Alaska, termination dust, and more homework

Have I mentioned how awesome Alaska is? The people are unbelieveably friendly, not fake friendly like in the south, really seriously friendly.

Last week we got "termination dust" on the mountains. When you see snow settling on the peaks of the mountains, you know that that it will be snowing in the city within a few weeks. It is natures way of telling us that summer is over, and winter is here. (There isn't much of a fall)

We have managed to get a handle on the four kids homework.

We used to make the kids do it as soon as they got home from school, but because school starts and ends late here (930 - 330), we let the kids play until dinner, and then do their homework. It gives them and us a break after school and work to relax and unwind before dealing with the tears...

Our biggest problem is that one of our 4th graders teachers gives more homework than the other one. It causes a few problems, but we usually supplement the homework to mitigate the problems.

In other news, a guy from work brought in some smoked salmon today... OMG was it good. I am so taking up fishing next year.

To Rightwingprofessor: No moose BBQ yet, but we have a family of three moose hanging out in our backyard.

I swear once I get settled in more, I will have more sarky commentary. For now go read D-Edreckoning... he had attitude and facts.

Don't laugh... major breakthrough

I was helping my 2nd grader read her decodeable books this evening and all of the sudden I noticed the helping e rule of thumb for whether a vowel is going to be long or short, except for "v" words. (i.e. the "i" in hide is long and the "i" in hid is short, long "a" in made, short "a" in mad. I don't know if there is an official name for it)

I told my daugher the rule, then practiced it for a bit, and it was amazing how quickly her reading improved in a matter of minutes.

Instead of guessing long or short vowel sounds, now she can figure it out most of the time. I swear her reading speed improved by 50% within half an hour.

I am an extremely fluent reader, and this simple rule of thumb never occurred to me consciously until tonight. I had somehow internalized the rule without being aware of it. What I can't figure out is why her 1st grade teacher never pointed it out to her. Perhaps she would be reading on grade level.

I also pointed out that "v" words are weird and don't always follow this rule. i.e. "ive" words can be short or long, and ave words are almost always short.

Teaching kids how to read is hard. You would think someone would come up with a systematic way to teach all the phonetic sounds and letter combinations, instead of relying on a parent to stumble on them by accident.

My (I mean my sons) first progress report

I got my sons first weekly progress report today, and he was missing one assignment.

Last Friday, he gave me a copy of his weekly home journal, which I read then promptly forgot.

I guess I was meant to not only sign it, but also write back comments for him to turn in on Monday.

So he did the writing, but because his father mess up, he gets dinged with a missing assignment.

I didn't realize I would be graded this year.

I sure hope I am not required to do a science project...

Don't worry though, I already did my assignment this Friday. I signed my name in my best cursive, and wrote a three sentence paragraph. The paper is already back in my sons folder.

p.s. to be fair, we love Alaska, and the school is pretty well run (except the whole curriculum thing, but you can't have everything).

Spelling Sentences

I have nightmares about writing sentences for spelling words. Helping 2nd and 4th graders write 15 - 25 (correct) sentences is tedius.

Why can't teachers split the sentences up through out the week... it aint rocket science.

Posted during hour 2 of 15 2nd grade sentences.

St. Paul school conquers the education achievement gap

St. Paul school conquers the education achievement gap

Great title for an article, except of course it isn't true. While the schools test scores are excellent for all demographic groups, there is still a significant achievement gap.

Approximately 90% of the schools white students are proficient in reading (according to the Minnesota state test), while 65% of its black students are proficient and only about 40% of its Native American students are proficient.

It has managed to eliminate the gap between Hispanic and white students.

Don't believe me? Check for yourself.

Do newspapers fact check education stories at all?

Homework... it's back! (and still sucks)

The kids (and schools) have hit the ground running. It's homework time again, and Aurora Elementary School on Elmendorf AFB, Alaska is no different than any other school in South Carolina (or any state for that matter).

