When I was a kid, I remember that "summer school" was for kids who were in danger of being held back. But, of course, there's more to it than that. Some districts offer summer enrichment programs (in, for instance, Mandarin). When I lived in South Bend, a highlight of each year was participating in the "Firefly" musical production run by the school corporation, which pulled the best singers and dancers from the entire district. This was, technically, a summer school course.
Unlike the federal government, many states require themselves to balance their budgets. That means that as the economy turns south, tax revenues dry up, and something has to go. Alas, this tends not to be the person assigned to make sure all highway signs reflect the new gubernatorial administration as soon as it changes over, or the person assigned to print out all emails for the Luddite assistant undersecretary for agriculture public relations. Legislatures instead tend to cut the enrichment programs. The New York Times has an article about this here. If any readers have seen enrichment programs hit the chopping block in their district, please let me know.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
On Working Hard
A few weeks ago, one reader asked me to post more stories about the Indiana Academy, to try to demystify the concept a little bit. Since news is a little slow on the gifted education front during the summer, I'll post something about it now.
The Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities is a residential school for gifted high school juniors and seniors. It is located on the campus of Ball State University and enrolls approximately 300 students. It's one of about a dozen similar public schools around the country (though it's one of only a very few that also emphasize the humanities. Most specialize in math and science, because these are seen as "hard" subjects that you can be gifted in. I am continually amazed how few people think the humanities are actually difficult -- done right they are!)
Anyway, my husband and I were talking recently about whether we would ever consider such an option for our son, Jasper. My husband actually lived at home for part of college, so the idea of having a child leave even earlier, at 15 or 16, seems foreign. Plus, he reminded me, my "normal" high school in South Bend produced a number of successful people in the grade above me, and mine. He's met one woman who got her chemistry PhD at Stanford, one who is getting a PhD at Harvard, has heard of a guy in my class who is now a doctor, etc. All of which is true.
But the occasional bright student does not change the culture of a school. The most fundamental difference for me between South Bend Clay High School, and the Indiana Academy, is that the Indiana Academy had way higher expectations. It taught me to work hard for something -- to throw myself into it -- when success was not guaranteed. This intellectual risk-taking is almost completely absent from the American educational experience for bright children today, and that is a shame.
I've been thinking about that lately, because I am deeply involved right now in an almost fantastically hard task. I have recently taken on a book project (another collaboration) that must be written in its entirety in about 5 weeks. So I'm cranking out about 2,000 publishable words per day, in addition to my other writing projects.
But here's the thing -- it has never occurred to me that it might be "too much." And, indeed, the darn thing is pretty much done a week early. I have a lot of confidence in my ability to throw myself into something and make it happen for a simple reason: that's what I did at the Indiana Academy.
My first semester junior year, I floundered around a bit. I didn't know how to work -- how to set goals and execute against them. But I figured it out. My senior year, I felt that to get into a good college as a not terribly well "hooked" kid from Indiana, I really needed to stand out. So I decided to get straight A's while taking our AP chemistry and AP biology classes simultaneously, plus multi-variable calculus and various humanities class, writing long features for our school newspaper, applying to 7 colleges that all had their own application forms, etc. I really didn't sleep much. I was in the lab a lot, and drawing on every bit of math ability I had to figure out my chemistry equations and the like. But it all wound up working out. I got 5s on all my AP tests, got my A's, got into every college I applied to, won several writing contests. And as these things started happening, my view of myself started to change, too. I had the ability to figure out a situation and make things happen. This does remarkable things for your confidence.
At Clay I never had to work. Really. It's not just that I was the top student in my class, because I often was at the Indiana Academy, too. It's just that what was required to be the top student was more. In theory, all of us could have failed a test (and, indeed, on some of our AP chemistry tests, the top score in the class would be in the 70's; the class median was a B, and to get an A you had to be more than a standard deviation above the mean). That would never have happened at Clay. The tests and mastery level required was set so that someone was inevitably getting a 100. If that someone was inevitably you, then you didn't have to work hard. Simple as that.
We do no favors to bright kids by making things easy for them. The Indiana Academy didn't make things easy -- and that was its biggest gift to me. I'll write more on this subject later, because there are many things that happened at the Indiana Academy to make a good academic environment, but that was the big one.
The Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities is a residential school for gifted high school juniors and seniors. It is located on the campus of Ball State University and enrolls approximately 300 students. It's one of about a dozen similar public schools around the country (though it's one of only a very few that also emphasize the humanities. Most specialize in math and science, because these are seen as "hard" subjects that you can be gifted in. I am continually amazed how few people think the humanities are actually difficult -- done right they are!)
Anyway, my husband and I were talking recently about whether we would ever consider such an option for our son, Jasper. My husband actually lived at home for part of college, so the idea of having a child leave even earlier, at 15 or 16, seems foreign. Plus, he reminded me, my "normal" high school in South Bend produced a number of successful people in the grade above me, and mine. He's met one woman who got her chemistry PhD at Stanford, one who is getting a PhD at Harvard, has heard of a guy in my class who is now a doctor, etc. All of which is true.
But the occasional bright student does not change the culture of a school. The most fundamental difference for me between South Bend Clay High School, and the Indiana Academy, is that the Indiana Academy had way higher expectations. It taught me to work hard for something -- to throw myself into it -- when success was not guaranteed. This intellectual risk-taking is almost completely absent from the American educational experience for bright children today, and that is a shame.
I've been thinking about that lately, because I am deeply involved right now in an almost fantastically hard task. I have recently taken on a book project (another collaboration) that must be written in its entirety in about 5 weeks. So I'm cranking out about 2,000 publishable words per day, in addition to my other writing projects.
But here's the thing -- it has never occurred to me that it might be "too much." And, indeed, the darn thing is pretty much done a week early. I have a lot of confidence in my ability to throw myself into something and make it happen for a simple reason: that's what I did at the Indiana Academy.
My first semester junior year, I floundered around a bit. I didn't know how to work -- how to set goals and execute against them. But I figured it out. My senior year, I felt that to get into a good college as a not terribly well "hooked" kid from Indiana, I really needed to stand out. So I decided to get straight A's while taking our AP chemistry and AP biology classes simultaneously, plus multi-variable calculus and various humanities class, writing long features for our school newspaper, applying to 7 colleges that all had their own application forms, etc. I really didn't sleep much. I was in the lab a lot, and drawing on every bit of math ability I had to figure out my chemistry equations and the like. But it all wound up working out. I got 5s on all my AP tests, got my A's, got into every college I applied to, won several writing contests. And as these things started happening, my view of myself started to change, too. I had the ability to figure out a situation and make things happen. This does remarkable things for your confidence.
At Clay I never had to work. Really. It's not just that I was the top student in my class, because I often was at the Indiana Academy, too. It's just that what was required to be the top student was more. In theory, all of us could have failed a test (and, indeed, on some of our AP chemistry tests, the top score in the class would be in the 70's; the class median was a B, and to get an A you had to be more than a standard deviation above the mean). That would never have happened at Clay. The tests and mastery level required was set so that someone was inevitably getting a 100. If that someone was inevitably you, then you didn't have to work hard. Simple as that.
We do no favors to bright kids by making things easy for them. The Indiana Academy didn't make things easy -- and that was its biggest gift to me. I'll write more on this subject later, because there are many things that happened at the Indiana Academy to make a good academic environment, but that was the big one.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Call for Entries for Davidson Fellowship Program
Hello everyone-- I've been away on vacation, and in the middle of another massive project, but thought I'd pass along this announcement. I helped Jan and Bob Davidson write Genius Denied several years ago. The Davidson Institute for Talent Development, which they started, awards multiple $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 scholarships each year for young people who do extraordinary projects. See below for their recent call for submissions for the 2009 program. I would love to see an "Outside the Box" winner this year, so hopefully someone will read this and come up with a wonderful project that no one knows how to categorize!
Davidson Institute Seeks Extraordinary Achievers to Receive $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 Davidson Fellow Scholarships
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development is offering high achieving young people across the country the opportunity to be named as 2009 Davidson Fellows, an honor accompanied by a $50,000, $25,000 or $10,000 scholarship in recognition of a significant piece of work in Science, Technology, Mathematics, Music, Literature, Philosophy or Outside the Box.
