Handle on Education

Reducing College Costs

2012-01-27T12:16:00.001-08:00

Start planning early to save on college tuition. Capable,diligent students can take an active part in reducing their class time and tuitioncosts while they’re still in high school. Of course, they have to be willing toput forth a diligent effort, but the results can be quite rewarding, bothacademically and financially.

In a previous article I explained that the CollegeBoard, the same organization responsible for the SAT, also designs andadministers Advanced Placement Exams. Mosthigh schools include AP courses in their curriculum. Students, typically those in grades 11 &12, usually need teacher recommendations to enroll, as these courses parallel introductorycollege classes. The coursework is more acceleratedor detailed than that in honors courses, so students should be fully aware ofthe time commitment before they enter the AP class. However, the outcome can besubstantially more worthwhile. Students who receive college credit have theopportunity to move more quickly into upper level courses when they entercollege. They can graduate from college early or even double major if they haveearned a number of college credits while still in high school.

From a financial standpoint, these AP courses arequite rewarding. The average per credit course at a state university rangesfrom $350-$500. For private colleges anduniversities, the per credit cost is much higher, at least $1500. Each college course is 3 or 4 credits, so thesavings are quite substantial. Thus, a high school student who earns AP creditfor a class can potentially save his parents $1000-$6000!

The College Board offers 34 different courses. Advanced Placement courses must follow acurriculum established by the College Board, because the exams that occur atthe end of the course are national. Thefocus of the courses includes problem solving and strong communication skills,especially in writing. The exams occur in May. They are scored on a 1-5 scale.Many colleges accept a minimum score of 3. Students should check with their guidancecounselors to determine which AP courses the school offers, and which ones mightbenefit them the most. They may be ableto start college with several courses already on their transcripts.

Reality check

2012-01-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

So, your children are bringing home stellar report cards andachieving above goal on state tests. Howcan you tell how they fare on the national level? For many parents, the firstindication of how their children rate on the national level occurs when thestudents take the PSAT’s. Sometimes theresults are quite unexpected.

I regularly encounter parents who contact me because theyare alarmed by their children’s scores on national tests. They ask why their children, who haveconsistently achieved honor roll status in middle and high school, score belowthe 50% when they first encounter a standardized test. These can be entrance exams required byprivate or parochial high schools or SAT’s and ACT’s for college entrance.

These are the facts: Reports cards are subjective. Theyreflect an individual teacher’s experience with a student at a particular pointin time. They may fluctuate greatly from term to term for a particular student.The reporting of a letter or number grade may not provide valuable information.The determination of the requirements for a grade may vary widely. What would constitute an A in one class maybe a B or even a C in another. Andattempting to compare grade requirements among different schools may bevirtually impossible.

State tests are just that. The Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT’s) administered to publicschool students in grades 3 to 8, and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test(CAPT’s) given to tenth grade students, are useful only for purposes of the State Board of Education. Theydetermine a district’s adherence to basic curriculum standards. They aren’tmeant to determine a student’s aptitude or potential.

Many independent schools administer nationally-normed examslike the Iowa’s or ERB’s to assess their students’ progress. Sadly, many, if not most, public school students and their parents aren’taware of their comparative standing on the national level until they’re at theend of their high school career. One wayof avoiding an unpleasant surprise is to take a national test like the SSAT inthe lower grades or a PSAT before junior year. It’s critical for a student to have an earlyindication of where he stands, so he can work towards his potential.

For more information, go to the SSAT website.

Read the Fine Print!

2012-01-03T03:57:00.000-08:00

I’m not talking about a legal document; I’m referring tofood packaging. Anyone who’s reading this is clearly literate. But how well domost people apply reading skills to fundamental activities like groceryshopping? Taking a few moments to read the listed ingredients can lead tobetter, more healthful eating. In fact, the entire family can participate inreading and reap the health rewards.

In this situation, less is better. Usually, a shopper candetermine that the fewer ingredients an item has the better the contents tendto be. In addition, the consumer should beware of products that containunpronounceable ingredients. Finally, she should realize that the suffix –oseusually indicates some type of sugar: Lactose, glucose, fructose, and sucroseall are forms of sugar.

Having become sensitized to the inclusion of the multitudeof additives in processed foods, I recently spent a day walking downsupermarket aisles doing some basic research. I spent some time perusing ingredient labels of a wide variety of items.Considering the ever-increasing expansion of the American waist-line, and theincidence of diabetes in this society, I fully expected to see “sugar” amongthe first of ingredients in products like cereals, cakes, cookies, ice creamand yogurt—and I did. Indeed, I wasalarmed at the profusion of methods used to conceal that fact. Many companieshave eschewed the word “sugar” for more esoteric or chemical designations, like“evaporated cane juice” (How does that differ from granulated sugar?) or “highfructose corn syrup.” Unfortunately,sweeteners of all sorts also appear in foods that we wouldn’t suspect: I foundit in most soy milk and salsa brands and even in pickles! Why?

I do not profess to be a scientist or nutritionist, but I ama reader. If shoppers take a few extramoments at the supermarket to learn what they’re ingesting, they might verywell alter their diets and eat their wayto better health. How's THAT for a new year's resolution?

Punctuating the Season

2011-12-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

It’s the time of year that many English teachers and other lovers of the language bemoan: the arrival of holiday cards that signify just how little their families and acquaintances know about their mother tongue. How could this situation persist? Most people purchase a variety of cards that require no more than their signature to express their heartfelt goodwill for the approaching season. Yet they still manage to mangle the language by including the one punctuation mark that they don’t need—the apostrophe. They unwittingly employ it whenever they sign their names: the Smith’s, the Jones’, the White’s, etcetera, cheerfully (if inadvertently) indicating that they own something—but what? Why do people insist on including the apostrophe, when they don’t need it? Do they think that it’s a shortcut for the plural? In short—how can such a small mark cause such massive misunderstanding?

For the record: apostrophes have several useful purposes. The two most common include showing ownership and indicating the omission of letters. That rule seems clear enough, as in the following sentence: It’s six o’clock, and I’m about to put my family’s dinner on the table. The first three apostrophes indicate letter omission, and the last shows possession. Compare that sentence to the following: It’s seven o’clock, so most of us are washing our families’ dishes. Notice how the plural possessive differs from the singular form—families’ vs. family’s. Admittedly, grammar and punctuation rules often have exceptions, as in: We’re hoping to have the children’s homework assignments completed before my boss’s teleconference. Whew!

Another common abuse of apostrophes appears with the possessive pronoun, particularly the word “its.” Most people who would never dare to write his’s, her’s, their’s, or our’s to indicate ownership readily interchange it’s for its. Why? Here’s a simple rule: Possessive pronouns NEVER use apostrophes. That rule is as unambiguous as one can find in English, yet one of the most abused. The word it’s remains the contraction, (shortened form) of the words it is. Yet look around to find various misuses of these two words: “HOHO’S is having it’s annual sale! Its time for saving’s at HOHO’S department store!” YIKES!

Can you find the errors in the following sentence? Avoid sending cards’ with unnecessary apostrophe’s! During the upcoming card exchange season, please carefully consider those who love the language. Remember: An apostrophe is not merely decorative, placed hither and yon to adorn letters and cards. It does serve a purpose, and that is NOT to form the plurals of words and names. Now the comma, on the other hand . . . Ah, but that’s a tale for another time.
Season's greetings!

Virtual Schooling

2011-11-27T15:04:00.000-08:00

Parents seeking an alternative to public education have often selected homeschooling. Within the past decade, their options have expanded to include online courses. According to a recent article in The Washington Post, Virginia-based K12, Inc. is “leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers.” While the company originally intended to provide a resource network for home-schooled students, it now provides flexible schooling for those who may not fit into the mainstream education system: “high achievers, strugglers, dropouts, teenage parents and victims of bullying among them.”
At least 250,000 students in thirty states currently engage in some form of virtual education. K12 represents a large portion of that number. “K12 would rank among the 30 largest of the nation’s 1,500 districts. The company, which began in two states a decade ago, now teaches about 95,000 students in virtual schools in 29 states and the District of Columbia.” Business is booming, as the company reported a 36% increase in revenue over last year.

According to the K12 website, parents and students can choose from a wide variety of free courses or programs online. “Students take courses online with support from their teacher via phone, online Web meetings, and sometimes even face to face. The parent (or "Learning Coach") keeps the student on track in line with the provided lessons plans. While courses are delivered online, the schools provide plenty of opportunities to connect online and offline with a vibrant school community.” Parental involvement decreases as students progress, but they should expect that their children will spend five to six hours per day on academic work.

However, most American parents and educators still question the value of virtual education. They are uncomfortable with the prospect of isolating children in front of a computer for a large portion of a day. They prefer a “brick and mortar” academic environment in which students interact with teachers and peers. They claim that socialization is a large part of learning. The debate will certainly continue as more opportunities for school choice emerge.

Teaching as a Profession

2011-11-06T12:45:00.001-08:00

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic conducted a survey of teachers, asking about their working conditions. The Wall Street Journal reported the results recently: “The Scholastic project found that teachers are desperate for more support. Three kinds rose to the top: more involvement from parents, more engagement from school leaders and higher quality materials to use in the classroom.”
The study found that although most educators can identify excellent teachers, they cannot actually quantify the qualities that those teachers possess. The Gates Foundation has been working for several years to try to change that. They have been working with “more than 3,000 teachers on a large research project called “Measures of Effective Teaching, or MET. These teachers volunteered to have their classes videotaped and their lessons scored by experts, to have their students evaluate their teaching, to fill out surveys about the support they receive and to be assessed on their content knowledge.” They discovered that “ . . .teachers don't like their no-support/low-expectations working conditions” The study aims to identify the characteristics that embody effective teachers, so that school districts can utilize those standards when hiring.
Both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have expressed willingness to rethink evaluation systems. The Gates are hopeful that once the research has been completed, educators can institute evaluations that will reward effective teachers and assist those in need of improvement. Providing effective evaluation tools and a process to implement improvement may end the “dance of the lemons.” *
*The practice of moving ineffective teachers from one school to another rather than firing them.

Another Reason to Shoot Your Television!

2011-10-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement about the dangers that television poses for children under the age of two. These physicians declare that television may result in sleep disturbances and delayed speech for these young children. An article on Vitals, an internet site associated with MSNBC, cites a disturbing statistic from a 2007 study: “About 90 percent of parents say their kids younger than 2 watch some type of media. By the age of 3, nearly one-third of kids have a TV in their bedrooms.”
The doctors recommend that rather than sitting toddlers in front of quickly flickering images, parents provide playtime for their children. According to the report, even background television may interfere with play activities that benefit children’s learning. In fact, it also inhibits parents’ interactions with their children.
While a few studies indicate that children older than 2 can improve their language and social skills by watching educational programs, the research does not extend those benefits to young children. In order to receive any positive results, children need to have the ability to pay attention and understand television programming. Babies do not!
According to Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, and lead author of the new policy statement, “Studies show that children under 11/2 years old have the same reaction to a TV program regardless of whether it's going forward or backward.” The AAP refers to two studies that indicate that “for kids 2 and under, watching programs such as ‘Sesame Street’ may have a negative impact on language development.”
Who needs further evidence that it’s time to unplug?

Another Cheating Scandal

2011-10-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve addressed cheating in previous articles; however, the recent ruling in Waterbury, Connecticut involving at least a dozen teachers demonstrates the pervasiveness of the problem. It also raises some serious questions about the best way to deal with those involved in unethical behavior. Twelve teachers received no more than the proverbial “slap on the wrist” after their admission of wrong-doing. They either prompted students in grades 3 through 5 to change their wrong answers to the right ones, or they erased the wrong answers and inserted the correct ones. State administrators became suspicious when the Hopeville scores indicated a dramatic improvement from previous years and demonstrated substantial improvement from the other elementary schools in the district.

Loss of twenty days’ pay seems rather lenient. They’ve been “committed” to community service? What organization will be willing to have them as volunteers? Why weren’t these teachers fired? While recent graduates and unemployed teachers struggle to find positions, these individuals are still working. Why was one teacher allowed to retire and retain her benefits rather than leave in disgrace? And how long will it take the Waterbury Board to terminate the principal? Will she go on to another school district? Will she collect a pension? Why aren’t parents demanding that their children be removed from their classes? What is the Waterbury system telling their constituents and the rest of the country? Perhaps some in-service programs on ethics are in order.

These teachers supposed to be role models for their students. Their retention in the school district sends a perilous message to the children: Cheating is bad, but only if one is caught at it!

2011-09-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

The most recent SAT results present troubling news. Last year’s seniors have the dubious distinction of having the lowest verbal scores in forty years. A perfect score for each of the three sections is 800. Each section indicated a drop in performance, with math losing one point to 514, writing declining two points to 489 and reading dropping three points to 497. These statistics should cause English teachers to pause and reflect. Changing the curriculum to include more rigorous reading and writing standards now appears crucial.

Unfortunately, the “literature” assigned in many English classrooms tends toward popular fiction. As I perused the summer reading list in my local library, I became distressed to see the suggestions. While Water for Elephants may pose light diversion, it lacks the gravitas that one would expect for students entering a senior year honors English course. When was the last time that a public school curriculum included The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy or Crime and Punishment? Even a cursory look at British and American novels written in the eighteenth or nineteenth century indicates much more complicated sentence structure, broader themes, and more opportunity for philosophical discussion. In order to improve the ability to infer and assess an author’s tone and attitude, and style, students need exposure to great works.

Furthermore, high school English teachers should teach the English language. Students learn to manipulate language by understanding the mechanics and grammar. How can they improve if they receive an essay that a teacher scores holistically? They need guidelines and suggestions that include methods on how to correct sentence errors, provide transitions, and optimize their personal style? Using examples from the students’ reading as well as their own writing (anonymously, or course) can prove not only instructive, but also entertaining. A return to the rhetoric classes of the past would necessitate that the high school teachers be well versed in the grammar. Administrators organizing in-service programs for continuing education credits must prioritize course work; proficiency in our mother tongue must be at the top of the list.

Unplugged!

2011-09-02T13:27:00.001-07:00

Those of us in the Northeast are just beginning the return to normalcy after the effects of tropical storm Irene. Families are cleaning up the litter left by the storm. They’re returning to the supermarkets to re-stock their refrigerators, catching up on laundry, and taking hot showers for the first time in a week. For many the restoration of electricity signals a return to electronic communication. But wait! Perhaps this last week has also provided an opportunity.

I have often expressed my concern about the use of a variety of electronic devices among children, adolescents and teens. I find the practice not only negative, but mind-numbing. In fact, I usually assign students essays about their reaction to a voluntary “Television turn-off Week.” I’ve actually expanded this topic to include all forms of electronics. Most students are horrified by the mere thought of unplugging from text and/or instant messaging, calling, and all forms of social networking. Well, we just experienced an involuntary television turn off week. My office remained open despite the lack of electricity. Parents were grateful to have their children unhooked from their electronic games and cell phones, and they were eager to have them engage in some productive endeavor.

One of my high school students, who admits to being obsessed with a variety of video and computer games, confided that he was so bored that he actually read two books. Another asked, in all sincerity, “What can I do at night without television?” He professed an interest in stars, so I suggested that he buy an astronomy book and take advantage of the lack of light pollution to do some star-gazing. Several students explained that they had resorted to entertaining themselves and playing with their siblings. I witnessed families going for walks at dusk, gathering for neighborhood cookouts, and standing outside conversing with their neighbors. They were engaged in real social activities.

This brief return to the nineteenth century provided us with an opportunity to realize how disengaged some people have become. Don’t be so quick to turn on the television or computer to live vicariously through some fantasy game or unreal “reality show.” Put down that game controller and remote! Be active and self-reliant. Live life and learn.

Brain power at Handle Associates

2011-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

No electricity? No computers? No calculators? NO PROBLEM!
At Handle Associates, WE GENERATE BRAIN POWER!

That sign appears on the lawn in front of Handle Associates' Guilford office four days after tropical storm Irene left thousands along the Shoreline in the dark.

Handle Associates isn't allowing Irene to affect learning. Regular office hours continue this week for students enrolled in all programs: Test Preparation, Essential Skills: Math & Reading, Writing, and Study Skills. In fact, students in the Test Prep program traveled from Durham and North Haven on Tuesday, ignoring the power outage while preparing for a variety of exams ranging from SAT's, ACT's,to COOP and HSPT.

We're here to assist anyone with a motivation to learn. We welcome students of all ages and abilities. Schools may have delayed opening but Handle Associates remains open. The message machine at the office may not be working, but the students and teachers at Handle Associates certainly are.

Know the Competition

2011-08-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

How much is too much work for American children? In an earlier article, I presented Amy Chua’s Tiger Mom philosophy. Many parents, educators, and others have criticized her for her intense approach to child rearing. If her intention was to prepare her daughters for an Ivy League education, then she achieved her goal; her older daughter is heading to Harvard soon. Yet, no one can deny that in order to succeed in a global economy we must prepare our students. We are clearly losing the academic race at the high school level. A recent article in the Fast Company, a publication dedicated to innovation, presents a snapshot of an elite high school in Beijing. Compare it with the typical experience of American students in a public high school to understand the competition our students face.

“These students’ lives are remarkably devoid of choice and of what might be classified in American high-school culture as ‘fun.’ Classes are picked for them. Dating is forbidden. Fashion is largely irrelevant. . . . The point of all this rigor: to remove every possible distraction as the students prepare for national college-entrance exams.” Students attend school from 7:30 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday, and 7:30-3:30 on Saturdays. At the end of the school day, most students spend several more hours attending to their homework. They do not have extra-curricular activities or part-time jobs.

On the other hand, the average American high school student attends school from 7:30 am to 2:00 pm Monday through Friday, with approximately one to two hours of homework. He has a plethora of after-school activities demanding attention, from team sports to part-time jobs.

I am not endorsing the adoption of the Chinese approach to education. Our country provides choice. But Americans need to encourage students to view education as their first priority. We must understand the competition in order to prepare properly. We must be prepared to face global challenges.
high

Censoring Learning

2011-08-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, has served in the public sector in two Presidential administrations. President Clinton appointed her to the National Assessment Governing Board. She was also assistant secretary in charge of research in the U.S. Department of Education for the first President Bush. She has received numerous honors and awards: Outstanding Friend of Education Award from the Horace Mann League; the American Education Award from the American Association of School Administrators; the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Distinguished Service Award; and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College at Columbia University, among others. These credentials underscore her passion for and expertise in education.

Her book, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, is an indictment of textbook censorship. She maintains that “bias and sensitivity” panels hired by testing and textbook companies have restricted what students learn. These groups are not subject matter experts. Rather, “They have a professional background in bilingual education, diversity training, English as a second language, special education, guidance, or the education of Native Americans or their special populations.” These panels reject or excise any material that they find objectionable. They have white-washed and sanitized textbooks to the extent that they are dull and lifeless. According to Professor Ravitch, the practice

lowers the literacy level of tests because test makers must take care to avoid language as well as works of literature and historical selections that might give offense. It restricts the language and the ideas that may be reproduced in textbooks. It surely reduces children’s interest in their schoolwork by making their studies so deadly dull. It undermines our common culture by imposing irrelevant political criteria on the literature and history that are taught.

The concept that eradicating any “objectionable” material will eliminate bigotry and intolerance is absurd. The novels of George Orwell (1984) and Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451) provide valuable lessons. Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. Censorship is akin to thought control; it inhibits learning. Do not allow it to continue!

Cheating: An Ignored Epidemic?

2011-07-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

Cheating among students at levels from middle school through college has been well documented. At the end of June, The Education Portal, a website that explores education topics, provided some grim statistics, maintaining that 75%-98% of college students have admitted to cheating. The report is disheartening:

Cheating typically begins in middle school
Nine out of ten middle schoolers admit to copying someone else's
homework;
Two-thirds say they have cheated on exams
Cheating most often occurs in science and math classes
The college students who are most likely to cheat are engineering and
business majors.

These results bring up a philosophical question: What is the real goal of a college education? Is it only obtaining a high grade point average as a means to entry into a graduate or professional school? Or should learning and self-improvement be the ultimate goals?

If this situation weren’t bad enough, a cheating scandal rocked Atlanta, Georgia this year. The governor published a report indicating that almost 200 teachers and administrators cheated over a period of a decade. As Constitutional attorney, Phyllis Schlafly, reported, these individuals, “fraudulently raised test scores so their schools would meet test targets set by the district and thereby qualify for federal funds . . . The high scores of Atlanta schoolchildren had enabled Superintendent Beverly L. Hall to collect $600,000 in performance bonuses over 10 years to supplement her $400,000 annual salary. Two national organizations honored her with the title of "superintendent of the year."

The National Education Association, which held a conference at the beginning of July, did not address the cheating issue at all! Why not?

