The Matrix meets the classroom:
Scientists have developed technology to "teleport" holographs of teachers into the classroom.Equipment which can beam the interactive image of a teacher into schools, where it can hold conversations and make eye contact with pupils, is to go on display at the BETT education technology exhibition next month.
Its creators at the Digital World Centre in Manchester believe it could be used to educate children living in remote areas, or to teach specialist lessons in minority subjets, which would otherwise be uneconomic.
Nifty, but it makes me wonder - given all the disciplinary problems I've read about, and unruly students who ignore real teachers, how on earth is a classroom going to stay under control with a holographic teacher? Or, perhaps, this is a great idea, because the schools can hire bouncers from clubs, or off-duty cops, to make the kids shut up and sit down, while the teacher can beam in from a safe distance away.
Interestingly, this article is actually 6 years old. Given that we don't have holographic teachers yet, does this mean the technology still isn't there? Or did the NEA rise up as one and block this development, seeing as how one good teacher could be beamed into many classrooms at once?
One Florida middle school springs the Holocaust on its students:
Local 6 News reported that eighth-graders with last names beginning with L through Z at Apopka Memorial Middle School were given yellow five-pointed stars for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Other students were privileged, the report said.Father John Tinnelly said his son was forced to stand in the back of the classroom and not allowed to sit because he was wearing the yellow star. "He was forced to go to the back of the lunch line four times by an administrator," Tinnelly said. Tinnelly said the experiment upset his child. "He was crying," Tinnelly said. "I said, 'What are you crying about?' He said, 'Daddy, I was a Jew today.'"
Other parents and children shared similar stories, Tinnelly said...
"Teachers felt that it would have defeated the purpose to tell the students ahead of time because that would have prepared them," Principal Douglas Guthrie said. "Students came in and all they got was a star."
Well, if the object was to teach children what it feels like to be persecuted, I'd say it was a success. Did the reporter talk to any of the privileged kids? How are they feeling today? If any of them were happy with the way things were, now there's a spot to introduce a lesson.
However, I've always found it odd that some educators believe children have to go through this sort of role-playing in order to truly understand a historical event. Do they really think that the horrors of the Holocaust can't be understood without these sorts of theatrics? Have the qualities of empathy disappeared so fully from today's students that the horrors of anti-Semitism escape them entirely? Whatever happened to teaching students about an event, letting them read texts related to it, and encouraging them to think critically about what happened, and why?
Merit pay for better student achievement - it's a growing phenomenon:
In the past year, Minnesota, Florida, Texas and the cities of Houston and Denver have established merit pay programs that partly or completely tie bonuses to student achievement. Other states, including Ohio, Iowa and Mississippi, are considering similar programs. advertisement
Merit pay for teachers has been around for decades in various forms as a way to reward instructors whose salaries are chiefly determined by years of experience and post-graduate degrees. Teachers unions have been critical of most merit pay incentives, arguing the money for such programs would be better - and more fairly - used to raise basic pay.
That's such an odd idea to me, on the face of it. I suppose that's because I've never worked in a field where the idea is to equally distribute all the money in the budget, rather than rank performance and distribute money based on rankings. For the record, however, even if merit pay is a good idea, that doesn't mean tying raises to test scores necessarily is.
I've manged to completely miss the Carnival of Education lately, so here's last week's and here's this week's versions.
Last week's Carnival linked to a fantastic rant about more-pious-than-thee textbooks that mix "social justice" with basic math ("It’s an equation! No, it’s an inequality! No, wait…it’s bullshit!"). This week, there's a great discussion of why Nancy Drew should never be seen text-messaging her crime-solving compatriots ("What's wrong with you? Do you really think our kids are too stupid to understand that things were different back in the day?").
Don't miss.
I'm not quite sure why this article expresses such surprise about these educational findings:
A study by academics at University College London (UCL) and Kings College London has given statistical backbone to the view that the overwhelming factor in how well children do is not what type of school they attend- but social class. It appears to show what has often been said but never proved: that the current league tables measure not the best, but the most middle-class schools; and that even the government's "value-added" tables fail to take account of the most crucial factor in educational outcomes - a pupil's address.
I'm not familiar with the "league tables" referenced in this (confusingly-written) article, but it appears they contain rankings of schools, and the authors of the study referenced above appear to have data showing that the rankings correlate highly with the address of the student. The authors are horrified about this "polarization," and hope these data will be used to oppose privitization and school choice. I'm finding it hard to see why allowing middle-class parents and middle-class schools to "find each other" is such a bad thing.
Also, just looking at these results, I don't see a causal relationship. Why are the authors concluding that a middle-class address is a cause, rather than concluding that better children, and more involved parents, actually help produce better schools?
(Disclaimer - I don't have time at the moment to try to find the original study online, if it is online, and I'll confess that I'm not even sure if "middle-class" means the same thing in the UK as it does in the US. So make of my commentary what you will.)
Where does your kid rank among his high school class? You may not be able to find out:
In the cat-and-mouse maneuvering over admission to prestigious colleges and universities, thousands of high schools have simply stopped providing that information, concluding it could harm the chances of their very good, but not best students.Canny college officials, in turn, have found a tactical way to respond. Using broad data that high schools often provide, like a distribution of grade averages for an entire senior class, they essentially recreate an applicant’s class rank.
The process has left them exasperated.
Admissions directors note that without ranks, the alternatives are...standardized exams like the SAT. A good thing, I say, but perhaps not what the schools were intending. One principal insists that refusal to rank forces universities to look at "the whole child." Putting aside the argument for a moment that many, many aspects of an entire child have little to no impact on how they may do in a college setting, how likely is this to happen for students wanting to attend a local university - like, say, the University of Miami, which receives 18,500 applications a year?
I'm not saying there's no room for improvement in the college admissions process, especially now that college degrees have gone from being superfluous to being useful to being required. But the withholding of useful data isn't necessarily going to produce the results the high schools are hoping for.
When is a video an "educational crutch?"
