Archive for August, 2008

A Slow Motion Train Wreck

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 10, 2008 in No category. 2 Comments

A fight after school in Florida leaves one middle schooler dead, and and his classmate facing a stark choice: a 10 year sentence  for manslaughter or a trial for second-degree murder.  The Ledger, a newspaper in Lakeland, Florida, looks at the background of the two boys.  This troubling story of uprooted lives, absentee parents, racial tensions, illness and crime is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. 

The role of the school in this story is limited to a single paragraph in which school officials say “it wasn’t a race thing. It was a kid thing, a pride thing, a turf thing. Fights are common in middle school.”  The lives of these two boys are by no means remarkable by the standards of inner city youth.  Thus the unasked question in this story: Do schools have a role in preventing events like this from occuring? What is the lesson to be learned here?

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Georgia Parents Demand Math Basics

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 10, 2008 in Curriculum and Parents. 0 Comments

A controversial math curriculum in Georgia is being expanded to the state’s high schools.  That’s raising the eyebrows and the ire of parents, who notes test scores in the Peachtree State haven’t exactly been lights out in math.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports 38 percent of the state’s eighth-graders failed the state’s new, redesigned math exam, which was based on harder material.

“While parents and teachers expected some students to struggle with the new math, they were shocked by the high failure rates,” the paper notes. 

After years of criticism that the state’s math curriculum was too weak, the Georgia Department of Education drastically changed the way students learn the subject. Officials adopted an “integrated” design, which weaves elements of algebra, geometry and statistics into a single math class, rather than teaching each separately. Elementary-school students use more hands-on activities to learn about numbers, geometry, multiplication and division. Middle school students learn some of the algebra previously taught in high school.

A parents group called Georgia Parents for Math wants more emphasis should be placed on math theory and basic concepts.  “We have not come up with some foreign math,” Martha Reichrath, deputy superintendent for the state Education Department, tells the AJC. “It is an enriched math. Our students will do better with this math. I do believe we will be the national leader in math.”

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Unacceptable is the New “Adequate”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 7, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 3 Comments

Asked under oath in a deposition if science is ”part of an adequate education” in the state of Georgia, Joanne Leonard said “I think you can do without science.”  What about social studies? Is that part of a child’s ”adequate” education?  “I would want them exposed to social studies,” Leonard said, ”but I think they can succeed in the world without social studies, and that is my opinion, my personal opinion.”

Ms. Leonard’s deposition was taken in a lawsuit brought by rural Georgia schools, who say the state isn’t giving them enough money to provide the “adequate education” required under law.  Much of the case involves defining “adequate”  And who is Joanne Leonard? Only the state Department of Education’s Director of Accountability.

I’m trying to think of what the appropriate response to this should be from Georgians, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t involve pitchforks and torches.  But I can think of something else Georgia can do without.

(HT: Joanne Jacobs)

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Sunshine Is Still The Best Disinfectant

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 6, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Educational Policy. 11 Comments

There are several important threads — the need for national standards and assessments; rethinking the difference between a highly qualified teacher and a highly effective one — at the ongoing NCLB discussion at NewTalk. But one comment raised by CK Board member Diane Ravitch jumps out:

My own preference would be for Congress to authorize national testing (à la NAEP), based on coherent curriculum standards, but without stakes or sanctions. The federal role should be to provide accurate information about student performance. It should be left to states and districts to devise sanctions and reforms. These jurisdictions are closer to the schools and likelier to come up with workable reforms. If states and localities don’t want to improve their schools, then we are in deeper trouble as a nation than any law passed by Congress can fix.

We assume accountability needs teeth to be truly enforceable, but Diane is right — an apples to apples comparison of how schools fare against each other seems likely to pour more sunshine onto what’s really happening than 50 states racing each other to the bottom by lowering proficiency standards. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest.

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The Innumeracy of Intellectuals

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 6, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Higher Education. 1 Comment

Inside Higher Ed“I know nothing about art or music,” writes Chad Orzel at Inside Higher Ed. “I don’t know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I’m not even sure those are both art terms.” Orzel, is not a high school student, or even a middle school student. He’s a professor of physics at Union College.

