Archive for the 'Research and Reports' Category

The “Curse of Knowledge”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 18, 2009 in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Literacy and Research and Reports. 8 Comments

Try this experiment: Find a friend and tell him you’re going to tap out the rhythm of a famous song that everyone knows.  Without telling him what the song is, tap out the notes for “God Bless America,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” or “Happy Birthday to You.”  No singing or humming along; just taps.  Before you begin make a prediction: Do you think he’ll guess the song correctly based on your ability to tap it out?

Nearly 20 years ago, a Stanford graduate student named Elizabeth Newton did her dissertation in psychology on this simple game and discovered something remarkable.  Given a list of 25 well-known songs to tap out, the listeners’ success rate was only 2.5 percent—one out of 40 attempts.  However the tappers were so sure the listener would know the song, they predicted a 50% success rate. 

Why the disconnect? In the experiment, the tapper hears the song in his or her mind and thinks it’s so obvious that the listener can’t possibly fail to understand it.  The tapper mentally sings the words and hears the melody to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” while the listener merely hears “tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.”   The tapper can’t understand why the listener doesn’t get it; the listener gets frustrated that the tapper thinks he should.  Chip Heath and Dan Heath describe the phenomenon in their book Made to Stick: 

The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us.  And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.

As a listener, the task is hard because even though you are getting valid information, it’s incomplete.  You’re not getting the whole song.  Newton’s experiment offers as good a model as you’re likely to find as to why background knowledge is the key to reading comprehension— for struggling readers, what’s on the page is useful, but it’s not enough. 

This is also one of the most difficult concepts to wrap your mind around.  When you read, your background knowledge is the melody playing in your head.  Like the tapper in the experiment, it’s impossible to forget what you know and force your mind NOT to make the connections that create understanding.    Proficient readers hear the music, the lyrics, even a full orchestra.  Students, especially those from low-income families or households lacking in enrichment, hear only tap, tap, tap, tap, tap tap.  

The tapping experiment also shows why reading strategies don’t help.  Try to determine the author’s (tapper’s) purpose.  Tap, tap, tap.  Can you find the main idea (melody)?  Tap, tap, tap.   When meaning breaks down, reread (relisten) for clarity.  No matter what “strategy” you employ, if you don’t know the song, it still sounds like tap, tap, tap.  Seen through this lens, reading strategies are worse than useless, only compounding the listener’s frustration.  You might as well instruct students “don’t just listen to the tapping, try to hear the song in your head!”  They can’t.

We all know background knowledge matters.  As teachers, even devotees of strategy instruction tell students to “activate your prior knowledge” to aid in comprehension.  However, we are assuming that there is background knowledge to activate.  If we don’t teach the explicit content needed to guarantee comprehension, we are hearing the melody in our heads and refusing to share it. 

Our students, on the other hand, hear only “tap tap tap tap tap tap.”

Study: Child’s Neighborhood Is “Biggest Factor” On Future Income

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 27, 2009 in Research and Reports. 2 Comments

Being raised in a poor neighborhood plays a major role in explaining why middle class African American children are far more likely than white children to slip down the income ladder as adults, according to new findings from the Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project reported in this morning’s Washington Post.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents’ education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

The study points out that middle-class blacks are “far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there.”  The Post reports two out of three black children are raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared with just 6 percent of white children.

Even middle-class black children have been more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods: Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today’s dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. But virtually no white middle-income children grew up in poor areas.

 

Teens Don’t Tweet

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 16, 2009 in Humor, Research and Reports and Students. 2 Comments

When 15-year-olds are writing research reports for Morgan Stanley advising executives worldwide how teens use social media, perhaps it’s an indication that we really don’t neeed to worry about teaching this stuff in school.  

By the way, according to the much-discussed report by bank intern Matthew Robson, teens don’t tweet.

“Teenagers do not use Twitter,” he wrote. “Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realise that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting Twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). They realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless.”

