New York City has a long history of providing gifted education to its children; there are dozens of programs scattered around the city, and several self-contained gifted schools. Stuyvesant, for instance, on the high school level, is internationally known. This being New York, the gifted programs are also quite diverse, with students -- many of them new immigrants -- speaking dozens of languages in their homes.
Of course, this is also an extremely competitive city, with all the usual problems of under-performing public schools. So getting into the city's gifted programs has also been a highly sought-after good for families. Private school is expensive, and comes with its own hassles. The city has used gifted programs as a way to lure middle and upper class families into the public schools, but such families are not arranged randomly around the city. Plus, some gifted programs have been located in dangerous neighborhoods, making parents disinclined to send their children there.
As a result, there has been a patchwork of entrance requirements for different programs over the years. Getting into some programs -- for instance, on the Upper West Side -- has been more difficult than getting into others.
This past year, New York has attempted to make the system a bit more fair and equitable. And frankly, I think they've hit on a reasonable solution. Right now, across the city's elementary schools, kindergartners, first and second graders are all taking the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT), and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA). Previously, parents had to request testing. Now it is done as a matter of course. The OLSAT, which measures logical thinking and reasoning ability, accounts for 75% of a student's score. The BSRA, which tests things like colors, shapes and numbers, accounts for 25%.
I think the use of the BSRA leaves the city open for a bit of criticism. While New York has been trying to enroll students in Head Start and other preschool programs, many kids have not attended these programs or high quality daycare programs. As a result, they may be a bit behind on their shapes, letters, numbers and colors, and other such knowledge that depends on information transfer. The OLSAT is a bit closer to a "pure" intelligence test (if such a thing exists). In theory, the material children learn at preschool should be less relevant, though even the idea of sitting still for a test is somewhat of a learned skill. But the 75-25 split does give the city a hedge against the idea that it's basing a child's future on a single test.
Any child who scores at the 95th percentile or above will be guaranteed a spot in a gifted program. Anyone who scores over the 97th percentile will be guaranteed a spot in one of the programs that draws children from across the city. You can read the city's brochure on the new policies here.
I think it's great that the city is taking this issue seriously. As Andrew Jacob, a Department of Education spokesperson, told Time Out New York Kids, "We want to identify more gifted and talented students and to make sure we're meeting their needs." It is infinitely more fair to test everyone than to rely on parents making the call that a child needs intervention.
That said, did I mention that New York is competitive? The Time Out New York Kids article on the gifted program changes cautioned parents to "break out the flash cards." It is too bad that many parents -- rightly, alas -- perceive the gifted programs as islands of excellence in a public school system that, though improving, still has a lot of problems. If you're counting on your child scoring above the 95th percentile so you can avoid paying $26,000 in private school tuition (or moving to the suburbs), you can bet that you will break out the flash cards. I wish that all the schools were excellent, and that the city's gifted programs were simply perceived as educational interventions for children who need them. But this is not the case. In the meantime, at least the new system is relatively fair.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
"We're neglecting our brightest low-income kids virtually as a matter of policy..."
I've finally been going through the pile of old BusinessWeek magazines at my house, and came across a Second Careers pull-out section from the Dec. 17 issue. The lead article, "Mr. P Learns His Lesson" was about a former BusinessWeek communications director, Robert Pondiscio, who had become an NYC Teaching Fellow. Basically an alternative certification program for mid-career types, the NYC Teaching Fellowship program aims to put these folks in jobs in hard-t0-fill schools. Pondiscio wound up teaching fifth graders in a South Bronx elementary school. In general, "parents loved me," he says. He was strict, gave a lot of homework, and enforced standards.
The article is mostly about how Pondiscio still managed to get burned out after five years of teaching, and wound up transitioning back to communications and non-profit work. But I thought that his observations about working in an urban school in the era of No Child Left Behind were most prescient. I quote:
"I was especially frustrated for my highest-achieving students. I have nothing but admiration for high-minded education reformers, teachers, and administrators who want to make sure every child goes to a great school. But one of the unintended consequences of the accountability movement in schools is that virtually all of a teacher's time and attention goes to the lowest-performing students. We lie to ourselves that we're educating high-performing kids because they test at or above grade level on dumbed-down state tests. In reality we're neglecting our brightest low-income kids virtually as a matter of policy, all but guaranteeing their future struggles in college and the workplace."
Eventually, Pondiscio decided he should start a non-profit that would focus on high-achieving low-income children -- on challenging them, and finding opportunities for them. And actually, New York City is embarking on a new era of gifted education -- in which all children will be screened, and all children who score in the 95th percentile will be offered a spot in the city's gifted programs. Up until now, admission to the various gifted programs has been a complicated patchwork of systems which, not surprisingly, better-off and better-connected parents were better able to navigate (we'll do another longer post on this topic later).
But I think that Pondiscio is on to something. There is a lot to like about the accountability movement. For too many years, too many educators have assumed that as long as there was a teacher in a classroom, and textbooks, and adequate funding, schools were doing their job. This is how a lot of jobs have worked in the past -- show up, you get a paycheck. No one demands a connection to the business bottom line. Now, we as a society are asking about outcomes. Are kids actually learning to read? Are they gaining the math skills necessary to get anywhere in life?
Yet...Savvy parents can deal with schools that focus on lower-performing students to the exclusion of their brightest pupils. They can notice that their children aren't being challenged, demand accommodations, or enroll their children in extra-curricular activities, make sure the kids get to the library a lot, read a lot, or else even pull their children out and put them in private schools. Children whose parents are not so savvy are simply stuck with the schools and teachers they get. T
his is a shame and needs to be addressed -- not by dumping the accountability movement's new standards, which would be a disaster -- but by judging schools and teachers based on individual students' progress. Give a high-scoring third grader a fifth grade achievement test. If she scores at the 79th percentile in the fall, and the 79th percentile in the spring, there should be consequences. What gets measured and rewarded gets attention. It's just that sometimes, we're measuring the wrong things.
The article is mostly about how Pondiscio still managed to get burned out after five years of teaching, and wound up transitioning back to communications and non-profit work. But I thought that his observations about working in an urban school in the era of No Child Left Behind were most prescient. I quote:
"I was especially frustrated for my highest-achieving students. I have nothing but admiration for high-minded education reformers, teachers, and administrators who want to make sure every child goes to a great school. But one of the unintended consequences of the accountability movement in schools is that virtually all of a teacher's time and attention goes to the lowest-performing students. We lie to ourselves that we're educating high-performing kids because they test at or above grade level on dumbed-down state tests. In reality we're neglecting our brightest low-income kids virtually as a matter of policy, all but guaranteeing their future struggles in college and the workplace."
Eventually, Pondiscio decided he should start a non-profit that would focus on high-achieving low-income children -- on challenging them, and finding opportunities for them. And actually, New York City is embarking on a new era of gifted education -- in which all children will be screened, and all children who score in the 95th percentile will be offered a spot in the city's gifted programs. Up until now, admission to the various gifted programs has been a complicated patchwork of systems which, not surprisingly, better-off and better-connected parents were better able to navigate (we'll do another longer post on this topic later).
But I think that Pondiscio is on to something. There is a lot to like about the accountability movement. For too many years, too many educators have assumed that as long as there was a teacher in a classroom, and textbooks, and adequate funding, schools were doing their job. This is how a lot of jobs have worked in the past -- show up, you get a paycheck. No one demands a connection to the business bottom line. Now, we as a society are asking about outcomes. Are kids actually learning to read? Are they gaining the math skills necessary to get anywhere in life?
Yet...Savvy parents can deal with schools that focus on lower-performing students to the exclusion of their brightest pupils. They can notice that their children aren't being challenged, demand accommodations, or enroll their children in extra-curricular activities, make sure the kids get to the library a lot, read a lot, or else even pull their children out and put them in private schools. Children whose parents are not so savvy are simply stuck with the schools and teachers they get. T
his is a shame and needs to be addressed -- not by dumping the accountability movement's new standards, which would be a disaster -- but by judging schools and teachers based on individual students' progress. Give a high-scoring third grader a fifth grade achievement test. If she scores at the 79th percentile in the fall, and the 79th percentile in the spring, there should be consequences. What gets measured and rewarded gets attention. It's just that sometimes, we're measuring the wrong things.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Gifted Education in High School
In Florida, over the past few years, lawmakers have been weighing whether to appropriate funds for gifted education in high schools. You can read a story from the Orlando Sentinel about the issue here. This is an issue that affects all of the states, and both sides have some good points. As some folks have pointed out, gifted students do have a lot of options at the high school level that are not necessarily labeled "gifted education" as such. Advanced Placement classes, other accelerated classes and dual enrollment are often options for pupils looking for challenging work.
Indeed, high schools come closer than elementary and middle schools to what a "good" education for a gifted kid should look like already. Since students usually change classes every hour, moving to a higher-level class isn't quite so logistically difficult as it is for elementary students. In math and English, at least, there are often different levels (or -- scandalous! -- "tracks") which makes readiness/ability grouping par for the course. And there are no silly pull-out programs that have the kids doing enrichment activities about Robin Hood, insects, the culture of Japan, etc., but not advanced math, science or English. Since AP classes, accelerated classes and dual enrollment aren't labeled "gifted education" as such, they don't have the same political sensitivity. When things come out of more general funds, they tend to be safer. As parents across the country have discovered, when something needs to be cut, a line in the budget called "gifted education" is often the first on the block.
That said, my guess is that Florida's high schools don't universally offer the whole suite of AP classes, or prepare kids to take them in grades 9-11, rather than solely in grade 12. Dual enrollment at local community colleges is a great option for gifted students who have particular interests or who have exhausted their local high schools' offerings. But my guess is that few schools make such arrangements as a matter of course.
If Florida -- and other states! -- want to nurture their gifted teenagers, one good option is to create residential high schools for gifted students. Such schools can offer the full suite of AP courses, which can be broadcast to students elsewhere who can't or aren't willing to enroll in a residential school. The legislature could also appropriate gifted funds for creating a dual-enrollment office or coordinator in the various districts. In general I don't like creating more bureaucracy, but since this person or office will have to do something with their time, they may make it more likely for schools to actually make dual enrollment work.
I'm curious if parents reading this blog live in districts that have made good arrangements for gifted high schoolers, and what you think about gifted education at the high school level.
Indeed, high schools come closer than elementary and middle schools to what a "good" education for a gifted kid should look like already. Since students usually change classes every hour, moving to a higher-level class isn't quite so logistically difficult as it is for elementary students. In math and English, at least, there are often different levels (or -- scandalous! -- "tracks") which makes readiness/ability grouping par for the course. And there are no silly pull-out programs that have the kids doing enrichment activities about Robin Hood, insects, the culture of Japan, etc., but not advanced math, science or English. Since AP classes, accelerated classes and dual enrollment aren't labeled "gifted education" as such, they don't have the same political sensitivity. When things come out of more general funds, they tend to be safer. As parents across the country have discovered, when something needs to be cut, a line in the budget called "gifted education" is often the first on the block.
That said, my guess is that Florida's high schools don't universally offer the whole suite of AP classes, or prepare kids to take them in grades 9-11, rather than solely in grade 12. Dual enrollment at local community colleges is a great option for gifted students who have particular interests or who have exhausted their local high schools' offerings. But my guess is that few schools make such arrangements as a matter of course.
If Florida -- and other states! -- want to nurture their gifted teenagers, one good option is to create residential high schools for gifted students. Such schools can offer the full suite of AP courses, which can be broadcast to students elsewhere who can't or aren't willing to enroll in a residential school. The legislature could also appropriate gifted funds for creating a dual-enrollment office or coordinator in the various districts. In general I don't like creating more bureaucracy, but since this person or office will have to do something with their time, they may make it more likely for schools to actually make dual enrollment work.
I'm curious if parents reading this blog live in districts that have made good arrangements for gifted high schoolers, and what you think about gifted education at the high school level.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Making Math Pay
I have a column in today's USA Today about a topic we've been discussing on this blog: paying math teachers more than other teachers in order to increase quality and quantity. Here's a link to the article, "Making Math Pay."
For the piece, I got to visit with some incredibly dynamic math and science teachers at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, interviewed Jim Simons (referred to once in the Financial Times as the world's smartest billionaire), and generally came away convinced of what I often find. There are some very good small programs out there, including Math for America, the Cristo Rey schools I wrote about this fall, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship I wrote about last winter, etc. These three programs are particularly interesting because they all aim to achieve scale. Math for America is being replicated in a handful of other cities, the Cristo Rey Network now has 19 members, and NFTE is in hundreds of schools.
Of course, the question is, does any of this move the needle? There are 50 million K-12 students out there. These three programs have wonderful results, but they help just a few thousand kids apiece.
Then again, I guess there's another question: does that matter? Maybe we can't necessarily move the needle for everyone, but as long as there are enough programs that do work -- affordable Catholic schools available to inner city kids, entrepreneurship programs that teach kids actual workable economics and that they always have the ability to make a job if they can't get one, a core cadre of excellent math teachers in urban schools -- there are life rafts for kids and families that choose to look for them. And there is something to that, even if it isn't everything.
For the piece, I got to visit with some incredibly dynamic math and science teachers at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, interviewed Jim Simons (referred to once in the Financial Times as the world's smartest billionaire), and generally came away convinced of what I often find. There are some very good small programs out there, including Math for America, the Cristo Rey schools I wrote about this fall, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship I wrote about last winter, etc. These three programs are particularly interesting because they all aim to achieve scale. Math for America is being replicated in a handful of other cities, the Cristo Rey Network now has 19 members, and NFTE is in hundreds of schools.
Of course, the question is, does any of this move the needle? There are 50 million K-12 students out there. These three programs have wonderful results, but they help just a few thousand kids apiece.
Then again, I guess there's another question: does that matter? Maybe we can't necessarily move the needle for everyone, but as long as there are enough programs that do work -- affordable Catholic schools available to inner city kids, entrepreneurship programs that teach kids actual workable economics and that they always have the ability to make a job if they can't get one, a core cadre of excellent math teachers in urban schools -- there are life rafts for kids and families that choose to look for them. And there is something to that, even if it isn't everything.
Making Math Pay
I have a column in today's USA Today about a topic we've been discussing on this blog: paying math teachers more than other teachers in order to increase quality and quantity. Here's a link to the article, "Making Math Pay."
For the piece, I got to visit with some incredibly dynamic math and science teachers at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, interviewed Jim Simons (referred to once in the Financial Times as the world's smartest billionaire), and generally came away convinced of what I often find. There are some very good small programs out there, including Math for America, the Cristo Rey schools I wrote about this fall, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship I wrote about last winter, etc. These three programs are particularly interesting because they all aim to achieve scale. Math for America is being replicated in a handful of other cities, the Cristo Rey Network now has 19 members, and NFTE is in hundreds of schools.
