This Isn't Getting Us Anywhere Fast

There isn't anything more disappointing than finding a long essay that starts off well and promises many insights based at least in part on its length, but then veers off track violently a few paragraphs in. Such wasted potential.

This is what I was thinking by about paragraph 11 (and confirmed by paragraph 15) of Stephen Downes' longish essay on 21st Century Learning.

It is especially disappointing because I've been hoping that someone would advance the argument because it appears that both sides are talking past each other. And, as long as we're talking past each other, the issue doesn't advance. The issue needs to advance because it is an important issue.

Stephen's essay clearly demonstrates where the issue has stagnated.

In paragraphs 1-15 he erects and then dismantles the "students need to learn facts" strawman and assures us that everyone agrees that they do:

Not only do I make these statements, I would say that any person who is an advocate of 21st century learning also makes these statements. I can't imagine anyone seriously proposing any sort of educational reform who does not agree with these statements. This is important, because it means it isn't sufficient to respond to advocates of 21st century skills by saying 'we need facts'. Everybody has already agreed with that.

Then he takes the carcass of that dismantled strawman and proceeds to erect another strawman, the "students need to learn skills" strawman, and naturally assures us that they do:

We know now - and, indeed, have probably always known - that an education based strictly and solely in facts is insufficient.

He then takes the remainder of the essay, the bulk of it, to dismantle this newly erected strawman. He could have just written a few points why skills are important and then cut and pasted a slighted altered version of the paragraph he used in dismantling the "students need to learn facts" strawman:

I can't imagine anyone seriously proposing any sort of educational reform who does not agree with these statements. This is important, because it means it isn't sufficient to respond to advocates of 21st century [facts] by saying 'we need [skills]'. Everybody has already agreed with that.

If anything, it would have saved him the typing of a few thousand words.

Why don't we move the argument to a more productive place. Both sides apparently agree that students need to learn both facts and skills and what they currently are learning is insufficient. The question is which facts, which skills, and how should they be best taught to maximize the knowledge that students need to be both productive and informed and to enable them to continue their learning throughout their life after formal education has been completed.

I'm still trying to work out these issues for myself and hopefully I'll be able to present a coherent essay on the issue in the near future. In the meantime, I am able to point out some of the flawed assumptions that Stephen makes in his essay in the hope that he can get himself back on track and thinking about the same issue from his very different perspective.

First, it isn't impossible to teach people facts. Quite the opposite is the case - we understand, and can prove (and have proved, over and over) that we can teach facts very simply and easily, through repetition, rote, memorization, practice examples, worked examples, and more. People can memorize the alphabet, the multiplication tables, the Koran, whatever. A great deal of our education today in fact turns on this very proposition: it consists of the teaching of facts, and the testing for recall of those facts.

The testing also shows that students are not able to recall those facts very well, despite this supposedly being the primary focus of present education and that facts are supposedly simply and easily taught.

Both sides apparently believe that at least some facts need to be learned and should be able to be readily recalled by students. Both sides also apparently believe that students need more than mere recall of facts. It follows that both sides should be concerned that students aren't able to recall facts if only for the fact that if they can't recall facts, it's unlikely they can do any "higher-order" things with those facts. Yet only one side is concerned over the current state of affairs. The other side is either being disingenuous with its call for the learning of facts or is playing fast and loose with the definition, as you'll soon see. In any event, their stance needs clarification.

When you teach children facts as facts, and when you do it through a process of study and drill, it doesn't occur to children to question whether or not those facts are true, or appropriate, or moral, or legal, or anything else. Rote learning is a short circuit into the brain. It's direct programming. People who study, and learn, that 2+2=4, know that 2+2=4, not because they understand the theory of mathematics, not because they have read Hilbert and understand formalism, or can refute Brouwer and reject intuitionism, but because they know (full stop) 2+2=4.

Again, both sides apparently agree that children should learn facts and to question/analyze facts and the evidence presented that establishes these facts. The implication that direct instruction is an inferior way of learning anything but facts has no empirical support. It's also wrong to imply that direction instruction is synonymous with rote learning and conversely that non-direct instruction isn't rote or is somehow "better."

We want people to know both the theory of mathematics and that 2+2=4. The two are separate things. And, I am especially suspicious when an educator claims to be teaching the "theory of mathematics" as a better way of teaching that 2+2=4 only to find out that the student cannot reliably determine what 2+2 is when questioned.

I used the phrase "it's direct programming" deliberately. This is an analogy we can wrap our minds around. We can think of direct instruction as being similar to direct programming. It is, effectively, a mechanism of putting content into a learner's mind as effectively and efficiently as possible, so that when the time comes later (as it will) that the learner needs to use that fact, it is instantly and easily accessible.

There is certainly no guarantee that direct programming will result in the instant and easy accessibility of content. This conflates the act of acquiring content with the act of retaining the content. It also ignores what we want the learner to do with the content once it has been mechanism acquired, that is, think about it and assimilate it so it can be represented in a structured and orderly way. No one seriously believes that merely learning lots of facts is the end-game of education. The real-end game is the student's ability to think and analyze better (at least in the relative domain of which those facts form the basis). And there's no getting around the fact that those who do know better (i.e., experts) also know more relevant facts and that these same experts don't think any better in areas that they don't know the facts.

Not so long ago, pretty much every bit of information a person needed in his or her life could be taught as a fact, which basic mechanisms - such as literacy - being used to make up the difference. Spending a lot of time teaching facts could be justified, because people needed basic knowledge to survive in an industrial world, needed to be able to understand the basics of language and literature, science and mathematics, and - crucially - not much more. And anything that detracted from that learning made a person less able to cope in society. These useless 'soft' skills might help with their hobbies and avocations, but they wouldn't help them get a job or do well in their career.

This presumes there was some golden age of education in which nearly everyone who tried, learned nearly everything that was important. There was no such golden age. I can think of no time in the past century in which one reform or another was under way in an attempt to reform the perceived inadequacies of the then-present education environment.

The economy has certainly shifted, in the US at least, from manufacturing to service, but I don't believe that service workers need to know any more or less than their manufacturing counterparts.

Nonetheless, I believe that both sides believe that a first-rate education (however defined) is paramount.

Today, the situation has completely turned around because of the six factors identified above. People need such greater capacities in literacy, learning, prioritizing, evaluation, planning and acting. And as their need for these dynamic skills and capacities increases, their need for facts decreases. Indeed, the more these skills are needed, the more the teaching of facts as facts actually impairs the teaching of these skills. The more static our teaching, the less dynamic the learner can be.

There is certainly a need for expertise and knowledge today. But, from what we know about the study of experts, one thing continues to be true -- experts know a lot of facts, otherwise known as domain knowledge. We value these experts because of their greater analytic ability (such as "literacy, learning, prioritizing, evaluation, planning and acting") and understanding of the domains in which they are experts. However, and this is the crucial bit, these same expertise have no greater analytic ability than the average Joe in areas in which they don't know the underlying facts.

