The Woodcutter

Joe was a hardworking woodcutter. His father had taught him his trade. He knew the importance of keeping his tools, axe and crosscut saw sharp so that his productivity would be high. Joe would go to periodic workshops with other woodcutters to keep his knowledge of axe and crosscut saw up to date. His prices had gone up steadily over the years. He claimed it was only to keep up with the inflation rate but in fact his prices had gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation. So, his was a record of steady and dramatic decline in productivity.

While Joe worked as hard as ever he found his prices couldn’t compete with woodcutters who were employing better methods to cause improved productivity. Thus, with time his business began to decline as only those customers that he had locked in to long term contracts would buy his wood. As those multi-year contracts expired he knew his business would decline even more.

Joe formed a trade group of other woodcutters using axe and crosscut saw to lobby politicians and support those politicians for election who agreed to work to fix the price of wood products so that they didn’t have to compete. Because they were so frustrated, they even engaged in the occasional act of intimidation to make their point. They launched an advertising campaign extolling the virtue of their product and how their methods didn’t pollute the earth with chainsaw exhaust. They were careful to compare their productivity to others who used the same unproductive methods they favored. In this way they put the best face on their low performance. Their advertising theme was, “Would Paul Bunyan stoop to using a chainsaw?” They had some success over time but as more and more states enacted laws permitting free choice in the buying of wood products, the economic prospects for Joe and his fellow trade group members declined steadily.

Now to Education

Is education different than Joe and his axe and crosscut saw friends? Not at all. The educator ranks are working as hard as Joe and his fellow woodcutters to preserve unproductive processes. They fear anything that doesn’t conform to the scientifically incorrect content they learned in education school which is continually reinforced by professional development classes and faulty research.

The situation in education is worse than Joe’s though. Joe’s actions are impacting his own long term viability as a woodcutter. The educators’ actions are harming their own credibility and long term prospects but they also are harming generations of kids who are ill prepared to compete in the increasingly competitive global environment. The experienced educators are making the bet that they can outlast criticism long enough to retire before they have to change, prioritizing their own comfort over the welfare of the kids. Thus, there is a strong “preserve the status quo at all costs” ethic at work in our school districts.

E.D. Hirsch whom I consider to be the person with the most complete understanding of our education problems stated in his appearance at the Manhattan Institute last fall (available on booktv.org by searching on E.D. Hirsch and selecting view video):

• Educators will never change on their own. They will have to be forced by outside forces [the public].
• Our education performance is characterized by low student achievement, ethnic inequality of results, low levels of civic commitment by graduates.
• Since the progressives gained control of the education schools and deployed graduates trained (brainwashed) in their technically incorrect methods, Sat verbal scores have declined from a level of about 543 in the late 60s to a steady level of about 505 from 1980 to now. He points out the excuses of the educators that this change is due to an increase in minorities taking the test. Hirsch asserts that this increase cannot explain the decline in white middle class student scores. He relates research by Harvard researcher, Christopher Jencks which showed that Iowa with 98% white, middle class students saw a large decrease in SAT verbal scores as well. The researcher concluded it was due to curricula less oriented to content, i.e. watered down and weak vocabulary. Hirsch looked at the College Board stats and found a constant pool of about 1 million test takers each year where those scoring over 600 on the verbal SAT had declined 56% and the students scoring over 650 had declined by 73% since the progressive content-free approach had been implemented.
• Achievement gaps have not closed for many decades and Hirsch states they cannot decrease until a content-rich curriculum replaces the current content-free, watered down approach. He points out that the current curricula and methods harm the minority kids the most.
• Hirsch decries the “monolithic intellectual monopoly of faulty ideas” as the biggest problem in education. Trying to convince educators of the need to change is impossible. They simply have been too well brainwashed in the faulty ideas to change from within. Change can only happen if they are forced to abandon their technically incorrect ideas.
• Richard Hofstadter, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, called for more content and less process in the education of our kids. He concluded the fragmented courses and watered down texts had to go if our education performance was to be improved.

What must the public do to end the harm our education system is doing to our kids?