Of course, the question is, does any of this move the needle? There are 50 million K-12 students out there. These three programs have wonderful results, but they help just a few thousand kids apiece.
Then again, I guess there's another question: does that matter? Maybe we can't necessarily move the needle for everyone, but as long as there are enough programs that do work -- affordable Catholic schools available to inner city kids, entrepreneurship programs that teach kids actual workable economics and that they always have the ability to make a job if they can't get one, a core cadre of excellent math teachers in urban schools -- there are life rafts for kids and families that choose to look for them. And there is something to that, even if it isn't everything.
For the piece, I got to visit with some incredibly dynamic math and science teachers at Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, interviewed Jim Simons (referred to once in the Financial Times as the world's smartest billionaire), and generally came away convinced of what I often find. There are some very good small programs out there, including Math for America, the Cristo Rey schools I wrote about this fall, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship I wrote about last winter, etc. These three programs are particularly interesting because they all aim to achieve scale. Math for America is being replicated in a handful of other cities, the Cristo Rey Network now has 19 members, and NFTE is in hundreds of schools.
Of course, the question is, does any of this move the needle? There are 50 million K-12 students out there. These three programs have wonderful results, but they help just a few thousand kids apiece.
Then again, I guess there's another question: does that matter? Maybe we can't necessarily move the needle for everyone, but as long as there are enough programs that do work -- affordable Catholic schools available to inner city kids, entrepreneurship programs that teach kids actual workable economics and that they always have the ability to make a job if they can't get one, a core cadre of excellent math teachers in urban schools -- there are life rafts for kids and families that choose to look for them. And there is something to that, even if it isn't everything.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them
Nerds is a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it to parents of kids who've been teased for being nerds, and those who haven't. He has a few main points. In our anti-intellectual culture, nerds (often so labeled for being socially un-self-conscious, and deeply interested in things other people deem weird or hard like math) are the low end of the social totem pole. Kids learn that being a nerd means, by definition, that you are unattractive to people and will likely never win over members of the opposite sex. The most gifted mathematicians will pursue their gifts anyway. But kids on the margins might shun such subjects in order to maintain their social standing. By the time they get to late high school and realize it's all silly -- and that you need a lot of math to get the best jobs in society -- it's too late.
Anderegg also probes the depths of the nerd and jock archetypes, criticizing the Legend of Sleepy Hollow for giving us the weird bookish character of Ichabod Crane, and wondering if Pres. Bush's habit of giving reporters nicknames won over these former nerds during his first election campaign. He takes on the ease with which amateur psychologists diagnose Asperger's syndrome, and pleas for parents to stop putting down "nerdy" kids in their own conversations. We asked him a few questions:
LV: In your book, you note that "nerds" are a particularly American phenomenon. Why is that? Certainly not just because of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow! I would venture to say most people haven't read the book.
People make fun of "nerds" who would never make fun of, say, African Americans. But is there a racial element, when it comes to Asian Americans? You note that there are no popular Asian rock stars, possibly because of the nerd stereotype.
You posit that
Can girls be nerds?
Girls can have the attributes of nerds but the nerd stereotype is pretty exclusively male. If you ask people to describe a prototypical nerd, 99 out of 100 will describe a male.
Asperger’s seems to have become the nerd-disease. Why do people like to “diagnose” improbable people (such as Bill Gates) with Asperger's?
The concept of "spectrum disorders" is popular, and scientifically valid. Asperger's Disease is seen as being the upper end of the autism spectrum. But no one seems to know where the spectrum ends and normal variation begins. Normality is not a point; it is also a spectrum, and Americans have very little understanding of the idea of normal variation: people can have varying degrees of eye contact, for example, and still be normal. So any little quirk is now described as a “touch of Asperger's.”
Has Harry Potter made it socially safe for kids to be interested in wizards again?
Would the culture change if there were, say, a TV show featuring a lot of hot mathematicians? Certainly a lot of our richest folks these days – hedge fund managers – are mathematicians. And they get hot dates. Does this change anything?
What can parents do if their kids are being teased because of nerdiness?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
"...But there's plenty of normal teenager too"
This post is an introduction, of sorts, to a longer post I hope to put up later this week. I recently read an article in the New York Times about 2007 Davidson Fellow Yuqing Meng. The article tells of this young man's amazing musical gifts (and, it turns out, physics gifts, too), but the title is really bugging me. Here it is: "A Prodigy, Sure, but There's Plenty of Normal Teenager, Too."
It's bugging me because I've been reading a fascinating book called Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them by David Anderegg. The author has agreed to a Gifted Exchange interview, so we'll post more on the book later. But one of the takeaways from this book is the idea that extreme interest and gifts in certain subjects (often math and science, but certainly classical music too) imply that someone is unlikeable, likely to be unlucky in love, and unattractive as well. This is a stereotype that stems from general American anti-intellectualism, and is taken quite literally by young children, because, well, children are literal minded. Prodigies by definition show extreme interest and gifts in something -- often something deemed a little hard or foreign to the rest of us -- and so, by definition they must be strange, weird and probably a little off. Not someone you'd want to hang out with.
Since in journalism, profiles are generally supposed to make you like the person, the journalist must inevitably contend with this stereotype. And so profiles of prodigies inevitably contain paragraphs about how the child in question is actually so normal. I have personal experience with this; an article on me in the South Bend Tribune after I did the incredibly geeky thing of score an 800 on the math SAT section in 8th grade made sure to mention that I was on the cheerleading squad. See, she's not really a nerd! Because a nerd is the worst thing you can be.
Likewise, our headline writer here at the New York Times wants to assure us that though Meng is obviously much better at piano than the rest of us, and better at physics, we should take comfort that he is just a "normal teenager" who is worried about where he'll go to college. See, he's not a nerd either! This genre of article also tends to make a big deal of prodigies' community service pursuits. It's another thing that humanizes them and makes them not seem part of the despised "other."
It's bugging me because I've been reading a fascinating book called Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them by David Anderegg. The author has agreed to a Gifted Exchange interview, so we'll post more on the book later. But one of the takeaways from this book is the idea that extreme interest and gifts in certain subjects (often math and science, but certainly classical music too) imply that someone is unlikeable, likely to be unlucky in love, and unattractive as well. This is a stereotype that stems from general American anti-intellectualism, and is taken quite literally by young children, because, well, children are literal minded. Prodigies by definition show extreme interest and gifts in something -- often something deemed a little hard or foreign to the rest of us -- and so, by definition they must be strange, weird and probably a little off. Not someone you'd want to hang out with.
Since in journalism, profiles are generally supposed to make you like the person, the journalist must inevitably contend with this stereotype. And so profiles of prodigies inevitably contain paragraphs about how the child in question is actually so normal. I have personal experience with this; an article on me in the South Bend Tribune after I did the incredibly geeky thing of score an 800 on the math SAT section in 8th grade made sure to mention that I was on the cheerleading squad. See, she's not really a nerd! Because a nerd is the worst thing you can be.
Likewise, our headline writer here at the New York Times wants to assure us that though Meng is obviously much better at piano than the rest of us, and better at physics, we should take comfort that he is just a "normal teenager" who is worried about where he'll go to college. See, he's not a nerd either! This genre of article also tends to make a big deal of prodigies' community service pursuits. It's another thing that humanizes them and makes them not seem part of the despised "other."
Friday, January 18, 2008
Insufferable Genius (RIP Bobby Fischer)
It's become a bit of a cliche that child prodigies fly high then fall fast, or at least develop some rather strange habits. Bobby Fischer, the international chess champion who died yesterday in Iceland at age 64 after a long illness, certainly did his part to keep this impression alive. Indeed, he was the quintessential troubled genius, seemingly misunderstood by most people, achieving great things while finding himself unable to live within certain constraints society imposed. You can read one obituary about him here.
The more I study people with profound intelligence, the more I am convinced that their brains do not exactly work like the rest of ours. Fischer appeared to have a certain self-defeating impulsiveness. One illicit match in Yugoslavia led to 9 months in detention, a revoked passport and exile (a nice one, but exile nonetheless) in Iceland. Yet in his mind, I'm sure it made sense. After all, his replaying his old rival Boris Spassky on a resort island did nothing to personally punish Slobodan Milosevic, the actual target of international sanctions. Since the rule didn't make sense, he didn't follow it.
He was prone to making anti-Semitic statements (though part Jewish himself; again, other people's rules of civility don't apply). He didn't like to go along with the showmanship part of chess that backers always wanted to draw crowds. One got the sense that he had a very fundamentalist view of the game (indeed, he accused current chess promoters of rigging games), failing to see that the pomp and circumstance is what gave him a platform beyond playing in a park. He was erratic. He was prone to the over-excitabilities that many parents of profoundly gifted children recognize. But boy could he play a lovely game of chess.
One always wonders with troubled geniuses if they, looking back on their lives, would have chosen their gifts. Fischer certainly considered himself the best, and seemed quite proud of that. So he probably would have. But fitting such a frenetic brain into our society is difficult at best. When I think of extreme child prodigies, I find myself thinking about the school for mutants in X-Men (but in a good way!) Simply having a place to be oneself does wonders to calm the mind.
The more I study people with profound intelligence, the more I am convinced that their brains do not exactly work like the rest of ours. Fischer appeared to have a certain self-defeating impulsiveness. One illicit match in Yugoslavia led to 9 months in detention, a revoked passport and exile (a nice one, but exile nonetheless) in Iceland. Yet in his mind, I'm sure it made sense. After all, his replaying his old rival Boris Spassky on a resort island did nothing to personally punish Slobodan Milosevic, the actual target of international sanctions. Since the rule didn't make sense, he didn't follow it.
He was prone to making anti-Semitic statements (though part Jewish himself; again, other people's rules of civility don't apply). He didn't like to go along with the showmanship part of chess that backers always wanted to draw crowds. One got the sense that he had a very fundamentalist view of the game (indeed, he accused current chess promoters of rigging games), failing to see that the pomp and circumstance is what gave him a platform beyond playing in a park. He was erratic. He was prone to the over-excitabilities that many parents of profoundly gifted children recognize. But boy could he play a lovely game of chess.
One always wonders with troubled geniuses if they, looking back on their lives, would have chosen their gifts. Fischer certainly considered himself the best, and seemed quite proud of that. So he probably would have. But fitting such a frenetic brain into our society is difficult at best. When I think of extreme child prodigies, I find myself thinking about the school for mutants in X-Men (but in a good way!) Simply having a place to be oneself does wonders to calm the mind.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Able Pupils Lose Momentum
An interesting government report out of the UK, written about in a recent article in the Telegraph, comes to the conclusion that "Able Pupils Lose Momentum."
(the Telegraph URL is quite long and is defying my attempts to write it correctly in the link function on Blogger; it's: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VN42UK5N014RNQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nschool106.xml)
Apparently, a quarter of the students who score very well on the state schools' tests at age 7 do not achieve high marks at age 11. The report looked at the various reasons and found that, in essence, schools are doing very little to actually nurture these "able pupils." They are often not grouped with children who have similar abilities, teachers spend more time with kids who are having difficulties, and the targets set for these pupils are often underwhelming. Apparently, teachers are supposed to set goals for these pupils (I am guessing this is something like a gifted IEP) but the report states that many teachers do not buy into this, and so the targets are things like "be neater." Of course, if people think the notion of challenging bright pupils is elitist, and everyone needs to be leveled off a bit, it seems to be working, at least for the quarter of students who don't do as well by age 11.
As we've said before on this blog, gifts are useless if they're not unwrapped. Gifted pupils will not inevitably do well in school. They do not necessarily fend for themselves. It is quite possible to turn an extremely bright kid off to learning by making his formal learning as unpleasant as possible. I have no idea why people would choose to do that, but as the UK report shows, it happens.
TOTALLY OFF-TOPIC POST: As many of you know, I'm a freelance writer, and write for all kinds of places beyond Gifted Exchange. Since many parents read this blog, I thought there might be some overlaps on this topic...I'm writing a magazine article, currently, on ways 2-income couples outsource household chores creatively in order to have a smoother home life. If anyone has ideas of people to speak with (folks who've used meal planning services, concierge services, children's taxis, etc.) please email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. Thank you!
(the Telegraph URL is quite long and is defying my attempts to write it correctly in the link function on Blogger; it's: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VN42UK5N014RNQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nschool106.xml)
Apparently, a quarter of the students who score very well on the state schools' tests at age 7 do not achieve high marks at age 11. The report looked at the various reasons and found that, in essence, schools are doing very little to actually nurture these "able pupils." They are often not grouped with children who have similar abilities, teachers spend more time with kids who are having difficulties, and the targets set for these pupils are often underwhelming. Apparently, teachers are supposed to set goals for these pupils (I am guessing this is something like a gifted IEP) but the report states that many teachers do not buy into this, and so the targets are things like "be neater." Of course, if people think the notion of challenging bright pupils is elitist, and everyone needs to be leveled off a bit, it seems to be working, at least for the quarter of students who don't do as well by age 11.
As we've said before on this blog, gifts are useless if they're not unwrapped. Gifted pupils will not inevitably do well in school. They do not necessarily fend for themselves. It is quite possible to turn an extremely bright kid off to learning by making his formal learning as unpleasant as possible. I have no idea why people would choose to do that, but as the UK report shows, it happens.
TOTALLY OFF-TOPIC POST: As many of you know, I'm a freelance writer, and write for all kinds of places beyond Gifted Exchange. Since many parents read this blog, I thought there might be some overlaps on this topic...I'm writing a magazine article, currently, on ways 2-income couples outsource household chores creatively in order to have a smoother home life. If anyone has ideas of people to speak with (folks who've used meal planning services, concierge services, children's taxis, etc.) please email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. Thank you!
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Why Wait Until Third Grade?
I was recently sent an interesting article about a gifted preschool program called the ECAP Academy in Wichita, Kansas. Kids as young as three are tested for giftedness and, if admitted, introduced to a preschool curriculum designed to stretch their little brains.
I can't comment on the school specifically, or the test (which was developed by the school's leaders), but the existence of a few gifted preschool programs like this around the country raise some interesting questions.
Since the mainstream recognition of gifted children and gifted education a few decades ago, schools have generally screened for giftedness in second or third grade. This is also the age in which schools tend to start any gifted programming they may offer. But many parents of highly gifted children have known since very early on that there was something different about their kids. So why do schools wait so long to identify and intervene?
