Common Core just put out the results of a year- long study of PISA test results for 15 year-olds. They looked in depth at the approaches of nine countries whose students outperformed American kids on the test. They used data on the PISA tests given in 2000, 2003 and 2006. You can download the report on the web. It is 102 pages long but worth reading. To save you time in case you just don’t have time or to entice you to read further if you do, I’ll give you the conclusion: All of these countries emphasize a broad liberal arts, content- rich approach, we emphasize “learning strategies, weak in content.” This is the old “only process is important” attitude taught by the education schools over the past century. It hasn’t worked out well. E.D. Hirsch made this point in his book The Knowledge Deficit, “The dominant ideas in American education are virtually unchallenged within the educational community. American education expertise (which is not the same as educational expertise in nations that perform better than we do) has a monolithic character in which dissent is stifled.”
The report also points out that the current preoccupation with “job skills” as in the 21st Century Skill Movement will not allow us to correct course and learn from our competitor nations. We still have the “bit in our teeth” and are determined to avoid facing the reality of the trap we have gotten into with the overemphasis on pedagogy (process) at the expense of subject knowledge. Until we bring balance to this situation we will continue to waste billions of dollars and more importantly limit our kids futures because we refuse to force the required changes to our approach.
Also, our education system which is mired in the past is not putting in the time to get the results we need even if they were focused on the approach used by the top competitor countries. Let me give you a personal experience that emphasizes the difference. When I was working in high tech, I visited Japan a few times, as VP and Division Manager of a semiconductor process equipment operation in New York. The trips always involved meeting with important customers and visiting our Japanese equipment plant in Oita Prefecture on Kyushu to assess how it was progressing. Our Oita plant was on the sea next to a hotel that specialized in weddings. That is where I stayed. On one visit I was to leave early Saturday morning to fly to Tokyo and then on home to NY Kennedy Airport. The flight was early and I had arranged for a cab to take me to the airport. It was rural area, especially compared to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka. On the way to the airport at 6:30 in the morning on a two lane road, we came upon a string of about a dozen school children riding their bikes to school. The oldest led the way and the smallest was last in line. I asked about it and was told, “Oh yes, our children go to school for a half day on Saturdays.” I thought, “Wow that explains a lot.”
I was reminded of this difference when I read the Common Core report. The length of the school year in the nine countries they studied in depth ranged from 180 days (some places in Canada) to 243 days in Japan, with an average of 206 days. In Colorado we specify a minimum of 160 days. I know trying to lengthen the school year here is a bit like tilting windmills. However, we need to face reality. I know the teachers would howl to high heaven if asked to work more days, especially without a pay increase. Our teachers are already paid really well in comparison and lots of things would need to change if we were to increase that significantly. Examples include merit pay, no tenure to protect poor performance, etc. I can see the heels being dug in and the foxholes being dug deeper over the mere thought of such changes.
However, it should be apparent that the great pay, good benefits, and great retirement plans enjoyed by teachers are all in great jeopardy if we continue to turn out human capital that is uncompetitive with the best in the world. Oh sure, we have gotten away with ignoring the reality of our poor performance for decades. We have to realize our economy is like a gigantic flywheel. That has helped maintain things in spite of our poor performance. But, it also will prevent swift action on the plus side from taking immediate effect as well. We continue to ignore this problem at great peril.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Dilutivity versus Robustivity and The Platte River Syndrome
Let me define the two words dilutivity and robustivity above. I coined them to describe different ends of the effects-of-activity continuum. First, dilutivity is activity that dilutes the strength of any endeavor. Robustivity is activity that enhances the strength of an endeavor. Additionally, nonotivity is activity that tends to preserve the status quo of any endeavor. Nonotivity is the most common activity followed by dilutivity and finally robustivity. However, even though many people aim for nonotivity, it is very hard to achieve because in effect, endeavors that don’t grow actually decline even if at a slow pace. The true status quo is a very rare occurrence.
People tend to fear and hate change. Nowhere is this more evident than in the education fiefdom. Educators have widely used a fourth kind of activity, talktivity for decades. Talktivity is talking about activities to improve things that turn out to be only talk in the end. However, they do end up consuming lots of resources which are wasted. Review the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission final report to refresh your memory. “Billions spent on improving the gap but the situation is only worse than when we started decades ago.”