• Educate yourselves to understand the reality of our poor education performance. For example, in Colorado where achievement standards are low, the comparison to other districts and schools based on the Colorado testing only tells you how a school or district compares to other weak performing districts or schools. Also, national standards are weak compared to our global competitors.
• Realize that the 5 decade progressive-approach detour into the education wilderness has been a disaster for our kids and nation. See my previous blog about the Borg Education system to refresh your memory on the aims of the progressive education initiative. They are basically trying to produce a credulous (gullible) populace that will be ready to believe in “expert” leadership and “made up” crises used to motivate more expert control.
• Realize that productivity is a null word in education where costs per student have soared at about twice the rate of inflation for many decades while results have stayed mired in “unacceptable” territory.
• Realize that educators are not the experts in what works in educating kids. They are the “anti-experts.”
• Realize that education degrees and certifications only provide evidence that the person has learned the “party line,” not that they should be valued as educators.
• Expect elected representatives at all levels to put service to kids as the top priority, not protecting the jobs, pay or benefits of educators. This will be difficult because ed power groups support malleable candidates who will vote the way they want them to if they make large contributions to campaigns. That is, if educators are performing poorly and they are in results where it counts, they must show greatly improved performance to justify hanging on to their positions.
• Realize that improvement can’t be made without hardnosed and sustained battle with the education power groups. These include the education schools, the federal and state education bureaucracies, the teachers unions, the administrator state and national groups, the school board associations, in other words everyone involved in the current mainline education system. The public must take responsibility to force the needed changes. Only the public has enough clout to overcome the entrenched and harmful treatment of our kids.
• Inoculate yourself against the constant drumbeat that more money is needed to “fix” things in education and that any cut will harm the kids. This couldn’t be further from the truth. More money only continues to feed the unacceptable status quo. It doesn’t go toward helping kids at all. In fact, if a freeze of school based administration and a reduction of 10% a year in central administration salary budgets were put in place until results improved by, say 50%, the message would finally be received by the educators. We must stop feeding this monster that destroys and attenuates kids’ future prospects.

While I support charter schools and vouchers, they simply don’t have the leverage to fix the problem for enough kids. A lot of charters are started by mainline educators who want to put the em Fah sis on a different sil Ah bul. Many charters aren’t putting in content-rich curricula which are needed to fix our education problem. Some charters are doing a great job and more power to them but they alone cannot be the answer. They impact too few kids.

Thus, if you care about our kids or the future of our nation, it is urgent that you become involved. Expecting educators to do their job and begin to serve the kids at the required level is a fool’s errand without “our help” which demands they get on with it NOW.

Ruts and Ladders

Quality Control, the Vital Missing Ingredient in Education

As mentioned in the last blog post, Public Action Required, educators have demonstrated the ability over and over to ignore legal requirements thus avoiding facing up to the needed change in their performance to benefit our kids. The example given in that post of how they manage to continue using Whole Language methods in spite of the NCLB requirement that if you want federal education money you must use SBRR programs is hardly unique. They do this by asserting that Whole Language methods do comply with SBRR (even though they definitely do not) and so continue to harm our kids. How do they get away with it? They get away with it because our education system is running “open loop.” That is, there is no quality control process to close the loop. Oh, the federal and state departments of education do many audits but they are ineffective, “going through the motions” affairs done by people who have been trained in the same false doctrine as all educators. They also have been taught that conflict is bad and that suppressing the truth is ok if it creates a sense of harmony. In this sort of arrangement, there is no concern for how the kids are being served only for maintaining harmony at all cost. This can’t be argued because the results betray the truth to anyone willing to look.

This is not to say that school districts are not competent at managing their spending to be in line with their budgets. They generally are. However, the problem is that the resources are not spent wisely. That is, the inertia in the system favors the “we’ve always done it this way” status quo, instead of prioritizing the areas that would really bring about the massive improvement that is needed and possible. Oh, there is lots of spending on “new sounding” initiatives, but the underlying foundational things that need changing are not addressed. It is creating a façade of activity, but productivity measures results per unit input and the results never really change while the input costs have risen dramatically for decades. Thus, productivity of the education fiefdom has declined precipitously over that time. This entrenched “rut habit” harms kids greatly because while all, even the educators, know that improvement is called for, no one is acquiring ladders to climb out of the rut allowing better performance.

Unlike other government funded activities in which the quality function takes the form of an inspector general, education has no such entity. Part of the problem is that control over education is spread out between federal, state and local political venues. In reality this gives the school districts, education schools, curriculum providers, and so-called education researchers and curriculum developers ample room to continue avoiding accountability.

Any quality function must have independence so that they can be objective about the performance of the organization which they are tasked to evaluate. Thus, the reporting relationship at both a district and state level would require a direct reporting relationship to the appropriate board of education. Only in this way could the truth of performance be reported without fear of reprisal. In actual practice this reporting relationship would foster a cooperative effort with administrators over time to be able to “keep the board out of most issues.” This would allow much faster resolution of performance problems which are currently swept under the rug or ignored.

What would be the benefits of a properly conceived quality function in K-12 education?

