OurBestStudents < Kitchen

28 Sep 2006 - 20:23

our best students

Over a year ago I began wondering whether the universal belief that we have good schools for affluent kids and lousy schools for disadvantaged kids was actually true. One of Jenny D's posts had got me thinking:

...schools serve rich white kids well. They do. Best example is TIMMS data. The highest scoring kids in the U.S. score as well as the highest scoring kids anywhere in the world. [ed.: see below] Our best and brightest are as good as the best and brightest anywhere. We are indeed producing scholars. They tend to be white and affluent, according to the statistics. They go to public and private schools.
[ed.: This is an exaggeration. The only U.S. students who score on par with the rest of the world's math students are those who take AP Calculus, which is 5% of the population.]

I no longer believe this for a number of reasons, the most significant being the fact that SAT verbal scores declined in the 1970s and never recovered. Once I learned that verbal scores are the center of the universe, that settled it.

Ticket to Nowhere
by Paul E. Peterson

Tuesday night's school board meeting raised a version of the rich school/poor school question, namely: how do our middle school students compare to middle-school students in other countries?

Does France have a middle-school slump?

I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know.

Do our kids, rich and poor, have a middle grades slump because it's natural to have a middle school slump?

Or do they have a middle school slump because our middle schools are inferior to middle schools elsewhere?

Middle school performance has lagged so consistently -- in wealthy suburbs and poor cities, in New York and around the nation -- that many educators, policy experts and even parents just shrug. The middle grades have long been viewed as the Bermuda Triangle of education. A common explanation is that there is simply no cure for puberty.

4th-Grade Successes to 8th-Grade Disappointments: Tests' Meaning Questioned ($)
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: May 26, 2005

Certainly this familiar chart implies that if 11 to 13-year olds in other countries do stumble in the middle grades, they don't come to a full stop the way our kids seem to:

source:
The Seeds of Growth
by Eric Hanushek

at the school board meeting

At the Board meeting we learned that:

Irvington 4th graders (in 2005-2006) ranked 4th in the state, out of 40, on the ELA

Irvington 8th graders (in 2005-2006) ranked 14th in the state, out of 40

43% of Irvington fourth graders in 2001-2002 scored a 4; 42% scored a 3, 13% scored a 2%; 1% scored 1
UPDATE: in fact, this figure — the figure for school year 2001-02 — was not presented to us at the Board meeting.
I had to look it up.

16.7% of the 8th graders in 2005-2006 scored a 4; 61.1% scored a 3; 22.2% scored 2s & 1s

Those last two figures are for the same class of kids. 43% get 4s when they're in 4th grade; 4 years later, in 8th, we're down to 16.7% scoring 4.

This was easily explained away by our Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Ralph Napolitano:

a couple of ELA teachers took sudden leaves, so lots of last year's 8th graders were taught by substitutes

18 new students moved into the district, 14 of whom were "receiving services" (mostly 504C or "building support"), and dragged our scores down (total class size: approximately150)

you really can't compare one year's kids to any other year's kids anyway because "the scaling might be different" (not a direct quote, unfortunately, but close)

There were no dissenters from this view (from all 3 of these views, I should say), although a couple of board members did ask questions which, if the point had been pressed, could have been probing. No probing occurred, however.

Under questioning, Ralph's presentation of self was masterful. When a Board member asked whether other districts include high-end special needs kids in their stats he lowered his voice a bit, assumed an intimate and confiding tone that cast a spell on the room, and said, "Well, you know, I think these days [meaningful look] they'd probably be in some serious trouble if they didn't include their special needs students in their data. But they didn't always..." and he trailed off.

The effect of this was to divert the room from a possible consideration of whether 14 kids receiving services can cause a 50% decline in 4s^* to a general recognition of the virtue displayed by our Irvington administrators, who can be counted upon to tell the truth when other lesser school districts are fudging their numbers. Or used to fudge their numbers, as the case may be.

The question of how many 504C students moved into districts that didn't experience a 50% decline didn't come up.

We moved on.

