Number 2 Pencil

Rotting my teeth

Bloggage will resume when I return from vacation on January 11th. I expect blogging to be frequent and somewhat spacey at that point, given that I'll be trying to catch up on all that I missed and I'll be experiencing quite the sugar high:

(Yes, this was an Xmas gift. Yes, it weighs ten pounds. The writing implement is there to show the scale.)

Update: This is a list I sent out to coworkers of what I've thought of to do with this chocolate beast:

1. Keep it in my office for when I want to bludgeon someone (probably an annoying coworker) into submission.

2. Melt it down in a small swimming pool and have a chocolate wrestling match.

3. Invite people to come by with hammers and break off as much of it as they desire.

4. Bake about 10,000 chocolate chip cookies.

Let me know if you can think of any others!

Christmas Eve Catblogorama

The neighbors across the street from my parents have a very sweet and friendly kitty. My stepfather was testing out his new digital camera (without really taking the time to focus) while I played with the visiting kitty (and made goofy faces - yes, I am slightly cross-eyed....)

Hope you're all having a Merry Christmas Eve!

Apologies for my absence

Here are the reasons I've not been blogging, should you care:

1. I now get up at 6 am so that I can get to the gym (at work) by 6:45 am. My calves already look better, but my late-night blogging has predictably dwindled.

2. I have a new job, as of January 1st. It's within the same company, but represents a substantial shift in responsibilities. Therefore, I've lately been spending time preparing, interviewing, and discussing my new tasks with all and sundry. Interestingly, this is the first time that my business card will actually read, "Psychometrician."

3. Just got my copy of the Extended Release DVD of The Return of the King, so there go about 20 hours of free time right there.

4. I'm only halfway through my shopping list, and now my Christmas card list has all my fiance's family and in-laws on it. If anyone knows where I can get a Darth Vader Voice Changer helmet - before next Wednesday - please let me know. And no, it's not for my fiance.

5. I've only gotten two Christmas gifts from friends, but both gifts were large bottles of liquor. Probably not a wise idea to chug Nocello (my favorite) and blog at the same time.

Did I mention I'll also be on vacation from December 22nd - 28th and January 1st - 10th? I'll try to squeeze some bloggage in around Christmas (including photos of my fiance and me), but I won't be anywhere near a computer the first week of January. So let's hope it's a slow news week for testing. And don't stop the email and comments - even if you don't hear back from me, I read everything, and I love to see energetic comment debates such as the ones here and here.

Update: Just got another Christmas gift. Wheeee! And my fiance's boss bought him this as a gift. How apropos.

Pencil sharpeners don't hurt kids; kids do

What's wrong with this picture?

Heck, what's NOT wrong with it?

PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck. The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne.

He was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had butterfly stitches placed on the wound. The attacker was suspended for two days and is now back in school.

A two-day suspension for deliberately striking near someone's jugular with a razor-sharp object? And the offender is allowed to return, while the sharp objects are not? You have got to be kidding me.

...the decision to allow the boy to return to school has angered parents. Some have signed a petition calling on the school to permanently expel the youngster. One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: "Are our children safe when we send them through those gates every morning? The lad purposely took the blade out of the sharpener. In my eyes that is a pre-meditated attack. My children know the difference between right and wrong. To suspend that boy for just two days is no punishment at all."

These British parents are being too polite, and too restrained. But British school administrators appear to be just as touchy-feely and sympathetic to crime as American ones:

Tracy Buckley, the school's head of governors, has written to all parents, saying the school understood the gravity of the incident and acted accordingly.

The letter states: "The school, like every other school, has a duty to promote 'inclusion' of all pupils. The emphasis of the (DfES) guidance is that a permanent exclusion is discouraged and to be considered as a last resort in very extreme circumstances. A fixed period exclusion was entirely appropriate for the circumstances."

Good to know that deliberately slashing a child's neck is not considered "extreme" in the UK. At this point, it's obvious that the banning of the pencil sharpeners is merely a desperate measure to regain some control over a school system in which kids who have the stomach flu will miss more classes than throat-slashers will.

catblogorama

Surely, some of you out there need a cat.

