Is our teachers learning?

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is releasing the results Tuesday. They say that only 27% of the more than 600 candidates who took the state elementary school teacher’s licensing exam passed. Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester was not surprised by the results. He told the Boston Globe that these results indicate that many students are not receiving an adequate math education. Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, says "The high failure rate puts a shining light on a deficiency in teacher-prep programs."

Zeros Aren't Permitted

What can I possibly say? Just read for yourselves.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS308&q=zeros+aren%27t+permitted&btnG=Search

Two Education Pieces in Today's AJC

I was a curious student early in high school, anxious to learn more about the world. But I had to hold back to wait for slower learners. All children should have the option of getting a good education. But an education that is watered down so it can be taught to all kids produces graduates with a minimal education. I’m not curious anymore. Will I now be just another drone who graduates from UGA with honors because I am a good test taker? Will this skill be beneficial to this country’s future? If so, I will do well.

Today’s students are a “lost generation," unfortunately lost in the hard glare of technology, blinded by the promise of cyber salvation on a distracted globe. What I used to take for granted — an engaged core of students who could think, read and write—has morphed into an assembly line of packaged minds fresh off the factory farm of iPod, “American Idol” and Facebook, a vast herd of electronic sheep stuffed with fast facts and establishment filler.

Obama's College Proposal

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/25/obama

On grading...

“Shouldn’t effort count for something?” We all know students who attend every class and turn in every assignment yet still do poorly, sometimes because they don’t test well or because they didn’t have the prerequisites to succeed in the course. Such students may not deserve to fail, but should they earn an A for their effort? And what about the students who are so far ahead of their peers that they can goof off in class, blow off homework and yet ace the midterm and final. Do they merit an A? Shouldn’t a student earn credit for showing up on time, for being respectful of the teacher and peers and for trying, even when the results fall short?

I once taught a cocky 20-year-old who’d been suspended from his prestigious university and ended up in my evening class at a community college in Florida, where the average student was about 60. The young man had already taken a similar course at his former school, so he was disgruntled to be repeating the same material and sitting next to classmates wearing orthotics. His displeasure showed. I gave him the A, but it hurt. On the other side of the grading equation, I’ve taught diligent students who respected their classmates, arrived early, stayed late, but flubbed the tests, usually because they entered college without the necessary fundamentals.

The author somehow misses the obviousness of an idea that she actually includes in her text. Shouldn't grades represent what you know? How did we get away from the idea that a grade represents what you have mastered of the subject matter at hand, nothing more and nothing less?

Sweating the small stuff

The Weekly Standard recently reviewed this book; a great read for anybody interested in seeing what actually works. The book also explains why we see more of what doesn't work instead of what does work...

The three legs of the education establishment tripod--teacher unions, education schools, and the district bureaucracy--are all unlikely to embrace key elements that make paternalistic schools work. Requiring teachers to work longer days and years would violate union contracts. So would allowing principals to handpick teachers (who may or may not be certified), evaluate and pay instructors based on their effectiveness, and fire those who are not successful in the classroom. Frequent testing, teacher-directed instruction, and flunking students who fail to meet academic standards are all unpopular at schools of education. District bureaucrats, meanwhile, are loath to grant individual schools the freedom to do things differently.

Is college too much to ask?

Charles Murray (of The Bell Curve fame): While half of our high school graduates march off to four-year colleges each year, only about 10% meet the intellectual benchmark suggested by College Board data - at least an 1180 on the SAT math and verbal tests - to master traditional college-level work. Murray contends that it’s cruel to steer kids to college when most lack the intellectual chops to handle it and will flounder. America holds a romanticized view of education, he says, and propagates a fairy tale, unsubstantiated by the hard truths of inborn abilities, that students are limited only by their ambition and will. Murray claims that the most schools can do is cause children who are intellectually below average - by definition about half of all kids - to be a little less below average. Even the best teachers under the best conditions cannot overcome the limits set by a child’s own cognitive abilities. “The 9-year-old who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears.”