All of the Board members had read newspaper accounts of the middle school slump. That fact alone earns the framers of NCLB my eternal gratitude. Until this moment, neither journalists nor parents nor parent school board members had any idea that U.S. kids experience a steady decline in scores after 4th or 5th grade. Journalists, if not parents, knew that 8th graders score worse than 4th graders, but they'd never looked at scores showing a steady year-by-year drop. Seeing it that way makes it seem worse, somehow, more inexorable and "systemic":

Meanwhile I am struck by one thing—the (unintended?) result of the federal mandate under No Child Left Behind to test students in every grade, three through eight.
The decline in performance as students age just leaps off the page. No matter whether the school is in a wealthy suburban community or an urban neighborhood full of transients and immigrants, the trend is the same. The only difference is how drastic the drop.
Ever since the state began standardized testing, districts have been struggling to come up with ways to stop the decline in performance from fourth grade to eighth grade. Heck, everyone’s struggled to figure out WHY there’s a decline.
One year, Education Commissioner Richard Mills played the blame game, urging parents to rise up against the middle schools which were clearly failing to do their jobs adequately. He has stopped being so pointed. But he still rails against the decline.
“The problem is literacy in the middle grades,” Mills said in a press release this morning. “These results demand improvement in curriculum, instruction, and professional development.”
So how come sixth, seventh and eighth-graders are struggling with literacy in middle school, yet the region’s high schoolers manage to pass the English Regents exam in much higher proportions? Take a look at any district’s Regent results in our interactive database.
Is there that much remediation going on in high school? Are the tests the problem? Are the kids just refusing to work hard in middle school?
Inquiring minds want to know.

This passage comes to us from "the education team at The Journal News," which has started a new education blog.

The reason the steady decline in scores leaps off the page, btw, is that the state Department of Education put out press releases saying so.

So we turned to the question of a middle school slump in Irvington.

It seems to be the consensus view of the administration and the Board (the Board president, at least) that there isn't one. Irvington students do fine until 8th grade, when they experience a sudden drop.

I wasn't following the presentation as closely as I could have by then; Ralph may have cited consistently high TONYSS scores in Grades 5, 6, & 7 over the years, although I didn't hear him if he did.

The TONYSS situation is a big mess anyway as far as I'm concerned. The TONYSS (Test of New York State Standards) is a privately created and marketed test NY schools used to administer in off-years (grades 5, 6, & 7). We parents were never given any comparison data whatsoever; the scales weren't explained; no sample questions were available, etc. The TONYSS are a complete mystery to me and everyone I know.

So even if he did cite off-year TONYSS scores, it wouldn't have cleared anything up for me.

The 8th grade test, Ralph said, was for some reason "more difficult" than any of the other tests & thus tells us nothing of value about our schools or our kids. We know this because, as he said, "Look at the Regents [exit] scores. They're very high. Everyone goes down in 8th grade. In 11th grade they're back." That last is a direct quote. “In 11th grade they’re back.”

"I can attest to that," the board president said, breaking in. His kids' scores had gone down in the 8th grade and then bounced back in the 11th. It is a universal phenomenon; it happens to everyone.

"The 8th grade test is unnecessarily difficult," Ralph agreed.

And that was that.

When the audience was finally allowed to ask questions one parent said, "Shouldn't the state be looking at itself? Shouldn't the state be asking itself why it's giving kids a test this difficult that isn't in line with the other tests?"

Ralph was mild and forebearing. He had nothing bad to say about the state, or the tests, or the 504C kids who moved into the district and depressed our scores. It was left to the audience to work up a case of indignation against the state and its outlier test. Which I suppose we did.

the bounce

Ralph being the fellow who told the PTSA president that "parents" were complaining about my Singapore math class as he closed it down, I think I'll just go ahead and say that a great deal of his presentation strikes me as nonsense on stilts.

Especially the bit about the bouncing scores.

Scores do not bounce.

Reading scores in particular do not bounce.

The Regents' test, which determines whether a student does or does not earn a diploma, is not comparable to the 8th grade test, which prior to NCLB determined nothing.

It is extremely difficult politically to impose tough exit exams, as Ed learned when he worked on exit exams in history/social studies in CA. When large numbers of 17 year olds are denied a high school diploma because they failed an exit exam, there’s an uproar.

When large numbers of 13 year olds hose the 8th grade test there isn't.

That's the difference.

Here is Chester Finn on cut scores in exit exams:

As if the official passing score of 55 on the state's Regents exams were not low enough, the Buffalo News reported this week that students needed to answer just 33 percent of the questions correctly to achieve that score on the Regents exam in biology, and 45 percent of the questions in math.
[snip]
Should a state be ashamed of setting a passing score this low? Not necessarily, so long as the assessment is good and the "cut score" isn't going to remain low forever. Developing a tough test but setting the initial passing bar low can be a shrewd reform strategy, provided the bar is then continually raised. A state that has high expectations for students spelled out in rigorous academic standards--and solid tests aligned with these standards--has taken important steps toward standards-based reform. Yet--regrettably but realistically--many of today's students are not prepared to meet high standards. This leaves states with three tough options: 1) flunk lots of students, 2) offer easy tests that most students can pass, or 3) offer challenging tests but set cut scores low at the outset, then ratchet them up. Option three may be the most likely to lead to improved instruction. New York claims that next year the cut score goes up to 65. Some doubt that this will actually happen. Watch this space.
source: Gadfly 2001

