SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Doing Our Levelling Best

Here’s a depressing study from Jacksonville, Florida which finds that, even though the city’s early literacy program had given its mostly-disadvantaged participants a reading advantage when they entered kindergarten, it was all gone by grade 3. It seems that preschool programs aren’t enough.

And when you think about it, this makes sense. The reason that advantaged children do better in school is that their parents had talked to them more, exposed them to more, read to them more, and so forth. Nor do their parents stop providing this helpful support when their children enter kindergarten; in fact, if anything, they tend to step it up. If Huntington Ashford-Jones IV is having trouble learning to read, chances are his parents will tutor him at home or else pay someone else to do the job. And if Melissa Middleclass doesn’t know her number facts, her parents will likely take prompt action. But little Oliver Nobody is on his own! 

Of course, educated, affluent parents have always seen to their children’s education. The very reason that public education was invented was to make sure that all children had an equal chance in life. It’s a cruel irony that modern teaching methods are discriminating against the very children for whom public schools were conceived. What a shame the public schools don’t adopt the direct instruction methods that Huntington’s and Melissa’s tutors use to such good effect, thereby removing at least one of the strikes against disadvantaged children.

Paying for Delaying

A Toronto elementary school teacher has been charged with sexual assault and placed on paid home assignment. This raises the difficult question of the appropriate employment status for an accused person during the period he or she is awaiting resolution of the charges. 

In the private sector, the more usual arrangement is for an accused to be suspended from his or her duties without pay - with the understanding that the employer will pay his or her salary retroactively should her or she ultimately be found innocent. The advantage of this arrangement is that everyone concerned is motivated to speed up the resolution period: the employee has no money coming in and the employer is worried about the prospect of having to fork out a lot of money with nothing to show for it.

In the case of the accused teacher, it is quite possible that neither the employee nor the employer will be particularly motivated to resolve the charges. Because there are lots of foot-dragging options available to Ontario litigants, it is possible to spin out the legal resolution period to many months or even years. Combined with the inefficiencies and backlogs in the Ontario legal system, there is a good chance the Toronto elementary school teacher will be cooling her heels at home on the taxpayers’ dime for some time to come. 

Would it not be more sensible to suspend the accused teacher’s salary pending resolution of the charges? We’re just asking….

A Head Start on Insolvency

Those who support the Ontario government's new all-day kindergarten plan may be sobered by the US government's recent evaluation of its Head Start program. Conceived in the mid-sixties as part of the war against poverty, the Head Start program aims to boost the school readiness of low-income children - just as all-day kindergarten is promised to do for Ontario. 

Comparing students who had been randomly assigned to Head Start with students who had not, the researchers found virtually no differences - cognitive, behavioural, or emotional - at the end of grade 1. This despite an enormously expensive program that includes medical, dental, and mental health care; nutrition services; and efforts to work with parents to foster their children's development. 

Do we really want to spend an extra couple of billion dollars a year on a program that is unlikely to affect student success while simultaneously pushing the province further into the red and enhancing the power of its teachers' unions?

The Trend Continues

Looks as if this trend in teacher evaluation is spreading--and supported by the teachers' unions!  From the state that brought us value-added assessment, Tennessee, is this report from the Tennessean, the Nashville newspaper, is summarized below:

Four years ago, Holston Middle was a school where hard-working teachers weren't seeing results.  It was only a matter of time before the Knox County school ended up on the state's target list, said Principal Tom Brown, and that would mean state sanctions and the stigma of being a failing school.

Frustrated, the teachers overwhelmingly voted to launch a new system that would revamp the school by offering bonuses for top teachers, offering loads of on-site training for staff and tying yearly evaluations to student test scores.

The TAP system — the new, formal name that used to be an acronym — worked, and now it's one of several teacher evaluation models state leaders are pointing to as a way student test scores and performance pay can lead to better schools.

Lawmakers this week passed new legislation that would for the first time require student test scores to be included in a teacher's evaluations. It also would require teachers to be evaluated annually.  Knoxville Superintendent of Schools James McIntyre said the district is eager to share its success story with the state and thinks components of the system could be adapted to a larger scale.

"This is a strong, successful instructional improvement and school reform model," he said. "I've been talking to anyone who will listen about the success we've seen, and I would be very interested in expanding the model."

The idea is controversial because opponents argue that teachers can't control all the things that go into a good test score, like a good night's sleep or a solid breakfast.

