Education Week published an article on 25 years since the famous A Nation at Risk report by Ronald Wolk, founder and former editor of Education Week, titled Why We’re Still ‘At Risk’, The Legacy of Five Faulty Assumptions.
He starts by asserting, “After nearly 25 years of intensive [very expensive and wasteful] effort, we have failed to fix our ailing public schools and stem the “rising tide of mediocrity” chronicled in 1983 . . . This is mainly because the report misdiagnosed the problem, and because the major assumptions on which current education policy—and most reform efforts—have been based are either wrong or unrealistic.”
He goes on to join the misdiagnosis with one of his own, “Most of the people running our public education systems and leading the reform movement are knowledgeable, dedicated, and experienced. But they are so committed to a strategy of standards-based accountability that different ideas are marginalized or stifled completely.” He is definitely falling into the education insider party line trap. To call the people tasked to lead in education leadership knowledgeable or committed to anything but maintaining the status quo is ludicrous. These people have been trained to not lead, not rock the boat, and pray morning and night to the false gods of education myths that don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. They have been tasked by the education insider power groups to maintain the status quo and prevent any real change from taking place. And in that they have been spectacularly successful. Of course, many billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in the process and kids are continuing to be harmed by the school system.
Wolk’s list of five “wrong assumptions” and some comments follows.
1. The best way to improve student performance and close the achievement gaps is to establish rigorous content standards and a core curriculum for all schools—preferably on a national basis. His argument on this one makes decent sense for the most part. “Standardization and uniformity may work with cars and computers, but it doesn’t work with humans. Today’s student body is the most diverse in history. An education system that treats all student alike denies that reality. . . Standards don’t prepare students for anything; they are a framework of expectations and education objectives. Without the organization and process to achieve them, they are worthless. States have devoted nearly 20 years to formulating standards to be accomplished by a conventional school model that is incapable of meeting them.
2. Standardized-test scores are an accurate measure of student learning and should be used to determine promotion and graduation. He argues, “if test scores are the accepted indicator, schools have not been meeting the needs of students for the past couple of decades. So why spend more money and time on constant testing to tell us what we already know . . . “ That is like saying if you are sick in the hospital stop taking vital signs information because it might cost too much. He also falls back on the demographic argument saying, “Standardized-test scores tend . . . to say more about a student’s socioeconomic status than about his or her abilities.” The demographic excuse leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that has led to a “kill them with kindness” mentality. That is, the underlying assumption that educators are trained to make starting in the education schools is that “those kids can’t learn to a high standard.” This has been proven to be wrong in hundreds of research studies but it makes a convenient argument for not addressing the real problems. Mortimore and Sammons as far back as 1987 showed that the teacher effect is up to 6 times more powerful than demographics in reading and that the difference is up to 10 times for math. The mistake being made is that while the performance of “gap kids” on the standardized testing correlates well with, say, eligibility for free or reduced lunch that demographics is the cause. It is not. The way educators treat the gap kids is the cause. The problem is imbedded deeply in the educators’ attitudes. Correlation does not prove cause. It is a good predictive tool however.
3. We need to put highly qualified teachers in every classroom to assure educational excellence. He says, “A great idea! If we could do that, we’d be a long way to solving our education problem. But it won’t happen for decades, if ever.” Wow! So let’s just give up and forget the kids’ futures being limited due to poor educational performance because the adults can’t get their act together. I know the problem can be solved but it will take new and creative thinking. We will have to break away from many of the “iron-clad” norms of teacher preparation and certification and replace them with a system that truly values “educated people as teachers.” There are tons of educated people out there who would be more than willing to enter teaching if it were made less difficult. The well educated people who are underemployed in our economy would view the pay and benefits of the teachers as a huge plus compared to where they have been working. Wolk bemoans the fact that teachers aren’t treated as professionals. That is a two way street. If you act professionally you are more likely to be treated as a professional. Of course, as I have pointed out multiple times the poorly skilled leadership in education would have to be retrained to enable the massive change required in teaching effectively.
