Happy Anniversary

BEFORE:

The US economy in 2000 had really, really full employment — it was an era when labor was so scarce that McDonald’s was actively trying to recruit senior citizens, when the joke was that you could get a job as long as your breath would fog a mirror, that is, as long as you were actually alive.
Slackers at the Fed

5 YEARS AGO TODAY:

• 9/12/2008 Lehman and Its Staff Await Next Step
  
• 9/13/2008 Wall St. Goliath Teeters Amid Fear of Wider Crisis
• 9/14/2008 Leading Plan for Rescue Would Split Up Lehman
• 9/14/2008 Jittery Road Ahead
• 9/15/2008 Stunning Fall Stunning Fall for Main Street's Brokerage Firm
• 9/15/2008 Wall Street's Turmoil Sends Stocks Reeling

AFTER:

Like so many young Americans, Derek Wetherell is stuck.

At 23 years old, he has a job, but not a career, and little prospect for advancement. He has tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, but no college degree. He says he is more likely to move back in with his parents than to buy a home, and he doesn't know what he will do if his car—a 2001 Chrysler Sebring with well over 100,000 miles—breaks down.

"I'm kind of spinning my wheels," Mr. Wetherell says. "We can wishfully think that eventually it's going to get better, but we don't really know, and that doesn't really help us now."

Mr. Wetherell is a member of a lost generation, a group that is only now beginning to gain attention of many economists and employment experts. From Oakland to Orlando—and across the ocean in Birmingham and Barcelona—young people have come of age amid the most prolonged period of economic distress since the Great Depression.

Most, like Mr. Wetherell, have little memory of the financial crisis itself, which struck while they were still in high school. But they are all too familiar with its aftermath: the crippling recession, which made it all but impossible for many young people to get a first foothold in the job market, and the achingly slow recovery that has left the prosperity of their parents' generation out of reach—perhaps.

"This has been for quite a while now a hostile environment for young people," said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, which has studied the impact of the recession on young people. "This is all they've really known."

The financial crisis that struck five years ago this month opened up a sinkhole in the U.S. economy that swallowed Americans of all ages and backgrounds. Retirees lost life savings. Families lost homes. Millions of Americans lost their jobs.

Wanted: Jobs for the New 'Lost' Generation By BEN CASSELMAN and MARCUS WALKER
Five years after the 2008 crisis, younger adults still struggle to find work | Updated September 14, 2013, 4:26 p.m. ET

Employment-Population Ratio Ages 25-54
Data extracted on: September 15, 2013 (5:46:00 PM)

Ed says he remembers McDonald's recruiting seniors and, come to think of it, I have a vague memory of McDonald's scrambling to find workers, too. I certainly recall jokes about elderly greeters at Walmart. In fact, I recall the elderly greeters themselves.

Most of all, though, I remember reading scores of articles expressing panic over the coming mass retirement of baby boomers -- not because baby boomers would be so expensive to support but because who would replace them?

That was the horror story circa 2000.

Where will we find people to fill all the jobs?

Last spring Ed ran into an an Irvington parent who complained that the high school was still telling students SAT scores don't matter. She told Ed that when she graduated from college, with a B.A. in English, I believe, she got a good job on Wall Street "walking in off the street." No M.B.A., no training, no experience of any kind. She was alive, she was intelligent, she had a college degree, so--bam--she had a job. A good one.

That's the way things work in a thriving economy.

AND SEE:
How a Market Crisis Unfolded

Grammar MOOC starting Wednesday

Grammar bytes, aka Chomp Chomp, is one of my favorite grammar sites. The grammar explained is traditional, but the presentations and examples are clear and effective. Plus the site is friendly without being jaunty. I hate jaunty.

My only complaint about Grammar bytes is the loud, sudden, and delayed chomping sound that startles me out of my wits every time I hear it. Those of you with outsized startle responses, consider yourselves warned.

Robin Simmons, the creator of the site, is offering a MOOC starting Wednesday September 18.

I'm signing up.

just let me staple the vicar...

I am going to try to get back on track here any minute now....but, in the meantime, and via Language Log, here is Peter Kay.

Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms for Older Adults

I've just this moment stumbled across a Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms for Older Adults, and I'm chuckling.

Judging by the Computer and Internet Terms they don't know, Older Adults have got it made in the shade. They are the last non-plugged-in humans on the planet, or at least the Western hemisphere.

In the world of the Older Adult, there is no Computer and internet addiction.

No obsessive gaming.

No Internet Blocking Productivity Software.

No glimmer of the possibility that surfing the internet is actually addictive!

Nope.

For the Older Adult, "surf the internet" is merely a term that needs defining:

Surf the Net:
To explore various websites on the Internet.

[pause]

Reading right along....(which is what happens to Older Adults who don't need a Glossary to tell them what Surfing the net means), I find myself partial to the definition of "Clicking":

Clicking
Pressing and releasing a button on a mouse to select or activate the area on the screen where the cursor is pointing. Usually, you click on the left side of the mouse (called a left click). For more advanced functions, you click on the right side of the mouse (called a right click).

The secret

Premack gave a group of rats free access to drinking water and a running wheel (Premack, 1959). He recorded their behavior across several minutes. Initially (at baseline), each rat spent some time drinking and some time running, but on average rats spent more time running than drinking: about 250 seconds running and only about 50 seconds drinking. Then, Premack restricted the rats’ access to the wheel: they were allowed to run only after they had drunk a certain amount of water. The rats soon learned the contingency and started drinking water in order to gain access to the running wheel. Unsurprisingly, the total amount of running decreased, because the rats now had to work to obtain access to the wheel. But the total amount of drinking increased to more than 100 seconds, as the rats now performed this behavior more often in order to gain access to the wheel. In effect, the activity of running was acting as a reinforce, and it was increasing the probability of an otherwise infrequent behavior, drinking:

S (running restricted) → R (drinking) → C (access to wheel)

Premack went on to show a similar pattern in human children (Premack, 1959). He put the children in a room that contained a pinball machine and a bowl of candy, and he recorded how much time each child spent playing pinball and eating candy. Some of the children spent more time playing pinball. Premack then restricted access to the pinball machine, allowing these children to play only after they had eaten some candy. Candy eating increased, showing that access to the preferred activity (pinball) could reinforce the less-preferred activity (candy eating). Conversely, children who preferred eating candy in the first place could be trained to play more pinball, by making access to the candy contingent on playing pinball.

Thus, in both rats and children, the opportunity to perform a highly frequent behavior can reinforce a less-frequent behavior. This idea came to be known as the Premack principle. Examples of the Premack principle abound in human life. For example, left to their own devices, most children will spend more time watching television than doing their homework. Thus, watching television is a preferred activity, and it can be used to reinforce the less-preferred activity of homework. The parent restricts television time, making it contingent on homework. As a consequence, the child spends more time doing homework than he would have done if television had not been restricted. A later extension of the Premack principle, the response deprivation hypothesis, suggests that the critical variable is not which response is normally more frequent but merely which response has been restricted: by restricting the ability to execute almost any response, you can make the opportunity to perform that response reinforcing (Allison, 1993; Timberlake & Allison, 1974). For example, perhaps you have a chore, like cleaning your room or doing laundry, that you normally detest. But if access to this activity is restricted, it can become reinforcing. If you have been studying for several hours straight, the idea of “taking a break” to clean your room or do the laundry could begin to look downright attractive. If so, you’ve experienced the Premack principle at work.

Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior New York: Worth Publishers, 2007
Mark Gluck
Eduardo Mercado
Catherine Myers
p316-317

Read the whole thing....

I am violating my brand-new All-Premack-all-the-time Principle to put up this post first thing in the morning instead of second thing:

One Classroom, Two Genders
By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

There are two surprises: one in the middle, one at the end.

The middle one was especially fun for me because I'd read the whole first column thinking, "Really?"

The twist in the middle explained my astonishment.