4 school age kids = 3.5 hours of homework, of course the ironic thing is that it takes my 7th grader the least amount of time to do her homework.

Today only 3 out of 4 kids cried.

Frickin waste of time if you ask me. I guarantee, that except for learning their spelling words and about 15 minutes of reading, the rest of the stuff didn't increase my kids competence at all.

To any teachers out there, please remember that homework probably takes at least twice as long and causes at least three times the amount of stress at home than you think it does.

Rory

President of Parents United Against Useless Homework.

Still Alive...

- Moved in to new house (unpacking sucks)

- Kids all enrolled in school (Heath math, not Everyday math... yeah!)

- Attended two school open houses (bla, bla, bla... teachers need to learn to get to the point)

I am back online, but wont have time to post to much until later next week.

Mackenzie, BC, Canada

We are making great time, and are about 250 miles ahead of schedule. I am posting from Mackenzie, Canada, a little sleepy town in northern British Columbia.

You wouldn't believe how beautiful it is up here. Rivers, lakes, mountains, and trees, British Columbia has it all.

Tomorrow we will hit the Alaskan Highway, and head to Fort Nelson.

Here is a link to our updated map.

Another trip change!

We have decided to skip waiting for the Ferry and just drive to anchorage. We are anxious to get there, and we don't have to wait.

We figure we can do the trip in 7 days.

Link to our route.

When loving parents choose segregation - Opinion - USATODAY.com

When loving parents choose segregation - Opinion - USATODAY.com:

But a well-documented and powerful educational phenomenon known as the 'peer effect' comes into play. Simply put, Johnny stands a much better chance of academic success in a school filled with privileged kids whose parents value education and push them to excel. The likelihood of Johnny achieving at high levels plummets if you put him in a school where most students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and don't get enough encouragement and support from home. Even in the unlikely event that the two schools are exactly the same in every other way — including teacher quality — Johnny probably will fare much better where he is surrounded by affluent students. Will sending Johnny to school with disadvantaged kids make him a better person? Maybe. Will it make him a better student? Almost certainly not.

Save me some google time... does anyone have any links to studies documenting the "peer effect"? Specifically, do middle class kids do better when they are sent to upper class schools?

update: hat tip to Joanne

Disneyland (and USC)

So we took the four oldest kids to Disney yesterday, so there went $1,000K. It is so much more expensive than I remember it... then again it was my parents who were paying when I was a kid. What is it about amusement parks, airports, and sports stadiums that cause hyperinflation? Does it really cost 2 or 3 dollars more to prepare a hamburger at Disney than a mile away at the local fast food joint?

I saw approximately 127.5 people wearing USC Trojan shirts and hats, and only one person wearing a UCLA shirt (and I think he was a tourist).

Fight On!

housing bubble related to education

It occurred to me that education funding could be significantly impacted by a housing market crash, since as property values go down, so would property taxes which are a significant source of school district funding.

I imagine that this would hit inner city urban neighborhoods a lot more than wealthy suburban neighborhoods.

Here in SoCal, small one bedroom houses in Compton and East LA have been going for half a mil. There true value is probably somewhere around 100K.

Disclaimer: OK, compton houses might not have quite gone for 500K, but they were fetching 400K for pretty damm small houses, but for an example of what I was talking about see...

Real Homes of Genius

Off topic... housing bubble

We are enjoying our impromptu vacation here in Southern California, so much so that we have discussed moving back here after I retire. The only problem though is the outrageous price of real estate here in the bloated California market.

I am not that worried though. I have spent the last few days reading extensively on the housing market, and I am convinced that our country is going to have a massive real estate crash, even worse than the 90's. My prediction is that in 4 to 5 years, I should be able to pick up a decent house here for under $300K.

You only have to look around here at people earning maybe 80K - 90K a year living in million dollar homes, to know that they are overextended. Sub-prime loans are coming due, foreclosures are at record levels, housing starts are down, and the housing inventory is increasing.

