something I have always wondered about

Why are narcissists so charming at first sight? Decoding the narcissism-popularity link at zero acquaintance.

Back MD, Schmukle SC, Egloff B.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2010 Jan;98(1):132-45.


Seriously.

I have always wondered about this.

Are narcissists really more popular at first sight?
[answer: yes]

When perceivers were exposed to the full amount of information available from targets’ appearances and behaviors at zero acquaintance, a significant positive effect of narcissism on popularity was found. Narcissists indeed make a positive impression on strangers. This was found for uninvolved as well as for highly involved perceivers. Thus, despite the negative interpersonal consequences of narcissism in long-term relationships, narcissists are more popular at first sight.

Interestingly, recent findings also show that narcissism is detectable at zero acquaintance (Vazire et al., 2008). Observers thus seem to like narcissists at first sight, although they accurately perceive their narcissism. Perhaps, at zero acquaintance, people accurately perceive those aspects of narcissism that also lead to popularity (e.g., the narcissists’ charming expression) but do not detect or misjudge other aspects (e.g., the narcissists’ low trustworthiness). Future research might analyze this interesting pattern of results using diverse situational contexts as well as different sets of targets.


Which facet of narcissism fosters popularity at first sight?
[answer: sense of entitlement; tendency to manipulate & exploit others]

It is of interest that the positive effect on popularity depended on the facet of narcissism under consideration. In contrast to the consistent specificity hypothesis and in line with the paradoxical specificity hypothesis, the most maladaptive facet of narcissism (E/E) was most strongly related to popularity at first sight. People with a sense of entitlement and a tendency to manipulate and exploit others were liked more at zero acquaintance. This was consistently shown for uninvolved and involved perceivers as well as for the different levels of information that the judgments were based on. Future research might additionally examine a broader array of interpersonal perceptions to analyze in more detail how narcissists are perceived by others.


What are the physical appearances and behavioral cues that mediate the effect of narcissism on popularity at first sight?
[answer: flashy and neat clothing; charming facial expressions; self-assured body movements; humorous verbal expressions]

According to our lens model approach, narcissists were expected to be popular at zero acquaintance because they should look and behave in ways that are immediately perceived as positive. These predictions were fully confirmed. Narcissism was related to fancier clothing, a more charming facial expression, more self-assured body movements, and more verbal humor, all of which led to popularity. For understanding the interpersonal consequences of narcissism, one has to consider and analyze the physical appearances and the nonverbal and verbal behaviors that are actually observable.

A lens model perspective can also be used to reconcile contradictory findings concerning the short-term interpersonal consequences of self-enhancement, a trait closely related to narcissism (e.g., John & Robins, 1994). Paulhus (1998) reported that self enhancement is related to positive peer impressions at short-term acquaintance. Other studies, however, found that the negative interpersonal consequences of self-enhancement are already apparent at short-term acquaintance, concluding that self-enhancers “manifest behaviors that are immediately detrimental to their social interactions” (Colvin et al., 1995, p. 1159).

According to our model, the popularity of self-enhancers depends on the cues they produce in the given social situation. Self-enhancers’ popularity is thus dependent on situational constraints and affordances. When an interactive situation at shortterm acquaintance fosters more intense and controversial communication (e.g., a dyadic debate about the use of capital punishment with communication partners forced to argue for different positions; Colvin et al., 1995), the negative social habits of self-enhancers (e.g., disrupting others, hostility, and arrogance) are more easily observable and lead to more negative evaluations by others. In contrast, when the
social situation is less intense and controversial (describing a family member’s or friend’s personality in a group meeting; Paulhus, 1998), the positive first impressions that self-enhancers evoke in others might hold for a longer time.


How much information is necessary to make narcissists popular at first sight?
[answer: a full-body photograph will do. with the face removed ]

Across studies, a very consistent pattern of results could be revealed. Narcissists with a sense of entitlement and a tendency to exploit others (E/E facet) were more popular at first sight. This was true for highly involved perceivers in a real-life setting (Study 1) as well as for uninvolved perceivers exposed to the full information of the targets’ behaviors (Study 2), the physical and nonverbal information (Study 3), or the physical information only (Study 4).

These findings parallel research on the accuracy of personality judgments based on thin slices of the targets’ behaviors and physical appearances. In many cases, the accuracy of snap judgments only increases slightly when based on more information (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992; Ambady & Skowronski, 2008; Kenny, 1994). Accurate personality judgments can result even when based solely on physical information (e.g., Borkenau & Liebler, 1992). Specifically for narcissism, researchers have shown that observers are able to judge targets’ narcissism on the basis of full-body photographs (Vazire et al., 2008).


Narcissists with a sense of entitlement and a tendency to exploit others were more popular at first sight.

I'm sure there's a very good explanation for that.

a School to Watch

Seventh-grade math students at Decatur Middle School recently spread out in the classroom and hallways to create a blueprint for a rain forest area at a zoo.

"We're learning about volume, depth, cylinders and cubes," said Tayaba Nadeem, 12.

She and group members Emily Siegman, 12, and Molly Cooper, 13, researched mammals, fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles in the real-life application for math.

"It's a different way to do stuff without using the textbook," Emily said.

That's exactly the point, said Principal Mark Anderson. Getting kids who are used to talking, texting and watching videos engaged in their schoolwork should lead to better test scores, he said.

[snip]

In honor of their efforts, the Southwestside school has been named one of the state's first three "Schools to Watch."

The program, which was launched in 2002 by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, recognizes successful schools so that their efforts can be duplicated elsewhere. Every three years, schools must reapply to keep the distinction.

The title doesn't mean the school has soaring test scores. In fact, ISTEPscores at Decatur Middle School are flat, with about 60 percent of students passing each year, Anderson said.

"It's not about test scores," he said. "It's about what you're doing to help the kids."

Decatur Middle School started changing the way it teaches three years ago, including more project-based learning in anticipation that Indiana would become a Schools to Watch state, Anderson said.

Decatur Middle School's engaging approach puts it on a select list
by Gretchen Becker
March 11, 2010

Someone needs to make a video of these kids "learning about" volume, depth, cylinders and cubes.

How are they actually learning about volume, depth, cylinders and cubes while they're "researching" [Googling] mammals, fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles?

And how are they using the formulas?

What do they know about the formulas?

Do they remember the formulas?

If they happen to forget one of the formulas, and don't have access to Google, can they derive a more complicated formula from a simpler formula?

Could these kids figure out the formula for obtaining the surface area of cylinder by grasping the fact that the surface area of a cylinder is composed of two circles and a rectangle?

I bet they can't.

That's the problem with applying math to the real world.

Kids don't learn to apply math to math.

national standards thread at Jaye Greene

here

and

Why Race to the Middle (pdf file)
by Ze'ev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky

palisadesk on teaching reading comprehension to kids with autism

We had to work on a lot of basic language comprehension tasks first. He needed to explicitly learn directional language, positional language, seriation. We worked on vocabulary in categories: parts of the body, vehicles, animals, tools. We practiced sentence frames for both oral and written language. We worked on the “question words” (where, when, who etc) with a lot of pictures, story strips, story maps. We used highlighters to go through very short texts to underline words or phases that tell who, or what or when. Although the experts say that children with autism are “visual learners,” this student was not. His auditory skills were far superior to his visual skills.

We had to teach pronouns, verb tenses and other syntactic features of text very explicitly. I got a number of good resources from Super Duper Publications and also used “Language for Learning” and “Language for Thinking,” which are DI programs, but modified somewhat in presentation – it was occasionally necessary to re-phrase the script, and to teach the lessons via back-chaining. My district is very big on teaching “inference” and “prediction” and other “comprehension strategies.” This was a big challenge. We used pictures and got to the point where the student could make statements about the picture that were inferential in nature (like, what season it was, how a person depicted was feeling) and explain his answer in a concrete way, but we didn’t get to the point where he could do this with text. “Prediction” depended on understanding verb tenses and cause/effect in a pretty abstract manner and I don’t feel we got anywhere with this, either. Working with informational text seemed more productive.