There are a few potential explanations, some of which show good faith toward the whole concept of giftedness, and some which do not. In the "good faith" category, there's the explanation that schools often use IQ tests to identify giftedness, and such tests can be unreliable when used with very young children. Though there are preschool admissions tests (which we hear about a lot here in New York!), and some IQ tests are normed for young children, anyone who's spent much time with a 2-3 year old knows there are a lot of other things that can affect performance. The kid may not want to spend time with a stranger. The kid may want a snack, want a nap, etc. But good preschool programs already take this into account. And there's a big difference between testing a child at 2 or 3, and testing him or her at age 5 (which is when, incidentally, the Davidson Institute recommends testing potentially highly gifted children).
The other potential explanation is the more negative one. Many a parent has been told that kids all even out by third grade. Hence, this is when you can tell if a child is actually gifted, as opposed to, I don't know, faking it. So schools only identify and offer programming in third grade or later.
Aside from not being true, I hardly think the argument that kids all move toward the median is an argument against testing for giftedness earlier. Why not screen multiple times? Maybe more kids will be identified as needing intervention in third grade than in first. That's fine. There's no reason identification has to be a one-shot deal.
But beyond that, if you think about it, this comment shows a fundamental distrust of parents.
The unstated message is that privileged or neurotic parents have been hot-housing their toddlers, and any sign of early giftedness is just evidence that these parents have been shoving flashcards in their tots' faces since they exited the womb. Once the professional educators take over when the kids are 5 or 6, this will all be sorted out.
There are a few problems with this attitude. First, you don't actually have to know how to read to be screened for giftedness (see the tests for 2-3 year olds). Kids who have no exposure to formal education can certainly show signs of extreme intelligence. So it isn't a necessary first step to get all kids up to speed on reading in order to figure out who needs more challenging work.
And second, third grade is actually way too late for many highly gifted children to be identified and served. As the Davidson Institute notes, "Profoundly gifted children often have very difficult early school experiences, which could have been ameliorated or prevented entirely if parents and teachers had had accurate information about their abilities, academic instructional levels, and social/emotional needs. Gifted girls may 'go underground' by age eight, unwilling to demonstrate their precocious abilities in public for fear of making others feel inadequate. Extremely gifted children can also reach the ceilings of various test instruments if you wait until they are older to test them (some profoundly gifted children even reach the ceiling of the Stanford-Binet LM by the age of eight or nine). With any other exceptionality, we would not deliberately wait until several years of elementary school have passed in order to identify the exceptionality."
The last sentence hints at the big problem. Many people see gifted education as some kind of reward. So you wait until all kids have been adequately introduced to formal schooling, and then reward the kids who get good grades with pull-outs that highlight bugs, Robin Hood, the culture of Japan, etc. Done right, gifted education should, instead, be an intervention for kids who need it. Kids are screened for hearing issues at birth because we know that failure to identify such a problem will stunt their learning for life. Likewise, failure to identify and accommodate extreme intelligence can stunt children, too.
I can't comment on the school specifically, or the test (which was developed by the school's leaders), but the existence of a few gifted preschool programs like this around the country raise some interesting questions.
Since the mainstream recognition of gifted children and gifted education a few decades ago, schools have generally screened for giftedness in second or third grade. This is also the age in which schools tend to start any gifted programming they may offer. But many parents of highly gifted children have known since very early on that there was something different about their kids. So why do schools wait so long to identify and intervene?
There are a few potential explanations, some of which show good faith toward the whole concept of giftedness, and some which do not. In the "good faith" category, there's the explanation that schools often use IQ tests to identify giftedness, and such tests can be unreliable when used with very young children. Though there are preschool admissions tests (which we hear about a lot here in New York!), and some IQ tests are normed for young children, anyone who's spent much time with a 2-3 year old knows there are a lot of other things that can affect performance. The kid may not want to spend time with a stranger. The kid may want a snack, want a nap, etc. But good preschool programs already take this into account. And there's a big difference between testing a child at 2 or 3, and testing him or her at age 5 (which is when, incidentally, the Davidson Institute recommends testing potentially highly gifted children).
The other potential explanation is the more negative one. Many a parent has been told that kids all even out by third grade. Hence, this is when you can tell if a child is actually gifted, as opposed to, I don't know, faking it. So schools only identify and offer programming in third grade or later.
Aside from not being true, I hardly think the argument that kids all move toward the median is an argument against testing for giftedness earlier. Why not screen multiple times? Maybe more kids will be identified as needing intervention in third grade than in first. That's fine. There's no reason identification has to be a one-shot deal.
But beyond that, if you think about it, this comment shows a fundamental distrust of parents.
The unstated message is that privileged or neurotic parents have been hot-housing their toddlers, and any sign of early giftedness is just evidence that these parents have been shoving flashcards in their tots' faces since they exited the womb. Once the professional educators take over when the kids are 5 or 6, this will all be sorted out.
There are a few problems with this attitude. First, you don't actually have to know how to read to be screened for giftedness (see the tests for 2-3 year olds). Kids who have no exposure to formal education can certainly show signs of extreme intelligence. So it isn't a necessary first step to get all kids up to speed on reading in order to figure out who needs more challenging work.
And second, third grade is actually way too late for many highly gifted children to be identified and served. As the Davidson Institute notes, "Profoundly gifted children often have very difficult early school experiences, which could have been ameliorated or prevented entirely if parents and teachers had had accurate information about their abilities, academic instructional levels, and social/emotional needs. Gifted girls may 'go underground' by age eight, unwilling to demonstrate their precocious abilities in public for fear of making others feel inadequate. Extremely gifted children can also reach the ceilings of various test instruments if you wait until they are older to test them (some profoundly gifted children even reach the ceiling of the Stanford-Binet LM by the age of eight or nine). With any other exceptionality, we would not deliberately wait until several years of elementary school have passed in order to identify the exceptionality."
The last sentence hints at the big problem. Many people see gifted education as some kind of reward. So you wait until all kids have been adequately introduced to formal schooling, and then reward the kids who get good grades with pull-outs that highlight bugs, Robin Hood, the culture of Japan, etc. Done right, gifted education should, instead, be an intervention for kids who need it. Kids are screened for hearing issues at birth because we know that failure to identify such a problem will stunt their learning for life. Likewise, failure to identify and accommodate extreme intelligence can stunt children, too.
Monday, January 07, 2008
From Good to Great Kids
I hope everyone had a wonderful break. Welcome back to a new year of Gifted Exchange!
I've been fascinated to see the posts piling up on the "Gifted Kids, Bad Behavior" entry. While many people assume that gifted kids are the teachers' pets, quietly completing assignments ahead of time and becoming star pupils, this is not always the case. Gifted kids, no less than other kids, can act out when they're bored or frustrated, and unfortunately, gifted kids are probably more likely than other kids to be bored or frustrated in classes that don't challenge them. Viewed in that context, some behavior problems make a lot of sense. If I had to go every day to a job I hated, that I hadn't chosen, and that bored me senseless, I would not be a happy camper either!
But, broadly, I think the topic touches a nerve. When kids are having trouble in school, parents start to wonder if they're doing something wrong, and if they are, if this is causing permanent damage. We also wonder if there's anything we, as parents, can do, to actually help our kids become happy, successful people.
Which brings me to the actual subject head of this first Gifted Exchange blog post of 2008. I've recently read Jim Collins' perennial best-seller of a business book, From Good to Great. The book looks at companies whose stock performance kept pace with the market for many years, then outperformed the market by many multiples over the next few years. What happened to make these companies go from good to great? What lessons can managers take from these examples?
Since I write about education, I got to thinking: This question can also be asked of child-rearing. Is there anything parents can do to help kids go from good raw material to great lives?
It's a much more difficult question, of course. For starters, defining "great" for people is completely subjective. Public companies are supposed to generate great returns for their stockholders. That is their job, full stop. But while some people might consider a happily married small town second grade teacher to have a good life, others would think that's kind of boring, particularly if the kid grew up saying she wanted to be a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Some people think $50,000 is a great income. Some people find $100,000 to be inadequate. Maybe someone has started a successful business, has a large, caring family, but is still unhappy with her life because of a chronic weight problem. I don't think there's a single metric people could agree on as a "great" outcome.
There's also the difficulty of social science data. I spend a lot of my time perusing education and sociological research, and if there's anything hunting through footnotes and equations has taught me, it's that separating out correlation and causation is like counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. For instance, we know that kids from higher income families tend to do better on standardized tests than kids from lower income families. But is this because income buys children the advantages of better schools, tutoring if they need it, etc? Or is it because it correlates with other things, like parents who care about academics and intact families?
That said, there is a point to all this musing. And that is my list of Things That Actually Matter. Similar to the way magazines like to end the year by cranking out top ten lists of the best movies and biggest scandals, I've been trying to come up with a list of factors that actually matter in children's outcomes -- factors that can help kids go from good to great. I've got five here, and I welcome suggestions of others. In no particular order, they are:
1. Smart teachers. This was an interesting one to me. I've been researching efforts to attract higher-quality math teachers to schools, but everyone has their own opinion of what higher-quality means. A few people have done some fascinating studies on this. One particularly compelling one from Ronald Ferguson looked at the math scores of children, based on the scores of their teachers on the 1986 Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (a basic literary skills test Texas administered to see how the state's teachers stacked up). He found districts in which kids entered with high scores but teachers had relatively low scores, and he found districts in which the opposite occurred. It turns out that, over 10 years, if students in two districts started out equal, but in one the teachers scored, on average, two standard deviations above the other on the TECAT, the student test scores would diverge by 1.7 standard deviations. In typical dry academic prose, Ferguson noted that "This is a large effect." A study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that, in high school math, one semester with a teacher who was in the top 5% of quality corresponded to an additional gain of 0.3-0.5 grade equivalents.
This one is hard for parents to do much about if you're committed to a particular school, as good and bad teachers can teach side by side. But it is a large effect. It matters.
2. Limit television. This one is less of a surprise. There have been thousands of studies on children and television, and while a few have shown some positive outcomes, many more have not. Television desensitizes children to violence, enforces gender and racial stereotypes, makes them whine for toys, corresponds with obesity and other health problems, and -- even when controlling for confounding factors -- watching more of it is associated with higher drop-out rates and lower college completion rates by age 26. Even educational television hampers children's ability to entertain themselves, to the point where new minivans on the market are advertising that they come with TVs in them so you can drive to Grandma's in peace. Heaven forbid children actually look out the window, talk to each other, etc. Even having a TV on in a room with a small child interferes with the child's focus. Better to treat it as a planned, occasional diversion, rather than a constant companion.
3. Praise children for effort, not ability. We've covered this one on Gifted Exchange before. Kids who are told they are "smart" or other positive attributes they cannot control become more risk averse because they don't want to try activities in which this label might not prove correct. We've all seen gifted children who breeze through high school, then fail in college because they don't know how to actually tackle something that isn't easy for them. Some drop out, claiming that no one understands their genius. Children praised for effort, on the other hand -- which is within their control -- are inclined to try harder things. Over time, kids who continually try harder things will achieve more than those who refuse to do so.
4. Keep the family intact. This is another one that could justify many books in its own right -- and has. Some of the trouble with single parent families is economic. Given that the vast majority of mothers are involved in the labor force to some degree, two parent families are going to almost always have more money than single parent families. Children from higher-income families have a lot of advantages over children raised near the poverty level. But, over the years, researchers have attempted to untangle the economic elements from the family break-down elements (for one excellently researched look at this, see Sarah McLanahan and Gary Sandefur's Growing Up With a Single Parent from Harvard University Press). Yes, many single parents do a heroic job, and deserve nothing but praise. From a sheer statistical perspective, though, overwhelmingly, the research shows that growing up with two parents is better than growing up with one.
5. Get children involved in some sort of constructive activity alongside adults. We've also covered this one with my posts on the Cristo Rey schools. These inner-city Catholic schools do a great job setting high expectations for children. But their most brilliant insight was born of financial necessity. Children at these schools work in corporate offices for 1-2 days a week in order to earn their tuition. The work itself isn't much (filing and faxing). The net result, however, is that kids see the kinds of lives they could have if they finish school, go to college and make something of themselves. This gives them the discipline to counter their more childish current impulses and to think long-term. This discovery isn't unique to Cristo Rey; I've encountered some other mentoring programs that work on the same principle (one Ernst & Young program raised the graduation rate to 90% among its Bronx student participants by bringing these kids to the gleaming Times Square E&Y headquarters fairly frequently). I suspect this is one of the reasons volunteer work appears to have such a good effect on kids. It's not just that they're volunteering, it's that they're working alongside adults -- the people they will someday become-- to accomplish something. Kids today spend way too much time with other kids. The modern teen culture this breeds focuses on things that don't matter, and inspires a lot of alienation. Volunteering, church activities, part-time jobs, and other such mixed-age activities get kids out of the world of TV, clothes, Britney Spears, etc., and hence can do a lot of good.
So anyway, that's a start on the list. What else should be on there? And if you've made it all the way down to the bottom of the post, thanks so much. We'll get back to specific gifted issues soon enough...
I've been fascinated to see the posts piling up on the "Gifted Kids, Bad Behavior" entry. While many people assume that gifted kids are the teachers' pets, quietly completing assignments ahead of time and becoming star pupils, this is not always the case. Gifted kids, no less than other kids, can act out when they're bored or frustrated, and unfortunately, gifted kids are probably more likely than other kids to be bored or frustrated in classes that don't challenge them. Viewed in that context, some behavior problems make a lot of sense. If I had to go every day to a job I hated, that I hadn't chosen, and that bored me senseless, I would not be a happy camper either!
But, broadly, I think the topic touches a nerve. When kids are having trouble in school, parents start to wonder if they're doing something wrong, and if they are, if this is causing permanent damage. We also wonder if there's anything we, as parents, can do, to actually help our kids become happy, successful people.
Which brings me to the actual subject head of this first Gifted Exchange blog post of 2008. I've recently read Jim Collins' perennial best-seller of a business book, From Good to Great. The book looks at companies whose stock performance kept pace with the market for many years, then outperformed the market by many multiples over the next few years. What happened to make these companies go from good to great? What lessons can managers take from these examples?
Since I write about education, I got to thinking: This question can also be asked of child-rearing. Is there anything parents can do to help kids go from good raw material to great lives?
It's a much more difficult question, of course. For starters, defining "great" for people is completely subjective. Public companies are supposed to generate great returns for their stockholders. That is their job, full stop. But while some people might consider a happily married small town second grade teacher to have a good life, others would think that's kind of boring, particularly if the kid grew up saying she wanted to be a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Some people think $50,000 is a great income. Some people find $100,000 to be inadequate. Maybe someone has started a successful business, has a large, caring family, but is still unhappy with her life because of a chronic weight problem. I don't think there's a single metric people could agree on as a "great" outcome.