...Loudoun County (VA) School Board member Joseph Guzman (Sugarland Run) says some commercial movies, such as the Lion King, which he says was shown in a science class to illustrate the “Circle of Life,” and another Disney cartoon, Mulan, which he says was used in an AP world history class, cross the line from education to entertainment. Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Sharon Ackerman and her staff are looking into Guzman’s suggestion that commercial movies are used as educational crutches.
I've seen quite a bit of coverage about this recent review of California's Prop 227:
It doesn't matter whether California students who don't know English are taught in bilingual classrooms or fully immersed in the language, according to a five-year study of California's Proposition 227. What matters is the quality of the education they receive."We don't see any compelling evidence that one is better than the other," said study co-director Amy Merickel with the American Institutes for Research. "We've been arguing about the wrong thing for a long time. ... It doesn't appear that forcing the majority of students to take the immersion pill is going to be a solution."
Seven years after California's controversial Prop. 227 passed and reduced the use of bilingual programs throughout the state, the 228-page study largely sidestepped the political debate surrounding English learners. Instead it recommended that educators put less emphasis on dictating specific methods and more on rewarding academic success.
The media is essentially touting the issue as "a draw." It's an interesting one, given the following salient points of the research:
Key findings from the study include:# Since the passage of Proposition 227, students across all language classifications in all grades have experienced performance gains on state achievement tests.
# During this time, the performance gap between English learners and native English speakers has remained virtually constant in most subject areas for most grades.
# Interviews with representatives of schools and districts among the highest performers in the state with substantial English learner populations further supported the finding that there is no single path to academic excellence among English learners.
The key points also note, though, that there are critical factors here, even if there's not one critical method:
The factors identified as most critical to their success were: staff capacity to address English learners’ linguistic and academic needs; school wide focus on English language development and standards-based instruction; shared priorities and expectations in educating English learners and systematic, ongoing assessment and careful data use to guide instruction.
One big honkin' post to cover some of the multitudes of testing, education and child-rearing news I've read lately. Enjoy!
Testing news:
Stockton (CA) isn't waiting for students to get in high school - or even finish middle school - before they are exposed to the CAHSEE content.
LSAC folks are wondering what the recent fuss over thumbprinting is all about. I wonder if the Patriot Act is really the issue here, or just a convenient excuse for would-be test-takers to complaint about rigorous identification methods that are implemented solely to thwart cheating.
ETS has put off the proposed modifications to the GRE for one year. A description of the revised test is here, with changes due to be implemented in the fall of 2007. The press release notes that "the delay will better serve test takers and graduate institutions." The snitty quotes from the representative of the Princeton Review in the Dartmouth article are pretty funny to me. First they complain about the test being shorter and adaptive, now they complain about it being longer and non-adaptive.
Arizona aims to add science to the state standardized exams. In addition, the current seniors have to pass all three of the AIMS sections — reading, writing and math — in order to be awarded a diploma. The current numbers aren't that pretty - only 73 percent of current high school sophomores have passed at least one section.
Education news:
I think this is going to be a pretty fascinating article for any parent to read:
The amount of black history integrated into lessons varies not only by state but from classroom to classroom, educators say. While Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois have diversified teachers’ resources, it is up to individual districts and teachers what is actually taught. And some teachers fear that a lack of focus on different cultures in standardized tests pushes that information to the background.“I think we do get kind of bogged down with the everyday teaching that we kind of overlook a lot of the multiracial issues, not only black but other students as well,” said Peggy Durden, a third-grade teacher at Stockwell Elementary in Evansville. “They’re not concerned, I don’t think, with the issues we’re talking about. (They’re focused on) the basic concepts we teach.”
Funny, those school administrators, insisting that teachers focus on basic skills before focusing on diversity lessons. I find it a tad disturbing that a third-grade teacher would refer to her required lessons in math and reading as "bogging" her down.
Graduate student Rohan Duggan should certainly go enroll elsewhere - perhaps at a university where the grammatical skills and vocabulary knowledge of his professors are at least at the college level.
Child-rearing news:
I agree with BoingBoing that this is an example of some really cruddy child-rearing. Talk about missing the opportunity to teach a lesson in basic manners and morality.
Was this transgression worth an arrest and $10,000 bail? Perhaps we should ask the kid who was standing outside in chilly, drizzly weather for hours with no coat to protect her.
Now THIS is what I call a science fair project:
Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants. Her project won the science fair at the New Tampa school, and she hopes to win a top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday.The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling. "I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much," she said. "And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner."
Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.
And we're not talking harmless little bugs, either. She found E. coli in three of the five ice samples. I think Tampa's got a bit of a problem - and a budding epidemiologist on its hands.
As in, a roundup of the zanier education news, while the snow piles up, Dave digs out my car, and the crockpot is bubbling.
"You won't let us in the dance? We'll make our own dance! And we'll freak if we want to!"
You'd think that "Disciplinary Policies To Avoid" would have been covered in Education 101.
Bad enough boys lag so far behind in educational performance, but they're falling behind on their three-day benders, too.
Kids should beware of candy that isn't fattening. Of course, given how schools are reacting lately to sugar, whether it's identified correctly or incorrectly, kids may get in trouble even when their candy is the real deal.
YEOW. In more ways than one.
Joanne Jacobs and the LA Times on the sensitive topic of compulsory algebra.
From the Times:
When the Los Angeles Board of Education approved tougher graduation requirements that went into effect in 2003, the intention was to give kids a better education and groom more graduates for college and high-level jobs. For the first time, students had to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry or an equivalent class to earn diplomas.The policy was born of a worthy goal but has proved disastrous for students unprepared to meet the new demands. In the fall of 2004, 48,000 ninth-graders took beginning algebra; 44% flunked, nearly twice the failure rate as in English. Seventeen percent finished with Ds. In all, the district that semester handed out Ds and Fs to 29,000 beginning algebra students — enough to fill eight high schools the size of Birmingham.
Among those who repeated the class in the spring, nearly three-quarters flunked again.
Joanne notes:
Passing algebra and geometry has been a district requirement since 2003, a state requirement since 2004. The story implies the requirement is just another fad. But the real problem seems to be that students are enrolled again and again in the same classes they failed before. They give up and zone out.