Surely, you cannot resist Little Chris:

Or Olivia:

Or, surely, not Miss Peaches:

Petfinder.org, folks. These kitties are at PALS as we speak, looking for good homes.

Here's another shot of Little Chris, just in case you needed more to make up your mind:

Growing roots

Despite all the opposition, and all the kvetching, NCLB is now "implanted" in our educational system, and more and more schools are meeting the requirements of the law, according to Education Week:

The No Child Left Behind Act, which President Bush signed into law in January 2002 as the centerpiece of his education agenda, is the latest reauthorization of the nearly 40-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The revised law is designed to close achievement gaps and bring all students to the “proficient” level on state tests by 2013-14, in part by ensuring access to high-quality teachers, improved reading instruction, and other measures.

Of the states not giving standards-based reading and math tests in each of the required grades, many are running to catch up and meet the requirement by next school year, with a number of them field-testing items this coming spring.

Some states are doing away with additional tests (some of which were not standards-based), in order to make more room for the federally-mandated ones. States are asking for (and receiving) changes to the federal requirements to remove some of the burdens. And states are discovering that schools can be A-level on one report card and failing on another:

Twenty-six states use criteria, in addition to those spelled out in the federal law, to assign ratings, according to Education Week’s survey. And sometimes schools may get dual ratings that do not always add up.

In Florida, for example, some schools that got A’s under the state system did not make adequate progress under the federal law...

The article's chock-full of good stuff - go read.

If u can rede this u rede 2 much email

Colleges aren't the only ones spending cash to bring people up to basic literacy levels, as Joanne Jacobs notes.

R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.

"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."

I don't know. I don't think email is to blame for this. There's nothing inherent in email communication that requires writers to dismiss with grammar and punctuation, and there's no reason that the employee quoted above should have suddenly forgotten how to use capital letters (not to mention the misuse and misspelling of "y'all"). I think we certainly tolerate more grammatical errors in emails, and email's immediacy does tend to value speed over perfection of thought. But something tells me that the lack of good writing education in the K-12 system is impacting communicating issues far more than new technologies might be.

Email may be less formal, but students who are well-educated are not suddenly going to become incoherent when confronted with Microsoft Outlook.

A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.

The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.

Exactly. If anything, email is useful here because it allows companies to more quickly identify those who can't think straight, as evidenced by the email below:

Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: "I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."

After reading this I sure as heck wouldn't believe her "logic" was correct about anything.

And those Shirley Temples are completely out of the question

Zero-tolerance travesties continue to move further into the land of surreality:

A Jefferson Parish fourth grader has been suspended for taking what's being described as a look-alike drug to school. Eight-year-old Kelli Billingsley brought homemade Jell-O cups to school at Boudreaux Elementary. Her mom says the school tested the Jell-O and determined it didn't have any alcohol in it. But the school suspended the girl for having a look alike drug.

The superintendent of Jefferson Parish schools says she will investigate the case.

Stay with me here. One possible explanation for why the school is suspending this fourth-grader (!) is because the only experience the school administrators in question have with Jell-O is through Jell-O shots. So they assumed this fourth-grader (!) must have brought an alcoholic treat to school, and they tested them. There was no alcohol in the Jell-O, of course, but the administrators assumed that non-alcoholic Jell-O was no different than, say, kids drinking water out of shot glasses, and we all know water is a lookalike drug to vodka. And that's totally against the rules. Right?

Or, it could just be that the administrators in question are totally insane. Your call.

Update: Looks like BOTH explanations may be a factor here:

The incident occurred Nov. 29, as the girl stood after classes outside Geraldine Boudreaux Elementary School in Terrytown, a New Orleans suburb. A teacher spotted liquid dripping out of the student's bookbag and found what looked like the small cups of alcohol-laced gelatin that are sold in bars, schools spokesman Jeff Nowakowski said.

The girl told the principal that her mother, who works in a bar, makes alcoholic shots at home and sells them at work. The fourth-grader said her mother had instructed her to take the shots to school and sell them, three for $1, to make some money for Christmas, Nowakowski said.

That's the part that's explained by assuming the school thought these were Jell-O shots.

The gelatin was turned over to the sheriff's department for testing to see if it contained alcohol. The girl was suspended for violating school rules against possessing or trying to distribute a "lookalike," or something that appears to contain drugs or alcohol.