What message does this example send to students? Is it that only a test matters? Is it a Machiavellian standard that the ends justify the means? Who would knowingly choose to be treated by a physician who cheated on a final exam? Who would hire an attorney who cheated on his boards? Who would travel over a bridge designed by an engineer who cheated to get ahead?

When cheating occurs, everyone loses!Parents are ultimately responsible for teaching their children a strong value system. Effort and integrity are enduring principles.

Test-optional Colleges?

2011-07-21T04:42:00.000-07:00

College is a business. Hence, colleges and universities market themselves to attract the widest selection of students. Within the past decade, a few colleges have indicated that they are “test optional,” meaning that they do not require applicants to take the SAT or ACT. That number is a small fraction of the American institutes of higher learning. On the Bloomberg.net site, Kathleen Steinberg, a spokeswoman for the College Board, acknowledged, “There are about 1,600 four-year, nonprofit colleges in the U.S. and fewer than 5 percent don’t require a standardized entrance exam for admissions.” On July 19 Bloomberg.net revealed that this statistic may be misleading because some of these “test optional” institutions actually buy names from the College Board to help them in their selection process.

Most of the information that admissions officers receive about students is subjective. Admissions boards have the unenviable task of sorting out the accuracy of grade point averages, teacher recommendations, interviews, and application essays. The SAT and ACT serve as the only national standards that universities can employ to assess applicants.

Students who provide biographical information when they take the PSAT, SAT, or ACT, can choose not to participate in the company’s search service. The College Board and ACT, Inc. sell names to about 1000 colleges and universities. The dean of enrollment at Smith College (a purported “test optional college”) shared that within the past academic year, the school paid the College Board $20,000 for names of above-average students, “which might be inconsistent” with its stated policy.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, which neither requires the tests nor buys names maintains, “Students are being duped by some schools into thinking that test scores don’t matter, when they matter a great deal for marketing outreach and prestige. . . Test-optional colleges that buy names of high-scoring students are hypocritical.”

The article goes on to reveal, “Another benefit to test-optional colleges of recruiting students with high test results is that it can help raise their average entrance-exam scores, a metric used in determining some national rankings and a measure of prestige. Since students who don’t test well may refrain from submitting scores, that leaves high performers, or those who can afford prep courses and pay fees to retake the test several times, to bolster a school’s average scores.”

Caveat emptor: Before applying to a “test-optional” university (such as those in the list below), applicants should do some research to ascertain if that school is truly SAT-free. Otherwise, they may decide to register for the next test—just to be sure.

American University
Bates College
Bowdoin College
Denison University
Dickinson College
Mount Holyoke College
Pitzer College
Smith College
Union College
University of Arizona
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Changing the Paradigm-Part 2

2011-07-15T04:52:00.000-07:00

The first part of this article expressed the possibility of grouping children by skill mastery rather than by age. However, changing educational practice can certainly go farther than that. For example, teachers at all grade levels should be specialists in their fields.

This system is the standard for secondary education. Public schools expect subject teachers to obtain certification in a particular subject area. Thus, under normal circumstances, a language arts teacher cannot teach math. This principle should apply not only to secondary teachers, but to elementary teachers as well. Thus, students have the opportunity to work with at least four different core teachers each day, thus providing opportunity for more in-depth study of a particular subject. If moving young children from class to class is too chaotic and time-consuming, then perhaps the teachers could move. Such an arrangement could provide students with expert instruction in their core subjects of math, reading, and language arts. Providing specific times for each subject could result in students to receiving a more equitable amount of instructional time for essential skills. Too many times, my elementary students report that they spend a great deal of time on one subject (perhaps spelling), but very little on grammar. In addition, alternating teacher instruction could expose students not only to different personalities, but also to different teaching styles. It could provide more opportunities for success.

Such a proposition would necessitate a change in teacher certification requirements. Instead of being a generalist with certification in “Elementary Education,” teachers would be required to demonstrate competency in their chosen field: math, reading, languages, or science. Such a shift could also attract professionals in each field to certify and share their expertise.

Homework Wars

2011-06-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Is homework a necessary part of learning? How much is too much homework? This question arouses a great deal of emotion among parents, teachers, and students. School boards around the country are assessing their homework policies to determine the proper balance. The amount of homework varies widely among school districts and even in within a school. Should homework be the domain of an individual teacher or the province of administrators and school boards?

According to a recent article in the New York Times, a district in New Jersey is considering a proposal “to limit weeknight homework to 10 minutes for each year of school — 20 minutes for second graders, and so forth — and ban assignments on weekends, holidays and school vacations.” Some parents maintain that too much homework doesn’t allow children to play and causes undue stress. Others counter that students should have homework so they can reinforce topics covered in school.
Homework should never be “busy work.” It should have real connection to the day’s lessons. According to Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, “Research has long suggested that homework in small doses can reinforce basic skills and help young children develop study habits, but that there are diminishing returns. The 10-minute guideline has generally been shown to be effective.” Moderation is the key component.
When teachers assign homework, they must review it the next day, so that students understand that their efforts at home are a valuable part of the learning experience. Furthermore, timeliness is essential. Teachers should make every effort to return assignments within a reasonable period.
According to the Times article, “Homework wars have divided communities for over a century. In the 1950s, the Sputnik launching ushered in heavier workloads for American students in the race to keep up with the Soviet Union.” So, the homework wars continue!

Changing the Paradigm: Archaic Grouping Practice

2011-06-01T09:54:00.001-07:00

Connecticut is one of the last states to consider changing the entry age for kindergarten students. Obviously, this adjustment would have an impact on the entire K-12 system. Currently, children must be 5 by the end of the year to register. Often parents (especially those with boys) choose to delay entry for those born after the summer, in the hope that they will mature enough to be ready for what may be their first school experience. This practice, commonly known as “red-shirting” results in an age range within the classroom; some kindergarten students may be 4 when they begin, and others may be 6. Yet the entire practice of grouping students by age rather than ability needs re-thinking.

Grouping children by age is a factory paradigm. It is predicated on the belief that children of similar ages progress at the same rate. True, some children are not ready to begin school at age 5. However, some are more than ready at 4, while others may not be ready at 7. Birth order may play a significant role in a child’s school-readiness, as does a child’s home environment. I am a strong proponent of homogeneous grouping by ability rather than by age. Ability grouping provides much more flexibility than does grouping by age placement. Mastery of a specific skill can allow a child to be in an accelerated group in one subject, a mid-level group in another, and a remedial group in a third. In my experience as owner of Handle Associates, a private learning center that offers customized learning for each student, I can report that I consistently have students who demonstrate their willingness and ability to learn material that is deemed several years “above grade level” in their schools. And the converse is true as well. Students who need more time and a slower pace can benefit from the additional attention that they deserve.

For those who argue that ability grouping inhibits social interaction, I propose that the school day be structured in such a way that students can be with their age-mates during non-academic times like lunch, recess, and “specials.” The good of the students should be the first consideration in any decision.

The Tide Continues to Rise!

2011-05-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

“Nearly three decades after A Nation at Risk . . . warned of a ‘rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people’ the gains we have made in improving our schools are negligible . . .” Such is the assertion that Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City school system made in his June article in The Atlantic. This prosecutor, who successfully opposed Microsoft, admits that, in his eight years at the helm of city education, he was unable to effect more significant changes. He provides a disturbing inside look at the nation’s largest school system. And he is certainly not alone. (I have previously discussed the battle that Michelle Rhee faced in Washington, DC.)

Within the last three decades, we have doubled spending on public education, yet we have little or nothing to show for the increased expenditures. The results of the latest NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) indicated that fewer than one third of eighth grade students are “proficient” in math, science or reading. College professors (even at our top universities) decry the lack of preparation of entering students. According to Mr. Klein, “ACT, the respected national organization that administers college-admissions tests, recently found that 76 percent of our high-school graduates ‘were not adequately prepared academically for first year college courses.’” Dismal reports concerning our students’ ranking globally continue to surface. WHY?

Joel Klein points fingers at teachers’ unions and politicians. Currently, New York City is facing the loss of more than 4,000 teachers. Yet FIFO policy (first-in, first out policy) is predicated on time only. Merit has no part in the decision. So the city will lose some talented, energetic teachers and retain some incompetents. No tenured teacher is fired! Where in private enterprise does such a system exist?

Politicians are also culpable. They have an unholy alliance with teachers’ unions. According to Mr. Klein, “ The school system can be enormously helpful, providing patronage hires, school –placement opportunities for connected constituents, the means to get favored community and business programs adopted and funded, and politically advantageous ties to school and parents in their communities.” And union members return the political favors by partaking in voluntary activities like attending political rallies and providing millions of dollars to political causes.

The entire public education system benefits adults rather than students. Mr. Klein asserts, “We treat all teachers as if they were identical widgets and their performance didn’t matter.” No accountability engenders mediocrity and incompetence.

This situation is endemic at every level. The education system can continue to operate at such a deplorable level only if parents are complicit. Are parents uninformed, short-sighted, or apathetic? Do they attend their local Board of Education meetings and become involved in any issues that affect their children? Do they demand accountability from the classroom teacher to the superintendent? How do they select Board members? Why are the athletic fields more crowded than the Board meetings? Do they demand the best from their educators? Or do they simply support the status quo? Parents want the best for their children. They must take stock of their local schools and become involved. The tide continues to rise!

STEM Calls for Change

2011-04-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

According to their website, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Coalition (aka STEM) aims to “support programs for teachers and students at the U. S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies that offer STEM related programs.” This new coalition consists of CEO’s who wish to devote their attention to improving the quality of education in math and science fields. They recently released a statement that urges state boards of education to “maintain or increase standards in math and science.” In a statement to NBC news, the chairman of the organization, Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel, said, “"We're basically lying to parents and their kids, saying that everything is ok, when there (is) data that suggest everything is not ok." He believes that elementary level students would be better served by working with teachers who are specialists in their field rather than generalists. Such teachers would have a strong foundation in a particular subject. He continues, “"Today the probability if you're in elementary or high school of getting a math teacher who knows math is only 60 or 70 percent.”
In fact, many elementary schools do not even include science education as part of the core curriculum until grade five. Regarding math, some schools are implementing “reform” or “constructivist” programs such as Every Day Math or TERC Investigations without sufficient training for the teachers. According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, only 33% of eighth grade students are proficient or advanced in math.
Many lessons from the past and the present indicate that simply allocating more money does not solve problems. Training, diligence, commitment, and creativity are critical to implementing change. Parents need to be partners with educators. They must be actively engaged in their children’s education and demand high standards.

Early Predictor

2011-04-08T13:04:00.001-07:00

A longitudinal study of reading ability offers some disquieting information about the relationship between poor reading in elementary school and high school graduation. Education Week reported today that a study presented at the American Educational Research Association convention in New Orleans indicated a strong correlation between reading ability in grade 3 and subsequent high school graduation rates. “A student who can't read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.”

The educational research appears to demonstrate that grade three is a turning point with regard to reading skills. Most students acquire essential read skills in grades 1-3; they then use these skills to learn other subjects. Remediation becomes more difficult as a student progresses. Donald Hernandez, the author of the study, and a professor at Hunter College, part of CUNY, analyzed data for the student born in the decade from 1979-1989. “He found 16 percent overall did not have a diploma by age 19, but students who struggled with reading in early elementary school grew up to comprise 88 percent of those who did not receive a diploma.”

Most states begin testing in grade three. While some scores exist for students in grade two, not enough information is available to provide a detailed analysis.
The challenge for the academic establishment appears to be the development of an appropriate intervention that will enable more American students to become successful readers.

Work Ethic Matters!

2011-03-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Years ago, many elementary classrooms contained a billboard with a quotation from Thomas Edison: “Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." The message from this prodigious inventor is clear: Effort counts! In a previous article, I mentioned the perils of praising a child for intelligence rather than effort. Doing so often has an effect opposite to the one intended. “Precocious” children often avoid activities and subjects that they feel they won’t master instantly. Progressing through school, these students may choose an easy course in which they know they will excel, rather than a more demanding one that can pose an intellectual challenge.

According to a commentary by Amy Shales in recent edition of Bloomberg.com, “Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there’s a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.” Those “gifted” students who avoid these courses because of their workload, or who switch because the course might affect their GPA, sometimes choose a humanities major that can cause them to earn substantially less throughout their careers.

Furthermore, while those perfect SAT scores might provide entry into an Ivy League school, the diploma from a top university doesn’t guarantee professional success. What really matters is how much effort an applicant puts forth. “Those old entrance-exam scores matter more than the school’s name in the longer run, conclude authors Kevin Lang of Boston University and Erez Siniver of the College of Management Academic Studies.” Alan Krueger of Princeton University published a study in February that indicated that, “The prestige of a university is less important than the student’s test scores and the fact that he or she aimed high when applying to colleges.”

So, anxious parents awaiting college returns need not fret if their children aren’t admitted to a top university—in the long run, it’s their long term efforts that matter.

"Dumbing Down the SAT Prompt"

2011-03-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was March SAT time. Several students in my test preparation course took the test and returned with questions about the prompt topic, which dealt with reality television. When they reiterated the topic, I was perplexed, as this question didn't fit the usual prompt format from the College Board. I was under the impression that the purpose of this sole subjective part of the exam was to demonstrate the student's ability to apply what he learned in a writing exercise. In the past, the essay question directed students to respond to the prompt with reference beyond their personal experiences, citing examples from literature, history, or current events. The March SAT question appears to be a new genre. Look below:

"Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular.
These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives. Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled.
How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?
Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?"

The emphasis on a response based mainly on knowledge of or immersion into popular culture is profoundly disappointing. Furthermore, it appears rather anti-intellectual. Rather than provide the opportunity for a student to develop a cogent, concise response that shows his knowledge of academic subjects like literature, the arts, and history, the question expects the student to sink to the depths of "feuilleton" (reference- H. Hesse's Magister Ludi: the Glass Bead Game).

Is this yet another instance of the "dumbing down" of American education? How sad!

A Dose of Reality

2011-03-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

The online magazine for Time recently posed the following question: “Is America no longer #1?” The author, Fareed Zakaria, proclaims that he is an American by choice rather than by birth. So perhaps he has a more objective viewpoint than native Americans who take the country for granted. He maintains that many citizens demonstrate an alarming degree of complacency about America’s global position, assuming that we will always be at the top of the list.

Although the US still has the largest economy and military, other countries are running at our heels. His argument indicates that we’re driving by looking at the rear mirror. “What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.”

He provides the following statistics:

• American 15-year-olds rank 17th in the world in science.
• They rank 25th in math
• We rank 12th among developed countries in college graduation.
• We come in 79th in elementary-school enrollment.
• Our infrastructure is ranked 23rd in the world.
• We're 27th in life expectancy.
• We’re 18th in diabetes.
• We do rank first in several categories: obesity, crime, and debt.

One way to shed that smugness and engage in a competitive environment is by educating our students. Our university system is still the envy of most of the world. Thousands of foreign students compete for placement in our best colleges. Our public schools must change their paradigm to prepare American students so they can once again climb to the top! Rather than a factory-based educational design that groups students according to age, we should offer mastery-based education that allows students to work at their own pace. Thus, capable students could race ahead of their age-mates when they display aptitude and interest in a particular discipline. Perhaps we could begin to re-gain our global standing.

Genius

2011-03-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

What do Mozart, Tiger Woods, Ted Williams, and Michael Jordan have in common? While we often hear the term “child prodigy” ascribed to at least two of them, that characteristic doesn’t apply to all. We know that each of these individuals showed phenomenal success in his chosen vocation. But the “magic” that these “special” people shared include the following qualities: uncommon diligence, resolve, and determination. David Shenk, the author of the book,The Genius in All of Us elucidates the process that these super-achievers and others like them undergo. The good news is that genetics alone doesn’t determine achievement. Those who persist doggedly in an endeavor can actually accomplish a high standard of success.

This book provides extensive research on the effect of both genetics and epigenetics on achievement. Epigenetics is defined as the “study of heritable changes that occur without a change in the DNA sequence.” Most people are aware of the role of inherited traits. But the discussion in this book dismisses a simplistic interplay of “nature versus nurture.” The process is much more complicated. And while genes do play a part in performance, they are not the singular determinant of a person’s ability. People do have the opportunity to alter their aptitudes by practice. To illustrate the very complicated process, consider the following as put forth by Mr. Shenk:

Yo Yo Ma is THE cello virtuoso. And while both of his parents and his older sister were musicians, he didn’t simply begin playing the cello at an exceptional level when he was three. His father was a music instructor who was determined to produce an expert. Hence, he surrounded Yo Yo with music even before his birth. Yo Yo admired his parents and older sibling, and he chose the cello over the violin at age four. He had the distinct advantage of having his father as his instructor, and he practiced relentlessly, improving steadily at a very early age. In short, he provides an example of the 10,000 hour formula.

Michael Jordan was not the gifted athlete in his family. In fact, he didn’t even qualify for his high school varsity team when he was a sophomore. That experience incited his competitive spark and allowed him to become the prodigious famous athlete. Once again, “practice makes perfect.”

Excuses don’t work. They are self-defeating. To excel in anything, whether music, sports, academics, or business, apply diligence and practice, practice, practice to enhance the epigenetics. Above all, the message here is that genius is a process.

Can Parents Learn from the Tiger Mom?

2011-02-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has been the topic of much conversation lately. The author, a Yale law professor, has been excoriated for being unreasonably demanding. However, as I read the jacket cover with some of the bullet points characterizing the “tiger” mentality, I mentally checked off the items with which I agreed and which I actually applied to my own children:

• no sleepovers
• no watching TV
• no playing computer games

In fact, I could actually insert a few of my own:

• no telephone calls during homework time
• daily extra assignments in math and reading

Professor Chua’s treatise on parenting methods may provide some insight into the differences between the academic performances of “tiger cubs” and their Western counterparts. And while some of her parenting methods are extreme (forcing hours of instrument practice on a young child), they originate from a different culture.

She brings up some valid criticisms of American parents:
“Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self –esteem.”
But what good is self esteem if a child has few skills, and little motivation or drive?

“Chinese parents assume strength, not fragility.” Allow children to show competence. American parents emphasize the importance of strength on a playing field. Why not do the same for academics? Why are some Western parents willing to drive spend hours at an athletic event at the expense of homework time?

“Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe their child can get them.” The real message here is the amount of effort that the child puts forth. How demanding is the school curriculum?

“ . . . the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of , and arming them with skills, work habits, and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.”
Having high expectations for children allows them to build confidence.

Ultimately, academic performance is only one (albeit large) portion of a child’s development. Western parents can modify some of the practices put forth by the “tiger mother” to enhance their children’s learning abilities. Yet the end point is not the really the “A.” Rather, it should be encouraging genuine effort that allows children to become competent, well-adjusted, self-assured, individuals.

Teens and Reading

2011-01-28T14:16:00.001-08:00

The January/February 2011 issue of The Atlantic magazine includes graphical representations of how the recession has changed life in this country. Naturally, it focuses largely on economic issues, such as the reality that 24% of 18-29 year olds have moved back home either because they are unemployed or underemployed. So what are they doing with their time? Well, the teens in that group are probably not reading this blog or a newspaper, or anything substantive, for that matter.

According to Tim Lavin, a senior editor of the magazine, in 2007, 15 to 19 year olds spent an average of 16 minutes each weekend day reading. In 2009, that reading time dropped to a mere 5 minutes per day. What did increase, however, was the amount of time that this same group played computer games. In 2007 the average time for game playing was almost 47 minutes, but that rose to more than 61 minutes in 2009. The numbers speak for themselves. Can we reverse this troubling trend?

Take a Test to Learn Best

2011-01-27T10:08:00.001-08:00

A recent study conducted at Purdue University and published in the journal, Science, indicates that taking a test immediately after reading material actually aids learning. The findings appear to demonstrate the power of “active reading” as a means to improving memory. As an article in the January 21 “Education” section of The New York Times reported, “Students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods.” These alternate methods included repeatedly studying the material, a common “cramming” practice, which leads to false confidence and appears to provide only short-term memory. Another method was “concept mapping” in which subjects transformed the material they read into diagrams.
All 200 research subjects received a scientific passage. After reading, some were asked to engage in a “retrieval test,” in which they wrote what they remembered about the article for 10 minutes. Then they re-read the passage and took another retrieval test. Other subjects either drew diagrams organizing the information that they read or studied the passage for five minutes each in four different sessions. The retrieval test group proved effective in remembering the most information more than a week after the initial exposure to the article. While cognitive scientists don’t yet understand the exact mechanism for such results, they speculate that “. . . by remembering information we are organizing it and creating cues and connections that our brains later recognize.”
The results also point to further evidence to eschew “constructivist” or “reform” approaches to math. The Times quotes famed Harvard educator, Howard Gardner, “The idea that children should discover their own approach to learning, emphasizing reasoning over memorization — “throw(s) down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included . . . “Educators who embrace seemingly more active approaches, like concept mapping,” he continued, “are challenged to devise outcome measures that can demonstrate the superiority of such constructivist approaches.” Thus, he admits, that no empirical evidence exists that the constructivist method is superior to traditional methods of storing and retrieving information. So, to retain the most information over the long term, read actively and then take a test!