Given my line of work, this doesn’t rise to the level of a liability, but it’s awkward. I’m a professor at a liberal arts college, putting me solidly in the “Intellectual” class, and there’s a background assumption that anyone with as much education as I have will know something about history and philosophy and literature and art and classical music….On those occasions when I’m forced to admit my ignorance (or, worse yet, the fact that I don’t even like classical music), my colleagues tend to look a little sideways at me, and I can feel myself drop slightly in their estimation. Not knowing anything about those subjects makes me less of an Intellectual to most people in the academy.

Alas, it’s a one-way street. Intellectuals in the humanities don’t look askance at those who confess an ignorance of math or science. In fact, it’s something of a badge of honor. “Students seeking to avoid math or science classes can expect to get a sympathetic hearing from much of the academy,” Orzel writes, “where the grousing of physics majors is written off as whining by nerds who badly need to expand their narrow minds.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think the lack of respect for math and science is one of the largest unacknowledged problems in today’s society. And it starts in the academy — somehow, we have moved to a place where people can consider themselves educated while remaining ignorant of remarkably basic facts of math and science. If I admit an ignorance of art or music, I get sideways looks, but if I argue for taking a stronger line on math and science requirements, I’m being unreasonable. The arts are essential, but Math Is Hard, and I just need to accept that not everybody can handle it.

“It simply should not be acceptable for people who are ignorant of math and science to consider themselves Intellectuals,” Orzel concludes. “Somehow, we need to move away from where we are and toward a place where confusing Darwin with Dawkins or Feynman with Faraday carries the same intellectual stigma as confusing Bach with Beethoven or Rembrandt with Reubens.”

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End It or Mend It?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 5, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

There’s a first-rate discussion on what to do with NCLB over at NewTalk.  All the big machers (as we say in New York) are there: Checker Finn, Diane Ravitch, Sol Stern, Randi Weingarten and many, many others.  Great stuff.

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A Progressive Educator Learns to Love Core Knowledge

Published by John Thompson on August 5, 2008 in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Essay and Teaching. 0 Comments

Long before I began teaching, I carried on a silent debate with Al Shanker and his “Where We Stand” column. I seethed when he recounted the common question—”is it on the test?”—and then dignified the mindset that produced such a juvenile question. Like so many liberals, my educational philosophy was a hybrid between Dewey’s (and the 1960s’) progressivism and the heroic fantasy created by Hollywood of the charismatic teacher who transforms students by the power of personality and hope. Shanker, however, did convince me that standards were politically necessary and maybe they were educationally valid.

I read Hirsch with the wisdom of half of a decade in the classroom, and I rejected his approach completely… Hirsch sounded too much like a fact-driven traditionalist. He sounded too much like a testing advocate.

My rookie year in an alternative school for felons was a perfect proving ground for my ideals. Our two teachers and our two social workers functioned interchangeably like linebackers in the old “3-4-4″ defense. Class and counseling were recognizably different at times, but mostly we worked seamlessly as student-centered teams. Anytime I wanted adjust my lesson plans, I would dismiss our Social Studies class, and notify the kids that we are now in Science class. And the students were free to do the same. When an emotionally disturbed student barged into class one morning in a particularly agitated state, he directed me, “John, teach me something.” “OK, I replied, today we are studying Psychology,” and I provided a simplified version of autonomic functioning, habit, and choice. The student then scribbled a diary of the day’s thoughts, categorizing them as “auto” and “congo,” which were his spellings of automatic and conscious, and habit. It would have made a great scene on The Wire.

Even as I congratulated myself for my innovative lessons, I started to recognize the impossibility of making the “bricks” of great ideas without the “straw” of information. When I moved to a regular high school, I saw that most of my students had almost no recall from their previous classes. An A.P. student answered that Vietnam was the war we won after dropping the atomic bomb. And it got worse from there.

