Teachers don't want to be blamed

The Blame Game -- from the School Institution Point of View

Throwing Curves reviews an article in the current issue of The Nation: Teachers are not the Enemy.

survey

If you have time to answer, that would be great!

SAT prep and merit aid survey

sage on the stage

“The sage on the stage” versus “the guide on the side” is how the debate is often framed. Proponents of the former ruled the education roost throughout the 19th century, but in the 20th century a child-centered doctrine, developed by John Dewey in the gardens surrounding the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, then refined at Columbia University’s Teachers College, gained the high ground, as “inquiry-based” and “problem-solving” became the pedagogies of choice, certainly as propounded by education-school professors. In recent years, the earlier view has staged something of a comeback, as KIPP and other “No Excuses” charter schools have insisted on devoting hours of class time to direct instruction, even to drill and memorization.

Eighth-Grade Students Learn More Through Direct Instruction
by Paul Peterson
Education Next
Summer 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 3

On the question of sages on stages versus guides on sides, we critically need parent choice.

You shouldn't have to pay private or parochial school tuition to get a teacher-centered classroom for your kids.

anonymous and Allison on choosing 2 out of 6 vs choosing 4 out of 6

I mentioned in a comments thread the fact that I'm having a very difficult time grokking the idea that the number of ways you can choose 2 items out of 6 is the same as the number of ways you can choose  4 items out of 6.

Why does ₆C₂ = ₆C₄?

Here is Allison's explanation of the specific problem I was asking about.

And here is Anonymous explaining why ₆C₂ = ₆C₄:

Image you have six balls (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, for example). You also have a box.

6C2: I have six balls, and I am choosing which two balls to put in the box.

6C4: I have six balls, and I am choosing which four to leave out of the box.

Thus, the combination "I put red and orange in the box," is the same way of splitting up the balls as "I leave yellow, green, blue, and purple out of the box." Counting the ways to put two in the box is the same as counting the ways to leave four out of the box. 

chemprof on parents and choice

re: the proliferation of global-themed charter schools, chemprof writes:

I don't have a problem with parents choosing a charter that I wouldn't choose for my own kid, anymore than I have a problem with parents choosing progressive private schools. I do have issues with these kinds of content-free methods taking over neighborhood schools when I don't have the option of sending my own child elsewhere. I think most of us are clear that many parents have different goals for their kids, but with the current neighborhood school system, there is no room for multiple approaches, and when charters are limited, then that's all you have.

That is exactly the way I feel.

I have no desire to force other parents to embrace the kind of school I want for my child. None!

But, by the same token, I feel strongly that other parents should respect and support my family's values and goals for our child.

After writing and moderating the Irvington Parents Forum for several years now, I believe that parents can't all be happy with the same schools.

Since we all have to pay the same taxes, I believe parents should support each other's choices, and for me supporting each other's choices means supporting charter schools, tax credits for private and parochial school tuition, and funding for homeschooling.

I realize there are different ways to configure a system based on parent choice, but my essential point remains the same: parents in my group need to be able to send their children to traditional, teacher-centered, content-rich schools without having to pay private tuition.

not puzzling, and not a paradox, either

Barry spotted this Thursday session (pdf file) at the NCTM's upcoming 2011 Annual Meeting:

The Chinese Paradox: How Traditional China Trumps U.S. Reform Attempts
(General Interest) Session

Using video of urban Chinese math classes and professional development, the speaker will explain the puzzling paradox for how seemingly traditional Chinese educational methods—large, teacher-centered, lecture-based classes; exam-driven curricula; and so on—produce students who excel over their U.S. peers, despite the United States’s recent reform attempts initiated by NCTM.

Thomas Ricks
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

The success of large, teacher-centered, lecture-based classes where students learn exam-driven curricula is not a puzzling paradox to me.


seemingly?

I'm wondering about that word seemingly.

seemingly traditional Chinese educational methods

I'm wondering whether Thomas Ricks is going to resolve the paradox by arguing that Chinese educational methods are only seemingly traditional.

I hope not.



Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning Series)

help desk - balls in boxes

from Art of Problem Solving's Introduction to Counting and Probability:

5.16 How many ways are there to put 4 balls in 3 boxes if:
(b) the balls are distinguishable but the boxes are not.

I don't understand the part of the solution that explains how many ways you could put 2 balls in one box, 2 balls in another box, and 0 balls in a third box:

(2,0,0): There are 4C2 = 6 ways to choose the balls for the first box, and the remaining go in the second box. However, the two pairs of balls are interchangeable, so we must divide by 2 to get 6/2 = 3 arrangements.