Under the lookalike rule, the girl's suspension will stand no matter what the sheriff's department finds. "The school system's position is, it doesn't matter if it had alcohol in it or not," Nowakowski said.

And that's the part that's insane, because even fourth-graders know that IT DOES TOO matter if there's actually alcohol in the treats or not. If the punishment for regular Jell-O and Jell-O shots is the same, why not bring the alcoholic version? (I'm thinking of teenagers rather than fourth-graders here.) And, once again, has the school considered that water is an awfully good lookalike for vodka?

Rearing good kids

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have quite a few "natalists" among my Devoted Readers:

There is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism." All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

As long as we're talking about sacrifice, can you say, "homeschooling?" I knew you could! Funny that it doesn't get mentioned anywhere in this thoughtful article, which describes the political and social ramifications of natalism:

If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences...

Like most Americans, but maybe more so, [natalists] suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.

You'd think the educational establishment would be more in line with this sort of mindset, since they're always saying that parents, and not teachers, should be held accountable for the factors that produce lower test scores. What could make them happier than parents who agree to do their part in childrearing?

Then again, all the natalists I know believe there are so many problems with public schools that no fully-functional kid should be forced to attend one.

Rolling the die and hoping for better math skills

Hot on the heels of our discussion about the importance of boring old "rote" math skills comes this depressing report about US math performance compared to other countries:

For a nation committed to preparing students for 21st century jobs, the results of the first-of-its-kind study of how well teenagers can apply math skills to real-life problems is sobering. American 15-year-olds rank well below those in most other industrialized countries in mathematics literacy and problem solving, according to a survey released Monday.

Although the notion that America faces a math gap is not new, Monday's results show with new clarity that the problem extends beyond the classrooms into the kind of life-skills that employers care about...

Given what we've heard here about the frightening attitudes in education about math, anyone want to bet that a lot of the problem is that the "life-skills" employers care about don't add up at all with the skills that educrats try to push?

The international survey was done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2003, testing 15-year-olds.

In one question, students are asked to calculate the number of dots on the bottom face of six dice, given the rule that the total number of dots on two opposite faces is always seven. Only 63 percent of US students got it right, compared with 68 percent of their peers in OECD countries. (This question was ranked Level 2, out of three proficiency levels.)

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

If at least two sides of the die are showing (probably three sides are, as exemplified in the diagram below), then the only skill this task requires is for the student to be able to add one-digit numbers. Excuse me - the student also needs to recognize that all they need to do is add one-digit numbers, and understand the spatial relationship among the six sides of a die.

(Note: The graphic is from a random die question I pulled off the web; this is not the graphic from the actual item. Just an example.)

And 37% of the participating American 15-year-olds couldn't figure that out? Jeez, I guess grandparents aren't playing enough Yahtzee or blackgammon with their grandkids these days.

These results track findings that most US high school students don't know enough mathematics to do well in college courses or the work force. "Only 40 percent of high school graduates are prepared to earn a C or higher in a college level course, and these are also the same skills needed for the workplace," says Ken Gullette, a spokesman for ACT Inc. in Iowa City, a college entrance exam.

Ken might want to talk about that with educators who believe children shouldn't be forced to learn math until they are absolutely "developmentally ready."

Update: Chris Correa notes that the director of the survey suggests that, in the US, there's too much focus on rote learning in mathematics, and that's why the US performance overall is suffering. Not only is that weird - it's very hard to imagine that our students are spending too much time on math drills - but Chris also presents an elegant graph to suggest that the conclusion is wrong, too.

And don't miss Jenny D's (formerly Dr. Cookie) discussion of the most important factor in math education. I don't think you'll be surprised at her conclusion.

Strange things are afoot in South Haven

When the story's this weird, the punchy lede just writes itself:

A teacher and a 14-year-old former female student whom she is accused of sexually assaulting participated in witchcraft together and even "wed" in a pagan ritual, police said. Elizabeth Miklosovic, 36, a teacher at South Haven's Baseline Middle School, was arraigned Thursday on a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Van Buren County...

