Science and Education

I was perusing sciencedaily.com today and ran across several articles that pertain to education.

Disclaimer: inclusion on this list does not mean I necessarily agree with all the conclusions.

Early Education:

Childhood Social Skills Linked To Learning Abilities

Early Head Start is a national intervention and support program for income-eligible families and provides comprehensive services to families prenatally until the child is three years old. The Brophy-Herb led group is currently working with EHS providers in six Michigan counties to evaluate an infant/toddler curriculum, targeting early social and emotional development that was developed by the MSU team and their EHS partners. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

...

• Overall, EHS children performed better on measures of cognition, language and social-emotional functioning than their peers at age three. In addition, they were less likely to be in the “at risk” category of cognitive and language functioning.By age five children who had received EHS programming as infants and toddlers continued to show fewer behavior problems and more positive approaches to learning.
• Parents of EHS children were more supportive of their children’s emotional, cognitive and language development when their children were three years of age. The same results were observed at assessments when the children were five years of age.
• When impacts were examined by race/ethnicity, African American children continue to show the greatest benefits. They were more likely to be enrolled in formal programs following EHS than those children not in EHS.

Reading/Language Arts

At-risk Readers Can Be Identified Early Through A Combination Of Brain Scans And Behavioral Tests

Taken together, functional brain scans and tests of reading skills strongly predict which children will have ongoing reading problems. What's more, the two methods work better together than either one alone, according to new research in the June issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Neuroscientists at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities think this double-barreled diagnostic can help identify at-risk readers as early as possible. That way, schools can step in before those children fail to learn to read or develop poor reading habits that might interfere with remediation, such as relying on memory for words rather than sounding out new ones. Early identification and systematic intervention can very often turn likely non-readers into readers, according to the study authors.

Russian Readers Learn To Read More Accurately And Faster

Children whose mother tongue is Russian and who acquired literacy in their home language before entering first grade received higher grades on reading skills tests than their peers who speak only Hebrew or those who speak Russian but have not learned how to read it. This was revealed in a study recently completed at the University of Haifa. The researcher, Dr. Mila Schwartz, pointed out that because of the linguistic complexity of the Russian language, it can be deduced that knowing how to read and write Russian will give children an advantage when learning to read other languages.

Math

'Teaching Gap' Exists Among US And Asian Math Teachers, Study Says

U.S. teachers incorporate analogies into their lessons as often as teachers in Hong Kong and Japan, but they less frequently utilize spatial supports, mental and visual imagery, and gestures that encourage active reasoning. Less cognitive support may result in students retaining less information, learning in a less conceptual way, or misunderstanding the analogies and learning something different altogether.

Stereotype-induced Math Anxiety Undermines Girls' Ability To Perform In Other Academic Areas

The scholars found that the worrying undermines women's working memory. Working memory is a short-term memory system involved in the control, regulation and active maintenance of limited information needed immediately to deal with problems at hand.

They also showed for the first time that this threat to performance caused by stereotyping can also hinder success in other academic areas because mental abilities do not immediately rebound after being compromised by mathematics anxiety.

Miscellaneous

Advances In Genetics Should Make Learning Easier, According To Professor

Fischer and Gardner describe some of what has been done so far. Donna Coch, one of the first Mind, Brain, and Education graduates and now an assistant professor at Dartmouth University, tracks electrical activity in the brain as children learn to read. “Everything she does is groundbreaking,” Fischer comments.

He points out that such research can aid in diagnosing disabilities at an early age. “We know that the earlier you catch learning difficulties, the easier it is to overcome them,” he says.

Dyslexia, in which children with normal intelligence have trouble reading, is an example. For many years, dyslexia was not usually detected until fourth or even sixth grade. “We can now detect signs of it in 3- to 4-year-olds,” Fischer notes. “In 10 years, with the help of genetic technologies, we may be able to find it in 1-year-olds, or even at birth.”

On Point : IQ Testing Issues - IQ Testing Issues

On Point : IQ Testing Issues - IQ Testing Issues

I was listening to NPR today and ended up screaming at the ignorance of the commenter's. I am going to paraphrase what Stephen Murdoch, who wrote IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea, had to say about IQ tests.

IQ tests don't measure intelligence, they measure knowledge, verbal and math ability, reading skills, and abstract problem solving ability

Makes you wonder what the definition of intelligence is.

Graduation at the 408

I know that I am cynical most of the time, but I do have a sensitive side. TMAO has finally posted some things after taking a few weeks off.
This post, "Teaching in the 408: Graduation Dichotomy", by TMAO almost made me tear up.

I walk around after it's over, and there is more hugging, and parents ask me to pose with their children for pictures. "How's my hair?" I ask in two languages, and the shutters click. "How many more graduations will you have?" I ask every kid. At least one they tell me. Two, others say. One of my favorite kids ever, S., with starting roles in three sports and a 3.83 GPA, says two very quickly, but his mom shakes her head slightly, "Tres," she says. And as he looks over at her with a question forming on his mouth, she says it more firmly, "Tres."

I smile, and nod, and look past her toward the fence, and the bushes, where C. crouched and hid on the dirty, slippery ground.

TMAO might only be in his 20's, but I still want to be like him when I grow up. Go read it, and while you are there, check out his comments on KIPP attrition rates.

I hope this chick kicks ass!

Schools Chief Makes Quick Mark - washingtonpost.com

Michelle A. Rhee, the acting chancellor of D.C. public schools, has moved quickly to exert control over the system by halting the principal hiring process, because she is concerned about the quality of the candidate pool.

"What I wanted to avoid was a rushed decision to fill a vacancy just for the sake of filling a vacancy," she said during an interview. "I have to know that we have a strong pool of candidates."

Rhee, former executive director of the New Teacher Project, said she will look internally, within the region and nationally for candidates to fill vacancies. "We need to be incredibly aggressive about recruiting the best," she said.

Rhee said she will consider interim principals rather than hiring someone permanently who is not a top candidate. The school system has at least 10 vacancies, including five at high schools.

Don't know why, but she seems like she might be the business.

Translation services

Having studied edu-lingo and school-think for the last year and a half, I thought I would translate the reasons that New Milford didn't choose Singapore Math after they tested it for a year.

memo reviewing the meeting with teachers and math committee members of April 6, 2006, which summarizes information about the pilot materials

Singapore - We have piloted Singapore Math materials in 6 classrooms in grades 1-3 (2 classes each grade). We have found the following:

1.Parents generally like it, especially once we figured out how much homework was appropriate for the program in the early grades.

Parents recognized good math when they saw it.

2.The program covers fewer topics, but does so in greater depth; kids seem to be doing quite well with it.

There isn't all that wasted "enrichment" that most math programs have.

3.The pace of the program is quicker than anything we do and quicker even than our curriculum calls for. As a result, some sped students actually perform AHEAD of their non-special education peers in successfully handling content almost by definition becoming non-sped students!

It made the rest of the teachers look bad.

4.There is little prose within the books and the books themselves look deceptively simple; the materials are more inviting to the math- phobic than the traditional type programs.

It is missing all those cool stories and pictures we are use to seeing.

5.Adoption of such a program would change the "landscape" that we know as math programming. Students in this program K-8 would have completed Algebra I, most of Algebra II and Geometry. Currently between 20%-25% are tackling Algebra I in grade 8; under 5% in a good year are tackling Geometry by that grade level.

It will make the rest of the education establishment look stupid

1. The teacher's guide has been termed in the words of the Singapore trainers "as pretty much useless". They are correct. The guides have offered little insight or guidance to teachers on how the program should be presented. Training support for this program would be essential and pretty much on going.

We were education majors. All that math stuff hurts our brains.

2. The books fall apart easily. The school in New Jersey that used them basically estimated a 20% replacement rate annually. While the books are $8 dollars per book (not expensive in today's world), 2 books per grade ($16), we would be
running up sizeable costs in replacement texts annually.

We can't afford to pay $16 per student per year for superior performance, we need to save that money for field trips to the local park.

