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Click here to find the comments for this topic
Another great find from Ken —
As Ken pointed out in his Comment, check out the author.
why I'm a concernocrat on this one Probably a lot of us have 'self-esteem fatigue.' Either that, or 'victim fatigue.' Or both. I know I do. I'm not exactly filled with enthusiasm for launching a whole new Victim Project. But my Bayes-o-meter is registering pretty high on this one, and has been since before I had kids myself. My concern isn't so much with what boys are or aren't learning, or whether their grades are lower than girls, etc. My concern is with telling very young children — and then repeating the message and underlining it in the middle-grades — that there's something wrong with them. And make no mistake, that is the message kids get. They get it from their own parents; Christopher gets it from Ed and me, and we know better. Here's an example. After our team meeting, Christopher's team worked exactly the way you'd want a team to work; they pulled together and they 'de-traumatized' him. The (male) guidance counselor is having him come in once a week for a one-on-one; the math teacher has him in once a week for extra help; his English teacher has been fantastic. She's giving him just the right mix of praise coupled with detailed instruction to make him feel 'safe' and motivated once again. At home, we're telling him, routinely, that his principal is great and his teachers are nice and smart. And we mean it.
PAUSE FOR SPACED REPETITION: This is why we're so keen on our principal, Scott Fried; [update: this statement is no longer operative] it's also why I always say the problem isn't the people, it's the curriculum and the not-teaching-to-mastery. Irvington schools are filled with teacher talent and, simply, with kind-hearted people who care about children. The teachers and administrators here are all people who, if they were my neighbors, I'd want to hang out with. That's what I'm saying.
BACK ON TOPIC So here's my example. Christopher was back on track, and we had a math test coming up. Ed studied with him and he got a 90! Fantastic. This is a kid heading towards a D in math; now he's got an A- on a test. Great, great, great; happy, happy, happy. Next quiz coming up. I've been tracking the class closely. I know everything they've done, every last homework assignment, every last test, every last Lesson in every last chapter. I have the Teacher's Edition; I have the Student's Edition. I have scans of all the tests & quizzes; I've made him go over all the problems he missed and correct them. I've checked all of his homework, every last problem, and made him re-do those problems, too. And I've retaught most of the material. So I'm thinking, I've got this under control. Ms. Kahl's habit generally has been to give one mid-chapter quiz and one final chapter test on the entire chapter. With Chapter 5, however, she ended up giving, IIRC, a mid-chapter test and then 2 or 3 quizzes on the remaining lessons, probably because of holidays and various other interruptions. So we were down to the last untested Lesson in Chapter 5, 5-8: Rational Numbers with Exponents. Fine. Christopher spends the weekend studying with his dad, and by test day has the material down cold. He gets a 68 on the test. He gets a 68 on the test, because the test wasn't on Lesson 5-8, it was on a 'Review Sheet' Ms. Kahl handed out in class that had much harder problems. Of course, this is the first we're hearing about a Review Sheet. Christopher's just flunked another test, and he's telling us, after the fact, that he had a Review Sheet. We say, 'Where is the Review Sheet?' He doesn't know. I look through the binder, and......it's in the freaking binder. Apparently NO ONE in this house, not Christopher, not me, not his dad, is capable of LOOKING THROUGH THE FREAKING BINDER TO FIND THE FREAKING REVIEW SHEET.
pause for self-justification Very soon, if it hasn't happened already, we'll be sufficiently beaten-up around here to REMEMBER TO LOOK IN THE FREAKING BINDER. Nevertheless, I'm not so sure a rational Bayesian-type person like myself should have known to look in the binder, because:
what the book covered Lesson 5-8 is 1 1/2 pages long. It demonstrates how to simplify these 4 expressions:
I assume the kids went over these 4 expressions or something like it; then they did some homework, probably no more than a handful of problems (I don't remember, but 4 problems for homework isn't uncommon). All of the homework problems are drawn from the textbook or the Prentice-Hall workbook. This is the hardest problem in the book:
Christopher went into the test able to do this problem.