[snip]

The issue of teaching reading comprehension to kids with autism is bound up with how to develop their language skills generally, and a lot of generalists like me don’t have a deep knowledge of the relevant research and resources.

resource on grouping

palisadesk recommends:

The Principals' Partnership
Research Brief
Tracking & Ability Grouping

survey: best type of schooling

Forty-seven percent (47%) of all adults rate public schools as the best type of schooling for students. Thirty-five percent (35%) say private schools are best, while just nine percent (9%) think home schooling is the best way to go.

In August 2004, 42% of Americans said public schools provide the best education for children, but just as many (43%) said they offer the worst education.

Among those who now have children in elementary or secondary schools, support for public schools is even higher at 52%. Thirty-three percent (33%) of these adults think private schools are the best type of schooling for students, and five percent (5%) favor home schooling the most.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of these parents rate the performance of their child’s school as good or excellent, down nine points from September 2008. This includes 40% who say their children’s schools are excellent, but that’s a seven-point drop from the earlier survey. Just three percent (3%) now say their child’s school is performing poorly.

[snip]

Those who earn more than $75,000 per year view public and private schools equally in terms of which is the best type of schooling.

Women are twice as likely as men to view the performance of their child’s school as excellent. Younger parents have a much higher appreciation of the schools than those who are older.

45% Say Parents Less Involved

I wonder if it's meaningful that more people said public schools are best today than in 2004. I haven't seen other surveys showing that confidence in public schools is rising - ?

Women twice as likely as men to view their child's school as excellent: jibes with my impressions.

And: only 52% of those who currently have children in public schools think public schools are the best type of schooling? Five per cent of parents with kids currently attending public schools think homeschooling is best?^*

Wow.

Of course, that perception fuels overspending on houses in areas with nominally high performing schools.


^* Approximately 11% of US children attend private schools. (pdf file)

Autism and reading comprehension: the parents as experts

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field)

One of the ways in which the usual rules don't apply when teaching autistic students is in picking appropriate reading assignments. Consider the following two passages:

Nobody gave The Treatment like Farquar. Palmer knew a kid who had his arm in a sling for a week after. Yet Farquar himself was maddeningly unpredictable. Some birthday boys he seemed to totally ignore, passing them on the street as he usually did, as if they were dog doo. On the other hand, he had been known to walk halfway across town, knock on a door and say sweetly to a surprised parent, "I hear there's a birthday boy in here."

Some kids turned into quivering zombies. They kept their birthdays as secrets as possible. In school, if their teacher announced their birthday, they denied it, claiming that it was a mistake. They refused to have parties. They stayed inside their house for a month so they would not bump into Farquar.

But there was another side to it. There was the honor. There was the respect you got from other kids, the kind of respect that comes to soldiers who survive great battles...

(From The Wringer, by Jerry Spinelli.)

Instead of fighting with weapons, Ghandi and the Congress Party began to use other methods of resisting the British. They taught the Indians to resist with "noncooperation"--meaning that Indians simply refused to pay taxes to the British government. They encouraged Indians to "boycott" British goods (refuse to buy anything made in Great Britain). Gandhi told his followers to make their own handmade cloth for their clothes, rather than buying British cotton. When the British put a tax on salt, Gandhi led his followers on a march of 240 miles to go collect salt from the sea, rather than buying the taxed salt. He started with seventy-eight people. By the end of the march, thousands of people were following him.

Gandhi told Indians to take their children out of British schools. He asked them to give up privileges given to them by the British. He himself sent back a medal that the British government had given him for his work in South Africa. When a factory refused to give its workers enough money to live on, Gandhi went on a hunger strike. He refused to eat until the factory owners agreed to the raise. It took too three days for the factory owners to give in and agree. They didn't want to be responsible for Gandhi starving to death!

(From The Story of the World, Volume IV, by Susan Wise Bauer).

Both The Wringer and The Story of the World are intended for the 9-12 age range. And according to the usual measures--vocabulary, sentence length, and sentence complexity--the second passage is unequivocally the more difficult of the two.

But in terms of the work the student must do to fill in the gaps in literal content to make sense of the text, the first passage is much more challenging. In particular, nowhere is it stated that Farquar beats kids up on their birthdays. If you don't infer this, you then won't understand why kids try to keep their birthdays a secret. And without this, and a grasp of the social meaning of "honor," you'll be completely baffled by the second paragraph of the excerpt.

In the second passage, on the other hand, much more is spelled out. The explanatory asides, while they contribute to the length and complexity of the sentences, offer useful definitions of key terms ("noncooperation" and "boycott.") In general, much less filling-in is necessary to understand the connections between sentences.

These differences between texts make sense when we consider their different settings. One is set close to home, and centers on schoolboy dynamics with which most neuro-typical children are familiar. Because of this, it can leave many things unstated and still make sense to most readers. The other text, on the other hand, is set in a faraway time and place, and involves issues that 9-12-year olds cannot be assumed to be familiar with. Thus, much more needs to be made explicit. For children with autism, many of whom pick up much less of the social dynamics of everyday life, this has the effect of leveling the playing field.

Because of this phenomenon, readings centering on other times, places, and issues tend to be much more accessible to those with autism than readings centering on everyday life. Unfortunately, however, in their zeal to make everything "relevant" to students' purported "personal lives," today's educators are biasing their reading selections more and more towards realistic texts about everyday life.

Any parent who spends any time reading with their autistic child knows about the problems this creates. But too few of those who teach autistic children in school settings--be they regular ed or special ed teachers--have either the training or the experience with one-on-one reading support to have much of an inkling about how autism affects reading comprehension.

Teachers must therefore be willing to hear suggestions from autism parents about appropriate reading assignments. But are they? I'm still waiting to find out...

Competitions and Scores?

I found this when I was investigating math competitions. It refers to the American Mathematics Competition.

"Major universities such as MIT are beginning to ask applying students for their AMC scores. Since the AMC tests a deeper level of math than the SAT, this can help identify students who are ready for a rigorous undergraduate curriculum."

Has anyone seen this requirement? My son's high school just has a club for the Math League. Any comments on this competition? I assume that the only way to compete in AMC is if the school participates. His school also participates in the Academic Decathlon. Any comments on this competition? Perhaps I should open up the question to any type of academic club and comments on whether it was worthwhile or not. How about groups or competitions that don't require the involvement of a school?

My son likes the Science Olympiad (middle school), but the high school doesn't continue on. It has nothing for science.

survey: who should choose textbooks?

This is interesting:

When asked who should have the final say on what textbooks are used in the classroom, 34% of Americans say teachers, but 24% say parents should have the final say. Fifteen percent (15%) prefer giving the final say on textbooks to local government. Nine percent (9%) each designate federal and state governments as the final word.

Among those with children in the schools, 28% say teachers should have the final decision on textbooks, but just 21% say that decision should be made by parents.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of all adults say parents, if they don’t approve of the textbooks selected by a school, should be allowed to transfer their child to another school that uses other textbooks. Twenty-seven percent (27%) disagree, and 12% are not sure.

But only 29% say that if all public schools in a district use textbooks that are unacceptable to parents, the district should make arrangements for those students to attend an acceptable private school. Fifty-three percent (53%) oppose that idea. Eighteen percent (18%) are undecided.

60% Say Their Kids Textbooks Place Political Correctness Above Accuracy

Only 28% of people with kids currently in the public schools believe teachers should choose the textbooks.

That is tiny.

I wonder how this question would poll if you asked how many adults think curriculum specialists lacking a degree in the subject matter under question should pick the textbooks .....

Ron Aharoni on calculations & calculators

Calculation isn't just figuring out the result of an exercise: it is figuring out the decimal representation of the result. Therefore, the ability to calculate is in fact tantamount to a profound understanding of the decimal system. This is one of the reasons why calculation is so important, and why it should not be replaced by a calculator.

Arithmetical operations can be calculated in many ways. The methods currently taught in school are the result of generations of thought, and much wisdom has been invested in them. Most are based on writing the exercises vertically, so that the ones digits are one above the other, the tends digits are one above the other and so forth.

Calculations are based on the knowledge of the addition and multiplication tables -- the sums and products of numbers smaller than 10. These must be memorized. The addition table should be well established in the first grade, and the multiplication table in the second or third grade. In addition, the children should be familiar with the rules that govern the operations, such as the distributive law and the rules of change.

