools and teachers are much better organized and politically powerful than anyone else in education politics. Over time they will gain control of the machinery of national standards even if they do not control it now.

National Standards Nonsense Redux

And Neal McCluskey:

....Which brings us to a whole different layer of policy making, one major media wade into even less often than legislating: writing regulations. How many stories have you read, or watched on TV news, about the writing of regulations for implementing anything, education or otherwise? I’d imagine precious few, yet this is where often vaguely written statutes are transformed into on-the-ground operations. It’s also where the special interests are almost always represented — after all, they’re the ones who will be regulated — but average taxpayers and citizens? Don’t go looking for them.

Plowing Through the Defenses of National Education Standards

Until parents have a union - an organized presence, inside the political arena, as parents - national standards are going to be controlled by the organized entities that control things now: ed schools and teacher unions.

I'm pretty sure.

college grads & jobs

at the Wall Street Journal

reading comprehension at OILF

pill bugs vs. beavers

SAT prep

I'm going to take the SAT, and I want to score a 700 on math, minimum.

Any suggestions?

I love anti Nerd's advice re: Math Workbook for the New SAT (Barron's Math Workbook for the Sat I) 3rd Edition.

I've taken my SATs May of 2003, and October 2003. I scored 740 for May SAT and achieved 780 for October SAT. This book is one of the best books for mathematics. It depends on how well you use this book. Anyways, I'll tell how i used this book.

First week: I bought the book, went over the concepts, structures, tricks, strategies, one of 10 REAL SATs practice exam to know what score i would rank, read through beginning stuff.

Second week: Starting this week, I work on chapter 3, which deals with arithmetic skills and concepts. There are 8 lessons in chapter 3. I did 2 lessons a day starting Monday, and then Friday, I relax and review the lessons I've practiced. When you study, you must MASTER the concepts. Knowing the concept does not help.

Third week: There are 7 lessons in Chapter 4 which deals with Algebra. I do two lessons a day, for 4th day, when I only do 1 lesson, I work on my weaknesses in Chapter 4. Then 5th day, I review and study. When review, review lessons from previous chapters so that you won't forget.

Fourth week: There are 5 lessons in Chapter 5. I work 2 lessons a day, and then I review and study as usual.

Fifth week: Chapter 6 deals with Geometry, which was one of my weaknesses. So I decided to learn 1 lesson a day since there are 8 lessons and SAT strongly emphasizes a lot on geometry. So fifth week, I've done 4 lessons, one lesson each day. 5th day, I reviewed.

Sixth week: I've continued and finish last 4 lessons and reviewed as well

Seventh week: I went back to my routine plan and studied two lessons a day, and then reviewed.

Eighth week: I worked on Chapter 8, last chapter before practice exams. 5 lessons, study.

9th week: Then after I've studied these chapters, I go over and review all the problems, questions, concepts from previous chapters. I review chapters 3-5.

10th week: Same as 9th week but I reviewed chapters 6-8.

11th and 12th week. I took practice exams to familiar myself with the exams. After you see the score you've got, go to problems and check to see if you made a mistake because you weren't careful enough. Then assume that it's correct and check your score again. For instance, You got 630 on practice exam but if you didn't make stupid mistakes, what could you have gotten?, 650? 700?

From this point, you're pretty much set for SAT Math. Note that I'm one of the biggest slacker with horrible English skills who's from Korea and still get high score. I am NOT a genius or some nerd. I received grades of Bs and Cs in mathematic courses in past and if I can pull this off, you can. This is a 3 month plan I've made beginning of junior year.

My parents told me that cramming does not work and that I should space out studying to learn more effectively. I am a fan of Bruce Lee and he has stated long time ago that "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." This means that you shouldn't assume you know the concept just because you've solved few easy problems. You should apply the concept as many times as you can and do them properly.

People say "practice makes perfect". It does not. PERFECT practice ALMOST makes perfect. You'll never get your goals to be perfect if you don't practice it properly and people make mistakes once in a while, so nobody is perfect.

In Psychology, It shows that spaced practice and overlearning helps for studies because overlearning and spaced practice puts your learning to long-term memory where it wont' decay for a long time.

When I say review and stdy everytime, it means, know the concept really well and master them by applying them as much as possible to every problems. When i say two lessons, it means, solve every problems in those lessons. I've also used Kaplan Math Workbook for practice problems to strengthen my concepts. I've studied previous chapters When I was studying chapters 4/5/6/7/8 to prevent my brain from forgetting.

I used this method to tutor students also as well. It worked for my studnets. I've raised most students' scores. My best student raised his score from 580 to 720, then he quit learning from me after 3 months, learned on his own from knowing this method for 2 months, and achieved 800. Student getting higher than a teacher? If I can do this, anyone can.

left-brained children in a right-brained world

Ed and I and our new school board member went to the Yale Club last night to hear Katharine talk about her book: Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World. A wonderful night, but the children's stories were sad -- which we hadn't expected. We expected to feel our customary exasperation; we hadn't expected to feel sad.

Here is Josh:

"I hate school," Josh announces. It's a Monday night in late September, the beginning of Josh's fourth week at one of the best middle schools the city has to offer, a math and science magnet that attracts the strongest teachers in the district, a school that his parents had set their sights on for years.

Ben, Josh's dad, looks up from the computer. "What do you mean?" They're both at the dining room table, which doubles as an after-dinner work space.

"I hate school," Josh repeats, raising his voice and thwacking a yellow foler against the table.

If Josh has said this before, it's never been with such vehemence.

"Please explain," Ben says.

"Take a look at the projects they just assigned us." Josh scoots the folder across the table.

Ben takes it and peers inside.

"There's a sheet for each subject," Josh says. "Take a look."

Ben pulls out several sheets and pages through: "Design a Playground," "Decorate a Tissue Box," Construct a Diorama."

"That's a lot of art homework," remarks Ben. "What about your other subjects."

"Dad, that's the point," yells Josh. "These are for my other subjects."

"Which ones?" Ben pages back through. Everywhere the same phrases keep popping up: "Be colorful." "Be creative."

"All of them. "Math, English, German . . . The tissue box is for German."

Ben looks again: "Decorate a box of tissues with German words, drawings, etc. Pick the vocabulary from chapters 1 or 2, and use those words to decorate your box of tissues. Put the number of the chapter you've chosen on your box also."

"You've got to be kidding."

Ben turns to the next page: "Construct a diorama illustrating the climactic scene of your novel."

"That's for English," Josh says. "The playground's for math. That last sheet is for science." He reaches for the folder, pulls out one more page, and hands it to Ben: "Write a three-page paper tha includes a description of a movie, television show, or a book that involves a scientific conept, a summary of the scientific concept, and an explanation of the relationship between the actual concept and how it is used in the movie, television show, or book."