To be eligible, applicants must be under the age of 18 as of Oct. 1, 2009, and a U.S. citizen or permanent U.S. resident residing in the United States. There is no minimum age for eligibility. The deadline to apply is March 4, 2009. Applicants must submit an original piece of work recognized by experts in the field as significant and it must have the potential to make a positive contribution to society. The scholarship must be used at an accredited institute of learning. For more information on the Davidson Fellows scholarship, or to download an application, please visit www.DavidsonFellows.org
Davidson Institute Seeks Extraordinary Achievers to Receive $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 Davidson Fellow Scholarships
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development is offering high achieving young people across the country the opportunity to be named as 2009 Davidson Fellows, an honor accompanied by a $50,000, $25,000 or $10,000 scholarship in recognition of a significant piece of work in Science, Technology, Mathematics, Music, Literature, Philosophy or Outside the Box.
To be eligible, applicants must be under the age of 18 as of Oct. 1, 2009, and a U.S. citizen or permanent U.S. resident residing in the United States. There is no minimum age for eligibility. The deadline to apply is March 4, 2009. Applicants must submit an original piece of work recognized by experts in the field as significant and it must have the potential to make a positive contribution to society. The scholarship must be used at an accredited institute of learning. For more information on the Davidson Fellows scholarship, or to download an application, please visit www.DavidsonFellows.org
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
"Time to Learn" -- an extended school calendar?
The other day, as I was dropping Jasper off at day care, a mom brought her 5-year-old in to greet Jasper's teacher. Apparently, this little boy had started at the day care when he was a baby, and was now back for the older kids' summer program. Kindergarten operates on a 9 month schedule but, of course, most people's jobs do not. So the family had to make arrangements.
Across the country, most students are now out of school for the summer. It's a fascinating anachronism, and one I've been thinking about a lot lately as I've been reading Christopher Gabrieli and Warren Goldstein's new book Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Very few American children need to be on the farm for the summer season, which was the original reason for a long summer break. Some 70-plus percent of American women participate in the workforce in some capacity -- not too far off the participation rate for men. That means that in the majority of American families, the only way someone can take the summer off to be with the kids is if mom or dad is a teacher.
Those high labor force participation rates also lead to a school year problem. As Gabrieli and Goldstein point out, most school calendars not only end after 180 days, a "day" is considered 6 hours. "As working parents we have raged against the inefficiency and foolishness of dismissing school at 2:30 in the afternoon," they write. If both parents work full time (or in single parent families) you either have to hire a sitter for the afternoon or rely on "self care." This is when kids get into trouble. As they note, "half of all high school students are sexually active, but we pay less attention to the fact that many teen pregnancies get started between 3 and 6pm." Parents who do want to be home to meet the school bus wind up limiting themselves in their career options.
That might all be fine if a 6-hour school day were best for the kids. But Gabrieli and Goldstein argue that it is not. A longer day has many benefits. "In science, longer classes allow students to carry out experiments from beginning to end in a single session," they write. In NCLB-driven schools that focus on the basics, extra time can create room for music, drama, art, PE. A study hall period can let kids do their homework at school and spend their evenings with their families. A pilot group of schools in Massachusetts that tried extended school days wound up seeing their test scores rise faster than the state average. So the authors encourage all school districts to give the idea a look.
I think it is worth looking at too, though I have some reservations. First, a lot of the school day is already wasted getting kids to be on task, dealing with discipline issues, moving between classes, etc. A year or two ago on this blog, we joked about starting school in January for gifted kids, because they could cover in a half year what it takes the typical class a year to cover. If a 6-hour school day is inefficient, I doubt an 8-hour day will be more efficient. Furthermore, if a school isn't meeting a child's needs in 6 hours, the school won't do it in 8 either. That's a philosophical choice, not a matter of time.
But, as someone who writes about working moms a lot, I do agree that it's ridiculous to send children home to watch television for 3 hours before the standard work day is done. I'm curious what Gifted Exchange readers think about the topic. Should school get out at 5pm?
Across the country, most students are now out of school for the summer. It's a fascinating anachronism, and one I've been thinking about a lot lately as I've been reading Christopher Gabrieli and Warren Goldstein's new book Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Very few American children need to be on the farm for the summer season, which was the original reason for a long summer break. Some 70-plus percent of American women participate in the workforce in some capacity -- not too far off the participation rate for men. That means that in the majority of American families, the only way someone can take the summer off to be with the kids is if mom or dad is a teacher.
Those high labor force participation rates also lead to a school year problem. As Gabrieli and Goldstein point out, most school calendars not only end after 180 days, a "day" is considered 6 hours. "As working parents we have raged against the inefficiency and foolishness of dismissing school at 2:30 in the afternoon," they write. If both parents work full time (or in single parent families) you either have to hire a sitter for the afternoon or rely on "self care." This is when kids get into trouble. As they note, "half of all high school students are sexually active, but we pay less attention to the fact that many teen pregnancies get started between 3 and 6pm." Parents who do want to be home to meet the school bus wind up limiting themselves in their career options.
That might all be fine if a 6-hour school day were best for the kids. But Gabrieli and Goldstein argue that it is not. A longer day has many benefits. "In science, longer classes allow students to carry out experiments from beginning to end in a single session," they write. In NCLB-driven schools that focus on the basics, extra time can create room for music, drama, art, PE. A study hall period can let kids do their homework at school and spend their evenings with their families. A pilot group of schools in Massachusetts that tried extended school days wound up seeing their test scores rise faster than the state average. So the authors encourage all school districts to give the idea a look.
I think it is worth looking at too, though I have some reservations. First, a lot of the school day is already wasted getting kids to be on task, dealing with discipline issues, moving between classes, etc. A year or two ago on this blog, we joked about starting school in January for gifted kids, because they could cover in a half year what it takes the typical class a year to cover. If a 6-hour school day is inefficient, I doubt an 8-hour day will be more efficient. Furthermore, if a school isn't meeting a child's needs in 6 hours, the school won't do it in 8 either. That's a philosophical choice, not a matter of time.
But, as someone who writes about working moms a lot, I do agree that it's ridiculous to send children home to watch television for 3 hours before the standard work day is done. I'm curious what Gifted Exchange readers think about the topic. Should school get out at 5pm?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Did NCLB hurt gifted students, part 2
For those of you who have waded through the whole Fordham report (see previous post) I'd like to start a discussion on the teacher survey. This is the second part of the Fordham report, and is based on questions asked of 900 elementary, middle and high school teachers.
Surveys are always somewhat problematic for a few reasons. First, people who respond may be different than those who don't respond. For instance, they may be more thoughtful about the questions being asked, have more of an interest in them, or just not be as busy. Second, people often answer questions in ways that show they agree with positive sounding statements (and then answer just as affirmatively to opposing statements that are also framed in a positive manner).
That said, the results of this teacher survey are fascinating. Among them:
1. Teachers are skeptical of the gifted label. A full 50% either strongly or somewhat agreed that "too often students are labeled as advanced only because their parents are overzealous and know how to work the system." Over 60% of high school teachers agreed with this statement.
2. Schools are not that concerned with the needs of high achievers. 78% of teachers agreed that getting underachieving students to proficiency is so important that the needs of advanced students have taken a back seat. About a third said that academically advanced students were a low priority, and 40% of high school teachers said that honors and accelerated classes were often watered down.
3. Teachers are quite concerned with the needs of academically advanced students, even if they don't believe their schools are. 73% agreed that "too often the brightest students are bored and under-challenged in school -- we're not giving them a sufficient chance to thrive." The focus group statements on this were particularly interesting. See page 52-- teachers talk about "cheating" their students and levels of frustration "when they have to sit by while we're babysitting." Noted one teacher. "It does seem that the resources, when we do get them for the higher achievers, are always geared toward things like day trips to places...The problem is that when we do get funds for the gifted students, it's always 'Take them to the science museum.'"
4. Teachers think students do better with homogeneous grouping and recognize that in-class differentiation is tough. By a margin of 72-14, teachers believed advanced students were more likely to reach their academic potential in homogeneous classes, rather than mixed ability classes. While this fell to 46-36 for struggling students, this still tilts in favor of ability grouping for slower students as well. A full 76% of teachers said they favored the idea of homogeneous grouping for meeting students' needs. Key problems in mixed classes: 77% agreed that when they assign group projects, advanced students do most of the work. (I should note that 57% disagreed that teachers had advanced students tutor others when they ran out of things to do...)