There's also the difficulty of social science data. I spend a lot of my time perusing education and sociological research, and if there's anything hunting through footnotes and equations has taught me, it's that separating out correlation and causation is like counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. For instance, we know that kids from higher income families tend to do better on standardized tests than kids from lower income families. But is this because income buys children the advantages of better schools, tutoring if they need it, etc? Or is it because it correlates with other things, like parents who care about academics and intact families?
That said, there is a point to all this musing. And that is my list of Things That Actually Matter. Similar to the way magazines like to end the year by cranking out top ten lists of the best movies and biggest scandals, I've been trying to come up with a list of factors that actually matter in children's outcomes -- factors that can help kids go from good to great. I've got five here, and I welcome suggestions of others. In no particular order, they are:
1. Smart teachers. This was an interesting one to me. I've been researching efforts to attract higher-quality math teachers to schools, but everyone has their own opinion of what higher-quality means. A few people have done some fascinating studies on this. One particularly compelling one from Ronald Ferguson looked at the math scores of children, based on the scores of their teachers on the 1986 Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (a basic literary skills test Texas administered to see how the state's teachers stacked up). He found districts in which kids entered with high scores but teachers had relatively low scores, and he found districts in which the opposite occurred. It turns out that, over 10 years, if students in two districts started out equal, but in one the teachers scored, on average, two standard deviations above the other on the TECAT, the student test scores would diverge by 1.7 standard deviations. In typical dry academic prose, Ferguson noted that "This is a large effect." A study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that, in high school math, one semester with a teacher who was in the top 5% of quality corresponded to an additional gain of 0.3-0.5 grade equivalents.
This one is hard for parents to do much about if you're committed to a particular school, as good and bad teachers can teach side by side. But it is a large effect. It matters.
2. Limit television. This one is less of a surprise. There have been thousands of studies on children and television, and while a few have shown some positive outcomes, many more have not. Television desensitizes children to violence, enforces gender and racial stereotypes, makes them whine for toys, corresponds with obesity and other health problems, and -- even when controlling for confounding factors -- watching more of it is associated with higher drop-out rates and lower college completion rates by age 26. Even educational television hampers children's ability to entertain themselves, to the point where new minivans on the market are advertising that they come with TVs in them so you can drive to Grandma's in peace. Heaven forbid children actually look out the window, talk to each other, etc. Even having a TV on in a room with a small child interferes with the child's focus. Better to treat it as a planned, occasional diversion, rather than a constant companion.
3. Praise children for effort, not ability. We've covered this one on Gifted Exchange before. Kids who are told they are "smart" or other positive attributes they cannot control become more risk averse because they don't want to try activities in which this label might not prove correct. We've all seen gifted children who breeze through high school, then fail in college because they don't know how to actually tackle something that isn't easy for them. Some drop out, claiming that no one understands their genius. Children praised for effort, on the other hand -- which is within their control -- are inclined to try harder things. Over time, kids who continually try harder things will achieve more than those who refuse to do so.
4. Keep the family intact. This is another one that could justify many books in its own right -- and has. Some of the trouble with single parent families is economic. Given that the vast majority of mothers are involved in the labor force to some degree, two parent families are going to almost always have more money than single parent families. Children from higher-income families have a lot of advantages over children raised near the poverty level. But, over the years, researchers have attempted to untangle the economic elements from the family break-down elements (for one excellently researched look at this, see Sarah McLanahan and Gary Sandefur's Growing Up With a Single Parent from Harvard University Press). Yes, many single parents do a heroic job, and deserve nothing but praise. From a sheer statistical perspective, though, overwhelmingly, the research shows that growing up with two parents is better than growing up with one.
5. Get children involved in some sort of constructive activity alongside adults. We've also covered this one with my posts on the Cristo Rey schools. These inner-city Catholic schools do a great job setting high expectations for children. But their most brilliant insight was born of financial necessity. Children at these schools work in corporate offices for 1-2 days a week in order to earn their tuition. The work itself isn't much (filing and faxing). The net result, however, is that kids see the kinds of lives they could have if they finish school, go to college and make something of themselves. This gives them the discipline to counter their more childish current impulses and to think long-term. This discovery isn't unique to Cristo Rey; I've encountered some other mentoring programs that work on the same principle (one Ernst & Young program raised the graduation rate to 90% among its Bronx student participants by bringing these kids to the gleaming Times Square E&Y headquarters fairly frequently). I suspect this is one of the reasons volunteer work appears to have such a good effect on kids. It's not just that they're volunteering, it's that they're working alongside adults -- the people they will someday become-- to accomplish something. Kids today spend way too much time with other kids. The modern teen culture this breeds focuses on things that don't matter, and inspires a lot of alienation. Volunteering, church activities, part-time jobs, and other such mixed-age activities get kids out of the world of TV, clothes, Britney Spears, etc., and hence can do a lot of good.
So anyway, that's a start on the list. What else should be on there? And if you've made it all the way down to the bottom of the post, thanks so much. We'll get back to specific gifted issues soon enough...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Problem with Math Teachers
I must confess -- I'm a bit of an economics junkie. So I've really been enjoying Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence. In the first half he tells his story of working in high levels of government (and hanging out with Ayn Rand) over the last many decades. In the second half, he offers his take on various economic problems facing the world.
One of the big problems in America is that -- even as the economy has been going gangbusters the last 2-3 years -- an increasingly high percentage of Americans do not think it is going well for them. This is one of the results of a winner-take-all globalized economy. The return on high skill levels is much greater than it was in the past. People cannot simply earn a high school diploma, get a job in a factory, and expect to be middle class for life. Most good jobs require a college degree and, in fact, require a level of critical capacity that even many college graduates don't possess. You have to be able to solve new problems and adapt to new situations.
Many top jobs require a good grasp of math, in particular, and this is where Greenspan identifies a big problem that we have also talked about on this blog. The American education system is doing a lousy job training a broad base of students for careers that involve math. In past blog posts, we've looked at problems with the curriculum. But he identifies another economic problem: most districts reward teachers by seniority, not how much they are needed.
"A flat pay scale when demand is far from flat is a form of price fixing that undermines the ability to attract qualified math teachers," he writes. "Since the financial opportunities for experts in math or science outside of teaching are vast, and for English literature teachers outside of teaching, limited, math teachers are likely to be a cut below the average teaching professional at the same pay grade. Teaching math is likely being left to those who are unable to claim the more lucrative jobs."
Of course, economics is about generalities; many of us can point to excellent math teachers who had a strong desire to shape young minds -- or who didn't particularly like the private sector. But as Greenspan points out, even without the quality issue, there's still a quantity issue. A 2000 study of large urban districts found that 95% had an immediate demand for math teachers. Clearly, it is hard to get good people.
The simple economic solution is to pay math teachers (or any other teachers with high-demand credentials) more. In reality, this has been beastly hard to do. The culture of teaching -- to say nothing of union contracts -- often undermine this. But I recently came across a program in NYC and a few other cities called Math for America that pays promising math teachers (defined pretty much as math majors who did not major in education; the program pays for a master's degree in teaching) an additional almost $20,000 per year above the salaries they would earn as regular teachers. The America Competes Act has a provision modeled on this program that will establish National Science Foundation fellows around the country and boost their pay.
I am looking more into these programs because I think it's a fascinating idea. Money isn't everything. I chose to go into journalism rather than a math-related field for reasons that have nothing to do with salaries. But, on the whole, a bright young person who is interested in teaching might choose to specialize in math if the pay was better. Over time, that would help solve the quantity problem, if nothing else.
One of the big problems in America is that -- even as the economy has been going gangbusters the last 2-3 years -- an increasingly high percentage of Americans do not think it is going well for them. This is one of the results of a winner-take-all globalized economy. The return on high skill levels is much greater than it was in the past. People cannot simply earn a high school diploma, get a job in a factory, and expect to be middle class for life. Most good jobs require a college degree and, in fact, require a level of critical capacity that even many college graduates don't possess. You have to be able to solve new problems and adapt to new situations.
Many top jobs require a good grasp of math, in particular, and this is where Greenspan identifies a big problem that we have also talked about on this blog. The American education system is doing a lousy job training a broad base of students for careers that involve math. In past blog posts, we've looked at problems with the curriculum. But he identifies another economic problem: most districts reward teachers by seniority, not how much they are needed.
"A flat pay scale when demand is far from flat is a form of price fixing that undermines the ability to attract qualified math teachers," he writes. "Since the financial opportunities for experts in math or science outside of teaching are vast, and for English literature teachers outside of teaching, limited, math teachers are likely to be a cut below the average teaching professional at the same pay grade. Teaching math is likely being left to those who are unable to claim the more lucrative jobs."
Of course, economics is about generalities; many of us can point to excellent math teachers who had a strong desire to shape young minds -- or who didn't particularly like the private sector. But as Greenspan points out, even without the quality issue, there's still a quantity issue. A 2000 study of large urban districts found that 95% had an immediate demand for math teachers. Clearly, it is hard to get good people.
The simple economic solution is to pay math teachers (or any other teachers with high-demand credentials) more. In reality, this has been beastly hard to do. The culture of teaching -- to say nothing of union contracts -- often undermine this. But I recently came across a program in NYC and a few other cities called Math for America that pays promising math teachers (defined pretty much as math majors who did not major in education; the program pays for a master's degree in teaching) an additional almost $20,000 per year above the salaries they would earn as regular teachers. The America Competes Act has a provision modeled on this program that will establish National Science Foundation fellows around the country and boost their pay.
I am looking more into these programs because I think it's a fascinating idea. Money isn't everything. I chose to go into journalism rather than a math-related field for reasons that have nothing to do with salaries. But, on the whole, a bright young person who is interested in teaching might choose to specialize in math if the pay was better. Over time, that would help solve the quantity problem, if nothing else.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Brainy Baby Backlash Continues...
I was watching Oprah on the treadmill the other day when I saw an advertisement for Hooked on Phonics. In it, a 4-year-old boy was reading out loud to his mom in front of a gaggle of other amazed moms. "How old is he?" they wanted to know. They also wanted to know the first mom's secret. She said -- with some rather forced humility -- that they'd been practicing. Flash to an ad for the Pre-K Hooked on Phonics system.
The whole thing seemed a wee bit distasteful to me. Not the part about a 4-year-old reading. I know that many highly gifted young people start reading long before kindergarten because they view reading as a way to learn more about the world. Since they want to learn more about the world, they learn to read. But this is often to their parents' amazement. There is very little "practicing" going on. The ad plays into the oft-repeated dismissal that parents of these highly gifted young people are just pushing them into reading in order to impress the other moms at playgroup. If 4 years old is good, why not even earlier? Fortunately for those looking to put other parents to shame, Hooked on Phonics has a baby edition that is aimed at 3-18 months.
But also, I found the ad disturbing because I just finished reading Susan Gregory Thomas' Buy Buy Baby. This book documents how various marketers have aimed their products at increasingly young children in order to build brand loyalty, and have gotten away with it by claiming the products are educational. Her particular bugaboo (the name of a $800 stroller, by the way) is the Baby Einstein series, but as she told me when I interviewed her for an upcoming USA Today column, there's really no escaping it. Elmo's face is on diapers. One of her daughter's first words was Dora, and she hadn't seen the show. My son Jasper loves his "How Big is Baby Elmo? Baby Elmo is SO Big" board book, and he doesn't watch Sesame Street. It was simply a pleasant looking book available at Babies R Us, but now he'll have an affinity to the red furry monster -- and no doubt the lunch boxes, toys, and sleeping bags he adorns -- for the rest of his childhood. Sigh.
The humorous thing about all these products is that they must be pitched as educational in order for families to feel it's OK to buy them. Every marketer knows this. Jasper has a musical animal train toy that plays incredibly annoying songs. But they all talk about "learning about animals." It's not enough to say that giraffes are tall, or to play Old McDonald Had a Farm, or what have you. The little singing voice keeps chirping that "learning about animals is so much fun!" Gregory Thomas tells a funny story about a doll for toddlers that had the names of body parts stitched onto the appropriate places. Toy stores refused to stock it because it wasn't "educational." So it was redesigned with numbers and letters stitched on instead. Now it was deemed OK, even though the new design made absolutely no sense.
It's unclear why parents are so concerned that toys for young kids be educational. Kids learn through play, period. They certainly don't learn more watching a Baby Einstein video than they do when you talk to them while folding laundry. Gregory Thomas blames a White House 0-3 conference in 1997 which claimed that those years were absolutely critical to brain development, as well as parental worries about whether kids will do OK in our winner-take-all culture.
The Hooked on Phonics Pre-K programs play into these worries. So do the various LeapFrog game systems which give very young kids even more screen time (unlikely to help little brains, regardless).
But there is definitely a backlash brewing. Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein videos took a big hit recently when some researchers discovered that kids who watch the videos know fewer words than those who don't. And TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment), has been featured on many blogs for its 2007-2008 Toy Action Guide which actually has the gumption to call LeapFrog's Click Start My First Computer a toy to avoid. Well!
Certainly there's no harm in pre-K kids learning their letters and numbers. But it is funny that we've become so obsessed about it, as if there is not a minute to lose in those critical early years. After all, the other little 4-year-olds are reading. All Johnny needs is a $99.95 toy, and he will be too...
The whole thing seemed a wee bit distasteful to me. Not the part about a 4-year-old reading. I know that many highly gifted young people start reading long before kindergarten because they view reading as a way to learn more about the world. Since they want to learn more about the world, they learn to read. But this is often to their parents' amazement. There is very little "practicing" going on. The ad plays into the oft-repeated dismissal that parents of these highly gifted young people are just pushing them into reading in order to impress the other moms at playgroup. If 4 years old is good, why not even earlier? Fortunately for those looking to put other parents to shame, Hooked on Phonics has a baby edition that is aimed at 3-18 months.
But also, I found the ad disturbing because I just finished reading Susan Gregory Thomas' Buy Buy Baby. This book documents how various marketers have aimed their products at increasingly young children in order to build brand loyalty, and have gotten away with it by claiming the products are educational. Her particular bugaboo (the name of a $800 stroller, by the way) is the Baby Einstein series, but as she told me when I interviewed her for an upcoming USA Today column, there's really no escaping it. Elmo's face is on diapers. One of her daughter's first words was Dora, and she hadn't seen the show. My son Jasper loves his "How Big is Baby Elmo? Baby Elmo is SO Big" board book, and he doesn't watch Sesame Street. It was simply a pleasant looking book available at Babies R Us, but now he'll have an affinity to the red furry monster -- and no doubt the lunch boxes, toys, and sleeping bags he adorns -- for the rest of his childhood. Sigh.
