When I wrote last week's post on Sir Ken Robinson's latest TED talk on why current US educational policy is doomed to failure, I was shocked to discover I hadn't included some of his earlier videos in my blog. So, better late than never....here are two of my favorites.
If I wanted to encapsulate this thinking into one presentation, I would choose the RSA Animate video entitled Changing Educational Paradigms:
But if you would like more detail on his theories about education and creativity, which is his particular expertise, I think the best source is his first TED talk, which has been seen by over 20 million people and has been translated into 58 languages:
They are insightful, funny, but most important, important videos to watch if you are concerned about the state of education....and, really, who isn't these days?
Showing posts with label educational reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label educational reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
In Latest TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson Urges Returning School Control to Local Educators
Sir Ken Robinson, the educational reformer whose talks are on the top of the TED most popular video list, has just come out with another wonderful presentation entitled "How to Escape Education's Death Valley." In it, he explains why current educational "reforms," such as No Child Left Behind, run counter to fundamental human nature and thus are doomed to fail. He contrasts the current American system, which is increasingly narrow, centralized, and standardized, with systems that rank at the top of international achievement, such as Finland, which are broad in scope, controlled by local educators, and individualized to particular students. He is pithy and persuasive, and delivers his talk with his typical dry humor. (My favorite humorous line from this talk was when, in discussing the growing diagnosis of American students with ADHD, he said "Children are not, for the most point, suffering from a psychological condition...they are suffering from childhood.")
Watch the video below to learn more about why our current educational policy ends up with the US spending immense sums of money but achieving unacceptable results in terms of drop-outs and other human factors:
Watch the video below to learn more about why our current educational policy ends up with the US spending immense sums of money but achieving unacceptable results in terms of drop-outs and other human factors:
Monday, March 19, 2012
The Power of Dreams in Education
Why aren't US students going into careers in science, engineering, and math? That is a question we've been asking as a society ever since I was working professionally in Washington DC in education policy in the 1980s. There have been many proposed answers to that question, but mostly the blame as been laid on our education system. Our science and math education isn't rigorous enough, or it isn't concrete enough, or it isn't relevent enough, or it isn't hands-on enough, etc. etc. etc. So our latest response has been lots of government and private programs to improve education in what is now called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
While I know science and math are tough disciplines--tough to learn and tough to teach (she says, having just completed teaching a hands-on physics class on light and optics that required lugging multiple sets of things for hands-on experiments to an outside classroom for five weeks)--and that we could definitely improve our science and math education, to my mind, that isn't the biggest problem with our current "brain drain" in STEM careers. The data I read indicates that most of "the best and the brightest"are choosing to go into fields other than math and science. That is to say, even if we could wave our magic wands and make our STEM education programs perfect, that isn't going to change the situation if students refuse to go into those programs in the first place.
There are many aspects to why American students aren't studying STEM. But one of the big ones, according to astrophysicist and science writer/media specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we, as a nation, have stopped dreaming about a better future and the important role science, math, and engineering have in getting us there.
I could say more, but Tyson himself says it so much better in the short video below, entitled "Why We Stopped Dreaming:"
There is no way I can improve on that. Except that I would say that it is not just limited to STEM. I grew up in the Washington DC area, where almost everyone there was employed in what we used to consider "public service." When I was growing up, working in Congress or the White House, the multiple court systems, the many federal agencies, the military complex built around the Pentagon, the related research institutes, the multiple non-profit public interest groups on all sorts of issues--all of those were honorable professions, and even though people found it a financial sacrifice, in terms of making a lower income than they might have had in private industry, it was worth it because they believed they were making a difference or playing a role in making the world safer, smarter, healthier, and better.
Now, after decades of people bashing "the government," our best and brightest don't want to work there either. Looking at the nastiness and frustration among our top politicians--the US Congress and White House--it is no wonder that our students don't want a career in politics. Education is another field where most of the public policy discussion is very negative, constantly highlighting all the perceived failures and rarely lauding the good work done day after day by millions of teachers across our country.
So what is left? Becoming an athlete, rock or rap star, an actor/actress or, even better/easier, becoming a celebrity through so-called "reality" TV?
This is a tough, tough problem, and I don't know how we are going to solve it as a society. But I know one thing. As teachers and as parents, we need to support our students in dreaming again. And I think it is particularly important in this middle school age--when they are old enough to understand and deal with some of the real substantive problems of our culture, but haven't yet experience so much frustration and inability to make a difference that they become cynical and indifferent. In our case, it is why we are so heavily invested in a effort called Healing Oceans Together, where the students wrote the following mission statement for their group:
While I know science and math are tough disciplines--tough to learn and tough to teach (she says, having just completed teaching a hands-on physics class on light and optics that required lugging multiple sets of things for hands-on experiments to an outside classroom for five weeks)--and that we could definitely improve our science and math education, to my mind, that isn't the biggest problem with our current "brain drain" in STEM careers. The data I read indicates that most of "the best and the brightest"are choosing to go into fields other than math and science. That is to say, even if we could wave our magic wands and make our STEM education programs perfect, that isn't going to change the situation if students refuse to go into those programs in the first place.
There are many aspects to why American students aren't studying STEM. But one of the big ones, according to astrophysicist and science writer/media specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we, as a nation, have stopped dreaming about a better future and the important role science, math, and engineering have in getting us there.
I could say more, but Tyson himself says it so much better in the short video below, entitled "Why We Stopped Dreaming:"
There is no way I can improve on that. Except that I would say that it is not just limited to STEM. I grew up in the Washington DC area, where almost everyone there was employed in what we used to consider "public service." When I was growing up, working in Congress or the White House, the multiple court systems, the many federal agencies, the military complex built around the Pentagon, the related research institutes, the multiple non-profit public interest groups on all sorts of issues--all of those were honorable professions, and even though people found it a financial sacrifice, in terms of making a lower income than they might have had in private industry, it was worth it because they believed they were making a difference or playing a role in making the world safer, smarter, healthier, and better.
Now, after decades of people bashing "the government," our best and brightest don't want to work there either. Looking at the nastiness and frustration among our top politicians--the US Congress and White House--it is no wonder that our students don't want a career in politics. Education is another field where most of the public policy discussion is very negative, constantly highlighting all the perceived failures and rarely lauding the good work done day after day by millions of teachers across our country.
So what is left? Becoming an athlete, rock or rap star, an actor/actress or, even better/easier, becoming a celebrity through so-called "reality" TV?
This is a tough, tough problem, and I don't know how we are going to solve it as a society. But I know one thing. As teachers and as parents, we need to support our students in dreaming again. And I think it is particularly important in this middle school age--when they are old enough to understand and deal with some of the real substantive problems of our culture, but haven't yet experience so much frustration and inability to make a difference that they become cynical and indifferent. In our case, it is why we are so heavily invested in a effort called Healing Oceans Together, where the students wrote the following mission statement for their group:
Healing Oceans Together (H2O) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of the seas, raising public awareness about the oceans, and supporting the community through environmental education. Our organization is largely student-driven and is exceedingly resourceful. We are homeschoolers saving the world one step at a time, because we believe that everybody, working together, can make a difference.I have to end with quoting (yet AGAIN, for those who know me) from one of my favorite books of 2011, Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt. In this passage from the book, which is set in the 1960s, the junior high science teacher, Mr. Ferris, is talking to a group of incoming students.
"Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dream. You come to build fantastic castles into the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High School would grow up to do".....what? What castle will you build?"With all our focus in education on test scores and STEM initiatives and funding priorities, we are forgetting to encourage our students to dream big dreams. And what kind of a life are preparing them for without dreams? As Langston Hughes said in his poem, Dreams:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Should We Be Supporting Virtual Schools?
There was an excellent story in the Washington Post this weekend on the pros and cons of virtual schools. Virtual schools are sort of a hybrid between public charter schools, online learning such as Khan Academy, and homeschooling. Virtual schools are K-12 educational systems run by public schools to teach children their entire education at home using technology. These are generally treated as charter schools (and thus exempt from many school regulations), but are paid for and treated as part of the public school system, usually with significant learner support expected by the at-home learning coach (e.g., parent or other similar substitute).
It is quite an extensive article, so I recommend that you read it in full here. But here are a few of the items that stood out for me:
Some Pros:
It is quite an extensive article, so I recommend that you read it in full here. But here are a few of the items that stood out for me:
Some Pros:
- Virtual schools provide a different educational choice for students who can't go to school or who have been failing in traditional school.
- For parents, virtual schools are similar to homeschooling, but without the responsibility or expense of obtaining high-quality curriculum yourself.
- Technology allows students to study at their own pace and schedule, to review what they don't understand as often as necessary and to skip through the things that they do, to use multi-media rich learning materials, and, to some extent, to adjust learning to their own learning style.
- Companies are investing lots of money into curriculum development, which presumably should translate into high-quality learning tools.
Some Cons:
- Virtual schools have a pretty terrible achievement record, both in terms of test scores and in completion/graduation rates. One study showed that only one third of the schools managed by the largest player in the business, K12 Inc, met the federal NCLB standards last year. And the article had an example of the Colorado Virtual Academy, also managed by K12, which has achieved only a 12% on-time graduation rate, compared to 72% of other schools statewide.