3. Teachers report that it has been "labor intensive" to prepare lessons, often taking longer to prepare the lesson than to teach it. With familiarity, some of the prep time would be reduced. Yet a real concern still exists at the elementary level about the amount of prep time necessary to sustain the program and teach the other subjects too. It isn’t that teachers are not willing to give the effort, it is that they saw this program as often requiring disproportioned amounts of time to prepare lessons, robbing from preparation required for other subjects. Hearing the stories about the demands on time have made many other elementary staff skeptical about this program.

Yes, it requires to much time to prepare a lesson in addition and subtraction, and we really haven't figured out how to collaborate yet.

4. The "change in landscape" image sounds exciting, but presents real practical problems. Can we train 6th grade teachers to teach Algebra I well? Can we recruit grade 7 teachers who are comfortable presenting lots of Geometry and Algebra II? If not, do we have a sense we could train them and, if so, at what costs? If we went down this road, it would become necessary to redesign the scope and sequence of high school math sequences. Does the system have the funds to do that and the staff to deliver the change? We would have almost all students taking Calculus by junior year, if not before then. That means the academic levels expected of all our staff would be raised in math.

We already told you that we were education majors, and math really really scares us.

5. The Singapore curriculum does not match the state frameworks very well, something the critics would applaud who feels the state frameworks are a problem to begin with. However, as mentioned above, the state measures on CMT’s reflect those frameworks. If we adopt this program, we would likely face an interesting, almost contradictory, dynamic of more students going further than ever before in math, yet perhaps having lower math results on the CMT’s. Our program, if powered by Singapore, would not cover all the discrete concepts measured on CMT's. In talking with one of our consultants who faced a similar issue in New Jersey with their test, he said such a dynamic never materialized. We will not know if it will be an issue here because we will not getting results back on CMT's in time to study how the program may have impacted results this year in grade 3. Since CMT’s impact how the district looks on NCLB issues of achievement, we cannot afford to ignore this issue.

We suspect that the Singapore Math students will score high on the CMT, forcing us to choose Singapore Math. Luckily we have to make a decision before the test results come out.

6. When asked for working models that involve districts like us, we found that we would be the cutting edge for all practical purposes, especially in Connecticut. That is a bit scary. We would be out there by our "lonesome" for now.

Big changes frighten us. Did we forget to mention that we were education majors because math scares us?

Mindless Math Mutterings: A Lesson in Collaboration

Mindless Math Mutterings: A Lesson in Collaboration

New Milford has decided to use a hybrid of math programs. See Mindless Math Mutterings for details, but I did want to comment on one thing I read in the final recommendation, posted at the district website.

By the end of second grade, students should have many of their basic skills in addition and subtraction firmly set, and it is at this point that we feel the pace of Saxon can present a problem. Students ready to “rocket forward” are sometimes kept in “lock step”. Parents remarked about that as well.

Therefore, beginning grade three we recommend a hybrid of both EDM and Saxon materials be given teachers. Teachers would, within their classes or working in tandem with another teacher’s class, group and regroup students throughout the year to provide practice where it is needed here and enrichment where it needed there.

Translation: Saxon mathematics was so effective that students were ready to move at a faster pace than we really want them to. To counter this, we will place them into Everyday Mathematics, which will distract them with alternate algorithms, word problems and silly games, and prevent the higher ability kids from getting to far ahead.

You notice it never occurred to them to just move through the Saxon material faster. Die acceleration, die! Enrichment wins again ->[insert evil maniacal laugh here]

Aim low, avoid disappointment

UCSMP: Everyday Mathematics:

"Helping children learn the basic facts is an important goal in the Everyday Mathematics Curriculum. Most children should have developed an automatic recall of the basic addition and subtraction facts by the end of the second grade. They should also know most of their 1, 2, 5, and 10 multiplication facts by this time. By the end of the fourth grade most students should have an automatic recall of all the basic multiplication facts and be familiar with the basic division facts. Multiplication and division facts are reinforced at the beginning of fifth grade.[emphasis mine]

Anchorage uses Everyday Math. This is what I have to look forward to... most (not all) children having automatic recall by the end of 4th grade (not 3rd grade).

I fully intend to start a parental revolution like that happening in Ridgewood, NJ, Washington state, and New York.

Plan of attack:

1. Start website
2. Letters to editor
3. Raise issue at PTA
4. Raise issue with school board

I know, I know, I promised to stay out of education reform, but it looks like so much fun.

Sopranos Finale

Sucked

Buzzword BS

The blogosphere and news world is on fire about the latest report on the progress made in education over the last few years.

Even though everyone and there bother has wrote something about it (including me now), I will pick on Kevin Drum's post over at Political Animal. Commenter's are using all sorts of cool phrases over in the comments section: phrases like "curriculum narrowing"

Curriculum narrowing is such a nice little buzz word. Of course no one talks about the curriculum broadening that happened over the last couple of decades.

Our schools teach the same things, to the same students, year after year, hoping that if it's repeated enough, some of it will sink in. Of course this is a very inefficient manner of teaching. It's half ass year after year.

K-3 should concentrate on basic reading and math skills.

4-8 grades should be used to gradually increase students background knowledge.

9-12 grades should then begin to merge the background knowledge, put it in to context, and teach critical thinking.

Instead our schools try and teach critical thinking to 8 year olds, basic reading skills to 8th graders, and background knowledge to Juniors in High School.

Kevin himself, notes the wide discrepancy between the state test scores and NAEP. (He isn't the only one, bloggers on the left and right are miraculously discovering it).

The discrepancy between State scores and NAEP performance has been well covered by the education blogosphere, including take-downs of several NYC articles.

For example.

http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/03/madison-cooks-books.html

http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/03/schemo-responds.html

http://rightwingnation.com/index.php/2007/03/21/3109/

http://rightwingnation.com/index.php/2007/03/17/3098/

Its amazing to me that the political blogosphere only cares about education when it can be used to score points against which ever political party they are against. The rest of the time, all that interests most political bloggers is whether some guy named Scooter is going to serve any prison time.

Meanwhile there are thousands of parents out there railing against the system trying to encourage the smallest amount of reform. Enjoy your 15 minutes school reformers, it will come around again in another few months.

Peace, I'm outie.

This guy should be fired!

Report Shows Indiana's Achievement Gap Still A Problem:

"Perhaps the only clear-cut data the report showed about Indiana is that the achievement gap between white students and poor or minority students is large and doesn't seem to be going away. Many other states have the same problem, said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy, an independent nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

I don't know who hired him, but they should probably be looking for someone else. "Many other states" don't have the same problem. EVERY STATE has the same problem. There isn't a single state without a large achievement gap. OK, maybe that isn't true. Some states have large achievement gaps, the other states have gigantic achievement gaps. With the exception of Washington state, the states that do show the lowest achievement gaps pretty much have crappy overall scores anyway.

You think if he was going to make excuses, he would go with "everybody else sucks as well", instead of "we aren't the only one who sucks". Put it perspective baby, put it in perspective.

Reference: Education Trust: Education Watch State NAEP Tables

I hate the new EdNews.org layout

EdNews.org - The Internets #1 source for Education News and Information

Just saying...

Dysteachia: The History and Science of the Code and Learning to Read and Comprehend it.

The History and Science of the Code and Learning to Read and Comprehend it.

I just found a really interesting and comprehensive website on the science of reading. It is chalk full of videos interviews with leading reading experts and researchers.

The contributors read like a who's who of reading experts, Engelmann, Moats, Hirsch, Whitehurst, etc... they literally have 30 to 40 interviews with just about any expert that you could name.

In this video called Dysteachia, the problem is summed up nicely by Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Former Branch Chief, National Institue of Child Health and Human Development.

When we look at the kids that are having a tough time learning how to read, we went through the statistics, 38% nationally, disaggregate that, 70% kids from poverty and so fourth hit the wall. 95% of those kids are instructional casualties... About five to six percent of those kids have what we call dyslexia or learning disabilities in reading. Ninety-five percent of the kids hitting the wall in learning to read are what we call NBT: Never Been Taught.

"Instructional Casualties" and "Never Been Taught" (NBT), I think those five words nicely sum up the problems that us parents have to deal.

My favorite interview is with Siegfried Engelmann, who gets quite passionate in his argument about the root cause of the problem.

