Hi, everyone. I won't have much time to blog over the next few days, but for your amusement (for the one or two of you who are addicted to N2P), here you go...
Photos!
Enjoy.
I'll post more later...
A view of the Chia Laguna resort
Local flora and fauna from the Italian resort in Chia
The beautiful ironwork on windows at the resort
Apartments built on ruins (what we Americans travel to Europe to see)
Flowers and statues on a wall surrounding a house in Cagliari
An ancient balcony with new plants, in Cagliari
Clear water and pink toes in the Mediterranean
Me, in the graveyard behind our house
My cat, watching me blog, bored
Me, working on the blog before a show (that explains the black sequins)
...Real life is (unfortunately) getting in the way. I'll try to update N2P tomorrow, but otherwise it'll be quiet around here until next Tuesday.
A group of British teachers have come up with the solution to enforcing classroom disclipline - webcams! If you're like me, your first reaction to this is, "What the --?", followed by a brief moment of wondering how all those teachers in the 1940's and '50's managed kids without the benefits of the Internet. But let's see what the webcam proponents have to say:
Cameras linked to the internet should be installed in every classroom so parents can see whether their children are misbehaving in school. Teachers who unveiled the plan today said they believed it could be the key to improving discipline, and involving parents in their children's education.
But critics say images downloaded from the cameras could be accessed by paedophiles...
The "webcam" call came today at the annual conference of the Professional Association of Teachers in Harrogate from Essex teacher Simon Smith...Webcams have already been introduced in a small number of nurseries...
[Smith] said: "Bad behaviour in class is a big issue throughout the school system, but teachers have to handle it on their own. If pupils knew their parents could see how they were behaving then they would think twice about disrupting classes."
Indeed, pedophiles could get ahold of these images. Sure, passwords could protect the system, but no system is perfect, and who's going to install and monitor this system? How many professionals are they going to hire for security?
And - leaving aside the ghoulish image of having your kid's classroom behavior beamed across pedophelia sites - who on earth thinks this is viable idea? Do teachers really think that parents have the time to monitor their kid's behavior during the school day? Isn't that the teacher's job (despite Mr. Smith's complaint that teachers have to go it alone)? And doesn't this mean that each child's behavior is visible not only to their parents, but to everyone else's parents as well?
What is the parent supposed to do if they see something they don't like? Drop everything and rush down to the school? What if they see the teacher doing something objectionable, or another kid? Do teachers really want to open themselves up to the possibility of constant observation?
Mr. Smith has apparently convinced himself that the following scenarios are feasible:
(1) Parents will log on regularly, observe only their own child's behavior, and take appropriate action at home.
(2) Parents will not react to odd behavior by teachers or other kids, and will have no problem with their own kid's images being available to other parents.
(3) Kids who have severe disciplinary problems will calm down immediately if they believe their parents will be watching, even though the webcam idea makes it obvious that the teachers feel they can not, or should not, control kids without outside input.
Each of these scenarios seems ludicrous to me.
Webcams in nurseries is one thing - it's not surprising that parents who place their kids in day care want to have instant access, given the inability of infants to care for themselves, the horror stories you hear about unqualified daycare workers, and the general kitchy-kitchy-kooeyness that parents of such young kids have. It's easy to imagine them logging on constantly to check on, and admire, their tiny little Ians and Emmas.
However, by the time the kids are 5 and 6, the parents are probably comfortable with abdicating enough responsibility to allow the kids to go off to school, and the parents rightfully expect that, during the day, the school officials will handle disciplinary problems, notifying the parents only when necessary. This webcam idea puts the burden back on parents to be aware of what their kids are doing 'round the clock, and leaves the door open for schools to avoid the responsibility for imposing standards and discipline altogether.
Will Michigan's students be better equipped to perform in the digital age if the schools give them laptop computers? Brian Carpenter of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy doesn't think so - and he's happy to tell you why:
The Michigan Legislature’s plan to equip every public school sixth-grader with a laptop computer — at an initial cost of $39.3 million — is based on dubious premises about technology and education reform...it will be another expensive but spectacular failure to improve the public school system.
House Speaker Rick Johnson...and other legislators hope to engage kids in learning at an age when many are starting to disengage from traditional methods of instruction. Since kids use Xbox and Game Boy at home — the thinking goes — why not equip them with technology at school? Proponents point out that we are living in "the digital age"and that children will be better educated for the job market if we give them more access to technology at school...
The idea that equipping kids with laptops will somehow inspire them to become more engaged in school work has little basis in sound research. Michigan sixth-graders who can’t read at grade level (about two-thirds of them, based on various standardized test data) need instruction in reading, not in surfing the Internet or creating PowerPoint presentations.
Mr. Carpenter's answer to the problems is not digital flexibility, but school flexibility - more school choice that would hold schools accountable for education, rather than allowing them to fritter away money giving laptops to kids who can't read yet.
Do kids with web access and tutoring become better readers? One study suggests so - but that's a far cry from deciding that providing kids with taxpayer-funded laptops will magically solve all their reading problems.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune has quite a different viewpoint about those infamous SAT analogy items than does the LA Times:
...the College Board's decision to drop the analogy section from the verbal portion of the test is to explicable as Adam Sandler is to tolerable.
Knowing the meanings of individual words is a useful skill, and so is being able to grapple with the relationships among different words. Because college professors routinely use analogies while teaching, and textbook authors use them in writing, it's certainly reasonable to include them in the SAT...
Of course, the loudest criticism of the analogy section came from people who don't like standardized testing at all. These opponents argue that the SAT is unfair to students from poor backgrounds and those whose first language isn't English.
Test makers should of course take pains to eliminate regional and cultural biases from the SAT and other standardized tests. But it's not at all clear that those differences won't show up in the new sections of the test -- or that it's the College Board's fault if they do...
With this last statement, the article sneaks up on the important acknowledgement that group score differences are not necessarily indicators of test bias, althought it would have been nicer if the writer had made that explicit. The LA Times writer, on the other hand, seemed pretty sure that it is the College Board's fault if there are group differences, as was evident by the writer's willingness to give plenty of ink to test critics who use the word "bias" loosely and incorrectly.
The Chambersburg (PA) Area School District has a six-week "Summer Reading Academy" program planned for some of its youngsters who are moving from elementary school to middle school, or middle school to high school. Sounds commendable, but the article raised a few questions in my mind...
Going from elementary school to middle school is both an academic leap and a cultural rite of passage, one that about three dozen students in the Chambersburg Area School District are spending six weeks preparing for this summer.
Only about 36 students are participating? How were they chosen? Best performers? Worst performers? Lottery winners? The article mentions that some of the students have "special needs" but some just needed "extra help." I'd like a bit more information about how the school chose this group, because I think that information is necessary to judge if the program is effective or well-run.
Students circulate between groups at Chambersburg Area Middle School, working on transition skills, comprehension and writing and the reading academy, [program coordinator Anne] Corwell said. "We're giving them some tips on how to do well at their new school," Corwell said of the transition sessions. A big part of that, especially for those entering the middle school, is getting used to going from one class to another through the day, along with study skills and organizing assignments, she said.
Oh, so by transition skills they don't mean learning to use transitional phrases. They mean learning to get up from one class and go to another. A useful skill, that, but hardly one that should be taught in a "reading academy."
In the reading academy, Corwell said some students are "re-taught phonics strategies," getting down to the basics of what sounds vowels, consonants and combinations of letters produce.
Wait, I thought that the youngest kids in this academy are on the verge of being promoted into middle school. Why are they having to be taught "the basics" of the sounds produced by vowels and consonants? How did they ever get through elementary school? If they were taught phonically before, why do they need to be re-taught it? Shouldn't the school officials be asking themselves why there are 36 kids preparing to enter fifth/sixth grade who don't already know these basics?
"You've got to keep the rhythm to it. You have to get faster to pass it," said Kayla Rotz, 13, as she went through a computer exercise on word recognition. A short while later, having maintained the same rate on the test three times, the computer allowed Rotz to print out a certificate attesting she was ready to move on to the next level.
Was Kayla ever tested on her comprehension of what she was reading? Was she ever given a real book to work with? Recognizing words is one thing; being able to use them is another. And what level words are we talking about? Is the school using computer technology to teach 13-year-olds to read words like "cat" more quickly? If so, then I'm not really impressed. I think a kid who can pick up a book and understand it, digest it, at a moderate-to-slow rate of speed is better off than a kid who has instant recognition of a word but may not be able to define it or use it in a sentence.
I don't mean to be too hard on writer Don Aines; this is obviously a puff piece on an all-volunteer summer academy, and I agree that the volunteer teachers should be commended for offering their time and services. It's just that there are deeper questions that can be asked about a program about this, not least of which are (1) why the program is necessary, and (2) whether or not it's effective.
Contrast that article with this one, which describes a summer school program in Stamford, CT. In this case, we're told how kids were selected, how they'll be taught, and how the program will be assessed for its effectiveness:
Summer school, in its fourth and final week, is heavily focused on literacy. Many participants are chosen because of their performance on standardized tests...Mara Siladi, the Board of Education's director for intervention and community outreach programs, called the three-hour daily sessions a "short-term remediation" that many students need...
