Schools of Thought

I was looking over the National Science Boards' recently released Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 and saw that the report referenced last year's release of the results of the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study on the American sophmore. The findings back up much of what I've noted before here, here and here, namely that our schools are not imparting the critical thinking skills which are key to an equality of opportunity and a thriving nation.

The ELS report notes that in 2002, 89% 10th graders "showed mastery of simple reading comprehension, including reproduction of detail and/or the author’s main thought," but only 46% could had the "ability to make relatively simple inferences beyond the author’s main thought and/or understand and evaluate abstract concepts" and a mere 8% had the "ability to make complex inferences or evaluative judgments that require piecing together multiple sources of information from the passage."

Put another way, less than half of 10th graders can read past a basic textual understanding, and less than a tenth can read critically. That's pathetic.

The story doesn't get any better when we shift to math. Here:

Overall, 92 percent of sophomores were able to perform simple arithmetical operations on whole numbers. (In turn, 8 percent of 2002 sophomores were unable to perform simple arithmetical operations on whole numbers.) About two-thirds (67 percent) could perform simple operations with decimals, fractions, powers, and roots. Fewer than half (46 percent), however, could perform simple problem solving that involved the understanding of low-level mathematical concepts. At level 4, one-fifth (20 percent) were proficient, that is, could understand intermediate-level mathematical concepts and/or demonstrate ability to formulate multistep solutions to word problems. Level 5 involves solving complex multistep word problems and mastery of material found in advanced mathematics courses. Since few sophomores have yet taken advanced courses (such as precalculus and calculus), it is not surprising that few showed mastery at this level—just 1 percent of sophomores were proficient at level 5.

I could start by talking about how frightening it is that a full third of 10th graders can't perform simple operations with demicals, fractions, powers and roots, but I'd rather talk about the less than half who can do simple problem solving.

The absence of any higher-order thinking skills in students two years away from graduation should drive a stake through the heart of any argument that it's OK to just teach the basics because students will pick up the advanced skills later. It should also confirm that our pedagogical regime is simply not imparting the learning which we should want our students to have. There is a crisis of thinking in our schools, and I don't know how anyone can still maintain that tweaks and nudges are going to fix the problem.

There's been a lot of skepticism recently about growth models: Russo here and here, WaPo editorial board here. The general qualm is that states are going to use growth models as a cop-out to actually improving student performance, and it's a legitimate concern. But a well-designed growth model can be more than just a quick fix; it can represent the next iteration of assessment systems. The key (and, Mr. Russo, I worked on this issue at EdTrust; I think they are very aware of what I'm about to say) is well-designed. What does that mean? In my opinion, it requires, at the bare minimum, these elements:

1) Growth-to-standard. This is absolutely critical. Growth targets can be set in one of three ways: Average growth (every student expected to improve the same amount which is taken from a base year growth), Expected growth (students expected to improve different amounts depending on how much they improved the previous year) and Growth-to-standard (all students expected to improve enough that they all meet a standard by a certain time). The first two open a Pandora's Box in which low-achieving students are never forced to catch up to their peers. North Carolina just recently changed their growth model formula because it was designed such that low-achieving students were expected to make less growth than higher-achieving ones. Growth-to-standard maintains the same ultimate goal of equity.

2) Vertically aligned curricula. It makes no sense to assess a students growth from 3rd to 4th grade if the 3rd and 4th grade cirricula are wildly disparate, because such an assessment would border on meaningless. There has to be alignment (which, not for nothing, seems educationally sound for a whole bunch of other reasons).

3) Advanced data systems. 18 states currently don't even have unique student identification numbers, and many of those that do have data systems that are primitive at best. Tennessee is the best example of a state-of-the-art data system which can collect enough information for keeping track of students and performing the statistical work needed to make an authentic growth model viable.

At their best, growth models can identify how much each student is progressing in their educational endeavors and identify weaknesses to be addressed. They can allow accountability to be tied not to a binary state, but to a dynamic, richer metric. There are plenty of conceptual concerns, to be sure -- some scholars are dubious about whether an individual teacher's effect can ever be parsed out of student test scores because of the myriad variables. And there's also the whole issue of assessment still being defined solely in terms of often low-level standardized tests. But I think that everyone is a bit hasty to dismiss growth models as nothing more than an attempt by the states and the federal government to abdicate their responsibilities.

Growth models are at the very least promising. Isn't that worth a carefully monitored pilot program?

Ask someone to describe a classroom, and they will inevitably evoke the scene ingrained in all our minds from our youth and the media: Children sitting in neat rows of desks with a teacher at the front standing in front of a blackboard. It's striking that such a design is rarely challenged -- not so much the positioning of the desks, but the passivity of the students who are at the feet of the benevolent teacher who passes on knowledge. As Alfie Kohn puts it, students today are, by and large,

[A]n empty bin, a reciever of other people's ideas ... they are supposed to sit there and do what they're told, finish the assignment, study for the student, memorize the right answers that someone else deicided they have to know. Other people prepare the meal for students, feed it to them, and then oversee their digestion of it.

This isn't just speculation, of course; this is the state of most of our schools. The TIMSS video study, for example, tells us that in the average 8th grade math classroom, the teacher talks 85% of the time. Certainly group projects and student choice exist in small measure, but compared to the passivity, they are but pebbles tossed about in a mighty river. Quite frankly, my experiences at U.Va., one of the finest institutions of higher education in the country, have been rife with student passivity in their own right.

But what does the passivity accomplish? What we now know about psychology dispells any notion that it improves motivation -- in fact, it can demolish motivation. Nor, if our goal is to produce critical thinkers, does passivity further our pedagogical endeavors. One does not gain mobility and deftness of mind from spending the majority of time being talked at and told things. If anything, it imparts a sort of learned helplessness, where students have few opportunities to gain independent, malleable skills. There's a reason why switching 87 - 24 to "subtract 24 from 87" trips up nearly a fifth of students who got the first one right.