Ben and his wife enrolled Josh at the math and science magnet not only because their son excels in math and science but because he's never been that motivated about writing, and is even less inspired by the arts-and-crafts activities that dominated his elementary school classes. This school, they thought, would finally give him a break. Instead, it turns out, Josh now gets to take this nonsense home as homework. Assaulted by a mental image of him bent over a shoebox, scowling and clenching his jaw as he glues in a carboard cutout of a Billy Pilgrim stick figure, Ben wonders how they could have been so wrong about the schoo. And how could the faculty of this math and science magnet be so wrongheaded?

pp. 86-87

The German tissue box assignment is real.

"practice each skill in isolation"

How to Survive Your College Math Class:

There is an overall pattern to learning mathematics. It applies to the structure of entire courses and it applies as well to your mastery of each of the skills you learn. You will recognize it as well if you have ever learned to play a sport or a musical instrument.

1. Practice each individual skill in isolation, under controlled circumstances, until you can do it easily and with con fidence.

2. Integrate the individual skills into sequences. Practice until you can chain skills together with di fferent variations, easily and with con fidence.

3. Practice in a realistic context, until you can deal with complete real world problems easily and with confi dence.

4. Go forth and solve real problems.

If you apply the suggestions here and make e ective use of the resources available to you (books, instructor, classmates), you are likely to suddenly find yourself doing mathematics, and maybe even liking it.

How to Survive Your College Math Class
(and Take Home Something of Value)
Matthew Saltzman and Marie Coffin
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Clemson University
Draft: August 25, 1998

There are few practices more frowned upon in public schools these days than teaching skills "in isolation." Hence: project based learning. Ed says if it were up to the schools, we wouldn't have subjects. We'd just have Subject.

Don't laugh.

They already tried it in Holland.

completing the square

off-topic:

What is the speaker's accent? (video)

what is logarithm, mommy?

This site looks like it might be good....

Mathematics and Statistics Help (MASH)
University of Sheffield

Professor of Economics Asks...

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics. Wall Street Journal Opinion

Daniel Klein is a professor of economics at George Mason University. This op-ed is based on an article published in the May 2010 issue of the journal he edits, Econ Journal Watch, a project sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research.

The article is available HERE

Playland

Yesterday C. and I went to Playland for their annual developmental disabilities day, also known as our annual Playland fudge day. Just inside the entrance, there's a fudge stand that sells the best fudge I've ever consumed, and C. and I binge on the stuff once a year.^*

The price is $3 per piece, or buy 4 pieces & get one free.

I told the young person behind the counter that I wanted 15 pieces, and she began methodically filling up the boxes. Methodically .... and .... slowly. At some point in this process, possibly thinking I could speed things along, I said, "So that's $36, right?"

And she said "No." She didn't seem to be exactly sure how much 15 pieces would be, but she didn't think it was going to be $36.

I said, "You get 1 free with each 4, right?"

"Yes."

"So I'm paying for 12 pieces and getting 3 pieces free."

She looked confused. I went over it again, but she still didn't think $36 sounded right.

Finally I said, "I want to buy 3 boxes of fudge, with 4 pieces in each box and 1 extra free piece," and that did the trick. Twelve dollars a box.

I don't think she knew how to work backwards from "15 pieces of fudge" to 12 pieces of fudge at $3/each + 3 extra free pieces.

Meanwhile, here are the "mathematical practices" required by the new Common Core standards (pdf file) for Kindergarten:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.

^* Have I mentioned the fact that I've de-veganed myself? Well, I have.

exercise & better grades

Vigorous Exercise Linked With Better Grades

Just staring at this headline is making me feel guilty.

Time to corral the dogs & go for a run.

the most fun part

I love the Corner Office series.

Here is Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive of Nvidia, on the origins of his ability to 'fail forward':

When I was in high school, nothing gave me greater joy than computer games. It was part of how I grew up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the video game era, but I’ve never beaten myself up about mistakes. When I try something and it doesn’t turn out, I go back and try it again.

Most of the time when you’re playing a game, you’re losing. You lose and lose and lose until you beat it. That’s kind of how the game works, right? It’s feedback. And then eventually you beat it.

As it turns out, the most fun parts of a game are when you’re losing. When you finally beat it there’s a moment of euphoria but then it’s over. Maybe it’s because I grew up in that generation, I have the ability to take chances, which leads to the ability to innovate and try new things. Those are important life lessons that came along.

I’m Prepared for Adversity. I Waited Tables.
Published: June 4, 2010
interview by Adam Bryant

children's savings accounts & math scores

more from the National Affairs blog:

Math Achievement and Children's Savings: Implications for Child Development Accounts

William Elliott, Hyunzee Jung & Terri Friedline
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, June 2010, Pages 171-184

Abstract:
In this study, we propose that children who have a savings account may be more likely to have higher math scores than children without a savings account. We find that children's savings accounts are positively associated with math scores. Children with savings accounts on average score almost nine percent higher in math than children without a savings account. Further, results suggest that children's savings accounts fully mediate the relationship between household wealth and children's math scores. However, household wealth moderates the mediating relationship. We find math scores of low-wealth children increase by 2.13, middle-wealth children's increase by 4.36, while high-wealth children's increase by 6.59 points. Policy implications are discussed.

IQ & family background

This is interesting....

Abstract:

For the purpose of understanding the underlying mechanisms behind intergenerational associations in income and education, recent studies have explored the intergenerational transmission of abilities. We use a large representative sample of Swedish men to examine both intergenerational and sibling correlations in IQ. Since siblings share both parental factors and neighbourhood influences, the sibling correlation is a broader measure of the importance of family background than the intergenerational correlation. We use IQ data from the Swedish military enlistment tests. The correlation in IQ between fathers (born 1951-1956) and sons (born 1966-1980) is estimated to 0.347. The corresponding estimate for brothers (born 1951-1968) is 0.473, suggesting that family background explains approximately 50% of a person's IQ. Estimating sibling correlations in IQ, we thus find that family background has a substantially larger impact on IQ than has been indicated by previous studies examining only intergenerational correlations in IQ.

Anders Björklund, Karin Hederos Eriksson & Markus Jäntti
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2010

IQ and Family Background: Are Associations Strong or Weak?
National Affairs
Friday, June 4, 2010

Karen Pryor on 'changemakers'

So you've become a clicker trainer! Naturally you are very excited. You want other people around you to stop using punishment-based methods and start clicking. So you introduce the clicker at your dog club or high school or wherever you are using it. And guess what: people not only don't change, they get mad at you.

Build a better mousetrap and, in chronological order, the world will:

1. Ignore you
2. Pretend to agree, but actually do nothing
3. Resist, delay, obstruct
4. Openly attack you (the dangerous phase, but also a sign that change is starting)
5. Absorb
6. Utilize
7. Take credit
8. Proselytize

On Being a Changemaker

In my school district, we've reached number 4.

Harvard Writing Program

Responding to Student Writing (pdf file)

Have just come across this paper from the Harvard Writing Program - no idea whether it's useful.

We'll see.

Brief Guides

off-task

Chesterfield County middle schools this year are assessing all eighth-graders' knowledge of 21st-century skills, which include communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, innovation and use of technology.