what the review sheet covered Here's the most difficult problem from the Review Sheet:
Christopher couldn't begin to do this problem. If he had any idea what these problems actually mean, he could have generalized from the shorter problem with fewer variables to the longer problem with more variables. But he doesn't have any idea what these problems actually mean. (file under: inflexible knowledge) This is cram school, and we're cramming. We're cramming so much we have a new household expression: teach to crammery Christopher made that up. We've added teach to crammery to our other two family mottos: and:
next move So Ed decides to write Ms. Kahl an email asking if Christopher can take the test again, because he's been sick, didn't get a chance to study, etc. This is only half-true, the true half being the fact that he's been sick & has missed a day of school. (It's possible he's missed whichever day they covered exponents.) The part that isn't true is the part about Christopher not studying. Christopher did study; he studied the wrong thing. He studied the book. Not the FREAKING REVIEW SHEET. Ed figures, OK, we'll plead illness, study the Review Sheet, he can re-take the test. That might have worked, except in the meantime Ms. Kahl has asked Christopher what happened on the test, why he did so poorly, and he has told her he didn't study the Review Sheet. So now we're the Lying, Making-Up-Excuses parents, on top of being the No common sense-y, Bullying, Teach to crammery parents. Oh fine, as Lucille Ball used to say. A good sport, Ms. Kahl says Christopher can re-take the test anyway, even though his parents are lying to her face, and she'll average the grades. Thank you!
onward to the next calamity OK, I handle the studying this time. WE STUFF THAT FREAKING REVIEW SHEET DEEP INTO CHRISTOPHER'S SHORT TERM MEMORY. WE TEACH LONG FRACTIONS WITH MULTIPLE VARIABLES & EXPONENTS TO BIG-TIME CRAMMERY; HE CAN SIMPLIFY THOSE BABIES IN HIS SLEEP
THEN HE HOSES THIS TEST, TOO
who do I need to bully to get this fixed? He hoses this test because the directions say not to leave any negative exponents and he apparently does not read and/or comprehend written directions on a test. He leaves negative exponents all over the place, and he earns a 79, giving him a Grand Average of 73.
the good news The good news is that when we get the second test back, we discover Christopher has in fact lost only 1 point to a wrong calculation as opposed to not reading and/or not comprehending written directions. His 'real' grade would have been a 96. This is good news, because if he's going to keep up with this math track he's going to have to be able to cram with the best of them. He can only do this course if his short-term, emergency memory is good enough to absorb massive quantities of nonsense knowledge & retain it long enough to — yes — REGURGITATE IT on a test. He can do it. He can cram with the best.
who do I have to bully to get this fixed, part 2 My problem is, I'm living in the real world. In my dream world, which does not exist on this planet, Siegfried Engelmann and his army ride into town and occupy the school. They kick out the principal, install their own people, and teach everything to mastery.
the boy problem All of this is incredibly stressful for the family. It just is. I'm sitting around thinking, Does he need vision therapy? Can we afford it? Does he have A.D.D.? Should we take him to Dr. Hollander? Will Ed agree? (no) Do I have A.D.(H.)D.? (yes) Does Ed? (I'm starting to think that's a possibility) If we give him ritalin will he develop clinical depression as a teenager? (panic) and on and on and on All of which churning & burning leads to the inevitable Core Meltdown when, on Monday, Christopher, Ed and I all manage to forget the fact that Christopher has a HUGE science test the very next morning, on Tuesday. This time around we forget because: a) Ed has volunteered to teach a brand-new HUGE undergraduate lecture course and is working 24/7. b) Christopher has decided, suddenly, that he prefers to work upstairs, in our bedroom, instead of downstairs, in my office, thus interrupting the fragile daily check-the-binder routine I have established in the visual context of my office. With my not-remotely-learned-to-mastery routine thus disrupted, I don't remember about the binder or the test until 9:30 pm, when I discover the binder lying on the floor of my bedroom. c) Christopher remembers nothing, ever. Nor does he check his binder, or his planner. This is new. He used to check his planner, back in the good old days when he liked middle school and thought he was pretty good at it. He used to remember things. He has a fantastic memory, which is the only thing getting him through Phase 4 math. Now he's the kind of kid who doesn't check his binder.
We hit the wall. Yelling, screaming (that's me), crying, door-slamming (that's Christopher). The works. Another Total Family failure. We're racking them up. The organized children got their review sheet, remembered their review sheets at home, studied their review sheets, and then scored, on average, a 93 on the test. The disorganized children took two tests, didn't read the directions either time, scored an average of 73, and, after that was over, had a family blow-up about the science test.
the answer is: If the school had a formal policy of teaching to mastery we wouldn't be going through this. The school would know whether Christopher has learned anything or not. The school would be responsible for Christopher's learning, not us. And Christopher would be learning. Right along with the organized kids.
