New Year, Same as the Old year

From Poor Elijah:

We raise academic standards on paper even as we’re compelled by policies and pressured by politics to lower them in reality. We crow about “standards-based” grading, as if teachers will miraculously agree about what “proficient” means more than we now agree about what a B means. Our “objective” scoring rubrics rest on the distinction between sentences that “wander” and those that “meander.” Advanced placement is less advanced, and everybody takes algebra, even if it isn’t really algebra anymore.

Dangerously Irrelevant Is

Dangerously Irrelevant shows why he's irrelevant.

In many job sectors, employees are expected to keep up with relevant technologies or risk job loss. When do we require that of K-12 and postsecondary educators? At what point do we say to them “No, we’re not training you how to use this. It’s easy enough for you to learn on your own. And if you don’t, we’ll find someone else who can.”
When will we, as educational systems, redefine the job descriptions and expectations of educators to include their regular and effective incorporation of relevant digital technologies?

Like many bloggers and opinionators, DI has it wrong. There are precious few teachers who aren't technologically capable. We all use technology every day. We call on cell phones, use computers, drive cars, download things from the Internet, use graphing calculators, SmartBoards and other technology. The level of use is different, but we're ALL living in this world now.

Who defines your acceptable level? Who decides that it isn't enough? Who has actually made sure that more technology is actually USEFUL in the classroom setting? Will it be Techno-geek boy or an actual teacher in a school like Packemin High School? To accept a definition like this from someone who has such an obvious axe to grind is like calling on the Oil Companies to write an energy bill for Congress. (Oh, wait ...)

A commenter says "The obvious next question is: If we are successful in changing job descriptions to include integrating 21st tools and resources, how do we fairly assess teacher performance?"

to which I respond:

The students need to know what they are doing - that's called knowledge of subject. Those 21st century skills are mostly Glitzenbullshit, a tool that kids can pick up at any time. People like this commenter are changing the subject out of ignorance.

As Peter Berger (Poor Elijah's Almanac) says,

The high-powered Partnership for 21st Century Skills still preaches this same doctrine, euphemistically arguing that we need to "emphasize deep understanding rather than shallow knowledge."

Unfortunately, without deep knowledge, the best you can have is a shallow understanding. Without any knowledge, meaning facts, any understanding you think you have is illusory, baseless, and void.

...

You can't attain understanding without knowledge, and you can't acquire knowledge without mastering facts. You can't skip the grunt work, even if it's often dull and painstaking. That's true in any discipline. Our children need to realize and accept this. So do the experts who mastermind our schools. So do we all. That's the new angle on teaching and learning that we desperately need. More gimmicks won’t help.

True, grappling with facts and turning them into knowledge can be hard work.

But reckoning with ignorance is even harder.

Emperor Awards have been announced

The Sixteenth Annual Emperor Awards have been announced and, as usual, they've got quite a few well-chosen and oh-so-appropriate barbs. The Distinguished Priorities Cross is awarded to a man who might have worked in my district. Certainly he must have put in time in an inservice or two because all of our cherubs seem to be following his philosophy pretty closely.

Sixteenth annual Emperor Awards

By PETER BERGER - Published: August 20, 2009

Before embarking on the new school term, it's helpful to review the past year's magic education moments. The Emperor Awards annually commemorate the monarch of underwear fame and his devoted admirers so we can profit from their example.

With American math students trailing peers in many industrialized nations, including England, our first award, the Distinguished Priorities Cross, honors an Ivy League professor for his long-standing campaign to stamp out teaching fractions and for recently expanding his hit list to include multiplication and long division. When the American Mathematical Association blasted his approach as "absurd" and one reason American math achievement is "so abysmal," the professor refined his position, suggesting that teaching fractions at least be "delayed until it can be understood, perhaps after a student learns calculus." Apparently unaware that most people find calculus a lot more daunting than dividing a pie into six equal pieces, he also left unexplained how fraction-free students would be able to comprehend calculus, which involves very complicated fractions.

Not that SmartBoard is helping much with fractions.

