Learning has many sources; one that is particularly promising for educational purposes is self-explanations.

I've come to feel that in math ed - though not in other subjects - this proposition is almost completely false.


From Seigler's homepage:

My colleagues and I have built computational models to illustrate how young children can make such intelligent decisions and also to show how the decisions improve as knowledge and skill improve.

He's not anti-content.




NCLB: one law, two philosophies

Meanwhile, Education Week has a terrific article on NCLB (registration required): What Works vs. Whatever Works: Inside the No Child Left Behind law’s internal contradictions by Mike Petrilli.

[T]he No Child Left Behind Act is the result of an uncomfortable truce between two groups of school reformers: the “what works” camp and the “whatever works” camp. The law is an amalgam of their ideas, and their ongoing competition will shape the contours of No Child Left Behind version 2.0.

First, let’s examine the what-works crowd. These reformers look across the education system and see its failings in terms of ignorance and ideology. They decry the pedagogical fads that sweep through our schools, bemoan educators’ resistance to scientifically proven reading-instruction methods, and abhor the quasi-religious nature of disliked educational “philosophies” such as constructivism and “multiple intelligences.” They seek to bring order to this chaos through the dispassionate eye of science. Using medicine as their model, they aim to employ rigorous research methods to determine what works, and then to use the force of law and regulation to ensure adoption of these methods throughout the land. After all, they say, we don’t allow doctors to wing it when they are practicing brain surgery; we expect them to use best practices in order to save lives.

The stamp of what-works advocates is clear throughout the No Child Left Behind legislation, but especially in two of its most controversial provisions: the Reading First program, and the “highly qualified teachers” mandate. The former requires schools to use funds for a narrowly defined type of reading instruction—namely, that which has been found by rigorous research to be effective. The U.S. Department of Education has dutifully implemented the program in this narrow, prescriptive way, leading to much gnashing of teeth and complaints of bullying. But for leaders of the what-works coalition, such as the former federal reading czar, G. Reid Lyon, anything else would amount to malpractice.

Then there’s the “highly qualified teachers” provision of the law, which demands that all teachers be able to demonstrate their subject-matter knowledge. This, too, is said to be based upon rigorous research, though even admirers of the mandate must admit that the evidence is somewhat flimsy. (Most studies linking subject-matter knowledge to teacher effectiveness have examined math or science at the secondary level; their applicability to elementary school, much less to subjects such as art, geography, or economics, is unknown.) But again, the what-works coalition borrows from the language of medicine, insisting that we wouldn’t allow doctors to practice if they didn’t have the relevant credentials. Surely we need teachers who are similarly well-qualified.

The whatever-works camp holds a very different worldview. These reformers look out across the education system and see its failings in terms of incentives, power, and politics. They decry the daily decisions made by school boards and district leaders that benefit adults instead of children (especially poor children). They abhor the red tape and bureaucratic inertia that keep educators from innovating. They don’t particularly care what happens inside the “black box” of classroom instruction; they just want children to be well-educated at the end of the day. They seek to right the system through the classic management model of “tight-loose”: Be tight about the results you expect, but loose as to the means. Put differently, the whatever-works camp combines accountability for student learning with flexibility around everything else. Using the entrepreneurial sector as its model, this camp aims to create a marketplace of schools, free to experiment, compete, and improve. After all, there’s a reason that America has the strongest economy in the world, they assert, and if we can empower educators with significant freedom (in return for getting results), they, too, will rise to the occasion.

The stamp of whatever-works advocates is also clear in the NCLB legislation. The very heart of the law is its accountability system, built into the Title I program, which was designed to create incentives for schools to boost student learning and close achievement gaps. Most important, the design of “adequate yearly progress,” with its disaggregation of test scores by racial groups, was meant to help local communities overcome the political barriers that keep resources and attention from flowing to needy children. In the spirit of “whatever works,” and in return for this increased accountability, the rules around the use of Title I funds were relaxed dramatically, and many more schools were given permission to use their federal dollars for “schoolwide” reforms. New “transferability” provisions were included in the law, too, allowing states and districts to move federal funds from one program to another. Just show us the results, Congress seemed to say, and we’ll leave you alone.

Is it any surprise, then, that educators feel whipsawed between competing demands? On the one hand, the federal government is saying to do whatever works to boost student learning, and on the other hand it’s saying to do things in a certain prescribed, preapproved way.

The result is frustration and anger. Imagine a poor, rural Title I school that is doing whatever works to get great results. In this case, it hires a former engineer from the local coal mine to teach 8th grade mathematics. She’s a natural, and her students’ test scores go through the roof. But because she didn’t major in math, she’s not considered “highly qualified.” How is that school’s principal going to feel when the feds come knocking, telling him to replace the teacher or risk being “out of compliance”? Or consider an elementary school whose reading results are soaring but which dares to use a reading program not on the state-approved Reading First list. Should the school’s principal be punished for insubordination, or celebrated for innovation and inventiveness?

What does all of this mean for the next version of the No Child Left Behind Act, due to be reauthorized in 2007? Surely both camps will try to consolidate their gains, further push their agenda, and avoid surrendering ground. The what-works camp will seek to expand its influence beyond reading to other areas, such as math. (This is especially true if the newly named National Mathematics Advisory Panel can identify rigorous evidence to support certain approaches to teaching math.)

[snip]

The whatever-works camp will try to expand on the transferability provision, perhaps allowing all of a state’s federal funds to flow through a simplified Title I formula. It will try to make it easier for schools to earn waivers from federal laws and regulations. And, perhaps most importantly, expect this camp to push for a larger role for charter schools, whose “accountability in return for flexibility” design epitomizes the whatever-works approach.

in a nutshell

what works

• Reid Lyon, reading czar

• Reading First

• qualified teachers mandate

• anti-constructivist, anti-multiple intelligence, anti neoprogressivism

• analogy to medical practice
  

whatever works

• analyze failure of schools in terms of "incentives, power, and politics"

• “tight-loose” management model

• marketplace of schools

• pro-charter

Coming off of Animals in Translation, I was a whatever works person.