To me, it seems like there would have to be 6 ways to choose 2 balls from balls 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the first box:

1,2
1,3
1,4
2,3
2,4
3,4

What am I missing?

For the option of (2,1,1), the solution is 6, not 3:

There are 4C2 = 6 options for picking the two balls to go in one box, and each of the other two balls goes into its own box.

I don't see how (2,0,0) is different from (2,1,1) when the boxes are indistinguishable.

Clifford Stoll at TED

In Defense of Clifford Stoll

wrong turn

at the Reason Foundation:

reason: What is at the very top of your education reform list?

Jeb Bush: Applying digital learning as a transformative tool to disrupt the public education system, to make it more child-centered, more customized, more robust, more diverse, and more exciting.

Here is my prediction: online learning is not going to save us.

I'm pretty sure.

I would like online learning to work. (I think.) I just don't expect that it's going to work, partly because it hasn't worked (well) for me or for anyone close to me, and partly because distance learning was an expensive flop when colleges tried it in the 1990s (see pages 98-99).

This brings me to my beef with education reformers who are advocating "technology": if they don't have an argument as to why technology is going to be "transformative" this time around, then they don't have an argument.

That's not to say they're wrong; maybe this time will be different. But I have yet to hear a reformer explain why this time will be different, and that's a problem.

They are not reckoning with the evidence against their position.



High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian 




Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom

 

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? 

The Computer Delusion by Todd Oppenheimer 


In defense of Clifford Stoll

Virtual Schools at Education Next

Chisenbop tutorial

just posted to the precision teaching list: Chisenbop tutorial

help desk - sine and arcs and circular functions

From Dolciani's Algebra and Trigonometry, Chapter 13-2 Circular Functions, p. 555:

sin s = y
cos s = x
tan s = sin s/cos s if cos s ≠ 0
cot s = cos s/sin s if sin s ≠ 0
sec s =1/cos s if cos s ≠ 0
csc s = 1/sin s if sin s ≠ 0

s is the length of an arc of a circle.

This may be asking too much, but I need help.

I have never seen sine, cosine, tangent, etc. applied to an arc. I've only learned sine and cosine in relation to angles in a right triangle.

I've looked back through chapter 12, but I don't see a section that explains this. I'm sure it's there, but it's not obviously there, and I'm in a hurry, sad to say.

Is there a short way anyone can explain to me how we get from sine, cosine, angles, and SOHCAHTOA to sine, cosine, and arcs?

Is there a website that has a succinct and lucid explanation? 

And is there a book you like for self-teaching trigonometry and algebra 2? (Do we know what book(s) homeschoolers use?)

I need a royal road to circular functions.

Digital Education at Throwing Curves

An attempt to take a serious look at the growth of technology-based instruction in the classroom:

Technology, digital natives, and the future of education

practice, practice, practice

C. and I just took Section 3 of Test 3 in the CollegeBoard online course.

20 questions, 25 minutes

C. missed one and skipped two; I skipped one (which C. got right!)

If we made the same score on the other 2 sections, C. would have a score of 670, and I would be at 750.

In January, C. was scoring in the upper 500s, and I was scoring in the low 600s. (Forget January; I'm pretty sure we were both bombing the test as recently as March. Must find my notes...)

Ed's goal for C. is a 2100, but I'd like him to break 700 on all 3 tests.

James Tanton on quadratics

I just interviewed Philip Keller, and he pointed me to James Tanton's website and books.

His Guide to Everything Quadratic has finally answered my burning question about the term "quadratic":

The prefix quad- means “four” and quadratic expressions are ones that involve
powers of x up to the second power (not the fourth power). So why are quadratic
equations associated with the number four?

Answer: These equations are intimately connected with problems about squares and quadrangles. (In fact, the word quadratic is derived from the Latin word quadratus for square.) Questions about quadrangles often lead to quadratic equations. For example, consider the problem:

A quadrangle has one side four units longer than the other. Its area is 60 square units. What are the dimensions of the quadrangle?

If we denote the length of one side of the quadrangle as x units, then the other must be x+4 units in length. We must solve the equation: x(x+4) = 6, which is equivalent to solving the quadratic equation x^2 + 4x - 60 = 0.