Read the whole thing because.....the last line is fabulous. Especially for readers of ktm, I think.

postscript: I remember writing lots of posts on the subject of "the girl show."

I wonder if any of you remember the time our middle school principal -- Chris was in the 6th grade -- told us: "Everyone knows boys do worse in middle school."

Direct quote.

Emotional Intelligence brings empathy!

This shocking discovery was worthy of a headline in last week's New Haven Register.

Within the article, one finds pronouncements that are similarly astounding:

Emotional intelligence plays a part in a variety of human interactions.

and:

“Emotions are fundamental to who we are as humans. If we don’t have emotions, we can’t do our work, we can’t make decisions, we can’t have relationships.”

The person quoted here is Susan Rivers, deputy director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University. As the article's lede explains: "Emotional intelligence is in the ascendancy at Yale University."

Yale, the same Ivy League institution that designed a new test that measures creative and practical skills and proposed it as a placement for the SATs, has recently jumped on the decades-old emotional intelligence bandwagon. This fall, it will officially open its emotional intelligence center. As the article reports:

The center, already operational, recently held its biggest training session to date, with educators from more than 50 schools across the country. They join 75,000 school leaders from more than 500 schools worldwide who also have had the training.

What exactly does the training consist of? It's hard to tell. In the words of director Marc Brackett:

“It isn’t a kit you can buy. It’s an approach. We are teaching the teachers and the kids. Some people call these 21st-century skills."

As the Register explains:

The training is known specifically as the RULER approach. It stands for: recognizing emotions, understanding the causes and consequences of emotions, labeling the full range of feelings, expressing them appropriately and regulating them.

Despite the gigantic number of school leaders who have already "had the training," much of it has yet to be developed. Purportedly in the works are instructional videos, games, and online simulations that will, in the Register's words, "illustrate emotional intelligence."

First train people, then develop the training curriculum... what's the logical final step? Perhaps, after hundreds of thousands more people have been trained and hundreds more schools have signed on and millions of dollars have changed hands, the center will conduct an efficacy study.

The ultimate goal? In the words of director Marc Brackett: "making Connecticut an emotionally intelligent state — one district at a time." How could anyone argue with that?

As for Yale itself, presumably it will take the lead in making emotional intelligence the single most important criteria for college admissions. In fact, it's already moving in this direction--especially when it comes to homeschooled applicants. "Yale wants to make sure homeschooled kids are not socially awkward," Joanne Jacobs reports. She cites Yale's admissions website:

We look for evidence of social maturity from all our applicants and especially from home-schooled students. Your personal statement, interests and activities, and letters of recommendation should speak to your ability to integrate well with other students and tell us about your non-academic interests.

As a side note, when it comes to impositions on home schooled children, we find another Yale-connected educational power broker. This would be Yale alumnus David Coleman, former lead architect of the Common Core and current president of the College Board. Coleman has been working had to align the SATs with the Common Core--in ways that, as Paula Bolyard writes in a recent post on Pajamas Media, may pressure home schools to conform to what's going on everywhere else.

Now all we need is for the Common Core to broaden its standards enough to make emotional intelligence its Meta-Standard. After all, emotions are so fundamental to who we are that, if we don’t have them, we can’t make decisions and do our work. Let alone attain any of the Common Core Standards.

(Cross-posted at Out in Left Field).

Hello! and how Math Trailblazers saved my district

UPDATE 10/26/2013: Wrong again. Here and here.

Hi everyone -

Sorry to be sooooo absent. I got stuck in the middle of a math post the other night, and then got swallowed up by the new semester.

Will get back to the chart ASAP, but in the meantime, sneak preview:

After introducing timed worksheets two years ago, my district has some of the best math scores in Westchester County, a development that required a mere 10 (or was it 12?) years of sustained local Math War, annual Parent Uprisings, the creation of Kitchen Table Math and the Irvington Parents Forum (followed by threat of legal action issued by the union), and the election of two anti-Trailblazers members (here, too) to the Board of Ed. (Three now, counting last spring's election.)

All this to get Mad Minutes.

Turns out Mad Minutes is enough to raise student achievement. Through the magic of synchronicity, I happened to be re-reading my 72 pages of notes from Morningside Academy's Summer School Institute 2012 (I gave a short talk on precision teaching at my college!), where I found this:

Chief Joseph [a school in Montana] - they had no aims, no celeration aims, no peer coaching...they just had the kids practice computation (& some other things) - last 30 minutes of the day (worst time to ask kids to do anything) - real simple - use daily chart - timer on, timer off - use practice sheets & chart - by June the kids at the Chief Joseph school were now scoring at the 80th percentile while district kids were in low 60s - ITBS Chief Joseph School (Precision Teaching) Great Falls, Montana school district (comparison) THAT IMPROVEMENT was just from drill and kill at end of day

In other words, doing nothing but introducing timed worksheets works. Achievement goes up.

I wonder if we are the only district in Westchester County with Mad Minutes?

We may be.

Meanwhile Dobbs Ferry, next door, which adopted Singapore Math a few years ago, has an 8th-grade pass rate half ours (30% in Dobbs; 61% in Irvington). From what I gather, Dobbs has always been devoted to progressive education, to a degree Irvington has never been (again, as far as I can tell). I'm sure that accounts for it.

Dobbs hired a math coach who gives interviews to the local paper saying Singapore Math "isn't about finding the right answer" and is about extensive use of hands-on manipulatives. I remember being so horrified by the first story on Dobbs' adoption of Singapore Math that I wrote a letter to the editor. (Wonder if I can find that now....)

We've still got Math Trailblazers and we're killing them.

We don't want Math Trailblazers; parents have been protesting Trailblazers for years. The result: the administration & board dug in their heels, and we are today the last man standing: the very last district in all of Westchester still using Trailblazers. (Though in theory Trailblazers has been 'hybridized' with Singapore Math.... "Hybridizing" Math Trailblazers with Singapore Math is the kind of desperate measure administrators have been driven to.)

Thinking it over, I have to believe that Trailblazers is a major reason for the fact that my district now uses timed worksheets.

Parents hated Trailblazers so much that they stormed the ramparts every year, year in and year out; the issue never went away.

Usually the dogs bark and the caravan moves on, but not in this case. The dogs kept barking; there was no escape. So every year there was a scramble to fix Trailblazers until finally a part-time interim curriculum director (who had previously worked in Chappaqua, the one district far ahead of us) started talking about "automaticity" and brought in timed worksheets.

I used to always say: if you want to have parent uprisings every year, adopt Math Trailblazers.

Now I'm thinking: if you want timed worksheets, adopt Math Trailblazers and suffer through 10 years of parent uprisings.

Will get my chart finished & posted soon, I hope. Lots more to tell on various fronts.

I am lobbying now for timed worksheets in grammar, reading, and writing.

UPDATE 10/25/2013: Wrong again.

"That said", "in your best light", and "seriously"

My son just got a mailing from MIT that said:

"You shouldn't stress out too much about your scores, because we admit people, not numbers. Seriously. That said, tests are important, and you should prepare for them as best you can. If you take the same test (SAT, ACT, or an SAT Subject Test) multiple times, we will consider the highest score achieved in each section."

"too much"

"Seriously."

Then they say this on their web site:

Score Choice

"If you take the same test (SAT, ACT, or an SAT Subject Test) multiple times, we will consider the highest score achieved in each section. We do this in order to consider all applicants in their best light."

"For example, if you take the SAT Reasoning Test in 11th grade and score 750 math, 700 critical reading and 650 writing, and then take the SAT again in 12th grade and score 700 math, 650 critical reading and 700 writing, only your best scores from each sitting (i.e. 750 math, 700 critical reading and 700 writing) are used in our admissions calculations."

"Students are free to use the College Board's Score Choice option and the ACT's option to submit the scores of your choice."

