Archive for May, 2009

Stop Global Dimming!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2009 in Parents. 5 Comments

At Kitchen Table Math, blogger SteveH finds himself irritated by the community service requirement at his son’s high school, and its heavy-handedness.  His son was asked to play piano at a meeting by a teacher who offered him “a letter of community service” for his trouble.  “My first reaction was irritation. My son would (should) make the decision without that carrot dangling in front of him,” he writes. “I don’t want my son always looking for an angle or for something to go on his resume.”

Comments on the blog from other parents offer a glimpse of just how common “service learning” has become.  Student Service Learning is a high school graduation requirement in Maryland, one parent notes.  Another points out community service is part of the International Baccalaureate program.  Then there’s this mom’s novel response to an assignment requiring each child to “choose a public activity to raise awareness” of an environmental problem:

We (yes, we, these are projects that require massive amounts of parental energy) chose “global dimming.” (My kids’ dad joked that there seems to be a lot of that happening in education these days.) For our public activity we decided to make a sign “Stop Global Dimming” and stand on a busy street corner (right next to “The End is Near Guy”–no, not really but I wish he had been there!). It was quite an experience although not necessarily what the teacher was looking for I suppose…I’m just glad we didn’t get locked up.

SteveH remarks all of this compulsory volunteerism makes him feel like Oliver North’s lawyer Brendan Sullivan, who famously quipped ”I’m not a potted plant.  I’m here as the lawyer. That’s my job” when members of Congress complained he was objecting too much to their questions.  

“That’s how I feel,” he writes. “I’m not a potted plant. I’m here as the parent. That’s my job.”

Morning Sickness? Lucky You!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2009 in Parents and Research and Reports. 2 Comments

Women who suffer morning sickness during pregnancy may be more likely to have a child with a high IQ.  Even worse (or maybe not) a study reported by The Journal of Paediatrics shows that severe morning sickness is a “significant predictor of higher scores.” 

“Our findings suggest an association between morning sickness and improved neurodevelopment in the offspring,” says Dr Irena Nulman, of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.  Britain’s Daily Telegraph notes previous studies have suggested an early protective benefit of morning sickness, however the long-term effects had not been directly investigated before.

“I guess that’s a small comfort if you’re feeling really sick,” notes Laura Vanderkam at Gifted Exchange.  I predict an outbreak of bragging in the form of complaints among the competitive parent set.  “Oh, I can’t believe how sick I was this morning…”

Ed Reform Devil’s Dictionary

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 19, 2009 in Humor. 5 Comments

Flypaper’s Mike Petrilli laments the tendency of both opponents and proponents of “school reform” to vilify the other side with caricatures.   “I think both sides care about improving children’s lives, want an education system that works for all kids, and think they are on the side of the angels,” Petrilli writes.  “So let’s keeping fighting the good fight, but by engaging over ideas, not by demonizing our opponents.”  Mike is right, of course.  But assuming old habits die hard, it might help to have an ed reform Devil’s Dictionary. This handy device will help you keep track of who is saying what about whom and why. 

It’s easy to use.  When you read one of the following phrases, simply substitute the definition provided for maximum clarity!

“Education reform”
     My cause or idea.

“Real reformer” 
     Someone who agrees with me.

“Champion of reform” 
     A powerful, rich or influential person who agrees with me

“Distraction”
     A colossal blunder made by a champion of reform.

“Puts the interest of adults ahead of what’s best for kids” 
     People who disagree with me; cf. “status quo”

“It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a step in the right direction.” 
     The data doesn’t support my pet reform.

“More study is needed”  
     The data says my pet reform has a negative effect. 

“I support merit pay”  
     Teachers are fundamentally lazy

“Data-driven accountability”  
     Children frighten me.

“Children are not data.” 
     Accountability frightens me.

“It’s important to listen to teachers”
     I will sit in the room while teachers vent, then go back to ignoring them.

“It’s important to listen to parents” 
     Everyone knows parents want what’s best for their kid and no one else    

“Bad schools threaten America’s economic competitiveness” 
     I will never see a social security check .

Educational Trash Talk

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 19, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and Education News. 2 Comments

Associated Press education correspondent Libby Quaid looks at some standard ed shibboleths and finds evidence of false alarms being rung in oft-quoted statistics comparing American students with children in other countries on test scores, instructional time and graduation rates.