"The aim is to provide students not with four more weeks of what didn't work well during the school year, but to give them something different," [Board of Education member Martin Levine] said...
Many of last year's summer school students performed better on standardized tests, according to a Stamford Public Schools analysis. Kindergartners improved their skills on all sections of a language readiness test after summer instruction. Nearly 55 percent of first- and second-graders scored better on the Developmental Reading Assessment test, which measures the level at which a student can read with accuracy and comprehension.
Nearly 55 percent of students in grades 2 through 5 and more than half of sixth- and seventh-graders improved on the Reading Comprehensions Test.
With this information, parents are better able to assess whether the summer instruction works, and can tell what the instruction is being focused on. Even though the PA summer "academy" mentioned above seems to be more informal than the CT summer school, I still think that the questions of method and assessment are still relevant in both cases.
I've updated my permalinks to include more edubloggers, including the Catholic School Blogger, Brian's Education Blog (from England), and the beautifully-named Our Horrible Children, which focuses on the idiocy of zero-tolerance policies.
This last blog is chock-full of inane decisions by school officials, including suspending a kid for having red eyes, kicking kids out for possessing prop weapons for class plays, and booting a kid out for three days over a "You Might Be a Redneck If..." t-shirt. Sheesh.
Both Brian and JP of Catholic School Blogger posted about famed teacher Jaime Escalante earlier this month. They're reacting to an earlier posting of Escalante's trials and successes, which were somewhat enhanced for dramatic effect in the movie Stand and Deliver. Rest assured, though, the article is sympathetic to Escalante's teaching efforts, and places the blame for the subsequent decline of the AP Calculus at Garfield High School on the administrators, not the teachers.
I bring this up because what I remember about this movie, not surprisingly, is how ETS was presented in such a bad light. If I remember correctly, the men who arrived to retest Escalante's students were literally "men in black" - ominous-looking creatures who were obviously being unfair. The movie tries to convince the audience that the only reason these kids were being retested is because ETS is an evil, racist entity that assumes Hispanic kids can't do calculus. As is almost always the case with Hollywood, what makes for good drama isn't always close to the truth.
ETS had valid reasons for retesting the kids, but unfortunately I can't reveal those reasons here. Ultimately, ETS was proved incorrect, which is what really matters for the story - but it's amusing to me to see such nefarious depictions of testing company representatives go unchallenged...
Two recent news stories have revealed some disturbingly racist and segregationist ideas floating around in public K-12 education.
First off, a rumor spread through Oberlin (OH) High School that a white teacher might be appointed to teach the African-American studies class. The reaction to this (apparently unfounded) rumor is the disturbing part:
Schools and community leaders in the Cleveland area are split over the issue of whether blacks should be the only ones to teach black history. In Cleveland, white and black teachers teach black history. A black teacher teaches black history at Shaker Heights High School, but a white teacher handles classes on oppression and human relations. Both classes deal extensively with race relations and slavery...
Phyllis Yarber Hogan, a member of the Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, said a white teacher wouldn't be well-suited to teaching students about subjects like slavery.
''When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault,'' she said. ''Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved. How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?''
Am I to understand that the assumption is that any white teacher would teach black kids that slavery was their fault? Any teacher, white or black, who wanted to present the full picture of slavery would have to teach about the black leaders who sold slaves to white traders, but this isn't the same thing as telling kids today that slavery was "their fault." How many of them really believe that, anyway?
It seems to me that this sort of opposition to white teachers is in fact an attempt to teach black children that they should continue to hold all white people responsible for slavery, and they should assume that all white people are the "type of person" capable of enslaving others. If this is the case, the class doesn't fall under "education," as far as I'm concerned.
(John Hawkins of RightWingNews has more, but his page is temporarily down.)
A new public high school in New York City goes one step further in assuming that kids should be surrounded only by their own "kind" - Harvey Milk High School is exclusively for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. The school recently spent $3 million dollars on renovations, which has some politicians steamed:
State Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long blasted the school as "social engineering" that wastes tax dollars.
"Is there a different way to teach homosexuals? Is there gay math? This is wrong. This makes absolutely no sense," Long said. "There's no reason these children should be treated separately."
Long said there are city and state discrimination laws on the books and that authorities should enforce them to stop gay-bashing. "What next? Maybe we should have schools for chubby kids who get picked on. Maybe all kids who wear glasses should have special schools. It's ridiculous," he said.
What burns Long most is the $3 million spent on renovations. "Maybe this is one of the reasons the city has no money," he said.
Jay Nordlinger covers both of these stories for National Review. He points out the obvious racism in the Oberlin flap:
If you say a white teacher can't teach "black history," you must say that a black teacher can't teach "white history." (Why should we have "black history" and "white history" anyway? When it comes to the United States, black people are as much a part of the story as cherry trees, Westward expansion, D-Day, and everything else.) When you say that black children must have "black role models," because white ones won't do, you must say, at the same time, that white children can't look up to Jackie Robinson, Marian Anderson, etc.
His comments on the high school for gay kids is equally insightful:
As American life gets ever more Balkanized, I'm not sure this is a good idea. Two quick points: First, are teenagers so sure about this sexuality business?... And shouldn't the life of young people be as little sexualized as possible? Isn't there enough time — too much time — for that later?
Then there's the argument about feelings, social comfort: Gay kids — obviously gay kids — come in for a very rough time in school...But, as New York's Conservative party boss Mike Long pointed out, what about fat kids? What about clumsy kids? What about kids with acne? What about handicapped kids? Do we farm them all out, ghettoize them, to protect them from the bumps and bruises of community living?
Nick of Twilight of the Idols also comments (after doing some background research as well):
First off, are heterosexual students actually excluded? If so, then I'd love to see how they get public funding to run a public school. Replace the word "gay" with "black," or worse, "white," throughout the article, and you begin to grasp just how ridiculous this idea is...
On top of this, it seems to fly in the face of the pro-diversity propaganda that's so widespread these days. Homosexual students will miss out on learning to interact with straight students, the heterosexual students won't have the diversified benefit of homosexual viewpoints in class, and neither side will learn the benefits of tolerance, etc.
As Nick points out, this sort of segregation only encourages homophobia and homosexual stereotyping. Back in the 1950's, the cry was for integrated education, and an end to "separate but equal" schooling. Now we seem to be swinging back the other way - and it's the allegedly liberal types who are supporting the return to segregation. Black students taught black history only by black teachers, gay kids in a separate high school altogether - to put it bluntly, the Klan would be happy with these arrangements, and that makes me very uncomfortable with these ideas.
As Opinion Journal puts it, these ideas "should not be acceptable from anyone in America in the 21st century."
You know, I'm still feeling under the weather, with low energy and even lower mood. But Devoted Reader Bas Braams knows what will get me up and shaking my fist at the world - SAT criticism that includes obsolete items. This LA Times article drags up, yet again, the infamous but long-gone "regatta" item as part of current criticism against the test:
...the National Center for Fair & Open Testing...contends that the SAT is biased against lower-income students and those for whom English is a second language. As evidence, center public education director Robert Schaeffer cited several analogy questions from over the years, including this one, since deleted:
RUNNER: MARATHON ::
A) envoy: embassy
B) martyr: massacre
C) oarsman: regatta
D) referee: tournament
E) horse: stable
The answer was C.
"That's incredibly culturally centered," Schaeffer said. "You don't see a regatta in center-city L.A., you don't see it in Appalachia, you don't see it in New Mexico."
I've emphasized the phrase "over the years" above, and for good reason. It's an attempt to drag up old news and disguise it as current criticism. This item hasn't been on the SAT for at least 13 years, perhaps longer. For at least that same amount of time, SAT items have undergone review for differential item functioning in order to root out these types of items - something the writer doesn't mention here.
According to Schaeffer's reasoning, because a few SAT items were once perhaps biased, we should assume that most of them still are. What 's more, no evidence is given here to show that at the time the item was written and used, it was in fact biased. If the word "regatta" was once on vocabulary lists, then it could have been unbiased, and there's no shame in the College Board deleting items once they're obsolete.
What Schaeffer is really saying is that now it isn't politically correct to insist that disadvantaged kids learn the word "regatta," and it's odd to see that taken seriously as test criticism.
Schaeffer also doesn't seem to understand the very basic purpose of the SAT, which is that it measures English comprehension. Therefore, kids who don't know English well should do worse on the SAT than kids who do know English. Yet, in his mind, this is "bias" against non-native English speakers, rather than evidence that the SAT is a valid measure of how well a kid knows English. Funny how test critics use the word "bias" so loosely, isn't it? ETS and the College Board should put the word "bias" in an analogy item so that the situation will come full circle.
Sadly, this article is somewhat commendable because writer Paul Pringle at least hints that the offending item is no longer in use. Some writers don't even go that far, as can be seen in this article; an unsuspecting reader might believe that this item was still in use.
(By the way, there is a regatta in New Mexico. Just so you know.)
I'm also not impressed by this tired argument:
...the SAT is often the target of complaints that material like the analogies can be professionally coached. Many say that gives an edge to students whose parents can afford tutors and prep courses.
"As soon as you start exposing some kids to the methods behind the questions, there start to be unfair advantages," said Larry Berger...He told of sleuthing for patterns to answers to boost his chances of guessing right on questions that flummoxed him.