Score Choice only allows one to send in the best scores from one sitting, but it sounds like MIT will supersize individual test scores. Also, the new Common App does not allow you to select Score Choice only for some schools, and many schools want to see all of your numbers. That's moot for MIT because they don't use the Common App.

In any case, I'm getting a mixed signal. My son did very well on his first and only SAT test. He should not bother to take the test again. "Seriously." Will he get kudos for that or should he take it again? He could get 60-90 more points (especially if the scores are supersized) and that would show him in his "best light" when all others are taking the test multiple times.

When admissions officers sit around talking about applications and holistic ideas come out of their mouths, are SAT scores floating around in their heads?

Letter from a friend

I love this letter from Debbie Stier to a friend of hers whose daughter has "started the SAT gauntlet." (Debbie never thinks of SAT prep as a "gauntlet," by the way. Not a gauntlet: that is a first principle of doing SAT prep with your child.)

My favorite part:

Vocabulary is the biggest part of the Critical Reading. The entire reading section (passages included) is a vocabulary based reasoning test; vocab is MORE than just those fill in those blank questions. The more vocab she knows (as in the "I can use it in a sentence and define it for you and tell you the 2nd and third def's" sort of way), the better.

The New York Times is a GREAT way to learn vocab IN CONTEXT. I've been reading the newspaper every morning with Daisy and we get at least 10 words per day that she can't define. We started with a half hour every morning and her mission was to find ONE article that she wanted to read in it's entirety and tell me about it and pick out a few vocab words.

She is now up to an hour and often reads 3-4 full articles and LOVES it.

She asks me vocabulary as we go along and I define the words and she writes them down with a little memory jogger. And as I read the paper next to her and I find words, I ask her the def's and she adds them to her list if she doesn't know them.

I'd say she's up to about 100 words now just from the NY times for the last 5 months.

Then, whenever doing anything (e.g. cleaning the kitchen, driving, etc.), I have her break out "the list" (it's handwritten plus on our phones), and she uses them in sentences and I tweak them for her.

This exercise will help with the speed of the reading passages too. A large part of the challenge in that section is the sophisticated vocabulary. They are college level reading passages (i.e. not what high schoolers are used to reading).

That's why the "as long as they read it doesn't matter WHAT they read" line of thought doesn't stand up in this context.

My other favorite part, from the P.S.:

3) Don't ask her, "Are there any words you don't know?" because she will say "No. I know them all." They all do. After she tells you the 1-2 words she thinks doesn't know, look through the article yourself and ask her words. You'll add another 3-4.

People don't know what they don't know -- especially teenagers.

4) If she rejects this whole idea at fist, ignore. They ALL say they don't want to do "SAT Work" -- especially with a parent. That will change very very quickly.

Beautiful!

These are great, too:

• Letter From a Friend
• The Curb Appeal of a Testing Location
• The One Thing You Should Know

Book is out in February!

35 lbs

Chris has lost 35 lbs.

35 lbs! Since June 6. Today is August 21, so that's 11 weeks.

I've lost weight, too, though I can't report how much since I haven't been weighing myself. At least 5 lbs, maybe more. Shorts that were too tight to wear at in June are loose now.

AND: I think I finally understand the Premack principle, which I'm certain is the basis of the VB6 diet we've both been following. VB6 is the first diet I've encountered that uses eating to reinforce not eating^* -- and it works, just as the principle predicts. I would never have guessed, even though I've been reading about the Premack principle for years. I wouldn't have guessed because until now I haven't understood the principle.

I am now thinking PP is the secret to life. (Unless response deprivation is the secret to life. Clearly I need a MOOC on radical behaviorism.)

I'll try to find time to explain tomorrow.


^* Or, more accurately, eating stuff you do like to reinforce eating stuff you don't like

Good News for Math Beasts

Good news to report! The Art of Problem Solving has released book 4A from its Beast Academy series and is hard at work at the rest of grade 4 and all of grade 5.

Algebra 1 in the 8th Grade (...or not)

Boston Globe (North) Reading’s New Math Curriculum Runs into Protests The district has adopted a new sequence that leaves more than 80 percent of eighth-graders without a direct path to a high school calculus course. Only 18 percent will be enrolled in algebra 1, compared with 60 percent to 65 percent in previous years, according to Craig Martin, Reading’s assistant superintendent for learning and teaching. [Parents] have expressed concern that the school system’s departure from the traditional math sequence, which required a majority of students to take algebra 1 in eighth grade, may leave little room for a high school calculus class, a requirement at many colleges for acceptance into a science or engineering undergraduate program.

Apparently students who attend Ivy League schools are good memorizers

Yale students seem to have spent so much time memorizing history facts and dates that Professor Joanne Freeman feels compelled to warn students against the Revolutionary War "fact bubble":

Tip number one is don't get lost in the dreaded Revolutionary War fact bubble, which I have to say it makes me think of the first time that I taught this course. I was actually a brand new professor and I had just come to Yale and it was my first course and it was my first lecture in my first course and I'm [sound cuts out] It actually was in Connecticut Hall, which, for those of you who don't know, dates back to the period when this course is talking about and was Nathan Hale's -- essentially his dorm. So there I am. I'm a brand new professor to Yale and I'm teaching a course about the Revolution and it's in a building that dates to the Revolution, so I'm having sort of a "wow" Yale moment as it is, and I'm off, I'm giving my lectures, and I'm really excited. I give about three of them and someone raises their hand after about three lectures and they have a kind of a puzzled expression on their face. I said, "Yes?" And he says, "Excuse me, Professor Freeman. What are we supposed to be memorizing? Where are the facts and dates?" [laughs] So as a new professor my first impulse was: Darn! I forgot the facts and dates. [laughter] I got it wrong. [laughs] But actually, the fact of the matter is, they're not the star of the show. Certainly, dates are not the star of the show. There are dates you're going to have to remember so don't think Easy Street; there's not a date I have to know. There will be some dates, but this isn't a story about dates. It's obviously something a lot more interesting and a lot broader than that. Okay. Avoid fact bubble.

Joanne Freeman "American Revolution" | Lecture 1 Introduction: Freeman's Top Five Tips for Studying the Revolution

Obviously, excessive memorization didn't keep these students out of Yale.

I'm sure there's a reason for that, the reason being that excessive memorization actually helped.

And here is Daniel Willingham:  prior knowledge & working memory in 1 paragraph

"Brief History of Mankind" starts tomorrow (& a MOOC thought)

At Coursera.

I'm loving Joanne Freeman's American Revolution course, though I'm making my way through it only slowly (& doing none of the reading, sad to say).

I had a revelation the other day that watching a videotape of a lecture delivered in a lecture course may actually work for the same reason watching a videotape of a stand-up comedy routine works. The lecture course and the comedy routine are the same form: one person, on stage, talking to a very large group of people who don't know each other.

Freeman's "American Revolution" is a classic lecture-hall survey; she doesn't even use Powerpoints! At one point, early on, she says "So that's what I mainly address for the rest of the lecture, and I'm going to talk about it by focusing on three different points" -- and she holds up three fingers.

The three-finger moment was interesting to me because, at Yale, when a professor says she is going to be focusing on three points, attention is paid. 

From the transcript:

So that's what I mainly address for the rest of the lecture, and I'm going to talk about it by focusing on three different points. Point number one: I'm going to talk a little bit about the distinctive character of the people who migrated to the colonies. [here she reacts to her student audience & starts laughing] It gives you such a sense of power when you're lecturing and you say, "There are three reasons" and the entire rooms goes: "Oh." [laughter] "Three. There are three." So there are three. So number one is the distinctive character of the people who migrated to the colonies. Number two is the distinctive conditions of life in British America, -- and that point I'll talk about for the longest. And then number three is the nature of British colonial administration. And I'll repeat that: the distinctive character of the people who migrated to the colonies, the distinctive conditions of life in British North America, and the nature of British colonial administration."
Lecture 3 The American Revolution: Being a British American | January 19, 2010

Freeman makes a number of references to eager-beaver student behavior throughout her lectures.

