SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

A joint Toronto Star/Ryerson School of Journalism investigation has found that an increasing number of Ontario private “diploma mills” are selling inflated high school graduation marks to enable their students to gain university admission. A companion piece from the Our Kids blog elaborates on this.

First of all, let me be clear. I don’t approve of the diploma mills, full stop.

On the other hand, when it comes to some public educators’ rather shrill accusations, for some reason I get this mental image of a bunch of people throwing stones at glass houses. For example, “There are kids who would be failing but are instead getting 80s in these schools” - like there’s no grade inflation in public schools. Or, how about the complaints that some diploma mills teachers are not well qualified or even competent - when the number of tenured incompetent public school teachers is the 500-pound gorilla in the education reform room. And then there’s the implication that some below-standard students are graduating from high school - when the Ontario government has lowered graduation requirements to the point that they are virtually meaningless (as per this KW Record article about students earning four high school credits for helping build a house). H/T to AS

We have met the enemy and he is us

The latest addition to our lending library, Class Warfare: Inside the fight to fix America’s schools by Steven Brill, tells the story of the education wars currently raging in the United States, along with some history. The author uses the Race for the Top competition (to which he attributes the recent tectonic shifts in state legislation) as the narrative structure. No dry historical tome, Class Warfare is full of personal information and anecdotes about the various individuals who are trying to reform American education - a widely-assorted cast of characters indeed. With each chapter short, typically only two or three pages, reading the book is like eating salted nuts – you read one chapter and you just have to read one more.

This excerpt (pp. 111-113) reports on a 2004 conversation between hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson and KIPP co-founder Dave Levin. 

“By now, the KIPP charter school in New York had twelve classes in three middle school grades, and the students were thriving, out-performing the city’s averages on all proficiency scores and blowing completely past the performance of children in similarly challenged communities.

“On this January morning that Tilson visited with him, Levin was poring over an application for two more KIPP charters that he was planning to start.

“‘Well, that certainly can’t be much of a problem,’ Tilson remarked. ‘Everything is going so well, I assume this is just a formality.’

“Levin stopped and looked up. ‘Are you kidding?’ he replied. ‘The better we do, the harder it gets.’

“Tilson was about to get his first lesson in school reform politics.

“Levin patiently explained that although he already had far more applications for the new schools than seats and would have to resort to a lottery, ‘they are going to try to stop us.’ Some local politicians in the communities where he wanted to launch, Levin continued, had already come out against KIPP and more were certain to do so. They would be likely to circulate petitions urging the city to block him. Thus, Klein’s department of education was making him fill out laborious forms and answer, then clarify, then reclarify, all kinds of absurd quesitons to make his applications bulletproof. (One asked him to change the punctuation on the name of the proposed school listed on one of the forms to conform to what had been written on another.)

“‘Who’s ‘they’?’ Tilson asked. ‘I thought all the politicians around here were Democrats.’

“‘They are Democrats,’ Levin replied. ‘They’re the problem.’

“Levin explained how the teachers’ unions had a stranglehold on local Democrats. How they funded a splinter political party, called the Working Families Party - which Democrats in close races depended on to get an extra line on the ballot - so that the union could use it almost as a subsidiary to do the union’s bidding. And how Working Families could deploy its allies in community groups, such as ACORN, to circulate petitions or deploy troops at charter opposition rallies.

“‘For me, that was a total revelation,’ Tilson recalls. ‘Here I was, a lifelong Democrat whose parents were lifelong Democrats, thinking I was fighting the next great civil rights fight - for equal education in these communities - and Dave Levin is sitting there telling me that my party is what is standing in his way.’”

There is such a thing as a free lunch after all

Freely Educate is a website that links to hundreds of free online resources that parents and teachers can use. Our Stairway to Reading remedial program was recently featured. Other resources can be accessed by clicking on one of the categories in the left-hand column. 