His British co-honoree is magnanimously doing his bit to keep America competitive. Arguing that math must be more "democratic," he contends that "social responsibility" demands a "total rethink" of British math instruction. He claims students are discouraged by the reality that solutions are either "right or wrong" and proposes that math answers "allow for shades of opinion."

The 2008 Nathan Bedford Forrest Prize recognized a California district for holding segregated pep rallies to "inspire students" while "being honest" about ethnic groups' test scores. Forrest 2009 belongs to an Illinois state senator. Concerned about funding for poor school districts and committed to shrinking the achievement gap between white and minority students, he urged minority children to start the year on the right academic foot by boycotting school. His plan was endorsed by Al Sharpton, whose characteristic wisdom earns him an honorable mention.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Silver Star salutes researchers who concluded that kids who spend hours on MySpace aren't really "wasting a lot of time." Among the "contemporary" skills children are developing via laptop and cell phone, experts listed "how to manage a public identity" in a "full-time intimate community" of "friends" who frequently never meet and often don't use their real names. The study cited vital instant messaging exchanges, including the girl who posted, "hey…hm.wut to say? iono lol/well I left you a comment…u sud feel SPECIAL.haha," and the boy who replied, "hello there…umm I don't know what to say, but at least I wrote something."

Gee, Bill. Way to go. If you can't succeed at convincing people that your computers are changing their children's education for the better, simply change the definition of education. There are enough stupid people that a significant fraction will believe anything you say and descend on their schools with demands of "more technology" and let's get every kid in front of a computer. Maybe those flat-panel screens are what they meant by "death panels"?

In a related field, the Academy acknowledges Family Circle's invaluable assistance helping mothers manage household and "school commitments." The editors advise that instead of jotting down grocery lists on paper, moms should "create" the list via computer keyboard and then "send it to your cell phone by text," which you can then download at the supermarket. While this 21st century procedure requires several thousand dollars in equipment and reliable cell phone reception, Family Circle maintains that it simplifies shopping because there's "no notepad needed." For their support of paperless mothers everywhere, we award the June Cleaver Golden Bundt Pan with Silicon Clusters.

21st Century Skills - in a nutshell.

The 2009 Archimedes Eureka Honorarium spotlights Science magazine findings predicting that, despite No Child Left Behind's "universal proficiency" mandate, every American student won't be academically proficient by 2014. Equally breathtaking, researchers revealed that low-income students who don't speak English are less likely to succeed academically than middle-class kids who do speak English.

In a field trip touted to "expose students to French language and culture" and allow them to "use their skills in a real world situation," a New England French class traveled 150 miles to a "French" restaurant where the wait staff doesn't speak French, the menu isn't in French, and the bill of fare features such traditional Gallic favorites as grilled turkey BLT, Maine crab cakes, ravioli of the day, and beer batter fish and chips. School officials' flair for boldly fictional press releases earns them our Phineas T. Barnum Citation. Honorable mention goes to the Maryland principal who distributed 3,600 peppermint candies on testing day because she heard they "increase performance and raise grades."

Yup. I've heard that one, too. Although, to be fair, it was "kids who eat breakfast do better on tests than kids who don't" forgetting that kids who eat breakfast are also more likely to be the ones with a stable home life / caring parent / proper amount of sleep. The doughnut shoved in the face of the bleary-eyed tardy-boy once a year isn't going to do much for his overall achievement.

In the past when students showed up without lunch money, Albuquerque cafeterias served them on credit. However, when many parents of these students, who incidentally were not eligible for free lunch, refused to pay their tabs, the district faced a $300,000 deficit. Rather than bankrupting the lunch program or letting anyone go hungry, officials decided to give kids with unpaid tabs a less expensive cold plate consisting of a sandwich, fruit, and milk. Rather than paying their bills or expressing their gratitude that their children were being fed a nutritious lunch that they weren't paying for and to which they weren't entitled, irate parents chose to complain that their kids weren't getting the same meal as kids whose parents were paying. For their principled refusal to accept a free lunch, we bestow the inaugural Even Greater Generation Entitlement Trophy.