In countering Murray, Anthony Carnevale (director of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce) attacked his major premise, “that there is something in each of us that is innate and fixed, that doesn’t change over time. … It is true that cognitive ability affects people’s prospect in life, but it’s also true that people’s prospects affect cognitive ability.” In looking at high-scoring first-graders across incomes, Carnevale says 75% of the more affluent kids will still test high in fifth grade, compared to only 45% of the poorer students. That gap is not created by some inherent deficit in the children, he says, but to the quality of the educational opportunities afforded the two groups.

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2008/12/15/learned.html

Carnevale (like most researchers looking at similar results) completely miss the point. They are confusing cause and effect. The largest factor influencing the facts that the affluent parents are affluent and the poor parents are poor is the cognitive ability of the parents, which IS hereditary. Therefore, the primary reason that financially disadvantaged students underperform is NOT financial; that is simply a side effect of the fact that they are below average on the cognitive ability scale.

WSJ Editorial on Alternative Certification

Like all unions, teachers unions have a vested interest in restricting the labor supply to reduce job competition. Traditional state certification rules help to limit the supply of "certified" teachers. But a new study suggests that such requirements also hinder student learning. Harvard researchers Paul Peterson and Daniel Nadler compared states that have genuine alternative certification with those that have it in name only. And they found that between 2003 and 2007 students in states with a real alternative pathway to teaching gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal standardized test) than did students in other states.

Obama's Education Transition Advisor

Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University education professor and one of Obama’s advisors, will head the Education Department transition team that is tasked with drafting policy for the incoming administration. Darling-Hammond is a self-described advocate of “progressive” education, the methods of which she believes are “grounded in a deep sense of curricular intentions, arise from compelling questions, and include rigorous intellectual challenges such as critical thinking and problem solving across disciplines.” The best progressive educators “engage in a dialectic between the subject and the student” and in so doing, the student “is constantly moved to a broader and more thoughtful place in the curriculum.”

What can your humble servant possibly add to that towering monument of edu-speak?

88% of DC 8th-graders can't read

Well, not really, although that is the sensationalist headline that CNN used. If you actually watch the news clip the actual statistic is that only 12% of eighth graders are proficient at the eighth grade level per NAEP exams (and only 8% in math). Isn't that bad enough without a misleading headline?

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/09/07/bolduan.fixing.dc.schools.cnn

Fake Diploma Mill Degrees

http://spotlight.encarta.msn.com/Features/

One fact from the article jumped out at me.

"The number of fake doctorates sold each year is in the range of 50,000 to 60,000," states John Bear, author of "Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning." "The number of real Ph.D.s awarded is around 40,000."

Bear goes on to say "In America right now, more than half of all the Ph.D.s are fake." but that is not correct. I assume he meant more than half of all PhDs issued each year are fake.

Wall Street Looks Abroad

Senior executives at some of the largest U.S. corporations say stringent immigration policies are hurting New York's ability to compete with other financial centers. Investment bank officials say visa issues have forced them to move jobs to other countries. "New York's ability to compete with London, which has much more open immigration, or with the emerging financial capitals in Asia and the Middle East, depends on mobility of talent," said Kathryn Wylde, president of Partnership for New York City.

Source: NYT

Now even Wall Street claims it can't find talent, another chink in our educational armor.

Georgia Tech employee stole $350,000 in grant funds

Discussion of Physics Education Major

Same idea, for the physics ed major now... I can't use FIU this time because both their online and printed catalogs for 2007-2008 have an error (a BIG one); the physics ed major actually reflects the courses required for the chemistry ed major instead. I shall use Florida State University, as it has a very similar curriculum to FIU's.