I know you have been waiting breathlessly wondering what The Platte River Syndrome is. Well, it relates to the description of the Platte as the pioneers trekked the wagon trail to the west as “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” Sometimes it was called a mile wide and an inch deep. The latter is the definition I want to use. It relates perfectly to our country’s approach to education. I remember when attending “parent nights” at my children’s high school being shocked to hear their teachers talk about topics I hadn’t been exposed to until I was in college. I thought, “Wow, these folks have figured out how to teach all of this stuff faster and at an earlier age than when I was in school.” I soon learned that they hadn’t. In fact, the approach was to “talk” about a long laundry list of topics as if they would be taught effectively but not to really “teach” them at all. Oh, they tried, I suppose, but you see, there was a reason I hadn’t learned those things until college. There simply wasn’t time to learn the prerequisites and those “gee whiz” topics too.
The too common result is that the educators set out the list of skills that are too long and then proceed to cover them superficially if at all. This is what I call The Platte River Syndrome (mile wide, inch deep). This approach guarantees that the kids are not taught anything to mastery. Oh, some learn it because their parents teach them or provide tutors or they are self motivated and work hard to learn it on their own. However, most don’t learn well enough. This is confirmed by any number of measures like the international tests to assess student achievement where our kids continue to score poorly compared to their best performing peers. Another confirmation is the high remediation rate of students who go to college, currently mired in place at about 30% in Colorado.
It would be far more productive to concentrate on learning the prerequisites with mastery instead of trying to bite off more than can be chewed. Why would anyone support such a foolish endeavor as represented by The Platter River Syndrome? I’ll let you vote among some possibilities. Feel free to come up with some of your own and share.
• Because education schools don’t teach subject knowledge well, the teachers don’t have the background to teach well and the “inch deep” approach makes it less likely that the public will catch on.
• Teaching to mastery requires focus and hard work. It isn’t nearly as fun as talking about advanced concepts at a superficial level.
• An inadequate understanding of what our foreign competitors are doing differently that create their better results. I have been amazed at reading reports of comments from study groups of educators after they have visited top competitor nations like Singapore. They view things through the filters they have developed here and miss the key differences completely because they can’t believe “those things” (which we wouldn’t consider from the start) are actually responsible for the difference in performance.
• The educators’ inability to face that many of the processes they believe in don’t stand scientific scrutiny. As E.D. Hirsch says in The Knowledge Deficit, “[M]ere scientific inadequacy can be a practical irrelevance in American education.”
• Education leadership is weak and allows this lack of intellectual honesty on what really works to go unchallenged.
Please contribute your possibilities or vote for any of the ones above.
Copyright © 2009 Paul Richardson
People tend to fear and hate change. Nowhere is this more evident than in the education fiefdom. Educators have widely used a fourth kind of activity, talktivity for decades. Talktivity is talking about activities to improve things that turn out to be only talk in the end. However, they do end up consuming lots of resources which are wasted. Review the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission final report to refresh your memory. “Billions spent on improving the gap but the situation is only worse than when we started decades ago.”
I know you have been waiting breathlessly wondering what The Platte River Syndrome is. Well, it relates to the description of the Platte as the pioneers trekked the wagon trail to the west as “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” Sometimes it was called a mile wide and an inch deep. The latter is the definition I want to use. It relates perfectly to our country’s approach to education. I remember when attending “parent nights” at my children’s high school being shocked to hear their teachers talk about topics I hadn’t been exposed to until I was in college. I thought, “Wow, these folks have figured out how to teach all of this stuff faster and at an earlier age than when I was in school.” I soon learned that they hadn’t. In fact, the approach was to “talk” about a long laundry list of topics as if they would be taught effectively but not to really “teach” them at all. Oh, they tried, I suppose, but you see, there was a reason I hadn’t learned those things until college. There simply wasn’t time to learn the prerequisites and those “gee whiz” topics too.
The too common result is that the educators set out the list of skills that are too long and then proceed to cover them superficially if at all. This is what I call The Platte River Syndrome (mile wide, inch deep). This approach guarantees that the kids are not taught anything to mastery. Oh, some learn it because their parents teach them or provide tutors or they are self motivated and work hard to learn it on their own. However, most don’t learn well enough. This is confirmed by any number of measures like the international tests to assess student achievement where our kids continue to score poorly compared to their best performing peers. Another confirmation is the high remediation rate of students who go to college, currently mired in place at about 30% in Colorado.