5. Teachers recognize that they have not had much professional development on the topic of high achievers. Only 30% said they had some training, and only 5% said a lot. This is a problem because most teachers said that there wasn't a lot of special gifted programming in their schools, meaning that any teacher may be required to teach a high ability student.
6. Yet for all this, teachers are pretty negative on grade skipping, something that would remove the need for as much in-class differentiation and specialized training. While 85% liked the idea of subject matter acceleration, 63% opposed grade skipping. This is reflected in school policies. 46% said that their schools do not allow grade skipping, and 27% say they are not sure, which means that it must be extremely rare in these teachers' schools.
I find it intriguing that the majority of teachers would favor subject matter acceleration and the majority would oppose whole grade acceleration. I wonder if there is the fear of kids being picked on in gym class (though few schools have gym class anymore)? Or a way of recognizing the reality that kids need more challenge while clinging to the "community" ideal of school? (That frankly has no basis in reality -- my friends weren't all born within 6 months of my birthday).
Regardless of the oddity, this may suggest a strategy for parents looking to advocate for gifted kids: if you want a high probability of success, pick 3 subjects you want your kid advanced in, and go for broke on those. If you play your cards right, you might say that this is introducing your kid to more peers, and hence is increasing their socialization... Grade skipping will be a harder sell.
Surveys are always somewhat problematic for a few reasons. First, people who respond may be different than those who don't respond. For instance, they may be more thoughtful about the questions being asked, have more of an interest in them, or just not be as busy. Second, people often answer questions in ways that show they agree with positive sounding statements (and then answer just as affirmatively to opposing statements that are also framed in a positive manner).
That said, the results of this teacher survey are fascinating. Among them:
1. Teachers are skeptical of the gifted label. A full 50% either strongly or somewhat agreed that "too often students are labeled as advanced only because their parents are overzealous and know how to work the system." Over 60% of high school teachers agreed with this statement.
2. Schools are not that concerned with the needs of high achievers. 78% of teachers agreed that getting underachieving students to proficiency is so important that the needs of advanced students have taken a back seat. About a third said that academically advanced students were a low priority, and 40% of high school teachers said that honors and accelerated classes were often watered down.
3. Teachers are quite concerned with the needs of academically advanced students, even if they don't believe their schools are. 73% agreed that "too often the brightest students are bored and under-challenged in school -- we're not giving them a sufficient chance to thrive." The focus group statements on this were particularly interesting. See page 52-- teachers talk about "cheating" their students and levels of frustration "when they have to sit by while we're babysitting." Noted one teacher. "It does seem that the resources, when we do get them for the higher achievers, are always geared toward things like day trips to places...The problem is that when we do get funds for the gifted students, it's always 'Take them to the science museum.'"
4. Teachers think students do better with homogeneous grouping and recognize that in-class differentiation is tough. By a margin of 72-14, teachers believed advanced students were more likely to reach their academic potential in homogeneous classes, rather than mixed ability classes. While this fell to 46-36 for struggling students, this still tilts in favor of ability grouping for slower students as well. A full 76% of teachers said they favored the idea of homogeneous grouping for meeting students' needs. Key problems in mixed classes: 77% agreed that when they assign group projects, advanced students do most of the work. (I should note that 57% disagreed that teachers had advanced students tutor others when they ran out of things to do...)
5. Teachers recognize that they have not had much professional development on the topic of high achievers. Only 30% said they had some training, and only 5% said a lot. This is a problem because most teachers said that there wasn't a lot of special gifted programming in their schools, meaning that any teacher may be required to teach a high ability student.
6. Yet for all this, teachers are pretty negative on grade skipping, something that would remove the need for as much in-class differentiation and specialized training. While 85% liked the idea of subject matter acceleration, 63% opposed grade skipping. This is reflected in school policies. 46% said that their schools do not allow grade skipping, and 27% say they are not sure, which means that it must be extremely rare in these teachers' schools.
I find it intriguing that the majority of teachers would favor subject matter acceleration and the majority would oppose whole grade acceleration. I wonder if there is the fear of kids being picked on in gym class (though few schools have gym class anymore)? Or a way of recognizing the reality that kids need more challenge while clinging to the "community" ideal of school? (That frankly has no basis in reality -- my friends weren't all born within 6 months of my birthday).
Regardless of the oddity, this may suggest a strategy for parents looking to advocate for gifted kids: if you want a high probability of success, pick 3 subjects you want your kid advanced in, and go for broke on those. If you play your cards right, you might say that this is introducing your kid to more peers, and hence is increasing their socialization... Grade skipping will be a harder sell.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Did NCLB hurt gifted students?
This week, the Fordham Institute released a new report on "High Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind." I'm trying to get an interview with the authors, but then it occurred to me that the good thing about a blog is that I can write about the same topic multiple times! So I'll give my first thoughts on the report now, and hopefully start a discussion. Then, when I get the authors on the phone, I'll have better questions to ask.
For the Fordham report, authors Tom Loveless, Steve Farkas, and Ann Duffett looked at how students in the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile scored on the NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or "the nation's report card"). They particularly focused on scores since 2002, which is roughly when the current national focus on accountability began. They also surveyed teachers about their time and priorities.
This is the major finding: Congress passed NCLB with the goal of narrowing the achievement gap. That has, in fact, happened over the past 5-6 years. Here is why it has happened: lower-achieving students have made fairly large gains on the NAEP. High-achieving students have made small gains. Consequently, the achievement gap has been closing.
The bigger question, of course, is whether this is something to be celebrating, and whether Congress set the right goal.
In education, there is always a fundamental tension between excellence and equity. As Americans, we really like both concepts. We want all students to achieve more in the future than they do now, and we also want some students not to lag too far behind others. But these are conflicting goals. If all student scores were rising on the NAEP at a fast clip, the achievement gap would stay the same. In fact, if all student scores rose by 10%, this would expand the achievement gap (a student scoring 200 would go to 220, a 300 to 330, expanding the gap from 100 to 110). This means that, fundamentally, we have to choose which of the goals of excellence and equity is most important.
The Fordham report gives data on what we have, apparently chosen. I want to stress that it does show something important: NCLB has not, per se, hurt the highest achieving children on an objective test measurement standard. Scores are relatively flat. The NAEP (like an out-of-level test -- e.g. giving the SAT to 7th graders) allows for a full spectrum of scores to show up. So this is not the case of a consistent 99th percentile grade-level score masking a decline in achievement that a blunt test can't pick up.
But the authors did also survey teachers, and found something that is also salient. Some 60% of teachers said low achievers were a "top priority" at their schools, and 23% said high achievers were (teachers could give more than one answer). Asked about who was likely to receive more one-on-one attention, 81% of teachers said struggling students were, with only 5% saying advanced students were.
We don't really have data of how teachers felt in the past. But it is clear that in this era of accountability, NCLB and other policies have designated our national priority: raising the test scores of low-achieving students. Everything else is secondary.
It is, of course, a worthy goal to raise low scores. On the other hand, a teacher's one-on-one attention is a zero-sum game. If it's going to low achievers, it's not going to high achievers. So basically, as a nation, we have made a choice to let high achievers coast. This shows up in the NAEP scores.
I -- and many readers of this blog, I'm sure -- am not terribly comfortable with this national choice. I've long advocated taking the basic concept of accountability and applying it to individual students, rather than schools. That way, no one can hide behind averages on a grade-level test that make it more critical for a kid on the border of proficient to become proficient than for a high-achieving student to excel. From my first read of the Fordham report, I think we can start making a case in public policy spheres that we should change NCLB's mission from closing the achievement gap to raising the achievement of all students (really meaning "no child"). It does us little good to make sure everyone is capable of reading a ballot and balancing a checkbook if we can't also produce engineers and doctors and programmers and the like. Equality is not a useful end goal in itself. Excellence is.
But I would really like to hear from some readers about this. Anecdotally, is NCLB hurting high achievers at your school? Leaving them to languish? Is it causing a new set of priorities? Or just reinforcing beliefs people already had?