The operation of division is the most difficult to calculate. On the other hand, the algorithm of division, called "long division," includes fundamental principles and therefore it should not be passed over.

Arithmetic for Parents: A Book for Grownups about Children's Mathematics
by Ron Aharoni
p. 95

Middle School Mathematics Institute and MSMI 2010

The Middle School Mathematics Institute is taking shape. MSMI will be a 501(c)3 non profit corporation whose purpose is:

to improve elementary mathematics education, with a focus on grades 4-8,
by:

* providing professional development in mathematics content for elementary school level math teachers
* supporting parents in understanding effective mathematics curriculum and support materials used in schools
*supporting students by providing the means for them to gain confidence and competence in their application of mathematics through improved instruction.

MSMI will focus primarily on teacher education, through workshops and institutes that teach mathematical content to teachers. Specifically, the workshops will be on school mathematics, but at a deeper level, so it is directly applicable to their classroom experience.

For now, that content will come from Wu, but I'm open to incorporating anyone else's clear, coherent, correct schoool mathematics for teaching teachers.

MSMI will have a second focus as well, which is parent education. MSMI will give talks and workshops to help parents understand the road to algebra: how important college prep math is, what the foundations are for that math, what should be learned when, how to evaluate a school's math program, and finally, what a coherent, concise, correct math program looks like. The hope is that the MSMI parent component will reinforce the teacher component and vice versa at a given school, with parents and schools coming to have a shared vision about what a college bound mathematics curriculum entails, and how best to teach that material.

The first institute is a week long mini course on fractions and decimals. It's June 14-18, 2010, in St. Paul MN. Prof. Wu will present the material for the week. It is based on his math textbook written specifically for prospective teachers.

I had hoped to get 30 teachers. I have already 23 confirmed participants with a week left for registration, and 3 other schools that are expected to send teachers but have not confirmed final numbers.

I hope to videotape the conference. I don't think the host facility will have enough outgoing bandwidth to live stream, but I hope to get a portion of the conference--say, an hour of Wu's talk--available as a stream on the MSMI website afterwards.

If anyone else from KTM is interested in attending, or learning more, let me know!

palisadesk on Fred Jones

Fred Jones ... had imbibed the “born teacher” myth and had a rude awakening when he was called upon to do some consulting at a school for incarcerated teens. The principal directed him to a classroom, where he entered to find students standing on tables, throwing things, climbing on windowsills, some huddled under tables, all kinds of ruckus, and the teacher yelling ineffectively at the front. Well, they were juvenile delinquents after all.

He went to some other classrooms and a period or two later noticed something. He was in a class of students who could have been from Groton or Phillips Exeter. They were seated, attentive, raising hands to answer, deeply engaged – in algebra, no less. It was a few moments before he realized that these were the exact same students as he had seen in the first classroom. Only the teacher was different.

That set him on the path to learn what it was that made one teacher highly successful with these (unlikely) students, while another was not. He learned over time that there are identifiable skills, behaviors and practices that teachers can learn that will make them much more effective, regardless of their baseline at the start. Those who are “natural born teachers” just do more of these things without being taught – but others can learn.

I took a week-long course from Fred Jones a few summers ago in Maine. It was worth every penny. His book, Positive Classroom Instruction, is now out of print (but available on secondhand book sites) and an excellent one on instructional issues, while Positive Classroom Discipline has some extremely good ideas and practical ones for managing student behavior not only in a positive way but in an instruction-friendly way. – so that more time is spent on effective learning.

His book Tools for Teachers is an excellent handbook for any new teacher (or one changing assignments, grade levels, etc). I refer to my copy frequently.

His website has lots of good articles and resources.

This is the point that is so difficult to get across to administrators and school boards.

Students are better or worse, depending on the environment.

So are parents.

In our middle school, I was a PITA and then some.

At Hogwarts, I barely know what's going on. As a matter of fact, it's entirely possible I don't know the last names of all of C's teachers.

That's because they're doing the teaching.

the final word

This may be the best comment Barry has ever written.

Re: Success Adds Up for D.C. Schools' Math Program by Bill Turque

The myth that teaching algorithms and procedures deprives students of conceptual understanding is as prevalent as the myth that saltpeter quells sexual appetite and is put into prisoner's food. Procedural fluency leads to conceptual understanding. Procedures are not taught in isolation and even a sidelong glance at math textbooks used in the 50's and 60's (an era that was supposedly dominated by rote learning) will illustrate the fact that explanations for procedures were given, and that such books contained many word problems to ensure that students could apply procedures and concepts to problems.

For a description of Everyday Math that is not quite as flattering as this Post piece, see my description of how I countered the effects of EM with my daughter and her friend:

More information on how Clifford Janey managed to get EM adopted in Washington DC

Seriously, what more is there to be said on the subject of Success Adds Up!!!!!

DC scholarships

Arne Duncan... proffered an argument that would be funny if it weren't so sad: Scholarships for poor students aren't worth supporting because not enough of them are given out.

Note to Duncan: You could give out more.

What's an education secretary in charge of $159 billion (and counting) to do?

Duncan had the temerity to admit that Opportunity Scholarship students "were safe and learning and doing well . . . [but] we can't be satisfied with saving 1 or 2 percent of children and letting 98 or 99 percent down." This is a false choice. But, were it fair, his answer would be to let down 100 percent instead?

Fortunately for the secretary, his children won't be in that 100 percent; he moved his family to Virginia. For the schools. He explained that he "didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education."

[snip]

Ending Opportunity Scholarships would be a tragedy for low-income parents everywhere because it says: Even when an education program works, the powers that be will tear it from the hands of children if it threatens their hold on the system.

Congress shouldn't betray D.C. scholarship program
By Kelly Amis and Joseph E. Robert Jr. WAPO March 8, 2010

A Singaporean perspective on Singapore Math

I recently came across an online article by a Singaporean named Justin Lee, the founder of two education businesses in Singapore. In reaction to many articles "fussing about Singapore Math on the Internet," Lee writes:

While many authors bemoaned or even whined about the difficulty American kids had with Math, it made me at times sympathetic or even amused. You see, Math in Singapore was highly enjoyable in my time and we dreaded other subjects like English and Science instead. Why is this so?

One reason, Lee points out, is that, for about 50% of the Singaporean population, English is not the native language. As a result:

Math in primary school (for 7-12 year olds) was one of the easiest subjects to ace. It did not involve language application as extensively as Science. Although the word problems in Math papers still involved the English language, it required us only to write one-liners as conclusions. Many friends of my age then scored above 80 marks out of a 100 in Math on a regular basis. Being able to score so highly in Math (as opposed to barely passing English or Science) easily made Math our favourite subject in school!

This, of course, makes me think of all the language impaired math buffs who suffer under Reform Math's much more language-intensive "story problems" and verbal explanations requirements.

Lee goes on to lament a development in Singapore that is taking math standards in Singapore in the opposite direction as that which American math standards have followed. Apparently, "there has been a rising trend of schools setting impossible-to-pass Math tests and examinations in the late 2000s." Instead of parents being upset that standards are too low, Singapore parents are upset that standards, which have long been higher than ours, have now risen too high.

Lee proceeds to describe how he and his classmates found Singapore math to be easy and enjoyable, with plenty of time left over for fun:

It is true that the Mathematical concepts are built year upon year and concepts that have been taught are not taught again, but merely revisited briefly. This is as opposed to the slightly incoherent system in the US, where kids can sometimes wonder why they are doing the same things again. While this arrangement may appear to be harder on Singapore students, I actually felt it was very easy on us. In fact, we felt that it was a gift from heaven to be able to do fractions at primary 6 again, right after we learnt something similar the year before.

It might appear as though a Singapore student would have had to spend many hours poring their beady eyes other Math textbooks and Math problems to acquire such ‘astounding’ proficiency in the subject. The truth is, the pace of learning was rather fine. I could do quite well in school without having to attend extra lessons (tuitions), and school only lasted from 730am to 1pm, Monday to Friday. There was still ample time for monkey business after 1pm.

