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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The amazing education gap disappearing trick
Neil Reynolds has a very different take on the PISA results in today's Globe and Mail. Readers will recall that it was widely reported that Canada did much better than the U.S. Malkin posted on this back in December. Reynolds looks at demographic differences between the U.S. and Canada to explain the disparities, which according to him, are not that big. Before Canada pats itself on the back, Reynolds analysis is sobering.
The "education gap" is a myth if you take into account racial and/or social background says Reynolds. From the comments on the Globe website following his column, this is sure to be controversial. (However readers should note, the Toronto District School Board is keeping track of demographic information, which when the board announced its intention, was also controversial.)
"This gap disappears entirely, however, when the scores are adjusted for demographic differences between the two countries. As it happens, white American students scored 525, one point higher than Canadian students. Asian-American students scored 541. But black American students scored 466, and Hispanic students 466. These scores reflect (among many other intractable causes) a widespread and lamentable indifference to formal education in the two most significant American subcultures. Blacks make up 12 per cent of the U.S. population, Hispanics 15 per cent. Asians make up only 5 per cent.
"Officially, Canada doesn't count people in this way. We count "visible minorities." But our visible minorities are much different than American visible minorities. In this country, blacks account for only 2.5 per cent of the population and aboriginals 4.5 per cent (combined, 7 per cent). Asian Canadians account for 11 per cent. Thus, one high-score demographic more than cancels out one low-score demographic in Canada. New Zealand (PISA score: 521) and Australia (515) are two other mostly white English-speaking countries with essentially identical PISA scores as Canada."
The Washington Post commented further:
The most pessimistic view of the [PISA] study is that, on average, American schools do as good a job as schools in other wealthy nations" - when educating similar students. On this basis, it's probable that most U.S. students are doing slightly better than most Canadian students.
And not even one mention of Finland...
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The devil is making them do it
The latest addition to our lending library is Be That As It May!: Or ten stupid things governments do to mess up '"edyukayshun" by Roberta Maclise McDonald. Written by a retired teacher, the book examines modern educational practices in the light of what was done in the past, usually finding that the past was better. (There are exceptions, for example language immersion and charter schools.) The book is exceptionally interesting, however, because of the light it sheds on teacher powerlessness. Despite deploring many (most?) modern practices, this teacher was unable to do a thing about them. The book will be an eye-opener to those who condemn teachers for going along with progressive policies.
The following is an excerpt from the chapter on "School Time (And Money) Wasters" (pp. 67-68), which includes things like too-frequent fire drills, intercoms, no-textbook policies, overuse of audio-visual materials, assemblies, swim lessons during school time, and the semester system. Here is what she has to say about "the lock-down". After pointing out that a grand total of 22 people have been shot to death in Canadian schools since 1960, she writes as follows.
"Notwithstanding that these are terrible tragedies, it does not seem to follow that thousands of students as well as their educational progress should have ot suffer to try to avert 'even one more death'. Educational authorities seem to forget that these events occurred because of deranged, mentally unstable individuals, people who live among us and will continue to do so. Everyone acknowledges that it is impossible to prevent such events from ever happening. The astronomical costs to the detriment of education do not seem to deter bureaucrats from instituting more costly, time-consuming procedures to try to make the schools safer. Shouldn't the total costs, including the ones related to monetary, psychological, and human rights, be taken into account instead of willy nilly implementing draconian procedures like Lock-Down?
"One of these lock-downs occurred while I was a substitute teacher a couple of years ago. I was very grateful there was a teacher assistant who knew what the procedures were. The children were all herded into a little 'time out' room at the back of the classroom; the doors were locked, the blinds drawn, all the lights were turned off, and it was our job to keep the students from whispering, even coughing, for what seemed like an eternity. We were fortunate that the school in question had been built recently, making accommodation for such a hiding facility, something few classrooms have. Altogether the exercise lasted about 25 minutes, ruined most of the period, and totally changed the learning atmosphere. It turned out to be merely a Lock-Down drill.
"Apparently thjis practice drill has been instituted in most schools, and is currently being mandated to take place several times a year. I can say only 'wow'! Does the minute possibility of danger from this source really justify this huge waste of time? If a killer really were stalking the hallways, how effective would these measures be?"
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the movies (Mossbourne Academy)
Further to our discussions about schools for disadvantaged students, here's a story from England about Mossbourne Academy, a government high school in one of the poorest parts of Britain. In its former incarnation, it was described as "the worst school in Britain". Now 10 of its students have been offered places at Cambridge University! What has changed?
As you can see from the school's web-site, the students are being offered a 21st-century education in an academy-style setting, complete with uniforms, Saturday activities, a strict behaviour code, a focus on learning, and high expectations. One of the school's key principles is: "A strong core ensures that basic skills are embedded at an early stage so that students are able to access the wider curriculum."
The Niagara District School Board would do well to take note.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Cargo Cult Science is alive and well in Niagara
The Niagara Public School Board plans to open a school for low-income students whose parents don't have a college or university education. Read all about it here. As the (appallingly-misspelled) comments show, there are plenty of objections in terms of élitism, segregation, discrimination, and so on. However, no one has picked up on the really bad aspect of the scheme - namely, that it is unlikely to work.