So.....I'm a little off-topic from Boys Don't Get To Study Boy Things, and probably, come to think of it, these should be two separate posts. But I need to go do my KUMON worksheets. My point is that, when you put it together:
cram school
teaching to crammery in middle school
the kind of kids who can be taught to crammery
free teach to crammery clip art
USA Today report on 135:100 boys:girls ratio in college
sexism in Everyday Math
invisible boys
boy trouble (New Republic on boys)
slacker boys, middle school, & forbidden positive images of boys in textbooks
throw rocks at them
please remain seated at all times
Ann Althouse thread sums up classroom change
cooperative vs. competitive learning
the girl show (8th grade graduation awards)
the boy show (character ed)
the other boy show
Where the Boys Aren't
letter from Robert Lerner, former commissioner NCES
Tom Mortenson's research
The Boys Project board
for every 100 girls — teachtocrammery
-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jan 2006 Back to: Main Page.
Another great find from Ken —
Reading, writing and gender bias The gender bias against boys is even greater than the perceptive article "Academic underachievers" (Page 1, Sunday) suggests. Two factors not mentioned in the article are how students are taught and evaluated. Consider the neglect of political and military history, which involve the real forces of politics, war and peace. Boys are more interested in these than are girls, but such subjects are downplayed in favor of "social" history. For example, my son's American history class devoted one class period each to changes in women's fashions during World War II and discussion of the battles of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Consider that when writing is taught, great emphasis is placed on keeping journals and expressing feelings, which generally are more interesting to girls than to boys, at the expense of a gender-neutral emphasis on expository writing and argumentation. Which is more useful in life, the ability to compose paeans to me, myself and I or the ability to set down one's ideas in cogent form? Consider the importance given to writing throughout the curriculum, even in mathematics and science classes, which favors girls over boys. By contrast, no educator has ever emphasized the importance of teaching mathematics across the curriculum: Sciences courses have been stripped of math requirements, and social studies courses neglect statistical topics and even the use of data to illustrate important demographic and population trends. This emphasis exists despite the fact that mathematics is extremely useful in everyday life and for many careers, while few jobs require the kind of writing that schools stress. Consider the revised SAT, with its recently added writing section. Writing again is elevated at the expense of mathematics, which is only one-third the total score. Again this shows bias against boys, who traditionally excel at mathematics, and in favor of girls, who are more likely to like writing. Consider the growing bias in favor of using mixed ability groupings, which downplays individual competition in favor of interpersonal cooperation and places a great burden on students to manage each other. Finally, consider grading practices that emphasize student behavior and assignment completion but not test scores. Tests are far better measures of what is learned, but because girls are better behaved than boys, de-emphasizing test scores favors girls over boys. Unless these deep and pervasive biases in grading and curricula are addressed, boys will continue to lag behind. ROBERT LERNER
Former commissioner
National Center for
Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education
Rockville
As Ken pointed out in his Comment, check out the author.
why I'm a concernocrat on this one Probably a lot of us have 'self-esteem fatigue.' Either that, or 'victim fatigue.' Or both. I know I do. I'm not exactly filled with enthusiasm for launching a whole new Victim Project. But my Bayes-o-meter is registering pretty high on this one, and has been since before I had kids myself. My concern isn't so much with what boys are or aren't learning, or whether their grades are lower than girls, etc. My concern is with telling very young children — and then repeating the message and underlining it in the middle-grades — that there's something wrong with them. And make no mistake, that is the message kids get. They get it from their own parents; Christopher gets it from Ed and me, and we know better. Here's an example. After our team meeting, Christopher's team worked exactly the way you'd want a team to work; they pulled together and they 'de-traumatized' him. The (male) guidance counselor is having him come in once a week for a one-on-one; the math teacher has him in once a week for extra help; his English teacher has been fantastic. She's giving him just the right mix of praise coupled with detailed instruction to make him feel 'safe' and motivated once again. At home, we're telling him, routinely, that his principal is great and his teachers are nice and smart. And we mean it.
PAUSE FOR SPACED REPETITION: This is why we're so keen on our principal, Scott Fried; [update: this statement is no longer operative] it's also why I always say the problem isn't the people, it's the curriculum and the not-teaching-to-mastery. Irvington schools are filled with teacher talent and, simply, with kind-hearted people who care about children. The teachers and administrators here are all people who, if they were my neighbors, I'd want to hang out with. That's what I'm saying.
