Archive for May, 2008

What Does This Say to You?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 23, 2008 in Assessment and Testing. 2 Comments

Here’s an education Rorschach Test: Read this story from the San Francisco Chronicle about Oakland’s Monarch Academy, and watch this multimedia slide show.

Principal Tatiana Epanchin demands more testing than other schools do, believing it’s the key to success – a controversial view to some. They test during recess. They give practice tests. They hold pep rallies before tests. She uses the tests to frequently assess every child, determining who needs help. No child is left behind or left alone.

What do you see? A high-standards, no excuses elementary school that prizes excellence? Or something less than that?

Way Smarter Than a 5th Grader

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 23, 2008 in Core Knowledge. 0 Comments

Pop Quiz (answers below):

  1. What is the westernmost Asian national capital?
  2. In which country is Makossa is a popular type of music?
  3. Where is Tillya Tepe?

If you don’t know, then you too would have lost the National Geographic Bee. The winner, 11-year-old Akshay Rajagopal from Lincoln, Nebraska won the contest by knowing that Cochabamba is the third-largest conurbation in Bolivia.

A conurbation, needless to say, is an extensive urban area resulting from the expansion of several cities or towns so that they coalesce but usually retain their separate identities. But you knew that.

There’s a terrific, if humbling, ten-question daily Geo Bee online. Start boning up for next year.

Continue reading ‘Way Smarter Than a 5th Grader’

Take the Money and Run

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 22, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Where are all of the companies that took advantage of Reading First and its $1B in new funding for scientifically based reading programs asks Patrick Riccards, aka Eduflack. “There is little doubt that a lot of people got rich off of RF. When a law pledges to put $1 billion a year for five years into our schools, there is a lot of money to go around,” he notes. “So where are all of these companies now?”

When all is said and done, the NCLB era may very well be known as the boom time for educational profiteering. And at the end of the day, those five-to-10-year-old companies whose revenue skyrocketed during the RF days will have a lot of explaining to do. At some point, we need to see ROI. And if they aren’t willing to defend the program they’ve been suckling from these many years, do we really expect to see results?

In the comments section, Reid Lyon seconds Patrick, noting “most if not all vendors are no where to be seen supporting the program that made them rich and are laughing all the way to the bank. Two words come to mind: greed and cowardice.”

A Memo to Wendy Kopp

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 22, 2008 in Education Leadership and Teaching. 16 Comments

To : Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder, Teach For America
From: Robert Pondiscio, The Core Knowledge Blog
Re: Taking TFA to the Next Level

Dear Wendy:

First of all, congratulations on the huge surge in applications this year, and that New York Times editorial praising the impact of Teach For America’s teachers. TFA is hot, hot, hot! You’re well on the way to establishing the premier brand in education reform. Heck, you’re already there. That’s why you made this year’s TIME 100 list of the most world’s most influential people. It’s a good time to be Wendy Kopp and Teach For America. You’ve earned every accolade.

Because of all this success, you have built up a boatload of political capital. You’ve earned the right to innovate and really move the needle for our most disadvantaged kids. Now it’s time to break the mold and deploy your corps members in a way that could take TFA’s impact—already significant—to new heights.

You and I both know that the big knock on TFA is always going to be that its teachers are “two years and out.” Sure, you’ve got data to show that your smart, well-trained new teachers improve student outcomes. That’s great stuff. We also know that a third of corps members stay past their two-year commitment, and that’s even better. Even those who teach for just two years often go on to leadership positions, both in and out of education, deeply affected and energized by their experience. Bonus! But the more cache TFA gets, the more it’ll be used by some as a blue-chip resume item to catch the eye of recruiters on Wall Street, in the best law firms and corporations, and in top grad schools. Face it, that’s already an issue. These kids are no dummies, after all.

So here’s how we solve the “two and out” problem and kick TFA’s impact into the stratosphere: Instead of throwing TFAers into the worst teaching situations in the cities you serve, place them in some of the best, highest-performing schools. (Stick with me, Wendy, here’s the beauty part.) Place them in that high-functioning school for two years as pinch-hitters for some of our best, most experienced teachers, and send those master teachers to the same schools to which you’re sending TFA corps members now. We can call it the Teach For America Fellowship, and throw in a nice extra chunk of change to incentivize those master teachers without worrying about whether it’s merit pay.

Here’s why it makes sense:

Continue reading ‘A Memo to Wendy Kopp’

A School Where Content is King

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 21, 2008 in Core Knowledge School and Curriculum. 0 Comments

Education Week’s Kathleen Kennedy Manzo has been working on an article about Core Knowledge for several weeks and it’s up today in the free content area of EdWeek’s website. Much of the piece is built around her visit to New Holland Core Knowledge Academy in Gainesville, Georgia.