I'm equivocating on this one. I've long been an advocate of schools providing lunch for every kid. I know it's an expense, but a manageable one. Just a thought.

The Order of the Tempest in a Teacup is headed for the Big Apple, which had previously installed safety mats at all its playgrounds. Now advocates are complaining that the mats can get too hot and burn children's bare feet. Playgrounds already post signs advising users to wear shoes and caretakers to make sure their children comply, but protesters aren't satisfied. One advocate wants the city to "do more" to "ensure that the signs are helpful," presumably by dispatching caretakers to read to the caretakers. Another watchdog group demands that the city "pressure the manufacturers to come up with a solution." Since dimming the sun isn't an option, he's proposing the city install canopies over all playgrounds. Similar future projects could include requiring seaside communities to install beach sprinklers for when the sand gets hot.

Pay up, chump. Of course, they'll get hot feet when they walk home down the streets covered with really hot concrete and asphalt ... oh wait, they've got shoes on for that. Give me a minute to figure this out. Yes, this is a very deserving award.

As always competition for the George Orwell Creative Use of Language Award was fierce. Candidates included the new credential "certified lifestyle counselor," which apparently means someone who puts you on a diet and isn't Valerie Bertinelli, and researchers who determined that people with "grit are more likely to succeed in school" because they're "doing something [they] love" and want to do, a problem for anyone who cares about words since grit generally involves persevering at something you don't love or don't want to do. However, we present Orwell 2009 to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and their crusade to start calling fish "sea kittens" in the hope that people will stop eating them if the have a cuter, furrier name, a tactic that's worked wonders when it comes to saving lambs. As part of their campaign, PETA officials contacted the principal of Whitefish High School in Montana to urge him to rename his school Sea Kitten High. Though the principal inexplicably declined, the Academy wishes to honor PETA for its venture into Orwellian territory.

The Academy also wishes to remind us that everybody deserves at least one Emperor for something.

Even you and me.

Except that I'd probably get an Emperor from Poor Elijah for giving out too many awards just so that no felt left out by not receiving an Emperor Award. (Mobius alert.)

Double Dose of Algebra and some Ramblings

Over at Curriculum Matters, they're asking Does 'Double-Dose' Algebra Work?

Across the country, one of the strategies schools are trying to help struggling students in algebra is essentially doubling the amount of time spent on that course. It's a popular tactic in other areas of math, and in reading, too.

A new study, however, says that double-dose courses produced mixed results in Chicago schools. On the one hand, the 9th graders studied saw their test scores rise. But the policy did not appear to result in fewer students failing the course, as school officials had hoped, the authors report. The grades of some struggling students increased, after the double-dosing, though the weakest students did not see their grades rise.

Ignoring the grammatical and structural problems in those paragraphs, I was struck by the apparent surprise. This result seems very obvious to me. With more time devoted to drilling and practicing for the test, you'd expect the test scores to converge on the mean. Look no further than KIPP.

The grades in the course, on the other hand, are based on different criteria. Teachers routinely count "participation," homework, classwork, and behavior. Extra credit and test corrections and grade-adjustment skew the scores. Parents routinely ask for "make-up work," code for "just give him more points without making him do anything or we'll raise hell."

Should advocates of double-dose math courses be pleased with these results? After all, one could argue that student learning—if test scores accurately reflect that—increased. Or should persistently high failure rates raise red flags?

Sure. But Red flags signifying which issue? That the class is different from the test? DUH. Would you be upset if the class averages were in the 90s and the test scores were dismal? Yes, you should. But you'd be worried about the wrong things. Do class averages measure learning? Does the State test measure learning?

When the State scores are low, the usual response is to bitch about the content of the course or the quality of the teacher. This is occasionally the problem. A few people complain about the motivation of the student, which is a big problem. No one ever talks about the idea that the teacher might be teaching material that the State isn't testing, like the algebra the kids need instead of the geometry that the State assumes they should be ready for at age 15.