• Improved accountability--this would stimulate much better performance over time. Problems are only given priority if they are highlighted within the organization. That does not happen in any productive way in education. Oh, achievement test results are there but there is no objective analysis of the causes of poor performance and their priority for solution. A quality function would facilitate for the first time in education the identification, prioritization and solving of biggest drags on performance first. There is no real discipline in education so that problems are not faced and solved. There is no penalty for poor work. There is no accountability.
• Non-compliance to legal requirements would be spotted early and corrected. This would prevent the problems as were discussed in the previous blog post where Whole Language was allowed to continue harming kids in spite of the legal requirement for SBRR reading programs. In the current state of education there is no closed loop to correct such violations or ideally prevent them from happening in the first place.
• Much better staff morale and satisfaction. No one wants to perform badly but in the current top-down management style, change is prevented even though it is desperately needed. Staff members are not allowed to participate in any meaningful way in problem identification and solutions. People have higher self-esteem and job satisfaction when they know they are doing a really good job. Today’s educator self-esteem is based on trying to believe that poor performance is really good performance. You can’t fool people and you certainly can’t lie to yourself without it negatively affecting your real self-esteem.
• It would stimulate improved leadership performance. This is because leaders would have to lead real change to solve the problems caught by the quality function. The days of ignoring problems and sweeping them under the carpet would be gone forever. Shining the light of reality on the situation would make upgrading leadership skill and knowledge unavoidable.
• Best of all, there would finally be an advocate for the kids with real power to stimulate urgency in pursuing improved performance.

Of course, now in a time of tight education budgets, the excuse will be, “We can’t afford to implement a new quality control function. I can guarantee you that a QC function well done would pay for itself many times over. Philip Crosby in his book Quality is Free points out that a quality function more than pays for itself by eliminating waste and the cost of doing things wrong. It would force districts to face the fact that they are wasting huge amounts of resources on counterproductive efforts. The people are working hard doing the wrong things. This is especially true of Central Office administration functions. When a new function is added it has a life of its own even after it is obvious that it is not providing any benefit. District leaders would rather continue doing a wrong, counterproductive and worthless function than eliminate it and the positions that go with it. That might cause stress and unpleasantness, something that the weak and overpaid leaders in education do not think they should have to deal with even though kids are being harmed.

And yet, by judiciously using hiring freezes and expecting staff to be flexible in doing a job that needs doing as opposed to one that is not worth doing, the situation could be corrected relatively quickly through attrition. If people chose to not be flexible then they would have the opportunity to seek employment elsewhere. Our kids are not served by continuing to pay a price in money and time for activities of no value.

Public Action Required

Whole Language High Jinks, How to Tell When Scientifically-based Reading Instruction Isn’t, Louisa Moats, (2007) The Thomas Fordham Institute.

“Science builds consensus among people in a way that few other disciplines can, if only because the nature of its proofs makes dissent so difficult. The path to consensus via science is rarely straight; it can take years to achieve and the battles can be bloody. But eventually, the accumulation of evidence is hard, even impossible, to ignore.” But ignore it is what is happening everyday in our school systems to the detriment of our kids, especially the “Gap children” who are most harmed by the unscientific methods favored by the “education experts” who aren’t.

“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 [brainwashed by ed school training].”

“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.”

“For at least a decade and a half, in other words, despite standards-based reform, despite No Child Left Behind (NCLB), America has failed to significantly improve the percentage of its children who can read at levels that will enable them to compete in higher education and in the global economy.”

“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.”

In 1967, Jeanne S. Chall published Learning to Read: The Great Debate which laid out the arguments against Whole Language. This, instead of settling the debate stimulated an intense dispute that consumed much of the 1980s and 1990s. This caused the formation of the National Reading Panel, charged with deciding once and for all which approach works. Its findings were not favorable for Whole Language adherents. The panel identified 5 elements children needed to master to become good readers: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These came to be known as “scientifically-based reading research” (SBRR) programs. NCLB in 2001 required that schools receiving federal dollars had to use SBRR materials.

You might think that would finally solve the problem. Wrong!! What happened is an indictment of the ethical integrity of our education fiefdom as a whole. If SBRR is the requirement, then Presto, just rename the old Whole Language programs as SBRR and go on as before, continuing to harm children and their futures. Thus, since 2001 Whole Language is even more prevalent than before the NCLB requirement. That is, pseudo-SBRR programs have received federal money to expand their impact. It seems that the only thing you need to do is advertise you are meeting the requirements to get by. It reminds me of the three monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

You might ask how supposedly “expert educators” could be fooled? Because they want to be is it in a nutshell. They have been trained [incorrectly] in their ed schools and subsequent professional development to believe in the romantic ideas [reading is a natural process; that is, teachers don’t need to do any work to help kids learn] pushed by the Progressives who control the ed schools so ubiquitously. They also would need to learn new things with real substance to be able to use the SBRR systems. One of the contradictions within education is that while they will tell you we must all be lifelong learners they don’t lead by example. That is, they just study the same failed processes over and over throughout their careers never allowing new and more valid knowledge to gain a foothold.

