First, I recommend you go to www.booktv.org and search on E.D. Hirsch. That will bring you to the December 13, 2009 broadcast of his presentation speaking about his new book, The Making of Americans.
Hirsch’s thesis is a good one: That American education went off the rails almost 6 decades ago when the graduates of the education schools anti-curriculum (child-centered) movement began to teach. They had been brainwashed that skills would suffice and save the kids from being forced to memorize facts and drill to increase real knowledge. The big plus for the ed schools was that subject knowledge courses taught by them could be “watered down, everyone gets an A” affairs. The results of this detour to ridiculousness began “biting” into our education performance in a negative way in the late 60s as the victims of the new scientifically unsound approach began graduating from high school. These graduates had the full “benefit” of being subject to the depredations for their entire school career. Hirsch showed a slide of SAT verbal scores going back to the late sixties. Scores plummeted and have stayed at the lower level. He used the Sat because it has more history than the NAEP. However, he did show a NAEP slide back to its inception to show that the “achievement gap” has been constant or getting worse over that whole time.
Hirsch makes the point, a good one, that language skills are the “skill of skills and key to success in citizenship, learning, and earning. He cites research that says if you take language proficiency into account, the earnings gap between minorities and the poor disappears.
That emphasizes one key point. The gap kids are the ones harmed the most by the anti-curriculum approach. Hirsch points out that the common excuses the education school types (and hence everyone else in the education fiefdom; delusional, defensive, insular, inbred) are all bogus and intended to deflect attention away from the real culprits; content free curricula. He relates research he did that shows that the scores of white, middle class kids plummeted along with the rest. He used Iowa as an example where 98% are white middle class and yet the scores have gone down there as well. When core curricula are installed, the performance gaps between rich and poor students narrow. The bottom line is that the current educational methods yield the results favored by `progressive' and `liberal' educators, while their methods drive everyone down, particularly the poor. Hirsch says, “It is hard to conceive of a greater social evil.”
Other comments he makes in the video also ring true.
• On the Governor’s effort to establish a national curriculum standard: “a politically craven and content free approach.”
• Our schools need to teach the founding principles of the Enlightenment and the blessings of liberty, not an intellectual tyranny.
• The last 50+ years have been characterized by; technically wrong ideas, fragmented courses, watered down texts.
• Critical thinking skills are powerfully knowledge dependent, meaning that the current goal of teaching critical thinking skills in a content free environment is a waste of time.
• The “how to” approach has always failed and always must fail.
How did we get into this mess? We delegated the education of our kids to educators without building in a closed loop, quality control function. We assumed “wrongly” that the education experts with the great sounding education bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees were competent to do the job. No matter how much they argue, their results prove the fact that they don’t know much about the realities of what works in education. We have ignored the multitudinous research that concludes that the education schools are little more than diploma mills extracting largess from a failed education process. Is it the educators fault for getting away with huge salaries based on worthless degrees and the poor performance? Is it the educators’ fault that the achievement gap has gone unimproved for decades in spite of the billions thrown at the problem? Or is it our fault for being too unengaged to demand that the whole craven process be fixed or ditched. In its current form our education system is essentially a very expensive baby-sitting/childcare operation.
What do I mean by fixed? Lots of things are required, but as a start, require content rich curricula as Hirsch recommends, stop paying for advanced ed degrees, install merit pay for educators (pay for true performance, not seat time in an ed school weak program or getting a year older), make teachers pass subject competency tests before being awarded certification. Require subject competency tests be passed every other year for current teachers to maintain certification. Decouple all certifications for teachers and leaders from ed school training. Only this will incentivize the ed schools to abandon their wrong-headed ideas that don’t stand scientific muster.
If you have learned about the trench warfare of World War I, you know that millions of men “lived” in trenches in all sorts of foul conditions. They got diseases like “trench foot” that could cause such severe infection that the limb would have to be amputated. Yet, the troops would much rather stay in the foul trenches than face the machine guns, mines and barbed wire of the battlefield. For them the “norm” of the trench while a terrible place to be was in their minds superior and much less scary than the world outside the trench.