The analogies, he said, are spiked with "distracters" — words designed to trip up students. An example: A question begins with the prompt "COVEN: WITCHES." The possible answers include "amulet: vampires," but the correct choice is "choir: singers." "The student is distracted by the superficial relationship between witches and vampires," Berger said.
What? You mean the SAT is a test for which one can actually prepare? Horrors! I eagerly await an alternative test from these critics - one on which preparation affords no advantage, so that a kid who practices under time limits and familiarizes himself with the tasks will do the same as a kid of similar aptitude who is completely unprepared for the occasion. After all, we wouldn't want to reward extra effort, would we?
Oh, and that "superficial distractor"? That's, um, the point. An amulet is not composed of vampires. The occult reference in this response makes it an attractive distractor, but a kid who understands the relationship won't pick the wrong option. I suppose Berger's ideal test item would be one in which all but the key response are clearly wrong. So - the test should not reward practice, and all correct responses should be very obvious. Have I got all this straight?
And isn't it interesting how, when private companies that are completely unrelated to the testing companies charge an arm and a leg for tutoring, it's the testing companies that suffer the criticism, as though they're the ones gouging customers? And this is despite the fact that the test prep companies have yet to present solid data attesting to the efficacy of their methods. Reporters almost never pick up on this misdirection of bile.
Amazingly, this article even treats us to the sight of Princeton Review assistant VP Jeff Rubenstein professing his "gall" at the sight of certain SAT analogy items - but the staff writer doesn't point out that Rubenstein isn't galled enough to refrain from helping run a company that charges students hundreds of dollars to learn how to answer these items.
If the items really galled him, don't you think he'd work for peanuts - even free?
(Joanne Jacobs also covered this article in a much more succinct fashion than I did. She always has better titles, too - "The regatta is over." Heh.)
School officials in Illinois fear that funding won't be sufficient in 2004-2005 to comply with NCLB - so they're hoping for a break:
The Illinois State Board of Education released this week the scores from the standardized tests students took in the spring...The results showed that Illinois students failed in many of the testing areas. Almost 630 schools in the state’s 894 school districts failed to meet state testing standards...
Mike Gray, superintendent of the East Alton Elementary School District, said the implications could be "extremely detrimental" to many school districts. He said this is the result of the larger problem most administrators and teachers have with NCLB -- not every student is capable of meeting certain standards.
According to the bill, by the 2012-2013 school year, all students must meet or exceed state standards. Administrators have directed their ire at this portion of the bill, because they feel the expectations are unrealistic...
Challenges from lawmakers are starting to funnel down, as well. Even states are considering action against the bill...The National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country, announced earlier this month that it is preparing a lawsuit to challenge the under-funded mandates required by NCLB.
Are those expectations unrealistic? Yes, they are. However, one could argue that setting the expectations any lower leaves states and schools too much wiggle room to write off problematic kids and slow learners, and lower expectations wouldn't put as much pressure on schools to change curriculums and practices that aren't working. It's hard to tell how much of the current frustration is because the expectations are truly impossible - or because the ed-school ideologies aren't flexible enough to allow for more effective teaching. NCLB was indeed intended to force schools to change - and it's not surprising that many people are unhappy with this.
One thing's for sure - it will be interesting to see how these lawsuits play out.
Former teacher Shirley Hickman muses about the effectiveness of exit exams in the Porterville (CA) Recorder:
Do the tests really measure what they say they measure? For example, the STAR Cat 9 test, which was given to high school students, was supposed to measure if students have met the California Standards in language arts, science, social science and math.
Initially there was only a 40% match between the test and the standards. Recently the test has been revised to make a better alignment and now the match is between 60% and 70%...
I am not opposed to state or national tests. In fact, much of my tutoring business revolves around helping students attain high scores on college entrance tests like the SAT I and SAT II. The tests are also telling me if I'm preparing the students adequately, and students are motivated to learn more so they can improve their test scores.
When I was teaching English at Monache and my students complained about their assignments, I explained that the work they did was preparing them for the minimum competency reading and writing tests.
Students were more willing to work hard when they knew they had to pass those tests to graduate. The California High School Exit Exam may have the same effect on many students...The aim [of NCLB] is praise-worthy, but the target will only be hit if there is a quality testing program that accurately measures what students need to know.
In contrast to Ms. Hickman's optimistic statements, here's an article from one very pessimistic and dissatisfied Alaskan high school junior, Luisa Walmsley:
It bothers me that it is so easy to graduate from high school without knowing much at all. The scores necessary to pass a course can be obtained by sitting through the classes and doing a minimum amount of work. I see students doing this in many of my classes, and I have been guilty of it myself. It is easy to take advantage of the system...
The current grading system places the emphasis on passing instead of learning. It does not matter how much you know, as long as you make a certain grade. If learning is not mandatory in order to get through school, then it must not be very important after all. What's the point of doing the work? Who cares?...
The state of Alaska has sought to remedy this problem by instituting the High School Graduation Qualifying Exam, which requires students to pass tests in reading, writing and mathematics in order to receive their high school diplomas...This exam doesn't even begin to improve the situation. We spend far too much time in school to limit our learning to basic skills. An exit exam does nothing to encourage more than just that. If we must have a test, it should be one that motivates students to seek more knowledge.
While Ms. Hickman seems to be dealing with students who rebel at learning just the basics, Ms. Walmsley thinks that the exams are too basic, and should be more difficult in order to be motivating. The exams weren't really designed to motivate students to learn more than the basic skills, though, so I can see why they'd be frustrating for students who want a challenge.
Palm Beach (FL) has some unhappy teachers right now. They're being denied a salary increase for superior teaching - because their schools as a whole didn't show sufficient increases on FCAT performance. Problem is, many of these schools already have "A" ratings, meaning that the teachers are being stymied by a ceiling effect that the state isn't taking into account:
Jerry O'Donnell, a science teacher at Eagles Landing Middle School west of Boca Raton, learned last week his A-rated school is not eligible for the teacher bonus because it did not make sufficient learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the standardized exams that determine a school's grade from the state..."How are we supposed to improve any more if we get A's every year?" O'Donnell said.
Teachers' union President Shelley Vana said the plan was bound to anger some teachers. Plans that pay teachers based on the quality of their skills have caused controversy across the country, she said. "There is no fair way to do merit pay," she said. "It's not the district's fault."...
"I was livid. I have never gotten any kind of bonus," said Karen Kaplan, a first-grade teacher at C-rated Orchard View Elementary School in Delray Beach who was a Palm Beach County Teacher of the Year finalist in 2001. She filed a portfolio but learned her school did not make sufficient gains for her to qualify. "This was supposed to be based on your individual performance and not your school's performance," Kaplan said. "It is very demoralizing."
I don't blame her for being angry. If the plan is supposed to reward individual teachers, then the school's performance shouldn't have been taken into account - especially if teachers at better schools are being penalized. I wouldn't agree with Ms. Vana in concluding that there is "no fair way" to assign merit pay, but this method certainly seems unfair.
A Michigan study on home internet use by low-income families has concluded that Internet use doesn't negative effect the social skills of adults - but it might improve the test scores of their children:
HomeNetToo is a research project designed to study how low-income families use the Internet at home. In particular, the researchers are interested in what makes people use the Internet and what effects its use has on people.
"We found no evidence that using the Internet at home reduces social contacts or undermines communication with family or friends," said Linda A. Jackson, professor of psychology at MSU and a principal investigator on the recently completed three-year study...
The researchers were most excited by their findings related to children.
"HomeNetToo children who spent more time online using the Web performed better in school after one year than those who spent less time online," Jackson said. "It appears that the text-based nature of most Web pages is causing children to read more, resulting in improvements in grade point averages and performance on standardized tests of reading achievement."
There's more than a simple correlational effect going on here, because the participants, all of whom had little to no computer experience, were given home computers, Internet service, and technical support for 16 months, and it appears before-and-after measurements were taken. There's no control group, but this experimental design is sufficient for showing the effect of targeted intervention on these groups. I'm not at all surprised that the kids are reading more (although I'm sure the parents had to figure out how to control what the kids were reading pretty quickly...)
This article in City Journal, on conservative compassion vs. liberal pity, has an excellent (and moving) description of the perils of viewing underpriviledged schoolchildren with pity and lowered expectations:
Today’s progressive-ed pedagogy, with its focus on pupils’ self-esteem, shrinks from giving students the constant challenge they need to move on to a new level of mastery and insight. The dumbing-down of the curriculum, the unwillingness to make kids learn a body of knowledge and develop basic skills through drill, the easy tests and lack of consequences for leaving homework undone—all conspire to keep kids’ horizons low, instead of expanding them. In inner-city public schools, especially, teachers tend to view their students with undiluted welfare-state pity, seeing them as unable to meet high, or even ordinary, standards. The result is the normalizing of social promotion and the multicultural assertion that the student’s own world is sufficient for him, that his education need not constantly challenge him with worldviews and ways of life higher and better than the limited world into which he was born—since how could he ever become the person fit to enter such a higher realm?
A teacher prompted by compassion rather than pity would say to a struggling kid: “You are not living up to your potential. You are frivolously wasting the gifts God gave you. You’ve got talent. Show it.”
