Chronicle of Higher Education

UPDATE: Blatant spelling mistake in title corrected after thorough embarrassment by anonymous commenter.

I love reading the Chronicle of Higher Education, but unfortunately they are a subscription based website, so you have to pay to read most articles.

Unless of course you use google.

For example, eduwonk linked to the article, The Latest Way to Discriminate Against Women
By RICHARD WHITMIRE

When you click on the link, you can read the first two or three paragraphs but have to be a member to read the rest.

Unless you can google for the phrase "The Lastest Way to Discriminate Against Women" , and click on the cached version of the article.

Pretty good for find for a boy huh.

And speaking of the article, which points out that women make up the majority of college students, you would think that there would be more boys doing everything they could to get into college... college women, seriously, whats not to love.

By the way, there are quite a few guys on my base who date girls from the local colleges here in South Carolina. I suppose the unbalanced ratio works out for guys in the military, as long as they are stationed by a college.

So here is a question

It appears that NCLB might be encouraging teachers to teach to the "bubble kids", the kids in the middle, the ones who need just a little effort to score proficient.

My question is this: economically where should our we concentrate our efforts in this country? Does it make more sense to concentrate on the brightest 1/3 of our students who arguably will contribute the most to innovation and development? Perhaps raising the middle 1/3 is the best answer, after all these are the ones who will form the vast bulk of our middle class. Does the cost of raising the achievement of the lower 1/3 outweigh the benefits? I know that ideally we would give all kids a superior education, but until the country moves to a value added system that take into account progress at all academic levels, any policy is going to result in the system targeting specific groups. Just a hypothetical question...

Update: Matt Johnson churns out a well reasoned argument for concentrating on the bottom 1/3. Go read his post for the full scoop.

I am going to play devils advocate and say that we should spend most of our energy on the middle 1/3. Like Matt, I agree that the top 1/3 will be OK anyway, but my argument is that $1 spent on the middle 1/3 will give more return than $1 spent on the bottom 1/3. Of course like Matt says, throwing money alone at a problem isn't going to solve anything, what we really need is pedagogy reform. (Disclaimer: I actually don't believe this, but that's why we call it being a devils advocate.)

Highly Qualified Students

It suddenly occurred to me while reading eduwonk, that all this effort on improving teacher quality is so inefficient.

What we need is highly qualified students!



By the way, go read the Education Intelligence Agency's (EIA) take on "bubble tests."

Any question on a fill-in-the-bubble test provides all the data necessary to come up with the correct answer. Students are then supplied with four or five possible responses. By their very nature, standardized tests inflate the scores of students on the low end of the scale. The only students who score lower than 20 percent on a fill-in-the-bubble test are victims of bad luck, since entirely random responses should raise you at least that high.

I would go even further. Since we all know that most multiple choice tests have at least two distractors that you can eliminate out of hand, most kids should score at least 50% on any test. When you consider that the students have been prepared for the tests, its a wonder than anyone fails.

Too Cool

From Tony via Darren at Right on the Left Coast



Easy Graphical Multiplication Trick - video powered by Metacafe

No, I still don't support Everyday Math.

School integration article actually argues for ability grouping

I was researching the "segregation" study in a previous post, and I came across this quote.

Study of reading development: “Segregated” schools hinder reading skills

“These findings support policies that promote comprehensive reading instruction, but indicate that just as much attention needs to be paid to ensuring that schools are integrated and to reducing classroom concentrations of children reading below grade level,” said Lynne Vernon-Feagans, the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood, Families and Literacy and Professor at the School of Education and co-author of the study.

Is it my imagination or does she seem to be arguing for ability grouping? School integration good, classroom integration bad?

By the way, there is very little recent research on ability grouping. There was a spat of it in the late 80's and early 90's, but very little recent research. I know that ability grouping is indirectly addressed in a lot of Direct Instruction and gifted education research, but as far as regular studies, it seems like Robert E. Slavin was the last researcher to seriously address it.

So very tired... w/ sciencedaily update

I am still alive... well at least I have a pulse. I am currently working 12 hour shifts, straight through the weekend due to an exercise. I am averaging 4 hours of sleep a night... and dragging.

Yet, I have still found time to bring you education related science briefs from sciencedaily.com.