Also Thursday, the Kent County prosecutor's office issued arrest warrants for Miklosovic on charges of first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct that accuse her of performing illegal sex acts with the student at the teacher's Grand Rapids home.

John Weiss, principal of the middle school where Ms. Miklosovic was teaching, wins the prize for understatement of the day:

"There have been a wide variety of reactions," he told The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph. "There are 550 students and 550 reactions, it seems."

My guess is that most of them would fall in the "Eww," "Ick!," and "Say what?!" categories.

The girl's family said Miklosovic brainwashed the girl into thinking the two did nothing wrong. A relative told The Grand Rapids Press that the family initially believed Miklosovic's interest in the girl -- who was described as vulnerable and as having emotional problems -- was to help her.

Unfortunately, incidents like this make it that much harder for teachers who aren't sexual predators to reach out to students who need extra help.

Lifting weights - or test scores?

Once again, testing gets blamed for the lack of interest in - or funding for - physical education classes:

Overpopulated physical education classes are just one of the limitations that the Salem-Keizer district is facing in combating the epidemic of overweight youths. The increased focus on national standardized test scores has stripped those classes of their impact, Lacey said. Physical education is becoming an afterthought, or even a back-door way to cater to the all-important test score.

A survey released in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention verified the widely accepted trend of declining participation in high school gym class. After a sharp drop from 41.6 percent in 1991 to 25.4 percent in 1995, numbers have risen slightly. In 2003, just 28.4 percent of high school students took gym every day.

Mmm, don't those numbers suggest that gym classes dropped sharply in the 6 or so years before NCLB was passed? And it seems to be going up since then? I mean, yes, it's still lower than it was in 1995, but I see nothing to suggest that increased emphasis on testing is the cause.

I do agree with the idea that gym class can be extremely beneficial to teenagers:

Lacey said he is shocked that so few children in a required physical education class know how to organize a simple game with a group of their peers if they are given a ball and left alone.

"A lot of kids are being socialized by TV and video games," Lacey said. "They're not being socialized by peer interaction. You'll have people say, 'It's only P.E.' As a P.E. instructor, I hear that a lot. But kids learn fair play, respect for authority, work ethic, putting a plan into action, the merits of regular practice, these life lessons and socialization that, without physical education, is a lost art because kids don't do those things on their own."

As someone who was more traumatized than helped by gym, I can't say that I'd assume all the "socialization" is necessarily good. I just didn't like most people I went to school with, and I was a clutz at anything involving a ball, a net, or a target; it didn't do much for my vaunted self-esteem to fail at those things five days a week. On the other hand, I'd have been perfectly happy in gym if there had been accommodations for those who wanted to work hard and practice regularly in a more solitary practice, such as in yoga or aerobics. Maybe schools would have more success getting kids interested if they'd focus on the positive aspects of exercise that don't require kids to spend more time with people who drive them nuts.

Regardless, it's hard to feel sorry for a principal who is (as one quoted in the article says), under intense pressure "to keep math scores high and reading scores high" at the expense of PE. Yes, teenage obesity and lack of exercise is a problem, but something tells me literacy and numeracy are more important still.

Quibbling over the data

FairTest has been posting SAT score tables on its website which show that poor and minority students do worse on the exam than white, wealthier students, and the College Board isn't happy about it. It's a matter of debate as to whether this is an indictment of the tests (as FairTest maintains) or of our educational system (as I maintain), but, interestingly, that's not really the point of the latest controversy:

The nonprofit College Board, which owns the SAT college entrance exam, has demanded that its chief critic remove from its Web site data showing that minority and poor students scored lower than white and upper-class kids. The letter to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, also called FairTest, claims the Cambridge-based nonprofit organization violated copyright law by posting the scores without permission.

FairTest, which opposes an overreliance on standardized tests, posted the Oct. 27 letter on its Web site along with its refusal to comply with the College Board's demand. FairTest argues that the data is widely available in the public domain and therefore not subject to copyright protection.

Needless to say, this gives FairTest the opportunity to get up on their soapbox about how CB don't want any negative information about their test to be released, but the public is already quite aware of test score gaps.

Critics long have attacked the tests as unfair, chiefly because white students tend to do better than other groups. Many reasons are offered -- family income and education, school quality, courses taken, access to tutors and test-prep courses.