Requirement: A minimum of 25 hours, selected from the following list:
AST 3033 Recent Advances in Astronomy and Cosmology
ISC 3121 Science, Technology, and Society
PHY 2048C General Physics A
PHY 2049C General Physics B
PHY 3101 Intermediate Modern Physics
PHY 3221 Intermediate Mechanics
MAP 2302 Differential Equations or MAP 3305 Engineering Mathematics
PHY 3424 Optics
PHY 3802L Intermediate Laboratory
PHY 4040C Physics of the 20th Century
PHY 4323 Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism
PHZ 3113 Mathematical Physics

Of course, this looks quite reasonable on paper. The somewhat low 25 credit requirement is due to the fact that the major wants to accommodate introductory chemistry and biology sequences. But the first problem is that General Physics eats up 10 of the 25 credits. Then physics ed majors stay away from classes that physics majors take, so you end up with the following very unreasonable collection of courses:

PHY 2048C-2049C General Physics A&B (10)
PHY 3424 Optics (3)
AST 3033 Recent Advances in Astronomy and Cosmology (3)
ISC 3121 Science, Technology, and Society (3)
PHY 3101 Intermediate Modern Physics (3)
PHY 3802L Intermediate Laboratory (3)

Here's how I would toughen this up...

1) Given how often biology, chemistry and physics teachers end up teaching each others' classes, I agree that the 25 credit limit is appropriate and will work within its confines

However...

2) Physics majors have to take General Physics as a lower division prerequisite; I see no reason why physics ed majors could not do the same.

3) Drop the AST and ISC courses. No question. There's simply no room for this. Drop the Physics of the 20th Century course too; it doesn't count for physics majors - too fluffy.

4) This removes the elective nature of the existing list. Modern Physics, Intermediate Mechanics, Differential Equations / Engineering Mathematics, Intermediate Electricity & Magnetism, Mathematical Physics and Optics should all be required. But since this is just six courses, I have actually opened up space for two electives.

So we end up with the following eminently reasonable collection of courses:

PHY 2048C-2049C General Physics A&B (prerequisite)
PHY 3424 Optics (3)
PHY 3101 Intermediate Modern Physics (3)
PHY 3221 Intermediate Mechanics (3)
MAP 2302 Differential Equations or MAP 3305 Engineering Mathematics (3)
PHY 4323 Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism (3)
PHZ 3113 Mathematical Physics (3)
Two electives selected from courses that satisfy physics major requirements (6)

And I've even saved a credit. My proposed program requires 24 credits instead of 25.

Discussion of Math Education Major

Trying to resurrect this blog...

When I argue that, at almost every college in the country, the math ed major is unnecessarily weak relative to the math major, the response I get is always that because of all the education courses required, there is not enough space left within the confines of a 120 credit degree to fit in all the courses that a math major usually takes. Fine, I will leave aside my opinion that the education courses are not anywhere near as valuable as the math courses they displace. I will work strictly within the confines of this restriction.

Let's look at one school's BS in math ed (my alma mater Florida International U) ...

Subject Matter Specialization: Thirty semester hours of mathematics at the 3000 level or above including 3 semester hours in geometry, 6 semester hours in probability or statistics, and 3 semester hours in linear or abstract algebra.

This sounds rigorous, until you start disecting it. First of all, at FIU the calculus sequence is somewhat oddly numbered 3000-level, so there's 12 credits right there. Then 6 credits of introductory statistics (also numbered 3000-level), 3 credits of linear algebra, 3 credits of geometry and 3 credits of history of mathematics, and you're at 27 credits without taking a single substantive upper-level college math class. One class (at FIU, introduction to advanced mathematics is customary) and you're done.

Let's see if this can be improved...

1) First of all, math majors are expected to complete Calculus I-II-III and Linear Algebra as part of their lower division preparation. Since the math ed major does not require any lower division prerequisites, it should be possible for them to fit these courses into their first 60 credits the same as math majors. I've just freed up 15 credits.