I favored tight-loose because of McDonald's success reforming the meatpacking industry using Temple Grandin's 10-item animal welfare audit. Temple created simple metrics such as "No more than 3 in 100 animals can boo in distress." Just 10 items, all focused on the animals. Nothing about employee training, nothing about non-slip plant flooring, nothing about plant maintenance schedules. That was the "loose" part. A typical government regulator-type will audit at least 100 different aspects of a plant, and Temple has seen the results in countries where that's the case. The results aren't good.

When the audit went into effect, plants thought it was far too strict to pass. McDonald's told plants that if they didn't pass, they'd be off their supplier list. That was the "tight" part. Not only did plants figure out how to pass the audit, a lot of them ended up exceeding the standards. Most plants passed the audit using the same management, the same workers, even the same out-of-date equipment.

So I'm a believer in "tight-loose."

But I no longer believe that a tight-loose approach will reform the schools. Charters & vouchers might, over the long haul, put so much pressure on existing schools that they're forced to change. Might. But I'm not hopeful. As far as I can tell people don't give up core values to increase market share, and neoprogressive ideology has been a core value of U.S. ed schools for nearly 100 years.

They're not going down without a fight.


nationalmathematicsadvisorypanel



-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2006

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TwoSides 04 Aug 2006 - 17:20 CatherineJohnson



Shortly after posting a link to Michael J. Petrilli's What Works vs. Whatever Works: Inside the No Child Left Behind law’s internal contradictions (registration required) it struck me: there are only two sides, and neither of them is neoprogressive.

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2006

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HelpWantedTestingCzar 04 Aug 2006 - 18:09 CatherineJohnson



In the Sun today:

Here's a bit of news from the New York State Department of Education. It didn't come to me as a result of a press conference or a news release, nor did any unnamed source meet furtively with me in a garage to slip me a package of confidential information. Rather this news came in the form of a help wanted ad that appeared in newspapers Sunday.

The news is that the state of New York, whose programs to administer academic tests to students has come under so much criticism, is simply not serious about fixing their broken system. As a result the education of millions of New York's children will continue to be compromised.

How do I know that the state isn't serious about reforming its test programs? The job in question is the director of the Division of Educational Testing for the state, and the advertised salary for the post is $94,543 a year. After some unspecified period of time and "performance advances," the salary could reach a maximum of $119, 658.

Let's put this into perspective. This is about the pay scale of an elementary school principal in New York City. Middle and High School principals make more. Principals in dozens of suburban districts earn significantly more. [ed.: I'll say]

source:
Testing Truths ($)
By ANDREW WOLF
August 4, 2006

It gets better:

When questioned about the low salary, the State Education Department spokesman, Jonathan Burman, suggested that the cost of living in Albany, where the job is located, is much lower than the city. This is true. But the Albany location is in itself a downside, not one of the most exciting cities for a top professional to relocate to.

The requirements for the post also suggest that the state is not serious in finding a high-powered person. Only a non-specific Masters degree is required, which could be satisfied by an M.S. in animal husbandry, along with just seven years of educational experience , three of which must be in testing and assessment.

The successful applicant must "oversee management of the Test Development and Test Administration Units for quality process improvements in the preparation, production and distribution of Statewide examinations." These include the Regents exams taken in many subject areas by high school students and the testing of children in K-8 that is required by the No Child Left Behind law.

and better —

Just a few weeks ago, the Sun reported that among all states, New York is the slowest to grade its standardized exams, making them useless as a tool to help evaluate individual students.

and better —

while the state claims 70% of its fourth graders to be performing acceptably in reading, NAEP suggests that the figure is only 33%. New York has one of the worst gaps of any state evaluated, according to an article in the scholarly journal Education Next.

Meanwhile psychometricians can name their price:

Sz-Shyan Wu is not a Cuban baseball star or a dissident musician. But in urging the United States government to grant him a work visa, the New York State Education Department is arguing that Mr. Wu, too, has talents so rare that bureaucracy must be cut and a red carpet rolled out.

Mr. Wu is a psychometrician or, in plain English, an expert on testing. And testing experts are in high demand.

With federal law requiring wider testing of schoolchildren, the nation faces a critical shortage of people like Mr. Wu with the mathematical, scientific, psychological and educational skills to create tests and analyze the results. The problem has sent states, testing companies and big school districts into a heated hiring competition, with test companies offering salaries as high as $200,000 a year or more plus perks.

[snip]

These experts are needed in virtually every aspect of developing, administering and scoring exams, from deciding what test will best measure certain skills to drawing up questions and answer sheets. Doctoral programs are producing at most 50 graduates a year in the field.

"This was always a very, very tight, small group of individuals prior to No Child Left Behind," said Wayne J. Camara, vice president for research and psychometrics at the College Board, which publishes the SAT and Advanced Placement exams. "Since No Child Left Behind, it has just gotten ridiculous."

Mr. Wu, who came from Taiwan for graduate school and who has adopted the name Bryan, got his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia last June. In months, he had a $74,597-a-year post in New York. "I also had a couple of other job opportunities," he said, in halting but good English. [ed.: So NY has psychometricians on staff? And we want a person with a Masters in education to over see their work?]

[snip]

Without psychometricians, the basic calculations cannot be made. For instance, the translation of a raw score of 40 correct answers out of 50 questions into a scale score of, say, 720 out of 800 on a standardized test is a result of their work.

These experts also wrestle with sophisticated questions about how to measure learning.

When the Michigan testing system suffered breakdowns three years ago, the state combined a $114,305-a-year Civil Service position with an additional contract worth additional tens of thousands of dollars to persuade Edward D. Roeber, head of state testing from 1976 to 1991, to return. Dr. Roeber, 62, said he went back knowing that he could secure a state pension and still find lucrative private work after retiring.

"If I were to go to a major testing company, I'd probably easily be able to pick up an additional $50,000 to $75,000 a year plus the bonuses," he said.

[snip]

All the major companies have openings, and like big law firms, many now aggressively recruit graduate students with well-paid summer jobs and other enticements.

"It's incredibly hard to recruit people," Mr. Camara said. "We have three openings, doctoral-level openings at the College Board, and we have had them since the end of 2005 and we'll be very lucky if we fill them by Labor Day."