...because in grade one, teachers did eminently stupid stuff, like have them look at the picture, discuss the picture, and then read the words. I am sorry Virginia, pictures do not generate specific words.

I will probably be blogging a lot more from this series in the coming weeks, but I highly suggest that you check it out.

Can't bear to watch... Nice White Lady a.k.a. Freedom Writers

So I am sitting here with the remote control in my hand trying to decide whether to watch Freedom Writers, and all I can think of is this youtube spoof.



I know once I hit play, I will probably cringe at all the stereotypes and exaggerations, just like I do when I watch any movie that portrays the military. Pray for my sanity.

- 5 minutes in to the movie and I am already cringing. I grew up right next door to Long Beach. It was bad, but not that bad. And then the whole, "I'm here for the diversity line"... I am about to puke.

- OK, her class just entered the room, and I realized I was actually rooting for her to fail. Something is wrong with me. Is this movie going to be as condescending as I think?

- Supposedly Ms Gruwell is super smart... so if she is so smart, how come she seems so shocked by the school? Growing up in Los Angeles, I don't care if you are from Beverly Hills, you are aware of the culture of the inner city.

- So only one kid in the whole 9th grade class knew what the holocaust was? (and he was white). Seriously... how many fricking stereotypes are they going to throw at me?

- Go white lady, go white lady, go! The journal idea is actually kind of cool. It probably doesn't help much with teaching grammar, spelling, or organization, but it could be a useful tool.

- It may be cliche, but the part where she took the kids to the holocaust museum actually got to me a little.

- Crap, I enjoyed that movie. Manipulating director 1 - Cynicism 0.

- The one thing I did take from the movie, is the idea of a teacher moving with their students from grade to grade. The idea has merit, unless of course the teacher sucks.

And I thought I was cynical... check this review out.: A Skeptic's view of Freedom Writers.

At first, I absolutely refused to see Freedom Writers. It looked like yet another feel good white-teacher-saves-colored-students with-much-rejoicing in-the-land-of-Nod movie. I mean, the narrative is another twist of the American Dream: ignore the circumstances around you and focus on yourself, and you’ll poise yourself for success and improvement. Rampant individualism abounds. You see people you once characterized as your people doing The Wrong Thing, and you set off to do The Right Thing without those people. And movies like Freedom Writers tell you in veiled ways that that’s okay, and the world cuts off when you leave it outside the fences of your school. The real world of deserting husbands, gang violence, and homelessness wipes clean away. As usual, my analysis is spoiler ridden because I just don’t give a damn. :-p

Read the rest for a pretty good analysis of the movie. (Despite all this, it still gave me an E.T. moment.)

This review over at MrCranky sums it up nicely as well.

More "credit" is due LaGravenese[the director] for deciding to avoid the scene with that one student who quits or dies or just doesn't get it. Everyone gets it in "Freedom Writers." Every student learns. Every student achieves. Every student is a changed person by the end of the film and Erin might as well be Mother Theresa.

"Freedom Writers 2" will feature Erin traveling to the Middle East to teach everyone peace, I'm sure.

Screw it

I hereby renounce all attempts to reform the American education system. Let all the other kids fail for all I care, it will just make it that much easier for my kids to stand out. Sure I will have to spend numerous hours a week supplementing their education, but if it helps my kids become successful, then it's worth it.

So go enroll your kids in progressive, project based schools with low expectations, and let them take watered-down classes. Forget about learning how to do standard algorithms, buy your kids a calculator. Some of them might succeed despite the schools, but enough will fail that my kids will have a better chance of rising to the top.

Thank you for your assistance.

Abbot and Costello Invent Everyday Math

Thats right... I have a time machine... and you can watch it here.



Via Mindless Math Mutterings, hat tip to Instructivist.

NCGA: No Child Gets Ahead

Promising miracles at Joanne Jacobs

Joanne Jacobs, points to an article in Education Next that mentioned one of my pet peeves, academic acceleration, or the lack of it in our schools.

"accelerating instruction for the 2 percent of students capable of benefiting from it."

BS... I think that at least 15 to 20% of students would benefit from academic acceleration. Walk into any middle class classroom in this country and there will be at least that many students who are bored and ready to move on while the teacher remediates the rest of the class.

Besides, there is no true acceleration in this country. Those who would point to things like 7th and 8th grade algebra as acceleration are wrong... that is advancement, not acceleration. It still takes 3 years for these kids to get to Calculus, just like it would take 3 years for a student who started Algebra I in 10th grade.

True acceleration would have students progress through a years worth of study in say 6 - 9 months. If acceleration was done properly, there would be a cumulative effect; each year accelerated students would be further and further ahead of their peers in standard paced classes.

I also ran across this article JS ONLINE: Law lacks direction for gifted students pointing out that Gifted Education is haphazard in this country.

What the law doesn't mandate is how students such as Adam will be educated - even though state legislators have identified programming for students with gifts and talents as one of 20 essential components of public education. The result? A mixed bag of approaches for how Wisconsin students identified as gifted are educated. Some are taught in regular classes with alternative activities to help speed them through lessons. Others are pulled out of class for about an hour a week of special instruction. Some may find a spot in a magnet program with other gifted students. And others get no special instruction at all.

While I am a supporter of No Child Left Behind and its high expectations and accountability requirements, I can't help but wonder if it should also be referred to as the No Child Gets Ahead.

I am starting to think that Gifted and Talented programs should just be eliminated in our schools. If schools truly served the needs of all students, there would be no need for "named" programs, just high quality education that best serves all students reguardless of abilities.

p.s. I accidently posted this here at KTM, I forgot to change the dropdown box on the blogger window, sorry.

Enrichment vs Acceleration

Enrichment is putting shiny rims and a lot of chrome on a car.

Acceleration is souping up the engine.

One looks good, one performs better.

Ideally you would have enough money and time to do both, but if not... it depends on whether you want to win a race or just look good cruising down the street.

30 Minutes a Week

For 30 minutes a week, my 3rd graders go to computer lab and use a PEARSONS technology self-pace instructional program.

In 8 hours and 52 minutes of computer time my son improved his math skills exactly .48 of a grade level to a 4.82 grade level using Pearsons Educational Technologies "Math Concepts and Skills"

My daughter improved her reading skills .56 of a grade level in the same amount of time.

This was all done in the last 18 weeks.

I can honestly say that my sons TAG class did nothing more than teach him 40 Latin root words. Actually this is being to generous, he learned the words at home, they just gave him them in his TAG class.

He did do some really cool paintings of interlocking puzzle shapes.

Just in case you think that the computer program just recorded classroom progress, none of the math concepts mastered were covered in the 3rd grade curriculum.

I don't care what the studies say about educational software, at least it doesn't hold students back.

Anchorage Gifted Program: It gets worse!!!

TAMEA ISHAM -- Home Page

Last post, I noted the weak math standards in the Anchorage school district. Today, I came across the homepage for the gifted instructor for the schools that my kids will attend.

Here is what I have to look forward to if one of my kids qualify for the gifted program:

Our first Unit is "New Atlantis", a comprehensive study of the ocean's problems, such as pollution, overfishing, whale and shark eradication, etc.. Students will be working in groups as they try to come up with answers to these important problems. Students will also be building submersibles and in cooperative groups will construct an underwater sea station. The unit will conclude with a parent presentation.

I know the kids are gifted, but solving the oceans problems... wow... these kids must be very advanced! I am so glad they aren't going to waste any time teaching them math, language arts, or history.

A little depressing

As many of you know, we are moving to Anchorage in August. I was a little depressed to learn that Anchorage's 4th grade math standards are a little weak compared with South Carolina's.

From the Anchorage A Parent's Guide : Fourth - Sixth Grade

4th Grade math

• memorize multiplication/division
facts to a product of 100.

From the South Carolina 3rd grade math curriculum standards

1. Recall multiplication and division facts
through 9.

Oh well, I guess the supplementing of my kids education will continue.

p.s. what is the purpose of the last week of school? It's not like the students learn anything.

Teacher fired because of kids' failures

Star-Telegram.com: Teacher fired because of kids' failures

A teacher was fired because parents, her principal and the school board didn't like her classes pass rate. She argues that the school was trying to get her to lower her standards. It was pointed out to her that her passing rate was lower than the rest of the math departments.