- In at least some states, the Virtual schools are "locating" in the poorest, most rural counties that received the highest levels of funding support from the state, but are enrolling students from throughout the state and counting them as students in that poor county. So, for example, the Virginia Virtual Academy counts all its students as being from its home base in Carroll County, which the state reimburses $5,421 per student. Therefore, the 66 students enrolled who actually live in Fairfax County, which would only receive $2,716 per student if they attended their local schools, are costing the state twice as much by being counted as Carroll County students.
- Socialization can be a big issue with these students, because unlike local homeschool organizations, which foster a variety of group social and academic experiences, virtual school students receive all of their education in their own home, even starting as early as kindergarten. Virtual schools are trying to address that issue and find more opportunities for their students to interact with their peers.
- While these companies are paying 35% less for their teachers than traditional schools, they are putting lots of money into lobbying politicians. According to the Post, in the past six years, K12 has contributed half a million dollars to US politicians, 3/4th of which went to Republicans (who are typically stronger supporters of the school choice movement).
This is actually a subject I know a good bit about in general, because not only do I homeschool, but I used to work in the distance education field before that. The pros and cons above (at least the ones that don't have to do with funding and lobbying) are things that we have long known about the potential and the problems with distance education.
Education via technology is sometimes the only solution for some students, such as those that are geographically remote or isolated (students in Alaska, rural Maine, or the mountains of West Virginia, for example) or who have health problems, physical disabilities, or other issues that prohibit them from attending traditional schools. Beyond that, distance education can be a fantastic option for disciplined, self-motivated learners.
However, while that designation applies to some percentage of students who fail in traditional schools, that description does not apply to the vast majority of struggling learners. Particularly students in poor communities have little or no home support for their learning, since they are often in full-time employed single parent or dual working parent homes, many of who are illiterate and/or do not speak English. They do not have access to the type of "learning coaches" that is critical for making this kind of education work, particularly for elementary-aged students. So while it sounds good to say these programs give choice to failing learners, the reality is that having these types of students trying to learn through technology at home without any support is likely to make their educational performance be even worse, not better.
As a homeschool mom, I can attest to the fact that showing a child the best-producing, most enthralling computer-based instruction featuring the most brilliant people on the planet does not ensure that he or she will learn anything from it. As I have stated in an earlier post, education is so much more than just giving a child wonderful instructional content.
So while I'm not saying I don't think they have potential and shouldn't play a role in the panoply of educational options we are fortunate enough to have in our country, I, personally, am suspicious about how much at least some of the schools are really dedicated to solving our educational problems, and how much they are about making their owners a substantial profit.
But take my word for it. Read the Post article, check into the situation in your state, and if you have any opinions, pro or con, feel free to add them below.
PS--Thanks to my father, who lives in DC, for pointing out this article for me. Also, just to be clear, I am extremely supportive of distance education options for taking some classes, particularly among older students. But the virtual school, which supplies the entire educational curriculum at home from literally grades K-12, is an entirely different matter.
PS--Thanks to my father, who lives in DC, for pointing out this article for me. Also, just to be clear, I am extremely supportive of distance education options for taking some classes, particularly among older students. But the virtual school, which supplies the entire educational curriculum at home from literally grades K-12, is an entirely different matter.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
New Study finds Average Test Scores for Middle Schoolers at Network-run Charter Schools Not Significantly Different than Public Schools
There was another study released this month that showed that, counter to public beliefs, the average test scores at charter schools run as a network (multiple charter schools run by the same management company, such as the KIPP and SEED schools featured in Waiting For Superman) is not statistically different than the averages at typical public schools.
But, as is so often the case with statistics, that statement obscures what is really happening. Among the 22 schools in the study, close to half had test scores in reading and math were higher than the norm for regular public schools. But about another third had test scores in those subjects that were significantly worse than public schools, with the remainder on par with the schools.
So, that means that taken as a whole, charter schools aren't doing any better than public schools. If your child goes to any individual charter school, though, there is a good chance that it will outperform the average public school. However, there is also a fair chance that it will do worse that its typical neighbors.
Once again, I don't mean to bad mouth charter schools; some are obviously doing an exemplary job, such as Raleigh Charter School here in our area. However, parents need to know that charter schools are not the panacea that many educational reformers make them out to be. Charter schools are experiments, and like all experiments, some will work out well, while others will be a failure. There are a high percentage of these network-run schools that even though they have all the things these reformers want--longer class hours, performance-based payment for teachers, etc.--they have lower test scores than the average middle school
If you want to see the report, which was done by Mathematica Policy Research and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington, you can access it here.
But, as is so often the case with statistics, that statement obscures what is really happening. Among the 22 schools in the study, close to half had test scores in reading and math were higher than the norm for regular public schools. But about another third had test scores in those subjects that were significantly worse than public schools, with the remainder on par with the schools.
So, that means that taken as a whole, charter schools aren't doing any better than public schools. If your child goes to any individual charter school, though, there is a good chance that it will outperform the average public school. However, there is also a fair chance that it will do worse that its typical neighbors.
Once again, I don't mean to bad mouth charter schools; some are obviously doing an exemplary job, such as Raleigh Charter School here in our area. However, parents need to know that charter schools are not the panacea that many educational reformers make them out to be. Charter schools are experiments, and like all experiments, some will work out well, while others will be a failure. There are a high percentage of these network-run schools that even though they have all the things these reformers want--longer class hours, performance-based payment for teachers, etc.--they have lower test scores than the average middle school
If you want to see the report, which was done by Mathematica Policy Research and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington, you can access it here.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Should We Radically Change the Format of Middle School?
One of my favorite educational columnists, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post's Answer Sheet, had a post yesterday about transforming the structure and nature of middle school education. She has a great attention-grabbing title for her article: How to fix the mess we call middle school.
She starts off with some of the reforms of middle school tried to date, and how they don't seem to be succeeding, at least in raising test scores. She then states what she thinks are the issues with middle school students (students aged 11-14):
She doesn't cite any data for these statements, but just lists them as givens. Now, I have to say that I haven't really experienced the problems she reports in her first bullet with the middle schoolers that I know through my homeschool classes and activities, as well as those I teach in my Sunday School classes. However, neither homeschooling nor our spiritual community reflect "mainstream" America, so maybe all those middle schoolers in schools show up that way.
But the second two--that they are old enough to make some serious mistakes when some, at least, haven't mastered impulse control or thinking through the consequences of their choices, and that they are hungry for problem-solving and real life experience--I definitely agree with.
So as she as proposed before, Strauss argues that we ought to do away with the academic focus in middle school, and instead turn that time into a "boot camp for life." What would this boot camp look like, at least in Strauss's opinion? It would focus on learning skills in applied settings, rather than traditional academic classes, with a strong focus on physical activity and REAL community service.
Strauss believes this is the perfect time to give students some real responsibility to meet a true community need. As she correctly states, many school "community service" projects are one-shot deals that involve little challenge or commitment. Picking up trash in a park is fine, but it doesn't develop any skills. Instead, Strauss proposes that students serve daily at a homeless shelter for a few months, where they will have to confront how our society deals with issues like poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and the like. It would also give young people the potential experience of really making a difference in someone's life--and just think how that might change the path of their career and life choices.
Strauss continues that young adolescents need to be out in the community, helping out or being paired with mentors. She also advocates giving such students more choice by letting them choose the books they will read and discuss, the music they will play or listen to, the art projects they will do. Finally, she talks about what all the homeschoolers I know already do: drawing out the "academic" topics in real life activities. Regular readers of this blog know, for example, that I use cooking to teach math, history, science, literature, art, world religion, and probably a few other disciplines I'm forgetting right now, as well as developing such skills as time management, following instructions, budgeting and shopping for best prices, concentration, the value of precision, nutrition, hygiene, and many others. And I don't know about you, but I don't know any middle schoolers who aren't interested in the topic of food.
And this is the joy of homeschooling. Many of us run our middle schools very much like she is saying, at least in my homeschool group (although we do have academic classes as well). Many of our classes and activities are organized around, or at least take account of, the students' preferences. We do a lot of learning in applied contexts and hands-on projects, rather than getting everything from a book or a website. And we have more time for sustained activity on community projects that we care about. We have a group of homeschoolers who visit an assisted living facility, not just at Christmas when it is "time to think of others," but every month for years on end. In my son's case, he has been there almost every month for 11 years--over 130 visits so far. You think maybe that is why the middle schoolers I know aren't "egocentric," "argumentative," and "utterly preoccupied with social concerns"?
I don't know what it would take to get the schools to change in the direction she advocates. But based on what I've seen in homeschooling, I think that is the direction to go.
She starts off with some of the reforms of middle school tried to date, and how they don't seem to be succeeding, at least in raising test scores. She then states what she thinks are the issues with middle school students (students aged 11-14):
Here’s some of what we know about kids in this age group — and why it is past time to do something radically different:
* Students in this age group are known to be egocentric, argumentative, and — this is not small thing — utterly preoccupied with social concerns rather than academic goals, driven by the swirling of their hormones.
* They don’t always have solid judgment, but they find themselves in position to make decisions that can affect them throughout their lives.