By the way, did you notice that it didn't take many paragraphs of prose for Stephen to go from extolling the need for knowing facts, to belittling the need to know facts, to claiming that learning facts impairs the development of 21st Century learning.

That's the tell. And, that's the problem with all the advocates of "21st Century Learning" -- they say one thing, but they "tell" you another. Either they contradict themselves right in their own argument, as Stephen does, or they provide gloriously-fact-free "model lesson plans", like P21 does, that contradict their argument that "of course, learning both facts and skills is important."

So, while I believe Stephen when he writes that skills cannot be taught in the absence of facts, I also believe, based on his writings, that he thinks that facts should be marginalized as much as possible, taking a back-seat to the skills he thinks are important (based on current technology which apparently never goes obsolete). This has been a recurring theme in the 21st Century learning debate. One side is playing fast and loose with the rhetoric, keep getting called on it, deny it, continue using a slightly modified rhetoric, and wonder why the other side isn't taking them seriously.

And, that's a shame because we aren't getting anywhere fast in this debate. No progress is being made despite the apparent common middle ground that exists if you believe the rhetoric. The losers, of course, continue to be the school children.

Innocuous and Clueless but Creepy

That's the impression I got when I listened to the President's speech to school children last week. I described the innocuous and clueless parts in a previous post. I'll get to the creepy part.

The reason why I'm still writing about a week-old speech is a late feed I got for Will Richardson's post on the speech.

After I read Will's post, I thought to myself how that would be the exact argument I would include in my Little Red Book when I become leader for life.

The real reason why the President's speech was controversial to many and offensive to some is the President's lack of respect for federalism and the limited government powers given to the federal executive office's. That the speech was given to children in a government-run school doesn't help matters. The implicit power grab by the President is unseemly. The dear leader parallels and the paternalistic overtones are simply creepy. That smart guys like the President and Will Richardson completely missed them is, well, disturbing. Didn't we fight a revolution not too long ago over executive overreach?

The Cato guys have the best take on these aspects of the President's speech.



Now compare to Will's take.

I keep thinking of those teachers out there right now who have had a level of confidence and professionalism stripped away by school districts who have ceded to parents wishes to avoid rather than to trust them to teach.

Last I checked, we still lived in a representative democracy. The people, through their elected school boards, still run the show (at least in most places). That is how it should be and the fact that some teachers and school districts misjudged and had to bend their will to the opinion of the locals is a healthy reminder of who remains in charge.

I keep thinking about what kids are learning by the way their schools are reacting, what it says to them about what school is and its value in their lives.

It tells them that their parents and not the schools are the ultimate authority.

I keep thinking what this says about a public school system that has “educated” the people at the front of all of the screaming and yelling.

This is how a democracy works when it comes to deciding controversial political issues like what goes on in public schools. In a private school, there is no yelling and screaming when the leadership of the school makes a bad decision, there is only a quiet call to the principal demanding a tuition refund.

That many people, many publicly-schooled, either missed or failed to appreciate the present controversy at the heart of the amount of power we've ceded to the government in the current environment of the public voluntarily ceding back hard-earned freedoms to a government (both Democrat and Republican run) that presents itself as a all-knowing benevolent dictator is quite disturbing. As Will writes -- "Talk about a teachable moment." Indeed.

SAT Scores and Family Income

Here we go again.




This graph of family income vs. SAT sub-test scores from the College Board (via the NYT's Eeconomix) has been getting a lot of play lately.




Many interpreted the graph as saying that raising family income causes an increase in SAT sub-test scores. (The Economix's sloppy "boost" language didn't help here. Nor did the left-unexplained R² of 0.95, an artifact of how the graph was constructed, rather than as a measure of the actual variance between family income and test scores which is far lower.)

Faithful readers will already know that the underlying data for the graph is incapable of supporting a causal analysis of the relationship. It only supports descriptive and correlational analyses. Yet that didn't stop many from making the causal leap in logic by opining how obvious it is that all we need to do to produce better students is to provide their family with more money (preferably lots more money) and, thus, solving all our education woes.

Economist Greg Mankiw points out the danger (and ridiculousness) of claiming causality from mere correlational data.

Suppose we were to graph average SAT scores by the number of bathrooms a student has in his or her family home. That curve would also likely slope upward. (After all, people with more money buy larger homes with more bathrooms.) But it would be a mistake to conclude that installing an extra toilet raises yours kids' SAT scores.

It's also a mistake to conclude that winning Powerball or getting a governmental handout is going to raise SAT scores as well. Suggest the former and you'll attract funny glances; suggest the latter and half the edusphere and three quarters of edu-journalists will call you profound. Yet both are un-empiric and equally silly.

This is especially so considering there is ample correlative and experimental evidence indicating that there is a third variable driving the test score - family income/number of bathrooms and similar income-derived correlations. Take a look at the correlation between IQ test scores and biological father's income in this graph.



The graph shows the correlation for both ordinary children and adopted children. The correlations are remarkably similar, yet the contribution of the biological father of adopted children is mostly limited to some sperm. That's some mighty potent sperm. Seems like we'd get a better bang for our buck if we assured that fathers have plenty of money instead of wasting it on kids once they are conceived.

I can waste the better part of the day dredging up silly correlations. Some of them might confirm your biases and opinions on how to improve education outcomes. You'll like those. Others will go against the grain of your biases and opinions. You won't like those and you'll probably think of a way to discount the results. In both cases you're not thinking scientifically. And that's the real problem in education.

Two Legends Depart

First Swayze

and now

Rotherham

No one puts Andy in the corner.

Duncan Finally Gets One Right

Today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged universities to get more involved in helping to improve under-performing schools, by forming partnerships with local school districts, establishing charter schools, and improving teacher education.

There's nothing I'd like to see more than Ed schools putting their crackpot theories on how best to teach children, manage a classroom, and run a school into practice under the unblinking eye of NCLB's data collection scheme (the one saving grace of NCLB).

The joy of being able to compare the performance of these Ed-school-run schools to other schools. Finally for the public to see that the emperor really has no clothes.

OECD Locks Up It's Latest Report

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development isn't being very cooperative these days as it locks up its latest report Doing Better for Children from those of us that want to find out how to do better for children. (Or, those of us who want to point out the OECD's various methodological flaws and other sundry mistakes.)

I can see why the OECD wants to charge for a pretty bound copy of the report, but charging to download the PDF?

I don't see the wisdom.

Isn't the whole point of being an advocacy group to, you know, advocate by spreading your "truth" far and wide?

If you only read one post on education today ...

... make it David Boulton's interview with Zig Engelmann over at Children of the Code.

It's a rare treat when the interviewer is actually knowledgeable about the subject being discussed.

If you didn't understand my point about the President's speech exhorting students to work hard being largely a waste of time, then this interview should clear things up. Hopefully.

I'm posting this now without comment, but I will follow up.

New edu-blog Mid-Riffs agrees

I agree with promising new edu-blog, Mid-Riffs', take on Obama's speech.