What must the public do to facilitate the use of reading curricula that work? First, we need to realize that it is a “forever project.” That is, the educators have shown over and over through the decades that the key to being able to prevent change is to; delay, delay, delay, finally agree to change, tell everyone the problem is solved, rename all of the old stuff labeling it as “new and improved” and go on with no tangible change into the future. You might say this is a cynical attitude but it isn’t. It is very much fact-based on what has happened over and over.

The analogy is one where you are fighting a tough and strong opponent who is out to harm your children. You are motivated and finally get the opponent down on the ground with your foot on his neck. But you must realize that the only way to protect your children is to keep your foot on his neck forever because if you don’t the harm will start up again the minute you turn your back. Saying to ourselves that it shouldn’t be our job is delusional. The ed power groups have too much power. It can only be overcome if the majority of the public works together to stop the harm being done decade after decade to our kids. If the “system” could fix it, it would have already been done. The results show that we must be involved, like it or not.

Arm yourselves with the knowledge and then let elected representatives, the educators in your schools and other members of the public know that you require much better treatment for our children.

Serve the Kids—The Opportunity for Improved Education Performance

The Problems with Colorado Education

Achievement is abysmal when compared to national and especially, international standards.

1. The Proficiency Illusion (2007), Colorado NCLB cut scores are on average the lowest for both reading and math among the 26 states studied. They give examples comparing cut score defining questions using Colorado as the trivial end of the scale with Massachusetts at the high end.

2. Assessing the Role of K-12 Academic Standards in States: Workshop Summary, Nat’l Academies Press (2007). Uses the Nat’l Assessment of Educational Progress testing to compare all states. Again Colorado is in the lowest group of states.

3. The SARs (School Accountability Reports) published by the Colorado Department of Education are “graded on the curve” affairs within Colorado. Thus, they do not highlight the big gap in what our kids are being provided and what the best global competition is receiving.

4. The Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report (2005), “Over a third of a century ago, Robert Kennedy called the achievement gap between minority and disadvantaged kids a stain on our national honor. In the meantime we have spent billions on finding a solution but the problem is demonstrably worse now than when RFK made his observation. “

5. The rates of improvement among Colorado schools are glacial at best which means since our competitor nations are continually improving faster that our kids are falling further and further behind.

How could this happen with all of the resources we throw at education? What do objective experts have to say?

1. E.D. Hirsch Jr. U of Virginia emeritus professor, decades long education researcher, author of excellent books on our education status and problems, stimulus for the “Massachusetts Miracle.”

The Knowledge Deficit (2006), He calls the current situation a “perfect storm” of Bad Educational Ideas. “The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education and especially about reading comprehension. Their well-intentioned yet mistaken views are the significant reason (more than other constantly blamed factors, even poverty) that many of our children are not attaining reading proficiency, thus crippling their later schooling.”

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.

Principles that constitute a kind of theology are drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism. The only way to improve scores in reading comprehension and to narrow the reading gap between groups is to systematically provide children with the wide-ranging, specific background knowledge they need to comprehend what they read.”

Massachusetts got rid of the harmful and never effective “how-to” based approach (the Hirsch stimulated Massachusetts Miracle) replacing it with a content rich approach and saw their achievement scores soar. Of course, in Massachusetts the educators didn’t lead the charge, it was required by the legislature whose leadership mustered the courage to oppose the unions and other education power groups.

Conclusion: the curricula favored by the education schools and that our educators are taught to believe in don’t work. They don’t stand scientific scrutiny. Thus, until the educators are forced to use curricula that work no major improvement can take place. All of the effort and expense of trying to “improve” the scientifically proven to not work current methods and curricula are a waste of valuable resources and kids’ futures.

2. Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, member of National Academies. Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?
It seems that the longer our children are exposed to our K-12 education system, the worse they do. If we wish to be average by global standards, we will need to improve a great deal. Can anyone imagine a football coach at any American high school greeting his players on the first day of fall practice by saying, “This year let’s get out there and try to be average for the Gipper!”?

It can, of course, be argued that comparing averages and medians tells only part of the story, as indeed is often the case. But in this instance, further parsing of the data generally reveals that the United States has a disproportionately small share of the highest performers and a disproportionately large share of the lowest performers. Although this is widely overlooked, it is not simply the poorer-performing students who are falling through the gaping cracks of our educational system but also the highest performers who—much to the nation’s detriment—are frequently being forced to learn in an environment approaching the lowest common denominator.

The problem of low expectations has not been confined to California. Alabama, for example, reported that in 2005, 83% of its fourth-graders ranked as “proficient” on its state test of academic achievement. But in the most widely accepted national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 22% of Alabama’s fourth-graders scored at or above the proficient level. In truth, neither of the measures matters much. What counts today is how the children of Alabama rank with the children of Singapore, Moscow, Hong Kong, Delhi, Beijing, and Berlin. There is little consolation in being first among losers.