Light bloggage today, folks. I'm a bit under the weather.
The Gadfly page at EdExcellence.net has two interesting book reviews up this week. Both are new books which together define the endpoints of the opposing sides of the testing war.
The first book is Richard Phelps' Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing, and it rightfully notes that most Americans support standardized testing, but the educational "elite" often do not. It also points out the strong educational propaganda movement that is meant to discredit tests; as I've pointed out before, journalists who fail to question claims that tests are unfair, or racially-biased, help push this propaganda.
I'm delighted to see that the book is finally out; Richard is an acquaintance of mine, and I actually spoke with him a year or two back about possibly being involved with the book. I chose not to participate, but I'd be lying if I said that our conversations didn't have some impact on my decision to start this blog. The book also quotes Dr. Gregory Cizek, who is also a friend of mine and a very knowledgeable, outspoken professor. Anyway, as I said, I'm glad to see the book's finally been published; can't wait to see what the other reviews are.
The second book, which, funnily enough, has a very similar cover to Phelp's book (oh, those bubble sheets), takes the opposite tack. The Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing, by Gail Jones, Brett Jones, and Tracy Hargrove (all of whom are education professors, not psychometricians) focuses on the stress and anxiety caused by testing. The Gadfly takes the words right out of my mouth:
A perfect example of educationists' propaganda campaign against high-stakes testing mentioned above, this is a 180-page rant complete with students' drawings meant to illustrate their "stress and anxiety." If you accept the authors' underlying assumptions, which are unadulterated education progressivism/constructivism, then you, too, may share their conclusion that high-stakes testing has side effects that are bad for children and other living things...
Student drawings? Last I heard, students also like to draw insulting pictures of their teachers; does this mean teachers should be removed because they cause "stress"? Reviewer Chester Finn also notes that if "you want a single-volume recapitulation of all the arguments against high-stakes testing that you've ever encountered, this is the book for you." Sounds like it's definitely the book for me, so I'll have to get ahold of it and craft some counter-arguments. Then I could post them on this blog and invite the authors to respond. THAT could be fun.
The 2002 federal Adequate Yearly Progress school assessment figures were released yesterday, and the handwringing and worrywarting has begun. The Sacramento Bee notes, for example, that 70% of California's schools failed to meet the new standards, which are described below:
Under AYP, progress must be shown not only for each school but also in subgroups within a school. The subgroups include major ethnic groups, English learners, disabled students and poor children. If any subgroup comes up short, then the whole school fails.
AYP mandates that certain requirements are met each year:
* Each school and subgroup must perform to a proficiency level. In the first three years of AYP, 13.6 percent of elementary and middle school students must be proficient in English and 16 percent in math. For high school students, 11.2 percent must be proficient in English and 9.6 percent in math. Those percentages climb in future years.
* All schools and districts must have at least 95 percent of their students take state standards tests.
* Schools must also show improvement in their Academic Performance Index -- a number between 200 and 1,000 assigned to schools based on student performance on standardized tests.
* Finally, schools must show growth in high school graduation rates.
Sanctions for insufficient progress include allowing students to transfer to schools that meet the standards, requiring schools to provide tutoring, or even firing school staff.
Why is it difficult for schools to meet the standards above? Many, it seems, don't manage to test 95% of their kids, and that requirement that all subgroups show improvement is tricky, although the percentages stated above proficient performers is surprisingly low. Only 11.2% of high school students must be proficient in English? What schools are failing to teach 9 out of 10 teenagers to read?
On paper, Oakland's schools seem to be failing in that mission, but, although only 5% of Oakland's schools met the required progress standard, it appears that at least a few schools fell short because they didn't test 95% of their students in each subgroup. And one Fremont elementary school, widely considered to be one of the best, is indignant at being included in the "failing to make progress" category:
Mission Valley, for instance, scored a perfect 10 on the 2002 Academic Performance Index, but it is considered deficient in both math and English in the AYP ratings because 92.2 percent of white children took the test instead of the required 95 percent. That equals about five children.
Never mind that more than more than 75 percent of the kids who did take the test were rated proficient in both subjects, surpassing by far the requirement of 13.6 percent in English and 16 percent in math.
"The 95 percent participation rate is a difficult baseline for all districts to reach," said Jessica Zektser, testing director for the Fremont school district, who noted that every district in Alameda County was thwarted by that requirement.
Emphasis mine. If nothing else, perhaps these sorts of numbers can provide impetus for some sort of change to that section of the law. I understand why the 95% requirement is there - to keep schools from fudging the numbers by refusing to test low-performers - but if a school shows that 94%, or 93%, were tested, and that this group was very far above the national benchmark, an allowance should be made. It's silly for a school whose children perform well overall to get a low rating just because five Hispanic kids stayed home on the days the tests were given.
The full report, which will include 2003 results, will be released in August of this year.
Well, this is certainly one way to gain international attention for your complaints about your kid's teacher.
Of course, if you pulled this stunt somewhere like New York City, then you'd really get some ink...
In the second Utah-related education story in as many days, the state is considering a proposal for raising the graduation standards, so that kids are actually forced to do better in classes, and not just perform well on standardized exams:
...instead of applying solely to high school students, the revised proposal holds middle school students to a C or better in their classes to earn course credit. Those who don't make the grade could still move on to high school but would be required to take certain classes to catch up.
In addition, the state board could require students to demonstrate certain skills -- such as technical writing or oral communication of ideas -- in order to graduate. Employers and colleges, then, would be assured that every graduate sufficiently proved his or her abilities in practice, not just on a test.
Although adding grades into this process is subjective, some supporters of the proposal believe this is a good thing, because grades may include "intangibles such as a student's work ethic, class behavior and effort. " Unfortunately, it could also include intangibles such as a teacher's unwillingness to assign a D or an F if they know that the student won't be able to move forward with those grade.
Other suggested changes:
* Sets non-negotiable minimum standards for students in kindergarten through 10th grade starting in fall 2004.
* Adds frequent "diagnostic" assessments in K-10 to alert teachers and parents to students' grasp of subject matter.
* Notes the state board will investigate establishing and enforcing exit competency guidelines that aren't necessarily connected to a single course. For example, a student could demonstrate competency in writing in classes such as history or science.
* Expands performance expectations to include seventh and eighth grade. Like high school students, seventh- and eighth-graders would be required to earn a C or better in each of 12 courses to advance to high school. Students who fail to do so would still move on to high school but would have to enroll in specific classes to catch up.
* No longer cites a six-period daily class schedule as the preferred schedule.
* No longer prescribes course requirements for the junior and senior years. Math, for example, would no longer be required senior year.
* Expands the breadth of electives high school students may take beyond 24 core and elective credits (or six courses a year over four years). One-third of additional classes must be in language arts, math, science, social studies, fine arts, applied technology, physical education, math or foreign language. This is meant to ensure a meaningful senior year by preventing students from filling their schedule with easy classes.
* Drops reference to tying school funding to student competency.
Interesting. How are the increase of the breadth of electives, and the deletion of the math requirement for seniors, supposed to prevent those kids from "filling their schedules with easy classes"? If math and phys ed are both considered acceptable electives, it's not hard to see which way some kids are going to go.
And how are schools going to be held accountable if state funding isn't tied to competency? Are there any provisions in the report for that?
In Texax, 96% of the third-graders passed their TAKS reading tests and will thus be promoted to third-grade.
Of the 11,478 students total who failed the test despite three attempts, some still have the chance to be promoted. Their parents can request a hearing, and the student can move on to the fourth grade (with additional remedial instruction) only if the parent, the student's reading teacher and his or her principal all agree that the student should be promoted. The introduction of the parent into this process is interesting - is anyone else aware of a state where the parent's opinion counts for anything? At this point, some of the flunkers might instead be given exceptions and a spot in special education programs.
Note that the test is given in Spanish as well, which would suggest that those children are not yet reading at the third-grade level in English. Are these Spanish-test-takers the kids who know only Spanish but who are being mainstreamed into English-immersion courses, or is it acceptable to be reading in either language in order to be placed in the fourth grade?
There's a long, and interesting, article in today's NYT on the use of the FCAT for grade promotion in Florida. Blogger Nick has taken notice of the story as well, but his archives don't work, so you'll have to scroll down.
The story begins with the description of Derek, a "good student" who, like 23% of all young Floridians, failed the reading portion of the third-grade FCAT. Derek was determined to be promoted to fourth-grade, and so attended a four-week summer reading camp financed by the state. The camp doesn't sound like much fun, and it wasn't, and to get out of third grade, one had to score above the 51st percentile of the Stanford 9 exam. Only 15% of the camp-bound youngsters managed this, which suggests that the camp is extremely ineffective at teaching Florida's youngsters, or that their reading problems are more entrenched than anyone anticipated.
The end result is that the third-grade retention rate is going to be four or five times what it was a year ago. Derek is one of those who is going to be held back, because he scored at the 50th percentile - and here's where the controversy begins:
Derek missed by one question, scoring at the 50th percentile. His principal, Louise Brown, says he deserves to be promoted. "Derek's a late bloomer, just coming into his own — not everyone reads on the same time scale," Ms. Brown said. By scoring at the 50th percentile, Derek is reading better than half the nation's third graders. But according to the new state rules on retention, championed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the principal and the teacher have almost no say in promotion.