"We obviously want our kids to have those 21st-century skills," said director of technology Lynda Gillespie. "The only way to make sure that you have those skills is through assessment."

Area schools assess students’ 21st-century skills
JUAN ANTONIO LIZAMA TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: May 24, 2010

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, life goes on:

Statistically speaking, however, having an expertise in statistics may help in getting a job: according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, graduates with math skills are more likely than their peers in other majors to find themselves promptly and gainfully employed.

The safest of all degrees to be acquiring this year is in accounting: forty-six per cent of graduates in that discipline have already been offered jobs. Business majors are similarly placed: forty-four per cent will have barely a moment to breathe before undergoing the transformation from student to suit. Engineers of all stripes—chemical, computer, electrical, mechanical, industrial, environmental—have also fared relatively well since the onset of the recession: they dominate a ranking, issued by Payscale.com, of the disciplines that produce the best-earning graduates. Particular congratulations are due to aerospace engineers, who top the list, with a starting salary of just under sixty thousand dollars—a figure that, if it is not exactly stratospheric, is twenty-five thousand dollars higher than the average starting salary of a graduate in that other science of the heavens, theology.

Economics majors aren’t doing badly, either: their starting salary averages about fifty thousand a year, rising to a mid-career median of a hundred and one thousand.

Learning by Degrees
by Rebecca Mead
The New Yorker
June 7, 2010

New York state PTA opposes charter schools

At a time when state aid funds are not only in short supply but aid payments are being delayed due to insufficient funds in the state till, arbitrarily raising the charter school cap and diverting even more funds from compromised public schools adds insult to injury. Additionally, NYS has created a parallel public school system, largely without public accountability for financial or academic performance.

etc.

CALL TO ACTION: Charter School Cap

and see: Taking the Parent out of the national PTA: an interview with Charlene K. Harr

Theater-of-the-Absurd

From Checker's Desk [Fordam Institute]
Rushing to Judgment?

Indeed, we'd probably be better off in the long run if the federal Race to the Top program were not crowding states to make this decision within sixty days. Worse, they're expected to commit to such a decision (to qualify for RTT funding) by June 1, even though the standards themselves don't appear until June 2! This has the makings of theater-of-the-absurd. It also raises anxiety levels about this worthy state-initiated, state-led venture turning into yet another federal mandate that will get caught in the wringer of Washington politics.

[snip]

At day's end, it's still states that are responsible for public education in the U.S.—and states that must determine whether and how to change it. To be sure, the "common core" carries with it significant implications for the federal government, too, most obviously in the revision of NCLB/ESEA, as well as any later iterations of Race to the Top (and, of course, the grant competition now underway for new assessments).

The Emperor’s New Clothes:
National Assessments Based on Weak “College and Career Readiness Standards”
Recommendations to a range of entities before states adopt Common Core’s standards. They include:

· State boards of education and state legislatures
· Local school boards and district superintendents
· USDOE
· Congress
· CCSSI/The Common Core consortium

“These proposed national standards are vague and lack the academic rigor of the standards in Massachusetts and a number of other states,” said Pioneer Institute Executive Director Jim Stergios. “The new report shows that these weak standards will result in weak assessments. After so much progress and the investment of billions of tax dollars, it amounts to snatching mediocrity from the jaws of excellence.”

-------------
Brookings Institute
Did Congress Authorize Race to the Top?

Martin Gardner, RIP

from City Journal:

The first time I encountered a column in Scientific American entitled “Mathematical Games,” I thought it was a contradiction in terms. Along with most English majors, I equated math with drudgery, not diversion. Then I read the piece. Its author, Martin Gardner, showed me how wrong I was. Over the years, he also showed me (and a few million others) how to understand topics that ranged from the left-handedness of molecules to the devious origins of Scientology to the secrets of sleight-of-hand artists to the in-jokes of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So it came as no surprise that when Gardner died last week at 95, he was mourned not only by mathematicians and physicists but by magicians, literary scholars, theologians, crossword-puzzle fans, writers, and editors. Indeed, the author of some 80 books was a classic example of the polymath (according to Webster’s: “From the Greek polymathēs, ‘having learned much’; a person, with superior intelligence, whose expertise spans a significant number of subject areas”).
The son of an Oklahoma-based oil prospector, Gardner gave no hint of what was to come when he attended local schools in Tulsa. He went on to the University of Chicago, majoring in philosophy and attending a wide variety of courses—but not a single one in math. “Beyond calculus,” he was to confess, “I am lost. The only way I could comprehend higher mathematics was to make a game of it.” Gamesmanship became an integral part of his long life—and perhaps the most important part.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to grow up,” he liked to say well into his 90s. “Other times I think, ‘Why bother?’”

The Mathemagician

Martin Gardner, R.I.P.

Stefan Kanfer
City Journal
27 May 2010

Online Math Curricula Resources

Homeschoolmath.net has updated her page of Online Math Curricula today. Quite a few that I had never heard of before...

xkcd

a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

More grammar denialism

I've just written about how Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), one of the standard therapies for autism, neglects grammar instruction. Since then I've been reviewing for an online class I'm designing the language curriculum of ABA's main competitor, the D.I.R (Floor Time) approach of the late Stanley Greenspan. Greenspan's curriculum is called the Affect Based Language Curriculum, available on Amazon for $55, and it, too, neglects grammar.

Part and parcel of giving short shrift to grammar is dismissing the work of that seminal linguistic grammarian, Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky's name is anathema among ABA devotees; Greenspan and his accolytes are merely dismissive.  In the Affect Based Language Curriculum, for example, Greenspan writes that Chomsky was wrong to claim that language is innate to the human brain since learning language depends on the social environment. 

Anyone familiar with Chomsky will recognize this as a straw man caricature. Of course learning language depends on the social environment. But this does not rule out an innate component, and Greenspan does not address any of the evidence or arguments adduced by Chomsky and others to argue that this innate component exists.  Instead, Greenspan goes further, arguing that developing "purposeful affect", or socially-grounded motivation, is all that grammar acquisition depends on: 

We create purposeful affect by being a pain in the neck. [E.g. by standing in front of the door the child wants to open.]... We go away a step and come back saying “go, go?”… Once children have that purposeful affect and begin connecting it to the word “go,” guess what they do? They begin using words meaningfully and even using that verb and noun properly.

A nonlinguist, Greenspan has no idea how complex grammar is. Neither verb conjugation nor noun phrase formation are trivial, and nowhere in the Affect-Based Language is there any discussion of how to teach this. Instead, as with ABA's Teach Me Language, the entire curriculum is organized around non-grammatical categories: requesting, using words to protest, talking about the past, adding to what the speaker just said.

Meanwhile, I and others have established that there are many children on the autism spectrum who can do all these things with words, but can't speak grammatically. In neglecting grammar, we neglect these children, many of whom are quite capable of learning grammar when it is taught explicitly and systematically.

