Progress report from TMAO

TMAO provides an update on the progress of his special ed and ELL kids:

• Of the 0% who could demonstrate mastery on the parts of speech, 73% are at that 80-80 mark.
• Of the 0% who could identify the parts of plot structure, and articulate the conflict-climax connection, 93% can now reasonably do so, although still not on grade level text, but utilizing grade level vocabulary and analysis
• Of the 60% who could write the alphabet correctly, in order, and identify the vowels, 98% now can (don't ask about that 2%)

These kids started the year far behind, but are starting to make progress. After six years of non-learning, kids like this can be less than motivated about learning. But, it is amazing how a little academic success and a desire to please teachers/adults/parents can motivate children (at least at this age).

When I say I need to cancel Saturday Academy because I need to go renew my driver's license, leaving out the part where I'm commuting 110 miles a day on an expired piece of plastic, there are audible groans.

Once when I inadvertently failed to put a star on my three year old daughter's reading "homework," I could tell by the look in her eyes that unless I rectified the oversight with due haste that I'd be on the business end of a makeshift shank crudely fashioned out of her Dora the Explorer kiddie spoon.

Then there's my six year old son who insists that I dutifully record the bonus points he's earned in the built-in motivation system of his reading program. Mind you, we've never discussed what the bonus points are for or what the consequences or bonuses might be for said bonus points, but damn if he's not going to get whatever bonus points he's got coming to him.

Clearly, Alfie Kohn does not have kids of his own.

A mom's plea: Don't make me do school projects!

Here's a must read from the CSM:

Please, oh please, dear curriculum developers, give us parents a break: Ban all make-work projects. Parents have jobs, too, you know. We do our children's homework. We serve on school boards, coach basketball, and volunteer with the Boy Scouts. Now you want us to be creative?!

"I feel like telling them that I've already been through third grade," complained one mother. "I've already built a mobile of 'Jack and the Bean Stalk.' I don't feel like doing it again."

It get's even better:

Recently, while rummaging through my son's 20-pound backpack, I found a note from the literature teacher: "Class, please sew together a stuffed animal representing a character from the Dr. Dolittle novel we read in class. It doesn't have to be elaborate, simply use any old scraps you have around the house. And, please, whatever you do, DON'T INVOLVE YOUR PARENTS!"

Oh yeah, sure. They always say that. Who, may I ask, is going to drive to the fabric store and run the sewing machine? Who will buy the stuffing, find buttons for the eyes, and sew on the cute whiskers? Certainly not the 9-year-old boy who is busy playing a Star Wars game on the computer.

Most parents would rather spend all night helping with real homework than wasting time with this nonsense.

Logic Lesson Two

Are you ready for your second grade logic lesson two? (Lesson one is here.)

Here we go:

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Lesson Two

Here's a rule: Fish live in water.

Say the rule without looking.

The rule tells about fish. What does it tell about? Answer: Fish. (highlight to see)

You must pretend that you don't know about anything else.

Item 1: Fish live in water. A trout is a fish. So what else do you know about a trout? Answer: It lives in water.

Item 2: Fish live in water. A frog is not a fish. So what else do you know about a frog? Answer: Nothing.

Why don't you know anything else about a frog? Because the rule only tells you about fish.

Item 3: Fish live in water. A whale is not a fish. So what else do you know about a frog? Answer: Nothing.

Why don't you know anything else about a whale? Answer: Because the rule tells only about fish.

Item 4: Fish live in water. A turtle is not a fish. So what else do you know about a frog? Answer: Nothing.

Why don't you know anything else about a turtle? Answer: Because the rule tells only about fish.

End Lesson Two
******************************************************

Lesson two was probably unnecessary for most of you high performers. For you, today's lesson could have been presented as independent work. But, in a classroom setting some students may have been absent yesterday and need the material taught by the teacher while lower performers may not yet clear on the concept and need the extra instruction. In future lessons this skill will be presented as independent practice.

These two lessons have been field tested, so we know that it takes this amount of teacher led instruction is necessary for lower performers to understand the skill. No doubt, you higher performers are getting bored with the repetition of the presentation. The interesting thing to note is that the presentation is the same for both the lower and the higher performers. The only difference is the rate at which they learn and master the material. The lower performers need more modeling and leading by the teacher, but by the end of the lesson, they will have learned the same skill as their higher performing peers. They didn't need a more elaborate explanation, a connection to some real world phenomena or the use of manipulatives. They learned it like the higher performers, it just took them longer and it'll take them longer to master the material and retain it, but they are capable of learning it.

And, this is not an easy concept to understand. I took a course in deductive logic in undergrad, and the professor told us that the class would fall into two groups, those that understood it and got A's and B's and those that didn't and got D's and F's. There were no C students in logic. He was right.

Many students had trouble with introductory logic concepts as presented in this lesson, especially when presented at the brutally fast rate of a college course. Some students think that when you're told that p = q, that you can deduce that if r ≠ p, then r = not q. So, in today's lesson, some students might be under the false belief that if we know that we are told that fish (p) live in water (q) that it may be fair to conclude that frogs (r) don't live in water (not q) or that frogs do live in water ( r = q) is false. As we know, both of these conclusions are wrong; we don't know anything about frogs, it is possible that they don't live in water and it is possible that they do. This simple misunderstanding is at the root of the problem when the deductions get more complex and/or the terms are more abstract or beyond the familiarity of the student.

This is a good demonstration of the folly of not grouping students by ability. In a typical classroom, instruction is targeted to the average student. Some of the instruction would be cut out. Thus, higher ability students are still forced to endure repetition they don't need and could be proceeding at a much quicker pace. While, lower ability kids aren't getting enough instruction to understand and master the concepts and skills presented. It is a bit cruel that our least capable students are being challenged the most by being forced to learn with less instruction and practice that they need to learn. Due to the cumulative nature of learning, this deficit slowly snowballs to the point where the lower performers learn less and less each lesson and soon aren't learning anything at all. Failure does not breed motivation.

A commentor in the post on Lesson one wrote:

The logic lesson here is interesting from my perspective as a college student interested in education, but I suspect that my second or first grade self would have found it senseless, repetitive, and frustrating if it were not accompanied by some kind of comprehensible explanation.

Now bear in mind that I am dropping you in the middle of the sequence. Previous lessons taught the students about following rules of the type (p = q, if r = p then r = q ) i.e., Fish live in water. A trout is a fish. So what else do you know about a trout? A trout is a fish. In these current lessons, students are learning p= q, if r ≠ p, then we don't know anything further about r, which is an incremental addition to what the know. The lesson presumes that students know this prerequisite information, so only the incremental change is taught, it does this by inductive teaching. It presents the student with an example rule ("Big men are heavy. An elephant is not a big man. So what else do you know about an elephant? Nothing student who doesn't understand the rule would not be able to perform the disc. This rule tells about big men, not elephants. The only thing we know is what the rule tells us.") and requires the student to discriminate between similar examples (whales are not fish) and non-examples (Jack is a big man). This is why such a simple teaching technique is not teaching by rote. the student is required to immediately apply what he has just been taught to perform the discriminations presented in the second part of lesson one and in today's lesson. If the teaching was by rote, the student would have to be taught the rule in the second part of yesterdays lesson and today's lesson. Instead, the students are already generalizing from what has been taught about the rule presented in the first half of lesson one. This ability to generalize is what efficient learning is all about. Teaching by rote would have required three times the amount of teaching since three separate rules would have been required to be taught.