2) Instead of the introductory statistics sequence designed for social science majors, I would require the Mathematical Statistics sequence that math majors are required to take. No change in the total number of credits, but I've just toughened up this requirement.

3) Geometry is fine as is. History of math is a little fluffy for my taste, but it is required by the state. No changes.

4) I would definitely add differential equations, which is a lower division prerequisite for the math major.

5) I would also require Advanced Calculus and Algebraic Structures. Together with introduction to advanced mathematics and mathematical statistics, this will give all math ed majors exposure to at least the common core required of all math majors.

To summarize, we started with the following course selection...

Calculus I-II-III (12)
Linear Algebra (3)
Introduction to advanced mathematics (3)
Geometry (3)
History of mathematics (3)
Introductory Statistical Methods (6)

And we've ended up with

Calculus I-II-III (prerequisite)
Linear Algebra (prerequisite)
Introduction to advanced mathematics (3)
Geometry (3)
History of mathematics (3)
Mathematical Statistics (6)
Differential Equations (3)
Advanced Calculus (3)
Algebraic Structures (3)
Two electives selected from courses that satisfy math major requirements (6)

Quite a difference, n'est pas? And all without removing a single education class.

Additional Data

Here's an updated graph of the percentage of temporary visa holders in mathematics, physical science and engineering graduate programs. In 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), the percentages were 42% for physical sciences, 44% for mathematics and 54% for engineering. These numbers reflect a slight drop from their peaks in 2001-2 due to a reduced number of visas in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.






For those who want all the gory details, they can be found at the NSF website.

Restarting a conversation from October 2004

It should be deeply troubling that admissions for students from countries which have previously been enthusiastic consumers of American education is up (apparently in double-digit percentage increases), especially in fields where American student participation has already declined dramatically, and in which international student participation already exceeds 50%.

It is facile and [dis]ingenuous to claim that this is a problem related to a lack of competitiveness on the part of American students. The real issue is whether the departments in question have been compromised to the extent that they no longer function for the populations that they were built to educate. Ohio University’s experience over the last two years indicates that such a compromised culture flourished for over two decades in its graduate mechanical engineering department — allowing international students to plagiarize with impunity and thus “outcompete” US citizens. Ohio is not alone and the problems detailed there may be spreading.

Realistically, American students really have very few other options to fulfill their educational needs. Degrees taken in most other nations (with the exceptions of the UK, Canada, and Australia) are usually not considered equivalent to US degrees in the US job market, and most nations are not particularly open to the notion of welcoming immigrant labor. There is also a certain amount of resentment and hostility generally directed at Americans abroad primarily owing to political issues — even in nations that are presumably allies — and it would be foolish to assume that this does not have a negative impact on those subjected to it.

There are other substantive issues involved, including the indiscriminate dissemination and loss of intellectual property, the exploitation of graduate programs to provide means and opportunity for international espionage, and the probability of successful integration of people from countries where ethnicity and religion are conflated with national identity. There are issues of representation and not-so-subtle racism — is it sound for a nation to enroll large numbers of people from a given nation (e.g. India) when it has substantial minority populations that are underserved (i.e. Hispanic, African-American, or better yet, Native American)? Not least is the issue of whether a nation has a duty to at least try to ensure the productive employment of its citizens, and whether large-scale international participation interferes with that duty.

Comment on the Inside Higher Education wesbite

A hilarious blog

Still very relevant commentary on the state of education today, but with a much needed humorous attitude that helps keep us sane.

http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/

Blog Post by Joanne Jacobs

Forty to sixty percent of students who start California schools as “English Learners” never reach full English proficiency; many won’t graduate from high school.

My article How Good is Good Enough? Moving California’s English Learners to English Proficiency is up on the Lexington Institute web site.

California schools lose funding when students are reclassified as “fluent English proficient,” an obviously perverse incentive. Many set high standards for reclassification: ELs have to do as well or better than the average native English speaker to qualify as proficient.