On test scores, the U.S. trails high-scorers Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, Quaid agrees.  But the U.S. ”holds its own in the group that comes next, a group of developed countries that, depending on the test, includes England, Germany and Russia.”  In fact, Quaid writes, the U.S. has gained on some of its toughest competitors since 1995, “making bigger strides in math than Singapore and Japan, and in science than Japan.”

On instructional time, “the U.S. has more instructional hours than many better-performing countries, though that raises a separate question about how well American schools spend classroom time,” she notes. 

On graduation rates, comparing the U.S. to smaller nations with declining populations is “comparing apples to oranges.” Comparisons are “based on entire populations, not on what actually happens to students who enter college in a given year,” Quaid writes.  In addition many European countries have switched to three-year degrees from four-to-six year degrees, in the past decade making their rates look better than before.

“Educational trash talk is not new. It is typical at both ends of the political spectrum,” Quaid observes.  “Liberals use poor performance to justify school spending. Conservatives use it to make the case for private-school vouchers and tax credits.”

Tunnel Vision

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 18, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and accountability. 11 Comments

It’s the worst Canadian import since Celine Dion, says Fordham’s Education Gadfly:  Ken “The Grade Doctor” O’Connor’s standards-based grading idea.  One North Carolina school system is looking to throw thousands of dollars at the Toronto-based consultant to speak to its teachers about why they shouldn’t lower grades for cheating, misbehaving or blowing off homework. 

“When you are focused on students’ achievement on standards it makes no sense to judge (i.e., grade) students on anything other than achievement,” O’Connor tells the Raleigh News & Observer in an e-mail message.  “In a standards-based system, grades need to be as pure measures of achievement that we can make them and they should not be inflated by good behavior or deflated by ‘bad’ behavior.”

 (Cue rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.  Kindly step aside to allow teachers to run screaming into the night.)

“Students are quickly learning that they do not have to be held to deadlines and timelines,” says one Wake County, North Carolina teacher. “They have learned that they can redo or retake, and not have to be held to high standards. When the bar is set lower, it is as high as the students will aim.”

Gadfly wonders if Wake County school officials are lacking in critical thinking skills.  It may surprise my friends at Fordham to learn we already have a great deal of standards-based grading as de facto policy.  In my school, there was absolutely, positively no way to hold a kid back–or even compel him to go to summer school–if he scored even a 2 (euphemistically called “approaching grade level”) on either the state math or ELA test.  This included the kid who was absent for more than 60 days, and the kid with over 100 latenesses and zero — I mean this quite literally — work done for the entire year.    Classwork?  Homework?  Report cards? Attendance??  Dumb shows and circuses.  The test was the alpha and omega; all else was optional.   Calling it standards-based grading would at least give it a patina of respectability.

Taken to its logical conclusion, doesn’t standards-based grading reduce all education to the equivalent of earning a GED or passing a CLEP exam?  Once you’ve proven you know the material, you get the credit.

Barbaric Yawp

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 15, 2009 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 1 Comment

So many interesting, provocative blog posts this week.  So little time to discuss them all…

Children of the poor get tougher and more unmannerly slowly. In time, they lose respect for authority. Perhaps because adults are rarely able (or willing) to protect them. Maybe because many public authorities quite openly treat them and their families disrespectfully. Over time, they come to depend on “the streets” and their “peer culture” for safety, and they imitate the public swagger offered on “middle-class” media of wealthy athletes, talk show hosts, et al.”  Deborah Meier at Bridging Differences

The Obama administration has announced that it’s going to see if it can get Democrats in Congress to not immediately zero out the D.C. voucher program, but to wind down funding in a manner that allows currently enrolled students to remain in the program through high school. Like a guilty teenager who wrecks the family car and then generously offers to pay for a tank of gas, the administration’s proposal is insulting in its earnestness.”  Rick Hess at The Enterprise Blog

Every day I wish I had never gone to college.  It has been the biggest mistake of my life. Sometimes I wish I had gone to prison instead of college. At least I would have learned a trade or two and started being independent once I got out.” Hernan Castillo at MSNBC.com.  Castillo is over $30,000 in debt and working in a warehouse despite holding a degree in accounting (HT: Joanne Jacobs)

Government, in short, has enormous difficulty fulfilling its current responsibilities, coordinating its various parts, and accomplishing its present objectives. You don’t have to romanticize the private sector’s competence to harbor serious doubts that giving government even more duties is a formula for disappointment. That’s true in education and in much, much else.”  Checker Finn on Forbes.com