BACK ON TOPIC So here's my example. Christopher was back on track, and we had a math test coming up. Ed studied with him and he got a 90! Fantastic. This is a kid heading towards a D in math; now he's got an A- on a test. Great, great, great; happy, happy, happy. Next quiz coming up. I've been tracking the class closely. I know everything they've done, every last homework assignment, every last test, every last Lesson in every last chapter. I have the Teacher's Edition; I have the Student's Edition. I have scans of all the tests & quizzes; I've made him go over all the problems he missed and correct them. I've checked all of his homework, every last problem, and made him re-do those problems, too. And I've retaught most of the material. So I'm thinking, I've got this under control. Ms. Kahl's habit generally has been to give one mid-chapter quiz and one final chapter test on the entire chapter. With Chapter 5, however, she ended up giving, IIRC, a mid-chapter test and then 2 or 3 quizzes on the remaining lessons, probably because of holidays and various other interruptions. So we were down to the last untested Lesson in Chapter 5, 5-8: Rational Numbers with Exponents. Fine. Christopher spends the weekend studying with his dad, and by test day has the material down cold. He gets a 68 on the test. He gets a 68 on the test, because the test wasn't on Lesson 5-8, it was on a 'Review Sheet' Ms. Kahl handed out in class that had much harder problems. Of course, this is the first we're hearing about a Review Sheet. Christopher's just flunked another test, and he's telling us, after the fact, that he had a Review Sheet. We say, 'Where is the Review Sheet?' He doesn't know. I look through the binder, and......it's in the freaking binder. Apparently NO ONE in this house, not Christopher, not me, not his dad, is capable of LOOKING THROUGH THE FREAKING BINDER TO FIND THE FREAKING REVIEW SHEET.
pause for self-justification Very soon, if it hasn't happened already, we'll be sufficiently beaten-up around here to REMEMBER TO LOOK IN THE FREAKING BINDER. Nevertheless, I'm not so sure a rational Bayesian-type person like myself should have known to look in the binder, because:
- we're halfway through the year & Ms. Kahl has taught only the material that is in the book (this isn't a complaint. it's an observation)
- Ms. Kahl has never, ever, given a test on material that was first introduced on a Review Sheet
- why would a teacher do this?? why would a teacher who's already teaching a super-hard course numerous kids are near-to-flunking decide to test not the exponent material in the book, but the much harder exponent material on a Review Sheet?
- etc.
what the book covered Lesson 5-8 is 1 1/2 pages long. It demonstrates how to simplify these 4 expressions:
I assume the kids went over these 4 expressions or something like it; then they did some homework, probably no more than a handful of problems (I don't remember, but 4 problems for homework isn't uncommon). All of the homework problems are drawn from the textbook or the Prentice-Hall workbook. This is the hardest problem in the book:
Christopher went into the test able to do this problem.
what the review sheet covered Here's the most difficult problem from the Review Sheet:
Christopher couldn't begin to do this problem. If he had any idea what these problems actually mean, he could have generalized from the shorter problem with fewer variables to the longer problem with more variables. But he doesn't have any idea what these problems actually mean. (file under: inflexible knowledge) This is cram school, and we're cramming. We're cramming so much we have a new household expression: teach to crammery Christopher made that up. We've added teach to crammery to our other two family mottos: and:
- Hello, we're the Berenson family, we like to get our way by bullying civil servants
next move So Ed decides to write Ms. Kahl an email asking if Christopher can take the test again, because he's been sick, didn't get a chance to study, etc. This is only half-true, the true half being the fact that he's been sick & has missed a day of school. (It's possible he's missed whichever day they covered exponents.) The part that isn't true is the part about Christopher not studying. Christopher did study; he studied the wrong thing. He studied the book. Not the FREAKING REVIEW SHEET. Ed figures, OK, we'll plead illness, study the Review Sheet, he can re-take the test. That might have worked, except in the meantime Ms. Kahl has asked Christopher what happened on the test, why he did so poorly, and he has told her he didn't study the Review Sheet. So now we're the Lying, Making-Up-Excuses parents, on top of being the No common sense-y, Bullying, Teach to crammery parents. Oh fine, as Lucille Ball used to say. A good sport, Ms. Kahl says Christopher can re-take the test anyway, even though his parents are lying to her face, and she'll average the grades. Thank you!