Also, providing more of a comprehensive explanation would not necessarily improve learning or understanding for the student. A brief explanation was provided in the beginning of the lesson. If the student did not grasp the concept then, he would not have been able to perform the discriminations later. Providing more explanation might aid in more understanding, but it might also serve to decrease engagement as the teacher prattles on with an explanation that might be outside the students ability to understand since the bit of knowledge being taught has not yet been internalized. It is difficult to synthesize gibberish. A balance must be struck between student engagement and understanding. The theory behind this sort of instruction is to keep the student maximally engaged, to provide a brief an explanation as possible to perform the discriminations, and to get the student performing those discriminations as soon as possible.

If the lesson were senseless to the student, this implies he does not yet understand the material, which would not be the case if he can perform the requested discriminations, i.e., answer the questions asked. Students get frustrated when they can't perform the task assigned, which is again would only be the case if the student couldn't answer the questions correctly. I think what the commenter means was that the lesson was too repetitious and boring for her since she immediately understood the skill and was forced to endure the rest of the lesson. This is no doubt the case for many adults and high performer children (my son understood the skill by the end of one example and one non example and proceeded to finish the lesson on his own). This is where good teachers come in; good teachers know when to move on as well as when to go back and reteach. In the instant case, the teacher would know to teach the first half of lesson one to a group of high performers and assign the second half as independent work, making sure that all the students were answering the questions correctly. Lesson two would be independent practice.

In the next lesson we'll get to the drill and kill portion of the sequence. I hope you can bear the agony and not have your precious natural curiosity crushed by this mindless practice.

Go to Lesson Three

Teaching Logic to Second Graders

Modern educators often deride direct instruction as the teaching of mere basic skills by rote memorization. It is said that this harms children by preventing them from constructing their own knowledge. They contrast this with what they claim they teach--higher order skills taught with understanding.

This is, of course, sheer nonsense. But, don't take my word for it. Let's take a look at an actual direct instruction lesson so you can judge for yourself. In fact, I'm going to present it to you like it is presented to students over the course of the next few days. See if you can construct the knowledge for yourself.

The lesson is about making written logical deductions based on a rule. This comes from Lesson 22 of Reading Mastery III. Normally, average students would get this lesson in the early fall of second grade. Advanced students might be presented with this lesson as early as early fall of first grade.

Pretend like you're a second grader just learning how to read. Follow my instructions and answer when directed to. Let's get to it.

Lesson one

Here's a rule about using rules: You must pretend that the only thing you know is what the rule tells you.

Here's a rule: Big men are heavy. Say the rule without looking.

The rule tells about big men. What does it tell you about? Answer: _____________ (The answer is (Highlight to see answer): Big men.)

You must pretend that you don't know about anything else. You must pretend that you don't know that whales are heavy. You must pretend that you don't know that elephants are heavy. The only thing you know about is big men.

Item 1: Follow along: Big men are heavy. An elephant is not a big man. So what else do you know about an elephant?

Nothing. This rule tells about big men, not elephants. The only thing we know is what the rule tells us.

Item 2: Big men are heavy. A whale is not a big man. So what else do you know about a whale?

Nothing.

Item 3: Big men are heavy. Jack is a big man. So what else do you know about Jack?

Answer: _____________ (The answer is (Highlight to see answer): He's heavy.)

If you didn't get it correct, read the following (Otherwise, skip to item 4): Jack is a big man. So what else do you know about Jack? Here's the answer: He's heavy.

Your turn. Big men are heavy. Jack is a big man. So what else do you know about Jack? Answer: _____________)

Item 4: Big men are heavy. Bob is not a big man. So what else do you know about Bob?

Answer: _____________

You don't know about Bob because the only thing you know about is big men.

(The answer is: Nothing. If you didn't get it correct, read the following: Here's the rule: Big men are heavy. Bob is not a big man. So what else do you know about Bob? Here's the answer: Nothing.

Your turn. Big men are heavy. Bob is not a big man. So what else do you know about Bob? Answer: _____________)

Let's go over those items again.

1. Big men are heavy. An elephant is not a big man. So what else do you know about an elephant? Answer: _______________. (Answer: Nothing. If you got it wrong repeat the question until you can answer it reliably.)

2. Big men are heavy. A whale is not a big man. So what else do you know about a whale? Answer: _______________. (Answer: Nothing.)

3. Big men are heavy. Jack is a big man. So what else do you know about Jack? Answer:
_____________. (Answer: Jack is heavy.)

4. Big men are heavy. Bob is not a big man. So what else do you know about Bob? Answer: ____________. (Answer: Nothing.)


Here's a new rule. Dogs have hair. Say the rule without looking: Answer: ____________.

The rule tells about dogs. What does it tell about? Answer: ______________. (Answer: Dogs.)

You must pretend that you don't know about anything else.

Item 5. Follow along. Dogs have hair. A girl is not a dog. So what else do you know about a girl? Answer: ______________. (Answer: Nothing.)

Why don't you know anything else about a girl? Because the rule tells you only about dogs.

Item 6. Follow along. Dogs have hair. Jokey is a dog. So what else do you know about Jokey? Answer: ______________. (Answer: He has hair.)

Item 7. Follow along. Dogs have hair. A cat is not a dog. So what else do you know about a cat? Answer: ______________. (Answer: Nothing.)

Why don't you know anything else about a cat? Because the rule tells you only about dogs.

Here endeth your first logic lesson. We'll do lesson two tomorrow.
************************************************************

This is the lower performers version of the lesson, so there is more instruction that you probably need to learn the rule. Plus you're an adult and know a lot. But I wanted to give you an idea of what a high quality Direct Instruction lesson looks like for teaching logical deductions.

When I did this lesson with my first grade son last night, we got to the third question and he figured he learned what he needed to learn and just finished the remaining questions independently. Elapsed teaching time: three minutes. This lesson might take 5-10 minutes with lower performers.

Bear in mind that almost all kids who've completed the previous lessons will be able to get through this lesson in a timely manner. This includes inner city kids, poor rural kids, kids whose parents don't love them, kids who didn't eat breakfast this morning, kids with toothaches, kids with low motivation, etc. Whatever wacky external factor you can dream of, with the exception of a legitimate cognitive disability, any kid will learn the skill taught in this lesson. A skill that most k-12 do not know, by the way.

I suppose this skill can be taught using constructivist techniques. (If anyone has any ideas leave them in the comments.) But, it is doubtful that this skill can be taught using such techniques in within the same 3-10 minutes interval that the skill can be taught using direct instruction techniques. That extra time is now available for practicing previously taught skills, which we'll do tomorrow.

Does someone still want to make the argument that this is rote learning? If so, then how do you explain the fact that students are able to generalize the skill by item 5, assuming they answer it correctly? Granted items 5-7 are very similar to items 1-4, and it is likely that students probably can't generalize the skill further by applying the skill to deductions that aren't as similar. That's OK, the students knowledge is still inflexible at this time, since the skill has just been learned. In time and with practice with increasingly difficult problems that knowledge will grow increasingly flexible and students will be able to generalize better.

Anyone have any ideas how the lesson could be improved? Teachers say they don't like following scripts. Fair enough. How would you improve the lesson?

Does anyone think that this scripted lesson relieves the teacher from thinking? In a typical lesson, the teacher would have to determine when students are firm with their answers. They have to know when to repeat questions, where to emphasize words, how to pace the lesson so kids will be engaged, when to apply the correction procedure when answers are wrong, and when to move on when it is clear that all the kids are firm on the material presented.