Student-centered learning has gotten a bad rap as being soft or fuzzy or not rigorous, and I'll be the first to admit there are plenty of examples of terribly executed student-centered programs. But that's an indictment of the execution, not the idea. Conceptually, I cannot see how leaving students in their passive vice -- a striking characteristic of a system which continues to stagnate in its achievement -- is a sound educational move.

Sorry that posting has been light; I've been at home celebrating the entry into the world of a new family member, and I've been sick. Regular posting should resume shortly.

I had a whole post ready in my head about Jay Mathew's column about teaching to the test, but then Peter Campbell (who I usually agree with, though only up to a point) went and said pretty much everything I was going to say. Here's a taste:

I couldn't agree more. Teaching to the test would be wonderful if the tests were worth teaching to. If tests did, in fact, require thought and analysis -- not just memorization -- then I'd say "Let's have more of it," too.

But the simple facts belie his optimism. Consider the following:

1) the vast majority of state standardized tests are multiple-choice format

2) answering multiple-choice questions correctly requires students to use recall and recognition skills, not thought and analysis; in other words, the task behind a multiple-choice question is to determine which of the 4 or 5 choices is the one correct or best answer to the question. This task should not be confused with thought or analysis. Thought and analysis require careful consideration of a multiplicity of variables; they seldom produce a single correct response to a single question.

So, go read Campbell's whole post. It's good.

There has been a great deal of hue and cry over Richard Cohen's recent Washington Post column eviscerating the universal requirement of algebra. Eduwonk has compiled some of the better responses, so I don't need to rehash their arguments. Personally, I do believe that math is an important requirement because it contains analytical and logical skills which are broadly applicable. However, I think Cohen brings up a valid point which is being drowned out by his iconoclasm: Within the overarching universe of "mathematics," what we choose to teach our students is often useless.

This relates back to my previous point asking what we want all of our students to be able to do when they exit the system. I think it's reasonable to assert that one of the things we want them to be able to do is understand and apply logical, rational thought. Moreover, there are specifics pieces of math that do come up in day-to-day interactions. Aside from basic arithmetic, our society is awash in statistics, probability, fractions and percentages, to say nothing of economics. These are all part of the math curriculum in varying degrees, but we also bombard our students with logarithms, derivates, integrals and the quadratic equation.

Let me put it this way: If what we're truly trying to get at is mathematical thinking, why not use mathematical topics that don't make students want to take a drill bit to their temple? I'm not suggesting that statistics and economics are going to cause students to start jumping for joy when it's time for math class, but at least you can make an honest case for their applicability (and I do think there's far more potential for intrinsic interest). Nor am I suggesting that the other, more academic topics shouldn't be available for anyone who wants to take them, simply that we should pick and choose carefully what we're teaching in the required courses.

This goes beyond simply math -- covalent bonds in chemistry, the Calvin Cycle in biology, memorizing the dates and names of battles in history... our curricula are swimming in topics which have marginal connection to the real world, yet there are ready replacements which still achieve the same ultimate goal. Especially when one in two high schoolers can't see the usefulness of what they're learning, it's worth reexamining the foundations of what we're teaching.

It's not that most of algebra is useless, as Cohen would have it. It's that most of what we choose to teach is useless.

There's an article in Saturday's New York Times about Harvard's president. The Washington Post is reporting on a Virginia county's efforts to raise SAT scores. Across the vast array of education blogs, you currently find posts on charter schools; appropriate school attire; different styles of high schools; the lawfulness of No Child Left Behind; the National Education Association's affiliations; teacher burnout; accountability; testing; and every other topic under the sun.

The discourse is vibrant and rich, and people bring unceasingly impressive passion and ideas to the table. Yet I am often left wondering: Where is the discussion of the bigger picture?

Talking about the nuts and bolts -- and some of the aforementioned issues are large nuts and thick bolts -- has its place, and it's rewarding in its own right. But to rehash a favorite analogy of mine, at some point, we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Here are the questions I want to see engaged: What is the ultimate goal of education, and what is the ultimate goal of our education system? What is the bare minimum we want all of our students to be able to do when they exit the system?

Until we can answer, or at least begin to discuss, those basic questions, we're never going to achieve our potential, because we won't have defined it. Because once we start to move towards a consensus on those questions, another one begins to assert itself from every rooftop:

Is our system designed to meet those needs?

Every policy debate -- every single one -- should pivot around that singular, foundational point. Certainly, the current debates touch, brush and skim off the surface of the fundamental questions, but they never meet them head-on. We don't ask what we want our students to be able to do once they leave; we ask what questions we want them to be able to answer.

Every day, 40 million students go to school, and millions of teachers prepare to educate them. Tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of individuals interact with education via advocacy groups, research organizations and federal, state and local departments of education. More than $450 billion is spent on education annually at all three levels of government, and each and every taxpayer helps finance it.

How many times do we stop and ask: Why are we doing this, what are we trying to accomplish, and are we acting in furtherance of those goals?

I'm ironclad in my certainty of saying not enough. And I'm ironclad in my confidence of saying that, perhaps more than anything else, this silence is holding us back from greatness. The Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote, "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."

What would we be?

Interesting report coming out of EdWeek:

The Bush administration is trying to take a more aggressive role in strengthening math education, using its sweeping, and sometimes controversial, endeavors in reading as a guide.

To that end, the White House is focusing on research to shape how students across the country are taught the most basic mathematical concepts.