I think we can all agree that when students don't ever learn the basics, they're doomed to failure. Darren points out that:
The real problem isn't that the students can't pass algebra, it's that in some cases they haven't been prepared to pass algebra. Granted, some don't help themselves (like the girl who missed 62 out of 93 days in the semester), but a healthy share of the problem seems, to me, to be this observation[from the Times]:At Cal State Northridge, the largest supplier of new teachers to Los Angeles Unified, 35% of future elementary school instructors earned Ds or Fs in their first college-level math class last year. Some of these students had already taken remedial classes that reviewed high school algebra and geometry.
Don't be so surprised. And the NEA and CTA want to keep American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence from providing alternative teacher credentialing here in California while keeping our state university programs in tact, focused on fuzzy, and patently irrelevant. Way to go, unions.
If elementary teachers are that shaky in math, their task of preparing students to learn algebra will be that much harder.
Two recent articles make for an interesting juxtaposition.
First, we are all apparently alarmed at the lack of math teachers these days:
The lack of certified science and math teachers is a growing quandary for schools around the nation, particularly those in poor neighborhoods. Lawmakers in Washington are proposing to spend billions over the next several years to encourage more teachers to enter those subject fields. Politicians and business leaders say this isn't just about education — it's about global competition. Competent and engaged teachers are needed to inspire American children to pursue a career in math or science. If it doesn't happen, the United States' role as leader in technology development and scientific research will wither, they say.
On the other hand, the NYTimes reports that public school and private school math scores seem to be about the same, once demographic variables are factored out:
large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools.The study, by Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski, of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, compared fourth- and eighth-grade math scores of more than 340,000 students in 13,000 regular public, charter and private schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2003 test was given to 10 times more students than any previous test, giving researchers a trove of new data...
"Over all," it said, "demographic differences between students in public and private schools more than account for the relatively high raw scores of private schools. Indeed, after controlling for these differences, the presumably advantageous private school effect disappears, and even reverses in most cases."
This could mean that everyone, and not just poor public schools, are suffering from a lack of math instructors, and not even our kids in private schools are getting enough instruction to compete with international students.
As if freshman year wasn't tough enough, now there's a summer "boot camp":
The Los Angeles Unified School District created the academic boot camp, called the Freshman Success Summer Bridge, at eight San Fernando Valley high schools last year for incoming students with low English or math scores. But the program had some limitations. Because participation was voluntary, some students who needed it most did not attend, and others dropped out. For some, six weeks was not enough; for others, the work wasn't challenging...Students included those who scored "below basic" or lower in English or math on standardized tests. In classes of about 25, they spent half their mornings on math, sometimes using laptop computers, and the other half on reading, writing and developing study skills. Students who completed the program earned 10 credits toward the 60 they need to be promoted to 10th grade.
Interesting that some students with low test scores mastered this material quickly enough to be bored by the end of the six weeks. Does this suggest a poor fit between test and curriculum? Do some students not take the test seriously? Or do they flourish with this individual attention?
Quite a few bits of insanity floating around the edusphere and childrearing world today...
Here's the best "out" I've seen yet for a really difficult and demanding child.
A credit card thief figures out a new plan. But given what all we've heard about teachers' salaries these days, isn't this like stealing from the poor? (Via the Education Wonks.)
Can we make a rule that if your initials are the same as a gang's, you get ownership of those letters?
I suppose this is one way to control fan behavior at games. Depressing that it comes to that, but it certainly seems effective.
Nothing says "excellence" like removing an honor just because a lot of kids strive for it.
Have you set your VCR/TIVO to record this? I have!
For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid." We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.The Belgians did better because their schools are better...
This should come as no surprise once you remember that public education in the USA is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
NewOldSchoolTeacher is getting ready to start student teaching. I like her ideas:
So anyway, I'll be teaching seniors. The school has three levels, it seems, for social studies--AP, Honors, and regular. As luck would have it, I got the regulars. Again, as you might guess, the regular kids are more difficult to handle and have far lower achievement levels.......I think that the school has to have a firm internal structure set up to help these low performers, and all students for that matter. This structure should include, but not be limited to, their primary teachers. I'm talking about tutoring, after-school help with teachers, a strong discipline code rigorously enforced (detention!), counseling support, contact with parents, and maybe just a little love. I mean, we all need a little love, right?
Not me, I'm a heartless robot with a soul of steel. Which is one reason I don't have a problem failing students. If a student is so behind that he/she can't catch up during the year, it is in that student's best interest to repeat and acquire the necessary skills. Likewise, a student who never does his/her work should learn that the consequence to that is failure. In the workplace, not doing work gets you fired. Schools can be more humane. Not doing work means you have to do the work anyway.
Failing a grade can turn someone's life around. Even if the student hates it (or you) at the time, it might be the best thing that ever happened to him/her.
Bingo.
Nice to know these Kansas schools have successfully mastered all teaching of English, and can move on to the really hard stuff:
A suburban Kansas City-area school district plans to add Chinese to its curriculum next year, making it the third area school system to teach the language. "We just can't ignore the whole area (East Asia) anymore," said Dan Lumley, director of curriculum and instruction for the Lee's Summit School District. "It's just unfair to the kids."On the Kansas side of the Kansas City area, the Shawnee Mission and Olathe districts teach the language. According to the education departments in Kansas and Missouri, the only other district to teach Chinese in those states is St. Louis' public schools. The Kansas Consortium for Teaching About Asia at the University of Kansas is promoting Chinese instruction in Kansas City-area schools. It is arranging for Chinese exchange teachers for the Lee's Summit and Shawnee Mission districts.
Actually, I kid. I think an opportunity to learn Chinese would be wonderful for American schoolchildren. I also think that Chinese methods of instruction might be wonderful for American teachers to see. I'd love to be a fly on the wall the first time that a Chinese teacher hears an educrat insist that memorization, individual work, and failing grades are harmful to students.