* They enjoy solving real life problems with skills.
None of this adds up to a great experience with the traditional academic classroom.
She doesn't cite any data for these statements, but just lists them as givens. Now, I have to say that I haven't really experienced the problems she reports in her first bullet with the middle schoolers that I know through my homeschool classes and activities, as well as those I teach in my Sunday School classes. However, neither homeschooling nor our spiritual community reflect "mainstream" America, so maybe all those middle schoolers in schools show up that way.
But the second two--that they are old enough to make some serious mistakes when some, at least, haven't mastered impulse control or thinking through the consequences of their choices, and that they are hungry for problem-solving and real life experience--I definitely agree with.
So as she as proposed before, Strauss argues that we ought to do away with the academic focus in middle school, and instead turn that time into a "boot camp for life." What would this boot camp look like, at least in Strauss's opinion? It would focus on learning skills in applied settings, rather than traditional academic classes, with a strong focus on physical activity and REAL community service.
Strauss believes this is the perfect time to give students some real responsibility to meet a true community need. As she correctly states, many school "community service" projects are one-shot deals that involve little challenge or commitment. Picking up trash in a park is fine, but it doesn't develop any skills. Instead, Strauss proposes that students serve daily at a homeless shelter for a few months, where they will have to confront how our society deals with issues like poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and the like. It would also give young people the potential experience of really making a difference in someone's life--and just think how that might change the path of their career and life choices.
Strauss continues that young adolescents need to be out in the community, helping out or being paired with mentors. She also advocates giving such students more choice by letting them choose the books they will read and discuss, the music they will play or listen to, the art projects they will do. Finally, she talks about what all the homeschoolers I know already do: drawing out the "academic" topics in real life activities. Regular readers of this blog know, for example, that I use cooking to teach math, history, science, literature, art, world religion, and probably a few other disciplines I'm forgetting right now, as well as developing such skills as time management, following instructions, budgeting and shopping for best prices, concentration, the value of precision, nutrition, hygiene, and many others. And I don't know about you, but I don't know any middle schoolers who aren't interested in the topic of food.
And this is the joy of homeschooling. Many of us run our middle schools very much like she is saying, at least in my homeschool group (although we do have academic classes as well). Many of our classes and activities are organized around, or at least take account of, the students' preferences. We do a lot of learning in applied contexts and hands-on projects, rather than getting everything from a book or a website. And we have more time for sustained activity on community projects that we care about. We have a group of homeschoolers who visit an assisted living facility, not just at Christmas when it is "time to think of others," but every month for years on end. In my son's case, he has been there almost every month for 11 years--over 130 visits so far. You think maybe that is why the middle schoolers I know aren't "egocentric," "argumentative," and "utterly preoccupied with social concerns"?
I don't know what it would take to get the schools to change in the direction she advocates. But based on what I've seen in homeschooling, I think that is the direction to go.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Traditional Schools in LA's Lowest-Performing Areas Raised Scores More Than Charters, so Wal-Mart Gives $15 Million...for More Charters
More bad news for the charter movement came out of LA this month--well, bad news in terms of actual student outcomes. But that didn't keep the founders of Wal-Mart from donating $15 million to add 20,000 more charter students in LA and 100,000 more throughout California.
A study this month by the Los Angeles Times compared test scores among K-12 students in the city's lowest-performing areas, and found that the traditional public schools had done a better job overall at raising student performance than had the comparable charter schools, even without additional resources that had been given to the charters. In the most dramatic case, the increase among high school students who were performing at "proficient" levels was almost double that of the high schools run by other organizations.
As in the other study I discussed lately, which showed that LA charter schools had dramatically higher teacher turnover rates, it is hard to draw conclusions from a single study about such a complicated topic as educational performance. Also, Los Angels obviously has some conditions that make it different from much of the rest of the country, although it gets a lot of focus when it comes to charter schools because it is the school district with the largest number of charters, both in terms of number of schools and number of students.
However, these and some other research certainly suggest that charters are not clearly outperforming the traditional educational systems they seek to replace. But that does not seem to dissuade the well-funded proponents of the charter movement from continuing to pour more money into these experimental systems. Hence, the $15 million gift from the Walton Family Foundation to the California Charter School Association, only weeks after these studies announcing negative trends in charter school performance.
Charter schools are experiments, and it is the nature of experiments that some, many, and even most are going to fail. But it is important for parents, beguiled by the hype of media like the tear-jerking "Waiting for Superman," to remember that these charter schools ARE experiments, and there is no guarantee what will happen if their child happens to get in. Charters may end up being like the fantastical Willy Wonka story: You may feel like the luckiest child in the world if you get one of the golden tickets, and at least some will succeed tremendously, but once you are in the chocolate factory, how many will end up turned into blueberries, shrunken, or fallen down a garbage chute?
A study this month by the Los Angeles Times compared test scores among K-12 students in the city's lowest-performing areas, and found that the traditional public schools had done a better job overall at raising student performance than had the comparable charter schools, even without additional resources that had been given to the charters. In the most dramatic case, the increase among high school students who were performing at "proficient" levels was almost double that of the high schools run by other organizations.
As in the other study I discussed lately, which showed that LA charter schools had dramatically higher teacher turnover rates, it is hard to draw conclusions from a single study about such a complicated topic as educational performance. Also, Los Angels obviously has some conditions that make it different from much of the rest of the country, although it gets a lot of focus when it comes to charter schools because it is the school district with the largest number of charters, both in terms of number of schools and number of students.
However, these and some other research certainly suggest that charters are not clearly outperforming the traditional educational systems they seek to replace. But that does not seem to dissuade the well-funded proponents of the charter movement from continuing to pour more money into these experimental systems. Hence, the $15 million gift from the Walton Family Foundation to the California Charter School Association, only weeks after these studies announcing negative trends in charter school performance.
Charter schools are experiments, and it is the nature of experiments that some, many, and even most are going to fail. But it is important for parents, beguiled by the hype of media like the tear-jerking "Waiting for Superman," to remember that these charter schools ARE experiments, and there is no guarantee what will happen if their child happens to get in. Charters may end up being like the fantastical Willy Wonka story: You may feel like the luckiest child in the world if you get one of the golden tickets, and at least some will succeed tremendously, but once you are in the chocolate factory, how many will end up turned into blueberries, shrunken, or fallen down a garbage chute?
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Do Charter School Burn Out Teachers?
Do charter school burn out teachers? That is the question raised by a recent study by educational researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.
In the study, the authors were looking at the statistical factors related to teachers leaving their schools. Teacher longevity at schools is correlated with positive educational outcomes, both among standardized test results as well as family satisfaction, student relationship building, and other "softer" measures of educational quality.
So the study, which was focused only on teachers in the Los Angeles school system, which can differ in many ways from most of the school systems in this country, is written in educational-ese and contains lots of data and statistics and such. I glazed over the statistics analysis and chi squares methodology and such that is part of such academic research, and I have a Masters in Education. But I think this graphic, taken from the report, can express one of the most important conclusions:
Click here to see the map in its original size.
The bottom line of this graphic is that I count 30 schools that have a teacher turnover rate of over 40%, and of that number, all but two are charter schools, which means that 93% of such high turnover schools are charters (and I don't know the exact statistics, but I think charter schools are only about 10% of all the schools in LA). So clearly, teachers are much more likely to leave charter schools than traditional public schools.
The question that the study doesn't address, however, is why. Charter teachers tend to be young; is that why more of them leave? (although more leave charter schools than is average for schools in general). Charter schools tend to be newer, which is also associated with higher turnover, but not at the rates seen in this study among the charter schools. Are the young teachers who work at charter schools more naive and/or idealistic than other young teachers, and thus leave when their fantasies encounter real educational situations? Are the demands of charter schools so intense that teachers can only maintain them for a year or two? Do the (sometimes) for-profit charter schools pay their teachers and/or offer fewer benefits or other incentives that make their staff leave for traditional schools? All of these explanations have been offered, but none have been proven.
So I don't know how to explain this data. But I do have a belief (which is backed up by some data) that students are better served by teachers with more experience and/or commitment to the school in which they teach. Therefore, I think the high teacher turnover rates should be at least a yellow caution light for those who seek to expand rapidly the charter school program (such as the Republican legislators, who this year lifted the 100-school cap on charter schools in North Carolina).
In the study, the authors were looking at the statistical factors related to teachers leaving their schools. Teacher longevity at schools is correlated with positive educational outcomes, both among standardized test results as well as family satisfaction, student relationship building, and other "softer" measures of educational quality.
So the study, which was focused only on teachers in the Los Angeles school system, which can differ in many ways from most of the school systems in this country, is written in educational-ese and contains lots of data and statistics and such. I glazed over the statistics analysis and chi squares methodology and such that is part of such academic research, and I have a Masters in Education. But I think this graphic, taken from the report, can express one of the most important conclusions:
Annual Teacher Turnover by School Size in LAUSD 2002 - 2007
Click here to see the map in its original size.
The bottom line of this graphic is that I count 30 schools that have a teacher turnover rate of over 40%, and of that number, all but two are charter schools, which means that 93% of such high turnover schools are charters (and I don't know the exact statistics, but I think charter schools are only about 10% of all the schools in LA). So clearly, teachers are much more likely to leave charter schools than traditional public schools.