How reliable are report cards?

2011-01-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

As owner and director of a private educational center, I often meet with students who are facing an entrance exam of some sort. These include the Secondary School Admission Tests and the Independent School Entrance Exams for private day and boarding schools; the COOP and High School Placement Tests for parochial schools; the SAT and ACT for college and universities, among others. These exams are usually the first exposure to a national exam for most Connecticut public school students. Parents who come to enroll their students for the test preparation course often do so after they receive the results of the first test attempt. They explain that their children receive A’s and B’s in their classes, and they perform at the “mastery” level on the state’s CMT’s and CAPT’s. So they were confident that they would score very high on the national exams. Then their children take the test. Too often these parents are devastated when they realize that the student who performs at the top of her class ranks only in the 30% or 40% on the more comprehensive and challenging exams. I explain that these basic level state curriculum exams bear no resemblance to the national tests. So why is the information from the school and state such an unreliable indicator of a student’s ability and performance?

Grades are subjective. Teachers award grades using a wide range of criteria including homework assignments, projects, class participation, attendance, and behavior. In many cases, the grades are inflated. The average grade is a C. Unlike in the fictional Lake Wobegone, all real students are not above average. Yet a majority receive grades in the A or B range. Just take a look at the local newspaper to see how many students appear on the honor roll. In fact, a parent with a very capable child in an elementary school approached me recently to inquire why 30% of the students in her child’s class received A’s in the class. She was reluctant to ask her child’s teacher. I provided one personal experience: Many years ago, when, as a principal evaluating a teacher’s performance, I inquired why the vast majority of his students had such high grades, he explained “that was what the parents wanted to see.” He would have to do some explaining if he gave a C. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique.

The state exams do not reflect student ability. Rather, they serve to illustrate a district’s adherence to state curriculum standards. The statistics provide information that allows state educators to assess pockets of success and failure and compare performance in a variety of areas. And Connecticut is doing dreadfully in that arena! The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released a report at the beginning of this month that ranked Connecticut as having the largest gap of all 50 states between student performance in “poor vs. non-poor” districts!

Private and parochial schools use national tests like the Iowa’s and ERB’s to assess student performance on a national level. Many public schools participate in the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Program, which requires students to take a national exam (either the SCAT in the lower grades or the SAT’s in grades 7 or 8 to qualify). Yet school personnel must first recognize a student’s ability to provide a recommendation for participation. Because this state has no standardized exam, parents can nominate their own children for the CTY program. In order for parents of public school students to a real measure of their children’s performance nationally they must be pro-active and schedule testing. How many parents have the facts, finances, or time to do this? The school system needs to institute some guidelines for reliable and objective student assessment.

Change is Coming to AP Exams!

2011-01-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

The College Board, which develops SAT and Advanced Placement Exams, recently announced that it will change the scope of most of the latter exams. The Board re-vamped the SAT’s in 2005, adding a writing section that brought the total score from 1600 to 2400. At the end of any given AP course, students take the exam to earn college credit. The scores range from 1-5; many universities will accept a 3 or higher. Now, in an attempt to streamline AP courses, they are altering those tests as well. According to a recent article in The New York Times, “The change is beginning with the 2012-2013 academic year with a new curriculum taking effect in two smaller programs, German and French language. Major revisions to physics, chemistry, European history, world history and art history will follow, with the hope of being ready for exams in 2014 or 2015.”
The non-profit organization first presented the Advanced Placement exams in 1956, in response to requests from private college-preparatory high schools that wanted to show how well their students could perform. “The board based the exams on what colleges taught in freshman survey courses.” Yet, aside from a rather broad outline of themes, the Board did not provide much guidance regarding course structure. Therefore, as the curricula of various courses like biology and world history expanded, the material that these year-long courses needed to cover became very broad and often unwieldy. Teachers attempted to cram in as much material as possible, with decreasing success: “While the number of students taking the A.P. biology test has more than doubled since 1997, the mean score has dropped to 2.63, from 3.18. On the exam last May, slightly fewer than half of the test-takers scored a 3, which equates to a C in a college course. And while 19 percent of students earned 5’s, almost twice that many got 1’s, which could be a failing grade in college.” In fact, some universities have stopped accepting the AP’s altogether, favoring their own placement exams to determine course eligibility.
Along with the new exams, which may pare down some of the course material, the Board will also provide a framework around which to design the courses. Such re-structuring may allow for more flexibility for class content. Students considering taking an AP course within the next year might consider deferring that enrollment for another year, if possible.

STING your way to success!

2011-01-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

The new year brings resolutions, and organizational strategies often head the list. Often consigned to the academic realm, these suggestions often appear in study skills manuals. However, one effective method for accomplishing this end is useful in a wide variety of situations whether personal, professional, and academic. The basic concept is simple. Make a list, prioritize it, and perform the tasks. This organizational technique can result in more discretionary time. Its acronym is STING. Whether a child in elementary school, a parent with a seemingly overwhelming “to-do” list, or professional trying to manage a variety of responsibilities, anyone can utilize this method to alleviate some of the stress associated with getting things done.

After devising a list of tasks, prioritize and set about in the following way:

Select a task: Start with the one that you dread the most. This way, you finish it and go on to more pleasant things.

Time yourself: First estimate how much time you think the task will take. Time activation is very effective, so that the task doesn’t consume the entire day. Students should “chunk” their time into manageable segments, usually about 45 minutes each. The same method is appropriate for others as well.

Ignore everything else. This is the step that requires the most self discipline. Avoid telephone calls, television, electronics, and any other distraction that could detract from your mission. Just do it!

No breaks! Devote all of your energy to completing the assignment or chore.

Give yourself a reward. Now is the time to take a few moments to congratulate yourself on a job well done. But be careful that the reward doesn’t tempt you away from working on the next assignment on your list. Take a few moments for something you enjoy, and you’ll have a great feeling of satisfaction when you’ve finished everything. Ring in the new year with STINGing success!

Cultural Literacy

2010-12-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

What is the hallmark of a truly educated person? In 1987, E.D. Hirsch published a book entitled, Cultural Literacy. In it, he discussed topics that constitute the essential elements of literacy in science, geography, and the arts. He included a comprehensive appendix of historical and legendary figures, scientific, geographic, and literary terms, and quotations that most educated people would be able to identify. The list appears in alphabetical order. A brief excerpt from one of the pages illustrates the breadth of information.

L’etat c’est moi Lincoln Memorial
Let bygones be bygones Lincoln’s Second Memorial Address
Let me not to the marriage of true Lindberg, Charles A.
minds/Admit impediments linear momentum
Let sleeping dogs lie Linneaus
Letter from the Birmingham Jail lipid
Letter killeth, but the spirit givith life Lippman, Walter

How many current high school seniors, college students, or adults can identify all or most of the terms above?

According to Hirsch, a literate culture brings a nation together. In fact, it is much more inclusive that any ethnic culture. “It has no in-group, no generational or geographical preference. It can be mastered in the country or in the city, in a shanty or in a mansion, so long as the opportunity is given.” (p.106) Such an education is blind to race or ethnicity, so that inner city children would be exposed to the same information as those in the suburbs.

In February 2009, Liz Coleman, president of Bennigton College, addressed a TED conference that expanded on this idea. She expressed her concern that that a truly liberal arts education no longer exists. Instead, she maintains, the curricula offerings at most colleges and universities emphasize a narrow scope that causes students to focus “more and more on less and less.” She has re-vamped the curriculum at Bennington College to include cross-disciplinary hands-on learning. She argues that they must be versed in broad-based liberal arts courses.
Shouldn’t math and science students have the opportunity to read philosophy, literature, and history? Don’t we owe our doctors, lawyers and scientists, the ability to understand and appreciate the arts and music? Shouldn’t we strive to have all Americans culturally literate?

High School Students & Reading

2010-12-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

The NAEP released a report on reading ability that indicates that, although scores for high school seniors have risen a few points from 2005, they are still below the level achieved almost twenty years ago. The difference in scores might appear insignificant (292/500 vs. 288/500). However the percentiles of achievement remain troubling. Only 38% of high school seniors performed “proficiently.” In fact, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated, “Today's report suggests that high school seniors' achievement in reading and math isn't rising fast enough to prepare them to succeed in college and careers.”

First, let me admit that I began my professional experience as a high school English teacher. I have a Masters degree in British and American literature, so admittedly my viewpoint is somewhat biased. However, I firmly believe that exposure to challenging literature enriches the readers’ experiences in several ways. It not only enhances language skills (reading ability, vocabulary, and writing style), but it can also posit themes that challenge assumptions and beliefs. Therefore, when I assign novels and plays to my middle and high school students, I tend toward the “classics” of Western literature.

While some students in honors courses may be exposed to major literary themes and authors, many others manage to leave high school without having a broad base of literary exposure. At best, they may read an excerpt of a classic. Many schools do not require that all of their students include the following concepts and authors in their coursework: Aesop’s Fables, Greek, Roman, and Viking mythology, haikus, sonnets, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, Bronte, Hardy, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, to list just a few.
If a particular work presents potential difficulty to the students, I usually provide an introductory reading, to enable them to grasp the cadence of the language or sentence length. As one brief example, I recently asked students from a variety of school districts if they were familiar with the classic Christmas story by William Sydney Porter (aka O. Henry), “The Gift of the Magi.” Most were not, so I assigned the reading, along with a series of questions that I had devised to ascertain comprehension. Take a glance at the introductory paragraph, and compare it to the sentence structure and vocabulary of most contemporary literature.

"One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in
pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the
vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation
of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it.
One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas."

Many high school students find the selection challenging. The short story provides opportunities for an analysis of writing style, vocabulary study, historical relevance, and theme in a few short pages. Provide opportunities for enrichment, and improvement will follow.

2010-11-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

The Importance of Grammar

2010-11-27T10:46:00.001-08:00

“We don’t have time to teach grammar.” Thus responded an elementary level teacher to a mother’s inquiry about her son’s poorly written composition. When the parent asked why no corrections appeared on the assignment, the teacher explained that grammar wasn’t a priority because it doesn’t appear on the Connecticut Mastery Test. Is this an acceptable response?
This situation is not confined to one school, one grade level, or even one district. Many students are not routinely schooled in the grammatical constructs that can help them to improve their writing. In fact, most students don’t realize the importance of coherent writing until they encounter the “dreaded” college application essay. They suddenly become aware that their writing identifies them. They learn that depending on the “grammar checker” on their computer is insufficient. They want to set themselves apart from the other applicants, and the most effective means of accomplishing that goal is through a truly excellent essay. Unfortunately, many students arrive at this realization too late.
Ironically, many students who study a foreign language are more familiar with the grammar of that language than that of their native tongue. While they may be able to conjugate a verb in Spanish or French, they are at a loss to do so in English. How can anyone write coherently if he cannot identify the essential components of a sentence? How can a writer refine his writing if he doesn’t have the tools?
Grammar needs to be an essential component of the curriculum from the time a student can read until he graduates from high school. Instead of focusing on “creativity” and “inventive spelling,” the curriculum should include grammar lessons that require analysis and development of good writing techniques. Holistic scoring is useless for the implementation of good writing habits. Students need to learn the “how” and the “why” of parts of speech, sentence structure, and mechanics in order to become capable writers. Creativity may be important, but it must be secondary to the development of a strong grammatical foundation.

States compared to Countries

2010-11-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

Every comparative educational study demonstrates the sorry fact that American educational standards rank far below those of other industrialized countries. Most of these studies focus on the average student on a national scale. Critics of the studies argue that the heterogeneity of the American social system account for the wide disparity in student performance—the old apples to oranges argument. So one Stanford economist, Eric Hanushek, decided to change the parameters of the data; he set out to search for excellence. Rather than taking test results of the nation as a whole, he focused on the performance of the most capable students in each state,” using math tests as a proxy for educational achievement.” He wanted to determine he could discount national diversity by looking at each state’s performance separately. Could student in any states compare favorably with those in top performing countries? The results of his experiment appear in the December issue of Atlantic, and they are not promising.
Massachusetts received the highest ranking of all of the states, but placed in the seventeenth spot, with approximately 11% of its students demonstrating proficiency. (Only 8% of Connecticut students well; they ranked right below Ireland and above Lithuania.) That was far below the results of the top three countries: Taiwan (28%), Hong Kong (24%), and Korea (22%).The lowest performers in the US were in Mississippi, with only 1% capable of passing the exam, ranking with such countries as Chile, Thailand, and Romania.
Although Massachusetts if hardly a beacon of achievement, it presents at least a glimmer of hope for the implementation of some educational standards. For example, educators in other states should take note of the changes to qualifications required for teacher certification. Teachers in Massachusetts must pass a basic literacy test. In order for students to graduate from high school, they must pass a test. States are beginning to propose changes, but very slowly. This year, “At least 35 states and Washington, DC, agreed to adopt common standards for what students should know in language arts and math.” Colleges are beginning to impose math requirements on teacher candidates.
The status quo is static and unacceptable. American students cannot compete in a global economy if they are so far below their peers in other countries.

Guidelines for a Successful High School

2010-11-14T11:39:00.000-08:00

The Alliance for Excellence in Education, a national policy and advocacy organization, has identified elements that can determine the quality of public high schools. How many of these qualities does your high school demonstrate? Investigate, and start a dialog with school and administrators. Get involved for the benefit of all!
1. Challenging classes: The “core classes” that students must include math, English, science, and history. Are the course offerings sufficiently challenging? Does the school offer college credits in the form of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, local university offerings?
2. Personal attention: Do the teachers know all of their students? Do students have an academic advisor who can guide them through the specific courses for their goals?
3. Academic support: Can faculty and staff identify academically at-risk students and supply the educational resources to help them become successful?
4. Real World Experience: Does the school allow students to make connections between book learning and work skills?
5. Family & Community Involvement: Do parents have multiple opportunities to visit the school and communicate with teacher and staff?
6. Safe Learning Environment: Is the school a safe haven for students?
7. Skilled Teachers: Are faculty members well versed in their subjects? Do they have the ability to teach students from a variety of backgrounds and abilities?
8. Strong Leaders: Are the administrators skilled in supervision, management, and organization? Can they develop an appropriately challenging curriculum?
9. Necessary: Does the school have the resources, hardware and software available for successful teaching and learning?
10. User-friendly Information: Does the community have easy access to information about the school, including graduation requirements, state test performance, and drop-out rates?

For more information, peruse their website for a more comprehensive discussion: www.all4ed.org.

Evaluations

2010-11-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Randi Weingarten's essay in the book that expands on the documentary, "Waiting for Superman." Ms. Weingarten is the president fo the 1.5 million member American Federation of Teachers. I concede that American schools contain some very gifted teachers; yet I do believe that they also provide a safe harbor for the merely mediocre, the inefficient and incompetent who tarnish the profession.

Ms. Weingarten mainstains that the evaluation system is flawed because of the method of evaluation: "An administrator sitting in the back of the classroom for a few minutes, a few times, in the first few years of teaching.The teacher then receives feedback at the end of the semester or the end of the year." I can tell you that her description is misleading at best.

Having been an administrator in several public school districts in Connecticut, I participated in the evaluation process. I was the one responsible for such evaulations. I would make unannounced visits to both tenured and non-tenured teachers, whether or not they were scheduled for evaluation that year. For those who were scheduled for a full evaulation, I had a more complete schedule. I visited each teacher several times during the school year, staying for the entire class period. I provided feedback and suggestions each time. In at least two instances, the teachers were clearly not fulfilling their duties. Everyone knew it: the students, the fellow teachers, and the parents. Yet these individuals received the same salaries as the other teachers and suffered no consequences for their ineptitude. In fact, one teacher actually took sick leave during my evaluation process, claiming he had an ulcer. The end result: No longer wishing to be associated with a "profession" that refused to acknowledge problems and repair them, I resigned and established my own educational center. The incompetent teacher returned after my departure and eventually retired with a substantial pension. "The dance of the lemons" continues.

Changing the Paradigm

2010-10-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Why are schools organized like factories? Why are students grouped according to age rather than ability or interest? Why do they seem to lose the capacity for divergent thinking as they progress through the education system? Sir Ken Robinson, “a world renowned education and creativity expert” (as introduced in the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce) poses these and other questions in a speech he recently presented. Also a featured speaker at a TED conference, he is a champion of changing the paradigm of education to benefit creativity.
He states, “If you’re interested in a model of learning, you don’t start with the production line mentality.” Like a product that is stamped with the date of manufacture, children are grouped according to date of graduation, when the only commonality that they may have as learners is the year they were born.
He proposes that standardization adversely affects creativity, and he provides the following example: At kindergarten, 98% of children demonstrate the capacity for divergent thinking, an ability to see many differing possibilities to address a problem. It is an essential component of creativity. They lose this ability for divergent thinking as they become “educated.” So, he argues that in order to change the educational paradigm, educators and others have to “think differently about human capacity.” How likely is that to happen in the current educational climate?

Language Arts Standards

2010-10-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

10/1/10
Some parents of my current students have shared the results of the spring 2010 Connecticut Mastery Test that they received when their children returned to school. While reviewing the scores, I noticed that although most of them did quite well in reading in general, the one area that appeared deficient was in “making connections with the text.” I pondered several explanations: The test was flawed. The students didn’t receive any instruction in making connections. The students didn’t understand the questions.
Then I began to read Diane Ravitch’s new book: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Professor Ravitch , a former assistant secretary of education, is critical of the emphasis on testing in the public schools. Although she maintains that the education system needs to improve, she asserts that state standards tend to be nebulous and ineffective at best. For example, “Without specificity and clarity, standards are nothing more than vacuous verbiage.” The “textual connections” on the CMT’s are an illustration of such verbiage.
She elucidates her point: “State standards for the English language arts are similarly vapid. Few states refer to a single significant work of literature that students are expected to read. In most states, the English standards avoid any mention of specific works of fiction or nonfiction of specific major authors. Instead, they babble about how students “interact with text,” apply “word analysis and vocabulary skills to comprehend selections,” “related reading to prior knowledge and experience and make connections to related information . . . Students should certainly think about what they read, but they should read something worth thinking about.”
I wholeheartedly agree on this point. I have become discouraged by the paucity of “classics” assigned in schools. By the high school level, well educated students should be familiar with works by the Greek tragedians, Roman and Greek epic poetry, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, and other world class authors. Instead, they are often mired in the morass of novels about teen angst and racial oppression. Why?
I will persist in assigning my students the “classics,” so they can read critically, appreciate good writing style in different formats, and respond meaningfully to universal concepts.

EQ in the Classroom

2010-09-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Arthur C. Clarke, most widely known as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey once said, “Any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be.” These sentiments should be a source of comfort for some educators, but a source of terror for others. With the proliferation of the computer assisted instruction, teachers need to recognize that their value is much more than that of lecturer. Students capable of reading can teach themselves. What, then, is the real function of a teacher?
Most people who can sit in front of a computer and read are capable of learning. Educational institutions like the University of Phoenix are predicated on the assumption that adults don’t need to be present in a classroom to learn. So educators should to be mindful that they are dispensable from a purely knowledge standpoint.
The actual role of a good teacher is to help the student learn how to learn. In order to do that effectively, he needs to form a positive relationship with his class. Educational studies have documented that children learn best from people they love. This can include a wide circle of people, but should certainly include their teachers.
A teacher, especially at or above the middle school level, may have a good grasp of his subject and a high I.Q. or intelligence quotient. But that doesn’t guarantee that his students will learn. He needs to make an emotional connection, too. Any student who has a negative relationship with a classroom teacher will resist learning from him. And while some people can learn despite a poor teacher, that situation is undesirable. Of course, some personality conflicts are bound to result in any mix of people, but the teacher can often minimize them with understanding or humor. In many instances, E.Q. (emotional quotient) can be even more important than knowledge. An excellent teacher will have a healthy balance of both characteristics. He needs to show an interest in his students and to help them discover their potential.

The End Point of Math

2010-09-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

I recently watched a presentation on TED that caused me to ruminate for quite a while. The TED initials stand for “technology, entertainment, and design.” Some of the best and brightest in these fields join regularly to share ideas that stimulate a great deal of thought. The seminars are eighteen minutes or shorter, and they are free online.
One very brief presentation by Arthur Benjamin lasted about three minutes and poses the question about the “end point” of math. Mr. Benjamin is both a professor of mathematics and a magician. (Perhaps these are related fields.) He maintains that, currently, all of math education leads to the ultimate course: calculus. While he admits that learning calculus is an exquisite intellectual endeavor, he questions its practicality. Of course, we want our engineers, economists, and scientists to be well versed in the subject. However, for the majority of the population, calculus isn’t meaningful. They will never use it.
Rather, he suggests that statistics and probability would be much more meaningful endpoint for most students. People would be able to understand data analysis, business market trends, and much more about their daily existence if they used statistics. The change in our world from analog to digital necessitates an alteration from the old to the new. He believes that teaching statistics is a vital part of that change. He makes a very good case!