A friend of mine went to his first day on the job at the United States Department of Education and was chagrined to see a sign on the door warning, “The door be broke.” That sign is emblematic of what’s wrong with education in America: our schools be broke!”  Janice Shaw Crouse at townhall.com

Stuff or Nonsense?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 14, 2009 in Curriculum. 9 Comments

“The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption on the environment has become “a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation,” the New York Times says.  “More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version,” the paper reports, and hundreds of teachers have written to the film’s producer to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8">http://youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8</a> 

Produced and hosted by activist Annie Leonard, the video is chirpy and upbeat.  An Inconvenient Truth, it’s not.  To put it as benignly as possible, Leonard has a definite point of view.  She defines extraction, for example, as ”a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet.  What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.”    The video is rife with similiar broad-brush assertions, such as Leonard’s contention that as people, “the primary way that our value is measured and demonstrated is by how much we consume.”

Critics complain that the video is stridently anti-capitalist and even anti-American.  “My friends tell me I should use a tank to symbolize the government and that’s true in many countries and increasingly our own,” Leonard says at one point, “After all more than 50% of our federal tax money’s now going to the military.”  The video’s line-drawing animation then shows a figure representing the U.S. government on its knees shining the shoe of a large, top-hatted figure with a dollar sign on its chest, symbolizing corporations.  “As the corporation has grown in size and power, we see a little change in the government where they’re a little more concerned in making sure that everything’s working out for those guys than for us.”

Subtle, it’s not.

Equally unsubtle is the reaction of the Heritage Foundation which lambastes the video as “the very extreme left’s Greenpeace view of America.”

Essentially it tells the story of how America is not a nation to be proud of, and in fact, your child should be ashamed for living in it. For example: after implying that the radios for sale in Radio Shack are assembled by 15 year olds in Mexico, and by purchasing one, you contribute to the exploitation of the third world and the eventual end of the Earth, the film’s creator and narrator Annie Leonard says: “So MY country’s response to this limitation is simply to go take somebody else’s. THIS is the third world. Which SOME would say, is another word for our stuff that somehow got on somebody else’s land. So what does that look like? The same thing, trashing the place. (capitalized emphasis ours).”

Heritage asks how “The Story of Stuff” has found its way into so many classrooms.  “While nobody denies liberal Greenpeace activists their point of view, even if factually wrong, surely airing a 20 minute political ad to little kids wouldn’t be supported by mainstream outlets, would it?”    The popularity of the video has led to a debate about academic freedom and the video’s appropriateness in at least one school system in Missoula County, Montana.  After getting the New York Times treatment, more will surely follow.

Sounds like another test of those 21st Century skills in critical thinking and media literacy our children are supposed to be developing.

Never Let The Facts Get In the Way Of A Good Story

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2009 in Education Practice and Educational Policy. 14 Comments

Back in my ink-stained wretch days, I sympathized with beat reporters whose noses would get out of joint when a “bigfoot” colleague would parachute into town and write a column uncomplicated by reporting or background knowledge.  So I can’t help but wonder what the New York Times’ Paul Tough thinks of his colleague David Brooks’ column about the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Tough, as you probably know, wrote the book on the Harlem Children’s Zone.  Literally.  Whatever It Takes looks at Geoffrey Canada’s mission to change the lives of Harlem’s children by intervening in every moving part of their lives from schools to parenting.  But Le Blogosphere is up in arms this week  wondering how Brooks came to conclude ”the Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right” in arguing that school-based approaches alone can close the achievement gap. It’s a conclusion that’s hard to support based on even a passing familiarity with Tough’s book. 

I don’t have a dog in the Broader, Bolder vs. Education Equality Project (”No Excuses”) fight, which represents the quintessential ed reform false dichotomy. Like many such debates, it seems rather obvious (and utterly uncontroversial) to suggest that we need to draw from both sides to get to a solution.  But to conclude, as Brooks did, that HCZ proves the “no excuses” case makes one wonder if he even read Tough’s book.  As Diane Ravitch notes “there are lessons for American education, but not necessarily the ones that Brooks points to.”   Corey Bunje Bower at Thoughts on Education Policy calls Brooks’ conclusion ”flat out irresponsible.”  Over at Public School Insights, the usually erudite and articulate Claus von Zastrow is driven to sputtering, “What??!?”