To sum up, I am positive that Math in primary school was enjoyable for most students in the 1990s. This may not be so after internal Math examination standards were revised upwards in the late 2000s, but we shall address this issue in another article.

I look forward to more! In our self-absorbed, American-exceptionalist country, the Singaporean perspective, which should be a key element in the debate over math reform, is all too often overlooked (le radical galoisien?).

the ingredients to good teaching

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html

Oh, check out these amazing videos.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/07/magazine/20100307-teacher-videos.html

The idea behind the whole article is that great teaching doesn't have to require the skills of a charismatic extroverted genius -- it's a set of concrete techniques combined with deep understanding of the subject you're teaching.

community college is the new high school

from K9Sasha:

My son went to school until Spring Break of his 8th grade year. At that point, I had had it with him not knowing how to write, and not even knowing his basic math facts. I told him that we had four years to get him ready for college and that it would take all four.

I was a little concerned about him getting into college from a homeschooling situation, but he applied to 6 schools and was accepted at all 6. He was strong enough academically to take Chemistry at the community college his junior year, and Writing and Physics there his senior year. The school I removed him from felt good if their students were ready for the community college after high school. I used the community college as part of high school to get him ready for university. What a difference in expectations!

One of the things that really stands out for me: When my son came home from taking his first PSAT test, the first thing he said was, "Thank you for making me learn my math facts. The first math problem was a simple doubling problem and I had it answered by the time everyone else got their calculators out."

My sister has done the same thing with one of her daughters. They did a California variant of homeschooling for 8th grade,^* then public high school for 9th. Most of the subjects in 9th grade were so low level that she enrolled in community college for 10th. It's worked out well.

^* It's not homeschooling....consultant schooling, maybe? I believe this option was created for students who are acting or perhaps homebound. There is a consulting teacher & texts are provided by the state. On the other hand, the parent can choose which textbooks his child uses. It's similar to what we would call Independent Study.

New York vs ALEKS

I've just finished topic number 210 in ALEKS geometry. One topic left to go.

ALEKS lets you compare what you're learning from ALEKS to your state standards. According to ALEKS, New York state geometry standards includes 101 of ALEKS' 211 standards.

I don't know whether New York's geometry standards include topics ALEKS doesn't cover.

palisadesk on instructional time

I have homeschooled and homeschooling family members, and we all see how much more rapidly children can learn in the 1:1 (or even 1:3 or 4) environment, with materials at exactly their instructional level. My sister was surprised how much her not-very-academically-inclined daughter could get done in the one or two mornings they worked on "school" per week. When they came back from their sailing odyssey, my niece had to take a test to ensure she was ready for fifth grade (had been a low average kid in third). She aced it -- was ready for sixth grade! And my sister admitted she was closer to an "unschooler" than a "homeschooler" and got serious about schoolwork in fits and starts.

Beyond that, although we think of the school day as 6 hours, it isn't 6 hours of instructional time in most places. My district's school day is 300 instructional minutes, although the actual time kids are in school is 8:30 to 3:00 -- six and a half hours. 50 minutes for lunch, 15 minutes each for morning and afternoon recess, and entry/dismissal times eat up that hour and a half, so we only have 5 hours of instruction, of which maybe 60% (if you're lucky) is dedicated to "the three R's." There are many interruptions -- PA announcements, assemblies, fund raising events. Students also have music, gym, library, art, science, social studies and health -- all important, too. The science and social studies are often incorporated into the literacy and math by very good teachers, but doing this well isn't easy, and the curriculum materials available are little help. Many teachers have to "write their own curriculum" because they don't have materials ready to hand. What a waste of time!

Then there's the whole issue of so many levels in one classroom. This means that inevitably some students' needs will be overlooked. My district is firmly committed to "differentiating instruction" and "full inclusion" of all but the most violent students, but they do not put their money where their mouth is. Every time I get the opportunity, I suggest to the higher-ups: WHY doesn't the district commission a cadre of experienced teachers/curriculum experts to produce units for different grade levels that match the curriculum and have differentiated reading materials, problems, activities and assessments? For example, a unit on explorers for fifth grade could have reading material from a first to a seventh grade level, map work, project topics and materials for kids from the very beginning level (they could learn the continents and make a globe model, for example) to challenge activities for the high achievers. They could have these for every major curriculum unit, and sell them to other districts and make money. Why are teachers having to write their own curriculum for 6 different grade levels in multiple subjects? It absolutely doesn't work. No wonder they use foldables.

So five hours of instructional time quickly gets whittled down. In classrooms with many levels, the actual teaching time at the student's level for those at the extreme ends of the spectrum (true for the gifted AND the very challenged) is only 1 or 2 % of the time available. No wonder that studies have found that students with the lowest level of reading skill read only about two or three minutes a day. Yikes!

How much time do pull-outs consume, I wonder - ?

indies nominees

Animals Make Us Human is on the list!

I didn't even know. A friend found out and sent me the link. Then my sister had to send them an email and ask them to add my name to the book, since they'd only listed Temple as the author.

sigh

I'm filing this under schmuck with an Underwood.

palisadesk on the math police - & parents teaching math facts

A propos of Kindergarten children being asked to write journals and stories without any instruction in spelling (or even in pencil grip or how to form the letters), and also children being taught -- or not -- number facts and algorithms, this discussion has come up on a couple of other boards I read. One important issue stands out: there is enormous variability in what is required and/or permitted to be taught in these areas.

I advise all parents to get a copy of your district's curriculum documents, if you can (many have them online) and see what teachers are being told to do. It may surprise you. In many places, expectations for teaching the mechanics of writing -- pencil grip, letter formation, manuscript or cursive writing styles, even spelling -- have been *completely* removed from the curriculum. Teachers can of course model them or give instructions en passant, but cannot actually focus on these things as objects of lessons.

Catherine has brought up the use of "instructional coaches." This is becoming more and more common, and one of their (unstated) roles is to act as "literacy police" or "numeracy police." If they see teachers doing spelling, or printing, or teaching math facts systematically, they are to discourage these things and also discuss it with school administration. My district no longer requires math facts to be taught, and teachers have actually been forbidden to practice them in class. They can assign math fact practice for "homework" which is another way of outsourcing to parents, as Catherine has pointed out in the past. This disproportionately penalizes low-SES kids whose parents don't have the time or sometimes the expertise to teach these things to their children.

It's very often not a matter of teachers not wanting to teach "the basics," but of their being prevented from doing so. Many of my colleagues grumble quietly about it, but because it is ordered from on high it can't be openly flouted. It's not clear to me who makes these curriculum decisions higher up the ladder, but sometimes it does seem (as an anonymous person said earlier) that the goal might just be to keep the proles in their place! In my darker moments I am tempted to think this is so.

Outsourcing math facts to parents handicaps all children. I know we've talked about this a lot over the years, but I don't have the patience to go hunting the posts. Easier to write a new post now---

At least two high-SES, highly-educated parents we know told us they were never able to remediate their sons' deficiencies in math facts or in long division. One of these parents went to Harvard. They tried, but they did not get the job done. Even Kumon didn't get the job done for one of the kids. (Not sure why -- possibly because the parents realized what the situation was too late -- ?)

I was lucky because the Saxon Math "Fast Fact" sheets worked for C. after 2 other approaches I tried failed outright: flash cards and flash card software. When I switched to the Saxon worksheets, he learned rapidly.

I had no idea what to make of it. Can't learn his math facts using flash cards? Can learn them practically overnight using worksheets?

Later on, I read a Rafe Esquith passage advising parents that students need to practice material in the format they'll use it on the test. That makes sense. It's consistent with everything I know about animal training and with Dan Willingham's explanation of flexible and inflexible knowledge.

But how many parents know this?

I sure didn't.

At a board meeting recently, our new part-time Interim Director of Curriculum and Instruction made one fantastic observation. She said she'd told teachers that "If we were serving a low-SES population, with parents working two jobs to make ends meet, we wouldn't expect parents to be skilling and drilling the math facts. Our parents have busy lives and many demands on their time, and we shouldn't expect them to do it, either."

Then she added, diplomatically, that in fact parents here, nearly all of whom are high-SES and well-educated, are not getting the job done.