Sunday at the Movies (Soroban)

Here’s living proof that practice makes perfect. YouTube link. HT to FDM

Game over for video games’ cognitive benefits

In the category of all-along-deep-down-you-knew-it-was-too-good-to-be-true, a recent review of the research on video games strongly suggests that they don’t make kids smarter after all. Furthermore, long periods playing video games subtracts from time available for activities known to make kids smarter (as detailed in this earlier posting). The same thing goes, by the way, for watching television.

While it would be nice to think that we are being good parents by plunking our kids in front of a screen, sadly it seems we would be deluding ourselves. Good parenting takes time, and lots of it. HT to Chas

Clowning around at education conferences

Guest Blog by Rod Clifton, professor of education at the University of Manitoba

Last week I flew to Montreal to attend the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, a gab-fest of academics from faculties of education across Canada and the U.S.  When I was in Montreal, I also went to see the Cirque du Soleil’s new production “Totem” which has an aboriginal theme and a number of aboriginal performers.

To me, the interesting thing about these two events is how good the Cirque was and how poor the education conference was.  Of course, at the conference I heard some good presentations.  Perhaps 30 percent of the papers were well-argued and well presented.  Equally interesting was that all of the acts in the circus were excellent; most of them were, in fact, amazing.  

This brings up two important questions.  Why can a bunch of clowns in a circus organize and present activities that are exceptional while educational professors cannot?  Why does the audience recognize talent at the circus while it does not at the conference? 

Perhaps we should get the clowns to organize the next academic conference for educators.  Perhaps the clowns should be hired to organize the programs in faculties of education so that student teachers actually learn some of the amazing things about teaching and learning.

Of course, this is an ironic joke.  But, it would take a smart clown to understand the irony and the humour.

Those who can’t, teach…

A Manitoba math professor has started a petition demanding higher admission standards in math for the university's education students. At present, many incoming students have very weak math skills, having completed only a grade 12 "consumer math" course. Here's a short interview on "As It Happens" and here's an article in the Winnipeg Free Press on this topic. 

Ontario incoming education students need only a grade 11 "applied math" course in order to gain admission to a faculty of education. Once certified (and virtually 100% of education students pass), teachers are eligible to teach grade 8 math. H/T to RC

A kinder gentler way

You know how in Les Misérables Valjean is sent to prison for stealing bread to feed his sister's starving family? Well, in the same vein - albeit perhaps not quite as harrowing - I offer you this front-page story in The Globe and Mail.

Ontario high schools typically start at an ungodly early hour, around 8:00 am, which is practically the middle of the night for teenagers. As a result, most of the students are sleepy in class and cope as best they can by drinking copious amounts of coffee. Now, in its infinite wisdom, the Ontario government has forbidden schools to sell caffeinated beverages. 

According to the Globe and Mail article, the ban is working about as well as Prohibition did - as students bootleg in coffee makers and thermoses full of tea or coffee. 

Schools that wish to reduce their students' caffeine consumption might instead consider opening their doors at 10:00 or 11:00 am in order to cater to their students' circadian rhythms.

Technology and Traditional Education

(Continuation of guest blog by Justin Birch)

Technology can be used to enhance traditional education methods to great effect. Many websites are available to help students memorize everything from poetry to multiplication and drill them on what they have learned.

The largest website for memorization is flashcard giant Quizlet, which features over 6 million sets of free flashcards. It's appropriate for kids in elementary school, but it really shines in its content for high school students. On the site, you'll find flashcards to quiz you in multiple languages. It features a wide variety of standardized test flashcards to help build vocabulary, and it includes flashcard sets for science, geography, literature, art, history, and even specialized terminology for careers such as medicine and law. Each flashcard set provides definitions and allows students to play games with the words to enhance memorization.