For the Fordham report, authors Tom Loveless, Steve Farkas, and Ann Duffett looked at how students in the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile scored on the NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or "the nation's report card"). They particularly focused on scores since 2002, which is roughly when the current national focus on accountability began. They also surveyed teachers about their time and priorities.
This is the major finding: Congress passed NCLB with the goal of narrowing the achievement gap. That has, in fact, happened over the past 5-6 years. Here is why it has happened: lower-achieving students have made fairly large gains on the NAEP. High-achieving students have made small gains. Consequently, the achievement gap has been closing.
The bigger question, of course, is whether this is something to be celebrating, and whether Congress set the right goal.
In education, there is always a fundamental tension between excellence and equity. As Americans, we really like both concepts. We want all students to achieve more in the future than they do now, and we also want some students not to lag too far behind others. But these are conflicting goals. If all student scores were rising on the NAEP at a fast clip, the achievement gap would stay the same. In fact, if all student scores rose by 10%, this would expand the achievement gap (a student scoring 200 would go to 220, a 300 to 330, expanding the gap from 100 to 110). This means that, fundamentally, we have to choose which of the goals of excellence and equity is most important.
The Fordham report gives data on what we have, apparently chosen. I want to stress that it does show something important: NCLB has not, per se, hurt the highest achieving children on an objective test measurement standard. Scores are relatively flat. The NAEP (like an out-of-level test -- e.g. giving the SAT to 7th graders) allows for a full spectrum of scores to show up. So this is not the case of a consistent 99th percentile grade-level score masking a decline in achievement that a blunt test can't pick up.
But the authors did also survey teachers, and found something that is also salient. Some 60% of teachers said low achievers were a "top priority" at their schools, and 23% said high achievers were (teachers could give more than one answer). Asked about who was likely to receive more one-on-one attention, 81% of teachers said struggling students were, with only 5% saying advanced students were.
We don't really have data of how teachers felt in the past. But it is clear that in this era of accountability, NCLB and other policies have designated our national priority: raising the test scores of low-achieving students. Everything else is secondary.
It is, of course, a worthy goal to raise low scores. On the other hand, a teacher's one-on-one attention is a zero-sum game. If it's going to low achievers, it's not going to high achievers. So basically, as a nation, we have made a choice to let high achievers coast. This shows up in the NAEP scores.
I -- and many readers of this blog, I'm sure -- am not terribly comfortable with this national choice. I've long advocated taking the basic concept of accountability and applying it to individual students, rather than schools. That way, no one can hide behind averages on a grade-level test that make it more critical for a kid on the border of proficient to become proficient than for a high-achieving student to excel. From my first read of the Fordham report, I think we can start making a case in public policy spheres that we should change NCLB's mission from closing the achievement gap to raising the achievement of all students (really meaning "no child"). It does us little good to make sure everyone is capable of reading a ballot and balancing a checkbook if we can't also produce engineers and doctors and programmers and the like. Equality is not a useful end goal in itself. Excellence is.
But I would really like to hear from some readers about this. Anecdotally, is NCLB hurting high achievers at your school? Leaving them to languish? Is it causing a new set of priorities? Or just reinforcing beliefs people already had?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Achievers All
The school year is drawing to a close, and around the country, middle schools are hauling out the podiums and the fruit punch, and holding ceremonies at which they celebrate their high achievers.
Chief among these are students who have participated in talent searches -- usually when a university gives out-of-level tests (SAT, ACT) to young teens to see how they do. (For one such article, see this piece from the LA Times). The theory behind talent searches is that while highly gifted kids max out at the 99th percentile on grade level tests, out-of-level tests can show the kids who are truly capable of more advanced work.
But, as usually happens with things in gifted education, something has gone a bit awry along the way. A talent search is supposed to be a diagnostic -- showing what a child is capable of, so that schools can arrange for more challenging work if necessary. But, instead, it's become more of an excuse for an awards ceremony to "celebrate" an achievement, as if it's a real achievement to score highly on a diagnostic test. If you study a unit in biology very hard, and then do well on a test, that may be an achievement worth celebrating. But celebrating a high score on a talent search diagnostic is like taking a kid out for ice cream because she did well on an IQ test. It misses the point.
But you can see why schools generally like talent searches and like to hold award ceremonies for the students who participate. Who wouldn't want a headline that a handful of your district's middle schoolers scored as high as college-bound high school seniors on the SAT?
Don't get me wrong -- kids like the attention too. But the problem with these ceremonies is that for the vast majority of students who score highly on out-of-level tests, the ceremonies are the end of the line. These kids are never given anything more challenging to do in school. The well-to-do ones can take summer classes at universities. But most pick up their certificates, enjoy the applause, collect copies of the newspaper story from their neighbors, and go right back into 8th grade pre-algebra.
That's too bad, because while celebrating high test scores is one thing, actually nurturing a bright young mind so the young person can achieve real things in the future is far better.
I am curious what the readers of this blog have encountered in terms of awards ceremonies for high scorers on out-of-level talent search tests. Did your districts do anything with the results?
Chief among these are students who have participated in talent searches -- usually when a university gives out-of-level tests (SAT, ACT) to young teens to see how they do. (For one such article, see this piece from the LA Times). The theory behind talent searches is that while highly gifted kids max out at the 99th percentile on grade level tests, out-of-level tests can show the kids who are truly capable of more advanced work.
But, as usually happens with things in gifted education, something has gone a bit awry along the way. A talent search is supposed to be a diagnostic -- showing what a child is capable of, so that schools can arrange for more challenging work if necessary. But, instead, it's become more of an excuse for an awards ceremony to "celebrate" an achievement, as if it's a real achievement to score highly on a diagnostic test. If you study a unit in biology very hard, and then do well on a test, that may be an achievement worth celebrating. But celebrating a high score on a talent search diagnostic is like taking a kid out for ice cream because she did well on an IQ test. It misses the point.
But you can see why schools generally like talent searches and like to hold award ceremonies for the students who participate. Who wouldn't want a headline that a handful of your district's middle schoolers scored as high as college-bound high school seniors on the SAT?
Don't get me wrong -- kids like the attention too. But the problem with these ceremonies is that for the vast majority of students who score highly on out-of-level tests, the ceremonies are the end of the line. These kids are never given anything more challenging to do in school. The well-to-do ones can take summer classes at universities. But most pick up their certificates, enjoy the applause, collect copies of the newspaper story from their neighbors, and go right back into 8th grade pre-algebra.
That's too bad, because while celebrating high test scores is one thing, actually nurturing a bright young mind so the young person can achieve real things in the future is far better.
I am curious what the readers of this blog have encountered in terms of awards ceremonies for high scorers on out-of-level talent search tests. Did your districts do anything with the results?
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Life Raft Strategy
I had the great privilege of attending the annual Prep for Prep "Lilac Ball" last night at the Waldorf-Astoria here in New York. This ball doubles as the graduation for students in the Prep for Prep program, a 30-year-old campaign to prepare the brightest minority students in New York City for admission to independent prep schools (day or boarding). Prep for Prep continues to monitor their students' progress while they attend Andover, Choate, Dalton, etc., with the hope that these students will attend elite colleges.
It seems to be working. Among the roughly 150 high school seniors walking across the stage last night, a dozen are going to Yale, eight (I counted) are going to Harvard, and many others to Princeton, Columbia, Duke, MIT, Stanford, etc. I got a little teary when Learah Lockhart, the daughter of a single mom, talked about how she had been working until 2AM as a 7th grader getting ready to go to Choate. She didn't want to leave her mother to go to boarding school, but her mother insisted. Her mom always kept her school papers with good grades in a box by her bed. As Learah said, in April, she got something that was definitely box-worthy. At this point, she read us the letter offering her admission to Harvard.
(Of course, knowing how hard this young lady worked to get to where she is in life, it kind of ticked me off to know -- according to Daniel Golden's book The Price of Admission -- that Albert Gore III got into Harvard despite being suspended in 8th grade for smoking marijuana, being cited during high school for driving 100mph, and not getting particularly good grades or test scores. While a student at Harvard, he was ticketed for driving under the influence, and was also later charged with marijuana possession. But I digress).