If they've "long attacked the test as unfair," it's hard to believe that CB is really trying to "hide" something from us now. This sounds like one for the lawyers to sort out. It's interesting, though, that the AP doesn't see fit to point out that three of the six "unfair" reasons above - courses taken, access to tutors and test-prep courses - are directly related to the amount of effort a student is willing to put into their education. Saying it's "unfair" for a student who takes more difficult courses, spends extra hours with tutors, and prepares for the SAT, to receive a higher score is ludicrous.

If anything, the list of reasons above suggests a great deal of validity evidence for inferences made with the SAT, because we'd expect those with more money, better schools, harder courses, and more preparation to do better. It's not the score gap that is seen as unfair so much as the disparate opportunities that lead to it.

High-stakes malingering

The rumor mill at UCLA is working overtime, and it's all about students faking disabilities to boost their test scores:

It's a clandestine rumor that is whispered in the stacks of Powell Library or passed around the table at a study session in Covel Commons.

Some students seem to think that the greatest shortcut on the path to graduate school is to fake a disability in order to obtain accommodations when taking standardized tests...

Very sad, but probably true (reporter Daniel Miller's hypothetical examples are pretty funny, though). Students probably do think that faking a disability is perfectly okay as long as one gets a boost from it - but that isn't as easy a task as it sounds:

...after talking with several psychologists and analysts who administer psychological evaluations that determine a patient's disability and the need for accommodations, it has become apparent that the notion that it's easy to lie about a disability to gain accommodations – and that this is a prevalent practice – is a myth.

"I would feel cheated out of all my hard work if I knew about people who lied to get extra time," said Ellie Altshuler, a fourth-year political science student who took the test Saturday. On Sunday, between sips of a celebratory mimosa, Altshuler also said that she did not know of anyone who got undeserved accommodations for the exam. LSAT takers needn't worry about malingerers distorting the test's curve because the scores of students who take the test with accommodations are not considered in the curve for the general exam.

Nice to see a student reporter who's done his research - he had to have contacted LSAC to get the information about accommodated test takers not being used in the final equating of scores. And I'm very glad to see someone put the word out that most testing companies have a series of very rigorous hurdles that one must pass to obtain an accommodated test. LSAC's in particular are quite extensive, especially for cognitive disabilities.

However, there's two groups that Miller forgot to talk with - parents and admission officers. It may very well be that Miller can't find anyone who knows anyone who actually got an undeserved accommodated test - but that doesn't mean they're not trying. Testing companies track the number of accommodated test requests each year, and the requests for accommodations based on cognitive disabilities has been increasing. Admissions officers, too, might have interesting information on any increase in the number of students who request accommodations after being admitted.

Is it easy to fake such a disability? No. But my guess is that people haven't stopped trying, nor will they.

Teaching to the (math) test can be a good thing

Mobile Register reporter Rena Havner tries hard to make the scenario of "teaching to the test" seem disastrous, but it honestly doesn't seem to me like the kids are being disadvantaged by an increased focus on long division:

Two years ago, before the Mobile County school system began administering standardized quarterly tests, third-graders weren't taught long division until the last two weeks of school, [teacher Cindy] Naylor said. Now, with the federal No Child Left Behind Act and a greater emphasis on standardized testing, long division must be taught months earlier, before the children are mentally ready, Naylor said.

Naylor, who has taught for 24 years, has told the Mobile County school board that too much emphasis is being placed on standardized tests and that children, and their grades, are suffering...She said she now has to "teach to the test," meaning that her lesson plans revolve around the subject matter covered on standardized exams that the system uses to evaluate teachers and that the state uses to rate schools.

Are we supposed to assume that a test for third-graders is bad if it requires they learn long division? I think so, but it sounds to me like many of Naylor's students are benefiting from this new structure:

She undertook plenty of tactics to try to make the long math lesson sink in: To prepare the children for long division, she read a story about ants that must find a number by which 25 can be evenly divided before they can march in a parade.

"Seventy-two!" the boy said, bragging to his classmates. "That was a hard one, but I got it right."