4. The United States should require all students to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math in high school in order to increase the number of scientists and engineers in the country and thus make us more competitive in the global economy. Wolk states, “This assumption has become almost an obsession in policymaking arenas today. Requiring every student to study higher-order math is a waste of resources and cruel and unusual punishment for legions of students. It diverts attention away from the real problem: our failure to help kids become proficient readers and master basic arithmetic.” I need to quote some history so that you can see how attitudes haven’t changed in a century about math education. This is from David Klein’s “A Brief History of American K-12 Math Education in the 20th Century.” “The prescriptions for the future of mathematics education were articulated early in the 20th century by one of the nation's most influential education leaders, William Heard Kilpatrick. According to E. D. Hirsch, Kilpatrick was "the most influential introducer of progressive ideas into American schools of education." Kilpatrick was an education professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, and a protégé of John Dewey. Kilpatrick proposed that the study of algebra and geometry in high school be discontinued ‘except as an intellectual luxury. According to Kilpatrick, mathematics is ‘harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking necessary for ordinary living.’ In an address before the student body at the University of Florida, Kilpatrick lectured, ‘We have in the past taught algebra and geometry to too many, not too few.’ So you see that Wolk says the same thing in a little different way. First, algebra is not advanced mathematics. Second, mastery of arithmetic is very important but not being done at all because of the increasing application of discovery math curricula like Everyday Math which use calculators instead of providing a foundation in math facts and skills that are necessary to the study of algebra. I agree that every student will not study calculus or want to become an engineer or scientist. But even those who take vocational tracks can use algebra in their future jobs or at least the mental discipline learned in algebra. An auto mechanic, for example, needs to have good diagnostic skills to succeed with today’s ever more complex cars. Sadly, the current state of math education fails to prepare many of those who do want to a pursue those fields of study, thus reducing our total number of domestically trained engineers and scientists. Unless we discard the wrong-headed assertions of the education school training regarding what education should entail we will be saying the same thing a century from now, although we may be speaking Chinese when we do it.
5. The student-dropout rate can be reduced by ending social promotion, funding dropout-prevention programs, and raising the mandatory attendance age. Wolk does a pretty good job on this one saying the drop-out rate is the most telling evidence of public school failure. He points out that the initiatives such as legally requiring students to stay in school longer or “just stay in” programs are not addressing the problem. The problem is that kids are allowed get further and further behind grade level performance yet are expected to stay in the system which becomes more demotivating and frustrating for them as the years pass. This gets back to the “self fulfilling prophecy” and the kill them with kindness approach. Wolk points out that the NAEP tests show that only about a quarter of 4th grade kids can read proficiently. Of course the levels decline in the 8th and 12th grades. Also, we need to realize that the NAEP is not as rigorous as the requirements in our strongest global competitor countries. Studies show that in surveys of students the one word they use most to describe their schooling is “boring.” Until we can engage and motivate them with high quality experiences [not field trips and other tangential activities but real subject based rigor] the problem will not change.
The article was disheartening to say the least. It is not disheartening from a “what is required” point of view. It is disheartening because fixing it will take a much different approach to the one we have been using. And that will only happen if the electorate demands it. The quote from Kilpatrick juxtaposed with that of Wolk shows that we are mired in a rut that can’t be broken out of without the public demanding that the problem be fixed. Sadly, most of the public believe that “their schools” are doing well and only those “other schools” are doing poorly and who cares about them?
PWR
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Singapore Teachers
I just read an interesting article on teachers in Singapore in the Christian Science Monitor from the March 24, 2009 edition. The article states that when a group of education leaders visited Singapore last spring [about a year ago], one [state superintendent of W. VA schools, Steven Paine] . . . asked a Singapore official about the basis of their math curriculum, she cited a standards framework put out by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics—in the United States. W. Virginia uses the NCTM standards in their curriculum, “so the question remains, why is it that they lead the world in student achievement? I think it’s because of their teacher quality,” he says.
“Only the top third of secondary-school graduates in Singapore can apply for teacher training. The National Institute of Education winnows that field down more and pays a living stipend while they learn to teach. Each year, teachers take an additional 100 hours of paid professional development. And they spend substantial time outside the classroom to plan with colleagues. Not only is teaching an honored profession in Singapore, but it’s also paid as well as science and engineering careers.”
Now let’s compare the Singapore approach to the one in America. Arthur Levine reported in his “Educating School Teachers.” “The nation’s teacher education programs are inadequately preparing their graduates to meet the realities of today’s standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms, in which the primary measure of success is student achievement.” Levine, who recently left the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University to become president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, “concludes that a majority of teacher education graduates are prepared in university-based programs that suffer from low admission and graduation standards. Their faculties, curriculums and research are disconnected from school practice and practitioners. There are wide variations in program quality, with the majority of teachers prepared in lower quality programs. Both state and accreditation standards for maintaining quality are ineffective. . . [and] the study found that too often teacher education programs cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change. Equally troubling, the nation is deeply divided about how to reform teacher education to most effectively prepare teachers to meet today’s new realities.”