The humorous thing about all these products is that they must be pitched as educational in order for families to feel it's OK to buy them. Every marketer knows this. Jasper has a musical animal train toy that plays incredibly annoying songs. But they all talk about "learning about animals." It's not enough to say that giraffes are tall, or to play Old McDonald Had a Farm, or what have you. The little singing voice keeps chirping that "learning about animals is so much fun!" Gregory Thomas tells a funny story about a doll for toddlers that had the names of body parts stitched onto the appropriate places. Toy stores refused to stock it because it wasn't "educational." So it was redesigned with numbers and letters stitched on instead. Now it was deemed OK, even though the new design made absolutely no sense.
It's unclear why parents are so concerned that toys for young kids be educational. Kids learn through play, period. They certainly don't learn more watching a Baby Einstein video than they do when you talk to them while folding laundry. Gregory Thomas blames a White House 0-3 conference in 1997 which claimed that those years were absolutely critical to brain development, as well as parental worries about whether kids will do OK in our winner-take-all culture.
The Hooked on Phonics Pre-K programs play into these worries. So do the various LeapFrog game systems which give very young kids even more screen time (unlikely to help little brains, regardless).
But there is definitely a backlash brewing. Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein videos took a big hit recently when some researchers discovered that kids who watch the videos know fewer words than those who don't. And TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment), has been featured on many blogs for its 2007-2008 Toy Action Guide which actually has the gumption to call LeapFrog's Click Start My First Computer a toy to avoid. Well!
Certainly there's no harm in pre-K kids learning their letters and numbers. But it is funny that we've become so obsessed about it, as if there is not a minute to lose in those critical early years. After all, the other little 4-year-olds are reading. All Johnny needs is a $99.95 toy, and he will be too...
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Girls Sweep Seimens Competition
This year, young women won both the individual and team divisions in the annual Siemens Competition. This prestigious high school science competition awards scholarships to young people who undertake compelling research. Isha Himani Jain of Bethlahem, PA, won the individual grand prize for her research on bone growth. Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff of Plainview, NY, won the team competition for their research on tuberculosis. You can read more about the competition here.
It's always good to read about young people doing amazing things in science, period. But I found the news about the female sweep of the top awards particularly heartening, given the ongoing controversy about women's achievements in science.
A few years ago, former Harvard President Larry Summers made headlines with his statement that women were unlikely to be proportionally represented in the "most prestigious jobs" in math and science in the near future for three key reasons. First, Summers claimed that all prestigious jobs require complete devotion during one's younger years, and until women are willing to put in the hours (to the exclusion of all else) they won't gain tenure at the same rates, publish at the same rates, etc. Second, women may not be as well represented on the extremes of mathematical intelligence. This doesn't mean any one given woman is worse at math than any given man. But perhaps on the margins there's a difference which then results in low representation at the top universities. And finally, there may be discrimination. But he made very clear that he thought the first two were bigger factors than the latter.
There is definitely a problem in academia and elsewhere with the perception that getting anywhere in math and science requires devoting oneself, monk-like, to the lab. Many corporations are plagued by this same idea that people who have outside interests aren't "serious." Both men and women have outside interests. But women are more likely to put a premium on having balanced lives. Larry Summers seemed to think this inevitably meant women wouldn't be well-represented at the top. Personally, I think the institutions will change. After all, we have a female Speaker of the House who started her political career after her kids grew up. But anyway...
What the Siemens competition results are doing is putting the nail in the coffin on Summers' second point. When young men and women are given equal opportunities, and are equally encouraged to excel in scientific pursuits, young women are just as likely to achieve great results.
It's always good to read about young people doing amazing things in science, period. But I found the news about the female sweep of the top awards particularly heartening, given the ongoing controversy about women's achievements in science.
A few years ago, former Harvard President Larry Summers made headlines with his statement that women were unlikely to be proportionally represented in the "most prestigious jobs" in math and science in the near future for three key reasons. First, Summers claimed that all prestigious jobs require complete devotion during one's younger years, and until women are willing to put in the hours (to the exclusion of all else) they won't gain tenure at the same rates, publish at the same rates, etc. Second, women may not be as well represented on the extremes of mathematical intelligence. This doesn't mean any one given woman is worse at math than any given man. But perhaps on the margins there's a difference which then results in low representation at the top universities. And finally, there may be discrimination. But he made very clear that he thought the first two were bigger factors than the latter.
There is definitely a problem in academia and elsewhere with the perception that getting anywhere in math and science requires devoting oneself, monk-like, to the lab. Many corporations are plagued by this same idea that people who have outside interests aren't "serious." Both men and women have outside interests. But women are more likely to put a premium on having balanced lives. Larry Summers seemed to think this inevitably meant women wouldn't be well-represented at the top. Personally, I think the institutions will change. After all, we have a female Speaker of the House who started her political career after her kids grew up. But anyway...
What the Siemens competition results are doing is putting the nail in the coffin on Summers' second point. When young men and women are given equal opportunities, and are equally encouraged to excel in scientific pursuits, young women are just as likely to achieve great results.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Another Gifted Blog
I'm excited to share the news about a new blog on raising gifted children with readers of Gifted Exchange. Kim Moldofsky, a longtime Gifted Exchange reader, has recently started contributing to BabyCenter (one of the biggest parenting websites out there). You can read some of her posts here. She writes about asynchronous development, over-excitabilities, laundry, etc. Hope to see some of you there!
Monday, December 03, 2007
Gifted Kids, Bad Behavior
A few newspapers run education Q&A columns, often written by educators, parents and the like. I came across this interesting one from InsideBayArea. A little girl, who is ahead of the rest of her class in various subjects, is humming, daydreaming, etc., as the teacher goes through her lessons. What should be done?
It's a good question. One of the big myths about gifted children is that they are well-behaved teachers' pets. Many get bored in class, and while some bored children just get quiet, others act out or call attention to the fact that they find class boring. Some whose social skills are less well developed may ask obnoxious questions, call the teacher or other students "dumb" and otherwise make general pains of themselves. It's hard to imagine anything more annoying than a kid who persists in humming while other children are trying to work.
Yes, gifted kids need to be given tougher work that challenges them. But bad behavior can't be tolerated, even if there is a reason for it. I'm curious how parents who read this blog have dealt with discipline challenges.
It's a good question. One of the big myths about gifted children is that they are well-behaved teachers' pets. Many get bored in class, and while some bored children just get quiet, others act out or call attention to the fact that they find class boring. Some whose social skills are less well developed may ask obnoxious questions, call the teacher or other students "dumb" and otherwise make general pains of themselves. It's hard to imagine anything more annoying than a kid who persists in humming while other children are trying to work.
Yes, gifted kids need to be given tougher work that challenges them. But bad behavior can't be tolerated, even if there is a reason for it. I'm curious how parents who read this blog have dealt with discipline challenges.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
"Dangerous" and "Daring" Books for Boys and Girls
When I was young, I remember hauling around one of those big books of everything -- a phone book-sized tome with page-long essays on Cleopatra, dragonflies, volcanoes, etc. -- and devouring its pages. I'd read 50 entries on a Saturday, or 10 before bed. I bored the rest of my family senseless with various tidbits gleaned from my reading and, at one point, announced that I loved my volume of "facts, all facts."
Yes, those were good times for a curious kid. During the pre-teen years, the voracious reader wants to learn everything she can about her universe, and how to have fun in it. That's why I've been smiling nostalgically for the past 24 hours as I've paged through two new books, The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls. Done up to look a bit like old-fashioned encyclopedias, these volumes offer bite-sized essays on everything cool in the world, as well as how-tos that give you a mischievous feeling in this era of toy recalls and injury-proof playgrounds. For instance, the Dangerous Book for Boys tells you how to build a go-kart and hunt and cook a rabbit (with explicit instructions that you must eat it -- it's no good to kill things just for sport). Delightful!
Not to be outdone, the Daring Book for Girls instructs on building a clock powered by lemons (who knew?), biographies of female pirates, examples of karate moves, instructions for telling a really good ghost story, how to whistle with two fingers and how to tie a sari. Yes, the world is a complicated place, but armed with this knowledge, the 8-12 year old reader will sail through.
These books couldn't come out at a better time. As I've been pondering Christmas presents for the children in my life, the lists of hot toys are bringing out the Grinch in me. For starters, many of the mass-market girls' dolls are completely brainless. One that "eats like a real baby?" Oy -- girls, you'll spend enough time trying to steer strained peas into real babies' mouths later in life. Why play it now? Most of the other hot toys feature screens of some variety -- as if kids don't spend enough time watching TV -- and the one science kit type that's made some lists is for making bubbles. In other words, no chemistry set with strong oxidizers that go BOOM! And forget any possibilities of skinned knees. The seemingly-cool SmartCycle, a stationary bike type contraption you hook into a TV that gets kids spinning in order to zoom through video games is, in reality, a bike that can't fall over, located in the living room where you won't get the ruddy cheeks that come from zooming down a real hill.
The Dangerous and Daring books, on the other hand, tell you to save up for a Swiss Army Knife. They tell you how to play 14 kinds of tag (banned on more politically correct playgrounds). They give you a brief history of artillery. They note the differences between genders ("as a general rule," observes the Dangerous book, "girls do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.") And yet, both contain poetry and instructions on foreign phrases and proper grammar. We may be dangerous and daring, but it is important for all of us to learn to be civilized as well.
In short, I think these books make much better Christmas presents than more video games for the curious children in your lives. Here's hoping they stay atop the best-seller lists for the rest of the holiday season.
Yes, those were good times for a curious kid. During the pre-teen years, the voracious reader wants to learn everything she can about her universe, and how to have fun in it. That's why I've been smiling nostalgically for the past 24 hours as I've paged through two new books, The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls. Done up to look a bit like old-fashioned encyclopedias, these volumes offer bite-sized essays on everything cool in the world, as well as how-tos that give you a mischievous feeling in this era of toy recalls and injury-proof playgrounds. For instance, the Dangerous Book for Boys tells you how to build a go-kart and hunt and cook a rabbit (with explicit instructions that you must eat it -- it's no good to kill things just for sport). Delightful!
Not to be outdone, the Daring Book for Girls instructs on building a clock powered by lemons (who knew?), biographies of female pirates, examples of karate moves, instructions for telling a really good ghost story, how to whistle with two fingers and how to tie a sari. Yes, the world is a complicated place, but armed with this knowledge, the 8-12 year old reader will sail through.
These books couldn't come out at a better time. As I've been pondering Christmas presents for the children in my life, the lists of hot toys are bringing out the Grinch in me. For starters, many of the mass-market girls' dolls are completely brainless. One that "eats like a real baby?" Oy -- girls, you'll spend enough time trying to steer strained peas into real babies' mouths later in life. Why play it now? Most of the other hot toys feature screens of some variety -- as if kids don't spend enough time watching TV -- and the one science kit type that's made some lists is for making bubbles. In other words, no chemistry set with strong oxidizers that go BOOM! And forget any possibilities of skinned knees. The seemingly-cool SmartCycle, a stationary bike type contraption you hook into a TV that gets kids spinning in order to zoom through video games is, in reality, a bike that can't fall over, located in the living room where you won't get the ruddy cheeks that come from zooming down a real hill.
The Dangerous and Daring books, on the other hand, tell you to save up for a Swiss Army Knife. They tell you how to play 14 kinds of tag (banned on more politically correct playgrounds). They give you a brief history of artillery. They note the differences between genders ("as a general rule," observes the Dangerous book, "girls do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.") And yet, both contain poetry and instructions on foreign phrases and proper grammar. We may be dangerous and daring, but it is important for all of us to learn to be civilized as well.
In short, I think these books make much better Christmas presents than more video games for the curious children in your lives. Here's hoping they stay atop the best-seller lists for the rest of the holiday season.
Monday, November 26, 2007
What's So Great About Singapore Math?
Recently, on this blog, we discussed the performance of US 8th graders on the NAEP, and how that compared with exams taken by students in various countries. As usual, Singapore came out right at the top. The vast majority of Singaporean students were deemed proficient; a far lower percentage of American students were.
Of course, the US has a long tradition of incorporating what works in other countries here. So it comes as no surprise that a number of districts have adopted "Singapore Math" curricula. Some have achieved test gains after doing so, though educational studies are almost impossible to control (i.e., are the gains from the curriculum, or the fact that the teachers went through additional training, and were excited about it? Etc.) You can read a handful of articles about the roll-outs here.
I don't have any personal experience with Singapore math. I haven't observed a class learning it. But reading over these articles, I have to say that the curriculum seems to be doing a number of things right.
First, kids learn fewer topics each year, but learn them more in depth. American kids might see 30 math concepts a year, and then re-cover 25 of them the next year. Singapore math does not repeat concepts. You learn a concept, then move on or build on it.
There are pros and cons to this. One of the reasons American schools review so many concepts is that kids move around, and there is no national curriculum (or even state curriculum sometimes). Singapore kids might move from school to school, but they'll be covering the same stuff even if they do. Kids who move into Singapore math districts in the US wind up with some big gaps.
But on the other hand, covering and then recovering concepts leads to burn-out and shallow knowledge. American students have covered various basic arithmetic concepts many times by the time they officially get to algebra. But they may not actually understand what's going on. I had a conversation with a grade school child recently in which he asked how old my baby was. Six months, I told him. So how long until he's a year old? the child asked. I turned it around and asked the kid how many months were in a year. Once we established that there were twelve, I repeated the original question. The child was somewhat confused. I have no doubt that if I'd given him a worksheet saying "12-6 = ?" he would know what to do. But a multi-step word problem requires deeper understanding of what subtraction is and why you use it. American schools tend to skimp on these.
Singapore math also encourages students to do problems in their heads, to talk them out, and to draw visual representations of the problem (as an intermediate step to doing that visual work in your head). There is some stress on speed in order to keep kids interested. I developed all kinds of short cuts and visual ways of figuring out problems when I did math contests in school, and those skills certainly helped me master various concepts. Singapore math seems to incorporate these strategies into the curriculum for kids who aren't on the Math Counts team. That's certainly a good thing.
I am not sure how this winds up working for highly gifted children. To accommodate them in a Singapore Math curriculum, one would have to rely on acceleration. If a kid has mastered the year's 10 concepts, bump her to the next year. But, on the other hand, even in the absence of acceleration, Singapore math seems to bring so many kids up to the advanced level on international comparisons that perhaps even many gifted kids are reasonably challenged. After all, Singaporean 4th graders start learning algebra (though they don't call it that -- it's presented as simply figuring out numbers you don't know in a problem).