Remember, this is a kid who wouldn't have been taught long division until sometime next year. And now he's thrilled about the fact that he can do multiplication in his head, on command. I realize Ms. Naylor does have a lot on her plate, and I'm sure the paperwork associated with NCLB can be overwhelming. But I don't get the feeling that her students are suffering because of it. Ms. Naylor feels she's not teaching as much "constructive" information any more, but the lesson plans above suggest she's doing a bang-up job in getting her students to understand the rules of mathematics. It's hard to see where the problem is with that.

Show us your --ts!

Well, fine, then. No one asked to see them, but here's my pair. Birdwatching, to boot.

Heh.

Update: As one of Meryl's commenters noted, you can tell these are real, because they're not the same size - although my right one is now larger than my left one. Funny how that works.

Honoring Ms. Joseph

Let's see, first I saw the email about the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation 2005 Prizes for Excellence in Education, which reads in part:

After careful consideration of the nominees gathered through public solicitation, the Foundation's selection committee recommended -- and the trustees approved -- the 2005 Prize winners:

Marion Joseph, former member of the California State Board of Education (1997-2003) and assistant to California's state superintendent of public instruction from 1970-1982.

Ms. Joseph's name didn't immediately ring a bell (I plead temporary overworkedness), so I didn't think much about this, until I received the following email from math guru Mike McKeown:

Marion Joseph was, finally, awarded a much deserved Fordham Foundation Valor Prize. She should have been one of the first.

Marion is a hero of education. All the good things that have happened in California education in the last 10 years would not have happened without Marion. She got started the same way most of us parent/grandparent activists did: They (school curriculum experts and educrats) were mistreating our children and no one seemed to care. Her successes were not just in reading (phonics). She made the math and science standards and intelligent curricula happen. She worked across the political spectrum to find those who understood what worked and was good for kids and to choose that over comfort inducing but failing programs and ideas.

Wow, I figured, that sounds pretty spiffy. But a second email from Mike really perked up my ears, as I discovered that infamous touchy-feely blogger and testing opponent Susan Ohanian is steaming over Ms. Joseph's prize:

Oh my goodness.

Yes, the applicant had to indicate every word that would be uttered to teachers and include copies of any and all reading materials, overhead transparencies, recommended books. It provided a preview of the rigid structures soon to be imposed on California schools.

What exactly is Ms. Ohanian an expert on, other than writing books about how public schools should hate and fear the marketplace, with all its concerned parents and "rightest" think tanks? It's very telling that she considers a teaching plan to be something to be managed so loosely that the Board of Education need not be provided with evidence of what the teacher actually intends to say in the classroom. How dare Ms. Joseph insist that she actually know something about a plan she is to approve! (And how interesting that Ms. Ohanian doesn't enlighten us on the other reasons she and her friends were turned down.)

I, for one, find Ms. Joseph's attention to detail encouraging:

I retired (from the State Department of Education) in 1982 and went off to do other things. And in 1987 California adopted a new language arts framework which attempted to raise the level of the kind of materials children read to a high level of literature. But what it did in actuality was minimize the idea that there were any foundation skills like phonics or spelling necessary for learning to read. And in fact, when the books were adopted by the state, those skills were not included in the books.

So California took a huge nosedive. And we began to go to work on it. But it takes a while to dig your way out of that. You have to write new textbooks and teach the teachers this different method. It takes a long time.

My guess is that Joseph's attention to little details - like the insufficient reading texts and the rock-bottom NAEP scores - are the bees in the bonnet of Ms. Ohanian and others of her ilk. Like Monty Neill, who probably figured he was safe slamming Ms. Joseph on the anti-testing ARN-L newgroup - and got a few of his nasty comments handed back to him, before the thread devolved into Bush-bashing, test-bashing, and nitpicking over whether Ms. Joseph can even be called an "educator".

When cheating costs an arm and a leg

From Caveon's biweekly Cheating In the News roundup, we have a tale of creepily horrific over-reactions to cheating:

Separatists in India's north-eastern state of Manipur have shot six male teachers in the leg for allegedly helping students cheat in exams. Two women teachers were beaten with sticks for the same offence, the rebels of the Kanglei Yana Kan Lup group said.

The rebels said the teachers took up to 5,000 rupees ($110) for helping students cheat and warned of further punishment if the cheating continued.