Levine’s statement about admission standards coupled with [programs] “cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change” seem to be at the core of the problem. “Universities use their teacher education programs as ‘cash cows,’ requiring them to generate revenue to fund more prestigious departments. This forces them to increase their enrollments and lower their admissions standards. Schools with low admissions standards also tend to have low graduation requirements. While aspiring secondary school teachers do well compared to the national average on SAT and GRE exams, the scores of future elementary school teachers fall near the bottom of test takers. Their GRE scores are 100 points below the national average.”
Some observations based on the information in the CSM article and Levine’s report.
• Admission to the teaching profession in Singapore is tough and thus the quality of candidates is high. In contrast, the admission requirements for American teacher training is low, very low. We must remember that graduating secondary school in the top third in Singapore is much more rigorous than graduating in the top third would be in the typical American high school. As Levine points out the majority of elementary school teachers have very low SAT and GRE scores.
• If you look at state achievement test results you will see that the kids generally perform at lower levels as they move to higher grades, especially in math. It seems obvious that the weak teaching in elementary schools is not giving the kids the foundation they need to cope with the more advanced studies they are expected to complete in middle and high school. When you are several years behind when you start high school it doesn’t matter if your high school math teacher knows more about math because you are very unlikely to be able to catch up.
• Pay was mentioned as a factor in Singapore. Yet, if you look at the Wall Street Journal article of Sept. 13, 2005, Wage Winners and Losers, page B1 you will see a ranking of 22 occupations by average annual pay based on the then newly released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. From highest to lowest you get: Economics Teachers, Physicians, Airplane Pilots/Navigators, Lawyers/Judges, Architects, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS, Natural Scientists, Computer Programmers, etc. You have to conclude that as in Singapore, American elementary school teachers are paid as well as natural scientists. Thus, we already are paying at high levels but we don’t have the performance to go with the pay. This does not mean all teachers are overpaid because some clearly deserve more pay. It does mean that the current “step-pay” plans where teachers are paid more each year for getting older is not giving incentives to perform better over the course of a long teaching career.
• The education schools are a foundational part of the problem. Their standards are too low, their faculty and curricula are out of touch with the current reality of real-world requirements, and the state regulatory entities continue to base their worthless certifications predominately on education school degrees and training. Yet, the education schools continue with the same outdated curricula that are rooted in the progressive movement of a hundred years ago and also don’t stand scientific scrutiny as E. D. Hirsch points out in his book, “The Knowledge Deficit.”
• The American educators who visited Singapore didn’t get the message because they viewed everything they saw through the distorted lens of American education context. They showed that they didn’t “get it” by continuing to approach problems with the same attitudes and methods that have been spectacularly unsuccessful in the past. Until they learn to face reality and break with the “conventional wisdom” of the education establishment, they will continue to serve our students poorly.
American education insiders have a remarkable ability to ignore or warp reality to their own points of view. They have an ironclad belief that they alone are the education experts and that they don’t need or want input from “outsiders.” That is perhaps the biggest difference of all between Singapore and here. Thomas Friedman in his famous book, “The World is Flat” tells of an Indian company, Heymath.com that has a contract with the Singapore education establishment. The contract is for Heymath.com to hire engineering students at their local Indian Institute of Technology [considered equivalent or better by some than MIT in the US] to work with Singapore teachers on the best ways to present the math content to their students. They also work via the web to tutor Singapore students. The quality control for their work is done by Cambridge University in Great Britain. Unlike their American counterparts the Singapore educators are willing to gain synergy by partnering with other disciplines and other countries as well if it benefits their students. That approach does not happen here because the education establishment wants to hold tightly to every education decision. There are many problems to be faced before positive change will occur. Until then Singapore and other nations’ kids will continue outstripping our kids in achievement, career opportunities, job security and all of the other things that go with being better educated.
“Only the top third of secondary-school graduates in Singapore can apply for teacher training. The National Institute of Education winnows that field down more and pays a living stipend while they learn to teach. Each year, teachers take an additional 100 hours of paid professional development. And they spend substantial time outside the classroom to plan with colleagues. Not only is teaching an honored profession in Singapore, but it’s also paid as well as science and engineering careers.”