But the larger issue is that many ELs go to schools that don’t do a very good job teaching reading and writing to anyone. They’re not reclassified as proficient because they score below-average in English Language Arts on the state exam, even though they may speak “playground English” as their preferred language. ELs become proficient in English more quickly if they attend schools that focus on building the reading and writing skills of all students.

This isn’t really about teaching in English (more than 90% of ELs are in mainstream English classes) or teaching in Spanish. It’s about teaching well.

Dean at M.I.T. Resigns, Ending a 28-Year Lie

Marilee Jones, 55, originally from Albany, had on various occasions represented herself as having degrees from three institutions: Albany Medical College, Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In fact, she had no degrees from any of those places, or anywhere else, MIT officials said.

I continue to be amazed at the attitudes that come out when something like this happens.

"something she did long ago came back and trumped [the good she did]” said Leslie Perelman, director of the program in writing and humanistic studies

No, it's not someTHING she did "long ago." It's a pattern of lies stretching across 28 years. Every time she signed a letter with her "degrees" (which is quite common for directors of admissions) she was committing fraud. I am sure the back cover of the book she co-authored prominently features her "degrees."

I am not normally pro-litigation, but I hope every student who got turned down from MIT since she became dean in 1997 sues the school.

Software Has No Effect on K-12 Performance

Going high-tech doesn't lead to higher math and reading scores, according to a federal study. The study on the effectiveness of education technology was released by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, a research arm of the US Department of Education. The study found achievement scores were no higher in classrooms using reading and math software products than in classrooms without the new products.

Researchers looked at elementary and secondary classes in 132 schools. The teachers that participated used more than a dozen software products to help deliver their lessons. Nearly all the teachers received training on the products and believed they were well prepared to use the technology in their classrooms. When asked whether they would use the products again, nearly all teachers indicated that they would. The report was based on schools and teachers not using the products in the previous school year. Whether products are more effective when teachers have more experience using them is being examined in a follow-up study. The report detailed the effectiveness of the products as a group and did not review the performance of particular programs.

[Sorry, no link]

Get a job, doofus!

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1110student-perpetual10.html

http://www.badgerherald.com/news/2006/04/20/lechner_aims_to_grad.php

He has compiled a 2.9 grade-point average

He has 242 credits (that's 20/year - noticeably less than full-time)

He has accumulated $30,000 in student loans

He has majors in theater, communications, and liberal studies; his minors are in pre-school education, health education, and women's studies. (One could not get a more useless collection of majors by throwing darts randomly at a school catalog.)

UW-Whitewater is not even a national university; it's ranked as a master's university by USN&WR.

Here we go again

The homework debate

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/webwatch/2006/09/homework_under_fire.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2149593?GT1=8592

http://kerryfoxlive.com/wordpress/?p=3286

One comment stuck in my mind:

[...] Many teachers lack the skills to design homework assignments that help kids learn and don’t turn them off to learning. Today, schools of education provide varying levels of training in the art of designing homework assignments that are more than busywork, usually imbedded in courses about curriculum. Many, however, offer none [...]

Cheating!

MBA students are the biggest cheats of all graduate students, with 56% admitting to using crib notes in exams, plagiarism or downloading essays from the web.

Among engineering students 54%, and among science students 50%, admitted to cheating. And even among the most honest group, the social scientists and those studying humanities, 39% admitted cheating.

Even more cheating is reported in undergraduate degree programs.

Words fail me.

Fox News Story on College

Fox News ran a special on college tuition, which discussed whether or not college was worth it. I often propose the unpopular notion that college is not for everyone and is often not the right decision. However, the misinformation propagated as news in this story made my blood boil.

The most appalling error was a comparison of (a) lifetime earnings of college graduates minus tuition versus (b) lifetime earnings of high school graduates. So many errors permeated this story that it is impossible to explain them all, but here are the biggest (and keep in mind we're talking about a one minute clip here). Let's look at the smaller items before I point out the most egregious of the errors.