But then there's this Nebraskan, who doesn't have a problem with cheating at all:

Conor Schultze cheats. And, if asked, he’ll say he doesn’t mind doing it. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln freshman advertising major said he hasn’t been caught cheating, and he thinks professors don’t take cheating seriously.

“When I cheat for tests, I write the answers on my leg or my arm,” he said. “If I cheat, it’s in classes that I don’t care about.”

Ironic, isn't it, that the body part he's using to help him cheat is the same one that's getting shot off of cheaters in India? Surely, there's got to be a happy medium in here somewhere

What's good enough for the Almighty is good enough for us

The best satire is virtually indistinguishable from real life:

DOVER, Pennsylvania - The Dover school board has raised eyebrows and ire across Pennsylvania and the country after requiring math teachers to offer 3 as an acceptable value of Pi. Pi is the name given to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, commonly accepted to be 3.141592, though the actual number is believed to go on endlessly, without repeating.

"Listen, I go to church on Sundays, I tithe, I don't need this," said Timothy Ernesto, a 10th grade math teacher in the district, "I need to get these kids ready for the rest of their lives, the SAT's, the ACT, the whole alphabet soup of testing they'll face before college. On top of all that, I have to teach an 'alternate reality' flavor of mathematics? I'm going to need my summer off!"

Graduate school: self-discipline required

Howard University's newspaper, The Hilltop, has an article about the "unfairly" high prices of test prep courses:

With many juniors and seniors preparing to take the Graduate Record Exam, there are many complaints about the high cost of preparatory classes. The GRE is a standardized test that provides graduate schools with a way to compare qualified applicants for admission and financial aid. Many students take these prep classes to help them get an idea of the format of the tests, to get practice and to help them maximize their scores. The prices of these classes can range from $400-$2,200 for 15- to 35-week courses.

These prices are out of the budget range of many college students who have to work and save or depend on family members to give them the money. This may force many students to opt to study for the exam on their own instead of forking out the several hundred dollars for a structured class.

Is it just me, or does that sound like we're supposed to believe that being "forced" to study for the GRE on one's own is a bad thing? It seems to me there is at least one erroneous assumption at work here, which is that there are special, hidden tricks to these standardized tests that only the test prep coursemakers know. What's more, these tricks must be very valuable, because Princeton Review is charging so much to reveal them.

I believe nothing could be further from the truth. The reason PR and their colleagues get away with charging this much is because students are willing to believe the anti-testing hysteria that's shoved down their throats daily. If you were convinced that psychometricians specifially write test items that female or minority students can't understand, you'd be rushing to sign up for test prep too, and hang the cost.

What's more, these aren't children we're talking about here, but young adults who are preparing for graduate school. Graduate school tends to require a great deal of self-discipline, logical thinking, concentration, and motivation. Although programs do what they can to support their students, when you come right down to it, the only person who can really shape your path towards a Ph.D is you. Anyone who can't get through the GRE without a lot of expensive outside help might find themselves floundering in the sink-or-swim world of a graduate program.

Friday catblogging

Haven't taken any new photos recently, but here's an old favorite of mine. I used to take my older cat, Alice, home with me when I would go to SC for Christmas, because she travels well. Meaning she barges right in and takes over whatever house she's been transported to.

She really enjoyed my mother's Christmas-red tablecloth - and so considerate of my mom to place it near a sunny window, too!

To see other pushy kitties, go check out the Carnival of the Cats. Last week's entry was at Watermark; today, we should see one appear at The People's Republic of Seabrook.

When passing the test may not be the point

Jay Mathews used to teach AP high school classes, and spent five years researching the success of Jaime Escalante (the Stand And Deliver teacher) and the disadvantaged minority students at Garfield High School. He's now uncovered a graphic (in Do What Works: How Proven Practices Can Improve America's Public Schools, by Tom Luce and Lee Thompson) which supports his belief that even students who fail AP exams ultimately benefit from the classes:

...to someone like me who has, along with many high school Advanced Placement (AP) teachers, sought statistical proof of the power of their work with disadvantaged students, this [graphic] is like finding that big flat-screen TV I always wanted under the Christmas tree.

