SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Extreme Parenting

Much reviewed in the media these days is a book entitled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua who is pictured here with her daughters. An excerpt from her book can be found here. Ms Chua reveals the secret methods of Asian mothers who all turn out stunningly accomplished and high-achieving children. The linked-to excerpt makes for very interesting reading, and typically elicits strong emotions from those who read it. Most North Americans, no surprise, violently reject the "tiger mother" approach. However, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from the excerpt.

Lesson 1 - The Supremacy of Nurture Over Nature

The near-100% success rate of tiger mothers strongly suggests that almost every child, given enough hard work, can be a top performer in almost any field.

Lesson 2 - The Power of Criticism in Fostering Self-Esteem

Tiger mothers don't hesitate to criticize their children when their performance is less than perfect. The children get it that this shows their mothers' total certainty in their strength and ability, and the criticism actually makes children more confident, not less.

Math Challenges Continue

       "Tucker Farrar, a Sacramento, California, high school geometry teacher, agrees that students are not given enough time to develop the core math skills that they will need later. Farrar said it "blows his mind" to see how many kids can pass a test and move to the next level without having mastered the math skills.

This month there will be a National Reading Summit in Montreal examining the 'joy' of reading and literacy, but not so much about learning to read. The event is funded by the TD Bank and organized by writers, librarians, and other 'activists' according to the website. There was some discussion in a previous post about emphasis on love of reading v. learning fundamental beginning reading skills.  Which are, frankly, two very different things that can happen independently of each other; however, the love cannot happen easily with out the acquisition of the skill.  

We see that same problems apply to mathematics as well.  Should we be downplaying the mechanics of learning math and emphasize the 'joy' of math?  Faithful readers might predict how SQE sees the issue.

According to this CNN report we need to concentrate on the 'mechanics' of math for the same reasons.   The challenge for teachers in the upper grades, according the the article, is trying to deal with students who have not mastered simple fundamental skills in the lower grades.  High school teachers were interviewed about how they have to make time and find ways fill in the gaps.  Some teachers had suggested that some elementary school math curricula try to cover too much material too soon.  School for Thought suggests that this may be a big part of the problem. 

I think that current curricula try to do too much too soon.  We want kids to have higher order skills long before they have a firm grasp of the tools with which to think.  Hung-Hsi Wu, professor of mathematics at U. of California at Berkely, called this a 'Bogus Dichotomy':

          In mathematics education, this debate takes the form of "basic skills or conceptual understanding." This bogus dichotomy would seem to arise from a common misconception of mathematics held by a segment of the public and the education community: that the demand for precision and fluency in the execution of basic skills in school mathematics runs counter to the acquisition of conceptual understanding.
          The truth is that in mathematics, skills and understanding are completely intertwined. In most cases, the precision and fluency in the execution of the skills are the requisite vehicles to convey the conceptual understanding. There is not "conceptual understanding" and "problem-solving skill" on the one hand and "basic skills" on the other. Nor can one acquire the former without the latter.

The same holds true for reading, piano, and golf. 

SQE's Stairway to Math math sheets are a good way to practice some of those fundamentals.  Parent and teachers can find out about resources for reading and math fundamentals at Schoolproofing Your Child.

Broken Hearts and Minds

Irene Cao, a six-year-old Toronto girl had her leg badly broken in a schoolyard accident a week ago. The school personnel refused to believe she had a serious injury and dragged her, screaming, into the school and then refused to call an ambulance despite her parents' anguished pleas. For more on this story, click here.

This kind of rigid conviction that they know best and callous disregard of students' and parents' pleas for help are all too common in education circles (pace the many fine, caring teachers who no doubt form the majority). However, I have personally talked to more than a thousand parents (and read about thousands more) whose concerns about their children's academic and emotional state were either downplayed or belittled by educators. In many cases, the parents were characterized as chronic malcontents and the kids as troublemakers.

It is very easy to see that Irene Cao was badly let down by the educators at her school, given her physical injuries. But the academic and emotional injuries perpetrated on other children are at least as damaging, and educators' refusal to respond to their cries for help are equally heinous. How can these educators be so cruel?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

       "We don't know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math," Thea Burnett, 6, said.