When the scores don't correlate, too many people spout off about "test-taking strategies" and "test anxiety" and "some kids don't test well" and "only a snapshot."

What is wrong with a "snapshot," anyway? I can't tell you how many times I've had people tell me that the (3-hr, well-constructed and extensively peer-reviewed before and after the fact) State Tests are bad because they're only one day's measurement and thus should be eliminated. These same folks then turn around and push for a final exam (1.5hr, 'constructed' by the teacher at 12 midnight and never reviewed) to be 20% of the kid's grade.

No one ever complains about the most common problem and the biggest reason why grades and State Scores rarely correlate: the teacher has too much control over the way the course is graded and his tests are scored.

Even the newest, most inexperienced teachers are routinely given control over grading, curriculum and student progress.

I have had brand-new teachers tell me that they are going to teach chapters 1, 6, 8, 7, 2, 4, in that order. Why? They thought it was better that way. Ch3 and ch5 are ignored because why? The answer usually has more to do with the teacher's lack of understanding than the stated reason, "Those chapters on matrices and blahblah are not current and blah blah blah." No account is given for the idea that the book was written and vetted by people far smarter (and with a lot more time to consider these things) to be done in a particular order. No thought is spared for the linearity of the material and the fact that most of the problems in ch4 assume that you've done (or at least understand) ch 1-3. Going out of order confuses even the best students; they are constantly asking "Should I have known that really important fact or idea? Am I stupid or did we just not cover it?"

The standards-based movement exacerbates this problem. Instead of following a curriculum, the teacher is supposed to pick and choose from the Standards and individualize the curriculum for each kid based on test scores. The grades coming out of this train-wreck usually have more to do with some vague idea of "effort" than of any assessment of ability.

Beyond the curriculum matters, the teachers also mess up grading. Do you count homework or grade it? Some have participation and brown-nosing scores as high as 10%. Some have tests, quizzes and homework roughly equal. In my school, we even have control over the relative weight of the terms if you can believe it. Some faculty count the two terms and the final as 40-40-20 while others are 45-45-10. Others don't give a final.

Is it any wonder that grades aren't changing in lockstep with the State scores?

Is it surprising that we don't achieve in the same way as the schools in other countries do? You know, the ones that have a national curriculum that aligns with the TIMMS and PISA tests so that those countries will do well on the TIMSS and PISA tests? That have long (by comparison) teacher mentorships so that the new teachers are in line with the older ones and not spinning off like some subatomic particle in their own personal cloud-chamber? Have we learned nothing from the reality of Stand and Deliver or were we just seduced by the feel-good fiction?

I'm not saying this is the ideal but if we wish to repeat their successes, we'll need to at least partially repeat their processes. We also have to consider that learning might not equal scores or grades.

Curriculum Matters continues with another obvious point:

Chicago is, of course, coping with many of the same challenges in algebra that other districts are. The new study follows another one, released last month, which found that Chicago's failure rates increased when the district mandated that students take algebra in 9th grade.

I nominate Curriculum Matters for Poor Elijah's Emperor Awards 2009 (2008 here) "Archimedes Eureka Honorarium" which spotlights the imaginative world of education research. Congratulations to all.

Education Research

One of these that I remember fondly is the "no lazy students" one. My principal read that and instituted a new policy the next day. We were not allowed to give a 0 for missing work -- we had to allow it to be made up, since "no child would ever choose to not do his work."

It is why I have such a visceral reaction to most education research. Principals, school boards and teachers (especially teachers) read preliminary research results and jump to wrong-headed conclusions. Then the school gets turned upside down to institute some "new" idea. Let's build "open classrooms" so the children can learn cooperatively with the teachers "doing inter-disciplinary work."

BLEAH.

Education research relies on classroom anecdotes, faulty numbers
PETER BERGER, Vermont middle school teacher / Schenectady (NY) Sunday Gazette
Sept. 14, 2008

Education experts always claim their latest breakthrough is based on "what the research tells us."