Now let’s compare the Singapore approach to the one in America. Arthur Levine reported in his “Educating School Teachers.” “The nation’s teacher education programs are inadequately preparing their graduates to meet the realities of today’s standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms, in which the primary measure of success is student achievement.” Levine, who recently left the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University to become president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, “concludes that a majority of teacher education graduates are prepared in university-based programs that suffer from low admission and graduation standards. Their faculties, curriculums and research are disconnected from school practice and practitioners. There are wide variations in program quality, with the majority of teachers prepared in lower quality programs. Both state and accreditation standards for maintaining quality are ineffective. . . [and] the study found that too often teacher education programs cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change. Equally troubling, the nation is deeply divided about how to reform teacher education to most effectively prepare teachers to meet today’s new realities.”
Levine’s statement about admission standards coupled with [programs] “cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change” seem to be at the core of the problem. “Universities use their teacher education programs as ‘cash cows,’ requiring them to generate revenue to fund more prestigious departments. This forces them to increase their enrollments and lower their admissions standards. Schools with low admissions standards also tend to have low graduation requirements. While aspiring secondary school teachers do well compared to the national average on SAT and GRE exams, the scores of future elementary school teachers fall near the bottom of test takers. Their GRE scores are 100 points below the national average.”
Some observations based on the information in the CSM article and Levine’s report.
• Admission to the teaching profession in Singapore is tough and thus the quality of candidates is high. In contrast, the admission requirements for American teacher training is low, very low. We must remember that graduating secondary school in the top third in Singapore is much more rigorous than graduating in the top third would be in the typical American high school. As Levine points out the majority of elementary school teachers have very low SAT and GRE scores.
• If you look at state achievement test results you will see that the kids generally perform at lower levels as they move to higher grades, especially in math. It seems obvious that the weak teaching in elementary schools is not giving the kids the foundation they need to cope with the more advanced studies they are expected to complete in middle and high school. When you are several years behind when you start high school it doesn’t matter if your high school math teacher knows more about math because you are very unlikely to be able to catch up.
• Pay was mentioned as a factor in Singapore. Yet, if you look at the Wall Street Journal article of Sept. 13, 2005, Wage Winners and Losers, page B1 you will see a ranking of 22 occupations by average annual pay based on the then newly released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. From highest to lowest you get: Economics Teachers, Physicians, Airplane Pilots/Navigators, Lawyers/Judges, Architects, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS, Natural Scientists, Computer Programmers, etc. You have to conclude that as in Singapore, American elementary school teachers are paid as well as natural scientists. Thus, we already are paying at high levels but we don’t have the performance to go with the pay. This does not mean all teachers are overpaid because some clearly deserve more pay. It does mean that the current “step-pay” plans where teachers are paid more each year for getting older is not giving incentives to perform better over the course of a long teaching career.
• The education schools are a foundational part of the problem. Their standards are too low, their faculty and curricula are out of touch with the current reality of real-world requirements, and the state regulatory entities continue to base their worthless certifications predominately on education school degrees and training. Yet, the education schools continue with the same outdated curricula that are rooted in the progressive movement of a hundred years ago and also don’t stand scientific scrutiny as E. D. Hirsch points out in his book, “The Knowledge Deficit.”
• The American educators who visited Singapore didn’t get the message because they viewed everything they saw through the distorted lens of American education context. They showed that they didn’t “get it” by continuing to approach problems with the same attitudes and methods that have been spectacularly unsuccessful in the past. Until they learn to face reality and break with the “conventional wisdom” of the education establishment, they will continue to serve our students poorly.
American education insiders have a remarkable ability to ignore or warp reality to their own points of view. They have an ironclad belief that they alone are the education experts and that they don’t need or want input from “outsiders.” That is perhaps the biggest difference of all between Singapore and here. Thomas Friedman in his famous book, “The World is Flat” tells of an Indian company, Heymath.com that has a contract with the Singapore education establishment. The contract is for Heymath.com to hire engineering students at their local Indian Institute of Technology [considered equivalent or better by some than MIT in the US] to work with Singapore teachers on the best ways to present the math content to their students. They also work via the web to tutor Singapore students. The quality control for their work is done by Cambridge University in Great Britain. Unlike their American counterparts the Singapore educators are willing to gain synergy by partnering with other disciplines and other countries as well if it benefits their students. That approach does not happen here because the education establishment wants to hold tightly to every education decision. There are many problems to be faced before positive change will occur. Until then Singapore and other nations’ kids will continue outstripping our kids in achievement, career opportunities, job security and all of the other things that go with being better educated.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Using Technology to Teach
Lewis J. Perelman wrote a book that came out in 1992 that was ahead of its time, School’s Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education. He used the success that industry was having in training people with technology and artificial intelligence systems and said that applying it to our children’s education would be very powerful. He asserted that at that time we had the ability to teach anyone, anywhere what they needed to know at an A grade level. An excellent and thought provoking book that is well worth reading.
Education Week has just put out its latest version of Technology Counts which looks at the state of technology-based learning and the use of education technology in the states. They give grades to the states for technology use and Colorado gets a nice shiny D+. Lots of states get A’s; Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, S. Dakota, Utah, and W. Virginia. Another 11 get A- grades.
I have been frustrated for some time about the lack of technology “rollout” to aid teaching and to prepare students to better cope with the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology in our world. I was glad to see that some progress is being made although as always in education it is glacial at best. A quote from the Education Week article, Breaking Away From Tradition, summarizes the situation “As the world of online education continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar schools are incorporating digital curricula and virtual teachers into their classrooms in ways that have surprised even the advocates of the online education movement. Once mostly catering to advanced students who educators believed had the motivation to pursue education online, virtual courses are growing in popularity for struggling students, too. And school districts and teachers that once felt threatened by the surge of online education are embracing the technology, often in a hybrid model that blends face-to-face learning with digital teaching and curricula.”
The dinosaurs still say things like, “Poor-quality online curricula exist in the marketplace, and figuring out how to train and evaluate virtual teachers is still a work in progress.” Of course, they do not mention that poor-quality curricula and poor teachers exist in the traditional education world as well. One area worth emphasizing is that some schools are using the online courses to help both the remedial and the advanced ends of the spectrum. Thus, districts that need to address the low achievement end of their population in an aggressive way, doesn’t have to mean ignoring the advanced end of the spectrum. This is very important because the push to get everyone proficient has taken attention away from the higher achievement end of the spectrum. Oh, there are still gifted and talented programs but the money and manpower goes overwhelmingly toward getting the low achieving kids to grade level.
This problem with under serving the top students is brought home well by comparing the A Nation at Risk report of 1983 with the Tough Choices or Tough Times report of 2007. While the A Nation at Risk report bemoaned the “rising tide of mediocrity” they saw in American education, they were still able to say that America’s best and brightest scored at the top of the heap compared to their international peers. However, the 2007 report stated that in the 24 years between reports our best and brightest had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap versus their international peers.
PWR 2009
Education Week has just put out its latest version of Technology Counts which looks at the state of technology-based learning and the use of education technology in the states. They give grades to the states for technology use and Colorado gets a nice shiny D+. Lots of states get A’s; Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, S. Dakota, Utah, and W. Virginia. Another 11 get A- grades.
I have been frustrated for some time about the lack of technology “rollout” to aid teaching and to prepare students to better cope with the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology in our world. I was glad to see that some progress is being made although as always in education it is glacial at best. A quote from the Education Week article, Breaking Away From Tradition, summarizes the situation “As the world of online education continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar schools are incorporating digital curricula and virtual teachers into their classrooms in ways that have surprised even the advocates of the online education movement. Once mostly catering to advanced students who educators believed had the motivation to pursue education online, virtual courses are growing in popularity for struggling students, too. And school districts and teachers that once felt threatened by the surge of online education are embracing the technology, often in a hybrid model that blends face-to-face learning with digital teaching and curricula.”
The dinosaurs still say things like, “Poor-quality online curricula exist in the marketplace, and figuring out how to train and evaluate virtual teachers is still a work in progress.” Of course, they do not mention that poor-quality curricula and poor teachers exist in the traditional education world as well. One area worth emphasizing is that some schools are using the online courses to help both the remedial and the advanced ends of the spectrum. Thus, districts that need to address the low achievement end of their population in an aggressive way, doesn’t have to mean ignoring the advanced end of the spectrum. This is very important because the push to get everyone proficient has taken attention away from the higher achievement end of the spectrum. Oh, there are still gifted and talented programs but the money and manpower goes overwhelmingly toward getting the low achieving kids to grade level.
This problem with under serving the top students is brought home well by comparing the A Nation at Risk report of 1983 with the Tough Choices or Tough Times report of 2007. While the A Nation at Risk report bemoaned the “rising tide of mediocrity” they saw in American education, they were still able to say that America’s best and brightest scored at the top of the heap compared to their international peers. However, the 2007 report stated that in the 24 years between reports our best and brightest had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap versus their international peers.
PWR 2009
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