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select another subject area Entries from SchoolFundingMoneyClassSizeMathAchievement 16 Sep 2006 - 20:00 CatherineJohnson This item made my day. After our school board announced that budgetary constraints had left them no choice but to increase class size in the 4th and 5th grades (from 19 or 20 students per room up to 23 or 24) parents voted in our second double-digit tax increase in a row. Our fourth and fifth grade classes will remain small. I was skeptical. For one thing, I was aware that Asian math classes are far larger than our own. For another, I was aware that comparative education researcher James Stigler* actually recommends increasing class size as a means of improving math achievement in America. Larger class size would allow American teachers to meet with colleagues in the lesson study groups that are standard practice in high-achieving countries. But while I knew all this, I hadn’t quite allowed myself to draw the obvious conclusion. I hadn’t grokked the possibility that if you’re living in a school district where everyone’s clamoring for small class size, and no one’s clamoring for teacher release time, . . . that might be a problem. So this afternoon I found this analysis of TIMSS data in Education Next: When other factors are taken into account, higher Well, all I’ve got to say is, thank heavens there’s only a small correspondence between high spending, small class size, and inferior mathematics and science results. Because if there were a large correspondence we’d be in trouble. + + + I like this chart, too: ![]() soucre: * James Stigler was one of the investigators in the 1999 TIMSS study and is coauthor of The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom by James W. Stigler, James Hiebert and The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education by Harold W. Stevenson, James W. Stigler. HighTechHeretic 12 Jul 2005 - 18:13 CatherineJohnson Jeff Boulier just pointed me to High Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong In the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian. This reminds me that I never got around to reading The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, so I'm ordering that, too! I think Clifford is right about computers in classrooms. The research I've seen makes me think that Computers are Calculators writ large, with many of the same negative effects on learning. Even if I hadn't seen the research, the fact that we have Mystery NGOs actively promoting the use of computers in classrooms--and being cited as authorities by Steve Leinwand--would make me leery. I'll get around to posting the studies I've found on this question sooner rather than later, I hope. updateOops. I already did post the Israeli study of computer use in the classroom.MoneyWellSpent 14 Jul 2005 - 14:43 CatherineJohnson Bastiaan Braams has just posted the June 15 D.C. Board of Ed resolution, which includes these items: Based on the evaluation of the submitted materials, the following recommendations are being made to the Superintendent of Schools for immediate adoption to insure delivery for SY 2005 - 2006: Elementary Mathematics Mathematics (Grades PK - 5) - It is recommended that the Board of Education for the District of Columbia Public Schools approve the adoption of Wright Group/McGraw-Hill: Everyday Mathematics. Cost: $1,207,875. Mathematics (Supplemental) - It is recommended that the Board of Education for the District of Columbia Public Schools approve the adoption of Pearson Scott Foresman: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. Cost: $470,000. Middle School Mathematics Middle School Mathematics (Grades 6 - 8) - It is recommended that the Board of Education for the District of Columbia Public Schools approve the adoption of Pearson Prentice Hall: Connected Mathematics. Cost: $875,567. Puts me in mind of the Boston tea party. I don't know why. EverydayMathInDC MikePiscalOnPublicSchools 01 Aug 2005 - 21:13 CatherineJohnson Go read Mike Piscal right now. You might want to scroll down and begin with his first post, which ends with this: There are four special interests that have blocked, clogged, and undermined reform for decades. It is all about money, control, and power. It is diseased value system that leaves our kids uneducated, exposed to violence and drugs, and with too few or zero opportunities to pursue the American Dream. Who are the four? Emphatically, I name names: the teacher’s unions, the University Schools of Education, the bureaucracies, and (unbelievably) the PTA’s. In my blogs, I will name the leaders of these entities and expose their lies, their self-interest, and their unwillingness to change the status quo.I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say about the PTA. Here's Thomas Toch, of Brookings: The PTA has particularly strong ties to teacher unions. Charlotte Frass, chief Washington lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers, said, "We often lobby together." Ties are even close to the nation's other leading teachers union, the National Education Association. One of the PTA's three Washington lobbyists is married to an N.E.A. lobbyist, and from the founding of the PTA's Washington legislative office in 1978 through 1993, its lobbyists were housed in rent-reduced offices in the N.E.A.'s headquarters a few block from the White House. Like the unions, the PTA pushes relentlessly for more federal education financing. Earlier this year more than 200 PTA political activists descended on Capitol Hill, urging members of Congress to back the Clinton administration's proposals for $25 billion in federally subsidized school-construction bonds and $5 billion in grants to reduce public school class sizes. The organization rejects the belief of many would-be school reformers today that public schools would work harder to improve if they had to compete for students and financing. "There are always winners and losers in a marketplace," Maribeth Oakes, the PTA's legislative director, said, "and we shouldn't have an education system where there are losers." The group has backed charter school laws only if they require that the hybrid public schools report to traditional school boards. Critics contend that strips the schools of the very independence that is the basis of the charter concept. And here's Chester Finn: [the PTA has] been politicized, ideologized, bureaucratized and, at least in the PTA's case, has become part of the public-education establishment, more interested in propping up institutional claims and employee interests than advancing the interests of parents and kids. 'All T and no P' is how I've come to describe the National PTA and its state affiliates. ... I can't name a single policy issue of consequence at the state or national level where the PTA's testimony doesn't mirror that of the NEA and/or AFT.(thanks to Illinois Loop)
ChildrenLeftBehind 27 Nov 2005 - 14:18 CarolynJohnston At Yet Another Really Great Blog (YARGB), some sharp criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act. IfTheStudentHasntLearned 23 Dec 2005 - 22:16 CatherineJohnson ![]() revision From Catherine: Our new pretend-shirt specifically says "If the student hasn't learned, the school hasn't taught," not 'the teacher hasn't taught'. No more thoughtless (and unintended) teacher-bashing. Seriously. I'm the last person to want to make teachers feel blamed and bashed, seeing as how half my relatives have been or are currently teachers. I'm sure I'll be one again at some point, too. The problem is that, when you talk about schools, it's the teachers who are visible. They're in the trenches, so they get the blame. (I realize I'm not telling teachers anything they don't know.) I know better than that, but I've been sounding like I don't. Time for a course correction. From Carolyn: Hey, my entire family on my mother's side were also teachers, every man and woman Jack of them. I've been a teacher too; so has Catherine. My observation is that policy flows downhill in a school, and the buck stops with the teachers. They get the responsibility, but not the authority; policy changes really have to start with upper management. We're here to put the pressure on upper management, and support the teachers in doing what they know how to do. ThoughtsAboutTeacherPay 14 Jun 2006 - 19:51 CarolynJohnston Catherine's comment that some teachers in Irvington are earning six-figure salaries led me to wonder what salaries are like for teachers in general. If some teachers are earning six-figure salaries, then my information on teacher salaries is sadly out of date. First, I came across this 2004 study from the Economic Policy Institute on teacher pay. Here's an excerpt: The importance of salaries (relative to other job characteristics, such as working conditions, summers off, and job flexibility) to the recruitment of high-quality teachers has also been studied in great detail. While the popular view is that teacher pay is relatively low and has not kept up with comparable professions over time, new claims suggest that teachers are actually well compensated when work hours, weeks of work, or benefits packages are taken into account. Whatever the case, the many unique features of the teaching profession have almost certainly complicated efforts to compare its compensation to that of other professions.So: maybe teachers really have a great deal going: it's hard to tell. But then here are some of the main findings of the study: And, as if that weren't bad news enough, I also came across a study of the state of charter schools in Colorado (from 2002) that indicates charter school teachers in Colorado are getting shafted in comparison with public school teachers. Not surprising, since charter schools get a fraction of the funding that public schools get. The study also indicated that, in general, maybe the charter school teachers aren't even as well qualified as the public school teachers (but who knows what qualified means?). The average teacher salary in charter schools in 2001-02 was 30% less than the state average salary of $40,659. This salary gap has grown slightly since 1997. In that year, the average salary for teachers in charter schools ($26,802) was about 28% less than the average teacher salary in the state of Colorado ($37,240).Finally, searching for more data about charter schools in Colorado, I came across this highly edifying (and entertaining!) study someone did of the charter school movement in a school district in Colorado that they called a 'crucible of school choice': my very own Boulder Valley School District. This study paints a picture of a school choice plan that is so aggressively successful that it is actually creating racial, social and intellectual inequality where there would otherwise have been none. And we know that this is true, because BVSD is almost uniformly populated by families that are white, wealthy, and highly edumacated. BVSD procedures and practices are a potentially important factor in the patterns of stratification. First, the practice of prominently displaying test scores in the local newspaper's annual open-enrollment insert, as well as on district and school Web pages, helps explain the prominence of test scores in the demand for BVSD schools. Second, requiring parents to obtain their own information on open enrollment, providing most information in English only, requiring parents to visit schools in which they wish to open-enroll their children, and requiring them to provide their own transportation help explain why choice has a stratifying effect. This system favors parents with savvy, time, and resources. It also favors parents who are connected to the parent information network, the importance of which was shown by how prominent word of mouth was as a student recruitment method.So here is the picture I end up with: teacher pay stinks, and the stinkiest teacher pay of all is happening at the most elite schools in my own hometown. What sense does this make? We visited one of the charter schools in BVSD, Summit Middle School, during the open enrollment period last year (Summit is pseudonymized as 'Pinnacle' in the BVSD school choice article). Summit has very highly educated and dedicated teachers, most of whom could easily have jobs elsewhere. They have their pick of the best students in BVSD because their requirements (for homework and the like) scare off all but the strongest students and the most ambitious parents. There is the sense, at Summit, of an elite learning community; that bright, hardworking kids are being trained for brilliant futures. And there are also summers off; why wouldn't a person want to teach there? Look no farther than Summit to understand why schools in general are having a hard time retaining quality teachers. When I left Florida Atlantic University, my salary was 32K per year, and had grown slower than inflation for several years. I wasn't crazy about that, but the low salary wasn't keeping me from pursuing a career as a math professor. Being a math professor was a profession in which I could pursue my interests and retain my self-respect. I still think the self-respect issue is at the heart of our teacher qualification problems in this country. It's a self-perpetuating problem; teachers don't get respect, people who demand respect won't consider the profession, so it attracts underqualified people (or, less frequently, extremely dedicated ones). How do you fix that problem? And how come nobody ever talks about it? RiseOfTheSixFigureTeacher 19 May 2006 - 21:49 CatherineJohnson ![]()
But in Central Islip, where 40 percent of families with children in the schools are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, the high school is on the state's list of schools needing improvement. Nearly one in five teachers in Central Islip makes $100,000 or more, and Yvette Camacho, a school board member, says ''Our taxpayers cannot afford them.'' ''Our taxpayers are your average Joes who work two jobs to pay the mortgage,'' Ms. Camacho said. ''We have wonderful teachers. But some are not wonderful, and they're making $115,000.'' Overall, our teachers make far more money than I do, and their health and retirement benefits are generous and secure. Yes, there are years when my income is higher than a teacher's. Those are the years when I get healthy book advances. The years when I'm actually writing the book I'm being paid to write are extremely low-income years. When you average it out, I'd be much better off working as a teacher, not a writer. Even as a bestselling author—and my advance for ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION was very high—I earn less than teachers here in Irvington. And nobody sets up a pension for a writer. Meanwhile I'm spending thousands of dollars on materials and KUMON programs to teach my children what our faculty and administration aren't teaching them. I'm sacrificing thousands more in lost income. And I have now had the experience of witnessing an Irvington teacher bully my child, as I foot the bill for an expensive and time-consuming Character Education Program for the kids. The Character Education Program seems to take place primarily during Study Skills, which brings me to yet another aggravation-making irony: Christopher did not learn study skills in Study Skills class. Then, when his grades reflected the fact that he does not know how to study, his Study Skills teacher had him sign a Grade Contract acknowledging 'full responsibility.' So at this point I'm what you call a grumpy taxpayer. I really can't read another word on the teachers-are-underpaid theme. When I start seeing articles about writers being underpaid, maybe I'll feel differently. Just call me 'Average Joe!' and one more thing! AND Ed just read the NYRB review of that big, long history of Ivy League admissions......and the review said that any child living in a circle around Manhattan is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to getting into elite schools, because the schools are looking for geographical diversity (and I'm assuming not quite so many Jewish last names, though I didn't read the article). So I'm thinking: a) we change Christopher's last name from Berenson to Johnson b) we give my brother's address in Chatham, IL when we apply to colleges um.....that leaves the question of how to disguise the location of K-12 Schools Attended. I'll think of something. Maybe we'll just move to Chatham for senior year. EdsStatementToPtsaForum 16 Sep 2006 - 20:07 CatherineJohnson I mentioned yesterday that the president of the PTSA had emailed Ed asking him whether he wanted to make a statement about the budget. Here's his reply: Catherine and I will be there tonight, but my proposal