SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

More Ketchup

Yet another study confirming the effectiveness of home education   H/T CT

Yet another study confirming the effectiveness of KIPP   H/T TB

An Atlantic Monthly article about the importance of teacher collaboration  H/T TB

A study on why Finns have high IQ's but few Nobel prizes   H/T JE

A study on whether e-readers are affecting comprehension   H/T CC

A Toronto Sun report on the pending crisis over Ontario teachers' contracts   H/T DW

More evidence that teachers are underpaid

I reproduce the following Jay Greene post because of its incredible importance. I expect a lot of comments, and I expect our new sheriff will have a tough time with his moderating chores. For myself, I blame Mike Harris.

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I know it’s early August but in some areas of the country they are already heading back to school.  And in Wagoner, Oklahoma we have a report of a special education teacher who was arrested on the first day back “after she showed up at school under the influence of alcohol and without her pants.“

Andy Rotherham dryly observed: “I blame Common Core.“

But hasn’t Oklahoma committed to withdrawing from Common Core?  Maybe he means that he blames the absence of Common Core.  I, as a believer in incentives, blame the relatively low cost of booze and the relatively high cost of pants. Or something like that.

Keeping the faith

Despite a recent court decision to the effect that Ontario Catholic school boards cannot reqire their students to take religious courses, some boards are flouting the ruling. more

I think the Ontario Catholic school boards are making a big mistake, for several reasons.

1.  It's rarely a good idea to break the law, especially when you are in the very dicy situation of having a majority of the public want you gone. 

2.  Catholic school boards, being #2, need to try harder, and alienating parents and students doesn't exactly further this cause.

3.  Religion classes, especially when they're 70 minutes long every day, won't necessarily have the desired effect. There can be too much of a good thing, and so much religious instruction actually runs the risk of turning students off religion - especially when they don't want to be there in the first place. Surely the school boards can find a way to inculcate the desired faith and values in the course of the regular school day - through example and precept and teachable moments. 

4.  The Jesuits said "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man". Trying to inculcate teenagers into the Catholic religion at their advanced age can be tricky - after all, it's well nigh impossible to get them to wipe their shoes at the door.

Money, money, money

When the public is asked whether they think schools should get more money, they always say yes. So I was interested in a section of the newly-published Teachers Versus the Public that dissects this phenomenon on the basis of people's knowledge of current expenditures. Here's an excerpt (pp 59-60).

"In 2007, we asked respondents to estimate the average amount of money spent per child each year in the school district in which they lived. Half of the sample was asked to estimate costs without any help or guidance. The other half, randomly chosen, was reminded that districts' costs include 'teacher and administrator salaries, building construction and maintenance, extracurricular activities, transportation, etc.,' thereby encouraging respondents to think expansively when making their estimates. At the time that the questions were posed, the only reliable, publicly available information on per-student expenditure in each school district was for the school year ending in 2005. For that year, the U.S. Department of Education reported that the average per-pupil expenditure was nearly $20,400 in the districts in which the respondents in our sample resided.

"The American public is hopelessly uninformed about school districts' fiscal realities. When respondents are left without any guidance, the average estimate is just over $4,200 per student, or roughly 60 percent below actual spending levels in their district. Reminding people of the range of expenses that school districts face does improve their assessments, but not by much. For members of the group told about the range of costs that need to be covered, the estimate increases to just $5,300, still almost 50 percent below actual per-pupil spending levels in their district....

"To see whether public opinion concerned increased expenditures changes when respondents are informed of actual levels of spending in their local district, we divide the sample into two parts. Half of the sample is left uninformed of the true level of recent expenditures in their district, while the other half is given the amount reported by the U.S. Department of Education for the most recent year that information was available....

"The impact of information on the public's preferences for more spending is quite dramatic. Combining responses across these years, support for increased expenditures in local districts drops 18 percentage points, to just 38 percent, among respondents who are told how much is currently being spent."

You can see the Ontario funding figures here. The projections for the coming year for the whole province total more than $22.3 billion, including capital expenditures (page 7). Given that the projected enrollment is 1,971,061, the per-pupil expenditure is estimated to be more than $12,155. Given a typical class size of 25, that's more than $300,000 - which you would think would be enough to pay for a teacher, overhead, transportation, textbooks, etc, with a bit left over.