Why are therapists all across the autism treatment spectrum so dismissive of grammar?  Part of it is that their ranks (and the ranks of speech/language therapists more generally) don't include linguists.  Here, though, the causality goes in both directions: we linguists haven't exactly been welcomed into the ranks of autism and speech therapists. But their grammar denialism, I believe, extends into the broader population.  

Most people think that grammar amounts to learning the labels for word categories (parts of speech), grammar-related spelling distinctions (e.g., "their" vs. "they're"), punctuation (as in run-on sentences), and stylistic rules about dangling modifiers and parallel structure. They have little appreciation for the more basic but complex rules and structure that underlie these rules of style: since the latter rules are innate, we don't need to learn them explicitly, and therefore most of us aren't even aware of them.

Unless, that is, we learn a foreign language grammar whose rules are significantly different from the rules of English grammar.  And here is where Americans in particular fall short.  If we learn a language at all, it tends to be one whose grammar isn't particularly exotic compared to English, or difficult for English speakers to learn--i.e., French, Spanish, or Chinese. Languages that Americans used to learn, like German, Russian, Latin, and Greek, presented us with far greater grammatical challenges than these languages do--and perhaps with a greater appreciation for grammar than we currently have.

Furthermore, deep appreciation of the grammar of a foreign language depends on in-depth study of that grammar. Most Americans never get to that point. Many abandon their foreign language after a year or two (as in the "world languages" language-surveying model that has become popular in U.S. schools). And, as I discuss in my book, more and more foreign languages classes have reduced grammar instruction to make room for what's called "communicative competence" (which includes conversing in classroom groups, putting on skits, and designing menus, travel brochures, and tissue boxes).

That leaves it up to the linguists of the world to somehow get across to others what grammar really is, and how best to teach it to those who need explicit instruction--be they foreign language learners or children with autism.

grass roots

Some of you know that I've been writing citizens' op eds for a Yahoo Group called the Irvington Parents Forum for some time now.^* I've been saying there what I say here.

In the past two years, the town has elected 4 new members to our 5-member school board:

Robyne Camp (elected 2009)
John Dawson (2009)
Bob Grados (2010)
Jim McCann (2010)

If you're interested in grass roots politics, it's worth reading these 4 candidates' "Answers to Forum Questions," because you'll notice that all 4 sound more alike than different: all 4 tell us they embrace academic excellence and accountability.

That is a far cry from the 2007 election, when we had 2 candidates who told the public: 'I don't know anything about education so I'll leave that to the experts, the people we've hired to run the schools.' That is very close to a direct quote.

In 2007, the 2 candidates who promised the public that, where academics and achievement were concerned, they would not provide independent oversight of the executive, defeated the 1 candidate who promised that he would.

This year, their terms up, they retired. Four candidates ran for their seats, 1 as a write-in; 3 of the 4, including both winners, ran on accountability platforms.

The main publicly-stated difference between the 2 winners (Grados & McCann) had to do with "politics," with Grados saying consistently throughout the campaign that he does not like politics, is not a politician, and has no "political agenda." In practice, this means he will vote to keep Math Trailblazers because the administration wants to keep Math Trailblazers. (scroll down)

So in truth, the 2 winners are divided on the question of whether parents and the broader public should have a voice in the education our children receive. However, I think the fact that both sounded like members of the reform camp is probably important.


opinion and fact

The Forum has been taking fire from the administration all year. During the Singapore Math meeting, our Interim Director of Curriculum and Instruction told the board that misinformation about Math Trailblazers was being spread around town. The foolishness making the rounds was the kind of thing, she said, that she once referred to as chatting "over the laundry lines in the back yard."

'But I can't call it that any more,' she said. (words to that effect)

In the last board meeting prior to the election, the Forum was openly denounced by the board president, one candidate (who told the audience that henceforth he would never again read the Forum), and one parent.

Post-election, Ed wrote the statement below in response to complaints by Grados supporters that the Forum is not "balanced":

It’s no secret that this list was created by people concerned about the leadership of our school district, aspects of its educational philosophy, budgetary issues, and a perceived unresponsiveness to community concerns. The list began, that is, as an agent of change. But it has always been open to all comers, and as the husband of the list’s co-founder, I know that essentially all posts are put through. The point of having moderators is not to establish any particular political line but to guard against vulgarity and ad hominem attacks and to prevent our inboxes from being overloaded with spam.

The Irvington Parents’ Forum is as “balanced” or unbalanced as its contributors make it. If we avoided controversy, it would become dull and unreadable. Ditto if all contributors did was state unadorned facts, genre: “The Irvington school district has an enrollment of approximately 1,800 students.”

Contributors express points of view, preferably with facts to back them up. That’s what democracy is all about—taking positions, attempting to support them, and trying to convince others that you’re right. And since we’re fortunate to live in a democracy, everyone is free to take issue (again preferably armed with appropriate evidence) with anything that anyone says.

So, the distinction between “facts” and “opinion” is a red herring. Facts mean very little unless framed by an argument, viewpoint, or philosophy. By the same token, opinions baldly stated and innocent of any factual evidence don’t do the speaker or writer much good. So, for example, if I state the fact that the United States entered World War II in December 1941, that’s not very interesting. But if I go on to opine that we should have gotten involved a year or 18 months earlier and that we didn’t because isolationism still reigned—then my statement, a combination of fact and opinion, becomes more interesting. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s necessarily right. Someone might reasonably respond that the United States didn’t have the military capacity to intervene effectively in Europe in 1939 or 1940, and that even in early 1942, we were woefully unprepared.

It’s as a result of this kind of argument that knowledge advances, new policies are framed, political alliances established, reforms enacted, and the like. Here, at the local level, the Irvington Parents’ Forum clearly fulfills a need. Otherwise, it wouldn’t attract new members almost every day of the week. If you disagree with something that’s been posted—as I’m doing now—go ahead and post a response. The chances are that there will be a response to your response, but again, that’s the beauty and privilege of free speech, especially at the local level. To intervene effectively in the national discussion, it helps to have power, position, and money. Here on the Parents’ Forum, anyone can add her or his two cents for free.

As for the idea that contributors are somehow sacrificing our kids’ education on the altar of local politics, I disagree. We’re creating a dialogue whose goal is to make a good school district better, to give our students the best education we can provide. I’m glad “Kris10why” had a world-class education here in Irvington, but we’ve had posts from recent IHS grads who don’t feel the same way. And, for me, every student counts.

^* Since October 5, 2006, to be exact.

endorsement (academic excellence)
endorsement (politics & community sentiment)
McCann!
the Kumbaya statement

Spell Czech

Eye halve spelling chequer.  It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write.  It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is made, it nose bee fore two long,
And I can put the error rite.  Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it, I am shore your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect in its weigh.  My chequer tolled me sew.