The question that the study doesn't address, however, is why. Charter teachers tend to be young; is that why more of them leave? (although more leave charter schools than is average for schools in general). Charter schools tend to be newer, which is also associated with higher turnover, but not at the rates seen in this study among the charter schools. Are the young teachers who work at charter schools more naive and/or idealistic than other young teachers, and thus leave when their fantasies encounter real educational situations? Are the demands of charter schools so intense that teachers can only maintain them for a year or two? Do the (sometimes) for-profit charter schools pay their teachers and/or offer fewer benefits or other incentives that make their staff leave for traditional schools? All of these explanations have been offered, but none have been proven.
So I don't know how to explain this data. But I do have a belief (which is backed up by some data) that students are better served by teachers with more experience and/or commitment to the school in which they teach. Therefore, I think the high teacher turnover rates should be at least a yellow caution light for those who seek to expand rapidly the charter school program (such as the Republican legislators, who this year lifted the 100-school cap on charter schools in North Carolina).
Friday, June 24, 2011
Does Khan Academy Represent the Future of Education, Part 2
Last month, I wrote a blog post about the free, online Khan Academy and whether or not that represents the future of education. My friend Maria of Natural Math has just written an interesting post on her blog on Metaphors explaining Khan Academy that encouraged me to think a bit more about this matter. So this is the metaphor I would offer about Khan Academy:
Forrest Gump taught us that life is like a box of chocolates. I would say that Khan Academy is like a can of soup. Education, however, is like a family dinner.
To explain this metaphor, I have to go back, wow, like 20 years ago, when I visited the National Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (which does the same sort of thing for the Air Force that its more famous cousins in West Point and Annapolis does for the Army and the Navy). Our guide, who was one of the instructors at the Academy, told me something that really stuck with me. He claimed that only about 25% of his job as an instructor was to teach the content in his classes. The vast majority of his job--75%--was to be a role model who exemplified by his character and his behavior what it is to be an exemplary Air Force officer.
And while that ratio may be off compared to traditional schools, given the special nature of those military academies, I think that there are some similar roles for all teachers. So much of education is all about the kind of person that student is becoming, not the academic subjects at all. We send children to classes to learn math, indeed, but also to learn to be responsible, to be punctual, to get work done by deadlines, to get along with other people, to continue to struggle with something you don't understand until you do, to work collaboratively, to be creative, to be a problem-solver....tons of things besides math (or science or English or whatever).
So, for example, if it were just about the content, you would think homeschoolers would be all over Khan Academy. We could set our children up on the computer and tell them to work their way through the videos until they are all done.
But nobody I know homeschools like that. When people uninformed about homeschooling talk to us, their first question is always, "But what about socialization?" And it is all we can do not to gaffaw in their face, because at least in an area like the Triangle NC, our kids are the most socialized kids on the planet. My son had some kind of group learning situation almost every day last year. He went to Math Clubs and Math Treks, did group nature explorations, participated in an history coop and a large, multi-age and multi-disciplinary coop, had art classes, wrote group stories for the homeschool newspaper, read and discussed over 100 books in several different book clubs, played on a homeschool baseball team, and studied world religions in Sunday School.
If it were just about the content, why would I do that to myself? The answer is, of course, that what I want for my son's education is so much more than just the academic content of his classes.
So, to return to my can of soup....Khan may be a master teacher (maybe...there are certainly lots of master teachers), and the Internet is a vehicle by which he can can himself (or other master teachers) and make it easily available. And canned soup is certainly handy to have. You can get canned soup from Master Chefs--for example, Wolfgang Puck sells canned soup--that probably tastes pretty good and that is pretty healthy (although I don't think it can match the homemade chicken, barley, and vegetable soup that I make weekly for my son's lunch and that takes a minimum of about 30 hours, since I use my friend Laura's recipe for making super-healthy 24 hour bone broth as the base for the soup).
But canned soup does not a family dinner make. The family dinner is about the other people, and the relationships, and tablecloths and silverware and candlesticks, and the conversations, and all of that, even if the family is eating canned soup for dinner.
So, Maria, there is my analogy. Khan Academy is like a can of soup. I might occasionally give my son a can opener and tell him to go heat one up, but I would never confuse it with a meal.
Forrest Gump taught us that life is like a box of chocolates. I would say that Khan Academy is like a can of soup. Education, however, is like a family dinner.
To explain this metaphor, I have to go back, wow, like 20 years ago, when I visited the National Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (which does the same sort of thing for the Air Force that its more famous cousins in West Point and Annapolis does for the Army and the Navy). Our guide, who was one of the instructors at the Academy, told me something that really stuck with me. He claimed that only about 25% of his job as an instructor was to teach the content in his classes. The vast majority of his job--75%--was to be a role model who exemplified by his character and his behavior what it is to be an exemplary Air Force officer.
And while that ratio may be off compared to traditional schools, given the special nature of those military academies, I think that there are some similar roles for all teachers. So much of education is all about the kind of person that student is becoming, not the academic subjects at all. We send children to classes to learn math, indeed, but also to learn to be responsible, to be punctual, to get work done by deadlines, to get along with other people, to continue to struggle with something you don't understand until you do, to work collaboratively, to be creative, to be a problem-solver....tons of things besides math (or science or English or whatever).
So, for example, if it were just about the content, you would think homeschoolers would be all over Khan Academy. We could set our children up on the computer and tell them to work their way through the videos until they are all done.
But nobody I know homeschools like that. When people uninformed about homeschooling talk to us, their first question is always, "But what about socialization?" And it is all we can do not to gaffaw in their face, because at least in an area like the Triangle NC, our kids are the most socialized kids on the planet. My son had some kind of group learning situation almost every day last year. He went to Math Clubs and Math Treks, did group nature explorations, participated in an history coop and a large, multi-age and multi-disciplinary coop, had art classes, wrote group stories for the homeschool newspaper, read and discussed over 100 books in several different book clubs, played on a homeschool baseball team, and studied world religions in Sunday School.
If it were just about the content, why would I do that to myself? The answer is, of course, that what I want for my son's education is so much more than just the academic content of his classes.
So, to return to my can of soup....Khan may be a master teacher (maybe...there are certainly lots of master teachers), and the Internet is a vehicle by which he can can himself (or other master teachers) and make it easily available. And canned soup is certainly handy to have. You can get canned soup from Master Chefs--for example, Wolfgang Puck sells canned soup--that probably tastes pretty good and that is pretty healthy (although I don't think it can match the homemade chicken, barley, and vegetable soup that I make weekly for my son's lunch and that takes a minimum of about 30 hours, since I use my friend Laura's recipe for making super-healthy 24 hour bone broth as the base for the soup).
But canned soup does not a family dinner make. The family dinner is about the other people, and the relationships, and tablecloths and silverware and candlesticks, and the conversations, and all of that, even if the family is eating canned soup for dinner.
So, Maria, there is my analogy. Khan Academy is like a can of soup. I might occasionally give my son a can opener and tell him to go heat one up, but I would never confuse it with a meal.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Does Khan Academy Represent the Future of Education?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about Khan Academy, a FREE online resource of math videos produced by Sal Khan, former hedge fund analyst turned educational visionary. Khan has turned some math tutorials he produced for his nieces and posted on YouTube into a collection of 2,300 math (with a scattering of other topics) videos that are the foundation of his vision of producing an entire educational curriculum, available free of charge to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.
Khan (who comes across as a nice guy and not a big ego person) has been a rising star in the media looking for their next educational "Superman" (as in "Waiting for Superman"), now that Michele Rhee's aura has been tarnished with Erasergate and the fact that she and her mentor were kicked out by the voters. CNN labeled him "Bill Gate's Favorite Teacher," Bloomberg Businessweek called him "a quasi-religions figure in a country desperate for a math Moses," and there is an active online campaign to have him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The latest on the Khan bandwagon is Steve Pearlstein, the Pulitzer-prize winning business and economics columnist for the Washington Post. In an article entitled "Mark them tardy to the revolution," Pearlstein posits that Khan's offering will upend all of education, just as Napster disrupted the music industry and Craiglist and the Huffington Post threatened the old models of the newspaper business.
According to Pearlstein, Khan and his ilk--"master teachers"--will produce videos that will be used by thousands or millions of students, reducing the number of people who will need to be employed as teachers. The video tutorial model, in his view, will also eliminate some of the current bedrocks of the educational system, such as age-specific school levels, school calendars, and grades (Pearlstein writes "As Khan loves to point out, grading will suddenly become simple: Everyone gets an A in every course, with the only question being how long it takes each student to earn it.") Given this approach, Pearlstein envisions that within a decade, educational quality will go up as costs go down, learning will become highly individualized, and "look for teaching to be transformed from an art to something much closer to a science."
My first reaction: I can't wait to see what Valerie Strauss, Pearlstein's Washington Post colleague who writes The Answer Sheet education blog for the website, has to say about these predictions.
My second reaction is this sounds like another great prognostication by someone who doesn't know much about education. Unfortunately, these days, those seem to be the ones who carry all the weight, since no one seems to care about what people who are actually trained for or work in education have to say.