Last year, the 6th grade accelerated math class had to stop dead in its tracks so the teacher could teach math facts & the standard algorithms. The kids were all high-SES and their parents are well-educated.

Teaching math facts isn't simple or obvious. Skilled teachers do it far better than most parents.

Blind Side

If you haven't seen Blind Side, you should. For anyone who has spent years of his life struggling to give his children an education, this is the movie. It's the movie for teachers waging the same struggle, too.

There's a moment, at the end, when Leigh Anne asks Michael if he even wants to play football. By this point he has been famously recruited by dozens of college coaches across the country and has committed to playing for Ole Miss, his new parents' alma mater. And only now does his mother ask him whether this is what he wants.

Michael answers, simply, "I'm pretty good at it."

For many of us, that's what education is about. A good education takes a small child and makes him good at reading, writing, and arithmetic whether he wants to be good at these things or not. The truth is, as Michael begins life with his adoptive parents, he doesn't want to play football. He's not suited to the game emotionally. But he learns to play because his parents and his coach and even his little brother painstakingly teach him to play, and they teach him to play because they know he can do it and because football matters to them. And now he plays well.

There's a lovely moment where Michael's new dad, Sean, recites The Charge of the Light Brigade. Michael asks why the 600 have to die, and Sean tells him it's because the leaders have made a mistake. So Michael writes a paper about what it means to trust your leaders, and to follow them.

At home, parents are the leaders; at school, teachers are.

But the real education leaders in this country, the ones deciding what our children will and, more importantly, will not learn, have made a mistake.

They've decided our children don't need to be in the game.

off-topic

Have I mentioned Ed has a stand-up desk?

Well, he does.

That's gotta be next on my list.

testable hypothesis

Elizabeth wrote:

Here is a quote from Sally Shaywitz's "Overcoming Dyslexia, A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level" p. 261:

"In one Tallahassee, Florida, elementary school where such a program [scientifically proven prevention and early intervention programs] was implemented, the percentage of struggling readers dropped eightfold--from 31.8 percent to 3.7 percent."

I would guess 1% using Webster's Speller and teaching both spelling and phonics at the same time, its focus on spelling and syllables is very helpful for my struggling students.

BTW, that's a great motto, "Education not remediation." Every smart students learn more when taught explicitly.

palisadesk answered:

The Shaywitz example that Elizabeth quotes is a fairly representative one. Schools that use effective instructional methods and materials significantly reduce their "struggling reader" populations, usually to a 1-digit %ile. There are many examples; most however are school-based. We don't see scaled-up replications of this type of success on a district basis.

The 1% that Elizabeth cites is reasonably the percent of children who would still flounder even after intensive 1:1 teaching with effective methods and materials over a significant period of time. However, it would not be likely to represent what could be achieved in general education classrooms at our current level of knowledge and operational constraints.

Students with severe disabilities must be taken on a case-by-case basis, as their learning needs are highly specific; in other cases, important variables are not always under school control -- for instance, students with high levels of absenteeism and/or frequent changes of residence. You can have the best-ever teaching, but the student has to actually be there and participate in order to benefit.

So hard data on what is the lowest percentage of students who we can expect will still lag *far* behind despite our best efforts is not available. What we do know is that the number of "struggling" students is far too high.

From intensive work with students at all ability levels, I believe it's a testable hypothesis that 99% could be taught foundation skills in reading, writing and math that are commensurate with their level of receptive language comprehension and cognitive functioning. Some cases would be extremely labor-intensive, and this becomes a time and resources issue. Public schools realistically do not have enough instructional time to be as successful with some high-needs cases as private services can be. I can think of cases where children have needed 4-6 hours a day of intensive therapy in several areas to make significant progress. Schools are not set up to provide this, and perhaps it's a separate question: should allowances be provided to parents of such children to purchase the needed services using special education funding? Should the school district contract these out?

We are talking about a small number (percentage-wise) of students, but their needs are real and not easily met.

Getting all students reading at the K-2 level is realistic for most schools. It is, however, only a step in the process. Children who master decoding and spelling early on may be strugglers later. That is why careful progress monitoring of all students is needed.

my 2 cents

on Response to Intervention

Linda on Response to Intervention

Response to Intervention, when done correctly, begins by addressing all students receiving excellent instruction in the classroom (Level 1). Even with excellent instruction, there are a number of students who may need either more time or more intensity of instruction to achieve grade level.

That is what the level 2, small group, interventions are for-- additional time and attention. I do level 2 math interventions, but my school does not use an artificial 20% cut-off. I only work with students who are not progressing at level 1, which in our school, is probably 5% of the population. In my experience, the level 2 kids often are ones who have behavior that keeps them from focusing their attention in large groups, have low intelligence (not PC to point out- but some kids just take a LOT of repetition to learn), or will eventually be diagnosed with a learning disability. If level 2 interventions don't work, then kids often are tested for learning disabilities and go on to level 3 interventions, one-on-one. [Level 3 is typically going to be classification for special education, as I understand it (but please correct me if I'm wrong) - cj]

It is actually a fantastic model that can save districts a lot of money by preventing kids from being diagnosed with disabilities that they do not have. The problem comes in when you don't have excellent level 1 programs and/or you arbitrarily decide that a certain percentage of students needs to be at level 2 regardless of whether or not they could learn in a whole group situation with excellent instruction.

It is too bad that RTI done poorly is probably going to doom this as another failed waste of money, when done well it would be exactly the opposite and really does help kids who are struggling for legitimate reasons.

Robin on the Seattle ruling

School administrators who omit public testimony and duly submitted evidence when there are hearings on textbook adoptions from the record provided to the final elected decision makers can now get in trouble. The resulting decision can be subject to judicial challenge.

It's that omission of public information that was contrary to the story they wanted told and might have prevented the textbook decision they wanted reached that set up the "arbitrary and capricious" ruling.

Especially given the State "mathematically unsound" ruling on top of the omissions.

If the Seattle administrators had submitted everything in the public record to the school board, we would likely have a different decision.

New Standard: If you change the public record to influence how the school board sees the evidence, you are setting the board up that its decision will be subject to an arbitrary and capricious challenge.

How is that open-ended? Administrators should not be doctoring the public record to present a one-sided story to the public decision-makers.

=============

I have read all the briefs and corresponded with some of the principals and those omissions were key to the court's ultimate finding.

To insulate themselves School Boards could simply decree that they will accept no public input on textbook decisions but as Barry Garelick notes, that attitude will likely not get them reelected.

I see less downstream craziness but I'm a lawyer so I tend to see the safety devices in place if an informed citizenry knows they exist, how to use them, and appropriately asserts the relevant facts to trigger them.

I think that is in fact what occurred in Seattle.

A chilling effect on wanton disregard of troubling facts and duly submitted evidence by school administrators and elected public officials involved with education is healthy for better decision making.

I think this is an especially important time to be having this discussion because I think we are moving away from any evidence based criteria limiting instructional materials or techniques in the US K-12 classrooms. I see that in every piece of federal legislation or regulations concerning education currently being enacted or discussed.

I'm hoping Robin will fill us in on what she's seeing in federal legislation and regs ----

Chicago Tribune endorses vouchers

Beautiful.

New York, New York

How did this happen?

New York’s placement among the finalists had been anything but certain, even though Mr. Duncan has frequently praised New York City’s school improvement efforts under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. But the competition barred states with laws that prohibit the use of student achievement data to evaluate teachers, and New York has a law that seemed to fit that criteria. But the state argued that the law banned the use of such data only in making teacher tenure decisions. The law sunsets at the end of June.

Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said Thursday that she believed the Legislature needed to pass a law raising the state’s cap on charter schools before New York could be awarded money.

New York Is Among Finalists for U.S. School Grants by Sam Dillon - March 4, 2010

Here was Joe Williams, in August:

In my home state (New York) we’ve got big problems with a law on the books that prevents student performance from being used in making teacher tenure decisions. The law is so bad, that when reporters wrote about it last year, not even the teachers union would claim credit for having pushed it through the legislature. So yeah, New York should have to adios this law before it can apply for Race To The Top funding, especially since nobody seems to want to defend it anyway. If New York doesn’t lift a finger and it gets funding in the Race, Obama and Duncan will essentially be lifting a finger (you know which one) to all of the other states that are doing everything they can to show they are ready for change and reform.