Unveiled this month, the plan would potentially give the federal government far more influence over classroom practices that traditionally have been left to states, school districts, and individual teachers. The proposal would establish a National Mathematics Panel to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various teaching strategies, akin to the body set up in the 1990s to judge reading methodologies. It would also introduce Math Now, a program to promote “promising research-based practices” in elementary and middle school math.

The White House proposals are part of a larger, $380 million plan to improve math and science education, with the goal of producing a more skilled workforce and sustaining economic competitiveness internationally.

Both undertakings would be modeled on actions the federal government took toward reading, including the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, which distributes grants to states for districts to carry out reading strategies federal officials deem to be effective and backed by research.

This is one of those times when I am tremendously wary given the Bush administrations' history, but I have to admit, that sounds about right. I want to qualify my support with a myriad of corrolaries, such as that the proposals need to focus on critical thinking; they need to be fair in their consideration of all options; they need to not contain even a whiff of the corruption that has dogged Reading First; the recommendations must allow for individual teacher flexibility; and they need to draw from a broad spectrum of expertise that falls on all sides of the Math Wars so as to avoid demagoguery.

But many of us in the wonk community have long harped on the lack of rigorous research going into classroom practice, and here's a proposal to do just that. Hopefully, the math panel will be able to learn from the reading panel's experiences. I'm swallowing more than one grain of salt, but this has the potential to produce significant benefits.

Having read the comments to my previous post and Mathew's article, I understand that there is a chain of logic that can be superimposed on results seeming to show that smaller class sizes don't have an effect on achievement. The logic appears to be that smaller class sizes = more teachers needed = drawing upon more low-quality teachers = flat achievement. This is perfectly plausible, but it occurs to me that it sets up a false choice: As if you have to decide between smaller class sizes (which I think almost everyone admits are beneficial with high-quality teachers in a critical-thinking curriculum) or fewer low-quality teachers in the schools. To let Chris Whittle of Edison Schools summarize this false choice, "Which would be better, a bad teacher with 15 kids or a good one with 30?"

I understand the parallel suggestion that by raising class sizes for good teachers, we can pay those good teachers more, but, again, a false choice. Firstly, the more kids we're shoving into the good teachers' classrooms, the less impactful their high-quality teaching will be. Secondly, why not pay all teachers more and recruit so many high-quality teachers that we don't have to overload any of them. I know it's not as simple as pressing a button and raising teacher salaries, but at some point in the process of truly improving education that is a necessary (though not singularly sufficient) step. It helps no one to try to ignore that reality and instead find stopgap measures using current resources which are less educationally sound for the students -- for instance, burgeoning class sizes.

If smaller classes are in fact advantageous to student learning given a good teacher, and if the problem standing between making them efficacious is the size of the pool of good teachers, then isn't the key to focus our efforts on improving the supply of good teachers instead of hacking away at small class size programs? While appreciating the here and now, our policies have to keep an eye towards the long-term.

I noticed a report that came out last month from the John Locke Foundation (a policy group focusing on North Carolina) which makes the claim that, at least from the standpoint of test scores, reducing class size has had no measurable effect in N.C.:

[T]he final report of the High Priority Schools Initiative assessed one of the state’s most important educational initiatives, a four-year (2001-05), $23 million class-size reduction program targeting low-performing and low-income elementary schools. The report’s findings are even more important as the North Carolina Lottery Commission will distribute part of an estimated $213 million in lottery revenue for class-size reductions in early grades. Is this a good investment? The answer is “no.” By the final year of the program, the performance of students in high priority (HP) schools declined significantly. From the first to the fourth year of the program, fewer schools met their ABC growth targets and even fewer made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In addition, small class sizes failed to produce significant gains in reading performance. In brief, there is no statistical evidence that smaller class sizes in high priority schools raised student achievement.

The report also notes the contention of well-known scholar Eric Hanushek that the evidence for smaller class size's positive effects are grounded somewhat more in rhetoric than hard science.

It's difficult to get an objective read on this, but a 1999 paper on the federal Department of Education website entitled "Reducing class size: what do we know?" suggests that "not all the questions about the impact of class size reductions have been answered, nor have all the debates been settled. Overall, however, the pattern of research findings points more and more clearly toward the beneficial effects of reducing class size." The document goes on to cite specific research.

I'm willing to cede that the theory of increased achievement caused by class size reduction is not as solid as, say, gravity, but here's my thought: It should work. Logically and rationally, giving a teacher 15 students instead of 25 should allow that teacher to better concentrate his or her attention, better customize his or her lesson plans, better identify and support student deficiencies and generally have a better grasp on each student's portfolio of personality and learning. I can't fathom -- and I would love to hear one -- a logical explanation for why more students would be better for authentic achievement, or why less students wouldn't help.

If, however, it is true that smaller class sizes don't always yield positive results, then I would argue there's a big problem with the classroom. For instance, my friend tells of his 8th grade civics class where the teacher literally had them copy down overheads for the bulk of class. Certainly, this style of ill-concieved direct instruction should have more or less the same impact whether there are 50 students or 5, since there are marginal amounts of dynamic engagement. However, a classroom where students are actually learning how to think and are engaged in a constant, fluid exchange of learning with the teacher should work measurably better with less students.

The very fact that there's a debate over whether a smaller student-to-teacher ratio is better should be frightening to every actor in the educational world. Something has to be going terribly wrong with the pedagogy and/or assessment system for that to even be a point of contention.

UPDATE: I hadn't even seen Jay Mathew's column on the issue Tuesday!

Welcome to the 54th midway of the Carnival of Education! We've got a whole lot of great entries this week, so let's get right to it.

Inside the classroom

There's little that's more useful for non-educators than understanding the daily trials and tribulations faced by a classroom teacher. Over at 2nd Grade Teacher, Ms. Patti fills us in on her week in review.