Two things could be happening here. Either she isn't teaching up to the rest of the departments standards, or the rest of the department has low standards.

Kevil wrote school board members this final statement: "I refuse to compromise my integrity because of an uninformed parent, a weak administration and a district that turns a blind eye."

Keller Superintendent James Veiteinheimer told me his solution: "Teach them well. That's the way, I think, you get students to pass. You don't add points or add grades. You don't fake anybody out."

I think it should be pretty easy to figure out if she was too tough, or the school just wanted to lower standardsto cave to the unhappy parents. Just perform an analysis of the students grades to their standardized test scores, for her and the whole math department. If the performance matches the grades, then she wins... if not then the school does.

My money is on her.

The Funniest Blog Post This Week

The Quick and the Ed

Kevin Carey over at the Quick and the Ed points out that the recent Washington Post story on Washington D.C. Mayor Fenty's school reform plan. It seems like the guy who drafted the plan, copied entire sections wholesale from Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

I know what your saying. Wow, a struggling school copied ideas from a more successful school district. Oh the horror.

Making fun of the Posts coverage of the story, and their attempt to point out that the two districts are different, Kevin had this to say (with a wee bit of sarcasm)

Intensive reading and math instruction in middle school, enhanced teacher recruitment, more focus on customer service to parents--while those wild, crazy notions might work in an urban / suburban district of 130,000 student in North Carolina, they obviously have no place whatsoever in an urban district of 57,000 students in DC. In fact, it's well-known within the research community that there's a point between 57,000 and 130,000--I believe the exact number is 94,583--where hiring better teachers and providing better math and reading instruction to at-risk students simply doesn't work anymore. You can look it up.

Go read the whole thing. It made me laugh out loud.

More Reading First Scandal

Over the coming days there will be a few articles about Senator Kennedy's latest report on the Conflict of Interest in the Reading First Program.

To be fair Senator Kennedy offers a great recommendation for the future:

enact changes in the current law governing conflict of interest controls at the Department.

But I just wanted to make two points. No where in the report does it mention anything about the reading programs being ineffective, and as the report says:

Presently, no federal law requires Department contractors, subcontractors, and consultants to be vetted for bias, conflicts of interest or impartiality.

In other words, the scandal is about poor implementation of the program, and not about people breaking the law. Of course as we know, despite these conflicts of interest, the program has been a great success for our countries disadvantaged students.

Lets improve the program, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Are you or your kids a Christine, Alex, Jessica, or Kevin.

From the Trenches of Public Ed.: A tale of four students

Christine is a girl in one of my American History classes. Although she didn't begin the year looking like she would be one of the top students in the sophomore class, there were no indications that she'd have any trouble in my class. When she took the quizzes for my reading assignments, it was clear that she had reasonably good comprehension, but she was a little inconsistent. At about the mid-point of the first quarter, she began to do the assignments less and less, and by the end of the quarter, she wasn't doing any of them at all.
...
Then there is Alex. Alex is a bright young man, and he also began the year doing reasonably well in my class. But one day in October, Alex was absent. Then he was absent again. Then again...and again...and again...and again.
...

Social studies isn't easy for Jessica, and like Christine, she failed the first quarter. Unlike Christine, her parents were all over her as a result. Jessica does not have great reading comprehension, but I have a note-taking system that the kids can use to guarantee themselves decent scores on the reading quizzes. Jessica began to do those regularly, earned a C the second quarter, and in doing so managed to pass the first semester.
...
Kevin is in class every day. He was a captain on our school's hockey team this year, and in January he got to the point where he could barely skate because he was suffering from a painful bulging disc. His coaches and his parents finally forced him to take a two weeks off from the sport, because he would never have done it himself. He did miss one day of school to see a doctor, but he was back in class the next day. It was too painful for him to sit, so he would come into class early, go to my cabinets, dig out about 15 books from my first semester Economics class, stack them on top of a desk, put his notebook on them, and take notes in a standing position. Kevin did that in all of his classes for about a month-and-a-half.

I was an Alex, I am ashamed to say. Unfortunately my parents were natural hardworking students, and it never occurred to them that I might be lying about attending school or doing my homework.

Today my whole parenting style revolves around ensuring my kids don't get away with what I did. Trust but verify is my motto.

Go read the whole thing.

SRA/McGraw-Hill Plays Both Sides!

SRA/McGraw-Hill Announces New Research-Based Elementary Reading & Language Arts Program: Imagine It!

"The new core Pre-K-6 reading and language arts curriculum from leading elementary educational publisher SRA/McGraw-Hill gives teachers everything needed to inform instruction and reach all students."

SRA, the same people who distribute Direct Instruction, now have a new curriculum.

"SRA's Imagine It! helps students develop the skills to think and investigate the answers to their own questions. The Concept/Question Board is used throughout each unit to keep students exploring and finding new dimensions to the unit theme. The strong Inquiry strand contains built-in tools in every unit that promote curiosity, investigation, and higher-order thinking. Each unit begins with student-led discussions that prompt questions and areas of investigation about the unit theme."

It seems like SRA wants to go after the "inquiry" crowd. I know SRA is in the business to make money, but doesn't it seem like they are sort of like arms dealers who sell weapons to both the rebels and the government that they are fighting?

I mean after all, on the same website that they are promoting a program that uses a "strong Inquiry strand", they also have this brochure (pdf), that states:

Before creating any Direct Instruction program, the authors carefully analyze the skills and strategies that must be taught. Every part of a Direct Instruction program is based upon solid research on how children learn and is validated in classrooms. The programs are written by the Direct Instruction authors to:
• Present tasks clearly in a way that allows students to understand concepts the first time they are introduced
• Present new material in small increments to help students achieve mastery
• Select examples and put them in a logical sequence
• Provide opportunities for guided practice and cumulative review
• Incorporate continuous assessment and management

Now of course, perhaps Imagine It!, is nothing more than a scientifically based program dressed up to satisfy all "whole language" and "Inquiry Learning" crowd, but it certainly confused me.

Perhaps they are banking on the pro-DI crowd getting booted due to the Reading First scandal, figured they would be replaced with a more "progressive" leaning crew, and had to come up with a different program to make money.

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops - New York Times

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops - New York Times

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. — The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).
...
“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”
...
Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

I am so underpaid... I could of predicted this several years ago and saved the district half a million dollars for each of the last few years. The people who think up these ideas have obviously never seen a real life teenager at a real life computer... talk about tuning out.

Computers are meant to increase critical thinking skills... yeah right. I will leave you with this last quote from the article.

In the school library, an 11th-grade history class was working on research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks even as their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

M.I.T. Dean Who Resigned Has a Degree After All

M.I.T. Dean Who Resigned Has a Degree After All - New York Times

In an odd twist to an already strange story, Marilee Jones, the former admissions dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who resigned last week after admitting that she had lied about her academic credentials, turns out to have a bachelor’s degree, but not from the institutions she had named on her résumé.

Instead, M.I.T. officials said, Ms. Jones earned a B.A. in biology at the College of Saint Rose, an independent college in Albany, where she grew up. Officials at the College of Saint Rose confirmed that they had awarded a bachelor’s degree to a Marilee Jones in 1973, when Ms. Jones would have been 21.

Well crap! There goes my theory about non-college graduates being able to succeed at academic jobs. I concede that Ms. Jones is basically an idiot and deserved to be fired.

My Teacher Merit Pay Plan

It seems like every other week there is a new teacher pay reform proposal published, so not wanting to be left out, I figured I would offer my own ideas.

I propose a system roughly modeled on the Air Force promotion system.

Levels: There would be several levels of teachers, and within each level there would be steps based on years of service. Each level of teacher would have added responsibility... for example you might have novice teacher, teacher, teacher mentor, teacher supervisor, and master teacher. Within each level, there would be years of service raises.

Promotion: Promotion between levels would be based on a combination of value added scores (75%) and personnel ratings (25%).

Value Added Rating: The key to the value added scores part of the rating system would be to base it on a 3 year average of scores. This would serve to mitigate the effects of a "good" or "bad" group of students, and also take into account consistency over an extended period of time. I also think that weighting more recent years slightly would reward improving teachers, but a balance would have to be struck.

