Sunday, October 25, 2015

A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”

A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”:
School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”


What’s wrong with America’s educators these days? Why don’t they believe school reformers when they say they have plans to “fix the schools?”

Maybe it’s because real educators want nothing more than to work, unimpeded, with actual children.

Maybe it’s because the reformers have cried, “Wolf!” once too often. Or twenty times too often.

Doubtless, millions of educators across the country could add examples to this kind of story. But I’ll start with Rod Paige, Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush. You may recall that while serving as superintendent of the Houston City Public Schools, Mr. Paige won acclaim for the “Houston Miracle.” On the strength of his walk-on-water powers, he followed Mr. Bush to Washington in 2001, where the Texas duo promised to duplicate miracles on a fifty-state stage.

Simply stated, Mr. Paige claimed to have reduced dropouts in many inner city high schools to zero.

Yep: zero!

It turned out later that the “Houston Miracle” was less miracle and more a matter cooking the books. One Houston high school, for example, managed to classify all 462 dropouts as “transfers.” Unfortunately, by the time everyone realized Mr. Paige couldn’t turn water into wine he was ensconced at the U. S. Department of Education.

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law. Now it was the turn of A Teacher on Teaching: School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”:

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III:

Charter Schools, An Exchange: Part III



Dmitri Mehlhorn and I continue our debate about charter schools below. In case you missed it, here's Part I by Dmitri, and here's my reply in Part II. I'll have my reply in Part IV up within a few days; stand by...


I also asked Dmitri to write a short bio of himself just for this series:

"Dmitri Mehlhorn is a Senior Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute. He writes frequently about education, including his own time as a public school student and parent. He is a co-founder and Board Member of StudentsFirst, which lobbies opposite teachers' unions on policies regarding choice and data. He is also a seed investor; however, his firm Vidinovo refrains from K-12 investments to avoid conflict of interest."

* * *


Episode III: The Return of the Charters

Do charter schools help kids learn?
I believe yes, and Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) believes no. We mostly agree on the basic facts, and disagree about the conclusions. As Jazzman wrote to me: “Almost everything you say is factually correct; however … you arrive at conclusions that simply are not warranted.”
So what now? 
At this point, we need to review the burden of proof in education policy, and then we need to review the evidence.   

In education policy debates, who should decide? 
If Jazzman and I, as proxies for the broader policy debate, agree that charters deliver better results, but cannot agree on whether they are “better enough,” how should our impasse be resolved?
 Jazzman is refreshingly transparent: “the burden of proof remains on those who make an affirmative case for charter proliferation, and it always will.” This answer, while representative of reform skeptics, seems unmoored from the principles of American public education. 
Parents seek freedom to make choices for their kids. A recent poll of parents found that two
- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/10/charter-schools-exchange-part-iii.html#sthash.fqCC7wyX.dpuf



Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times:

Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa

Alberto M. Carvalho, Miami-Dade County’s schools superintendent, said the test-based grades for schools could be a “scarlet letter.” Credit John Moore/Getty Images




MIAMI — When protests from parents and teachers erupted against the new Common Core tests here, Florida thought it had a solution: It dropped the tests.

But it abruptly switched sources for the exams, hoping the substitute would be more palatable.

Now, nearly six months after students finished taking their exams, Florida faces an even worse rebellion, led by the state’s 67 school superintendents. In speeches, letters to the editor and appeals to state officials, they are arguing that the tests were flawed — first, because they were developed for Utah schools and based on the curriculum taught there, and second, because of a string of disruptive technical glitches when they were rolled out here.

The superintendents are challenging the state’s plan to use the scores to give schools grades from A to F and to influence some teachers’ evaluations. Standing behind them are the Florida PTA, the state’s School Boards Association, teachers and administrators.

The scores have not been released because state officials have not yet set grading standards, but the dispute has already boiled over. Under a preliminary recommendation, little more than half of Florida’s schoolchildren would pass the new math and English exams in most grades. With some members of the Board of Education pushing for even tougher scoring, the grades could drop further.