Meanwhile, there's an eye-opening, first-hand discussion of motivational techniques over at The Art of Getting By, where Janet talks about a new program her school is trying.

Speaking of motivation, what do you do when a student willingly skips class and his father wants to mitigate the penalty? Three Standard Deviations to the Left is wrestling with that problem right now.

At Kitchen Table Math, they've asked an 8th grade teacher from Canada to talk about her teaching methods, specifically the incorporation of daily formative assessment into her algebra class. This teachers' pedagogy seems to be the product of a lot of hard work, and it's definitely worth a look.

On a less purely academic level (and appropriate for the day after Valentine's Day), Mr. Lawrence of Get Lost, Mr. Chips, muses about young love... and the very real possibility that it's too-young love.

Inside a different classroom, The Median Sib summarizes an article about professional development in this month's edition of "The Reading Teacher" and offers her own thoughts on accountability for PD.

At What It's Like on the Inside, the Science Goddess wonders why teachers become so self-concious when there's company in the room.

Finally, Schiess Weekly reminds us of an important truth: Bathrooms are important.

Editor's Choice: Speaking of the classroom, Jenny D. is trying to figure out which type of high school her daughter would be better off attending: here's her introductory post and a follow-up. The stark differences between various high schools in the same area is something that's often taken for granted, isn't it?

The Policy Wonks

The big wonk himself, EdSector's Eduwonk, starts us off with a post contemplating whether an overreliance on the future hope provided by programs like KIPP detracts from efforts to maximize the effectiveness of the schools we have today.

Regarding the schools we have today, SmadaNek's Ken Adams offers his very first submission to the Carnival looking at some New Jersey test scores and trying to tease out the cause behind the visible effect. Welcome, Ken, and I hope you'll continue submitting!

Meanwhile, at Principled Discovery there's some comparative education going on with German schools. It's easy to get caught up in the U.S. school system, and it's refreshing now and then to return to a comparative eye.

Also on a comparative note, the DeHavilland Blog looks at the urgency of innovation in the U.S. and abroad and applies some useful business angles to analyze the difference.

At Right Wing Nation, the author uses the blogosphere for what its good at: Sharing ideas. He talks about an old project he uncovered and some experiences with what he considers authentic constructivism. Pro-constructivism from the right wing; not something you see every day!

Over at the AFT's NCLBlog, there's a good debate about whether, as the title puts it, quality is supplemental. Jaime starts things off, and Michele responds (aside: For those who've been following the blogodrama, the line "Eduwonk is right" appears! Breakthrough?).

While we're on the subject of the AFT, let's just consider this an Editor's Choice pick: Kindling Flames is left baffled by the AFT's recently-unveiled NCLB cartoon:

When thinking about what it takes to truly create large scale policy reform, you have to wonder if the AFT has the right formula. I mean, do you really picture Dr. King, Malcolm X, or Gandhi in the throes of the civil rights movement saying to their peers; "Don't you think a cartoon musical with singing animals would inspire a change in the hearts and minds of a country and get Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964?"

At the Other Bloke's Blog, Barry talks about research showing potentially large cognitive benefits from being bilingual, including the possibility of staving off Alzheimer's!

Speaking of research, Darren at Right on the Left Coast provides a good reminder to not always believe ambiguous citations.

The Charlotte Capitalist, meanwhile, offers his pointed thoughts on whether New Yorkers should get tax credits to educate their own children rather than leaving them in public schools (Carnival game: consider the name of the blog and try to figure out where the author falls on the issue! If you win, buy yourself a pie.)

I would also like to humbly submit my own entry, asking if, given what we know about motivation, our classrooms are structured correctly (see The Art of Getting By and Three Standard Deviations to the Left above for cases in point).

Editor's Choice carnival debate: Two different blogs taking two very different tacks on the question of school funding.

First, The Daily Grind worries about his old high school's troubles, many of which apparently stem from a lack of funding and tight budgets.

But is it really a money thing? Ogre's Politics and Views is skeptical of whether the school systems aren't endless vaccuums sucking up the taxpayer's dough.

Hey, teacher...

NYC Educator asks a very important question -- what is a "substandard teacher"? And he postulates that maybe his native state had standards that were a bit too low (has anyone SEEN the "Highly Qualified Teacher" requirements?)

On a different note, The Education Wonks -- who graciously allowed me to host the midway this week -- wonders about the appropriateness of a local teacher barring military recruiters from his classroom.

Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory is trying something new: Using the blogosphere to recruit high-quality teachers, in this case for the new Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. If you're in the market for a job, check it out.

Higher Ed.

SpunkyHomeSchool offers some good background on the federal Dept. of Education's efforts to get involved with higher ed, and wonders in NCLB isn't going to soon stand for "No College Left Behind."

At Resistance is Futile, there's something of an expose on the University of Oregon's "carousel of information" for, in the author's words, helping illegal immigrants "from Mexico obtain a matricula consular card, which can then be used as valid identification in the state of Oregon for the purpose of obtaining on Oregon driver's license."

Misc.

This post doesn't fit neatly into any category, but given the state of current events, I thought it was illuminating. So consider it my final editor's choice: At The Business of America is Business, Muslim students speak about the Danish boycott.


Well, that'll do it for this edition of the Carnival of Education. Thanks for stopping by, and thanks to the contributors for all of your superlative submissions. I'm constantly impressed by the quality of the posts.

Next week, the Carnival returns to its rightful owners over at The Education Wonks. Submissions should go to owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net and are due 9:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, February 21st.

This midway is registered at TTLB's carnival roundup.

Remember to get your Carnival of Education entries to me by 8pm EST tonight. E-mail them to edwahoo@gmail.com. The Carnival will open tomorrow morning right here at the Edwahoo.