Joanne Jacobs notes that, as far as some seniors are concerned, AP classes take a backseat to manicures and minimum-wage jobs:
My colleagues and I are fully committed to providing [our 12th-grade students] with a world-class academic education, one that regularly produces large numbers of National Merit Scholars and sends students on to do well in Ivy League colleges.But we do not look out over classrooms full of enthusiastic, prepared and appreciative students as my daughter does in China...Our schools are failing because of the demands and temptations provided by a mass culture that is the primary educator of most of our young people. Even in our advanced placement courses, we deal with students who don't understand why English teachers expect them to read 400-page novels, write papers carefully or do precise study for rigorous tests. They will tell you that they don't have the time.
They are also expected to work 20 hours a week at Target to pay for their cars, fit in their hair, tanning and nail appointments, babysit their mother's younger children, acquire their own meals, plan for the prom and senior week, respond to their phone and computer messages and listen to everything programmed into their iPods. Further, they need to do all of those things after they have worked three hours a day for their coaches and fit in all of their doctor, dentist and therapy appointments.
And we haven't even gotten to the God-given right each American child has to the pursuit of happiness in the form of playing with their PlayStations, watching videos, taking trips to Starbucks, hanging out and napping.
Interesting, that "God-given right" to have a busy life that we seem to teach our youth about. It's probably not a coincidence that at the same time high school teachers wonder why their students can't sit still and focus on academics, a new syndrome has appeared in elementary school - The Overscheduled Child:
Contemporary children get so much more than basic schooling. Many also participate on one or more teams, have lessons in music, art, foreign language, and are tutored in school subjects. Although each activity may be valuable on its own, in aggregate these commitments leave parents and children frazzled, keep children from developing self-reliance, and hurt families...This is happening because many contemporary parents see their fundamental job as designing a perfect upbringing for their offspring, from conception to college. A child's success—quantified by "achievements" like speaking early, qualifying for the gifted and talented program or earning admission to an elite university—has become the measure of parental accomplishment. Despite knowing in their hearts that their families are over-scheduled, many parents keep rushing because they fear that cutting back could harm their beloved child's future.
That is why the most competitive adult sport is no longer golf. It is parenting.
I know five-year-olds who have taken more sports classes, seen more plays, had more lavish and expensive birthday parties, and have more scheduled dates with their peer group members than I have, or ever will. They also tend to have lovely playrooms filled with toys, but I wonder when they have time to play with any of them.
For some schools in California, an increase in "quality" might mean simply fixing the water fountain, or increasing the number of textbooks available:
In 2000, Sweetie Williams and his son Eliezer “Eli” Williams—who graduated from high school last June—became the lead plaintiffs in Williams v. California. In the class action, they charged that the conditions of the school Eli attended in the San Francisco Unified School District were “dismal and unacceptable,” according to a statement the elder Williams wrote in 2004 when the case was settled. Restrooms were dirty, toilets didn’t work, fences were rusty, and many teachers didn’t even assign homework because students didn’t have books to take home with them, he added.“Every child should have the opportunity to go to a school where they are given the basic materials and facilities that all children need to learn,” Sweetie Williams wrote, summing up the case and describing the reasoning behind the inspections that are now mandatory for hundreds of California schools.
The site visits like the one at Pomona’s Ganesha High, which Sepulveda completed with the help of four other team members, are just part of the detailed process through which officials monitor the physical and academic conditions of the schools targeted in the lawsuit.
Great Falls High School is proud of its seven National Merit semi-finalists - the most in 21 years:
Great Falls High School's class of 2006 has seven National Merit semi-finalists this year — more than it has had in one year for at least 21 years, said Counselor Steve Bennetts. This class's kids have more 4.0s, higher standardized test scores and higher GPAs than classes before and after it, according to the counseling office.Bennetts calls them "the brightest class to ever graduate from Great Falls High."
And they're more than eggheads. (One National Merit semifinalist admits to nearly flunking a calculus test.) They practice tae kwon do, write novels, sew their own prom dresses (off-white with a burgundy border), downhill ski and ace national exams.
One little complaint of mine - I wish someone was teaching the kids how to express humility without downgrading the exam:
Every class has its smart kids, Bennetts said, but the class of 2006 has more than its share. They work hard, take hard classes and something inside drives them."It's a desire to learn," Barlow said.
By and large, the National Merit semi-finalists among them downplay that rank.
"You go in, you sit down, you get lucky on a test one day," Hall said.
No, not really, kid. You made your luck that day. It's admirable that they want to be humble about their accomplishments and not flaunt their awards in front of the kids who didn't do as well, but to suggest that the high scores are the result of pure luck is incorrect.
It seems a bit odd to see "standout" students with full schedules complaining about too much homework:
...when Norton, Mass., Middle School officials eliminated two study halls each week, three seventh-grade girls decided they had had enough. erryn Camara, Lynsey Kearns and Audra Schlehuber gathered more than 150 signatures on a petition to restore the study halls, which were scaled back to fulfill state requirements on classroom time..."I know two classes a week doesn't seem like a lot, but a lot of kids are staying up until midnight on their homework," Kearns said. "We don't have enough time to get it all done."Complaints about homework are a time-honored tradition, but today's protests may be more than idle grumbling. With teachers and schools under increasing pressure to cover more topics and raise standardized test scores, even young students at many suburban schools are saddled with a heavy load of nightly assignments, teachers and parents say.
The complaints seem to be about the loss of family time together, with students complaining that all the time from dinner to 10 pm is homework. But what about before dinner?
Parents have greeted the trend with a resounding chorus of complaints, saying the hours spent on homework are detracting from normal family life. Students are sacrificing sleep to finish work sheets and projects -- and robbing families of what little relaxation time together they have, they say.The three Norton seventh-graders -- bright, articulate girls described by their principal as standout students -- bounce from activity to activity after school, then study for about two hours each evening, more if they have a test or a project due the next day. "As soon as I finish dinner, I have to start my homework," said Kearns, who goes to basketball practice and theater classes after school. "That takes me till about 10 p.m., and I go right to bed. What ever happened to relaxing?"
Ah. I see (emphasis mine). Spending a couple hours a day on basketball and theater class - that, they understand. That time spent away from family is apparently fine with everyone, and only the time spent on homework is sticking in the parental craws. This seems odd, and I wonder how many parents out there would be willing to tell their younger kids to pick just one activity, and leave the rest of the time for schoolwork.