But all of that leaves out the demand-side: the students’ willingness (or not) to learn. We can deliver the perfect curriculum via perfect teachers led by perfect principals in perfect schools operating under perfect accountability standards and choice, but if the students have the attitude that “I refuse to learn, because it’s not cool, or it’s acting white,” they won’t learn very much. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Exactly. Certainly, there are some kids at the margin who need a good motivational speech to get them to try a little more earnestly.

But, such a motivational speech only makes sense if the required learning is within the student's reach once the effort is made. Otherwise, the students are merely wasting their time.

Let's take a look at reading performance at the President's hand-selected Wakefield High. 75% of black students and 77% of Hispanic students are not achieving at a level being achieved by 75% of white students (a level that in my estimation falls somewhere between basic and proficient on the NAEP).

Does anyone really believe that 75% of black students, 77% of Hispanic students, and 25% of white students just need a presidential kick in the ass to make the grade?

I'd venture that few would without a major overhaul of the curriculum and pedagogy with the help of a time machine to transport them back to K for their do-over.

Then you can give all the motivational speeches you want.

And, be sure to not to miss John Carney's alternate speech which gets a lot closer to the actual truth of the situation. (HT Mid-Riffs)

Obama Harangues Students, Still Clueless on Ed Policy

Update: After surveying the edusphere, the consensus seems to be that the President's speech was mostly innocuous, perhaps a little uplifting, and by golly them youngsters needed to be reminded about the value of hard work. Nuts to that. At best it was a waste of our time. I believe that schol-age children are mostly rational actors. They know the value of hard work. And, they know the value of acquiring a good education. What they do not see is how working hard for thirteen long years is going to end with their acquiring that education since, try as they might, they always end up at the bottom of the class. What's more foolish to give up or to work hard in light of the daily stream of data telling you that you're a failure? So, the President's oratorical skills might lead to a temporarily up-lifting of spirits, but don't expect it to last afetr the results of the next test. What Obama missed was an opportunity to address the real problems in education: why aren't some students doing well in school and how should we go about changing that. (And I edited the post for readability which was awful in version one and is slightly less awful now.)

The Obama Administration continued its muddled approach to education today in the President's speech to American school children. The administration's policy on education is based on the politician's fallacy.

• We must do something
  
• This is something
  
• Therefore, we must do this.
  

Previously, the Administration's "this" was to spend lots of money (how many more times do you think we'll be able to double the deficit before we can't do "this" anymore) and give the unsustainable spending binge a fancy slogan ("race to the top").

In today's speech, the other shoe dropped for America's students. The Race to the Top money came with some strings attached. (Though kudos, mr. President, for keeping the "dear leader" aspects to a minimum.)

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Actually, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the "best" schools (whatever that means), AND students taking responsibility for their education and still not wind up with academic success at the end of the day.

By stressing the student responsibility part of the equation in today's speech, Obama is implying that all the other preconditions for school success are already in place for students who take responsibility for their education to succeed -- which is patent nonsense.

I could point to plenty of well-funded schools with dedicated teachers and supportive parents with plenty of student failure disproportionately affecting the black, Hispanic, and poor students. Take for example the Radnor Middle School and The Napa High School that I blogged about back in 2007. Or Philly's Science Leadership Academy or the School of the Future.

In fact, I could also point to many schools that aren't so well-funded, with apathetic parents, and middling teachers in which plenty of students still succeed. Of course, you'll have to go back to the dark days of the 70s to find less than well-funded schools, where you'll also find a population that was far less wealthy and less educated, and where many parents believed their responsibility for education ended with paying school taxes and making sure the their kids went to school on a somewhat regular basis.

Obama's list of pre-conditions of academic success is both under and over inclusive. And, that's being generous. A less generous interpretation is that the Obama administration is just as clueless as their predecessors when it comes to education policy. They don't know what's wrong with education policy, nor do they know how to fix it. But, they know something needs to be done and by god they mean to do something about it. Or at least look like their care and are doing something about it. Because that's how you get re-elected without having to show actual results. That's also why the public sector underperforms the private sector.

No doubt that's why Obama's team chose Arlington's Wakefield High to deliver his speech. Symbolism. Wakefield High has all the right symbolism.

• Wonderfully diverse student body for celebration purposes;
• Fashionable diverse leadership, also for celebration purposes;
• Has own Twitter account;
• Believes in the magic of smartboards;
• Making adequate yearly progress across the board under NCLB (thanks to VA's pitifully low standards) (p. 9);
• Voluntaryily under School Improvement Plan demonstrating the helping (though not heavy-handed) hand of government;
• Involved parents;
• Technology, technology, technology;
• Passes the ten minutes with Google "Nothing-Blatantly-Controversial"Test.

What's there not to like?

At least that's what the underling who vetted Wakefield high was probably thinking.

But I'm guessing he or she didn't have the math skills to understand (or at least didn't dig deep enough into) the Virginia Department of Education's very own report card on Wakefield High. Symbolism isn't very effective when the hard date shows chronic failure. And make no mistake about it, Wakefield High is a typical failing high school in which many students would rationally have no interest in working hard. This directly undermines the message in Obama's speech and whatever symbolic value Wakefield high was choosen for. So, let's take a look at wakefield high's data.

I suppose our unknown vetter stopped at page 4 of the report which shows black and Hispanic students performing within about three percentage point of whites based on pass rates. That's close enough for government work. It's also a statistical artifact of having a very high pass rate, such as Virginia's. When the pass rates are very high (or very low for that matter) the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and white and Asian students appears to be small. But, it isn't.

Trust me, the achievement gap is alive and well at Wakefield High as you can see with your own lying eyes on pages 10 to 18 in which subgroup performance data is laid bare (thank you NCLB). In particular, you want to look at the scores for the Advanced category which is a) a tougher standard, b) with a lower pass rate, and c) required but not used for anything under NCLB.

2008 English (Reading) - Percent of students scoring advanced
Black: 25% (1% above state average)
Hispanic: 23% (8% below state average)
White: 75% (18% above state average)
Achievement gap: 50% (holy cow)

2008 English (Reading) - Percent of students scoring advanced
Black: 18% (2% above state average)
Hispanic: 13% (6% below state average)
White: 62% (22% above state average)
Achievement gap: 44% (yikes)

2008 Geometry - Percent of students scoring advanced
Black: 5% (2% below state average)
Hispanic: 8% (7% below state average)
White: 34% (5% above state average)
Achievement gap: 29% (ouch)

2008 Algebra II - Percent of students scoring advanced
Black: 9% (2% below state average)
Hispanic: 14% (3% below state average)
White: 30% (2% above state average)
Achievement gap: 21% (ouch again)

On and on it goes for nine depressing pages. (The only subject without an achievement gap is Algebra I, but that's what you'd expect with a pass rate below 10% in a "restricted range" course.)

Wakefield High needs to celebrate its diversity because that's about all it has to celebrate.

