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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Engineering Learning
For some reason, engineers tend to be education reformers. At present, for example, SQE has three engineers on its board of directors. This article may shed some light on the phenomenon.
The article describes the Carpe Diem Collegiate High School and Middle School in Yuma, Arizona - a charter school that was created by an engineer and is located in a former call centre with "more than 200 personal cubicles, each containing a computer, fill[ing] the single room that makes up one floor of the school.... Students split their time between individualized online instruction on their personal computers and teacher-led collaborative workshops....The school has five teachers and four teacher aides for 226 students with each teacher teaching all the students in their subject, regardless of grade level."
As well as being cost-effective, "Carpe Diem has delivered some promising results, while serving a student population that was 46 percent low-income in 2011–12: Carpe Diem ranks among Arizona’s 10 highest-performing charter schools, outperforming Arizona’s statewide four-year graduation rate five of the six years between 2007 and 2012 (with a 96 percent graduation rate in 2011), and regularly exceeding the Arizona average at every grade level on the statewide assessment."
Obviously, this is only one model, and it will be great for some students and teachers but terrible for others. However, the existence of Carpe Diem opens one's eyes to the fact that the traditional big box schoolhouse, with one teacher in a class with 25 students, is not the only possibility.
At present, the education bureaucracy has the system in a straitjacket, including making it almost impossible for engineers to make a meaningful contribution. The current arrangement benefits the bureaucracy but it doesn't benefit anyone else.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Cautionary Tale
Since time immemorial, Alberta students were head and shoulders above other Canadian students and among the best in the world. But over the past ten years or so, Alberta has started to slip. Each time an international comparison of student achievement like the TIMSS and the PISA is released, Alberta's absolute scores are significantly lower and, because other jurisdictions are rocketing ahead, Alberta is dropping like a stone in terms of the rankings. This is bad news for Alberta, but it gets worse.
This article tells how the Alberta Department of Education is hard at work dumbing down the provincial curriculum and bringing in enforced child-centred teaching methods. Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the province is dropping its grade 3, 6, and 9 testing. And don't forget that Alberta is the home of the zero hero.
All this is of course bad news for Alberta, but it begs the larger question of why some people find child-centred learning so appealing. It demonstrably doesn't work, it's bad for kids, it hurts the economy, it's unpopular with voters. Why is it still undead?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
School choice is for presidents, but not for peons apparently
Shortly after he was elected, President Obama, who you would think would be the champion of poor black children, tried to shut down the DC school voucher program for poor kids (while sending his own daughters to a very exclusive and expensive private school). In this clip, President Obama asserts that school vouchers have a limited or no impact on student outcomes, and he is followed by three blue-chip professors who demonstrate that school vouchers have a significant impact on student outcomes. One wonders where President Obama got his information - obviously not from his own department of education! One further wonders why the President opted to pay approximately $80,000 a year for a private school for his own children if he thought they would be just as well off in a public school.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Doing it by the numbers
Today is math day, at least at School for Thought. So a few random math items.
Please sign this petition for changes to the Ontario math curriculum.
Here's a cute site for math practice.
Click here for a discusson of the importance of teaching basic math algorithms.
Don't forget about SQE's own free math materials.
And, for those who just can't get enough about math, click here.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Knowing Things Makes You Smart - Not Vice Versa
The Core Knowledge Foundation sells all kinds of materials that parents can use to enrich their own children's education - for example, What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know which sells for $20 and which contain "information and activities on stories and poems, common sayings, history and geography, math, science, visual arts, and music, as well as suggestions for related readings and resources. The kindergarten and first grade books also include sections on how children learn to read". Click here for an interesting read about the philosophy behind the Core Knowledge Foundation.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Derivation of X)
Here's a cute short clip that explains why we use X to represent the unknown.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
He would have been a great teacher if only he had known what he was talking about…..
Unlike Ontario, Denver, Colorado is experiening rapid enrollment growth and needs to hire hundreds of new teachers every year. As a result, Denver Public Schools is recruiting some of its teachers through a couple of untraditional teacher training programs - programs that licence professionals who are interested in mid-career changes but are unwilling to waste a year or two at a faculty of education. As is common with other similar teacher preparation programs, the untraditionally-prepared teachers are outperforming novice teachers who received traditional teacher training. more
Of course, the teachers' union is dismissive of the new programs (the unions prefer a small pool of teacher candidates because scarcity drives up value). Baturally, the teachers' unions don't reveal the true reason behind their stance, but instead posit that five weeks is not long enough to give prospective teachers the necessary pedagogical skills.
There is quite a stark divide on the question of whether it is more important for teachers to have good teaching skills or whether priority should be given to subject knowledge. The fact that most status quo educators emphasize the importantce of teaching ability over subject knowledge is reflected in the high percentage of teachers who are assigned to teach out of field, the frequent switching of teachers among different grades and subjects, and the fact that teachers are never at any point tested for subject knowledge. Many teachers ruefully admit that they are sometimes only a chapter ahead of the students in their classes.
Most education reformers, however, assign greater importance to subject knowledge, reasoning that it's very important for teachers to have a strong grasp of their subject. Among other things, effective teachers must be able to provide enriched information to their more advanced students, be aware of common misconceptions and know how best to dispell the misconceptions, forge links and connections among various concepts and themes, have deep subject knowledge in order to organize the material optimally, and be able to be flexible about different ways of looking at topics.
Obviously, both subject knowledge and pedagogical skill are necessary, but if I had to choose one or the other, I would choose the former. What do you think? H/T TA
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Public servants are having their cake and eating it too
Ontario's Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity has released a paper on public sector compensation, finding that public sector workers across Canada tend to be considerably better compensated than private sector workers. On average, their wages are higher and more of them receive better pensions. Plus, of course, they have much better job security.
In Ontario, the difference between public and private compensation for comparable work amounts to more than one billion dollars a year. The wage premium in Ontario is the largest compared to the other three big provinces, and it has increased the fastest over the past 10 years.
When it comes to teachers, the differential between public and private is among the largest of any category, As the report points out, "the higher than average levels of public wages in Ontario may be detrimental to the province's economy, since the government could be taking the most qualified individuals out of the private labour market". This has obvious repercussions for private schools when they try to recruit good teachers. And this is not the only area where governmental activity makes life hard for private schools - since the government schools offer a free service while the private schools must charge tuition.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Einstein knew his number facts
Click here and here for a primo illustration of what a difference spin makes.
In the first link, Moira MacDonald reports on a new EQAO study showing that kids who fail the province's grade 3 math test are overwhelmingly likely to fail the grade 6 math test - suggesting that the early years are critically important and, given the large and growing number of children who are failing math, that primary math instruction needs to be better.
In the second link, the Minister of Education is quoted as being "confident that our balanced approach ot math will ensure Ontario students are innovators, problem solvers and critical thinkers who will thrive in the new economy". The Minister is standing by the province's math curriculm.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Plan to Reduce High School Cafeteria Patronage
Most people know you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. And when it comes to teenagers, you can't even lead them to water, much less make them drink. Yet the Ontario government is persisting in trying to do exactly this, investing $2.2 million of taxpayers' money in healthy eating in secondary schools grants. more This column by Peter Shawn Taylor tells why it's not going to work.