I stumbled across this site, which contains blogs maintained by the teachers of Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. The blogs seem designed to keep parents updated on what's going on in the classrooms and on any important notes or reminders. What a great and innovative merging of technology and education!

The question of motivation seems to burrow itself into every facet of education. I've always found our schools to be structured strangely, given what we now know through pyschological and educational research about motivation. Specifically, classrooms tend to be competitive and fairly regimented. I was thinking about this again while reading an article about reading motivation in "The Reading Teacher" by two researchers, Kathryn Edmunds and Kathryn Bauserman, who found that 4th-grade students consistently listed choice and personal interest as primary motivators for wanting to read. Edmunds and Bauserman cite a 2000 paper by researchers John Guthrie and Allen Wigfield who note, in Guthrie's words,

Regrettably, motivation for reading decreases as children go through school. One explanation focuses on the capacity of children to understand their own performance. Children become much more sophisticated at processing the evaluative feedback they receive, and for some this leads to a growing realization that they are not as capable as others. “A second explanation focuses on how instructional practices may contribute to a decline in some children’s motivation” (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000, p. 408). Practices that focus on social comparison between children, too much competition, and little attempt to spark children’s interests in different topics can lead to declines in competence beliefs, mastery goals, and intrinsic motivation, and increases in extrinsic motivation and performance goals...

This issue of motivation is especially cogent in today's educational climate, since high-stake tests and, in high school, grade point averages, are presenting more pressing extrinsic motivations than ever. As a commenter offered below, "As for love of learning, we burned that bridge long ago. Did you read about the districts that offered cash, DVD players, and in one case, a car to promote student participation?" Extrinsic motivation isn't always bad; when there is already a lack of intrinsic motivation, it can in fact be a very handy tool. Despite that potential, it is often abused. As Alfie Kohn lays out in "Punished by Rewards," in many circumstances an excess of extrinsic motivation can kill intrinsic motivation -- in other words, students can lose their love of learning and instead only perform for positive (or the absence of negative) consequences.

There's also the point regarding choice and student interest. My conceptual problem with the Core Knowledge Curriculum and ideas of its ilk is that there is a suggestion that all students should be learning the same things in the same ways. If the skill you want is reading, then the actual book shouldn't matter -- Of Mice and Men and Prince and the Pauper will both advance the cause, but one might really appeal to certain students while the second might appeal to others. I understand of course that occasionally the whole class needs to be reading the same book, but even just anecdotally, I went to the best public high school in the nation and almost all of the books we read were whole-class, no option. According to NAEP survey data, in 1998 a full 40% of 8th grade English classrooms have students reading books of their own choosing only either "once or twice a month" or "hardly ever" (happily, that number is much lower in 4th grade, though far higher in 12th grade).

When I talk about fundamentally evolving our pedagogy, this is the type of thing I'm talking about. An emphasis on choice and personal interests and a tempering of competitiveness helps students learn. There is an enormous mountain of evidence and research that tells us that. Yet we have many, many classrooms which deemphasize choice and personal interest and carry a highly competitive atmosphere.

I daresay almost every single child enters kindergarden with a love of learning. The fact that most of them lose it by the time they even get to middle school -- and that, to a large extent, we know why and don't repair the problem -- is agonizingly sad.

There are a number of interesting results in the recent AP-AOL Learning Services poll that took the temperature of parents and teachers on various issues. There are multiple sharp divides, mostly in places you would expect -- for example, how much each group thinks discipline in school is a problem (hint: the people who work there aren't wearing the rose-colored glasses). Similarly, parents and teachers unsurprisingly agree on the importance of recruiting and retaining good teachers.

One result which I thought was particularly interesting, though far from shocking, was this:

While teachers oppose standardized testing, parents have mixed views. Seventy-two percent of teachers say there is too much emphasis on standardized testing at their schools, compared to less than half (48%) of parents.

Now, I've said it before, and I'll say it yet again: I don't have a problem with the idea of standardized tests, and in fact I wholeheartedly support a strong accountability system, I just take major exception with the structures, format and content we use. The thing is, my opinion of standardized tests is informed by dozens of hours working with the tests, looking through the tests and reading about the tests. And I am not even on the same continent as anyone who has studied psychometrics.

I don't think the vast majority of parents have ever read their state's standardized test. Certainly not the bulk of the 48% that seem to indicate the tests are a-OK. Almost all the states have sample questions buried deep in their Dept. of Ed. web site, but I can't imagine a particularly significant number of parents utilize that resource. As such, most parents can't likely form a good opinion on whether standardized tests are authentically testing the skills we want our kids to have, whether "test prep" is consequently the same as good teaching, etc.

A lot of the results in this poll point to a relative lack of engagement by the parents in education -- a two-way street, to be sure. But ultimately, educational progress is going to come via the will of parents, and at least when it comes to assessment, there needs to be some way to get the parents informed if we're going to see the evolution we need.

From the Baltimore Sun:

The future of Studio Course in Baltimore middle schools was thrown into doubt yesterday after the release of a report showing the language arts curriculum is not preparing pupils for the state's standardized tests.

City schools Chief Executive Officer Bonnie S. Copeland, who commissioned a review of the curriculum after criticism resulting from a Sun article, issued a statement showing plans to tweak Studio but continue using it. School board Chairman Brian D. Morris, however, said that Studio "will be subject to intense scrutiny" by the school board and Copeland's administration after the Maryland School Assessments next month.

The report, written by veteran educator Theresa M. Flak, found that teachers and principals are unhappy with Studio and don't believe it has prepared their pupils for next month's state tests. Studio uses teen magazines and de-emphasizes grammar in an attempt to spark children's interest in reading and writing. It was implemented this school year, at a cost of at least $2 million, in response to dismal state test scores in the city's middle schools.