That just about sums up what this not-so-new fad is all about.  Reading this New York Times look at another recycled blast from the progressive past will raise a few eyebrows among seasoned educators and parents who know better.  What's the new experiment?  Nothing more that a return to open classrooms of 60 first graders, four teachers, lots of noise, chaos, and probably not much learning going on contrary to what little Thea says.  What the heck were these Brooklyn NY educators thinking, and worse, who in their right minds would allow this school?  But then, I'm not surprised. Old edu-habits are hard to break. (The comments posted after the online article are also worth a read.)

Here's a sample of what New American Academy classrooms are like:

       Lessons are a series of complex choreographies. In the 2,000-square-foot kindergarten, for example, each child is assigned a "university"- a grouping by skill level - and another group by color: blue, red or green. Every 40 minutes or so, the children regroup in a different part of the room. During a visit in November, an observer noticed that each move led to the children's standing up, running, talking, and then having to quiet down again.This is the hardest moment of the day," said Lorraine Scorsone, the master teacher in the kindergarten, as eight adults tried to wrangle the children into a semicircle for group  reading time. "In early childhood, disengaging is very difficult, and moving to another activity is very difficult."

       Ms. Scorsone, with 23 years of experience, had what appeared to be a magical touch, and the children listened raptly one day in November as she explained how a banana travels from foreign lands to local stores. But the other teachers, who do the bulk of the teaching, had more trouble gaining the attention of the children, who lay on carpets looking at the ceiling or fiddled with belts and shoelaces on the outskirts of lessons.

      "Ewww," squealed a boy named Ethan when he was told that the class would plant a banana tree later that day. Other children began mimicking the sound, which they had been making earlier. "Ethan, stop it," said his teacher, Pepe Gutierrez. "I don't know why you are screaming."

       The first grade was tougher, with less-experienced teachers and more children who were violent. In the first two months of school, a student pulled a chunk of an adult's hair out, and an ambulance crew was called twice to calm a child. Eight weeks into the year, the only student work visible on the blue-painted walls was a poster with finger-painted hand prints and the words "Hands Are Not for Hitting."

       "Many of the children have already had a year in what I would call a state of nature, when Rousseau spoke about people who live under no civilization," Mr. Waronker said, referring to the children's experience in a regular public school kindergarten. Fifteen children still could not recognize letters, and only one-third were at grade level. "This is messy work - this is the front lines."

       In the front of the room, Kathleen Kearns, a first-year teacher, strained to get her 20 students to understand how to use a chart to classify similarities and differences between two characters in a book. About half a dozen students refused to sit in their places.

       "I need you here; your job is here," she said to one, trying to be heard. After class, she said, "I am exhausted at the end of the day."

       "The school stresses student independence over teacher-led lessons, scientific inquiry over rote memorization and freedom and self-expression over strict structure and discipline. The founder, Shimon Waronker, developed the idea with several other graduate students at Harvard. It draws its inspiration, he said, from Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding high school in New Hampshire where students in small classes work collaboratively and hold discussions around tables."

 This is progressivism at its worst and it will be interesting to see how children actually achieve as time goes on.  I suspect that they won't and this will be another ridiculous experiment doomed to failure.

        But Mr. Waronker decided to try out the model in one of the nation's toughest learning environments, a high poverty elementary school in which 20 percent of the children have been found to have emotional, physical or learning disabilities. The idea, he said, was to prove that his method could help any child, and should be widely used elsewhere. "I didn't want to create an environment that wasn't real for everyone else and then say, look at my success," he said.

       The challenges have been considerable. Faced with out-of-control classroom situations, Mr. Waronker, 42, had to rethink his idea that his model could work for even the most disturbed children. By January, three children who were violent had been moved to more-structured environments; seven other first graders moved away or withdrew, reducing the class size to 50."

 Seems that more things change, the more they stay the same.  Pity the children.