Now, I'm not saying that some of these ideas might not be good ideas. But does Mr. Pearlstein really think it will be that easy? We've long ago abandoned the agrarian lifestyle that first set up our "summers off" educational calendar, but after about a century of resistance to changing that calendar, Pearlstein thinks we're going to talk families out of it within 10 years? Good luck with that. Pearlstein thinks we are going to do away with grades and just let everyone work at their own speed until they've mastered the content? Did he read his own paper's story about the DC-area school that tried eliminating the use of F grades (read my blog post about it here), which lasted ONE WEEK due to vehement public opposition after the Post publicized the policy (read my follow-up post here)? Again, personally, I agree with the concept--that is certainly what we do as homeschoolers--but I think Pearlstein is WAY underestimating the amount of conservatism there is about education, both among educators and among the public they serve.
My biggest issue, however, is that this is just another example of the "Superman" syndrome--the idea that some one new wonderful person or thing is going to come along and save education--and money as well! The one thing we know about education is that it is complicated, and diverse, and challenging, and ever changing. And it will always be those things, because it is a business about developing people, and people are complicated, and diverse, and challenging, and ever changing.
This is not, by any means, a dig at Mr. Khan or Khan Academy. I like the guy, and I think what he is doing is great. And it is wonderful that Bill Gates and his son get off on sitting down and watching dozens of Khan's math videos together. But it is not like that at our house. My son doesn't enjoy them and doesn't learn that well from them. He is not a great fan of video instruction in general. ESPECIALLY for math, videos don't have the interaction he needs to keep from zoning out. So when we have been working on a math concept that I've been doing a bad job of explaining, and so he understands why he is watching and is interested in having something he is trying to understand made clearer, he might watch and learn from these videos. But in general, this is not the solution for him.
I'm dubious of the argument that having everyone watch Khan Academy vidoes--but at their own pace--constitutes "highly individualized learning." I do think technology does present an option for creating lots of individualized modules on all sorts of topics. But for education to work for everyone, there have to be lots of different types of modules--videos, podcasts, computer programs, simulations, role playing games, virtual reality plays, I don't know, but tons of different types of approaches for the tons of different types of minds. And who is going to match all these great resources with these diverse minds? I don't think our computers are sophisticated enough for that yet. It's still going to take people---people who are not only familiar with all these resources, but who understand education and understand minds and understand children and their needs and behaviors.
In short, I don't see education having fewer staff and lower operating costs anytime soon--certainly not within 10 years. But, then, what do I know? Since I have both a Masters in Education AND over 20 years experience working in education, obviously no one wants to listen to my opinion.
Khan (who comes across as a nice guy and not a big ego person) has been a rising star in the media looking for their next educational "Superman" (as in "Waiting for Superman"), now that Michele Rhee's aura has been tarnished with Erasergate and the fact that she and her mentor were kicked out by the voters. CNN labeled him "Bill Gate's Favorite Teacher," Bloomberg Businessweek called him "a quasi-religions figure in a country desperate for a math Moses," and there is an active online campaign to have him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The latest on the Khan bandwagon is Steve Pearlstein, the Pulitzer-prize winning business and economics columnist for the Washington Post. In an article entitled "Mark them tardy to the revolution," Pearlstein posits that Khan's offering will upend all of education, just as Napster disrupted the music industry and Craiglist and the Huffington Post threatened the old models of the newspaper business.
According to Pearlstein, Khan and his ilk--"master teachers"--will produce videos that will be used by thousands or millions of students, reducing the number of people who will need to be employed as teachers. The video tutorial model, in his view, will also eliminate some of the current bedrocks of the educational system, such as age-specific school levels, school calendars, and grades (Pearlstein writes "As Khan loves to point out, grading will suddenly become simple: Everyone gets an A in every course, with the only question being how long it takes each student to earn it.") Given this approach, Pearlstein envisions that within a decade, educational quality will go up as costs go down, learning will become highly individualized, and "look for teaching to be transformed from an art to something much closer to a science."
My first reaction: I can't wait to see what Valerie Strauss, Pearlstein's Washington Post colleague who writes The Answer Sheet education blog for the website, has to say about these predictions.
My second reaction is this sounds like another great prognostication by someone who doesn't know much about education. Unfortunately, these days, those seem to be the ones who carry all the weight, since no one seems to care about what people who are actually trained for or work in education have to say.
Now, I'm not saying that some of these ideas might not be good ideas. But does Mr. Pearlstein really think it will be that easy? We've long ago abandoned the agrarian lifestyle that first set up our "summers off" educational calendar, but after about a century of resistance to changing that calendar, Pearlstein thinks we're going to talk families out of it within 10 years? Good luck with that. Pearlstein thinks we are going to do away with grades and just let everyone work at their own speed until they've mastered the content? Did he read his own paper's story about the DC-area school that tried eliminating the use of F grades (read my blog post about it here), which lasted ONE WEEK due to vehement public opposition after the Post publicized the policy (read my follow-up post here)? Again, personally, I agree with the concept--that is certainly what we do as homeschoolers--but I think Pearlstein is WAY underestimating the amount of conservatism there is about education, both among educators and among the public they serve.
My biggest issue, however, is that this is just another example of the "Superman" syndrome--the idea that some one new wonderful person or thing is going to come along and save education--and money as well! The one thing we know about education is that it is complicated, and diverse, and challenging, and ever changing. And it will always be those things, because it is a business about developing people, and people are complicated, and diverse, and challenging, and ever changing.
This is not, by any means, a dig at Mr. Khan or Khan Academy. I like the guy, and I think what he is doing is great. And it is wonderful that Bill Gates and his son get off on sitting down and watching dozens of Khan's math videos together. But it is not like that at our house. My son doesn't enjoy them and doesn't learn that well from them. He is not a great fan of video instruction in general. ESPECIALLY for math, videos don't have the interaction he needs to keep from zoning out. So when we have been working on a math concept that I've been doing a bad job of explaining, and so he understands why he is watching and is interested in having something he is trying to understand made clearer, he might watch and learn from these videos. But in general, this is not the solution for him.
I'm dubious of the argument that having everyone watch Khan Academy vidoes--but at their own pace--constitutes "highly individualized learning." I do think technology does present an option for creating lots of individualized modules on all sorts of topics. But for education to work for everyone, there have to be lots of different types of modules--videos, podcasts, computer programs, simulations, role playing games, virtual reality plays, I don't know, but tons of different types of approaches for the tons of different types of minds. And who is going to match all these great resources with these diverse minds? I don't think our computers are sophisticated enough for that yet. It's still going to take people---people who are not only familiar with all these resources, but who understand education and understand minds and understand children and their needs and behaviors.
In short, I don't see education having fewer staff and lower operating costs anytime soon--certainly not within 10 years. But, then, what do I know? Since I have both a Masters in Education AND over 20 years experience working in education, obviously no one wants to listen to my opinion.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Educational Reform in Seuss Verse
For those of you who are as sick as I am of the typical (and often not very civil) point-counter point debate over education reform.....well, as Monty Python title announced, now for something completely different.
This comes from a fabulous blog called Failing Schools, which is written by three actual teachers to combat much of the nonsense about education reform being spouted by non-educators (their tag line is "Are schools failing, or are they being failed?"). Sabrina, who is one of the three co-authors, was responding to the latest controversy over Michelle Rhee's brief control of the DC Public School system (if you are not familiar with the report that someone in the school system changed the standardized test sheets to improve student scores, you can get the full details on the scandal, dubbed "Erasuregate" or "Erase to the Top," at the RheeFirst website). However, she decided to do her critique via hand-drawn pictures accompanied by verse in the style of Dr. Seuss!
So here it is-- Rhee the Reformer: A Cautionary Tale. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
This comes from a fabulous blog called Failing Schools, which is written by three actual teachers to combat much of the nonsense about education reform being spouted by non-educators (their tag line is "Are schools failing, or are they being failed?"). Sabrina, who is one of the three co-authors, was responding to the latest controversy over Michelle Rhee's brief control of the DC Public School system (if you are not familiar with the report that someone in the school system changed the standardized test sheets to improve student scores, you can get the full details on the scandal, dubbed "Erasuregate" or "Erase to the Top," at the RheeFirst website). However, she decided to do her critique via hand-drawn pictures accompanied by verse in the style of Dr. Seuss!
So here it is-- Rhee the Reformer: A Cautionary Tale. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
In Which I Prove that the Current Focus on Testing Is INSANE
People in my educational circles generally know that I have a Masters in Education, but most of them don’t know that as an undergraduate, I was a Philosophy major--a Phi Beta Kappa Philosophy major, actually, from the Alpha chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, since Thomas Jefferson and some other 18th Century alumni founded PBK at my alma mater, the College of William and Mary. (I don’t mean to brag here; I’m just trying to establish a modicum of evidence that I might know what I’m talking about.)
Anyway, with all the discussion back and forth about standardized testing and data-driven schools and performance-based teacher evaluation and salary systems, etc., I thought perhaps I should go back to my philosophical roots and use some old-fashioned philosophical proofs to bring clarity to the debate.