Of course, the US has a long tradition of incorporating what works in other countries here. So it comes as no surprise that a number of districts have adopted "Singapore Math" curricula. Some have achieved test gains after doing so, though educational studies are almost impossible to control (i.e., are the gains from the curriculum, or the fact that the teachers went through additional training, and were excited about it? Etc.) You can read a handful of articles about the roll-outs here.
I don't have any personal experience with Singapore math. I haven't observed a class learning it. But reading over these articles, I have to say that the curriculum seems to be doing a number of things right.
First, kids learn fewer topics each year, but learn them more in depth. American kids might see 30 math concepts a year, and then re-cover 25 of them the next year. Singapore math does not repeat concepts. You learn a concept, then move on or build on it.
There are pros and cons to this. One of the reasons American schools review so many concepts is that kids move around, and there is no national curriculum (or even state curriculum sometimes). Singapore kids might move from school to school, but they'll be covering the same stuff even if they do. Kids who move into Singapore math districts in the US wind up with some big gaps.
But on the other hand, covering and then recovering concepts leads to burn-out and shallow knowledge. American students have covered various basic arithmetic concepts many times by the time they officially get to algebra. But they may not actually understand what's going on. I had a conversation with a grade school child recently in which he asked how old my baby was. Six months, I told him. So how long until he's a year old? the child asked. I turned it around and asked the kid how many months were in a year. Once we established that there were twelve, I repeated the original question. The child was somewhat confused. I have no doubt that if I'd given him a worksheet saying "12-6 = ?" he would know what to do. But a multi-step word problem requires deeper understanding of what subtraction is and why you use it. American schools tend to skimp on these.
Singapore math also encourages students to do problems in their heads, to talk them out, and to draw visual representations of the problem (as an intermediate step to doing that visual work in your head). There is some stress on speed in order to keep kids interested. I developed all kinds of short cuts and visual ways of figuring out problems when I did math contests in school, and those skills certainly helped me master various concepts. Singapore math seems to incorporate these strategies into the curriculum for kids who aren't on the Math Counts team. That's certainly a good thing.
I am not sure how this winds up working for highly gifted children. To accommodate them in a Singapore Math curriculum, one would have to rely on acceleration. If a kid has mastered the year's 10 concepts, bump her to the next year. But, on the other hand, even in the absence of acceleration, Singapore math seems to bring so many kids up to the advanced level on international comparisons that perhaps even many gifted kids are reasonably challenged. After all, Singaporean 4th graders start learning algebra (though they don't call it that -- it's presented as simply figuring out numbers you don't know in a problem).
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
University at Age 7, or a "Normal Childhood"
From the UK, we have an interesting story this week about a 7-year-old boy with an intense interest in chemistry. Little Ainan walked and talked early (as many highly gifted children do) and then taught himself chemistry on the internet. Now his parents want him to go to university to study chemistry on that level. They are searching for a place that will take him, and are warning that the child will become very frustrated if he is denied the chance to do such advanced work. You can read the story here.
I don't know about the particular merits of this case. I know little Ainan needs a lot of challenge. I also know that universities are most wary of having him participate in labs (even a brilliant 7-year-old can have the coordination and concentration of a 7-year-old).
After reading enough of these stories, though, you start to notice certain throwaway comments that are in fact quite profound. For instance, the reporter feels the need to note that "Experts believe that the lack of a normal childhood can do irreparable long-term psychological damage."
Do they? What is a normal childhood anyway? I'm not sure I know anyone who feels they had one. Children who move around a lot because their parents are in the military, or are missionaries, don't have a normal childhood. Likewise, children who go to university at age 7 probably don't have a normal childhood either. But unless one believes that anyone who doesn't go to normal, local schools for grades K-12, has a perfectly normal family and normal activities, is suffering irreparable long term damage, it's hard to argue that a normal childhood is so important. Or else we're all damaged, which may be the case too.
(As a side note, I particularly enjoyed the list of child prodigies on the bottom who met a variety of fates. These two are right next to each other:
*Ruth Lawrence graduated from Oxford at the age of 13 with a first-class mathematics degree in 1985. She is now a maths professor in Israel, married with two children
*Terence Judd made his first appearance as a classical pianist at the age of 12, playing at the Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. At 22 he threw himself off Beachy Head, just before Christmas 1979.)
I don't know about the particular merits of this case. I know little Ainan needs a lot of challenge. I also know that universities are most wary of having him participate in labs (even a brilliant 7-year-old can have the coordination and concentration of a 7-year-old).
After reading enough of these stories, though, you start to notice certain throwaway comments that are in fact quite profound. For instance, the reporter feels the need to note that "Experts believe that the lack of a normal childhood can do irreparable long-term psychological damage."
Do they? What is a normal childhood anyway? I'm not sure I know anyone who feels they had one. Children who move around a lot because their parents are in the military, or are missionaries, don't have a normal childhood. Likewise, children who go to university at age 7 probably don't have a normal childhood either. But unless one believes that anyone who doesn't go to normal, local schools for grades K-12, has a perfectly normal family and normal activities, is suffering irreparable long term damage, it's hard to argue that a normal childhood is so important. Or else we're all damaged, which may be the case too.
(As a side note, I particularly enjoyed the list of child prodigies on the bottom who met a variety of fates. These two are right next to each other:
*Ruth Lawrence graduated from Oxford at the age of 13 with a first-class mathematics degree in 1985. She is now a maths professor in Israel, married with two children
*Terence Judd made his first appearance as a classical pianist at the age of 12, playing at the Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. At 22 he threw himself off Beachy Head, just before Christmas 1979.)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
We're Number 18!
Every international comparison of US students with students in certain Asian countries presents an opportunity for self-flagellation. A new analysis by Gary Phillips of the American Institutes for Research is no different.
Phillips used various statistical techniques to convert the scores other nations achieved on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test to scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP, or "nation's report card" test that a sample of American 4th, 8th, and 12th graders take every few years). Specifically, he compared 8th grade mathematics scores. The results show that the U.S. is right in the middle of the pack. About two-thirds (65%) of 8th graders scored at or above the basic level, 27% scored at or above proficient, and 6% scored at or above advanced.
This isn't awful (the Jordanian equivalent of 8th graders came up with a 35-11-2 basic-proficient-advanced split on this international comparison, and those in the Philippines came up with 10-1-0). It puts the US squarely in a cohort with other nations such as Finland, England and New Zealand.
However, Americans seldom like to view themselves as being mediocre. The true stars on this international comparison are, no surprise, the industrialized Asian nations. Singapore's split is 96-73-34, South Korea's is 93-65-26, Hong Kong's is 94-64-23, Japan's is 92-61-24, and Chinese Taipei (which I understand to be the politically neutral name for "Taiwan") posts 87-61-31. Interestingly, the Flemish part of Belgium is fairly close to the Asian tigers, posting an 88-51-15 split. You can see the whole report here.
I think there are two key take-aways from this analysis. Many Americans know we have a problem with educating our most disadvantaged students. They still believe, however, that our top quarter of students is doing pretty well. This comparison shows that to be completely false. The top quarter of American 8th graders is equivalent to the "top" three-quarters of Singaporean students. Six times the proportion of Singaporean students test at the advanced level, compared with American students. Even the folks in Flanders are managing to educate two-and-a-half times the proportion of students to the advanced level as here in the U.S. There is no reason the top quarter of American students can't be educated to the advanced level, defined as being able to generalize and synthesize concepts and principles in the key mathematical areas (such as statistics and probability, algebra and functions, etc.) The fact that only 6% of American 8th graders score at this level shows that American schools are failing to challenge their top students. This is a problem, since knowing how to generalize and synthesize are key skills for competing in the knowledge economy, and given the state of American high schools, it's unlikely that kids who aren't figuring these things out in 8th grade will get much better at them later on.
Second, if we're serious about raising mathematical achievement, we need to look at what these Asian countries are doing. This isn't a new idea; periodically, some school district tries to implement "Singapore Math" or what have you. But in education, as in any social science field, it is difficult to separate out which factor works. Perhaps a certain kind of instruction is key, or perhaps Singaporean students watch a lot less television. We'll examine studies of Singapore math in some coming Gifted Exchange posts to see what people have come up with.
Phillips used various statistical techniques to convert the scores other nations achieved on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test to scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP, or "nation's report card" test that a sample of American 4th, 8th, and 12th graders take every few years). Specifically, he compared 8th grade mathematics scores. The results show that the U.S. is right in the middle of the pack. About two-thirds (65%) of 8th graders scored at or above the basic level, 27% scored at or above proficient, and 6% scored at or above advanced.
This isn't awful (the Jordanian equivalent of 8th graders came up with a 35-11-2 basic-proficient-advanced split on this international comparison, and those in the Philippines came up with 10-1-0). It puts the US squarely in a cohort with other nations such as Finland, England and New Zealand.
However, Americans seldom like to view themselves as being mediocre. The true stars on this international comparison are, no surprise, the industrialized Asian nations. Singapore's split is 96-73-34, South Korea's is 93-65-26, Hong Kong's is 94-64-23, Japan's is 92-61-24, and Chinese Taipei (which I understand to be the politically neutral name for "Taiwan") posts 87-61-31. Interestingly, the Flemish part of Belgium is fairly close to the Asian tigers, posting an 88-51-15 split. You can see the whole report here.
I think there are two key take-aways from this analysis. Many Americans know we have a problem with educating our most disadvantaged students. They still believe, however, that our top quarter of students is doing pretty well. This comparison shows that to be completely false. The top quarter of American 8th graders is equivalent to the "top" three-quarters of Singaporean students. Six times the proportion of Singaporean students test at the advanced level, compared with American students. Even the folks in Flanders are managing to educate two-and-a-half times the proportion of students to the advanced level as here in the U.S. There is no reason the top quarter of American students can't be educated to the advanced level, defined as being able to generalize and synthesize concepts and principles in the key mathematical areas (such as statistics and probability, algebra and functions, etc.) The fact that only 6% of American 8th graders score at this level shows that American schools are failing to challenge their top students. This is a problem, since knowing how to generalize and synthesize are key skills for competing in the knowledge economy, and given the state of American high schools, it's unlikely that kids who aren't figuring these things out in 8th grade will get much better at them later on.
Second, if we're serious about raising mathematical achievement, we need to look at what these Asian countries are doing. This isn't a new idea; periodically, some school district tries to implement "Singapore Math" or what have you. But in education, as in any social science field, it is difficult to separate out which factor works. Perhaps a certain kind of instruction is key, or perhaps Singaporean students watch a lot less television. We'll examine studies of Singapore math in some coming Gifted Exchange posts to see what people have come up with.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Joy of Distance Learning
When I attended the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities in the mid-1990's, some of my AP classes were broadcast state-wide via some innovative (for the time) software. This set-up allowed kids at other high schools to see the same lectures and ask questions. Their own on-site teachers supervised labs. It wasn't perfect, but it did allow Indiana to spread around scarce resources (high school teachers who could teach advanced science well) to as many students as possible.
Ten years later, this concept still hasn't caught on as well at the high school -- or college -- level as it could have. So there's a certain genre of "gee, isn't this cool?" article that runs about these programs whenever they're launched. For one example, see this recent Baltimore Sun article called "Technology Goes the Distance for Students." These Maryland students now have the option of taking advanced math classes without going to community colleges, which is logistically easier for all involved.
Any lecture-style class can lend itself to this format. Since most 101-level classes at college fit this mold, too, it begs the question: Why not adopt distance learning for higher education more broadly? If you think about it, there's no real reason for multiple versions of Econ 101. One awesome lecturer, nationwide, could be recorded giving the basic lessons, perhaps with computer simulations that class members could do on their own PCs, all at the same time. Grad students or other faculty could lead short break-out sessions once a week to answer questions and go over homework. Of course, this would make it seem a little more odd that some universities charge much more than others. But it would probably raise the quality of most basic college level courses and create lots of efficiencies.
The distance learning model is much harder to make work for discussion-oriented classes (which would include good literature classes). Still, a few programs such as Stanford's EPGY, and Northwestern's Gifted LearningLinks, are starting to fill the void.
This is a long time in coming. The biggest problem for gifted learners is that they are so rare. In order to have enough highly gifted kids to form a class, you need a broad geographic reach for a school. This doesn't work well if kids need to go to one place to meet with certain teachers, unless you live in a big city. There are enough highly gifted children within New York City's 8 million residents to justify a high school like Stuyvesant. There probably aren't so many highly gifted kids in a rural area. With distance learning, these obstacles start to disappear.
Ten years later, this concept still hasn't caught on as well at the high school -- or college -- level as it could have. So there's a certain genre of "gee, isn't this cool?" article that runs about these programs whenever they're launched. For one example, see this recent Baltimore Sun article called "Technology Goes the Distance for Students." These Maryland students now have the option of taking advanced math classes without going to community colleges, which is logistically easier for all involved.
Any lecture-style class can lend itself to this format. Since most 101-level classes at college fit this mold, too, it begs the question: Why not adopt distance learning for higher education more broadly? If you think about it, there's no real reason for multiple versions of Econ 101. One awesome lecturer, nationwide, could be recorded giving the basic lessons, perhaps with computer simulations that class members could do on their own PCs, all at the same time. Grad students or other faculty could lead short break-out sessions once a week to answer questions and go over homework. Of course, this would make it seem a little more odd that some universities charge much more than others. But it would probably raise the quality of most basic college level courses and create lots of efficiencies.
The distance learning model is much harder to make work for discussion-oriented classes (which would include good literature classes). Still, a few programs such as Stanford's EPGY, and Northwestern's Gifted LearningLinks, are starting to fill the void.
This is a long time in coming. The biggest problem for gifted learners is that they are so rare. In order to have enough highly gifted kids to form a class, you need a broad geographic reach for a school. This doesn't work well if kids need to go to one place to meet with certain teachers, unless you live in a big city. There are enough highly gifted children within New York City's 8 million residents to justify a high school like Stuyvesant. There probably aren't so many highly gifted kids in a rural area. With distance learning, these obstacles start to disappear.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Rush, Little Baby
The Boston Globe ran a fascinating (and, warning, rather long) piece on the infant education industry a little over a week ago. You can read the piece, "Rush, Little Baby," here.
Author Neil Swidey reaches the standard conclusion of these pieces. For most children, early formal instruction (before the usual start of first grade or at most kindergarten) does little good. Early readers are not really reading, they are memorizing and, in fact, children who are pushed to read too young are less avid readers later on. All the commercial products out there to maximize infant brain development may in fact retard such development. After all, just look at the recent study pointing out that Baby Einstein video devotees had less well-developed vocabularies than children who didn't watch such videos.