Passage from McGuffey's Sixth Reader

I'd been wanting to post a passage from McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Revised Edition (1879) for ages now, but it seemed too long for a blog.

Now that I've discovered Blogger's Page feature, I've added a Page called "What people used to be able to read."

Bad-news scores

My district's first set of Common Core scores. (Sample test questions.)

I read a funny letter in the Times today from the mother of a child in third grade:

[snip] I am a journalist and editor, and I found the writing on my third grader’s sample language arts test so dense (and dull!) that even I sometimes had trouble reaching correct answers. Likewise, sample questions for the third-grade math test, which are intended to measure greater complexity in thinking, looked to me like basic word problems with lots of superfluous words.

Naturally that second observation forced me to drop everything (or, more accurately, further delay beginning everything) and check the 3rd-grade math questions.

I found this:

Two groups of students from Douglas Elementary School were walking to the library when it began to rain. The 7 students in Mr. Stem’s group shared the 3 large umbrellas they had with Ms. Thorn’s group of 11 students. If the same number of students were under each umbrella, how many students were under each umbrella?

You may use the space below to draw a picture of the problem.

Mom's got a point.

Goodreads!

I saw a bunch of you 'friended' me (or whatever it is one does on Goodreads) -- fantastic!

What fun!

Leader shmeader

Debbie S. sent me this link to a Times story on Berkeley's holistic approach to reading applications --- amazing!

....Another reader thinks the student is “good” but we have so many of “these kids.” She doesn’t see any leadership beyond the student’s own projects.

Listening to these conversations, I had to wonder exactly how elite institutions define leadership.

Confessions of an Application Reader
Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley
By RUTH STARKMAN
Published: August 1, 2013

Remind me to tell you my story about the time the Dartmouth admissions officer came to Irvington.

Actually, why don't I go ahead and tell the leadership part of the story now.

During his talk the Dartmouth guy mentioned "leadership" so many times that finally a parent in the audience raised his hand and said, "What if your child isn't a leader?"

The admissions officer said, and I am close to quoting: "There are many ways to be a leader. Being a good follower is being a leader."

Perplex this!

I'm thick in the middle of things, but in my travels today I came across this passage (two seconds ago, actually) and I had to post.

Dan Meyer, 31, is in the process of becoming a celebrity math teacher (hey, it’s a small group). Much of his rapid trajectory upward can be explained by his message, which involves a digital curriculum that will (he says) instantly engage and perplex kids and thus resolve all classroom management issues (more on this later), a message tailor-made to appeal to both techies, since it implicitly attacks all teachers, and progressive educators, since it is inherently constructivist.

Dan Meyer and the Gatekeepers
educationrealist

He had me at "instantly engage and perplex kids and thus resolve all classroom management issues."

In the cabin

I'm loving the anonymous "Insider" (aka "Stakeholder") quotes in the report from Whiteboard Advisors.

My favorite, re: President Obama's proposed tobacco tax to fund preschool:

"Houses the idea safely in the ‘this will never be agreed to’ cabin."

We need that cabin in my district.

On when ESEA reauthorization will take place:

"Never. It’s now a moth in amber–preserved in perpetuity. They ought to send it to the national archives and put it under glass."

"At this point, there is zero leadership on this at ED, and zero interest on the Hill."

On PARCC and SBAC: right track or wrong track?

"As many predicted, this is turning out to be one of the greatest boondoggles of all time."

"It is the beginning of the end for both. States are going to start running for the door. To many reasons to get out. The Administration ultimately spends ~$350 million for something states didn’t want and the market took care of."

"Smarter Balanced is headed in the wrong direction educationally; PARCC is headed in the right direction but is afflicted with grievous problems of organization, management and delivery."

“The Common Core is having a PR problem, very generally.”

“They were artificial constructs that didn’t have any actual support behind them other than a way to spend money. It would have made more sense to give the money to states and encourage them to build their own consortia so that they actually wanted to participate and be part of it.”

On Randi Weingarten's proposed moratorium on high-stakes testing:

“Over the last 60 days, the entire CCSS architecture has gotten wobbly. Anything is possible now. Opponents smell blood in the water.”

“The centrist, compromise position will become ‘delayed.’ Those who support it will go out of their way to show they are not ditching accountability.”

And Arne Duncan, unbeloved:

“Arne Duncan has blinders on and thinks that he is the nation’s superintendent, chief school board, and principal for every school. He doesn’t understand or accept criticism, and doesn’t see how poorly this is going. States will freak out when they see the assessments and their cut scores and will do everything and anything to back away from this land mine as quickly as possible.”

I wonder what nuggets I'll find in the report from April 2013.

Yet another reason for instructional grouping

Abstract

Two studies tested the effect of humor, embedded in learning materials, on task interest. College student participants (NStudy 1 = 359, NStudy 2 = 172) learned a new math technique with the presence or absence of humor in the learning program and/or test instructions. Individual interest in math was measured initially and also tested as a factor. The results showed that the effect of humor in the learning program depended on individual interest in math. Humor raised task interest for those with low individual interest in math but slightly lowered task interest for those with high individual interest in math....

The effect of humorous instructional materials on interest in a math task
Kristina L. Matarazzo • Amanda M. Durik • Molly L. Delaney | Motiv Emot (2010) 34:293–305

"Growing headwinds for Common Core"

I haven't been following the progress of PARCC....and I hadn't realized how central the idea of common assessments were to the Common Core undertaking, although I should have.

Looks like things aren't going well on that front:

Yesterday, PARCC released the cost of its tests—and right on cue, another state, Georgia, dropped out of the testing consortia. This is a disaster.

At this point, I won’t be surprised if we end up with 20 or more different testing systems in 2014–15. So much for commonness, so much for comparability. Rigor and alignment with tough standards are likely the next to fall.

That's how the consortia crumble
Andy Smarick / July 23, 2013

Here is Truth in American Education on Whiteboard Advisors Insider Results on Common Core.

And here is T.H.E. Journal Magazine on Remaining PARCC States Affirm Commitment, Get on Track for Field Testing By Dian Schaffhauser 07/30/13

The "Insider" brief is fun: Tracking Measures, Growing Headwinds for Common Core, and Prospects for Administration Policy Proposals May 2013.

This reminds me David Steiner's observation, which I've heard him make twice...which was that, at least in his view, the point of Common Core was to get around the fact the Constitution leaves education up to the states. That's why Common Core produced standards instead of curricula, Steiner said: the U.S. federal government cannot constitutionally impose a central curriculum on the states.

So the idea was to impose a central set of standards instead.

I guess common assessments adopted willingly by individual states were another means of circumventing that obstacle. (They would pretty much have to be if the goal is to circumvent the constitution.)

The whole undertaking now seems crazy to me.

Get around state prerogatives?

By creating a complicated and expensive common assessment states have to buy?

[pause]

Maybe this is crazy; I haven't thought it through.

If you really want common assessments - if you actually want to make common assessments happen as opposed to almost make them happen and then have states pull out of the consortium - pass a law requiring every student in the country to take one of the already-existing standardized tests when he or she leaves school.

SAT, ACT, SAT Subject Matter tests, Accuplacer....pick one, pass a law requiring 18-year olds to take it (is that constitutional? I don't know), and fund it.

Then you have a nationally standardized comparison of all students in the United States.

Andy Smarick's other post is worth reading, too: The Complicated Economics of Testing in the Era of Common Core Standards


The Role of the Federal Government in Public Education in the United States

Enduring links from childhood Math and reading

Abstract

Understanding the determinants of socioeconomic status (SES) is an important economic and social goal. Several major influences on SES are known, yet much of the variance in SES remains unexplained. In a large, population-representative sample from the United Kingdom, we tested the effects of mathematics and reading achievement at age 7 on attained SES by age 42. Mathematics and reading ability both had substantial positive associations with adult SES, above and beyond the effects of SES at birth, and with other important factors, such as intelligence. Achievement in mathematics and reading was also significantly associated with intelligence scores, academic motivation, and duration of education. These findings suggest effects of improved early mathematics and reading on SES attainment across the life span.

