RSS Feed
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Not Learning about Learning Styles
This Toronto Star article by an assistant curriculum leader at the Toronto District School Board is interesting for two reasons.
First it debunks the harmful learning styles fad that is all the rage in schools and links to a column by Howard Gardner, the "father" of the learning styles theory. Dr. Gardner's advice to teachers is "Drop the term 'styles'. It will confuse others and it won't help either you or your students."
The second point of interest is the comments, perhaps half of which disagree with the Toronto Star article (and lots of the disagreeing comments have little hearts beside them, indicating that others agree with their disagreeing). Clearly, there is still strong support among educators for the learning styles theory. H/T DW
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
It doesn’t have to be this way
Here's a story from Cincinnati about a parent who camped out for 13 days in order to get a place for his child at a magnet (free specialized public) school because there was so much demand for the school.
In the private sector, this would be a strong signal for a company to find a way to create more places at this school - by adding an addition or opening a second campus or making more efficient use of existing space or finding another option. Of course, this doesn't happen in the public sector.
Centrally-planned economies like the former Soviet Union handled excess demand by rationing and line-ups, while in a free-market economy, ways are quickly found to handle excess demand. In fact, in a free-market economy, excess demand is welcomed - even striven for.
Not so in Cincinnati's centrally-planned school system.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Blended Learning)
This video makes a persuasive case for blended learning. The video raises lots of questions in my mind about things like costliness, percentage of kids who would benefit, percentage of teachers who would be good at it, student-teacher ratio, suitability for primary grades, and more.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A tale of two cities
This article in today's Globe and Mail discusses the fact that the students in most schools in Toronto low-income neighbourhoods do poorly on the provincial tests and makes the point that people are increasingly living in neighbourhoods with others like themselves. As a result, forcing people to send their children to their neighbourhood school means that the children do not get to rub shoulders with children from other walks of life - thus removing the social-equalization justification for public education.
The article also covers some interesting ground, including references to Jeb Bush's speech and what school choice and accountability measures are accomplishing in Florida.
Quoting from long-time TDSB trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher: "People like me like to think that we can [close the achievement gap]. In our saner moments we know that we probably won't."
Education Minister Liz Sandals is quoted as thinking that the introduction of school choice might actually exacerbate educational inequality (go figure), and so she believes that the solution lies in universal programs such as full-day kindergarten. Ms Sandals apparently didn't mention the government-sponsored recently-published studies of its full-day kindergarten program that suggested the program was essentially making no difference whatsoever. H/T RT
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Ending Religious Discrimination and Free online French homework help
The topic of religious discrimination in Ontario having generated primarily a war between two frequent commenters, I have decided to move on. But not before giving my own point of view.... which is that the best way to fix Ontario's discriminatory policies is to have the province agree to fund any lawful school that can attract a minimum number of students, say 25 - whether it be a religious school, a hockey school, a year-round school, a Montessori school, a virtual school, whatever. As long as a school obeys the law, meets minimum academic standards, and keeps parents coming back, what difference does it make whether the delivery mechanism is a public board or a private board or even an entrepreneur? What matters is whether kids are safe and learning, for heaven's sake.
Anyway, I now draw your attention to a new free online French homework help. Voilà Learning provides other services as well. Check it out. H/T DW
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Grasping the Nettle of Religion
Today, I kick off a week-long discussion topic.
In 1999, the UN Human Rights Committee condemned Ontario for funding Catholic religious schools while denying funding to schools of other religious denominations. In 2005, in an unusual move, the Human Rights Committee condemned Ontario again. By any measure, Ontario's policy of discriminating in favour of the province's Catholic families is grossly unfair. I think everyone can agree on that.
So there are two possible solutions: Ontario can either stop funding Catholic schools (which, just a point of interest, do much better than the secular publicly-funded schools on the provincial tests) or else start funding schools for families of all faiths, including Muslim families.
Do you favour one of these solutions and, if so, which one and why? Or, perhaps you favour the continuation of the present discriminatory situation and, if so, why?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Dysfunctional Board)
Here is a hilarious video of a board meeting that actually took place in Carpentersville, IL. Admittedly, this not a group of school trustees, not this time, but I dare say many school boards are not too far off this way of operating.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
United We Fall?
The fate of the first union-run school in the US is hanging in the balance, due to low student achievement, according to this article. Here's the last paragraph.
"For the union, ensuring that its charter school survives is a high-stakes endeavor. Former UFT President Randi Weingarten opened the school in 2005 to pierce the argument that charter schools succeed because union contracts hold other schools back. But seven years into its existence, the nation’s first union-run school was one of the lowest-performing schools in the city, and its position did not improve when the state released its first round of scores from tests aligned to new Common Core standards this summer."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The Nation’s Report Card
The US 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress results have just been released. This is a sort of national report card that is considered the gold standard for measuring student learning gains.
The report is voluminous and the results can be sliced and diced in all kinds of ways, but this link leads to a pictograph that lets you see which states are making gains. There are four measuring points - grade 4 math, grade 8 math, grade 4 reading, and grade 8 reading, plus you can compare to various previous NAEP assessments, look at raw scores or percentages,drill down by things like ethnicity or parental education or type of school, read sample questions, and so forth. I set the comparison year to 1992, the first year, to see which states are making the greatest gains (there's a very easy-to-understand graph at the bottom of each page). So on grade 4 and grade 8 math, the biggest gainer is the District of Columbia. On grade 4 and grade 8 reading, it's Maryland. I invite you to play with the graphs - it's sort of fun in a wasting-time kind of way.
The biggest reading gainers, according to Matthew Ladner, are the students in Florida charter schools.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves
I've just started reading Intelligence and How to Get It by Richard E. Nisbett, and I'm really excited to learn more. Here's an excerpt from the introduction. More to come later as I read on.
"The basic message of this book is a simple one about the power of the environment to influence intelligence potential, and more specifically about the role that schools and cultures play in affecting the environment. The accumulated evidence of research, much of it quite recent, provides good reason for being far more optimistic about the possibilities of actually improving the intelligence of individuals, groups, and society as a whole, than was thought by most experts even a few years ago.
"On the other hand, just as there are laypeople and experts who are wrongly convinced that intelligence is mostly a matter of genes, there are laypeople and experts who have mistaken and sometimes overly optimistic ideas about the sorts of things that can improve intelligence and academic performance. One of the goals of this book is to present evidence on which intenventions are most effective.
"The chapters that follow emphasize that societal and cultural differences among groups have a big impact on intelligence and academic achievement. People of lower socioeconomic status have lower average IQs and achievement for reasons that are partly environmental - and some of the environmental factors are cultural in nature. Blacks and other ethnic groups have lower IQs and achievement for reasons that are entirely environmental. Most of the environmental factors relate to historical disadvantages but some have to do with social practices that can be changed.
"Culture can also confer advantages for the development of intelligence and academic achievement. Some cultural groups have distinct intellectual advantages, on average, over the mainstream white population. These include people with East Asian origins and Ashkenazi Jews. Later, I discuss what these advantages are due to and whether some of them might be adopted by others who would like to increase their own intelligence and acaddemic achievement.
"Finally, I present ways of improving intelligence as suggested by new scientific findings."