New School Year

2010-08-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

As the long, languid days of August draw to a close, many parents begin the ritual of preparing their children for the new school year. While those children might attempt to mute the television when the commercials announce “Back-to-School” sales, parents know that the sooner they begin organizing, the less frenetic the change of schedule will be. Going on a shopping spree is only a small part of insuring that children are ready to return to school. Of course, students do need to obtain the essential tools for their particular grade, like notebooks, folders, binders, and backpacks. However, preparing the child physically and emotionally is paramount to insure a successful beginning to the school year.

Children should have a physical exam every year. Summer is a great time to schedule such an exam that may uncover problems that impede learning. Undiagnosed vision and hearing deficits put children at a distinct disadvantage in the classroom. Sometimes a school requires certification of a physical exam for entry into the next grade or participation in a sport. School personnel may allow the child to begin without the exam if the family has evidence of an impending appointment. Furthermore, mounting evidence demonstrates that proper dental care contributes to overall good health, so including a trip to the dentist in the school-readiness campaign is a good idea.

Sleep patterns have a huge effect on learning, so parents would be wise to ease into a schedule change as soon as possible. Rather than waiting until the night before school to switch bedtimes, setting incremental changes may be easier on parents and children alike. Developmental experts suggest that school-age children receive about ten hours of sleep per night. So, a child who goes to bed at 11:00 and rises at 7:00 is falling short of the recommendation. He may be tired and irritable at rising and distracted during class time. Shifting the rising and sleeping times by an hour each week may prevent the “jet-lag” effect on that first day.

Establish a family reading time each day. Many students view reading as a necessary evil during the school year and thus avoid it during summer vacation time. Parents who model reading behavior and who read to and with their children demonstrate that they are participating in an enjoyable activity. Even parents of high school can engage them in discussion if they read the same books as their teens. This practice need not stop with the inception of the academic year.

Plan a special activity prior to the beginning of school. This may be as simple as a family picnic the evening before school or any other “pre-season” activity. A new school year is a time for new beginnings!

Plagiarism & the Internet

2010-08-02T13:14:00.001-07:00

Plagiarism and the Internet

Is plagiarism stealing? In a word-Yes! Intellectual dishonesty of any type compromises the individual who engages in it and cheats the party subjected to it. An article by Trip Gabriel in this week’s “Education” section of The New York Times illustrates the plagiarism problem and a few characteristic student attitudes.
Plagiarism may take several forms. The most blatant case I encountered occurred when I was teaching freshman writing at a local university. At the end of the spring semester, a student submitted a research paper identical to one I had received the previous semester. Unfortunately for that student, not only did I remember the original submission, but I also had a copy of the first paper. The result: a failing grade on the paper and in the course.
Most students aren’t quite that bold, however. More copy sections from a source without providing a citation that would credit the author. The author of the Times article maintains “ . . . many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.”
He characterizes plagiarism as a “disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information.” Because such open-source sites, such as Wikipedia, do not credit specific authors, students believe that they can take the information verbatim without citing the source. Some maintain that the information is free and need not be credited. But that would be akin to copying from an encyclopedia without providing a citation. He includes some troubling statistics:
In surveys from 2006 to 2010 by Donald L. McCabe, a co-founder of the Center for
Academic Integrity and a business professor at Rutgers University, about 40 percent of
14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences in written assignments. . . .
Perhaps more significant, the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes
“serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34
percent earlier in the decade.”

A few academic researchers point to the Internet culture as responsible for the proliferation of plagiarism. The disregard for intellectual property such as music takes the form of “lifting” someone else’s authentic idea and presenting it as one’s own. Not only is that laziness; it is dishonesty.

The N-Factor

2010-07-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

Size does matter –in testing situations. A study published in Psychological Science in 2009 investigated the effect of testing size to SAT scores. Two professors, one from the University of Michigan and the other from Haifa University, compiled data from the College Board for all 50 states. Using information from the 2005 SAT (the “new” SAT format), they compared each state’s average SAT scores to its “test taker density.” They identified the “density” as the number of students taking the test divided by the number of testing locations available in the state. The results: the higher the testing density, the lower the average SAT scores. To allow for the lower population in some of the more rural states, they then factored in ACT scores. Even with those additional scores, the states with the lower populations had higher average scores. Finally, the researchers studied data from cognitive tests from students within the University of Michigan. Once again, they found that students who tested in smaller groups performed better than those who took tests in large areas like auditoriums and lecture halls. They called the results the N-factor. The size of the competitive group affects the test taker.

In fact, even the PERCEIVED size of the competitive group can adversely affect results. Some research volunteers who took a quiz alone were told that they werecompeting against 9 others. Another group (also solitary test takers) was told that 99 others were also taking the test at the same time. “The students who thought they were in the smaller pool finished the quiz significantly faster than those who thought they were 1 in 100.”

So, what can do to counteract the N factor? One suggestion would be to try to relieve the stress that is a natural consequence of the situation. Aside from practicing and studying content, students need to learn memory, focus and relaxation techniques as they prepare for exams like the Sat & ACT. If students can train themselves to disregard the others taking the test with them, they may achieve better results. They need to focus on THEIR results and remind themselves that they are competing only against themselves.

Common Standards

2010-07-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

Last week Connecticut joined the growing number of states to adopt the new set of common academic standards. According to Education Week magazine, “As of July 9, twenty-three states decided to replace their mathematics and English/language arts standards with the common set. Another flurry of adoptions is expected by Aug. 2, since the $4 billion federal Race to the Top contest gives more points to states that meet that deadline.” The K-12 math and language arts standards were developed in collaboration with content experts, state boards of education, teachers, administrators, and parents. The first draft appeared in March, and the final draft was released on July 9. However, some state education department opted out of the contest, as they expressed concern that the standards are still in the preliminary form. They expressed the need to perform due diligence before adoption. In fact, a number of core committee members refused to sign the final document. R. James Milgram told Education Week. “. . . they do not match up well with international expectations, and they are not quite as good as the best of the state standards, in California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Indiana.”

Among the states that have already adopted the common standards, the move has
touched off little controversy. New Jersey was an exception. In the Garden State,
some people concerned about math education objected, arguing that the math standards were not as rigorous as the state’s current expectations.
Joseph G. Rosenstein, a math professor at Rutgers University in Piscataway who
helped shape New Jersey’s math standards in 1996 and 2002, said he feels the state board didn’t sufficiently consider his concerns, and those of other experts, before
voting June 16 to adopt the new standards.

The goal of the common standards is to equalize the uneven academic expectations that currently exist in these core areas in different states. One reason that the standards have received little opposition now is that they are still somewhat abstract. Controversy may arise once exams for these standards are formulated. Our students need to be challenged. We await the results.

Education & the Economy

2010-07-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Improving access to high quality education may be the best way to insure a stable economy. That is the premise of a book by economist Raghuram Rajan, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He argues that instead of providing access to cheap credit like sub-prime mortgages, the American government should focus on providing equity in education to its less skilled labor. According to a recent review in The Economist, “America would do well to take a hard look at how it educates its young and what safety net it provides to its poor.”
I emphatically agree with this assertion. I have witnessed the many positive results that a rigorous education can provide the economically disadvantaged. Guiding children through the wonders of learning can expand their possibilities and engender a love of learning that affects not only the individuals involved, but also succeeding generations. I have provided just a few examples of such outstanding programs.
I, myself, am an alumna of one of the most competitive parochial high schools in New York City. This school attracted middle and lower class students from at least three of the city’s boroughs as well as sections of Westchester. Students traveled long distances to attend, most using public transportation. Many of my classmates have achieved prominence nationally and internationally. Among their ranks are executives of Fortune 500 Companies, business owners, NASA scientists, broadcasters, physicians, attorneys, judges, and even a Supreme Court Justice. Certainly, they have global influence!
As an educator, one of the best teaching experiences I ever had in a school setting occurred in a parochial girls’ high school in the center of Newark, New Jersey several decades ago. The major differences between this school and the local public high school were the commitment of the parents and the dedication of the teachers. We were on a mission! Our school had very few drop-outs, and most of our students went on to college and graduate school. The school is still open, and still dedicated to educating young women in the inner city who have become leaders in their community and beyond.
The ABC Program (A Better Chance) accepts disadvantaged students from inner cities into suburban public schools. These students must display academic promise and a willingness to be uprooted from their homes to attend schools in different states. The students often reside in homes that have been converted to dorm-type housing that can accommodate at least five students and a resident director who oversees their homework and activities. Host families from the community take the girls to their homes on weekends. Upon graduation, most of the students are admitted to very selective colleges and universities, usually on scholarship.
A parochial middle level magnet school in New Haven, Connecticut, St. Martin de Porres Academy, opened its doors about five years ago. To gain admission for grades 5 through 8, students must meet the following requirements: financial need, parental commitment, and willingness to learn. The school is tuition-free. The school day extends from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. Students receive two meals a day and school uniforms. Teachers provide additional tutoring when necessary. Such assistance extends to graduates who are invited to return if they need help with high school assignments. The school is funded through contributions and fundraisers. Graduates go on to private and parochial high schools, most on full scholarship.
Many, if not most, elite preparatory schools have programs that support the underprivileged. I have first-hand knowledge of at least two different programs in one of the top schools in the country. These programs recruit inner city youth from around the country. They support the students’ tuitions, room and board, and travel expenses throughout their attendance. These students go on to selective colleges throughout the country.
Thanks to generous contributions of alumni and philanthropic organizations, these programs help to educate the economically disadvantaged. This country needs to provide high quality education to prepare our youth to be a highly skilled workforce and productive citizenry. We need more of funding for these institutions and programs like them!

Sleep Your Way to Success!

2010-06-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

High school students need more sleep! I have been teaching at the secondary and college levels for over three decades, and I’ve noticed that the most successful students have something in common: They are well organized. They can manage their time effectively, thus avoiding cramming time and allowing for discretionary time.
I’ve recently added a separate study skills component to my instructional programs, so I’ve done research on brain development and methods of improving concentration, focus, and memory. I can provide exercises to practice these skills, and I can suggest methods for prioritizing tasks. Yet the success of all of these strategies relies heavily on two other aspects over which I have no control: nutrition and sleep.
Students need to eat regular meals that contain the right balance of protein and carbohydrates at the correct times during their day. For example, most students don’t realize that eating protein before class will boost their ability to concentrate, while having a lunch heavy on carbohydrates can hinder their focus because they experience post-prandial sleepiness.
Furthermore, studies prove that those who sleep about ten hours a night perform mental and physical tasks better than those who get less sleep. I regularly inquire about the number of hours my students receive, and the standard answer is “About six hours.” That is insufficient! And the school schedule is not conducive to the habits of the normal teenager, with classes generally starting before 8:00 am, which is akin to having them working in the middle of the night. So students need to accommodate the school schedule and budget their time well enough to allow them to have a good night’s sleep or all of the practice can go to waste!

Why Writing Skills Are Important

2010-05-17T10:05:00.001-07:00

Let me preface my remarks by admitting that I am, by both profession and temperament, a grammarian. Perhaps to the annoyance of some, I have gone so far as to suggest that the management of a supermarket change the sign over the express line from “10 items or less,” to “10 items or fewer.” I am sensitive to the nuances of the language, sometimes to my own detriment, as hearing a friend say “I feel badly,” sounds like the proverbial nails on a chalkboard to me. Having admitted that, I can go forth to explain why excellent writing skills can contribute to success in school, in business, and in life.
According to guidelines from Marquette University, “Writing is the primary basis upon which your work, your learning, and your intellect will be judged—in college, in the workplace, and in the community.” Marquette credits both Brown University and the University of Missouri when providing specifics. I agree with each of the points listed below:
• Writing expresses who you are as a person.
• Writing is portable and permanent. It makes your thinking visible.
• Writing helps you move easily among facts, inferences, and opinions without getting confused—and without confusing your reader.
• Writing promotes your ability to pose worthwhile questions.
• Writing fosters your ability to explain a complex position to readers, and to yourself.
• Writing helps others give you feedback.
• Writing helps you refine your ideas when you give others feedback.
• Writing requires that you anticipate your readers’ needs. Your ability to do so demonstrates your intellectual flexibility and maturity.
• Writing ideas down preserves them so that you can reflect upon them later.
• Writing out your ideas permits you to evaluate the adequacy of your argument.
• Writing stimulates you to extend a line of thought beyond your first impressions or gut responses.
• Writing helps you understand how truth is established in a given discipline.
• Writing equips you with the communication and thinking skills you need to participate effectively in democracy.
• Writing is an essential job skill.
As with anything worth doing well, writing takes practice. Writers must understand the mechanics of writing: those include grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The ability to phrase thoughts well comes with the ability to discriminate between parts of speech, sentence length and variety, and effective punctuation.
Educators must make grammar and writing skills priorities in our system. Writing programs should begin in earnest in first grade, when students learn to read. The emergent reader can certainly understanding the function of the basic building blocks of sentences—verbs and nouns. By the time they reach third grade, students should understand all eight parts of speech. Once they possess a strong grammatical foundation, they can venture into expository writing, with frequent feedback from trained professionals. Only then, can they produce effective writing.

Fat, Dumb, and Happy

2010-05-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

A billionaire philanthropist who has made educational reform his personal crusade has harsh words for American students and their parents. In a recent interview with Bloomberg.com news, Eli Broad places the blame on U.S. lackluster performance on nationwide complacency. He maintains that American parents fail to place the correct emphasis on their children’s education. Speaking bluntly, he stated, “The American people frankly have been over many, many years, to be blunt, fat, dumb and happy. . . If they want their children to compete with children in India, China or Korea, they better get them a far better education.”
His foundation will focus on helping to change state and national educational policies. He believes that the national government will have to play a bigger role in order to have standard curriculum. He also urges changes in the school year, teacher assignments to schools, and a realignment of school boards that do not address student achievement.
Joining him in calling for education reform is Nouriel Roubini, an influential economist, who believes, “Investing in education and technology would benefit the U.S. economy more than spending on housing.” Indeed, an article in this week’s The Economist backs up this assertion. “Many Americans lacking true upward mobility bought its trappings, such as a bigger house or better car. As a result American optimism has been pierced by doubt.”
The best gifts any parent can give her child are time, attention, and a high quality education. Surely, those intangibles will last much longer than material possessions.

Alternative Route to Certification

2010-04-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

In the past, teachers’ colleges, also known as “normal colleges,” had a virtual monopoly on providing the route to teacher certification. However, a move is now afoot to provide alternate means of achieving teacher certification. Some universities have implemented crash courses for certification, producing “six week wonders” i.e. those who already have a bachelor’s degree but lack state requirements for certification. According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Officials in Washington, D.C., and New York State, where some of the best-known education schools are located, have stepped up criticisms that the schools are still too focused on theory and not enough on the craft of effective teaching. Now, some states are exploring the possibility of providing alternate certification routes.”
In previous entries, I have explored the positive results of the Teach for America program. I’ve speculated that these neophyte teachers are successful because they are highly educated in a specific academic area, rather than in educational theory. They enter their classrooms devoid of teacher certification, but armed with knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment. Now, they may be able to acquire their certification through specially designed programs. “The United States secretary of Education is also trying to expand these programs. The 2011 federal education budget doubles the financing for teacher training through a $235 million fund that will go to both alternative and traditional preparation programs focused on high-needs schools and subjects.” He admits that while some schools of education, like Columbia Teachers’ College, provide good training, “Many, if not most, of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.”
In New York State, teachers must obtain a Master’s Degree within five years to receive professional certification. The Board of Regents, the governing education body in New York, would create a partnership with alternative programs. They would allow these programs to develop their own paths to certification, subject to their approval. For example teachers who emerge from Teach for America and work in “high risk” schools for a minimum of four years could be eligible for certification in the state.
These efforts are laudable, but are they enough? Individuals who continue to enroll in colleges that provide traditional routes to certification need much more than theory. Some education professors haven’t set foot in an actual K-12 classroom in decades, or at all, for that matter. The system is broken, so we need to repair it!

Teacher Tenure

2010-04-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

Who benefits from teacher tenure? Does tenure ensure that the best, brightest, and most motivated teachers are instructing students? Clearly, many state education departments find problems with it, as they attempt to improve or eliminate the existing structure. An article in Education Week states, “A handful of states have begun to overhaul their tenure-granting processes by increasing the number of years it takes teachers to win due process rights, and by trying to improve the evaluations that are supposed to guide determinations of whether a teacher qualifies for the benchmark.”
Take Connecticut as one example of current tenure law. Teachers qualify for tenure after 40 school months (roughly 4 years). Once granted, teachers can be dismissed after due process hearings for only the following reasons:
1. Inefficiency or incompetence based on evaluations that comply with State
Board of Education guidelines for evaluations;
2. Insubordination against reasonable board of education rules;
3. Moral misconduct;
4. Disability proven by medical evidence;
5. elimination of the position to which he was appointed or loss of a position another teacher, as long as there is no other position for which the teacher is qualified and subject to the applicable provisions of a collective bargaining agreement or school board policy; or
6. Other due and sufficient cause. (Connecticut Tenure Law)

The criteria are somewhat vague at best. As someone who has served as both an assistant principal and principal in Connecticut public schools, I can attest to the difficulty in dismissing incompetent tenured teachers. The process is not only extremely time consuming but also expensive. In the meantime, students suffer, sometimes losing a critical year of education. That situation is inexcusable.

The Education Week article reports, “The mechanisms through which the states are approaching changes to their tenure policies differ. They range from a law enacted in Ohio last year delaying tenure-granting until a teacher has served for seven year to a regulatory overhaul in Delaware, completed in January that more closely ties tenure to a teacher’s effect on student achievement.” Change is welcome!

Transparency in Public Schools

2010-03-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, Adam Schaeffer, a member of the CATO Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation, published a paper entitled, “The REAL Cost of PublicSchools.” In it, he maintains that the per pupil expenditures submitted by educational administrators, “often leave out major costs of education and thus understate what is actually spent.” He reviewed districts in five major cities and found that, on average, the money they actually spent was more than 40% HIGHER than reported. “The gap between real and reported per-pupil spending ranges from a low of 23 percent in the Chicago area to a high of 90 percent in the Los Angeles metro region.” Furthermore, he found that public schools spend about 93% MORE than the median private schools in the same locations.
These statistics bring forth some very troubling questions: Where is the transparency on fiscal matters that the citizens deserve? Whose schools are these? After all, this is their tax money, so shouldn’t they know exactly how public officials use it? Why aren’t all of the costs transparent?
Studies have demonstrated no direct correlation between the amount of money allocated to student expenses and effectiveness of education. If that were actually the case, some of the public schools with the highest per pupil costs (NYC, for example) would outstrip all those with lower costs. That, however, is untrue. Has anyone asked why private schools, which offer lower teacher salaries, educate students more effectively? Could unions be implicated in the demise of public education? While good teachers certainly deserve the salaries they receive, many ineffectual teachers receive the same pay.
Take one prime example: New York City public schools. Some ineffective tenured teachers report to an administrative building to sit all day doing nothing. Yet they still receive their salaries and benefits, sometimes in excess of $100,000 a year! Meanwhile, trained, dedicated, qualified new teachers are receiving per diem pay with no benefits while they prepare lesson plans and provide instruction for the classes left behind. Administrators who try to rid their schools of these incompetent teachers face reams of paperwork and years of litigation. Any private enterprise that operated so ineptly would be defunct in short order. Why? Maybe it’s because the teachers’ union has a stranglehold on the schools.
Demand accountability and excellence in the public sector, especially in education!

The "Mastery" Plan for High School Graduation

2010-02-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

Beginning with the 2011 school year, some Connecticut high school students may be eligible to graduate after two years. A new education plan, funded in part by the Melinda and Bill Gate Foundation, and organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy, will debut in eight states. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the goal of the program is to insure, “that students have mastered a set of basic requirements,” thus reducing the numbers of high school graduates who need remedial courses when they enroll in college. The “board exams” will model similar examinations that exist in high achieving countries like Singapore and Finland. They will include English, math, science, and history.
Students who pass the exam can choose to graduate and move on to a community college after tenth grade. Those who wish to enroll in selective colleges may continue to take college preparatory courses throughout their last two years of high school.
Connecticut is one of only eight states to pilot this program. The others include Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The participating states will apply for federal stimulus aid to defray the cost of the pilot program. Start-up costs for each student are estimated at $500 for materials and tests and to train teachers. Each state pledges to begin the program in ten to twenty schools. The criteria for the pilot schools have yet to be determined.
Rather than the customary “seat time,” which requires that students collect a number of credit before graduation, this program will focus on mastery of content for graduation. The commission members hope that students who demonstrate mastery of basic skills can move into community colleges without needing remedial assistance.