Personnel Ratings: Since a large part of my program would be to encourage high performing and experienced teachers to mentor newer teachers, I would create a rubric that not only took into account teacher mechanics like control of classroom, organization, use of time, etc..., but that also took into account more subjective measures like mentoring, teamwork, and leadership. To ensure integrity, I would propose that the rating score would have to have concurrence between three separate people, perhaps a master teacher, a department head, and the principal of the school.

Certification and Education: I would include certain advantages to teachers who completed teacher education plans, perhaps awarding them slightly higher pay than teachers who started teaching with just a bachelors degrees, but teachers who started without a degree and proved themselves as competent teachers would catch up to the "certified" teachers within one year. Since most education certification programs only take one year, the only advantage to attending them would be if the program provided the new teachers with applicable skills that improved value added scores. Additional graduate education could also be factored into the personnel rating, but once again, because of the weighting of the value added scores, only programs that "added value" would make the program make sense. Hopefully, this program would cause education schools to reform themselves to emphasize real world skills, instead of concentrating on education fluff.

Tenure: Finally, I would include a high year of tenure program for the basic level of teachers. If after say three or four years, a teacher wasn't able to meet a certain level of performance, they would be let go. Since most studies I have read have said that most improvement happens in the first two years of teaching, this should be enough time to determine who the good teacher would be. Additionally, once promoted to a certain level, teachers would continually have to meet cutoff scores for that level. This would ensure that teachers would have to continually strive to for success.

Goal: The goal of my proposal is to reward good teachers, while at the same time encouraging education schools to reform. Since their would be years of service raises, teachers who peaked out or simply didn't want to take on the extra responsibilities of promotion would still be rewarded for dedication and loyalty to the profession. Because value added scores carry most of the promotion points, education schools would only be able to survive if they could demonstrate that they gave their students a competitive edge, besides for a piece of paper. Reform is on the horizon, I think that my rough outline of a program is a good starting point to design a pay system that rewards high performers and hopefully provides incentives for teachers to excel and to improve.

Urgent Advice and Opinions Needed!

Thursday there is a meeting soliciting community opinion and comments on the merging of Sumter School District 2 with Sumter School District 17.

Both school districts are small, so my initial inclination is that a merge would make sense fiscally. Both school districts have a full compliment of advisers, curriculum specialists, and endless other administration types.

Even merged, the school district would only cover about 8,000 students, which isn't terribly large.

While District 17 has the reputation for being the better school district, its reputation rests almost entirely on its demographics, as it has a slightly higher number of white students and a lower number of low income students. The district is by no means a white enclave.

District 2 actually does a better job of educating its students, as I have posted in the past, and when disaggregated data is compared it is way more successful, especially with low income and minority students.

Next year, the two school districts are going to have one of the first intra-district open enrollment programs, and the districts already share a career center.

Since I am moving to Alaska, the point is actually moot for me, but I still want to take the opportunity to educate the public.

Like many other political decisions made in the south, I expect the decision to be influenced by racial politics, divisions between rural and city residents, and plain old fashion turf defense.

References:
schoolmatters.org: District 2 - District 17
School Report Cards: District 2 - District 17

What are your thoughts?

Gap years

I propose that all college students take a mandatory Gap year travelling around the world before starting, or even applying, to colleges.

Think about it, a gap year would not only ensure that Universities got well rounded students, but a certain number of kids who weren't cut out to survive in the real world would be weeded out of precious admittance slots.

Some of you might point out that low income students won't have the same resources to pay for the trips, but if a smart resourceful 18 year old can't find the money to travel, then the probably won't make it in school in anyway.

Hell, if we made the made the gap year requirement three years, colleges wouldn't have to worry about underage drinking either.

Note: This comment was made is entirely tongue in cheek.

Smart teens don't have sex (or kiss much either).

Slightly related to my value of colleges theme, I just read a post on Intercourse and Intelligence by Jason Malloy over at GNXP.

A detailed study from 2000, entitled "Smart teens don't have sex (or kiss much either)", confirms what many of us probably already assume.

Jason comments:

One reason we might guess that smarter people in high school, or in more challenging colleges or majors, delay their sexual debuts is because they are delaying gratification in expectation of future reward. Sexual behavior (or at least the investment needed to procure a partner or sustain one) may compete with time/resources required for other goals, and intelligent people may have more demanding goals.

He also pointed out:

Perhaps more revealing, HS, also showed that intelligence correlates with less sex within marriage for the same age range. While still consistent with pregnancy fears and competing interests, lower sex drive seems like a better fit. In fact another revealing finding from the Counterpoint survey was that while 95% of US men and 70% of women masturbate, this number is only 68% of men and 20% of women at MIT!

So relax all you kids who didn't get into top colleges, elite schools have their price.

Side note: If more intelligent people are having less sex (and I assume less babies), what the hell is driving the Flynn effect?

Update: Pretty weird, but via Darren at Right on the Left Coast, Marginal Revolution quotes Robin Hanson commenting on a study, Reading, Writing, and Sex: The Effect of Losing Virginity on Academic Achievement, by economist Joseph J. Sabia:

My interpretation: Teen boys who want sex out of teen girls have to spend a lot of time in sports, fights, clubs, signaling their attractiveness. Teen girls who want sex just have to say "yes", and the sex itself takes little time, especially given that teenage boys are the partners. :

Well duh. Also note that there was no need to include the phrase "who want sex", since I pretty much assume the overwhelming majority of teen boys want to have sex.

The Be-All End-All College Credential

The Quick and the Ed: The Be-All End-All College Credential

Kevin Carey agrees with my earlier post on the MIT Dean of Admissions scandal.

At the modern university, that distinction doesn't exist--you have to be certified by the institution that taught you. Indeed, since degrees aren't based on any objective, verifiable evidence of learning, that's all they're certifying--that you've been taught. So I wonder if in addition to deterring future resume-fudgers, M.I.T. wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of employing someone who is living proof that you don't need a university degree to be really good at a complex, challenging, difficult job--particularly one at a university.[emphasis mine]

Wow... I have a whole anti-university theme going today.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: A MySpace Photo Costs a Student a Teaching Certificate

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: A MySpace Photo Costs a Student a Teaching Certificate

If a school like Millersville University of Pennsylvania, denies students a degree because of pictures like this.

I am in trouble...

Me, my son, and friends at Oktoberfest 1998, Munich, Germany

P.S. before anyone starts castrating castigating me, it was family day at Oktoberfest (yes Oktoberfest has a family day), and my ex-wife was sober and taking the picture.

Another Harvard is Impossible Article

Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard - New York Times

Quite frankly, I am getting sick of the whole its impossible to get into Harvard meme, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read this article in the NYT.

The author, a Harvard Alumni, no longer gets depressed after he interviews yet another gifted student who probably won't get in to Harvard, even though the students are way more accomplished that he was when he got in.

As he observes in the story:

I came to understand that my own focus on Harvard was a matter of not sophistication but narrowness. I grew up in an unworldly blue-collar environment. Getting perfect grades and attending an elite college was one of the few ways up I could see.

My four have been raised in an upper-middle-class world. They look around and see lots of avenues to success. My wife’s two brothers struggled as students at mainstream colleges and both have made wonderful full lives, one as a salesman, the other as a builder. Each found his own best path. Each knows excellence.

Though I sometimes regret not giving myself the opportunity to attend a good college after high school, I have lived a pretty decent life. I excel at my job, I have a better house than my parents had, and most of all I have five wonderful kids, but I have also had adventures.

I lived in Europe for 12 years, I have met people from the around the world, ordered beers in more languages than I can count, travelled alone, snowboarded the Alps, sipped beers on the Mediterranean, seen Roman ruins, and countless other adventures that I would of never gotten to experience if I had taken the traditional route of a four year University.

You have to wonder if the one thing that is missing from the resumes of applicants to competitive schools these days is a sense of adventure, and an ability to roll with the punches.

Don't get me wrong, I value education, but if my kids chose to backpack around the world for a few years instead of going to Harvard, I wouldn't be at all disappointed.