Enduring Links From Childhood Mathematics and Reading Achievement to Adult Socioeconomic Status
Stuart J. Ritchie and Timothy C. Bates | Psychological Science 24(7) 1301–1308 2013

I've been reading many abstracts of late.

Andrew in August

For all of Andrew's^* life, until my mother died in January 2011, we went to Illinois every August. First to Springfield, then to Chicago. Always, without fail.

August is upon us again, and Andrew has been lobbying for his trip to Illinois for days now: lobbying Ed and me and, when that goes nowhere, searching for Chicago and "grandma's house" on Google.

Today his teacher^* sent home this list of sentences Andrew wrote on the computer at school:

I go to Staybridge on August 16th.
I go on the airplane.
First I go to camp.
Then I go to Staybridge.
I will see grandma in Staybridge.
Grandma's house is in Staybridge.
Staybridge is in Chicago.
I love Grandma.
Mommy and Daddy are going with me.
I have to pack my bags.

I have no idea how to handle this.

^* For passersby, Andrew is 19 years old and has autism. The references to Staybridge are to the Staybridge Inn in Springfield, our home away from home. 

Color me not surprised

In sum, we propose that adults never fully outgrow the cognitive and perceptual biases that are so striking in infants and preschoolers. That is a humbling thought, much as it was humbling to discover that humans are not the center of the universe or as rational and ‘‘in control’’ as once thought. However, if clarity can come from investigating extreme cases, then perhaps studying children, who show these biases more blatantly than adults, might be a rich source of insight and future hypotheses about adult cognition.

Not Quite as Grown-Up as We Like to Think: Parallels Between Cognition in Childhood and Adulthood
Adele Diamond and Natasha Kirkham | Psychological Science Volume 16—Number  4 | p 291-297.

I'm just waiting for the day they find out crows are smarter than people.

A lot smarter.

Gutting Out the Grammar

Lately, I have been thinking more about SteveH's experience of an elementary teacher dismissing his young son's knowledge of geography as "mere facts" because I have steered my family's educational boat even more towards the classical model over the last year or so.  (We have even started Classical Conversations one day a week, the model of which would horrify the type of folks who say "drill and kill.")

Because, well, *OF COURSE* his son only had superficial knowledge, mere facts.  He was an elementary student.  That's what they do, those little collectors of knowledge.  Those sponges.  They absorb facts.  And if you don't provide them with useful ones, they will happily populate their brains with the name and basic biographical information of every character in the Star Wars Extended Universe.  (They may even do that, anyway.  Mine sure have.)

Here's what I don't understand about the folks who think it is so horrible to load up a child's brain with "mere facts" -- do they really, *really* think it never has to be done?  Do they not mind that the fact-can just get kicked down the road to either high school or college, when you can no longer progress without the domain knowledge but your brain is no longer developmentally eager to be constantly memorizing and chanting inane things?

Then I was thinking of Catherine.  And basal ganglia.

Well, I did no actual thinking about basal ganglia, to be sure, because I don't know the first thing about it.

Of course, there's the rub -- what is the "first thing" about basal ganglia?

As Catherine wrote much about when she started plunging into her studies, you have to learn the lingo.  You have to absorb the "mere facts" -- the grammar -- of any new field.  Why wait to do it until you have to simultaneously struggle with the logic and rhetoric (to use the classical model's terminology)?

The whole thing just makes me angry.

I can't tell you how many moms I have met who tell me a similar story: They "hated" math.  They feared having to teach it to their kids.  Then after going through Singapore (or even Saxon, for that matter) in the elementary levels, it all clicked and they realized they *liked* math and were good at it.

My pet theory is that if you look at math from the grammar --> logic ---> rhetoric model point of view, grammar has been gutted out of the picture in many schools for some time and it is fashionable to try to jump straight into logic (if not rhetoric) right away.  And now we have these moms who are *finally* getting their grammar stage math competence, and suddenly the logic / rhetoric stage math is no longer frightening (and, in fact, fun and fascinating) because they finally have the foundational underpinnings to understand it.

Maybe?

Naturals and strivers

To understand how talent and achievement are perceived, three experiments compared the assessments of “naturals” and “strivers." Professional musicians learned about two pianists, equal in achievement but who varied in the source of achievement: the “natural” with early evidence of high innate ability, versus the “striver” with early evidence of high motivation and perseverance (Experiment 1). Although musicians reported the strong belief that strivers will achieve over naturals, their preferences and beliefs showed the reverse pattern: they judged the natural performer to be more talented, more likely to succeed, and more hirable than the striver. In Experiment 2, this “naturalness bias” was observed again in experts but not in nonexperts, and replicated in a between-subjects design in Experiment 3. Together, these experiments show a bias favoring naturals over strivers even when the achievement is equal, and a dissociation between stated beliefs about achievement and actual choices in expert decision-makers.

Naturals and strivers: Preferences and beliefs about sources of achievement
Chia-Jung Tsay, Mahzarin R. Banaji Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 460–465

I wonder why this is?

Why would experts hold the bias (while believing they hold the opposite bias) while nonexperts don't?

Is this likely to be specific to the music world? (I have no idea.)

"The virtues of opaque prose"

ABSTRACT

Instructors tell their students to write clearly. This prescription meshes with our intuition, wins confirmation in scores of books on writing, and finds empirical confirmation in research on perceptual fluency: People like content that is easy to process. Nevertheless, in some circumstances people expect content to be difficult, and ease might be interpreted as a lack of quality. We investigate this possibility by asking people to judge the quality of written text which varies in fluency (through the manipulation of font and facial feedback). Across three studies, disfluent content was judged to be of higher quality when it was thought to come from a source focused on conveying information than one designed to maximize enjoyment.

The virtues of opaque prose: How lay beliefs about fluency influence perceptions of quality Jeff Galak, Leif D. Nelson Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 250–253

I'm trying to decide whether Galak and Nelson's prose is opaque enough to make me believe them...

Goodreads

Is anyone else on Goodreads?

I joined a couple of months ago & am still getting the hang of it.

I'd love to get book recommendations from all of you---

I think you can find me here.

Fort Hood

I stayed for a day and a half of presentations and ended up missing a fabulous talk by a retired British.... Colonel, I think.

He talked about the French army and confirmed everything Ed had said previously on the subject of France being a warring nation, which I hadn't known. If I get to it, I'll post a couple of Ed's slides listing all the wars the French have fought over the centuries. There are many.

[pause]

Forget Ed's slides. Check this out.

France may also be the longest continuously existing state, btw. Another thing I didn't know.

Ed says Glen told the soldiers that they have to think of the French military as the Marines; they are that good.

He also made a point that had never occurred to Ed or me although it's obvious once you hear it: armies need to fight wars. Meaning: the only way to stay in practice is to fight real wars. War exercises aren't enough.

The French army fights real wars. Glen showed videos of the Mali operation, and the take-away was essentially that the French army is brilliant. French soldiers were doing 9000-mile sorties and making them look like a field trip to the recycling plant.

He also showed photos (videos?) of the German army, which is choc-a-bloc with expensive weaponry and aircraft, but whose soldiers haven't fought in a real battle since --- WWII? His opinion is that if something happens in Europe, only two countries will be prepared to fight: England and France.

In terms of defense, the issue is Russia, which has been sending probes into the airspace over the Baltic States (I now know what the Baltic states are, so time well spent...) and over Sweden. Apparently Russia is too intimidated by Finland to poke its nose into Finnish air space.

Russia also stages showy war exercises to practice an invasion of the Baltic states. The Russian army is doing one now, I think -- now, or not long from now. Military analysts assume Russia would like to take back the Baltic states because they have warm-water ports, which don't freeze in winter. Russia is too weak to attempt that now, but, on the other hand, Putin may not know that. He may be surrounded by people telling him the country is a mighty power; there is no way to know.