That was 5 years ago, and the cut scores have not moved:

When the New York State Board of Regents voted last week to delay holding all students to higher standards for at least two more years, they portrayed it as a simple ''mid-course correction'' that was to be expected.
[snip]
An independent panel examining the state's Math A exam in June, which 63 percent of the students failed, concluded that the test itself was badly flawed. They said that if the state uses ''make or break'' tests, then it must spend the money to get them right. In the same vein, the panel found that Albany officials had raised standards but never made the curriculum clear or invested enough in training teachers.
[snip]
On the surface, the idea of guaranteeing that all students receive the same high-quality education is attractive.
Many states have embraced the standards-based approach that New York is using, which calls for statewide learning goals and statewide testing.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act, passed in 2001, gave further momentum to the movement, with annual testing and penalties and remedies for schools and children that failed to meet standards.
But as much of the country is carried along by this movement, there are growing concerns that the pendulum has swung too far.
Robert L. Linn, a University of Colorado professor and co-director of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, who has served as an adviser to New York's Department of Education, expressed some of the mixed reactions to the standards approach when he said: ''Nobody can argue against No Child Left Behind, because how can you say that you should leave some children behind? But it is also nuts to say that it is possible to bring everybody to the same level. You can say that your goal is to have everyone run a mile in under five minutes, but do you really believe that it can be accomplished? I don't.'' [ed.: please. Running a mile in under five minutes ≠ passing algebra 1]
[snip]
New York used to issue different diplomas for students at different levels. Only the top students, who took the toughest Regents exams, got the prestigious Regents diploma. It was not until 1996 that the Regents made the exams a condition of high school graduation for everyone.
Scaling Back Changes On Regents Standards ($) By KAREN W. ARENSON
Published: October 14, 2003

Apparently it's possible to earn scores of 1 to 4 on the Regents exams these days, just as students do on the annual tests, though you'd never know it drilling down into the DOE website.

Irvington students earn a heck of a lot of 4s on Regents English:

Regents ELA 2003: 79% of Irvington test-takers earned a 4

Regents ELA 2004: 66% earned a 4

Regents ELA 2005: 71% earned a 4

Regents ELA 2006: 70% earned a 4

How did our lower grades do last year on the annual NCLB tests?

Grade 3 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 18.4%

Grade 4 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 32.3%

Grade 5 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 26.3%

Grade 6 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 38.8%

Grade 7 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 29.7%

Grade 8 percent earning a 4 on annual ELA exam: 16.7%

That's some bounce.

Ralph assured us that we could count on all of our students continuing to do very, very well on Regents ELA.

I wonder why that is.

does everybody bounce?

Not necessarily.

Assuming I’m reading the charts right, in 2 of the last 3 years Hastings-on-Hudson (pdf file), 2 towns over from us, saw its 8th grade scores go up from what they'd been in 4th grade.

Back in 4th grade, both of those classes had lower scores than Irvington children. In 8th grade their scores were higher — on the same “unnecessarily difficult” test our assistant superintendent seems to feel is too much for Irvington children to manage.

Hastings didn't come up at the meeting.

RAND on middle school

So I was Googling up a storm today, trying to find a direct comparison of the Regents' exams, on which our students do so well, to the annual NCLB exams, on which they do much less well. I came up empty, but I did find this passage in a famous RAND study of middle schools:

In sum, the international comparisons do not convey a favorable picture of the achievement of U.S. middle school age students. Although many of the other OECD countries may not have the disparity between the haves and have-nots or the same levels of racial or ethnic diversity as the United States, these factors alone cannot account for the standing of U.S. students. That 4th graders perform well on TIMSS but 8th graders do not suggests that economic conditions cannot explain differences in the relative performance levels for these two grades (Suter, 2000). Analyzing TIMSS results, Schmidt, Jakwerth, and McKnight (1998) found that the variability in student achievement levels in the United States is comparable to that in other countries. Furthermore, tabulations presented by Richard Houang (cited in Suter, 2000) showed that, even if all students belonging to ethnic or racial minorities are excluded, white U.S. students still rank in the lowest one-third of all countries at the end of secondary school. Thus, we cannot attribute the low relative rank of U.S students to the performance of specific racial or ethnic groups. However, differences between certain demographic groups should not be ignored; in later sections of this chapter, we therefore attempt to describe such group differences within the United States more fully.
source: Focus on the Wonder Years: Challenges Facing the American Middle School:
Challenges Facing the American Middle School
Jaana Juvonen
Vi-Nhuan Le
Tessa Kaganoff
Catherine Augustine
Louay Constant
p. 32-34

Our public schools do not serve rich white kids well.