~Sauce Unknown


Source:  Hake Grammar & Writing

codswallop

Group work can also increase engagement because individuals can be assigned roles that allow them to be "experts in something," so that they can be challenged at a level appropriate to their understanding, she says. To discuss and present various theories for why the Jamestown settlement failed or why the dinosaurs became extinct, for example, more advanced students may be "producers" charged with stopping their group periodically to summarize what is being said; those with attention deficits might be assigned to be "prop directors" to keep track of supplies needed to make a chart for the final presentation.
Unleashing the 'Brain Power' of groups in the Classroom: The neuroscience behind collaborative work
Nancy Walser
Harvard Education Letter
May/June 2010, p 2

Good thing we got rid of tracking.

the Kumbaya statement

for all you David Kaplan fans out there:

unity, yes, but not yet time for Kumbaya

McCann!

from the Department of Good News:

McCann/Grados -- Budget Passes

And, from the Department of Freudian Slips:

District figures different from Parents Forum figures

Forum figures correct

Why Aren't We Hearing About This?

Minute 29-34
A Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago

Thanks to The Math UnderGround!

we're number 15!

wow!

(See what happens when I go off campaigning??)

next generation

Sorry to have been AWOL - election day is today, so I'll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, read this endorsement of two candidates running today. I've never met the author, who I'm told is a freshman in college.

Amazing.

The end of an era for unstructured, child-centered autism therapy?

Reading about the death of Dr. Stanley Greenspan in last week's New York Times, I wondered about the future of Floor Time. This was the approach that Greenspan, a well-known child psychologist, championed as the most effective therapeutic intervention for autism--an approach I've critiqued first here and later in Raising a Left-Brain Child.

Some of Floor Time seems reasonable but obvious: a wheel re-invented time and again by those who work with autistic children--parents and professionals alike--whether or not they've ever heard of Greenspan. What do you do with a child who pays you no attention; who remains immersed in a world of his or her own? Jump into this world and follow the child's lead. Much easier said than done, of course, and therein lies the devil. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone would do what Floor Time devotees have yet to do:  start publishing lists of specific strategies that those who work directly with autistic children have come up with and found helpful?

Far more problematic are Floor Time's not-so-obvious recommendations: avoiding teacher- or therapist-centered instruction; avoiding formal structure; using a social- and emotion-based mode for interaction, language acquisition, and concept-development that flies in the face of the specific strengths and weaknesses of children with autism--depending, for example, on an ability to read facial expressions and tone of voice.

The curious thing about Floor Time is that, in both its child-centered approach, and in its emphasis on social and emotion-based learning, it strongly resembles the "whole child" Constructivist classrooms in which all too many children (neurotypical as well as autistic) are languishing.

Floor Time's biggest competitor is a behaviorist approach called ABA. It has its own problems (which I've also critiqued first here and later in Raising a Left-Brain Child), but it at least has been subjected to fairly rigorous empirical studies, has something of a proven track record, and provides the structure and direct instruction that children with autism depend on.

Who is winning this competition? In light of current trends in education, you'd think it would be Floor Time. But autism is a pretty powerful condition, and the reality of autism tends to favor ABA.

Two days ago I finally watched Temple Grandin, the movie, which concludes with a scene at the 1984(?) Autism Society of America Conference. Here an aged, bearded, unnamed psychotherapist stands at a podium, holding forth on an outdated emotional attachment theory of autism (one that could easily be the philosophical father of Floor Time). The Temple Grandin character, sitting in the audience with her mother, rises and starts talking about her own experience: all about structure, drills, being pushed by her mother and others out of her world and into the worlds of science and engineering. All heads turn towards her, and she ends up literally upstaging the bearded sage on the stage.

I thought of Stanley Greenspan then, and then I read his obituary.

(cross-posted, in a slightly different version, at Out In Left Field)

Dan Meyer at TED x NYED: Blow up the US curricula (Impatient Problem Solving)

Here's the talk:



Another blogger heard the talk and was so inspired that he interviewed Meyer

BrainFruit Interview w/ Dan Meyer: Eliminating Homework, Using Technology, and Inspiring Kids

I had the good fortune on Wednesday of being able to interview Dan Meyer, who gave a great TED Talk recently on math curriculum reform. He also has a wonderful blog, dy/dan, which is worth checking out.

An Interview Highlight @ 9min 30sec

I saw in my classes when I was first teaching that the students who did homework tended to be students who didn’t need to do homework, [and] the students who didn’t do it or copied it DID need it. So there was a weird imbalance there.

So I did a study for my master’s thesis and found that it didn’t improve my student’s grades. Completing homework, it didn’t have an effect, positive or negative… and that was kind of scary. So I decided to really focus on my in-class time and really maximizing that.

So much good information came out of this interview- that’s just a taste of it. Let me know what you thought, and if there’s anything I can do to make these even more valuable in the future.

election 2010

nice to meet you

black helicopters

write-in

tutoring & an endorsement

Robyne Camp

a damn shame

we need more like her

Robyne Camp

answering to the great Oz

from a parent:

There is no question in my mind that "wealthy" suburban municipalities have school systems that are the victims of "predatory" management and vendors.

The administrators, consultants, publishing companies (selling curriculum) and every layer of union, specialists etc. have contributed their portion of excessive profit taking to leave us with a torrent of spending resulting in bloat, and little to no accountability for results.

A generalization that fits here....

Our schools appear to be high quality because our children are simply high performing (in general) and come from households which are education oriented, set high expectations and are involved and assertive in their child's learning. For the most part, you could put this profile of child in almost any school, and they will do well.

I have some cynical views on how we the "powers that be" spend our money - mostly on visible items like themselves (sharp/well spoken/well dressed) infrastructure, equipment (fancy exercise rooms, fields and theaters and smart-boards), because these give the appearance of quality and visually represent "progress." Yet, our curriculum is gutted, there is little to no investment in the soft/invisible skills delivered by humanities, art and critical reasoning, exposure by travel to the great city we live, museums etc.

You get the picture.

Barring those important educational aspects, the school day is reduced to a form of day care where state tests are the focus. Again...you know the rest. That puts us on a vicious loop of paying extraordinary taxes for little beyond what any other school can offer educationally - without all the bloat. Correcting this is the the principal behind Charter Schools.

I have some ideas on how to pick-away at this, and it involves very concrete steps using novel approaches form technology...

First crowd-source community help to...

1) Translate all state mandates and laws governing schools into plain English. This way the community can defend itself every time the Administrators and come Board member invoke inertia in the name of "well it's the law" or "it's NY mandate." We as a community should know those rules better than they do.

2) Create a Benchmarking group or citizens from like and non-like communities with high performing schools and low performing schools to uncover what goes right and what goes wrong. We are way too much in a vacuum.

3) Create another team that looks for visionary, unorthodox ways to deliver great results with little spending. There are example all over the country of great leaps in education by making small changes no one thought of.

4) This is risky and counter-intuitive: Do challenge the budgets, hold back money and where appropriate, encourage communities to vote no, because if the money dries up, the vultures will leave.

5) Create regular surveys to act as plebiscites and referendums to steer the school's philosophical direction in line with the community. Today it is a disconnected space ship answering to the great Oz.