Wakefield High is the poster child for the Obama Administration. Since the administration doesn't know how to reduce the achievement gap (and lacks the power to in any event), it'll be sure to befuddle you with tables and graphs to disguise the gap. And, it'll celebrate diversity to assure you don't look behind the numbers and to insulate itself from criticism.

Not caring about school isn't a cause of student failure; it's an effect acquired through years of trying and not being able to succeed in school. It's the result of a system that provides an education that many students are unable to access. And, as Wakefield High shows, celebrating diversity doesn't make academics any more accessible. Nor does having a black principle lacking a Y chromosome. Nor does living in the mecca of government sinecures and diversity make-work jobs. And, so much for twitter and smartboard being an educational panacea.

So, yes, by all means, blame the students for failing to take responsibility. That's an excuse as convenient as any for a politician.

More Evidence that Good Instruction Can make a Big Difference

Last spring I reported on the Gering School District (Nebraska) which had taken their Reading First grant back in 2004 and, with the help of NIFDI, implemented the full-immersion Direct Instruction for Reading and Language Arts back in 2004 district wide.

Let's see what the results look like four years later now that that first cohort has reached 3rd grade. We can also take a look at the performance of the 4th - 6th grades who participated in the program for some of their school years. Also, we can take a look at the 7th and 8th grades that received a remedial version of the reading program only.

As you can see from my fancy Excel 2007 graph below, Gering students are now performing better than the Nebraska state average.

The blue bars on the left represents the mean performance of all students in Nebraska on the Nebraska state NCLB test (a test with an artificially high pass rate to be sure, but we are concerned here with relative performance). Nebraska is about 70% white and 25% Hispanic so the average performance of all students comprises mostly white students.

The red bars represent the performance of all Gering students which is higher than the Nebraska average in all grades. This is significant because the demographics of Gering are below the Nebraska average. (Adults are less educated and there is more poverty.)

Now let's take a look at the subgroup data to see who is making the progress.

The green and purple bars represent the performance of Hispanic and white students respectively. Both groups are performing better than the state average for all students in all grades but grade 5 where Hispanics perform slightly below. Gering Hispanics are actually performing better than Gering white students in grade 7 which is something you rarely see on a district wide basis and/or without selective admissions.

The light blue bars (on the right) represent the performance of students receiving free and reduced price lunches -- a proxy for poverty. Poor students in Gering perform better than the Nebraska average for all students (not just poor ones) with the except of grades 5 and 7. This is something you don't see everyday. I've run quite a few analyses like this for different states and I have yet to find an entire school district whose low-SES students performed above the state average for all students.

Apparently the effects of poverty and being a non-Asian minority can be mitigated through good instruction alone.

I challenge anyone to produce similar effects for their favored non-instructional intervention (on a District-wide basis without selective admissions) that produce effects similar to those found in Gering in grades 3-8.

I'll drill down deeper into the data in a future post.

When is a decoding error not an error?

I recently came across the Critical Reading Inventory, a balanced literacy diagnostic, which purports to assess reading ability.


In case you were still under the misapprehension that balanced literacy was a state-of-the-art blend of the best of code-based reading instruction and the best of whole language theory, the Critical Reading Inventory should help disabuse you of that notion.


The problem with balanced literacy is that even though it typically includes phonics-like activities, it is not based on alphabetic code-based reading instruction. The dirty little secret behind balanced literacy is that for all the lip-service that's paid to phonics, in balanced literacy the decoding of text using the alphabetic code can be replaced with the guessing of word identity based on non-phonological information. In balanced literacy, decoding errors can be ignored if the reader guesses a word that means about the same thing as the word that the reader is unable to properly decode. That doesn't sound very balanced to me. Doesn't sound like decoding either.


The Critical Reading Inventory helpfully makes public their scoring assistant website in which teachers learn the black art of miscue analysis (i.e., ignoring decoding errors). Two case studies are provided laying out all the gory details. (Beware this is not for the faint of heart.) Let's take a look at a scoring sheet from the second case study in which "John," a fifth grader, struggles to decode a third grade text.

(Click on the graphic to see a full sized version.)

As you can see, John has made numerous (over 20) decoding errors half of which have been ignored because of the miscue analysis. All the errors with a plus sign (+) in the margin have been ignored because John's errors didn't affect the meaning of the text.

This is how you make it seem like a student has learned how to read when he really hasn't yet. But doesn't it all look so scientific and professional. We have "case studies" which sounds like science. And science is good. right? And we have fancy jargon like "miscue analysis" which makes it seem so professional like these educators really know what they're doing. You can trust us with your child's education.

And, that's just the decoding part of the test, wait until we get to the comprehension part.

All the Cool Kids Are Doing It Now

Uncle Jay is blogging.

Reminds me that I have to do a post on Jay's latest book on KIPP which I enjoyed.

Any other new bloggers to recommend?

What I learned this year

Another school year down. One child completed kindergarten. One child completed third grade. A ptotracted negotiation with my school district over my third grader's GIEP. A hundred blog posts in the hopper. Innumerable education articles read. So what, if anything, did I learn this school year educationwise?

The concept of reading "comprehension" should be abandoned.

There do not seem to be any good instruments for testing reading comprehension that are valid, reliable, and objective and that actually measure how well the student is able to comprehend text.

There is insufficient content instruction in the late elementary grades. Many students are fluent decoders at this level. Too much time is wasted on learning reading strategies and reading simple fiction books instead of learning content knowledge which we know many low-SES students lack and is somewhat easy to teach.

There's a lot of fat in math curriculum from fourth grade until algebra begins (typically in eighth grade). Half the year is typically devoted to review.

Despite all this math review, many students fail to learn elementary math as demonstrated by standardized tests which by and large test nothing but elementary math.

Since when did being able to write a short essay about how you solved a math problem become the end game of elementary math. This seems to be testing the student's reading ability twice rather than the student's math ability. See Reading Comprehension, Not Knowing How to Teach above.

History, geography, science, and civics instruction continue to get short shrift.

Many schools practice education socialism in kindergarten by not formally teaching reading at least to the at-risk students in favor of not teaching anyone in the hope that the at-risk will mature and to slow down the capable.

Students are grouped instructionally for teacher convenience rather than student need. The at-risk and special education students are spread out so no teacher is over-burdened. Same deal with the more capable students.

Instructionally differentiation is largely a waste of time. The more capable students are given make-work and other sundry time-wasters too compensate for an instructional pace that is too slow for them. The less capable students get a watered down version of the curriculum. Is it any wonder why they never catch up?

School Districts don't always follow the regulations when the regulations conflict with how they want to run their school.

Education policy makers aren't too concerned with the nitty-gritty details (see above) that really determine the effectiveness of schools. There's a good argument that they are incapable of knowing the details needed to effectively regulate, so its more important for the incentives to be aligned at the school level so educators will run their schools most effectively themselves. Currently, those incentives are far from aligned.