In the no duh category

Curriculum Focused On Cognitive Skills May Improve Child Behavior

Children who were taught a curriculum that focused on self-control and awareness of their own and others’ emotions were found to exhibit greater social competence and fewer behavioral and emotional problems.

Kids who are taught how to behave, behave better... I might apply that to my parenting skills.

Children With Sleep Disorder Symptoms Are More Likely To Have Trouble Academically

According to the results, students with reported symptoms of sleep disorders received significantly worse grades than students without symptoms of sleep disorders. Specifically, there were differences in math, reading and writing grades.

and

Late Weekend Sleep Among Teens May Lead To Poor Academic Performance

Teenagers who stay up late on school nights and make up for it by sleeping late on weekends are more likely to perform poorly in the classroom.

So let me get this straight... being tired doesn't help you learn? Who would of guessed.

'Segregated' Schools Hinder Reading Skills

Children in families with low incomes, who attend schools where the minority population exceeds 75 percent of the student enrollment, under-perform in reading, even after accounting for the quality of the literacy instruction, literary experiences at home, gender, race and other variables, according to a new study.
...
The study also showed that the percentage of struggling readers in a classroom negatively influenced every student’s reading performance, erasing any benefits of comprehensive literacy instruction. Children attending kindergarten classrooms with higher percentages of students reading below grade level demonstrated constrained performance in reading at the end of kindergarten. The same was true for children in first grade.

Next thing you know we will find out that ability grouping might just work...

Science Daily did have one interesting articles though.

Cognitive Scores Vary As Much Within Test Takers As Between Age Groups Making Testing Less Valid

How precise are tests used to diagnose learning disability, progressive brain disease or impairment from head injury" Timothy Salthouse, PhD, a noted cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, has demonstrated that giving a test only once isn't enough to get a clear picture of someone's mental functioning. It appears that repeating tests over a short period may give a more accurate range of scores, improving diagnostic workups.

It struck me that many kids are sorted into gifted or not gifted after one single test. I imagine a few high ability kids get missed based on one unlucky test. Its also ironic, that we might actually need more testing, not less.

Well, that's it for now. Time for me to crash.

Calling him out...

Ok, who else is dying for Ken over at D-Edreckoning to start blogging again. Whether you agreed with him or not, he certain had some of the most thought provoking and well researched posts in the edublogosphere.

Ken if you are reading this, get off your lazy ass and post something.

Peace

Last Word

My absolutely last word on school integration (I hope). Why don't school districts just impliment a pure lottery system to school assignment? Everyone would have an absolutely equal chance of being screwed.

No Sympathy

Supreme Court - School Integration: What Will We Tell Our Children?:

Amid the lawyers, policymakers and pundits debating the implications of Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the Louisville and Seattle voluntary school integration plans, came the soulful plea of an African-American mother. Interviewed on National Public Radio, Mary Myers of Louisville explained how the ruling against her local officials’ efforts to racially balance their schools may well jeopardize her two children’s school assignments and educational opportunities. Ms. Myer’s children, ages 13 and 16, had benefited from the defeated desegregation plan because it had allowed them to attend racially diverse public schools outside of their community. Had they and their peers attended neighborhood schools, Ms. Myers noted, they would not have been exposed to people of different racial and cultural backgrounds and they would not be prepared for the incredibly diverse and global society they will soon inherit. When asked about her response to the decision, this 49-year-old mother sounded fed up: “Leave these children alone. Let them go to school together…. They have to go into the workforce and work together.”

If Ms. Myers is so concerned about exposure to diversity, then why does she live in a neighborhood that doesn't have any? Also how does sending her kids to the local suburban school prepare her kids for a "incredibly diverse and global society"? Do they have a lot more foreign kids in the suburbs? Maybe she should find a school or neighborhood with a large Hispanic population.

Arguments for race based school integration policies are a lot stronger if they concentrate on school inequities, instead of relying on straight "diversity" arguments, unless of course the community and parents have made a documented proactive concentrate effort to end neighborhood ethnic clustering. Then again, assigning people where to live based on race would be unconstitutional.

p.s. spare me any arguments about Ms. Myers not being able to afford to live anywhere else, I have been to Louisville and there are plenty of poor white neighborhoods.