I’m a little rusty, but I could probably write this all up in formal philosophical logic symbols, but to make it more reader-friendly, I’m just going to use the English language.
Argument #1
High standardized test scores are necessary because they prove the effectiveness of school education.
High standardized testing scores require all students to give the same correct answers to the questions.
For all students to give the same correct answers to the questions, all students must learn the same things in their educational classes.
All students learning the same thing in their education means that school education is standardized.
Therefore, to have high standardized testing score, education must be standardized.
Argument #2
Human brains do not operate the same way; indeed, science is proving all the ways that individual human brains, or at least groups of them, think differently from other groups and/or individuals.
Humans do not have the same personalities, body types, learning styles, or energy levels.
Humans do not have the same body of experiences, histories, or family situations.
Therefore, humans are highly differentiated.
Argument #3
School education is the education of humans.
Humans are highly differentiated.
Therefore, to serve humans, education must be highly differentiated.
But wait! We’ve now proved that education must be standardized AND education must be highly differentiated! Obviously, both can not be true. So which argument is wrong? The one that is based on what science and our own common experience both tell us--that humans are a set of very different creatures? Or the one that is based on a premise that was invented by a subset of humans who decided that high standardized test scores are the best way to evaluate education?
If you are having trouble, let me give you a hint. Arguments 2 and 3 are based on what we philosophers like to call “Facts.” Argument 1 is based on what we call a “Supposition.” Which one do you think triumphs in a logical argument?
Or if philosophy isn’t your thing, try approaching this from a scientific perspective. As I wrote in Monday’s blog post, we just had a class on biodiversity. Nature supports differentiation, not a reduction in complexity or variety. When humans have interferred with biodiversity by reducing the number of animal or plant or sometimes insect species living in an area, it has generally led to ecological, environmental, or health problems, and often even disasters. Life itself is supported by diversity, not standardization. So why would we be developing an educational system that runs counter to this basic precept of living?
Thus, the problem with all this focus on testing is not just that it doesn’t work, or wastes resources that would be better spent on other things, or that it is unproven. The problem with such an insistence on standardized testing, and therefore standardized education, is that it runs counter to the fundamental reality of life, which is diversity. And what do we call people who insist on things that are counter to reality? (Let’s skip the obvious topical joke here, folks--this is serious business.) We call them INSANE.
So there you have it. A singular focus on standardized test scores is insanity. I only wish that more educational policy makers would get their heads out of their data and wake up and smell the coffee---coffee that originated, of course, in the rainforest...the most biodiverse ecosystem on this planet.
Anyway, with all the discussion back and forth about standardized testing and data-driven schools and performance-based teacher evaluation and salary systems, etc., I thought perhaps I should go back to my philosophical roots and use some old-fashioned philosophical proofs to bring clarity to the debate.
I’m a little rusty, but I could probably write this all up in formal philosophical logic symbols, but to make it more reader-friendly, I’m just going to use the English language.
Argument #1
High standardized test scores are necessary because they prove the effectiveness of school education.
High standardized testing scores require all students to give the same correct answers to the questions.
For all students to give the same correct answers to the questions, all students must learn the same things in their educational classes.
All students learning the same thing in their education means that school education is standardized.
Therefore, to have high standardized testing score, education must be standardized.
Argument #2
Human brains do not operate the same way; indeed, science is proving all the ways that individual human brains, or at least groups of them, think differently from other groups and/or individuals.
Humans do not have the same personalities, body types, learning styles, or energy levels.
Humans do not have the same body of experiences, histories, or family situations.
Therefore, humans are highly differentiated.
Argument #3
School education is the education of humans.
Humans are highly differentiated.
Therefore, to serve humans, education must be highly differentiated.
But wait! We’ve now proved that education must be standardized AND education must be highly differentiated! Obviously, both can not be true. So which argument is wrong? The one that is based on what science and our own common experience both tell us--that humans are a set of very different creatures? Or the one that is based on a premise that was invented by a subset of humans who decided that high standardized test scores are the best way to evaluate education?
If you are having trouble, let me give you a hint. Arguments 2 and 3 are based on what we philosophers like to call “Facts.” Argument 1 is based on what we call a “Supposition.” Which one do you think triumphs in a logical argument?
Or if philosophy isn’t your thing, try approaching this from a scientific perspective. As I wrote in Monday’s blog post, we just had a class on biodiversity. Nature supports differentiation, not a reduction in complexity or variety. When humans have interferred with biodiversity by reducing the number of animal or plant or sometimes insect species living in an area, it has generally led to ecological, environmental, or health problems, and often even disasters. Life itself is supported by diversity, not standardization. So why would we be developing an educational system that runs counter to this basic precept of living?
Thus, the problem with all this focus on testing is not just that it doesn’t work, or wastes resources that would be better spent on other things, or that it is unproven. The problem with such an insistence on standardized testing, and therefore standardized education, is that it runs counter to the fundamental reality of life, which is diversity. And what do we call people who insist on things that are counter to reality? (Let’s skip the obvious topical joke here, folks--this is serious business.) We call them INSANE.
So there you have it. A singular focus on standardized test scores is insanity. I only wish that more educational policy makers would get their heads out of their data and wake up and smell the coffee---coffee that originated, of course, in the rainforest...the most biodiverse ecosystem on this planet.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The Kids Are All Right
I hope people enjoyed my eight nights of book reviews for Hanukkah. It was kind of fun to focus on one things for a while, as well as finally writing reviews of all these great books we've been reading. I really recommend the Mock Newbery Book Club program--it encourages your middle schooler (and probably you as well, at least if you are like our family) to catch up with some wonderful new books, and has us all reaching for different types of book than we typically read.
But now, back to other educational issues. However, I'm still in a holiday mood, so I don't want to go on a rant against educational policies I disagree with right now. So I thought tonight maybe I would give parents a gift--the gift of reducing our guilt about all the ways we are messing up our children.
This gift comes via one of my favorite educational writers, Alfie Kohn (oft mentioned in this blog). He posted a new article on his website recently pointing out that all the woes of today's educational critics--high school graduates who can't read, employers who find high school graduates incapable of performing even entry-level jobs, grade inflation, falling standards, yada yada yada--have been railed about for years. That is, critics were saying the same things about the problems with the education system during Eisenhower's time (and in some cases, even earlier) as they are saying now. So while it is obviously unacceptable to have high school graduates who can't read, at least it is not just a recent phenomenon that our generation has created.
While this article is good, an even better one was something in the same vein he wrote this summer. In that article he addresses the often-heard criticism that today's parents are too permissive and indulgent, and that today's students are entitled, smug, out of touch with reality, and out-and-out spoiled rotten. Well, Kohn traces the exact same complaints about overindulgent parents and what he calls "undisciplined narcissists" even farther back, to over a century ago. It seems that educational experts have been blaming parents for ruining their children's work ethic for nearly as long as we've had mandatory universal public education.
Kohn points out a couple of holes in this line of criticism. First, there is no data--in fact, there has never been any attempt to collective information on parenting styles in a systematic way that could be used to rate a parent as "permissive" versus a "disciplinarian" in all these many long years that critics have been decrying the failures of successive generations of parents. What little research has been done in this area hardly suggests that parents are awash in overindulgence; Kohn cites a 1995 study of parents of preschoolers in which 94% admitted that they spank or hit their children.
For this complaint, however, Kohn does have an explanation. He discusses a 2010 article in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science by Brent Roberts, Grant Edmonds, and Emily Grijalva of the University of Illinois. These researchers argue that such critics are confusing developmental differences with generational differences. That is, young people, on the whole, are more self-centered and self-concerned, laxidasical, and unfocused than older professionals (such as these professional critics) because of age-related developmental differences; most only become less self-involved and more focused as they get older. So, yes, there is a difference between the younger generation and the older one--but it is function of age, rather than a result of differences in parenting styles (or anything to do with their parents, really). But as the young generation matures and eventually is replaced by a new young generation, they, too, will start shaking their heads and making pronouncements like "these young kids these days DON'T.... or SHOULD.... well, you get the picture.
So, parents, you are off the hook for that one. If your tweens or teens or even college students or recent graduates are driving you crazy with their lack of responsibility and their inability to get over themselves, don't beat yourself up for being a bad parent. Most likely, they are just being kids--which is what they are, no matter how early our society starts the whole "get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job" pressure on them. Apparently we did the same things to our parents (that's not how we remember it, of course, but we probably did), just like they did to our grandparents, who did the same thing to our great-grandparents...and on and on.
So, Alfie Kohn, thank you once again for helping us keep things in perspective.
But now, back to other educational issues. However, I'm still in a holiday mood, so I don't want to go on a rant against educational policies I disagree with right now. So I thought tonight maybe I would give parents a gift--the gift of reducing our guilt about all the ways we are messing up our children.
This gift comes via one of my favorite educational writers, Alfie Kohn (oft mentioned in this blog). He posted a new article on his website recently pointing out that all the woes of today's educational critics--high school graduates who can't read, employers who find high school graduates incapable of performing even entry-level jobs, grade inflation, falling standards, yada yada yada--have been railed about for years. That is, critics were saying the same things about the problems with the education system during Eisenhower's time (and in some cases, even earlier) as they are saying now. So while it is obviously unacceptable to have high school graduates who can't read, at least it is not just a recent phenomenon that our generation has created.