• The story used the earnings of an average college graduate, but tuition from an elite private institution (whose graduates will earn more than the average college graduate).
• The use of the average earnings of college graduates was incorrect, since the earnings of those who have MORE than a college education would have also needed to be taken into account.
• The calculation did not account for time value of money (interest, inflation).

Each of these errors changes the magnitude of the difference between the high-school number and the college number but does not have a huge impact. What most shocked me about this calculation was that it double-counted the effect of college tuition, and this DOES have a huge impact on the calculation - to the extent that it makes the decision come out the opposite of what they were saying in the story.

What they did was subtract tuition from the college graduates's earnings - fair enough. But then they also took the tuition money and projected it at (an unreasonably high) interest over the working lifetime of the high school graduate. You can't have it both ways! ARGH!

Interesting

From the Yale's math department's "Tips for Teachers" web page:

It is dangerous show your students that you are wasting your precious time teaching these ignorant fools.

Note the choice of words. It doesn't say "have your students think that"; it says "show."

Repeat to your students, colleagues and to yourself that you like to teach.

And maybe you will even start to believe it.

No wonder the really high-end departments have such a reputation for bad teaching.

Talent Shortage

From a WSJ article today...

Corporate America is desperate to find technical talent, prompting many to step up retention efforts, while making a mad dash to move higher paid research operations to China and India. It raises new debate about caps on visas for foreign workers and the need to attract more U.S. students to the careers in math and science.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the U.S. needs 135,000 new computer professionals a year, but its universities are producing only 49,000 computer science graduates annually. The agency also predicts the need for science and engineering graduates will grow 26% to 1.25 million by 2012. However, the number of graduates in those fields has remained relatively flat for two decades.

Typical

Kentucky is piloting a math program that that costs $300,000 per 30 students, owned and promoted by a contingent of politicians. The ridiculous cost is partly due to the required hardware and furniture purchases - "it's necessary to buy both the hardware and software because the software seems to interfere with other programs."

[Thanks to DVD for the link]

Student Totally Out of Line, and doesn't even know it

As a former teacher, a local story that caught my eye...

Twist on an ol' song earns teen suspension

Beth Anne Cox says she meant no harm. Gwinnett County school officials see it differently: They say the 16-year-old threatened her teacher when she sang a parody of the folk song "On Top of Ol' Smokey" in class. Administrators suspended the Peachtree Ridge High School junior for five days. School officials say she disrupted the class with a threatening and inappropriate twist on the familiar lyrics. Beth Anne, who has since apologized to the teacher in writing, says she was humming the tune in class Friday and sang the words out loud when a classmate asked her about the song. "I wasn't talking to my teacher. I was talking with my friend," Beth Anne said in an interview Tuesday. "I would never threaten anyone."

The story doesn't point this out, but in the picture of Miss Cox that accompanied the story, in which she was holding up her "apology," you can clearly make out the comment, "The tone is threatening."

However, Sloan Roach, the school system's spokeswoman, said Beth Anne was upset about a grade and talked about it with her German teacher. Roach said Beth Anne later interrupted the lesson and sang the song. "What she did was perceived to be threatening," Roach said. "It caused a disruption, and the remarks were inappropriate. Based on the facts, the decision was made. It was an appropriate response." Beth Anne disputes the school's account. "I don't know where they got that from," she said. "Yes, I got a bad grade, but I wasn't going to scream and moan and cry about it. I would never threaten my teacher over one bad grade." Classmate Erik Hildebrandt supported her version of the story. He said the classroom was noisy as students played a game to review for a test. "She sang the song to me, and she wasn't looking at anyone else," Erik said. "But I'm not really surprised this happened. They have had their troubles before." Beth Anne acknowledged that tension has existed between her and the teacher. "He's very submissive, and I'm very loud and outspoken, and we just both just get irritated with one another."

