SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Sunday at the Movies (Libertarian Point of View)

The interviewee proposes to get government out of education and leave it entirely to the free market. 

How long would a radio station last if it insisted on reporting the news in an inscrutable way?

In my opinion, this CBC radio interview on giving students grades only touches on the main point, namely that grades and report cards would be unnecessary if kids didn't have parents. I mean, the sole purpose of reporting is to give feedback to parents. So it seems pretty obvious to me that schools might as well find out precisely what kind of reporting parents want and then give it to them. Or am I missing something?

IQ is more than just a pretty brain

Here's a short true-or-false quiz for you. 

• IQ tests are an accurate and largely sufficient measure of intelligence
• IQ is primarily genetically controlled
• IQ is little influenced by environmental factors
• Racial differences in IQ are likely to at least in part, and perhaps in large part, to genetics
• Educational and other interventions have little impact on IQ
• Educational and other interventions have little impact on racial differences in IQ.

Go to the top of the class if you answered false to every question.

For more information and to find out why these commonly-held beliefs are mistaken, read this article from the latest American Educator. It includes lots of fascinating stuff, including ways you can increase young kids' IQ's - for example, breastfeed, babies, talk and listen to them, encourage them, expose them to new experiences, and read to them.

The verdict on school choice is now in

From a new report from the Friedman Foundation: "As school choice continues to blossom nationwide, a new report finds that of all the “gold standard” research on children who utilize vouchers, 11 of 12 studies conclude all or some of those students achieve better educational outcomes. No study found choice participants were worse off than those remaining in traditional public schools.
The report also found that of the 23 empirical studies on how school choice impacts public education, 22 show the resulting competition improved public school performance. No research concluded school choice harms public schools."

“A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice” — released by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice — also reviewed empirical research related to school choice’s impact on taxpayers, diversity, and civic values. That research consistently supports school choice in those areas."

"There are 41 school choice programs in 22 states and Washington, D.C. Among those programs, the most prominent are vouchers and tax-credit scholarships, which are serving more than 250,000 students. School choice has exhibited continual growth since 1990, when the nation’s first modern voucher program launched in Milwaukee. In the past two years, five new states have adopted private school choice while other states, most notably Indiana and Louisiana, expanded existing programs."

Mission not possible at this time

I've finished reading Mission Possible: How the secrets of the Success Academies can work in any school, and I was very impressed. The Success Academies in Harlem have the goal of educating slum kids to a very high standard, and by all accounts they are doing this. The schools focus on their students' higher-order thinking skillls, emphasizing the meaning of what they read, aiming for deep understanding, encouraging meaningful debate, exchange of ideas, and so forth. And it all sounds wonderful. The schools are doing so much right: enriching their students' vocabularies and general knowledge; offering a rich and attractive environment; providing dedicated and caring teachers; focusing on hard work, making kids fall in love with books, and so forth. 

But as I read along, I kept thinking - how are they teaching their kids to read in the first place? The only reference to beginning reading instruction came on page 104 when it was mentioned that the Success Academies used to use the phonics-based Success for All program, but dropped it because it was too skills-based and not about the meaning of books. The schools "still use its Reading Roots books to teach phonics in kindergarten and first grade". 

Fortunately, the book comes with a DVD containing 23 clips of actual classroom footage. The clips show caring hard-working teachers, attractive classrooms, engaged students, high-level discussion - and kids who are, on average, very poor readers! I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. 

Clearly, the Success Academies have no idea what properly-taught grade 1 children are capable of in terms of reading fluency. What a crying shame!

Seeing relationships

There's a very interesting article about spatial thinking in the latest American Educator, the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers.  Essentially, it says that good spatial thinking is an important component of STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). The good news is, contrary to popular belief, spatial ability can be improved, and the article provides a link to another article that explains how this can be accomplished. Here's an excerpt (p. 31).

"Science, mathematics, and social studies are deeply spatial subjects. Currently, students who come to class with higher levels of spatial ability take more easily to learning in these areas, but this fact does not mean we cannot teach in a way that maximizes learning for all. Spatial ability can be improved both inside and outside the classroom, as well as by instruction in other subject areas, notably the visual arts. Spatializing the curriculum by including and explicitly teaching the spatial symbol systems that lie at the heart of science, mathematics, and social studies is an achieveable and worthwhile goal."

If accuracy doesn’t matter, what does?

There's an article in today's Globe and Mail about errors in Ontario high school civics textbooks. The trouble with this is that most students will end up worse off after taking the course, because it's usually better to know nothing about a topic than to hold an incorrect belief. Error-ridden textbooks mean Ontario taxpayers end up shelling out enormous amounts of money that are worse than wasted.

And it's not as if textbook errors are confined to civics. Eight years ago, we published a study of provincial science curricula. Factual errors were detected in most provincial science curricula and, even though we wrote to each province listing the errors, not one acknowledgement was ever received nor were the errors corrected. In addition, the curricula contained numerous dogmatic statements unsupported by evidence: for example, that Canada's native peoples were good stewards of the environment and that different cultures have equally-valid perspectives. 

Most textbooks are written by educators, as opposed to academics. It would be better if more textbooks could be written by academics with a deep knowledge of the field - or, if this is not possible for some reason, at least get publishers to run draft versions by academics before going to press.

Sunday at the Movies (Bill Gates on Good Teachers)

For the first eight minutes, Bill Gates talks about malaria, and the last 12 minutes the importance of creating and rewarding good teachers.

Parent Trigger Laws - Sometimes it can be difficult to pull the trigger

At present, seven US states have "parent trigger" laws that theoretically make it possible for parents to take control of failing schools. Of course, the schools don't want to be taken control of, and here is an article about the dirty tricks they have used in an effort to avoid being taken over. It looks as if other parents are getting smarter though, learning how to make the parent trigger laws work for them, and so this story is essentially an optimistic one.

Of course, in Ontario we couldn't have parent trigger laws because we have no way of identifying failing schools. 

Same amount of money, very different outcome

Be sure to watch the short video at this Jay Greene posting. It shows what's possible, in Arizona at least, when a child's state funding is made available to his parents.