Don't expect a soft landing... it is going to be harsh, and will probably put us into a deep recession.

Perhaps the most telling thing is seeing people paying for million dollar homes and then driving around in Saturn's and other mid-range vehicles. Something is obviously not jiving.

The only question is how low and how long. My prediction... 25% nationally, 40-50% in bubble markets, and for prices not to stabilize until 2011.

Just saying...

"achievement gap" - Google News

Search the term "achievement gap" on Google News any day of the year, and it will amaze you the number of dumb repetive articles that are posted around the country and the world.

The articles usually go something like this... (paraphrased)

Recent test results continue to show an achievement gap between whites and (select any other racial category except for Asian).

[Optional comment about slight improvement in test scores and reduction on gap, though its never a significant amount.]

>insert quote from education official saying that the closing the achievement gap is their number one priority<>

>insert quote from sociologist or educator who attribute the causes of the gap to (choose one: racism, school funding, crime, distribution of highly qualified teachers, expectations) to ensure that no one even considers IQ<

Education officials have recently started a new program/initiative to address (problem selected above).

Officials are optimistic because they have second hand knowledge of some school has made progress, even though there are rarely any facts to back up the assertion.

Seriously! Check out a few articles. It's almost like there is a fill in the blank template.

How much do you want to bet that the same template will still be being used 20 years from now?

Just for fun, here are the number of results for various google news searches.

• 83 for ("achievement gap" poverty)
• 60 for ("achievement gap" expectations)
• 55 for ("achievement gap" school funding)
• 27 for ("achievement gap" teacher quality)
• 5 for ("achievement gap" intelligence)
• Your search - ("achievement gap" IQ) - did not match any documents

Crap...

Tuesday night, while in Moab, UT on my way to Bellingham, Wa, I got an email from the Alaskan Marine Highway telling me my Ferry was canceled. My choices were to either drive to Alaska or wait 2 weeks for the next ferry. Unfortunately, we couldn't drive because all of our kids birth certificates had been sent away when we had ordered passports, and they weren't back yet.

Of course this presents two problems, what to do with the extra 14 days, and what to do about the kids school, since they won't arrive til 2 weeks after school starts.

We decided to head to my hometown of Los Angeles to visit family. We also decided not to worry about the school, since the first two weeks of school are usually nothing but review anyway, and as I have said before, the Alaska standards aren't as tough as South Carolina's anyway.

Just to be safe, we ordered copies of all the required birth certificates, just in case the next ferry is cancelled as well.

So it's LA Baby... beaches, Mexican food, and traffic!

p.s. Here is an upated route. Note the visit to the four corners, and the long detour to Los Angeles. If I am forced to drive to Alaska later, I will update the map. (click the map for interactive version)

We are right...

here

We get to Albuquerque, NM and everyone apologizes for the heat. When we left South Carolina, it was as hot as 111 degrees with loads of humidity. A dry 95 feels like a spring day to us.

My grandparents are both ex-educators... and of course we started talking about education. They are both fans of multiple learning methods, multiplication fact tricks (skip counting, finger tricks, etc...), and mo money. It was a nice little discussion, and my Grandpa might hit up my blog (Hey Gramps).

Tomorrow we head north towards Salt Lake City and Boise. It should be a much prettier drive, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are pretty flat.

Our trip...

Just in case you are wondering... here is the continental part of our trip to Alaska.

Click for an interactive link.

Let me know if you are on our route.

School of the Future's first casualty...

How did I miss this from the Philadephia Inquirer?

Also in line for new leadership will be the district's flagship High School of the Future, which saw the surprise resignation of its principal. Shirley Grover, hired by the district in 2005, left for personal reasons this month, officials said.

There was also a single update to the School of the Future blog.