This comment seems highly inappropriate to me. Miss Cox has apparently never learned that in the classrom, the teacher is in charge.

Apologies for 'Ol' Smokey' not enough

The Gwinnett County student suspended for disrupting a lesson and threatening a teacher says she won't be in that teacher's class when she returns to school next week. She has since apologized to him in a letter. When Beth Anne's suspension ends Monday, she won't return to her German class, she said Wednesday. "I don't know where I will be second period, but the school said they would find somewhere to put me," Beth Anne said. "They said I can't go back to the class because I threatened the teacher. How afraid can you be of a 16-year-old? I think he just wants to avoid me because he knows he's wrong."

I thought an apology was an acknowledgement of being wrong. If she not only thinks that the teacher was wrong, but that he KNOWS that he was wrong, then what exactly did she write in the apology?

Beth Anne said she wasn't worried about what students would say when she returned to school and that she had received more than 70 e-mails of support. A few students wore T-shirts to school Wednesday with iron-on pictures of Beth Anne, said Alex Baker, Beth Anne's best friend. Alex wore one of the shirts to school Wednesday and said she'd made bout 15 shirts for other students. She said she planned to wear her shirt for the rest of the week. "Beth Anne didn't disrupt the class or do anything wrong," said Alex, who is also in the German class. "What they're doing to her is just wrong."

In addition to the suspension, the school principal revoked permission for Beth Anne to attend Peachtree Ridge next school year. She has attended the high school since her freshman year. Beth Anne said her family prefers the school because it is less crowded than North Gwinnett High, her neighborhood school. Beth Anne will be required to attend North Gwinnett next year, said her mother. Roach said Wednesday that Beth Anne will be able to make up all missed work and receive full credit. Roach said principals review permissive transfer requests annually. She said the principal's decision not to allow Beth Anne to return to Peachtree Ridge next year is final. Beth Anne's mother would like her to graduate from Peachtree Ridge and wants assurances the suspension won't hurt her daughter's grades.

You know, what Mrs. Cox wants is completely irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps instead of making demands of the school, she should teach her child some manners!

Roach said Wednesday that Beth Anne will be able to make up all missed work and receive full credit.

Make up all work!? Full credit?! Then she didn't really get a suspension, did she? More like a week's vacation. Appalling.

Book by Joanne Jacobs

Joanne Jacobs has just published a book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2005) about a charter school that prepares Hispanic students for college. After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight Ridder columnist, she quit in 2001 to do freelance reporting, start an education blog and write Our School.

Our School enables readers to step inside a charter school that’s struggling, learning from mistakes, adapting and improving. Our School follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that’s 90% Hispanic. Most students come from Spanish-speaking immigrant families; most earned D's and F’s in middle school and enter ninth grade with fifth-grade reading and math skills. They were left behind academically but promoted anyhow. Operating with a work-your-butt-off philosophy, DCP now outscores the average California high school on the state’s Academic Performance Index and sends all graduates to four-year colleges.

Thursday, May 11
Washington, DC
On Thu 5/11 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking and signing books at William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts, 705 Edgewood St. NE, Washington, DC (near the Rhode Island and Brookland-CUA metro stops). In addition, the school’s musical troupe will perform and guests will be asked to donate a children’s book to the school library.

Founded in 2004, WEDJ enrolls students from all over the city. Students take classes in music, dance and theater and perform in at least one public exhibition or performance each year. A longer school day and Saturday classes ensure enough time for academics and arts. Currently an elementary, the school is adding middle and high school classes in the fall.

Wednesday, May 17
Philadelphia, PA
On Wed 5/17 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking at Russell Byers Charter School, 1911 Arch St., in downtown Philadelphia.

Founded in 2001, the school educates children in kindergarten (a two-year program starting at age four) through sixth grade using the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program. The school was created to honor the memory of Russell Byers, a Daily News columnist killed in a mugging.

(Both the Washington and Philadelphia charter schools primarily serve black students.)