Continue reading ‘A Progressive Educator Learns to Love Core Knowledge’

A Second Act In American Life

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 4, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Higher Education. 0 Comments

“The Dumbest Generation” author Mark Bauerlein has an interesting piece about Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Bauerlein has a good grasp of his work on cultural literacy and curriculum, but his piece is about Hirsch’s career before Core Knowledge–work that set Hirsch “at the forefront of literary study.”

I don’t know of any publication in which Hirsch explains why he stopped doing critical theory; or, indeed, why he exited the whole high-powered/grad school/research humanities world. We may assume, though, that Hirsch simply drew a sweeping conclusion over the course of the 1970s: Literary theory and literary study were drifting ever farther from the pressing intellectual needs of 19-year-olds. Students were coming into college with cultural-literacy deficits, and humanities professors weren’t responding. All the incentives of professional success steered professors away from the freshman classroom, not to mention from the pre-college years, and glamour of a symposium in which theory stars hashed out Derrida’s latest turned a composition class into sheer drudgery.  That didn’t change the fact that the help students needed came properly in elementary and middle school, and Hirsch directed his attention accordingly. His example is worth remembering.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was clearly wrong.

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Cognitive Dissonance on NCLB

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 4, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Teaching. 6 Comments

“I’ve always told people, I have the best job in the world,” writes Susan J. Hobart, a National Board Certified Teacher, in the current issue of The Progressive. 

Today, more often than not, I feel demoralized. While I still connect my lesson plans to students’ lives and work to make it real, this no longer is my sole focus. Today I have a new nickname: testbuster. Singing to the tune of “Ghostbusters,” I teach test-taking strategies similar to those taught in Stanley Kaplan prep courses for the SAT. I spend an inordinate amount of time showing students how to “bubble up,” the term for darkening those little circles that accompany multiple choice questions on standardized tests.

Yes, another one of those NCLB-is-destroying-education pieces written by a teacher.  I predict that by the time the sun goes down, a smart guy like Jay Greene will have a line-by-line rebuttal on his blog explaining why this teacher is all wet.  Why there’s no evidence that curriculum narrowing is occuring under NCLB.   I’m sure it’ll make perfect sense.  Heck, I’ll probably even agree with most of it.

Then I’ll remember my own 5th grade classroom, where I never had social studies textbooks–or time for social studies and science after our two hour ”literacy block” and 90-minute math workshop–but always had a fresh supply of shiny Kaplan test prep books every year.  Where my students rarely got art, music or gym.  Where we were trained by Teachers College to teach a unit on “test-taking as a genre” of literature.   I’ll also remember the school assemblies and pep rallies where we tried to get the kids excited about the tests and shared all our “positive energy.”  And I’ll remember one TFA corp member grad student, who was mandated to do two hours of test prep a day starting in September for the state tests in March. 

Did I just dream all that? 

I can do without the shrill rhetoric about the “assault on public education” and “one size fits all testing.”  Still, every time I hear a veteran teacher describing with sadness how the job they loved became a joyless grind I find myself thinking, “Yeah, me too. ”  How did this happen when testing, accountability and NCLB was what we were supposed to be doing all along anyway?  Was I simply caught up in one of the greatest cases of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials?

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Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 3, 2008 in Weekly Roundup. 0 Comments

A weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Core Knowledge

The Great Schism
Diane Ravitch vs. Checker Finn over the latter’s dismissal of Randi Weingarten’s inaugural speech as AFT President, in which she called for schools to become community centers offering a range of services.

Magic Bullets Frustrate Reformers With Elusive Ways
As Donald Rumsfeld did not say, “You go to school with the teachers you have. Not the teachers you wish you had.”

Text, Yes, But Is It Reading?
Are the hours kids and teenagers spend prowling the Web a threat to literacy? Or is it simply a new form of reading and writing?

The Politics of History
Lawmakers in California have had a busy summer deciding what students in the Golden State should be taught in school.

Distraction Kills
Could the demand to deliver differentiated instuction be part of why teachers burn out so quickly?