In fact, I've begun to wonder whether some of our affluent suburban schools are giving students less "value-added" per year than inner city schools.

CHAPTER 3: Achievement of Advanced Students

-- CatherineJohnson - 28 Sep 2006

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.

The effect of this was to divert the room from a possible consideration of whether 14 kids can cause a 50% decline in 4s*

Since the absolute number of kids scoring 4 dropped (I'm assuming identical class sizes), 14 new kids can't be the cause. You need to lose 25 kids scoring 4 to get the drop or the 25 kids need to have their test scores drop.

Using a sample size of 150 (assume the same for both grades) and the 4th and 8th grade distributions you provide, I get this:

	4th	8th
Score = 4	~50 kids	~25 kids
Score = 3	~95 kids	~90 kids
Score = 2 or 1	~5 kids	~35 kids

So ...

25 kids went from 4s to 3s between 4th and 8th grade.
30 kids went from 3s to 1or2s. [I'm assuming that the kids who dropped from 4 had scores of 3. If none of the 3s dropped, then we'd have 95+25 kids scoring 3 in 8th grade. We only have 90, so 30 kids dropped out of 3s. The check of this is that the 1 or 2 scores went up by 30.]

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 28 Sep 2006

Actually, to see a dropoff (or to show that one doesn't exist), the school should provide longitudinal data. Show how the kids who were in the school district for both 4th and 8th grade did. If they aren't slumping, then the slump is probably caused by a demographic change. If they are, then demographic changes don't matter.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 28 Sep 2006

That 4th graders perform well on TIMSS but 8th graders do not suggests that economic conditions cannot explain differences in the relative performance levels for these two grades...

One possible explanation might be that TIMSS contains algebra problems, and most countries get to algebra by about 7th grade, but the U.S. generally doesn't get to algebra until 9th grade (I think this is correct). If so, U.S. 8th graders are being tested on material that they have not learned. Doing poorly under these circumstances doesn't mean that the teachers taught poorly, or that the curriculum material was bad (although both may be true). It might, however, cause some to wonder why the U.S. takes two extra years getting to algebra.

Can anyone find sources for my claims above? I remember reading the 7th/9th grade algebra difference somewhere, but can't find it...

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 28 Sep 2006

Here's a source ...

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/math/part5.html

Quoting ...

TIMSS data suggest that one reason U.S. students do less well at 8th grade is that the middle school mathematics curriculum in the U.S. is significantly less challenging than curricula in other countries. In Germany and Japan, virtually all students in grades 5 through 8 move beyond arithmetic to the foundations of algebra and geometry. By 8th grade, mathematics courses in virtually all other countries participating in TIMSS include significant algebra and geometry, while in the U.S., only students in college-preparatory classes receive significant exposure to algebra, and very few students study geometry. As a result, the content taught in U.S. 8th grade mathematics classrooms is usually at a 7th-grade level compared to the 40 other nations in the TIMSS study.

-- KtmGuest - 28 Sep 2006

"...schools serve rich white kids well. They do.

Because of or in spite of the schools? This is typical moronic Ed School logic. Our town's schools talk about how our kids "hold their own" compared to the neighboring town. Our public schools are rated as "High Performing" with a commendation. They still don't offer a full course in algrbra for 8th graders - even just for some kids. More commonly, the next town over offers pre-algebra, algebra, and advanced algebra in 8th grade, but it's strictly survival of the fittest - scholars are produced in spite of the schools. You can't just look at the best students. You have to look at the average students, the students not getting any help at home. Relative comparisons can only give you limited information.

The problem with middle schools in the US is that they are below the philosophical and curricular wall between high school and the lower grades. They either don't expect much from the kids (like our schools), or they expect a lot, but don't have a clue how to do it, like it appears to be happening in Irvington.

-- SteveH - 29 Sep 2006

Did I goof?

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 29 Sep 2006

Lower sat verbal scores in the seventies – doesn’t this correspond chronologically with the increasingly wider use of whole language – in the 60s – when those students were in elementary school? Whole language was widely adopted by schools public and private, poor and affluent. As far as the math scores going down and then back up, doesn’t this correspond with the “new math” from the 60s? It could be that when teachers began teaching “new math,” they weren’t good at teaching it, but eventually got the hang of it (I don’t have evidence to back this up – I am just hypothesizing). Whole language, on the other hand, just doesn’t work well, no matter how good the teachers are, which would explain the verbal sat scores remaining low. You can’t get the hang of teaching something that doesn’t work. On a side note, I would bet anything that teachers who get good results with whole language aren’t purists – i.e., they are almost certainly adding elements of phonics and grammar, whether they are conscious of it or not.