Here's what Jacobs has to say about the book: I observed classes, faculty meetings, board meetings, disciplinary hearings, parent sessions and school assemblies. I shadowed the principal, sat in on a teacher evaluation, helped the Mock Trial club and tutored ninth graders at the school. I hung around. Our School shows how a do-it-yourself school with a work-your-butt-off philosophy can make a difference for left-behind students. While the book puts DCP in the context of the charter school movement, it doesn’t pretend to be a scholarly study. Think Tracy Kidder meets Up the Down Staircase.

You can learn more about the book at http://www.ourschoolbook.com/, and you can learn more about the school at http://www.downtowncollegeprep.org/.

Reviews of the book

“Our School, a vivid account of the creation and first years of a charter high school, reads like a novel whose characters are both stereotypical and improbable. But this isn't fiction. The challenges are real, the stakes high, the lessons important, and the achievements extraordinary.” - Henry Miller, Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2005

“Our School is eye-opening, chilling and inspiring. Up-close and personal, it follows the lives of the students, parents and faculty who had faith that they could break free and succeed.” - Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee, 11/20/2005

“Our School at once illustrates the possibilities and the challenges of urban education. But it's the former that makes it an exciting and important book.” - Andrew J. Rotherham, New York Post, 1/29/2006

“The story delves into the heart of the charter school movement with a glimpse into the life of a single charter school. Jacobs takes the reader into the lives of the struggling students as they shed their troubled pasts and learn to appreciate the rules and strive for a future in college.” - NewsWire, Center for Education Reform

“DCP is enthusiastically experimental. When something's not working (e.g., trying to teach algebra when kids don't know fractions), they try something else. As Jacobs tells the story of DCP's amazingly committed teachers and their (mostly) courageous students, even hardcore opponents of charter schools may soften.” - Publishers Weekly

“Our School is wonderfully written and wonderfully informative. I cannot think of another book that provides such a close and honest look at a successful charter school serving immigrant kids in grave danger of striking out in American life. The fascinating story that Joanne Jacobs tells zips along like a good novel, but it also delivers an important and optimistic message to educators who want to rescue kids.” - Abigail Thernstrom, co-author of No Excuses and America in Black and White

“Jacobs has written a ground-breaking book about the most interesting, and potentially important, change in American schooling in the last 15 years.” - Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist, author of Harvard Schmarvard, Escalante, and Class Struggle

“Our School is today's Up the Down Staircase. It's not often a book about my profession gets it right.” - Robert Wright, teacher, Morrill Middle School, San Jose CA

On NCTM Mathematics

Essays by William G. Quirk on various aspects of NCTM math:
Understanding the Original (1989) NCTM Standards
Understanding the Revised (2000) NCTM Standards
Understanding the Shallow Learning Expectations Promoted by NCTM Standards
Memorization and Practice are Ruled Out in NCTM Standards
The Anti-Content Mindset of the NCTM Standards
How the NCEE Limits K-12 Math

Truly excellent! My own views are almost exactly reflected by those articles. I have long wished to find the time to develop articles of similar depth explaining what is wrong with NCTM math.

FL bill would allow HS students to pick "majors"

The Florida House passed a bill that would require incoming high school freshmen to declare a major, just like college students. The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Students would be able to major in humanities, English, communications, math, science, history, social studies, arts, foreign languages and vocational skills. To graduate, students would have to earn 15 core credits in courses like math, science and English, 4 credits in major courses, and 5 credits in elective courses like drama and Spanish.

Source: CNN

I think this is a terrible idea! Our high school students graduate with little enough knowledge as it is. We are now going to remove 4 credits of general education and make it a "major"? What kind of "major" is a high school student equipped to handle? Backing up a step, how many high school freshmen are ready to choose a major at 14, when a considerable number of college students change majors?

Most College Students Lack Skills

More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

And that's not even the scary part of the story...

Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation!