SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Natalie Munroe, a Pennsylvania teacher has been suspended because she wrote some nasty comments about her students (for example, “rude, disengaged whiners”) on a secret blog. You can read all about it here. The article is mainly on about whether the teacher should be fired or disciplined. But there is an aspect of this case that is not being considered.

This is a teacher who thinks her students are jerks and losers and there they have no chance at success. The teacher thinks it unfair to blame her for her students’ failure, since their learning problems are their fault, not hers.

Strangely, though, this is not the attitude of the teachers at 99 KIPP schools who all teach students with enormous problems - with terrific results. Could it be that Ms Munroe’s students are living down to her expectations?

Sunday at the movies (From the mouths of babes)

This short video succinctly exposes one of the problems with modern approaches to teaching math.

Who’s in charge here?

You can learn more about too-powerful unions by listening to Levin Reads Insider Email From Retired Union Cop. The first seven minutes tell the story - after that it’s just a rant. But the first seven minutes are sobering evidence of the danger of union-dominated governments.

David vs Goliath

In a comment to "The $160,000,000 Gorilla", Mr. Wainscotting points out that we live in a democracy and the unions have a perfect right to lobby on behalf of their members. He further suggests that people with opposing views go out and support the campaigns of political candidates with whom they agree.

Of course, Mr. W is right about the democracy part, but he is not taking into consideration the disproportionate amount of power wielded by the teachers' unions. Here are some of the government and school board policies that give the unions an unfair (IMHO) advantage and render them arguably the most powerful political lobby in Ontario.

1.  In order to teach in Ontario, people must join a teachers' union. This gives the unions a guaranteed flow of revenue and power no matter what they do.

2.  The school boards collect individual teachers' union dues on behalf of the union, thereby saving the union the considerable expense of collecting their monthly dues and keeping records. It also eliminates the possibility of teachers defaulting on their payments.

3.  Teachers continue to be paid by the school board when they leave the classroom to conduct union business. And if teachers take a prolonged leave of absence to work as a union official, the clock keeps running in terms of their retirement benefits and seniority. This saves the union a lot of money and makes it easier to recruit union stewards.

4.  The school boards give the unions privileged access in terms of using their facilities for meetings, mailings, and posting information. There is also typically a time slot at staff meetings for union announcements. 

5.  The provincial government contributes significant amounts of money to the teachers' unions every year for various activities. 

Taking all of these subsidies into account, the annual revenues of the Ontario teachers' unions are realistically equivalent to well over two hundred million dollars. Against this, the amount of money and power individual citizens can wield pales into insignificance. 

Weird Science, financial literacy and other “Stuff”

Since this last recession, the concept of teaching financial literacy has been written about quite a bit.  Maclean's magazine editor Peter Shawn Taylor has an interesting essay in yesterday's Financial Post section of the National Post.  Taylor's thesis: "Before anyone unveils any new courses in basic financial literacy, we should make it a crusade to rid our schools of the financially illiterate and factually incorrect course material currently masquerading as economics and science in our schools today."

School for Thought agrees.

In Trashing the Children Taylor talks talks about a new cartoon documentary, The Story of Stuff, that is making its way into elementary school science classes.   What concerns him is that the cartoon-ementary is a "clever delivery system for a non-stop stream of outrageous leg-pullers and eyebrow-raisers. References are deceptive, misinterpreted or plain wrong. And the message is explicitly intended to make the kids watching feel ashamed of their lives and interests."

Looks like An Inconvenient Truth all over again.  Lots of lies and no counter-argument.  Get kids made feel guilty while we brainwash them about the environment, business, and global economy.

SQE's 2005 examination of cross-Canada K-12 science curricula, Teaching Science in the 21st Century, noted the increasing number of dogmatic statements unsubstantiated by scientific evidence creeping in to provincial curricula.  Teaching Science concluded that encouraging a skeptical, questioning attitude and teaching how to distinguish "junk" science from the real thing is essential.   If the ultimate goal of education is to provide knowledge and inculcate a questioning mind, how is allowing "stuff" like this going to achieve that? 

Good science says that hypotheses not supported by facts should be abandoned. Time to trash this one.

The $160,000,000 Gorilla

The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) is recommending a surcharge of $75 on its members' 2011 dues (as set out here). The money is to be spent exclusively on political activities during the 2011 provincial election.

OECTA has 34,000 members. At $75 each, this adds up to a cool two and a half million dollars. And don't forget OECTA's meat and potatoes revenue of $950 times 34,000 members = well over $32 million. Furthermore, you can bet the province's other teachers' unions are similarly engaged and, with a collective membership of about 126,000, they have real clout. Estimating: 160,000 union members times $1,000 dues - $160,000,000. Every year. No wonder the OSSTF executives travel the province in a private jet.

In addition to their media activities and contributions to candidate's campaigns, the teachers' unions mobilize thousands of their members to knock on doors, stuff envelopes, answer phones, and all the other grassroots work that helps people get elected.

The bottom line is: the Ontario teachers' unions have the ability to influence which party gets elected - and then what the government does once elected. Naturally, the teachers' unions press for measures that benefit their members - even when those measures (like protection for bad teachers or reduced instructional time) are bad for kids. 

Should the teachers' unions be this powerful?

Just obeying orders

I'm going to stick my neck out somewhat today. I have been giving some thought to TDSBNW's impassioned defence of classroom teachers (in the comments to "Reading the tea leaves"), saying that I was disengenuous to criticize a teacher for using foolish methods since she was following strategies mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Education and would be breaking the law to do otherwise. Well, of course, this is all true and I don't dispute any of it. And yet and yet........

Why is TDSBNW one of the very few teachers willing to say it out out loud that the mandated methods are ridiculous? Why are most teachers appearing to be fine with them - in some cases even embracing them whole-heartedly? Why aren't more teachers grumbling about being forced to use methods that don't work? Why aren't more teachers sneaking in systematic phonics?

I am of course aware that the Ministry, faculties of education, and school boards do their level best to keep teachers in the dark about good reading practices. I know that teachers are not allowed to use decodable readers. I realize that peer pressure and shaming techniques are used to tremendous effect in schools. I have no doubt that there are many excellent reasons why the teacher worms are not turning.

Nevertheless, it still comes as a surprise to me that so many teachers are continuing to teach children using methods that are demonstrably failing something like half of the children in their classes - especially given how critically important the ability to read is to each child's future. Would these same teachers passively acquiesce if they were being forced to beat their students? Would a dentist comply with orders to treat children's dental cavities without freezing? Would an engineer meekly submit to directives to design unsafe strollers?

I'm just asking......

Reading the tea leaves

Dear Aunt Malkin,

My son is struggling with reading in school. Yesterday, his teacher sent home a list of strategies for me to use in helping him at home. They are (reproduced exactly as in the original source):

• Word match by finger pointing
• Independently go back to re-read at the error. [Don't be too quick to jump in and give the child the word.]
• "Reading the pictures". Take a few seconds to look at the picture before attempting to read the words. Good readers do this.
• Pointing to the beginning sound. [cat] "No," said the cat. If something tricks you, go back and think about the story. What makes sense? Re-read the sentence. Say the beginning sound - and the word will "pop" into your head.
• Enjoy the process!

What do you think?

Joanne, Toronto

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Dear Joanne,

These strategies violate the two most important principles of good reading.

1.  Good readers look at every single letter in every single word as their eyes move smoothly from left to right across the page. Any strategy that promotes a departure from this smooth progression is harmful to the development of fluent reading. Teachers should not be encouraging beginning readers to look at the pictures or go backwards in the sentence.

2.  Good readers do not guess at words. Every time they encounter an unknown word, good readers slow down and sound it out (after this process has been repeated enough times, the word becomes immediately recognizable and attains the status sight word). Teachers should not be encouraging beginning readers to guess words on the basis of their initial sound or in the context of the story.

I am not surprised to learn that your son is struggling with reading in school. If you leave him with this teacher, he is at risk of developing a learning disability or worse. Get him out of there!

Regards, Aunt Malkin

Sunday at the Movies (Report Cards)

Click here for a light-hearted reminder that you shouldn't put too much faith in your kids' report cards.

Does your seatwork/homework practice the target skill?

The latest addition to our lending library is Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. Although this book is designed primarily for classroom teachers, in that it contains very detailed descriptions of how to implement the most powerful explicit instruction, it also lays out the basic principles of effective instruction - along with their basis in the research. I had a really hard time choosing an excerpt from the book, because it contains so much great material, but I finally decided to take a bit from the chapter "Providing Appropriate Independent Practice" (pp. 202 & 210-211). 

"Although some educators decry the use of extended practice of skills as an instructional tool, research on how people become experts or elite performers indicates that even the most gifted among us reach their pinnacles through practice - and lots of it. It appears that world-level expertise in an area (e.g., sports, chess, music, academics) is not due simply to innate capacity or ability, but to a large degree depends on frequent (i.e., every day), deliberate (i.e., to achieve a specific goal) practice over a long period of time (i.e., about 10 years), along with supervision (i.e., feedback on performance) of that practice. We are not suggesting that the typical learner needs to practice academic skills that long and that often; however, this research stresses that in order to achieve proficiency, both practice and feedback on the quality of that practice are necessary. It behooves us to remember the old adage: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice'."

The authors then go on to discuss the best way to provide students with practice - for example, adding related skills to skills that were previously acquired in such a way that all of the skills are practised together and distributing practice over sessions that are of short duration and spaced over time. Here's an excerpt from the section on how to design good homework.

"One of the first considerations in designing or selecting practice activities is to ensure that the task matches the skill you have taught. The skill is what you have taught your students to do (e.g., how to add two-digit multiplication problems, how and when to end a sentence with a question mark, describing what an adjective is, how to add an ending to a root word, carrying out the steps of a paragraph-writing strategy). The task is the way students will practice the skill (e.g. completing a worksheet with multiplication problems to solve, adding necessary punctuation to a series of sentences with no end punctuation, circling words that are adjectives within sentences, writing spelling words with endings when dictated by a partner, writing a descriptive paragraph when given a prompt. It is essential that the task requre students to perform the target skills. For example, if the instructional objective is that students can write specific manuscript letters, the task should require that they actually write the letters; a task that asks students to circle words beginning with a particular letter is not an appropriate match between skill and task.

"Similarly, consider this scenario: A spelling book offers four practice activities for learning a list of spelling words:

• Alphabetize the words.
• Complete a word search of the spelling words.
• Solve a crossword puzzle with the words.
• Study the words, using Read-Cover-Write-Check: Read and spell the word (say the letter names orally); Cover up the word; Write the word from memory; Check the spelling of the word (compare with the original word).

"Although the students' skills at alphabetizing, doing word searches, and solving crossword puzzles may improve as they participate in the first three activities - the fourth activity, direct studying of the spelling words - is the only activity that requires students to spell words from memory. Thus it has the highest probability of increasing students' spelling proficiency in the least amount of time.

"The importance of matching the task to the skill may seem obvious; however, worksheets and other practice activities provided in commercial curricula often don't entail use of the actual target skill. As a result, due diligence is required of teachers."