All those lesson plans with Twitter?  Have you considered 8-track tapes?  A Victrola?

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes…and School Choice?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 14, 2009 in Education Theory, Parents and Research and Reports. 12 Comments

Why do parents enroll children in underperforming schools when there appear to be better choices nearby?   For some, transportation may be a dealbreaker,  according to a new survey by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education posted by EdWeek’s Debra Viadero:

The results suggest that transportation is especially challenging for low-income families, 45 percent of whom do not own cars, or who own vehicles that are unreliable. According to the survey, one third of those families said they did not enroll their child in the school they preferred due to transportation difficulties.

Dan Willingham recently unpacked one of the paradoxes surrounding school choice over at Britannica Blog with his patented cog sci spin.  In particular, he takes issue with the argument that choice will improve the overall quality of education, since parents would not knowingly send their kids to “bad” schools.   Yet they do it all the time.   “Why should we expect people to make rational decisions about their child’s schooling,” Willingham notes, “when they don’t make rational decisions in other complex arenas?”

I can imagine an advocate saying ‘But the real point is that it’s the parent’s choice. If they want to send their kid to a mediocre school because it’s close to the home, that’s their business.’ Fair enough, but that is a different argument. We are no longer debating whether choice will improve schools but about philosophy of governance. What happens if parents do not make sensible educational choices for their children?  We don’t let parents choose not to educate their children—there are truancy laws. Should society intervene if parents send their child to a school that the parents ought to know is terrible? And are we, as a society, going to allow people to make poor choices for which there is a collective cost? Perhaps this is the educational equivalent of letting people choose to drive without wearing a seatbelt.

When I taught in the South Bronx, I routinely (and quietly) encouraged dozens of families to enter their children in the lottery for the KIPP school less than a half a mile away, but few ever did.  Meanwhile, the massive and dangerous middle school across the street was the top choice of students leaving my school.   Granted, there were three basic flavors of middle school in the neighborhood : bad, worse, and abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here   Still, to Willingham’s point, a disproportionate number made what I perceived to be the worst possible choice.  The one thing it had going for it was proximity.

Update: Jay Greene wanders into the fray at his blog and in the comments below.

Background Knowledge and Reading Comprehension: The Evidence Grows

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 6, 2009 in Curriculum, Literacy and Research and Reports. 1 Comment

 Dan Willingham’s latest over at Britannica Blog (”What Makes a Good Fourth-Grade Reader? Knowledge.”) highlights a new study showing that integrating material from other subjects in reading instruction boosts comprehension.  Ten-year olds in Hong Kong rose to 2nd among 44 nations on the 2006 PIRLS international reading test.  Researchers looked at dozens of variables, Willingham notes, ”to determine which instructional factors were associated with student reading achievement.”  They found the most important factor in reading achievement was the frequency with which the teacher used materials from other subjects in reading instruction.

“The results are impressive in their clarity, and important because they dovetail so well with theories of reading comprehension, described here. Once students can decode, background knowledge is crucial to reading comprehension. Ensuring that students have wide-ranging knowledge of the world ideally begins at birth, through a rich home environment. Schools must do everything possible to support and expand that knowledge base, and integrating material from other subjects into the reading curriculum is an important step in the right direction.

Willingham has said it before, but too few people get it:  Teaching content IS teaching reading:

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc">http://youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc</a>
 

Willingham is en fuego this week.  USA Today catches up with Dan’s latest book, Why Don’t Students Like School?  If you follow the Core Knowledge Blog, the interview by Greg Toppo plays like a Dan Willingham greatest hits album– our brains are not designed for thinking, good teachers find the sweet spot of mental challenge, “learning styles” are hooey–but it’s heartening to see Dan’s wisdom get the full national treatment, where it will be an epiphany to countless parents and more than a few teachers, too.

Richard Whitmire highlights the USA Today piece and get the headline just right:  “If you don’t know Daniel Willingham, you should.”