As Test-Taking Grows, Test-Makers Grow Rarer ($)
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
NY TIMES
May 5, 2006

I want to be a psychometrician when I grow up.

In the meantime, today's news galvanized me into action. Last year Lone Ranger left links for two companies that allow homeschoolers to administer the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to their children. Dealing with these folks is more rigmarole than I feeling like going through, but I'm going to do it. As a direct consequence of NCLB, a law I support, Irvington no longer gives a standardized test that would actually tell parents something useful about our children's comparative achievement levels.

The New York tests don't even tell us anything useful about what sorts of things our children do and do not know. When Christopher was in 5th grade no one could even begin to explain to me what skills were tested in the "Measurement" section of the TONYSS, which almost cost Christopher his '4' in math. (What is a 4 in math? I don't know, and nor does anyone else.) Someone at the school thought maybe it covered perimeters.

Even supposing it did cover perimeters, I would still have no idea how Christopher's poor knowledge of perimeters stacked up against other kids' poor knowledge of perimeters.

So our kids are being chronically tested with no actual information emerging from the process.

For some reason I decided, months ago, that BJU Press was the easier of the two companies to deal with.

news flash: I have just this moment discovered that "BJU" stands for "Bob Jones University" — and that, at Bob Jones University, critical thinking is considered crucial to learning.

wow

The pod people really have taken over the world.

In fact, it appears that the pod people took over Bob Jones University 30 years ago.

They're probably responsible for the demise of INVASION.



how to give your child a real standardized test

• request a copy of your college transcript showing conferral of degree

• download and fill out form from BJU site

• mail or fax with copy of transcript

• sign statement saying you are a homeschooler (i.e. that you do not intend to use the test professionally)
  

After that the process is pretty easy, iirc. They send you the test, you administer it to your child, and you get the scores 4 to 8 weeks later. I sent away for my transcript today.

BJU URLs

• contact: 1.800.845.5731 or
  1.864.242.5100 ext. 3300 (for questions)
  testing@bjupress.com
  Customer Services
  1700 Wade Hampton Blvd.
  Greenville, SC 29614-0062

• Iowa Test of Basic Skills

• test interpretation

• BJU FAQs

• forms and applications

• Terms and Conditions

• cost: $57.50
  

how one father used the ITBS to improve his daughter's reading

here




UPDATE 9-19-2006:

Making slow but steady progress on administering the ITBS to Christopher now that my district no longer gives any standardized tests apart from the indecipherable state tests.

The process thus far:

• order transcript from your alma mater showing that you have a Bachelors degree

• fill out application posted on Brochures and Forms at BJU Press

• download pdf file of Iowa Test Administrator's Application (62 kb) — very brief, one-page application

• fill out application and mail to BJU Press with copy of transcript

• within 4 to 5 days BJU will have approved your application; if you're in a hurry you can receive approval over the telephone at that time. If you're not you can wait for approval to arrive by mail.

• download pdf file of 2006 Testing & Evaluation Homeschool Order Form (155 kb), fill out, and mail to BJU Press. (Link to form is posted on Brochures and Forms page.)

• TO BE CONTINUED

BJU Press contact info:

BJU Press, Customer Services
1700 Wade Hampton Blvd.
Greenville, SC 29614-0062

FAX | 1.800.525.8398 | 1.864.271.8151 (local & overseas)
E-mail | testing@bjup.com
Website | www.bjup.com

The folks at BJU Press are easy to get on the phone and helpful once you've reached them. So if you have questions (you will) it's no problem getting answers.


I started on this process in the beginning of August.

It is now mid-September.

Planning to get this whole thing wrapped up by....Halloween?

Too bad my school doesn't offer nationally recognized norm-referenced tests.

Here's what I want from the feds: I want the DOE to post downloadable standardized tests - tests from all over the world - parents can download and administer to children if they choose.

I want some way to measure where my child stands in relation to his peers across the country and around the world.

thank you

myshortpencil
ITBS
iowatestofbasicskills
jerrymoore



-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2006

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WordForTheDay 06 Aug 2006 - 00:38 CatherineJohnson




BLOB



-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Aug 2006

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MyLifeAndWelcomeToIt 06 Aug 2006 - 22:55 CatherineJohnson

So yesterday Christopher tells me M has been sneaking him candy bars. She goes out and buys Twix bars every day, hides them in the oven or in the meat drawer where I won’t see them, and then, when I leave the room, she slips him one. She slips one to Christian, too. Then the 3 of them huddle together in the family room, stealth-eating their illicit Twix bars.




source:
Bitter Single Guy

That explains a lot.

I’ve been killing myself this summer trying to get Christopher slimmed down via exercise as I did two summers ago after reading Trim Kids, a superb book that belongs in the office of every pediatrician in the country.

That was the summer after 4th grade. Christopher had gained weight after a brutally cold winter led the school district to cancel recess until spring thaw. When we told somebody at the school we'd like Christopher to go outside and play anyway, cold or not, we got the old, "A lot of parents want their kids inside — you'd be surprised" response. It's always those other bad parents, the ones you've never met and never will, who are gumming up the works.

Christopher gained so much weight that winter the kids were calling him “fat,” and when he stepped on the scale and discovered he’d passed the 90 mark he burst into tears.

So it was time to dive into child-weight-loss research, which led me to Trim Kids & subsequently to the discovery that kids can lose huge amounts of weight from 3 hours a day of bike riding and camp without having to count calories or swear off ice cream.

Christopher stayed thin through 5th grade, but this year was impossible. The new middle school has a state-mandated Wellness Committee but no playround. It does have a track and a football field, but the kids aren’t allowed to use them. Plus there’s no recess and if they jostle each other during their lunch break the teachers scream at them.

So: back to Trim Kids.

Two summers ago Christopher was going to the Dows Lane day camp, which is maybe a mile from our house, most of the route off-road & shaded. Christopher and I would ride our bikes over in the morning; then, in the afternoon, I'd ride my bike to camp again and we'd ride home together.

It was wonderful.

