Hello! and how Math Trailblazers saved my district

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

Hi everyone -

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

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

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

All this to get Mad Minutes.

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

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

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

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

We may be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE 10/25/2013: Wrong again.

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

My son just got a mailing from MIT that said:

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

"too much"

"Seriously."

Then they say this on their web site:

Score Choice

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letter from a friend

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

My favorite part:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beautiful!

These are great, too:

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

Book is out in February!

35 lbs

Chris has lost 35 lbs.

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

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

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

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

I'll try to find time to explain tomorrow.


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

Good News for Math Beasts

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

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

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

Apparently students who attend Ivy League schools are good memorizers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Coursera.

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

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

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

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

From the transcript:

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

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

Passage from McGuffey's Sixth Reader

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

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

Bad-news scores

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

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

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

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

I found this:

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

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

Mom's got a point.

Goodreads!

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

What fun!

Leader shmeader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perplex this!

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

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

Dan Meyer and the Gatekeepers
educationrealist

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

In the cabin

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

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

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

We need that cabin in my district.

On when ESEA reauthorization will take place:

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

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

On PARCC and SBAC: right track or wrong track?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Arne Duncan, unbeloved:

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

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

Yet another reason for instructional grouping

Abstract

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

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

"Growing headwinds for Common Core"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole undertaking now seems crazy to me.

Get around state prerogatives?

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

[pause]

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

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

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

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

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


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

Enduring links from childhood Math and reading

Abstract

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

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

I've been reading many abstracts of late.

Andrew in August

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

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

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

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

I have no idea how to handle this.

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

Color me not surprised

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

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

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

A lot smarter.

Gutting Out the Grammar

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

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

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

Then I was thinking of Catherine.  And basal ganglia.

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

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

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

The whole thing just makes me angry.

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

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

Maybe?