Is this a basic skill or higher order skill? If this is only a basic skill, what's a higher order skill?

I'll follow-up on this post later. You have a lot on your plate to digest.

Go to Lesson Two.

There They Go Again

Blaming everything and everyone but themselves.

Student poverty, parent education, home resources, English-language proficiency and other factors outside our control work in tandem like a perfect storm to dampen our results in ways that few others have to contend with.

Said Michael Casserly, executive director of the ironically named Council of the Great City Schools, in reponse to the recently released NAEP results showing that at least half of fourth and eighth graders tested in science failing to demonstrate even a basic understanding of the subject in 9 of 10 major cities, and fourth graders.

No, the perfect storm is that you've been getting kids like this for at least fifty years and you still have absolutely no idea how to teach them such that they learn anything.

WaPo Picks Fave Edubloggers

WaPo's Jay Matthews wants to know who your favorite edubloggers are. He and prolific letter writer Walt Gardner are going to do the judging:

I hope readers will e-mail me at mathewsj@washpost.com and Gardner at walt.gard@verizon.net the links to their favorite education blogs -- no more than five per reader, please, and I would love you to rank them in your order of preference. Gardner and I will look them over and reveal our favorites in a future column.

Matthews seems genuinely interested in blogs, but Garner seems to think otherwise:

I have an aversion to them because they too often become venues for rants rather than for reason," he said. "It's a question of time management. I do learn valuable things at times from blogs, but they seem to attract a disproportionate number of self-styled experts with dubious credentials who just want to ventilate.

This coming from someone who's ventilated in nearly 200 letters to the editor in the past 14 years. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Here's a list of Mr. Gardner's letters to the NYT. He seems to be on the wrong side of most education issues. And, by wrong side, I mean he touts things that have no proven track record of success. He's a test-hatin', excuse-makin', cliche-spoutin', card-carrying member of the Kozol Kool-Aid drinkers brigade.

Unless the social and economic factors that account for the differences are addressed early in disadvantaged children's lives, the No Child Left Behind law will eventually result in virtually all of this country's schools' being declared failures.

Can anyone still maintain that public schools serving students from the kind of rundown urban neighborhoods that Helen Epstein describes can compete with public schools serving students from affluent suburbs?

Walt Gardner letter says problem with standardized tests is that they measure more what students bring to classroom in way of socioeconomic status and inherited ability than what is learned in school.

What she has accomplished in four years at the school is proof that the most important educational goals are often those that are impossible to assess using existing instruments.

From the 1960's to the present, I've known countless students who did not conform to the model of intelligence in place in school and yet went on to become productive, responsible adults, involved with their work, their families and their communities. That is the ultimate test of what education is all about.

Standardized test scores, therefore, report how knowledgeable one student is compared with another, but not how knowledgeable either one is about the subject matter being tested.

To avoid the intrinsic unfairness of standardized tests that is a direct result of their construction and interpretation, schools need to look seriously at performance-based assessment of learning.

Remind me again how being a classroom teacher for 28 years automatically qualifies you as being a legitimate expert on education policy as opposed to, say, a "self-styled expert[] with dubious credentials." It'd be one thing if we knew he was a successful teacher of low-performers. Then we might give his experience based views some credence. Otherwise, his teaching tenure is an appeal to authority that lacks any real authority.

The one good thing about writing letters to the editor; you don't have the room to provide support for your opinions. And, it's not like anyone is going to take the time to criticize a letter--except maybe some wacky blogger.

BTW, my favorite edubloggers are listed in the sidebar. There are a few more that I haven't yet included and a few that need to be culled (for lack of blogging). Some I agree with, some I don't. But, they all have something interesting to say.

Education Research

Recently I criticized this post by Stephen Downes of Half And Hour which claimed:

Certainly, any approach to learning theory that suggests that an experiment can be conducted in (say) a double-blind model in order to test hypotheses in terms of (say) achievement of learning outcomes in my view demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the enquiry.

Stephen stopped by in the comments and defended his position

My arguments are not without foundation and evidence. What I am criticizing (as one who knows the field understands) is a particular approach to testing and evidence that has been subject to widespread criticism both inside and outside the sciences.

and suggested that we drop by his site and see what he had to say. So, I did. I found this.

That education is a complex phenomenon, and therefore resistant to static-variable experimental studies, does not mean that it is beyond the realm of scientific study. It does mean, however, that the desire for simple empirically supported conclusions (such as, say, "experiments show phonics is more effective") is misplaced. No such conclusions are forthcoming, or more accurately, any such conclusion is the result of experimental design, and not descriptive of the state of nature.

I'm not convinced. Education research is execrable most of the time. But, legitimate education research does exist which permits general conclusions to be drawn. Often, in education research, we are content if we learn whether an intervention increases student performance. We don't necessarily need to know why the intervention works.

For example, let's put together a hypothetical education experiment for a reading intervention for grades K-2. Let's call it the RITE program. The study will consist of 4000 students in the intervention group and 4000 students in the control group spread over many classrooms with many teachers. We will making sure demographic factors and other student factors are taken into account when splitting up the groups. The control group will be given a "research based, phonics reading program." The measurement tool we'll use is the SAT-9 which appears to be a good measure of reading ability. All students will receive pre-tests and post-tests to measure student achievement. For good measure we'll have an external evaluator conduct the study to reduce the bias effect. Here are the results of our study:
The First bar is for the control group, 36% performed better than than the 50th percentile while 33% performed below the 25th percentile. The next bar is for the intervention group who've gotten one year of the intervention. This group performs about the same as the control group. The next bar is for the intervention group in the program for two years; performance is starting to improve, but the students are not quite up to national norms yet. The last bar shows the intervention group who've been in the program for all three years. This group performs above the national norm -- 61% of students are performing above the 50th percentile, while only 14% are performing below the 25th percentile.

The effect size of the three year intervention group is over a standard deviation which is a large effect size for educational interventions and practically unheard of in education. Due to our large sample size, our results are statistically significant at a high level and we can confidently achieve them by faithful replicating the intervention. We don't need to know whether the intervention group used a whole language program or a phonics based program, whether the students were exposed to rich literature, or any other messy detail. Such details, though important, are irrelevant to us. As are other external factors, because whatever factors affected the intervention group also affected the control group.

And, while it is possible that other interventions might work as well or better than this one, we know with a high degree of certainty that this intervention will significantly boost student achievement.

By the way, the study is real. RITE stands for the Rodeo Institute for Teacher Excellence (Houston). The evaluator was the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics. The report was published in 2002. See more about it here (and here).

If we had more classroom research like this and if schools adopted successful research-based interventions with fidelity instead of trying to extrapolate out the parts they think are the cause for success (invariably they're wrong), student achievement could be markedly improved in this country.

NYT Reading First Hit Piece

The NYT is still milking the Reading First "scandal." This time they're using Cindy Cupp as their willing mouthpiece.

Cupp, who runs a tiny phonics-based reading program, Dr. Cupp Readers® & Journal Writers, filed the first complaint against DoE. I'm not going to go rehash how most of the allegations in this story were not substantiated by the OIG report. I've covered that ground already in detail (Look in the October archives). This time let's focus on Cupp's shaky allegations.

First the NYT sets up Cupp to be a white knight.

Dr. Cupp is a self-described speedboat who spent 19 years teaching children and adults to read. At her company, Cupp Publishers, she visits Georgia schools demonstrating her reading kits, while her sister, a retired guidance counselor, packs them for shipping and handles the bookkeeping.