The standard error of measurement on the Stanford 9, developed by Harcourt Assessment, is 3.2 points, meaning Derek's score may reflect a reading ability above the 51st percentile...
As Nick points out, this also means that Derek could be reading below the 50th percentile. The reporter is correct to mention the SEM here, because that's a measure of variability for an individual student's scores, but we don't know how many percentile points 3.2 points translates to, and it seems a bit skeevy to base an argument on the SEM without pointing out that it cuts both ways.
Derek's principal's argument that "not everyone reads on the same time scale" is actually an argument against promotion, not for it. The point that supporters of the FCAT are trying to make is that fourth grade is not for everyone of the same age; it is for everyone who can read at the fourth-grade level. It's possible - perhaps likely - that Derek is not one of those kids. Thus, the fourth-grade might not be where he is supposed to be right now, because he's not on the same "time-scale" as everyone else.
For a reporter who's unafraid to mention the standard error of measurement, Michael Winerip seems awfully shy about pointing out the distribution of those who flunked more prominently than did Derek. Did most of Florida's flunkers hover around the 50%ile mark? Or was Derek chosen because he was the closest to the cutscore?
We do read that "hundreds" scored within the standard deviation for the passing score on the Stanford 9. The relationship between the standard deviation and the SEM for a test, in case you're wondering, is
s * (1-r)**1/2,
which is keyboard notation for the standard deviation times the square root of the sample size minus the reliability of the test.
Without the reliability of the test, we can't really tell what the standard deviation is, so we're still a little bit in the dark about how wide the band is. If the number is in the high hundreds, it's not surprising that 71 were close to the cutpoint, because we'd expect most kids to be massed up around the middle of the bell-shaped score distribution. If it's in the low hundreds, that might be a different story. Tens of thousands of Florida's third-graders had the chance to take the Stanford 9 for promotion; depending on the number and the distribution, for "hundreds" to be within one standard deviation is expected.
My guess is that the distribution of the FCAT flunkers on the Stanford 9 was exactly as expected - most everyone was in the middle to the lower end of the curve, which is more likely to be positively skewed than bell-shaped. But by choosing to tell the story of one kid who is close to the 85th percentile of the flunkers, and close to the grade promotion cutscore, the reporter invites readers to imagine that most of Florida's students fit this description.
In Florida's push to get every child reading by third grade, politicians have ignored the scientific studies on retention, which overwhelmingly conclude that students held back suffer academically, dropping out at a higher rate.
Why doesn't the reporter cite any studies here? I'm not trying to be mean; I'm just not aware of this "overwhelming" evidence. I mean, if kids who get held back tend to drop out at a higher rate, that isn't proof that holding kids back causes them to drop out later. Instead, it could simply mean that the same factors that keep kids from achieving early on - lack of intelligence or concentration; emotional disturbances; undiagnosed learning disorders - keep them from achieving later on.
Principal Brown, in fact, contradicts the reporter's statement with her own:
Ms. Brown is not against testing. Her school has an A rating from the state, based largely on strong test scores. But she says she does not believe that tests should replace human judgment and says that just a couple of her third graders should be retained.
"A child will not read any better whether he's sitting in a third-grade or fourth-grade classroom," Ms. Brown said.
If I'm reading this correctly, Ms. Brown is saying that promoting a kid to fourth-grade instead of retaining them won't help matters. Her statement is an argument against promoting poor readers, not for promoting them. It also seems to be a mighty pessimistic assessment of both third- and fourth-grade reading classrooms, doesn't it?
Those of you who read my comments section will notice that many of my readers have recently made logical statements about why third-graders should not be tested under stakes as high as this. I tend to agree with them. However, given that we currently have a culture (at least in Florida) in which third-graders are being held to these standards, it behooves us to examine the data accurately and see what it's telling us.
We can argue all day about whether to promote the kids who flunked, but I'd rather argue about why they flunked. What are the schools not doing that they should be doing? Are the test standards inconsistent with the classroom curriculum? Are kids of this age more likely to have incapacating test anxiety, or are they perhaps unable to grasp the implications of not trying their best? This article could have addressed these questions, but instead it gave us one sob story, one partial-sob story, incomplete data for our conclusions, uncited "overwhelming" research, contradictory statements, and complaints about summer schooling.
Most profoundly, I find it astonishing that the article, which is about the reading portion of the FCAT, highlights the fact that many more third-graders will be held back this year, but doesn't invite its readers to wonder what reading skills the test might be measuring that teachers didn't catch in the past.
Devoted Reader Nick has started his own blog, entitled Twilight of the Idols. One of the topics he'll be convering is education, so I feel entitled to consider him a blogchild of mine, whether he wants to be or not. That way, when he catches articles like the NYT story on the FCAT mess before I catch them (see above), I get to horn in on his scoop as well. :)
So go on over and say howdy. And tell him to get off Blogspot as soon as possible, so he'll have archives that work.
One Delaware mother is very, very concerned about her daughter's poor performance on the high-stakes eighth-grade mathematics exam, and she blames the tests. Reporter Victor Greto produces a sympathetic portrait of those who oppose the state testing:
When 13-year-old Courtney Suchanec received an outstanding achievement certificate for her math work at Kirk Middle School in Newark at the end of this school year, she threw it at her mother. I don't deserve this, the eighth-grader told Gail Patton, her mother.
"I told her she did deserve the award," Patton said. After all, Courtney earned a cumulative 3.95 grade point average at the middle school, and got straight A's in eighth grade. Her daughter's frustration did not come from her yearlong academic performance at school, Patton said. "It was the test."
The test she referred to is one of the Delaware Student Testing Program's standardized third-, fifth- and eighth-grade tests, some of which carry consequences such as mandatory summer school or retention...Courtney received a "2" or "below standard" on the math test...which meant having to take the test again, as well as the possibility of summer school. "She also has to have tutoring," Patton said. "This is a girl who has had As in math all her life."
Okay, granted, the test might be the problem - or were the classes the problem? Was there a serious disconnect between the class content and the testing standards (which would indicate the need for revised exams, not lower stakes)? Was grade inflation perhaps to blame, for boosting Courtney's "self-esteem" a bit higher than the test indicates? If Courtney suffers from test anxiety, it's understandable that she's frustrated at the situation, but this one story doesn't give us that much evidence.
While I feel sorry for her, I'd really like to know how many other students are having this problem. One child is a moving anecdote; many children would indicate a serious case of grade inflation, curriculum-test standard misalignment, or both. It's not that I don't agree that too much testing is harmful, or that younger children may be less likely to be able to perform well in high-stakes settings. But one test-anxiety-ridden child does not an formidable case against testing make.
And neither do these arguments against testing that appear later in the article:
When [teacher] Finnan taught social studies a couple of years ago, she said, half her class of 22 scored two or more grades below the standards on the reading portion of the test. To compensate for that, "Science and social studies got shortened because we spent so much time on reading," she said.
The next year, all her students met the test's standards, "but I didn't feel like I had the time to enjoy the kids. I felt like I was always pushing, driving and coaxing."
Is there a way to teach every kid in the class to read without some driving and coaxing? Since when is education supposed to be effort-free? And how can social studies be meaningful if a kid can't read?
Delmar principal Mark Holodick said the tests are a work in progress, and said there is too much emphasis now being placed on individual students.
"I've never seen students or adults respond well to the threat of failure or being punished for not performing," he said.
That's funny. Most adults I know understand, and respond to, the idea that punishment for bad performance is inherent in every part of our lives, whether we live in the collegiate, graduate, and post-graduate universes. Perhaps if you're a school principal in Delaware, you face no punishment for slacking off, but the real world demands that you accept punishment if you don't perform well in your college classes, your job, or your marriage. If you don't believe this, your professor, your boss, or your spouse's divorce lawyer will be happy to explain it to you.
Again, this is not to say that third-graders should be forced to live with high-stakes testing - but it's just plain silly to oppose testing for third-graders by insisting that adults don't live with high-stakes testing, of a sort, every day.
The Washington Post has the goods on the new standards set this week for the Maryland State Assessment, or MSA. Having sat in on standard-setting committee meetings myself, I know a bit about how time-consuming, and brain-draining, the process is...
The passing standards vary for each test and grade level. The math exams, for example, will be scored on a scale of 0 to 800, with 379 set as passing for a third-grader and 392 for a fifth-grader. Reading test scores now range from 100 to 700, but officials said they plan to recalibrate the numbers to match the math standards.
The impact of the scoring system likely will hit local school districts next month, when the state plans to release a detailed breakdown of test scores by county, school and individual student. Statewide results, officials said yesterday, show that although most students met the new targets, fewer than half of Maryland's eighth- and 10th-graders scored proficient in math.
Maryland apparently has a huge standard-setting group, which, interestingly, includes non-psychometricians with a vested interest in the process - that is, parents:
Although the law requires all subgroups to make progress each year, it is up to each state to determine what those yardsticks will be. That put the 300 Maryland parents, educators and testing experts who met last week to fine-tune the passing scores in a bind. Set the targets too low and risk being accused of watering down standards; set the bars too high and risk making it too difficult for many students to pass...