3. David Klein’s A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century

The Progressive Education Catechism: Klein relates how the progressives (John Dewey, et al) took control of the education schools in the 1930s. Their view was and is that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism.

Notice the “slow pace” comment. It is as if we are using a 1903 Oldsmobile in the global education race when our best global opponents are using modern and reliable, up-to-date autos. Until we change to what works, not what we were taught works and doesn’t, our kids will continue to be harmed.

Thus, the constructivist, how-to approaches are slower than the content rich approaches. Because of that they simply can’t get the job done compared to our global competitors who use the methods that stand scientific scrutiny and work much better. Also, comprehension is very dependent on background knowledge. The progressive approach does not provide knowledge [content rigor] and hence understanding of what is being taught.

The Progressive’s approach is particularly harmful to “gap” students.

Let’s look at a local example. I use District 11, not because it is the worst case but because it is the largest local district and representative of the situation. While reading achievement is unsatisfactory, math is really, really unsatisfactory. Looking at the progression of data across the grades you see that the split between 3rd grade proficient or better versus below proficient (73, 27) becomes in 10th grade (32, 68).

Initial conclusions from the data

The math teaching process in D11 is performing at an unacceptable level. It transforms the mostly proficient 3rd graders into mostly unproficient 10th graders over time. A good process would start well and end better.

The results shows that students are advancing each year in math skill much less than the very weak Colorado standards increase.
Every large district in Colorado has charts that have the same shape. They just shift up and down with the “demographic luck of the draw” for their student population.

Why does it matter? The American Institutes for Research (2007) reported on a study they had done comparing the NAEP to TIMSS (The International Math and Science Study). The results showed that the US 8th grade math students scored 27% proficient or better while Singapore math students scored 73% proficient or better. 17 nations scored better than the US, including Hungary, Slovak Rep. Slovenia, Canada, Russia, Malaysia, etc. China and India who have strong math teaching records weren’t in the testing but would have scored ahead of us almost certainly.

D11 Grade 10 CSAP Disaggregated Math, Prof or Better

Looking at the last 5 years of disaggregated data for tenth grade students shows no improvement in reducing the gap between white students and either black or Hispanic students. The NCLB requirement is that all students will score proficient or better by 2014. That would take a miracle with today’s starting point. The district is mired in “polishing the rotten apple” of their current math teaching process when it can never provide the required results. When pressured they hire expensive “outside” education consultants to assess their math process and curriculum. This is guaranteed to reinforce the current underpinnings that are so tragically inadequate because the outside consultants have the same brainwashed views that the district personnel do. This is a waste of time and money if you want to help the kids do better. Of course, the motivation is to preserve the status quo not to help the kids or to perform better.

As in any process the quality of the “final product” is the real measure of success or failure. That is, how perfect is the finished TV or car? In education, “What is the diploma worth?” “Don’t worry, the math feature doesn’t work too well but they can read, sort of.” In math education we measure results in the third through tenth grades and each grade level result must be considered in the context of how it contributes or detracts from the final result (10th grade in this case).

What is the approach of the top competition globally? A quote from the Singapore Ministry of Education is instructive, from their Nurturing Every Child, booklet (2006), “Teach Less, Learn More--Syllabuses will be trimmed without diluting students’ preparedness for higher education. This will free up time for our students to focus on core knowledge and skills.” Their approach is the antithesis of the American “mile wide, inch deep” time wasting approach.

Why aren’t we doing better at teaching math?

Math teachers, especially at the elementary level have far too little math subject knowledge. Also, educators do not understand the hierarchical nature of the study of math. The goal in elementary math must be providing the foundation for higher level study, NOT being able to solve arithmetic problems with a calculator or simplistic, non-universal algorithms, even though that is what is tested at the elementary level.

What can the research tell us? Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, Liping Ma (2002). Background: She compared Chinese elementary teachers to American elementary teachers.
Chinese teachers have 2 to 3 years of “Normal School” training after a 9th grade education. American teachers have 16 to 18 years of formal education. Chinese students typically outperform U.S. students on international comparisons of mathematics competency in spite of the extra education level of U.S. teachers.

An Example Problem Ma Used in Her Research: Divide 1 ¾ by ½.
What She Found—100% of the Chinese teachers computed the correct answer. Barely 40% of the American teachers computed the correct answer. In the assessment of approaching the problem in more than one way, no American teachers did that while about 35% of Chinese teachers did. In the question of providing at least one correct story (relevant context for students) about 90% of the Chinese teachers were successful while only 2% of the American teachers were able to do it. Ma’s conclusions:

“Even expert teachers, experienced teachers who were [inappropriately] 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 students’ achievement. The number of math courses taken in college did not.

What must be done to fix our education system to really serve the needs of the kids?