You'll soon see that Cupp is no white knight. Cupp is merely a grey knight, at best, with limited resources.

When the federal government enacted Reading First in 2002, Dr. Cupp thought her company would surely get a slice of the pie. After all, 90 percent of students in the schools that use her kits had learned to read by the end of first grade.

Lovely sense of entitlement we have here.

To get Reading First funding our little speedboat, Dr. Cupp would have had to have comply with the following requirements:

1. conduct scientific research validating that her program worked;
2. show that her program was consistent with the scientifically based reading research conducted on other programs;
3. managed to convince one or more states to include her program on their Reading First
application; and
4. have that application approved by DoE's expert panels.

Certainly, nothing on Cupp's "research" page lists anything approaching valid research on her program. At best her program is no better than any of the major publishers' programs that used other people's research to skirt past the lame "consistent with scientifically based reading research (SBRR)" standard of the Reading First law. File this under the two wrongs make a right theory of entitlement.

There is no evidence in the OiG report that DoE Cupp's program was rejected because it lacked SBRR or that states were forced to remove it from their Reading First applications. It could be that states did not include the program in their applications in the first place or voluntarily removed the program from their list after their application was rejected by DoE.

Here is what happened. DoE is not permitted to endorse or disparage any reading program so when a state included reading programs on their list that did not have SBRR, i.e., whole language programs, DoE could only reject applications and offer vague suggestions for the rejections. Many states did not take the hint, so after a few states got their applications approved, DoE started suggesting that to states having problems to take a look at the approved applications for guidance. Cupps program (and SfA) were not on these approved applications, ostensibly because those states chose not to include them in their applications. Frequently, states coming into the process later took the easy way out and just copied the approved programs fromapproved applications. This is how Cupp got screwed. There is no evidence in the OiG report that DoE ever specifically rejected Cupp's program.

The federal program emphasized phonics -- mastering the sounds of letters and letter blends -- as opposed to what officials considered the mushiness of whole-language teaching, which emphasizes grasping meaning through good children's literature. Dr. Cupp's materials also emphasized phonics -- in 60 stories centered on two caped turtles named Jack and Jilly.

This is a nice example of biased and/or sloppy reporting on behalf of the NYT.

The federal program "emphasized" phonics because the Reading First statute mandated that DoE accept only programs consistent with the reading research. Only phonics programs meet this requirement. Whole language programs were considered "mush[y]" because they have no reading research supporting their use because "emphasiz[ing] grasping meaning through good children’s literature" has turned out to be an ineffective way to teach reading.

It is not sufficient that Cupp's program "emphasize[] phonics." Under the Reading First statute reading programs must not only contain the five essential components of reading instruction (phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) but also teach these components in a systematic and explicit manner. Perhaps Cupp's program meets these requirements, but you have no way of knowing if you get your facts and analysis from the NYT.

Still, schools that used her materials found themselves frozen out of federal money. Dr. Cupp sought an explanation from a friend at the Georgia Department of Education, where Dr. Cupp was director of reading from 1996 to 1999, and was told, she said, that any school listing her reading program “would not be funded.”

After the federal department repeatedly rejected their grant applications, Georgia officials concluded that “this money is available if you follow the rulebook,” said Dana Tofig, communications director for the Georgia Education Department. Dr. Cupp’s reading program “did not meet the benchmarks it had to meet,” he said, adding that the officials who could explain why no longer worked in the department.

Too bad none of this is supported in the OiG report. It could be the case that Cupp failed to meet the burden of showing that her program was consistent with the reading research. It's not like she had any of her own research to rely upon.

Dr. Cupp points out that Georgia chose big textbook publishers, like Scott Foresman and Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, spurning what she called home-cooked turkey dinners like her reading program.

More sloppy reporting. While the Foresman program was approved for Reading First funds, other Macmillan/McGraw-Hill reading programs (by their Wright Group) were denied funds. So much for the kooky conspiracy theories.

The article devolves from there, relying much of the same allegations made in last month's waPo article by Grunvald. See Bob Sweet's takedown here. (take a look at the comments as well.) This latest NYT article demonstrates that journalists know nothing about legal analysis and research and know less than nothing when writing about a "scandal" involving both.

Fuzzy Math Must Cause Fuzzy Logic

Constructivist educators say the kookiest things sometimes. Here's a good example in today's NYT.

Many parents and teachers remain committed to the goals of reform math, having children understand what they are doing rather than simply memorizing and parroting answers. Traditional math instruction did not work for most students, say reform math proponents like Virginia Warfield, a professor at the University of Washington.

Have you ever read an article on education that didn't contain enough false dilemmas to fill an undergraduate logic text?

There's reform math on one hand that has "children understand what they are doing" though no one has ever been able to prove that this is in fact the case since students taught using typical constructivist math programs tend to score just as poorly as the more traditional math programs which simply require "memorizing and parroting answers." Oddly enough, if constructivist taught students were better at "parroting answers" we might not have a math war going on now would we. But, the sad fact is that they are not any better than the traditionally taught kids in this regard which tends to give one pause when constructivists parrot the "children understand what they are doing" meme. No doubt such sentiments were learned by rote.

There is some truth in the "[t]raditional math instruction did not work for most students" meme that traditional math proponents should take to heart. Same holds for proponents of traditional phonics instruction. Most traditional math and phonics programs weren't and aren't any good, though constructivist heavy math and balanced literacy programs offer no improvements other than rosy rhetoric.

One area where reform math programs do fall down is in computation skills. All those hide-the -ball problem solving lessons that chews up mucho class time come at the expense of the all important practice that all but the looniest constructivists recognize is still needed to learn math. Understanding math (whatever that means) may be beneficial, but if that understanding doesn't translate into computational fluency, then the hapless students are not going to have a fun time in algebra or anything else that comes later.

Moving right along.

"It produces people who hate math, who can't connect the math they are doing with anything in their lives," Dr. Warfield said. "That's why we have so many parents who see their children having trouble with math and say 'Honey, don't worry. I never could do math either.'"

Any program that does not result in students learning math is going to cause those students to hate math. Those who can't do math (and by do, I mean compute) won't be able "connect the math they are doing with anything in their lives."

If constructivist taught students hate math any less than traditionally taught students it is not because they understand or are any better in math. Such has never been shown in any legitimate study. Only possible explanation is the "ignorance is bliss" theory that might be causing all this unexplained happiness. Kids who are never asked to do long division or manipulate fractions aren't going to be too upset that they can't do those things.

In part, the math wars have grown out of a struggle between professional mathematicians, who say too many American students never master basic math skills, and math educators, who say children who construct their own problem-solving strategies retain their math skills better than those who just memorize the algorithm that produces the correct answer.

Talk is cheap. Educators can say whatever they want. But, no one has ever proven that "children who construct their own problem-solving strategies retain their math skills better."

Remember, these kids who've constructed their own problem-solving strategies aren't scoring any better in test of simple math skills. They might be retaining something better, like maybe all the bad strategies they discovered along the way, but it's not math skills.

Memorizing the algorithm isn't going to do squat either. Practicing the algorithm until it can be performed with automaticity is what's needed. And, if it can be taught in an efficient way so that it is learned with understanding, all the better. It is a conceit of constructivists that they believe they are the only ones teaching with understanding. That and the inability to distinguish between memorization and practice leads one to the conclusion that they really have no idea what they are talking about.

