Schools of Thought

I love debate. I think that the civil exchange of arguments is one of the healthiest intellectual exercises out there, and it's one of the reasons I think blogs are amazing -- they bring together minds from the farthest reaches of the country and in some cases the world. But you only get so far in arguing, and what education needs perhaps more than anything is solutions. So I'm proposing an experiment: Let's brainstorm.

Here's the way it works. The question on the table is this: "What is the single most major reform needed in American education today?"

The key is that this is brainstorming, not debating -- that means you can't criticize anyone else's ideas, not at this stage. I just want everything thrown on the table, radical or minor. You'll have to be concise, but we're looking for the jist of the idea anyways. We have a lot of great minds floating around the education blogs, so let's see what we can come up with.

One other thing: My blog isn't getting a massive amount of traffic right now due to my relatively low recent posting load, so it would increase the usefulness of this experiment if you could post a link or say something about it on your own blog.

I'll throw mine out to start -- schools have to be reformed in their pedagogical structures (and everything that flows from them, possibly including but not limited to classroom design and assessments) so that they have the singular goal of critical thinking.

Well, I finished my Teach for America application, so I should be posting more regularly. I tend to embrace a philosophy of posting where I only write when I feel I have something fairly elaborate to say, as opposed to the equally legitimate concept of quick-hit posting. That being said... here's a quick-hit:

WASHINGTON - The House Agriculture Committee approved budget cuts Friday that would take food stamps away from an estimated 300,000 people and could cut off school lunches and breakfasts for 40,000 children.

Because, as everyone knows, kids learn really well when they're hungry.

Pathetic.

Almost a week has passed since the release of the new NAEP results, and it's worth taking stock of what it all means. I think reactions to the results are extremely instructive, and, in the case of many of the states, disturbing.

Let me say up front what I make of the results: I think the most important thing they demonstrate is that NCLB is not a panacea nor a long-term solution. There are those who would like to suggest that the NAEP results can't be attributed to NCLB, but while NCLB can't take 100% of the causality, it certainly has its fair share. Think about it this way: If NCLB truly has had such marginal impact on American education in the three years after it was passed that its impact can't be felt on a well-respected national assessment, then things are even worse than we thought.

While NCLB certainly hasn't yet reached full implementation (it's not till next year that all states have to have grades 3-8 tested), there has been an enormous amount of money and manpower spent on implementation. Whether bemoaning or praising the law, we've heard hundreds and probably thousands of testimonials regarding the direct effects NCLB has had in the classroom. Every time encouraging state assessment results were released, the same proponents were claiming the victory of NCLB. It is almost silly to suggest that a solid residual from NCLB wouldn't show up in NAEP results (especially in elementary school, where kids have been learning under its auspices for most of their school lives). But the ironic implication of that argument is that NCLB is extraordinarily low-impact. Fact is, 4th grade reading scores went up by 1 point. NCLB is no booster fuel.

That being said, I still think NCLB is a good law in that it forces schools to take account of its low-end students instead of flat-out ignoring them and also that it's forcing districts and states to build the necessary infrastructure of accountability. 18 states currently lack unique student identification numbers, but the vast majority of them are working on designing them, and most of the others are upgrading their respective data systems -- that, too, can be attributed to NCLB. A good short-term program, anything but a long-term solution.

[There, and you thought I'd never come right out and tell you my position!]

What's incredible is how the various factions in our little educational drama are reacting. Fordham is shocked, shocked I say, to find that gambling is going on here:

"As we look at those numbers, we wonder whether or not the progress being reported at the state level is for real," said Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Fordham Foundation. "Are states subtly making their tests easier in order to make their scores look better?"

Your winnings, sir. By the by, at least 16 states are changing their assessments in substantive ways for the '05-'06 school year (at least 13 are changing cut-scores). You can bet not all of them are increasing the rigor.

What's even more ludicrous are the state's reactions.

Education officials in Maryland and Virginia said it's natural for scores to rise more quickly on statewide tests than on the national assessment. Material tested in the Maryland School Assessment and the Standards of Learning exams is drilled into students. Preparing students for the state tests is a singular focus of teachers. Under No Child Left Behind, schools reap rewards if they do well on the tests, penalties if they do not.

