09 Jul 2005 - 18:29

one parent's conversion

Susan just pointed me to the most amazing personal story at Illinois LOOP.

I'm bulletting the main points from the introduction for readability:

• author is a mother of 3 in a state that instituted progressivist reforms in the early 90's.

• she and her husband hold doctoral and masters degrees in non-education fields and provided their children an enriched environment

• all 3 children have professionally-assessed aptitude in the superior range.

• their complete reliance on teaching professionals and progressivist methods resulted in learning difficulties resembling those of the 'disadvantaged'.

• after-school remediation of elementary skills has, over the course of about 18 months, made significant improvement to the children's grade-level achievement and attitudes toward learning.

• family will now homeschool 2 of the children next year using the 'classical' method.

read the whole thing

update

I'm halfway through the story—it's incredible.

Read this:

By the end of elementary, we acknowledged to ourselves that something had gone badly wrong, though the causal link from early elementary instruction was not yet clear. It was easier to place blame on ourselves, on an exaggerated sense of homework neglect. Still, we took the precaution of moving the children to a private school billed as 'traditional' - only to eventually discover it to be an upscaled version of the progressivism offered at no extra charge by the public school next door. That discovery, too, was years in coming; I was so consumed with the career that paid the tuition that I barely took note of the continuing deterioration in scholastic achievement, much less delved deeply into the reasons why.

2 themes:

• parents knowing there's a problem, but not knowing what it is
  
  is it your child? (poor aptitude, 'average' ability, 'math-reading-spelling's not his thing,' watches too much TV')
  
  is it me? (didn't supervise the homework, wasn't paying attention, didn't read the stuff in the backpack)
  
  is it the teacher? (It didn't cross my mind that Christopher's problems in math might be related to the textbook until I tried to teach out of the it myself. And not until this year did I begin to perceive problems with the system (no core curriculum, no articulation between grades & schools, etc.)

• private schools just as pervaded by constructivist philosophy as public
  

update 2

oh boy. this is harrowing:

What was it that finally broke through my unquestioning faith and mindless optimism? A recognition that certain elements of a 7th grade math program were badly askew, some research for purposes of a teacher conference, and finding the Mathematically Correct website. A binge of research ensued which continues to this day.

As full understanding of how progressivism had failed my children finally dawned, I was furious - more with myself than anyone else. But, I can no longer spare the emotional energy which anger consumes. It takes all I've got to stay attuned to three children from 3:00 to 10:30 p.m. sufficiently to correct Kumon math, direct grammar remediation, go over their SRA reading comprehension work, monitor the writing process program, and check assigned homework for the knowledge gaps which have undermined so much prior learning...and somehow attend to the non-tutoring aspects of parenting.

7th grade.

That is horrifying.

My perception—and I hope everyone will chime in on this—is that many parents hit the wall at the end of 4th or 5th grade.

I've heard through the grapevine that there are lots of unhappy 5th grade parents here thanks to the TONYSS tests.

(The TONYSS aren't mandated by the state, and aren't the same test everyone has to take in 4th and 8th. They're created by a private testing company, and purchased by individual school districts.)

The TONYSS are graded on a scale of 1 to 4.

Almost no one earned a 4 on the English language arts half. Only 2 children in Christopher's class of 19 kids got 4s, Christopher being one.

(Poor thing. Christopher's glaring, obvious talent in life is not math. It's history & social science. Not surprising given that his father is a historian.)

Back to the TONYSS. There were 4 or 5 kids in Christopher's class who earned 4s on math.

It sounds like a lot of kids who had been getting good grades all school year suddenly came up with 2s & 3s on the TONYSS.

I could be wrong about this.

But that's what I'm hearing.

For me, Christopher's '39' on Unit 6 at the end of 4th grade was a lucky break.

Even Christopher said the same thing last fall.

He actually said, 'If I hadn't gotten a 39 you wouldn't have started teaching me.'

Up til the moment Christopher came home with that 39 I had no clue there was anything wrong with U.S. education that couldn't be fixed by moving to a super-expensive suburb and paying a small fortune in property taxes to get small class size and high per-pupil spending.

When it came to education, the sum total of my sophistication was 'you get what you pay for.'

update 3

I've felt anger, but there are no easy targets. I knew every teacher and administrator involved. I knew that they had cared about my children and appreciated my work on behalf of the district; many of them are my friends. I saw them as well-intentioned, doing their best to use effectively the pedagogical tools to which they were limited by the progressivist reform vision that had been imposed from a policy level, one in which millions in professional development funds were being invested.

Check, check, & check.

This is what I've come to realize: the problem is at the 'system' level...

You can certainly have a bad teacher; I think we've had one so far. (She was a terrific lady; I feel bad saying anything publicly. But she didn't seem to be able to teach math out of the SRA book, something I couldn't do, either.)

I love this, too:

If I have anger left for anyone, it is the educationalists who control accreditation standards that shape teacher training and professional development, and incidental to such, education policy.

[snip]

...for all their power to effect or impede change at the critical level of teacher training, this is the last group to feel the heat of public accountability. They will never have to confer with the parent of a 4th grader who can't read. They will never see a performance review based on the achievements of their students. They will never face the electorate with their records. And they are, in a practical sense, insulated from legal liability for malfeasance.