Once again, a removal of race-based quotes results in a dip in "diversity":
...inside the accelerated classes at the Hennigan and other public schools in the city, the pipeline to exam schools is starting to look a lot less like Boston's public schools. Black and Hispanic students fill 44 percent of the 968 seats in the accelerated classes in the school district, though they make up more than three-quarters of Boston's students overall. White and Asian students now occupy 55 percent of the seats, though they are only 23 percent of the district.In particular, the number of black students, now at 239, in the classes has dropped by half since 1999, when the city stopped using racial quotas to assign students to the classes...
''It's not a true picture of what the city is," said Costa, who presides over a majority white and Asian fourth-grade accelerated class in a school that is 85 percent black and Hispanic. ''You can't tell me that all black children aren't capable of achieving like white children. I wouldn't buy that."
No one is saying they aren't capable of achieving. The standardized test score is simply telling you that they aren't achieving, at least not in the numbers Costa would like to see. For some reason, everyone wants to now put the accelerated program under a microscope, instead of asking two simple questions:
1. Does performance on the standardized entrance exam seem to be predictive of whether one will benefit from accelerated learning?
2. If so, then why are black and Hispanic students not scoring well on the exam?
If the test is actually not useful, then other methods should be used. But if the test seems to be useful, the problem is not necessarily with the program or the test. One part of the puzzle might be the attitude that black and Hispanic students can't be expected to do well on objective measures of achievement, and require special set-asides to ensure that they make it to accelerated classes.
An exasperated Florida teacher takes her students to task in a Sun-Sentinel opinion piece:
...what is most interesting under the No Child Left Behind Act is this tidbit about accountability: "No Child Left Behind holds schools and school districts accountable for results. Schools are responsible for making sure your child is learning." Schools are responsible, yet it seems low-performing schools have fewer and fewer resources to help promote learning gains.As a teacher, I think the goal of increasing student achievement has much merit. However, we good teachers beat our heads against walls day-in, day-out trying to get our students to grasp not just the standards and benchmarks, but also the importance of reinforcing their education with homework and reading. When I tell students they have to do independent reading, they groan. I actually had an advanced student, when told the School Board expected students to read a new book every two weeks, ask, "Don't they think we have lives?"
The more important word in the phrase "student achievement" is "student." Until the students take responsibility for their own learning, test scores will not improve....
I don't think I would have been able to get away with the "Don't you think I have a life?!" argument in high school.
I'm sensing a link between this teacher's aggravation and this parent's downplaying of the importance of science:
With the single goal of boosting standardized test results, a third year of science will now be required for all incoming freshmen (Class of 2010) at Paso Robles High School. This is the latest action in a continuing trend to force students into academic courses regardless of ability, strengths or interests. While added courses can be a good thing, this change comes at the expense of electives and vocational programs. Many parents and teachers feel that such a reduction of electives will have a negative impact on all students.All students need a curriculum rich in sensory opportunities, with a chance to do, play and move, and opportunities to learn teamwork, discipline, leadership and hands-on skills. There is not a test score out there that measures this kind of learning, but watching our performing arts students, I, for one, know success when I see it!
...student enrollment in courses such as art, drama, music, life skills, social studies and vocational programs will drop considerably with this change. Inevitably, Paso Robles schools will begin to lose their very qualified and dedicated teachers as well.
Let me get this straight - the entire school is going to go down the tubes just because now students will have to take earth sciences, biology, and chemistry? Are you kidding me? Has it really been announced that all the elective courses are now cancelled because one more science course is required? And has it also been announced that the work in the additional science course is utterly contrary to discipline, hands-on learning, teamwork, and all the other concepts this author believes are important?
Visual and Performing Arts classes are beneficial to high-schoolers - but so is science. I'm failing to understand why, at this high school of all high schools, the two are considered to be in opposition to one another.
Hey, Devoted Readers, I need some advice.
A friend of mine has a lovely and precocious daughter in kindergarten, who is very smart in reading and math, is extroverted, loves school, and is both taller and slightly older than the other kids in her class. She's used to hanging out with her older sister's friends, who are in fourth grade. The public school at which she is due to start first grade next year has recommended to my friend that she be allowed to skip it altogether and start in second grade.
My friend wants to weigh all the options before making such a huge decision. I'd love any links, books, people, advice, etc on this topic that you guys can supply - either email me or put them in the comments section. Personal anecdotes are welcome as well.
A USA Today editorial asks the provacative question: Boys lag behind - Does anyone care?
Maryland educators opened their latest test results recently and discovered their 10th-grade boys lagging far behind girls in literacy skills. The same thing happened in Kentucky, Vermont and Washington. Teachers and parents can tell you that in elementary school, girls are more facile learners. But gender differences are assumed to level out over the years and clear up by high school.That's not happening...It gets worse. Boys are twice as likely to land in special education and far more likely to be held back a grade and drop out. At many public universities and some private colleges, barely 40% of the students are male.
Oddly, educators, researchers and philanthropists agree there's no serious effort to figure out why this is happening and what can be done. Other priorities prevail...
Yes, they certainly do, to the extent that some critics today continue to repeat the tired canard that tests and schools are inherently short-changing girls. Even though who have changed their tune and are no longer claiming this are very reluctant to propose that special attention be given to boys - witness the insistence, in the face of contrary data, that the same teaching methods that help girls excel must also help boys excel.
It's very odd, indeed, that the current data is not being taken seriously especially given that this problem wasn't exactly uncovered yesterday.
And if educators and administrators seem unwilling to deal with the fact that boys are falling behind academically, I wonder how willing they'll be to deal with these types of problems within their schools:
Many Hillsborough County middle and high school students lead double lives - one for their parents and one for their peers.In a districtwide survey, nearly half of high school students and one in five middle school students said they have had sexual intercourse, and a higher percentage of high school boys than girls reported being physically hurt by their "significant others."
Emphasis mine. The survey's past results are here. Kudos goes to the first school district who tackles these problems by admitting that both boys and girls can be abusive, and ensuring that victims of either sex should be unafraid to reach out for help. Then again, if this article is anything to go by, administrators who are unfraid to acknowledge and tackle female violence may find themselves under attack.