is the following: we should recommend that there be no increases in the "real" school budget — no increases, that is, beyond the costs of inflation and of the various contractual agreements or legal requirements over which we have limited control: staff benefits, special education, debt service, and the like. If we want to add new items to the school budget or spend more on existing items, we should look critically at the rationale for those items, asking ourselves whether the evidence clearly shows that the proposed new spending will have the desired effect. If the answer is "yes," we should then recommend offsetting cuts in other areas of the budget. We should also ask the District to evaluate all programs, curricula, and educational initiatives after an appropriate period of time. Any program whose evaluations fail to show clear-cut gains for our kids should be dropped. In most cases, programs that can't be readily evaluated should not be adopted in the first place. I wasn't there when he made his statement, but from where I sit he did it brilliantly. At that point in the meeting (maybe 25 minutes in?) no one had mentioned TRAILBLAZERS. After Ed gave his statement, parents asked him what programs he would want the school to evaluate for effectiveness. Ed said, D.A.R.E. & No Put-Downs (the character education program brought into the Main Street School last year thanks to parent fundraising. No Put-downs cost the teachers & kids 20 minutes of lost instructional time each and every morning for 5 months (maybe more). Did it work? Was there less bullying? How much bullying was there in the first place? We don't know! Now the community is paying for the program; the Irvington Education Foundation picked up the tab for the first year only. So Ed said he'd evaluate D.A.R.E. & No Put-Downs. Then he said, 'And the district should evaluate TRAILBLAZERS. We have an expensive and controversial math curriculum supported by an inadequate research base. The program needs to be evaluated for effectiveness.' He is good. Both the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum were present. Irvington PTSA Forum PTSA Forum Tonight Ed's statement to the PTSA Forum report: PTSA Forum fact sheet for forum: Singapore Math & teaching to mastery & TIMSS gap StupidInAmerica 12 Jan 2006 - 17:55 CatherineJohnson Ken left a link to John Stossel's special 'Stupid in America' tomorrow night at 10. (January 13, 2006) Jan. 9, 2006 — American students fizzle in international comparisons, placing 18th in reading, 22nd in science and 28th in math - behind countries like Poland, Australia and Korea. But why? Are American kids less intelligent? John Stossel looks at the ways the U.S. public education system cheats students out of a quality education in "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids," airing this Friday at 10 p.m. "We're not stupid. & But we could do better," one high school student tells Stossel. Another says, "I think it has to be something with the school, 'cause I don't think we're stupider." That's the question Stossel examines in his special report: What is it that's going wrong in public schools? There are many factors that contribute to failure in school. A major factor, Stossel finds, is the government's monopoly over the school system. Parents don't get to choose where to send their children. In other countries, choice brings competition, and competition improves performance. Stossel questions government officials, union leaders, parents and students and learns some surprising things about what's happening in U.S. schools. He also examines how the educational system can be improved upon and reports on innovative programs across the country. "Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our Kids" with John Stossel airs Jan. 13, at 10 p.m. I'm setting up the TIVO. BriefReportPtsaForum 16 Sep 2006 - 20:10 CatherineJohnson Well, I was going to write an account of last night's PTSA Forum, but now it's 5:39 pm and the whole thing's a blur. Let's see. Basically, it went great. Since Ed had been asked to give a statement, he came prepared. [update 4-11-06: Ed now says he wasn't invited to give his statement, he was merely asked whether he'd like to give his statement or have the PTSA president give it &mdash which, if true, completely changes my view of reality....sigh] We were both semi-braced for tension, because the PTSA-hosted Q&A with the school board candidates had been so unpleasant. Part of the reason it was unpleasant was that we were apparently the only people in town remotely concerned about annual tax increases. We've had double-digit property tax increases for at least two years running; it might be three. Last winter, when Ed asked the school board how much money we're spending on administrative costs the President of the Board said, "A lot." A lot. That was the answer. He clearly thought 'A lot' was a good answer. It was a nasty scene. The school board was threatening to increase class size slightly in 4th and 5th grades, and parents were frantic. One mother was in tears; others basically said, 'We'll spend whatever it takes. Just tell us how much.' The board voted to increase class size and then, at the last moment, 'discovered' some sources of revenue they didn't know about — something like that. (As I say, I'm not a Budget Maven.) But that was the jist, more or less, and it didn't make us happy. Surprise money? In a school district? Doubletree suddenly paid its taxes? The whole scenario seemed cooked-up. Threaten parents with increased class size & voila. They're begging for a tax increase. (One parent directly asked the Board to increase taxes as much as possible.) We could be wrong about this, and we probably are. But the fact remains that the budget drama last year gave the impression of having been manipulated for maximum impact, whether it was or not. So that's the back story. yes, it's a $9 million dollar playing field! Last night's surprise, which wouldn't have been a surprise if we'd been paying attention, was that the district is planning to propose a Bond to borrow money for a $9,000,000 playing field at the high school. This on top of the $50,000,000 we just borrowed 4 years ago to build a new Middle School Campus equipped with state of the art everything, but already in need of repair. I've mentioned the architect we know here, the guy who's working on the new buildings for Ground Zero.....he's not happy. If he's not happy, we're not happy. All of which means we are so not interested in putting 9 million dollars into brand new state of the art playing fields virtually guaranteed to make the Ground Zero guy even more unhappy than he already is. so here's the good news Nobody was interested in putting 9 million dollars into a brand-new state of the art playing field. Nobody. Not one living soul. In fact, one group has already formed to oppose it — and guess what? They're none too happy about the curriculum, either. They want to know how we can be spending $18,000 per pupil and have no books in the library. That was a shocker. The Forum was held in the brand-new state of the art Campus Presentation Room, located just off the brand-new two-story state of the art Library. The mom who's leading the group opposed to the 9-million dollar playing field pointed around to the bookshelves on the 2nd floor. They're empty. I had no idea. I'd never looked at the shelves to see if they actually had books in them. I just assumed there were books. My thinking was: It's a library, there are shelves, ergo there are books. There aren't. There are all kinds of missing books, as a matter of fact. Fourth grade ELA doesn't have a textbook at all, just packets; other classes have some books, but not enough books. Then there are the missing tissues. Apparently the district has formally dropped its budget for Kleenex in the classroom. So, unless the teacher buys Kleenex for the kids with her own money, there's no Kleenex. Who knew? Ken said once that tax revolts can happen fast. There's a tipping point. Last year's budget sailed through 2 to 1, so I assumed every budget would always sail through 2 to 1, forever & ever. That's not the way it looked last night. Even one of the moms who's been most active getting budget increases passed every year (we have to vote the budget through) was sounding astonishingly negative. She was saying things like, "I've always done a lot of propaganda* that was the word she usedfor the budget, back in the Dark Ages when nobody voted, and now parents all vote, and it's great, and now we have a Superintendent and an Assistant Superintendent and an assistant for the assistant and a Principal K-3 and a Vice Principal and another Principal Grades 4-5.....' I'm serious! This is the way she was talking! (This particular mom is a Math Brain who has an autistic kid, and she's always like that. She's hilarious; speaks her mind. She's a friend of ours. She asked Ed to write an op-ed supporting a tax increase a couple of years ago, and he did.) There wasn't One Living Soul there who was feeling like The School Needs More Money. TRAILBLAZERS I've been saying Since Day One that I didn't know why on earth the district would deliberately go out and choose a math textbook that was guaranteed to get parents up in arms. I was right. Parents are just about to be up in arms; more than a few already are. That's the point of the Math Enrichment Specialist: appeasement. Consciously or no, the administration is attempting to buy off the GATE parents by spending more of our money. First we have to pay for a lousy math curriculum; then we have to pay for a Math Enrichment Specialist (which means health insurance & pension paymentsuntil that person is dead) to make up for it. No one was told, going in, that Implementing TRAILBLAZERS would then mean HIRING AT LEAST TWO MORE FULL-TIME PEOPLE just to make up for the deficiencies of TRAILBLAZERS. No thanks. Give the Math-Brain kids a decent curriculum, and while you're at it give my kid a decent curriculum, too. That's what I thought I was paying for when I came here. drip, drip, drip I've mentioned that 'spaced repetition,' which is the fundamental principle of learning, works. Last night was further proof. I've been saying the words 'Singapore Math' constantly ever since fall 2004. It's gotten around. Late yesterday I made up a Fact Sheet to hand out to everyone so I could avoid the humiliation of my Previous Appearance at a PTSA event, when I spoke longer than my allotted 3 minutes and then got ticked off when they told me to sit down. (I will never get over that.) So I printed up a Fact Sheet. Four sections: Sample problem from Singapore grade 6 placement test (end of grade 5) Can Irvington children pass Singapore tests? Mathematics achievement in the U.S. The spiraling curriculum I got there late, and sat in the back. The mom next to me said hi, and I gave her one of the sheets. She took one look at it and said, 'Oh, Singapore Math. I'm very interested in that.' Word gets around. You just have to keep putting it out there. consciousness raising Ed and I both spoke about spiraling versus mastery curricula, separately, so we were able to do spaced repetition in the same night. Then I brought up spiraling versus mastery for a third time when a mom complained about backpack weight. I'd be willing to bet that every person there, or close to, could tell you today what spiraling is. They could certainly tell you what mastery is: teaching to mastery is what they thought their schools were already doing. That's sure what I thought. When it was my turn to talk, I said I'd made up fact sheets and would just pass those out instead of speaking. Then I asked the president to add 'spiraling versus mastery curriculum' to the list she was writing up front, because she hadn't written down the point when Ed made it first. At that point, people asked me to stand up and tell them what spiraling was. They wanted to know. The cool thing was that a 2nd grade teacher was sitting behind Ed, and she confirmed to parents sitting around her that, yes, Irvington schools use a spiral curriculum. I'm not sure whether there were 2 teachers there, or just one. One teacher told the parents nearby that some skills are taught to mastery while others are spiraled. I'd love to know how they choose which skills to teach to mastery, and which to teach to exposure. Once people know that teaching to mastery isn't being done — purposely and knowingly is not being done — that knowledge isn't going to go away. It's going to grow, and the implications are going to become clear. other parents The other parents were fantastic. This was the single best parent meeting I've ever attended. People were incredibly articulate, and no one was competing for attention, undermining other people's positions — fantastic. No one wants a 9 million dollar playing field, everyone wants an excellent curriculum, and everyone wants to know what that curriculum is. My friend Kathy said (paraphrasing) 'All the extras are nice, the art, the drama. But having earned a Ph.D. in the social sciences, I'm aware that American students are considered completely unprepared. Our children need an excellent education in the basics. If my daughter has a calculator in 6th grade, that's all the technology she needs. I don't want to buy any more technology for the school until I can sleep at night knowing she's getting a sound education in the basic subjects.' It was brilliant. Amazing. She had a huge effect on the room. Her friend, Ellen, was incredible, too (she's the mother of the GATE child). Great, great, great. lost instructional time I'll have to check this story, but Kathy also heard, from a teacher, that the kids in her class had only two uninterrupted weeks of instruction all last fall. Their routine is chronically interrupted. We are besieged by extras. Every week there's some Special Event for the kids, something wonderful, special, and extra. It's chronic. It's time to get back to what should be the core mission of the schools. Education. Reading, writing, math. Taught to mastery. sample problem Here's the sample problem I included at the top of my Fact Sheet, from the 6th grade placement test: 8. The ratio of Zoe’s money to Yolanda’s is 3:7. Yolanda has $64 more than Zoe. If Yolanda gives ¼ of her money to Zoe, what will be the new ratio of Zoe’s money to Yolanda’s? Every parent there had to have looked at that problem and thought, No Irvington 5th grader can do this problem. update from Carolyn: Wrong. Every parent there was looking at it and saying... can I do this problem? I'm guffawing! It's true! (I had a couple of seconds there wondering the same thing.) I don't think TRAILBLAZERS is going to last too long here. My goal is for Irvington to be the first town in Westchester to bring in Singapore Math. Of course, I'm also going to have to start hassling people about Teaching To Mastery (pdf file). Irvington PTSA Forum PTSA Forum Tonight Ed's statement to the PTSA Forum report: PTSA Forum fact sheet for forum: Singapore Math & teaching to mastery & TIMSS gap * that was the word she used: propaganda FactSheetPtsaForum 16 Sep 2006 - 20:20 CatherineJohnson This is the Fact Sheet I distributed to parents & to the PTSA Executive Committee. I don't think this is the most effective Fact Sheet possible; I would have preferred something much simpler. I think a very effective Fact Sheet would be just one word problem printed in the middle of the page with this question: Will your child be able to solve this problem at the end of 5th grade? I would also want to get across the information that a perfectly average child in Singapore can solve this problem. However, I really wanted to raise the issue of teaching to mastery and the spiral curriculum, so I filled up the sheet. Under the circumstances, I think that was OK. Anyone who'd like to use this sheet for anyone reason — please do! And, of course, feel free to modify & improve it. I would also appreciate feedback. I made this up very quickly, because I didn't get inspired until Ken left his post about teaching to mastery. This is the best I could do in 15 minutes or so. NOTE: all of this material fit on one side of one sheet of paper. Sample problem from Singapore grade 6 placement test (end of grade 5) The ratio of Zoe’s money to Yolanda’s is 3:7. Yolanda has $64 more than Zoe. If Yolanda gives ¼ of her money to Zoe, what will be the new ratio of Zoe’s money to Yolanda’s? http://www.singaporemath.com/EasyEditor/assets/pl_pm6atest.pdf (pdf file) Can Irvington children pass Singapore tests? Tests are available online at: https://www.sonlight.com/singapore-placement-tests.html http://www.singaporemath.com/Placement_s/12.htm Mathematics achievement in the U.S.