Different story this summer. This summer he’s going to Squire Camp at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry. One and a half miles through traffic, uphill, and in the sun. Ten minute stoplights, single-file sidewalks with no setback, lousy Westchester drivers, honking, people trying to mow you down at the Pedestrian Crossing sign, other people’s dogs, the works.

I’ve been speed-trekking Christopher and both dogs to and from camp every morning. By the time I get home I’m pouring sweat and exhausted. Not exhausted, spent. Caved in. Caved in and in need of an hour or two recovery time from whatever dog-or-car (or dog-and-car) close call in the steaming heat has befallen me and my not-the-dog-whisperer pack that morning. E.g.: three weeks ago Surfer tried to eat a Welsh Corgi & the owner screamed at me. Ever since then I've been hauling Surfer and Abby off the side of the trail every time I spy another dog in the distance, putting them in sit-stays, and then enforcing eye contact between Surfer and me while the other person's dog lunges across the path and into Surfer's face as the owner beams and says things like, "She likes to boss the other dogs around."

I’ve been doing this 5 days a week.

I've been doing this 5 days a week and until 3 weeks ago, when I put everyone on ELOO, Christopher’s weight had not budged. He was getting 6 hours of exercise a day and he still had exactly the same body he did at the end of 10 months with no recess.

How could this be happening?

So now I find out M’s been slipping him candy bars behind my back. Not just candy bars; candy bars and Gatorade. Huge quantities of Gatorade, Gatorade all the livelong day. This has been going on for....I don't know, years, maybe.

I didn’t know about the Gatorade, either.

This summer, once Christopher started the ELOO, he stopped drinking Gatorade. M would hand him a glass of Gatorade and he’d say, “No thank you.” That’s when he started losing weight, finally; since going on the Shangri-La diet he’s been losing weight steadily even with the Twix bars. As of this morning he’s lost 3.5 lbs in 3 weeks. He looks great. Kids can look better fast; they only need to lose a little to tip back over the line visually. By the charts he's still heavy; by the mirror he's nice looking. He looks so different my neighbor's husband didn't recognize him yesterday. Today one of his friends said the same thing.

update 8/7: Christopher hasn't lost 3.5 lbs. He's lost 5 lbs. No wonder he looks different.

Ed thinks the fact that Christopher told me about the Twix bars is a good sign. I do, too, though I’m not sure what it’s a sign of, exactly. It’s definitely a sign Christopher wants to lose (more) weight, but I’m wondering whether it’s also a sign the ELOO is working so well he no longer craves the Twix bars as much as he did.

[news flash: Christopher just looked up from his Saxon Algebra ½ and said, “I feel like venturing in the woods.” I hope this means he’s learning the 15 new vocabulary words per day (pdf file) E.D. Hirsch calculates a high-achieving kid acquires each and every day from age 2 until age 17 when he gets accepted by a selective college.]

I haven’t come up with a plan to combat the Twix bars. Christopher doesn’t want me to tell M he told on her, and I can’t quite envision a way to casually open up the oven door and peer inside for no reason in the middle of the afternoon without raising suspicion.

The more important question is Jimmy. What is he eating that I don’t know about? Christopher says M doesn’t give Jimmy the Twix bars. That's possible. Ed took him to the doctor this week and found he's lost 4 lbs since last year. He'd been gaining steadily at a rate of 10 to 15 lbs a year; this year he didn't gain, but lost. So maybe Christopher is right.

Ed was scandalized by the whole thing until he remembered that his maternal grandmother used to sneak candy to him and his brothers. His dad was a dentist, and he didn't allow his kids to eat candy. He was so hardcore about it that he gave the neighbor kids apples on Halloween. His mother in law disapproved, so she sneaked candy to the 3 boys.

I suppose this is the kind of thing that makes young frontier wives prefer to face Indian war parties alone instead of taking refuge in their mother in law’s big brick house where the guns and the male slaves all live.

The good news is that the Shangri-La diet is a brilliant success where Christopher is concerned. Either it's working as advertised and Christopher’s appetite is suppressed, and/or it’s working as a frontal-lobe booster, creating a daily structure so compelling Christopher is able to resist sugar drinks. Either way, he’s losing exactly what he needs to lose at exactly the rate he should lose: one lb a week. Perfect.

update: It's closer to 2 lbs a week. 5 lbs in 18 days.

The jury’s still out on Jimmy and me, although at the moment I am “cautiously optimistic.” More on that anon.

I wonder if Ed’s dad knows his mother-in-law sneaked candy to the kids.







image:
Bitter Single Guy

American Educator Spring 2003: The Fourth Grade Plunge
Trim Kids: Introduction

The Shangri-La Diet at Amazon
freakonomics blog posts on Roberts
Calorie Lab review
ethesis (lost 62 lbs) "best practices"
huntgrunt

Shangri La diet in freakonomics
Seth Roberts website
Shangri La diet part 2
early adopter
diet, evolution of the brain, & McDonalds
Marginal Revolution on Shangri La
your own lying eyes
progress report 7-23-06
Jimmy 7-24-06
mind hacks & Shangri-La 7-26-06
7-29-06 update
my life and welcome to it - 8-6-06 - success
compare and contrast photo op 8-12-06
9-12-06 update
9-17-06 Jimmy is melting
Dr. Erika's olive oil diet works, too

shangrila


-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Aug 2006

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NixOnColumbiaTeachersCollege 07 Aug 2006 - 20:35 CatherineJohnson



new old schoolteacher is guestblogging for eduwonk. Until June she was, I believe, a graduate student at a school of education in NYC which I take to be Columbia Teachers College, although her blog doesn't currently identify the institution.

Columbia Teachers College, the employer of William Heard Kilpatrick, is Ground Zero for curricular & pedagogical awfulness. E.D. Hirsch argues that Kilpatrick, not John Dewey, is the real founder of progressive education.