Faced with students' declining scores in mathematics, Bozeman High School [MT]is strengthening its math program while the school board considers whether to make an additional year of math study a graduation requirement.
Bozeman High will add a remedial math class, increase teacher training and make attendance at a drop-in math lab a requirement for struggling students, instead of an option, Principal Godfrey Saunders told the board...
At Chief Joseph Middle School, 58 percent of eighth-grade boys who took a standardized test showed proficiency in math, down from 76 percent in the previous testing cycle. Girls held steady, at 77.
Emphasis mine. Good grief, what a drop (though a middle school in Montana might have a small enough population that only a couple of boys could make a huge impact; I can't download the software to check here)
Rock Island High School (IL) announces the end of social promotions:
The Rock Island-Milan school district's Parent Advisory Committee met Wednesday to further discuss what parents want incoming freshmen to get from the federally-funded Smaller Learning Community, or Freshman Academy...Under the SLC’s plan, next year's ninth graders will receive extra academic, social and motivational support from teachers; lessons that will address different learning styles and cultures; and be identified early for pre-advanced placement and honors classes, or the opposite -- for needing extra help in reading and math.
Former Rocky principal Nate Anderson, who is heading up the SLC, told parents Wednesday he is "not a proponent" of social promotion. Along with that ideal is the token phrase being used to catapult the SLC: "failure is not an option."
More of the principal's message is here:
First, I would like to thank parents who attended the parent information night this past week. We trust that the disseminated information was of value. For those parents who were not able to attend, there were five important steps presented that may assist in strengthening student academic development.They are:
Encourage mandatory attendance from home
Set high expectations by encouraging your child to make good grades
Insure your child’s engagement in class by asking open-ended questions
Get involved with your child’s education
Be informed of testing, report cards and other pertinent information regarding your child’s high school experience
Sounds good to me.
This week's Carnival of Education is up, which includes a head-scratching question from Polski3:
A teaching colleague of mine is using an F- grade for those students who utterly fail the class, usually due to a combination of not turning in work and discipline issues. My colleague says it sends a message that the student is REALLY DOING BAD. What do you think? Does it send a message? Or is it overly harsh and redundant?
Also online is Caveon's latest Cheating in the News roundup, which details "mass plagiarism" in the UK:
Examiners say they detected "blatant copying of material from the internet" in some of this year's coursework for GCSE English. Staff at the AQA exam board are said to have been surprised at some of the more obvious examples.They also said some schools gave students so much help it amounted to "a kind of mass plagiarism".
So here's what we do. If you fail honestly, you get an F, along with tutoring and helpful advice (which may be along the lines of, "Perhaps you should choose a different subject for your major.")
However, if you cheat, then you get a big honking "F-minus" in red permanent ink and 44-point font size. That seems to me like the best solution.
Philadelphia teachers are asking their students to give 'em more feedback:
Almost daily, Haverford Middle School science teacher Theresa D'Andrea asks for feedback about how she is doing. And her students answer with a wave of brightly colored index cards.Green means yes, the student understands the lesson. Yellow means maybe, sorta, kinda. And a red card held aloft is a signal that a student needs an extra dose of instruction. Some days, just a few cards are in the air, and D'Andrea offers a quick refresher and also reminds her students that they can get extra help after school.
The cards function as an early warning system that alerts D'Andrea and her students to lapses in learning.
Nifty (thought this method will be pretty funny to any student who plays soccer). Other examples of "formative assessments" in Philly schools:
At Upper Merion Area High School and elsewhere, for instance, students use handheld clickers to answer a teacher's question, and the instant record of responses shows the entire class whether some, most or all students got the lesson.And teachers in the Garnet Valley School District use Palm Pilots to take in-class notes on student achievement. Moving from desk to desk, the teacher can observe and record whether a student is at an entry level or advanced understanding of a particular math or reading concept.
The NYTimes opens an article about the new "innovative" math with a provocative anecdote:
LAST spring, when he was only a sophomore, Jim Munch received a plaque honoring him as top scorer on the high school math team here. He went on to earn the highest mark possible, a 5, on an Advanced Placement exam in calculus. His ambition is to become a theoretical mathematician.So Jim might have seemed the veritable symbol for the new math curriculum installed over the last seven years in this ambitious, educated suburb of Rochester. Since seventh grade, he had been taking the "constructivist" or "inquiry" program, so named because it emphasizes pupils' constructing their own knowledge through a process of reasoning.
Jim, however, placed the credit elsewhere. His parents, an engineer and an educator, covertly tutored him in traditional math. Several teachers, in the privacy of their own classrooms, contravened the official curriculum to teach the problem-solving formulas that constructivist math denigrates as mindless memorization.
The article does a nice job of capturing the frustration parents feel with math instruction so "progressive" and devoid of "mindless memorization" that their sixth-graders are unable to make change from a $20 bill. What's more, the parents who are helping their children memorize multiplication tables are derided as "helicopter parents":
Susan Gray, the superintendent, attributed the criticism of the math program to "helicopter parents" who are accustomed to being deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. "Because the pedagogy has changed, the parents who knew the old ways didn't know how to help their children," she said. "They didn't have the knowledge and skills to support their children at home. There's a security in memorization of math facts, and that security is gone now."
Um, is that supposed to be an advantage of constructivist math? That engineers, scientists, and doctors who used to be able to expect their kids to make change can no longer do so? And I'd like to point out to Ms. Gray that the term "helicopter parents" was developed to mock those overprotective souls who keep a close eye on kids who've left the nest and moved on to college. Applying the term to parents who are horrified at how handicapped their young kids are by lack of "drill and kill" math knowledge is condescending and nasty.