The spiraling curriculum “…if I put in front of you a fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade textbook in math and opened up to page 200 and I jumbled them up, and said, “order them from fifth through eighth grade in order,” you'd have a very tough time because they all look the same. That's because, unfortunately, we have this national strategy of “we're not really going to teach to master, we're going to teach to exposure and over lots and lots of years of kids seeing page 200 in the math book, eventually somehow they're going to learn it. We're going to teach them how to reduce fractions in fifth grade, in sixth grade, in seventh grade, in eighth grade, in ninth grade and continue until finally somehow magically they're going to get it…..[at KIPP] we have a different math strategy and a different math philosophy.” Source: Mike Feinberg, co-founder Knowledge is Power Program KIPP. 80% of KIPP 8th graders – disadvantaged children in the Bronx – pass Regents A at the end of 8th grade, as compared to approximately 30 to 40% of Irvington 8th graders, depending on the year http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/feinberg.html Time costs of teaching to exposure, not mastery Summer regression under spiraling curriculum: 1 month at least (source: Time for School: Its Duration and Allocation http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/EPRU%202002-101/Chapter%2004-Glass-Final.pdf) Summer regression with mastery curriculum: 1 week at most {source: Student-Program Alignment and Teaching to Mastery http://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/StuPro_Align.pdf spiralling curricula (pdf file, p 16) American Children lose 3 weeks’ instructional time at a minimum each year that children in other countries do not lose. Some children lose more. While U.S. children are being re-taught skills they did not learn to mastery the year before, their peers in high-achieving countries are mastering new skills and concepts. Over the years, this lost instructional time adds up. 3 weeks lost in second grade means U.S. children are 6 weeks behind in 3rd grade, 9 weeks in 4th, 12 weeks in 5th and so on down the line. The gap widens each year. Irvington PTSA Forum PTSA Forum Tonight Ed's statement to the PTSA Forum report: PTSA Forum fact sheet for forum: Singapore Math & teaching to mastery & TIMSS gap StupidInAmericaPart1 16 Jan 2006 - 18:39 CatherineJohnson Of course I missed the show, but the message boards are a hoot. This one is from sharpeteacher: Stupid in America does not start in the schools. It is the stupid adults that produce these lazy, under-achievers. When the parent see no reason to act like civilized people why would you expect the children to. The problem I have in my classroom is parents. Parents support their disrespectful children. They defend them when they get suspended or act like fools. [ed.: true! case in point!] (Parents like the one on tv that said her child was in high school and could not read.) It is the parents responsiblity more than the teacher to be sure the child is progressing. Maybe if parents suck it up and quit being selfish, stupid people then there children would care and learn about the real world and do well in school. You are comparing these countries and states that do not have the same rules or even the same tests. If you take a test and I take another test we can not compare our scores because we did not take the same test. Parents do not care enough to change their childs school. What we need is for someone to stand up and broadcast a show about stupid parents in America!!!!! Here's a school administrator: I agree as an administrator we have more stupid parents that bad teachers. It only takes discipline. Another satisfied customer: It's funny, that only teachers are responding to this thread. Let me tell you that I have read to my 2 children since day one, have helped with homework every night, volunteered uncountable hours in the public school system and am probably over involved in my kids lives. But just recently I have encountered this problem. My 10th grader just dropped 2 grades in Geometry in 4 weeks and I did not know about it until the week before Christmas break. After a conversation with the teacher she tried to tell me that I "should have known" that my child was in trouble. She said that she had done everything she was supposed to do to inform me. She had sent a letter home at the beginning of the year, stating that she would eventually send a password home to log on to an account to check grades and that my son, "if he were doing his job" was keeping a running tab of grades. I never received either. She obviously does not have children, thinking that they are going to come to you, saying, "mom, I'm flunking Math". Give me a break! The teacher gets paid for making sure my child learns [ed.: a common misconception! no! she doesn't get paid to make sure your child learns! she gets paid to spiral!] and obviously, my child was not learning, and his teacher felt that I did not need a note concerning this fact. Hey, as long as she can pick up that paycheck for putting in those hours, what makes the difference whether my child learns or not. Let me also tell you that I am not an absentee parent. I have volunteered in the public school system for 13 years, and am always available. This "teacher" also went on to say that it was all three of our responsibilitys' to make sure that my son was progressing. [ed.: hey! I got the same line from the Study Skills teacher who hung up on me!] I can't fix what I do not know about. She also said that she had 132 students and couldn't keep track of everything. Well, then maybe she should only get part of her paycheck, if she is only doing part of her job. Let me also add, that in the week since we have found out about the grade drop, we have gotten him two tutors, (pretty bad when a child has to go to another teacher for tutoring), have helped him more at home and he has raised his GPA by 5% in one week! [ed: I Should Have Homeschooled, Part 100-something] Teachers are always saying that the student needs to take responsibility....just once I would like to see a teacher step up and take responsibilty for what they have done...or in this case what they haven't. Public Education in America really stinks! why do new teachers quit within 5 years? I spent three years as a high school teacher, getting a job at a public school straight out of college. Three other rookies started with me. One quit after one year; the second year another quit; I quit the third year; the other rookie is now the high school’s activities director, eyeing a vice principal position. Most new teachers leave the profession within five years. Teachers like to point at this statistic as proof of how hard their job is. It isn’t. It’s proof of the job’s meaninglessness. It takes a month or so at the job to realize that it doesn’t matter how hard you work, or how well you do. Your students will appreciate it, a little, but they are gone when the bell rings, and at the end of the year, they’re out of your life. The administration will take no notice. Your pay isn’t attached to it in any way. Beyond that, your class of 25 becomes a class of 40 with ten special ed students. You’ve got a future felon you’d like to throw out of your class but can’t, because no one cares how well you teach, but cares a lot if you deem one kid a bad apple. For someone young, who has visions of a rewarding career, it quickly becomes apparent that public school teaching is an empty profession. Career public school teachers come in two flavors, both shown in the John Stossel special. a) the lazy bum who likes the free ride. That teacher who had his geography students playing Monopoly isn’t the exception, he’s the rule. I guarantee you that the teachers on this message board and in your lives who speak of working 60 hours a week are LYING! At my school, all the teachers arrived five minutes before the first bell and left five minutes afterward, and didn’t take any work home with them. They ran personal errands during their prep periods, and milked the image of the overwork teacher to anyone who wasn’t in the club. b) The activist. The Union President who made such a fool of herself on the show is the other model. This teacher is also prevalent in the schools. She doesn’t care that kids learn math, science, English, or history. She got in this business to become a brainwasher, and uses her classroom as her personal political forum. I’ve left the profession, and now work for a corporation in a cubicle. And despite the fact that my job is much harder now, at least it feels like I am accomplishing something! uh-oh The sad state of affairs on this matter is that the majority of us have personally experienced a really bad teacher on more than one occasion. That's too many bad teachers! Me? I personally spent from the beginning of my junior year to the month of February teaching myself AB Calulus. Why you ask? Because my teacher was too busy planning the annual math club ski trip during my class period. I also, by my choice, went to a local college that summer to take AB Calculus to be sure I was ready for BC Calculus my Senior year. I then spent my daughter's 6th grade year giving her the math lesson she should have been taught at school everyday by the teacher who couldn't stay off her cell phone long enough to teach. Her idea of teaching was handing out worksheets, reams of them, for the children to do without any lesson. The proverbial straw was the worksheet asking to calculate areas and perimeters of squares, triangles, parellograms, circles, etc. The worksheet had a diagram with measurements and an A = under each one. No formulas. I asked my daughter where her notes were from class on this. She said Mrs. Teacher didn't teach that day. They did worksheets with 5 digit numbers multiplied by 5 digit numbers...busy work. helicopter parents of the world, unite update eduwonk likes this book, from Brookings: ![]() Apparently the Wall Street Journal called it, "The education book of the year . . . an icon-smashing book on school reform." There's a terrifically interesting-sounding (awkward modifier alert) list of books under "People who bought this book also bought":
the politics of vouchers (interview with Terry Moe) VouchersAndTheFreeForAllArgument 17 Jan 2006 - 23:14 CatherineJohnson I've mentioned that I began life as a pro-public-schools, anti-voucher person. Today I'm pro-charter, pro-voucher, pro-homeschool. Anywhere but here. After a few years of browbeating, Ed has become a supporter of vouchers for inner city kids, including vouchers to attend religious schools. But he's adamantly opposed to vouchers for everyone else. He wants charters for everyone; he wants open enrollment for everyone. He's probably come around to the view that homeschooling is superior to public schooling (though he doesn't want me homeschooling). But he's intransigent on the subject of vouchers for all. He's against it, because he thinks we'd end up with an educational free-for-all. While the prospect of an educational free-for-all doesn't strike terror into my own heart, I have to say that this passage from John Stossel doesn't exactly make me want to March on Washington for vouchers: If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom. This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like saying, 'You know what?' 'Parents are too stupid to figure out their own kids' education.' STUPID IN AMERICA! Sorry. Just kidding. The point is: if a pro-voucher person like me can read a pro-voucher paragraph like this and feel instant dismay.....I'm not going to be persuading people like Ed any time soon. what kind of voucher program would lots of people support? I don't know the answer to that, but Ed is a reasonably good proxie for the anti-voucher voter. (Anti-voucher-voter? Sounds like robo-Roto-rooter. If this were a real book, I'd have to re-write that.) Yesterday & today Ed was telling me what kinds' of voucher programs he would support:
research on countries that audit outputs Apparently, outputs auditing in the form of centralized exams works well: Centralized exams. Of the 39 countries in this study, 15 have some kind of centralized exams, in the sense that an administrative body beyond the schooling level writes and administers the exams to all students. This can profoundly alter the incentive structure within the educational system by measuring student performance against an external standard, making performance comparable across classes and schools. It makes it easier to tell whether a given student’s poor performance is an exception within a class or whether the whole class is doing poorly relative to the country as a whole. In other words, centralized exams make it obvious whether it is the student or the teacher who is to blame. This reduces the teachers’ leeway and creates incentives to use resources more effectively. It makes the whole system transparent: parents can assess the performance of children, teachers, and schools; heads of schools can assess the performance of teachers; and the government and administration can assess the performance of different schools. Centralized exams also alter the incentive structure for students by making their performance more transparent to employers and advanced educational institutions. Their rewards for learning thus should grow and become more visible. Without external assessments, students in a class looking to maximize their joint welfare will encourage one another not to study very hard. Centralized exams render this strategy futile. All in all, given this analysis, we should expect centralized exams to boost student performance. And they seem to. All things being equal, students in countries with centralized exams scored 16 points higher in math and 11 points higher in science, although the science finding is not statistically significant due to the small number of countries in the sample (see Figure 3 for results). Furthermore, students in schools where external exams or standardized tests heavily influence the curriculum scored 4 points higher in math, though there appears to be no effect in science. This suggests that science tests may lend themselves less readily to standardization. I like this idea:
ECONOMIST on FL Supreme Court striking down voucheres a voucher program many people might support -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jan 2006 DataWarehousing 07 Oct 2006 - 22:10 CatherineJohnson Our school district is now using 'data warehousing.' The couple who came to dinner Friday night — both employed in math-related fields — were highly unenthusiastic about this development. My neighbor, the statistician, had the same reaction when she read about it. The Friday-night-couple said data warehousing is the same thing as data mining.....which I think I favor. Is that wrong? I'm certain they're right, though, that data mining will allow the district to flummox parents with whatever statistics they decide to pull out. Although.....so far district efforts to flummmox parents, namely me, have been unimpressive to say the least. These efforts consist of the Assistant Superintendent sending me one letter and one email telling me 'scores have gone up' since we purchased TRAILBLAZERS. I pointed out that scores went up all over the state and that, furthermore, 'scores went up' is raw data, and we left it at that. Color me Not flummoxed. Then they shut down my Singapore Math course. not flummoxed now & don't plan to be in the future What do I need to start learning in order to not get flummoxed down the line? Apart from real knowledge, comprehension, & procedural skills, I could use some lingo, just so I sound like I know what I'm talking about. If the District is going to blow smoke-with-data, I need to be able to blow my own smoke, which I can do just through language. (Have I mentioned how ruthless I am lately?) whose data is it, anyway? What I fear — because we've hit this brick wall many, many times in special ed — is that parents won't get to see data because parents seeing data will represent an invasion of other parents' privacy. Maybe things won't go that way, but seeing as how they've always gone that way for us in the past, and seeing as how Bush & c. had to pass a huge, major, revolutionary law just to get schools to disaggregate and publish their data some place where parents could find it, tells my Bayesian mind to count on it. So maybe I should be familiarizing myself with the FOIA, right? Wal-Mart has a warehouse for data, too No idea whether this book would be useful or not. ![]() -- CatherineJohnson - 16 Jan 2006 ThePoliticsOfVouchers 17 Jan 2006 - 23:17 CatherineJohnson I've just finished reading The Brookings Brown Center on Education Policy Presents Terry Moe Discussing Schools, Vouchers and the American Public. It's terrific. NOTE: most of the bullets here have been added (by me), and my comments are in bold. JUNE 7, 2001 TOM LOVELESS: It was about a decade ago that Terry [Moe] and John Chubb published a book that is now considered a classic in American education, "Politics, Markets and America's Schools," and that was while they were senior fellows here at Brookings. That book, which remains still controversial, unleashed a movement — a national movement in support of vouchers that is still rippling today. [snip] LOVELESS: This is a very different book. In Terry's new book, he analyzes, really, the structure of public opinion on the voucher issue, and it's a fascinating bit of research that he has done and makes a wonderful contribution, not only to education, but to political science as well. [snip] TERRY MOE: There are people around now, especially some of the critics of vouchers, who are saying that this thing is about to die out. The movement has peaked and it's essentially yesterday's news. And the evidence for that is the results of the initiative campaigns in Michigan and California where vouchers went down to resounding and humiliating defeat. [snip] ...I do think that these [critics] have started at the right place because they are starting with public opinion. Now this is a thoroughly Democratic nation and public opinion really matters. [snip] a survey that I carried out of 4700 American adults. They were asked an array of questions on public and private schools and on vouchers. And what I tried to do here was to go well beyond the kinds of survey that you normally come across. The typical survey on vouchers — and there are a lot of them out there — ask one question, and it's a question about — basically, do you support vouchers or not? [snip] ....what I've tried to do here is to carry out an analysis of public opinion, and I'm not just interested in describing it. If I wanted to describe it, I would have issued my own brief report in 1995, which is when this survey was actually carried out. [snip] ...the risk is obviously is that things could have changed since 1995. But if you look at other surveys, it appears that things really haven't changed much, if at all, surprisingly — at least as far as the mass public is concerned. [snip] I support vouchers. Normally in my own work — I'm a political scientist — I wouldn't say where I stand on these issues, I would just do my work, you know. But in the voucher issue, it's important, I think, to know where the author is coming from because so much of this literature, unfortunately, is infused by ideology and is slanted and is not particularly well done and is not particularly scientific. I think that's really a bad thing and something that we need to get away from. So I expect people to be skeptical — I want them to be. But I want to underline that I am, first and foremost, a social scientist, and my concern here is not to be a cheerleader for vouchers and not to convince people that vouchers are a good thing. My goal in this book is to be right... [snip] ...the place to start is with a simple point that couldn't be more profound in its importance for politics of this issue, and that is that Americans like the public schools. In the first place, they are reasonably satisfied with the performance of the public schools. They think their local schools, as a system, are doing pretty well. They're not ecstatic, but they think they're doing pretty well. They are even more positive about the schools that their own kids go to. Their direct experiences with the public schools are quite good — surprisingly good. Secondly, many Americans embrace what I call "the public school ideology" which means that they have a set of values that lead them to think that having a public education system is a good thing. They believe in the ideals of this system. They like having a public school system. They want to support this kind of a system, quite aside from specific performance issues. So this is a really fundamental thing that voucher leaders have to face, because it's obviously not optimal from their standpoint to have a population that's reasonably satisfied and normatively committed in this way.[ed.: I'll say] So if this were the end of it, voucher leaders could pretty much pack their bags and go home. But this isn't the end of it. And the rest of the story is more positive by quite a bit. Number one, Americans think, on the average, that private schools are better than public schools. And it's really in their minds a matter of relative performance. They think the public schools are pretty good, but they think private schools are better, and when they are making choices about going private and about vouchers, that's what they are thinking about — they are thinking about relative performance, not the fact that the public schools are pretty good. Okay, secondly, there are a number of very specific issues that are important to them on which they're not satisfied. [ed.: bullets added][ed.: I suspect this figure is higher, for 'Freudian' reasions. When you can't change what you have, defense mechanisms ought to protect you from seeing just how bad what you have really is.] Critics of vouchers are concerned that people want to go private basically for pernicious reasons, right — because they are elitist, because they want to separate themselves off from minorities and from the lower classes. Basically they see vouchers as having greatest appeal to the affluent and to people who are advantaged, and they think that if vouchers were adopted, you would get an exodus of these kinds of people from the public system which would exacerbate existing social biases. Voucher leaders, of course, claim the opposite and claim that parents are basically interested in performance, not in elitism and race and these other sorts of things, and that the people who would be especially interested in vouchers would be the people who have the lowest performing schools and who have no choice now — I mean, like people who are disadvantaged...In Milwaukee, the civil rights leader who did most to bring vouchers to poor kids subsequently split with the movement over the issue of dropping 'means-testing.' She wanted to keep it; didn't want vouchers given to kids who weren't poor. (Must fact-check this, but the jist is correct.) I'm going to have to carry on lobbying for TEACHING TO MASTERY. Q: Your survey found that people think it's unfair to trap kids in bad schools, and that people would like more competition and more choice, but that they also like the public schools. That would lead one to conclude they want more public school choice. Could you articulate what it is a voucher system would add beyond what a public school choice system would do? MR. MOE: Well, allowing children to go private gives them access to the entire private sector. The private sector contains a lot of schools! Like in Milwaukee, there are more than a hundred private schools that these kids now have access to, of all different types. So there's much more diversity, much more choice when you take advantage of the private sector. Also, there's much more dynamism and innovation in the private sector. They can just like, set up a new school. No, not the public schools. No, they have to spend $40 million building buildings that can withstand a nuclear holocaust or something, and it takes forever, right? All this planning and everything, and in the private sector you can get lots of schools being set up, giving kids much more in the way of choice and the kinds of programs they have. You know, there's just a lot more diversity. I think it's very important to include the private schools, and also very important not to see this as some sort of subversion of public education. I think we should think of it as an integral part of public education and that the public's job is to see to it that its money is used to educate kids. And if that's our fundamental goal, it doesn't matter where they get educated, just that they get educated. And the idea that they have to be educated in government-run schools, I think is an old idea, that doesn't make much sense. If we really think about the kids, they don't have to be educated there.Hear, hear. jeez I'm thinking: how can you be pro-social justice and anti-voucher? ![]() TIME/Oprah poll (public school, money, NCLB, 21st century) the politics of vouchers Terry Moe, political scientist -- CatherineJohnson - 16 Jan 2006 AmericansLoveRegulations 23 Jan 2006 - 23:46 CatherineJohnson They do. This is the one area in which I'm out of step with Mainstream America — the one area in which Ed is the Real American (inside wrestling reference), not me. I say we regulate the constructivists. They could use some adult supervision, and I could provide it. -- CatherineJohnson - 16 Jan 2006 StateOfTheUnion2006 06 Feb 2006 - 13:39 CarolynJohnston From President Bush's state of the union address, a call for 30,000 new math teachers to move from math and science-based professions into teaching (hat tip to JoAnneC, who can't believe we're so late with this post): "Third, we need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We've made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs. If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world."My question is this: will there be incentives? And would President Bush like to pay me to develop teacher training courses? -- CarolynJohnston - 03 Feb 2006 PutOnYourBigGirlPanties 04 Feb 2006 - 22:37 CatherineJohnson ![]() I'd noticed that eduwonk had been somewhat perseveratively quoting Margaret Spellings' line about putting on her big girl panties.....which was just odd enough not to cause me instantly to go read the article it came from....but then joannejacobs finally read the article herself, which galvanized me into action.....and let me tell you, I'm glad I got over to WAPO. Margaret Spellings: In Her Own Class is fantastic: Spellings is blunter than you might expect, vivid and bigger, as if her photo had been cropped and enlarged. She is a tall woman swinging an iguana-green purse, wearing edgy rectangular glasses and chewing gum. (She spits it into the garbage when you arrive, as if you were the teacher.) Spellings scanned the crowd: "Colin's the little hottie of the school." She had her babies without pain medication. She's a tough enough manager to be called a "bulldog on details" by Rove; strong enough to raise her girls as a single mom when her first marriage ended; brave enough to admit that she dreams of being a torch singer draped over a piano; Texan enough to live by the motto (on her notepad) "Put on your big girl panties and deal with it." the good news is — — she's got a kid in middle school: Middle school is tricky, Spellings said -- too many hormones and too loose a curriculum. When boys in white shirts and ties shuffled onstage, Spellings said, "They're so awkward, it cracks me up." Her own experience in seventh grade was "the low point of my life," she said. ". . . There's a lot of mush going on in middle school -- one of the nuts we haven't cracked in public education policy." You can order the big girl doll here. -- CatherineJohnson - 04 Feb 2006 FundingForTheDOE 13 Feb 2006 - 23:47 CarolynJohnston From the desk of JoAnneCobasko, budget highlights related to the President's education proposals in his State of the Union address: Among the highlights of the FY 2007 budget request are: Preparing America's Students for Global Competition. $380 million under the American Competitiveness Initiative will strengthen math and science instruction in our elementary and secondary schools, including:As usual, this raises more questions than it answers. The first being: what the heck are Reading First and Striving Readers, and why should we base expensive math improvement initiatives on them?? I'm not hostile, I just don't know anything about them. And the second: just how do they plan to encourage qualified professionals to teach high school math and science courses with $25M? Billboards? I can see it now. "Having a midlife crisis? Sick of that high-paying job at Microsoft? Feeling like you need more meaning in your life? Come teach public school!" -- CarolynJohnston - 11 Feb 2006 TheLimitsOfScientificResearch 14 Feb 2006 - 00:02 CatherineJohnson From a terrific short essay by Chester Finn, warning of an almost-certain-to-occur (IMO) Unintended Consequence. It's worth reading the whole thing. Science and nonscience: The limits of scientific research in a nutshell
-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Feb 2006 RetirementBombsAway 20 Feb 2006 - 21:44 CatherineJohnson via Education Wonks, Schools face 'death spiral', a USA Today article on the cost of lifetime health insurance for retired teachers. random factoid: Los Angeles sets aside $1,000 of its $5,500-per-student budget to cover health care costs for current and retired teachers. To cover the newly estimated $10 billion liability would require $2,087 per student. Well, I guess the good news is they won't have a lot of money left over for purchasing fancy-shmancy manipulatives or hiring math consultants who don't know any math. (just kidding) N Y Times on 'pension bomb' (free link) Since 1983, the city of Duluth, Minn., has been promising free lifetime health care to all of its retired workers, their spouses and their children up to age 26. No one really knew how much it would cost. Three years ago, the city decided to find out. It took an actuary about three months to identify all the past and current city workers who qualified for the benefits. She tallied their data by age, sex, previous insurance claims and other factors. Then she estimated how much it would cost to provide free lifetime care to such a group. The total came to about $178 million, or more than double the city's operating budget. spike my salary, please My understanding is that many or most public employee pension contracts have the force of law, which I take to mean that citizens can't vote to revise the terms: ...the public pension morass is bigger, more wide ranging, and ultimately more costly than anything you've seen in the corporate world. The practices, quietly approved by elected officials, allow workers to dramatically spike their pre-retirement compensation, to retire on more than 100 percent of their pay, and to draw both their salaries and pensions, with guaranteed market returns, simultaneously. [snip] ...for almost a decade now, while it has been continually sweetening the pension plan, the [San Diego] city council has also voted to give the pension system far less money than its actuary recommended. But those pension benefits must be paid -- they're protected by California law, just as public pensions are constitutionally guaranteed or protected in 40 other states. [snip] A corporation, under federal law, typically must start pumping money into its pension plan once the value of the plan's assets sinks below 80 percent of its liabilities. But there is no such law governing state and local plans -- the decision to pump additional money into a pension plan lies with the individual discretion of state and local governments. Thanks to this discretionary funding system, shortsighted politicians can simultaneously dole out rich pensions to their heavily unionized workforces (thereby presumably currying favor with a powerful group of voters and avoiding nasty strikes) and keep the rest of their constituents at bay by shoving the liability for those increased benefits onto future taxpayers. "The next generation of taxpayers is not sitting at the table," says Jeremy Gold, a New YorkÐbased pension consultant. "In fact, the money is going from our children's pockets to today's municipal employees." [snip] ...government plans are generally much richer than