Did Brooks really just argue that the Harlem Children’s Zone’s success supports the schools alone approach championed by “reformers”? That’s like arguing that the Surgeon General’s reports discredit the link between smoking and cancer.

“Brooks joins a long line of national commentators who are turning important conversations about school improvement into a morality play pitting the “establishment” against the “reformers.” In the process, he is promoting false and damaging dichotomies between efforts to improve schools and efforts to offset social and economic disadvantages that contribute to achievement gaps,” Claus concludes. 

Just so.  But back to my reporter friends.  It wouldn’t surprise them to hear a columnist wrote the story one way when their reporting led in a different direction.  That’s just the nature of the beast.  A columnist’s job is tell you what he thinks; reporters tell you what they found out.   Brooks recommends Whatever It Takes in his column.  It’s a great suggestion.  He should really see what Tough found out.

Mea Culpa:  Aaron Pallas did a terrific analysis of HCZ’ test results last week which I overlooked.  Do have a look.

One Bad Apple

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 12, 2009 in Education Theory, Educational Policy and Research and Reports. 18 Comments

bad-apple Children from troubled families perform “considerably worse” on standardized reading and mathematics tests and are much more likely to commit disciplinary infractions and be suspended than other students, according to a new study.  Writing in Education Next, Scott Carrell of UC-Davis and the University of Pittsburgh’s Mark Hoekstra offer evidence that  “a single disruptive student can indeed influence the academic progress made by an entire classroom of students.”

Carrell and Hoekstra, who are both economists, examined confidential student data from Florida’s Alachua County school district, consisting of observations of students in grades 3 through 5 over an eight-year period. The pair also had access to disciplinary records for every student in their sample, which they cross-referenced to domestic violence data from public records.  What emerged was a compelling set of data that indicates children exposed to domestic violence have more disciplinary problems at school, underperform academically and have a negative effect on peers–resulting in lower test scores and increased disciplinary problems in others.  In essence,  a ”one bad apple” syndrome.  Carrell and Hoekstra title their piece “Domino Effect.”

“A majority of parents and school officials believe that children who are troubled, whatever the cause, not only demonstrate poor academic performance and inappropriate behavior in school, but also adversely affect the learning opportunities for other children in the classroom,”  observe Carrell and Hoekstra.  The pair cite a Public Agenda survey which found that 85 percent of teachers and 73 percent of parents agreed that the “school experience of most students suffers at the expense of a few chronic offenders.”  The study largely validates those concerns. 

Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy. First, they provide strong evidence of the validity of the “bad apple” peer effects model, which hypothesizes that a single disruptive student can negatively affect the outcomes for all other students in the classroom. Second, our results suggest that policies that change a child’s exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his educational outcomes. Finally, our results provide a more complete accounting of the social cost of family conflict. Any policies or interventions that help improve the family environment of the most troubled students may have larger benefits than previously anticipated.

Poll teachers in struggling schools, and I will wager a substantial amount that classroom disruption is identified consistently as the primary barrier to student achievement.  Yet it is consistently glossed over or dismissed, typically attributed to a teacher’s lack of classroom management skills.  I have long believed that the time on-task lost to disruption and behavior problems is almost certainly one of the under-discussed root causes of the achievement gap.  This study does a great service by confirming what many teachers and parents have intuited for years: disruption matters and has a negative effect on all students.

School and classroom tone matter enormously–perhaps more than any other factor.  Get it right and everything seems to work.  Get it wrong and nothing does.  This study holds out the promise of sparking a very important discussion about the rights of the individual in the classroom versus the rights of the community.  It’s long overdue. 

(Image via Digital Eargasm)

If It Ain’t Broke, Break It

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 11, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and Education News. 2 Comments

Common Core accuses Massachusetts educrats of “sneaking 21st century skills into classrooms basically under cover of night.”

Last week the Pioneer Institute learned that bureaucrats at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education have snuck 21st century skills into the statewide Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) without telling anyone-effectively changing the content of Massachusetts education without public or legislative input.

The Boston Globe took time off from fighting for survival last week to let Bay State ed officials feel their displeasure over the test debacle as well.  “Massachusetts stands apart in public education precisely because it created high academic standards, developed an objective measure of student performance and progress through the MCAS test, and required a passing grade in order to graduate,” observed a Globe editorial.  “Students, as a result, rank at or near the top of standardized testing not just nationally but on tough international achievement tests in math and science. Any retreat from this strategy would be a profound mistake.”