Here is new old school teacher:

I am currently attending the KIPP Summit 2006 in New Orleans, attended by all the KIPP schools as well as other excellent charter schools and charter school networks (for example, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First). It is awesome. Compare some of the AERA presentations I talked about yesterday with these, presented over the last few days here in New Orleans:

--"Basics on Advising College-Bound Students"
--"Analyzing Test Scores"
--"Activities and Questioning with Bloom's Taxonomy"
--"Informal Assessment of Reading Difficulties"
--"Overview of Expository Writing, Parts I and II"
--"A Typical Day in Math 8"
--"Developing Number Sense"

These sound a little more practicable and useful than a session on Taiwanese mail-order brides, don't you think? Yesterday I learned a ton of great strategies for creating a safe, calm, effective learning environment and how to deal with students with difficult behavior. Today in 1.5 hours I learned exactly how to teach my kids to write summaries from fiction or non-fiction and how to highlight text effectively (college, hello!). THIS IS WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED from grad school and NEVER GOT. And was so sad about that I had to write an angry blog full of tirades. It's $30,000 worth of tragic.

That's $30,000 to not learn how to teach.


My favorite W.H. Kilpatrick saying:

activity leading to further activity without badness

That's the project method.





The Columbia School of Pragmatism
William Heard Kilpatrick UNESCO

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Aug 2006

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WilliamHeardKilpatrickMathBrain 07 Aug 2006 - 21:01 CatherineJohnson



William Heard Kilpatrick, the real father of progressive education in America, began life as a math guy:

Kilpatrick completed his bachelor’s degree at Mercer University in 1891. Lacking any compelling career goals, he undertook graduate study in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, an event which changed his thinking and his life. The environment there, which prompted open-ended intellectual inquiry and his discovery of the domain of modern, evolutionary science, led him to embrace the ideas and outlook of modern science and to pursue secular truth.

After completing one year of graduate work at John Hopkins, Kilpatrick served as a high school teacher and principal in Blakely, Georgia. During these years, he began his systematic study of education and began applying progressive techniques to public schools—habits he would continue throughout his public school career. At a summer institute to develop his pedagogy, he saw the need to get students involved in meaningful experiences, and became committed to devising activities that would build on their interests. Though dedicated to teaching and his students, Kilpatrick returned to Johns Hopkins to continue his study of mathematics. He left after a year, disillusioned by what he considered low-quality teaching and an insufficiently robust academic program.

[snip]

In 1897, Mercer University offered Kilpatrick a faculty position in mathematics and astronomy. He served as acting president of the school from 1903–1905, returning to the faculty full time during his final year. His growing religious doubts culminated in a heresy trial that resulted in his resignation from Mercer at the conclusion of the 1905–1906 academic year. Kilpatrick then served as a principal and mathematics teacher in Columbus, Georgia.

During a summer school session while at Mercer University, Kilpatrick took a course offered by John Dewey. Though his initial reaction to Dewey was not positive, Kilpatrick’s later interaction with him changed his philosophy of life and education.

[snip]

While at Teachers College, he ran into Dewey again. Instead of getting discouraged, he took on the challenge of explaining Dewey to others, and became a protégé of the progressive education movement. Kilpatrick eventually became known as Dewey’s chief interpreter for his popularization of Dewey’s somewhat dense educational philosophy.

Hirsch says no one understood Dewey's prose or lectures. He gained a following thanks to Kilpatrick.


-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Aug 2006

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ActivityLeadingToFurtherActivityWithBadness 07 Aug 2006 - 21:21 CatherineJohnson



Ed and I cracked up yesterday when we learned that Sayyid Qutb, the Karl Marx of Al Qaeda, went to ed school.

Wright draws a fascinating picture of Sayyid Qutb, the font of modern Islamic fundamentalism, a frail, middle-aged writer who found himself, as a visitor to the United States and a student at Colorado State College of Education in Greeley in the 1940’s, overwhelmed by the unbridled splendor and godlessness of modern America.

source:
The Plot Against America

Paul Berman says Qutb earned his Masters degree at Colorado.

So if Qutb hadn't "kissed the gallows" in Egypt he could have been a certified teacher here in the US.




bonus factoid

Osama Bin Laden is 6 feet tall.




activity leading to further activity without badness



-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Aug 2006

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SeptemberElevenWorkbook 08 Aug 2006 - 12:24 CatherineJohnson



I love the Sun.

Today's front page carries this story:

Schoolchildren Get ‘Trivia Questions' About 9/11 Attack

BY KELLY BIT - Special to the Sun
August 8, 2006

An activity book for children about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks being distributed to schools with funding from Keyspan, North Fork Bank, and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges contains pages of "trivia questions" and math problems about the attack.

The booklet, funded in part by an event involving Olympic silver medal winner Nancy Kerrigan, is intended to make for "a happy 9/11 commemorative event," said Tara Modlin, the founder of the organization distributing it, Stars, Stripes & Skates."To teach kids about an event so morbid, we needed to make something fun for them," she said.

[snip]

Stars, Stripes & Skates, an organization that hosts an annual ice-skating fund-raiser that commemorates the September 11 attacks, is currently distributing 10,000 booklets, which include math equations involving the numbers nine and 11, a connect-the-dot exercise that shows New York's old skyline, a word search for keywords such as "Osama bin Laden," "Twin Towers," and "Taliban," and various "trivia questions." The booklets are being delivered to schools and ice rinks across the Northeast.

In the clues for the "word search," Mayor Giuliani's name is misspelled.

Ms. Modlin said her main goal was to use "child-friendly articles" to inspire children to ask questions of their parents and guardians about September 11th. "It's a tough word, Osama bin Laden," she said. "We don't define it so kids can ask their parents who that is." She said if her child asked her who Osama bin Laden is, she would say, "That's a really bad man who did bad things to others."

Number one, any child old enough to do word searches for "Taliban" is old enough to absorb more information about 9-11 than really bad men doing really bad things. At a minimum, one could use a synonym or two for "bad" that an eight-year old hasn't heard before. Like "appalling," say. Or "nefarious." Or "execrable." Maybe a 9-11 workbook could have a whole synonym word search! Help these kids pick up their 15 new words for the day.

math activities, too!

The math trivia section includes equations that show "relationships" between "the mystery number 11" and the attacks, such as "9/11, 9+1+1 =," which children should find equals 11.