By contrast, schools and teachers have little motivation to prepare for the national assessment. Results aren't reported for individual students or for most school systems. The national test is somewhat out of synch with local lesson plans. A fourth-grader in Maryland who takes the national test may face a question that has not yet been asked or answered in any Maryland school -- or one that was covered two years earlier.

The national assessment "doesn't test state standards, which is how we're judged on No Child Left Behind, which is how our systems are judged," said Bill Reinhard, spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education. "That's basically where everything is going. Our teachers are told to put their focus on the Maryland School Assessment."

The national assessment tests learning. The NAEP is one of the most rigorous and well-respected exams out there. If the Maryland Department of Education is admitting that their state standards are in fact not aligned to actual learning, and moreover that students can only perform on their state assessment due to test-prep and rote memorization.... that's just remarkable. Reading a statement like that, my hackles can't help but rise. I've heard the argument that teaching to the test is OK so long as the test is assessing standards the students need to know, but the evidence clearly shows that premise is not being met. This is the ugly side of NCLB, the undeniable bruise that is the cost of the short-term gains in accountability: Outcomes, arbitrary or not, become obsessions. The only outcome that should be an obsession is educating every child till they have the skills to reach their highest potential. This myopia is starting to become pathological, and it's starting to become worrisome.

Let me close with this last thought on NCLB and NAEP: Entering a landscape with little accountability, little alignment to standards, few data systems and the wholesale negligence of a significant portion of the student population, you would expect the early years to show the most improvement. It's not there. Even on state results, most 3-year gains (the years under NCLB) have remained in the single digits. The achievement gap still streches to the horizon. Student learning is stagnant.

NCLB is the foundation. It's about time we consider ways to put up the walls.

Graduation honesty

Ok, so you say the achievement gap is actually only closing noticeably with 4th grade math scores? Let's take the spin up a notch.

"In an interview, Ms. Spellings called attention to the improvement in math by fourth graders. She said the less robust increases and outright declines in some reading scores were understandable in part, because the nations schools are assimilating huge numbers of immigrants.

"We have more non-native speakers, there are lots of so-called at-risk, hard-to-educate students, and in spite of that, steady progress is being made," she said. "We're on the right track with No Child Left Behind."

[Source: NYT]

Now, if that were actually the case, we'd expect to see different regions of the country which get different influxes of immigrants to show different results. Not so much.

4th grade reading, average score by region:
West: 2003 -- 210, 2005 -- 211
South: 2003 -- 215, 2005 -- 217
Midwest: 2003 -- 220, 2005 -- 220
Northeast: 2003 -- 223, 2005 -- 224

Additionally, there are some really intruiging results if you look at it by the kids who have a language other than English spoken at home (largely immigrants) -- they actually do better. The stagnation is coming from the good ol' born-and-bred Americans (of course, when the superior gain can still be counted on one hand, no one's really on a bullet train).

4th grade reading, average score by amount of language other than English spoken in the home:

Never
2003 -- 219
2005 -- 220

Once in a while
2003 -- 222
2205 -- 222

Half the time
2003 -- 213
2005 -- 214

All or most of the time
2003 -- 203
2005 -- 206

The last category is the only one that's a statistically significant difference.

So, what was that again, Madame Secretary?

The media seems to be buying the NAEP spin hook, line and sinker. Let's be clear about what's in question: Between 2003 and 2005, the first period of time tested after the No Child Left Behind Act was in place and on line, did the achievement gaps close significantly? On an overall average score level, I've demonstrated below that they have simply not. How about in the categories of proficiency, another way to cut the data?

4th grade reading:
Black students (percentage at each level)
--------------
below basic: 2003 -- 61; 2005 -- 59
basic: 2003 -- 27; 2005 -- 29
proficient: 2003 -- 11; 2005 -- 11
advanced: 2003 -- 2; 2005 -- 2

Hispanic students
--------------
below basic: 2003 -- 57; 2005 -- 56
basic: 2003 -- 28; 2005 -- 29
proficient: 2003 -- 12; 2005 -- 13
advanced: 2003 -- 2; 2005 -- 2

White students
--------------
below basic: 2003 -- 26; 2005 -- 25
basic: 2003 -- 34; 2005 -- 35
proficient: 2003 -- 30; 2005 -- 30
advanced: 2003 -- 10; 2005 -- 10

Will someone please show me these heart-warming gap closures? I see, at most, a 1% shrinkage. If that's "pleasing," to use Secretary Spellings' word, we've got some serious problems. We really have some serious problems.

"[the 2005 NAEP] shows there's an achievement gap in America that is closing; that minority students, particularly in fourth-grade math and fourth-grade reading are beginning to catch up with their Anglo counterparts. And that's positive, and that's important."
--President George W. Bush, 10/19/05

"The results in fourth grade are particularly encouraging, and we are truly heartened by the continued narrowing of the achievement gap."
--Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, 10/19/05

Here's my first reaction to the NAEP results: Wow, that's some impressive spin. One wouldn't think you could find a way to declare victory when fourth-grade reading scores have improved by one point since the implementation of a landmark education law, but I continue to be amazed. Here's the party line, apparently -- the gaps are closing. Except........ not really.

Black/White Gaps (source: NAEP data explorer):

2003 white: 227.1
2005 white: 227.6

2003 black: 197.3
2005 black: 198.9

2003 difference: 29.8
2005 difference: 28.7

So far, so good, right? It's not even worth quibbling that the "gap closing" stems mostly from a tiny gain on the part of the white students. What it is worth quibbling about is that the difference isn't statistically significant!

Says it right there, right on the page (standard error in parenthesis):

From 2003 to 2005, the change in the gap was 1(0.6), which does not represent a significant difference between the two years.

From 2002 to 2005, the change in the gap was 1(0.8), which does not represent a significant difference between the two years.

Same story for the Hispanic/White gap and the Free and reduced lunch/non-FRL gap:

From 2003 to 2005, the change in the [H/W] gap was 1(0.8), which does not represent a significant difference between the two years.

From 2003 to 2005, the change in the [FRL/non-FRL] gap was 1(0.6), which does not represent a significant difference between the two years.

If you were curious, the 2003 to 2005 differences for 4th grade math in each of these categories are also not statistically significant.

So, uh, at what point exactly does spin just become flat-out dishonesty?

The new National Assessment of Education Progress results were released today. Posts to follow soon. First-look from the WaPo here.

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
Office of the Governor

Mark R. Warner FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Governor October 17, 2005

Contact: Kevin Hall Charles Pyle, Dept. of Education
Phone: (804) 225-4260 (804) 371-2420
Cell Phone: (804) 393-9406
Internet: www.governor.virginia.gov www.doe.virginia.gov

GOVERNOR WARNER ANNOUNCES GRADUATION
RATE FOR CLASS OF 2005
~ Nearly half of graduates earn Advanced Studies diplomas ~
~ 2,639 benefit from Governor’s Project Graduation initiative ~

RICHMOND - Governor Mark R. Warner today announced that 73,735, or 94.6 percent, of the high school seniors who made up the class of 2005 graduated this year. The class of 2005 was the second class of seniors required to pass Standards of Learning (SOL) tests to earn a standard or advanced diploma.

The percentage of seniors who earned a diploma in 2005 was slightly higher than the percentage for last year, when 94.2 percent of the seniors in the class of 2004 earned a diploma. The percentage of seniors who graduated with a diploma in 2005 was nearly identical to the average for the previous five years (94.5 percent).

------------

Well, gee, if we define graduation rate as the percent of seniors who graduate, that's telling us.... wait, no, that's telling us absolutetly nothing.

The graduation rate is the number of freshman who enter 9th grade divided by the number of seniors who recieve diplomas. The graduation rate for the class of 2005 is that equation applied to students entering high school is 2001. Practically no states have the data systems to do that computation at the moment, but it is simply disingenuous to make up these bogus measures and call them "graduation rates" -- and technical wording aside, it is clearly implied that 94.6% is the graduation rate. North Carolina uses the same laughable metric and actually reports that to the federal government as their official graduation rate (VA reports a more reasonable number as their official count). If you were wondering, independent estimates put Virginia's graduation rate at about 74%.

Gov. Warner has been a tremendous leader on education issues as chief executive of Virginia and head of the National Governor's Association. Shame on you, Governor, for taking a backwards step.

Update: AGH! Washington Post, what are you doing?!

Update 2: The Richmond Times-Dispatch, on the other hand, reports the information in its proper context.

This is an absolute must-read article highlighting how the huge disparities of class influence education, but also missing a huge piece of the puzzle:

When the opening-day bell rang for kindergarten this year, most of teacher Sally Schwab's students weren't around to hear it.

Almost two-thirds didn't show up for their first day of classes at Morse School, one of the lowest-scoring public schools in the city. Some had never spent a day in preschool. A few held their books upside down.

But seven miles northwest, at Beaubien School, one of the city's highest-scoring neighborhood schools, attendance in Maureen Bryers' kindergarten class was nearly perfect. More than twice as many kids arrived with two years of preschool under their belts. All were familiar with books; some even owned hundreds of them.

These two sets of children approached the starting gate of school -- kindergarten -- quite differently. One set arrived loaded down by disadvantage, the other buoyed by past opportunities.

Their differences, research indicates, reflect the beginning of an achievement gap that could grow wider with time.

"It's a tale of two classrooms,'' said economist W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "One school is just rolling the rocks downhill, and the other is slowly rolling them uphill.''

Two worlds

For five days over the first two weeks of school last month, Chicago Sun-Times reporters visited kindergarten classrooms in one of the 10 lowest-scoring and one of the 10 highest-scoring neighborhood schools in Chicago.

The assignment opened a window into two worlds -- one, in West Humboldt Park, occupied by poor kids; the other, in Jefferson Park, filled mostly with kids whose parents paid for preschool.

One disparity between the two groups was so great -- the number of books in kids' homes -- Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan said it has made him want to find a way to give every teenage mom of a Chicago newborn a "welcome home'' basket of up to 100 books.

"I'd like to figure out a way we could become the first city in the country to think about these things,'' Duncan said. "You found a huge disparity. It's more than four to one [difference in books]. And that's not fair.''

The problem with this article, which beautifully demonstrates the issue of class, is that also prepetuates a common myth: the myth that the achievement gap can be found entirely in the homes of poor kids versus the homes of affluent kids.

There's no mention of the funding gap in schools, the gap that shows nationally in 2002, schools in districts with the least poverty recieved on average $1,348 more per student than districts with the most poverty. There's no mention of the fact that poor students are vastly more likely to get teachers who have less experience, are less likely to have a major in their subject, are less likely to have done well on their SATs and are overall less likely to be effective. There's no mention that it's not only the parents of the poor children who don't have many books, it's their schools, too (I know of teachers in disadvantaged schools who had to dig into their own pockets just to provide their classes with ratty, used individual copies of books).

Class matters. Home life matters. It's impossible to deny that poverty presents inherent obstacles which wealth evades. But putting the entire burden of the achievement gap on society at large excuses a tangible area where we can work to close it: Schools. The schools our poor kids attend -- the kids who, as this article poignantly shows, face the gravest challenges of all segments of the population and need the most support and opportunities -- the schools our poor kids attend are especially abysmal.

And here's the key, and it deserves its own paragraph: we know that good schools can allow kids to conquer all the other challenges.

It's the one chance we get to let the kids break the cycle of generational poverty, to reach their potential which is behind so many hurdles. Schools can do it, we've seen it happen; I can show you. How cruel, then, that we so disadvantage the disadvantaged and then blame their disadvantages for their failures. If you want to trace the achievement gap, start by looking at the institution that should be instilling the ability to achieve.

Michigan is set to become the third state to require the ACT or SAT for all high school students (thanks to Kindling Flames for noting this). This is an intruiging idea, but it also carries potentially crippling pitfalls that makes me wonder if the ACT/SAT isn't a poor choice for a statewide assessment.

First, consider the other two states that employ the mandatory college-prep exams: Illinois and Colorado. In 2001, the two had overall graduation rates of 75% and 69%, respectively, with about a 50% rate for black students. In IL, they started using the mandatory ACT in 2001, and self-reported numbers have shown a meager 4% increase in graduation rate from 2001 to 2005. These are extremely average rates, not terrible and not superlative. So the argument that having everyone take the exam will significantly increase the graduation rate seems at least dubious.

It actually seems that Michigan didn't initially set out to replace it's current MEAP test with this intent in mind: While the press release notes, "By making [the ACT] available to all high school students at no cost to the student, the state will ensure that every student has the needed entrance exam completed in order to qualify for admission into a college or university," it also points out that "The Department of Management and Budget was instructed to contract with a provider to develop, administer and score an exam which measured English language arts, mathematics, reading, social studies, and science and would be accepted by colleges and universities for entrance and placement purposes. Pearson Educational Measurement and its partner, ACT, were awarded the competitively-bid contract."

Here's the problem: The ACT and SAT are probably the two most preppable exams out there. SAT prep alone is a $310 million-a-year industry. There are tricks, tools, shortcuts and a multitude of tips out there for public consumption on how to do well on these tests -- usually without actually knowing the material. I took an SAT prep course myself, and the entire program was spent teaching me how to beat the test while not employing actual mastery.

Moreover, and this is a crucial point, the prep courses and materials are disproportionately available to affluent students; in other words, students will have a direct, marked advantage or disadvantage on their state assessment purely on the basis of class.

These are bad tests for assessing true student learning. This isn't to say they don't serve any purpose, but they are not designed for the purpose of annual assessment. Annual assessments ideally should be diagnostic, telling you authentically what kids know, how deeply they know it and the degree to which they are learning to think. The ACT and SAT are designed more to give college admissions officers a crude measure of an applicants' intelligence (though the predictive validity is still debated). These are two very different missions.

This of course leads to the overarching point, which goes right back to the graduation conundrum -- should curriculum be aligned to getting every kid to college? In reality, curriculum should be aligned to getting every kid the opportunity to go to college. Now, that often means a rigorous curriculum which is a boon of college-prep classes, but its the rigor that's more important than the college-prep part. So, unless the ACT and SAT are demanding the type of skill set that will allow a student to exit 12th grade and be successful at achieving his or her potential whether or not college is in the immedeate future, fine. I'm highly skeptical. And if that equation doesn't mesh, it means that some students are going to have their educations ironically short-circuited by an arrogant attempt to shove each and every American child into college.

Let me be very clear: A 70% overall graduation rate and 50% minority graduation rate are utterly unacceptable. Those numbers should never start with anything but a 9. There are lifetimes of work to be done to achieve that equality of opportunity -- and close the achievement gap -- and we're not even close. But forcing every student to take a college-prep exam by substituting it for the state assessment is an interesting idea that just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Make the ACT and/or SAT free for all students who want to take it; great. Making it the measure of student achievement is just asking for trouble.

I'll be posting on Michigan's decision to employ the ACT as their high school exit exam tomorrow. Right now, I want to get out of the theoretical and into the classroom. In checking a blog-type site for students who attend my old high school, which is consistently rated one of the top three high schools in the nation, I saw an interesting post: A student who hadn't been at school the day before asking for what had happened in her classes. The responses lead me to ask -- keeping in mind this is the creme de la creme of American public high schools -- is this what we should expect a typical day to be like? (Note: all teacher names have been taken out in deference to privacy.)

1st comment: in ap psych, we just checked the test ([teacher] gave us a 7 point curve again) and we're going to the computer lab thursday. chapter 17 is due monday.

2nd comment: in french we didn't really do anything today... We pretty much just talked about what we did over the weekend and started going over the pages on francophone countries before chapter 1. [teacher]'s not going to be here on Friday, we don't have any homework, and just bring your book to class on Friday.

3rd comment: hum[Humanities; a combined english/history course]- [teacher] gives a speech about the importance in group projects, if one person is a problem for the whole group, make sure you tell [teacher] so if your presentation is screwed up then [teacher] can take into account that part of it was that one person and their issues. and then we went to a lab and worked on the canterbury tale projects the rest of the time

[teacher2] talked about different religions and the religious leaders and the importance of theocracies. and [teacher2] compared calvinists to lutherans a lot. and then just said that we have to make sure we read chapter 5.

This high school is on block scheduling, which means you have four 1 and 1/2 hours classes. Especially with half of the day spent doing low-level work, this isn't exactly a picture of rigorous, critical thinking- and skill- building pedagogy. The students themselves don't seem particularly impressed. I can tell you from my own personal experience that the descriptions follow a more or less normal day at this school.

Of course, this isn't even close to a scientific analysis, but the power of anecdote (especially that of relatively unpoisoned student perceptions) suggests important questions. Combined with my previous post on the systematic TIMSS and NAEP studies, the primary question is: Do we really know what the point of K-12 education should be, and are our curriculum and structures aligned towards that goal?

In recent months and years, there has been a push towards firming up high school graduation requirements and aligning them with college admissions standards. The A-G curriculum in California springs to mind, and there have been many articles like this one coming out of Missouri:

The state Board of Education approved more stringent high school graduation requirements Thursday for the roughly 900,000 students in public schools.

The change raises the credits needed to graduate from 22 to 24, with fewer electives, beginning with students who graduate from high school in 2010. That means today's eighth graders will need to keep the requirements in mind next year when mapping out the courses they intend to take in high school.

Key to the new requirements are additional required courses in English, math, social studies and science, along with newly required courses in health and personal finance.

In addition, 19 states currently have high school exit exams, and 7 have them in the works.

In many ways, making graduation really mean something is a wonderful trend. Students shouldn't be graduating without the basic skills that they can parlay either into a postsecondary education or a good job; in other words, without the basic skills to have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. But beneath the surface lies a disturbing paradox: kids who fail the tests or fail to meet the requirements are being punished for what in many cases is the fault of the system.

As I've noted before, best we can tell, the nationwide graduation rate is somewhere around 70% overall and 50% for minorities. The evidence is murky on whether exit exams or stricter graduation requirements have a substantial impact on the number of dropouts; an August 2005 report from the Center on Education Policy summed it up: "No consensus has emerged from research on how exit exams impact graduation or dropout rates, although state data indicate exit exams may exacerbate disparities in graduation rates between white and Asian students on one hand, and black, Hispanic, and Native American students on the other." Nevertheless, it is clear that far too many students are hitting 10th, 11th, 12th grades unable to beat the cut. For example, almost 100,000 California seniors, or 20% of the class, failed their latest chance on the state's exit exam this year, while over 23,000 Arizona high schoolers, or 37% of that class, have only two more tries. Let's not even talk about Florida.

The question becomes who takes responsibility for the failures. Certainly personal responsibility cannot be discarded, and some sliver of students are deadset against learning and have been for years and could care less about failing a test they don't want to be taking in the first place.

But they weren't born that way. In many if not most situations, the love of learning has simply been beaten out of these kids as a result of attending poor schools in poor buildings with poor teachers and poor resources. This isn't to minimize the impact of home life and environment, but merely to suggest that when tens of thousands of people are chugging along through the grades and then run face-first into a brick wall around 10th grade, perhaps it's not primarily their fault. Yet they are the ones being punished for it by having their opportunities and potential wrenchingly stunted by the absence of a high school degree.

I titled this post "the graduation conundrum," and here is the conundrum: We have to choose between lowering graduation standards and letting everyone graduate even if they don't have a full set of basic skills, or raising graduation standards and ensuring that everyone who graduates is properly armed but shut out a multitude of students who have done nothing wrong.

I'm not really sure what the answer is to that puzzle, and I'm not really sure what should be done in the short-term. The only way out I see is to eliminate the premises: Elevate education in this country from the earliest years to such a quality level that no child reaches high school unable to reasonably graduate under rigorous, aligned curriculum. Otherwise, the end of the pipeline will continue to fester as a lose-lose proposition with a very real impact on peoples' lives.