While you would be hard pressed to equate the current situation for the adults who work in education to trench warfare, it wouldn’t be too hard to relate the analogy to the kids (victims) who see their future prospects greatly damaged by the current system. They don’t have amputated limbs but amputated future prospects. There exists a universal reluctance among the adults working in education to face the reality of the harm they are doing to the kids with the anti-curriculum approach. While our education schools do a very poor job of educating teachers and administrators they are world-class at brainwashing their graduates to believe in harmful, unscientific clap-trap. When I have confronted ed school professors with the scientific evidence of their failure they say, “Well, if it isn’t true, it ought to be.” Some say, “That’s my job you’re talking about.” Neither response is ethical when kids are continuing to be harmed by their intransigence.
While most effort to reform the system has been aimed at convincing the educators to face the scientific truth and replace the current approach with one that works, it has been ineffective. It is easy to see why the current rut is comfortable to educators. Change is not something most people volunteer for. And in a world where the adults in education prioritize their own comfort ahead of the futures of the kids no change will be occurring from within. It can only happen if forced from outside the education fiefdom.
Am I saying that educators have nothing to fear if a knowledge curriculum is implemented. No I am not. You see, that would cause the educators’ lack of rigorous subject knowledge to be exposed to the light of day. This problem is especially large in the elementary grades. This would mean redirecting all teacher “professional” development away from more methods classes toward subject knowledge classes. Since the school districts have time and money for the professional development in their budgets it wouldn’t be a fiscal problem for them. The problem would be finding knowledgeable people to teach the subject knowledge courses. The education schools don’t have such people so they would have to be found elsewhere.
The only example of real reform taking place in America has been in Massachusetts (termed the Massachusetts Miracle). It was caused by political leadership willing to disappoint ed power groups who contributed to their campaigns. They imposed the change to content rich curricula on the educators. The kids in Massachusetts have benefited greatly. It should be obvious that working with educators in our school districts to improve things for the kids is a fool’s errand. They haven’t changed on their own and they “ain’t” about to start now.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
I Admit It. I Was Wrong
I have been convinced for years that the use of the constructivist math curricula (often called NSF First Generation because the NSF sent many millions for their development to ed school professors and researchers) were the biggest problem in low math achievement results among American students. Recent events now cause me to demote the poor curricula problem, while still needing urgent attention, to second place. What has displaced curriculum as the most important problem to solve if we desire to stop spinning our wheels and really improve math achievement among American students?
First, let me describe some interactions with a large local school district over the math achievement problem. Studying the district’s achievement results for grades 3 through 10 on the state achievement tests, shows the scope of the problem. At third grade the majority of students score proficient or better. At tenth grade the majority of students score below proficient. This indicates that on average students progress less than a year in achievement for every year spent in school. In fact the 10th grade proficient or better percentage for 2009 testing for this district was in the low thirty percent range. This correlates well with the high college (both 2-year and 4-year) remediation rates which are in ranges from just under 22% to 52% across the district’s large high schools. The data show clearly that the students from this district are not being adequately prepared in math for the increasingly global competition for well-paying “knowledge jobs.”
Another concerned person and I met twice with the district’s central office staff in charge of curricula and math specialists tasked to support the math teaching process for elementary and middle/high schools. We reached an impasse when we stated that the curricula being used (Everyday Math being the prime example) were the cause of the problem and the central office folk said the curricula had no effect. We were amazed. Since then I have met a couple of more times with central office staff and have been pushing the idea that the math subject knowledge of teachers (especially elementary level) needed to be improved through additional training for the teachers.
Soon after that the “math team” made a presentation to the board of education for the district. One slide they showed compared annual growth rates in achievement among the 30-plus elementary schools in the district versus 6 different curricula being used. Their study concluded that there was no statistically significant difference which supported the assertion of the people in our first meeting telling us that the curriculum made no difference in achievement. Thus, it became time to face that something besides curriculum was masking the deficiency of curricula which is so apparent to those who understand math and what foundational skills must be learned in elementary grades to prepare students for success in middle and high school.
After more research, I have concluded that the poor level of math knowledge among teachers is far and away the biggest contributor to poor math achievement of their students. In retrospect this should have been no surprise to me. I had read Rita Kramer’s “Ed School Follies” which emphasized the fact that education schools focus on process (pedagogy) training to the effective exclusion of teaching subject knowledge with even minimal rigor. David Klein’s “A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century” which also makes the point that education schools are infected with the progressive attitudes emphasizing process, socializing students to be “good (pliable) citizens” and de-emphasizing content. E.D. Hirsch Jr. in his “The Knowledge Deficit” again points out that the ed schools de-emphasize knowledge (content) in favor of constructivist (ex. Whole Language & Everyday Math) approaches which have proven to be scientifically ineffective, a fact he labels as of little importance among ed school faculties who won’t change even in the face of contrary research findings.