Number two, the edu-world had nothing to do with these workbooks, which is part of our problem here at Kitchen Table Math. The general public just doesn't know much about education. Even with a psychology degree (in cognitive psych, no less) and twenty years spent writing about psychology, I knew next to nothing about education research, the history of progressive education in this country, or public education politics & policy when Christopher started school. After spending the past two years immersed in the subject, I'm still trying to figure it all out.

By the time parents know enough about the public schools to mount a serious campaign against edu-tomfoolery in their own districts, their kids have graduated.

how much reading a day?

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

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FifteenWordsADay 08 Aug 2006 - 16:46 CatherineJohnson



Reading E.D. Hirsch, I'm finally understanding why teachers & administrators who know what they're talking about constantly push parents to read to their children and children to read to themselves:

A well educated 12th-grader knows an enormous number of words, mostly learned incidentally. But, there is also an important place for explicit vocabulary development, especially in the early years, and especially for children who are behind. Isabel Beck and her colleagues13 in their excellent guide to explicit vocabulary instruction estimate that students can be taught explicitly some 400 words per year in school. (See “Taking Delight in Words” on page 36 for an example of such instruction.) These 400 words can be of immense importance to those children who are behind and need to be brought to the point of understanding key words as fast as possible. But that is just the beginning. If we want all of our children to comprehend well, they must learn many, many more words each year through incidental means. A 12th-grade student who scores well enough on the verbal portion of the SAT to get into a selective college knows between 60,000 and 100,000 words. There is some dispute among experts regarding the actual number so we might split the difference and assume that the number is about 80,000 words. If we assume that a child starts acquiring vocabulary at age two, and that the 12th-grader is 17 years old, he has acquired 80,000 words in 15 years. Multiplying 365 days times 15 we get 5,475 days. We divide that number into 80,000, and we find that the high-achieving 12th-grader has learned some 15 words a day—over 5,000 words a year. But of course, the 15-words-a-day estimate is just a mathematical average that describes a haphazard and complex process occurring along a very broad front.

source:
Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge—of Words and the World
American Educator
Spring 2003

the magical number 12

After 3rd or 4th grade, most of these new words have to come from a child's reading material, because he's already learned all the words grownups use in speech.

Steven Stahl summarizes what we know about how children - and adults - acquire new words:

Ordinarily, when we encounter a word we don’t know, we skip it, especially if the word is not needed to make sense of what we are reading (Stahl, 1991). But we remember something about the words that we skip. This something could be where we saw it, something about the context where it appeared, or some other aspect. This information is in memory, but the memory is not strong enough to be accessible to our conscious mind. As we encounter a word repeatedly, more and more information accumulates about that word until we have a vague notion of what it “means.” As we get more information, we are able to define that word. In fact, McKeown, Beck, Omanson, and Pople (1985) found that while four encounters with a word did not reliably improve reading comprehension, 12 encounters did.

source:
How Words Are Learned Incrementally Over Time
by Steven A. Stahl American Educator
Spring 2003

I just took a quick look at Christopher's copy of Vocabulary Workshop Level A. The word "adverse," in Unit 2, appears 6 times in 6 different contexts. Then it appears 3 times more in the Review unit.

So once Christopher is finished with Level A, he just needs to see all 300 words again 3 more times apiece, probably. That seems like a good deal to me. I'm going to have Christopher do the entire VW series, and I'm going to consider adding Wordly Wise to the mix. I've already purchased a very nice little programmed instruction vocabulary book by community college professor George Feinstein: Programmed College Vocabulary: Compact Edition (7th Edition). It's only 176 pages, so I assume the non-compact edition would be better. But Amazon had the compact edition, so that's the one I ordered.

I still want to know whether teaching Greek and Latin roots gives you a leg up. If I knew that it did, I'd order Vocabulary from Classical Roots: Strategic Vocabulary Instruction through Greek and Latin Roots by Norma Fifer, Nancy Flowers. Actually....as I think about it, I may just go ahead and order the first book and assume that "word study" is a good thing for its own sake. I hesitate only because a year ago I spent some time working with the first book and found that it's not as user-friendly as a self-teaching book should be. Too many new words are introduced too quickly, which means that you're constantly having to provide your own practice & self-testing - something I didn't feel like doing and something Christopher won't do.

Christian likes word roots, so when he started working for us two years ago I gave him my copy. But I think I'll go ahead and order a new copy and see whether there's some way I can make it work for Christopher.

In the meantime, we're chipping away at English from the Roots Up at the dinner table. We've learned 13 Greek and Latin words so far. Plus ace boon coon from the New York slang dictionary and three sheets to the wind from the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.

Ed had never heard the expression before.



in a nutshell

• A well-educated 12th grader knows 60,000 to 100,000 words.

• This works out to 15 new words learned a day from ages 2 to 17.

• By the middle grades, most of these words must be learned from written materials.

• On average, students need 12 encounters with a word in 12 different contexts to learn it well enough to improve reading comprehension.
  

• UPDATE: Engelmann says the correct figures are in the neighborhood of 30,000 words & 3 new words a day.

Mark, Doug, & Ken on Dungeons & Dragons vocabulary & SRA DI curriculum

here (scroll down)




This is sad news (scroll down):

Steven Alan Stahl, 52, died May 6 at Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana. Stahl, a UI professor of curriculum and instruction, joined the faculty in 2002. Memorials: Steven A. Stahl Memorial Scholarship Fund at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the International Reading Association, the American Cancer Society or the Entertainment Industry Foundation's National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance.

Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading a day?
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
Vocabulary Workshop levels & grades
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day



-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

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EngelmannOnHowManyWordsADay 08 Aug 2006 - 19:05 CatherineJohnson



Ken left this passage from Engelmann in the Comments thread to 15 words a day:


Engelmann thinks that Hirsch's estimates are way too high. He think's it's more like 30,000 words total and 3 new words a day.

