A Few Good Links

by Robert Pondiscio
January 5th, 2009

Posted in Education News | No Comments »

USA Today reports the number of homeschooled children continues to climb–1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education started keeping track in 1999.

Edweek’s Michele McNeil looks at the shaky condition of state budgets and reports sparing K-12 education from deep cuts will be tough.  Schools looking to make up shortfall may turn to parents for money for supplies and even staff, the Wall Street Journal notes. 

The Washington Post’s Bill Turque reports Michelle Rhee’s vision for transforming D.C. schools includes removing ”a significant share of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.”

Denver school superintendent Michael Bennet will fill out the U.S. Senate term of Ken Salazar who was tapped to be Secretary of the Interior.  Andy “Eduwonk” Rotherham cheekily dubs Bennet (D-School Reform). The New Yorker’s Katharine Boo did the definitive piece on Bennett two years ago. 

Over at Flypaper, Checker Finn is worried about devout but clueless kids after a trip to the LBJ ranch. The dozen or so youngsters on the tour could manage to ask only two questions during the entire tour, including a girl who wanted to know, “Was he saved?”

Margo/Mom, who frequently posts thoughtful and well-informed comments here on the Core Knowledge Blog, gets full guest blog honors over at Swift and Changeable and brings to light an obscure, but potentially powerful piece of NCLB on school improvement plans.

Finally, a Des Moines Register analysis reinforces for what, alas, seems to be the 17,659th time: the lowest-income students get the least experienced teachers.

That’s Edutainment!

by Robert Pondiscio
January 5th, 2009

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Education Practice, Opinion, Teaching | 6 Comments »

“Why did the amoeba cross the microscope?  To get to the other slide!!  Hey, you’ve been a great class, thanks for coming!  I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip the classroom aide.  I love you!  G’night!!”

Believing that poor classroom behavior indicates of a lack of stimulation, the official British education watchdog organization, Ofsted, is planning a “crackdown on boring teaching” in the mother country, the Guardian reports.  Chief inspector of schools Christine Gilbert tells the paper,

“People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it’s appropriate to them. Then they’ve not got lost five minutes into the lessons and therefore started mucking around. Behaviour in our schools is generally very good. But there’s what I would describe as low-level disruption where children are bored and not motivated, so they start to use their abilities for other ends. That then can lead to other children being distracted in lessons and so on.”

The response from teacher’s unions?  “With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement,” said Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT.  “Quite frankly, life isn’t like that and education isn’t like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils.” This British teacher, however, seconds the motion:

In schools that serve poorer areas, where many students’ attention spans are decimated by a diet of sugary snacks, video games and 20 channels of fast-edited crud on the cathode ray tube, pupil engagement is not just an issue; it is the issue. The teacher who is not able to induce open mouths expressing awe and wonder within the first 10 minutes of a lesson is likely to witness the jaws of those mouths slacken as one, when class behaviour heads quickly in the direction of “off-task”.

No one will argue that engagement doesn’t matter.  It’s a way to get and hold a student’s attention, which is a prerequisite to learning.  Still, it’s hard to unravel all that is troubling about this. First, there’s the idea, per Keates, that a day in school is made up of non-stop entertainment.  Next there’s the devaluing of seriousness and reflection–plenty engaging for some–a point made in teacher Diana Senechal’s essay yesterday on accountable talk.  Then, perhaps most obviously, there’s how exactly to define a “boring lesson.”  I can trace my love of history and literature to a pair of middle school teachers, who knew their subject inside and out.  But they were strict, demanding, a little intimidating, and most decidely not engaging to many of my classmates.  I feared and adored them both.  On the other hand, my 9th grade earth science teacher was a laugh riot, but I wouldn’t know an igneous rock if it hit me between the eyes.  All three were well-regarded teachers, and rightly so. 

One student’s engagement rubric is not another’s.  Life is made up of dealing successfully with all kinds of people, and all manner of personalities. Vive le difference!

Another 21st Century Skills Skeptic

by Robert Pondiscio
January 5th, 2009

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Posted in No category | 2 Comments »

Add the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews to the growing number of observers skeptical of ”21st century skills,” which he pronounces the latest doomed pedagogical fad.

It calls for students to learn to think and work creatively and collaboratively. There is nothing wrong with that. Young Plato and his classmates did the same thing in ancient Greece. But I see little guidance for classroom teachers in 21st-century skills materials. How are millions of students still struggling to acquire 19th-century skills in reading, writing and math supposed to learn this stuff?  

Mathews is especially tough on the rhetoric of 21st century skills enthusiasts who insist, as one advocacy group does, that every aspect of our education system must be aligned to prepare citizens with the 21st century skills they need to compete.  “This is the all-at-once syndrome,” Mathews observes, “a common failing of reform movements.” 

Like many fads, 21st century skills has legs because it sounds so reasonable, especially to non-educators.  Children should be able to solve problems, and think critically.  For teachers, the fad has the potential to send the message that such skills are content-neutral, or can be taught in the abstract, which is demonstrably false.  As has been discussed on this blog and elsewhere, you can’t uncouple higher order thinking from the deep subject-specific knowledge that makes it possible. 

“It takes hard work to teach this stuff, and even harder work, by poorly motivated adolescents, to learn it,” Mathews concludes.  “In our poorest neighborhoods, we still have some of our weakest teachers, either too inexperienced to handle methods like modeling instruction or too cynical to consider 21st-century skills anything more than another doomed fad. There might be a way to turn them around, but if there isn’t, instead of engaged and inspired students, we will have just one more big waste of time.”