onward to the next calamity OK, I handle the studying this time. WE STUFF THAT FREAKING REVIEW SHEET DEEP INTO CHRISTOPHER'S SHORT TERM MEMORY. WE TEACH LONG FRACTIONS WITH MULTIPLE VARIABLES & EXPONENTS TO BIG-TIME CRAMMERY; HE CAN SIMPLIFY THOSE BABIES IN HIS SLEEP
THEN HE HOSES THIS TEST, TOO
who do I need to bully to get this fixed? He hoses this test because the directions say not to leave any negative exponents and he apparently does not read and/or comprehend written directions on a test. He leaves negative exponents all over the place, and he earns a 79, giving him a Grand Average of 73.
the good news The good news is that when we get the second test back, we discover Christopher has in fact lost only 1 point to a wrong calculation as opposed to not reading and/or not comprehending written directions. His 'real' grade would have been a 96. This is good news, because if he's going to keep up with this math track he's going to have to be able to cram with the best of them. He can only do this course if his short-term, emergency memory is good enough to absorb massive quantities of nonsense knowledge & retain it long enough to — yes — REGURGITATE IT on a test. He can do it. He can cram with the best.
who do I have to bully to get this fixed, part 2 My problem is, I'm living in the real world. In my dream world, which does not exist on this planet, Siegfried Engelmann and his army ride into town and occupy the school. They kick out the principal, install their own people, and teach everything to mastery.
the boy problem All of this is incredibly stressful for the family. It just is. I'm sitting around thinking, Does he need vision therapy? Can we afford it? Does he have A.D.D.? Should we take him to Dr. Hollander? Will Ed agree? (no) Do I have A.D.(H.)D.? (yes) Does Ed? (I'm starting to think that's a possibility) If we give him ritalin will he develop clinical depression as a teenager? (panic) and on and on and on All of which churning & burning leads to the inevitable Core Meltdown when, on Monday, Christopher, Ed and I all manage to forget the fact that Christopher has a HUGE science test the very next morning, on Tuesday. This time around we forget because: a) Ed has volunteered to teach a brand-new HUGE undergraduate lecture course and is working 24/7. b) Christopher has decided, suddenly, that he prefers to work upstairs, in our bedroom, instead of downstairs, in my office, thus interrupting the fragile daily check-the-binder routine I have established in the visual context of my office. With my not-remotely-learned-to-mastery routine thus disrupted, I don't remember about the binder or the test until 9:30 pm, when I discover the binder lying on the floor of my bedroom. c) Christopher remembers nothing, ever. Nor does he check his binder, or his planner. This is new. He used to check his planner, back in the good old days when he liked middle school and thought he was pretty good at it. He used to remember things. He has a fantastic memory, which is the only thing getting him through Phase 4 math. Now he's the kind of kid who doesn't check his binder.
We hit the wall. Yelling, screaming (that's me), crying, door-slamming (that's Christopher). The works. Another Total Family failure. We're racking them up. The organized children got their review sheet, remembered their review sheets at home, studied their review sheets, and then scored, on average, a 93 on the test. The disorganized children took two tests, didn't read the directions either time, scored an average of 73, and, after that was over, had a family blow-up about the science test.
the answer is: If the school had a formal policy of teaching to mastery we wouldn't be going through this. The school would know whether Christopher has learned anything or not. The school would be responsible for Christopher's learning, not us. And Christopher would be learning. Right along with the organized kids.
So.....I'm a little off-topic from Boys Don't Get To Study Boy Things, and probably, come to think of it, these should be two separate posts. But I need to go do my KUMON worksheets. My point is that, when you put it together:
- boys don't get to study military history; they don't even get to read THE MATCHLOCK GUN
- boys, as a group, are having lots more experiences of outright failure and general incompetence in school than girls
cram school
teaching to crammery in middle school
the kind of kids who can be taught to crammery
free teach to crammery clip art
USA Today report on 135:100 boys:girls ratio in college
sexism in Everyday Math
invisible boys
boy trouble (New Republic on boys)
slacker boys, middle school, & forbidden positive images of boys in textbooks
throw rocks at them
please remain seated at all times
Ann Althouse thread sums up classroom change
cooperative vs. competitive learning
the girl show (8th grade graduation awards)
the boy show (character ed)
the other boy show
Where the Boys Aren't
letter from Robert Lerner, former commissioner NCES
Tom Mortenson's research
The Boys Project board
for every 100 girls — teachtocrammery
-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Jan 2006 Back to: Main Page.