Children are chosen for admission to the Prep for Prep program based, initially, on having test scores above the 90th percentile. From my discussions with people in the program, this seems to be a pretty hard fast line. Then once they make this initial cut, they give these children (drum roll please)... an IQ test! Yes, people are chosen for Prep for Prep based on their scores on the WISC. The selected children are then put through their paces being brought up to speed academically so they will enter their prep schools on par with the more privileged children who usually attend such schools.
As far as I know, the Prep for Prep program is not particularly controversial. It's funded with private money (and often the independent schools themselves give scholarships and financial aid to the young people who gain admission). You would need to have a pretty big chip on your shoulder to begrudge giving brilliant kids from modest circumstances the opportunity to attempt the kind of rigorous education that will give them a shot at being admitted to elite colleges (I might quibble with the fact that Prep for Prep does not seem to be open to white children, many of whom also come from modest circumstances, but a fair number of the graduates were Asian children, so at least it does seem to be open to all minority children).
Yet when we refuse to create self-contained gifted classes or schools in inner cities, this is exactly what we do. I think of Jonathan Kozol's complaints about New York City's selective public schools (which some Prep for Prep kids wind up attending). "The better schools function, effectively, as siphons which draw off not only the most high-achieving and the best-connected students but their parents too," he wrote in Savage Inequalities. "This, in turn, leads to a rather cruel, if easily predictable, scenario: Once these students win admission....there is no incentive for their parents to be vocal on the issues that concern the students who have been excluded...The political effectiveness of those who have been left behind is thus depleted...public schools in a democracy should not be allowed to fill this role."
There are plenty of people who think that schools for the gifted wind up being politically unacceptable life rafts. They concentrate limited resources on the brightest children, rather than the lowest achieving, or some other metric.
This is, of course, exactly what Prep for Prep does. The program amounts to a private gifted education program. The idea is to get the brightest kids out of bad schools, and put them in good schools where they will be challenged.
I -- like most people -- have no problem with that using private money. In an ideal world, sure, all schools would be great. But we don't live in that world. So I don't believe in holding bright children hostage until they and their parents revolt. If Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are willing to cough up money to buy tables at an event to support that, all the better.
But I do find it interesting that such a program has to be private to be politically palatable. Wouldn't it be great if any highly gifted kid across the country whose needs could not be met locally could attend an elite boarding school without worrying about the cost? Wouldn't it be great if we identified all the brightest kids (perhaps partially using the WISC!) and then monitored their progress and made sure their needs were being met? Alas, this does not seem to be a public education priority. A private life raft is better than no life raft. But I'd like a few more public life rafts around the country as well.
It seems to be working. Among the roughly 150 high school seniors walking across the stage last night, a dozen are going to Yale, eight (I counted) are going to Harvard, and many others to Princeton, Columbia, Duke, MIT, Stanford, etc. I got a little teary when Learah Lockhart, the daughter of a single mom, talked about how she had been working until 2AM as a 7th grader getting ready to go to Choate. She didn't want to leave her mother to go to boarding school, but her mother insisted. Her mom always kept her school papers with good grades in a box by her bed. As Learah said, in April, she got something that was definitely box-worthy. At this point, she read us the letter offering her admission to Harvard.
(Of course, knowing how hard this young lady worked to get to where she is in life, it kind of ticked me off to know -- according to Daniel Golden's book The Price of Admission -- that Albert Gore III got into Harvard despite being suspended in 8th grade for smoking marijuana, being cited during high school for driving 100mph, and not getting particularly good grades or test scores. While a student at Harvard, he was ticketed for driving under the influence, and was also later charged with marijuana possession. But I digress).
Children are chosen for admission to the Prep for Prep program based, initially, on having test scores above the 90th percentile. From my discussions with people in the program, this seems to be a pretty hard fast line. Then once they make this initial cut, they give these children (drum roll please)... an IQ test! Yes, people are chosen for Prep for Prep based on their scores on the WISC. The selected children are then put through their paces being brought up to speed academically so they will enter their prep schools on par with the more privileged children who usually attend such schools.
As far as I know, the Prep for Prep program is not particularly controversial. It's funded with private money (and often the independent schools themselves give scholarships and financial aid to the young people who gain admission). You would need to have a pretty big chip on your shoulder to begrudge giving brilliant kids from modest circumstances the opportunity to attempt the kind of rigorous education that will give them a shot at being admitted to elite colleges (I might quibble with the fact that Prep for Prep does not seem to be open to white children, many of whom also come from modest circumstances, but a fair number of the graduates were Asian children, so at least it does seem to be open to all minority children).
Yet when we refuse to create self-contained gifted classes or schools in inner cities, this is exactly what we do. I think of Jonathan Kozol's complaints about New York City's selective public schools (which some Prep for Prep kids wind up attending). "The better schools function, effectively, as siphons which draw off not only the most high-achieving and the best-connected students but their parents too," he wrote in Savage Inequalities. "This, in turn, leads to a rather cruel, if easily predictable, scenario: Once these students win admission....there is no incentive for their parents to be vocal on the issues that concern the students who have been excluded...The political effectiveness of those who have been left behind is thus depleted...public schools in a democracy should not be allowed to fill this role."
There are plenty of people who think that schools for the gifted wind up being politically unacceptable life rafts. They concentrate limited resources on the brightest children, rather than the lowest achieving, or some other metric.
This is, of course, exactly what Prep for Prep does. The program amounts to a private gifted education program. The idea is to get the brightest kids out of bad schools, and put them in good schools where they will be challenged.
I -- like most people -- have no problem with that using private money. In an ideal world, sure, all schools would be great. But we don't live in that world. So I don't believe in holding bright children hostage until they and their parents revolt. If Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are willing to cough up money to buy tables at an event to support that, all the better.
But I do find it interesting that such a program has to be private to be politically palatable. Wouldn't it be great if any highly gifted kid across the country whose needs could not be met locally could attend an elite boarding school without worrying about the cost? Wouldn't it be great if we identified all the brightest kids (perhaps partially using the WISC!) and then monitored their progress and made sure their needs were being met? Alas, this does not seem to be a public education priority. A private life raft is better than no life raft. But I'd like a few more public life rafts around the country as well.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Core Competency Moms
This post is not specifically about gifted education, but about parenting. I had mentioned on this blog a few months ago that I was looking into the rise of middle-class household chore outsourcing (just as corporations are focusing on their core competencies -- ie, what they do best -- families are starting to as well. For moms this tends to be nurturing kids and the paid work they do). I've even spoken with some readers about the topic. Now, I've been posting a series of essays over at The Huffington Post on "Core Competency Moms." Here are some links; I'd be thrilled if you checked them out and left a message or two.
On Not Doing Dishes: The Rise of the Core Competency Mom
Life, Uncluttered
On Wasting Time: Are You Reading This at Work?
A Happy Mom's Secret: Don't Do Your Own Laundry
On Not Doing Dishes: The Rise of the Core Competency Mom
Life, Uncluttered
On Wasting Time: Are You Reading This at Work?
A Happy Mom's Secret: Don't Do Your Own Laundry
Monday, June 02, 2008
Figuring out the Flynn Effect
When I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago, blogging for Scientific American about the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, I interviewed a student named Julian Lyles Bass-Krueger who'd done a fascinating project on how Tetris (the computer game where you turn shapes to fit into variably-sized holes) makes you "smarter."
How so? He had half of a group of subjects play Tetris for 15 minutes (the other half did not play the game). Then he gave both groups a spatial reasoning assessment, of the sort you might see on an IQ test. The result? People who had played Tetris for 15 minutes scored about 55% higher on the spatial reasoning test.
While intelligence tests are usually based on multiple areas (not just spatial reasoning) this is obviously a huge difference. Bass-Krueger posited that this might be one factor in the Flynn Effect, the phenomenon that IQ scores seem to have been rising a few points per decade for much of the 20th century. After all, games like Tetris didn't exist 70 years ago. If many modern children are exposed to such games, their scores would naturally be higher.
It's an interesting theory, and there's probably some truth to it. The Flynn Effect is one of those concepts that's very difficult to tease out, and is often misunderstood. I have heard people reference it as a critique of the concept of intelligence. After all, if IQ scores are rising, then maybe IQ tests are easily gamed. People who've had the opportunity to do brain teasers as kids will naturally score better. Based on this idea, the use of IQ as a way to identify kids for gifted education also seems flawed. After all, who's to say if a child is gifted and needs educational intervention, or has just played a lot of Tetris?