State Assessments Hinder Capable Students

2010-02-07T05:38:00.001-08:00

The Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University has published a report suggesting that the emphasis on “proficiency” on state exams may actually hinder progress for the nation’s most capable students. While school districts receive credit for raising the scores of lower students, they have no incentive to encourage their brightest. As reported in the educational journal, Education Week, the “proficiency” label is not very challenging. “We know the proficiency bar is set quite low in most states,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president for national programs and policy at the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which produced a 2008 report pointing to lagging academic-improvement rates for top performers.” As one example, students who perform below goal on the Connecticut Mastery Test must receive remedial assistance. So school districts must provide resources to achieve the additional instruction. However, the only responsibility that schools have regarding gift and talented students is to “identify” them and send the report to the State Department of Education. They need not provide any services to these students, most of whom sit in heterogeneously grouped classes waiting for their less capable classmates to catch up. Does that ever happen? The recent findings “challenge policymakers’ hope that a rising tide would lift all boats. When a state narrowed gaps at the proficient level on state tests, the analysis showed, it didn’t necessarily follow that the gaps at the top were reduced as well.”
While school superintendents pat themselves on their backs for achieving a “proficiency status,” these capable students sit restless and bored and become less motivated to learn. Small wonder that parents of high achieving public school students who encounter their first real standardized test with national norms, such as the SSAT, SAT or ACT, are often stunned to discover that they achieve below the 50% mark. How could that be, when they’re consistently on the honor roll? Educators need to change their policies and paractices so that our educational system reaches all students.

Characteristics of a Super Teacher

2010-01-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

What are the characteristics of an effective teacher? Are superior teachers simply born with the skills they possess, or do they acquire those skills in a classroom? One thing is certain, effective teachers are essential for any improvement in the educational system. “More than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter.” This comment comes from an article in the January edition of The Atlantic entitled “What Makes a Great Teacher.” What enables some individuals to command students’ attention and challenge them to do their best? Within one academic year, the difference between students in a “super” teacher’s class and those in a poor teacher’s class can be staggering. In fact, as much as a three year differential in learning can occur within a single academic year. So being able to identify key characteristics of excellent teachers and teacher candidates is essential to improving the quality of the classroom experience.

The Teach for America Program has been compiling data about effective teachers for the past two decades. Not surprisingly, these educators have some common characteristics. Excellent teachers have high expectations for their students, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds or location. They also continually seek new ways to improve themselves and their teaching methods. They are persistent and engaged. They seek parental involvement. They organize; they plan; they persist. Persistence can take the form of high grade point averages in college as well as leadership achievement –running something and showing tangible results.”

Having knowledge is essential for a super teacher. But knowledge in a particular subject area like math, science, or language appears to count more than simply possessing a set of credentials like a Masters Degree in a general field like education. A super teacher also has the ability to share her knowledge with students.

Another shared trait is “life satisfaction.” In fact, those teachers who reported that they were content, “Were 43% more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues.” Attracting such individuals must be the imperative for any educational reform.

Holistic Scoring?

2009-12-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

I have been teaching English for more than thirty years, so I’m no longer surprised that high school and college students do not know the eight parts of speech and their uses. Few English teachers at the secondary level teach grammar. Rather, they engage in literary discussion, and movie viewing. (Instruction in “the classics” from Greek plays to American authors appears to be declining as well. Ah, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Question: How can students learn to express themselves clearly and concisely without proper instruction?
Answer: They can’t.
On state assessments as well as national tests like the SAT’s and ACT’s student essays are graded holistically. That means that the reader spends only a few moments with each essay and gives a score, usually on a 1 to 6 scale. She doesn’t correct errors in mechanics, spelling, and punctuation. But students don’t see these essays again, so they don’t know what was right or wrong.
Most teachers use the same grading format for essays that they assign. It’s faster, to be sure, butHowever, the classroom teacher is supposed to provide instruction in order for students to improve. Thus, grading holistically is inadequate in these situations. Sometimes the instructors provide a “rubric” to let the students know what they’re evaluating. But seldom do they use the students’ essays as starting points for instruction. They lose these “teachable moments.” If students learn the terminology of writing, including the parts of speech and their functions, then they can practice and improve. The concept of diagramming sentences is foreign to most students, who do not understand the function of all of the parts of speech.
Perhaps the first step in improving writing instruction is to teach the teachers!

Television Advertising & Sugar Cereals

2009-11-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Many studies demonstrate that television viewing affects children’s physical and mental health. Unlimited television time detracts from active play and induces passivity. Furthermore, commercialism is rampant on network and cable television. Children have no defenses against the advertising industry, so they fall prey to every fad. A recent report indicated the possible devastating effects of television advertising on preschoolers.

Consumer Reports provides the following disturbing statistic. The average preschooler sees 642 cereal ads per year on television alone, almost all for unhealthy cereals.” The study, conducted at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity points to both short and long term effects of poor nutrition. For example:

Cereals marketed directly to children have 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber, and 60 percent more sodium than cereals marketed to
adults.
Forty-two percent of child-targeted cereals contain artificial food dyes,compared with 26 percent of adult cereals.
Of the children’s cereals, only 8 percent meet the nutrition standards
needed to be included in the USDA’s food stamp program

Starting the day with a good breakfast is vital for successful learning. However, starting the day with a high-sugar cereal is a bad decision. And children watching television before they go to school are assaulted with commercials for these sugary snacks.

In fact, the cereal companies have been aggressively marketing the least nutritious cereals to children. Furthermore, the medical editor of CB.com indicates, “The current generation of children will be the first in the history of America to die earlier than their parents did - and a recent study reveals cereal ads may be partly to blame. Poor food choices haunt individuals throughout their lives. Obese children have fewer friends and lower self esteem. They also have a greater likelihood of suffering from depression than their thinner counterparts.

So parents should shut the television, discard the sugary cereals, and provide more healthful choices for their children.

Theory or Pratice?

2009-10-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

The Secretary of Education has criticized most of the teacher training programs in colleges and universities. Arne Duncan calls for a drastic change in preparing teachers for actual classroom experience. As quoted in The New York Times, “By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.” About half of the nation’s public school teachers have graduated from teachers’ colleges. He maintains that at least 60% of teachers with degrees from education colleges thought that they were not prepared to teach when they graduated. They expressed a desire for more practical experience.

I must agree. The least useful and most brain-numbing courses that I had to endure as an undergraduate were methodology courses that were required for state certification. (And the graduate coursework for administrative certification was even worse!) If teaching is ever to be considered a real profession, then the qualifications must increase, and the training and salaries need to be commensurate with those of highly trained professionals. Physicians must undergo years of residency before they can practice; lawyers must pass the bar exam, and certified public accountants need to perform well on qualifying exams. A first year teacher may enter a classroom full of surly teenagers armed with little more than a few methodology courses and three months’ worth of student teaching. That does not compute as a recipe for success.

Instead of burdening would-be teachers with busy-work like portfolio development, provide them with quality academic and practical classroom experience before they receive their diplomas and certifications. Expect that as undergraduates they will become experts in a certain subject rather than major in the nebulous realm of education. The old adage, “Those who can’t do-teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers” must disappear.

Provide future educators with at least a full year of student-teaching experience under the tutelage of a master teacher. Allow them to develop lesson plans and interact with students. Provide them with the guidance and experience that they need, and give them regular feedback. If they can’t pass those conditions, then they shouldn’t receive certification. And if they do enter the profession, provide merit pay. Perhaps then change will occur.

The Proof is in the Pudding: And It's Sour!

2009-10-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

The scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress are out, and the news is dismal. The NAEP test is generally more challenging than annual state-wide exams like the Connecticut Mastery Test. Despite good intentions and high expectations, this assessment indicates that the nation’s children are suffering through another educational fad. Fourth graders showed no improvement in math, and the slight improvement in the grade eight scores is insignificant. According to a report in The Christian Science Monitor, “The lack of progress, education advocates also say, is striking enough that the country should be asking hard questions about its math education, particularly for younger students. . . . This may mean we've gotten all of the octane we can out of our current math teaching force," says Amy Wilkins, a vice president at the Education Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing achievement gaps. "What can we do to get more really good math teachers not only into the profession, but into high-poverty and high-minority schools?" According to Matt Driscoll, who was the head of the education department in Massachusetts, "If we are to succeed, we must all work together to provide comprehensive, challenging math courses for future educators."
So once again, it’s time to ask why many of the nation’s schools have chosen to experiment with an unproven math curriculum: the reform math movement? Parents know this constructivist program as Every Day Math or Connected Math. Whatever name educators choose, the evidence indicates that it’s NOT working!
The alleged goal of this system is to help students focus on theory and understand math concepts in lieu of rote memorization. Yet no evidence exists that it works! In fact, according to The Oregonian a major criticism is that “It slows down advanced students and doesn't prepare them for higher forms of math.” Results of recent SAT’s back up this assertion. Recent scores showed no improvement in math scores. The ACT exam, the college entrance exam that is more curriculum-based than the SAT indicated, “Only 42% of high school graduates are ready for college-level math.”

If, indeed, the “reform” movement strives to help students develop their own meaning of math, then it has failed. The recent scores reflect a woeful standing. Parents should demand accountability. Poor math skills will haunt them for their entire lives unless changes occur immediately.

Gender-Specific Conversational Styles

2009-10-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

At a recent education conference, I attended a presentation by renowned linguist Deborah Tannen. The author of twenty-one books and more than 100 articles, Dr. Tannen’s area of study focuses on the effect of conversation from childhood through adulthood. The title of a few of her publications provides some insight into her research: You Just Don’t Understand, Talking from 9:00-5:00, and You’re Wearing That?

This lecture highlighted gender differences. She included some video clips showing best friends in conversation, which were not only entertaining but instructive, especially for educators. The most striking difference between the sexes is their use of eye contact and posture. From an early age, girls face their friends and look right into their eyes, often bending in towards them or whispering in their ears. Girls put value on being the same, so they also cooperate. On the other hand, boys sit parallel to each other, not making eye contact. They value competition, both physical and conversational. Whereas girls do not like a direct approach because they find it “bossy,” boys prefer very direct, succinct conversation. Most parents can attest to the experience of having a meaningful conversation with a teenage boy while riding in a car, because of parallel seating.

This gender difference can clearly have implications for instruction, especially private tutoring. Having done some research previously, I altered my approach with private instruction. I changed the seating arrangements depending on the gender of the student. I sit across the desk from the girls, but next to boys when I can. That little change helped the sessions become more effective because the gender-specific seating arrangements allow the student to be more comfortable during a tutoring session. Small changes in seating and conversational style can have a profound effect on learning.

Altenatives to television

2009-09-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

Unrestricted television viewing and Internet access have detrimental effects on the physical, intellectual, and emotional health of many Americans—adult and children. These electronic devices can render their most insidious effect on our youth because they hinder both activity and creativity. Obesity and diabetes have been linked to such viewing. So have focus problems, including a proliferation of attention deficit diagnoses.

The two things that children say they want from their parents are time and attention. So eliminating or reducing television viewing can also engender more family cohesiveness. Parents have asked what they can do to restrict their children’s television habits and encourage personal development. I offered some suggestions in a previous article that certainly bear repeating now. They can wean their children from “the tube” by substituting their viewing time with other activities, or by allowing children to engage in free play, in which they can amuse themselves. “Screen free” family activities need not be expensive. They can foster togetherness, intellectual development, and physical health. They can include both indoor and outdoor activities.

After-school alternatives can include the following: outside seasonal activities such as bike riding, jumping rope, playing tag, skating, playing catch, gardening, sledding, etc. Indoor activities can allow the child the opportunity to develop a hobby or skill: drawing, painting, building, reading, creative writing, crafts, playing a musical instrument, learning a foreign language, and much more. Furthermore, the following activities can bring the family together and help the child feel like a productive member of the family unit: cooking and baking; playing board games, chess, checkers, crafts, and much more.

Family “field trips” can take advantage of community resources. For example, most town libraries have evening hours during the week. Living near a university affords special advantages, like museums, athletic events, and inexpensive theater and musical events (e.g. the Yale website provides a variety of free daily events). Activities are restricted only by imagination. Parents can learn more about their children and allow them to be less dependent the “boob tube” to amuse themselves.

Boys and School

2009-08-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

In previous articles and blogs, I have addressed the issue of effectively educating boys. But the topic is so important that it bears repeating. Would single sex classes benefit boys as well as girls? Why are the majority of valedictorians girls? Why does a gender gap exist in colleges, with more women than men enrolling in and graduating?

In 1972 Title IX Education Amendment prohibited discrimination due to gender. That was certainly critically important for girls. Unfortunately, an unanticipated result may have left boys in the dust, educationally speaking. The education pendulum began to swing away from boys. Well-meaning educators determined to focus on giving girls equal treatment in classrooms and in sports failed to recognize that boys and girls learn differently. Biological differences include motor and brain development, so those differences should affect educational methodology.

Dr. Larry Summers, former Harvard University president, was excoriated when he dared to declare that women were not as adept in math and science as men. Perhaps his message was politically incorrect; however, like most stereotypes, it contained some truth. Instead of denying differences, educators should address them. According to Peg Tyre, author of The Trouble with Boys, “Our expectations for our children have been ramped up but the psychological and physical development of our children has remained about the same. Some kids are thriving in the changing world. But many aren't. What parents and teachers see—and what this government study now shows—is that the ones who can't handle it are disproportionately boys. “
From an early age, boys are more active than girls. They like to manipulate objects and move. Their fine motor skills develop later than those of girls. They need unstructured play. So placing them in female-centered classrooms from kindergarten can have a detrimental effect on their attitude and ability. They should be able to move around if needed, stand if they desire, and have activity periods that will help them to focus.
Some educational options include separating the classes by gender, incorporating more physical activity in classroom activities, and using developmental milestones instead of age to group children into grades. Educators and administrators need to be sensitive to the needs of boys if they are to thrive educationally.

Testing: When Size Matters

2009-07-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Does the size of a testing group affect student performance? A recent study cited in The Economist theorizes that it can have a significant effect. Two researchers: one from University of Michigan and one from University of Haifa in Israel examined the results of the 2005 SAT and noticed a difference in scores relative to group size. They found an inverse relationship between group size and test scores. In other words, as the number of test-takers increased, the average scores on the test decreased. In fact, they discovered a similar pattern for the Cognitive Reflection Test, which is also an analytical exam.
The researchers tried to determine if their data resulted from such external factors as inadequate or uncomfortable seating conditions or distracting noises in unsuitable locations like gyms or large lecture halls. To rule out this possibility they conducted another experiment. “They asked 74 university students to take a timed, easy general-knowledge quiz which they were asked to finish as quickly as possible without compromising their accuracy. Each student completed the test alone, but half were told they were competing against ten other people and the other half that they were competing against 100.” Those students who thought they were competing against the smaller group finished about 5 seconds faster than those who imagined they were in the larger group! So the psychological component over-rode external factors.
These findings point not only to the advantage of small group testing situations but also to the ability to use psychological factors to control outcome. Students testing in a smaller setting may reap the benefits with higher test scores. So registering for a test early may be one way to insure placement in an optimal location. In fact, students applying to independent schools usually take the Secondary School Admission Test at a school. However, they can choose to take the test privately (Flex Test) with a certified educational consultant for an additional fee. They are allowed to take that Flex Test only once during the academic year. So perhaps the test makers already noticed the advantage that testing alone provided those students.

The "Business" of Education

2009-07-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

When reformers discuss improving the American school system, they often focus on finances. However, providing additional funding doesn’t necessarily translate into improved student achievement. Some inner city schools that have higher per pupil expenditures still have notoriously low test scores. So addressing educational issues shouldn’t translate into spending more money. For example, teachers’ salaries at private schools are considerably lower than those of their public school counterparts, yet these private schools consistently demonstrate higher achievement levels and more of their students enter selective colleges and universities than those in the state-run schools. Why?

One reason is the very structure of these organizations. Private schools are business entities that must respond to the needs and expectations of their clientele. In other words, they must produce a high quality “product.” Any private school that doesn’t do so will quickly lose its support and close its doors. Public schools are government agencies. Thus, they lack the business culture and drive to provide a quality product or a profit.

One suggestion for improving public schools in Britain and American comes from the July 4 issue of The Economist: “Make head teachers at state schools as accountable to parents as their peers at privates schools are and give them the same freedoms, notably to sack poor teachers and pay more to good ones.” That won’t happen until someone (perhaps the American taxpayer?) can break the strangle-hold that teachers’ unions have on the American system.

In the meantime, parents who are unsatisfied with the status quo but who cannot afford to send their children to private school have several alternatives. They can home-school them; they can try to enroll them high quality charter schools, or they can supplement with after school learning centers like Handle Associates.

American Education from a European Vantage

2009-06-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

The latest edition of The Economist presents a grim view of the American public education system. Our British cousins concede that American workers put in longer hours have less vacation time than their European counterparts. (The French have seven vacation weeks, and the Germans have eight.) So they question why hard-working adults tolerate such low standards for their school-aged children.

American children are required to spend only 180 days per year in school. European students attend for 195 days, and East Asian countries require their schools to be open for a minimum of 200 days. “Over 12 years, a 15 day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year. . . . (They) also have one of the shortest school days, six and a half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark, and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese.”
Moreover, the lengthy summer vacation eradicates a great deal of learning. “The average child reportedly forgets about a month’s worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics.” Most teachers will admit that they spend the first six weeks of school reviewing and re-teaching what their students lost over the summer. American students consistently perform poorly on international educational tests, especially when compared with those in other industrialized nations.

The current state of educational affairs leaves our children with a distinct disadvantage in the global job market. They are burdened with an archaic academic calendar intended for an agrarian society. Teachers’ unions have a strangle-hold on districts, so administrators can do little or nothing to improve the situation. Education is a function of the state rather than the federal government, so although Barack Obama can urge school administrators to “rethink the school day,” he cannot mandate any substantial change.

But change MUST come if we are to protect our children’s and our nation’s future. Parents must demand more from their educational systems. The first step can be as simple as having students reinforce daily lessons with meaningful homework assignments. Laziness cannot and should not be a defining characteristic of American students.

What Makes a GOOD College?

2009-06-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

Parents of many rising seniors spend the summer shuttling them to visit colleges and universities with the hope of finding the right fit. But what makes a college attractive and worth the tuition? Is it the physical campus, the teaching staff, the coursework, or a combination of many features? Does the “brand name” of a college feature into the actual level of education?

Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank, has proposed that the methods of measuring a university education should change. Thomas Toch, the co-director of the organization, maintains that the cost associated with any particular college does not necessarily correlate with the level of instruction. “Tuition has been skyrocketing for years, with little evidence that education has improved. Universities typically favor research and publishing over teaching. And influential college rankings like the one published by US News & World Report measure mostly wealth and status . . . They reveal next to nothing about what students learn.”

One brief example for assessment is the college credit system. Colleges vary regarding the number of credits they award a course, and that can have a substantial effect on learning. For example, a student attending a college that provides 3 credits per course must take 5 courses per semester to carry 15 credits. By contrast, a college that uses 4 credit courses can take just 4 courses that same semester to receive 16 credits. And laboratory courses require even more credits and work. According to Mr. Toch, “The National Survey of Student Engagement gathers data on factors proven to correlate with learning—things like the number of books and lengthy papers assigned in courses. . . The Collegiate Learning Assessment tests students’ critical thinking and measures progress over a college career. “ However, the organizations that administer these surveys can’t make their reports public. He proposes that the government “push for systematic public information on the quality of undergraduate learning, school by schoo.” That might be a good start.

Academics or Athletics

2009-06-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

Who’s in charge in schools—teachers or coaches? As learning institutions, the primary purpose of school programs SHOULD be academics. Striking a balance between the intellectual and the physical is commendable. And everyone needs discretionary time. Ah, therein lies the problem. In some cases, practices exceed classroom time and coaches’ demands become excessive.
Throughout my many years in education, I have been continually perplexed and often troubled by the dominance that coaches yield not only over students, but also over teachers, administrators, and parents. Why do parents comply with demands like weekend practices that clearly cut into family time? Student athletes have confided that their families could not go on vacation because the coaches would penalize them if they missed practice. Others have reported that they could not participate in numerous activities outside the confines of the court, the track, or the field because their coaches simply wouldn’t release them. Who schedules an athletic event the night before a major exam like the SAT’s or ACT’s? Who’s keeping the interests of the students in the forefront?
To what end is all of this emphasis on sports? Colleges may attract students by having winning teams that generate contributions, but what benefit do high schools receive aside from a trophy or a title? What percentage of high school athletes actually go on to be recruited for a college team or even participate in a college sport? Qui bono—the student athlete or the coach?