217

So... the state of Wisconsin mentioned "professional development" 217 times in its Race to the Top application and still didn't make the final 16.

Good.


update: uh-oh

from Fred Hess:

New York's 908-page application included some choice phrases. It promises, "An intense focus on curriculum and meaningful professional development based on student performance; data-drive instruction where teams develop individual student action plans based on data from formative and interim assessments; differentiated professional development and coaching based on data" (page 6).

It also declares that it will create "clear, content-rich, sequenced, spiraled, detailed curricular frameworks" (yes, five adjectives) for new assessments (page 10).

And, impressive for the sheer amount of jargon that could be wedged into a single sentence, New York's app promises "to support differentiated professional development closely linked to student growth data, identify coaches and mentors using effectiveness ratings closely tied to student growth data, and build data-driven feedback loops between professional development, coaching/mentoring activities, and teacher effectiveness" (page 144).

Spiraled frameworks, differentiated professional development, and coaching ----

Whoa.

I have to move.

Possibly to Wisconsin.

Or Guam.

Basically, any place not in danger of winning Race to the Top.

dodged a bullet

For a while there it seemed as if everyone was talking about Lengthening the School Year and/or Lengthening the School Day - yikes. More time in school: when will parents & tutors teach math?

And then, the taxes.

oy

Looks like that one's not getting off the ground.

bonus: Maybe people will stop saying KIPP gets its results from all the extra time. (Maybe KIPP doesn't need all the extra time?)

that was quick

Elsewhere in the edu-world, the town of Avon, CT hired a new superintendent last fall, only to discover, via a story in the newspaper, that as of March 4 the new superintendent of Avon has signed a contract to become the new superintendent of Berlin, CT.

The reader comments are priceless.

Berlin introduces David B. Erwin as superintendent

education, not remediation

With my tiny district's per pupil spending now somewhere north of $30K and rising, and a new law requiring Response to Intervention, I'm getting desperate.

So this morning I wrote this plea for adopting programs that work and unadopting programs that don't work:

Response to Intervention wouldn't break the bank if we used evidence-based decision making: if we rigorously evaluated curricula and teaching methods for evidence of effectiveness -- and had a Plan B in place for abandoning curricula and teaching methods that aren't working sooner rather than later.

Example: we use 'balanced literacy' to teach reading.

Scientists who study reading instruction, and the National Reading Panel of 2000, tell us that children should be taught to read using "systematic synthetic phonics instruction." Balanced literacy is far less effective than phonics.

Exactly as the science predicts, here in Irvington we have a very large number of struggling readers. I believe the number is currently 18 or 19%, but I will check my notes. We currently have 5.5 "literacy specialists" remediating all of our struggling readers K-8, and after Response to Intervention kicks in I assume we'll have to hire more.

If we were using the program "Jolly Phonics," a field-tested British (pdf file) synthetic phonics curriculum, we would have only 5% of our students struggling to read. That 5% would include kids like my two children with autism.

We can easily afford to teach the 'bottom' 5% of our students in a 1:5 or 1:3 ratio. We're pretty much doing it now.

Moreover, because fluent reading is the core skill underlying all future academic achievement, we would likely have fewer special education students. That is the goal of Response to Intervention law: to reduce the number of students needing special education.

For me, the most important path out of our financial crisis is to ardently embrace evidence-based decision making: do what works, stop doing what doesn't.

In the run-up to the first fields vote, when people were putting up hand-lettered signs overnight, someone put up a sign that said:

EDUCATION
NOT
REMEDIATION

That should be our principle. Remediation is fantastically expensive: it costs the taxpayer who must fund remedial teachers, and, more importantly, it costs the child who is struggling to learn.

Our district-wide goal should be to reduce to the absolute minimum the number of children needing remediation. We should adopt curricula and teaching methods that give our kids success.


update

I can no longer locate the Johnston & Watson PowerPoint that gave the 5% figure (I can email a copy if you'd like to see it). Palisadesk cites 10%.

more is more

anonymous says:

The Common Core national assessment being developed right now will apparently require teachers to grade it as it will have open-ended, critical thinking questions to which their is no specific right answer.

(per Linda Darling-Hammond's presentation to NGA where she said teachers would be the graders)

Apart from the difficulty of knowing where our kids really stand, this will mean employing more salaried human beings with benefits rather than that disinterested computer scantron without union representation.

Hadn't thought of that.

So we've got, coming down the pike, 4 new categories of public school employment:

• teachers to provide "Tier 2" intervention
  
• instructional coaches in math & ELA (& other - ?)
• curriculum specialists to 'develop' curriculum
• stipends for teachers scoring the groovy new Common Core assessments, should such occur
  

Have I left anything out?

fyi: our Director of Pupil Personnel says that "Response to Intervention" is starting with reading instruction but will then be expanded to include all of the other subjects (and ages) as well. If that is the case, we are looking at paying teachers to teach up to 15% of the K-12 student population in tiny groups of 3 to 5 students. (I think our administrator said 18%, but I'll check.)

Laura on executive function in 2nd grade

I'm finding myself in a position where I'm wondering if I can leverage the district's fear of being sued to try to get them to put together a more academically focused class for my son.

He's hitting the second grade wall (I spoke with a mom yesterday who pulled her kid out and is sending him to Eagle Hill in Greenwich, where he's now thriving, and she said second grade is when it really starts)--absurdly high demands for executive function are being pushed ever higher and higher (pick out your own book, monitor your own reading for 30-40 minutes, remember whatever little reading activity of the day you're supposed to apply to what you read), and focused academic instruction is plummeting ever lower.

They are talking about the possibility of putting my above average IQ kid in a segregated special education class.

I'm starting to wonder if the threat of being sued to pay for an out-of-district placement might motivate my school system to do something more creative.

Two years running, now, the principal of our K-3 school has told the school board that her goal is to 'create a safe environment where children can take risks.'

She's talking about 5 year olds.

Taking risks.

That's her goal.

Constructivism means transferring responsibility from the grown-ups to the children.

Seattle school district appeals

here

thanks to Cassy T

insider baseball

from Steve H:

At one underperforming high school in our state, the administration got to the point where they fired all of the high school teachers. (They wanted more money.) It recently made national news and even Obama commented on it. Only 7% of the 11th graders met minimal proficiency on the state math test. (Just today, it appears that this leverage has worked and they will come to some sort of agreement with the union.) Ironically, the superintendent of this school system was the one in charge of bringing MathLand to our schools (a different town) years ago. She left to go to this job when my son was in first grade. My son left for a private school after that year and the school started the process of switching to Everyday Math.

I feel that many of us parents are over on the sidelines with our hands raised and asking "Can we say something here?"

At a recent board meeting, when the topic of whether our teachers could 'handle' Singapore Math came up, I raised my hand and asked whether I could say something.

The Interim Director for Curriculum and Instruction said, "No!" Teachers and building principals sitting in the audience were invited to speak; parents had to follow the rules and wait until the end of the very long presentation to make 3-minute comments.

The Interim Director also told us she is recommending that we soldier on with Trailblazers because "there is no perfect curriculum." She said that several times over the course of the evening, with an air of gravitas: There is no perfect curriculum.

Also, we need a math coach, to complement the ELA "teaching learning facilitator" we have now. Plus we need to hire back the teaching-learning facilitator whose position was eliminated last year during the budget fracas.


coming soon to a school district near you

To those of you living in affluent suburban towns: this is the future. Public schools are committed to hiring tenured teachers to teach tenured teachers, and tenured curriculum specialists to "develop" curriculum. Absent tax revolts, there is no conceivable limit to the number of instructional coaches and curriculum specialists affluent schools will attempt to hire in the coming years, because there is no conceivable limit to the amount of "in-house professional development" classroom teachers require and no conceivable limit to the amount of "curriculum development" imperfect curricula require. A whole new tier of administration has been invented and is now in the process of being hired.