[...]

Studio aims to improve pupils' reading and writing abilities by getting them to read and write more. Pupils write daily in journals on topics of their choice. But the report found that some journal writing "amounts to copying charts from the chalkboard." In addition, it says, "some students have many blank pages in their writer's notebooks, and there appear to be no consequences."

The report quotes a principal as saying, "Anything goes! Everything is accepted by the teachers, and nothing is graded." It also found a logistical problem with pupils picking their own books: "If there is no consistent common text for every teacher to use then there is no consistent (or realistic) approach for a teacher to check a student's accuracy or understanding of the text."

To be implemented properly, Studio requires every classroom to have a library of 800 to 1,000 books. No classroom visited by panel members met that criterion. The report says teachers "have gone to extraordinary lengths" to find more books for their classrooms by "scouring thrift shops and bargain sales at bookstores," bringing in books and magazines from home, and soliciting donations from their churches and local businesses.

Teachers and principals told the panel they did not have enough magazines for a magazine unit, and they expressed concerns about the magazines they did have. Though CosmoGIRL! was pulled from city schools in December, they said remaining magazines such as Teen People and Teen Vogue do not reflect racial diversity and are "aimed at a teen market with substantial disposable income," not "disadvantaged urban youth."

Other magazines, such as PSM (about PlayStation 2) "are considered to be too commercial, graphic and violent in their content to be appropriate as instructional tools," the report says.

So, um, the biggest problem with this program was that it wasn't preparing kids for their standardized tests? That's why it should be ended? Not because, I don't know, it wasn't teaching the students much of anything and was horribly underresourced? Our priorities have gotten really strange these days...

Over at Right on the Left Coast, there's a post about the ubiquitous student question of "when are we ever going to need to know this?"

The author, Darren, a math teacher, opines:

I hear that question frequently in math. It grows old. Do they ask the same question in English class when studying the poetry of Emily Dickenson?

He goes on to give the example of women in anti-aircraft artillery units during WWII who had to utilize advanced math skills and continues,

So when are you ever gonna have to use this? Maybe when you're trying to defend your country from attack by a ruthless enemy!

Bottom line is, I don't know when you're "ever gonna have to use this stuff". But isn't it good knowledge to have, just in case? And why cut yourself off from fields you don't even know about yet? I'll bet the women in school in 1930s Britain never thought they'd be using math to help shoot down Nazi aircraft.

I remember, as a student, that this type of answer was never very convincing, and I went to excellent schools and had superlative parental support. I understand that as well-educated adults, many of us (Darren clearly included) have an innate love for learning and enjoy knowledge for knowledge's sake. That's great.

It seems to me, however, that it's a different beast for students, many of whom couldn't tell you why they are learning what they're learning. This isn't just an assumption I'm making; according to the High School Survey of Student Engagment, only half of high schoolers thought that school contributes substantially to "learning work-related skills" and only 45% thought that it contributed substantially to "solving real-world problems." As I noted in my first post on the HSSSE, "If you're in the other half, what precisely is your incentive for working hard?"

The rub is that most of the skills we want our students to learn DO have real-world application; very direct, concrete real-world application. We use analytical math when we're trying to logic out how long it's going to take us to get from one place to another; we use percentages to determine tips. Part of the problem is what we choose to teach -- I've never used a logarithm or integration in my life, but I use statistics all the time, yet that was hardly covered -- the other part is that we seem bad at communicating the 'why'. More than anything, math is important because it's a mode of rational thinking which becomes ingrained in how we go about our day to day business; we use the scientific method without even noticing; we read critically every time we pick up a newspaper or log on to a web site.

Quite frankly, if we can't answer the question "Why are we learning this?" then we shouldn't be teaching it. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is a love of learning we should always strive to impart in our students, but it's not something that can be hammered in. The curriculum should have explainable, tangible real-world applications, and when the students see that, they'll be a lot more apt to pay attention and care.

The one-year anniversary edition of the Carnival of Education is up at the Education Wonks.

I'm hosting next week, so get your undoubtedly excellent submissions to edwahoo@gmail.com by 8pm EST next Tuesday, Feb. 14.

To be completely honest, school choice isn't a subject I've delved into in as much depth as other educational topics (as one of my friends put it, it seems sort of like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic unless you address more fundamental issues like teachers and pedagogy). I believe that modest and carefully watched market forces can create positive pressure for change, but I also believe there's the potential for a tightrope with no net underneath. Something stuck out to me while I was reading Jay Mathews' piece in Thursday's Post about Maury Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., whose scores skyrocketed after multiple years of failing AYP (80+% free and reduced lunch, 75+% minority, and 92% passing the 3rd and 5th grade English exam. Take that, demographic determinists). While the article was lauding Maury's progress and was obviously intended to show that pressure to improve can work, I couldn't get around this:

No school in the Washington area has felt more severely the weight of the 2002 law that not only tracks how well children do on state testing but also demands that schools improve their performance every year. In 2004, Maury students passed the state reading test at the lowest rate in Alexandria: 38 percent of third-graders and 59 percent of fifth-graders passed.

That triggered a provision of the law that allows parents to transfer their children to a better-performing school. Maury's enrollment dropped from 166 to 131. Middle-class parents were the first to leave, pushing the school's percentage of low-income children above 80 percent. (emphasis mine)

That seems to me the danger of school choice. Isn't it going to give rise to "middle-class flight" leaving in a lurch the families who are tied to a location because of limited job opportunties? Wouldn't we see a new pseudo-segregation, except not by race, but by income level? Maury is obviously a success story and enrollment is up a notch after the latest round of progress, but look at what it took:

In 2003, with the federal law taking effect, Alexandria Superintendent Rebecca L. Perry tried to shake up the school: She required all teachers to reapply for their jobs and gave each one who made the grade a $3,000 bonus. In 2004, she moved an unusually successful and energetic principal, Lucretia Jackson, into Maury and provided funds for new carpets, new tile walls, a new media center and more classroom space.