“This is probably the most important issue facing all of us,” Alberto M. Carvalho, the Miami-Dade County schools superintendent, said at a recent school board meeting. “The fight is not over. But I can tell you the state seems pretty adamant in moving forward as quickly as possible, even in the face of incomplete, inadequate, possibly corrupted, invalid and unreliable data.”

Framing it as a battle over the future of accountability in schools, Mr. Carvalho added, “If there was ever a time to press the pause button, this is the time.”

The state has already suspended most direct penalties associated with the new tests. Students’ scores will not be used to hold them back a grade, and school grades will not be used to punish failing schools.

But superintendents and others are angry that the state plans to move forward with the school grades at all, and to use student scores as a factor in some teacher evaluations. School leaders want the scores to be used simply as a baseline to better measure learning gains in next year’s scores.

Other states have faced problems with new tests for the Common Core, the national guidelines for kindergarten through high school reading and math Superintendents in Florida Say Tests Failed State’s Schools, not Vice Versa - The New York Times:


Adaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?

Adaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?:

No More Pencils, No More Books

Artificially intelligent software is replacing the textbook—and reshaping American education.

151023_Sketch_computerclass_590
Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo


By Will Oremus

ighteen students file into a brightly lit classroom. Arrayed around its perimeter are 18 computers. The students take their seats, log in to their machines, and silently begin working. At a desk in the back, the instructor’s screen displays a series of spreadsheets and data visualizations to help her track each student’s progress in real time.

This isn’t a Vulcan finishing school or a scene from some Back to the Futuresequel. It’s Sheela Whelan’s pre-algebra class at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, New York.
The students in Whelan’s class are all using the same program, called ALEKS. But peek over their shoulders and you’ll see that each student is working on a different sort of problem. A young woman near the corner of the room is plugging her way through a basic linear equation. The young man to her left is trying to wrap his mind around a story problem involving fractions. Nearby, a more advanced student is simplifying equations that involve both variables and fractions.
At first glance, each student appears to be at a different point in the course. And that’s true, in one sense. But it’s more accurate to say that the course is literally different for each student.
Just a third of the way through the semester, a few of the most advanced students are nearly ready for the final exam. Others lag far behind. They’re all responsible for mastering the same concepts and skills. But the order in which they tackle them, and the pace at which they do so, is up to the artificially intelligent software that’s guiding them through the material and assessing their performance at every turn.
ALEKS starts everyone at the same point. But from the moment students begin to answer the practice questions that it automatically generates for them, ALEKS’ machine-learning algorithms are analyzing their responses to figure out which concepts they understand and which they don’t. A few wrong answers to a given type of question, and the program may prompt them to read some background materials, watch a short video lecture, or view some hints on what they might be doing wrong. But if they’re breezing through a set of questions on, say, linear inequalities, it may whisk them on to polynomials and factoring. Master that, and ALEKS will ask if they’re ready to take a test. Pass, and they’re on to exponents—unless they’d prefer to take a detour into a different topic, like data analysis and probability. So long as they’ve mastered the prerequisites, which topic comes next is up to them.Whelan, the instructor, does not lecture. What would be the point, when no two students are studying the same thing? Instead, she serves as a sort of roving tutor, moving from one student to the next as they call on her for help. A teaching assistant is also on call to help those who get stuck or to verify that they’re ready to take their next test. As the students work, the software logs everything from which questions they get right and wrong to the amount of time they spend on each one. When Whelan’s online dashboard tells her that several are struggling with the same concept, she’ll assemble those students and work through some problems as a small group. It’s teaching as triage.
The result is a classroom experience starkly different from the model that hasAdaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and upending American education. Should we welcome it?:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 10/25/15


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CORPORATE ED REFORMPeg with Pen: No VictoryPeg with Pen: No Victory: No VictoryThere is no victory here. Obama's administration suddenly does not care about our children. King doesn't suddenly care either. These folks and their corporate cronies have been pummeling our public schools for how many years now and suddenly - now suddenly - they are listening and here to save the day? NO. As Morna McDe