Want to Fix the Achievement Gap? Fix the Expectations Gap

Via Joanna Jacobs and HechingerEd, a new study from AIR finds that states set widely differing academic expectations for their students. What is expected of an 8th grader in one state, for example, may be the expectation for a 4th grader in a different state. Of course, states can meet the reporting requirements of NCLB by setting the bar however high (or low) they please, with unsurprising results:

“By setting low performance standards, states commit the educational equivalent of short selling. Rather than betting on student success, the educators sell the student short by lowering standards,” said Phillips. “What the education system gets out of this practice is the illusion of high rates of proficiency, which have a palliative effect on public opinion and meet the requirements of federal reporting. What the student gets out of it is a dumbed-down education, with little opportunity to learn college-ready and career-ready skills.”

 There is a lot of talk, esp. from the right, about local control. But what research--and common sense--shows is that we need to hold every student to the same high standard. This is why national science standards are necessary. No common standards, no common assessment.

Once we agree on what students should know and be able to do, we can begin to design quality curricula to get them there.

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Also covered on the Inside School Research blog, which I highly recommend.

How Much Math is Too Much Math?

U. Chicago math professor V.G. Ramanathan asks, How much math do people really need?

We need to ask two questions. First, how effective are these educational creams and gels? With generous government grants over the past 25 years, countless courses and conferences have been invented and books written on how to teach teachers to teach. But where is the evidence that these efforts have helped students? A 2008 review by the Education Department found that the nation is at "greater risk now" than it was in 1983, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores for 17-year-olds have remained stagnant since the 1980s.

The second question is more fundamental: How much math do you really need in everyday life? Ask yourself that -- and also the next 10 people you meet, say, your plumber, your lawyer, your grocer, your mechanic, your physician or even a math teacher. 

The answer to the first question is that the edu-fads have not been effective at all. But that is not the fault of math, it is the fault of educators who may themselves need to know more math.

The second question is competently addressed over at Joanne Jacobs.

Why is This a Novel Idea?

Ed blogs have pointed me recently to Lesson Study, which is pretty much what it sounds like: the detailed examination, by a small group of teachers, of a particular lesson with specific learning goals.

If you are unfamiliar with the field of education, the fact that this is a cutting edge  Japanese import, and not standard practice, will surprise you. If you are a teacher, you know how little attention is paid to developing the basic tools of teaching in ed schools and in professional development.

Examining a lesson and improving upon it is not revolutionary. In fact, it is pretty much necessary to educate well. South Korea, I once read, has a national database of lesson plans that are evaluated and updated by every teacher who uses them. If we in the U.S. are to improve the art of teaching, this is the way we need to go.

Why Technology Won't Save Us

Despite all the hype about digital nativism and 21st-century skills, it seems that you don't actually need a lot of high tech to teach effectively, reports Amanda Ripley at slate.

"In most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms," says Andreas Schleicher, a veteran education analyst for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who spends much of his time visiting schools around the world to find out what they are doing right (or wrong). "I have no explanation why that is the case, but it does seem that those systems place their efforts primarily on pedagogical practice rather than digital gadgets."

Read more.

And it seems that handwriting may not be so irrelevant, either, according to this article at the Wall Street Journal.

"During one study at Indiana University published this year, researchers invited children to man a "spaceship," actually an MRI machine using a specialized scan called "functional" MRI that spots neural activity in the brain. The kids were shown letters before and after receiving different letter-learning instruction. In children who had practiced printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and "adult-like" than in those who had simply looked at letters.

"It seems there is something really important about manually manipulating and drawing out two-dimensional things we see all the time," says Karin Harman James, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Indiana University who led the study."

Why I Started a Blog, or, It's the Curriculum, Stupid

As a new science teacher, I was dismayed by the lack of high-quality, field-tested, complete curricula available and by the lack of attention paid to the actual teaching of science content. To put it in terms that the non-education-educated will understand, newly trained science teachers have not been taught how to actually teach. They have not been handed down lessons that have proven successful in the past, they have not been asked to consider the importance of the order in which ideas are developed over the course of a year, they have not been given a set of tools with which to do their jobs. In short, every new teacher is asked to reinvent the wheel.

I'm starting this blog in an effort to fix that. I want to draw attention to the issue of curriculum in science, biology in particular, and to find like-minded individuals interested in working with me to develop a solution.

In part, this is an attempt to highlight the muddled thinking that has become so pervasive around issues of science teaching. The muddle includes the current popularity of inquiry-based approaches, the emphasis on process skills over actual science content, and the idea that successful teaching cannot be tested and measured. Less obviously, but more insidiously, it includes the sentiment that a good curriculum will hurt teachers by diminishing their autonomy.

I would like to accomplish for science what E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation have for elementary education. I would like to create an open-source, comprehensive biology curriculum that can be tested and improved by teachers all over. This is a first step.