No Discernible Effects

The What Works Clearinghouse has released a report on the research base of the elementary math program Saxon Math. The conclusion:

No Discernible Effects

Only one of the seven studies met the WWC's criteria with reservations.

Resendez & Manley (2005) reported no significant effects of the Saxon Elementary School Math program on overall mathematics achievement at grades 1–5. Using school-level data provided by the authors, the WWC confirmed that Saxon Elementary School Math did not have a statistically significant or substantively important effect on math achievement at each grade level from first to fifth grade. Based on this study finding, the WWC categorized Saxon Elementary School Math as having no discernible effects on overall math achievement.

The average performance gain was +7 percentile points which is not educationally significant. Compare this to the average gain of +12 percentile points for Everyday Math.

For both math programs, most of the results were not statistically significant.

I'd say that a school district has little basis to switch from whatever it is they are currently using to either of these math programs based on the research reviewed by the WWC.

It's the Vocabulary, Stupid

As was noted in the comments of this post, teaching low-IQ kids is exceedingly difficult. The problem is that low-IQ kids learn more slowly than their smarter peers. Unless we accelerate the learning of these kids, they will fall further and further behind.

We know how to accelerate the learning of some, but not yet all, of the many important academic skills.

We know how to accelerate the learning of written word decoding (i.e., reading) by teaching forty sounds and by teaching how to blend those sounds rapidly together. Thus, a general case can be learned that will permit the reading of any regular-sound English word. And, in this way, a great efficiency in teaching is achieved when a relatively small set of building blocks can be recombined into a large set of applications. Almost all kids without a cognitive disability can be taught to decode in a timely manner.

Similarly, spelling can be efficiently taught by using a related process of spelling-by-sounds, which is an effective procedure for spelling words with regular letter-sound correspondences. The process also assists with the spelling of irregular words.

Elementary math can also be efficiently taught as several problem-solving skills that operate as general cases. These cases have more limited applications than decoding, however, and thus generate less net gain in accelerated learning.

Language skills, involving general cases of grammatical rules and word classifications, appear to have about the same level of potency as arithmetic. Thus, language skills are also teachable even to low IQ kids.

The performance of lower performers can be accelerated to national norms by the end of third grade in reading, math, spelling and grammar skills through careful instruction. And, it stands to reason, that the academic performance of higher performers can also be accelerated at least as dramatically.

What remains a problem, however, is the acquisition of vocabulary and underlying concepts, which is not nearly as amenable to general case learning. The learning of vocabulary is a "linear additive set" which is described as follows:

In a linear additive set, the learning of one element gives little advantage in learning a new element. To be sure, there are families of words that have common root meanings and common meanings of affixes, which permit some limited general cases to be generated. But, by and large, the learning of proper names, new concepts, and the learning of synonyms for concepts already known by another name, involve linear additive sets in which each new element must be taught. Knowledge of the English language, which is absolutely essential to oral and written comprehension, serves largely to define intelligent behavior (Miner, 1957). Teaching this language involves a task of the first magnitude.

Generally speaking, schools do not systematically build vocabulary-concept knowledge. Current programs are structured to teach middle-class children or children who, to a large extent, are taught oral-language comprehension at home. It is assumed that this form of language learning is then transferred to reading comprehension at school.

Most schools employ some sort of basal reading program until the third grade which utilize a controlled vocabulary for instruction. Typically, about 1,500 hundred words are covered at this time. And, the average student has a working oral vocabulary of two to three times this size.

After the third grade, vocabulary shifts to an increasingly uncontrolled adult vocabulary. It is estimated that, on the average, 5,000 words are learned after third grade. Since schools do not systematically build vocabulary knowledge, students with weak home training in English language skills are often in trouble by fourth grade, if not earlier. It is this vocabulary-concept knowledge deficit that plays a major role in reading comprehension problems.

It is the vocabulary deficit that remains the educational sticking point for lower performers, though some inroads have been made. Since low IQ kids do not learn as quickly as higher IQ kids, their vocabulary acquisition rate is significantly reduced. The problem is compounded because low IQ kids tend to have low IQ parents and the language used at home tends to be much lower than in higher IQ families:

In an important study, White et al. (1990) investigated reading vocabulary size and growth differences between students in grades 1 through 4 in two low socioeconomic status (SES) schools and one middle SES school. Reading vocabulary was defined as the number of printed words that were both decoded and understood. White et al. (1990) found that even in grade 1, there were important differences in the size of the reading vocabularies of students in the middle SES school (about 4,800 words out of 19,050) compared to students in the two low SES schools (about 3,500 and 2,500 words, respectively). Also, the differences between the number of words known by students at each grade level indicated that vocabulary increases may exceed the 3,000 words per year commonly referenced (e.g., Baumann & Kameenui, 1991; Beck & McKeown, 1991; Graves, 1986). A prevailing finding was that vocabulary growth appeared to differ on the basis of SES. The vocabulary size of the students in the middle SES school increased by about 5,200 words per year while that of the students in the two low SES schools increased by about 3,500 words per year.

Further compounding the problem is that schools are increasing downplaying the need to learn facts, i.e., vocabulary and underlying concepts, in favor of higher order thinking and other constructivist laden nonsense. The logical processes involved in reading comprehension are general case sets which can be taught with some efficiency. Research has shown that when "poor readers" understand and are familiar with the concepts presented in a written passage their reading comprehension is at least as good as "better readers" who are not familiar with the concepts.

For example, in one study (Recht and Leslie, 1988), the researchers tested junior high school students who were either good or poor readers (as measured by a standard reading test) and who were also knowledgeable or not about the game of baseball (as measured by a test created for the study by three semi-professional baseball players). The children read a passage written at an early 5th-grade reading level that described a half inning of a baseball game. The passage was divided into five parts, and after each part the student was asked to use a replica of a baseball field and players to reenact and describe what they read. The researchers found that baseball knowledge had a big impact on performance: Poor readers with a high knowledge of baseball displayed better comprehension than good readers with a low knowledge of baseball.

If you've been reading this blog for the past few weeks and caught my series on how the brain works, you might be able to adduce what's going on here.

[T]he students with a lot of knowledge of baseball were able to read a series of actions and chunk them. (For example, if some of the text described the shortstop throwing the ball to the second baseman and the second baseman throwing the ball to the first baseman resulting in two runners being out, the students with baseball knowledge would chunk those actions by recognizing them as a double play--but the students without baseball knowledge would have to try to remember the whole series of actions.) Second, because they were able to chunk, the students with baseball knowledge had free space in their working memory that they could devote to using the replica to reenact the play as well as providing a coherent verbal explanation. Without being able to chunk, the students with little baseball knowledge simply didn't have enough free space in their working memory to simultaneously remember all of the actions, keep track of their order, do the reenactment, and describe the reenactment.

It is possible that low IQ kids may lack the cognitive abilities required to perform higher order abstract thinking, such as theoretical mathematics and the like. But, it is unlikely that such skills are required at the K-12 level. So, such a shortcoming is likely not a limiting factor for learning at this level. The problem is much simpler than that. The problem is that these lower IQ kids are simply not learning oral comprehension as quickly as their smarter peers and such learning is not as amenable to acceleration of learning through optimized instruction.

Currently schools are mostly structured to teach middle-class children or children who, to a large extent, are taught oral-language comprehension at home. This is why IQ correlates so well with general language ability. Smarter kids learn faster, are exposed to more vocabulary at home, read more, and, as a result, learn more of what's taught at school. Slower kids learn slower, are exposed to less vocabulary at home, read less, and as a result learn less at school.