But I think there's a larger factor in play that's probably more important. While it's a popular email forward to give an example of an 8th grade test from pioneer days (thus showing how dumb we modern folks are by contrast), one has to remember that when intelligence testing first took off in the earlier part of the 20th century, childhood mortality rates were still fairly bleak in industrial countries, including ours.
In 1936, according to historical records from the US government, infant mortality nationwide was 57.1 deaths (among children under age 1) for every 1000 live births. For non-white children, the rate in many states was twice as high (for instance, among non-white babies in Delaware in 1936, there were 110 deaths before age 1 for every 1000 live births). These days the number is 6.78 deaths per 1000 live births. Among black babies, the rate is twice as high: 13.6/1000. But even this unfortunately high number is many times lower than for children of all races 70 years ago.
Two things that we know affect brain development are pre-natal and infant health and nutrition -- factors that are highly correlated with infant mortality. Just as most of us are taller than our grandparents, it makes sense that our brains were better nourished when we were babies. And as it turns out, most of the Flynn Effect gains are concentrated on the lower part of the intelligence spectrum. That suggests that intelligence scores have gone up not because striving parents are teaching their kids brain games to get them into the top track in school, but because pregnant women and infants are not generally malnourished in developed countries anymore. They also receive better medical care (such as antibiotics that fight the infections that might otherwise lead to long term learning problems).
There is some evidence that the Flynn Effect has mostly stopped of late in richer countries, which would also be consistent with this hypothesis (there's less room for improvement these days).
But that brings us back to the Tetris question. If 15 minutes of Tetris can improve spatial reasoning scores by 55%, doesn't this put IQ scores under at least some suspicion? Yes...and no. All tests are blunt instruments. The fact that children's IQ scores tend to rise by 5-6 points the second time they take a test indicates that there is a learned familiarity boost. But this is pretty much a ceiling on the effect. Just as coaching can boost an SAT score 100 points, but not 600 points, playing brain games might boost an IQ score from 110 to 115, but not from 110 to 150.
In a previous post, I suggested that IQ tests be used as an initial screen for gifted education, but not the sole screen. Gifted education is not a reward for kids who work hard in school. Nor should it necessarily be based on a stark 130-and-over line in the sand. It should be an educational intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a normal classroom. My suspicion is that this is a subset of the 130+ crew and -- in good schools that allow grade skipping -- probably a smaller subset.
The Flynn Effect is a fascinating phenomenon. It may be a result of a more stimulating environment, but it's probably also the result of some more basic public health and welfare improvements. I don't believe, though, that it fundamentally changes the need to recognize the unique learning styles of extraordinarily bright children.
How so? He had half of a group of subjects play Tetris for 15 minutes (the other half did not play the game). Then he gave both groups a spatial reasoning assessment, of the sort you might see on an IQ test. The result? People who had played Tetris for 15 minutes scored about 55% higher on the spatial reasoning test.
While intelligence tests are usually based on multiple areas (not just spatial reasoning) this is obviously a huge difference. Bass-Krueger posited that this might be one factor in the Flynn Effect, the phenomenon that IQ scores seem to have been rising a few points per decade for much of the 20th century. After all, games like Tetris didn't exist 70 years ago. If many modern children are exposed to such games, their scores would naturally be higher.
It's an interesting theory, and there's probably some truth to it. The Flynn Effect is one of those concepts that's very difficult to tease out, and is often misunderstood. I have heard people reference it as a critique of the concept of intelligence. After all, if IQ scores are rising, then maybe IQ tests are easily gamed. People who've had the opportunity to do brain teasers as kids will naturally score better. Based on this idea, the use of IQ as a way to identify kids for gifted education also seems flawed. After all, who's to say if a child is gifted and needs educational intervention, or has just played a lot of Tetris?
But I think there's a larger factor in play that's probably more important. While it's a popular email forward to give an example of an 8th grade test from pioneer days (thus showing how dumb we modern folks are by contrast), one has to remember that when intelligence testing first took off in the earlier part of the 20th century, childhood mortality rates were still fairly bleak in industrial countries, including ours.
In 1936, according to historical records from the US government, infant mortality nationwide was 57.1 deaths (among children under age 1) for every 1000 live births. For non-white children, the rate in many states was twice as high (for instance, among non-white babies in Delaware in 1936, there were 110 deaths before age 1 for every 1000 live births). These days the number is 6.78 deaths per 1000 live births. Among black babies, the rate is twice as high: 13.6/1000. But even this unfortunately high number is many times lower than for children of all races 70 years ago.
Two things that we know affect brain development are pre-natal and infant health and nutrition -- factors that are highly correlated with infant mortality. Just as most of us are taller than our grandparents, it makes sense that our brains were better nourished when we were babies. And as it turns out, most of the Flynn Effect gains are concentrated on the lower part of the intelligence spectrum. That suggests that intelligence scores have gone up not because striving parents are teaching their kids brain games to get them into the top track in school, but because pregnant women and infants are not generally malnourished in developed countries anymore. They also receive better medical care (such as antibiotics that fight the infections that might otherwise lead to long term learning problems).
There is some evidence that the Flynn Effect has mostly stopped of late in richer countries, which would also be consistent with this hypothesis (there's less room for improvement these days).
But that brings us back to the Tetris question. If 15 minutes of Tetris can improve spatial reasoning scores by 55%, doesn't this put IQ scores under at least some suspicion? Yes...and no. All tests are blunt instruments. The fact that children's IQ scores tend to rise by 5-6 points the second time they take a test indicates that there is a learned familiarity boost. But this is pretty much a ceiling on the effect. Just as coaching can boost an SAT score 100 points, but not 600 points, playing brain games might boost an IQ score from 110 to 115, but not from 110 to 150.
In a previous post, I suggested that IQ tests be used as an initial screen for gifted education, but not the sole screen. Gifted education is not a reward for kids who work hard in school. Nor should it necessarily be based on a stark 130-and-over line in the sand. It should be an educational intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a normal classroom. My suspicion is that this is a subset of the 130+ crew and -- in good schools that allow grade skipping -- probably a smaller subset.
The Flynn Effect is a fascinating phenomenon. It may be a result of a more stimulating environment, but it's probably also the result of some more basic public health and welfare improvements. I don't believe, though, that it fundamentally changes the need to recognize the unique learning styles of extraordinarily bright children.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A Modest Proposal for Gifted Education
As school days dwindle, education stories are becoming fewer and far between. We'll go on our summer schedule here soon at Gifted Exchange, posting a bit less frequently. I thank you all for visiting me through our third school year.
In the meantime, I want to start a discussion on a new gifted program in Pittsburgh. You can read an article about it here. The reason I'm highlighting this particular one is that it gets at a lot of the current issues in gifted education (amazingly, in about 1200 words).
1) How do you identify gifted students? Pennsylvania is instituting some changes. From the article:
"'This is about a more flexible, open process,' said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the state board. 'It opens it up to students who may not test well on the IQ test.'
Current state rules say students must have an IQ score of at least 130 and do well on other measures -- grades, teacher observation, other standardized tests -- to be identified as gifted. The new standards, which after a review process could kick in for the new school year, say districts can use an IQ test or other measures."
Across the country, many districts and states are chucking the 130-and-up standard. Many educators (and others, I might add) are highly suspicious of IQ tests. But it's interesting that few educators are recommending that you use an IQ test as an initial screen, and then cut it down from that based on the idea that IQ tests might identify too many kids, because they can be gamed (at least one study found that people who play Tetris right before a spatial reasoning test do 50% better on it).
Rather, educators are proposing ditching or downplaying the IQ test standard because they want to open gifted education to kids who would not score above 130 on such a test. I suspect people want to do that because it gets at a second issue raised by the article:
2) Gifted education as a reward (as opposed to an intervention).
Here is the opening paragraph of the Pittsburgh article:
"David Badamo composes a sports fight song, goes on a scavenger hunt and uses books about sports to learn literary techniques at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Badamo, 11, visited the center with 200 other gifted students from 20 school districts in the area."