This story about Seattle administration tells you where we're headed. Here's Meg Diaz' report. (pdf file)

Do our policy elites have any idea this is going on? Do our newspapers and media outlets?

palisadesk on 'standards'

It's all relative, though. As Elizabeth pointed out, in a low-performing school 60% (or more) of first-third graders will be non-readers or close to it. RTI will not single out 60% of the population for Tier 2; only the most extreme cases will get that specialist help. For others it will be business as usual. Everything depends on local school conditions and populations.

We occasionally get a student transferring in who has been classified LD, mild cognitive delay, or some other exceptionality. In some cases these students perform above average for our non-classified, general ed students. They get As and Bs without modifications or accommodations.

It serves as a reminder that "standards" are very flexible things and what is "low" or "high" depends on the school context.

Right you are.

lgm on Tier 2

re: Response to Intervention

Tier 2 reading intervention is done as a pull-out. The student still participates in the daily whole class lesson, but goes to a reading specialist or sped teacher for the intervention with a small group composed of eight or less students who have the same lacking skill that will be the topic of the lesson.

Haven't seen any data yet as to its effectiveness compared to the old style of leveled reading groups of 6-8 students.

RightStart

anonymous says:

RightStart is, indeed, an Asian mental abacus program--but it's actually more. I can say, hands down, that RightStart is superior in every way to Singapore in the first grade level. And that's saying a LOT because Singapore is amazing!

Want to get the worst kid in the class adding two-digit numbers with regrouping in first grade? And adding four-digit numbers on paper with PERFECT understanding? RightStart does it. RightStart takes the very best of Asian mathematics programs and distills it down into it essence. It uses a very few select manipulatives extremely well--as conceptual connectors, not crutches--which echoes the author's original background in Montessori education.

AND it's scripted, so it helps teach the educator even as it teaches the student, even it the educator isn't a naturally mathy person.

If you want your child to score in the 90th percentile, I will guarantee that RightStart can do it with any kid of AVERAGE intelligence. The most that it requires from the instructor is to pay attention to any stumbling place and to further break down and clarify any points of confusion that might arise rather than doing sheer repetition--solve the problem rather than waiting for it to resolve itself by using the approach that YOU'VE learnt from RightStart and apply it to the lesson at hand to chop it into smaller bits.

My son had intuitive mathematical power, but with his language processing problems, communicating anything he couldn't instantly intuit was very, very hard--until I found RightStart. It was amazing. We did the entire series because he needed to make stronger connections between language and concept, and I've never been so impressed with a math program. Ever.

Now, Singapore does have one powerful tool that RS lacks--it has the model method of problem solving, and the word problems are more sophisticated and also much more frequent. RS also weirdly peters out before really giving much work on multiplying and dividing fractions using the standard algorithm, having covered it EXCELLENTLY conceptually but not having practiced it as it does other things.

Anyhow, my very mathy kid is using the sequence RightStart/Singapore Primary to NEM 1-3/Additional Mathematics/IMACS Elements of Mathematics. His personality is such that getting him to do any practice not on the Flashmaster is WWIII, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. (which has already added some 6 months to his journey, though daily battles and sheer cussedness...)

My next door neighbor is very, very UN-mathy (failed algebra II), and her kid would be thrilled to step through algorithms without understanding a thing, if he can. After Calvert failed him (letting him get away with zero comprehension), she's now doing RightStart with great results. His sequence will likely be Right Start to Life of Fred/VideoText to either community college or ChalkDust or EPGY for calc.

In short, it works great for very different kids.

"The Joy of X"

here

Speaking of joy, I finally got back to my ALEKS geometry course,^* which I abandoned last August after my mother fell.

My mother is continuing to improve, by the way. Which means the four death talks -- four -- that various doctors initiated with me and my siblings were premature.

Actually, the four death talks appear to have been not only premature but wrong in every respect. Take, for instance, the observation, made by my mom's intensivist in ICU, that: "Your mother has tiny little lungs and an enormously enlarged heart. Her only hope of survival would be a heart-lung transplant."

That appears to be codswallop, according to my mom's new cardiologist. "Heart function is good." "Heart muscle is strong." "Ejection fraction is normal." "Pulmonary hypertension has resolved." And so on.

Also, the diagnosis of congestive heart failure: wrong, it seems. My mom tells me she was given a brochure on congestive heart failure sometime after her heart attack 5 years ago, which informed her that a person in her situation had 5 years to live, max. Also wrong. Unless, of course, she doesn't have congestive heart failure (confusion reigns amongst us family members), in which case the brochure is possibly right but irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the physicians associated with the nursing home where my mom is recuperating have been operating under the assumption that my mother's diagnosis is congestive heart failure so they are now trying to nail that down. Congestive heart failure: yes or no? That is the question. The nephrologist (my mother does have kidney failure; of that we are sure) says she is going to read the entire history.

oh, man

My life goal: vegan my way to a healthy old age and die in my sleep. By then I will have spent a good 30 years dealing with the public schools; I don't want to spend the last 20 wrangling with hospital intensivists and hospice-touting PCPs. Noooooooooo.

That said, I will also point out that modern medicine is a miracle. Wow. My mom is alive and recovering because emergency rooms do what they do and dialysis machines & nephrologists do what they do and a good nursing home does what it does - because they all do what they do. Modern medicine keeps desperately sick and dying people alive and then some.

true story: in February I flew back to Chicago and went with my mom to an appointment with her new cardiologist. We're sitting together in his tiny office, my mother is back from the grave and getting around by wheelchair and medi-van...... and the doctor tells her to "lose weight and exercise." In 6 months we have gone from "tiny little lungs and an enormously enlarged heart" to "lose weight and exercise."

Alright, then!

Seriously, though, I don't know what to make of our experience thus far, and I have made a conscious decision not to delve into the literature on US medicine. (Also banned: the literature on US food industry.) I've read just enough to see that some of the institutional problems besetting health care are similar to institutional problems besetting public education, and that is helpful and intellectually stimulating to know. But that's enough. If I start finding out what goes on in your basic American hospital, my head will explode. Ditto for factory farming and the USDA.

The one tentative conclusion I hold at the moment: doctors aren't particularly expert at making predictions about an individual patient's immediate future. That's fine with me. I want doctors to save my mother's life, not ship her off to hospice because things look bad. And save her life is what they did.

My advice, which I realize is not original but bears repeating: when you're dealing with major medical, keep your wits about you and take things with a grain of salt.

And: if different doctors are telling you different things, pay attention to that fact. In our case, we were getting so much bad news about our mother, doctors were so insistent the jig was up, that we discounted the observations of doctors who weren't telling us that death was imminent. Not long after the intensivist told us my mom's only hope was a heart-lung transplant, another doctor told us, "She's doing well. This is what we do in ICU. We support a patient's organs and bodily systems while the patient recovers to the point that they can function on their own."

Hearing this, my sister and I thought, in so many words: this guy is nuts.

Then, during my mom's third hospitalization, when I received two hospice-promoting telephone calls from two of her PCPs, the hospital cardiologist told my sister that my mom's heart was strong and we weren't anywhere near hospice decisions. The nurse said the same thing. Another glaring contradiction.

That go-round we reached the reductio ad absurdum of having the hospital social worker apparently develop a suspicion that we children were trying to usher our mother out the door, seeing as how we kept bringing up hospice. The social worker actually interviewed my mother on the subject. What is your relationship with your children, she asked.

Hah!

Next time, Ms. Hospital Social Worker, try asking: What is your relationship with your PCP and why does he keep calling your kids up long-distance to bend their ear about how their mother can have a "peaceful, quiet death" if they talk her into going to hospice sooner rather than later?

My other provisional conclusion: more specialists. Fewer PCPs. (Just kidding.)

In any event, my siblings and I needed to attend to the fact that we were getting wildly different opinions from different physicians, and we needed to find out why that was happening and insist that everyone get on the same page if possible. Instead, we assumed the worst and we grieved. Grieving before the fact clouds your reasoning. I don't think there's any way not to grieve before the fact, but from now on I am going to know that's what I'm doing and try to reason my way around it.

But back to ALEKS. I've got 3 more topics to master, then I return to Algebra 1, which I was working on before I decided to sign up for geometry last June because I was forcing C. to sign up for geometry. During the 9 months I've been away, ALEKS Algebra 1 seems to have grown from 288 topics to 333. Oy. When I switched to Geometry last June, ALEKS erased my Algebra 1 records, but my screen grab says I had mastered 270 topics.