I'd like to file a class action suit against Columbia Teacher's College.

Back to main page.

---

---

Comments

After entering a comment, users can login anonymously as KtmGuest (password: guest) when prompted.
Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.

---

A visit to Prof. Plum's website is in order...hang on to your hat! http://www.educationation.org

Go first to the Rant Archives.

-- LoneRanger - 09 Jul 2005

---

OK my first post here. Your bliki format has deterred me beacuse it is a bit different, I must be getting old.

> I'd love to file a class action suit against Columbia Teacher's College.

Not possible, there is no agreed-upon, generally accepted professional standard for education professionals.

Drs, Lawyers, accountants are liable for malpractice because there are real standards in those professions that can be used to objectively measure performance. Most of the time.

And consider that she is highly educated and intelligent, but it still took years for her to figure out there was something wrong. Lawyers and judges are similar, highly educated and intelligent, , and most will defer unquestioningly to the experts on pedagogy.

Thousands of families have gone though the same process, first you work earnestly with earnest professionals to effect positive change in the existing system, eventually you give up in frustration or exhaustion. Then for those of us with modest means, we take the plunge and teach our children ourselves.

Hey I like the wiki edit feature

"Zock" Joe in NM

-- KtmGuest - 10 Jul 2005

---

Hey Zock, welcome!

Your explanation of what happened here at our house is dead on.

-- CarolynJohnston - 10 Jul 2005

---

Hi Zock!

Of course you're right, and I of all people do know this.

That's why Christopher's teacher told us she preferred teaching kids with IEPs: there's some 'bite' in an IEP; it's a legal document.

OTOH, I've run across people gearing up to do bring some kind of legal/political pressure to bear on schools via NCLB.....(which I haven't taken time to read or even skim).

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2005

---

This 'bliki' is seriously new.

I had no idea we are the only active bliki on the entire web.

I'm gobsmacked.

I'm predicting that blikis will replace blogs.

Actually....I don't think blikis will necesssarily replace political & current events blogs.

I don't see a crying need for the 'wisdom of the crowd' when it comes to reacting to the news. A Comments section serves the purpose.

But when you're trying to collect & assemble & use the 'wisdom of the crowd,' a bliki is a brilliant, brilliant idea. (I can say that, because I had no idea we were going to be doing a wiki, bliki, or blooki.)

The implications of this form are huge, I believe.

If you look at what's happened with the political blogs--Trent Lott, Dan Rather, etc. (regardless of whether you think those were good developments or bad)--why wouldn't the same thing happen with blikis?

I read the other day that something like 70% (don't quote me) of all journalists read blogs in order to do their jobs

Only 1% of journalists think blogs are reliable (I remember that figure distinctly).

But everyone's reading them, and blogs are now powerful enough to help set the agenda.

If education blikis take off......think about it.

Life would look very different.

I'm not ready to predict that, but I am going to predict that blikis will become an established form.

One last thing: I mentioned that my husband wants his own bliki.

I mentioned that because, three months ago, he was a bliki skeptic.

Now he wants his own. (He thinks blogs aren't 'cool.' That was fast!)

He sees them as an unbelievably fantastic tool for education & for educators.

A bliki is obviously a good tool for education politics as well.

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2005

---

The edit feature is great!

EXCEPT THE PRINT IS WAY WAY WAY TOO SMALL!

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2005

---

What we really need in life is a wiki-slash-word-processor.

A full-featured WordPerfect^? word processor wiki.

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Jul 2005

---

I was discussing this bliki last night with a friend, who is a former teacher with experience in elementary, middle, and high school, and with both IEP and non-IEP classes, and she says she also preferred teaching the IEP adaptive behavior students. Not only was there a well-defined plan with exactly specified goals for each student, but also she was dealing with the same classroom management problems as the regular ed teachers, except with only five students and an emergency button on the wall!

-- KtmGuest - 01 Dec 2005

---

I don't recall either of my parents (1 Ph.D. in chemical engineering, 1 math major) helping me with my homework, ever. Well, okay, there was the one time in 10th grade where my mom helped me set up the electric typewriter so I could type up a 10-15 page term paper, but other than that, they had no idea what I was studying, what was assigned, or when it was due.

I did every single one of my shadow boxes and other projects by myself. (And the teachers could tell, I'm sure.)

This bliki has made me think about the elementary math education that I experienced in school, and I have come to realize that I don't remember a thing of the instruction -- because I wasn't paying attention at all. I don't think I ever had to do math homework at home until high school, because I was doing it in class while the teacher was instructing, or I did it the previous week by working ahead in class while the teacher was talking, or whatever.

I do, however, remember how to do fractions, decimals, long division, algebra, and calculus. I can even take square roots with a paper and pencil, something I taught myself out of an 1899 math book my mom found at a church yard sale. I am a little rusty at geometry proofs, but I can do geometry puzzles like the ones in the Singapore 6B entrance exam.

(Okay, okay, they encouraged and indulged my math mania by buying me math books and letting me read ahead in their high school and college texts. So sue me... that's not really helping with my homework. :) )

-- KtmGuest - 01 Dec 2005

---

illinoisloop

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Jun 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	one parent's conversion
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	ConstructivistTeaching, KumonProgram, ParentsTeachingKids
LogDate:	200507091429