Teacher Incentives & Student Performance

2009-05-29T13:40:00.001-07:00

Let me be clear from the beginning; rewarding individuals for exceptional performance is good. While the form of the reward can range from pat on the back to a monetary award, but most people enjoy acknowledgement of their hard work and achievement. Nobel Prizes, Olympic medals, the Oscars, and Super-Bowl rings, represent a few of the prizes awarded to those who excel in their respective fields. Merit pay for teachers is good. However, the caveat for educational administrators is how to measure success. Because grading students usually involves a subjective component, report card grades are not an accurate assessment of teacher effectiveness
A study released by the Institute for the Study of Labor this year indicated an inverse relationship between individual teacher incentives and student performance in Portugal’s public schools. Specifically the authors maintain that “increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a significant decline in student achievement, particularly in terms of national exams. The triple-difference results also document a significant increase in grade inflation. According to The Atlantic “The teachers may have been inflating classroom grades to cash.” Obviously, an objective measurement of student achievement, like standardized exams, would provide a more accurate assessment of teacher effectiveness
However, an earlier study released in a 2006 report from the Journal of Public Economics provided different results. In this situation, “test scores are higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance. Moreover, the estimated relationship between the presence of merit pay in teacher compensation and student test scores is strongest in schools that may have the least parental oversight. The association between teacher incentives and student performance could be due to better schools adopting teacher incentives or to teacher incentives eliciting more effort from teachers.”
So, choosing the appropriate measure can provide better insight into good teacher practices. Those effective teachers should be rewarded if their students are performing well. As I indicated in a previous entry, high teacher quality can contribute a year or more of increased learning. They can then serve as mentors and models for their less effective colleagues.

Attitude Affects Ability

2009-05-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

“Advanced math is not only for rocket scientists.” A recent article in The Washington Post reported on methods to introduce fifth and sixth grade students to algebra in an effort to have American youth become less math phobic and more engaged in higher math. Raytheon, a Massachusetts-based company, is in the forefront of the celebrating math ability. They sponsor celebrities from athletes to actors to demonstrate the importance of math in their fields and in life. Making math less mysterious may go a long way to improving motivation, which affects math ability.
A 2007 study at Stanford University demonstrated the power of motivation in a curious way. They followed the academic progress of two groups of New York City seventh graders. One group received an introduction to the “changing nature of intelligence” (that the brain forms new connections when learning ) at the beginning of the school year. The control group did not receive this information. By the end of the school year, the first group improved their math grades more than the control group, whose math ability declined. Another informal survey by The Washington Post in Fairfax, Virginia, examined students’ attitudes toward math and their performance. Not surprisingly, those who enjoy math say it makes sense, while those who don’t like it find it hard and confusing.
Rather than commiserating with their children about the difficulties of math, parents would be wise to encourage them to change their attitudes. Like anything else—athletics, music, art--math takes practice. As a famous athletic-wear motto says, “Just do it!”

Literary Literacy

2009-05-20T05:36:00.000-07:00

Years ago, Howard Gardner published Cultural Literacy, in which he delineated a body of knowledge Americans should possess in order to be considered educated. I always ask my secondary level students to tell me what they’re reading for school assignments, and I am often dismayed by the dearth of classics on their lists. So, for the sake of cultural literacy, I feel compelled to introduce them to authors with whom they may not be familiar. For certain “great works” form the basis of cultural literacy for the Western world.

The following works still appear on most middle school reading lists: Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Noticeably absent are works by Dickens or Shakespeare. Carol Jago, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English reports that many 19th. century texts such as Dickens' Great Expectations, are disappearing completely from classrooms, because teachers consider them, "Too long, too hard" for attention-deficient teenagers of the 21st century. Teachers are giving up." Hence, some middle school students read an excerpt from one of these authors in an anthology. Sometimes these excerpts appear in abridged form “translated” into more “readable” form. Substitutions for the classics include popular series like Harry Potter and Twilight.

Perhaps that is one reason that the College Board has included a writing prompt on the SAT. The question directs the students to respond with reference to their “reading, and observations.” So I have them compile a “literature list” rather than a reading list. I have found that most American Literature classes in high school still expect students to read The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. While most high school students read at least one Shakespearean play, some have read only one, with assistance of a movie for explication. Few have had any exposure to ancient Greek drama or even know who Dante Alighieri is.
Mark Bauerlein of Emory University says “the background college freshmen bring to class is already helter-skelter.” In his book, The Dumbest Generation, blames “the unclear goals of the politically correct and a dumbed-down digital culture. “
According to David Kipen, director of literature for national reading initiatives with the National Endowment for the Arts, no national canon exists. We must challenge our students to help them grow. Let’s not accept mediocrity as a standard. Keep the classics alive!

Reading or Studying?

2009-05-14T04:39:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between reading and studying? I pose this question to my students and often receive blank stares in response. When I ask them to distinguish between “leisure reading” and academic reading, most of them admit that the only reading they do is that required for school. Their choices for discretionary time generally tend toward the electronic—television, computer games, cell phone. It’s little wonder, then, that when they face standardized tests, they struggle with critical reading passages.
One way to improve comprehension and reduce study time is to employ active reading strategies.

As the name states, this type of reading requires the participant to be actively engaged in the process. It involves a pen or pencil, so the reader can extract meaning from the text by asking questions and by making brief notations on the page. If writing in the book is not feasible, as in the case with most public school students who merely borrow a book for the academic year, using a notepad or sticky notes is the alternative. Simply highlighting material is a poor alternative, as the result can be a colored page that provides little clue to important passages. The questions the reader poses as she reads provide a framework for unlocking the information.

Why am I reading this? The answer to this question should NEVER be, “Because I have to,” or “Because the teacher said so.” Rather, the following questions will prove to be more helpful: “What do I want to learn from this selection?” “Why is this important?”

What type of information is this? Is it a non-fiction or fiction section? What is the general topic? What is the specific information that I can learn about this topic?

What is the main idea or thesis? Express this in a word or phrase.

What is the author’s purpose? Is this piece informative, humorous, satiric, analytical, etc?

What is this paragraph about? Notice how each paragraph following the thesis reinforces or qualifies the initial premise by providing examples, illustrations.

While this method may take some practice, the more one uses it, the more likely it will become second nature. Studying can become more productive and less time consuming.

Achievement Gaps

2009-05-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

A May 5 report in Education Week summarized the Educational Testing Service report. The research indicates that wide education gaps still exist among races and economic classes. As a professional educator with over three decades of experience, I would like to address a few of the findings over the next several entries and pose some questions and possibilites of my own. So many variables occur affect educational outcome, that trying to discern cause and effect is a formidable process.

The ETS reported the following:
"In percentages of 8th graders taught by uncertified teachers, the gap has increased between Hispanic students, whose teachers are far more likely to lack certification, and white students."

Having taught in parochial and public schools in three states, in inner-city, suburban, and rural settings I have encountered a wide range of student and teacher competencies. I completed my student-teaching in a New York City junior high school that organized the students homogeneously. The honors classes included SP1 through SP3. The bulk of the classes, however, ranged from #1 to #13. The teachers assigned to the highest number classes (e.g. #13) were more occupied with student containment than with education. The majority of students were Caucasian, and the teachers were certified.

After this internship, I went on to teach in a public high school in an upper-middle class suburb in Westchester County, where teachers maintained New York State certification. My next position was at the junior high level in a Catholic school about 20 minutes from Manhattan, where certification was not a necessity. I didn't witness a great deal of difference between my certified and non-certified colleagues. Sitting through methodology courses may test an individual's endurance, but it doesn't guarantee that person will succeed in a classroom full of less-than-eager students.

My most positive teaching experience was, perhaps ironically, in the middle of Newark, New Jersey in a Catholic girls' high school. The student population consisted largely of minority students: African American and Hispanic girls, with some Portugese as well. The school administration consisted of nuns, and some nuns were also on the faculty. Certification wasn't required, so some of the teachers had a license, while others didn't. In fact, most of the teachers were lay people who received what amounted to subsistence wages. However, this was the most dedicated faculty I've ever had the honor to work with. They had a vocation rather than a job. No one quibbled about union dues or prep time. When a colleague was out sick, everyone covered the classes, so the students could have a productive period rather than busy work.

Another positive aspect of this school was parent involvement. These students had families that were committed to their education. Some parents worked two or three jobs to pay the tuition. Make no mistake; this was an inner city school, and these girls were inner city kids. But the mere threat of a call home was sufficient to quell unruly behavior.

So, certification is no silver bullet for educational woes and ethnicity need not be an excuse for failure. Rather teacher competency, consistency, and commitment, along with a partnership with the family are keys to unlock students' academic interests and talents.

Think Ahead!

2009-05-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

This is a busy time of year for most students, but it tends to be a frantic period for high school juniors. May and June mark the height of testing for many college-bound juniors. Aside from preparing for end-of-the-year school exams, some are facing standardized tests like Advanced Placement exams. These tests can help students and their families save on college tuition costs or even reduce the time the students spend in college. Rated on a 1-5 scale, they require extensive preparation during an academic year. However, the rewards can be substantial. Many colleges award credit for scores of 3 or above. Diligent, capable students can enroll in AP courses throughout high school. If they perform well, they have a number of options. They can enter college with a semester or more of college credits; they can re-take the college course with a solid background in the material; they may choose to skip entry level courses and move into more advanced levels. However, colleges and universities differ in their AP policies, so students and parents should do some research prior to applying.

Unfortunately many students are aware of yet another set of tests that some colleges require. Aside from SAT's and ACT's selective colleges and universities expect to receive scores from at least two SAT Subject Tests. Students should check the admission requirements of universities they are considering. The Common Application lists the tests required for the colleges that accept that form. Students can also research admission requirements on each university's website.

These tests include specific history, science, math, language and English topics. The earlier students know about these tests, the easier it will be for them to decide which ones to take. The best time to sit for one of these exams is immediately following completion of the course. Thus, thinking about college should begin as early as freshman year. While most students haven't selected college choices at that point, taking these exams allows them more options. A ninth grader enrolled in a physics course can take the Physics SAT at the end of that school year. Taking one or two tests per year provides opportunity and reduces stress. The tests are an hour long, so students can take two or three at one sitting. But waiting until the end of junior year puts a great deal of pressure on students who may face the prospect of taking subject tests for which they are not prepared. Or they already be overburdened with other exams. Think ahead for maximum results

"PC" Invades the Elementary MATH class

2009-04-24T10:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve expressed my opposition to the latest permutation of math pedagogy to afflict schoolchildren several times, but I find it necessary to share the latest absurdity. Regardless of the semantics of a particular program (e.g. reform, constructivist, connected, or everyday) the concepts are not only confusing but also educationally unsound. Having a child “construct his own meaning behind math” is patently ridiculous.
By the way, theoreticians rather than practitioners designed the program. In other words, math educators, not mathematicians, are the responsible parties. When was the last time these college professors actually taught children in an elementary classroom rather than a laboratory? Perhaps these American math educators could have played with this idea if our students were so far ahead of their global counterparts that they were sitting on their hands waiting for everyone to catch up. But the opposite is true. Comparisons with students in other countries indicate that our children are woefully ill-prepared. Rather than stressing self-reliance and competence, the program advocates calculator use as early as the first grade classroom. Why not expect students to practice math facts as they do the alphabet? Or will children also have to construct their own alphabets next?
But the most recent excuse for implementing this method would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. In some convoluted formula that remains a mystery to most reasoning adults, students learn to subtract starting with the numbers on the LEFT (thousands, then hundreds, etc.). In one second grade class in New Haven, the teacher explained that this was the proper way to perform this mathematical operation, in order NOT to confuse the children into thinking that they were “borrowing” the numbers. Because then they would have the wrong impression about borrowing in general because “they can’t give back a number”! So now, political correctness has invaded the math lesson. My students will continue to learn the traditional approach, and they will continue to excel!

"Reform" Math?

2009-04-20T04:38:00.000-07:00

What is constructionist math, and how does it differ from the traditional approach to learning math?

Many of today’s parents recall with trepidation their own elementary and junior high school exposure to the “new” math (base 3, base 7 etc.) When faced with another “new” theory about learning math, they are, therefore, understandably skeptical.

The traditional approach includes skill practice in the foundations of computation such as number facts and practice drills. Students using the traditional approach memorize the multiplication tables and learn how calculate long division problems using the four-step process (divide, multiply, subtract, bring down). The sequential approach to math expects that students will master their computation skills before they progress to more complicated procedures like “order of operations,” mathematical properties, and problem-solving formulae.

On the other hand, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics presents the constructionist approach (including Connected Math) as an attempt to more fully engage students in their learning of math. This approach eschews drill and practice and rejects memorization. Rather, it emphasizes an “inquiry” program for pupils to “construct” their own knowledge through reasoning. This approach often introduces calculators into the classroom as early as first grade with the hope that the students will learn math in the process.

And so, another nationwide “math war” ensues in this country. Critics of the traditionalist movement call it “drill and kill.” Opponents of the constructionist approach cite examples of children being unable to compute correct change or solve basic multiplication problems. They maintain that students who have not built a solid foundation of math facts at an early age have difficulty in high school math.

An article in a recent edition of the NY Times reported that parents in one Rochester suburb went so far as to send a petition to their board of education requesting that students have the option of taking traditional math. Although, the board initially rejected the petition, it did acknowledge the legitimacy of some complaints; it has begun supplementing the constructivist classes with lessons in computation. As a result, the board had to petition the State Board of Education for a postponement of the statewide Regents exam.

America’s students do not fare well in math ability when compared to those in other industrialized nations. One typical example is the 2003 math exam sponsored by the “Program for International Student Assessment.” Fifteen year old students from 34 countries took part in the exam. Results reported in late 2004 indicated that US students ranked 29 of the 34 nations, ahead of only 4 Mediterranean countries and Mexico. Three Asian nations, China, Japan, and Korea ranked at the top. These countries ascribe to a very traditional math curriculum, replete with incessant skill and practice work.

Anyone who questions the importance of these mathematics standings need only glace at current economic headlines. Undereducated American workers compete for jobs globally, and outsourcing to foreign nations is a common phenomenon. The summer edition of The Atlantic included a speech at the University of California by a member of several corporate boards in Europe and the United States who maintained that about 30% of American high school graduates are unprepared for the workforce, as opposed to about 15-20% in Europe.

Recent changes in the SAT, the college entrance exam taken by most students on the East Coast, includes increased higher order math content. Will the constructionist method help or hinder these students? Will it allow American students to be more prepared for challenges in the work force or universities? Whether the constructionist theory will have the desired effect of producing individuals with a solid knowledge base remains uncertain. The impact of the constructionist movement may take some time to filter through high school and college classes.

The Value of Homework

2009-04-20T04:35:00.000-07:00

Tom Friedman’s bestselling book, The World is Flat, presents the premise that competition for jobs is now global. The “playing field” for employment has been leveled due to the availability of a highly educated, inexpensive global workforce. Anyone who has attempted to receive technical help with electronic equipment has discovered the veracity of his statement. Those toll-free numbers connect with assistants located in the far reaches of the globe. Corporations continue to outsource departments previously filled by local employees.

This globalization of the world’s economy has far-reaching implications for our educational system. U.S. students are no longer competing only with their neighbors down the street, in the next towns, or even across the country for college entry and jobs. Rather, they must be globally competitive. Of course, that implies that our schools must produce students capable of that competition. What can they do to be ready for the challenges of the twenty-first century? A number of options arise, and one is quite simple.

In the first place, the current 180 day school year, modeled on an agrarian culture is on one of the shortest in the world, and it is certainly archaic. Furthermore, each school day consists of a mere 6 hours, and much of that time evaporates in non-instructional tasks like lunch, recess, passing time, and study halls. Increased testing, extended school days and expanded academic years are contentious and expensive propositions. Yet, according to one writer at the Brookings Institute, a famous “think tank,” another solution for increased learning and additional time “on task” does exist. It’s called “homework.”

Too few American students in engage in meaningful homework. A 1999 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicated that about 66% of seventeen year olds had less than an hour’s worth of homework each night, and approximately 40% did no homework at all. Homework, which includes reviewing and compressing class notes, reinforces concepts from the day’s lessons. It also teaches responsibility. After all, school is a student’s primary work. Learning the lesson early in life that sincere effort and dedication yield positive results has benefits that extend far beyond the classroom.

Many immigrant families acknowledge the benefit of homework in their children’s success. Several decades ago, an educational study performed in one of California’s poorest performing districts yielded interesting results. It found that the children of new immigrants from Southeast Asian countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam ranked at the top of the nation’s performers. They were in the same schools, in the same classes with the same teachers, yet they were honor students achieving academic distinction and national awards. The significant difference between them and their American born classmates was that after school they sat around the kitchen table (most with non-English speaking parents and grandparents at their sides) doing homework and studying!

Of course, the homework needs to be meaningful and directly related to classroom learning. It can’t be “busy work” that is never checked or reviewed. It needs to promote academic learning, reinforce the curriculum, and enhance skills. In order for students to see it as beneficial it should have a direct impact on their lessons. The amount of homework a student receives should vary according to age and grade. But certainly a half hour per night for elementary school students is appropriate. On the other hand, twenty to thirty minutes per night per academic subject for high school students would provide a great deal of additional learning. If high school students spent at least an hour on homework every weeknight, they would be engaging in 180 additional productive learning hours, or 30 more school days, without adding any time inside the building! Let’s help our children succeed now and in the future! Homework is a beginning.

Supplementing education

2009-04-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is a truism that education begins at birth. However, it is necessary to emphasize the role of parents as a child’s first and most important teachers. Long before a child takes his first trip on the school bus, his or her parents can launch him on a journey of life-long learning and exploration. Whether the child is the only, first, middle, or last, each child deserves the attention and time that only a parent can provide.

Supplementing education is not always an easy task. Rather, it is time-consuming and sometimes exhausting, but it is certainly enriching and rewarding for parents and children alike. Parents are their children’s role models; children are great mimics, so parents should be mindful of their own habits. One of the most positive actions that a parent can take from the beginning is to help the child to establish himself as an independent learner. If he forms active habits early in life, he will be less likely to rely on outside sources like television and video games to amuse him. Thus, for optimal engagement, the television should be off. In fact, avoiding the television habit can be one of the most beneficial acts a parent can achieve. Once parents shut off the television, they can find a multitude of activities in which they can participate with their children.

In early childhood, building blocks, finger-painting, listening to books or tapes, and molding clay are some of the tools of learning. Placing a child-sized table and chairs near a busy parent allows a child to amuse himself without being isolated. In fact, allowing a child to entertain himself with books and artistic materials is a gift that can last a lifetime. Most towns offer a wide range of opportunities for engaging in parent-child programs outside the home: libraries and community centers offer many possibilities. Mom/Pop & Tot swimming and gymnastics programs, reading programs, and music programs for toddlers are excellent opportunities for play and learning. Starting an informal play-group is an alternative to organized programs and offers socializing opportunities for parents as well as children. Planning field trips to museums, firehouses, farms, zoos, beaches, parks, and other activities need not be expensive and can provide a full day of amusement for everyone involved.

The activity repertoire certainly expands once the children start school. Team sports are usually quite popular: hockey, soccer, basketball, and baseball, and more are all readily available. However, be mindful of the child’s attitude toward the sport. Be sure that these activities provide more fun than stress for the child. For those children who prefer non-competitive sports, martial arts programs are excellent. In addition to physical benefits, they foster concentration and confidence. Music, art, dance and drama lessons provide excellent arenas for self-expression and growth. But remember not to overdo the activity circuit.

Foreign language study is superb. Children are receptive to language early, so some pre-school programs like Montessori introduce it to three and four year olds. Certainly, foreign language should be a part of the school program before middle school. The ability to be truly bi-lingual or multi-lingual appears to diminish with age. So surely children would benefit from foreign language programs in elementary school.

Supplementing school education should be ongoing. Parents who are aware of what their children are doing in school can take many opportunities to expand on a learning unit. They may find that their child would benefit from more in-depth study on a topic introduced in school. Rather than seeking supplementation only if something seems to have gone awry in school, parents also can help their children find new opportunities for enrichment and growth. The important part of the supplementation process is being aware of the child’s interests and needs. Aside from looking at papers that come from school, notice his attitude and ask questions. If your child has an affinity in an area, try enhancing it. If he or she shows a weakness, strengthen it. There are a number of local instructional programs in writing skills, reading, and math and test preparations. Some students concentrate on catching up with their class in a particular subject, while others enjoy the opportunity for advanced study and enrichment.