Blaming Parents
Parents’ failure to impose moral values in the home has left many children out of control, says the head of a U.K. teachers union, with educators now expected to effectively raise young people themselves.

Principal Apologizes for “Excellent” Rating
His school made AYP, earned an “excellent” rating from the state, and passed the 2008 Ohio Achievement. Principal David Root has just one thing to say: “I’m sorry.”

Best of the Blogs

What if “improving teacher quality” isn’t THE answer? at The Education Gadfly
We can’t hire enough great teachers, and we can’t get the best teachers to serve in the neediest areas, notes the Fordham Foundation’s Mike Petrilli. So what’s our Plan B?

On New York State Tests, A Growing Achievement Gap Between White/Asian and Black/Hispanic New York City Students at Eduwonkette
“As we all expected,” writes Eduwonkette, “the New York City Department of Education had questionable motives for stalling the release of the New York State scale score data.”

Snake Oil is still Snake Oil even when its Broader and Bolder at D-Ed Reckoning
Broader, Bolder needs a healthy dosage of humility, especially since so many of its bromides remain untested.

NCLB: Less Than Meets the Eye, More Than Nothing at Jay P. Greene’s Blog
NCLB is neither being unfunded nor a mandate. It’s as if the unfunded mandate crowd is saying: “The $10,000 per pupil we already get just pays for warehousing. If you actually want us to educate kids, that’ll cost ya extra.”

Your education road map to the 2008 state and national elections at Campaign K-12
Could there be an entire presidential debate focused on education? Maybe, if the Business Coalition for Student Achievement gets its way.

Good News (and Some Bad): A Report Card on U.S. Education at Brittanica Blog
While the highest performing students in the county are making steady gains, Karin Chenoweth notes, the lowest performing students are improving even faster in math and early reading.

Teaching and Curriculum

Teaching Secrets: Five Tips for the New Teacher
Teacher Magazine
Hit the ground running and breathe when you leave. If you make you students the enemy, you will lose. And always remember, the show must go on.

Girls measure up to boys in math
The Associated Press
In the largest study of its kind, measuring the performances of more than 7 million children on standardized math tests, researchers found no difference in the scores of boys versus girls.

Education should lift all children
The Detroit Free Press
Six years after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, Susan Neuman argues there is frustratingly little evidence that it will close the achievement gap between low-income, minority children and their middle-class peers.

Pay-Hike Plan for Teachers In D.C. Entails Probation
The Washington Post
A plan floated by Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee offers teachers huge salary increases—if they give up seniority and spend a year on probation.

No Single Explanation For Test Score Bump
The Washington Post
Test score gains across the U.S. illustrate a basic disagreement among educators since the 2002 enactment of No Child Left Behind: Are kids getting smarter, or are tests getting easier?

Education Policy

Education as a Civil Rights Issue
The New York Times
Recent events suggest that the civil rights establishment generally is ready to break with the teachers’ unions and take an independent stand on education reform.

McCain, Obama Offer Dueling Education Plans
National Public Radio
Barack Obama is proposing a laundry list of educational benefits that would reach from birth to college. John McCain, plans to focus on enabling local educational initiatives and expanding virtual learning.

The Greatest Scandal
The Wall Street Journal
The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation’s greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark.

Homeschooling and Parenting

The Downside of Redshirting: The trouble with older kindergarten
Slate
At what age should children go to kindergarten? At what age should your child go to kindergarten? What if these questions appear to have different answers?

Unschool vs. School
Snavley Freebirds
A home-schooled teenager went to school for a year to see what it was like.

A Teenage Mother, Wiser, Speaks Up
The New York Times
“Some girls think it’s cool to have a baby. I want them thinking straight. I want them to really know the consequences from somebody who’s living with it every day.”

Et Alia

Diversity Coming to History Everywhere
The Park Record (Park City, Utah)
New interpretive material at the Park City Museum will include a sign depicting Native Americans in Park City, even though very few ever established residence here. Research indicated that American museum goers “have simply come to expect Native American history in their museums.”

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