Becker recognized this problem 30 years ago in his analysis of the Project Follow Through data.

Children coming from home backgrounds that fail to provide adequate training for the continuous growth of vocabulary and concepts are likely to continue to fall behind in public schools. Even after four years of intensive effort, children taught in the Direct Instruction Model are far short of an average high-school senior's vocabulary--a vocabulary that is presumed by most fourth-grade tests.

The data on our fifth and sixth graders strongly imply that the schools fail to build skills toward this goal. One might conclude that this is simply more evidence of the failure of compensatory education. When viewed from a different perspective, however, the data point to a failure of school programs to accomplish their assigned roles.

Advocates of compensatory education assumed that all learning problems would be solved by finding the critical stage where some magic could be applied to fertilize cognition. The Follow Through data suggest that a magical solution is unlikely.

Massive restructuring of school systems is required. As schools are presently constituted, there is no way that low-performing children can be adequately prepared for the vocabulary they will encounter by the fourth grade. Clearly, the first step toward improving this situation is to recognize that language learning does not end by the third grade. Once this is understood, programs can then be engineered to teach vocabulary-concept knowledge in a systematic way throughout the school years.

Much has been learned in the intervening years and the teaching of vocabulary has improved so that lower performing students at least up to the fifth grade level can continue to perform at national norm levels in reading comprehension. But, in most schools it is still business as usual with vocabulary acquisition still being downplayed or ignored all too frequently.

Today's Education Strawman ...

... comes courtesy of Australia's The Age attacking the idea of a national curriculum. But once you start reading the article you quickly realize that the columnist has more a beef with the particular national curriculum chosen, rather than the concept of national curriculum generally.

The columnist humanizes the argument by finding a dupe pre-service teacher, Sarah, and using her as an unwitting mouthpiece.

Earlier this year, Sarah had a disquieting teaching experience. She taught the latest in "direct phonics" lessons to a group of secondary school students in Melbourne who were deemed to need remedial help.

The passive voice -- the lazy columnist's best friend.

So here we have high school students who apparently can't read well because they lack decoding skills. The school appears to have placed them in a "direct phonics" course to remediate these skills. I assume that direct phonics (in scare quotes naturally) means that the students will be taught synthetic phonics (i.e., sounds are taught how to be blended rapidly) in a direct systematic and intensive manner. The reason, no doubt,is because this is the only kind of phonics that is effective with struggling readers, like these high school kids.

One can assume that if these kids are in high school and are still read poorly however they were taught to read in the lower grades, probably not a direct phonics, didn't work.

The lesson was completely scripted for Sarah. In a foretaste of what is in store for students in the centralised curriculum model currently described by neoconservative politicians and media pundits, it was a one-size-fits-all lesson that could be taught anywhere across the nation, at any time.

A truly impressive string of cliches.

I suspect that automobile manufacturers used to say the same sort of nonsense about Henry Ford when he standardized the manufacture of automobiles. Then they either adapted or went out of business, so we don't hear about such complaints much any more.

One reason to standardize the curriculum is to improve quality control, the sort of quality control that might have prevented kids from reaching the high school level not knowing how to read well. "A supervisor entering a classroom can quickly determine what is happening and compare this with what should be occurring. The supervisor, therefore, is better equipped
to provide direct, practical demonstrations or suggestions to the teacher or aide. By standardizing the teaching program in this way, it is also easier to monitor the progress of the
children with criterion-referenced tests that children should pass if they have completed lessons at a specified level."

Then we have the "scripted lesson" critique. We are lead to believe that novice teacher Sarah, fresh out of school will magically turn out to be a master teacher. Perhaps, she'll be mentored by the schools current crop of expert teachers-- you know, the ones that weren't able to teach our hapless high schoolers. Scripted lessons are a hot button topic for educators. So why do many successful curricula use them -- because they work:

The scripts permit the selection and testing of sequences of examples that produce efficient learning if followed. Most teachers simply do not have time to find appropriate words and examples or to sequence skill hierarchies in the most efficient possible manner. When teachers phrase their own questions, they may choose terms unknown to lower-performing children or may include unnecessary verbiage. In choosing examples, moreover, they may teach incorrect rules because the positive examples have some irrelevant feature in common. In sequencing, it is easy to omit those skills critical for later, more complex tasks.

It's all about quality control. Back to the column.

In one 35-minute period of "teaching", every word that Sarah spoke, the precise time at which she delivered these words, and even the hand signals to accompany the words, were all tightly scripted.

Now we have "teach" in scare quotes. I wonder if the columnist would put scare quotes around his description of the failed teaching that preceded this?

We also learn that signals are bad when used as a cue for students to respond together. When students respond in unison, the teacher can determine which ones understand what is being taught (the ones who responded) and the ones who don't (the ones that didn't respond or incorrectly responded). This permits the teacher to provide a remedy to the students who still need more instruction. Another way of saying this is that signals permit the teacher to differentiate the instruction by targeting students who need more instruction and determining when they have learned. So much for one size fits all.

According to educators, signals are apparently good for choir and band practice, but bad when teaching reading, even though the effective use of signals obviates the problem of having the slower kids imitate the faster kids when responding. Without signals, it becomes difficult to determine who has learned the material and who is merely parroting what the smarter kids are saying.

When Sarah talked with me (her English education lecturer) some time after this experience, she had mixed emotions. After an exhausting week of planning, teaching, marking, staff meetings, in-service activities and much more, this scripted curriculum seemed a welcome relief. "I didn't have to think," she said.

She laughed, although it was clear she was still ambivalent about the experience. Then she asked: "But what sort of teaching is it when I'm not required to think?"

Presumably better that the instruction the kids received previously which forced the state (the entity running the schools) to intervene against the wishes of the educators, who were failing to do perform their job adequately.

The only time teaching a scripted lesson requires little thinking is when all the students are responding correctly. Students who are responding correctly are learning the material. Then the script, really is like the lines delivered by an actress and all the teacher has to do is read the lines, making sure that the students are responding correctly. This is a job most people would kill for.

However, invariably, there will come a time when some students will not respond correctly when they are supposed to. This is where the teaching comes into play. At this point the teacher has to first recognize that the students have responded incorrectly and then to provide a remedy. This requires the teacher to deviate from the script and follow the specified correction procedure, fix the mistake in learning, and then resume with the lesson. In this case the script is more like a flow chart and the teacher is required to make all the difficult decisions to know when to provide remedies when students aren't learning in addition to presenting the scripted material inn a lively and brisk manner that keeps the students on task and engaged.

This remains an exceeding difficult job than requires much training and classroom ability for teachers to get right. The experience is that teachers need at least two years of training to know how to teach the scripts correctly with low performing children so that these children are actually learning instead of being passed through the system as they are currently. This job requires a lot of thinking, otherwise we'd hire monkeys to read the scripts to children-- they work for bananas.

Now you should be able to answer the columnist's rhetorical question.

Indeed. At a time when neo-conservative commentators and politicians are touting the benefits of an efficient, centrally controlled curriculum, where decision making at the local level is taken out of the hands of teachers and schools, Sarah's story should give us cause to reflect.

Parents might well ask: Is this the sort of curriculum we want for our children? Do we want our children taught by a teacher who is not required to think?

No, we want them to continue to fail to learn how to read, write, and do math as they currently are. Idiot.

Studies Show ...

American Institutes for Research (AIR) has updated their Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center Report on Elementary School Comprehensive School Reform Models (PDF) to include new research studies.