Solving quadratic equations, even if not derived from a quadrangle problem, still
involves the geometry of four-sided shapes. As we shall see, all such equations can
be solved by a process of “completing the square.” 

chemprof on merit aid, part 2

chemprof writes:

[M]erit aid is all part of "enrollment management." The goal is to attract strong students, partly because that helps with rankings but largely because of cohort effects. Schools with a core of strong students are more attractive to other strong students, who want to be in classes with other students at their own level. For less competitive schools, managing this is a tricky problem.

...I'd agree that knowing the [specific] criteria [for merit aid] would be interesting, but I don't know that you'd be able to make much use of it. ... [W]e are typically told we can offer 8 scholarships and there might be 30-40 students who admissions has targeted as possibilities (based on stated interest and their general ranking). Picking the 8 is a matter of reading the files and talking to admissions, and nothing about criteria or the decision making process is ever written down!

Oh, and our admissions department ranks every file on a 1-5 basis where 1 is highest. However, the faculty have often thought they overlooked strong students (as 2 or 3 ranked), because those students had fewer extra-curriculars or were otherwise less interesting to admissions. 

chemprof on merit aid and an upper cut-off

re: merit aid, chemprof writes?

The big thing to know as a parent is that the major opportunity for aid happens when students enter college. There is less merit aid available for transfers at most places, even if they admit a lot of transfers, and if you aren't awarded merit aid on entrance, there is usually no mechanism for getting an award later. 

[snip]

For our science scholarships, we look at math SATs, and typically give them to students whose math SAT is 650-700. Why an upper cutoff? Because we've found that students above that are using us as a safety school, and might come if they get a major merit award but not if they only get a smaller one. But if someone was at 710 and admissions was really excited about them, we might push things around a bit.

help desk - even and odd functions

5. Determine whether each function is even, odd, or neither.
a. f(x) = x^4 = 3x^2 + 5
b. g(x) = 2x^2 + 6x + 4

Algebra and Trigonometry Structure and Method
Dolciani

First draft of New York teacher evaluation regs available for comment by the public

The first draft of the New York teacher and principal  evaluation regulations has been posted online for comments from the public.  It looks like it might be a slog to go through the 40-page document, but the six-page summary is here.  The deadline to submit comments is Friday, April 29.

In my first look at the proposal, it hit me that I probably oppose any evaluations based on New York state tests.  "Something fishy" about New York State Regents scoring
 

DRAFT REGULATIONS FOR TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL EVALUATION POSTED FOR COMMENT

Last year, legislation was enacted requiring an annual performance evaluation of all teachers and principals. These evaluations will play a significant role in a wide array of employment decisions, including promotion, retention, tenure determinations, termination, and supplemental compensation, and will be a significant factor in teacher and principal professional development. The Regents Advisory Task Force on Teacher and Principal Effectiveness -- composed of teachers, principals, superintendents of schools, school board representatives, school district and BOCES officials, and other interested parties -- has been meeting regularly since September 2010. And the Board of Regents has discussed various topics related to the evaluation system at its meetings in January, February and March 2011.

Earlier this month, at the Regents April meeting, the Task Force submitted a comprehensive report containing recommendations for implementing the evaluation system in New York. . . . . The draft regulations will be on the Regents agenda at their meeting in May.

Cross-posted at Education Quick Takes

sage on the stage bests guide on the side

new study

from the press release:

[P]rominent organizations such as the National Research Council and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, for at least the last three decades, have “called for teachers to engage students in constructing their own new knowledge through more hands-on learning and group work.”

Harvard Study Shows that Lecture-Style Presentations Lead to Higher Student Achievement

Thirty years.

merit aid at the University of South Carolina

anonymous writes:

The University of South Carolina has an extensive Honors College, which offers upper-division classes in a wide variety of fields, in addition to the more usual freshman-sophomore ones. All Honors College courses are taught by professors (no TAs) and the classes are small - my son and his wife had classes as small as 4 students (2 grad, 2 undergrad) and few above 20-25. An Honors College degree requires a senior thesis. The last I heard, the Honors College required at least a 1400 SAT, but most Honors College students receive merit scholarships - for out-of-state students, such scholarships qualify them for reduced tuition (essentially the in-state rate). The campus is right in Columbia, and the housing on the historic Horseshoe is reserved for Honors College students. It's not a big brand name, but the opportunity for a great education is right there and the Honors College faculty want to help their students with special programs, internships etc.