While this article is good, an even better one was something in the same vein he wrote this summer. In that article he addresses the often-heard criticism that today's parents are too permissive and indulgent, and that today's students are entitled, smug, out of touch with reality, and out-and-out spoiled rotten. Well, Kohn traces the exact same complaints about overindulgent parents and what he calls "undisciplined narcissists" even farther back, to over a century ago. It seems that educational experts have been blaming parents for ruining their children's work ethic for nearly as long as we've had mandatory universal public education.
Kohn points out a couple of holes in this line of criticism. First, there is no data--in fact, there has never been any attempt to collective information on parenting styles in a systematic way that could be used to rate a parent as "permissive" versus a "disciplinarian" in all these many long years that critics have been decrying the failures of successive generations of parents. What little research has been done in this area hardly suggests that parents are awash in overindulgence; Kohn cites a 1995 study of parents of preschoolers in which 94% admitted that they spank or hit their children.
For this complaint, however, Kohn does have an explanation. He discusses a 2010 article in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science by Brent Roberts, Grant Edmonds, and Emily Grijalva of the University of Illinois. These researchers argue that such critics are confusing developmental differences with generational differences. That is, young people, on the whole, are more self-centered and self-concerned, laxidasical, and unfocused than older professionals (such as these professional critics) because of age-related developmental differences; most only become less self-involved and more focused as they get older. So, yes, there is a difference between the younger generation and the older one--but it is function of age, rather than a result of differences in parenting styles (or anything to do with their parents, really). But as the young generation matures and eventually is replaced by a new young generation, they, too, will start shaking their heads and making pronouncements like "these young kids these days DON'T.... or SHOULD.... well, you get the picture.
So, parents, you are off the hook for that one. If your tweens or teens or even college students or recent graduates are driving you crazy with their lack of responsibility and their inability to get over themselves, don't beat yourself up for being a bad parent. Most likely, they are just being kids--which is what they are, no matter how early our society starts the whole "get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job" pressure on them. Apparently we did the same things to our parents (that's not how we remember it, of course, but we probably did), just like they did to our grandparents, who did the same thing to our great-grandparents...and on and on.
So, Alfie Kohn, thank you once again for helping us keep things in perspective.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Should We Get Rid of Middle Schools?
Forget about just getting rid of F's--should be be getting rid of middle schools altogether? Researcher Peter Meyer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute certainly seems to think we should, at least according to his article in Education Next entitled "The Middle School Mess." Meyer cites studies that show that students who attend K-8 grade schools, rather than stand-alone schools teaching 6th-8th grades, demonstrate fewer behavior problems, maintain higher rates of on-time high school graduation, and earn higher grades and higher standardized test scores.
So what's the problem with middle school? Meyer argues that the typical middle school does not put a high priority on academic achievement, and so does not demand sufficiently rigorous learning demands on the students in these grades.
According to Meyer, middle schools are a relatively recent invention. For most of the 20th century, 7th and 8th graders attended "Junior Highs" that were supposed to prepare them for high schools. But in the 1960's and 1970's, such institutions were attacked to putting too much pressure on the students, while not recognizing the developmental needs of early adolescents. The fear was that starting the academic preparation for college in junior high was forcing 12 and 13 year olds to focus solely on the core classes--math, reading and writing, and science. However, the educational theorists of the time protested that early adolescence should be a time for discovering and pursuing passions like art and music, journalism and drama, scouting and other outdoor experiences, and (in those time) topics like home and industrial education. Early adolescents, they felt, were dealing with a lot of physical, emotional, and hormonal changes, and needed time to explore not only these interests and potential study and/or career paths, but also to figure out who they were becoming and how they related to their family, peers, and world. Thus, middle schools were founded as a transitional time for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to get used to the high school system of different classes with different teachers and other such attributes and to acquire subject-matter content and skills necessary to be successful in high school without overloading them with work so that they could try on different activities and ways of being as they matured into true adolescents.
So should we get rid of middle schools? I guess it depends on how much you buy into our current system of evaluating educational progress primarily, if not purely, by test scores and other quantifiable data. If one's priority is simply higher test scores, then our 1970's-style, more humanistically-designed middle schools are probably out of place. Meyer states that the recent trend is towards eliminating middle schools in favor of more K-8 institutions. However, I can see other curricular, economic, and practical rationales behind such schools, so I don't know without more research that a backlash against the middle school concept is fueling that trend.
My personal bias is that schools should be about developing happy, productive, well-rounded, and effective citizens, and I don't think that is measured by standardized tests. In fact, the current preoccupation with testing is one of the reason we have chosen to homeschool. And I would like to think that somewhere along the now 17+ years of institutionalized education that we now expect our children to attend there would be some kind of focus on developing aspects beyond being a highly-performing testing machine.
But, then, I know I'm an oddball. So what's your opinion? Do we need to get rid of middle schools, or at least get them on a more academically-focused track?
So what's the problem with middle school? Meyer argues that the typical middle school does not put a high priority on academic achievement, and so does not demand sufficiently rigorous learning demands on the students in these grades.
According to Meyer, middle schools are a relatively recent invention. For most of the 20th century, 7th and 8th graders attended "Junior Highs" that were supposed to prepare them for high schools. But in the 1960's and 1970's, such institutions were attacked to putting too much pressure on the students, while not recognizing the developmental needs of early adolescents. The fear was that starting the academic preparation for college in junior high was forcing 12 and 13 year olds to focus solely on the core classes--math, reading and writing, and science. However, the educational theorists of the time protested that early adolescence should be a time for discovering and pursuing passions like art and music, journalism and drama, scouting and other outdoor experiences, and (in those time) topics like home and industrial education. Early adolescents, they felt, were dealing with a lot of physical, emotional, and hormonal changes, and needed time to explore not only these interests and potential study and/or career paths, but also to figure out who they were becoming and how they related to their family, peers, and world. Thus, middle schools were founded as a transitional time for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to get used to the high school system of different classes with different teachers and other such attributes and to acquire subject-matter content and skills necessary to be successful in high school without overloading them with work so that they could try on different activities and ways of being as they matured into true adolescents.
So should we get rid of middle schools? I guess it depends on how much you buy into our current system of evaluating educational progress primarily, if not purely, by test scores and other quantifiable data. If one's priority is simply higher test scores, then our 1970's-style, more humanistically-designed middle schools are probably out of place. Meyer states that the recent trend is towards eliminating middle schools in favor of more K-8 institutions. However, I can see other curricular, economic, and practical rationales behind such schools, so I don't know without more research that a backlash against the middle school concept is fueling that trend.
My personal bias is that schools should be about developing happy, productive, well-rounded, and effective citizens, and I don't think that is measured by standardized tests. In fact, the current preoccupation with testing is one of the reason we have chosen to homeschool. And I would like to think that somewhere along the now 17+ years of institutionalized education that we now expect our children to attend there would be some kind of focus on developing aspects beyond being a highly-performing testing machine.
But, then, I know I'm an oddball. So what's your opinion? Do we need to get rid of middle schools, or at least get them on a more academically-focused track?
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Should We Stop Giving Students F's?
In the movie Apollo 13, when Ed Harris's character (Flight Director Gene Kranz) announces "Failure is not an option," he is referring to the fact that the team could not even consider the possibility that the astronauts stranded in a broken spacecraft would not return to Earth safely. But when West Potomac High School principal Clifford Hardison says it, he is talking about the fact that his school has dropped the use of the F grade in classes. Rather, students who have not performed up to minimal expectations will be given an I for Incomplete, and will be given additional time to do the work necessary for a passing score.
Needless to say, this has been a very controversial move, both within the school itself and among the educational community. Proponents argue that what we should really care about is that students' achieve mastery, not how long it takes them to do so. Otherwise, they continue, students receiving F grades simply drop any attempt to understand that subject matter....and, all too often, end up dropping out of school all together. Opponents say that removing the F grade takes away one of the few tools in the teacher's arsenal as teachers attempt to persuade reluctant learners that they need to apply themselves and do the work necessary to cover the subject matter and skills required to be productive in "the real world." And the "good students"--the ones who have performed to expectations, who turned in all their assignments on time and studied to get good grades on their tests--worry that the fact that their high school gives out I's (to be replaced by the appropriate grade once all assignments and tests have been passed) will diminish the value of the high grades they achieved within the normal timeframe of the class.
It is particularly interesting to consider from a homeschooling perspective. Most of the homeschoolers I know do minimal or no grading until students get into high school level classes, which need to be turned into some kind of transcript for college admission or job applications. In my experience, the prevailing thought among area homeschoolers is that those transcripts need to include grades, because that is what colleges or employers expect. But there is a contingent that argues that even high school level work should not be graded (including one of my favorite writers on educational reform, Alfie Kohn). But even among those who are grading their students, many actually take the same approach as West Potomac. That is, if their children don't get through all the material in a subject the parent's have planned for the year, they don't usually get an F; they continue to work on it in the next academic year, and it is listed as a course in the year in which they complete the work, not the year they began it.
I haven't decided which way we will go when my son gets to the transcript years. But what about you? Do you think giving F's is a good idea or a bad idea?