Consider these specimens of actual education research:

* A study of juvenile crime determined that most of it happens after school, as opposed to during school, when most juveniles are in school, or after 11 at night, when most juveniles are in bed.

* According to a sexuality specialist, teenagers who drink are more likely to have sex. This confirmed what teenagers themselves discovered at drive-in movies.

* Investigators probing adolescent behavior calculated that a 20-cent tax on six-packs of beer would lower gonorrhea rates for 15- to 19-year-olds by 9 percent.

Their findings rest on the assumption that teenagers who are thinking of having sex will decide not to if it costs them each an extra dime.

* A bestselling pediatrician-turned-education-expert deduced there's no such thing as a lazy student.

His "science" tells him that children never "decide not to make an effort."

* British and American researchers concurred that overweight kids are more likely to be picked on.

* A Georgia team discovered that eighth-graders who study algebra tend to do better in "higher level" ninth-grade math classes. Also there appears to be a correlation between success in ninth-grade English and reading lots of books in eighth grade.

* ACT analysts determined that students who can read "complex" material are more likely to be ready for college than students who can't.

* Students rejected by their classmates are more likely to withdraw from school activities. Preschoolers whose parents drink and smoke are more likely to choose alcohol and cigarette accessories for their Barbie dolls.

* Students who rank in the bottom fifth of basic skills have a low probability of completing college. Kids with "academically oriented friends" tend to do better academically, while kids whose friends are "delinquent types" are more likely to wind up in trouble.

Impressed?

Gender gap

In 1993, research conclusively told us that girls were achieving less than boys and were victims of a gender gap. By 1994, these conclusions were under attack, and by 1999, the data were telling us that boys, not girls, were achieving less and were victims of a gender gap.

The research also validated single-sex schooling until a March 1998 report cast doubt on the value of single-sex schooling, a charge that was irrefutable until an April 1998 report confirmed the benefit in single-sex classes.

In 2001, the research demanded that schools "give single-sex classes a chance," except when it concluded with equal certainty that single-sex programs were a failure.

When most people think of research, they picture facts, figures and experimental results. Unfortunately, education's numbers come from standardized testing, which has proven so unreliable that its reputation for producing meaningful data lies in well-deserved ruin. When RAND concludes that today's standardized tests identify not "good" and "bad" schools, but "lucky" and "unlucky" schools, you've definitely got a data problem.

When education researchers aren't citing faulty numbers, they're basing their conclusions on feelings.

For example, those conflicting gender studies rested on notoriously unreliable student surveys and evidence as weightless as "boys call out in class eight times more often than girls," which is why scholars and critics complained about flawed research claims, a small body of research and questionable findings.

Similarly, a 2004 evaluation of Maine's statewide laptop distribution announced that laptops made a "significant and positive impact" on the quality of work and student achievement. Except those rosy conclusions were based on the perceptions of teachers, parents, and students, on their "opinions, but not actual hard data." In other words, the evidence consisted of what students and teachers believed had happened, not on any documented improvement in student performance.

The American Educational Research Association even endorses a research tool they call "data poems." Employing this method, educators can "focus, interpret, clarify, and communicate qualitative research" by writing and reciting a poem.

Don't look for this species of research at a physicists convention.

Not a science

Education research rarely satisfies real scientific standards. That's partly because education isn't a science. It's an art and a craft.

That doesn't mean that teachers don't need knowledge of their subjects, or that I can't improve my technique in the classroom.

But education research is fundamentally anecdotal, so that what I observe free in my classroom isn't necessarily any less valid or informative than an expensive study of someone else's classroom, especially when most of those studies are conducted by experts who have rarely, if ever, worked in a classroom.

The education establishment has lavished a fortune on research that's yielded mostly meaningless data and sentiment dressed up as evidence. Schools have squandered scant resources and time hopping on research-based bandwagons.

Even worse, decades of students have been the unwitting guinea pigs of a pseudo-science that more often suits education experts' philosophical preferences than it serves either students or the truth.

The nation, its schools and our students would be better served by common sense.

If the research tells us anything, that's it.