Acquiring Knowledge

In the last post, we discussed the six forms of knowledge:

• verbal associations - facts and lists: (this one thing goes with that one thing);
  
• concepts - sensory and higher-order: (all these things have some features in common);
  
• rule relationships: (this set of things goes with that set of things); and
  
• cognitive routines: (to read all of these words, or to solve all of these math problems, or to write these kinds of essays, do steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6)

These forms of knowledge are defined by the logical structure of the knowledge itself. The logical structure is the connections inherent in the knowledge. Learning one of the forms of knowledge means learning those connection.

In this post we'll discuss how these connections are learned and, thus, how knowledge is acquired by a learner.

Acquiring Knowledge

Generally, facts and lists are learned differently than concepts, rules, and routines.

1. Facts and Lists

Facts and Lists (statements that connect specific things) are learned by simply memorizing the connection. The memorization could be long term or short term depending on how long the knowledge is needed by the learner. If the knowledge is important, it is often useful for the knowledge to be practiced (rehearsed) so that it retained in long term memory. Otherwise, the knowledge will have to be reactivated every time it is needed (this is where Google helps tremendously).

2. Concepts, Rules or Propositions, and Routines

In the case of concepts, rules or propositions, and routines, however, the student has to figure out the general idea that is revealed by the examples. The student gets from the examples (specifics) to the general idea embedded in the examples by inductive reasoning. In other words, the learner performs a sequence of logical operations, beginning with examples and ending with a general idea. That is, the learner:

(a) observes examples and nonexamples (examples of concepts, or rules/propositions, or routines);
(b) performs a series (a routine) of logical operations on what it observes; and
(c) arrives at (induces, figures out, discovers, “gets”) the general idea (the concept, rule, or routine) revealed by the examples and nonexamples.

The teacher's job is to induce this learning by helping the student to “get”(see, grasp, figure out, learn) that the examples reveal a connection—a general idea (verbal association, concept, rule-relationship, cognitive routine). The teacher uses examples (and nonexamples) so that students learn (grasp, figure out, induce) the general idea (the knowledge) that connects the examples.

There are a few ways this can be done.

a. Method of agreement.. The student identifies what is common to the examples and not found in nonexamples. What is common is the general idea; e.g., redness. This is because the examples differ in nonessential features but agree in the essential feature. If they are all “treated” the same way (named, solved), it must be because of the way in which they agree. So, the teacher should present a range of examples; help the student to compare and contrast the examples; and to identify the sameness—which is the general idea (concept, rule, routine).

b. Method of difference. The student identifies what is different between the examples and nonexamples. What is different must be what makes the difference. This feature that is different (present in examples, but missing in nonexamples) must be the general idea. Examples and nonexamples are the same in nonessential features but differ in the essential feature. If they are treated differently, the difference (feature) must be what makes the difference. This difference is the general idea. So, the teacher should juxtapose examples and nonexamples; help the student to compare and contrast and to identify the difference that makes the difference.

c. Method of concomitant variation. The student identifies how one kind of thing changes along with (in the same or different direction as) another kind of thing. If one thing changes, and everything else stays the same, and then another thing changes in a regular way, then it is reasonable to infer that they go together—they are in a functional or causal relationship. This form of inductive reasoning is used especially in discovering rule relationships.

Let's now take a look at how these play out in learning concepts, rules, and routines.

A. Concepts

A concept is a set of events or things that have one or more common features. The common features are the concept. The word (“red”) is not the concept. It is merely a name for the concept. “Red” signifies or points to the feature—the redness. So, to teach a concept, the teacher should teach the student what are the common features of the examples and the name of the features (“red”) so that the student can communicate the concept to other persons.

What makes a concept a basic (or sensory) concept, as opposed to a higher-order concept? The “stuff” of basic concepts is right in front of the learners eyes, ears, or skin.

• Red: Not the word “red”; the color your eye perceives that is called “red.”
  
• On: Not the word “on”; the way things are arranged that is called “on.”
• Hot: Not the word “hot”; the way your skin feels when you touch “hot.”

All of these are basic concepts. Because all the information that defines the basic concept is right there. So, a basic concept should be taught by giving examples and naming them. Then juxtapose (put next to each other, or one right after the other) examples with nonexamples (that are the same in every way except in the features that make the difference), and name them. Here's an example of how to teach the concept "over" using examples and nonexamples.


In basic concepts, such as red, on, and s says /sss/, the “stuff” that defines the concept is right there to be seen, heard, or felt. However, the stuff that defines higher-order concepts is not right in front of the learner's senses. The learner can’t see in one place all the stuff that defines democracy, or justice, or furniture, or symmetry. The stuff that defines democracy (elections, for example) is spread over time and place and groups. So, to teach a higher-order concept the teacher should first give a verbal definition that draws a big circle around all the stuff in the concept. And then give examples and nonexamples so that student sees the actual stuff that defines the concept. Here's a simple example of teaching the higher-order concept "bird":

B. Rules
Rules are statements that connect not one thing and another thing (e.g., name and date), but connect whole sets of things (concepts):

• When demand increases, price increases.
• All dogs are canines.
• Rules can be shown on diagrams; e.g., graphs and models of interconnections.

Rules can be generally taught in one of two ways.

1. Deductive method: from general (rule) to specific (examples). In the deductive method the teacher teaches the rule statement first. Then examples and nonexamples are presented, as with concepts. Then the teacher tests all examples and nonexamples to see if the student has learned the rule.

Teacher: “Is this (verbal description of graph) an example of the demand-price rule?”

Student: “No.”

Teacher: “How do you know?”

Student states rule.

Then the teacher generalizes to/tests new examples and nonexamples. Here's another example of using the deductive method.

“The question is, Is there a connection between how steep an inclined plane is and how long it takes a ball to roll down it?”

The teacher then tells the student the rule-relationship (the steeper the inclined plane, the less time it takes the ball to roll down the inclined plane) and then show examples using inclined planes of different angles. These examples would confirm the rule.

2. Inductive method: from specific (examples) to general (rule). In the deductive method the teacher presents a range of examples first (e.g., different price-demand curves): cars, oil, movies. Then the teacher shows students how to compare the examples and to identify the sameness—the relationship.

One variable goes up and the other variable goes up. “Demand varies directly with price.” Then the teacher present nonexamples, and show (in relation to the rule) how they are nonexamples. “Demand is increasing, but price stays the same. That does not fit the rule. Then the teacher gives new examples and nonexamples, and has the student say if they are or are not examples, and how he knows.

Here's an example of using the inductive method on the inclined plane ball-rolling example above.

The teacher has the student do an experiment by rolling balls down inclined planes of different angles, measuring how long it takes each ball to roll down, and then has the student draw a conclusion.

This way requires more skills. (In the deductive method, the student merely compares examples with the rule. “Yup, the ball takes less time when the angle is steeper.”) For example, the student has to change the angles, measure the times, write the measurements, compare and contrast the instances, and figure out the connection. This means the teacher would have to teach these pre-skills before students do the experiment.