Swidey puts a lot of the research in one place, and is good at pointing out the absurdity of some claims -- and some parents. My 6-month-old son has never seen a flashcard in his life (he has seen Sesame Street, but that's because we found out it shut him up the other morning when my husband and I were both trying to get things done. We were surprised that Sesame Street had kids learning about the number 18, though. Maybe this is a testament to the infant education movement's reach. We didn't think Sesame Street went past the number 12!)
But what is true for the average child -- that kids parroting back Dick and Jane books are not really reading -- is not at all true for the highly gifted child. Swidey does mention that maybe 3% of children are truly early readers. That is, they comprehend what they are reading on the page, and how each letter or letter combination corresponds to a sound, and how stringing those sounds together makes a word. These children are able to figure out words from context. Readers of this blog -- who have seen their five and six year olds devouring Harry Potter, reading silently -- know that these children are, in fact, reading. Generally, these kids haven't been pushed at all. They learn to read because they want to discover what wonderful things are in books.
The problem is that the research cited in this piece, and the general tone of "oh those crazy parents" is often used to say that early enrichment for gifted kids isn't necessary. After all, kids all even out by third grade or so, as Swidey says. This is why many gifted programs don't start until third grade. By then, the effect of early parental striving has allegedly disappeared, so we can get down to business of figuring out who is "actually" gifted. But believing that toddlers can't actually have advanced intelligence that needs to be nurtured is as absurd as showing a 6-week-old baby a flashcard. Many parents of gifted kids have the experience of being labeled "pushy" at some point or another, and articles like this certainly add to the adversarial nature of the relationship between parents and educators. Maybe some brilliant kids haven't been pushed at all. Maybe they push their parents. Trying to hold them back is silly, and stating that they may possibly become less avid readers later on just adds to parental insecurities.
Author Neil Swidey reaches the standard conclusion of these pieces. For most children, early formal instruction (before the usual start of first grade or at most kindergarten) does little good. Early readers are not really reading, they are memorizing and, in fact, children who are pushed to read too young are less avid readers later on. All the commercial products out there to maximize infant brain development may in fact retard such development. After all, just look at the recent study pointing out that Baby Einstein video devotees had less well-developed vocabularies than children who didn't watch such videos.
Swidey puts a lot of the research in one place, and is good at pointing out the absurdity of some claims -- and some parents. My 6-month-old son has never seen a flashcard in his life (he has seen Sesame Street, but that's because we found out it shut him up the other morning when my husband and I were both trying to get things done. We were surprised that Sesame Street had kids learning about the number 18, though. Maybe this is a testament to the infant education movement's reach. We didn't think Sesame Street went past the number 12!)
But what is true for the average child -- that kids parroting back Dick and Jane books are not really reading -- is not at all true for the highly gifted child. Swidey does mention that maybe 3% of children are truly early readers. That is, they comprehend what they are reading on the page, and how each letter or letter combination corresponds to a sound, and how stringing those sounds together makes a word. These children are able to figure out words from context. Readers of this blog -- who have seen their five and six year olds devouring Harry Potter, reading silently -- know that these children are, in fact, reading. Generally, these kids haven't been pushed at all. They learn to read because they want to discover what wonderful things are in books.
The problem is that the research cited in this piece, and the general tone of "oh those crazy parents" is often used to say that early enrichment for gifted kids isn't necessary. After all, kids all even out by third grade or so, as Swidey says. This is why many gifted programs don't start until third grade. By then, the effect of early parental striving has allegedly disappeared, so we can get down to business of figuring out who is "actually" gifted. But believing that toddlers can't actually have advanced intelligence that needs to be nurtured is as absurd as showing a 6-week-old baby a flashcard. Many parents of gifted kids have the experience of being labeled "pushy" at some point or another, and articles like this certainly add to the adversarial nature of the relationship between parents and educators. Maybe some brilliant kids haven't been pushed at all. Maybe they push their parents. Trying to hold them back is silly, and stating that they may possibly become less avid readers later on just adds to parental insecurities.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Memorization and Intelligence
ABC News had an interesting story on pint-sized prodigies the other day called Are You Smarter than a Toddler? (or alternatively, "How Young is Too Young to Start Studying?" -- it has two different titles which suggest very different things...)
Children who can memorize long lists of quotes, capitals, digits of pi, etc., are staples of the talk show and late night show circuit. They are often called "prodigies," and certainly they are "highly talented children," as my dictionary defines the word. But crack memorization skills and intelligence are different things. Intelligence is "ability to learn and understand or deal with new or trying situations." It's a difference which is occasionally disconcerting. I remember watching one little girl on Oprah who had memorized a large number of quotations. She had memorized all of them in the form of quote, and then the name of the person who said it. She stuck to this format even in situations where it made no sense. Oprah said she heard the girl had memorized one of her quotes on something, and the little girl recited it back, and then said "Oprah Winfrey" as if the woman had not just asked her the question. This is the same skill that helps people win spelling bees.
ABC News interviewed Carol Dweck, the Stanford University psychology professor who studies child development, for some perspective on the phenomenon. "Children come wired to make these associations to learn," Dweck said. These kids' skills are impressive and unusual, but "it's not what you would call a prodigy. A prodigy is someone who has a deep precocious understanding of something — of numbers, words, music. They think in new ways, invent things." Or as ABC News puts it, "A true prodigy is someone like Picasso or Mozart who was composing by age 5, or Tiger Woods who shot a 48 on a nine-hole course by the age of 2."
It's all semantics, but there is a reason I'm always a little worried when I see these kids on television shows. Memorization is not a particularly useful skill, long-term, and if people think that's what gifted children are able to do differently, then it doesn't make a great case for giving gifted children the interventions they need. Most of the kids trotted out on TV shows probably are highly gifted, but their prodigious memorization is not necessarily the best evidence of that. It's simply the most obvious "cool" trick anyone can understand.
ABC News had an interesting story on pint-sized prodigies the other day called Are You Smarter than a Toddler? (or alternatively, "How Young is Too Young to Start Studying?" -- it has two different titles which suggest very different things...)
Children who can memorize long lists of quotes, capitals, digits of pi, etc., are staples of the talk show and late night show circuit. They are often called "prodigies," and certainly they are "highly talented children," as my dictionary defines the word. But crack memorization skills and intelligence are different things. Intelligence is "ability to learn and understand or deal with new or trying situations." It's a difference which is occasionally disconcerting. I remember watching one little girl on Oprah who had memorized a large number of quotations. She had memorized all of them in the form of quote, and then the name of the person who said it. She stuck to this format even in situations where it made no sense. Oprah said she heard the girl had memorized one of her quotes on something, and the little girl recited it back, and then said "Oprah Winfrey" as if the woman had not just asked her the question. This is the same skill that helps people win spelling bees.
ABC News interviewed Carol Dweck, the Stanford University psychology professor who studies child development, for some perspective on the phenomenon. "Children come wired to make these associations to learn," Dweck said. These kids' skills are impressive and unusual, but "it's not what you would call a prodigy. A prodigy is someone who has a deep precocious understanding of something — of numbers, words, music. They think in new ways, invent things." Or as ABC News puts it, "A true prodigy is someone like Picasso or Mozart who was composing by age 5, or Tiger Woods who shot a 48 on a nine-hole course by the age of 2."
It's all semantics, but there is a reason I'm always a little worried when I see these kids on television shows. Memorization is not a particularly useful skill, long-term, and if people think that's what gifted children are able to do differently, then it doesn't make a great case for giving gifted children the interventions they need. Most of the kids trotted out on TV shows probably are highly gifted, but their prodigious memorization is not necessarily the best evidence of that. It's simply the most obvious "cool" trick anyone can understand.
Friday, October 12, 2007
A Free and Appropriate Education
This week, a divided Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision requiring New York City to pay for private school for a child with learning disabilities. The child had never attended public school. In addition, the child is the son of Tom Freston, former chief executive of Viacom, who got a roughly $85 million severance package. In other words, this is a case about principle, not the actual educational options a child will face. But as such, it could be a win for gifted education -- maybe.
You can read an article about the case here. In essence, the ruling means that parents do not need to first put a child in an educational situation they consider inappropriate before they file for tuition reimbursement at a private school. States pay private school tuition for thousands of disabled children across the country. Sometimes these payments are as high as $50,000 for children who require residential treatment. Others attend private schools that are focused on specific disabilities such as autism or blindness. New York's position was that the public schools should at least be able to try to serve these children before the parents enroll them in private schools. By letting the ruling stand, the Supreme Court is saying that's not the case. If parents don't think the public schools can meet their children's needs, the kids do not need to fail first in order to go elsewhere.
Freston does not actually need the money to pay for his son's private school tuition. Indeed he has donated all his tuition reimbursement money to public school tutoring programs. He has fought the case so other parents without $85 million good-bye gifts from Viacom can have the same opportunities. (Though interestingly enough, the New York City schools offered Freston's son a spot in the city's Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education - in many cities, such options don't even exist).
I certainly don't begrudge children with disabilities the opportunity to attend whatever school serves them best at public expense. But when I read about some of the dollar amounts involved, it makes me a little sad that most profoundly gifted kids -- who have special needs whether they have other disabilities or not -- are often stuck in whatever regular school happens to be nearby. Some could be best served by boarding schools elsewhere, or private schools in town, but their families can't afford it. Sometimes parents have sought disability dignoses solely to qualify for special education programs that can help.
In states with gifted education mandates, this case could possibly open the door for some families who have chosen private schools over inadequate public school options to file for tuition reimbursement. It may or may not work. But the door is slightly ajar.
You can read an article about the case here. In essence, the ruling means that parents do not need to first put a child in an educational situation they consider inappropriate before they file for tuition reimbursement at a private school. States pay private school tuition for thousands of disabled children across the country. Sometimes these payments are as high as $50,000 for children who require residential treatment. Others attend private schools that are focused on specific disabilities such as autism or blindness. New York's position was that the public schools should at least be able to try to serve these children before the parents enroll them in private schools. By letting the ruling stand, the Supreme Court is saying that's not the case. If parents don't think the public schools can meet their children's needs, the kids do not need to fail first in order to go elsewhere.
Freston does not actually need the money to pay for his son's private school tuition. Indeed he has donated all his tuition reimbursement money to public school tutoring programs. He has fought the case so other parents without $85 million good-bye gifts from Viacom can have the same opportunities. (Though interestingly enough, the New York City schools offered Freston's son a spot in the city's Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education - in many cities, such options don't even exist).
I certainly don't begrudge children with disabilities the opportunity to attend whatever school serves them best at public expense. But when I read about some of the dollar amounts involved, it makes me a little sad that most profoundly gifted kids -- who have special needs whether they have other disabilities or not -- are often stuck in whatever regular school happens to be nearby. Some could be best served by boarding schools elsewhere, or private schools in town, but their families can't afford it. Sometimes parents have sought disability dignoses solely to qualify for special education programs that can help.
In states with gifted education mandates, this case could possibly open the door for some families who have chosen private schools over inadequate public school options to file for tuition reimbursement. It may or may not work. But the door is slightly ajar.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Bastions of Privilege, and Other Myths
Education writer Peter Sacks is the author of Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education. Like me, he also blogs occasionally for the Huffington Post. Recently, he wrote a piece on how ability grouping has gone "underground" that left me shaking my head. You can read the piece, "Can Public Schools Fix the Achievement Gap? Yes, But They Won't" here.
Basically, it takes a certain sort of person to find evil in just about everything good that's going on in American education. He takes on AP classes, math and science magnet schools that are partially funded by corporations, and even a shocking move by some Berkeley High teachers to "quietly" offer what was called the Academic Choice program within the school (basically, a rigorous college prep curriculum). According to Sacks, all these are bastions of class and privilege. And as long as they exist, and every student is not enrolled in them, nothing will change.
So what is to be done? "With appropriate re-engineering and refocusing, American schools do have the capacity to diminish the achievement gaps that politicians like to talk about," he writes. "Schools need to pay a lot more attention to supplementing the cultural and social capital that disadvantaged students -- for a variety of reasons -- do not get from home because they, unluckily, were born to parents who lack education, information, and resources."
But I am trying to figure out how this would work in a schooling situation in which all separation of children has been deemed illegitimate. Let's say schools select out children from troubled backgrounds who are having academic difficulties for special attention. Perhaps they could be put in intensive math classes that would bring them up to speed. But would the children already performing at grade level need to be in the same intensive catch-up classes? Their presence would take attention away from those who need special help. But if these at-grade-level children are in separate classes from those who need extra help, we're back to some version of tracking, which will be viewed with much suspicion. Indeed, gifted education, when done right, is simply finding kids who need supplementation and giving it to them. Somehow this is OK if the kids have cultural and social capital needs. But not, in Sacks' view, if they have academic ones.
Of course, I would never claim that all is wonderful in the world of tracking and ability grouping. I know that in some schools, very bright poor or minority children are made to feel uncomfortable in college prep or AP classes. And too often, the "regular" tracks get bad teachers who don't challenge the kids. Sometimes honors classes don't challenge kids either, as we discussed in the last post. But the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well.
Still, say we took a high school and chose one of two options. Everyone takes whatever math class the most advanced 10 students are capable of, or everyone studies the level of math the ten students who are struggling most in the subject are able to handle. The first might be interesting. I would love to see an experiment with it. My guess is that some proportion of the next tier of students would rise to the occasion through diligent work. But among the rest, you'd have as much frustration and failure as if you told all students in a school to run a 20 minute 5k.
Unfortunately, when schools do away with ability grouping, they tend to choose some version of the latter option (not aimed at the very bottom, usually, but the lower middle). Good teachers can still figure out a way to make it work some of the time. With bad ones, though, it's a disaster. Every time some education writer or researcher goes on about the joys of heterogeneous grouping, I remember my 7th grade English class, in which the teacher spent day after day having us do pre-writing exercises called "clusters," since some kids simply couldn't handle an essay. Eventually, it got so boring that a number of the boys started jumping out the first floor window and running around the school. But who knows. Maybe this is what Sacks means by "tearing down the gates."
Basically, it takes a certain sort of person to find evil in just about everything good that's going on in American education. He takes on AP classes, math and science magnet schools that are partially funded by corporations, and even a shocking move by some Berkeley High teachers to "quietly" offer what was called the Academic Choice program within the school (basically, a rigorous college prep curriculum). According to Sacks, all these are bastions of class and privilege. And as long as they exist, and every student is not enrolled in them, nothing will change.
So what is to be done? "With appropriate re-engineering and refocusing, American schools do have the capacity to diminish the achievement gaps that politicians like to talk about," he writes. "Schools need to pay a lot more attention to supplementing the cultural and social capital that disadvantaged students -- for a variety of reasons -- do not get from home because they, unluckily, were born to parents who lack education, information, and resources."