While I had read some summary representations of Liping Ma’s research on the subject knowledge of elementary math teachers, I did not read her book describing her research, “Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics,” until recently. She created a comparison study of teachers from China and from the U.S. The Chinese teachers had much less formal education than their American counterparts. The Chinese system for elementary teachers is to take those with a ninth grade education and give them 2 to 3 years of “normal school” training beyond ninth grade to qualify to become teachers. The U.S. participants in her study had from 4 to 6 years beyond their high school graduation.
Yet, in spite of that, U.S. students consistently score significantly lower on international math achievement comparisons. Ma used Deborah Ball’s TELT model (Teacher Education and Learning to Teach Study) to assess the math knowledge of each teacher in the study. She found;
• “Even expert [U.S.] teachers, experienced teachers who were mathematically confident, and teachers who actively participated in current mathematics teaching reform did not seem to have a thorough knowledge of the mathematics taught in elementary school.”
• Teachers’ subject knowledge correlated very well with their student’s achievement.
• Number of math courses taken in college did not.
What are we to conclude from this review of the research and the international achievement testing results?
• Seat time in education school classes does not result in adequate subject knowledge for the teachers.
• If we desire to improve math achievement, we must provide subject knowledge training for the existing cadre of teachers. This will need to take the place of the ubiquitous teaching of more pedagogy processes which are already overdone in education schools. Only by teaching subject knowledge can balance be brought to the teachers’ skill sets.
• Starting with elementary teachers is where the most leverage exists. This is because if children don’t get a rigorous foundation in elementary grades they are too far behind to catch up in the middle and high school class work.
“Cultures that are open and willing to change have a huge advantage in the world,” said Jerry Rao, the MphasiS CEO who heads the Indian high-tech trade association. “You have to have a strong culture, but also the openness to adapt and adopt from others. The cultural exclusivists have a real disadvantage. Exclusivity is a dangerous thing. Openness is critical because you start tending to respect people for their talent and abilities. You are dealing with people on the basis of talent—not race or ethnicity—and that changes, subtly over time your whole view of human beings, if you are in this talent-based and performance-based world rather than the background-based world.” From The World is Flat by Tom Friedman.
You may ask what does the quote above have to do with our education problems? Our education fiefdom is the most exclusive of exclusive cultures. It is a world in which “background is king.” That is, people are paid more for degrees, getting a year older and classes, not their performance level. A multitude of researchers have found in study after study that the education school degrees from undergraduate to doctoral level are essentially worthless for the task at hand. The above quote makes the point that the world is becoming more and more a meritocracy where we will be valued for the quality of our output not our backgrounds; degrees, good-old-boy connections, pedigrees, etc.
Our educators’ refusal to change from a background supreme culture to a results supreme culture will continue harming out kids until the public becomes more knowledgeable and motivated to require that it change. For now, it looks as if when that time of realization comes we will likely be in a lower and lower standard of living “death spiral” which will be very difficult to overcome because the root cause was ignored for decades. Reality can be a scary thing but facing it is foundational to transforming performance in a positive way.
First, let me describe some interactions with a large local school district over the math achievement problem. Studying the district’s achievement results for grades 3 through 10 on the state achievement tests, shows the scope of the problem. At third grade the majority of students score proficient or better. At tenth grade the majority of students score below proficient. This indicates that on average students progress less than a year in achievement for every year spent in school. In fact the 10th grade proficient or better percentage for 2009 testing for this district was in the low thirty percent range. This correlates well with the high college (both 2-year and 4-year) remediation rates which are in ranges from just under 22% to 52% across the district’s large high schools. The data show clearly that the students from this district are not being adequately prepared in math for the increasingly global competition for well-paying “knowledge jobs.”
Another concerned person and I met twice with the district’s central office staff in charge of curricula and math specialists tasked to support the math teaching process for elementary and middle/high schools. We reached an impasse when we stated that the curricula being used (Everyday Math being the prime example) were the cause of the problem and the central office folk said the curricula had no effect. We were amazed. Since then I have met a couple of more times with central office staff and have been pushing the idea that the math subject knowledge of teachers (especially elementary level) needed to be improved through additional training for the teachers.