So where are we? Well, no matter where we go I get asked the same question. I find it very indicative of where we are as a country in our analysis of education… “What are the test scores showing” Well… while the learners will be responsible for taking the PSAA’s in their 3rd year, they are not taking the 6 week bench mark tests. So, from an assessment perspective? Each learner has a 17 page OneNote Assessment Portfolio. It documents and measures their work and competencies against a rubric. (Below)

Pretty convenient to not have to worry about benchmark tests. You can click over to read their whole child rubric if you want.

Perhaps the most interesting this is the way Mary Cullinane goes off about the system.

So what have been the biggest challenges?
Well… the system. And I’m sure this comes as no surprise. And I don’t want to suggest that people have not been supportive. They have. However the system prevents them from going to the edge. The system prevents us from being creative. The system supports the status quo, not innovation. The system gets in our way. The system is frustrating.(sic)

Hopefully she isn't complaining about the part of the system that insists the students learn how to read, write, and perform math without relying on computers.

For some real entertainment, read a commenter's rant about the "others."

And then there were The Others. I won't dwell on them, but I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of what and whom I'm talking about. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you had to deal with them while all of this was coming to fruition. I'll bet you could write an entire book just about these people, and your dealings with them. In a perfect world, people such as these would be relegated to the dustbin. But in our real world, this does not necessarily happen. Pity.

No matter what the project, whether in Philly, Boston, or Timbuktu - there are always The Others. And there will always be The Others. They are a given in this world. These are the people who withhold their cooperation for various stupid reasons. These are the naysayers - but you know this because you've experienced it all first-hand, though you may be too diplomatic and too nice to admit it.

It's like a conspiracy theory. Pretty dramatic stuff.

Also see this video news report on the SOF. Make sure you view the end where a professor from Temple University questions the practicality of the SOF.

On the road...

Sorry about the light blogging. I have spent the last week moving out of my house, and we are now living in a hotel. On Friday we hitting the road for our 13 day drive to Alaska via the Alaskan Ferry.

Unfortunately this means I haven't had time to follow the latest education news, meaning that my usually sarky comments are on a brief hiatus.

Be patient, and you will be able to follow my trials and tribulations in our new school district. I wonder how long it will be before I upset someone at the school?

CUNY Plans to Raise Its Admissions Standards - New York Times

CUNY Plans to Raise Its Admissions Standards - New York Times

The City University of New York is beginning a drive to raise admissions requirements at its senior colleges, its first broad revision since its trustees voted to bar students needing remedial instruction from its bachelor’s degree programs nine years ago.

In 2008, freshmen will have to show math SAT scores 20 to 30 points higher than they do now to enter the university’s top-tier colleges — Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens — and its six other senior colleges.

...

Dr. Goldstein said that the English requirements for the senior colleges would be raised as well, but that the math cutoff would be raised first because that was where the students were “so woefully unprepared.”

In the fall of 2005, for example, more than 40 percent of students in introductory math courses — pre-calculus, college algebra and calculus — either failed or dropped out of the classes, numbers typical of many universities nationwide.

[emphasis mine]

Discuss.

Something smells fishy in Baltimore...

How schools get it right By Liz Bowie Sun Reporter

Tucked amid a block of rowhouses around the corner from Camden Yards is an elementary school with a statistical profile that often spells academic trouble: 76 percent of the students are poor, and 95 percent are minorities.

But George Washington Elementary has more academic whizzes than most of the schools in Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll and Baltimore counties.

These students don't just pass the Maryland School Assessment - they ace it. About 46.2 percent of George Washington students are scoring at the advanced level, representing nearly half of the school's 94 percent pass rate.

I love a success story as much as the next person, but somethings are almost too good to be true. I could understand George Washington excelling if their scores had gone up incrementally over the years, but according to greatschools.net their amazing performance has happened suddenly over the last two years.

In 2004, only 46% of their 3rd graders scored proficient in reading, in 2005 it jumped up to 76%, and in 2006 an amazing 96% of their kids pass the MSA.