You cold have a volunteer group report everything up to the board in open community meetings every month, so as to distill the info gathered, and present it as workable ideas that can be voted on to implement.

Study how Giuliani and Bloomberg neutered the unions in NY, because they will always be a challenge here. I would also make a very public showing of removing the "Union Free" name in our schools. It's misleading, and the unions hide behind it. I would go as far as calling them Union based schools. They won't be able to hide. You will be amazed how many people don't know we have a very strong union to answer to over there, even though it's our money. They dictate to us. I am not anti-union, but I am very anti- lack of progress and results and a very high cost. They are part of the problem if they don't allow the teachers the flexibility that many of them want to further our kids along. With few exceptions, we have good educators and they deserve our support. The Administration, Union, NYS and even sometimes the Board is often in their way. They deserve our support. I'd love to see them all get raises (with less ongoing Health and Retirement Benefits - sorry, join the rest of us!), and way less to the Administrators.

C ya!

Jaywalking

funny as always

Mandatory bubbling session for AP students

While we were at the High School last week, viewing the 10th grade IB students' personal projects (year-long self-discovery projects), I noticed this sign in the commons. For those not familiar with standardized tests, this is a MANDATORY session on how to correctly bubble in the answers on the AP exams.

Really.

Did Congress Authorize Race to the Top?

Brookings Institute article.

There is nothing in the text of the ARRA, or in the portions of the two other statutes to which it points (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the America Competes Act), that authorizes, requires, or even suggests that states competing for funds would need to adopt common state standards, create more charter schools, evaluate teachers and principals based on gains in student achievement, emphasize the preparation of students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or restructure the lowest 5 percent of their schools.

Yet the grant program the administration designed to implement the provisions of the ARRA, the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, included each of these policy priorities, and states had no chance of winning unless their applications were built around them.


Let's Do The Numbers
Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #263
(p. 7) In sum, Massachusetts’ willingness to permit the public to comment on its academic standards, combined with a few quirks in the weighting system, cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

David Steiner, David Steiner

here

here

and

here

Amazing.

Are standards requirements? Are curricula products?

The push for standards is everywhere. But what are standards?

In engineering disciplines, engineers build products based on *requirements*.

Requirements are specifications of a problem to solve in order to build a product, or system or process. Requirements are NOT a design--they are not a solution. They specify key elements that a solution must have, should have, and would like to have, but properly written, they leave open what the actual solution is.

Examples of requirements are:
device must weigh less than 2.2 ounces;
device must operate properly during and afterw a fall from 8 inches into a bath of 110 degree liquid for not less than 6 seconds duration
device user input method must support touch typing at not less than 20 wpm

system performance requirements are things like:
system must detect intrusion within N seconds with probability of detection >=80% in noisy/cluttered environment

system must locate target within accuracy of 3 sq feet at range of 1.5 miles with false positive rate of no more than 1%



Excellent requirements are difficult to write. The best ones are (at least) unambiguous, concise, testable and/or measurable, and finite. Unambiguous requirements leave little room for confusion (and seldom have compound requirements in them.) Measurable requirements give you a way to tell performance; testable ones allow you a method to demonstrate you've met the requirement.

Requirements define inputs and outputs as well as what happens in between.

Given good requirements, a good design will meet them, and even more, will trace how they are met (if possible, every design choice points to a set of requirements, and on design choice exists without such requirements backing it up.) Every choice at every stage would be traceable to the requirements.

Among the stakeholders looking for a product/process/system, most aren't skilled at requirements writing. Explicit requirements are few and far between, and most must be teased out, so that derived requirements (that do meet the above criteria) can be created.

Given that, what in the world are standards in education? Are they supposed to be requirements? Of WHAT system/process/product? A classroom's learning? A classroom's teaching? Are they requirements from which one defines curricula? Is the curricula the product that meets the standards? Are students the product that are supposed to meet standards?


Reading the Common Core standards, they don't come close to meeting the criteria of requirements.
Here's an example:

1. Understand that multiplication of whole numbers is repeated addition. For example, 5  7 means 7 added to itself 5 times. Products can be represented by rectangular arrays, with one factor the number of rows and the other the number of columns.
2. Understand the properties of multiplication.
a. Multiplication is commutative. For example, the total number in 3 groups with 6 things each is the same as the total number in 6 groups with 3 things each, that is, 3  6 = 6  3.
b. Multiplication is associative. For example, 4  3  2 can be calculated by first calculating 4  3 = 12 then calculating 12  2 = 24, or by first calculating 3  2 = 6 then calculating 4  6 = 24.
c. 1 is the multiplicative identity.
d. Multiplication distributes over addition (the distributive property). For example, 5  (3 + 4) = (5  3) + (5  4).

So, apparently, these are *student* requirements.
They mean to be saying
"THE STUDENT SHALL understand that"

But what student? All students? A typical student? A student who passed the prior year's standards?

What does it mean to understand that 1 is the multiplicative identity? Does it mean to be able to recite that phrase? use that fact in a problem? use that fact in N problems, and get the answer right M times out of N problems? does it mean being able to cite the use of the multiplicative identity in order to solve the problem?

These standards aren't finite, concise, unambiguous, and without guidance, certainly aren't testable.

Where does that leave curricula? Since the standards are "THE STUDENT SHALL" rather than "the system shall", how can any curricula meet the requirements of what a student is required to learn?


If curricula aren't solutions to the problem defined by the standards requirements, then what are curricula? And what are teachers or students or schools? Stakeholders ? Or something else?

Why do we insist on teaching fractions like we teach poetry?

...asks professor Hung-Hsi Wu of Berkeley at last week's NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Conference. Once you learn algebra, precision is most desirable, mathematics can not be taught in an ambiguous manner. He brings Mark Twain, Shakespeare and Keats into an informative and, for me, entertaining conference session.  (At one point, he turned the definition of multiplication of fractions into free form verse!) From his presentation:

Consider Hamlet's comment on Denmark after his father's death:
'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

Compare it with the definition of 3/4 :
Take a pizza (or a fraction bar) and divided it into 4 equal parts. Take 3 parts.

My favorite quote from his presentation came after working to understand the product formula (is there an official name for this?): a/b x c/d = ac/bd. He said something along the lines of:

"You've worked so hard to understand, don't you need a treat? Here's the standard algorithm. You can almost use it mindlessly."

At which point people in the audience started snickering & guffawing. Wu continued:

"We drive mindlessly. Do we consider the internal combustion engine when we do so?"

He insists that computation is a part of mathematics:

Analogies and metaphors have a place in mathematics. They can be very helpful in the understanding of precise concepts and reasoning. However, it is a mistake to allow them to replace precise concepts and reasoning.

Let us hope that fractions will be taught with less poetry, but with more emphasis on

precise definitions, and
precise reasoning

Want to enjoy the whole presentation in your own home? Point your browser to: http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf

Karen Pryor on paying students to learn

Why economists can't learn something about reinforcement theory is beyond me.

explanation, please

$1,675?

How exactly does a publisher arrive at this figure?