Needless to say, this has been a very controversial move, both within the school itself and among the educational community. Proponents argue that what we should really care about is that students' achieve mastery, not how long it takes them to do so. Otherwise, they continue, students receiving F grades simply drop any attempt to understand that subject matter....and, all too often, end up dropping out of school all together. Opponents say that removing the F grade takes away one of the few tools in the teacher's arsenal as teachers attempt to persuade reluctant learners that they need to apply themselves and do the work necessary to cover the subject matter and skills required to be productive in "the real world." And the "good students"--the ones who have performed to expectations, who turned in all their assignments on time and studied to get good grades on their tests--worry that the fact that their high school gives out I's (to be replaced by the appropriate grade once all assignments and tests have been passed) will diminish the value of the high grades they achieved within the normal timeframe of the class.
It is particularly interesting to consider from a homeschooling perspective. Most of the homeschoolers I know do minimal or no grading until students get into high school level classes, which need to be turned into some kind of transcript for college admission or job applications. In my experience, the prevailing thought among area homeschoolers is that those transcripts need to include grades, because that is what colleges or employers expect. But there is a contingent that argues that even high school level work should not be graded (including one of my favorite writers on educational reform, Alfie Kohn). But even among those who are grading their students, many actually take the same approach as West Potomac. That is, if their children don't get through all the material in a subject the parent's have planned for the year, they don't usually get an F; they continue to work on it in the next academic year, and it is listed as a course in the year in which they complete the work, not the year they began it.
I haven't decided which way we will go when my son gets to the transcript years. But what about you? Do you think giving F's is a good idea or a bad idea?
Friday, November 12, 2010
What Schools Can Learn from Homeschooling
As homeschoolers, we are always borrowing things from the school systems--teaching techniques, class structures, but particularly curricula and lesson plans. However, at least some of us think that the schools could learn a thing or two from us as well!
My friend Maria of Natural Math and I wrote an article on this topic that has just been published on the Shareable website. You can access the first part of the article here.
The gist of our argument is that while some schools are making some incredible strides in transforming themselves so that students experience success rather than failure (see my recent post on "Waiting for Superman" for more information), they still have to operate within the established school paradigm. But there are some educators who are not constrained by the traditional school structures and funding mechanism. Those are, of course, homeschoolers--or, as we prefer to call them in the article, family educators, because most of what we do is very different from "schooling," and if you are anything like us, it seems like we're never at home! For example, I'm writing this post at a local library while my son is writing articles for our homeschool Newspaper Club that is run by another friend of mine. And it is this kind of community-based learning--you teach my son to write, I'll teach your daughter about history or psychology (two of the classes I'm teaching right now)....and, of course, Maria will teach them all her wonderfully vibrant and engaging approach to math--that is the focus of our article. It is creating networks of teachers and learning that allows us to prepare our children to participate effectively in the broad spectrum of the curriculum (not just the subjects we personally know well) without spending a fortune, since most of us are single-income families.
In the article, we're not arguing that everyone should homeschool, or that homeschooling is inherently better. Also, schools obviously have to deal with a whole range of issues that home educator networks usually don't need to address. Our point is just to present home education as a realm where teachers and learners have the freedom to redesign education from the ground floor up, and to suggest that communities just consider some of the things that are working for us in homeschooling as we continue to investigate the kind of fundamental school reform that is required for our information society.
Anyway, check out the article at http://shareable.net/blog/family-educator-commons and let us know what you think.
My friend Maria of Natural Math and I wrote an article on this topic that has just been published on the Shareable website. You can access the first part of the article here.
The gist of our argument is that while some schools are making some incredible strides in transforming themselves so that students experience success rather than failure (see my recent post on "Waiting for Superman" for more information), they still have to operate within the established school paradigm. But there are some educators who are not constrained by the traditional school structures and funding mechanism. Those are, of course, homeschoolers--or, as we prefer to call them in the article, family educators, because most of what we do is very different from "schooling," and if you are anything like us, it seems like we're never at home! For example, I'm writing this post at a local library while my son is writing articles for our homeschool Newspaper Club that is run by another friend of mine. And it is this kind of community-based learning--you teach my son to write, I'll teach your daughter about history or psychology (two of the classes I'm teaching right now)....and, of course, Maria will teach them all her wonderfully vibrant and engaging approach to math--that is the focus of our article. It is creating networks of teachers and learning that allows us to prepare our children to participate effectively in the broad spectrum of the curriculum (not just the subjects we personally know well) without spending a fortune, since most of us are single-income families.
In the article, we're not arguing that everyone should homeschool, or that homeschooling is inherently better. Also, schools obviously have to deal with a whole range of issues that home educator networks usually don't need to address. Our point is just to present home education as a realm where teachers and learners have the freedom to redesign education from the ground floor up, and to suggest that communities just consider some of the things that are working for us in homeschooling as we continue to investigate the kind of fundamental school reform that is required for our information society.
Anyway, check out the article at http://shareable.net/blog/family-educator-commons and let us know what you think.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Review: Waiting For Superman
Last night a few of us went to see the educational document Waiting for Superman (which I mentioned in a previous blog post on Educational Reform Documentaries). This film, which was made by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," seeks to do the same thing with this documentary that they did with Gore's movie--to raise public consciousness about a crucial issue and to spark a grassroots movement to start taking action to solve the problem.
This documentary, as you might expect, is really well done and contains lots of shocking data. But I found it more heart-wrenching and depressing than "An Inconvenient Truth." What they have done in this movie is to personalize the almost-unbelievable statistics about the failure of public schools to education urban minority youth by focusing on the stories of a few specific children in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and New York City (among others). OF COURSE, these children are photogenic and adorable youths with dreams for a better future being raised by loving and concerned lower-income families. As the documentary cites the statistics about how poorly these children's schools are serving their communities--backed up with footage of schools that demonstrate bad teaching, depressing buildings, and uncaring school administrators--the families pin their hopes that their children can beat the odds by winning a lottery entrance into one of the charter schools whose track records have produced almost universally successful graduates. Unfortunately, the odds are against them; at one of these schools, there were over 700 applicants for under 50 available spaces. By the end of the movie (at least if you are a softie like me), you care so much about these children that it is almost too stressful to even watch them go to the public lottery to see if their son, daughter, or grandson will manage to win one of the coveted spots.
The question the movie poses is, Why should these children have to win a lottery for a shot at a decent education? Shouldn't that be the right of every American child, or at least all those willing to put in the effort required (as these examples all are)?
The movie isn't completely depressing. In particular, it highlight schools that are working, that have a 96% graduation rate in communities where the comparable public schools have 2/3rds of their students dropping out. It does a great job of capturing the vision, the energy, the thinking, and the settings of educational reformers who are doing a great job in preparing their students to succeed in college. And it suggests why all schools aren't doing a similar job.
So, if you want to learn about such highly-technical educational terms as "dropout factories," "the dance of the lemons," or the infamous New York City "rubber room," or if you want to hear the story of Anthony in DC, Daisy in LA, or Francisco in Harlem, check out "Waiting for Superman." Particularly here in Wake County NC, where the community is engaged in an intense debate about how our schools should be structured, this film sheds lights on disheartening data we would like to ignore and raises questions we might not want to answer--but we should anyway.
This documentary, as you might expect, is really well done and contains lots of shocking data. But I found it more heart-wrenching and depressing than "An Inconvenient Truth." What they have done in this movie is to personalize the almost-unbelievable statistics about the failure of public schools to education urban minority youth by focusing on the stories of a few specific children in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and New York City (among others). OF COURSE, these children are photogenic and adorable youths with dreams for a better future being raised by loving and concerned lower-income families. As the documentary cites the statistics about how poorly these children's schools are serving their communities--backed up with footage of schools that demonstrate bad teaching, depressing buildings, and uncaring school administrators--the families pin their hopes that their children can beat the odds by winning a lottery entrance into one of the charter schools whose track records have produced almost universally successful graduates. Unfortunately, the odds are against them; at one of these schools, there were over 700 applicants for under 50 available spaces. By the end of the movie (at least if you are a softie like me), you care so much about these children that it is almost too stressful to even watch them go to the public lottery to see if their son, daughter, or grandson will manage to win one of the coveted spots.
The question the movie poses is, Why should these children have to win a lottery for a shot at a decent education? Shouldn't that be the right of every American child, or at least all those willing to put in the effort required (as these examples all are)?
The movie isn't completely depressing. In particular, it highlight schools that are working, that have a 96% graduation rate in communities where the comparable public schools have 2/3rds of their students dropping out. It does a great job of capturing the vision, the energy, the thinking, and the settings of educational reformers who are doing a great job in preparing their students to succeed in college. And it suggests why all schools aren't doing a similar job.
So, if you want to learn about such highly-technical educational terms as "dropout factories," "the dance of the lemons," or the infamous New York City "rubber room," or if you want to hear the story of Anthony in DC, Daisy in LA, or Francisco in Harlem, check out "Waiting for Superman." Particularly here in Wake County NC, where the community is engaged in an intense debate about how our schools should be structured, this film sheds lights on disheartening data we would like to ignore and raises questions we might not want to answer--but we should anyway.
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