The article's primary shortcoming is its lack of links to bloggers, educators, and teachers who have been fighting this battle for quite some time. At the very least, the author should have linked to Bas Braams and Mike McKeown for their tireless work in this area. To get the best sense of the ongoing battle to return common sense and multiplication tables back to public school math, you can also click on over to the NYHOLD site and just keep scrolling. A recent paper by Stanley Ocken, a professor of mathematics at CUNY-NY, sums things up nicely:
...the New York State 4th and 8th grade assessments are weak in computational and pre-algebra skills. Those exams include lots of word problems dealing with everyday situations, but the actual math skills required are minimal [What's more, such items place a heavy reading load on students, and often end up measuring more reading comprehension than math skills]. That’s a direct result of the vision described in the NCTM Standards: computation with standard algorithms must be removed from its dominant place in the elementary curriculum. After all, you can get the answer with a calculator.The problem with that recommendation is its effect on students’ future ability to handle algebraic symbolism efficiently, fluently, accurately. It’s necessary, but not sufficient, that kids learn the multiplication table cold. Once that's done, they need to assemble basic operations into more complex tasks. That’s why they still need to practice standard algorithms for multi-digit multiplication and division. It is the experience of sustained number manipulation, with fluency and accuracy as the goal, that establishes a foundation for future success with lengthy algebraic symbol manipulation tasks that are critical in mathematics and science, beginning with a good Algebra II course. And it is the importance of sustained number manipulation that is categorically rejected by the NCTM Standards and by elementary math programs, including Everyday Math, that share the NCTM vision.
This fuzzy math has been lauded by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics for years as more inclusive and beneficial to students in a high-tech age, and a cursory read of their mathematics standards would seem to support their claims. However, the careful reader will note that, despite their claims that there's no one "right" way to teach math, the NCTM pushes collaborative learning over solitary work, and they present "conceptual understanding" as something that contrasts to, rather than results from, the learning of basic skills. Calculators are also a integral (ha) part of their brave new vision.
For more criticism of the NCTM and their plan for teaching "conceptual understanding" without having to memorize any formulas, you can click back to old links of mine here, here, here, and here.
And to end with my own anecdotal evidence of sorts, let's just say that everyone I know who tutors high school math, either on the side or as a full-time job, is not having to hunt for pupils, even in the best school districts where the public schools are considered to be very good. The tutors I've spoken with don't describe their pupils as being pushed by "helicopter parents," either, but say that the outside is tutoring is a necessity to balance the undemanding school curricula.
You know, I think this is a great idea:
The Minneapolis school system's online physical education allows kids to choose a physical activity they enjoy, do it for 30 minutes three times a week -- on their own time -- while keeping an online journal. A parent or coach must confirm the student did the activities, and a fitness test at semester's end will turn up any cheaters. Course choices have ranged from weight-lifting to swimming to horseback riding...Josh Boucher, a 15-year-old sophomore, has a hip condition that makes it difficult for him to run. But he also has a black belt in karate, and last summer was able to turn his training into his phys ed class. "I was doing so much physical activity -- more than most gym classes," Boucher said. "Now I can get credit for it."
He also rejects the idea that the online classes are easier than traditional gym. Students must study the health benefits of their activities and get assignments on related topics like healthy eating. "It's time-consuming," Boucher said. "We had hours of written work where we were learning about fitness and how to better our lives. More than I'd ever had in gym class."
Just think - No stupid uniforms. No having to spend an hour between 8 and 3 playing volleyball with people you may not like. No icky school showers. If your kid's shy, get 'em into something that isn't a contact sport; if your kid's a little demon, they can learn a real competitive skill instead of a watered-down gym class that has to be approved by everyone's parents.
I wish I could have done gym class this way. For most of my life I thought I was completely unathletic because I can't do anything well that requires me to hit a ball. With this option I would have been off the softball field and into a kickboxing class like shot through a goose.
A perspective published in EdWeek.org argues that good, solid research isn't that helpful in the educational system nowadays:
I no longer believe that education research will turn our schools around. And it’s not likely to help us to fix our ailing schools for very specific reasons. First, research is not readily accessible—either physically or intellectually. The findings tend to be written for other researchers in academicspeak and appear in relatively obscure journals.
True enough. The general incomprehensibility of educational jargon has been widely mocked in the real world.
Second, even if research findings were more accessible, they wouldn’t be widely read. Teachers, principals, superintendents, and politicians are generally not consumers of research.
And whose fault is that? Don't the first three groups listed above generally hold at least a bachelor's degree? If they aren't consumers of research, perhaps the problem lies in their training to be part of the educational system.
The author continues with a few more reasons that research isn't used, or used well, in today's educational environment, before moving on to this:
Sixth, much education research is flawed because it relies so heavily on a flawed measure—standardized test scores.
Anyone surprised that this attitude shows up here? No? Let's move on.
Test scores may be the only “objective” data available, but they’re not necessarily a reliable measure of student learning.
Ah, no. "Reliability" has a very specific meaning when it comes to testing, and in an article that talks about how educators aren't generally consumers of research, it's ironic - or perhaps not - that the author appears to be misusing this technical term. Most, if not all, multiple-choice standardized tests that are developed for use are in fact highly reliable, because reliability in testing means consistency of measurement, or the extent to which the results are similar over different forms of the same test or occasions of test administration. Items that are objectively scored are more likely to produce similar test-retest results for examinees.
Exams composed of primarily multiple-choice items tend to have high reliability, and in fact most test developers shoot for a reliability of .90 for these types of exams. The addition of open-ended items, performance-based items - in fact, all the less-structured types of assessments that so many educators are fond of - usually lessen the reliability of these types of exams.
So I'm not sure why the author used low reliability as a criticism here, since that's probably where the least amount of error appears in this type of exam.
Nor do they measure many of the traits we hope schooling will produce in kids—like good habits of mind and behavior. They don’t measure Howard Gardner’s other intelligences, like artistic talent, athletic prowess, or social skills. After kids leave formal schooling, they’ll be judged for the rest of their lives on the quality of their work and their personal and professional behavior. Test scores are a poor proxy for those qualities and for a wide range of other skills and abilities.
Ah, the old "But my kid is so high in kinesthetic intelligence!" argument. What testing critics are hoping you don't notice with this type of criticism is the fact that, if you can't read and write and do basic calculations - skills for which test scores tend to be extremely good proxies - your chances of economic success in our society are extremely low, regardless of your academic or artistic abilities. Sure, there are kids with rock-bottom SATs who make big bucks on stage or on a playing field, but the percentage of Americans who make a living with those skills alone is pretty darn small.