1. Elect political representatives at all levels who can prioritize the kids’ welfare over their allegiance to the ed power groups who contribute most to their campaigns. This is vital because the education insiders are all much more interested in protecting their cushy existence than in serving the kids. Their actions and results are irrefutable evidence of this. I was told in my research by several superintendents when I pressed them on how the kids could be so poorly served, “Paul, you don’t understand. Education is run to benefit the adults who work here, not the kids.” They won’t change unless forced to. It is that simple. The Massachusetts legislature was able to overcome the power group influence and install content rich standards. Why can’t Colorado legislators?

2. Help spread the word far and wide about the truth of our educational performance. The educators have been very successful in using propaganda methods to hide the truth.

3. Realize that while well meaning for the most part, educators don’t understand the reality of their false beliefs and the harm they are doing. We can’t educate them by civil discussions. I have tried for years and years. They just ignore the truth because they fall back to their brainwashed faith in the false gods taught them in their ed schools and reinforced strongly in their daily work. Education is definitely an “all the puffer bellies all in a row” environment. Thus, it is up to the public to confront the harmful beliefs and methods of our education system. This is the only way that positive change can happen. We must have stronger staying power than the education fiefdom members (delusional, defensive, insular, and inbred).

4. Demand the current constructivist curricula be eliminated from all of our schools. These include Whole Language and its renamed progeny along with math curricula like EveryDay Math that do not provide the foundation required for even algebra, let alone more advanced math studies so important in today’s global competitive environment.

5. Demand that rigorous subject knowledge tests be required for teacher certification. Also, require periodic rigorous subject knowledge testing for maintaining teacher certification regardless of tenure.

The list could go on but addressing these problems would provide a real boost to kids’ education prospects. I hope you will sign up for duty in the “Force Better Education for Our Kids” army. The kids’ need powerful advocacy to overcome the entrenched status quo bias of the self-satisfied education fiefdom.

Taking on an entrenched and wrong set of beliefs.

You are probably at least a bit familiar with the conflict between Galileo and the Roman Church over the earth-centered (geocentric) view then believed and Galileo’s sun-centered (heliocentric) theory based on his scientific observations. This story is one of an entrenched power structure that defends its beliefs in spite of scientific proof of their inadequacy. In fact, it is the story of trying to destroy those who held opposing views.

The first attack on Galileo came when clerics denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture." Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. [This could be termed a “live to fight another day” approach] When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Also, the publication of any of his writings past or future was forbidden. Although he tried to remain loyal to the Catholic Church, his adherence to scientific experimental results, and their objective interpretation, led to a rejection of assertions contrary to observation, in matters of science.

You might well think that you are glad you live in a world where such things can no longer occur. You would be wrong. Oh, certainly things are not so openly biased but going against an entrenched and fixed in their beliefs monolith is not easier or safer today than it was in Galileo’s time. Instead of Inquisitions new methods are now employed to prevent the truth from being recognized and acted upon.

• The first set of techniques is to go on their way reinforcing their false beliefs while actively ignoring the truth as presented by “outsiders.”

• The second technique is to create a façade of expertise. This false (in the face of the evidence) posturing as the experts is very effective especially if they are careful to not react defensively which might give the outsiders’ arguments credibility.

• To reinforce their expert reputations they give themselves false trappings; including certificates of expertise (diplomas) and continuing education in the false doctrine from other “departments” of the monolith.

• Any problems with performance related to using the false but mainline approaches are blamed on other factors and people that the insiders do not control. This, “We confess it is their fault” approach is incredibly effective to the majority of the credulous populace.

• They are also adept at using their leverage on politicians to preserve their power to prevent concerns over their false beliefs.

Yes, I am building an analogue to our education system. The similarities are robust.

Acting on Reality in Times of Tight Education Budgets, An Opportunity and a Responsibility

Tight budgets are a perfect opportunity to assess the validity of underlying assumptions within our education system. The board deliberations of a large local district are instructive as to the logical traps that tend to prevent facing reality and taking appropriate actions. To date in their deliberations the board has followed the guidance of the “status quo at all costs” administration recommendations. One example will make the point. Two well meaning and kid advocate board members voted against cutting literacy and math programs for K-8. That is akin to voting to preserve the dosage of intellectual arsenic to those kids. You see, they made the assumption that the programs were worthwhile and having a positive impact. But foundationally both the literacy and math curricula are based on scientifically unsound beliefs. While our competitor nations and even the best states (ex. Massachusetts) have embraced curricula that work and pass scientific scrutiny. They feel no need at all to worship false education beliefs especially when it would harm their kids. Thus the answer is not preserving the added time and effort to inflict the harmful curricula on the kids. The answer is to install curricula that actually work and make sure they are well taught.