Adolescents who engage in athletics, creative arts, writing, music, are more active and certainly more intellectually stimulated that those to plant themselves in front of some inane re-runs. Moreover, adolescents and teenagers who view learning as a positive, life-long experience know that it is not confined to a classroom. It surrounds them at every turn. Supplementing education can provide many benefits beyond academic learning; its positive results can last a lifetime.

Summer learning

2009-04-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks of the school year are fast approaching, and many parents are seeking activities for their children that will help them to retain or advance their academic skills during the summer months. Like muscles that strengthen and grow with use, the brain benefits from constant use and challenge. Summer is a great time to combine learning and fun. Children from pre-kindergarten through high school can maintain and advance their learning skills in as little as twenty minutes a day. Whether parents are home with their children all day or working outside the home, they can engage in many rewarding activities together. Many resources are available online or at the library. Materials can be found right at home. They keys are planning and consistency. Work on something every day. Take advantage of the good weather to engage in activities outdoors, so that children associate learning with the world in general, not just the classroom.

According to Richard Riley, Secretary of Education, “Educational research has made it clear that parents who are actively involved in their children's learning at home help their children become more successful learners in and out of school.” Here are just a few suggestions for learning activities. Some are provided by the Home and School Institute. They are arranged according to age. You are limited only by your imagination. Using available resources and a bit of ingenuity, you can make almost any mundane errand a fun learning experience for adults and children alike. Find time to engage your child and you’ll both be rewarded.

Kindergarten-Grade 3

Number practice: Give your child practice in reading numbers left to right by dialing a telephone.
Napkin Fractions--Make fractions fun. Fold paper towels or napkins into large and small fractions. Start with halves and move to eighths and sixteenths. Use magic markers to label the fractions.
Shapes: Cut bread into different shapes--rectangles, triangles, squares, circles. Make at least two of each shape. Ask your youngster to choose a pair of similar shapes, then to put jam on the first piece, and to place the second piece on top to make a sandwich. This is a snack plus a game to match shapes.

Reading: This activity also teaches the body parts--head, arm, knee, foot. Print the words on sticky paper and ask your child to attach these papers to the clothes in the closet or drawers. Make a pattern of your child lying on a large sheet of paper. Tack it up. Ask your child to attach the words for the body parts to the right locations.

Writing: Set up a table outside with finger paints and paper. Let your child paint and create “concrete poetry” about what he sees around him.

Disappearing letters: Promote creativity and build muscle control with a pail of water and a brush. On a warm day, take your children outside to the driveway or sidewalk and encourage them to write anything they wish. Talk about what they've written.

Listening skills: Read a story aloud to your child and stop before the end. Ask the child how the story will turn out. Then finish the story and discuss the ending with the child.

Grades 4 & 5

Math— Discuss baseball and football scores and averages on the sports pages. Who are the high scorers? What are their averages and percentages?

Ask your child to choose a dish to prepare for a meal. Then have your child check to see what supplies are on hand and then make a shopping list. At the supermarket, let your child select the food on the list. First, your child decides which items are the best buys and makes selections. Also, have your child write the price of each item on the list and, if possible, figure the total, checking the prices against the sales receipt.

At the gas station, ask your child how much gas you needed and the cost per gallon. Then have him calculate your mileage.

Reading--Read with your child by taking roles in stories and acting out dramatic poems. Whenever possible, tape record these sessions. Then listen to and enjoy these performances together.

Join the summer reading challenge provided by the local library.

Encourage your child to read the newspaper every day, starting with sections of particular interest, like movie reviews, sports stories, or local events.

Writing—Have your child keep a diary or a travel journal. Encourage him to write in it every day. Bring it along on family trips. It will serve as a wonderful memento!

Encourage your child to write a review of books he has read or movies he has seen. He can tape record them and “broadcast” them to family and friends.

The first installment of this article focused on summer learning activities for children through grade 5. This article continues with suggestions for students in grades 6 through 12. With the child’s increasing maturity and independence, the activities can take on a more global perspective. Summer is the perfect opportunity to reinforce the concept that exciting learning takes place outside the confines of a “brick and mortar” classroom. In fact, demonstrating that adults continue to engage in meaningful learning is one of the most important lessons that parents can impart to their children. Once again, some of the suggestions come from the Home and School Institute. Use them as a catalyst for further exploration.

Grades 6-8

Math—Give your child the practical mathematical tools to run a household. Make a list of household expenses: utilities, telephone, food, mortgage, gasoline, etc. Then ask the child to estimate the monthly cost of each item. Discuss them first, and then let him calculate the actual cost of the expenditures and the income necessary to pay them and still have discretionary funds.

Practical application: If your child receives an allowance or regular spending money, ask him to calculate the cost of his activities and deduct it from his allowance. Does he save a portion of his allowance? If so, what percent?

Have your child look through newspapers and magazines for ads or articles containing percents, decimals, and fractions.

Reading—In order to help your child learn to read critically, introduce him to the editorial and op-ed sections of the newspaper. Then use the information as a source for dinner conversation. Ask him if he agrees or disagrees with the views expressed and to explain why.

Show your child the wide variety of magazines and journals available in the town library. If your child has a special hobby or interest, introduce him to a specialty magazine that might help him to explore that interest.

Writing—Encourage your child to send postcards to family and friends. They need not be from an exotic location. Postcards featuring the local towns are readily available.

Have your child write a review of a movie or video he has seen. What genre was it: fantasy, science fiction, action, etc? How were the characters portrayed? Why was the resolution satisfactory or unsatisfactory? Would he recommend it? For whom? Why or why not? The important component is to have the child think critically. Using “how” and “why” questions provides more opportunity for expression that “what, when, or where” questions.

Grades 9-12

Unfortunately, a parent’s involvement in his child’s education often decreases dramatically during the teen years. However, this period is just as crucial for a child’s development as the early childhood years. Teenagers definitely require careful parental guidance and involvement. The activities listed below aim to increase not only intellectual development, but communication as well.

Math—Encourage teenagers to set up checking savings accounts to monitor their use of money. Whether they earn money through part-time employment, household chores, or allowance, help them to have a realistic view of income and expenses. Have the teen demonstrate ways find cost savings for activities like movie-going, video rental, amusement parts, and athletic events. If the teenager drives, have him calculate the cost of owning and maintaining a motor vehicle. What percentage of his earnings should he allot to gasoline, insurance, and repairs?

Reading—Form a family book club. Often, students have required or suggested summer reading lists for school. In order to foster active reading, a very important component in learning, parents can encourage critical reading skills. For example, when parents read the same novel, the family can arrange to have a weekly discussion about it. Not only is the family time valuable, but teens can learn to appreciate a challenging novel on different levels. They can even extend their critical analysis skills with a little secondary research. Different family members can take turns leading the book discussion. The leader can guide a discussion to include valuable insights on a number of the novel’s elements. Points of discussion can include narrative style, theme, conflict, point of view, and resolution.

Writing—This activity is related to the reading. Teens can write reviews of the books that they read during the summer. Not only will they retain the information for a longer period, but they will have review material for the fall, when class discussions begin.
Furthermore, many books have been made into movies. Hence, teens can view the videos and then compare and contrast the stories presented. Some questions to consider include: how the director’s vision related to the reader’s vision; how the director’s view affected the action, characterization, setting? Does the teen agree with the director’s vision or the portrayal by the actors?

Above all, enjoy the summer with your children, no matter what their ages are!

Value-added analysis

2009-04-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Attracting highly skilled professionals to education in this country has been a difficult task. In many countries around the globe, teachers receive a great deal of respect. In Italy, for instance, secondary level teachers are considered “professors.” Unfortunately, many Americans repeat the adage, “Those who can’t do-teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.” Often, methodology professors in college provide more theory than practice, and their subject matter bears little resemblance to actual experience. So, what makes a good teacher? Are “natural” teachers born or trained? Finally, shouldn’t we recognize and reward effective teachers?
Value-added analysis can assist in identifying effective teachers. Using standardized test scores, researchers can quantify the academic performance in a class within an academic year. Over time, comparing these results can indicate how much more effective one teacher is than another. And that difference can be staggering: one full academic year! According to an article by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) that appeared a December issue of The New Yorker, “Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a bad school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to one in the eighty-fifth percentile.” He goes on to explain that both teachers receive the same salary, yet halving class size would result in doubling cost. Thus, ridding schools of bad teachers and providing merit pay for excellent teachers could actually save money!
While teacher styles vary widely, analyzing the methods of excellent teachers can provide some useful information for training new teachers. For example, enthusiasm for the material, attentiveness to student behavior, teacher affect, engagement, movement, language, even humor, can have a huge effect on a lesson. Analyzing videos of excellent teachers can be an effective method for teacher training. Providing additional compensation for master teachers who work with teaching trainees (in addition to their merit pay) would go a long was to making education a respected profession.

Family mealtimes & academic performance

2009-03-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

Families need to slow down and take the time to have dinner together. Most people already know that poor eating habit causes obesity, diabetes, and other health-related problems. Eating on the run affects far more than physical health: it Regularly stopping at the local fast-food restaurant certainly has detrimental effects on diet. The documentary Super-Size Me illustrated those results quite graphically. Indeed, the subject of that experiment received dire warnings from his physician about continuing his junk-food -only regimen.
A study at Purdue University demonstrated, “As a child grows older the frequency of family meals declines.” In fact, while 60% of 13 year olds have family mealtimes seven days a week, that number decreases to 30% by the time these teens are 17. The reasons include schedules for both parents and children. With two working parents and students’ activities, many families’ cooking skills have declined. Regular family mealtimes provide many benefits. Among these are A increased language acquisition, enhanced school performance, and academic success. A direct correlation exists between the frequency of family meals and the good grades. In addition, children who experience family mealtimes have a lower incidence of behavior problems and depression.
Families can prioritize to ensure that they meet together around the dinner table. They can eschew activities that detract from their family time. And communities can assist by scheduling athletics and other activities that don’t interrupt the dinner hour. Furthermore, when the family does gather for meals, they should be sure that distractions like television are off. Everyone will reap the benefits!

Linguistics & Math?

2009-02-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

Asian countries routinely surpass Western nations in math achievement. Some researchers maintain that the Asian school systems place more emphasis on mathematical ability. Others believe that Asian students simply work harder. But Stanislas Dehaene poses a different theory: The very structure of Asian languages may facilitate mathematical ability. Malcolm Gladwell quotes him in Outliers: The Story of Success: “In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English, and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in any given language and the memory span of its speakers.” For instance, a typical English speaker can remember seven digits, but a Cantonese speaker can remember 10. Saying “four” and “seven” takes longer than saying their equivalents in Chinese (“si” and “qi”).
The number naming system in Asian languages makes the math task easier than it is in English. Gladwell contends that “The number system in English is highly irregular . . . They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one; twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two tens four, etc.” The inherent logic of their system makes numbers more accessible from a very early age. Chinese children can count to forty by age four, whereas American children can count to fifteen by the same age. So even before they reach kindergarten age, American children are a year behind their Chinese counterparts, simply due to the structure of their language.
The Chinese number system also allows children to do calculations much more easily than their Western counterparts. “Ask an English-speaking seven year old to add 37 + 22 in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers. . . Ask an Asian child to add three-tens seven and two-tens two, and the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence.”
The relationship between language and math is fascinating, especially when one considers right-brain/left brain theories. But the immediate question facing educators is how to make mathematics more meaningful and more accessible to children. Instead of “dumbing down” the curriculum with constructivist concepts, they need to impose more skill work so that our children can become globally competitive.

The Magic Number

2009-02-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

What makes a person excel in his field? Does innate ability exist? What allows a Tiger Woods, Yo-Yo Ma, or Bill Gates to soar ahead of his competitors? Some researchers maintain these individuals, who may have vastly different backgrounds and abilities do have one thing in common: They achieved outstanding success through determination and practice. Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, makes a case that “prodigies” are actually individuals who have had the good fortune to find something that they love and the ability to invest a great deal of time perfecting their skills. And the magic number of hours is 10,000. He quotes neurologist Daniel Levintin: “The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert—in anything.” Gladwell contends, “It’s all but impossible to reach that number by yourself by the time you’re a young adult. . . Most people can reach that number only if they get into a special program. ”
So both time and opportunity are factors for phenomenal success. Supportive parents are, therefore, part of the equation. In fact, even Mozart comes into consideration with this formula. His father recognized his talent and developed it. But although Mozart began composing as a child, he produced his master work when he was twenty-one, after he had been composing concertos for ten years.
This research certainly has academic implications. Like the athlete who trains, or the musician who practices relentlessly, the serious student needs to invest time and energy in his pursuits. His parents need to foster his interests and abilities. He needs to ignore distractions. He must shut off his electronic devices: computer, cell phone, music player, etc., and study! Those who wish to score high on SAT’s would be wise to start practicing very early—several years prior to the test —to achieve a perfect score. So, the message seems clear: The harder a person is willing to work, the better he becomes at something, or, to quote an adage, “Practice makes perfect.”

Changing Expectations

2009-01-19T12:23:00.000-08:00

“Education begins at home. Parents are a child’s first teacher and his most important ones.” These statements are so obvious that they are truisms. Yet many parents have abdicated their responsibility regarding their children’s education. While people talk endlessly about strategies to improve public education, they cannot escape the reality that educators cannot make any substantial changes in isolation from the family structure. Throwing money at the problem has not improved the situation. In a recent book, Predictably Irrational, the author mentions that the US already spends more money than any other Western nation on its schools. Yet every year we encounter dismal reports indicating that our children continue to fall behind their European and Asian counterparts. Why?
Wealthy school districts can certainly attract more qualified teachers if they offer better working condition and higher salaries than inner city schools. Yet these perquisites are only part of the story. In the 1970’s, a now-famous study investigated the achievement of the children of Cambodian & Vietnamese “boat people” in the troubled inner schools of Los Angeles. The students had the same daily experiences in school as the rest of their classmates—the same teachers, curriculum, and books. Yet these Asian students were scoring high on national exams and receiving National Merit Scholarships and entrance to competitive universities. The conclusion for the difference was that each night, the Asian students sat around the kitchen table with their families (and often with parents or grandparents who couldn’t speak English) and completed their homework. These families had high expectations and a culture that valued educational success.
As an educator with over thirty years’ experience, I have served in a variety of school settings, from inner city to suburban, parochial and public, large and small. I can say, unequivocally, that the best school-based experience I had as a teacher occurred in the middle of Newark in a poor Catholic high school where the lay teachers were receiving salaries that put them on the verge of qualifying for federal assistance. Yet we had a student body that consistently out-performed the local public schools by a wide margin. Aside from enjoying the services of dedicated professionals, these parochial school students (many of whom were not Catholic) possessed another critical component for success—the commitment of their parents. In some cases, parents worked second or third jobs to afford the tuition. In this situation, the financial commitment translated into higher expectations for their children’s achievement. The parents took time off work to attend teachers’ meetings, and they contacted the school if they suspected that their children were not performing as they expected.
I also know of a tuition-free charter school in New Haven that offers books, uniforms, and three daily meals to its students, along with a school day that runs from 7am until 6 pm. In order to qualify for enrollment, however, the parents must sign a contract promising to volunteer at the school and check their children’s homework every night. This school is enjoying expanded enrollment every year and has a waiting list for students. The students achieve because their parents support them.
Instead of throwing money at the education problem, perhaps educators would be better off to think of some creative strategies for involving parents. After all, school is not day care, so educators should fully expect parents to be partners in their children’s education. Americans parents must accept that they need to value education and transmit this attitude to their children in order to effect any changes in the system.

Cheating

2009-01-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

Many students have become adept at scamming the system. An October article in US News & World Report cited Donald McCabe of Rutgers, one of the leading experts on the subject, who maintains that cheating reached its zenith in the middle of the last decade, when “more than 50% of students ADMITTED to cheating in some form.” (So we can only surmise that the figure was actually higher). Cheaters often devise ingenious ways of being deceitful, as evidenced by the many YouTube suggestions. These include the use of cell phones, pages, calculators, scanners, and other electronic devices. Some of the cheaters rationalize their behavior by claiming that the course is useless or unrelated to anything they might need in the future.

Some educational institutions have t honor codes that place the onus on other students to curb bad behavior. “Studies show that well-designed and enforced honor codes can make big dents in improper behavior.” But many schools are also attempting to combat the problem through technology.

Taylor Ellis, associate dean for undergraduate programs and technology at UCF's college of business explains their approach. “Many business students now take their tests on cheat-resistant computers in a new, super-secure testing center.” Many students plagiarize by lifting passages straight from Wikipedia or study sites like SparkNotes. Educators are employing a variety of strategies on the war against cheating. These include websites like turnitin.com to anti-cheating hardware. In the former, a teacher can turn on his computer to find phrases that might have appeared in other sources. In the latter case, organizations like the Graduate Management Admissions Council use “palm-print readers to make sure students who sign up for the GMAT are the ones who actually take the tests.”

Remote learners are also subject to anti-cheating deterrents. “Troy University in Alabama encourages online students to install on their home computers a $150 anti-cheating package that includes a 360-degree webcam so that proctors can remotely monitor all sights and sounds in their rooms and software that locks down computers for anything but tests during exams.”

Although cheating has for millennia, technology has made it simpler. Perhaps now, that same technology can provide some solutions.

Response to article

2008-12-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

One day last week, as I was researching an educational topic, I inadvertently came upon a March entry of Ned Vare’s blog, in which he made a misleading statement, characterizing me as “an apologist for the public schools.” Sadly, he has misinterpreted the disinterested dissemination of information for a political position. He has demonstrated a woeful unfamiliarity with most of my writing, because he clearly mistook my explanation of the constructivist (aka Everyday Math, Connected Math, etc.) for an endorsement of it. I question whether he actually perused the entire article, “New Math,” for he neglected to mention my conclusion: American test scores are deplorable, and this new undertaking is uncertain at best, so why should we experiment with our students?
I have written several articles about the math program currently in use in several Shoreline districts, and not one favors it. See my July 1 entry, “Math: myth versus reality.” Moreover, in “Politics, Education, and Everyday Math” I further elucidate my position.
While I understand that anyone can be misinterpreted or misconstrued, I’m saddened that Mr. Vare has chosen to engage in ad hominem attacks. My sole intent remains to edify readers rather than to proselytize. Our children’s (and our nation’s )best interests should be the focal point dispassionate discourse and erudite discussion.

Incentive or Bribery?

2008-12-08T15:14:00.001-08:00

Some parents reward their children for achieving in school with money or gifts such as toys, games, cell phones, and other desirable objects. They call the practice “positive reinforcement.” Others expect their children to achieve for the knowledge alone or for the ability to receive no more than a compliment, a pat on the back, and the satisfaction of a job well done. They consider such external incentives, “bribery.” Rewarding students to achieve certainly has its supporters and detractors, and the discussion usually brings forth heated debate. However, theory has turned to practice in dozens of school districts across the nation that are willing to pay students to achieve.
In an article in the October issue of The Kiplinger Report, Janet Bodnar states, “A plan by New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chancellor Joel Klein to pay fourth- and seventh-graders for high test scores has prompted plenty of reaction.” She cites the “slippery slope” that this practice engenders. Students can hold out for bigger and better “prizes” as they mature. And once the students reach high school and can hold part-time jobs, their parents’ leverage may evaporate. She also quotes school psychologist Sylvia Rimm, who points out that “for high-achieving students, money doesn't matter. And, Rimm says, kids who are underachievers fail because they're inconsistent.” Research has shown that once the incentives disappear, so does the motivation.
On the other hand, some school districts are desperate enough to attempt any measure to keep their students enrolled. The Spark Program is currently in practice in some New York City Schools. Developed by a Harvard economist, this program strives to target at-risk students from lower income families. A report on ABC news maintains that the developer of the program, Dr. Fryer, “Is trying to figure out a way to make school tangible for kids, to come up with short-term rewards that will be in their long-term best interest." Santa Ana, California, and Baltimore, Maryland also provide cash rewards for students who perform well. The goal is to keep students engaged enough to stay enrolled.
If students are actually rewarded for high achievement, perhaps the practice will spread to teachers as well.

High School Reform

2008-11-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

In 2006, the commission for the National Center on Education and the Economy proposed changes to the structure of high school. Their report, “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” calls for “restructuring school systems to save money and redirecting those savings toward elements such as universal prekindergarten and higher teacher salaries.”
Businessmen and politicians express concern that American students rank so low in math and science when compared to other industrial nations. The US is 21st in high school graduation statistics. The commission's 2006 report aims on "getting our best and brightest to achieve at very high levels, to be the drivers of new ideas and entrepreneurial approaches.” Now three states are willing to try some of the suggestions put forward two years ago.
Massachusetts, Utah, and New Hampshire are among the first to implement some radical reforms. For instance, in its ten year education plan, Massachusetts includes teacher-created schools, similar to charter schools, that would still allows for local funding under the regular school system. The National Education Association advocates such a change because it gives teachers more control over their professional environment.
New Hampshire is considering allowing the state’s sixteen year olds to graduate early to attend college or career training. “After passing a state board exam, they could take demanding college-prep courses or enroll in community college. Those who didn't pass could get help in their problem areas and then try again.” The funds saved by allowing those students to move ahead could be allocated to other sectors of the education budget.