A pretty good payoff

The Milwaukee school choice program is one of the oldest school choice programs in the US and, as such, has been much studied. It provides low-income students with vouchers to attend the private school of their choice and, at present, more than 25% of its students are taking advantage of this option. Other studies have looked at academic achievement, finding that voucher students do generally better than non-voucher students with similar backgrounds.

This new University of Minnesota study compares the graduation rates of voucher students and non-voucher students, finding that the graduation rate of voucher students is about 18% higher. If the non-voucher students had done as well, an estimated 4,000 more students would have graduated from high school between 2003 and 2009 - changing most of their lives for the better. 

Taking the work out of reading

This just in, courtesy of People for Education. The National Reading Campaign is sponsoring at talk at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) titled Reading for the Joy of It. Asking whether our obsession with literacy has taken the joy out of reading, the speakers will suggest that the declining percentage of students who like to read is the result of a too-strong focus on the mechanics of reading and too much emphasis on standardized test scores.

This looks overly complicated to me. In my experience, the kids who don't like to read are pretty much the kids who find it hard to read. After all, whole language/balanced literacy teachers have been pushing joyful reading for several decades now, yet fewer and fewer students like to read. It makes much more sense to focus on making it easier for kids to read (by placing a stronger emphasis on the mechanics of reading and being guided by meaningul standardized testing).  

This is an example what one of the SQE directors calls the 180 Degree Syndrome: to find out what you should do in a given situation, simply take the advice of status quo educators and completely reverse it. The 180 degree syndrome is very common in education circles these days.

Sunday at the Movies (Alberta)

These two videos were made by a UK production company hoping to find out why Alberta students do so well on international comparisons of student achievement. These videos, both about 20 minutes long, have been broadcast throughout the UK and form part of a series on Teachers TV. The first one emphasizes the role of school autonomy and school choice in Alberta's success, and the second one zeroes in on teacher accountability and professional development. Both are eye-opening.

Not Demographics or Demogaguery

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, recently published this article in the Wall Street Journal. He begins by making the case for the importance of good schools, calling the failure to do so "a slow-moving economic catastrophe". Mr. Bush then shows that Florida has made very significant improvements in its schools, to wit: "In 1998, nearly half of Florida's fourth-graders were functionally illiterate. Today, 72% of them can read. Florida's Hispanic fourth-graders are reading as well as or better than the average student in 31 other states and the District of Columbia. That is what I call a real game-changer."

He goes on to outline the educational reforms Florida has instituted to bring about this improvement: accountability measures, rewards and consequences, and school choice. Mr. Bush ends with the following crucial message.

"FLORIDA'S EXPERIENCE BUSTS THE MYTH THAT POVERTY, LANGUAGE BARRIERS, ABSENT PARENTS, AND BROKEN HOMES EXPLAIN FAILURE IN SCHOOL. IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. OUR EXPERIENCE PROVES THAT LEADERSHIP, COURAGE, AND AN UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO REFORM - NOT DEMOGRAPHICS OR DEMAGOGUERY - WILL DETERMINE OUR DESTINY AS A NATION.

The usual unusual suspect is unsuspected once again

The C.D. Howe Institute has just released a report on school dropouts in Canada, finding that the country has made progress in lowering the overall dropout rate. However, certain groups - boys and certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups - continue to have unacceptably high percentages of drop-outs. In the case of boys, for example, five boys drop out for every three girls who do so. More than 50% of on-reserve First-Nations students drop out. The report recommends such things as targeted early childhood programs, an emphasis on sports, and more and better measurement of educational outcomes. 

Unfortunately, the author appears to be unaware that "progressive" teaching methods are disproportionately harmful to the very groups that have the worst dropout rates - boys and disadvantaged students. Direct, sequential instruction from kindergarten onwards would do far more for them than increased measurement more sports teams. 

Canada gets noticed—finally!

Well, at least Alberta and British Columbia are making headlines today for two topics that School for Thought has often blogged about--Alberta school choice and teacher merit pay. It's about time that media started to pay attention to them, especially when provincial budgets are under strain and new thinking is needed.  (I think we need New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in Canada too, but I digress.) 

