SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Who Profits?

This Globe and Mail article documents the increasing percentage of the cost of Canadian university students’ education that is being paid by their tuition fees. The tone of the article is that it’s a shame, really, and governments should be paying much more - if not all - of the cost to students.

However, there is another way to look at high tuition fees, as these two articles (here and here) from our archives attest. The bottom line is that when students are paying only a small proportion of the cost of their education, universities devalue them as customers, isolating university administrations from the consequences of their decisions about such things as course offerings, qualify of education, professorial availability, and responsiveness to students’ needs. 

Quoting from the article “Students Without Borders”: “The result has been precisely what Adam Smith observed 200 years ago about the difference between Oxford and the University of Glasgow. At the University of Glasgow (where Smith taught), the well-being of the professors depended upon their being able to satisfy the expectations of their students (because the students paid their professors directly). These students were well-served. At Oxbridge, where the professors lived essentially from the endowment of the university rather than from the money freely given by the students in exchange for quality services, the professors were awkward, indifferent, and distant.“

Leading Questions

Here’s a news piece about Canadian Leader of the Opposition Michael Ignatieff implying that he had not attended a private school - when the truth is that he actually went to Upper Canada College, probably the nation’s most expensive and élite private school, from the age of 11 onwards. 

So my question is - why in the world would Mr. Ignatieff try to cover up his private school education? After all, the vast majority of Canadian political leaders also attended private schools - Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, Bob Rae, Dalton McGuinty, Lucien Bouchard, Kim Campbell, John Turner, Paul Martin, etc. etc. - suggesting that individuals with a private school education are well prepared for the demanding role of leader. Why should Mr. Ignatieff be ashamed of his superb education?

The Right Medicine

Well, it seems that you and I are the only normal people left, and I'm not so sure about you......  

As this article explains, the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the Bible of the American Psychiatric Association) plans to expand the number and scope of mental disorders to include such things as toddler tantrums and binge eating. The article refers to "three false epidemics" of attention deficit disorder, autism, and childhood bipolar disorders that have led to over-prescription of such drugs as Ritalin.

While it would be nice to be able to overcome kids' learning difficulties by giving them labels and magic pills, unfortunately reality seldom obliges. The truth is - the only way to overcome most learning difficulties is to work hard and teach well. It may sound boring, but it works!

Learning About Learning Styles

Most educators believe that students will learn better if material is presented in a way that suits their "learning style" - for example, "visual learners" will do best if lessons are presented in a format that emphasizes the visual presentation of information. The belief in learning styles is very well accepted among educators and has spawned a thriving industry of teaching materials and professional development that is very lucrative for the the individuals who peddle these wares. The researchers in this study surveyed the studies on learning styles and found no evidence to support the notion that students learn better if their supposed learning styles are catered to. Furthermore, teachers' attempts to cater to supposed learning styles turned out to result in the use of suboptimal teaching approaches. Quoting from the report: "Limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number". 

Weapons of Math Destruction

Check out Weapons of Math Destruction, a "site dedicated to the disarmament of all fuzzy math weapons". It includes some amusing cartoons, as well as some videos, math resources, and even free screensavers and wallpaper. According to the site, "the world is a dangerous place and there's no need to walk around in constant fear of some nuclear math weapon destroying your child's education".

The Luck of the Draw

The Lottery is a movie about the more than 3,000 applicants who apply for 475 spots at Harlem Success Academy, a New York charter school. It shows how important the lottery is to their children's futures and how devastating it is for the majority who don't win. The inevitable conclusion is that the Harlem Success Academy should be cloned so that children's futures don't depend on the luck of a draw.

It’s Magnificent, But It’s Not Education

Thanks to David Harris for sending me a copy of an old (1961) book The Schools which exposes the follies of “progressivism” in education, a trend which the author dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. Here’s a passage from the book which follows a description of an experimental progressive school which was getting good results (p. 53).

“No one should be surprised that progressivism, or any other philosophy of education, works well when the teachers are people of the quality of the Bradts. The question is whether or not any philosophy is capable of fragmentation into specific techniques which can be acquired by teachers who aer not remarkably gifted. Unfortunately, progressivism in America was always more interested in creating proper attitudes than in developing effective techniques. In England, partly under the prodduing of Bertrand Russell, the agitators for ‘activity methods’ concentrated their fire on the elementary school, where the matter to be taught is more easily represented by objects and actions. In the United States, the notion that ‘anybody can teach elementary school’ was too deeply ingrained in the community. And the failures of the elementary school, then as now, were less blatant than the failures of the rapidly emerging high school.