But I am trying to figure out how this would work in a schooling situation in which all separation of children has been deemed illegitimate. Let's say schools select out children from troubled backgrounds who are having academic difficulties for special attention. Perhaps they could be put in intensive math classes that would bring them up to speed. But would the children already performing at grade level need to be in the same intensive catch-up classes? Their presence would take attention away from those who need special help. But if these at-grade-level children are in separate classes from those who need extra help, we're back to some version of tracking, which will be viewed with much suspicion. Indeed, gifted education, when done right, is simply finding kids who need supplementation and giving it to them. Somehow this is OK if the kids have cultural and social capital needs. But not, in Sacks' view, if they have academic ones.
Of course, I would never claim that all is wonderful in the world of tracking and ability grouping. I know that in some schools, very bright poor or minority children are made to feel uncomfortable in college prep or AP classes. And too often, the "regular" tracks get bad teachers who don't challenge the kids. Sometimes honors classes don't challenge kids either, as we discussed in the last post. But the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well.
Still, say we took a high school and chose one of two options. Everyone takes whatever math class the most advanced 10 students are capable of, or everyone studies the level of math the ten students who are struggling most in the subject are able to handle. The first might be interesting. I would love to see an experiment with it. My guess is that some proportion of the next tier of students would rise to the occasion through diligent work. But among the rest, you'd have as much frustration and failure as if you told all students in a school to run a 20 minute 5k.
Unfortunately, when schools do away with ability grouping, they tend to choose some version of the latter option (not aimed at the very bottom, usually, but the lower middle). Good teachers can still figure out a way to make it work some of the time. With bad ones, though, it's a disaster. Every time some education writer or researcher goes on about the joys of heterogeneous grouping, I remember my 7th grade English class, in which the teacher spent day after day having us do pre-writing exercises called "clusters," since some kids simply couldn't handle an essay. Eventually, it got so boring that a number of the boys started jumping out the first floor window and running around the school. But who knows. Maybe this is what Sacks means by "tearing down the gates."
Monday, October 08, 2007
Course Inflation
Course Inflation
Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education reporter, had an interesting column a few weeks ago about virtual AP classes. These can be a great way for gifted students in small districts to take challenging courses. There's also an added bonus in that, online, no one really knows how old you are. So a 14-year-old might feel more comfortable taking AP Bio online than she would in a class full of older children.
The most interesting part of Matthews' column, though, in my opinion, was the allusion to course title inflation. The young man he profiles was enrolled in honors 8th grade classes. But these classes didn't challenge him at all. AP Biology, on the other hand, has an actual, objective standard in the form of the final test. A 4 or 5 shows you learned basic college biology material. A 1 or 2 shows you did not. There's no smiling at the teacher for a better grade, or getting effort for trying. That makes these tests unpopular among some who like wiggle room, but many kids like a challenge. They rise to the occasion. Inflated course titles don't make the same demands on kids.
That's one of the reasons to view the new research on ability grouping that I cited in my last post as suspect. Many honors classes are anything but difficult for bright children. I have no doubt that they don't show progress in those programs. That doesn't mean ability grouping per se is good or bad. But there's a world of difference between, say, an AP Calculus class offered to a small group of freshmen and sophomores who are ready for it, and a general honors-track math class that just requires 75%+ on grade level standardized tests. If the latter isn't taught to be challenging, the difference will be even more profound.
Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education reporter, had an interesting column a few weeks ago about virtual AP classes. These can be a great way for gifted students in small districts to take challenging courses. There's also an added bonus in that, online, no one really knows how old you are. So a 14-year-old might feel more comfortable taking AP Bio online than she would in a class full of older children.
The most interesting part of Matthews' column, though, in my opinion, was the allusion to course title inflation. The young man he profiles was enrolled in honors 8th grade classes. But these classes didn't challenge him at all. AP Biology, on the other hand, has an actual, objective standard in the form of the final test. A 4 or 5 shows you learned basic college biology material. A 1 or 2 shows you did not. There's no smiling at the teacher for a better grade, or getting effort for trying. That makes these tests unpopular among some who like wiggle room, but many kids like a challenge. They rise to the occasion. Inflated course titles don't make the same demands on kids.
That's one of the reasons to view the new research on ability grouping that I cited in my last post as suspect. Many honors classes are anything but difficult for bright children. I have no doubt that they don't show progress in those programs. That doesn't mean ability grouping per se is good or bad. But there's a world of difference between, say, an AP Calculus class offered to a small group of freshmen and sophomores who are ready for it, and a general honors-track math class that just requires 75%+ on grade level standardized tests. If the latter isn't taught to be challenging, the difference will be even more profound.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Does Ability Grouping Harm Students?
Does Ability Grouping Harm Students?
Over the past few weeks, several publications have written about a new University of Sussex study purporting to show that ability grouping in math harms students.
This is news to those of us who follow education research. One of the biggest analyses of ability grouping to date (from James Kulik of the University of Michigan, surveying 23 major studies on grouping) found that when high-ability students receive accelerated classes, they advance as much as a whole year more than students of similar age and intelligence left in regular classrooms. Kulik's analysis found that specific subject grouping also helps slower students; low-achieving fourth graders put in a very focused group gained as much as two-thirds of an academic year over control subjects.
But the University of Sussex research, done by Prof. Jo Boaler and associated grad students, claims otherwise. The team followed 700 students over five years at three high schools. The press release states boldly that grouping kids by ability harms education. You can read an article about the research here. You can also read the report directly here.
Or you can read my take on it, rather than wading through the whole thing. I am always amazed, reading educational research, at how much the concept of "equity" excites some professors. Boaler studies math, and undertook her study to show that math classes could be used to advance the cause of democracy and caring for the least among us no differently than, say, civics class. She compared group-oriented, mixed-ability classes at a school poetically referred to as "Railside" (since it was near the railroad tracks) with two more suburban schools. The suburban schools used ability grouping. Though the students at Railside entered the school behind the suburban students, at the end of their four years, 41% of seniors were in advanced calculus or pre-calculus, v. 27% at the other schools.
That seems like a pretty clear win. But reading deeper, it becomes clear that the suburban schools were employing what I call the "boring" method of teaching mathematics. Teachers would lecture for 21% of the class; students would then work alone on problems in their textbooks for about half the class. Since this is the same thing they'd do for homework, I would not be surprised if kids spent whole periods watching the clock. When problems were discussed, teachers only spent about 2 minutes on each of them. There was very little opportunity for open-ended problem-solving.
At "Railside," on the other hand, when the teachers did discuss problems, they'd spend 5.7 minutes on a problem, and Boaler describes the process as far more interactive. The kids did a lot of group work -- approx. 70% of the class. There is nothing wrong with learning in groups. Math problem solving can often benefit from a shared approach. Of course, Boaler, being so into "equity," finds this very satisfying for a different reason. Students receive group grades! And best of all, they feel "responsible" for unmotivated students in their groups, rather than feeling that they are a "burden." The political implications are clear.
But I digress. What struck me, reading this study, is how well-trained the teachers at Railside must have been to make this set-up work. Since Boaler talks about "teachers" I am assuming that multiple ones employed this same group-work strategy. That means Railside had fairly strong quality controls in its math department. Teachers settled on a strategy and were committed to its implementation. They asked open-ended questions, and explained topics in depth. They roamed between groups during the problem solving sessions, meaning they were energetic enough to stay on-task for the entire class period. The beauty of the "traditional" approach (as Boaler refers to it) is that it allows the math teacher to read a copy of US Weekly for the 48% of the time the students are doing problems alone in their workbooks.
It begs the question. Given that Kulik's meta-analysis of major educational studies found that, in general, ability grouping helps both slower and faster learners learn more, isn't it possible that the better results achieved at Railside are the result of energetic, committed teachers, rather than the lack of ability grouping? Great teachers are highly correlated with great results.
Unfortunately, they're also rare. As I've written about ability grouping before on this blog, the benefit to that approach is that it fails better. Given a choice of a mixed ability class with a great teacher, and an ability grouped class with a lousy one, I'd take the former. But that is usually not the choice. This study compares intense, analytical, teacher-directed group learning with the "boring" method of teaching math. The former also happens to be heterogeneous in this case; the latter homogeneous. But when there are two big differences between things you're comparing, it's hard to know which one causes the results.
Two other quick critiques. First, while I think the teaching is more responsible for the gains seen at Railside than the ability grouping, the general type of ability grouping employed in American schools isn't finely tuned enough to challenge bright kids anyway. Creating three reading groups in a standard neighborhood school is slightly helpful. But it's far more helpful to create a gifted magnet program that draws students from, say, five counties. Then you can actually create classes for the top .1%. It wouldn't surprise me to find that most students in the 85-115 IQ range can do OK in a math class together. But if you try to throw, say, a Nate Bottman (2007 Davidson Fellow, topic: Analytically Determining the Spectra of Solutions of the NLS) in to a group-learning, mixed ability class, you will quickly find a problem with the approach. At Railside, "If they found that one student was standing out, by, for example, being faster in their mathematical thinking, they would find aspects of the work that the student was less good at and for which they needed more practice," Boaler writes. But a child who's learned calculus on her own at night is not going to need to practice more on any aspect of algebra.
And second, I assume the University of Sussex, and Stanford, where Boaler has also taught, aren't letting just anyone in these days. Their graduate programs and professorial hires are very much grouped by ability. This research was a group project between Boaler and her grad students. But this was hardly a true "mixed ability group." If Boaler really thinks ability grouping is harmful and inequitable, she should have pulled three people off the streets and asked them to work with her instead. I'm sure the results would have been just as good, and Boaler wouldn't have had to carry any extra weight in the computations at all...
Over the past few weeks, several publications have written about a new University of Sussex study purporting to show that ability grouping in math harms students.
This is news to those of us who follow education research. One of the biggest analyses of ability grouping to date (from James Kulik of the University of Michigan, surveying 23 major studies on grouping) found that when high-ability students receive accelerated classes, they advance as much as a whole year more than students of similar age and intelligence left in regular classrooms. Kulik's analysis found that specific subject grouping also helps slower students; low-achieving fourth graders put in a very focused group gained as much as two-thirds of an academic year over control subjects.
But the University of Sussex research, done by Prof. Jo Boaler and associated grad students, claims otherwise. The team followed 700 students over five years at three high schools. The press release states boldly that grouping kids by ability harms education. You can read an article about the research here. You can also read the report directly here.
Or you can read my take on it, rather than wading through the whole thing. I am always amazed, reading educational research, at how much the concept of "equity" excites some professors. Boaler studies math, and undertook her study to show that math classes could be used to advance the cause of democracy and caring for the least among us no differently than, say, civics class. She compared group-oriented, mixed-ability classes at a school poetically referred to as "Railside" (since it was near the railroad tracks) with two more suburban schools. The suburban schools used ability grouping. Though the students at Railside entered the school behind the suburban students, at the end of their four years, 41% of seniors were in advanced calculus or pre-calculus, v. 27% at the other schools.
That seems like a pretty clear win. But reading deeper, it becomes clear that the suburban schools were employing what I call the "boring" method of teaching mathematics. Teachers would lecture for 21% of the class; students would then work alone on problems in their textbooks for about half the class. Since this is the same thing they'd do for homework, I would not be surprised if kids spent whole periods watching the clock. When problems were discussed, teachers only spent about 2 minutes on each of them. There was very little opportunity for open-ended problem-solving.
At "Railside," on the other hand, when the teachers did discuss problems, they'd spend 5.7 minutes on a problem, and Boaler describes the process as far more interactive. The kids did a lot of group work -- approx. 70% of the class. There is nothing wrong with learning in groups. Math problem solving can often benefit from a shared approach. Of course, Boaler, being so into "equity," finds this very satisfying for a different reason. Students receive group grades! And best of all, they feel "responsible" for unmotivated students in their groups, rather than feeling that they are a "burden." The political implications are clear.
But I digress. What struck me, reading this study, is how well-trained the teachers at Railside must have been to make this set-up work. Since Boaler talks about "teachers" I am assuming that multiple ones employed this same group-work strategy. That means Railside had fairly strong quality controls in its math department. Teachers settled on a strategy and were committed to its implementation. They asked open-ended questions, and explained topics in depth. They roamed between groups during the problem solving sessions, meaning they were energetic enough to stay on-task for the entire class period. The beauty of the "traditional" approach (as Boaler refers to it) is that it allows the math teacher to read a copy of US Weekly for the 48% of the time the students are doing problems alone in their workbooks.
It begs the question. Given that Kulik's meta-analysis of major educational studies found that, in general, ability grouping helps both slower and faster learners learn more, isn't it possible that the better results achieved at Railside are the result of energetic, committed teachers, rather than the lack of ability grouping? Great teachers are highly correlated with great results.
Unfortunately, they're also rare. As I've written about ability grouping before on this blog, the benefit to that approach is that it fails better. Given a choice of a mixed ability class with a great teacher, and an ability grouped class with a lousy one, I'd take the former. But that is usually not the choice. This study compares intense, analytical, teacher-directed group learning with the "boring" method of teaching math. The former also happens to be heterogeneous in this case; the latter homogeneous. But when there are two big differences between things you're comparing, it's hard to know which one causes the results.
Two other quick critiques. First, while I think the teaching is more responsible for the gains seen at Railside than the ability grouping, the general type of ability grouping employed in American schools isn't finely tuned enough to challenge bright kids anyway. Creating three reading groups in a standard neighborhood school is slightly helpful. But it's far more helpful to create a gifted magnet program that draws students from, say, five counties. Then you can actually create classes for the top .1%. It wouldn't surprise me to find that most students in the 85-115 IQ range can do OK in a math class together. But if you try to throw, say, a Nate Bottman (2007 Davidson Fellow, topic: Analytically Determining the Spectra of Solutions of the NLS) in to a group-learning, mixed ability class, you will quickly find a problem with the approach. At Railside, "If they found that one student was standing out, by, for example, being faster in their mathematical thinking, they would find aspects of the work that the student was less good at and for which they needed more practice," Boaler writes. But a child who's learned calculus on her own at night is not going to need to practice more on any aspect of algebra.
And second, I assume the University of Sussex, and Stanford, where Boaler has also taught, aren't letting just anyone in these days. Their graduate programs and professorial hires are very much grouped by ability. This research was a group project between Boaler and her grad students. But this was hardly a true "mixed ability group." If Boaler really thinks ability grouping is harmful and inequitable, she should have pulled three people off the streets and asked them to work with her instead. I'm sure the results would have been just as good, and Boaler wouldn't have had to carry any extra weight in the computations at all...
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