Because everyone is piling on the Toronto District School Board at the moment, just for fun I looked at its numbers. It is projected to spend more than $3 billion next year on 246,000 students = $12,195 per student. You would think it would be enough to be going on with.

Let me count the ways

SQE Honorary Patron Rod Clifton has written this article about the poor teaching offered to undergraduates at Canadian universities, suggesting that it is the reason why between 20% and 30% of Canadian first-year students fail to continue to second year, while fewer than 60% graduate within six years.

For my part, I think that poor teaching is A reason, but not THE ONLY reason. Some other possible reasons include:

1.  The notion of going to university has become a status symbol and a means of job-getting (as opposed to the original concept of university being a place for the few people interested in purely theoretical and acedemic pursuits), and many students are now applying to university who are unsuited.

2.  The universities are overwhelmed by their hordes of students.

3.  In many provinces, the universities have no reliable way (like external exit exams) to assess the abilities of their applicants, and they end up admitting many totally-unprepared students.

4.  Many students lack basic reading, writing and math skills and, although they try, the universities are simply not equipped to remediate these students.

I'm sure there are some other reasons that I haven't thought of, and I invite readers to augment my list. 

The university drop-out epidemic is a serious problem, and deserves some scrutiny. For one thing, it wastes a lot of taxpayers' money. For another, it is devastating to the students who drop out: many of them got high marks in high school and confidently expected to ace university. Each drop-out is a personal tragedy.

Sunday at the Movies (Zero Chance of Passage)

This is an interview with the Minnesota lawyer who wrote the legislation for the first charter schools in the United States. I would be very surprised if she doesn't correct at least one misapprehension on your part.

The Character Factory

Here at School for Thought, we often bang on about how schools' job number one should be academic achievement and how a decent education is all disadvantaged students need in order to have a fair chance at life. Now comes this fascinating column in the New York Times about the importance of "character".

Not only is character important in terms of improving students' odds of succeeding, but also it helps them be better learners. Character and academics are intertwined. 

While hectoring and character development programs have failed to work, nevertheless there are several effective avenues to making it easier for disadvantaged students to be able to climb. They are habits, opportunities, exemplars, and standards. 

Many of these avenues are already being used effectively by schools like the KIPP schools and, as Doretta points out, this is what the nuns used to do for their Catholic students. It's also worth noting that the word "self-esteem" appears nowhere in the article. H/T TB

A Civil Discourse

GUEST BLOG BY TOM BEREND, SQE DIRECTOR AND NEWER SHERIFF IN TOWN

We welcome your opinions, and we love getting comments on this blog. Our contributors tend to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, engaged, and passionate about education. But there's something about comments on the Internet that brings out the worst in people.

Education is a vital part of our professional and personal lives. Many issues we raise on this blog are hotly contested, and even the most placid readers may take strong positions on our posts and with other readers' comments. But that makes it even more important that we present our arguments in a positive and thoughtful way. 

I've asked Malkin if I can take over moderating the blog for the next two weeks, and try to raise the level of conversation. My rules are very simple.

1. Be polite and respectful.  
2. Stay on topic. 
3. State your position clearly and write succinctly. 
4. Provide support for your claims. 
5. Don't hog the microphone.  
6. Strong opinions are OK, but outrage is not. 
7. Don't post just to upset others.

If I reject your post, I will explain why in an email back to you. Feel free to contact me at [email protected]. 
 

Everybody complains about the parents but nobody does anything about it

As with the weather, there are many educator complaints about parents, but nobody does anything about it. Until now, that is. Click here for an article about a DC charter school that is educating parents along with their children. What a great idea!  H/T TB

A camel is a horse designed by a committee. So what is a school board?

In this Toronto Star op ed piece, Charles Pascal lambastes the Toronto District School Board, calling for a total clean-out. Interestingly, Mr. Pascal mentions in passing that there are lots of effective school boards in Ontario. I didn't know that. As we have readers from all over the province, I invite you to provide a comment about your local school boards  - effective or non-effective, functional or dysfunctional. In fact, it would be wonderful to hear from readers in other provinces as well about their school boards.