According to the article at least, the new school will provide all the trappings of success - tutoring, mentoring, parent involvement, nutrition programs, a stable environment, after-school activities, etc. But there is no talk of a switch to the kind of direct, sequential instruction that disadvantaged students need if they are to succeed. Project Follow-Through, a 20-year study involving more than 350,000 children, definitively proved that the best programs for disadvantaged students - in terms of both academic success and positive self-concept, are programs that use direct, sequential instruction and emphasize basic skills. These findings have never been challenged.
Yet the Niagara Board is silent on the vital question of instructional methodology. This is Cargo Cult Science in action. Here's Richard Feynmann on the subject (excerpted from a Caltech commencement address).
"In the South Seas, there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
"Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school - we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty - a kind of leaning over backwards."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Pompous, patronizing, piffle-filled, and pretentious….
So, to get your juices flowing, I reprint in full a letter to the editor that appeared in The Globe and Mail today. The author, Heather Lotherington, is a member of the education faculty at York University. The letter is an excellent example of educationthink, being pompous, patronizing, piffle-filled, and pretentious. And, it goes without saying, wrong. It's hard to believe some people actually believe this stuff!
"We educate children for the future they will inherit. Standardized tests of language and literacy test the literacies of a half century ago, when grammatical knowledge and mastery of spelling and punctuation marked the educated person.
"Contemporary literacies profoundly invalidate such tests. Literacy now requires mastery over digital tools for collaborative, dynamic, multimodal communication. Continuing to test children's formal spelling using handwriting is a speck on the team-oriented strategizing and programming abilities they will need to succeed.
"Standardized tests assume that each student has learned exactly the same thing. When we can customize education to reach all students and maximize the potential of each, insisting that each student learn the same thing is wasteful of precious human resources.
"Please suggest to the aging politicians who support standardized tests to collaborate electronically with the children of today, who might be able to give them a few pointers on how people communicate in this century. Mind you, they might not all pass."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
AAAHHH-CHOOO!!
The other day Malkin wrote the U.S. is sneezing. Get a hankie! Now that the Republicans have shifted the balance of power in Washington, looks the the doomed D.C. voucher program may be back on track. SFT readers may recall that, when he was first elected, Obama phased out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program, but only after a huge battle that would have seen it cancelled outright. The program provides private school scholarships for low-income children.The video below, "Why President Obama? Why?" was part of that backlash. Virginia Walden Ford, head of D.C. Parents for School Choice is optimistic that the voucher program will be reinstated. Her interview is worthwhile viewing here.
Ford, a Washington, D.C., resident whose youngest son received a scholarship from a neighbor to attend private high school about 15 years ago, said she knows what the program means to parents who want to give their kids an alternative to the public school system. "The future of kids who could have soared -- without an opportunity to go to a school that serves them better, they won't," she said.
On another note, this parent might wish that the fever was spreading to Ohio. Mom Kelly Williams-Bolar was jailed for lying about her residency to get her kids into a better school district. Unbelievable story, but sadly true. A voucher surely would have been a better solution than breaking up a family and jailing a mom who said about her kids,
"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she said. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them."
Like I said, get a hankie.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Not just for Illinoisians
The Illinois Loop is a website chock-full of helpful information for the parents of children who are struggling in school. In addition, the site includes a humour page with some amusing satire, and a personal stories page where several parents tell about their own experiences with public education. Many of these stories are quite interesting and relevant.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The US is sneezing….
Here's Jay Greene being interviewed about the benefits of school choice. One of the benefits of school choice, according to Dr. Greene, is that it works to counter the baleful consequences of centrally-planned education systems. In watching the video, it's important to remember that the US is far more advanced than most Canadian provinces when it comes to school choice. However, you know the old saying - when the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The Roots of Public Education Failure
Things have been a little quiet around here lately, and so I thought I would try to shake things up by writing something controversial. Today, I want to talk about how and why public education is failing so many students, despite the many caring and hard-working educators who work in it. My hypothesis is that it's the fault of the centrally-planned nature of public education.
This long-but-fascinating article explores the theories of a Nobel-prize-winning economist most people have never heard of - F. A. Hayek - who argued that central planners' interventions lead towards totalitarianism. If you don't have time to read the whole article, be sure to at least read "The Pretence of Knowledge", "The Synoptic Delusion", and "The Abstract Order". Here's an excerpt:
"Intellectuals were under a dangerous self-delusion that mastery of our social and economic life lay in their grasp. Deeply-troubled by what he saw, Hayek set out to expose the rational-sounding claims of the salivating planners for what they were, the oldest scam in marketing: bait and switch. Planners promised a world in which the public's needs and desires would be satisfied more efficiently and with less waste and human misery than ever before. The reality, Hayek knew, would be that people's lives would be planned to satisfy the needs and desires of the planners, and that ultimately, if left unchecked, the economic waste and the loss of economic freedom would be devastating."
I suggest that the more education systems are centralized, the more unresponsive, wasteful, and ineffective they become.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Teach Effectively
Teach Effectively is an excellent source of information about, well, teaching effectively. The site has a special focus on information about good instruction for students at risk for school problems.
The latest posting is a case in point, informing readers that, until the end of January, Siegfried Engelmann's stellar remedial reading program, Funnix, is available for free downloading. Funnix normally costs $249.