C. Routines
A Routine is a sequence of steps for getting something done. Solving math problems, sounding out words, writing essays, brushing your teeth, brushing someone else’s teeth. Routines are taught in the same way that lists are taught. The teachers models each step (or a few steps), then adds a few more steps (and then models the whole sequence so far, then adds a few more steps; etc., until the routine is complete

Applying Acquired Knowledge

That's how students acquire knowledge, but we also we also want them to be able to apply and extend the knowledge they've acquired to new examples. In general, we apply or generalize knowledge through deductive reasoning. That is, the learner:

(1) has/knows/can say a general idea (concept, rule/proposition, routine);
(2) uses the general idea (definition of a concept, or statement of a rule, or features of the things handled by the routine; e.g., math problems, words) to examine a possible new example using the information in (2);
(3) “decides” whether the new thing fits (is an example of) the definition, rule, or routine (“Can you solve this with FOIL?”); and
(4) “treats” the example accordingly--names it (concept), explains it (with the rule), solves it (with the routine).

Here's an example: If a general rule or proposition (learned either via inductive reasoning or is being told) is that when demand increases, price increases, and if you notice that the demand for oil is increasing, the learner will deduce (predict) that the price of oil will increase.

It is a simple deductive syllogism. When demand increases, price increases. The demand for commodities are increasing. oil is a kind of commodity. Therefore, the price of oil will increase. “How do you know?” “Because when demand increases, price increases, and an increase in the demand for oil is an example of an increase in demand.”

Now we know about the forms of knowledge and how that knowledge is acquired and applied. Next we'll learn how knowledge is retained past the acquisition stage. And, then, we can get to the good stuff -- the differences between novices and experts and why the "struggling" of an novice is not the same as the "struggling" of an expert.

*So far these first two posts have been adaptive from the works of Martin Kozloff, Professor of Education. See Kozloff's site for much more detail on these topics.

To Struggle, or Not to Struggle

I want to follow-up on my last post regarding the purported efficacy of designing instruction such that the novice K-12 student is required to "struggle" to learn the new material.

All the material that is typically learned on the K-12 level is amenable of being placed into meaningful relationships (or connections) with pre-existing skills and knowledge of the student. Learning will be more difficult when:

1. the student does not possess the prerequisite skills and knowledge assumed by the new material; and/or

2. the teacher has not displayed the meaningful relationships inherent in the new material or has given an explanation that is difficult for the student to follow.

In these situations learning will require higher-levels of analytic ability. And, the students most likely to learn in these situations are the high-IQ students because these students are better able to solve problems they haven't seen before (or that contain untaught vocabulary).

For the purposes of this discussion I want to focus on the purposeful failure (often for pedagogical reasons) of the teacher to display the meaningful relationships inherent in the new material to novice K-12 students under the belief that the ensuing "struggle" will better learn the new material and the underlying meaningful relationship/connection. (I think it's generally recognized that providing confusing explanations by the teacher and failing to ascertain whether a student possesses the skill and knowledge prerequisites is an indication of poor teaching.)

Let's start with the kinds of information, skills, and knowledge that the K-12 learns and what neds to be taught and learned. I've adapted this explanation from Martin Kozloff's Making Sense of What You Read and Hear, and Making Sense When You Teach.

Regardless of the subject (math, history, science), there are only six kinds of information, skills, or knowledge that can be communicated to and learned by the K-12 student.

Each kind of knowledge represents a connection. To understand the knowledge is to understand the connection. To use the knowledge (to apply it to possible examples of it) is to apply the connection.

1. Facts

Ex: “The U.S. Constitution was written in Philadelphia.”

For purposes of instruction a fact is a true and verifiable statement that connects one specific thing (Constitution) and another specific thing (Philadelphia).

Teach the connection.


2. Lists

Ex. 1: “The elements of sugar are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.”

Ex. 2: “Here is a list of facts about the U.S. Constitution. Written in Philadelphia between May and September, 1787; the draft was sent to the various states for ratification; the Constitution plus the Bill or Rights is a compromise between advocates of strong central government (Federalists) and advocates of strong state governments with a limited central government (anti-federalists); the Constitution was finally ratified in 1789.

Like with facts, these statements connect one specific thing (elements of sugar, Constitution) and a list (of other specific things).

Teach the connection(s).


3. Sensory concepts

Exs: blue, on.

The specific things (examples) of the concepts differ in many ways (size, shape), but they are connected by a common feature, such as color or position.

All of the defining features of the concept are in any example. Therefore, the concept can be shown by one example. However, a range of examples is needed for the learner to see what the common feature is and to cover the range of variations (e.g., from light to dark red).

Teach the range of examples needed for the learner to determine the common feature and the range of variations.


4. Higher-order concepts.

Exs: Democracy, society, mammal.

The specific things (examples) of the concepts are connected by a common feature or features; e.g., making societal decisions through elected representatives (representative democracy).

The defining features of higher-order concepts, however, are spread out. Therefore, you can’t simply show examples to teach a higher-order concept. You have to give a definition (that states the common, defining features) and then give examples and nonexamples to substantiate the definition.

Teach the definition of the common features and then substantiate the definition through suitable examples and non-examples.


5. Rules or propositions

These are statements that connect not specific things but whole groups of things (concepts or categories).

• Categorical Propositions. Some rules or propositions state (assert, propose) how one kind of thing (concept or category) is part of or is not part of another kind of thing (concept of category). These are called categorical propositions. For example, all dogs (one kind of thing) are canines (another kind of thing). Or, No birds (one kind of thing) are reptiles (another kind of thing). or, Some bugs are delicious.
  
  Teach the rule or proposition.
  
  
• Causal or hypothetical propositions. Other rules or propositions state, assert, or propose how one kind of thing (concept or category) changes with another kind of thing (concept or category). These are called causal or hypothetical propositions. You can tell that a statement asserts a causal or hypothetical proposition because it states (or suggests) something like “If…. If and only if.… Whenever…. The more… The less….one thing happens, then another thing (happens, comes into being, changes, increases, happens more often, decreases).
  
  The “thing” (variable, condition, antecedent event) that is the alleged cause of something else can work (have an effect) in different ways. For example, the alleged cause might be considered a necessary condition for something else to happen or change. (“If X does not happen, then Y will not happen.” Or, “If and only if X happens will Y happen.”) Or, the alleged cause might be considered a sufficient condition for something else to happen. (“Whenever X happens, Y will happen.”)
  
  For instance, Whenever temperature increases (one kind of thing), pressure increases (another kind of thing). [This proposition suggests that a rise in temperature is a sufficient condition (by itself) to cause an increase in pressure.] Or, If and only if there is sufficient oxygen, fuel, and heat (one category of thing) will there be ignition (another category of thing. [This proposition suggests that sufficient oxygen, fuel, and heat are a necessary condition for ignition.]
  
  Note: When you have identified all of the necessary conditions, you now have a set of variables that are a sufficient condition. Think of a causal model of fire, a cold, and a revolution.
  
  Teach the rule or proposition.
  

6. Routines

Routines are sequences of steps that usually must be done in a certain order. Solving math problems, sounding out words, and stating a theory or making a logical argument (each proposition in the theory or argument is like a step that leads to a conclusion).

Teach the routine.

NB: A routine is a connection of a number of events, such as steps in solving a problem or a listing of events leading up to a war. There are different arrangements of steps or events in routines. You want your students to see what these arrangements are.

• Sequence in one direction. A leads to B leads to C leads to D. Ex.: sounding out words, solving math problems.
  
  
• Sequence with feedback loops. A leads to B and the change in B produces a (reciprocal) change in A which produces more change in B until some limit is reached. Exs.: Outbreak of war, onset of illness, falling in love, divorce, getting porky and out of shape.
  
  
• Stages or phrases. A sequence of events or steps can be seen as a process divided into stages in a process.
  
  Ex1: Load rifle: steps a—b—c--d; Fire rifle: steps e—f—g; Clear rifle: steps h—i; Clean rifle: steps j—k, etc.
  
  Ex2: In history: If you examine enough (examples of) genocidal movements, you notice that one group has some features (e.g., property, social status) that produces envy in another group, or does something that threatens another group (e.g., resists power). This might be seen as the background (first) phase. Then (phase 2) the genocidal group demonizes the first group with racial slurs and propaganda. Then (phase 3) the genocidal group begins to mistreat the victim group; e.g., attacks, job loss, confiscating weapons, special (degrading) clothing. If (phase 4, escalation) the victim group fights back, this provokes worse treatment. If the victim group submits, it furthers the genocidal group’s perception of the victim as degraded. The genocidal group then (phase 5) creates an organization for killing or transporting. Then the killing begins (phase 6).
  
  
• Logical argument. A text might be arranged as a logical argument. There are two sorts of logical arguments:
  
  a. Inductive. Facts are presented. Then the facts are shown to lead to a general idea, such as a conclusion. For example, examine five examples of genocide and INDUCE (figure out) the common phases and the activities in each phase.
  
  b. Deductive. Or, text may be arranged so that it presents a deductive argument. It begins with a general idea, such as a rule--first premise.
  
  “If X happens, then Y must happen.”
  
  It then presents facts relevant to the first premise—evidence or second premise.
  
  “X happened.”
  
  It then draws a conclusion.
  
  “Therefore, Y must happen.”
  

In the next post we'll discuss how a student learns this knowledge.

Once More into the SES Breach

Here goes some new research on effects of positive parental efforts in their adopted children and the persistence of negative outcomes for these children:

The results show that parents invested more in adopted children than in genetically related ones, especially in educational and personal areas. At the same time, adoptees experienced more negative outcomes. They were more likely to have been arrested, to have been on public assistance and to require treatment for drug, alcohol or mental health issues. They also completed fewer years of schooling and were more likely to divorce. In adoptive families, it appears that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Parents invest more in adoptees not because they favor them, but because they are more likely than genetic children to need the help.

Razib of Gene Expression points out:

In Western countries adoptive parents are screened. Many of them are of higher socioeconomic status, and they adopt children from the general population, with a likely skew toward lower socioeconomic status biological parents. The traits which determine your social status are a combination of environment and genes, the latter mediated through various personality dispositions and attributes. In fact there is plenty of data to show that shared parental environment has a marginal long term effect. This is not to say that there aren't environmental inputs which matter, and which adoptive parents bring to the table, but their direct guiding is not the operative element.

This study is consistent with the results of other adoption studies, such as the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study which found similarly disappointing results.

Apparently, changing a low-SES child's environment to a high-SES environment is not going to magically convert the child to a high-SES child that can be plopped into a fancy suburban school and expect magic results. No, that's not going to happen.

Berliner can put "studies" like this out every year in which he pretends he has some secret anti-poverty potion that will cure the education woes of the low-SES.

If high-SES parents aren't capable of ameliorating the biological/genetic factors of their low-SES adopted children, what's the basis for our believing that any governmental sponsored poverty intervention could produce the same or similar results given that the children will still be saddled with their less-capable biological parents?

Berliner's out of school factors (OSFs) as not as powerful as he thinks or at least his cherry-picked research has led him to believe:

[O]ut-of-school factors (OSFs) play a powerful role in generating existing achievement gaps, and if these factors are not attended to with equal vigor, our national aspirations will be thwarted.

This brief details six OSFs common among the poor that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schools can accomplish on their own: (1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences on children; (2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4) environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6) neighborhood characteristics. These OSFs are related to a host of poverty-induced physical, sociological, and psychological problems that children often bring to school, ranging from neurological damage and attention disorders to excessive absenteeism, linguistic underdevelopment, and oppositional behavior.

Berliner is overselling the effects of prenatal care, the first of his OSFs.

The remaining OSFs would seem to have been taken care of in the adoption studies, and yet the achievement gaps persisted. In fact, the parents in the adoption studies would have been more likely to ameliorate the "linguistic underdevelopment" and yet they seemed to have been incapable of doing so. See Hart and Risley and Zig's explanation of the effect in the first six or so minutes of this video.

Most of Berliner's OSF's seem to be related to various distractions (hunger, sickness, bad peers, chaotic family environment) that low-SES children must contend with. Berliner seems to forget that middle-class kids and high-SES kids have their own distraction to contend with. We don't worry too much about those distraction but they certainly exist. And, with respect to the linguistic deficiencies, these deficiencies will remain in place unless there is some kind of high-powered instructional intervention put into place, i.e., the kind that form part of any preschool program that the the SES hustlers advocate.

So even if we were to follow Berliner's recommendations to the letter, we're still going to be left with children with instructional needs and language deficiencies that are different than the needs of high-SES children. These kids are still going to require compensatory education and improved instruction that takes into account their deficiencies. This is not the kind of instruction that you find even in high-SES schools.

The problem remains an instructional problem at its core.

Compare and Contrast

Because Ed schools do such a lousy job teaching teachers how to teach and how children learn, teachers often develop their own theories on teaching and learning based on their own observations. Often these theories are wrong.

Here's Dan Meyer blogging about a common teacher misconception: the supposed instructional value of allowing/encouraging students to struggle:

The good teacher knows if the learner learns through the ears, the eyes, or the hands just like the good spotter knows where the lifter wants support — at the wrists or under the elbows or on the bar. The good spotter is unhelpful; the good spotter doesn't intervene at the first sign of struggle but realizes that the struggle is essential, that the struggle is the entire reason they are there, and waits as long as possible before intervening.

The good teacher puts weight on the student's intellectual bar and lets her struggle under that weight as long as possible, asking questions to help her cut through the confusion, just like the spotter shouts encouragement at the lifter. (emphasis added)

I hate to ruin a colorful analogy, but the theory is wrong. Students struggling with material is not good for learning, retention, or motivation. Here's Engelmann on the topic:

Always place students appropriately for more rapid mastery progress. This fact contradicts the belief that students are placed appropriately in a sequence if they have to struggle—scratch their head, make false starts, sigh, frown, gut it out. According to one version of this belief, if there are no signs of hard work there is no evidence of learning. This belief does not place emphasis on the program and the teacher to make learning manageable but on the grit of the student to meet the “challenge.” In the traditional interpretation, much of the “homework” assigned to students (and their families) is motivated by this belief. The assumption seems to be that students will be strengthened if they are “challenged.”

This belief is flatly wrong. If students are placed appropriately, the work is relatively easy. Students tend to learn it without as much “struggle.” They tend to retain it better and they tend to apply it better, if they learn it with fewer mistakes.

The prevalence of this misconception about “effort” was illustrated by the field tryouts of the Spelling Mastery programs. Over half of the tryout teachers who field tested the first and second levels of Spelling Mastery with lower performers indicated on their summary forms that they thought the program was too easy for the children. Note that most of these teachers were not DI teachers and had never taught DI programs before. When asked about whether they had ever used a program that induced more skills in the same amount of time, all responded, “No.” Nearly all agreed that the lower performers had learned substantially more than similar children had in the past. When asked if students were bored with the program, all responded, “No.”

What led the teachers to believe that the programs were too easy? All cited the same evidence: students didn’t have to struggle. For them, it wasn’t appropriate instruction if it wasn’t difficult for the lower performers. (p. 17)

This is the danger for a would-be-profession that eschews empiricism in favor of individual intuition.

Duncan: More Class Time and More Choice

Education Secretary Arne Duncan believes that American schoolchildren need more class time and more school choice.

One out of two ain't so bad.

More School

Duncan believes that American school children should be in school at least six days a week, 11 months a year if they are to be competitive with students abroad.

I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short.

You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; eleven, twelve months a year.

Presently, this proposal is a waste of time.

Is more seat time really needed in today's poor instructional environment? If you're in the top third of the student distribution, you're already forced to endure an instructional pace that is too slow, resulting in wasted time and opportunity and plenty o' boredom. if you're in the bottom third of the distribution, you're mostly lost because the instructional pace is too fast. More seat time isn't going to help. Just because KIPP has been successful with an expanded school day and school year, doesn't mean that other schools will find the same success.

Duncan's comparisons with foreign countries is misplaced. The U.S. is competitive with foreign countries once you control for demographics. Our white students are competitive with white students from European. Our Asian students are competitive with Asian students from Asian countries. And no country does a particularly good job educating black and Hispanic students in large numbers.

If we want to do a better job educating students, we need to get government out of the education business and limit its role (on all governmental levels) to the education funding distribution and regulation business which is more difficult to screw up.

This is not to say that our currently antiquated system is ideal. It isn't. But there are bigger fish to fry before we force most students to endure more seat time. Our colleges are the envy of the world and they make due with about 20% less class time than our current system. Maybe we should reduce class time?

More Choice

Duncan also believes that students need more choice.

I'm a big believer that students and parents should have a choice what school they want to go to.

Me too. The problem, however, is that current voucher and charter schools are too tiny to provide sufficient choice or develop an adequate market of educational choice from which students can chose.

Currently, most schools (private, public, and charter) look remarkably similar from an instructional standpoint. If you like your Model T in black you are in luck. There are a few reason for this.

• Lack of information on the relative merits of different instructional practices. (The Internet is starting to make a dent here.)
• Popular instructional practices (i.e., the norm) serve the middle-class adequately. (In fact, most instructional practices will provide adequate instruction to this population.)
• There are other non-instructional considerations (like school environment, extracurricular offerings, peer environment, school prestige, and the like) that are relevant and serve as an independent basis for picking one school from another
• The measures for measuring the relative merits of instructional are few and far between, not widely used and/or made publicly available, and are population dependent.

To improve, we need a well-functioning and competitive education market which provided real choices to students. And, the best way to accomplish this is to give the public school funding directly to parents and let them decide (within regulatory limits) the appropriate use of the funding. (After the system has been rebooted, naturally.) That stills sounds like a public education system to me.

Three Year Blogiversary

Here are the Stats


Nearly 600 posts. (Maybe 15% were decent.)

Countless typos.

190,000 Visits. (Mostly from the same dozen people)

300,000 Page Views.

317 Google Reader Subscribers

60 Bloglines Subscribers


Top Referring Websites (Other than Search Engines)

1. Joanne Jacobs
2. Kitchentable Math
3. Eduwonk
4. Wapo
5. OEDB
6. This Week in Education
7. RRF Message Board
8. EconLog
9. Core Knowledge Blog
10. Rightwing Nation


Most Popular Posts From the Past Year

1. Science Leadership Academy (What they say vs. what their students can do) (Series)
2. Learning Styles are Bunk
3. Today's Chart (Pass rates vs. % Free/Reduced Meal Students)
4. Improving Socioeconomic Status (A fool's Errand)
5. Developmentally Appropriate Practice is Not Developmentally Appropriate
6. Efficiency and Spelling
7. New DI Program: Differentiated Reading
8. Decodable vs. Predictable Texts
9. Theory II: Teacher's Salaries
10. Your Pet Reform is Suckier Than You Think

Most Popular Posts From the Archives

1. It's Official: Everyday Math Sucks (Sept. 2006)
2. Alfie Kohn: Dangerous Jackass (Aug. 2006)
3. How to Effectively Manage a Classroom (Oct. 2007) (Guest Post by teacher PalisadesK)
4. Differentiated Nonsense (May 2006)
5. Everyday Math on Long Division (Oct. 2006)
6. Kid Writing (Aug. 2006)
7. Reading Mastery III Sample Lesson (Part 1) (May 2006)
8. Effective Mathematics Instruction The Importance of Curriculum (April 2007)
9. It's the Vocabulary, Stupid (Nov. 2006)
10. New Way to Teach Penmanship (Dec. 2006)

Thanks to all the readers, commenters, and other edu-bloggers.

Duncan Hypocrisy Watch

The NYT reports that during a press phone call yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan "unleashed a barrage of dismal statistics about the South Carolina schools" whose Governor, Mark Sanford "has told the Obama administration that he would not accept some $577 million in educational stimulus money for South Carolina unless he could use it to pay down state debt."

During the putative barrage of dismal statistics Duncan noted that "only 15 percent of the state’s black students are proficient in math and that the state has one of the nation’s worst high school graduation rates."

This is a pot kettle black moment.

Duncan, who up until he was tapped by the Obama administration, served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Why don't we take a look at how well the Chicago Public Schools has fared under Duncan's astute management?

In 2007, only 10% of 4th Grade black students in Chicago tested at the proficient level in Reading. (Table A-5) And, only 9% of 8th Grade black students tested at the proficient level. (Table A-6)

In 2007, only 8% of 4th Grade black students in Chicago tested at the proficient level in Math. (Table A-5) And, only 6% of 8th Grade black students tested at the proficient level. (Table A-6)

These dismal results were obtained with spending of between $13k - $14k per pupil -- far higher than what South Carolina spends. Apparently, how much a district spends has little to do with how well it educates.

Now there goes some performance information on our public schools that is "embarrassing."