It would be far more productive to concentrate on learning the prerequisites with mastery instead of trying to bite off more than can be chewed. Why would anyone support such a foolish endeavor as represented by The Platter River Syndrome? I’ll let you vote among some possibilities. Feel free to come up with some of your own and share.
• Because education schools don’t teach subject knowledge well, the teachers don’t have the background to teach well and the “inch deep” approach makes it less likely that the public will catch on.
• Teaching to mastery requires focus and hard work. It isn’t nearly as fun as talking about advanced concepts at a superficial level.
• An inadequate understanding of what our foreign competitors are doing differently that create their better results. I have been amazed at reading reports of comments from study groups of educators after they have visited top competitor nations like Singapore. They view things through the filters they have developed here and miss the key differences completely because they can’t believe “those things” (which we wouldn’t consider from the start) are actually responsible for the difference in performance.
• The educators’ inability to face that many of the processes they believe in don’t stand scientific scrutiny. As E.D. Hirsch says in The Knowledge Deficit, “[M]ere scientific inadequacy can be a practical irrelevance in American education.”
• Education leadership is weak and allows this lack of intellectual honesty on what really works to go unchallenged.
Please contribute your possibilities or vote for any of the ones above.
Copyright © 2009 Paul Richardson
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Whole-Language, the reading equivalent of Everyday Math
As promised in the last post, here is the scoop on the problem with reading instruction.
The following information is from Louisa Moats’ report Whole-Language High Jinks, How to Tell When “Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction” Isn’t (2007)
“For more than three decades, advocates of “whole-language” instruction have argued––to the delight of many teachers and public school administrators––that learning to read is a “natural” process for children. Create reading centers in classrooms; put good, fun books in children’s hands and allow them to explore; then encourage them to “read,” even if they can’t make heads or tails of the words on the page. Eventually, they’ll get it. So say the believers.
But students aren’t “getting it.” By almost any measure, U.S. reading scores have been too low for too long. Consider the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Since 1992, its results for reading by fourth and eighth graders have been almost uniformly bleak. Among fourth graders, just 31 percent of students in 2005 rated proficient or better. That’s just two points higher than in 1992. The exact same scores were recorded by eighth graders over the same time span.
This comes as no surprise to scientists who have spent decades studying how children learn to read. They’ve established that most students will learn to read adequately (though not necessarily well) regardless of the instructional methods they’re subjected to in school. But they’ve also found that fully 40 percent of children are less fortunate. For them, explicit instruction (including phonics) is necessary if they are to ever become capable readers. These findings are true across race, socioeconomic status, and family background.”
So reading is another area where educators trained by the education schools to believe in the “natural” methods of learning that are harming kids who desperately need science based instruction to learn to read. Moats isn’t the only one to criticize the whole language approach. E.D. Hirsch in his book The Knowledge Deficit points out the same problem. Since it is important to recognize that the label describing these harmful practices has been changed from Whole Language due to the bad press given them under that title, we need to understand the “relabeling” that has taken place.
“Although the term “whole language” is rarely used today, programs based on its premises, such as Reading Recovery, Four Blocks, Guided Reading, and especially “balanced literacy,” are as popular as ever. These approaches may pay lip service to reading science, but they fail to incorporate the content and instructional methods proven to work best with students learning to read. Some districts, such as Denver, openly shun research-based practices, while others, such as Chicago, fail to provide clear, consistent leadership for principals and teachers, who are left to reinvent reading instruction, school by school.”
“[Moats] suggests ways of separating the wheat from the chaff and explains that good reading programs
• use valid screening measures to find children who are at risk and provide them with effective, early instruction in phonology and oral language; in word recognition and reading fluency; and in comprehension and writing skills;
• interweave several components of language (such as speech sounds, word structure, word meaning, and sentence structure) into the same lessons;
• build fluency in both underlying reading skills and text reading, using direct methods such as repeated readings of the same text;
• incorporate phonemic awareness into all reading instruction, rather than treating it as an isolated element;
• go beyond the notion of phonics as the simple relationship between letters and sounds to include lessons on word structure and origins;
• build vocabulary from the earliest levels by exposing students to a broad, rich curriculum; and support reading comprehension by focusing on a deep understanding of topic and theme rather than just a set of strategies and gimmicks.