The numbers: Hirsch selects 60,000 as the number of word meanings for the top-of-class student. I did a very unscientific experiment that may be way out in left field, but I came up with a smaller number. I didn't have a top-of-class high-school student handy, but I had a top-of-class graduate student. I opened a college dictionary that had about 70,000 entries to four random pages. I read the words, spelled them, told her the part of speech for those she questioned, and asked her if she knew what they meant. On three of the pages, she did not know all the words. On one page, she did not know bourn, bourrée, bouse, boustrophedon, bouzouki, bowerbird, bow pen, bowsprit. She also didn't know a second meaning of bower (a bow anchor). She probably didn't know bovid, but I gave her half credit. "Could that be something related to a bovine?" "It is an adjective for bovine."

Also, I did not present most capitalized entries because I didn't think they were fair (Bournemouth, Bow bells, Bowditch, Bowen, Bowie State.) I did present Bowie and Bowling Green. I did not present six entries because they were either dialect, slight variations of the same word (two bowman entries for instance), obsolete, or spelling variations (bowlder for boulder). The page had 58 entries. Eleven were discards. Of the 47 remaining, she missed 9.5 (half credit for bovid). So her score on that page was 37.5/47 or 80%. Her performance on the other pages was 100%, 65%, 39%. The low-scoring page had lots of sodium words, which she could identify only as a substance composed of sodium. (She got sodium chloride, sodium fluoride, sodium glutamate, and Sodium Pentothal, but she was not able to identify the others.) Also, I threw out a lot of items on this page-variant spellings, obsolete words, capitalized words I didn't know and that seemed trivial, affixes, and obscure slang words. She also missed sociometry, socal, socman, sokeman, sodalite.

Indeed my decisions were less than operationally delineated, but if we assume that 15% of the entries are not fair and that the top-of-class person would get average 80% on the others, the total number would be something on the order of 48,000, which is quite a bit less than 60,000. Personally, I don't believe it's that high. Also of interest is that a very extensive analysis of morphology for spelling, conducted in the '70s, came up with a number of 30,000 words that seemed to be fairly exhaustive.

At least some cognitive scientists favor this range over the one that Hirsch suggests. Biemiller and Slonim (2001) concluded that the learning rate of new words for the top-of-class student is more on the order of about 3 words per day, not 8-18. So there seems to be far from perfect consensus on number of words. Also, Biemiller endorses explicit, direct instruction. So there isn't perfect consensus on methods for inducing vocabulary.

Three new words a day sounds much more likely to me, based on nothing more than instant reaction.

I just noticed that Ken is back on the job!

Can't wait to read.

Fischgrund on divorce and SAT scores
how much reading a day?
robust vocabulary instruction (400 words a year)
Vocabulary Workshop levels & grades
15 new words a day
Engelmann says it's 3 new words a day

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

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DictionaryOfEnglishUsage 08 Aug 2006 - 20:21 CatherineJohnson



I've just noticed this comment from Doug:

My latest time sink:

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

Nearly 1000 pages of excellent articles on usage debates.

BTW, from this book's article on "number":

1. All commentators agree that the plural verb in the first example that follows is correct, and so is the singular verb in the second:

"Current statistics already show that, of the unemployed, a large number are illiterate" [citation omitted]

"the number of foreign-language and second-language users together adds up to 300 to 400 million" [citation omitted]

(Which pretty much answers your usage question from a couple of weeks ago.)

So now I'm in trouble.

I had no idea such books even existed.

Obviously I'm going to be ordering one or two or three of them inside the next 10 minutes.

I really like the purple cover on the Cambridge book.








UPDATE 20:42 PM (4:42 pm here) - I'm getting the one Doug has. Merriam-Webster.



-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

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NotAMathWhiz 08 Aug 2006 - 23:55 CatherineJohnson



This is the first time I've seen a teacher refer to himself as a facilitator —

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

This book saved me!!!!, May 6, 2005
I am a gifted facilitator but that doesn't mean I am an expert in every subject area! This book helped me understand the logic of Algebra for the first time in my life! It helped me understand Algebra in a way that I could explain to my students and that made sense! My students enjoyed the little stories that helped them remember the rules of Algebra! This book saved me! It was a breakthrough for me and I give it the highest rating. Anyone who is over their head in trying to teach Algebra will find it a lifesaver.

The publisher's blurb for Real World Algebra says the book is "Recommended for upper elementary students with higher math ability and interest, older students—and teachers who never did quite “get” algebra."





Edward Zaccaro
Hickory Grove Press

-- CatherineJohnson - 08 Aug 2006

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ImMeetingCarolynToday 09 Aug 2006 - 17:57 CatherineJohnson



In person!

For the first time ever!

Carolyn, Bernie, and Ben!

I can't wait.


-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Aug 2006

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GroupHome 09 Aug 2006 - 21:46 CatherineJohnson



Short attention span theater around here.

Somehow Ed and I ended up with an appointment to visit a group home today. I'm not exactly sure how this happened. We put ourselves on the New York Cares waiting list about a year ago, because people told us it takes forever to find a group home for your adult child, and then "forever" turned into one year and so there we were, driving to Pelham Manor.

The home and, more importantly, the people, turned out to be great - which is incredibly upsetting because we're told that the people at other homes aren't reliably great.....

So yesterday we were parents putting out fires, and today we are people who might possibly be making other arrangements.

We're not ready.

I cried most of the way home, discreetly I thought, while Ed said things like, "I guess I thought Jimmy would always be with us" and "I think it's harder to have a kid like Jimmy leave than to have your normal child go to college" and "When Christopher graduates from high school we could move to Pelham Manor and live by Jimmy."

The next step is for everyone - all five of us - to go to dinner there.

If anyone has thoughts or advice - or knows people who have thoughts or advice - I'd like to hear. Jimmy still has two years of school left and we don't want him to move out (ever, it seems).....

But we've heard nothing but horror stories about how hard it is to find a placement, how awful the caregivers can be, how unstable the placements sometimes are. We both feel like this is it, the only good future for Jimmy that will materialize. So we have to grab it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Aug 2006

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JohnstonAndJohnson 12 Aug 2006 - 11:34 CatherineJohnson

-- CatherineJohnson - 12 Aug 2006

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VacationFromTheVacation2006 31 Aug 2006 - 19:53 CatherineJohnson



We're back!

Sort of.