those offered by corporations. The average public sector employee now collects an annual pension benefit of 60 percent after 30 years on the job, or 75 percent if he is one of the one-fifth or so of workers who are not eligible to collect Social Security benefits. Of the corporate employers that still offer traditional pensions, the average benefit is equal to 45 percent of salary after 30 years. Just as important, about 80 percent of government retirees receive pensions that are increased each year to keep pace with the cost of living, a feature which protects pensions against the effects of inflation and that can increase the value of a typical pension by hundreds of thousands of dollars over a person's retirement. But such inflation protection is nonexistent in corporate plans. [snip] In March [San Diego] agreed to a tentative settlement that would require it to increase its annual payments to the pension plan dramatically, starting with $130 million in 2005 (a 40 percent increase over the prior year) and gradually rising in subsequent years. To put that amount in context, San Diego's total general revenue fund for 2004 is $742 million. No matter what, San Diego residents are now facing some drastic cutbacks in city services or unwanted tax hikes. As for the latest round of pension increases, they can't be reduced because -- you guessed it -- they're protected by law. [snip] Governments will probably continue to offset rising pension costs by slashing services and, in the process, laying off workers -- not a pleasant alternative for either the workers or the citizens of the community. source: The $366 billion outrage (Wall Street Week with Fortune) update Joe Williams links to an AFT response: This might come as a surprise to many readers, but in the 25 years that I negotiated contracts with school districts for affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers, no one ever threw money at me.Hey! Me, neither! Actually, that's not true. People threw money at Temple and me for ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION. Unfortunately, they didn't throw pensions and/or health care. -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Feb 2006 QueensLawsuit 01 Mar 2006 - 17:42 CatherineJohnson I'm intensely interested in this lawsuit. -- CatherineJohnson - 01 Mar 2006 ComputersInTheClassroomPartTwo 19 Mar 2006 - 19:20 CatherineJohnson "No pilot project in educational technology has ever been declared a failure." source: High Tech Heretic Clifford Stoll computers in the classroom ed technology never fails "Computer Delusions" another negative study -- CatherineJohnson - 19 Mar 2006 NoVendorLeftBehindPartOne 19 Mar 2006 - 21:32 CatherineJohnson This is fun. -- CatherineJohnson - 19 Mar 2006 TheFilmstripsOfThe1990s 22 Mar 2006 - 00:21 CatherineJohnson The Filmstrips of the 1990s....that would be computers in the classroom. source: The Atlantic Monthly July 1997 The Computer Delusion Volume 280, No. 1 pages 45-62 news from nowhere I'm going to go out on a limb and say that someone, somewhere in the Irvington administration wants to buy lots more technology. Why do I say this? 1. 'Technology' was a line item on the PTSA Forum wish list. This list, I believe, (NOT FACT-CHECKED) was created by the school board. 2. Irvington is holding its first ever 'Technology Expo,' an event at which teachers from all four schools will show how they use technology to teach. Students will "share digital portfolios, computer programming, and multimedia presentations." Vendors will be present! Call me cynical, but that sounds like a dog and pony show to me. I'm against it No more technology. Please. Teachers don't like it, as far as I can tell.....at least, judging by the relative non-use of edline thus far. Back in the fall Raina Kor told parents that many teachers feel 'uncomfortable' with technology. That's why it was going to take awhile for teachers to start using edline; they were uncomfortable. Well, I say: GOOD FOR THEM. What is all this technology doing for us? The one skill I have seen a 6th grader use from his 'Technology' class this year is to download soft porn from funbay. I'm serious. His mom asked him where he learned how to pull pictures from the web and put them in his 'Picture File,' and he said, 'I learned it in Technology.' I don't want any more technology. I certainly don't want to pay for any more technology. what do teachers want? from Computer Delusions by Todd Oppenheimer: If history really is repeating itself, the schools are in serious trouble. In Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 (1986), Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University and a former school superintendent, observed that as successive rounds of new technology failed their promoters' expectations, a pattern emerged. The cycle began with big promises backed by the technology developers' research. In the classroom, however, teachers never really embraced the new tools, and no significant academic improvement occurred. This provoked consistent responses: the problem was money, spokespeople argued, or teacher resistance, or the paralyzing school bureaucracy. Meanwhile, few people questioned the technology advocates' claims. As results continued to lag, the blame was finally laid on the machines. Soon schools were sold on the next generation of technology, and the lucrative cycle started all over again. In Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, Cuban finds that "less than ten percent of teachers used their classroom computers at least once a week." update: Steve Jobs on technology and the schools Steven Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer and a man who claims to have “spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet,” has come to a grim conclusion: “What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology,” he told Wired magazine last year. “No amount of technology will make a dent.... You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school—none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.” Temple (Grandin) says the same thing Listen to Tom Henning, a physics teacher at Thurgood Marshall, the San Francisco technology high school. Henning has a graduate degree in engineering, and helped to found a Silicon Valley company that manufactures electronic navigation equipment. "My bias is the physical reality," Henning told me, as we sat outside a shop where he was helping students to rebuild an old motorcycle. "I'm no technophobe. I can program computers." What worries Henning is that computers at best engage only two senses, hearing and sight -- and only two-dimensional sight at that. "Even if they're doing three-dimensional computer modeling, that's still a two-D replica of a three-D world. If you took a kid who grew up on Nintendo, he's not going to have the necessary skills. He needs to have done it first with Tinkertoys or clay, or carved it out of balsa wood." As David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University, puts it, "A dean of the University of Iowa's school of engineering used to say the best engineers were the farm boys," because they knew how machinery really worked. Temple has seen this phenomenon time and again. Architects who learned to make scale drawings on CAD make core perceptual errors, such as not knowing where the center of a circle is. This is a brand-new category of error. Architects who learned to make scale drawings by hand never, ever make such mistakes. Never have and never will. (Temple says that Frank R. Wilson's The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture explains some of this...when I finally get around to reading, I'll report back.) silver lining Turkle's concern is that software of this sort fosters passivity, ultimately dulling people's sense of what they can change in the world. There's a tendency, Turkle told me, "to take things at 'interface' value."Indeed, after mastering SimCity, a popular game about urban planning, a tenth-grade girl boasted to Turkle that she'd learned the following rule: "Raising taxes always leads to riots." Gee, if Irvington kids are using their many hours online to learn that raising taxes always leads to riots, maybe there's hope we won't see a double-digit increase one of these years... computers in the classroom ed technology never fails "Computer Delusions" another negative study Steven Jobs on computers in the classroom Why Web Users Scan Instead of Read history without books -- CatherineJohnson - 19 Mar 2006 EmailToThePrincipal 08 Oct 2006 - 22:40 CatherineJohnson back story here Ed just talked to the principal on the telephone. He was aggressive and unresponsive. The principal, I mean. Not Ed. So. Hi Scott — I’m sending a detailed memo covering our experience with Ms. K’s class this year. But I’d like to respond to one point immediately. You observed that Ms. K does not know whether Christopher can do the calculations involved in constructing a scale drawing. Scott, I agree. Ms K does not know whether her students have learned the material she’s covered in class. This is true for all of her students, including those who did record their mental math. We know of one child in the class who has earned grades of C and D on his tests, while scoring an unbroken string of As on the Extended Response problems he takes home to do. What has that child learned about pre-algebra? Can Ms. K tell you? Punishing a child for failing to write down mental math is not teaching; nor is it information. Punitive grading is entirely negative. It demoralizes the child, angers the parents, and erodes trust. We have two core problems with Ms. K’s teaching, one concerning her ability to inspire, motivate and lead her students to success in mathematics, the other concerning her ability to assess performance. It’s the latter that concerns me here. Ms. K does not perform systematic, ongoing formative assessment. She covers material, gives tests, and assigns grades. And there her responsibility ends. This year Ed and I have been fully responsible for seeing to it that Christopher actually learns the math Ms. K has ‘covered.’ This wasn’t the case at Dows Lane; nor was it the case with all but one of Christopher’s teachers at Main Street School. That teacher was not asked to return. I would hope everyone involved in Ms. K’s tenure case would ask himself this question: Suppose Christopher—or any other student in the class—does not know how to construct a scale drawing? What happens now? Ms. K’s answer is: Nothing. Once she’s recorded a grade, she’s done. If Ms. K wanted to know whether Christopher can construct a scale drawing, she would have him do a simple scale drawing in her presence. She should do that with the entire class, because none of the kids I know was able to handle this assignment on his own. By rights, Ms. K ought to be finding out whether any of her students can do a simple scale drawing independently, without parent guidance. Instead, it’s up to us to make sure Christopher has mastered this skill. I will do so this summer when I reteach pre-algebra using Saxon Algebra 1/2. If I’m going to do Ms. K's job, I want a refund. Ms. K, after two years of work, is going to be awarded lifetime employment, lifetime benefits, and a generous retirement, all funded by taxpayers like me. Scott, I need to earn a living. I have two children with severe handicaps who will require lifetime care; I must fund my own retirement. I need to be able to rely on our very well paid teachers to teach my son. Instead I’m pulling worksheets, buying and studying textbooks, reteaching math lessons, preparing Christopher for the state test (Ms. K told the kids not to study because they ‘don’t know what’s going to be on the test’),* and helping Christopher’s friends in the class to boot. This isn’t right. Catherine Johnson * Topics covered on the New York State tests are listed here: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/mathstandards/g6.html. These topics are also listed in the Glencoe Test Prep book Ms. Kahl sent home sporadically in the run-up to the test. I am KICKING myself for not homeschooling. Actually, it's not even at that level. I'm kicking myself for not having a clue. I'm kicking myself for not having the slightest idea what was wrong with our public schools. I'm kicking myself for not even suspecting that, when it comes to public schools, money ≠ quality. Christopher won't be doing any more 4-hour projects for Ms. K. That's over. My only concern now is: is he learning pre-algebra to mastery? Everything else is noise. extended response problem from IL state test extended response problem 1 extended response problem 2 extended response problem 6 extended response problems 7, 8, 9 direct instruction & the rigor conundrum Dan's daughter reacts to extended response problem defensive teaching of Singapore bar models open-ended problems in math ed problems that teach - "Action Math" email to the principal keywords: performance indicators New York state tests New York state standards -- CatherineJohnson - 27 Mar 2006 IrvingtonTutors 05 Apr 2006 - 01:22 CatherineJohnson Just talked to a friend. A couple of weeks ago she said she'd hired a tutor. She had to, or her son was going to flunk the year. So she hired an Irvington teacher. That's what everyone does. When their kids are struggling in school, parents work with them every night, go over the assignments, reteach the matieral, check edline to see if anything's been posted. Parents here put in a lot of teaching time. Then, when that doesn't work, they hire an Irvington teacher. So I just found out how much she's paying this teacher. Care to guess? bonus question What effect, if any, has the tutor had on this child's grades? update: tonsillectomies in Vermont After Doug raised the issue of perverse incentives in the Comments thread, a Ktm Guest and teacher disagreed, saying that she refers some students - often those who've missed school - to a colleague who does a terrific job with them. Ktm Guest does not feel that he/she is being influenced by perverse incentives. That led me to recall a 'tonsillectomy study' finding that doctors on a fee per service pay schedule performed far more tonsillectomies than other doctors, without realizing that their numbers were so high. Incentives operate at an unconscious as well as a conscious level on all of us. This is core human nature; this is the way the brain functions. Until the entire field of cognitive science jumps in to tell me I'm wrong, which is not going to happen, my Truth is: the unconscious is real, it's UNCONSCIOUS, and it makes its own decisions without feeling it needs to clear them with us. This morning I went hunting for the tonsillectomy study, which turns out to have been performed by a Dartmouth professor. (for newbies: I graduated from Dartmouth College) Here's the critical passage: The Vermont Experience During the 1960s, Dr. Wennberg began examining the rates at which different hospitals in Vermont were performing tonsillectomies. With four young children, he had a natural interest in this topic. What he found surprised him. In one area, the rate was so high that about 70% of the children in a particular school system were having their tonsils removed by the time they were 12 years old. In the neighboring town (where Wennberg's children attended school), the rate was about 20%. "By 1973", Wennberg says, "there was a tightening of the general variation throughout the state . . . without any intervention on our part other than simply feeding back the information." Wennberg's team discovered that two physicians in one high-rate area Morrisville had initiated a second opinion procedure along with an extensive review of the relevant literature. This led to a central question: which rate is right? In many respects Wennberg has been studying the answer to that question ever since. One thing is certain: proper measurement of outcomes is key. There are a couple of interesting points here. Number one, the 'inflated' rates of tonsillectomy weren't necessarily inflated. It could just as easily have been the low-tonsillectomy town had a deflated rate. Judging by everything I read and hear, this is what we see today in Medicare and health insurance coverage which tends to cover surgical treatments but not pharmaceutical treatments, physical