-- LindaP - 29 Sep 2006

Intrigued by your post, I did some research and found this, which I wasn’t looking for, but which addressed one of the things you wrote about:

The 8th grade test, Ralph said, was for some reason "more difficult" than 
any of the other tests (which tests? TONYSS? annual NCLB tests?) & thus 
tells us nothing of value about our schools or our kids. We know this because 
"Look at the Regents [exit] scores. They're very high. Everyone goes down 
in 8th grade. In 11th grade they're back." That last is a direct quote.

"I can attest to that," the board president said, breaking in. His kids' 
scores had gone down in the 8th grade and then bounced back in the 11th. 
It is a universal phenomenon; it happens to everyone.

"The 8th grade test is unnecessarily difficult," Ralph agreed.

http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/timeline.php

October 2001
The New York Times reports a growing concern that the New York 
State Education Department is manipulating test scores to get 
its desired results. Commissioner Mills admits that the bar was 
deliberately set high for the 8th grade. For example, "to meet 
state standards" at grade level in math this year, 8th graders 
had to achieve a much higher minimum score on the 8th grade test 
than 4th graders had to achieve on the 4th grade test .

Arbitrarily difficult tests in one grade, followed by easier tests in older grades, give a false appearance of improvement, but give the kind of official results that, perhaps, make for good public relations - albeit at the expense of substantive education.

-- LindaP - 29 Sep 2006

Can comments be edited?

My previous comment seems to have affected the formatting of the entire page, at least on my browser.

oops...

sorry...

-- LindaP - 29 Sep 2006

Yes, I have a big bottom scrolling thing going on here.

-- SusanS - 29 Sep 2006

All fixed now.

But -- I don't see the original thing that you're quoting from. The OP for this topic just looks like this for me:

sigh.... 

comparing different stats....

Was there more?

-- GoogleMaster - 29 Sep 2006

Also -- if the TIMSS test is unnecessarily hard in 8th grade, then it should be unnecessarily hard for all 8th graders, not just the US 8th graders.

The obvious reason for the US students to decline in position relative to the other countries from 4th grade to 8th grade is that the other countries are teaching more math and/or doing a better job of it between 4th and 8th.

Or, perhaps in all of the other countries in the TIMSS, some large proportion of the less-well-performing students drops out between 4th and 8th grades. That might be possible in some countries, but it's extremely unlikely for that to be the case for all of the other countries that take the TIMSS.

-- GoogleMaster - 29 Sep 2006

oh wow

I can't wait to read

I've been driving myself nuts with this - it's distressing that I'm still not fluent in these things

Ed said immediately that 18 new students (it was 18 altogether, 14 of whom were "receiving services") couldn't cause a 50% drop.

That's the way it worked out for me, too.

Then this morning another friend went through the numbers & said the same.

I didn't want to read anything here until I'd worked it through again.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Show how the kids who were in the school district for both 4th and 8th grade did.

That's one of the thoughts I had. Then I drove myself nuts trying to do it.

Here are more precise data:

in 4th grade this group had 145 children, of whom 33% scored a 4, which would come to 48 children.

in 8th grade we know we have 18 newcomers, but we apparently have only 150 kids, which means 13 children must have left the district (which doesn't sound right. The figure of 150 comes from the School Board president & isn't exact.)

in 8th grade, with 150 kids of whom 18 are new to the district, 16.7% score a four, which is 25 kids.

After I figured this out I lost myself trying to figure out what the drop would have been if all 13 children who (presumably) moved away were '4s' and all 18 children who moved in were 3s to 1s.

Then I was trying to compare that to the "normal" drop you see in ELA scores here from 4th grade to 8th grade.

Of course now that I know that in 2 of 3 school years Hastings 8th graders improved their scores on the test, that's less relevant.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Mark You can see sample TIMSS questions online....I know I've posted the link before.

Hang on.

(I don't remember algebra questions offhand, but I could be wrong.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

TIMSS US site

benchmarking questions

sample 12th grade questions

(still looking for the 8th grade quiz - it's excellent)

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

heck

I can't find the original interactive website, but I did find something better:

TIMSS released items, scoring, etc.

TIMSS 2003 released items (pdf file)

Haven't looked through it yet.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

This is typical moronic Ed School logic.

I was willing to entertain this idea, if only because the AFT PowerPoint presentation has data showing that the VERY top kids - the kids who take AP calculus (not any other kind of calculus, just AP calculus!) are competitive with top kids elsewhere.

But that's it.

Except for that small cohort (which iirc is 5% of U.S. high school kids) our "top" students aren't "top" anywhere else.

