College the New High School?

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Thursday April 29, 2010 · 5:55 PM PDT

2010/04/29 · 17:55

Long ago, American society decided that high school graduation represented the minimum amount of education to get a decent job. It used to be a person could graduate from high school and make a living. My childhood milkman (anyone remember those) graduated from high school and got a job with Foremost where he worked until he retired. He lived comfortably, bought (and paid off) a house two blocks from the nicest neighborhood in town, and saved enough to create a trust fund for his disabled daughter. He successfully kept his family smack dab within the middle class, all on "just" a milkman's salary, with just a high school education. His wife never worked outside the home.

Today, statistics show that a student with just a high school education has a slim chance of being able to support a family within the middle class.

sgoya

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Thursday April 22, 2010 · 5:19 PM PDT

2010/04/22 · 17:19

Apparently not. So concludes a pair of studies, one focused on middle school mathematics, and the other on early reading.

Results after one year of providing teachers math professional development (PD) indicate no improvement on their students' math achievement when compared to teachers who did not receive the study-provided PD.

sgoya

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Thursday April 15, 2010 · 4:28 PM PDT

2010/04/15 · 16:28

It is not that teachers resent all research. But an extended advertisement posing as research? Or administrators mandating teachers implement new "researched-based" practices? Or research with questionable conclusions? Or research that ignores the day-to-day concerns of teachers? Or research on new ways to teacher-proof the curriculum?

Qualcomm funded a grant to provide smart phones to 100 ninth graders in North
Carolina for algebra study. Guess what, the study found that smart phones aided algebra learning. So let's all run out and get smart phones for the kids.

sgoya

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Sunday February 28, 2010 · 3:11 PM PST

2010/02/28 · 15:11

What would happen if some popular policies of today were taken to their logical conclusion? If all the children are above average, would they not be "re-centered" like SAT tests? I do not know if the author, Richard Salsbury, pondered the question when he wrote his story Law of Averages. Maybe he did. But whether he did or not, the story reads like a parody of all that is wrong with education today.

It is the meritocracy turned on its head in the name of preserving the self esteem of all. (Snark alert)

"...how are other kids supposed to cope if they think you're above Average?"

sgoya

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Friday February 19, 2010 · 4:22 PM PST

2010/02/19 · 16:22

I don't know about you, but my education students have often groused about what they perceive is the lack of teaching experience among those tasked to teach them how to teach. Every term, after my self introduction, my students come and tell me how happy they are to finally have a professor with significant teaching experience. But my students are only speculating. Perhaps they surmise a lack of experience because their other professors do not claim any when they introduce themselves.

On the other hand, I found myself also often speculating. I would listen to my colleagues and shake my head. Once I checked all the online resumes of my colleagues in the education department. I was disappointed. Most have of my fellow education professors lacked what I would consider significant teaching experience. Maybe they spent some time as a guest in an elementary or secondary classroom for the purpose of completing a thesis or dissertation. But real, in-the-trenches experience? Not there.

sgoya

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Friday February 12, 2010 · 5:21 PM PST

2010/02/12 · 17:21

It is the chicken and egg puzzle. Which came first, the teaching philosophy or the textbook? Do teaching methods and philosophy determine textbook content, or does textbook content drive subject matter teaching? Long ago in a faraway land I taught in an international private school that decided to seek WASC accreditation for the first time in its quarter century plus existence. I was the only teacher who had ever been through the accreditation process before. The school decided to divide us up into committees, not by grade level, but by subject matter. I was a secondary science teacher so naturally I was on the science committee. The primary teachers were asked their preference. The fourth grade teacher was appointed the chair. Our first assignment was to write a science curriculum whose scope and sequence encompassed k-12.

