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!

Saxon Lovefest?

If you Google "Saxon Math Textbooks" to find information on this series of math textbooks, every link is breathless with worship of these books. I don't understand it.

I know some studies proved that the books were very effective with children from low-income families. Now, I am not a fan of the new new math or constructivism or putting lots of pictures in math books or any of that crap, but all the sites I read chastised state textbook adoption boards for not adopting these books. The fact is these books suck! Having used them in an actual classroom setting, I believe the claims that they work well with below-average students, but if you have an average (or God help you, an above-average) student, these books are worse than useless. I believe they are detrimental.