While many schools have narrowed the curriculum since Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, doubling up on reading and math instruction to prepare students for crucial tests in those subjects, this school has embraced a far broader course of study. Each day, its students tackle a rich and rigorous sequence of lessons in history, science, and the arts, as well as mathematics and reading/language arts.

New Holland is a Core Knowledge “visitation school,” which means officials from the Core Knowledge Foundation have visited the school to ensure that the curriculum is being fully implemented; it serves as a demonstration school for educators interested in adopting the Core Knowledge curriculum. Manzo writes:

Principal [Jill] Goforth and other educators at New Holland say the curriculum is a key reason why the school has made adequate yearly progress—a central NCLB hurdle—each year, with some 85 percent of students meeting benchmarks on state tests in math and reading. No small feat, they say, for this K-5 public school of 640 students—two-thirds of them Hispanic, and 24 percent African-American. Nine in 10 of the students are considered poor, and 27 percent are English-language learners.

Any comment I make about the piece would be colored by obvious self-interest, so just go read it. Here’s the link, available to subscribers, only. We plan to make the full story available to our readers soon.

IQ and Education

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Education Theory. 0 Comments

Diane Ravitch is particularly strong over at Bridging Differences, commenting on Charles Murray’s recent piece, The Age of Educational Romanticism, in the New Criterion.  She’s not buying it.

Retention Deficit Disorder

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Teaching. 0 Comments

Teacher blogger TMAO’s surprise announcement last week that he was resigning from his school was the edublog equivalent of LBJ announcing he would not run for re-election. Today he posts the reasons that were NOT behind his unexpected departure.

It’s not that he wasn’t prepared, successful, supported or paid. TMAO is basically burned out, conceding “I’m not happy unless I’m being the teacher I see in my head, but the process of finding that guy and living as him no longer makes me happy.”

Having been in TMAO’s shoes less than a year ago, I’ll say what I said then and many times since. Teaching in a struggling school is the easiest job in the world to do badly—but the hardest job in the world to do well. Setting high standards is something you do not just for students but for yourself. It’s not (and this, frankly, is something too many people who’ve never been in classroom will never quite get at a visceral level) about test scores or data. It’s so easy to take that first step down the path of least resistance. No one knows but you. Some make peace with it. Others — and it sounds like TMAO is one of them — simply can’t abide not “being the teacher I see in my head.”

This inevitable inability of even the most earnest, energetic young teachers to keep it up for more than a few years portends many things for education reform. None of them good.

Update: Corey Bunje Bower, a consistently thoughtful ex-teacher blogging at Thoughts on Education Policy weighs in candidly on the TMAO story and his own reasons for quitting.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Education Theory and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Girls’ gains in the classroom have not come at boys’ expense, says a new report from The American Association of University Women. The Washington Post and the New York Times both have pieces on the group’s study out today, which finds that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender (Shocker, that).

The best quote comes from the redoubtable Sara Mead of the New America Foundation in the Times:

“There’s still a lot of debate about whether there’s something we should be doing differently in teaching boys and girls. The people on the feminist-leaning side of the debate see the conversation about a boys’ crisis as a strategy to advance the single-sex education agenda. I’m not sure that’s correct. I don’t think the kind of data we have about boys’ and girls’ achievement tells us anything useful about single-sex education.”

Thanks for clearing that up, Sara.

Update: More from Eduwonkette, the Queen of Charts

Scientology School?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Education Theory and School News. 0 Comments

Nary a word about it in the domestic press, but overseas papers and gossip sites are thick with stories about Will Smith–yes, that Will Smith–who is reportedly bankrolling a new California Pre-K to 6 school, The New Village Academy of Calabasas.

The legitimacy of the reports can’t be verified, but a lot of care went into creating the school’s web site, which says its opening is set for Fall 2008.  Check out the glossary of ten “educational theories” the school purports to use: a Chinese menu of models including constructivism, Piaget, Montessori, Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, inquiry instruction, et al.  Then there’s something called “study technology,” which the school’s web site describes thusly:

An educational model developed by L.R. Hubbard, study technology focuses on three principles. First is the use of “mass” (manipulatives and hands-on experiences) to foster understanding – children need to see and feel what they are learning about. Second is the attention to the “gradient,” which ensures sure students master one level before moving on to the next. Third is the “misunderstood word,” in which students master word definitions and are taught not to read past words they don’t know the meanings of in order to understand completely what they are reading and learning. NVA uses study technology as an umbrella methodology woven through the subjects.

L.R Hubbard?  Yes, that L.R. Hubbard.

Randi Says, “I Want My CK!”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Curriculum and Education Leadership. 0 Comments

I’m not at the New Schools Venture Fund’s summit in DC this morning.  (I’m sure my invitation was lost in the mail), but Fordham’s Mike Petrilli is.  Alexander Russo, too, and both are blogging it.  According to Petrilli, Randi Weingarten is showing Core Knowledge some love.