At dinner Glen told Ed that his first experience as a soldier was in Northern Ireland. In a situation like that, he said, you have to pay as much attention to the men under your command as you do to the situation you're trying to control because the men you lead are 18- and 19-years old and terrified. One of his soldiers came within a hair's breadth of shooting a civilian because the man was walking down the street carrying an umbrella in the rain.

Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Terri reminded me of the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, and thank the gods! A couple of months ago I was trying to think of the name of the effect and trying to think of the effect itself. I couldn't remember either one, but I vividly recalled thinking the what's-it effect was extremely cool.

I was driving myself crazy.

Speaking of pundits

You may have to be a subscriber to the Times to find this funny, but here goes.

I've been reading the papers on my iPad for a couple of years now, but Ed still gets the Sunday Times. In June, two weeks before the Egyptian coup, he sat down at the kitchen table, opened up his paper, and saw Tom Friedman's weekend column:

He read the tag line out loud in a tone of pronounced indignation (What is this doing in my paper?), and then sat there, glaring at the page and waiting for my reaction.

It took me a good three or four seconds to absorb "Egypt is a mess but there is hope in the young environmentalists" (What?) ---- and then we both burst into horselaughs.

I think that's the loudest I've ever heard Ed laugh.

Big data strikes again

The New York Times is reliably fun to read on the subject of technology:

SAN FRANCISCO — Although certain kinds of engineers are in short supply in the United States, plenty of potential candidates exist for thousands of positions for which companies want to import guest workers, according to an analysis of three million résumés of job seekers in the United States.

[snip]

[T]he technology industry argues there are not enough qualified Americans [to fill tech positions]. Its critics, including labor groups, say bringing in guest workers is a way to depress wages in the industry.

Many economists take issue with the industry’s argument, too. One side points out that wages have not gone up across the board for engineers, suggesting that there is no stark labor shortage.

[snip]

“I didn’t expect this result,” said Steve Goodman, Bright’s chief executive.

[snip]

“We’re Silicon Valley people, we just assumed the shortage was true,” Mr. Goodman said. “It turns out there is a little Silicon Valley groupthink going on about this, though it’s not comfortable to say that.”

[snip]

The Senate immigration bill, passed last month, nearly doubles the number of H-1B visas that companies can seek every year. Industry lobbied heavily for it, bulldozing efforts to add language that would force companies to try to hire an equally qualified American first.

[snip]

The age of workers, which the study did not look at, may also play a role....[A]mong 32 technology companies surveyed, only six had a work force with a median age over 35. At Monster, the job search portal, the median age was 30; at Google, 29; and at Facebook, 28. The median age of American workers over all is 42.3 years old, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As if to underline the study’s findings, Mr. Goodman spoke from a conference room that looked out on decorated ping-pong tables, a liquor bar and tiki-themed snacks. Later that day, Bright was having a party, partly to attract new talent, he said, including foreign programmers here on H-1B visas.

Big Data Analysis Adds to Guest Worker Woes
By QUENTIN HARDY and SOMINI SENGUPTA
JULY 23, 2013, 10:23 AM

Groupthink in Silicon Valley, groupthink amongst the punditry, groupthink in the White House....

[pause]

This part was interesting:

For a few job categories, like computer systems analysts, there are relatively few “good fits” among American applicants, Bright found. Computer systems analyst jobs, considered relatively low-skilled in the tech world, had four openings for every American candidate. For others, like high-skilled computer programmers, there were more than enough potential candidates in the United States, the company found.

As I recall, there's a section in the Steve Jobs book where Jobs explains to President Obama that the workers they really can't find are skilled workers with Associate degrees.

I'll have to find that and post.

For the record, I had absolutely no idea there wasn't a shortage of engineers until Kitchen Table Math readers explained the world to me. I never questioned the narrative; I just took all the Silicon lamentations at face value.

Workflowy for packing

Workflowy cuts my packing time in half, or close to. It's amazing.

With my usual travel list(s), I get into an obsessive-compulsive scanning doom loop.

I put something in my bag and cross it off my list.

Then I put something else in my bag and cross that off my list.

Unfortunately, crossed-off does not mean invisible, so every time I check my list to see what to pack next, I end up rereading the whole thing, or at least re-scanning the whole thing; plus I start to experience doubt.

Did I really pack the long cord for the iPad? Sure I crossed it off the list, but did I put it in my bag?

Better check.

(Same problem with recipes, btw.)

With Workflowy, when you cross something off the list it disappears (if you want it to).

So the list gets smaller and smaller, and there's never anything to scan other than items you have definitely not packed. There's no re-scanning, and there's (almost) no checking or re-checking. Out of sight, out of mind.

When you want to restore the list, you just Un-cross all the crossed-off items et voilà! List restored.

Gone fishing, part 2

Ed has been invited to give a seminar on France at Fort Hood, and I'm going!

The army invited specialists on various European countries, and I'd love to hear the whole thing, but I'm coming back Wednesday.

Gone fishing

We're in Garrison, NY today & tomorrow.

Our host says this is robber baron territory. When he & his wife bought the place in 1998, it was 16,000 square feet of ruin, sounds like. Took a year & 3 months of work before they could even stay overnight.

All I can say is I'm glad somebody has the attention span to restore 16,000 square feet.

Those robber barons. Great taste, apparently. Beautiful place.

Doug Lemov has a new book out

Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better

For several years now, when I think of the public schools, the first issue that springs to mind is the stark absence of any mention or consideration of the need for practice. In the 14 years we've had kids in our local schools, I don't believe I've ever heard an administrator use the word 'practice' in any context other than 'football practice' or 'basketball practice,' etc.

When the subject is academics, the word is always 'understand.' Students will 'understand.' Not practice.

That's a problem because although class time is all about understanding, the tests are about remembering: students are tested on what they know. Which means students have to practice the content taught in the classes, but the school doesn't worry about providing effective practice. Teachers give homework, but no one collects or corrects the homework, and no one asks whether the homework actually works. Does the assigned homework increase knowledge? Nobody knows, and nobody asks. Practice is not a topic of conversation. At least not within my hearing.

Naturally under this system (Teach, test, and hope for the best), parents end up hiring a lot of tutors --- but tutors can't really provide effective practice regimens, either. (Even if a tutor would like to provide a practice regimen, parents don't need a whole new set of homework-from-thetutor to deal with.)

So the core requirement of all learning -- practice -- is left to the kids.

Let's just hope they're following the literature.

Can you spell hegemony? part 2

Leveraging discovery?

B-school talk and ed-school talk in the same sentence?

Ewwwwww.

Globe Education Shakespeare: Macbeth

"SEXEY" paragraphs

I bought a terrific book on college essay writing from iTunes: Essay Writing for Students. Just $4.99. The authors seem like a lot of fun.

I like their paragraph acronym, which they characterize as "one way to structure a paragraph:

SEXEY is a mnemonic (neh-MON-ick - a memory device) to help you create well-structured paragraphs which fully answer your essay questions.

S – STATEMENT
Make a statement linking to the question that you have chosen to answer.

E – EXPLAIN
Explain what your statement means in relation to your text.

X – EXAMPLE
Add in an example and quote from your text to back up your statement and explanation.

E – EXPLANATION
What your quote and example show the reader.

Y – WHY
Why is this all important? How does it all link to the question? What does it show us? How does it link to the novel as a whole or to a social and/or historical/political context?

As far as I can tell, all of the examples in the book -- and there are many -- are academic.

No personal writing, no journalism, no op eds.

It is very difficult to find an American textbook that teaches (or excerpts) academic prose.