Another excellent site that allows students to up their knowledge and acquire new understanding is FreeRice.com. This site is associated with the United Nation's World Food Programme and boasts that it donates 10 grains of rice to those in need for each right answer to quiz question. Subjects include English, math, foreign languages, chemistry, the humanities, and geography. When a student gets an answer wrong, that question will continue to cycle through the game until it is mastered. Get too many answers wrong, and it knock the student back a level to redo it. This facilitates the rote memorization that is fundamental to basic learning, and it will help students build a better understanding of the world too. As they play the game, they'll also help fight hunger and learn about such important social topics as food security.

There are many websites available to help students develop their memorization skills and enhance classroom instruction by developing this foundational knowledge base. These are just two of the best. What should be remembered is that language and math, like any other skills, are best learned when they are both memorized and grasped. To know that 2 x 3 = 6 is not the same as understanding the concept that underlies multiplication, but knowing that this multiplication table is fundamental to teaching children to grasp the larger concept. The same can be said for languages, literature, and even artistic skills that are only understood through kinesthetic memorization. Using technology to enhance memorization and help students drill themselves using flashcards and games is just one way that teachers and parents can bridge the gap between progressive and traditional education and enhance the knowledge base of their students.

Using modern technology to reinforce traditional educational methods

Guest Post by Justin Birch, a writer for onlineschools.org who frequently writes for other blogs.I have divided his post into two parts, and the second part will run tomorrow.

There's no denying that education has evolved considerably since the days of the one-room schoolhouse. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are still fundamental, but the approach to how they are learned has changed dramatically. As we move into the era of the online school, the progressive education model, focusing on learning by doing, has become the norm, and the traditional educational model, which emphasizes rote memorization and drills, has fallen by the wayside. However, a movement is underway to bring back the traditional educational techniques, leading to a debate over the value of rote memorization and drills and an exploration of how technology can be used to enhance traditional educational methods. As educational philosophies continue to evolve, it is essential that teachers and parents understand how technology can enhance all aspects of a child's education and, in this case, how traditional educational techniques and technology can go hand-in-hand.

Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University, sees the value of rote memorization and drills to reinforce that memorization. That might be surprising to hear from a college professor at a highly respected institution, but when you hear his arguments in favor of this traditional education, it makes sense. In his blog at "The Chronicle of Higher Education," Bauerlein writes of the benefits he finds in making his English students memorize poetry from anthologies and recite them to the class. He argues that rote memorization is a process that actually drives learning, thereby enhancing the capacity of an individual to delve deeper into a subject and learn by doing.

According to Bauerlein, there are numerous benefits to learning by rote memorization, particularly when it comes to acquiring language and developing literacy. In fact, memorizing passages of famous speeches and lines of beloved poetry force a number of cognitive changes that enhance the overall learning process in every subject. Memorization builds vocabulary. It forces the learner to slow down and think about the words they are learning, thereby enhancing their literary understanding. It assists in the development of public speaking skills, and it forces the learner to step outside of him or herself to grasp the rhythm and heart of the language. Most importantly, perhaps, it builds "mental muscle." When students learn to memorize, they become more adept at it. It allows them to develop a reservoir of information, stored within their minds, from which they can draw to understand more difficult concepts. This holds true whether the student is learning to memorize the first few lines of the “Iliad” or the multiplication tables. Each subject will add to his or her accessible knowledge base and provide links to understanding new information.

The best way to memorize any information is through the time tested method of mnemonics. Straight memorization is not nearly as likely to persist as using memorization techniques such as rhyme, particular objects or even the Roman Memory Palace. The techniques of mnemonics, according to The Access Center, a K-8 technical assistance program for students with disabilities, have shown that students taught mnemonic techniques consistently outperform peers who have no memory training. How much more likely is a student who learned to sing their ABCs going to be able to organize books and information alphabetically than someone who didn't learn that same song? Traditional memorization and drills have their place in developing understanding, and recognizing that is key to developing well-rounded learners who have a large knowledge base of information that will enhance their intellectual understanding.