The Value of a College Degree

Dean of Admissions at M.I.T. Resigns - New York Times:

Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became famous for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. But today she admitted that she had fabricated her own academic educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at the university.
...

Ms. Jones on various occasions had represented herself as having degrees from Albany Medical College, Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but she had no degrees from any of those places, said Phillip L. Clay, the chancellor of M.I.T.

If this was a movie, the whole theme would be how a hardworking woman without a degree managed to rise through the ranks. At the end of the movie, she would make a impassioned speech, everyone would forgive her, and she would keep her job... but this is real life. Despite doing an apparently excellent job, she was forced to resign.

The whole story raises a pretty good question: What is the value of a college degree if someone without it was able to rise so high in a competitive school like MIT?

The story certainly lends credence to the theory that college doesn't actually add much academic value (for a lot of careers, not all) and is nothing more than a way to vet for intelligence and perseverance.

Of course many people will argue that its not an issue of whether she had a degree or not, but an issue of integrity. Do you really believe that she would of even got her foot in the door if she had been honest about having a degree?

If she is smart, she will launch her own consulting company that helps students get into the colleges of her choice. She has already written one book, perhaps now she will write another exposing the dirty little secrets of college admissions.

When Fair Use Isn't Fair

Update: "Tomorrow the hammer's coming down hard over the 'Fair Use' issue..."

Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog: When Fair Use Isn't Fair

Shelly over at Retrospectacle was threatened with legal action when she used one figure and one chart from a scientific paper published in the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture, with full citation of course.

She took down the offending figure and chart and reproduced the data in excel, but there is principle here. Apparently the Journal didn't like the spin she was putting on the data.

This sets a bad precedent. Education researchers could conceivably ask us bloggers to not use published data to make points against the establishment.

Re: Antioxidants in Berries Increased by Ethanol (but Are Daiquiris Healthy?) by Shelly Bats

http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/antioxidants_in_berries_increa.php

The above article contains copyrighted material in the form of a table and graphs taken from a recently published paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. If these figures are not removed immediately, lawyers from John Wiley & Sons will contact you with further action.

Go read for yourself.

You may contact the publishers at the following to let them know what you think.

Update: The issue has been resolved... I have removed the contact details.

Balanced >insert subject here<

The next time someone tries to defend or advocate for balanced math instruction or balanced literacy remember this simple mathematical formula.

(good + bad) / 2 = mediocre

or

"The average of good plus bad is mediocre."

Good Education Research

An Interview with Frederick Hess: The Education Research We Need; (And why we don't have it)

According to Frederick Hess, good education research is done by everyone except education schools.

That's a great question. Certainly, there is good evidence that upper-tier economics, political science, sociology, and public policy programs are producing PhDs with quantitative skills and methodological sophistication that dramatically surpass those of earlier generations. This has been the pattern of the social sciences for several decades, and nothing has changed on that score. Whether some programs are emphasizing formal theory or econometric training to the degree that fewer graduates may have an aptitude for or interest in field work is a question some have posed. But I don't know that anyone has any good answers to that.

With regard to doctoral level training in education, I'm in no position to pass judgment on the quality of instruction being offered at the hundreds of institutions offering education doctorates. I can say, however, that the education policy work by young scholars that I find most compelling consistently seems to be produced by young scholars trained in the disciplines. Whether that judgment is a product of my own tastes as a reader, self-selection on the part of doctoral candidates, the quality of preparation, or some other factor, I really can't say.

So, if I am reading this right, if I ever want to make a contribution to educational research, I should get a PHD in something other than education.

Disclaimer: Just in case I ever do want to get into an education graduate school and the admissions people do a google and discover this post, I want to say for the record that I only look down on the other education schools... not yours.

Cross Posted at Kitchen Table Math

Reading First "Scandal" - OIG Report Irony

I am guessing that if you are reading this post you are either an education junkie like myself, or you have a fetish for short bald guys. If it is the latter, then read no further. If however, you are trying to make first of the whole "Reading First" scandal, read on.

I haven't seen the hearings yet, mainly because my fiancee won't let me hog the computer for four hours, but today at work, I read most of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reports investigating the RF program.

Having read accounts of the hearings, I was quite surprised when I read the actual reports. This scandal as it's now being called, might blow up in the face of the people protesting the program (whole language mafia).

The OIG, almost subliminally called for the Reading First program to become more stringent that it already is. In the The Department’s Administration of Selected Aspects of the Reading First Program,
FINAL AUDIT REPORT issued February 2007, I found this nugget on page 23.

Since the legislation is scheduled for reauthorization in 2007, Congress has an opportunity to clarify whether reading programs should be funded on the basis of program effectiveness. Congress will also be able to determine what it means for a program to be “based on scientific reading research” and whether this definition is consistent with program effectiveness. Information obtained and deliberated upon, as part of the reauthorization process, should enable Congress to make the legislation more responsive to the needs of children by ensuring that quality programs are funded with Reading First funds.

We suggest that the Department and Congress, during the next reauthorization of the law, clarify whether reading programs need to have scientific evidence of effectiveness in order to be eligible for funding under Reading First.

Right now it is still possible for states to slip in programs that on the surface meet the basic requirements of having explicit and systematic instruction in the five essential components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency (including oral reading skills), and reading comprehension strategies.

If Congress added a requirement for scientific evidence of effectiveness to the requirements, many of the weaker programs would not qualify.

Of course, Congressman George Miller, is ignoring this aspect of the report during his grandstanding.

kitchen table math, the sequel: A Whole Saturday Of Whole Language

kitchen table math, the sequel: A Whole Saturday Of Whole Language

Myrtle Hocklemeier volunteered to teach illiterate adults how to read. The organization that she volunteered at had two groups. One taught phonics and the other used whole language. She unfortunately mistakenly signed up for the wrong one.

At least she got to use her Attic Greek.

There was yet another demonstration about how whole language worked and phonics was pointless. In a given normal English paragraph several words were replaced with what was supposed to be nonsense symbols. She told us the meaning of those words and then held up a card with those words on them and asked us to tell her what the word said. The class obliged and parroted back the words and this was then pronounced more proof that whole language worked. Then she did something really sneaky, she held up two cards with words which were not in the passage and that we hadn't seen before. What did they mean? No one could answer. Except, the "nonsense" symbols were Attic Greek and so were the words. Because I have studied Attic Greek I was able to call out the English meaning of one of the cards that no one was supposed to know. (I never imagined that studying this language would pay off in such a delicious way--although trivia. It was a beautiful Myrtle moment.) The trainer ignored my out of turn response and told the class that these words, the meanings to which they couldn't identify, were proof that words can't be learned outside of "the whole context". I didn't come there for a confrontation so I didn't say, "But I learned all those words from vocabulary lists and I learned to read Attic Greek by studying rules of how it's pronounced." Nope. I kept my mouth shut. The white-haired old lady nearly high-fived me.

Go read the whole thing and give her your condolences.

We're not all victims

Rosa Brooks said it, Kevin Drum agrees, and so do I.

We're not all victims

I hate to be callous, but the VT shootings had about as much effect on my life as these murders.

I feel for the families and I can't imagine how they must feel, but its their suffering, not ours.

I will go even further and state that 9/11 didn't effect my life, except of course for longer lines at the airport and that whole going to war thing.

I would much rather read about Alberto Gonzales in the hot seat, and the Reading First hearings.

Michael J. Petrilli on Reading First on National Review Online

Michael J. Petrilli on Reading First on National Review Online: "Hooked on Hysterics"

Sorry I lied in my last post. I got bored of studying and came across this article.

Someone a lot more qualified than me seems to echo several of my last few posts on Reading First

This circus was set in motion on the campaign trail seven years ago. That’s when Governor George W. Bush proposed a heavy-handed federal program, modeled on a similar — and notably successful — one in Texas, that would provide mucho dinero for reading instruction, but only for interventions that were scientifically proven to work.

(I said Reading First was a bribe)

and

Fast-forward to tomorrow’s hearing, featuring the Education Department’s inspector general, who spent much of 2006 producing reports purporting to show that federal officials steered Reading First grants to preferred programs — those with which they had “professional associations.” Not that he presented any evidence of financial shenanigans — merely that a handful of the expert panelists reviewing the state applications were partial to certain reading approaches (specifically, those that work).

