SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

The Dance of the Lemons

The cover story in this week’s Newsweek deals mainly with the difficulty of firing bad teachers, although it also touches on many of the themes we have been exploring in this blog. So far the article has attracted 597 comments, which indicates how visceral this issue is. 

An Expensive Lesson

Many people think that lack of sufficient funding is the primary obstacle in the way of good public schools, but few realize that this theory has already been tested. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a federal judge forced Kansas City, MO to spend two billion dollars over 12 years on its approximately 35,000 students - doubling per-student spending, reducing class sizes, building dozens of expensive new schools, raising teacher salaries and so forth. It was a complete disaster - parents hated it, racial relations worsened, and corruption ran rampant. Test scores remained the same, as did the black/white achievement gap.

Now, the other shoe is dropping. As this article from the Wall Street Journal reports, the Kansas City school board has just voted to close nearly half its schools (despite their Olympic-size pools and state-of-the-art technology) and eliminate about 700 jobs in order to tackle its annual $50 million deficit. Student enrollment is way down and the schools are only half-filled.

There will soon be absolutely nothing to show for this expensive experiment. Missouri taxpayers might just as well have flushed their two billion dollars down the toilet. 

Whose Interests II

A few months back Malkin posted a great video entitled the Truth About Teacher Unions.  Well, it seems that more truths have come to light.  The California teachers' union topped the list of state political spenders. 

According to the LA Times, since 2000 they have spent $211.8 million on political lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians.  They spent just about double what their state public sector counterpart spent.  Here's the top five listed in the LA Times article:

--The California Teachers Assoc.,  $211.8 million.
--The California State Council of Service Employees, $107.4 million.
--The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, $104.9 million.
--The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, which operates a casino under a state-approved compact, $83.6 million.
--The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, which also operates a casino, $69.2 million.

SQE wonders what Canadian federations spend on lobbying and contributions, not to mention their share to groups like Working Families Coalition. We also wonder if their members wonder.

HT to Right on the Left Coast.

A Coherent Approach to Education

The Core Knowledge Foundation, aware that disadvantaged children's biggest disadvantage is their impoverished vocabularies and general knowledge, has developed an excellent sequence of specific knowledge for grades K-8. This sequence is currently being followed in more than 1000 schools - to wonderful effect. Yesterday, the foundation made its Core Knowledge Sequence available on-line free of charge. 

And, à propos of yesterday's posting, this is an excellent curriculum - even though it costs nothing.

Don’t Buy It!

A commenter to "Indications of Discontent" asserted that "money equals quality" - in other words, you get what you pay for. But this is not the case at all. There are many reasons for disconnects between price and quality, even in a free market economy.

• It can be a question of timing. As an example, the person beside you in the plane may well have paid much less than you for his seat, depending on when he bought it. 
• It can be a question of commercialism versus art. As an example, a classic book like War and Peace can be purchased for the same price as a Harlequin romance novel. In fact, the Dover reprints of classic works of literature sell for under $5.00!
• It can be a question of mis-functioning markets. As an example, Hyundai vehicles are beating GM and Chrysler cars in terms of quality ratings, but they cost considerably less.
• It can be a question of competition. As an example, The Hurt Locker won the best movie Oscar at the Academy Awards, despite costing only about $11 million - versus its main competitor, Avatar, which cost more than $200. And of course you can go to the cinema and see either movie for the same price.

Anyone who thinks that a high price tag guarantees high quality is a retailer's dream customer. 

College Math Project—Some Interesting Results

Besides the headline-inducing conclusion that women over 40 are better at math, the College Math Project reported on something far more revealing: 

"Many of the students who are identified by CMP as being "at risk" have inadequate understanding of concepts they were first taught in elementary school - key concepts such as fractions, ratio and proportion, and percentages, among others. CMP is encouraging students and parents, and elementary and secondary teachers to recognize the importance of these topics and to revisit them as necessary throughout a student's education to ensure that they are mastered before students reach the postsecondary level."

Surprised?  Not really.  SQE has been saying the same for years.  Teachers and parents can try our Stairway to Math, a series of practice worksheets to help students master those basic skills.

Making an Informed Choice

Canadian parents who are lucky enough to be able to choose among public schools should be aware that several Canadian think tanks publish information on the performance of individual schools in most provinces. 

The Fraser Institute has just published its Report Card on Ontario Schools 2010. It also publishes report cards for Alberta, BC, Quebec, and Washington State.

The C. D. Howe Institute publishes information on schools in BC, Ontario, and Alberta. 

The Montreal Economic Institute publishes information on high schools in Quebec.

The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies publishes a report card on schools in Atlantic Canada.

Information is also available concerning individual teachers and professors in several countries.

A Cui Bono?

The teachers' unions frequently justify their demands for things like smaller class sizes, more special education teachers and teacher's aides, more professional and personal days, and higher salaries on the grounds that these things are good for the students. Of course - no doubt coincidentally - all of these things are good for the unions, in that they grow the unions' membership, revenues, and clout. 

If we want to find out whether the teachers' unions really have the students' best interests at heart, we need to identify an initiative that would be good for the kids but bad for the unions - and then establish whether the unions support it. And we don't need to go far to find a litmus test - namely, teacher-directed learning.

Teacher-directed learning, including systematic phonics and sequential math instruction, has overwhelmingly support in the research. As Time Magazine stated with reference to systematic phonics, "the evidence is so strong that if the subject under discussion were, say, mumps, there would be no discussion". The consensus among mainstream researchers is that teacher-directed learning is beneficial to all students, but especially to disadvantaged students and boys.

Sadly, the use of teacher-directed learning is not supported by the teachers' unions. It does not appear, for example, among the 15 most important issues identified by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. Interestingly, the widespread adoption of teacher-directed learning would reduce the unions' basis for arguing in favour of things like smaller class sizes and more special education teachers - since students would be learning just fine without them. 

In some ways, the teachers' unions may be actually taking student failure to the bank.

Check the backpacks!

I always get a kick out of Mike Antonucci's Intercepts Blog, billed as a listening post monitoring public education and teachers' unions. It never fails to elicit a chuckle.  This one is from his latest:

Local unions have organized teachers to hand out fliers to parents about education cuts. Parents, I assume, will not be handing out fliers to teachers about public employee pension funds.

Make sure you check your backpacks, kids.

Indications of Discontent

It's pretty tricky to get a handle on the level of parental dissatisfaction with schools, since polls yield confusing and conflicting data - depending on things like what questions are asked and how they're worded. Here, for example, is a recent Harris/Decima poll which suggests that almost half of Canadians consider the country's public education systems inadequate.

This pretty much confirms our perception here at School for Thought, where we are perennially amazed by the continuing popularity of our free remedial reading and remedial math programs and my free book How to Get the Right Education for Your Child. Even though we are known to only a very small fraction of interested parents and teachers, our resources continue to fly off the shelf. Clearly, there is a huge hunger out there for information and materials that can bail out the untold numbers of children who struggle in school. If you are a parent or teacher who is in this situation, you can access information about additional good teaching materials at our schoolproofing site. If you have very young children, we strongly encourage you to consider using some of the resources listed there for preschool children. 

There are lots of other free Internet resources responding to the same demand. Here's a website that lists some of them.