Remembering math forever

An analysis of life span memory identifies those variables that affect losses in recall and recognition of the content of high school algebra and geometry courses. Even in the absence of further rehearsal activities, individuals who take college-level mathematics courses at or above the level of calculus have minimal losses of high school algebra for half a century. Individuals who performed equally well in the high school course but took no college mathematics courses reduce performance to near chance levels during the same period. In contrast, the best predictors of test perform ance (e.g., Scholastic A ptitude T est scores and grades) have trivial effects on the rate of performance decline. Pedagogical implications for life span maintenance of knowledge are derived and discussed.

Lifetime M aintenance of High School M athem atics Content
Harry P. Bahrick and Lynda K. Hall
Journal of Experimental Psychology
1991, Vol. 120, No. 1, 20-33

Bahrick, Hall, and Baker have a brand-new book out on long-term retention.

From The College Board: Reconciling AP Exams With Common Core

I'm very concerned about the information College Board is giving to AASA, the school superintendents association, regarding calculus. "Despite these measures, there are still difficulties in reconciling many AP courses with the Common Core. In particular, AP Calculus is in conflict with the Common Core, Packer said, and it lies outside the sequence of the Common Core because of the fear that it may unnecessarily rush students into advanced math classes for which they are not prepared. The College Board suggests a solution to the problem. of AP Calculus “If you’re worried about AP Calculus and fidelity to the Common Core, we recommend AP Statistics and AP Computer Science,” he told conference attendees. Moreover, the College Board may offer an AP Algebra course (although no plans are definite), which may supplant AP Calculus, particularly in schools rigidly adhering to the Common Core standards." I'm an apcalc and alg2 teacher with a b.s. in classical applied math. The statistics course that I took in college years ago was a calc-based course. Lisa Jones @proudmomom

Nonconscious arithmetic

The modal view in the cognitive and neural sciences holds that consciousness is necessary for abstract, symbolic, and rule-following computations. Hence, semantic processing of multiple-word expressions, and performing of abstract mathematical computations, are widely believed to require consciousness. We report a series of experiments in which we show that multiple-word verbal expressions can be processed outside conscious awareness and that multistep, effortful arithmetic equations can be solved unconsciously. All experiments used Continuous Flash Suppression to render stimuli invisible for relatively long durations (up to 2,000 ms). Where appropriate, unawareness was verified using both objective and subjective measures. The results show that novel word combinations, in the form of expressions that contain semantic violations, become conscious before expressions that do not contain semantic violations, that the more negative a verbal expression is, the more quickly it becomes conscious, and that subliminal arithmetic equations prime their results. These findings call for a significant update of our view of conscious and unconscious processes.

Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously Asael Y. Sklara, Nir Levya,1, Ariel Goldsteinb,1, Roi Mandela, Anat Marila,b, and Ran R. Hassina
19614–19619 | PNAS | November 27, 2012 | vol. 109 | no. 48

I'm sure our friend friends the basal ganglia have something to do with this....

Here's the press release.

Yale Open Courses

Yale Open Courses 

Course list

I've started the American Revolution course, which I like tremendously so far.

For some reason, the Yale Open Courses are the first MOOCs I've felt drawn to. I don't know why.

Just noticed they offer for-credit summer courses, too.

Report from the front

The other day I was introduced to a dean at a progressive private school. We chatted, and at some point I asked how the school assesses student learning.

The dean was vague. He mentioned teachers "reflecting" a couple of times, and then said the school is moving more and more to students assessing themselves, which also involves reflecting.

Funny thing: just last week I talked to a friend of mine whose son attends the school. She says the school has rampant grade inflation, and her son has learned nothing but his grades are good. He learns so little at school that he had two full-time tutors all last school year. (This is a very smart kid, by the way. No learning problems, no behavior problems.) When she took him to the SAT tutor she used with an older child in the family, the tutor told her there's no way he can prepare her son to take the SAT Math Subject test.

I told my friend about "Teach Like a Champion" classes: rapid-fire, high-energy events, with cold-calling and choral response, and said we need charter schools for rich kids. Parents should at least have the option of putting their kids in classrooms where kids spend a a lot of time practicing, not just discussing.

My friend is athletic, and she sparked to the idea it instantly. She said her son would love it, and he would remember what's been taught because he would be practicing in class.

Grade inflation and no practice during class-time: that is a recipe for total disengagement in a lot of kids.

Portlander and Anonymous 1 & 2 on Looking it up

Portlander said...

Sheesh. A cynical person would point out that Google is notorious for putting a thumb on their search results. If one has to rely on Google to get facts every time facts are needed, well that's giving Google an enormous amount of power to bias perceptions.

It's not a whole lot different than the mainstream media running pictures of a 12 y.o. Trayvon Martin in a football uniform instead of a 17 y.o. Trayvon Martin smoking a joint and sticking out his middle fingers on Facebook.

So yes, all the facts you need to know Walter Duranty, er... Walter Cronkite, er... The Googleplex will deliver.

Anonymous said...

Not only that; but a person who has a good knowledge base in a field or topic will get much better information out of Google (or any search engine) than an uninformed person will.

Anonymous said...

So if I can look up the translation of an English word into Spanish, that's as a good as being able to speak Spanish?

I think not.

I'm laughing!

Of course, to be fair, Marissa Mayer does not say that looking things up on Google is the path to success.

But the point still stands: how does one become good at looking things up?

To a very large degree, you become good at looking things up by acquiring knowledge of the field you're looking things up in. I go back to my struggles with the basal ganglia. Today I'm better able to 'look things up' productively because I've developed a sense of the field, of who the major researchers are, and, to a lesser degree, what the differences of opinion are amongst them.

When Marissa Mayer says "It's not what you know, it's what you can find out," she is misformulating reality. You have to know something to find things out.

Beyond that, how often is it actually true that you have to acquire new knowledge/information in order to do your job?

I don't know the answer to that question, but as far as I can tell a great deal of work depends upon doing what you know how to do: applying the knowledge you possess to the situation at hand.

Marissa Mayer is misinformed

2010: HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

Marissa Mayer: It's not what you know, it's what you can find out. The Internet has put at the forefront resourcefulness and critical-thinking and relegated memorization of rote facts to mental exercise or enjoyment. Because of the abundance of information and this new emphasis on resourcefulness, the Internet creates a sense that anything is knowable or findable — as long as you can construct the right search, find the right tool, or connect to the right people. The Internet empowers better decision-making and a more efficient use of time.

---

Thoughts:

1. There was an "abundance of information" available before the internet, too, yet somehow nobody thought that the presence of a World Book Encyclopedia in your house meant you didn't have to know anything.
   
2. Interesting that Mayer sees "memorization of rote facts" as something you might do as a form of "mental exercise" or for "enjoyment." She's right! Learning stuff is fun! Thinking, on the other hand, is not fun. Not for the most part. 
3. Better decision-making and more efficient use of time...I have no way of guessing whether either of those things is true (I'm skeptical of the first claim), but the internet is beyond fantastic for writers. Ed is writing his textbook now, and he can't believe how easy it is to find the sources and information he needs. As a historian working with primary documents, he hadn't really joined the JSTOR revolution. Now he has, and he's amazed.
4. Speaking of JSTOR, the general public needs access, too. 

Former Reddit co-owner founder arrested for excessive JSTOR downloads

Prior knowledge gets around working memory limits

[I]t’s well known that extensive background knowledge allows one to circumvent the limitation of working memory. To take an obvious example, if I ask you to hold six letters in mind for one minute, it will be much easier to do with B-R-A-K-E-S than with X-P-W-M-Q-R. Although both are a string of six letters, the first forms a word, so you can treat it like a single unit. It’s like holding one thing in working memory, not six. Naturally, this saving of space in working memory only works if you know the word “brakes.” The same phenomenon is observed in many other domains. The chess expert looking at a board does not see 16 white pieces—she sees several clusters of pieces, each cluster defined by the relationship of the pieces to one another and to opposing pieces. Whether it’s chess pieces or letters in a word, the compacting of many things into one thing in working memory is based on prior knowledge.
Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn? by Daniel T. Willingham

Jeopardy

I hope some of you are watching Jeopardy.