Soon after that the “math team” made a presentation to the board of education for the district. One slide they showed compared annual growth rates in achievement among the 30-plus elementary schools in the district versus 6 different curricula being used. Their study concluded that there was no statistically significant difference which supported the assertion of the people in our first meeting telling us that the curriculum made no difference in achievement. Thus, it became time to face that something besides curriculum was masking the deficiency of curricula which is so apparent to those who understand math and what foundational skills must be learned in elementary grades to prepare students for success in middle and high school.
After more research, I have concluded that the poor level of math knowledge among teachers is far and away the biggest contributor to poor math achievement of their students. In retrospect this should have been no surprise to me. I had read Rita Kramer’s “Ed School Follies” which emphasized the fact that education schools focus on process (pedagogy) training to the effective exclusion of teaching subject knowledge with even minimal rigor. David Klein’s “A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century” which also makes the point that education schools are infected with the progressive attitudes emphasizing process, socializing students to be “good (pliable) citizens” and de-emphasizing content. E.D. Hirsch Jr. in his “The Knowledge Deficit” again points out that the ed schools de-emphasize knowledge (content) in favor of constructivist (ex. Whole Language & Everyday Math) approaches which have proven to be scientifically ineffective, a fact he labels as of little importance among ed school faculties who won’t change even in the face of contrary research findings.
While I had read some summary representations of Liping Ma’s research on the subject knowledge of elementary math teachers, I did not read her book describing her research, “Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics,” until recently. She created a comparison study of teachers from China and from the U.S. The Chinese teachers had much less formal education than their American counterparts. The Chinese system for elementary teachers is to take those with a ninth grade education and give them 2 to 3 years of “normal school” training beyond ninth grade to qualify to become teachers. The U.S. participants in her study had from 4 to 6 years beyond their high school graduation.
Yet, in spite of that, U.S. students consistently score significantly lower on international math achievement comparisons. Ma used Deborah Ball’s TELT model (Teacher Education and Learning to Teach Study) to assess the math knowledge of each teacher in the study. She found;
• “Even expert [U.S.] teachers, experienced teachers who were mathematically confident, and teachers who actively participated in current mathematics teaching reform did not seem to have a thorough knowledge of the mathematics taught in elementary school.”
• Teachers’ subject knowledge correlated very well with their student’s achievement.
• Number of math courses taken in college did not.
What are we to conclude from this review of the research and the international achievement testing results?
• Seat time in education school classes does not result in adequate subject knowledge for the teachers.
• If we desire to improve math achievement, we must provide subject knowledge training for the existing cadre of teachers. This will need to take the place of the ubiquitous teaching of more pedagogy processes which are already overdone in education schools. Only by teaching subject knowledge can balance be brought to the teachers’ skill sets.
• Starting with elementary teachers is where the most leverage exists. This is because if children don’t get a rigorous foundation in elementary grades they are too far behind to catch up in the middle and high school class work.
“Cultures that are open and willing to change have a huge advantage in the world,” said Jerry Rao, the MphasiS CEO who heads the Indian high-tech trade association. “You have to have a strong culture, but also the openness to adapt and adopt from others. The cultural exclusivists have a real disadvantage. Exclusivity is a dangerous thing. Openness is critical because you start tending to respect people for their talent and abilities. You are dealing with people on the basis of talent—not race or ethnicity—and that changes, subtly over time your whole view of human beings, if you are in this talent-based and performance-based world rather than the background-based world.” From The World is Flat by Tom Friedman.
You may ask what does the quote above have to do with our education problems? Our education fiefdom is the most exclusive of exclusive cultures. It is a world in which “background is king.” That is, people are paid more for degrees, getting a year older and classes, not their performance level. A multitude of researchers have found in study after study that the education school degrees from undergraduate to doctoral level are essentially worthless for the task at hand. The above quote makes the point that the world is becoming more and more a meritocracy where we will be valued for the quality of our output not our backgrounds; degrees, good-old-boy connections, pedigrees, etc.
Our educators’ refusal to change from a background supreme culture to a results supreme culture will continue harming out kids until the public becomes more knowledgeable and motivated to require that it change. For now, it looks as if when that time of realization comes we will likely be in a lower and lower standard of living “death spiral” which will be very difficult to overcome because the root cause was ignored for decades. Reality can be a scary thing but facing it is foundational to transforming performance in a positive way.
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