Identified and taught properly using scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) programs, students at risk of reading failure actually have good prospects for success.”
“Despite the scientific evidence, despite the flat-line reading scores on NAEP (and the SAT verbal section), many teachers and school systems continue to embrace whole-language approaches. In this report, one of America’s foremost reading experts, Louisa Moats, shows how whole-language reading programs have survived, even thrived, mostly by claiming to be aligned with SBRR strategies even when they are not.”
“Few people are better qualified to make this judgment than Moats. She earned her Ed.D. in Reading and Human Development from Harvard University in 1982 after teaching in public and private elementary school settings. For 15 years, she was a licensed psychologist with extensive experience working directly with children with reading problems. In 1996-97, she served as advisor to the California Reading Initiative, and later co-directed a large, federally funded research project on reading instruction in high poverty schools. Currently she writes professional development courses for teachers and directs research projects with Sopris West Educational Services. Her list of publications is extensive, including several books. Her articles have been published in journals as diverse as Annals of Dyslexia, American Educator, the Journal of Child Neurology, Nature Neuroscience, and Reading and Writing. She has taught courses at
Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, and Saint Michael’s College.”
“The concept of balance,” she wrote, “implies … that worthy ideas and practices from both Whole Language and code-emphasis approaches to reading have been successfully integrated into an eclectic mix that should go down easily with teachers and kids.” But, she explained, “it is too easy for practitioners, while endorsing ‘balance,’ to continue teaching whole language.”
Parents beware. As I stated in the Spring Loaded posting earlier, the bad stuff is too often relabeled, “new and improved” and continues to be harmful to our kids’ learning process.
The following information is from Louisa Moats’ report Whole-Language High Jinks, How to Tell When “Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction” Isn’t (2007)
“For more than three decades, advocates of “whole-language” instruction have argued––to the delight of many teachers and public school administrators––that learning to read is a “natural” process for children. Create reading centers in classrooms; put good, fun books in children’s hands and allow them to explore; then encourage them to “read,” even if they can’t make heads or tails of the words on the page. Eventually, they’ll get it. So say the believers.
But students aren’t “getting it.” By almost any measure, U.S. reading scores have been too low for too long. Consider the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Since 1992, its results for reading by fourth and eighth graders have been almost uniformly bleak. Among fourth graders, just 31 percent of students in 2005 rated proficient or better. That’s just two points higher than in 1992. The exact same scores were recorded by eighth graders over the same time span.
This comes as no surprise to scientists who have spent decades studying how children learn to read. They’ve established that most students will learn to read adequately (though not necessarily well) regardless of the instructional methods they’re subjected to in school. But they’ve also found that fully 40 percent of children are less fortunate. For them, explicit instruction (including phonics) is necessary if they are to ever become capable readers. These findings are true across race, socioeconomic status, and family background.”
So reading is another area where educators trained by the education schools to believe in the “natural” methods of learning that are harming kids who desperately need science based instruction to learn to read. Moats isn’t the only one to criticize the whole language approach. E.D. Hirsch in his book The Knowledge Deficit points out the same problem. Since it is important to recognize that the label describing these harmful practices has been changed from Whole Language due to the bad press given them under that title, we need to understand the “relabeling” that has taken place.
“Although the term “whole language” is rarely used today, programs based on its premises, such as Reading Recovery, Four Blocks, Guided Reading, and especially “balanced literacy,” are as popular as ever. These approaches may pay lip service to reading science, but they fail to incorporate the content and instructional methods proven to work best with students learning to read. Some districts, such as Denver, openly shun research-based practices, while others, such as Chicago, fail to provide clear, consistent leadership for principals and teachers, who are left to reinvent reading instruction, school by school.”