What this type of testing critic wants you to conclude is that kids who do well on standardized tests have learned many literacy- and numeracy-related facts without really understanding them, that these skills are utterly separate from other mental and physical abilities, and that the development of skills that are measurable with tests always happens at the expense of other critical skills. I think that's nonsense. You want to teach your kids good habits of mind, good social skills, and some touch football or ballet as well? Then explain to them that, unless they're prodigies, they'll be supporting themselves with their minds, not their bodies, later on in life, and skills such as discipline and teamwork will serve them just as well later on life as they will on their upcoming exams.
Does research show that high test scores predict everything a kid will do later in life? Of course not. But I think there's sufficient research to show that low test scores are a sign of a real problem, and a strong indication that intervention is needed. Maybe if schools of education impressed this upon the would-be teachers and principals, educational research would have a bit more impact on education today.
Authors Bryan and Emily Hassel, who wrote, "The Picky Parent Guide: Choose Your Child's School with Confidence," are interviewed at Connect For Kids. They also have a website, PickyParent.com, which has some interesting lists for parents. My favorite was Top Ten Signs of a Mediocre School, which noted that parents should beware of a school in which test scores are entirely predictable based on race. I find this amusing, as so many test critics insist that all standardized tests are in fact measures of nothing other than race and SES, while so many good schools with high test scores for minority and lower-income students go right on disproving that theory.
The News-Leader (MO) covers a presentation by an educator with a radical plan for schools that might be suitable for, oh, about 1% of the student population:
Just hear me out, educator Bruce Smith told a small crowd Monday at Drury University. Students should set their own schedule, work at their own pace and decide, in many ways, what they want to learn. Smith was providing an overview of the Sudbury schools model, which emphasizes independence and democracy - with students and teachers being the governing force and decision makers.
Here we go again. The fetishization of unstructured learning and the assumption that students today always know enough about what they like to choose anything at all.
Smith is a former Columbia high school teacher who left public schools because he thought the system was squashing the natural curiosity in children. The schools stress independent thinking and de-emphasize standardized testing. Students are encouraged to follow their passions.
I wonder if "follow" means "learn the facts about," or if it's okay to just be independently "interested." One could argue that being passionate yet uninformed about a topic is worse than being ignorant and uninterested.
Students ages 4-19 are accepted. There are no formal grades. Depending on state standards, many Sudbury schools do not require standardized testing.
If there are no formal grades, the anti-testing attitude is a given. Grades, and test scores, imply a set standard to which students are being compared. That standard might be a set amount of facts learned, or how other students are doing with the same material, but it's always there. Except at Sudbury schools, where their philosophy sounds like it would make any sort of useful comparison virtually impossible.
After the presentation, Smith fielded audience questions ranging from student-teacher ratios - although there are no specific ratios, ratios are much smaller than in the public school system - to how the system deals with children with special needs.
I wonder if any questions were along the lines of, "What will you do to ensure that my child learns something in your school? What will you do to ensure that they learn something that will allow them to support themselves as mature adults?"
How does a student know if he's graduated - one man asked. The crowd laughed. In order to graduate, students must prepare and defend a thesis over a six-month period, Smith said.
"Say what? What if my child needs more than six months to explore his chosen passion? What if he doesn't express himself well in writing or in speech, instead choosing interpretive dance? What if his style of learning precludes him being required to defend anything about it to impartial observers? Didn't you say that he gets to decide how quickly his education goes? How dare you set such an arbitrary and unmoving standard! My child is special and can't possibly develop his passionate work of, of, whatever it is, on that sort of schedule! "
And if Sudbury school administrators expect never to hear that, I have some lovely, inhabitable lakefront property in New Orleans to sell them.
One parent speaks out in support of the school:
"I would say one of the biggest ones is the ability for my daughter to be able to know herself and make choices and have freedom," Frey said. Frey is against standardized testing, saying it adds stress at a young age, doesn't test children on skills they will need in real life and places an emphasis on learning how to test, instead of learning.
Because, as we all know, life never requires that you be able to withstand any sort of test, or live by someone else's schedule. Making life choices also never requires the drudgery of learning facts. Life involves no stress, and no restrictions on freedom, and no knowledge of standardized-test friendly skills like literacy and numeracy.
Can you imagine how a child who was actually in this system from ages 4 to 19 would do in the real world? The only one I bet would survive would be the natural scientific geek who - to the horror of the school, I would think - would insist on being taught rigorous mathematics and chemistry and biology. This would be the lucky child who understood intuitively that many of the world's triumphs and adult successes don't involve passion and self-knowledge so much as they involve lots of hard work, stress, and precise calculations.
The latest edition of the Carnival of Education is up, hosted by the delightful Jenny D. Her "Editor's Choice" pick is NewOldSchoolTeacher, blogging at Oh, snap!, who has a funny, understated description of herself on her site:
I am a student at a graduate school of education. Unfortunately, I am also smart and care about education. You see where I'm going with this.
Oh, yes we do. Don't miss her tale of terror, "Teaching a lesson in a progressive school", where the official position is to be "against" quizzes. I love her comments on why the little facts and details are important:
My teachers and others want kids to understand the "big ideas" in history, rather than memorizing facts and details. But I just don't think you can teach these big ideas directly. They are empty and meaningless by themselves. You teach the small stories, the facts, the dates, the chronology, the events, and then out of these, patterns begin to emerge. That's the beautiful part, when the students start to see them. It's like giving them tree after tree after tree, and suddenly they realize it's a forest. Or it's like that painting, by...Seurat? The one with all the little dots. There is no picture without all the dots!It's funny, because I feel that the teaching strategy I am suggesting is actually more constructivist than my constructivist teachers. It doesn't involve lots of group work, and it doesn't shun facts, and there would have to be a lot of teacher support and prodding, but I think students could come up with a lot of "big ideas" on their own, without us directly telling them. Giving them the facts, rather than a somewhat revisionist thematic interpretation of the facts, actually gives them more power, and a forest full of trees.
No wonder "progressive" teachers hate standardized tests. We keep focusing on those damn trees - sometimes down to the level of individual leaves - while they keep trying to convince students that seeing the forest as a whole is the only important goal.