The 3rd grade cohort from 2004 jumped up to 87% in 2005, and to 97% in 2006. This is amazing progress.

The same pattern in repeated in every grade.

Now according to the Baltimore Sun article, George Washington Elementary uses the same curriculum as the rest of the city and doesn't have a high level of parental involvement. They do have a homework club for an hour a day after school and have a 3 week summer program.

So I wonder what the secret of their improvement was... is their homework club and summer program that great, did they suddenly replace all their average teachers with superstars, or did the same teachers spontaneously improve their performance.

George Washington teacher Tracy Larkins says teachers at her school have been given a degree of autonomy. When staff members go to the principal with a new idea, they usually will be allowed to try it out, she said.

You have to wonder if one of the ideas wasn't to give the kids the answers to the test.

hat tip to This Week in Education

Disclaimer: If the school really is a miracle worker, I will profusely apologize and become their biggest advocate, but the scores certainly do warrant investigation. Who knows, perhaps we can can their magic and pass it around to the rest of the education establishment.

Republicans for Hillary???

"Can She Be Stopped" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
In your book, JPod, you argue Rudy can do it. I have my doubts tonight any Republican can, all circumstances being basically what they are today. What say you?
07/23 10:10 PM

Obama's Astonishing Moment [Byron York]
Sen. Barack Obama, the candidate who once neglected to mention that he would counterattack if al Qaeda destroyed two U.S. cities, tonight pledged to meet, one-on-one, in his first year as president, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashir Assad, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong Il.Sen. Hillary Clinton refused to make such a pledge. "I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year," she said. "I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes."
07/23 09:00 PM

Hillary [John Podhoretz]
I don't like her. I wrote an entire book on how to stop her. But in these debates, there's Hillary in the lead...and then there's everybody else.
07/23 08:58 PM

There's Really No Question [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Hillary is the nominee. She won't talk to Ahmadinejad and Assad? That puts her way Right of our Speaker of the House.If I had to vote for a Democrat, I know who it would be.
07/23 08:10 PM

I've always thought it was pretty ironic that the perception of Hillary has been of a super left-wing liberal, when in reality, she is the most centrist of all the Democratic candidates.

Now if only she would get on the right side of education reform...

Anchorage School District Middle School Math Textbook Adoption

According to their website, the Anchorage School District has adopted MathScape as their 6-8 grade math text book.

Of course there was never any doubt about whether they were going to adopt "reform" math. The four choices they had to decide upon were, Connected Math, Math in Context, MathScape, and Math Thematics. I suppose it was just a matter of figuring out which one was the fuzziest.

According to the School District memorandum, here are some of the strengths of the program (emphasis mine)

Student:
The program provides the following for the needs/rights of students:
• know the purpose of learning, including objectives, standards, goals, criteria and evaluation rubrics
• choose from a variety of strategies to explore, solve, and communicate math concepts
• engagement through a variety of activities, which may include independent projects, cooperative learning, manipulatives, technology, collaborative work, etc.
• feel connected and free to take risks
• a belief that math can be learned
• opportunities for self-monitoring and self-reflection
• make connections to real life applications
• support at individual learning levels

Teacher:
• Teacher makes meaningful connections between math and real-life.
• Teacher has high expectations for success and achievement for all students.
• Teacher uses a variety of instructional and assessment strategies (differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, exploration & learning extensions, use of manipulatives and technology, and other best teaching practices).
• Teacher clearly states classroom expectations, and content and language objectives. • Teacher provides time for student reflection & meta-cognition.
• Teacher communicates with and is available to parents and students.
• Teacher receives appropriate and ongoing professional development & training (knowledgeable of pedagogy, content, and vertical alignment of curriculum).
• Teacher is provided adequate time and opportunity for grade-level and vertical collegial collaboration and support.

You notice there is nothing about fluency, mastery, clear examples, computation, standard algorithms, etc...

What do you expect from a school district that uses Everyday Mathematics?

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.