This tight budget period is a perfect opportunity to put on your netting and “kick the hornet’s nest” to excise the false educational beliefs from our education organizations. Administrators who cannot admit the error of their ways are perfect candidates for not having their contracts renewed. Don’t feel sorry for them. The choice is eliminating their false beliefs or ignoring the harm they are doing year after year to the kids. That is an easy decision to make. That would reduce the negative drag on performance more than any of the current alternatives that are based on a false foundation of wrong beliefs.

This is an opportunity that must be taken. It will mean taking positions on performance and substance of the education process that are different, but much more effective, than those held by the governmental education bureaucracies, the education schools, the administrators, etc. That is, there is no rule against having higher standards than the very weak standards at the state and national level. There is also no rule against using curricula that are scientifically sound and work. If we care about the kids let our actions show it. Words and platitudes are not enough.

Comments on PWR (Post Secondary and Workforce Readiness)

Following is my response to the CDE request for feedback on their PWR initiative.
Some of this is repetitive of previous posts but including that info gives you the full content sent to the CDE.

After reading minutes and looking at PowerPoint presentations on the CDE website regarding new standards, assessment and how that relates to success in post secondary and career, I find that nothing ever really changes.

When you look at the responses to the public surveys sponsored by CDE you find that Business people respond very little while educators make up the vast majority of respondents. Is that because the non-education insider public is satisfied to allow the “education experts” to handle the important education decisions regarding how our kids are prepared for life after their K-12 school experience? My answer is that they don’t respond to the surveys, etc. because experience has proven to them that it is a waste of their time. That is, the educators go through the motions asking for public input but don’t really want to hear it and for sure don’t value it enough to really take it to heart.

The education establishment has a vested self-interest in maintaining control of education decisions. They want to protect the cushy status quo and avoid any real change. In every cycle of this “pseudo reform” process you see lots of effort expended but it is for the most part a waste of valuable resources and hence results in the stunting of our kids’ future prospects. This prioritization of the comfort of the adults in education at the expense of the kids is all too firmly entrenched. In my education research I spoke to many superintendents in 6 states. I heard more than once when I questioned them about how the kids were being so poorly served that, “you don’t understand, education is run to benefit the adults who work here, not the kids.”

What I would do differently?

• Examine the underlying assumptions that are not working—educators find it easy to assume that the underlying assumptions they have are valid and only refining how they implement them is needed. As the unchanging (in any major way that is required) results show the current approaches aren’t working. Our kids can’t compete with the best performers in the world let alone even the best in America. Colorado has chosen to take the low (and easy) road in standards and achievement test levels with NCLB definitions of proficient that are at the very low end of the states in that regard. This is an indication of the state education leaderships’ low opinion of the competence of Colorado educators. Setting low expectations begets low results.

• Stop wasteful deeper and deeper focus on minutiae—this has caused a total lack of perspective. This is the story of blind men and the elephant. They each conclude because they are feeling a different appendage of the elephant that it is something completely different than it really is. Stop looking through the microscopes (which might be appropriate if you knew what the whole beast looked like) and zoom out to a full perspective including how our best competitor nations do things. Go for foundational skills well understood-- Singapore doesn’t do more. They do less – less, that is, of the time-wasters that clutter the American “mile wide, inch deep” math curriculum. A world-class curriculum like Singapore’s focuses on math skills that prepare children for algebra and beyond. It builds mastery of those skills step by step, and incorporates these skills into more and more complex problems. A quote from the Singapore Ministry of Education is instructive, from their Nurturing Every Child, booklet (2006), Teach Less, Learn More—“Syllabuses will be trimmed without diluting students’ preparedness for higher education. This will free up time for our students to focus on core knowledge and skills” More topics poorly covered does not help except as something for educators to brag that they are teaching (they aren’t at least at more depth than spouting the title).

• Heed the advice of E.D. Hirsch who calls the current situation a “perfect storm” of Bad Educational Ideas. “The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education and especially about reading comprehension. Their well-intentioned yet mistaken views are the significant reason (more than other constantly blamed factors, even poverty) that many of our children are not attaining reading proficiency, thus crippling their later schooling. 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. Principles that constitute a kind of theology are drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism. The only way to improve scores in reading comprehension and to narrow the reading gap between groups is to systematically provide children with the wide-ranging, specific background knowledge they need to comprehend what they read.” Massachusetts got rid of the harmful and never effective “how-to” based approach (the Hirsch stimulated Massachusetts Miracle) and replaced it with a content rich approach and saw their achievement scores soar. Of course, in Massachusetts the educators didn’t lead the charge, it was required by the legislature.

• From David Klein’s A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century For example, William Heard Kilpatrick, professor at Columbia Teachers College (early twentieth century), reflecting mainstream views of progressive education, rejected the notion that the study of mathematics contributed to mental discipline. His view was that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism.