Another witness will be Chris Doherty, the former administration official who directed the Reading First program until he was made to walk the plank on behalf of his superiors last fall. His response to these “allegations” might as well be “guilty as charged.” He and his colleagues did exactly what they were expected to do. Federal officials did prevent states from using certain programs, programs not based on scientific research, and advised them how to look for better ones, just as Congress intended. That was the whole point...

As I previously commented:

Some reading programs are good, some are bad.

Good reading programs have experts, bad reading programs have quacks.

Reading First hires experts.

Experts recommend good reading programs.

Schools improve using good reading programs.

Quacks get pissed, accuse experts of profiting.

Michael's main point though is that Democrats that supported Reading First are in a quandary. Pile on a program they supported to make political points, or stand by their convictions and Reading Firsts success.

Me... because I haven't anything else to say.

I am busy studying for a test (Senior NCO Professional Development), so I don't have time to post anything interesting (if I do at all), so here is a picture of me and my sister in Los Angeles, from about two years ago. I don't think I look like an education geek, but I am.

Reading First says In Your Face!

Reading First Paying Off, Education Dept. Says - washingtonpost.com

That's the irony," said John F. Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy. "The program was poorly -- even unethically -- administered at the federal level, yet it seems to be having a positive effect in schools.

...

A department official said the data show that the number of students in Reading First programs who were proficient on fluency tests increased on average over the past five years by 16 percent for first-graders, 14 percent for second-graders and 15 percent for third-graders. On comprehension tests, it increased 15 percent for first-graders, 6 percent for second-graders and 12 percent for third-graders. The official said the analysis is based on results from 16 states that have the most complete data.

I bet this upsets more than a few people.

Critics said the results were not so impressive, considering how much money has been spent on the program. They said the test scores are meaningless because they are not compared with the performance of other students, who nationwide are doing better in reading.

It would be nice to see these numbers, but I am willing to bet that a lot these other schools were influenced by Reading First.

Its also pretty ironic that the same people who would argue for more money to be poured into education on things like teachers pay, now decide to complain about the money. And just how expensive is the program?

According to the Reading First website, the program helps 1.7 million children. The annual budget for Reading First in 2006 was $1,029,234,000. By my calculation this works out to around $605 per kid per year. Obviously, this is way to much money to spend on low income children to teach them how to read.

The most disturbing thing though, is as far as I can tell, Reading First is nothing more than a bribe to use effective programs. What does it say that states just didn't adopt scientifically based programs by themselves?

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold - New York Times

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold - New York Times:

Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.

Shouldn't they rename it computer studies instead of computer science.

Next they will take the calculations out of math, oh wait... new math already does that.

TFA vs TTT

My highly scientific study inspired by Teaching in the 408:

Title: Troops for Teachers vs. Teach for America

Hypothesis: Patriotic salty military veterans make better teachers than young idealistic Ivy League graduates.

Method: Google (do I need to say anymore?)

Data:
Survey of TFA school principals by Kane, Parsons & Associates, 2005

Quality of Training

Three out of four principals (75 percent) rated Teach For America corps members' training as better than that of other beginning teachers.

Nearly all principals (95 percent) reported that corps members' training is at least as good as the training of other beginning teachers.

Impact on Student Achievement

Nearly three out of four principals (74 percent) considered the Teach For America teachers more effective than other beginning teachers with whom they've worked.

The majority of principals (63 percent) regarded Teach For America teachers as more effective than the overall teaching faculty, with respect to their impact on student achievement.

Supervisor Perceptions of the Quality of Troops to Teachers Program: Completers and Program Completer Perceptions of their Preparation to Teach: A National Survey

Principals overwhelmingly (over 90%) reported that Troops to Teachers are more effective in classroom instruction and classroom management/student discipline than are traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.
Principals stated (89.5%) that T3s have a positive impact on student achievement to a greater degree than do traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.
T3s strongly agreed or agreed that their preparation program equipped them to use research-based instructional practices associated with increased student achievement and effective classroom management behaviors.
School administrators overwhelmingly "strongly agreed" or "agreed" that Troops to Teachers exhibited research-based instructional behaviors to a greater degree than traditionally prepared teachers with comparable years of teaching experience.

Conclusion: While both groups of students do better than traditionally educated teachers, my hypothesis was confirmed. Extensive analysis shows that salty old veterans kick the ass edge out young college educated idealist in the classroom.

Seriously, I think a formal study would make for interesting reading. There are more military veterans than there are top college graduates who would be willing to make teaching a long term career. The military instills a sense of organization, problem solving skills, discipline, and stresses results. Of course it might just be that military veterans are a little bit older and more experienced.

Regardless, I fully support expanding both programs. Anything that increases the number of decent teachers willing to work in disadvantaged and low SES schools is a good thing.

Both sets of teachers bring a different perspective, and a different set of skills to the classroom. I don't think its a matter of the programs competing with each other, as much as complimenting each other.

*Note: This is an edited repost cleaned up for the Carnival of Education.

Textbook scandal summed up.

Multibillion dollar textbook scandal reaches Congress - USATODAY.com

Some reading programs are good, some are bad.

Good reading programs have experts, bad reading programs have quacks.

Reading First hires experts.

Experts recommend good reading programs.

Schools improve using good reading programs.

Quacks get pissed, accuse experts of profiting.

Scandal ensues.

Probable solution: Hire quacks, recommend bad reading programs, or combination of both.

Probable result: Schools get worse.

Every ones happy in the end. (Except of course for the kids who can't read)

Talk about no win situation.

I've been Immussed!

I sort of wish I was a little bit nicer on my post on TFA vs TTT. Joanne Jacobs picked it up and quoted my "snot nosed" remark. It sort of upset someone called R.J. Ohara, enough so that I think he banned me from his website. I could be wrong, but for some reason my i.p. address is banned from collegiateway.org.

At first I thought that maybe there was an error with the website, but when I visited though an anonymizer, the site works fine. I was also able to visit the site earlier while at work.

If I am banned, it would be bit of overkill though. Perhaps the military is different than civilian life. Good natured banter is pretty common, and using "snot nosed" to refer to younger people isn't exactly rare. Sometimes humor doesn't translate so well over the Internet.

Ironically, I am a big fan of programs like TFA and Ivy League schools. I wish I had buckled down during my high school days. My SAT's were good enough, but my grades pretty much sucked.

I just thought it was interesting that military veterans would do so well compared with the elite that TFA selects, especially since we all know that in the long run Ivy League graduates are going to make a lot more money than old Master Sergeants like myself.

Regardless, even if I am banned... I sort of like the idea of the collegiate way website. It advocates small residential colleges within Universities. I would imagine the small college atmosphere promotes student and teacher engagement and provides a cozy environment to learn in. Go check it out.

Post on the unmentionable

Unlike most people, I have nothing to say on today's events. Unfortunately, I have noticed a trend for copycats after traumatic events. Hopefully this doesn't happen again.

Troops to Teachers vs Teach for America

*Disclaimer: All ribbing was made in jest. I totally respect both the TFA program and Ivy League schools.

My highly scientific study inspired by Teaching in the 408:

Hypothesis: Patriotic salty military veterans make better teachers than snot nosed young idealistic Ivy League graduates.

Method: Google (do I need to say anymore?)

Data:

Survey of TFA school principals by Kane, Parsons & Associates, 2005

Quality of Training

Three out of four principals (75 percent) rated Teach For America corps members' training as better than that of other beginning teachers.

Nearly all principals (95 percent) reported that corps members' training is at least as good as the training of other beginning teachers.

Impact on Student Achievement

Nearly three out of four principals (74 percent) considered the Teach For America teachers more effective than other beginning teachers with whom they've worked.

The majority of principals (63 percent) regarded Teach For America teachers as more effective than the overall teaching faculty, with respect to their impact on student achievement.

Supervisor Perceptions of the Quality of Troops to Teachers Program: Completers and Program Completer Perceptions of their Preparation to Teach: A National Survey

Principals overwhelmingly (over 90%) reported that Troops to Teachers are more effective in classroom instruction and classroom management/student discipline than are traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.