Ben, the contestant who has won at least 5 days in a row, I think, looks very familiar.

Here he is.

This is funny:

With great intentions, he bought two “very thick books filled with lists of facts, and promised myself I’d read through them every night,” he says. “That lasted exactly one night. I can’t memorize facts very well. I spent a lot of time adding and subtracting large numbers with pen and paper, because I didn’t want to mess up the final wager, especially being a math major.”

VB6

C. has lost 10 pounds on Mark Bittman's VB6 diet!

VB6 ("Vegan before 6") is an amazingly user friendly diet: it's the first diet I've ever tried that uses eating things you like to positively-reinforce not eating things you like without causing the whole diet to crash and burn. I've spent years trying to make the Premack principle work for weight loss, and I think Bittman has actually done it.

The funny thing is, back when I briefly became a hard-core vegan (I've been a 'part-time' vegan since then), I started out by doing exactly what Bittman did: I stuck to a vegan diet during the day, then ate a regular dinner with the family.

But I saw my own 'VB6' as a way station to full-time veganism; it never occurred to me that you could actually lose weight on that regimen.

Turns out I was wrong.

Here's an excerpt:

Six years ago, the man I most trusted with my health said to me, “You should probably become a vegan.”

Not exactly the words I’d wanted to hear, and certainly not what I was expecting. But I’d asked Sid Baker, my doctor of thirty years, what he recommended, given that he’d just told me that at age 57, I had developed the pre-diabetic, pre-heart-disease symptoms typical of a middle-aged man who’d spent his life eating without discipline.

He’d laid out the depressing facts for me: “Your blood numbers have always been fine but now they’re not. You weigh 40 pounds more than you should. You’re complaining of sleep apnea. You’re talking about knee surgery, which is a direct result of your being overweight. Your cholesterol, which has always been normal up until now, isn’t. Same with your blood sugar; it’s moved into the danger zone.”

A more conventional doc would’ve simply put me on a drug like Lipitor, and maybe a low-fat diet. But Lipitor, one of the statin drugs that lowers cholesterol, is a permanent drug: Once you start taking it, you don’t stop. I didn’t like the idea of that.

Furthermore, its effectiveness in healthy people has never been established, and it’s also been implicated in memory loss and other cognitive complications; I didn’t like the idea of any of that, either. And at this point, low-fat and lowcarbohydrate diets have essentially been discredited: They might help you lose weight, but they’re not effective for maintaining that loss in the long term, and they may even wreak havoc on your system.

But becoming a vegan? A person who eats no animal products at all? Calling that a radical change to my lifestyle was more than a bit of an understatement. Yet it was clear that something had to be done. I asked Sid, “Is a compromise possible? Any other ideas?”

“You’re a smart guy,” he said. “Figure something out.”

The answer, to me, was this: I’d become a part-time vegan. And for me, this part-time veganism would follow these simple rules: From the time I woke up in the morning until 6 in the evening, I’d eat a superstrict vegan diet, with no animal products at all.

In fact, I decided to go even beyond that: Until 6 p.m., I’d also forgo hyper-processed food, like white bread, white rice, white pasta, of course all junk food, and alcohol.

At 6 p.m., I’d become a free man, allowing myself to eat whatever I wanted, usually—but not always—in moderation. Some nights, this meant a steak dinner; some nights, it was a blow-out meal at a good restaurant; other nights, dinner was a tunafish sandwich followed by some cookies. It ran, and runs, the gamut.

Whatever happened at dinner, though, the next morning I turned not to bacon and eggs or a bowl of Trix but to oatmeal or fruit or vegetables. For lunch, rice and beans or a salad—or both. Throughout the day I snacked on nuts and more fruit.

I called the diet “vegan before six,” or VB6. And it worked.

A month later, I weighed myself; I’d lost 15 pounds. A month after that, I went to the lab for blood work: Both my cholesterol and my blood sugar levels were down, well into the normal range (my cholesterol had gone from 240 to 180). My apnea was gone; in fact, for the first time in probably thirty years, I was sleeping through the night, not even snoring. Within four months, I’d lost more than 35 pounds and was below 180—less than I’d weighed in thirty years. And the funny thing was, the way I ate in the daytime began to change the way I ate at night.

An excerpt from Mark Bittman’s “VB6″

AND SEE:
I Answer Frequently Asked Questions about VB6
Help for the afflicted
Application of the Premack principle to the behavioral control of extremely inactive schizrophrenics

Why students have to memorize things - revised

I've been trying to get this post right, and it's getting closer.

I'm sensing an uptick in anti-knowledge sentiment, so I need a rebuttal.

What do children want?

Fabulous post from a substitute teacher in Great Britain

Knowledge and memory posts

6/24/2006: Mastery learning and IQ (warning: broken links; page can't be edited)

10/25/2006: On not teaching to mastery (warning: broken links; page can't be edited)

4/26/2007 How to build a fast learner

4/26/2007: Extremely fast learning

6/10/2007: On Intelligence (Jeff Hawkins)

9/9/2010: The rule of 20

1/23/2012: Why students have to memorize things

3/30/2012: Look it up

8/13/2012: Jeff Hawkins: intelligence is memory, memory is intelligence

6/18/2013: Deeper shmeeper

7/2/2013: Why students need to memorize, Common Core edition

President Obama has a really bad idea

President Obama recently visited a school that "relies 100 percent on project-based learning." Not just visited, lauded.

Sigh.

Apparently the White House is launching a "High School Redesign" initiative, which appears to be supported by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Boards of Education:

Today's global economy requires new approaches to teaching and learning in America's high schools to foster problem solving and analysis, to support creativity and collaboration, and to connect student learning directly to the real world. Students learn best when they are engaged in complex projects and tasks aligned with their interests and when they work with others through practical examples and case studies that engage them in rigorous academics and in the application of knowledge.
Fact Sheet: Redesigning America's High Schools

Manor New Technology High School, a 100% project-based school, is cited as one of five Promising Examples of Redesigned High Schools.

From the President's speech:

• at Manor a history teacher might get together with a math teacher and develop a project about the impact of castles on world history and the engineering behind building castles
• or a group of students might be in charge of putting together a multimedia presentation about the moral dilemmas in literature as applied to WWII
• folks who use mathematical equations to build musical instruments
• tests on bungee jumping with rubber bands and weights
• robots that were being built
• all kinds of great stuff
• there's a lot of hands-on learning here
• part of what makes this place special is that there's all this integration, various subjects and actual projects, and young people doing and not just sitting there listening
• I could not be prouder of what's happening here at Manor

AND SEE:
Help Desk: Project-Based Learning
High School Redesign Gets Presidential Lift
Smartbrief on How to Make Project-Based Learning Work
Tips for Transitioning to Project-Based Learning
Manor New Technology High School

The founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
All is forgiven.

The good news

The good news....

A recent report shows that although project-based learning is a growing trend in education, only about 1% of schools nationwide use the practice on a regular, committed basis.

How to make project-based learning work

One percent!

One percent is not a growing trend for a teaching method that dates back at least one hundred years. At least, I hope not.

There's bad news, too. (President Obama has a really bad idea.)

Willingham on interdisciplinary work

. . . Gee retells (via Jonah Lehrer) the story of a building at MIT that housed professors from a wide variety of disciplines, with a concomitant flowering of intellectual cross-fertilization. Gee quotes (with approval, I guess) Lehrer: “The lesson of Building 20 is that when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself.”

As an academic who has been doing interdisciplinary work for 20 years, I would counter: “Like hell it does.”

Virtually every school of education is housed in a building with people trained in different disciplines, and interdisciplinary work remain rare. For reasons I won’t get into here (and much to the despair of university administrators) interdisciplinary work is hard.

Book Review: Theory and Practice
7/1/2013