“[Moats] suggests ways of separating the wheat from the chaff and explains that good reading programs
• use valid screening measures to find children who are at risk and provide them with effective, early instruction in phonology and oral language; in word recognition and reading fluency; and in comprehension and writing skills;
• interweave several components of language (such as speech sounds, word structure, word meaning, and sentence structure) into the same lessons;
• build fluency in both underlying reading skills and text reading, using direct methods such as repeated readings of the same text;
• incorporate phonemic awareness into all reading instruction, rather than treating it as an isolated element;
• go beyond the notion of phonics as the simple relationship between letters and sounds to include lessons on word structure and origins;
• build vocabulary from the earliest levels by exposing students to a broad, rich curriculum; and support reading comprehension by focusing on a deep understanding of topic and theme rather than just a set of strategies and gimmicks.
Identified and taught properly using scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) programs, students at risk of reading failure actually have good prospects for success.”
“Despite the scientific evidence, despite the flat-line reading scores on NAEP (and the SAT verbal section), many teachers and school systems continue to embrace whole-language approaches. In this report, one of America’s foremost reading experts, Louisa Moats, shows how whole-language reading programs have survived, even thrived, mostly by claiming to be aligned with SBRR strategies even when they are not.”
“Few people are better qualified to make this judgment than Moats. She earned her Ed.D. in Reading and Human Development from Harvard University in 1982 after teaching in public and private elementary school settings. For 15 years, she was a licensed psychologist with extensive experience working directly with children with reading problems. In 1996-97, she served as advisor to the California Reading Initiative, and later co-directed a large, federally funded research project on reading instruction in high poverty schools. Currently she writes professional development courses for teachers and directs research projects with Sopris West Educational Services. Her list of publications is extensive, including several books. Her articles have been published in journals as diverse as Annals of Dyslexia, American Educator, the Journal of Child Neurology, Nature Neuroscience, and Reading and Writing. She has taught courses at
Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, and Saint Michael’s College.”
“The concept of balance,” she wrote, “implies … that worthy ideas and practices from both Whole Language and code-emphasis approaches to reading have been successfully integrated into an eclectic mix that should go down easily with teachers and kids.” But, she explained, “it is too easy for practitioners, while endorsing ‘balance,’ to continue teaching whole language.”
Parents beware. As I stated in the Spring Loaded posting earlier, the bad stuff is too often relabeled, “new and improved” and continues to be harmful to our kids’ learning process.
Friday, May 15, 2009
People only see what they are prepared to see. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The chart shows the distribution of math scores in the four bands reported for the CSAP testing in Colorado. These bands are Unsatisfactory, Partially Proficient, Proficient, and Advanced. Within the bands are shown the percentage of students by grade in each grouping. I picked this chart because it has a nice, relatively symmetrical shape. However, in looking at similar charts for most of the large districts in the state the message is the same but the distributions can be skewed somewhat to the left or right. That message is that kids being taught math in Colorado (Colorado is not unique, just at the low rigor end of the distribution of the states) are not advancing a grade level in performance for each year spent in school. Thus, the longer the kids are “exposed” to the system the worse they perform against the standards.
Under NCLB each state was given the latitude to set their own standards. This means that there is a wide variation in their rigor. However, since the distribution of the performance of the states on their own tests shows much higher proficiency than those states do on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) testing, you have to conclude that the states are “sandbagging” their tests to look as good as possible and avoid NCLB sanctions, some more than others. In The Proficiency Illusion (2007) done by the Fordham Institute and NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association) where they studied 26 states’ standards for math and reading across all grades they found Colorado to have the lowest standards of those 26 states and South Carolina to have the highest standards in both subjects. In their concluding comments on Colorado’s standards they said,
“When setting its cut scores for what constitutes student proficiency in reading and mathematics for NCLB purposes, Colorado aimed low, at least compared to the other 25 states in this study. (This finding is consistent with the recent National Center for Education Statistics report, Mapping 2005 State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales, which also found Colorado’s standards to be toward the bottom of the distribution of all states studied.) Colorado’s low cut scores have declined even further in recent years in several grades.
As a result, Colorado’s expectations are not calibrated across all grades; students who are proficient in third grade are not necessarily on track to be proficient by the eighth grade. In addition to better calibrating the state’s cut scores, Colorado policymakers might consider raising those scores across the board so that parents and educators can be assured that scoring at the NCLB proficient level means that students are truly prepared for success later in their educational careers.”