Theirs was a strange kind of failure. They were beaten by the equivalent of 30 or 40 strokes by this Tiger Woods of exams, but they still substantially increased their chances of college success. Anglos who flunked an AP exam were twice as likely to get their degrees as Anglos who never took one. Hispanics, African American and low-income students were three times as likely to get their degrees if they at least tried AP.

This is not proof, of course, that AP classes always work miracles; since AP students are currently somewhat self-selected, one could argue that the students who take the classes are more talented than the general population (even if not learned enough to pass the exams), and thus it's not surprising that they would do better in college.

However, these types of results - along with success stories like Escalante's - should be a very strong lesson to everyone who believes the only way to help disadvantaged students achieve (and gain high "self-esteem") is to bring the classes down to their level and not challenge them too much. Anyone who believes that such students would receive no benefit at all from a tough AP class - and an exam that's too difficult for them - should have to come up with an alternate explanation for these numbers.

(Via Cranky Professor).

When you need bifocals to take the exams

Hopeful college applicants aren't the only ones who should be prepared when it comes to high-stakes tests. This Globe and Mail reply to a letter-writer concerned about employment personality testing is quite interesting:

Strictly speaking, you can refuse or withdraw from testing at any time; no psychologist worth her salt can make you sit through an assessment against your will unless you're ordered to by the court. But refusing to be assessed in a job competition is declining to play the game by the employer's rules...

If asked to recall how many statistics courses were required before they were handed a diploma, most psychologists are likely to respond with eye-rolling, grimacing, tongue protrusion and other signs of disgust.

Well, they got THAT part right. I've known too many school and clinical psychologists who hated statistics, and avoided statistics classes like the plague. They'd take the bare minimum and gripe about it the whole time. Now, I don't expect everyone to be as interested in psychometrics as I am - but still, I find troubling the anti-stats mindset that you see in abundance in psychology undergrads, and to a lesser extent in graduate students.

Not all employment testing is hogwash.

Intelligence tests are good predictors of job performance precisely because it's your level of intelligence that allows you to acquire job knowledge and skills.

Problem is, it's un-PC to say that nowadays.

Science teachers, know your facts - but leave room for other explanations?

Two science education articles that I read this morning are quite interesting in juxtaposition.

First, there's a plea for science teachers to stop faking their science knowledge!

Over the past few years, [Bill Robertson has] written a series of books aimed at encouraging K-12 teachers to enhance their understanding of science, on such basic concepts as sound, light, and energy. This particular session is on force and motion. His books, published by the NSTA under the title, Stop Faking It! Finally Understanding Science So You Can Teach It, ask instructors to divest themselves of a few myths. One is that science topics are invariably hard to understand. Not so, if teachers can grasp the underlying concepts behind them, Mr. Robertson says. A second is that educators can teach science without understanding it. Teachers need to have a mastery of the fundamental principles behind the science they cover, the writer says—not just an ability to recite facts...

Educators and others have decried the lack of subject-matter expertise among science teachers for years, though opinions vary on what contributes most to those shortcomings.

At the same time, though, some schools want their science teachers to expand their scientific curriculum with information that may not really be science:

The way they used to teach the origin of the species to high school students in this sleepy town of 1,800 people in southern Pennsylvania, said local school board member Angie Yingling disapprovingly, was that "we come from chimpanzees and apes."

"Evolution -- is that the Darwin theory?" Cashman shook her head. "I don't know just what he was thinking!"

Maybe Mr. Robertson could clarify that for her.

Tests will expand to fill the space available

EdWeek (free reg required) details the changing playing field for psychometricians and testing companies, thanks to NCLB:

The No Child Left Behind Act has spawned new opportunities—and challenges—for an increasingly diverse testing industry. With all of the federal law’s testing requirements, the Government Accountability Office estimates that states will have to spend between $1.9 billion and $5.3 billion in the next six years, depending on the types of tests used.

But other players, such as the Dover, N.H.-based Measured Progress, the Minneapolis-based Data Recognition Corp., and the ETS, a relative newcomer to the precollegiate testing field, have also grown rapidly in the past several years. States can also choose from a handful of smaller players.

NCLB, aka the "Psychometrician's Work Act of 2001."