When Jackson arrived at Maury in the summer of 2004, she organized open houses for parents and put a sign out front that read, "Wanted: More Children to Love and Educate." She brought in volunteer tutors, made sure that no Maury class had more than 20 students and added hour-long after-school lessons three afternoons a week.

She patted backs, asked teachers what they needed and kept a close eye on test results.

Now, don't get me wrong: If that's what it takes to get a struggling school going, then that's a formula to replicate (presuming it wasn't all drill-and-kill test prep, all the time). However, it seems like the option to have students transfer didn't lead to the success, it was pressure followed by solid leadership and deliberate action taken to save the students who were left.

At the same time, I know there's an argument that choice helps low-income students by giving them access to better schools. Why didn't Maury's low-income families take advantage of that opportunity, then? I keeping coming back to the subtle challenges of poverty as perhaps articulated best by Barbara Ehrenrich's Nickel and Dimed: A school that's further away is, relatively speaking, probably harder to adjust to for low-income families than more affluent ones. Then, of course, there's the more conceptual debate over whether we shouldn't be fixing bad schools rather than abandoning them.

This post is more or less me thinking aloud, but I am left wondering: if the theory behind school choice is that pressure will be put on the bad schools to improve because there will be movement away from them, doesn't that presuppose as an axiom that there's equal opportunity for movement? And if that opportunity doesn't exist, what structures can be built into a limited choice system that can keep the benefits without injuring disadvanaged students?

A number of people I really respect are pro-school choice (I almost wrote pro-choice there... wrong debate!), so I imagine there are responses to these concerns out there. Or, maybe I'm missing something in my understanding of the proposals. Anyone?

When even Fordham is willing to admit this, perhaps there's hope yet:

"NCLB also creates perverse incentives for states to set low standards and dumbed-down tests, which is happening."
--Chester E. Finn, Jr., Michael J. Petrilli

The paper version of the talk given by Lorrie Shepard I referenced in my last post contained a forward-thinking philisophical nugget that I think warrants its own post:

"Good assessment should be so entwined with good teaching that it becomes impossible to see where one leaves off and the other begins."

This is a truth which seems to get lost in the policy debate (I'm not sure how it plays out in the classroom, though I look forward to finding out -- current teachers?). Assessment isn't solely a summative activity based on tests which occurs at the end of the year, nor is it something which should happen only every so often. Assessment for its true diagnostic purpose is something that is synonymous with teaching, because good teaching should almost always involve an active dialogue with the students. It doesn't always have to be an oral dialogue; even well-designed worksheets can provide both practice and insight into what the student knows and, if he or she is struggling, where in the thought process the learning is breaking down.

One of the important points Shepard draws out is that this type of learning-assessment requires approaching problems from many different angles to see if students really get the concept. This in turn allows for identification of where in the thought sequence the problem lies.

I bring this up for two reasons: First, if this is the picture of good classroom assessment, it's disturbing that our accountability assessments look so very different. The vast majority are devoid of any attempt to engage students in that dialogue -- instead, they test a single method and usually try to "trick" the students while they're at it. Second, if teachers are constantly assessing their students in the intrinsic act of teaching -- and if they can be trained to be good at it -- it may not be unreasonable to suggest that teachers should play some role in the systemwide accountability assessments.

It again comes back to what the ultimate point of the systemwide assessments are. If their purpose is truly diagnostic to assist the teachers in their craft and help the students learn, and if their simultaneous purpose is to identify deficiencies, we need to rethink how they are designed on the most basic level.

Following the comments in the recent EdSector report confirming that many exams are indeed focused solely on low-level skills, I dug deeper into their source material and came across the paper version of a fascinating talk given by Lorrie Shepard, dean of the education school at the University of Colorado-Boulder. The talk, given as part of ETS' William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture Series, focused on what it means to have rigorous assessment which truly tells you what a student knows.

What's perhaps most striking is how much simple standardized test multiple choice items -- items which almost all of us would say assess a skill we want our kids to know -- can inflate the appeareance of knowledge. Take addition and subtraction, for example.

In one case, the same set of kids were presented with the standard test problem of
764
+67
----

and the alternative item of "Add 764 and 67." There were the same MC options for both items.

73% got the first problem right. Only 67% got the second problem correct. Put another way, 6% of the kids taking the standard exam looked like they knew how to add while they actually had no flexible grasp of the concept.

It gets worse when you move to subtraction:

87
-24
----

Versus "subtract 24 from 87." 83% correct on the first, 66% on the second. This time, the inflation was 17%!

More broadly speaking, Shepard notes that, "In large school districts selected because of accountability pressure focused on raising test scores, random subsamples of students were administered unfamiliar standardized tests and alternative tests constructed item-by-item to match the district-administered test but using a slightly more open-ended format. Student performance dropped as much as a half standard deviation on the unfamiliar tests..."

We often here proponents of explicit instruction talk about going "back to the basics." But teaching to the test via drill of low-level skills -- something which is the dominant form of pedagogy in most America public schools -- leaves students without the mobility of mind and leaves us with false impressions of how much they have actually learned. It is useless to be able to pick out the correct answer for 2 + 3 if you don't actually understand what you're doing. And, if you can't use nor understand the addition skill in a variety of circumstances and in a variety of ways, how can you ever develop critical thinking skills which are grounded in extrapolation and connection? Yet all we care about as a system -- all we judge and peg consequences to (positive and negative) -- is the ability to pick out the correct answer for 2 + 3.