therapies, and so on. Wennberg's Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Ways and Means discusses these effects.) Number two, I haven't tracked down the original study, but given how accurate my memory has been thus far (!) I'm going to trust my recollection that the physicians in the 70%-rate-of-tonsillectomy town had no idea they were likely being influenced by an incentive to perform unnecessary tonsillectomies. Just finding out how far out of line they were with other physicians living and working in other towns caused them to scale back. The truth is that every day in every way we are affected by incentives to do X and disincentives to do Y. Most of the time we don't know why we do the things we do. ![]() Dr. Wennberg how much do Irvington teacher-tutors make? Irvington teacher-tutors, part 2 new Irvington policy -- CatherineJohnson - 01 Apr 2006 CharacterEducationPartnership 02 Apr 2006 - 17:33 CatherineJohnson What do we know about the Character Education Partnership, if anything? advice for vendors -- CatherineJohnson - 02 Apr 2006 TaxpayersGuideToSchoolReform 02 Apr 2006 - 20:41 CatherineJohnson ![]() Education Week interview with Larry Cuban. -- CatherineJohnson - 02 Apr 2006 TheCharterBlog 11 Apr 2006 - 00:10 CatherineJohnson The Charter Blog I want more charter schools right now. ![]() Speaking of which, I started reading Joanne Jacobs' book. It's great. ![]() Our School ![]() Joe Williams And here is Joe Williams' pro-charter blog, The Chalkboard. I've read Williams' book, Cheating Our Kids. It's a page-turner. The book is especially helpful on the politics of school reform. I had no idea, for instance, that urban school boards are stacked with union members. Board elections are held in 'off-months,' like April, when nobody votes. Unions run candidates, and vote their candidates in. (The whole idea of a 'public sector' union was something I didn't understand until reading Williams' book.) update, from Anne Dwyer: In Michigan they changed the law for school elections. The law states that school elections can only be held in Nov with state and and national elections or in May. If the school district holds the elections in Nov, the entire cost of the election is borne by the clerk's office. If they decide to hold them in May, then the school district must pay the cost of the elections. The number of school districts that chose to put their elections in Nov and not have to pay the cost: 1. Williams also has separate chapters devoted to the Democratic and Republican parties that are extremely useful, along with a prediction about when the Democratic Party will swing around to supporting students instead of school employees and vendors, and how exactly that will happen. ![]() ![]() Who is this guy? ![]() Charter Blog links to unknown happy person -- CatherineJohnson - 10 Apr 2006 BlameGame 11 Apr 2006 - 19:25 CatherineJohnson Ed chose to tell me, over dinner, that the entire country thinks we aren't spending enough money on the schools. swell You may or may not be able to access the National Journal page carrying the poll. It's pretty interesting. For instance, 5% of Americans give U.S. public schools an overall grade of 'A' for excellent. That's interesting. from the Poll Track email: Nearly six in 10 said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to improve the country's public schools. More than 20 points fewer -- 38 percent -- said they would not. And the survey indicates respondents aren't happy with the amount of money already allocated to education, either. Sixty-four percent said the country is spending too little money on public schools; 22 percent said it was about the right amount and just one in 10 said it was too much. Nearly a quarter of respondents -- a slim plurality -- blamed finances for some schools' failure to improve test scores. But nearly as many (21 percent) said school districts were at fault. Eighteen percent blamed parents, 14 percent blamed students themselves and 11 percent blamed teachers. The No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration initiative designed partly to address accountability in education, got a mixed response in the poll. Thirty-five percent said they thought the 2002 legislation has had a positive effect on schools, but the same number said they thought it hadn't had much impact at all. Twenty-three percent said they saw a negative effect. Respondents also revealed some trepidation about curriculum. A majority said schools are not "teaching students the skills they will need for our economy in the 21st century," and a 44-percent plurality gave schools an average grade of C. OK, I'm going to go scrounge for some glimmers of hope.... Conducted 3/28-30/06 by SRBI Public Affairs; surveyed 1,000 adults; margin of error +/-3% (release, 4/9). A response of * indicates less than 1 percent. Where do you think the United States ranks internationally when it comes to the quality of education we provide overall? Would you say that America is best when it comes to quality of education, in the top 5, top 10, top 20 or below that? Best 3% Top 5 25 Top 10 29 Top 20 22 Below that 17 No answer/Don't know 3 In general, what grade would you give public schools in the United States -- an "A" for excellence, a "B", "C", "D" or a failing grade of "F"? A (Excellent) 5% B 31 C 44 D 10 F (Failing grade) 7 No answer/Don't know 3 Do you think that we are spending too much money on public schools, too little money or about the right amount of money on public schools? Too much 10% Too little 64 About the right amount 22 No answer/Don't know 4 Would you be willing to pay higher taxes to improve the public schools, or not? Willing to pay higher taxes 59% Not willing 38 No answer/Don't know 3 Do you think that the public schools overall are teaching students the skills they will need for our economy in the 21st century, or not? Teaching the skills they need 38% Not teaching them 57 No answer/Don't know 6 Do you have any children in your household currently attending school, grades "K" thru grade 12? Yes 36% No 64 (If "yes") Do any currently attend public schools? Yes 86% No 14 No answer/Don't know 1 (Asked of those who have children attending public schools) And what grade would you give your child's school -- an "A" for excellence, a "B", "C", "D" or a failing grade of "F"? A (Excellent) 23% B 46 C 21 D 7 F (Failing grade) 3 No answer/Don't know * (Asked of those who have children attending public schools) Do you think that your child or children attending public schools are being adequately prepared for college if they decide to go to college? Yes 62% No 33 No answer/Don't know 6 (Asked of those who have children attending public schools) If you had the choice of sending your child to a different school in your area, would you switch schools, or not? Would switch schools 40% Not switch schools 57 No answer/Don't know 3 In your opinion, do you think there is too much emphasis on standardized achievement testing in the public schools in your community, too little or about the right amount? Too much 44% Too little 11 About the right amount 39 No answer/Don't know 6 In 2001, Congress passed President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act. How much would you say that you know about the "No Child Left Behind" act? Great deal 17% Some 40 Not much 29 Nothing at all 14 No answer/Don't know 1 Based on anything you may have seen or heard, do you think that the No Child Left Behind act has had a positive impact on education, a negative impact or not much impact at all? Positive 35% Negative 23 Not much impact 35 No answer/Don't know 8 Who is to blame when some public schools fail to improve test scores? Not enough money 24% School districts 21 Parents 18 Students 14 Teachers 11 No answer/Don't know 11 I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think the significant finding is the one I've posted in red. 57% say students aren't being prepared for the 21st century. That's huge. (well, I think it's huge....) My impression is that when you're trying to sort through mixed emotions, or confronting a highly charged issue, a useful strategy is to ask people how they think other people would answer the question. In this survey, I would have liked to see a question asking people what grade they think other Americans would give public schools. The question about whether generic students are being generically prepared for the 21st century seems sufficiently abstracted from the immediate reality of a respondent's Public School In My Brain Nexus to cut through Americans' universal love of public schools. It's also interesting that NCLB polls as well as it does. NCLB is the target of a pervasive, coordinated negative campaign from the unions supported by a wide swathe of the media. (aside: I don't say this as an editorial comment. NCLB may end up doing more harm than good; I have no idea.) If I were running the NEA, the fact that only 23% of the country thinks the law has had a negative impact would have me worried. TIME/Oprah poll (public school, money, NCLB, 21st century) the politics of vouchers Terry Moe, political scientist -- CatherineJohnson - 10 Apr 2006 DougOnMoneyAsASignal 27 Apr 2006 - 19:27 CatherineJohnson from Doug "But there's hard, and then there's Kafkaesque." One of the big problems with this is that kids are terrible at telling the difference between the two. Parent: "Clean up your room." Kid: "I can't." After years of that, when a kid comes home saying that his class is "too hard", the parent is biased away from sympathy. If the parent doesn't have very strong knowledge about how to teach appropriately for the skill level of the kid, this is a rational result. After all, we pay teachers to be SMEs (subject-matter experts) in education, so we should listen to them. Historically, there's been a presumption of competence of our kids' teachers. I don't know that presumption is warranted anymore. It's certainly rebuttable, and all too frequently rebutted. As to what we should do about this sad state of affairs? Support school choice, whether through charter schools, "choicing in" to regular public schools, or vouchers. There must be effective signalling back to the schools when their results are insufficient, and money is the only signal that works consistently. Is it true that money is the only signal that works consistently? I have no idea. I'm asking. From where I sit, he's right about parents being biased away from sympathy. I'm actually close to developoing a Unified Theory of Middle School, and Doug's observation reminds me that part of the way the whole thing works is that you get middle school grade deflation at the exact moment your kids are most difficult to deal with inspiring of sympathy, confidence, and good thoughts generally. -- CatherineJohnson - 25 Apr 2006 NycEducatorStrikesAgain 12 Aug 2006 - 12:32 CatherineJohnson arrgh speaking of administrators WESTCHESTER: Poorer School Districts Practice Higher Math to Pay Leaders OSSINING is one of the poorer school districts in Westchester, and its students' achievement levels are average. But in one category, it is competitive with the best districts in the state: Its administrators are well paid. Superintendent Robert J. Roelle is one of a small but growing group of superintendents who make more than $300,000 in salary and benefits, according to information compiled by the State Education Department. And with 26 assistant superintendents, principals and department chairmen and women making at least $104,000, Ossining has one of the largest contingents of six-figure executives in the state: about 6 per 1,000 students, a level rivaled only by a few other districts in Westchester and Long Island. "It's more than the governor makes," Irwin Kavy, the school board president, said of Dr. Roelle's salary. "It's extremely high." Across suburban New York, salaries of school administrators are testing new heights. Districts, competing to give the children of their affluent residents every advantage, have helped create a seller's market for management talent that has pushed some superintendents into the thin air of the $300,000 salary-and-benefit package. Meanwhile, the $200,000 milestone — effectively the floor for superintendent pay now — has become increasingly common among deputy and assistant superintendents. Fifty-six school administrators in Westchester now make more than $200,000 in total compensation, and 19 of them are assistants or deputies. [snip] The median increase in total compensation of superintendents in the county was 8.6 percent last year, according to data reported to the Education Department. Inflation advanced just 3.3 percent in that time. [snip] Demand has increased because a cohort of teachers hired in the late 1960's, who became administrators in the 1980's and 1990's, is now retiring. Boards are looking to replace about 80 of the state's approximately 750 superintendents each year, instead of the usual 40 or 45, according to Thomas Rogers, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. But supply has dwindled, officials contend, because administrative jobs have become less attractive. "The job has become incredibly complex," said Vincent T. Beni, a recruiter and former superintendent in Irvington. "Fiscal constraints are imposed from outside, and they drive a lot of the decisions. The imposition of mandates from state and federal government are not funded, and require you to go out and ask people to raise their taxes to pay for them. When I first started, we were education leaders of the community. Now, you've become a fund-raiser." A word on Vin Beni. We liked the guy. He was superintendent when we first moved here, and he'd come over from BOCES, so he knew his way around special ed. He was brought in, as far as we can tell, to build the new middle school. He built it, and it was finished on time. But it cost more than it was supposed to cost and the place is already falling down. At board meetings he never missed a chance to tell us how strongly he opposed state tests & state standards, and how great the pro-tax activists who'd hired him were. (Apparently there had been an anti-tax revolt that was squashed by one of our neighbors, who's been on the school board ever since.) Vin was a hotshot. It was said that if Al Gore became president Vin would be going with him. That didn't happen, and Vin left in disgrace when a female superintendent over on the east side of the County had him arrested for stalking. Vin was a married guy. Christopher came out of his school one day to find news cameras in front interviewing parents. He thought the cameras were there because his school was so good. I spent the rest of the day racing to turn off Channel 12 every time they replayed the Vin Beni stalker story. The charges were dropped eventually, but I find the whole thing pretty hard to forgive. hostile parents The job is hard, especially in the small districts where residents expect a lot and costs are soaring. "The environment is more hostile," he said. "The tension has never been greater because the demand has never been greater and the costs have never been greater." You bet. This is one hostile environment, here in Irvington. We are paying these people a bloody fortune and we've got a middle school clobbering our kids with punitive grades and Discovery Algebra. Somehow, when I pay $18,000 a year in property taxes, I don't expect to have the assistant superintendent tell tales about me to our PTSA president behind closed doors. I don't know why. it's always worse than you think Joseph Auricchio, an Edgemont businessman who opposes hefty school taxes, says superintendents in suburban districts are not only overpaid but also, in some cases, not qualified. "Superintendents are teachers plucked out of the classroom to do a C.E.O.'s job totally unprepared and inexperienced," he said in an e-mail exchange. Mr. Kavy echoed those sentiments. He favors changing the state requirement that administrators be certified teachers, which he believes has contributed to the problems. Because of the requirement, he said, "someone with a great deal of experience in managing, but was never a teacher, can't fill those positions, so there's a shortage of administrators out there. I had no idea administrators were required by state law to be certified teachers. On second thought, given the antics of Bloomberg and Joel Klein (constructivism from the top down) I can't see that it matters. Top Pay for Top Jobs The shading of each school district is based on its concentration of high-salaried administrators, meaning any superintendents, assistant and deputy superintendents, principals, assistant principals and department heads whose annual salary and benefits exceed $104,000. State law requires all non-city school districts to report information about such employees, but some do not. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Apr 2006 DianeRavitchAtThisWeekInEducation 09 May 2006 - 19:12 CatherineJohnson On The HotSeat: Uber-Contrarian Diane Ravitch - worth reading the whole thing, but here are excerpts: Years ago when you were at the Department and I was working at a research firm, I had a sign up on my bulletin board quoting you about how education research was "a jobs program for the over-educated." Have things gotten any better, or are they worse? DR: I don't recall saying that, but I do think that education research is definitely improving. There are more and more randomized field trials, more concern for quality, and more education researchers with a strong background in social science. You and others had been arguing of late that the time was nigh for national standards and testing. I and others had been arguing that the timing wasn't right. Where are you on this topic as of now? DR: I think that the time will come when this country adopts some form of national curriculum and testing, probably first in mathematics and science. I don't think the time is right around the corner (although it was the Thatcher government in Britain that installed a national curriculum and national testing), but I do think it will happen. How does a national system actually happen? DR: I see NCLB as a transition in that direction, with the federal government taking on more responsibility for education quality, and with growing confusion about the difference between high scores on NAEP and much lower scores on state tests. Maybe in three years, or five years, or ten years, but it will happen. [snip] In light of recent debacles surrounding the testing industry, tell us the main things we need to know about the textbook approval and publishing industry about which you've written. Same players and issues, or an entirely different beast? DR: The issues are somewhat different, and to some extent so are the beasts. The basic problem, which is common to both testing and textbooks, is the reliability of the product. The media is shocked, shocked, when there is a foul-up in the testing industry and scores are not reported correctly or lost or something else goes wrong. They should be equally shocked by the errors that appear in textbooks and by the insertion of political correctness or the elimination of controversial passages, but those things don't capture headlines the way the testing problems do. Why don't textbook errors get as much attention? DR: In the main, I'd say it is because textbook reviews are few and far between, many are issued by single-issue groups, and even when they are on target and eye-popping, the most coverage they get is a single story on p. 14. Why do testing scandals make big waves and textbook "issues" turn into yawning non-scandals? Probably it is that specific individual students get hurt by the testing scandals, while the "victims" of bad textbooks are widely scattered and have no names. [snip] Clinton or GWB, and why? DR: That's a tough one for me, as I like both of them. Clinton was the best articulator of education issues that I have ever met or heard. He really believed (and I guess still believes) in the importance of strong standards (his original platform—Putting People First-- called for a system of national standards and tests). One time I saw him talk to an assembly at a high school in Silver Spring, Maryland. The kids were nearly leaping out of their chairs and cheering as he urged them to take harder courses and study more. The man really understood and communicated. GWB is obviously not in the same league as a talker as Clinton. But he understands the issues too and NCLB was his attempt to address them. There are a lot of things wrong with NCLB, but there are a lot of things right about it too. Recall that it passed both houses with 90% of the votes. Many compromises wre required to get to that 90% mark. Where do you and other right-leaning education thinkers overlap on policy issues, and where -- assuming things aren't as monolithic as they seem -- do you differ? DR: I am not a right-leaning education thinker. I am an independent-minded education thinker. I put a premium on having a rich liberal arts curriculum, which serves as the basis for testing, professional development, teacher education. That's why I like the Core Knowledge curriculum, which has much similarity to AP and IB but is aimed at pre-K through 8. I care more about what kids learn and whether they get a good education than about the political structure that surrounds schooling. Thus, while I have written favorably about choice, I worry about letting thousands of flowers bloom and discovering that most of them are weeds; I prefer, as one of my heroes Isaac Kandel wrote many years ago, to "prejudice the garden toward roses." What ideas, left or right, seem over-hyped or otherwise unlikely to meet the expectations that have been set for them? DR: A favorite of the left--more money--will not by itself produce great education; how it is spent makes a world of difference. A favorite of the right--vouchers--seems unlikely ever to happen, and if it did happen, would be bogged down in endless legal challenges, and even then, might lead to a plethora of mediocre schools that don't get great results. A favorite of the coroporate reformers, who are now in the saddle, is to change the structure (e.g., let the mayor run the schools), but that ignores the fundamental problems of curriculum and instruction. How has it happened to turn out that it's considered just fine to give federal funding to private and parochial colleges but not to private and parochial K12 schools? DR: This is a historical fluke. When Pell grants were debated, there was a big issue about whether aid should go to institutions or to students. Ultimately the decision was to aid needy students, and that effectively ended the question about "funding" private and parochial colleges since they too had students who were eligible for Pell grants. Underlying the difference, however, is the fact that the organized interests attached to K-12 education have always been focused on the goal of excluding private and parochial schools from aid formulas. The reasons for this are complex, but the end result has been fairly consistent (with the exception of Title I in 1965, which did include religious schools on a funding-follows-the-student basis). What about Catholic schools? DR: Although I’m Jewish and attended public schools for 13 years, I care a lot about Catholic schools, which are especially valuable in urban centers, and would hope we can figure out a way to help them survive. I say this as someone who is deeply committed to public education. In higher education, there is no inherent conflict between supporting the state university and the local Catholic college. Both serve important public purposes. Is there anyone out there that qualifies as a rising star on education issues from the right, an academic or politician? Who and why? DR: Frederick Hess of AEI, because he is so articulate and brilliant, even when people disagree with him. [ed.: ditto] [snip] A lot of my readers are education reporters. Who are the best education writers our there in the press, and what do you look for in a good education story? DR: My personal bests are Sam Freedman of the NY Times and Jay Mathews of the Washington Post. To me a good education story is one in which the writer examines the situation, the claims, the press releases, and questions whatever the authorities told him (or her). If for example the government or a think tank or someone else releases a major study, the writer reads it carefully, checks the evidence, talks to people with contrary views, and writes a story that puts the study or report into context. [snip] What are you up to right now in terms of writing projects, teaching, research? What's coming next? DR: Among several things, I am putting the finishing touches on an anthology that I edited with my son Michael Ravitch; it is called The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know, and it will be published later this year by Oxford University Press. I am also finishing up a glossary that I call EDSPEAK, which contains about 1,500-2,000 words and phrases of lingo and jargon that educators use. I am also writing and doing research for the Hoover and Brookings Institution, where I am a senior fellow. I am trying to lead a quieter life, with fewer obligations other than to my writing. I'm going to be ordering both books, along with at least $500-worth of books on writing I'm going to be ordering today, now that I know for a fact that Irvington Middle School does not teach writing and Irvington High School bases admissions to the Honors program on writing. -- CatherineJohnson - 09 May 2006 HomeschoolMomSaysParentsAreResponsibleAfterAll 15 May 2006 - 12:02 CatherineJohnson music to my ears . . . With regard to the April 25 letter "Defeated budgets ruin opportunities," I laughed at the writer's statement that those who voted against the school budget "failed (her) children." Parents are responsible for their children's education. With more and more families relying on two incomes to support a household, the public school districts have become a glorified day care system. If you are the type of parent who feels that educating your child is the burden of the taxpayers and local school district, you are the one who is failing your children. The writer states that she wants her children to "have every opportunity." Then, give it to them. You can start by erasing the notion that taxpayers should foot the bill for extracurricular activities. Dip into your own pocket and support your offspring's endeavors. With New Jersey's test scores dropping lower each year and incidents of violence in our schools on the rise, budgets that ask for new turf on football fields, additional sports teams and other nonessentials are irresponsible and asinine. If the money were going toward the basics — reading, science, history and mathematics — perhaps more people would consider voting "yes." But don't expect responsible parents and taxpayers to allow their pockets to be tapped once again to support noneducational agendas. I am the parent of two children. I pulled them out of public school last year and began home-schooling this year because I realize as the parent, these children are my responsibility to educate. I taught them for less than $2,000 this year. That figure includes books, manipulatives, bowling, tae kwon do, music lessons and field trips to places like Philadelphia and Plymouth Rock. Compare what my children have done this year to what other children were offered at an average cost that exceeds $10,000 per pupil. Unfortunately, I still pay the school portion of my property taxes. But don't expect me to vote "yes" when there is such a discrepancy in spending, overhead and test scores. Lucille Kentner via: This Week in Education I do think it's the state's responsibility to educate children, but seeing as how the state isn't doing it, I'm happy to read letters from mom's who are educating their kids on an annual budget of $2000. That's probably about what I'm paying to afterschool one child. That and the $18,000 in property taxes. Of course, that's not counting opportunity costs. -- CatherineJohnson - 09 May 2006 SchoolsAndGroceryStores 02 Jun 2006 - 14:15 CatherineJohnson I've been collecting essays I can have Christopher read and summarize. Edspresso links to one of the clearest columns on economics I've ever seen: Government K-12 schools, as now run everywhere in the U.S., will never excel at educating students. The reason is that each school gets its students and its budget without having to compete for them. Imagine if, say, supermarkets were run the same way we run schools. Everyone in my county would pay taxes to fund the county supermarket system; each one of us would then be assigned one specific county supermarket at which we are allowed to shop. Of course, once in our assigned store, all the groceries that each of us gets are "free" -- meaning, we don't have to pay for them on the spot. If the products and services supplied by the supermarket are of poor quality, we're not allowed to switch to other county markets; we must, instead, complain to politicians. The managers of the supermarkets will agree that their stores offer abysmal service and undesirable products; they will assert that this sad fact is caused by underfunding. We will be warned that only by paying higher taxes will we have any possibility of getting better supermarkets. So our taxes will rise and funding for supermarkets will increase. But quality will remain poor -- and the excuses offered by the government-employed managers of the supermarkets will remain that they need yet more funding. Author Donald J. Boudreaux, chair of George Mason's economics department, also has a nice passage on productivity in France and America: Average worker productivity will be higher in those economies cursed by heavy government intervention into the labor market. Although at first this prediction might sound counterintuitive, it makes perfect sense. When government artificially raises the cost of hiring workers -- by mandating high minimum wages or by increasing the amount of red tape firms must endure in order to fire workers -- the workers that remain unhired are those who are least productive. Think about it: If the French minimum wage is the equivalent of $10 per hour, then French workers who can produce no more than $9 per hour of revenue for employers will not be hired, while in the U.S. such workers will be hired. By pricing the lowest-skilled workers out of the labor market, European regulations ensure that only relatively high-skilled workers get jobs. So measures of average worker productivity will tend to show that workers in restrictive countries such as France and Germany are more productive than are workers in America. But this statistical outcome is a deceptive artifact of lamentable labor-market regulations whose burdens fall disproportionately on Europe's poorest peoples. Can't wait to share that one with Ed, who has more than once told me French workers are more productive than American workers. I've been wanting Christopher to go to George Mason ever since I read Alexander Tabarrok and Peter Boettke's column about it in SLATE. Now I'm sure. -- CatherineJohnson - 31 May 2006 TheBoyShow 03 Jul 2006 - 22:21 CatherineJohnson Thank heavens for character education. If we didn't have Character Education integrated into all courses at the middle school, the boys probably wouldn't have gotten any awards. ![]() Step 1: What is my problem? ![]() Step 2: Think, think, think of some solutions. ![]() Step 3: What would happen? ![]() Step 4: Give it a try! source: Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning This material was developed by the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families The Girl Show The Boy Show The Other Boy Show USA Today report on 135:100 boys:girls ratio in college sexism in Everyday Math invisible boys boy trouble (New Republic on boys) slacker boys, middle school, & forbidden positive images of boys in textbooks throw rocks at them please remain seated at all times Ann Althouse thread sums up classroom change cooperative vs. competitive learning Where the Boys Aren't letter from Robert Lerner, former commissioner NCES Tom Mortenson's research The Boys Project board for every 100 girls — -- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006 BillAndMelindaGates 24 Jun 2006 - 15:13 CatherineJohnson ![]() I love this photo. ![]() interview with Bill & Melinda Gates -- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006 FundTheChild 04 Jul 2006 - 00:44 CatherineJohnson Fund the Child Haven't read yet.