I would like to know.

who decides?

from Steve H :

"It's a numbers game. The argument is how many people actually have it and use it. If it's not a significant portion of the population than you can make the argument that it's a ludicrous goal to set that says we have to get every student there."

Who makes this decision and when do they make it?


"This thread poses the argument that the kids have already figured this out, long before the adults."

What, exactly, do they figure out? Do they come to the conclusion that they are just not good in math; that they don't like math? Is that really the case or is that because of bad teaching and curricula? KTM is all about fixing the problem of K-8 math and making sure that kids don't come to the wrong conclusion. It's about keeping educational doors open. Besides, up to a point, I don't care what my son likes or doesn't like. He has to do the work. I will decide which doors to close, and I will thank the school and other adults for not making that decision for me. I would also hope that they would not make that decision for kids who do not have parents who protect them from do-gooders and societal bean counters.

I agree. I have put three children through the public school system, two with autism. For all three of my kids, educators have made assumptions about what they couldn't do that were flat wrong.

Probably our worst experience of this was the public school in Los Angeles where the teacher thought Jimmy was nonverbal. We had no idea they thought that, and when we found out Ed videotaped me working with Jimmy on his flash cards.

"vacuum cleaner"

"newspaper"

After the teacher saw the video, she said, "I wish you'd told us."

E.D. Hirsch: a brief history

Hirsch writes:

In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville wrote admiringly: “In the United States the general thrust of education is directed toward political life; in Europe its main aim is to fit men for private life.”

[snip]

The reasons for this communitarian emphasis were obvious to American leaders in the nineteenth century. Loyalty to the Republic had to be developed, as well as adherence to Enlightenment ideals of liberty and toleration. For without universal indoctrination by the schools in such civic virtues, the United States might dissolve, as had all prior large republics of history, through internal dissension.

The aim of schooling was not just to Americanize the immigrants, but also to Americanize the Americans. This was the inspiring ideal of the common school in the nineteenth century, built upon a combination of thrilling ideals and existential worry. By the end of the century we were educating, relative to other countries, a large percentage of the population, and this forward movement continued well into the twentieth century. In the post–World War II period, the US ranked high internationally according to a number of educational measures. But by 1980, there had occurred a significant decline both in our international position and in comparison with our own past achievements. Two decades ago I was appalled by an international comparison showing that between 1978 and 1988 the science knowledge of American students had dropped from seventh to fourteenth place. In the postwar period we have declined internationally in reading from third place to fifteenth place among the nations participating in the survey.

The root cause of this decline, starting in the 1960s, was a by-then-decades-old complacency on the part of school leaders and in the nation at large. By the early twentieth century worries about the stability of the Republic had subsided, and by the 1930s, under the enduring influence of European Romanticism, educational leaders had begun to convert the community-centered school of the nineteenth century to the child- centered school of the twentieth—a process that was complete by 1950. The chief tenet of the child-centered school was that no bookish curriculum was to be set out in advance. Rather, learning was to arise naturally out of activities, projects, and daily experience. A 1939 critic of the new movement, Isaac Kandel, described it this way:

Children should be allowed to grow in accordance with their needs and interests…. Knowledge is valuable only as it is acquired in a real situation; the teacher must be present to provide the proper environment for experiencing but must not intervene except to guide and advise. There must, in fact, be “nothing-fixed-in-advance” and subjects must not be “set-out-to-be-learned.”

By 1950, with new, watered-down schoolbooks and a new generation of teachers trained in specialized colleges for education, the anti-bookish, child-centered viewpoint had taken over the schools. The consequence was a steep decline in twelfth-grade academic achievement between 1962 and 1980, after which, despite vigorous reform efforts, reading and math scores on the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress have hardly changed.

With the current emphasis on testing and accountability it might be assumed that the days of child-centeredness are now over. But that assumption would miss an essential point. The schools still lack a definite, pre-set, year-by-year curriculum (though this is changing in math) and yet at the same time schools are being required to make measurable progress on year-by-year tests.

How to Save the Schools
New York Review of Books
May 13, 2010
by E. D. Hirsch Jr.

advertisements for myself

A couple of days ago I caught sight of Ed's copy of The New York Review of Books lying on the kitchen table. (Where else?)

I looked at the cover, didn't see anything that caught my interest. Normally that's the end of it. I never look at the table of contents.

For some reason, though, this time I did. I opened the paper, turned to the contents, and was skimming down the list, asking myself why I was doing this since I wasn't feeling any more interested on this second pass, when suddenly I realized I was reading familiar words: Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Which hadn't been mentioned on the cover.

I had no idea!

After I stumbled across the review I called Ed to alert him, then left the house without reading more than a few paragraphs. I hate reading reviews. Ed called later to say that it was a "rave," and I still have not read the thing in its entirety.

But I'm glad it's there.

Joanne Jacobs community college blog

it's new!

Math on a farm

Jane wrote:

I suspect that the data that say the vast majority of people don't use math is inaccurate. I suspect that every small business owner is constantly using basic algebra. We have a family farm and constantly, daily use algebra. My contractor calculated angles, areas, amount of paint, flooring, labor and materials necessary to remodel our house. Our banker uses a calculator, but easily and obviously has the mathematical fluency to have a real time conversation about prices, quantities, exchange rates and whether certain data sources are reliable. The sales people we deal with calibrate machinery to determine how much material we need to use on a field. Of course, I check their calibration calculations as well. Yes, we all use tools, but without the understanding of how the math fits together, the tools would be black boxes and we wouldn't know when a number didn't make sense. And we are constantly figuring out, how much seed to put on a field, if a chemical needs to be applied at a certain flow rate and dilution, how fast does the tractor move. If we can x crop and it costs z to grow and we might sell it for a range of y1 - y2, Which crop should we plant.

My dad was a farmer. He always had a slide rule handy on his desk. I was fascinated by it.

I don't know why he had it, and I can't guess because I've never learned to use a slide rule.

I'd like to.

missing knowledge

Barak Rosenshine on teacher effectiveness research:

I suggest that the teacher effects era, between 1955 and 1980, was an impressive run of cumulative research. During this period, over 100 correlational and experimental studies were conducted using a common design and the different observation instruments shared many common instructional procedures. And it was cumulative: researchers cited and built upon the instructional findings of others.

After several years of immersion in the education world, I am just now finding out about this.

Return of the repressed.

success or failure

Constructivist Instruction: Success or Failure by Sigmund Tobias and Thomas M. Duffy

I discovered the book while Googling Barak Rosenshine.

Until last week, reading the Direct Instruction list, I had never heard of Barak Rosenshine. He is apparently Doug Lemov's predecessor;^* he did what Lemov did, which was to find highly effective teachers and then watch what they were doing.

Later on, he trained teachers in the techniques and compared their students' achievement to that of students in classrooms with conventional teachers. The teachers trained in direct instruction were more effective.