“Having established a beachhead of ideas in the elementary schools, the progressive movement charged on to conquer secondary education leaving behind the booby traps which always clutter a mental countryside conquered by ideas without techniques. ‘Look-see’ methods of teaching reading, ‘social learnings’ in arithmetic, the trivialities of elementary ‘social studies’ and the half-baked literary approach to ‘scientific method’ - all these remained on the field to injure two generations of teachers, while the reformers poured forward to the new attack along the broadest imaginable front.

“In historical perspective, it is easy to see that the progressives rode to certain destruction when they attempted the conquest of the entrenched ‘subject matter’ of secondary education. Like the Light Brigade at Balaklava, they were ill advised. Perspective on this battle has been hard to achieve, however, and even today most commentators on one side can see only the gallantry and idealism of the charge, while commentators on the other side can see only its stupidity. What was needed, but never supplied, was a comment of the sort made by the French artillery observer who watched Tennyson’s Six Hundred launch themselves into the cannon’s mouth: ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.‘“

The Law of Diminishing Returns

This Pepperdine University study found that as school funding increased in California, the percentage of spending that made it to classrooms decreased. In other words, more and more of the spending “went to administrators, clerks, and technical staff, and less to teachers, textbooks, materials and teacher aides”. 

As most classroom teachers will agree, it gets worse. Understandably, the new members of the bureaucracy feel the need to justify their existence, and soon many of their activities start getting in the teachers’ way - what with increased paperwork requirements, visits from consultants, unrealistic pedagogical fiats, introduction of expensive but useless technology, and so forth. Perhaps some of our teacher readers would be willing to elaborate….

The obvious answer is to eliminate the school board middlemen, and give all of the money directly to individual schools.

Charter Schools: The Best Way to Help Students from Low-Income Families

A new study from the respected Brookings Institution looks at a trial program underway in Harlem to overcome the effects of poverty and low education. The Harlem’s Children Zone (HCZ) is a comprehensive approach that includes “early childhood programs, with parenting classes; public charter schools; academic advisors and afterschool programs for children attending regular public schools; and a support system for former HCZ students who have enrolled in college. Health components include a fitness program; asthma management; and a nutrition program. Neighborhood services include organizing tenant associations; one-on-one counselling to families; foster care prevention programs; community centers; and an employment and technology center that teaches job-related skills to teens and adults.“ The program costs hundreds of millions every year and there are plans to expand it.

Because by no means all of the students attending the HCZ charter schools were eligible for the complete package of social and community support, the Brookings Institution was able to compare the academic outcomes of HCZ students and non-HCZ students in the HCZ charter schools, finding that students from outside the Zone garnered exactly the same benefits from the charter schools as did the students from inside the Zone. In other words, they found no evidence that the HCZ program was affecting student achievement absent the charter school component.

Quoting from the study (pp. 8-9): “There is no compelling evidence that investments in parenting classes, health services, nutritional programs, and community improvement in general have appreciable effects on student achievement in schools in the U.S. Indeed there is considerable evidence in addition to the results from the present study that questions the return on such investments for academic achievement. For example, the Moving to Opportunity study, a large scale randomized trial that compared the school outcomes for students from poor families who did or did not receive a voucher to move to a better neighborhood, found no impact of better neighborhoods on student academic achievement. The Nurse-Family Partnership, a highly regarded program in which experienced nurses visit low-income expectant mothers during their first pregnancy and the first two years of their children’s lives to teach parenting and life skills, does not have an impact on children’s reading and mathematics test scores. Head Start, the federal early childhood program, differs from other preschool programs in its inclusion of health, nutrition, and family supports. Children from families enrolled in Head Start do no better academically in early elementary school than similar children whose parents enroll them in preschool programs that do not include these broader services. Even Start, a federal program that combines early childhood education with educational services for parents on the theory that better educated parents produce better educated kids, generates no measurable impact on the acadmic achievement of children…..

“In contrast to disappointing results for Broader, Bolder initiatives, there is a large and growing body of evidence that schools themselves can have significant impacts on student achievement. The most powerful educational effects over which we have any societal control occur within the walls of schools. They are the effects produced by good teachers, effective curriculum, and the changes in leadership, management, culture, and time to learn that are incorporated into schools that beat the odds, including successful charter schools.“

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words

Click here for a cool new tool that lets you generate “word clouds” from whatever text you input. It’s fun and - marginally - educational. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Dolores Hiskes who has a great site at www.dorbooks.com - lots of excellent material and tips for teaching reading.