Not that it's of interest to anyone else, but I seem to be experiencing near-daily Synchronicity events. I learned what weighted scores are & how they're calculated for the first time ever two days ago. Today I'm reading about a bipartisan weighted funding scheme for school funding. This kind of thing is happening constantly. It's sort of fun, but I probably shouldn't count on it lasting forever. -- CatherineJohnson - 28 Jun 2006 JayeGreenOnSchoolFundingIncrease 24 Jul 2006 - 00:11 CatherineJohnson Few people are aware that our education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. By the middle of the 1950s that figure had roughly doubled to $2,345. By 1972 it had almost doubled again, reaching $4,479. And since then, it has doubled a third time, climbing to $8,745 in 2002. Since the early 1970s, when the federal government launched a standardized exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it has been possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. Over that period, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil doubled. So if more money produces better results in schools, we would expect to see significant improvements in test scores during this period. That didn't happen. For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged. Increased spending did not yield more learning. This big-picture evidence is strongly confirmed by academic research. Though you'd never know it from the tenor of most education debates, the vast majority of studies have found no sustained positive relationship between spending and classroom results. Economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University examined every solid study on spending and outcomes--a total of 163 research papers--and concluded that extra resources are more likely to be squandered than to have a productive effect. Still, countless people assume that our schools are underfunded. One explanation is that people don't want to believe that large amounts of public money have been used without producing significant results. There's plenty of room for debate on how best to reform our school system, but the sooner Americans realize that lack of resources is not the real problem in our schools the sooner we can have a meaningful debate on how to make education more productive. source: in a nutshell
update: here's Mark Roulo — I have seen these statistics before, and this is not the correct way to view things. Let us imagine for a moment that today we were spending WW-II (inflation adjusted) numbers to educate students. Let us further imagine that we had 30 students per classroom. So ... $1,200x30 = $36,000 per classroom. Subtract out maybe $3,000 per year for textbooks and supplies, so we've got $33,000 left. Then subtract out for electricity, heat, janitorial services, cost of running the bus, a small fraction of a librarian, books for the library ... Maybe we have left $20K-$15K to pay the teacher both salary and benefits. Health care is about $5K per year, so we will be offering average salaries of $10K to $15K per year to the teachers. Starting salaries will be lower. I think it is pretty obvious that while this was enough salary to compete for talent in 1945, it isn't enough today. This illustrates the problem with numbers like those quoted. Part of what the money spent on schools is doing is trying to be competitive with salaries offered by other jobs that the people we want to be teachers might take. Inflation adjusted numbers don't take this into account because everyone makes more in inflation adjusted terms since 1945 (that is part of why we are wealthier as a country). A more relevant number would be something like %GDP-spent-per-pupil (it would be a very small number!) over time. That would (probably) take into account increases in wealth and income across the board. Now ... I've made a big assumption in the above analysis. The assumption is that teaching can't get any more efficient (in the economic sense). If I had to guess, I'd guess that engineers get paid maybe 4x today what they did in 1945. Today's engineers, however, can do things that were simply impossible in 1945. In a very real sense, today's engineers are at least 4x as productive as their 1945 counterparts. A huge reason for this is that the tools have gotten better. Teaching hasn't changed much since 1945. One teacher, one class (15-30 students ... the class size has dropped), chalkboard/whiteboard or maybe overhead-projector or powerpoint. Lecture and books and tests. Teachers could be paid much better if we could find a way for them to teach more effectively. Unfortunately, while in engineering a lot of money gets spent on building new tools and purchasing new tools that prove to be effective (because the firms that do this correctly make more money), the incentive to do this in education seems to be non-existant. So, to summarize: As stated, the inflation numbers don't mean anything in terms of productivity because education must compete for employees in an economy that is gradually becoming wealthier. ![]() Terrific book. Illinois Loop page on school funding -- CatherineJohnson - 19 Jul 2006 TeacherPayPodgurskyAndHoxby 27 Jul 2006 - 18:58 CatherineJohnson Two more researchers weigh in on the subject of teacher pay. ![]() ![]() source: Is there a qualified teacher shortage? by Michael Podgursky ![]() ![]() ![]() source: Wage Distortion (pdf file: full text) Wage Distortion (abridge; not pdf) by Caroline Hoxby Hoxby's and Leigh's argument: The factors contributing to the reduced likelihood that women of high aptitude will enter the teaching profession appear to come from both within and outside the teaching profession. We focus on two that can be expected to be of critical significance. First, within the teaching profession, the pay scale of public school teachers has become increasingly compressed since the 1960s. The salary distribution has narrowed so that those with the highest aptitude earn no more than those with the lowest. This may have pushed able women out of the field of education. Second, outside of teaching, college-educated women have achieved greater parity in their pay vis-à-vis male workers, luring more able women to alternative professions. High-aptitude women may have pulled away from education in order to take special advantage of the new opportunities. While there could be other explanations outside our investigation, conventional wisdom has long pointed to new opportunities for college-educated women as the primary explanation for the change in teacher quality that many have sensed. We were inclined to accept the conventional wisdom when we began this project, but, after systematically comparing the relative importance of the two factors, we found, surprisingly enough, that pay compression within the teaching profession, induced by the introduction of collective bargaining, has had by far the greater effect. On further reflection, we were not quite so surprised by the results. For one thing, the overall timing of the decline in teacher quality corresponds to the rise of collective bargaining within education. Teacher unions won collective bargaining rights in key cities and states during the 1960s. Over the next 20 years, collective bargaining spread from state to state across the country. As a result of union action, the average salary for teachers increased modestly. But as the average was edging upward, the range of the scale narrowed sharply, so much so that able young women were bound to take notice. Moreover, collectively bargained contracts placed a premium on characteristics such as seniority and credentials rather than performance, further depressing the opportunities for the high-aptitude teacher. Christian Science Monitor's take on the Hoxby - Leigh paper: How do the new teachers measure up? by Teresa Mendez: "These teachers were never a big share, but they were a non-negligible share," says Caroline Hoxby, a professor of economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., whose research focuses on the economics of education. "People say they were important leaders. They weren't in every classroom but they were mentors." CSM's graphic, drawn from Hoxby's & Leigh's data: ![]() The Hoxby-Leigh article, which I read a year ago, was a revelation. Like everyone else, I had assumed that greater opportunities for women in other realms made teaching a less attractive occupation across the board. It hadn't occurred to me that a factor like wage compression, while making teaching less attractive to some women, would make the field more attractive to others. -- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006 LarrySummersFallOut 26 Oct 2006 - 12:53 CatherineJohnson $265 M wow I've ended up being somewhat "con" Larry Summers, mostly in light of Ericsson's research on expert performance, which I have yet to write a word about here. I'd read somewhere that Summers told a gathering of professors that economists have the highest IQs, political scientists have the next highest IQs, and sociologists have the lowest IQs of the three. I thought he couldn't possibly have said such a thing in public, but it turns out he did. Ed's friend who teaches at Harvard, and who was pro-Summers I think, was there when he said it. blech And then there's Ben Barres. The new blog Creating Passionate Users has a terrific post on expert performance that (almost) renders anything I would write superfluous. (She also has a follow-up on her own experience with the Shangri-La diet which I know all you ectomorph Math Brains eagerly await.) UPDATE 7-29-06: Christopher has lost 2 lbs in 2 weeks & Jimmy has probably lost the same — lots of water retention ups-and-downs with him no doubt due to meds. His high was 222, his low 216.5, and for the past few days he's been steady at 218. I've lost nothing, but have eaten no junk fook in 3 weeks thanks to ELOO. Virtue will have to be its own reward in my case.) UPDATE 8-7-06: Christopher has lost 5 lbs since July 20. That's 5 lbs in 19 days. It's still hard to tell with Jimmy, because his weight veers wildly, apparently due to huge swings in water weight. We think he may have lost 3 pounds. I seem to have lost 2 lbs. Everyone's appetite is down. Here's her expert performance graph: ![]() My feeling about this chart is that fuzzy math and bad teaching prevent students from leaping above the "suck threshold." When you never practice to mastery, because you understand a concept or because you "can always look it up" - where are you on the curve? At the bottom. With the drop-outs. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance TOC & excerpt expert performance Daniel Willingham on Ericsson's research The Shangri-La Diet at Amazon Seth Roberts website Shangri La diet in freakonomics 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 10-4-2006 Dr. Erika's olive oil diet works, too shangrila -- CatherineJohnson - 27 Jul 2006 LovelessOnEducationPhilanthropy 04 Aug 2006 - 20:27 CatherineJohnson The title of my paper is how program officers at education philanthropies view education. It is inspired by a 1997 study of education professors done by the Public Agenda Foundation in New York City, and in that particular survey, what Public Agenda found was, and I quote from the study: "Professors of education have a distinct, perhaps even singular prescription for what good teachers should do, one that differs markedly from that of most parents and taxpayers." [snip] The study concluded with the following. Quote. "While the public's priorities are discipline, basic skills and good behavior in the classroom, teachers of teachers severely downplay such goals." So what I decided to do was give the same survey to program officers at education foundations, and in a nutshell, what I found was that they too are far outside the mainstream, on some issues [program officers are] even farther outside the mainstream than education professors. [snip] You can see in these bottom... six different classroom activities. These are sort of mainstays of progressive education. These are thing that come under criticism by progressives over the last 100 years. Take a look. Should kids be given--this is the percentage that responded that more of this would be a good thing. Should kids be given more homework assignments? Only 21 percent of the program officers felt that they should be given more homework. 41 percent. The education professors are tougher on homework. Penalties for students who break the rules. Only 19 percent of the program officers. 37 percent, again about twice as many of education professors. And in a minute I'm going to show you what the general thinks about these things. The title of the public agenda report was Different Drummers. The program officers at the philanthropies appeared to be even more different than the different drummers, at least on issues of discipline and basic skills. Those are the two main differences. Memorization, endorsed by only 11 percent of the program officers. Prizes to reward good behavior in the classroom. This is Alfie Cohn's [ph] big problem, he has a big problem with that. Only 11 percent. And then multiple choice exams, not popular at all. source: character ed Look at the question on schools fail to teach religious values. If you see that as a serious problem or not. Only 6 percent of program officers think that's a problem. Among traditional Christian parents, not surprisingly, 70 percent see as a problem. But even in the general public, almost half, 47 percent, think it's a serious problem. I'm surprised to discover that, if I had to choose, I would come down on the "serious problem" side of this issue. I don't want public schools to teach religious faith, though I support vouchers for religious schools and I wish to heck our schools would teach the Bible as subject matter content. Biblical literacy: a good thing. On the other hand, I don't want public schools teaching values - namely narcissism and yay-me blather - that directly contradict my own religious values. At Main Street School (grades 4-5) the kids apparently recited some kind of self-respect affirmation each and every morning, after the Pledge of Allegiance. Christopher can't remember the words now, and neither can I, but he thinks he had to say something like, "I am an amazing person." Every single morning. I am an amazing person. Then, at the 5th grade graduation, the superintendent read an "Alphabet of Values" - "A is for Achievement" - that kind of thing. Most of it was nice, but the entry for L was awful: L: Love yourself first and always. It may have been even worse; it may have been "Love yourself first and best." blech I was sitting there thinking, "So what happened to Love thy neighbor as thyself?" (Which leads me to think it probably was "Love yourself first and best.") As far as I'm concerned, there are many, many occasions in life when loving yourself first is a very bad idea. Anyone who a) gets married and b) has kids is going to experience these occasions. Probably anyone going into the teaching profession is going to experience them. I don't want my kids being taught to love themselves first. I also don't want them spending a lot of time thinking, "I am an amazing person." As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that spending any at all time thinking the words I-am-an-amazing-person is a terrible idea, and I could probably support my view empirically if I had all day to scan the archives of the PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN. (I have no idea whether this particular study does or does not support the anti-I am amazing person viewpoint. I think it might.) some good news Loveless: The program officers with teaching experience are closer to the mainstream public views. This jibes with my feeling that teachers are more likely than their superiors to think radical constructivism is a crock. Hirsch has a nice observation to the effect that while no one has been able to defeat ed school ideology, no one's been able to defeat reality, either. Students learn the way they learn. Teachers are in the trenches. question from the audience QUESTION: Hi. My question sort of is which side are you on, or actually, which side are the philanthropists on in regard to the education wars that are being fought across this country, often under the name of the reading wars or the math wars. You know, to what extent are they facilitating the reform agenda and to what extent are they facilitating maybe the opposite. MR. LOVELESS: I don't mind taking a stab at that. For the most part, they're on the neoprogressive side, which in the--I edited a book, a couple years back, called The Great Curriculum Debate, and it's about the wars in both math and reading that have occurred over the last 15 years, whole language versus phonics, and in math, math reform or NCT and math reform versus more basic emphasis on arithmetic and other traditional mathematics. And for the most part, the philanthropies have supported, financially, the neoprogressive side. So the question is, given the fact that lots more money poured into the schools over the past decades hasn't improved them, can lots more money poured into the schools make schools worse? My feeling is yes. It's possible to have too much money. This reminds me of the various studies showing that rich people undergo all kinds of unnecessary surgery. My line on that used to be, "You go into Cedars-Sinai for a c-section, you come out with a nose job." In context - i.e. living baja Beverly Hills - it was funny. -- CatherineJohnson - 03 Aug 2006 PaulPetersonOnDoePrivatePublicStudy 04 Aug 2006 - 10:57 CatherineJohnson I've added Peterson's critique to the original post. (Scroll down.) ![]() source: St. Louis Historic Context - Education -- CatherineJohnson - 04 Aug 2006 TwoSides 12 Aug 2006 - 14:53 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 HelpWantedTestingCzar 12 Aug 2006 - 12:14 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: 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 $75,000 a year plus the bonuses," he said. [snip] All the major companies have openings, and like big law firms, many now aggressively recruit graduate students with well-paid summer jobs and other enticements. "It's incredibly hard to recruit people," Mr. Camara said. "We have three openings, doctoral-level openings at the College Board, and we have had them since the end of 2005 and we'll be very lucky if we fill them by Labor Day." As Test-Taking Grows, Test-Makers Grow Rarer ($) 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
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
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: |