Eight committees last week examined how the state tests correlate to what students should know now and by 2014. Testing experts then reviewed the process, followed by another panel that checked for consistency among tests, scores and content. The final part was what Gary Heath, assistant state superintendent, called a "reality check": how students would be affected by the new scoring system.
All of those are necessary steps in standards setting. I wonder where the parents come in? Are they part of the "reality check"?
Those of you complaining that our test-driven culture is forcing schools to drop classes that don't teach the basics might find this article interesting. The article describes the process by which a particular school district in Utah is re-evaluating whether classes can remain in the curriculum.
The schools in Utah are under the gun to revamp their curricula and beef up graduation requirements, and the article makes it clear that the relationship the class content has to the test scores is important for judging the necessity of a course:
In an afternoon study session, the board agreed with a staff proposal to evaluate courses based on three criteria: whether the courses are necessary, whether they contribute to schools' annual growth in test scores and graduation rates, and whether they enhance students' post-high school options.
Now, I don't see these criteria as flawed, but some do. But those who claim that necessary courses are going to go under the knife should look further at the basis by which some of these courses were created in the first place:
Whenever a principal wants to add a new course, he or she fills out an application answering questions such as whether the proposed course is driven by the needs of students, whether research supports the need for the course, and whether it will improve the cultural, social and intellectual environment for all students. In all, there are eight questions in the application...
"Up to now, approval of a course has been pretty likely because all we ask for is for the principal to answer a few questions," Assistant Superintendent Linda Mariotti said. The process is inherently flawed because it is so subjective, she said. "There are no criteria for schools to determine, 'Do we really need this? What constitutes student need?' " she said...
Under the proposal she presented to the board Tuesday, principals and their schools' community councils would initiate the process for adding a new course by answering "yes" to three questions: whether research supports the need for the course, whether a qualified instructor is available to teach it and whether the course is fiscally feasible...Course proponents would also have to meet two of three additional criteria: whether the school needs another core academic class or a class that supports the core, such as "the function of literature;" whether the proposed course will help the school and students meet annual growth targets for standardized test scores and graduation rates; and whether the course will enhance students' post-high school options.
Wow, such onerous requirements these are. Don't initiate a course unless the money and teaching resources are availabe, and there's evidence to support the need for it. Oh, and is it going to help the kids by either allowing them to learn basic/core skills, or help them in the post-high-school world? If not, should taxpayers really be paying for it?
These criteria seem reasonable to me, yet I'm awaiting the inevitable backlash from those who think that kids have a right to take sports marketing (to use one example) in a public school.
This NEPA (NorthEastern Pennsylvania) News Team report on the use of NAEP scores in comparing urban schools (previously, the test has been used only for national and state comparisons) has the most optimistic headline I've seen in a while:
"New school scores set urban benchmark, show huge room for improvement"
Translation? The schools setting the benchmarks have a looooong way to go...
Six school districts volunteered to set an urban benchmark, allowing them to compare their fourth-graders and eighth-graders and to gauge whether school reforms work over time. The six are Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles and New York.
"We knew we were taking a risk in joining up for this test, knowing it was going to be another case of Atlanta students underperforming," said Sharron Hunt, chief accountability officer for Atlanta Public Schools. "That doesn't mean we have low expectations; I believe the students can and will achieve higher rates _ all of our students."...
...The six districts all have high percentages of black or Hispanic students, who typically score below whites on standardized tests...
The standard is not even excellence here, but "proficiency." Nationwide, only 30% of youngsters reach that mark; in urban areas, even fewer do. It seems the urban educators are pushing here for their charges to be compared not only to students nationwide, but also to students in similar cities. The educators sound pretty gung-ho about the whole thing:
In Los Angeles, roughly 40 percent of fourth-graders tested had limited English ability. That's a factor, not an excuse, said Roy Romer, superintendent of the city's school district. "The value to us is, over time, how do we change?" Romer said. "We're low, but we are coming up rapidly." He said elementary grade scores in the city have increased at twice the state average, as measured by California tests...
In Atlanta, Hunt said, the national scores will do more than serve as a starting point _ they will drive change. For example, the district may realize it must put more emphasis on a specific reading skill, or it could shift some lessons to an earlier grade, she said.
These two fun-loving parent, arrested in Maryland for child abuse and reckless driving, are obviously lifetime enrollees in the, "Honey, let's allow the kids make the decisions" school of parenting (or non-parenting, as the case may be). The last sentence of the article strikes me as very funny, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the obligatory, "But I didn't mean to cause any harm" following the admission that, maybe, they did something really boneheaded.
Redheaded Rambler Sheila, whom I've linked to previously regarding Make Way For Ducklings, found a posting in her archive she thought I'd like. It's related to my posting about sanitizing test items, in a way, but it's much more amusing.
The Kentucky Courier News reports on a new academic trend - schools are moving away from such traditional indictors of academic achievement as valedictorian status, and towards "finding another way to honor high-achieving seniors," as one teacher puts it. Gee, telling someone that they're #1 sounds like a whiz-bang way to honor them, doesn't it? So why on earth would schools want to change this system?
You can see it coming, can't you?
THE TREND away from naming a single valedictorian is taking place against a backdrop of litigation that illustrates just how intense the competition for the top spot in a school can sometimes become.
You get three guesses as to who's mentioned next, and the first two don't count.
In Moorestown, N.J., for example, Blair Hornstine, who took most of her classes at home because she suffers from an immune disorder, sued when school officials decided that home-schooling gave her an unfair advantage and that another student should share valedictorian honors with her.
Sadly, she's not the only example listed here...
Other recent cases have centered on students who sued to get a grade changed so they would be valedictorian, and on parents who tried to prevent the school system from changing the way seniors are honored to protect their child's position as potential valedictorian.
The schools dropping the valedictorian/salutatorian honorifics are allegedly trying to avoid the "cutthroat" competition among classmates. Funny, but given the complaints I hear from some teachers who would gladly cut their own throats if it would motivate their uncaring students, having students care a great deal about where they rank doesn't seem like the worst possible outcome. Blair seems like the perfect example of such competition taken to its logical extreme, of course, but frankly, she's news partly because few, if any, have been competitive enough to sue over the honors status, and perhaps few ever will.
Some school boards and parents want the valedictorian positions to stay, because of the motivation factor:
...Lee Cotner, a member of the New Albany-Floyd County school board, said, "I'm not in favor" of moving away from naming valedictorians. He added that he believes the tradition "fosters healthy academic competition, and to take that away I think is wrong."
You won't be surprised to hear that another board member disagrees with this, and bases his disagreement on the sacred philosophy of self-esteem:
Fourteen years ago, Don Sakel was principal of Floyd Central, the only other high school in the New Albany-Floyd County district, when it abandoned valedictorians in favor of a system designed to honor a larger group of students. That system is still in place — the school recognizes the top 2 percent as graduating with "distinction," the next 3 percent as "high honors" and the next 5 percent as "honors" graduates.
"We felt that the more students we could recognize, the more students would achieve," Sakel said. "It builds self-esteem."
Of course. Telling students where they rank isn't good enough, and letting students know who is #1 is, I suppose, a bit too much self-esteem for the top person. My high school had honors graduates as well, but I don't think the honor rankings were done for our self-esteem, or to make those of us who didn't make valedictorian feel better.
The blindness of these administrators to the reality of life, and teenagers, amazes me. Everyone who cares will know who the top person is, because the students are going to compare GPAs. Everyone also knows that being in the top spot is something to shoot for, and that being one among several in the top category is just a watered-down version of that. If the kids do start to care about graduating with "distinction," there will be just as much competition for that as for the valedictorian spot. And why do we need a process to increase the self-esteem of the kids at the top, when they should be getting a boost from making good grades in the first place?
Oh, and for those of you itching for yet more Blair coverage (you know who you are), I thought this article in the Daily Pennsylvanian was pretty good. I also just noticed in one of my earlier posts that one reader suggested this editorial, which singles out school superintendent Paul Kadri for his problematic handling of the whole valedictorian situation.
Students heading for the University of California schools will face a new battery of tests beginning in March of 2005:
UC regents on Thursday adopted new freshman admissions test requirements that are aligned to national changes on the SAT and ACT tests, which colleges and universities across the nation use in admissions decisions.
Previously, UC-bound students were required to take the ACT or the SAT I test, as well as three additional, subject-specific SAT II tests. But both the ACT and SAT boards are revising their tests nationwide...The new SAT includes an essay portion, and expands and changes the language arts and mathematics portions, while the new ACT includes revised math and language arts sections and an optional essay...
UC's new regulations will require all incoming freshmen in 2006 -- who will enter their sophomore year of high school this fall -- to take the new SAT or ACT, including the essay portion, as well as two subject-specific SAT tests. For the subject tests, students can choose tests in two of six subjects: history/social science, English, mathematics, lab science, a foreign language, or visual and performing arts.
Astonishingly, there isn't one negative quote in the article about how this revised testing, with the additional requirement of the subject tests, is going to discriminate against minorities, or women, or how the university is only going to admit "lower-order thinkers" using these exams, or any other obligatory anti-testing quotes. The writer must have been under a deadline.