Will I ever get to calculus?




^* Now I just have to get back to Fluenz Spanish and life will be good.

Artsy math; what about mathy art?

Yet another breathless newspaper report of a hands-on, student-centered math class, this one out of North Penn, Pennsylvania. It begins with a typical math diss:

If you think geometry is a bit boring, well, you may be right.

Geometry was one of my favorite math classes--and my favorite class at the time. I especially loved the abstract proofs, and the elegant, infinite world you could construct out of a handful of axioms. This class took me places I'd never been before, and, I think, took my thinking to a whole new level. Writing about it makes me smile.

The article continues:

But for one Pennridge 10th-grade geometry class, a hands-on architecture project has made geometry exciting.

Geometry teacher JoAnn Rubin uses a creative architecture project that teaches her students to use the precision of geometry and architecture as well as the freedom of artistic expression to help all types of students succeed in her math course.

"Not everyone is good at math," Rubin said about the project. "Some kids are really artistic."

The project asks students to create a representation of a building that they think is interesting or original.

They can make a model or a poster or any kind of representation of the building using their geometry skills. There is really only one thing curtailing the student's creativity on the project.

"The only restriction was that the buildings couldn't be rectangular," Rubin said with a smile.

This one restriction led students in many different directions and had them recreating all different kinds of buildings, from architectural classics to the downright bizarre.

Rubin's assignment appears to have fulfilled her goals--with flying colors:

Although the project results were all over the spectrum, students of all mathematical abilities consistently succeeded.

"It's about recognizing that we all have our talents and interests," Rubin said about the project that allowed every student to explore their abilities beyond the chalkboard. "I wanted them to look at the geometry of the actual buildings."

Equality of outcome; celebration of multiple intelligences; real-life examples; it's all there.

But I can't help feeling concerned for one of Rubin's thriving students:

One of the more creative projects was built by Brett Saddington, who turned the parameters for the project completely upside-down.

"I just looked up the world's strangest buildings," Saddington said about the Google search that led him to an upside-down house built in Szymbark, Poland.

He said that he one day hopes to be an architect or an engineer, and he showed off his talent with his topsy-turvy creation.

His teacher is hopeful, too:

Most of Rubin's students will not become architects or engineers, but by giving her students a look at the practical and creative side of geometry, she has given them an appreciation that could take them anywhere.

"They really don't know what direction they may be heading," Rubin said. "But who knows? They may become architects or engineers."

But I'm worried that, in this topsy turvy world of math education, where art is math and appreciation is learning, Brett's high school teachers may never teach him the math he needs to pursue an architecture or engineering degree in college and beyond.

Unless, of course, the art teacher is having Brett and his classmates spend the same amount of time doing math problems about the geometry of perspective drawing and optical wave forms.

yes! (summer plans)

I'm apparently working with the Department of Energy's Ames Lab over the summer under chemist Ning Fang (the guy whose research is on the front page of the web site). While I'm really excited to be investigating the in vivo rotational dynamics of biomolecules by getting cells to "swallow" gold nanoparticle probes, it's also a little out in the middle of nowhere. (Ames, Iowa...)

What do NSF kids do for fun when they're not in the lab? Especially when the lab is out in the Midwest?

The internship also runs from Jun 1 to Aug 6, I also need to figure out what I'm doing between May 15 - May 30 and Aug 7 -- Aug 23 (the days of summer that aren't being used for research). I do not have my own car. In fact I don't yet know how to drive so maybe this would be a good opportunity to take a crash course (literally).

My home is about 700 miles away from my school ... so I don't know if it's worth it go home. My family is a single-parent household and we live on the humble income side so I don't know if it's worth it to go back home to stay cooped in a small apartment for two weeks! (Though the NSF will only pay for transport to and from your home/school, and not say, your uncle's place in NYC. I think. Maybe I can check if they'll be a bit flexible.) Actually I have not yet been to my mother's place ... it's in a totally different city since I moved to college (it's smaller and closer to her work) -- so none of my high school friends are there. So I kind of feel semi-nomadic!

The NSF will also be making me $4250 richer. OK, deduct $300-400 for groceries and the occasional eating out (do people even eat out in Iowa??) ... but I don't know if that affects my EFC (expected family contribution) on my FAFSA, especially if it's government-funded? I know I have to pay tax on it. Should it go to a car... or a med school / grad school fund? My undergrad debt will be about $8k ... assuming my FAFSA EFC doesn't go up. My earnings this year (excluding work-study) are about $1.5k, and AFAIK student doesn't start affecting EFC until it's over $3k. Do NSF stipends count as student income on the FAFSA?

go to video

Dr. M,

In regard to your request for Dempsey & McLaren to define themselves. For the purposes of this discussion we can do a reasonable job in 6 minutes:

Seattle excluded all evidence provided by the public in making the decision to adopt "Discovering" for HS math on May 6, 2009

This was a virtual replay of May 30, 2007 when directors decided to trust their hired professionals instead of using evidence in adopting Everyday Math.

The six minutes is our response to the SPS board on May 20th to their decision to adopt "Discovering" on May 6th.

Let this play past the 4 second intro. Then move the slider to find us from minute 22:15 to minute 28:30

SPS Board meeting video of May 20, 2009 part I:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=4538

Now please define traditionalist.

Thanks,

Dan

Dan Dempsey on the Seattle case

The SPS responded in court that "Discovering" was not an inquiry program but a "Balanced" Program. The Judge noticed that all the texts had "Discovering" in the title and on page four the publisher claimed this was an investigative approach to mathematics. She also noticed that every lesson began with an investigation.

Numbers Wars
by Linda Baker

pop quiz, part 3

from:
A Parent’s Guide to Education Reform (pdf file)
By Dan Lips, Jennifer Marshall, and Lindsey Burke
Heritage Foundation
p. 10

How much do American public schools spend per pupil?
American public schools spent an average of $9,266 per pupil during the 2004–2005 school year.19

How much does the U.S. Spend on K–12 education as a nation?
The United States spent $600 billion on K–12 education in 2006—about 4.5 percent of our gross domestic product.20

How many students are in K–12 public schools?
About 50 million students attend American public schools.21

What is the average public school teacher salary?
In 2004, the average public school teacher’s salary was $44,400.22

Who earns a higher hourly wage—public school teachers or mechanical engineers?
Public school teachers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005. BLS estimates that mechanical engineers earn $31.93 per hour.23

What percentage of public education funding is spent on classroom expenditures?
61 cents out of every dollar currently spent in American public schools is for instruction.24

What is the average class size in American public schools?
There are 16 students for each teacher in the average public school.25

What percentage of all public school staff are non-teaching employees or administrators?
Non-teaching employees and administrators account for 49 percent of all public school staff.26

What percentage of government funding for education comes from the state, federal, and local governments?
46.9 percent of public school revenue comes from state government. 44 percent of funding comes from local government. Only 9.2 percent comes from the federal government.27

What percentage of American 8th graders cannot read?
26 percent of 8th grade students scored “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading exam.28

What is the percentage of American adults who are illiterate?
The U.S. Department of Education’s 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that 14 percent of American adults scored “below basic” in literacy, meaning that they could not perform simple everyday tasks that required reading or writing.29

=================

19 U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics: 2007, Table 171, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_171.asp?referrer=list.
20 Ibid., Table 25, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_025.asp?referrer=list.
21 Ibid., Table 33, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_033.asp?referrer=list.
22 Ibid., Table 72, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_072.asp?referrer=list.
23 Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters, “How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?” Manhattan Institute Civic Report No. 50, January 2007, at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_50.htm.
24 Author calculations based on average spending on instruction divided by total current expenditures. U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics: 2007, Table 172, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_172.asp?referrer=list.
25 Ibid., Table 60, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_060.asp?referrer=list.
26 Ibid., Table 80 at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_080.asp?referrer=list.
27 Ibid., Table 162, at http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_162.asp?referrer=list.
28 U.S. Department of Education, Reading Report Card, 2005.
29 U.S. Department of Education, NCES, “2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy,” at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/index.asp.