But supporters of the TAP system say it won approval from teachers' unions, parents, and principals, because of its focus on training, rewarding good teachers and setting clear expectations.

No Royal Road to Learning

Speaking of math, take a quick look at the winners of the University of Waterloo math and computing contests. There is a definite trend. Here are the names of the students with perfect scores on the Gauss Grade 7 contest.

Jahid Adam, Courtnie Baek, Anton Campbell, Victoria Cao, Joyce Chan, Victor Chang, Jiyang Chen, Sijia Chen, Jae Won Choi, Andrew Choi, Christina Choi, Jessica Clarke, Vivian Dai, Chris Diec, Kelly Dong, Daniel Gao, Nicholas Guetter, Courtney Hardy, Tony Hu, Simon Huang, Stefan Keselj, Cloe Kim, Hannah Kim, Hyeji Kim, Joo Ko, Matthew Lakier, Andre Vito, Luka Lawford, Junho Lee, Alice Li, Peter Li, Adam Li, Victor Li, Terry Liu, Frank Liu, Dale Lucier, Saeyon Mylvaganam, Aliya Nathoo, Plisov Oleg, Eric Pan, Justin Park, Ashley Qian, Young Jin Shin, Jordan Sinder, Laura Song, Richard Tuovila, Alina Wang, Bo Qin, Joy Wang, Brody Wong, Larkin Woo, Jeffrey Wu, Yidi-Lily Wu, Xiaoze Wu, Brian Yeung, Anne Yin

School for Thought would like to draw your attention to the fact that large numbers of Asian children are enrolled in Kumon Math by their parents. For those who have been living on Mars for the past few years, Kumon Math is a very popular tutoring method that drills the basics of arithmetic in a highly-repetitive fashion. It is criticized by many educators because it focuses on the mastery of basic skills, as opposed to conceptual understanding and higher-order problem-solving abilities. Yet the University of Waterloo math and computing contests definitely test understanding and higher-order skills, as a glance at the questions will make obvious.

In fact, the received wisdom of Ontario educators is exactly wrong. A solid grounding in arithmetic leads to advanced math understanding and the ability to solve difficult problems, while a premature focus on higher-order learning runs the risk of blocking advanced performance.

“If You Don’t Get Something, It’s My Fault” What a Concept!

I thought this article in today's Globe and Mail deserved a read not just because it is a great look at JUMP math and its creator John Mighton (his Myth of Ability is a must-read as well), but it also sums up the idea that the teaching is the most important indicator of student success.   Malkin's recent post on teachers' unions and my previous one on Houston's value-added assessment approach brings this concept of no excuses under the spotlight.  In fact, there is an movement called NO Excuses Schools.

Mighton tells his students, "If you don't get something today, it is my fault, so stop me." What a concept indeed!  In an education environment that blames poor outcomes on everything from income level, social background, class size, lack of money, (pet excuse here) to the phases of the moon, this is mind blowing.  Also from the Globe article: "The program has met with more resistance in Ontario, where it began. Many school board officials prefer the current approach, which helps students discover and understand mathematical concepts through problem solving. Still, JUMP is getting attention there: Mr. Mighton has trained more than 100 teachers in the public and Catholic boards since September."

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Further to my previous post, the Houston Chronicle reports:

 "One of every 300 teachers in the Houston school district was fired for poor performance last year - a number likely to rise under a new policy to hold them more liable for student achievement. The district's superintendent, Terry Grier, said there's no "magic number" of teachers who should be ousted in a given year, but suggested that the school district's rate seems low given some academic shortcomings.  Last school year, 36 teachers out of nearly 12,000 - about 0.3 percent - were fired for performance reasons, according to data from the Houston Independent School District.

'Quite frankly, if we were that good, why do 100,000 of our kids read below grade level?' Grier said.

The school board on Thursday gave initial approval to a policy that allows the district to dismiss teachers whose students consistently perform below expectations on standardized tests. The change represents a move to make personnel decisions based more on student learning instead of relying solely on principals' classroom observations of teachers. Grier and school board members have emphasized that the district's goal is not to fire teachers but to help them improve. Teachers' job evaluations now will include their so-called value-added scores, a statistical measure of their effectiveness in helping students reach their potential on standardized exams."

It seems to me that Houston is taking the no excuses approach.

In Ontario, the passage of Bill 177 could mean a real shift in responsibility for making sure kids learn.  If it means not blaming the children, then there may be hope yet. If the usual excuses get used, then the amended Education Act will mean diddly squat.

Teacher Evaluation

Further to my earlier post about long-term trends in education, this article that appeared in the Houston Chronicle piqued my interest.  Seems that the Houston Independent School District is ready to approve a plan to use their Texas state testing to evaluate teacher effectiveness based on their "value-added score."  Teachers could be fired for failing to improve student learning over a three- to four-year period, although every effort would be made to help teachers improve their teaching.

As you would expect, the local teachers' union is not a happy camper. The paper quotes Steve Antley, president of the Congress of Houston Teachers:  "There are so many factors that influence scores--school climate and leadership, not to mention how students woke up feeling on test day."   Oh please!  Enough of the excuses.  What about the most important factor in learning--the actual teaching? 

The Tennessee Value-Added study showed that of all the factors affecting learning, the quality of the teaching was the most crucial:

      Research conclusions utilizing data from the TVAAS database have shown that race, socioeconomic level, class size, and classroom heterogeneity are poor predictors of student academic growth. Rather, the effectiveness of the teacher is the major determinant of student academic progress.

By the way, the same "value-added score" is used to determine performance bonuses for Houston teachers.  Mr. Antley doesn't like that either. The concept of value-added is new one for Canadian educators and one that ensures better accountability so that ALL children can be expected to learn.

1 Man, 12 Dogs, 12,000 kilometres

The article in today’s Globe and Mail with the above headline mentioned that some guy was dogsledding to commemorate Manitoba’s 140th birthday but what I couldn’t understand was why he was going all the way to Peru? Wouldn’t going through the Central American rain forests be a little tough on the huskies? Of course, a quick glance down to paragraph two indicated that the distance should have been 1,200 kilometres. But nobody caught the error because when it comes to facts and arithmetic, we’re losing our ability to apply simple “smell” tests.

If you know that Canada is approximately 5,000 kilometres coast-to-coast 12,000 sounds like an awfully (unbelievably?) long way. But how do you apply “higher order thinking skills” to a report like the one above if you don’t have the basic facts (in your head) with which to start your analysis? Sure you can look them up in Wikipedia, but try that in a meeting at work when you’re discussing relative maritime shipping distances from Mumbai and Shanghai to Vancouver without looking stupid!

Education Trends for the Next Decade

In line with the natural look back at the decade past, several papers have published a look at trends for the coming decade.  According to the Brookings Institute, not only is school testing here to stay, but also it will get more complex. Here are the three biggest trends forcasted (USA Today):

1. Techology that allows more online learning, particularly for high school students.

2. Less "tyranny of localism."  "Technology will reduce the power of locally elected, highly political school boards. School boards could shift from regulating and controlling input to monitoring outcome."  (Hmm. Can you spell Bill 177?)

3. More sophisticated standardized tests. According to the Brookings Institute, " Accountability isn't going to stop. Testing is going to get more sophisitcated."  "States are developing systems that can potentially trace a student's knowledge--or lack thereof--back to a single teacher.  Parents might someday be able to compare teachers head-to-head, much as they now compare schools."

What real world “difficult conversations” tell us about student evaluation

Every year, employers everywhere pay more than they need to in order to dismiss incompetent employees. Why is that? Nine times out of ten it’s because the employee’s manager did not provide the underperforming employee with formal notice of the problem. Why doesn’t the manager provide the notice? Because that would involve having a “difficult conversation” and people, whether they are managers or employees parents or teachers, avoid these types of conversations like the plague. When a student is struggling at school, a parent-teacher interview becomes a “difficult conversation”.

The easiest thing for the teacher (and the parent) to do is to pretend that there isn’t a problem and focus on some of the student’s positive behaviours and achievements. As a result, problems fester and remediation becomes increasingly difficult. Many parents who turn to SQE for help are the victims of avoided “difficult conversations” with their children's teachers.

If a teacher is strong enough, he or she can attempt to address the student’s misbehaviour or underachievement in an interview with the parents, but how can they do that credibly if they don’t have data to back up what they’re saying? Just how often is Stacey running around the room screaming like a banshee? Just how weak are Syed’s arithmetic skills? Educators who promote narrative report cards and parent-teacher interviews over report cards with letter or percentage grades are assuming that teachers are going to be able to handle these “difficult conversations” far better than most senior managers in both the private and public sectors. And that’s just not a realistic expectation. (If you’re interested in learning more about this fascinating topic that applies to both our work and personal lives, I recommend that you read the book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Patton et al.)