It's an interesting and slightly disturbing facet of education policy that no one's really quite sure what's going on in the American classroom. Talk to some people, they'll tell you that it's constructivism run amuck; walk across the street, and the schools are filled with drill-and-kill and endless test prep. It's really quite amazing that teachers can fit in so much group work and direct instruction at the same time. So where's the truth in all this rhetoric? Unfortunately, the obvious difficulties in acquiring data on the specific types of pedagogy underway have left us with only a meager few secondary sources. Luckily, these sources are fairly comprehensive and at least suggest the broader picture.

The most systematic information we have comes from the 1999 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) video report, which involved videotaping lessons in seven countries that did varyingly well on the test and following it up with extensive questionnaires for the teachers. Eschewing international comparisons for the moment, this is what the study found about 8th grade math classes in the U.S.:

*53% of class time was spent reviewing, with 28% of class periods entirely review

*Less than 1% of problems serve the goal of "making connections;" instead, the vast majority of time is spent on simply learning procedures, the second-lowest of four categories of skill level.

*Teachers speak on average 85% of the time in class, and of the 15% of the time the students are speaking, only 7% of those utterances are longer than 10 words (in other words, 1% of the time students are contributing substantive points).

Now, this is only looking at math, but the picture that emerges is not one of a critical thinking-oriented, student-oriented, constructivist domination. Indeed, it's a more traditional view of the teacher at the front of the classroom directing the show via relatively low-level repetitive work. At the same time, it's not completely drill-and-kill, either; the report notes that most periods involve the entire class learning as a whole body. On a continuum of "constructivism" (or at least the bastardized version that currently exists) to "direct instruction," American math classes seem to fall moderately on the side of direct instruction.

The other source of data for this exploration is the National Assessment of Educational Progress' data bank. The main NAEP, which is conducted via a sample size of students, also gives detailed questionnaires to teachers and students, including questions about instructional practice. To keep things equivalent, let's look at 8th grade, but reading this time.

*In 1998, 53% of teachers reported that they did a group project with regards to reading assignments only once or twice a month, while 26% did group projects "never or hardly ever."

*In 2003, 43% of students reported that they had a class discussion about a reading assignment "at least once a week," while 30% had class discussions only once or twice a month.

*In 1998, 42% of teachers reported that they had students discuss different interpretations of what they had read once or twice a week, while 40% did this either once or twice a month or almost never. Only 36% of teachers asked their students to explain or support their understanding of what they had read almost every day.

Again, this is hardly a faux-progressive paradise; when less than half of classes are having regular class discussions and a mere third are being challenged to show their understanding, it's more likely that lectures and note-taking are still healthily the norm in most schools. Pedagogy doesn't appear to be in the deathgrip of drill-and-kill either, but those who see the current educational malaise as the fault of some fuzzy teaching style would be wise to check their own backyard first.

I've returned from haitus and I'm rip-roarin' and ready to get back in the thick of things. Posting should resume a regular schedule from here on out.

It's been an interesting but sparse week in terms of education news, with the NYC Teachers Union contract the major event. There was, however, an article that caught my attention in the New York Times today. Mike Winerip, one of my favorite education beat writers, has a great piece on the "coincidental" combination of an easier reading test and higher test scores:

Take Frances Rosenstein, a respected veteran principal of Public School 159 in the Bronx. Ms. Rosenstein has every right to brag about her school's 2005 test scores. The percentage of her fourth graders who were at grade level in English was 40 points higher than in 2004.

How did she do it? New teachers? No, same teachers. New curriculum? No, same dual-language curriculum for a student body that is 96 percent Hispanic and poor (100 percent free lunches). New resources? Same.

So? "The state test was easier," she said. Ms. Rosenstein, who has been principal 13 years and began teaching in 1974, says the 2005 state English test was unusually easy and the 2004 test unusually hard. "I knew it the minute I opened the test booklets," she said.

Now it certainly looks like the 2004 test had some unfair parts to it, but this is just another notch in the belt of those who subscribe to the Fudge It theory of test scores.