Assessments need a fundamental evolution if they are to begin doing their jobs and actually start assessing the learning we want to see.

At Tuesday's EdSector launch event, a segment of the conversation focused on EdSector's suggestion that many of the testing woes could be ameliorated with federal oversight or common standards. Put simply, 50 different states with 50 different standards and 50 different testing regimes is chaos and severely blunts successful accountability. Three states -- Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island -- recently made history by creating a consortium and developing a single exam for the trio: the New England Common Assessment. When the question was posed about challenges stopping other states from joining together in consortia, or, at the far end, a single national exam, Sharron Hunt, the director of testing for the Georgia Dept. of Ed., replied that the barrier was one of meshing standards.

Hunt suggested that it wasn't so much the content that was an issue (after all, as Thomas Toch pointed out, Georgia and Nebraska and Maine are all hopefully teaching the same reading and math skills), but rather the sequence. Since states teach various content at different times in the cirricula and sometimes in different grades, discrepancies arise. This seemed to me to be an inadequate response, though I don't doubt it's behind the reluctance of most states to enter into common pacts.

If indeed Georgia, Nebraska and Maine are teaching division skills at different points in their educational sequence, then one of two things should be true:

1) After rigorous scientific study, it should be clear that there is a "best practice" sequence which maximizes student's developmental track and imparts the skills most efficiently and effectively. There is no reason for any state to be using an inferior sequence simply in the name of local control.

2) We can get away from the antiquated notion that all children learn at the same rate and develop assessments which are pegged to skills instead of age. That is to say, assess all the students in Georgia, Nebraska and Maine who are being taught division, regardless of whether division is taught in 2nd grade or 3rd grade. It's the skill proficiency, not the grade, which is the issue around which accountability and assessment must revolve.

States obviously like having control over their own assessment regimes, especially since so many of them are fond of inflating their scores to avoid looking bad. Yet we're not going to make much real progress while accountability is shrouded in misdirection; common assessments and ultimately voluntary national standards may present the best course out of that fog. The states seem to be searching for reasons for reticence, but their arguments fall flat.

Well, I'm back. My responsibilities at The Cavalier Daily are officially complete, and now I can focus my full attentions on education and this blog. Since I'm marking an ending, it was only fitting that I attended a launch event on Tuesday: The first official report released by Education Sector. Both the excellent report and the panel discussion that followed were fascinating, and I want to spend some time talking about both.

The report, authored by Thomas Toch, focused on the testing industry and how it plays into the varied nuances of NCLB. The whole thing is worth a read, especially the important sections on the dearth of psychometricians and the shrinking profit margins of testing companies, but I was most interested in the section entitled "simple questions." Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am paramountly concerned with critical thinking; I have long held that simple, primarily multiple-choice tests reflect our learning expectations and allow critical thinking skills to fall by the wayside. Well, it turns out I'm not the only one:

Perhaps the most troubling classroom consequence of the tumult in the testing industry is the strong incentive the problems have created for states and their testing contractors to build tests that measure primarily low-level skills ... NCLB has sought to lift the level of teaching in the nation’s classrooms by requiring states to set challenging standards for what students should know and be able to do. But testing experts say that many of the tests that states are introducing under NCLB contain many questions that require students to merely recall and restate facts rather than do more demanding tasks like applying or evaluating information, largely because it’s easier and cheaper to test the simpler tasks.

...Such tests also give a skewed sense of student achievement. Scores on reading tests that measure mainly literal comprehension are going to be higher than those on tests with a lot of questions that require students to evaluate what they’ve read by, say, reading two passages and identifying themes common to both. The same is true in math. In a study by Lorrie Shepard, a testing expert and the dean of the school of education at the University of Colorado–Boulder, 85 percent of third-graders who had been drilled in computation for a standardized test picked the right answer to 3 x 4, but only 55 percent answered correctly when presented with three rows of four Xs. (emphasis mine)

Despite the flaws in MC items, the report notes that Education Week reported 15 states are using NCLB reading and math exams this year which contain not a single open-ended question.

Both the report and the individuals on the panel discussion -- Toch, Gary Cook (research scientist with the Center for Educational Policy Research at U-Wisconsin), Sharron Hunt (director of testing for the Georgia Dept. of Ed), and Kelley Carpenter (director of communication for McGraw-Hill) -- suggested that the primary solution was to create multiple choice items that assess higher cognitive functions.

Certainly there are better and worse MC questions, and certainly a modest use of MC items is a necessary trade-off given the tremendous cost and time of creating and grading open-ended questions (so long as students are asked, just for diagnostic purposes, why they arrived at their answer), but I question the underlying logic. A multiple choice question fundamentally reduces the universe of possible answers to four, and that also provides an enormous bank of guiding information. Thus, even the best MC questions will still fall short when trying to assess true critical thinking skills. It seems to me that the pyschometric trend should instead veer towards assessments which have a smaller number of intensive constructed response items, much like the now-defunct Maryland School Performance Assessment Program.

More and more these days, assessment seems to be driving instruction. If that's the case, then something like money cannot be allowed to curtail the development of high-quality exams focused on identifying critical thinking skills. Yet, as the report notes, we spend a relative pittance on exams, with the federal government only chipping in $400 million among the 50 states. This is especially grave since a test with many open-ended questions can cost a state upwards of $5 billion over the course of five years to contract, administer and score versus only $2 billion over five years for one that's all MC. But if it's $3 billion more over five years to avoid the iceberg, then we need to start having a conversation about where to come up with the money.

Tomorrow: The panel discussion on common exams and common standards.