This just has me shaking my head. You do not have to be gifted to go on a scavenger hunt. I'm guessing that all kids would enjoy a lesson about literary techniques using sports books, just as most kids would enjoy a field trip to the John Heinz History Center. If the basic way of serving gifted kids is bringing them on field trips that other kids don't get to do, who can blame people for wanting to expand the definition to encompass any kid who does well in school? It's like giving a kid an ice cream cone. We naturally want to give the treat to anyone who works hard.
But that is not the same as being gifted. Gifted kids can be lazy, can get bad grades, can act out in class and so forth. Gifted education should be an intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a normal classroom, not a reward for the "best" students.
3) Inadequate ability grouping.
Of course, the reason the Pittsburgh students were brought to the history center is that they needed to do something on their special "gifted day." From the article:
"Pittsburgh Public Schools is the only district in the area that sends its 2,800 gifted students to a special school one day a week. J. Kaye Cupples, executive director of student support services, said the district is thinking of ending its gifted center at Greenway School because of concerns the program might not meet students' needs the rest of the school week."
Very true. What is the point of bringing a kid to a special school for one day a week, and then leaving them in their regular classrooms the rest of the time? Unfortunately, the district's solution is not to open up the gifted school for five days a week. Instead...
"The district will experiment this fall with five schools -- Colfax, Dilworth, Fort Pitt, Grandview and Northview Heights -- where gifted children will be taught with other students.
Many districts "cluster" gifted students in a classroom with regular students.
'Research shows that they need to be with intellectual peers a good part of the day to share ideas and to push each other to excel,' said Cathy Ekis, the elementary gifted coordinator at Penn Hills.
The youngsters might also be pulled out of their regular classrooms and be taught by special teachers elsewhere in their school."
In other words, we're going from one day a week of busing to a central location to maybe a daily pull-out, with a few gifted kids clustered in an age-level classroom.
This is not necessarily going to be an improvement, but looks more palatable to people who don't like gifted education. It also maintains an allegiance to the "kids should be with their grade level" mentality.
Which leads me to my modest proposal for setting up a system of gifted education. After spending years reading through the literature, and various articles like this, I have a few ideas on best practices in gifted education:
1. Don't chuck IQ tests or out-of-level tests. Yes, these may miss kids who don't do well on tests, so it's worth having some alternative screen (like a portfolio). But the point should not be to expand the definition of gifted. This is an educational intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a regular classroom. If a kid who is working just slightly above grade level is getting bored in a regular classroom, it's because you've got a lousy teacher. Deal with that problem.
2. Gifted education should not look like a reward. In smaller districts, it should look like one thing: acceleration. You take a lot of politics and mystique out of the gifted label if kids who get it don't suddenly get to go on fun field trips. Instead, they go (for example) three grade levels up for math, do an independent study in English, sit in on a community college history course, and take an online science course in the library.
3. If you're going to do ability grouping, really do it. Larger districts may have enough highly gifted students that it becomes more economical to create self-contained gifted classes or schools. That's a fine idea -- but don't just bus the kids there once a week. Don't just do two afternoons a week of pull-out. Self-contain them the whole time. And combine these programs across grades. Gifted fourth graders have no more in common with each other than they do with gifted third or fifth graders. Let the kids work at their own pace while interacting with their intellectual peers. All told, that might be even more fun than composing a fight song and going to a history museum.
Tongue-in-cheek here, I also have a modest proposal for articles about gifted education. Attention writers: please stop including the "we're just normal kids" line. Everyone does it. Sigh. Here's the Pittsburgh one:
"Most people think we're different because they think we're brainiacs," said Badamo, a fifth-grader at Ross Elementary School in the North Hills School District. "I don't think we're different at all. We do a lot more advanced work. We still like to do sports and the things other kids like to do."
In the meantime, I want to start a discussion on a new gifted program in Pittsburgh. You can read an article about it here. The reason I'm highlighting this particular one is that it gets at a lot of the current issues in gifted education (amazingly, in about 1200 words).
1) How do you identify gifted students? Pennsylvania is instituting some changes. From the article:
"'This is about a more flexible, open process,' said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the state board. 'It opens it up to students who may not test well on the IQ test.'
Current state rules say students must have an IQ score of at least 130 and do well on other measures -- grades, teacher observation, other standardized tests -- to be identified as gifted. The new standards, which after a review process could kick in for the new school year, say districts can use an IQ test or other measures."
Across the country, many districts and states are chucking the 130-and-up standard. Many educators (and others, I might add) are highly suspicious of IQ tests. But it's interesting that few educators are recommending that you use an IQ test as an initial screen, and then cut it down from that based on the idea that IQ tests might identify too many kids, because they can be gamed (at least one study found that people who play Tetris right before a spatial reasoning test do 50% better on it).
Rather, educators are proposing ditching or downplaying the IQ test standard because they want to open gifted education to kids who would not score above 130 on such a test. I suspect people want to do that because it gets at a second issue raised by the article:
2) Gifted education as a reward (as opposed to an intervention).
Here is the opening paragraph of the Pittsburgh article:
"David Badamo composes a sports fight song, goes on a scavenger hunt and uses books about sports to learn literary techniques at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Badamo, 11, visited the center with 200 other gifted students from 20 school districts in the area."
This just has me shaking my head. You do not have to be gifted to go on a scavenger hunt. I'm guessing that all kids would enjoy a lesson about literary techniques using sports books, just as most kids would enjoy a field trip to the John Heinz History Center. If the basic way of serving gifted kids is bringing them on field trips that other kids don't get to do, who can blame people for wanting to expand the definition to encompass any kid who does well in school? It's like giving a kid an ice cream cone. We naturally want to give the treat to anyone who works hard.
But that is not the same as being gifted. Gifted kids can be lazy, can get bad grades, can act out in class and so forth. Gifted education should be an intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a normal classroom, not a reward for the "best" students.
3) Inadequate ability grouping.
Of course, the reason the Pittsburgh students were brought to the history center is that they needed to do something on their special "gifted day." From the article:
"Pittsburgh Public Schools is the only district in the area that sends its 2,800 gifted students to a special school one day a week. J. Kaye Cupples, executive director of student support services, said the district is thinking of ending its gifted center at Greenway School because of concerns the program might not meet students' needs the rest of the school week."
Very true. What is the point of bringing a kid to a special school for one day a week, and then leaving them in their regular classrooms the rest of the time? Unfortunately, the district's solution is not to open up the gifted school for five days a week. Instead...
"The district will experiment this fall with five schools -- Colfax, Dilworth, Fort Pitt, Grandview and Northview Heights -- where gifted children will be taught with other students.
Many districts "cluster" gifted students in a classroom with regular students.
'Research shows that they need to be with intellectual peers a good part of the day to share ideas and to push each other to excel,' said Cathy Ekis, the elementary gifted coordinator at Penn Hills.
The youngsters might also be pulled out of their regular classrooms and be taught by special teachers elsewhere in their school."
In other words, we're going from one day a week of busing to a central location to maybe a daily pull-out, with a few gifted kids clustered in an age-level classroom.
This is not necessarily going to be an improvement, but looks more palatable to people who don't like gifted education. It also maintains an allegiance to the "kids should be with their grade level" mentality.
Which leads me to my modest proposal for setting up a system of gifted education. After spending years reading through the literature, and various articles like this, I have a few ideas on best practices in gifted education:
1. Don't chuck IQ tests or out-of-level tests. Yes, these may miss kids who don't do well on tests, so it's worth having some alternative screen (like a portfolio). But the point should not be to expand the definition of gifted. This is an educational intervention for kids whose needs cannot be met in a regular classroom. If a kid who is working just slightly above grade level is getting bored in a regular classroom, it's because you've got a lousy teacher. Deal with that problem.
2. Gifted education should not look like a reward. In smaller districts, it should look like one thing: acceleration. You take a lot of politics and mystique out of the gifted label if kids who get it don't suddenly get to go on fun field trips. Instead, they go (for example) three grade levels up for math, do an independent study in English, sit in on a community college history course, and take an online science course in the library.
3. If you're going to do ability grouping, really do it. Larger districts may have enough highly gifted students that it becomes more economical to create self-contained gifted classes or schools. That's a fine idea -- but don't just bus the kids there once a week. Don't just do two afternoons a week of pull-out. Self-contain them the whole time. And combine these programs across grades. Gifted fourth graders have no more in common with each other than they do with gifted third or fifth graders. Let the kids work at their own pace while interacting with their intellectual peers. All told, that might be even more fun than composing a fight song and going to a history museum.