As in its previous study, the Direct Instruction Model and Success for All were found to be the most successful models. The report also points out that only a few of the models had a substantial research base to support their effectiveness.

For more than one third of the models, the CSRQ Center identified only 10 or fewer studies that seemed to be relevant for our review of the overall evidence of positive effects of the models on student achievement. In contrast, one model (Direct Instruction) had more than 50 and another (Success for All) had more than 100 studies that were originally considered for review in Category 1. After screening more than 800 studies for quality in Category 1, we found 95 studies that met CSRQ Center standards. Again, these were unevenly distributed, with nearly one fourth of the models having no studies that met CSRQ Center standards and with
five models (America’s Choice School Design, Direct Instruction, Literacy Collaborative, School Development Program, and Success for All) having five or more studies that met CSRQ Center standards.

I liked this gem from the Direct Instruction description.

Based on its experience, NIFDI feels that family and community involvement is peripheral to accomplishing its mission to accelerate student achievement. The NIFDI model assumes that since parental involvement cannot be controlled by school leaders, the Full Immersion Model of DI should not require parental involvement.

If you read the edusphere blogs, you'll know that parental involvement is frequently touted as the holy grail of education reform. Good work if you can get it.

It is not a coincidence that the two education reform models, DI and SfA, that achieve the best results, i.e., significant boost student achievement, dramatically alter the structure and nature of schooling. This is because schools, as they are currently configured, are not concerned with student achievement, especially the achievement of low-SES and low-IQ kids.

But don't get your hopes up just yet because another study by Rand finds that MOST SCHOOLS FAIL TO FULLY ADOPT REFORM MODELS DESIGNED TO BOOST STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.

Schools that embrace comprehensive reform models designed to improve student achievement frequently do not fully adopt all practices recommended by the model developers, according to a RAND Corporation report issued today. The findings call into question whether the comprehensive school reform model approach that has been adopted by more than 8,000 schools nationally can become a key strategy to help improve student performance. A survey of 250 schools from Florida and Texas that embraced comprehensive school reform models found that none had adopted all of the changes the models called for to boost student achievement, according to the study by RAND Education. The reason most often cited for failing to adopt all aspects of the reform packages was a shortage of support for needed improvements and investments such as teacher training. "

At the current level of implementation, comprehensive school reform models are likely to have only modest or no effect on student achievement," said lead author of the report Georges Vernez, who is a senior social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Without substantially more support, it is not likely most schools will be able to faithfully adopt these models of school improvement." Comprehensive school reform is based on the idea that a school should have a coherent educational strategy that addresses every aspect of its operation.

More than $2 billion in federal funds have been used to implement the approach at schools nationally. Studies assessing the success of comprehensive school reform models have been mixed, with some showing a modest improvement in student achievement and others finding no impact. Most of those studies assumed schools had adopted all aspects of the reforms. RAND researchers surveyed principals and teachers at the schools in the study, and visited a number of campuses in order to more closely assess adoption of the chosen comprehensive school reform model. Researchers found some types of changes were embraced more often than others. Schools were most likely to adopt the curriculum prescribed by the model developer, but were less likely to adopt the recommended instructional practices.

Practices designed to increase parental involvement were the aspect least likely to be adopted. Most of the schools in the study did not have the level of support recommended by developers of the models. Teachers reported receiving about half of the recommended initial training and only one-quarter of the recommended ongoing professional development, according to RAND researchers. In general, teachers reported a lukewarm commitment to adopting their school's reform model and most felt the training they received was not adequate. However, in schools where the level of support increased, so did adoption of the developer-recommended practices, according to researchers.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

New Look

Experimenting with Beta Blogger's new templates. Might be a little messy until I work out the kinks. You've been warned.

On Textbooks

Bob Dixon, on math textbooks:

And speaking of asking kids to do something they haven't been taught, "critical thinking" problems are a regular part of the text. Those problems are much like the ones we'd see in a book of brainteasers. Here's one:

Work with a partner. [Good idea, especially if your partner is an adult who knows how to do problems like this.] Arrange the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 into two decimals so that their sum is as close to 1 as possible. Use each digit only once. The sum cannot be equal to or greater than 1.

They [also] have these "critical thinking" problems along the lines:

Jane is 7 years older than her brother, and the sum of their ages, plus 5, multiplied by 4, is the age of their house. How old is everyone and everything?

The people who author these books are the same ones who look back derisively at my mathematics education because we had to figure out when a couple of trains, leaving opposite coasts and going different speeds, would meet up. The problem wasn't all that authentic, but I think the algebra for solving it was. I have nothing against the "Jane is 7 years ..." problem per se. If you've taught the algebra for solving ... just about anything ... then no problem. But in my daughter's text, "critical thinking" means "something relatively difficult to do that we haven't taught anyone how to do, mostly because we don'’t know how to do that."

Bad Schools, Not Poverty, Cause Bad Student Performance

I've been playing around with the 2005/2006 released scores for Pennsylvania's PSSA exam while doing a little research on the KIPP school in Philadelphia and stumbled upon a few interesting results.

A few months back, the edusphere was atwitter with Richard Rothstein's Kozol-esque claim that poor kids would perform better if they were placed in more affluent schools.

Let's see if this claim has any bearing to reality (at least in Pennsylvania).

I looked at the the data for the 7th grade PSSA exam, a grade when most poor kids have not yet dropped out. There were 803 schools with disaggreagated data for low SES students.

I limited my analysis to schools to good schools, i.e., schools that were capable of successfully educating poor kids. My theory is that bad schools are the cause of education failure in of and themselves. This failuire hits poor kids especially hard.

I defined "good school" as being any school whose pass rate for poor kids was above 67.3, the state mean. I was left with 140 schools (17.4%), showing you what a rotten job our schools do with poor kids in general. I was under the impression that the reason we have this expensive public education system in the first place is to educate all these kids who otherwise couldn't afford to be educated on their own. As always, socializing the problem by getting big government involved has failed to solve the problem. But I digress.

Then I determined the performance of these good schools having high concentrations of poor kids (greater than 50%). Only 18 schools met the criteria. The average concentration of poor kids in these schools was 72%. The average pass rate for these schools turned out to be 76.6%.

As a point of comparison, there were 258 "bad" schools (93.5%) with highly concentrated (average concentration: 81.4%) poor students. The average pass rate for the poor kids in these bad schools was an abysmal 38.9%.

Next, I determined the performance of the good schools with low concentrations of poor students (less than 50%). 112 schools met the criteria and had an average concentration of 24.3% poor kids. The average pass rate for these schools turned out to be 74.7%.

The pass rate for the 410 low concentration (27.3%) "bad schools" was 52.9%.

The conclusion is that Rothstein and Kozol are wrong. Poor kids in predmoniantly poor schools will perform about the same as poor kids in more affluent schools as long as the school is a good school. The problem is that the vast majority of our schools aren't any good. In these schools there is over a half a standard deviation disparity in the performance of poor kids in predominantly poor schools.

The problem isn't poverty; the problem is bad schools.

Those Who Can't Teach, Inflate Grades

The headline to of this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article intrigued me:

Tougher reading program means low city grades

Let's see what's going on.

Parents of some Pittsburgh elementary school students will find an unwelcome surprise -- unusually low marks in reading -- when their children bring home report cards Nov. 17.

Because the Pittsburgh Public Schools this fall introduced a standardized grading system and what it described as a more rigorous reading program, some students have seen their performance slip on classroom tests.