Thus, while our educators TALK about the need for critical thinking skills, they don’t provide the knowledge base required to provide context to any attempt at critical thinking.

In conclusion, until our education establishment faces the truth of what works as opposed to the false beliefs they were taught in education school by education faculty more interested in “if it isn’t true, it ought to be” approaches, the kids will continue to be poorly served. They will become less and less prepared to compete in the increasingly meritocratic, flat world.

A final quote from Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and an engineering degree holder from his Is America Falling Off of the Flat Earth?

"It seems that the longer our children are exposed to our K-12 education system, the worse they do. If we wish to be average by global standards, we will need to improve a great deal. Can anyone imagine a football coach at any American high school greeting his players on the first day of fall practice by saying, 'This year let’s get out there and try to be average for the Gipper!'?

It can, of course, be argued that comparing averages and medians tells only part of the story, as indeed is often the case. But in this instance, further parsing of the data generally reveals that the United States has a disproportionately small share of the highest performers and a disproportionately large share of the lowest performers. Although this is widely overlooked, it is not simply the poorer-performing students who are falling through the gaping cracks of our educational system but also the highest performers who—much to the nation’s detriment—are frequently being forced to learn in an environment approaching the lowest common denominator.

The problem of low expectations has not been confined to California. Alabama, for example, reported that in 2005, 83% of its fourth-graders ranked as “proficient” on its state test of academic achievement. But in the most widely accepted national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 22% of Alabama’s fourth-graders scored at or above the proficient level. In truth, neither of the measures matters much. What counts today is how the children of Alabama rank with the children of Singapore, Moscow, Hong Kong, Delhi, Beijing, and Berlin. There is little consolation in being first among losers."

Thus, the whole PWR endeavor coupled to new standards and new assessments is only an exercise in going along in the same rut and avoiding the obvious truth of our education failures.

Why Do We Have a Borg Education System

Most of you are familiar with the Borg from Star Trek. Their goal is to assimilate everyone into the Collective or destroy them. They are all directed by a central hive. In many ways our education system is modeled on the same principles. To understand what has happened to education in America you need to look at some history.

The French Revolution, the first fascist revolution, was characterized by an effort based on Rousseau’s assertion that they should turn politics into a religion and that the people needed to be led by experts who told them what to do based on the experts view of the common good. Rousseau’s concept was that “the people” is sublime whereas “the person” is weak or at any rate, expendable. Rousseau said that individuals who live in accordance with the general will are virtuous. If an individual could not be forced to conform, they would be eliminated.

The philosophies of Jean Jacques Rousseau are foundational to many of the beliefs of the progressive movement in America that started in the early twentieth century. John Dewey used Rousseau’s philosophies in forming his progressive education initiatives. Rousseau wanted to take children away from parents and raise them in state-owned boarding schools. Note today that the liberal government believes it is vital to get children into government controlled pre-school. This is a stark contrast to Finland (a top performer on international achievement tests where kids start school at age 7). Dewey embraced the idea of getting children into school as early as possible before they could learn “harmful,” individualistic views from their parents.

The Progressive’s goal with education was and is to “socialize” the children (brainwash them) to be credulous “followers” of the liberal elite experts who would “guide the society to the collectivist good.” There’s is definitely not an “all men created equal with individual liberty and responsibility” approach.

For example, William Heard Kilpatrick, professor at Columbia Teachers College (early twentieth century), reflecting mainstream views of progressive education, rejected the notion that the study of mathematics contributed to mental discipline. His view was that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism. 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. Thus, while our educators TALK about the need for critical thinking skills, they don’t provide the knowledge base required to provide context to any attempt at critical thinking.

The Progressives are nothing if not tenacious. They have remained true to these principles to this day and by the mid-1950s they had attained effective total control of education school training of our educators. This has allowed the replacement of content-based curricula with content-free, how-to, skills-based curricula that are of the slow paced, student centered, discovery learning type. The education schools have brainwashed their graduates so successfully that even though the how-to curricula do not stand scientific scrutiny, they will not acknowledge it. E.D. Hirsh in his book “The Knowledge Deficit” calls scientific inadequacy a minor inconvenience to educators today. The ed schools have, also because their training essentially does not include any rigorous training in the subjects to be taught, made it very difficult to go back to the content rich curricula that worked well, because to do so would require “retreading” the current teacher force with subject knowledge. Our best global competitors all emphasize subject knowledge and their kids are scoring much better than ours on international achievement testing. We are at or near the top of the list in the amount spent per child for education but that is only enriching educators. It doesn’t result in better outcomes for our children.

The main question at hand is can we break out of this lack of competitiveness driven death spiral to lower and lower standards of living by “retooling” our education system to provide competitive skills to our children? Or will we keep ignoring the problem until we are past the point of no salvage and eventually have to start over from a much lower base of economic activity? Yes, it is that serious.