We're in vacation from the vacation mode. The kids (read: Andrew) weren’t quite as insane as they’ve been on previous treks home, thanks to a doubling-up on the Depakote, but my mom isn’t doing well, my dad spent the entire 3 days of our visit downstate packing for his trip to Mayo Clinic (we did get to see him in Evanston), and we got word in the Staybridge Inn parking lot that Ed needs a “delicate” 4-hour surgery to remove a benign tumor on his parotid gland.

That was just the Springfield leg of the trip.




friends on the road

We got to meet Karen A in Bloomington! That was great!

We didn't get to see our ace boon ktm chum [name withheld] up north because I wanted to spend all of the short time we had either visiting my mother or worrying about my mother. Andrew is more than she can handle for a few hours at a time now, so we did more worrying and less visiting than any of us would have liked.

Plus I wanted to see two of my oldest friends from K-12 days, one of whom was recovering from surgery for cancer and the other of whom had just learned her husband was losing his job.

Thus: vacation from the vacation.

School starts September 6.

Get your Christmas shopping started early.



-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Aug 2006

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HowToTeachYourselfArithmetic 31 Aug 2006 - 20:59 CatherineJohnson



This may seem like a strange question coming from me.....can you teach yourself arithmetic?

UPDATE 10-19-2006: The answer is yes. You can. Christian is doing it now. Starting in Saxon Math 5/4.

I ask because Christian just got his placement test results — he passed reading!

I don't think we can credit the Yonkers school system for that, but the Mamaroneck schools may have had a hand in it. I say "may" because Christian's mom is college educated and has always subscribed to the New York Times, which meant that as a child Christian, like the rest of us it seems, was getting most of his vocabulary and exposure to print at home. He went to Mamaroneck schools through middle school, then moved to Yonkers where his 12th grade English teacher used the same book Mamaroneck used in 7th.

So I'm not giving Yonkers a lot of credit.

The bad news is math. We're looking at a pre-algebra placement.

(Can we sue the schools for not teaching yet?)

I'm in no mood to pay for two zero-credit remedial courses at Westchester Community College, and I don't know whether financial aid exists for pre-algebra. Even if it does, Christian needs two semesters' worth of remedial math (pre-algebra and high school algebra) before he can take a math or science course for credit. If that's what he has to do, then that's what he has to do, but he also has to support himself and stay motivated. The college completion stats don't show a lot of people who have to take two semester's worth of remedial math making it through.

I'd like to find another way if possible.

Naturally I'm thinking Saxon. Christopher's been moseying through Saxon Algebra 1/2 this summer. He's up to Lesson 15 and he's been getting all the answers right. Christian could probably teach himself fractions, decimals, and percents using Algegbra 1/2.

On the other hand, the Saxon books are huge. "Huge" meaning long and time-consuming. Long and time-consuming may be the only way to go here, seeing as how there's no royal road to geometry. But if anyone has thoughts, I'd like to hear.

update: I've just realized I'm going to have to get Christian to take the Saxon placement test.

If Saxon puts him into 8/7 or 7/6....I'm going to have to find another way.




computers & test anxiety

Christian says his mother was shocked that he passed the reading test.

I didn't get that at all until he told me he's always had a hard time taking tests. It sounds like he has some test anxiety; plus he's got some kind of fine motor "issue" (Carolyn's favorite word!) that tripped him up for years. He was classified special needs, along with all the other black kids, and his mom was constantly trying to get the school to provide him with a keyboard. Plus he's lefthanded.

So basically, he's never been able to take tests.

Apparently the reason he did well on the WCC test was that it's done on a computer terminal. He took the Accuplacer test, which I gather is being used in colleges all over the country. I had no idea the College Board is also in the remedial placement testing business. Apparently there's a whole Accuplacer test prep world out there, too. (It's aways worse than you think.)

Doing the test on the computer made Christian feel as if he wasn't doing a test. He was the second person finished; he just whipped through it.




ALEKS?

This is making me wonder whether ALEKS might be a good idea for Christian.

I'm certain Christian has math baggage (scroll down for Rudbeckia, Steve H, Carolyn, & Susan) and it seems pretty clear that looking at math on a computer will help him "break set."

On the other hand, I've been using ALEKS for a few weeks and while I find it highly motivating - addictive, almost - I don't find it highly illuminating. It's pretty much the ultimate in fragmented content, and the program offers no "metacognitive pointers" as Saxon does. You're on your own.

By "metacognitive pointer" I mean the kind of pointers people give when they're telling a delivery person how to get to their house. ALEKS doesn't give pointers. ALEKS just gives you the procedure, along with a lot of hyperlinks to other pages filled with other procedures & definitions, and that's the end of it. It's like learning algebra from Hal.

Years ago, when I interviewed nearly 100 couples for a book on marriage, I ended up dividing people into two categories:

• people who give good directions

• people who don't ^*
  

People who give good directions always tell you where you're going to be tempted to go wrong, how to tell if you have gone wrong, and what to do about it when you realize you did go wrong. A really good direction giver will say "You can't really see the driveway from the road, so if you get to the traffic light across from the church and the Sunoco station you've missed it."

That kind of thing. That's what the Saxon books do. Saxon lessons routinely tell students what mistakes they're likely to make and how not to make them. Often these pointers give you greater insight into the topics you've been studying.

Saxon Algebra isn't going to be addictive for most people.

But it is illuminating.



Any thoughts?

^* When I first met Temple, she made exactly the same observation & for the same reasons.

Christianlearnsmath



-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Aug 2006

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MileStone 31 Aug 2006 - 23:08 CatherineJohnson



I'm finishing Saxon Algebra 1 tonight!







In the nick of time, I might add. I leafed through Christopher's 7th grade math textbook last night, taking a closer look.

It's algebra.

Also a chapter on logic & a chapter on statistics.

And it's not written by John Saxon.


[pause]


Carolyn & I could probably use this as a ktm personal logo (not about Saxon of course):


A parent says "Yuck", September 27, 2005




started Saxon Algera 1: April 14, 2006
finished: September 1, 2006

-- CatherineJohnson - 31 Aug 2006

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