(btw, I need to fact-check the AP calculus stat. I'm also remembering a figure of 12%...5% may be the number who take AP calculus and pass the exam. Definitely no more than 12% of our high school seniors take AP calculus.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

This is interesting: 17% of U.S. high school students take calculus

No wonder the TIMSS study found that it was only the kids taking AP calculus who were competitive

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

but it's strictly survival of the fittest

That's us absolutely.

We have rationing of Honors & Regents courses.

Scott Fried told me, the day before he left (the administration made him meet with me so they wouldn't have to!) "I make the hard decisions" - meaning "I decide which qualified kid who could succeed in Regents science in 8th grade doesn't get to take it."

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

I can't believe it.

I looked up all the AP stuff a couple of weeks ago, and recorded none of it.

My browser must have crashed before I got to it.

sigh

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

doesn’t this correspond chronologically with the increasingly wider use of whole language – in the 60s – when those students were in elementary school

I'll have to think about that - let's see....I know in the 50s they were using whole language

That was the Dick and Jane era.

So those kids - hey, I think you're right - those kids would have taken their SATs at the start of the 1970s & through the decade

(I'm not sure when that particular wave of whole language began)

Hirsch says, too, that progressive ed took over the ed schools early in the century, but didn't completely pervade the schools until the earlier generation of teachers had retired

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Supposedly the new math (the old new math) never really got that far into the schools.

otoh, I had new math books, and I was growing up on a farm in central IL....

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Wow, Linda

What a find!

(The article about the 8th grade test.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Very, very interesting

That strikes me as a potentially useful approach to pressuring schools to lift standards

You're not flunking anyone, or withholding diplomas

BUT you are making schools look bad

That "unnecessarily difficult" 8th grade test gives me leverage; it allows me to ask why our school isn't doing a better job

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Arbitrarily difficult tests in one grade, followed by easier tests in older grades, give a false appearance of improvement,

yeah, well that was the Ralph argument

our kids "bounce back"

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

U.S. advanced mathematics students included those who had completed or were completing pre-calculus, calculus, calculus and analytic geometry, or Advanced Placement calculus, repre-senting about 14 percent of the school-completing age cohort in the United States. If we compared only those U.S. students who had taken or were taking calculus or Advanced Placement calculus against all the advanced mathematics students in other countries, how did our calculus students perform?

12th grade study NCES

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

found it (different source from the one I had last week, but probably better):

How Do U.S. Twelfth Graders With Calculus Or Advanced Placement Calculus Compare To All Advanced Mathematics Students In Other Countries?

U.S. twelfth graders with calculus or Advanced Placement calculus instruction represented about 7 percent of the U.S. age cohort. These students did perform better in the assessment than the larger U.S. group that also included students whose highest course was pre-calculus.

Advanced mathematics students in 6 countries (France, the Russian Federation, Switzerland, Denmark, Cyprus, and Lithuania) outperformed calculus and AP calculus students in the U.S. Figure 10 shows that the performance of U.S. twelfth graders with calculus or Advanced Placement calculus instruction was not significantly different from the international average and 7 of the 16 TIMSS nations that administered the assessment to their advanced mathematics students. Our scores were significantly higher than those of two other nations (Germany and Austria).

The performance of U.S. twelfth graders with Advanced Placement calculus instruction, who represent about 5 percent of the U.S. age cohort was significantly higher than the performance of advanced mathematics students in 5 other countries. Figure 11 shows that one nation (France) outperformed the United States, while our scores were not significantly different from 9 other countries and the international average. Thus, the most advanced mathematics students in the United States, about 5 percent of the total age cohort, performed similarly to 10 to 20 percent of the age cohort in most of the other countries.

CHAPTER 3: Achievement of Advanced Students

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

The top 5% of our kids perform similarly to the top 10 to 20% of the same age cohort in other countries.

That's the best it gets.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Our very top kids are competitive — with the top 10 to 20% of kids elsewhere!

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

Mark if you're around - you're right; there are quite a few algebra items on the test - the first two pages in the pdf file identify the subject matter

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Sep 2006

I know in the 50s they were using whole language

Sorry, but they weren't. "Whole Word", which was in use in the 1950s, is not the same thing as "Whole Language".

Whole Word is "Dick and Jane." Whole Language is "Authentic Literature."

There is no way that Dick and Jane stories would be considered in a real Whole Langauge classroom.

Basically, the three approaches to reading instruction are:

Phonics: Letters and combinations of letters have sounds. You start to read by learning to decode the words using these letter->sound mappings. Once you are good at this, then you move on to "real" stories. Think the McGuffey^?'s Readers.
Whole Word: The kids memorize each word as a distinct entity. No letter->sound mappings are taught. This tends to break down pretty quickly because English has a lot of words. Think Dick and Jane.
Whole Language: The kids are given authentic literature from day 1. Because the stories are so good, the kids learn to read by osmosis, just like they learned to speak. Maybe a little bit of phonics is taught incidentally.