Update: I want to be clear that I absolutely support integration efforts as long as they don't explicitly take into account an individual students race. Economic integration... love it, school choice... love it, magnet schools... give me more, but I would be beyond pissed off if I was told that my kid couldn't attend a school for no other reason than his race. Of course I consciously chose to live in a diverse neighborhood with integrated schools.

Weak NCLB Growth Models

There are many critics of NCLB. Some people complain that it causes states to lower standards, others complain that it's unrealistic, still others say that it lacks funding, while others complain that "tests" don't really measure learning and the whole premise is wrong.

To counter some of these arguments, several states have been approved to use so called growth model formulas, including my future home state of Alaska (45 days and counting). When I first heard of the concept, I was pretty excited, after all I figured that growth models would make it harder for school districts to ignore students who already meet the low expectations that is required of them.

I was wrong.

Alaska's growth model only uses growth if a student doesn't meet standards. In other words if little Johnny scores two grades below grade level, Alaska can still get credit for him passing as long as he is on target to pass the test within the next few years, or by 10th grade. 3rd graders and 10th graders must test on target.

So basically, there is still no incentive to improve performance of those already making the grade.

I need to find a state that sets their education target at ensuring all kids make AT LEAST one year of progress in one year of school.

Oh well, NCLB is a crappy law but it's less crappy than nothing. I am so pragmatic.

Questions on Diversity

Everyone is talking about diversity, ethnic vs socioeconomic, the supreme court ruling, and student achievement. I am going to chime in, in the new couple of days, but first I wanted to raise some questions that I haven't seen addressed.

1. Everyone acknowledges that diversity, whether by income or race, does raise achievement of targeted groups, but only if the targeted group is in the minority. Is the purpose of diversity efforts to expose students to another culture, or is it to supplant their current culture?

2. High achieving majority minority schools such as Achievement First and KIPP seem to impose a new school culture on students. Is this their way of eliminating the need for diversity, but just creating a middle class boot camp?

3. Is their a logical reason for white flight? Most diversity advocates say that middle class students academic achievement isn't hurt by diversity, but you never ever see numbers to back this up. Are white parents racist or looking out for their children?

4. Why do I get the feeling that the Supreme Courts decision won't really have any large scale effect on diversity efforts. Seattle doesn't even use their system any more, and its not like we read about x number of cities that are now going to have to change their policies.

I am still pondering these questions and more, but if you want to read some honest thoughts on the subject, go check out Teaching in the 408.

No Benefits of College Completion for African-Americans?

Ok, this is crazy. I was exploring the NAEP Data Explorer today and ran across a really unexpected statistic.

I know its hard to read, but the average scale score for blacks whose parents completed college is 246, compared to 251 for blacks whose parents have "some education after High School".

Yes I did check, and the difference is significant (at least according to the NAEP website).

I am at a total loss to even attempt to explain these results. Anyone have any guesses?

Update: I realized I didn't describe the results. Well this artifact shows up in 8th grade reading and math and holds true for Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians.

More on Economic Diversity

So I have been reading a lot about the benefits of economic integration lately, and I came across this chart from an article called Raleigh: a Model for Economic School Integration by Alan Gottlieb in the May 2002 issue of The Term Paper from the Piton Foundation.

Click for Larger Image

The whole issue of the Term Paper argues that economic integration is a benefit for everyone involved, this chart (on page 5) is used to document the improvement of subsidized students who attend majority middle class schools, but doesn't it also show that there is an even more significant penalty for middle class students who attend predominantly low SES schools?

iDiversity

Between the iphone and the latest Supreme Court ruling on school integration, I can hardly scan the Internet without puking.

The hysteria is mind boggling. You would think from some of the articles posted that the Supreme Court just reinstated slavery.

As far as I can tell its only the fugly awkward racial integration plans that are going to be effected. There are plenty of options still available including socioeconomic integration, a subject that is going to become a lot more popular in the coming months and year.

The Century Foundation prepared well and already has the first post-supreme court paper out on socioeconomic integration. It's only 24 hours after the decision and they already have a 78 page report out.