Principals stated (89.5%) that T3s have a positive impact on student achievement to a greater degree than do traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.

T3s strongly agreed or agreed that their preparation program equipped them to use research-based instructional practices associated with increased student achievement and effective classroom management behaviors.

School administrators overwhelmingly "strongly agreed" or "agreed" that Troops to Teachers exhibited research-based instructional behaviors to a greater degree than traditionally prepared teachers with comparable years of teaching experience.

Conclusion: While both groups of students do better than traditionally educated teachers, my hypothesis was confirmed. Extensive analysis shows that salty old veterans kick young college educated punks idealist asses in the classroom.

Notes: I also suspect that Troops to Teachers could beat Teach for America in a street fight.

Seriously, I think a formal study would make for interesting reading. There are more military veterans than their are top tier college graduates who would be willing to make teaching a long term career.

On a related note, the Air Force has long had their own Community College of the Air Force which enables AF recruits to get an associates degree in their technical specialty.

The problem has been that much of the technical credits wouldn't transfer to four year universities requiring us enlisted to take a significant amount of extra classes to get our bachelors degree. Additionally, since us in the military tend to move pretty often (and go fight annoying little wars), we often have to transfer schools. The end result being that some of our previous traditional classes aren't applicable to the programs at the new location. Online programs are an option, but even they don't accept all of our credits.

This summer, the Air University is going to implement an Associates-to-Baccalaureate program in conjunction with several universities. The program would provide us with several degree programs in which 100% of our CCAF associates degree are transferable. This would mean that after earning our Associates degree, we would only have to complete 60 more credits to get our Bachelors degree. The programs will all be fully accredited, and be able to be completed at any location around the world.

It occurred to me that implementation of this program would significantly increased the number of military veterans retiring with Bachelors degrees which would then enable them to go on to get their teaching credentials.

I have already decided to go into education after I retire (duh...), but feel like I am swimming upstream trying to complete my bachelors degree. I have taken classes at over five different schools in the last 10 years, and though I am very careful with the classes I take, I realize several of them won't be needed for my final degree.

I have actually decided to take this summer off school, partly because I am moving to Alaska, but also to see which degrees and which schools are going to be part of this program.

Update: corrections made to prevent making people cry.

What do great middle schools have in common?

Unstuck in the Middle - washingtonpost.com

Jay Matthews picks the best middle schools of the Washington D.C. area.

With few exceptions, the schools are all in well to do neighborhoods with a small percentage of blacks and Hispanics.

Wouldn't it be a more interesting article, if it told us which middle schools in affluent neighborhoods aren't successful.

Of course the school with the highest percentage (99.9%) of blacks was the KIPP DC: Key Academy. They had an awesome 75% algebra completion rate... higher than most of the public affluent schools.

Reading, Writing & Frustration - washingtonpost.com

Reading, Writing & Frustration - washingtonpost.com

I suspect that a large percentage of so called dyslexia could be prevented by sound reading instruction. At the very least it could be diagnosed at an early age.

Back then, Sarah had a fondness for the book Put Me in the Zoo, not great literature but great fun to read when you're starting out on that voyage to literacy. She'd read the tale, about a funny, spotted leopard desperate for a home in the zoo, seemingly effortlessly, over and over again: "I would like to live this way. This is where I want to stay." At least, we thought she was reading it.

We soon discovered, when Sarah turned to other books, that she had been memorizing the words. Basic words such as "ball," "the" and "dog" baffled her. Sometimes she recognized words on one page but had no recall when she saw the words again a page later. At times, she reversed the order of words in sentences or skipped them entirely.

We brought up our concerns with her first-grade teacher. "You need to read to her more" was her response. But we were already reading heavily to Sarah. My husband and I are writers, and reading is a passion. We redoubled our efforts, recording the number of books on a log we kept on the kitchen table. Once a week, she took it to school, where the teacher put congratulatory stickers on it. By the end of the year, she'd hit 460 books.

Surely Sarah would pick up the ball and run with it, we thought. But while the other second-graders in her public school were sailing through The Magic School Bus and Amber Brown-- books with chapters, plots and complex thoughts -- Sarah was stuck with basic readers such as The Snowball.

"I saw a snowball on a hill," it read. "It rolled along and picked up Bill!"

She read haltingly, stumbling over the simplest words. She surprised and baffled us by doing well on spelling tests, until we realized she was once again memorizing. Gradually, it dawned on Sarah, too, that there was a problem.

Well duh...

The article goes on to blame all of her woes on dyslexia, a syndrome that affects "5 to 15 percent of schoolchildren with normal or above-average intelligence."

It seems to me that schools should address the other syndrome that affects far more children. The poor teaching syndrome, characterized by lack of effective reading instruction, a reliance on idealistic but flawed pedagogy, and an abundance of frustrated children and parents.

Welcome back to me and the "whole language" debate

I was in Florida for most of the last week so unfortunately, I missed commenting on the the "whole language" debate. This also explains my lack of posting. Some initial thoughts...

1. It was a debate that wasn't a debate.

2. Nancy seemed to confuse phonics with "DI". Two separate issues.

3. The comments were very educational and some great points were made.

4. Ken was way to nice... and Nancy didn't even approach giving a coherent argument... come on... case studies???

5. It was so cool that my blog got a mention, even if it was by the "enemy".

6. Nancy is more of a "whole language" idealist versus a "whole language" intellectual.

Education Research

TCRecord: Educational Researchby Robert McClintock

Consider now the harm. The vast quantity of educational research produced year in, year out, serves no real need or opportunity in the workaday world of schools, of their management, or of parenting. It does not arise to meet a felt demand from these quarters. It exists because the system of schooling requires many teachers and they require a professional preparation, which occurs primarily in academic institutions. In turn, those academic institutions need a faculty and they assess the ability to conduct and publish research as their primary criterion for deciding who to recruit, promote, and tenure as faculty members. The vast bulk of educational research will have no effect on anything except the process of recruitment, promotion, and tenure in schools of education. It exists for the sole reason that both individual researchers and the institutions that employ them consistently use the research for this purpose. (emphasis mine)

And this is the problem. So much of this bulk of education research is total bullshit. Inevitably, there will be studies to support just about any ideological stance possible. Research can be cherry picked to provide realistic looking justification for just about any reform possible. If a school district wants to implement reform math, they will simply present the local school board with a few studies showing that a particular fluffy textbook or constructivist pedagogy has positive effects.

Of the top of my head, the only successful widespread use of data I can think of is the Reading First program, which was based on analysis of data by the National Reading Panel. Other than that, most studies might as well be written on toilet paper.

Even the largest most expensive and expansive education study ever conducted, Project Follow Through, was ignored and relegated to the dustbin of history. Only us DI "crackpots" seem to have any memory of it.

The What Works Clearinghouse is certainly an important step in helping to sort through all the BS out there, but as we have seen with its recent review of Reading Recovery, it's not infallible.

I hate to say it, but what we need is another Project Follow Through, though this time we pray that the increase in media exposure and the advent of the Internet will prevent the same dishonest ignoring of data that happened in the 70's. It's possible right?

I give up

As you may know, I am quite frustrated with the way our local primary school is teaching my 1st grader how to read (as in, they aren't teaching her).

Two months ago, I went to the school and lobbied to get her in the after school tutoring program, hoping that it would help catch her up.

Tuesday, when I picked her up from tutoring I asked what she had learned. Here is what she told me.

"We learned how to look at pictures to figure out words."

Hopefully, all of her text books in the future have lots and lots of pictures. Does anyone know where I can get a comic book version of Charlotte's Web?

Eduflack on RR, RF, and WWC

Eduflack: Can Reading Recover?

Eduflack clarifies the reasons behinds the What Works Clearinghouse and Reading First programs views on Reading Recovery. He also covers the Reading First scandal.

The short story — these are three distinct programs with three distinct impacts on the improvement of our schools. Let's not lump them all together, in an attempt to use X to disprove Y and Z to call Y into question. These all serve a role, and they all can be a part of student success.

Hat Tip to Russo.