In the Wee Small Hours

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 9, 2009 in Parents and Research and Reports. 11 Comments

An NIH study of over 15,000 teenagers shows a link between sleep and mental health.  “Teens whose parents let them stay up after midnight on weeknights have a much higher chance of being depressed or suicidal than teens whose parents enforce an earlier bedtime,” notes USA Today’s Greg Toppo. 

The findings are the first to examine bedtimes’ effects on kids’ mental health — and the results are noteworthy. Middle- and high-schoolers whose parents don’t require them to be in bed before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be depressed than teens whose parents require a 10 p.m. or earlier bedtime. And teens who are allowed to stay up late are 30% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year.  The differences are smaller but still significant — 25% and 20%, respectively — after controlling for age, sex, race and ethnicity.

Going to bed after midnight on weeknights reportedly increases the risk of depression by 42%.  The lead researcher, Columbia University Medical Center’s James Gangwisch, says the takeaway for parents is “try as much as possible to sell teenagers on the importance of getting enough sleep.”

Hey, it’s his study, but I have to wonder: Perhaps the difference-maker isn’t the sleep, but having a bedtime?  Is it possible that parents who set rules and routines for their children such asregular bedtimes are more involved in their kids’ lives?  Maybe their kids are less likely to feel adrift and depressed as a result.

 

 

What’s He Got That I Ain’t Got?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 2, 2009 in Curriculum and Research and Reports. 9 Comments

What do the high performing nations of the world have that the U.S. lacks?  Rich, deep academic content, according to a new report. 

“Each of the nations that consistently outrank the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences,” writes Lynne Munson, the executive director of Common Core in Why We’re Behind, a study that compares America’s educational quality to Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands and Switzerland.

The nine nations studied differ greatly in how they deliver their broad, rich curricula.  “Some have a national curriculum and standards but no tests,” Munson notes.  “Others have both, and some leave everything up to the states. Interestingly, no state-based nation in our sample currently has a national curriculum or standards, though one is attempting to develop some.”

So what is the common ingredient across these varied nations? It is not a delivery mechanism or an accountability system that these high-performing nations share: it is a dedication to educating their children deeply in a wide range of subjects.

It’s not possible to prove with absolute certainty that there is a cause and effect link between the content taught in high-performing nations and their performance on the PISA exam, Munson notes.  ”But, considering these nations’ enormous geographic, demographic, cultural, and governmental differences what other explanation could there be?”  Common Core’s report calls for more research into the relationship between content and achievement. “This research should be done now because if what this report suggests is true—that a comprehensive, content-rich curriculum is the key to high achievement—than we have a lot of work to do here in the United States,” she concludes.

What do we have that better performing nations lack?  Data, perhaps.  And if we’re reading it right, it’s telling us we need to start spending a little more of our ed reform capital looking at what our children are actually doing in class, and a little less time on structural issues.  If you want to fatten the calf, surely we can do better than our present steady diet of thin gruel in between all those weighings.

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…”

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)

Beauty Premium Observed in High School Grading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 11, 2009 in Research and Reports. 7 Comments

Want to boost your GPA?  Pay attention, work hard and practice, practice, practice.  That’ll help.  But it helps if you’re good-looking, well-groomed and easy to get along with, according to a new University of Miami study.  “Physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming are good predictors of grades in high school and may indicate future success in college and labor markets,” notes the report by the University’s Health Economics Research Group, which purports to be the first to demonstrate that non-cognitive traits play an important role in the assignment of grades in high school.

“Several studies in the literature have found that physical attractiveness is significantly related to labor market earnings for men and women. Thus, we were somewhat surprised to find that physical attractiveness was not the most important non-cognitive predictor of grades,” notes Michael T. French, professor of health economics in the UM College of Arts and Sciences and one of the authors of the study. “Instead grooming and personality were stronger predictors of academic success in high school for boys and girls, respectively.”