Thus, the terribly inadequate performance shown in the graph is against abysmally low standards. How could this go on year after year without some positive response to require serving the kids better? First, you have to appreciate that the education “experts” are more than happy to depend on the parents and the public not putting in the large amount of effort required to ferret out the truth. Oh, it is reported to be sure. However, you have to be willing to dig for the data you need among the infinite amount available and then be able to cast it into a form that will allow you to understand the consequences to the kids of the poor decisions being made by educators.
There are two gigantic problems in the teaching of math (will discuss at another time some similar problems in other subject areas). The first is that teachers, especially at the elementary level do not have adequate math knowledge to teach it to their students. This has been a well known problem of the education schools’ poor training of teachers for decades but no one with the power required has been willing to kick over that hornet’s nest and require the ed schools to improve their product immediately or go out of business. In an Associated Press article, Math Teachers Barely Ahead of Students,
“WASHINGTON (AP) 12/07/08 — Math can be hard enough, but imagine the difficulty when a teacher is just one chapter ahead of the students. It happens, and it happens more often to poor and minority students. Those children are about twice as likely to have math teachers who don't know their subject, according to a report by the Education Trust, a children's advocacy group. Studies show the connection between teachers' knowledge and student achievement is particularly strong in math. ‘Individual teachers matter a tremendous amount in how much students learn,’ said Ross Wiener, who oversees policy issues at the organization.”
This has been known for decades. Mortimore and Sammons in their 1987 report on research they had done on the effect of teachers on student learning found that the teacher was up to 6 times more important than student demographics in reading and up to 10 times more important in math.
Liping Ma’s book, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in China and the United States, reports on her research of American elementary math teachers selected from the best and those who were getting their masters degrees at the end of the current school term compared to Chinese elementary teachers. She found that the Chinese teachers who were predominately the product of 2 years of training beyond high school (similar to the Normal School training America had before the blossoming of the education schools in the twentieth century) had far more math knowledge than their “better educated” American counterparts.
The second major problem is that more and more American elementary schools have switched to constructivist or discovery curricula like Everyday Math. This has been attractive to school districts because it helps to mask the lack of math skill among teachers who were having great difficulty teaching with the direct instruction method that most adults experienced. The discovery method because students work in groups flailing about to “solve” problems with the aid of calculators for even the most trivial problems takes a lot longer. That is, you can’t cover as much material in the time available with the discovery method as with the direct instruction methods. Also, the algorithms that generations of students here (and abroad) were taught are not taught in the discovery math curricula. You might say, what is the problem, if they get the right answers for the problems they are trying to solve. The answer is that the study of math is hierarchical in nature. You build the foundation starting at the beginning and continue to build on it year after year. Now, algebra requires the manipulation of polynomials with all of those algorithms that the direct instruction method teaches are necessary in algebra and higher math. They can be used on the simple problems but also on the more complex ones—hats off to the people who were dedicated enough to develop these elegant approaches to solving both arithmetic and algebraic problems. So we send the kids into a very stressful transition in middle school where they are totally unprepared for the studies at hand. Also, manipulation of fractions is virtually a lost art among products of the discovery curricula. These skills again are essential for the study of algebra. While many educators consider algebra “advanced math” it is certainly not and it is something that will benefit every student whether they intend to go to college, trade school, etc.
An argument I often hear is that I must be wrong because the constructivist curricula are “research based” and have passed muster. And that is true. But the “research question” used to foist off this trash on our kids is flawed. That is, it asks if the curriculum allows kids to solve simple arithmetic problems with the aid of a calculator when it should and must for integrity ask, does the curriculum allow kids to solve simple arithmetic problems AND PROVIDE THE NEEDED FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF ALGEBRA AND HIGHER LEVEL MATH? The answer there is a resounding NO!! These curricula are not suitable for any elementary school in the nation and should be banned immediately.
In reality, the education experts, especially in the education schools do not understand math (or many other subjects) well enough to be entrusted with decisions about curricula or anything else pertaining to the educating of our kids. Rita Kramer’s assertion in her famous book “Ed School Follies” that “our educators are not educated” is succinct and true if you base your evaluation on the results of our education system.
Since the educators are not going to change without significant pressure, who will stand up for the welfare of the kids? You?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
25 Years Later—A Nation at Risk is even worse off
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
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
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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