British Columbia Liberal leader contender, Kevin Falcon, has proposed teacher merit pay for the province.  As you can imagine the usual suspects (teachers' federations) have gone ballistic over this.  According to Mary-Lou Donnelly, president of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, and repeated in today's National Post editorial:  "a more effective way to improve education would be to provide better working conditions for teachers; give them more time off for professional development, fund smaller class sizes and provide more resources to deal with special-needs students."   (Ya, ya--blah, blah, blah)  Of course, the editorial opines, that is what you would expect a union official to say--send more money, but don't judge our members. 

Merit pay is also in the news in the Mop and Pail as well. Their editorial cautioning against merit pay is rebutted today in this Globe and Mail op-ed by Gary Mason, who argues about giving merit pay a chance.  He illustrates the reasons why unions oppose it and points out some thoughtful pros and cons.  He also make proposals about how it could work.

     "Teachers' unions have opposed merit pay in the United States, too. Any kind of performance-based system makes unions less relevant, you see. It's the union's job to get better working conditions and compensation for teachers. If teachers get more control over some of these areas, it weakens the power of those groups representing them."..."I don't accept, as teachers' unions insist, that merit pay is a bad idea because it would pit teacher against teacher. When did the profession become a communist collective?"

And,

     "I think it's too early to say whether providing financial incentives to teachers is an altogether good idea. It's certainly a plan that is still evolving, around the world.

      "Israel's Department of Education instituted a pay-for-performance system in underperforming schools. An economist who was appointed to investigate whether the program worked found that students who were exposed to teachers paid on merit did better than those who weren't.  In India recently, 300 schools were randomly apportioned into three equal-sized groups. In the first group, teachers received extra money for improving their own students' accomplishments. In a second group, merit pay was tied to the performance of the entire school. The third group was the control group where no financial bonuses were offered.  Test scores rose dramatically in the two groups where incentives were offered, relative to the control group. Scores jumped 68 per cent when the merit was linked to the teacher rather than the school as a whole.

      "There are many people, teachers included, who ask why educators should be different from other professions where staff receive bonuses and salary increases based on performance. Today, a teacher gets pay increases based on years of service and his or her educational résumé, neither of which has a direct bearing on classroom performance.  Beyond that, some feel that if top teachers can obtain big bucks, perhaps more of our country's brightest minds will be attracted to the profession."

It seems too, that Alberta "don't get no respect" at home either according to Kevin Libin in the National Post. Seems that Alberta's education system--charter schools, partial funding for private schooling, and Edmonton's public schools--are the envy of the world, but not in the rest of the country.  No kidding!!  When educrats start bragging about how well Canada does on international tests, we keep reminding the public that it is ALBERTA that is bringing up the scores.  When SQE compared science curricula across the country, Alberta's ranked the best of the lot. 

        "In Edmonton, principals have autonomy to choose which services they want to buy from the board - be it a new boiler or a new teacher - and roughly 90¢ of every education dollar flows directly to the school level. And schools can turn themselves into specialty shops: Edmonton's public Vimy Ridge Academy offers professional-level ballet training and a military cadet school under the same roof.  And because Alberta operates using what is essentially a voucher system, if there's a spot available, any student from the city can attend, or join one of the province's more than a dozen independent charter schools. And if they choose a private school, the government will pay a big chunk of their tuition there, too. Schools are free to educate in whatever way they like, as long as they keep turning out students who demolish provincial tests."

 Libin writes that UK Education Secretary Michael Gove is looking to implement a similar competitive influence into British schools:

         "That students take a wad of government dough to whatever school they choose has made Alberta a robust market where public schools try besting their charter and private competitors, he says. It's precisely that competition for excellence that Mr. Gove says he expects will revitalize the U.K.'s moribund state system.

          "Strangely, though, while Alberta's experiment with competitive, decentralized education has been hailed a smashing success, other provinces seem set in forging their own path, occasionally with lacklustre results: In the PISA report, Prince Edward Island scores below the OECD average and Manitoba just makes it. Every province has some way to go to match the excellent results Alberta achieves."

 AMEN!