^* Please correct me if I'm wrong - just getting into this. Rosenshine has researched teacher effectiveness and summarized the research; I'm not sure which studies he did.

how to start a charter school

Laura sends this resource: Charter Schools Development Center

off-topic: stand up desks

I keep meaning to get one.

worse than you think

Klein said he believed staff at Public School 38 in Brooklyn answered school surveys honestly, even though the Daily News reported that Principal Yolanda Ramirez berated them for 40 minutes for slamming her in their responses.

"First of all, my own experience is it's pretty hard to pressure anyone in the system," Klein said. "I'm convinced - these are anonymous surveys - I'm convinced people play them overwhelmingly straight. "

Ramirez was caught on tape telling teachers that they shouldn't publicly slam her because, "if I were to begin putting out some of your dirty laundry a lot of you wouldn't be here."

Chancellor Joel Klein says teachers answer survey questions honestly because they are anonymous
by Erin Einhorn and Rachel Monahan
April 16th 2010

Leveling The Playing Field

I wonder if teaching math should be made to look more like recess. Now that spring has sprung and the grass has dried out, my kids are doing lots of football and baseball after lunch. I've always been fascinated at the range of behaviors you can observe when a ball comes out .

Some boys never engage in these things. Others will only get involved if the ball hits them. Still others only engage when a group of similarly skilled boys coalesce. These kids aren't great at it but they have a good time with each other and almost never engage with the experts. The experts are at the top of this food chain. They exhibit skills that are simply amazing, given their young age (12-14)

The experts are usually (>80%) engaged and the others of course trickle down to no participation at all. There's a natural filter at work. The best are amazing, exhibiting a fluidity and naturalness that you can just tell is extracting the absolute best out of them. The worst (sorry) throw like girls. Actually I have a few girls who throw really well but they've never developed the requisite full motion skills to catch well. Might have to do with breaking a nail, sigh.

What's key is that everybody can throw and catch but there is an elite that clearly will go on to become accomplished athletes in football or baseball (or both). These kids will eventually get formal training in the underlying theory of what is making them excel naturally. For now they just excel and presumably they got that way from huge amounts of play (practice) that they chose (value proposition) because they were good (wired for it) at it.

You could easily conjure up a scenario where if bureaucrats were to see this (fortunately they mostly stay inside) they would be appalled at the disparities on display. They would retire to their offices and write a standard to ensure that no child is left behind in playing catch. Then they would set up classroom training to guarantee that every student has access to the new standardized curriculum. They would introduce nerf balls so that nobody gets hurt or breaks a nail. Then they could train us teachers to introduce mixed ability groups so that the experts are forced to play with the geeks. They would want to ensure that all sports were covered so they would schedule a new game every week in an elaborate multiyear spiral.

Before long every kid in school would hate recess as much as math. The playing field would be leveled and we would get the miserable equal outcomes that we are getting in the academic disciplines. Pretty far fetched, eh?

Well what if you thought of academics more like sports. In math maybe you work with calculators from day one and you make sure that every kid can do the kinds of things we all do with calculators, mastering every day mathematical application. As this process evolves you would see who has the passion and talent to go deeper. Along the way, kids who can't cut it get to drop out of the pursuit of theory and depth but they do so with a repertoire that ensures they can at least use the gadgets in their lives effectively. You could continue this natural filter throughout the K-12 years. Wouldn't every kid get what they need?

Right now we have a tendency to turn off kids at every step in the process by delivering theory first. Eventually the experts get what they need but only after suffering through 12 years of torture playing catch with people who can't catch. Many of the non-experts get turned off before they get the basics of application and leave school unable even to use a calculator properly. Wouldn't it be exciting to demonstrate some neat result and have kids jaws drop and quiz you on why that works? Wouldn't that lead to more interest than theory first?

Isn't it true that history and science are taught this way now? Two subjects that my middle school students love! Hmmmmmm.

Arguments against Corrective Math

Just came across three articles arguing against using DI's Corrective Math as remediation for students in Philadelphia's low-performing "Empowerment Schools."  The venue is The Notebook, an online journal that describes itself as an "independent voice for parents, educators, students, and friends of the Philadelphia Public Schools." The author is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and a consultant for two of these Empowerment Schools.  

Using familiar arguments and buzzwords, she argues that the solution instead is better implementation of the existing ("rigorous," "research-based") Everyday Math and Math in Context curricula.

If you have a moment, please comment on these articles (most of the existing comments support the author's views):

http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/102440/correcting-corrective-math-problem

http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/102440/correcting-corrective-math-problem-ii http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/102455/correcting-corrective-math-problem-iii

(I haven't yet commented myself because, as a Philadelphia parent and educator, I wanted to pitch a response article first).

Eat, Poop, and Play

I caught one of my kids, who hasn't done a lick of work all year, diligently working through a math problem the other day. Astounded, I walked over to compliment him on his efforts. He admonished me not to expect this type of exertion all the time as it "was not his life". I was surprised at his candid offering and inquired as to what exactly he thought his life was. His response?

"Eat, Poop, and Play! That's my life!"

This, even more candid assertion, set me back on my heels a bit and I was curious to know how he had come to this frame of mind so I asked him what he thought his parents life consisted of. His response?

"Parents? My parents work for me!"

At first, this exchange simply tickled me in the same way that any number of open, uninhibited kid conversations do, but this one was different. It's been rattling around in my head for a week now and I can't shake it. It's one of those throw off comments that has more truth than humor in it, I suspect.

It's made me ponder the entire relationship of middle school kids to school and more specifically the role of education from their perspective. In this modern world, how many people really need math anymore? You can get a job at McDonald's and have the register do all the math you'll ever need for work. You can get a phone that has a sophisticated calculator in it. You can get computer programs to perform all manner of things that we used to accomplish only through painstaking pencil and paper scribbles.

So I'll pose a simple thought experiment to you all. How many people actually need a math education in the modern world that goes beyond knowing the number system and the names of simple geometric shapes? What careers would people be limited to if their mathematical knowledge was this limited? What careers would they be truly excluded from pursuing?


Have my kids figured out what they need from their perspective and is our push to have them all learn algebra simply a throwback to a time when it was more important in a world bereft of gadgets? Are my (disadvantaged) kids making a perfectly rational decision when they don't apply themselves to math?

How much education do you really need for a life of: eat, poop, and play?

zero

At least somebody around here is smarter than a 5th grader:

Their answer to question 29, "Any number to the power of zero is equal to what value?" is incorrect. Zero to the power of zero is indeterminate, not 1.

Neils Henrik Abel

Why is this true?

Will Burrow on Teach Like a Champion

There's been a discussion of Teach Like a Champion on the DI list, and the consensus seems to be that Lemov's taxonomy is very close to DI.

Will Burrow gave me permission to post this reaction:

I have read about half of it. for $16 it is the buy of the century. Anyone who teaches a child must read the book and keep it close at hand forever. The book has solid suggestions for delivering any type of material--and yes it validates DI.

Another Will Burrow link.

political season

Hey everyone -- the school board election is coming up and I'm going to be campaigning more and posting less for a few weeks.

Board candidates