Utah has created an initiative to address the low rate of post-secondary education. More than half of the state’s students do not attend college. Moreover, half of those who do go on stay for only one year. Recommendations for how to integrate education and employment should be ready in the early part of the new year.

Entrepreneurship can repair a floundering system only if archaic ideas and practices do not interfere.

Sleep-revisited

2008-11-02T12:32:00.000-08:00

As an educator who works daily with adolescents and teens, I am troubled by the fatigue that I witness from many of them. I regularly ask how many hours of sleep they manage during a typical school night. Most high school students respond that they average fewer than six hours. When I tell them that they require at least 9 hours of sleep, most of them respond that they cannot possibly accomplish everything and still have sufficient sleep. Research studies have indicated that biological factors contribute to “night owl” status for teens, and certainly, early morning school hours exacerbate the situation. Add homework, athletics, extracurricular activities, and part-time employment to that mix to understand why they suffer from protracted sleeplessness.

Their anecdotal reports appear to parallel sleep research. An article in a recent edition of Education News by nutritionist Byron Richard presented come troubling data. “Sleep problems in children and teens have reached a crisis level in America. . . . Only 20% of teens get adequate sleep. 16% of teens say have noticeable sleep problems, while 28% report falling asleep at school. . . New science shows that these issues are setting the table for obesity, depression, drug abuse, and future cardiovascular disease.”

Factors such as stress and poor diet can contribute to sleep problems. An ingestion of sugar can provide a temporary boost to a sleep-starved brain. Yet, in the long run, poor eating and snacking choices can lead to more extensive problems like obesity without providing the rest that the body really craves.
While parents have little or no control over their teens’ sleep patterns, they can promote a lifetime of good health by establishing positive habits very early. Aside from establishing regular bedtimes for young children, they can encourage good eating habits and regular exercise. They can provide a healthful diet and a restful, stress-free environment. As their children reach puberty, they can assist them in selecting activities that will supplement rather than overtake their academic responsibilities. They can encourage their children to establish study routines that allow for discretionary time for rest and relaxation.

Latin

2008-10-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Latin, once the lingua franca of the civilized world, faded into obscurity centuries ago. With the exception of the Catholic Church, few employed the spoken language. The 1960’s proved bleak for this classical language, when the Church agreed to present Mass in the vernacular of its congregations. Interest in Latin revived somewhat in the 1970’s and 1980s with the back-to-basics movement in many schools. Now the language is making a resurgence in both middle and high schools across the county, as students read of Caesar, Cicero, and other Roman notables.

The New York Times reports that interest in the ancient language have erupted due to students’ attempts to improve their vocabulary for the college exams like the SAT’s or ACT’s . Some English teachers contend that Latin provides a foundation for English grammar. Or perhaps students have fallen under the spell of the language as a result of their exposure to the Latin words, phrases and incantations in the Harry Potter series. Whatever the reason, “The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from 124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998. While some modern languages, like Italian, have experienced a decrease in the number of students who take the Advanced Placement exam, the opposite is true of Latin; the number of students taking the Advanced Placement Latin exam has nearly doubled in the last decade. Spanish and French still lead the foreign language course totals, and more students are taking Chinese and Arabic. However, in some districts, the increase in Latin students has driven administrators to search for additional teachers, so they can offer more advanced levels or more sections.
According to the Times article, “The executive director of the American Philological Association at the University of Pennsylvania, which represents more than 3,000 members, including classics professors and Latin teachers, said that more high schools were recognizing the benefits of Latin. It builds vocabulary and grammar for higher SAT scores, appeals to college admissions officers as a sign of critical-thinking skills and fosters true intellectual passion.” In addition to translation of classical documents, some teachers enliven the class with “livelier lessons that focus on culture, history and the daily life of the Romans. Porro ago Latin! (Long live Latin!)

Digital kids

2008-10-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Are today’s kids smarter or dumber than their parents were? Education Week reported on a luncheon hosted at the end of September by the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. Individuals born between 1980 and 2000 comprise the former group, sometimes dubbed the “millenials.” Two experts debated their abilities and accomplishments, employing a variety of statistics to support their views.

Professor Mark Bauerlein, from Emory University, bemoans the lack of literary knowledge that this generation possesses. An English professor by training and trade, he argues that “students’ obsession with social networking and video games has led to an abandonment of serious leisure reading. This is their opportunity to acquire the conceptual tools and background knowledge that will become the foundation for their intellectual lives, careers, and citizenship.” During their free time, instead of sitting down to read some classic literature like Dickens, Shakespeare, or Dante, they opt to log onto social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace to talk to friends. He backed up his assertions with statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and scores on recent college admissions tests.

However, Neil Howe, a historian and demographer, rejected that glum view of today’s youth. His more optimistic approach highlighted trends such as declining teen-aged pregnancies and lower drug abuse statistics and higher IQ scores. They also have access to more sophisticated pastimes, such as “creating robots, writing software programs, and developing projects to enter into science fairs.”

Both speakers agreed that these millenials have more access to cultural resources and technology than their parents did. “Baby boomer” parents may have to measure their offspring with a different yardstick. Perhaps every generation compares itself to the ones before and after it and finds fault. Boomers may recall the lyrics to one of the songs in Bye-Bye Birdie, a play that debuted forty-five years old. “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way? Oh, what’s the matter with kids today?” They remain relevant today.

The Catholic School Effect

2008-09-26T05:22:00.000-07:00

A professor at Brown University and a researcher at the University of Munich have collaborated to discover the effects of Catholic schools on the overall education of a number of countries. Their article, entitled “Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School,” cites evidence to support the historical Catholic resistance internationally to public education and its effects today. Their findings indicate that countries that had a Catholic population that resisted government-mandated schooling in the 19th century now have higher student performance today for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Due to space constrictions, this article focuses only on the American results.

They demonstrate the relationship between “early resistance to state schooling and the current extent of private schooling to examine the effect of competition on student achievement across countries.” The results indicate that the existence of parochial and private education benefits not only students in those private schools, but also public school students as well. They have found that “private competition reduces educational expenditure per student in the system, so that the better educational outcomes are obtained at lower cost.”

Countries that had a higher percentage of Catholics in 1900 now have a greater overall number of private schools. By the early twentieth century, the US had as many as 5,000 Catholic schools. “Although American Catholic schools never enrolled more than a small fraction of the national student population, as late as 1980 they accounted for almost 80 percent of enrollment in private elementary and secondary schools.” To understand the national effects of such schools, the researchers used data from twenty-nine countries that participated in a study in 2003. “Not only do school systems with more extensive private sector competition improve educational outcomes, they also do so at lower costs.”

Competition usually spurs organizations to work harder for higher achievement. Why would education be a different matter? Perhaps the introduction of the voucher system might induce a healthy competition that would benefit American education.

College readiness

2008-09-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

It’s not ONLY the test! That’s the advice I give to parents seeking test preparation for their children in the eleventh and twelfth grades. While the SAT and the ACT play a part in the selection process, the students’ transcripts certainly factor into the college application equation. Therefore, strategic selection of high school courses is very important.

By seventh or eighth grade, forward thinking parents should start assessing the strength of their children’s basic math and writing skills. Are they capable of taking the most challenging level of math that the school offers? Are they proficient readers and writers? Is their vocabulary expanding? Are they acquiring and using new vocabulary regularly? Are their science courses challenging? Have they begun to study a foreign language?

A report by WestEd, a California-based research and service agency, has indicates that many of that state’s high school seniors fail to meet college admission requirements because they “fall off the college-preparatory track in ninth grade—and can’t get back on.” They suggest that school districts monitor course selections for college-prep freshmen to determine if their classes align with requirements of the state’s four year colleges. Certainly, this situation is not unique to California schools.

State-wide standards require students to complete four years of English and three years of science, math, and history to graduate. Yet the levels of these courses can vary widely, even within a high school. Test preparation courses can familiarize students with test format and strategy. However, they cannot supplant the information on the transcript or compensate for years of academic insufficiency.

Most public high schools have guidance counselors who may responsible for the emotional needs of hundreds of students. They do not have college counselors dedicated to assist junior and senior students in post-secondary education selection. Therefore, parents need to serve as advocates for their children to insure that they will have the ability to apply to a four-year college if they should so choose.

A one-day test is part of the formula, but academic preparation should begin years before students enter the test center with their #2 pencils and calculators.

Connecticut Test Scores

2008-09-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

The news is out regarding the 2008 state test results, and it is not encouraging. The Department of Education has released data for statewide examinations administered to public school students: Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) for students in grades three through eight and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) for tenth graders. The results indicate that over 40% of Connecticut public schools failed to meet performance standards required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
In a statement released on September 10, Commissioner Mark E. McQuillan admitted, “A total of 408 schools did not meet the NCLB standard —Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)—this year; that is about 40 percent of our schools and about 100 more schools than last year.”

The Federal standards for proficiency in math and reading increased this year, from 70% to 80%. In 2010, the goal will be 90% and 100% by 2014. He admitted that reaching the adequate yearly progress goal would require improvement in “early reading instruction in our districts. Restoring the Early Reading Success grants and our continuing work that was begun at last year’s reading summit are important pieces of the puzzle.”

The statewide statistics appear below:

AYP Status for 2008
• Of 805 elementary and middle schools, 349 did not make AYP – an increase of 84 over last year’s
265.
• Of Connecticut’s 182 public high schools, 59 did not make AYP – 9 more than last year.
• Of the state’s 171 school districts, 44 did not make AYP – 12 more than last year.
(Source: “News Connecticut Department of Education” 9/10/08)

At the high school level (CAPT) math poses a larger problem than reading. Poor math scores resulted in a third of the high schools not achieving the AYP goal. Therefore, in January 2009, the Department of Education will send proposals for reform of math and science education to the General Assembly. The department is also working directly with fifteen of the state’s largest districts to “turn around schools that have been struggling for years.” No schools on the immediate Shoreline have been identified for assistance.

Orthography 101

2008-09-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Spelling demons! The English language has many of them. Students and adults alike bemoan the many exceptions to spelling “rules” that simply don’t apply. Famous writers on both sides of the Atlantic (Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw among them) had proposed simplifying English orthography. For example, according to the vagaries of the language, “ghoti” could conceivably be pronounced “fish.” This strange concoction comes from pronouncing the “gh” as in “enough,” the “o” as in “women,” and the “ti” as in “nation.” Native and non-native speakers struggle to understand how words like “threw” and “through” are homophones. One humorous verse from a book entitled Language Minority Students in American Schools: An Education in English, illustrates the complexity of the language:

Beware of heard, that dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: It sounds like bed not bead
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed.

Because of the language’s history (English derives from both Germanic and Latin roots.), it has a multitude of sounds for each letter or letter combination. This characteristic makes English words much more difficult to spell than words in romance languages like French, Spanish or Italian. An article in The Economist cited a 2003 study that indicated that English takes more than twice as long to read to learn as it does to read most other western European languages.

Recent national test results in the United Kingdom demonstrated that about 30% of British students cannot read properly. One suggestion, according to a professor at a British university is that the English-speaking population should accept the most common misspellings as variations of a word rather than errors. However, spelling reform is quite difficult because language is more than a series of phonetic sounds. In The Economist, Mari Jones of Cambridge University argues that, “ Differences in regional pronunciation mean that introducing a phonetic spelling of English would benefit only people from the region whose pronunciation was chosen as the accepted norm. . . It would need continual updating to accommodate any subsequent changes in pronunciation.”

Languages change constantly, so unless some population wholeheartedly embraces an entirely new system spelling rules, English speakers should continue to have their “spell checkers” at the ready.

ACT now!

2008-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

This year’s ACT scores reveal that 75% of those who take the test will require remedial assistance in at least one subject during their college enrollment. This disturbing statistic certainly has major implications for curriculum development throughout the country.

This college entrance exam is more curriculum-based than the SAT, as it contains math, reading, writing and science sections. Nationally, more students take the ACT than the SAT, although the latter exam is more popular on the East and West Coasts. However, the expansion of the SAT that occurred since 2005 has affected the number of students taking the ACT. More students are opting to take both exams, as colleges will accept either test. This year, a record 1.42 million students took the ACT. That figure represents a 9% increase over last year’s number. According to the Star Ledger of New Jersey, “At least a third of that expansion came from states that traditionally saw college-bound students take only the SAT, with the percentage increases rising by double digits in New York, Connecticut, California, Oregon and New Jersey.” Students interested in majoring in either math or science sometimes choose to take the ACT. In fact, some educators and college administrators question whether some high-achieving students are actually propping up average scores nationally.
The perfect ACT score for each of the four sections is 36. The national composite score for this year’s graduating class was 21.1, a slight decrease from last year’s scores. USA Today reported that “ACT scores continue to show huge gaps remain between the preparation students receive in high school and what they need to succeed in college. Only 22% met a benchmark score for college readiness in all four subjects — English, math, reading and science. According to an ACT spokesman, part of reason for the reason for the poor test performance is that many students taking the test have not completed four years of college preparation courses. They maintain that “Students who take a four years of English, and three each of math, science and social studies — are significantly more likely to meet benchmarks.” The test developers also stress that these courses need to be rigorous. “Among 2008 graduates who took the minimum core curriculum in math — algebra I and II plus geometry — just 14% met the math benchmark.”
No single test can indicate a student’s success in college. However, high schools will better serve their students and the nation if they challenge their students.

SAT score reporting policy changes AGAIN!

2008-09-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

October marks the beginning of test taking season for students applying to college. This year’s graduating class will be the last one affected by the College Board’s policy of sending all test scores to colleges and universities. The Board announced this week that its policy of sending score reports will change next year. The change takes effect in March 2009, so current seniors applying to college are not affected. Currently, test takers do not have the option of holding test scores that they do not want colleges to see. All SAT I Reasoning test scores, as well as SAT Achievement Test scores go directly to colleges and universities to which a student applies. The “new” policy actually returns to a previous practice that existed prior to the March 2005 debut of this expanded test. That policy allowed students to choose which scores they wanted colleges to receive. Thus, only students who took the test over the last three years had no choice regarding their SAT scores.

The College Board maintains that this “score choice” option will benefit applicants who take the test more than once. They can decide if they wish to defer sending test scores or not send them at all. However, once they decide to send scores, they must choose complete test. They cannot “mix and match” test scores. In other words, if a student performs quite well on the Critical Reading section of one test but scores much better on the Math section of a different test, she has to decide which scores to send (or whether to send both sets), as the entire test results will show. This “new” policy aligns with the ACT practice that allows students to choose which test results to release. One can only speculate as to why the College Board changed the policy at all.

Of course, this change will also benefit the test makers, as students may be more inclined to take the test multiple times, if they have the option of choosing which scores to send. In fact, more students have been opting to take both the SAT and ACT and sending them to colleges. Expect more changes to come.

Dyslexia

2008-08-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

The brain is a plastic organ! No, not literally, but it does possess qualities that allow it to repair itself or adapt to new pathways. The latest study from Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated that students with dyslexia “permanently rewired” their brains after only 100 hours of intensive remedial reading instruction. The study, published in the August issue of the journal Neuropsychologia provides some exciting possibilities for the future of special education.

The instruction resulted in brain activity in the cortical region of the brain, the one associated with reading. Moreover, those gains not only continued, but also solidified a year after the training. Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine the alterations in the portion of the brain responsible for language development and reading. Specifically, that is called the “parietotemporal area, which is responsible for decoding the sounds of written language and assembling them into words and phrases that make up a sentence.” Prior to remediation, poor readers showed less activity in that region than did good readers. That differential between the two groups decreased immediately after the dyslexic students participated in the remedial course. “However, at the one year follow-up scan, the activation differences between good and poor readers had nearly vanished, suggesting that the neural gains were strengthened over time, probably just due to engagement in reading activities.”

These findings contradict earlier beliefs that dyslexia results from visual problems, like transpositions of letters such as b and d, p and q, Only about 10% of reading difficulties have a visual cause. A much larger percent –70%-- arise from “a difficulty in relating the visual form of a letter to its sound, which is not a straightforward process in the English language.”

The remediation consisted of specially trained remedial reading teachers working with three students per group for an hour a day. “The training included both word decoding exercises in which students were asked to recognize the word in its written form and tasks in using reading comprehension strategies.” The brain imaging study was the first to test students in their understanding of words in sentences, rather than simply word recognition.”

Clearly, this study can have significant implications for curriculum development in areas other than reading. Also re-training the brain to overcome some learning disabilities is a distinct advantage over medicating students. Targeted instruction may be the wave of the future in education.

Math: myth vs. reality

2008-07-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Why do students in Asian countries consistently outperform their American counterparts in math? Do girls have inferior mathematical skills? Several studies yield results that may provide surprising answers to these questions.

Many adhere to the myth that Asian students are inherently better in math than Western students. However, the method of imparting the mathematical message may account for a large part of the gap in performance. A recent book entitled Made to Stick reported on a research study in the early 1990’s that explored this issue. A group of forty schools participated in the study- ten each in Taiwan and Japan, and twenty in the United States. “The researchers found that all the teachers used rote recall quite a bit; it was standard procedure in at least half of the lessons observed in every country. But other techniques varied greatly among the three countries.” The biggest difference appeared to be that the teachers in the Asian countries used many more concrete examples in their classrooms to reinforce abstract mathematical concepts. For example, they inserted a real-world concept like money or sports to illustrate an equation. A typical example occurred in an elementary Japanese classroom: “The teacher placed on a desk 5 rows of 10 tiles each. Then she took away 3 rows of 10 tiles. She asked a student how many tiles were left, and he gave the correct answer: 20. The teacher then asked the students how they knew that this was a subtraction problem.” She had provided her students with a visual image of subtraction.” This style of questioning, called “computing in context” is the opposite of rote learning and “occurred about twice as much in Asia as in the US (61% vs. 31%).” This method helped the abstract concept to stick.

Onto myth #2- a previous belief that girls do not perform as well as boys in math suddenly appears incorrect (or at least outdated). While the difference in achievement may have been true about twenty years ago, The National Science Foundation has just released a study that indicates otherwise. “Enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance,” said Marcia C. Linn of the University of California. Girls did as well as boys in solving complex math problems, and they are now enrolling in the more advanced math courses.” While boys still outperform girls on the math portion the SAT, researchers explained the reason. “Since more girls than boys go to college, about 100,000 more girls than boys take the test, including lower-achieving girls who bring down the girls’ average score.”

Some myths take longer to disappear than others. Teachers and counselors can help eradicate this one by advising girls to pursue careers in math and science.

Politics, education, and Everyday Math

2008-07-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

Last month, education advisors for the two presidential candidates met to address a group of educational publishers. According to the Scholastic.com website, “Lisa Graham Keegan spoke for Senator John McCain, and Jeanne Century represented Senator Barack Obama. The two advisors outlined the candidates' positions on a wide variety of issues, including reading programs, national standards, research and development, technology in schools, and teacher support.”

Certainly, all citizens should understand the backgrounds and positions of the candidates in order to make informed decisions about voting. Few issues possess more emotional charge for parents than those directly affecting them and their children: employment and education. Of course, these two topics are inter-connected, as highly educated individuals earn more and are more globally competitive than those with only minimal skills and education. To insure global competition, The US needs to have a world class public education system. The candidates differ about the path to that goal. “Ms. Keegan, the former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, said that Senator McCain strongly supports school choice and competition in education. She also noted his belief in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. Ms. Century, director of the science program of University of Chicago's Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education, spoke on Mr. Obama’s behalf. She stated that Senator Obama “favors strong teacher support, including immediate feedback to teachers, rigorous national standards, and a curriculum that includes science, social studies, art, music, physical education, and foreign languages.” Regarding reading, Ms. Keegan favors national standards, while Ms. Century believes, "No reading program is proven effective everywhere for every student." But what about math?

Comparative studies indicate that American students score very low compared to Asian students, especially in mathematics. A national and local debate continues to rage regarding math education and the newest “reform” approach. A recent column in Education News cited Ms. Century’s involvement with the Everyday Math movement in her role in CEMSE. In fact, as early as 1999, in a study called "The Principals (sic) of Educational Reform: Supporting Mathematics and Science Teaching in your School: A Handbook for Elementary and Middle School Principals,” she called upon administrators to go so far as to remove teachers who resisted the Everyday Math Program. At a time when America needs high standards, this “inquiry based learning is sorely inadequate. It imposes upon its students a system that “places process above product.” The math curriculum needs strengthening, not weakening to enable American students to face the challenges that continue to emerge in a global economy.