In the 1950s the reading debate was Whole Word vs. Phonics. Whole Language wasn't on the scene yet.

The 1980s saw the Whole Language vs Phonics reading wars. It is probably fairly accurate to peg the start of Whole Language as Kenneth Goodman's 1967 paper, "Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game", so blaming the 1970s SAT slump on it is almost certainly wrong.

It was years before the 1967 paper had enough influence on classrooms to matter. A 1980s drop in reading scores (if there was one) might be attributable to Whole Language.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 29 Sep 2006

I remember my Dick and Jane like it was yesterday. I was in Kindergarten in '63/'64. I do remember sounding out the new words at times, but my teachers were all from the Jurassic period, or so it seemed, so I'm sure they mixed it up.

I remember quite a bit of phonics mixed in which I found dull, but am quite thankful for now, expecially in regards to spelling. I didn't realize how many little rules I had pounded in me until I started working with my sons, who seem to have no rules pounded in whatsoever.

Being a visual person, the idea of remembering words from the last page by sight was easy for me. Not all readers can learn that way. But the fact that Dick and Jane wasn't great literature was irrelevent to me at 5. I think I just remember feeling very successful.

-- SusanS - 30 Sep 2006

But the fact that Dick and Jane wasn't great literature was irrelevent to me at 5. I think I just remember feeling very successful.

That was, I think, part of the driving force behind Whole Word. It is fairly easy for kids to memorize 100 or so words fairly easily. With a controlled vocabulary text, the kids can be "reading" very quickly.

The only problem with it is that it doesn't scale very well. Getting to 100 this way is fairly easy. Getting to 10,000 is not.

As an interesting example of the way this plays out, I have 3rd and 4th grade math textbooks from 1955 (the "Arithmetic We Need" series, if anyone cares). At the back of each book there is an appendix on vocabulary.

The 3rd grade book says this:

The following list contains, by page number, the 188 new words used in this text, exclusive of proper names and abbreviations. These are in addition to 714 words which pupils are assumed to have learned in their reading and arithmetic work in Grades One and Two.

The 4th grade book says this:

This text contains 124 new words, exclusive of proper names and abbreviations. These 124 words used are in addition to the 1,698 words assumed as known to pupils entering the 4th grade.

Several things leap out at me:

There is a set of words to be learned for each grade.
The authors of all 4th grade textbooks probably have to try to write books using no more than ~2,000 words. And ~1,700 of these come from a list. I bet this cramps writing style a bit.
The kids obviously are assumed to not know how to "sound out" words, because if they do know this, the count of ~1,700 words "known" by the end of 3rd grade is much to low.
I wonder when the kids are expected to be able to read from a randomly selected book that doesn't have the vocabulary strictly controlled. Maybe by 4th or 5th grade because the most common words dominate? I just don't know, but the mind set of tracking which words are assumed known is very odd to me.

Also:

I was in Kindergarten in '63/'64. I do remember sounding out the new words at times, but my teachers were all from the Jurassic period, or so it seemed, so I'm sure they mixed it up.

Or they had learned with phonics and were teaching phonics with the Whole Word textbooks. It is not uncommon for teachers to continue teaching how they always have taught even when the curriculum officially changes (which tends to make comparing approaches harder than it might be).

We probably were seeing this back in the 1980s. Some classrooms that were officially Whole Language were probably using a lot of phonics. I suspect we are seeing this today as well in California and a lot of classrooms that are officially phonics are much closer to Whole Language than one might suspect.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 30 Sep 2006

Mark Just skimmed your post (have to go get some stuff done!) - yes, you're right.

In the Dick and Jane days there wasn't a focus on reading good children's literature from the get-go.

I wonder if the Dick and Jane books worked better than balanced literacy?

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Oct 2006

Where are the word lists?

Since the LA teacher doesn't like to challenge kids, mabye I should start using the vocabulary instead!

Also, I've got the munchkin at home and I want her to be world class too!

-- EvilMathTeacher - 04 Oct 2006

Where are the word lists?

I don't know. I expect that 1950s readers might have them in the back. If not, the teacher's editions probably have them. But I don't know for certain (maybe something to check the next time I'm at my local used book store ...).

Sorry.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 07 Oct 2006

As a community service, I've hunted down a look-say reader.