That will translate into lower grades on report cards than parents are accustomed to seeing, said Susan Sauer, curriculum supervisor for elementary reading, and Barbara Rudiak, executive director for 18 district elementary schools. Some parents already have noticed a drop in their children's test scores.

Ok, so it wasn't the more rigorous program that caused the drop in grades, it was the switch to a standardized grading system. But it gets better.

"This has created a certain amount of controversy with principals, parents and teachers," said Dr. Rudiak, who is project manager for the "Treasures" reading program, purchased from Macmillan/McGraw-Hill for about 13,250 students in kindergarten through grade five. The program is also used in elementary classrooms at the district's K-8 schools and accelerated learning academies.

Low grades cause controversy because they show schools aren't teaching. Most professions would respond to feedback indicating widespread practioner underperfformance by trying to self-regulate and improve before the government steps in. What do you think the educrats will do?

Go read RightWingProf's post on academic groupthink first and see if that influences your answer. We'll wait.

While we wait, let me tell you about Pittsburgh's new reading program "Treasures" which is a new basal reading program that tries to mimic reading research in an attempt to qualify for Reading First funds. The important thing is that it has not been researched and it has no evidence of success. What it does have is lots of pretty pictures. Many school districts selected this program on this basis rather than the more rigorous "does it actually work" basis. Lets dub this the Pretty Picture Fallacy.

But even in education, you reap what you sow, pretty pirctures not withstanding, as we're about to find out.

Aligned to state learning standards and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the program should boost student performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, said Richard Sternberg, principal of Grandview Elementary in Allentown and president of the Pittsburgh Administrators Association.

Ms. Sauer and Dr. Rudiak said changes in elementary reading complement the district's "Excellence for All" plan, which includes a 2009 deadline for academic improvement.

Should boost performance? Should boost performance?

Based on what, you may ask.

Based on the typical educrat standby -- a wild ass guess. This is how education works in this country.

Educators select new programs based on such tangibles as pretty pictures and other faddish nonsense, and then guess, without evidence, that it'll work. When it turns out five or six years later that the new program doesn't work, the next best thing will be out and they'll switch to that without remorse and without regard to all the children damaged by the current program.

And, just because this is a phonics based program containing the five essential elements of reading instruction doesn't mean that it's any more likely to succeed. Such reasoning is based on the following logical fallacy:

If a dog is a Dalmatian, it has spots.
Therefore, if a dog has spots, it is a Dalmatian.

The first statement is true. The second statement doesn't follow from the
first.

The probable response from most readers is that nobody could be naive enough not to recognize this flaw. English setters, some terriers, sheepdogs, and many mutts have spots. Unfortunately, there are many educational parallels to the argument that all dogs with spots are Dalmatians. Here's one:

If a beginning-reading program is highly effective, it has various features: phonics, phonemic awareness, and so on.
Therefore, if a program has these features, it will be highly effective.

Current reform practices revolve around this logic, but the logic is as flawed when it refers to effective programs as it is when it refers to Dalmatians.

It takes a lot more than phonics to make a good reading program. It takes a lot more than reading comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and phonemic awareness for that matter.

There's only two ways to know whether a reading program has fit the puzzle together correctly--test it beforehand or inflict it on hapless students and let the chips lie where they may. Course two is the typical course of action taken by most publishers by the way.

If we want to find out how well the program works, the fail safe method is to look at the performance of the students, under, say, a fair grading system.

Before this school year, each teacher decided what constituted an "A" or other grade in elementary reading. Some teachers gave more weight to take-home work than colleagues did, and some teachers designed their own tests because they didn't like those provided with the previous program, Harcourt "Collections," Ms. Sauer and Dr. Rudiak said.

Such discretion has been eliminated as the district standardizes instruction within a school and among schools to promote equal treatment of students, they said. All teachers now use tests provided with the "Treasures" program.

The distinction the journalist was looking for, but failed to produce, was the objective vs. subjective distinction. The old grading scheme was subjective and permitted the schools, through the teachers, to juice up the grades by making easy tests, grading tests more easily, and/or giving more weight to non-test work (i.e., more subjective criteria).

The new grading scheme is more objective and takes power away from the schools to fudge grades by using their own subjective measures.

Educators don't like objectivity and empirical results. You'll find out why this is so soon enough if you don't know already.

Initially, the district decided that the weekly tests would make up 40 percent of a student's grade; unit tests, given about every five weeks, 50 percent; and assignments, 10 percent.

But that formula quickly yielded so precipitous and widespread a drop in grades that officials revised the system. In hindsight, Dr. Rudiak said, the initial formula gave too much weight to tests -- and did so when the format was brand new to students and teachers.

Imagine if you were a patient getting treated for a broken arm using a new experimental treatment. After the treatment the doctor makes you get an x-ray to see if the bone set properly. The x-ray shows the bone did not set right. The doctor, however, tells you that the x-ray machine has indicated too many mis-set bones using this new treatment, so the doctor tells you that they've adopted an additional criterion for determining if bones are really set properly. If the patient filled out his insurance forms correctly, then they've been a good patient and good patients heal properly. Therefore, your broken arm has set properly. You leave the doctors office relieved that the new treatment has successfully healed you, even though your bone has not set properly.

This is what's going on in Pittsburgh. The objective tests made by the curriculum publisher are indicating that kids aren't learning what the publisher intended.

There are three potential reasons for this: one, the curriculum isn't any good; two, the teaching isn't any good; or three, some combination of one and two.

I'm going with option three. The curriculum is untested and the authors of that curriculum have no track record of success and the schools in Pittsburgh have no track record of success teaching kids like the kids in the Pittsburgh school district.

Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka said his members advocated for a change in the grading system to keep students from being unfairly penalized. While cautioning that "we have more work to do," he said the revised formula is better for students and restores some of the flexibility teachers need to be effective.

"There's a fine line between there not being guidance and something being too rigid. Neither one is good," Mr. Tarka said.

Could someone explain these two paragraphs to me in a way that makes sense.

How does allowing students to pass when tests indicate that they've failed "unfairly penaliz[e]" the student? Is it that under NCLB, failing students indicate failing schools?

And, how does allowing schools to pass kids who don't deserve to pass enable teachers to be effective? Effective in what? Social promotion?

Assignments now make up 30 percent of the grade, while unit tests and weekly tests each account for 35 percent. Ms. Sauer and Dr. Rudiak said they still expect some students to have lower-than-typical report card grades, in part because of the rigorous "Treasures" program.

While the Harcourt program tested students on passages they had read before, "Treasures" requires students to apply comprehension and other skills to unfamiliar texts. It includes more nonfiction passages than the old program.

So now subjective assignments are worth three times as much, and even that won't mask the failure in the Pittsburgh school district.

Ms. Sauer and Dr. Rudiak said additional adjustments to the grading system may occur in the future. Mr. Sternberg said students are catching on.

"As a matter of fact, they're starting to do better now," he said.

Better than what?

Continued Light Blogging Today

Here's some recommended reading in my absence:

Elementary History Teacher has a good post on the educrats in her state mandating that social studies be taught thematically instead of chronologically.

Edspresso has a good post on the new Kipp Philadelphia school which has in three short years managed to get some amazing results out of its first cohort of students, now in seventh grade, who've been in the school since fifth grade. I'll have more on this tomorrow.

Kitchen Table Math has had a lot of good posts on mastery learning in the past week that are a good continuation of my "how we learn" posts.