Rescuing Brown v. Board of Education: Profiles of Twelve School Districts Pursuing Socioeconomic School Integration

Some of the key points made:

A large body of research has long shown that concentrations of poverty—even more than concentrations of minority students—can impede academic achievement, and that providing all students with the chance to attend mixed-income schools can raise overall levels of achievement. Breaking up concentrations of poverty is not, as one judge suggested, a "clumsier proxy device"3 for obtaining a certain racial result; it is a powerful educational strategy for raising student achievement.

and

Are middle-class children hurt by attending economically mixed schools? The research suggests that sprinkling a few middle-class children into a school of highly concentrated poverty may hurt their academic achievement, but so long as a critical mass of the students are middle class (not eligible for free and reduced price lunch), middle-class student achievement does not decline with the presence of some low-income students. Studies find that integration is not a zero-sum game, in which gains for low-income students are offset by declines in middle-class achievement. This is true in part because the majority is what sets the tone in a school, and because research finds that middle-class children are less affected by school influences (for good or ill) than low-income children.

I am a bit uncomfortable with the naked condescension that postulates that poor and minority students always need to be kept as minorities to succeed. For one thing it means that integration in many heavily minority cities will be useless and harmful (at least to the the middle class kids that are integrated). Of course, it's obvious from cities like Washington D.C. that just throwing money at the problem won't work.

My prediction is that we will start to see more and more talk about merging suburban districts with city districts to water down the overall concentration of low SES students.

It's a complicated problem and one that doesn't have an easy answer.

Of course given the hype about the new iphone, how long will it be before someone advocates giving an iphone to every inner city student, with the argument that they can listen to podcasts of lectures and then call their teacher if they have a problem.

An argument against parent choice...

Much has been made about giving parents the opportunity to make choices for their children, often with the mantra that "parents know best", but in somethings I would beg to differ.

By all accounts my parents were ideal. My mom had a Bachelors Degree, My father graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a Masters Degree in math. They emigrated to New Zealand when I was baby, where my father got a job as a math teacher. Yet... they still made a conscious decision to dress me, my brother, and my sisters like this... and then take a picture to record it for posterity.


Of course by posting it on the internet, there is an argument to be made that I am an even bigger fool.

Hillary Won... (not that it matters)

In case anyone was wondering, Hillary pretty much won the Democratic Debate tonight. My thoughts and observations... at random.

Hillary was the only one to get a standing ovation for the answer to one of the questions.

That guy from Alaska is seriously wacko.

There was a lot more questions on education, and there were none on Iraq.

Biden was very articulate.

Obama was disappointing... he is to intellectual for the format and doesn't come across well during short soundbites.

Obama was the only one brave enough to actually mention the black communities responsibility to hold themselves partially accountable for certain social problems.

I had no idea that crack and powder cocaine crimes were sentenced differently.

There was no direct question about NCLB.

It was the fairest debate format so far, but the number of candidates limited response time.

I found myself disagreeing with the candidates stock answers to a lot of questions... surprising since even though I am fairly conservative these days, I still consider myself a Democrat.

Oh yes, it was a complete panderfest for the most part.

Disclaimer: my observation that Hillary won was based on observation, not on preference, and was based on an objective view of which candidate did the most to shore up support for their target audience. It does not mean that I think Hillary is the best candidate.

South Carolina: Managed by Idiots

South Carolina is run by idiots, of course that is no secret. We have a history of academic under performance and mismanagement, and here are two more examples.

The tuition and fees at Winthrop University, a good school, but not necessarily an academic powerhouse, has now been raised to $10,210 for an academic year.

It's fees are the now the highest in the state, higher than University of South Carolina and Clemson, though their fees are rising dramatically too.

In 1997, Winthrop’s annual tuition and required fees amounted to $3,818. Tuesday’s action means the cost of a Winthrop education has soared 167 percent in a decade.

For comparison, Clemson’s tuition was $3,112 annually in 1996-1997. If the Clemson board approves president James Barker’s recommendation for a 5 percent increase, that would mean Clemson’s tuition and fees have increased 217 percent in the same period.

We constantly hear about how a college education is super duper important, unless of course you want to be a nobody, yet our governments and the schools just keep raising tuition.

Of course it's always blamed on funding cut-backs, but I don't buy it for a second. It's supply and demand, with the demand perpetuated by the supplier.

Want more proof that the higher education system is more concerned about money and prestige, than they are about educating students?