Also, the focus on the essay question makes it difficult for the typical anti-testing crowd to complain, because those types of items are more objective. allow for more creative thinking, and usually allow women to perform better. However, I suppose the wrangling over the "discriminatory" standard of Standard Written English will soon begin. What's more, if the cutpoints are set high for the essay portion, schools that have been neglecting writing skills will really have put their students at a disadvantage. In that case, they'll be doing student a valuable favor by starting to "teach to the test," if it includes making sure they learn to write well.
Did three Bristol (PA) elementary school teachers help their students just a bit too much on the PSSA (Pennsylvania's standardized test)? PA's Dept. of Education thinks so, and the teachers may be employed at a school that was facing sanctions if test scores did not improve:
Bristol Township School District officials are waiting to hear whether the state determines three Buchanan Elementary teachers cheated on Pennsylvania's standardized assessment test...The investigation was prompted by a discussion between Erin and Justin Darr and their now 9-year-old son, Brandon, who was in third grade on test day during the spring. "My son said that he had spelled 'wolves' incorrectly on his paper and he turned it in to his teacher and she corrected it," Erin Darr said yesterday...
Buchanan Elementary was one of nine Bristol Township schools warned that it could face sanctions if scores did not improve. Darr thinks this pressure played a part in what her children told her.
"This was just absolutely appalling that they would teach the children to cheat to get a better score to keep their hind ends out of trouble," Darr said. "They're telling the children it's OK to cheat so you stay out of trouble," he said.
Exactly.
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin has come up with a new way to compare US cities - literacy rates. Kay McSpadden reports in the Charlotte Observer on how Dr. Jack Miller compiled his statistics, and has a few observations about other factors related to literacy:
Dr. Jack Miller, chancellor and education professor, recently compiled the statistics from the 64 largest U.S. cities. He looked at the number of booksellers per capita, library support, newspaper circulation, the number of locally published periodicals, and the education level of the population to measure the overall literacy of the cities...
In all categories, the top 10 cities of various sizes were spread across the country, though more of the Sun Belt cities were represented in the bottom 10 cities, perhaps, the researchers speculate, because they have larger, poorer immigrant populations...
...the list raises interesting questions. If Charlotte's population is so well educated, why aren't we reading more? If we have such a large percentage of educated adults, why is it easier to find a bookstore in Atlanta than in Charlotte? Why do children in Miami have more library services than our kids do? Why aren't more people here reading the newspaper, and why haven't we been able to generate more local magazines? Some of those questions are best answered by the leaders who allocate funding for libraries or who encourage businesses such as booksellers and publishers...
Me, I wonder how Dr. Miller is accounting for the prevalence of the internet. I buy almost all my books off of Amazon (or my generous readers send them to me, thank you very much), I read almost all my news online (I get only the Sunday edition of the Inquirer), and I buy many fewer periodicals than I used to, almost none of them local. I suppose that, for now, a literate city is going to have more bookstores and more local periodicals than a non-literate city, but in the future, that may change, and it may not be possible to measure literacy by examining only non-web-related variables...
Joanne Jacobs noticed a fine article in the Sacramento Bee about the postponed California exit exam. Columnist Daniel Weintraub correctly judges what the fuss about exit exams are all about - when bad teaching on part of a school leads to negative consequences for the students, it's hard for the school to defend its choices:
The alternatives [to postponing the exit exam] the board considered were worse than delay. One was to make the test easier. The other was to lower the passing score [These could be considered the same thing]. Instead, other than dropping one essay requirement to shorten from two days to one the time it takes to administer the language portion of the exam, the board stayed the course. This is good news.
But fans of reform should not rest easy. The test's opponents will see this decision not as a momentary pause but as a crack in the door. They will continue to push to weaken accountability because they do not believe in it....The high school exit exam has become their primary target because, of all the tests the state administers, this is the only one that truly counts...It means something, and that meaning makes it dangerous. When kids fail, people start asking questions. Did the child try hard enough? Did the parents push hard enough? Did the school provide the proper coursework and materials? Was the teaching sufficient?
All of those questions are uncomfortable for a segment of the education establishment that would rather fuzz things up, pat kids on the head for making a good try and send them on their way with no concrete sense of what they have taken with them after 13 years of seat time in the public schools...
Mr. Weintraub also correctly picks up on the recent eduational, political, and cultural philosophies which say that no child can ever fail. The exit exam, by definition, is going to identify those who fail, and unless it is dumbed down beyond recognition, some kids in even the best schools are going to fail. Unless we're willing to say to those kids, "We gave you the best opportunity, but for whatever reason, you didn't perform up to the standard" and refuse to issue a diploma, our support of accountability is empty talk.
Mr. Weintraub estimates that perhaps 80% of California's seniors would have eventually passed the exit exam. Are we truly comfortable with flunking the other 20%? And are we willing to defend the results even if the 20% group contains disproportionately large numbers of minority students? That's the first issue the anti-testing crowd will attack - indeed, it's often the crux of their claims that such tests aren't "fair" - and exit exam supporters should be ready for it.
Is the FCAT really just helping "rich" schools get richer? That's the premise of this Herald Tribune article, which cites a lot of critics of the Florida School Recognition Program.
This program is a reward program for schools that either rank an A on the state's school grading scheme or who improve by at least a full letter grade from one year to the next. The FCAT plays a big part in how schools are ranked, and that seems to be where most of the contention is coming from. The bogus claim that the FCAT doesn't measure any actual learning is repeated here, and one critic says the test might not be "fair," without defining what he means by that. Given that I've seen "fair" redefined so broadly that any score gaps among any groups are termed "unfair," I'm automatically skeptical of his remarks.
I can understand the frustration of schools that are teaching large numbers of impoverished kids. The federal money they receive is either insufficient, or mismanaged, or both.
On the other hand, giving schools money when they fail doesn't provide them with incentive to get better; instead, it provides a motive to continue to do just poorly enough to keep getting money. Who's going to push their school to improve if the money is going to go away when the kids start performing better?
This analogy, of course, is totally false:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at the urging of state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, has threatened to organize a boycott of Florida's sugar, tourism and citrus industries if changes in the FCAT program aren't made.
Wilson said the recognition program, which has grown to $120 million a year, is a waste of money if wealthy schools benefit most.
"It should be the opposite," Wilson said. "It's like a doctor who goes into a community and gives chemotherapy to the people who don't have cancer."
So minority kids are like cancer patients? And the kids who are doing better aren't doing so because of their own efforts, or the efforts of their teachers, but because they're just lucky enough to be cancer-free? That seems to be the implication here. Also, there's the fact that chemotherapy is not enjoyable, and no one without cancer would be crazy enough to undergo it. Money, on the other hand, is quite enjoyable to everyone, and, unlike with chemotherapy, there's just as much justification for giving money out to those who earn it (through high scores) as to those who need it (because they don't have any and are doing poorly).
Reading through the comments of all the critics in this article, I notice that several show antipathy towards affluent kids and their schools (which are "supposed to be making A's" and thus, presumably, should enjoy no extra reward for it), and a total of none suggest an alternative method of motivating kids, rewarding those who acheive, and holding schools accountable - other than giving all that reward money to schools that don't have enough. Oh, sure, there's this sentence:
Some principals at poor schools would like to see measures put in place to increase their chances of getting good grades.
But that isn't explained more fully, and is followed up immediately with:
Others say any rewards system based on standardized tests or other academic measures will inherently favor rich schools.
Got that? NO rewards for schools doing well are acceptable. And how much favor are we talking about? The richest 50% of the schools are, by the Herald-Tribune's own analysis, getting only 67% of the reward money - that's a difference, but not by much, and it indicates that over 30% of the poorer 50% schools are performing at A level or improving.
The program is indeed helping some rich schools get richer - but it's helping some poor schools get richer as well. If the money is going to be used as a reward, sending it to schools that perform well is the only fair method.
One of the nice things about being an amateur herpetologist is that people send me random quotes, photos, stories, etc. about the reptiles I love so much. One good friend sent along a couple of lizard photos from a trip she and a friend took to Topanga Canyon, CA. The photo is really cool, but she doesn't know what kind of lizard it is, and neither do I. If any of you Californian readers know what it is, drop me a line.
And now back to our regularly-scheduled programming...
Canadian anti-testing educrats are in the news again, claiming that it's a crying shame that educational reform is focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, instead of the development of imagination:
"Imagination is not high on the list of priorities in education," said Elliot Eisner, professor of education and art at Stanford University in California. "Test scores, reading levels and math take centre-stage -- they measure outcomes and meet accountability requirements. Spending time on imagination is considered frivolous, unnecessary."
Perhaps, yes, if the child in question can't read, and the school thinks it should be spending taxpayer money on fostering the child's imagination, rather than their reading skills.
Cedric Cullingford, professor of education at the University of Huddersfield in northern England, said that politicians and those running schools repress children's imaginations with the emphasis on standardized testing.
"What we're doing to children is patently wrong," Cullingford said. "The idea is if it's not measurable, it doesn't exist, and that math, language and science are the crucial studies."
Help, help, they're being repressed! These comments from learned professors of education approach parody. They're whining about the fact that schools are focused on math, and language skills, and science. They believe that this focus represses children. How has it escaped their notice that (a) schools are for educating, and (b) children tend to show a remarkable ability for developing their own imaginations, but they don't tend to absorb reading skills or long division through osmosis?