At the next meeting, we passed around our work. I was aghast.

sgoya

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Sunday February 07, 2010 · 3:05 PM PST

2010/02/07 · 15:05

There are three kinds of teachers: disheartened, content and idealistic, according to a new study released by Public Agenda. Disheartened teachers comprise a huge 40% of the teaching force, but it's not like they are randomly distributed. Some students are very much more likely to have a disheartened teacher than a content or idealistic one.

sgoya

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Sunday January 31, 2010 · 3:55 PM PST

2010/01/31 · 15:55

While preparing a post on state-of-the-art language labs in schools, I came across this piece about interactive white boards (IWB). Our society is so enchanted by technology. If you are a grant writer, you know that nearly every request for proposal (RFP) wants a technology piece. If it is not there, the proposal will not be funded. Thus, otherwise excellent proposals are encumbered by unnecessary, and often useless components that add expense without clear benefit.

Seen as the first step towards "21st century teaching and learning," schools and districts run out and spend thousands of dollars on these gizmos, hanging them on walls and showing them off like proud hens that just laid the golden instructional egg...without time and training, they quickly become nothing more than really expensive overhead projectors.

sgoya

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Sunday January 24, 2010 · 5:17 PM PST

2010/01/24 · 17:17

Book Review: Francis S. Collins The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. 2006. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The science curriculum is the battleground for one battle after another over creation and evolution. Nearly every school board must engage the issue; it is only a matter of when. If they exclude creationism, they risk alienating parents. Most school boards opt for a consider-all-sides approach, and please no one. Creationists object to what they perceive as an attack on God. Evolutionists object to the inclusion of creationism on any terms because creationism is not science. Declaring, "No serious biologists today doubts the theory of evolution," Dr. Collins comes down firmly on the side of evolutionists, and fervently wishes certain Christians had not packed the word "creationist" with so much unnecessary baggage.

sgoya

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Friday January 22, 2010 · 12:27 PM PST

2010/01/22 · 12:27

I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.

The change in Mr. Hoff’s room, and in a handful of other classrooms like it around the country, stems from growing interest among academic experts and educators in teaching science to preschoolers.

A handful of other classrooms? Just a handful in 2010? When my kids were in preschool twenty years ago, there was tons of hands-on science. Oh wait, they went to preschool in Japan.

sgoya

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Tuesday January 12, 2010 · 3:14 PM PST

2010/01/12 · 15:14

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has gone on record recommending use of calculators in the earliest grades, thereby precipitating a debate on such use within the academic community and among school-based practitioners. In this survey of studies, research critiques, case studies, and editorials, the most generous conclusion to be drawn is that calculator usage need not hinder the development of math reasoning skills, but it may in fact do so. Educators should not be expected to adopt NCTM recommendations based on such skimpy research.

NCTM’s recommendation that calculators should be introduced under the guidance of skilled teachers is inadequate given the documented shortage of skilled math teachers at even the primary level. Until the first prerequisite is met, that is, upgrading the quality of math instruction by upgrading the quality of math teachers, the issue of calculator use in the earliest grades is largely irrelevant to math achievement, math reasoning skills, or problem solving skills.

sgoya

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Thursday January 07, 2010 · 2:46 PM PST

2010/01/07 · 14:46

Lecture doesn't have to be a dirty 7-letter word. One of the things we are learning about education is that we do not know what we think we know. See the new research on learning styles. Another surprise: lecture is not necessarily bad.

Sometimes lecture is not only the most effective but also the preferred medium. Honestly, has anyone else sat through a three-hour "hands-on" professional development workshop, only to walk out wishing the presenter had lectured the material and saved everyone two and a half hours. We could have gotten some serious grading done.

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College the New High School?

Does teacher professional development work?

Smart Phones, Or Why Teachers Resent Education Research

Lake Wobegone of the Future

Education Professors: Blind Leading the Blind?

Characteristics of Japanese Textbooks

The Tragedy of Disheartened Teachers

Expensive Useless Education Technology

Book Review: The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins

Science for Preschoolers?

Calculator Research in the Earliest Grades

Discovery Good, Lecture Good, Too