Comments

Boy, this is encouraging.

I find the connections among education & economics & U.S. history etc. extremely difficult to understand, and untangle.

But as far as I can tell, our economy is hugely based on brainpower, and I'm taking that as a given.

The other aspect of our situation is .... the 'trickle-down' effect???

Math is so demanding as a subject, that I think we tend to see it in black-white terms: there are People With Math Talent, natural-born Math Whizzes, and then there are the rest of us.

But I'm sure that can't be the case--AND I'm sure that we're 'losing math' at the most basic levels.

The other day an air conditioning repair person came out and when Ed told him he'd already paid 25% of the bill, the man couldn't do the math. He had no idea what that meant; he couldn't even do it on a calculator.

That might seem trivial, but when you think what that would mean to a company that relies on its employees to collect payments, it's not.

Then when you get into realms where more than money is involved--where a nurse is translating dosages & creating correct dosages for particular patient weight and so on--and you realize we're going to be in huge trouble if we are in fact producing a generation who can't handle fractions.

I'm very confused about the whole thing, I have to say.

I talked to my best friend from LA two days ago, and she said colleges now require calculus.

Both her kids have spent a huge amount of time and energy mastering calculus.

So how did this happen?

Are her kids typical, or are her kids highly atypical?

I have zero idea.

They both went to demanding Catholic high schools.....but my friend says it's the colleges that are demanding calculus.

In any case, a second wave of Sputnik-like sense of urgency would be a very good thing.

I would also like to see the NIH do for math ed. what they did for reading. Fund a huge definitive, multi-centered study on how kids learn math.

-- CatherineJohnson - 28 Jul 2005

The legislation would allow the nation’s secretary of education to develop mathematics and science education coordinating councils, which would be comprised of business, education and community leaders. The councils would work to implement legislation, increase teacher recruitment and bolster student achievement in math and science.

I don't like this.

How about a couple of parents on those councils?

I tend to dislike councils in general.....maybe that's wrong.

-- CatherineJohnson - 28 Jul 2005

Tuesday night of this week, I attended a public meeting of the Illinois Education Task Force, which has recently been appointed by Governor Blagojevich. The charter of the task force is far from clear to me. This was the first of three meetings they plan to hold. I believe their work will culminate in a report to the governor. They listened to "testimony" from all attendees who were wishing to speak, even though that meant we ran until 11:00 p.m.

Almost everyone there was a representative of an education college, a school board, or an advocacy group. There were also a couple of representatives of the business community. Boeing, headquartered in Chicago, was prominently highlighted. The discussion by Boeing's representative, and the related statements by others focused heavily on this concern for developing domestic math and science talent. I'm pretty cynical by nature, so don't take it as a big surprise that I was underwhelmed.

Speaker after speaker mentioned this sicence and technology imperative (along with NCLB imperatives) as if that proved how insightful they were. Representatives from at least two universities used this need as a reason to support their efforts to integrate education from preschool ("zero-5 preparation has been shown to be very important") through college. One speaker referred to this span as P-16. The other referred to P-20!! Right through the Ph.D.!

I'm willing to believe there is a need. There is no way, though, that the response to it should be led by ed schools.

I recently heard Newt Gingrich speak on C-SPAN. You can like or dislike him, but you must admit that he comes up with some creative (if not necessarily accurate) perspectives. He mentioned that throughout the twentieth century, America benefitted from the brain drain from oppressive foreign lands. Einstein, for example, was driven from his homeland by politics. On a broader scale, the best minds from India, China, and the Middle East found much more opportunity in the U.S. than in their native lands. Well, with the demise of communism and the advance of capitalism to places like India and--to some extent--China, those brains can find opportunity at home. From a global view, this is good news. It means, however, that we need to rely less on imported talent.

When I got my chance as the penultimate speaker at the task force meeting. I had the advantage of not working from a prepared text and not representing anybody but myself. I could then respond, to some extent, to the testimony of others. I told the task force that they needed to enlist some economists in their efforts. I cast doubt upon whether any players already in the education establishment could really lead any efforts to improve. I said that despite the many lists of priorities and solutions that speakers had offered, the task force was unlikely to come up with any real solutions. Instead, they should strive to construct market mechanisms to reward what works and eliminate what fails. Those results should be based upon actions (hiring of graduates by industry, high rates of acceptance into engineering programs from local high schools) rather than words (opinions or survey results).

So, I agree with Catherine when she expresses dislike for councils in general, and educratic councils in particular. I think markets make the best decisions. Sometimes we need to construct pseudo-markets based on funding credits or something, but we should strive to put market mechanisms in place to find the best solutions.

-- DanK - 29 Jul 2005

Hopefully sometime soon, Catherine will write about Temple Grandin's concept of 'outcome-based audits' (subtle hint there).

-- CarolynJohnston - 29 Jul 2005

Einstein, for example, was driven from his homeland by politics. On a broader scale, the best minds from India, China, and the Middle East found much more opportunity in the U.S. than in their native lands. Well, with the demise of communism and the advance of capitalism to places like India and--to some extent--China, those brains can find opportunity at home. From a global view, this is good news. It means, however, that we need to rely less on imported talent.

This is my concern, exactly.

As far as I can tell--Ed's been scoping this out at NYU--the U.S. is still a huge draw.

We still have the best graduate programs, and foreign students--whose numbers are much higher than they were--still seem to stay.

But I don't see any reason why this situation should continue into the future, if their homelands become less oppressive and offer more economic opportunity.

Most people prefer living with 'their own'; that's human nature, I think.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Jul 2005

I told the task force that they needed to enlist some economists in their efforts. I cast doubt upon whether any players already in the education establishment could really lead any efforts to improve. I said that despite the many lists of priorities and solutions that speakers had offered, the task force was unlikely to come up with any real solutions. Instead, they should strive to construct market mechanisms to reward what works and eliminate what fails. Those results should be based upon actions (hiring of graduates by industry, high rates of acceptance into engineering programs from local high schools) rather than words (opinions or survey results).

Good for you.

We have had councils up the wazoo for over 100 years now.

It's the same faces, the same places.

We need outcome meaurements (and YES I WILL get Temple's audit written up!!!)

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Jul 2005