What's more, any child who does have imagination is, at some point, going to want to express it in a more advanced way, and the basic skills are extremely important for this. What's the point of the school fostering imagination in a budding writer, if the school doesn't also teach the kid how to best express creative thoughts in writing? I wonder if the aforementioned Professor Eisner, who teaches both education and art, would agree that it's more important to foster artistic imagination in children than to teach them how to hold a paintbrush?
Interesting editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the lack of educational improvement in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the state spends $4 billion a year on education - more than almost any other state, in fact:
Pennsylvania ranks 19th in [NAEP] fourth-grade reading out of 44 states for which scores are available, close to the middle of the nation. The state's eighth-grade reading scores look about the same, ranking 20th out of 42 states, according to the assessment test...
At first glance, those test scores may not look too bad - not great, to be sure, but not alarming, either. They look a lot worse when you put them next to the state's gargantuan education budget. Adjusting for cost of living, Pennsylvania's per-pupil education spending ranks third in the nation. Pennsylvania schools are providing a mediocre performance on a top-ranked budget, even before Gov. Rendell's proposed spending increases.
Authors Greg Forster and Marcus Winters, both of the Manhattan Institute, think that accountability, not money, should be the issue driving reforms:
States with tough accountability systems did well on the national tests. Massachusetts led the nation in fourth-grade reading scores and was second in the nation in eighth-grade reading scores, and it achieved this excellence on an education budget that ranks 36th in the nation for per-pupil spending. Virginia ranked sixth in fourth-grade reading and seventh in eighth-grade reading despite a budget that ranks 25th in the nation.
Pennsylvania's state test, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, is not used to hold students or schools accountable. Just the opposite, in fact: If schools do badly enough on the test, they are rewarded with additional state funding - rewards that Rendell now proposes increasing. Providing that kind of perverse financial incentive for schools to fail is just the opposite of the approach that works elsewhere.
I wish this entry were a joke, but it isn't. This whole mess began back in December but I'm just now finding out about it.
At the same time that the anti-semitic and dreadfully untalented NJ poet laureate Amiri Baraka was under attack from lobbying forces for his hateful "poems", he was appointed to another poet laureate position. Who would take him, given the scandal over his nasty September 11th poem? Given that New Jersey was trying to find some way to get rid of him? Who?
The Newark Public School system, that's who:
Baraka is a longtime resident of Newark, and was named the poet laureate of Newark Public Schools yesterday even as he was under attack in the capital of Trenton.
This decision brings to mind a few questions, the first one being - Does the Newark School system really need to be wasting money on a poet laureate? And why is that position acceptable for an anti-Semite?
The school system in Newark was so bad in the 1990's that one report showed that the longer a child remained in the Newark system, the lower his or her chances of achievement. By 2001, little improvement was seen; the city of Newark sued the school system over $70 million worth of misappropriated funds. The state now oversees the school board.
One reporter thinks the problem is pure racism - on Baraka's part, and the Newark school system's part as well. One group battled the state to save Baraka's position as poet laureate; their enthusiasm is admirable, but it's obvious they don't understand what free speech really means, and they obviously refuse to recognize anti-Semitism and racial hatred when they see it.
Ultimately, the NJ General Assembly passed a measure at the beginning of July, 69-to-2, to get rid of the position of poet laureate altogether. Obviously, if the state has to abolish the position of poet laureate to get rid of Baraka, that's what they're willing to do. But who will protect the schoolchildren of Newark from his "poetry"?
Baraka's already taking advantage of his new position; in June he spoke before a Newark high school audience. He's threatening to sue the state, and repeats the erroneous claim that the General Assembly's action constitute violation of his First Amendment rights. Here's a tip, Baraka - you're free to say what you want in your "poems." But no one is forced to give you a platform for them, and if the government decides to let you go, and you have to find another means to be heard, that isn't censorship. As long as you can publish and distribute your poems through some means, without government interference, you aren't being censored.
Obviously, for Baraka as well as his supporters, speech is only "free" if it's free from all criticism and judgment. May Newark's kids be able to see through his self-serving attitude.
(via Little Green Footballs)
Given the, um, spirited discussions I've seen this week in my comments sections, most of which were about teachers' unions, I just can't resist reprinting this Best of the Web posting in full:
In Vermont (Gore by 9.93%), it was a scene worthy of "Monty Python's the Meaning of Life": Wayne Nadeau, head of the social studies department at Lamoille Union High School in Hyde Park, "admitted that during the 2001-02 school year he had consensual sex with a female paraprofessional in his classroom," reports the Rutland Herald. As a result, his teaching license was suspended for 20 school days "and the suspension was reported to national authorities."
Now, the Herald reports, Nadeau has been elected to the executive board of the National Education Association. Suddenly the whole thing makes sense. He wanted to be part of a "teachers union" and was just confused about the meaning of the term.
Wayne Nadeau: Giving teachers a whole new way to pay their dues.
Heh.
I love Philadelphia.
While the rest of the world natters on about such unimportant events as Tony Blair's speech before Congress, recent uprisings in Iran, the volatile situation in Iraq, and the controversy over whether Dubya lied about his Iraq-Niger intelligence information, the Philadelphia Daily News is focused on one thing:
That's right. Philly residents are furious because outside food has been banned from the new Lincoln Financial Field, where the Philadelphia Eagles are due to start playing this fall. Eagles fanatics are used to stocking up at local delis and hoagie shops before the games, because if there's anything Philly folk take seriously, it's their food. And they want local food, and they don't want to pay too much for it, so the information that food will be available within the stadium, for a premium price from a Boston-based catering service, has been met with near-total derision and anger.
Team president Joe Banner, who raised the hackles of fans before when he tried to ban the use of credit cards for buying tickets, is now officially the most-hated man in Philadelphia. Over $200 million dollars of taxpayer money went into the new stadium, but it's privately managed - or mis-managed, as the case may be.
You can see why we're focused on this at the exclusion of everything else. Why, how are we supposed to rise back up in the rankings of America's Fattest Cities (we're only in fourth place now) if we can't sit and eat humongous, cheap, and very very tasty hoagies while hollering for our Birds? Devious Philadelphians are already plotting boycotts and revenge tactics. The local business owners, who scoff at Banner's claim that banning outside food won't harm their businesses, will be leading the charge against the ban. Furious letters are pouring in to the Daily News. A hoagie-shaped petition flyer is available, and the DN will send each and every one to the Eagles' Front office.
Save our Hoagies!
Did I mention I love Philadelphia?
The NY Regents Exam officials just can't catch a break. Now the Physics exam is being challenged, though officials are defending the test as "flawless":
Leonard Morochnick was so upset after 43 percent of his physics students at the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies failed the Regents physics exam last month that he sat down at his computer and banged out a lengthy analysis of the test...he and scores of other physics teachers across the state have continued to critique the test and to denounce what they perceive as injustices to anyone who will listen.
The latter group has not seemed to include state officials in Albany, who defend the exam as technically flawless...
There are no official statistics, but some teachers who have assembled test results from schools across the state estimate that more than 40 percent of the 40,000 students who took the exam on June 17 failed it. Many who failed had received good scores on the College Board's SAT II physics test, educators said.
Why are there no official statistics? Is it that the Regents Exam normally distributes the pass/fail rate but hasn't done so yet? Or is that information normally withheld?
The upshot is that, even if the reaction to this is not "snowballing" like the reaction to the obviously-flawed Math exam, schools are deciding not to use the Physics exam, and the New York State Association of School Superintendents sent a letter out to college admissions officers in an effort to convince them to disregard the Physics exam results.
Oh, wait, here are some "official statistics," but only for the June 2002 test:
Criticism of the test began immediately after it was introduced in June 2002. Commissioner Mills announced on the basis of a preliminary review that 33 percent of students had failed it. Data collected in a complete survey, announced later, showed a 39 percent failure rate. That was more than double the 17 percent failure rate on the previous Regents physics test...
The fail rate more than doubled and the state didn't think anything was wrong? Are they mad? Or just in denial? According to one SUNY-Buffalo professor who studied a series of answer sheets, the passing standard was changed substantially from 2001 to 2002 - to pass the June 2001 exam, students had to get 50 percent of the items right, whereas on the June 2002 and subsequent exams, students had to get 68 percent of the items right.
When the definition of passing changes this substantially, I don't see how the testing process can be considered consistent from year to year. Is there some documentation as to why the standard was changed so dramatically, and is there any theoretical basis as to why it should have? Even if the state felt that a 17% pass rate was too low, it's ludicrous to raise the bar that high from one year to the next.
If an exam that is meant to be of equal difficulty from year to year turns out to be a little bit too easy, then the passing rate might fluctuate from year to year as well. But according to observers, the test contained more difficult items and required a larger number of items correct to pass. No wonder teachers report that physics class enrollments are down.
The logical consequence of bad schooling in California? Civil juries will now be instructed in "plain English" as opposed to legal "mumbo-jumbo":
Pleading guilty to confusing jurors for 70 years with complex legal mumbo jumbo, California approved simpler rules on Wednesday that promise to instruct civil juries in plain English. The Judicial Council of California adopt