In my local paper today, there was an article about the latest report on USC Sumter's bid for official status as a four year university.

The justification for why the Sumter can't sustain a four year college is because we are, well simply put, uneducated country bumpkins.

Of course perhaps access to a local college is what we need... teach us.

Oh wait, I forgot, teaching isn't what colleges are about... after all according the the report, Sumter's current teachers aren't worth a S*&#, because:

total faculty publications are at this time less than the output of a single professor at a typical research university

Yep, it's about time for me to move to Alaska. They are probably all screwed up, up there as well, but at least I can go fishing and skiing more often.

Education Gossip and Scandalous Videos

Well we all know that school consist of 75% gossip and 35% learning, so Alexander Russo points out that Sara Mead (formerly of The Quick and the Ed) and Matthew Yglesias are an item now, and are to be added to his list or education "power couples".

Since I am naturally nosey curious, I googled around and found a pretty scandalous video of Matthew interviewing Sara Mead. Who knew that neuroscience and education could be so sexy.

From the TFA Trenches: In Closing... (The Kids)

I read a lot of blogs quite cynically, but my favorite posts are almost always the soppiest.

I have to say I loved this post from the TFA Trenches blog, where he recounts the students that really effected him during the school year.

S--- is a tremendously shy Vietnamese boy, often ostracized by our enormously Latino majority. This year, however, he made not just one friend but two. After a semester slumped against a pole looking deeply morose, he can now be seen with his arm across the back of his friends, running and smiling.
...
T--- is an all-star. In class, he tracks me with almost unnerving focus. Sometimes I want the kid to be distracted so I can pick my nose.
...
M--- is a “newcomer,” this is her first year in the United States. As of next year, she is also identified as “gifted.” She participates tremendously in class and invalidates the very concept of a “language barrier.” Her writing shows an almost photographic memory of English sentence patterns.
...
L--- is a student I will deeply miss. I’ve known her for two years, as her older brother brought her to my after-school science classes last year. She is a rarity ----unsophisticated without being immature. Her sense of humor, childish of course, is still quite agreeable to me. She is one of few students with whom talking at length is not onerous.

This is only a sampling meant to tease you. Click on over and read it all, if it doesn't make you go awwwww then you have no heart.

'Men cleverer than women' claim

BBC NEWS UK Education 'Men cleverer than women' claim

I think this article is mis-named. Men might have a slightly higher IQ, on average, than women (note the "might"), but we certainly aren't "cleverer".

Clever is convincing men that the default position of the toliet seat is down.

As far as I am concerned I would gladly trade a few of my IQ points (and I don't have many), to be "more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work work."

Diane Ravitch Misguided Arugments against the Pay-the-Student Plan - Politics on The Huffington Post

Diane Ravitch: Bloomberg's Misguided Pay-the-Student Plan - Politics on The Huffington Post

Via Edwize, I just read Diane Ravitch's critique of NYC's pay the student plan.

She says:

From the point of view of schooling, this plan is wrong because it tells kids that they should study only if they get extrinsic rewards. Yet what educators are supposed to do is teach kids to have a love of learning, to encourage them to improve their lives by enlarging their knowledge of the world. If they are going to study only if someone pays them, what happens when the payment ends? What will motivate the kids who are not getting cash payments when their classmates are being paid off for higher scores? The plan destroys any hope of teaching the value of intrinsic motivation, or the rewards of deferred gratification, or the importance of self-discipline for a distant but valued goal.

Nowhere in the article does Diane Ravitch make the argument that the plan won't improve achievement, instead she complains that poor inner-city students should suck it up, ignore reality, and learn for the sake of learning.

I don't know if this program will work. All I care about is that if it does work, that it's more cost effective than any other plan to raise achievement by the same amount.

Diane's argument is petty, unrealistic, overly-idealistic, and represents whats wrong with our holier than though education system.

By her arguments since teaching is a truly valuable and critical profession, in fact it is a noble profession and a higher calling, perhaps we should all oppose any attempts to increase teachers pay, since increased pay devalues "the value of intrinsic motivation, or the rewards of deferred gratification, or the importance of self-discipline for a distant but valued goal."

Note: I actually like a lot of what Diane Ravitch says, but even I get it wrong sometimes.

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.