This is from the Friends Old and New, which is Book 2, Part 1 of the 1965 New Basic Readers from Scott, Foresman and Company:

The first five stories of Friends Old and New, which contain only one new word, serve as a valuable review section. The book introduces a total of 220 new words and continues to use the 329 words introduced at previous levels.

Since this is book 2, I'm assuming that this is for 2nd grade, and that 2nd grade will have two readers: Part 1 and Part 2.

It looks like the 1st grade reader introduced 329 words and the 2nd grade reader will introduce an additional 450 words or so. Friends Old and New notes that:

In addition to these new words, 130 new forms of known words appear in Friends Old and New. These forms, which are not counted as new, include parts of known compounds, compounds made up of two known words, forms made by adding or dropping ed or ing, and contractions in which one letter is ommitted.

The new word list (I'm omitting the new forms) from the volume I have is:

neighborhood hide place box

Bob both Wendy Tony

Silva you'll cookies box

still sit around if

gave Borg (sic) painter side

watch trick ring bell

stay neighbor's door rang

near tools hook garden

hungry told sister Ann

fell need clean money

helpful kind bring Linda

lots sorry hard Taro

Koda kite fish fly

pull tried use end

getting yourself Yoshi their

hear those much board

noise making shout say

hurried bears flashlight turned

better heard John brother

Bill window truck high

wind cap quick dry

dryer best visit top

until would water snow

Don roll ever seen

biggest wheels shovel front

leave by push start

each telephone line dad

tie letter today without

slides everybody ready trip

before six o'clock keep

cold won't wait plane

cried send minute only

cry tired wonder suddenly

himself should bump early

wise winter climb never

apple sad ground always

beautiful aunt flowers squawking

catch ear goose bake

ten or herself clothes

small forget mouse Saturday

paper afraid I've answered

been gone machine fence

blow windy shook bigger

pick hury gray scare

perhaps corn buzz bee

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 11 Oct 2006

Friends Old and New -- Hey, I had that book!

-- GoogleMaster - 12 Oct 2006

Friends Old and New -- Hey, I had that book!

It is, it would seem, the 2nd grade follow up to Dick and Jane. Same publisher and series, but without Dick and Jane.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 13 Oct 2006

Compare and Contrast:

Here what is explicitly taught by the end of Reading Mastery II.

* 53 sounds * 932 regular words * 193 irregular words

That's a 44% increase in the number of words learned just by teaching phonics. Even more remarkable is that average students and above can proceed through the RM curriculum in only one school year. So that's 44% more words in half the time.

-- KDeRosa - 13 Oct 2006

"...schools serve rich white kids well." (quoted from Jenny D)

This sounds awfully simplistic. Both, quality of curriculum and instruction as well as quality of the student body are necessary for substantial learning. If students come ill-prepared, have terrible study habits and severe behavioral problems, then schools will only be able to do so much. Conversely, students with good backgrounds might be able to overcome a poor curriculum and lousy instruction. "Rich white kids'" schools (a nauseating cliche) are often given to the worst educational fads and students succeed despite the school. It's also a nauseating cliche since some of the best students are "of color" (in the PC vernacular). This simplistic, cliched thinking is remarkable for someone who is doctoring in education. But maybe not.

-- CharlesH - 14 Oct 2006

oh gosh - I just noticed this thread!

I've got to get it moved up front

-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Dec 2006

I'm now panicked about reading comprehension here in the "Our Scores Are Outstanding" climes of Irvington.....

-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Dec 2006

We absolutely must stop hiving off "rich white schools" from poor black and Hispanic schools.

Doing this utterly distorts the analysis and understanding of what's wrong with the schools.

It also makes it impossible for the NEW YORK TIMES to perceive that the reason KIPP succeeds is not that the school is teaching black & Hispanic kids "middle class culture."

It's that the school is teaching them content.

In middle class schools the parents are teaching a substantial portion of the content.

-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Dec 2006

Mark

Don't know why I didn't see this earlier.

Exactly.

I spent quite a bit of time playing with percentages & percent change - and then suddenly realized that was beside the point.

The point had to be: what is happening to individual kids?

There were 68 kids in the class who scored a 4 in 4th grade.

There were 25 kids in the class who scored a 4 in 8th grade.

Eightteen new kids came in, all (apparently) scoring below 4; so a bunch of kids had to leave.

I worked out the figures the other day and even in the best case scenario for the school that leaves 36 kids still in district who scored 4s in 4th grade & did not score 4s in 8th.

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Dec 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	our best students
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	AssessmentTests, CompareAndContrastPosts, IrvingtonMath, IrvingtonSchools
LogDate:	200609281620

Navigate KTM

Kitchen Table Math

KTM User Pages

Service Groups

Parent Groups

Personal Pages

Blogs

Special lists

Help

our best students

Comments