Tongue-in-cheek here, I also have a modest proposal for articles about gifted education. Attention writers: please stop including the "we're just normal kids" line. Everyone does it. Sigh. Here's the Pittsburgh one:
"Most people think we're different because they think we're brainiacs," said Badamo, a fifth-grader at Ross Elementary School in the North Hills School District. "I don't think we're different at all. We do a lot more advanced work. We still like to do sports and the things other kids like to do."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Is there a 'War on Boys?'
The American Association of University Women (which captured tons of headlines in 1992 for its report on "How Schools Shortchange Girls") released a report yesterday called "Where the Girls Are." This report seeks to compare boys' and girls' school performance and to refute the idea that boys are getting the short end of the stick in today's schools.
"It is a testament to the success of the efforts by AAUW and others that the gender equity debate has taken a new twist in which boys are cast as the disadvantaged gender," the report notes, singling out Christina Hoff Sommers' book, The War Against Boys. "Girls' gains have not come at the expense of boys."
The evidence in the report is fairly straightforward. Both boys and girls have been holding steady or improving slightly on standardized tests over the past few years. Girls tend to do slightly better on NAEP reading sections, boys do better on the SAT. The between-gender differences in performance, though, are nothing compared to the differences between racial groups and between income groups (which might be a more fruitful area for concern). Young women (and, interestingly, older women) are going to college in record numbers, but young men are more likely to go than in the past as well. So while the percentage of college students who are men has fallen in recent years, the proportion of men who are going to college has gone up. This suggests that women aren't "taking men's places" in colleges -- they're simply flooding into college, while the proportion of men going to college has been more of a slowly rising tide. Among "traditional" college students (those under 24) from high-income families, men still slightly outnumber women. It's just that while older women are more willing to go back to school for a few years, many older men can't or won't leave the workforce to do so.
The AAUW of course has its politics. They sniff that there's no way there could be a war on boys because men still out-earn women, even controlling for years in the workforce, field of study and the like. Which is true. But girls were doing OK on tests compared with boys in 1992, too, and the AAUW still managed to put out a report then counting the number of times teachers called on kids who were raising their hands, the number of times boys blurted out answers and teachers acknowledged them, etc. If one used different stats, one could surely come up with a report that schools shortchanged boys. For instance, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and to be disciplined for causing problems in the classroom. The majority of elementary school teachers are women, and just as grown women often feel awkward in offices in which all the managers are male, boys can feel excluded in female-dominated environments that lack male role models.
That said, I don't think there's much to be gained from hunting for a war on one gender or another. No discovery of a war is going to help a kid read or do math. Our schools have lots of problems. Not least is that bright kids sit, bored to tears, in their classrooms because they're not allowed to move ahead. Kids breeze through tests and homework, not learning the joy of having to actually labor hard to understand something. That happens to girls and boys. We should see more studies on that.
"It is a testament to the success of the efforts by AAUW and others that the gender equity debate has taken a new twist in which boys are cast as the disadvantaged gender," the report notes, singling out Christina Hoff Sommers' book, The War Against Boys. "Girls' gains have not come at the expense of boys."
The evidence in the report is fairly straightforward. Both boys and girls have been holding steady or improving slightly on standardized tests over the past few years. Girls tend to do slightly better on NAEP reading sections, boys do better on the SAT. The between-gender differences in performance, though, are nothing compared to the differences between racial groups and between income groups (which might be a more fruitful area for concern). Young women (and, interestingly, older women) are going to college in record numbers, but young men are more likely to go than in the past as well. So while the percentage of college students who are men has fallen in recent years, the proportion of men who are going to college has gone up. This suggests that women aren't "taking men's places" in colleges -- they're simply flooding into college, while the proportion of men going to college has been more of a slowly rising tide. Among "traditional" college students (those under 24) from high-income families, men still slightly outnumber women. It's just that while older women are more willing to go back to school for a few years, many older men can't or won't leave the workforce to do so.
The AAUW of course has its politics. They sniff that there's no way there could be a war on boys because men still out-earn women, even controlling for years in the workforce, field of study and the like. Which is true. But girls were doing OK on tests compared with boys in 1992, too, and the AAUW still managed to put out a report then counting the number of times teachers called on kids who were raising their hands, the number of times boys blurted out answers and teachers acknowledged them, etc. If one used different stats, one could surely come up with a report that schools shortchanged boys. For instance, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and to be disciplined for causing problems in the classroom. The majority of elementary school teachers are women, and just as grown women often feel awkward in offices in which all the managers are male, boys can feel excluded in female-dominated environments that lack male role models.
That said, I don't think there's much to be gained from hunting for a war on one gender or another. No discovery of a war is going to help a kid read or do math. Our schools have lots of problems. Not least is that bright kids sit, bored to tears, in their classrooms because they're not allowed to move ahead. Kids breeze through tests and homework, not learning the joy of having to actually labor hard to understand something. That happens to girls and boys. We should see more studies on that.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
Last week, I went (with Scientific American) to Intel's International Science and Engineering Fair in Atlanta. I did a lot of live-blogging from the site, and I encourage you to visit the Scientific American website to read some of my postings.
My job there was to point out some of the more cool projects. Here at Gifted Exchange, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the whole science fair concept, and how bright children often encounter science these days.
On some level, the ISEF was a lot like a normal science fair. Everyone hung out in a giant hall in front of their tri-fold poster boards, which contained a lot of grainy photos of (often) a gloved hand pouring some liquid into a container. On the other hand, there were less props than you normally see at a science fair. Few plants. No vinegar volcanoes. With people traveling, and with strict rules, it's just easier not to put a pea plant on a table to indicate that you put certain compounds on said pea plant.
The students were often undertaking interesting experiments. They measured wave patterns in a tsunami simulation. They gave people spatial reasoning tests after they played Tetris (a concept I will write more about later). I was glad to see that a fair number of high school students are really interested in science. It makes you hopeful about the future.
On the other hand, was a certain humorous innocence to some of the projects. For instance, my editor, Ivan, blogged about an experiment in which a young lady photo-shopped pictures of her mother and her science teacher's husband to change various features, and then asked people who they would vote for for president. The results indicated that appearance did affect how people would vote but, on the other hand, what else were people going to choose on? They had no information about these candidates' platforms, history, etc. A much better experiment would create platforms and histories and rotate them through the photo-shopped candidates, all the while asking who people preferred. If you could see that even people who supported gun control were quite willing to vote for a gun-rights candidate with a stunning nose, you might reach the conclusion that people were more interested in nose appearance than they probably should be. But, of course, this is high school. I was reminded of my own science fair project once which looked at "Probability and Pascal's Triangle." I "discovered" that, when you toss x number of pennies a certain number of times, the number of times you get each quantity of heads does work out to look like Pascal's triangle. In other news, I hear that mixing vinegar and baking soda makes a volcano.
For all their re-discovery of the known, though, the good thing about science fairs is that they change science from a subject in which you memorize definitions for a test to a subject in which you think up questions and try to answer them. I suspected many of the students at ISEF did not actually think up their own questions. They worked with professors who suggested the problem; they had parents in the particular field they were looking at. But they did think through the investigations. Science fairs also give students hands-on experience with science. Some young people did experiments at home, others learned to use lab equipment -- a fun experience which no doubt keeps many people interested in research.
I also realized that certain schools make a point of teaching kids about lab research, and encouraging students to do independent research projects. The existence of science fairs like Intel's (and the Intel Science Talent Search, and the Davidson Fellowships) do dangle a carrot out there for schools and kids to leap after. What may be more amazing is -- given the scholarship money out there, and the prestige that comes to a school from having multiple winners, or even one -- is why more schools don't encourage this. All you have to do is free time up in the schedule, or schedule a research class, and hook people up with a local university. My own excellent high school -- the Indiana Academy -- required everyone to take a "research" class, but I recall no one actually winning anything major as a result.
But as college admissions becomes more competitive, I'm sure more schools will figure this out. It's all a little packaged, perhaps, but it does encourage kids to work hard, and spend their time on independent science projects. I'm curious about readers' experiences with science fair projects, and what your children have learned from making a tri-fold poster board display.
My job there was to point out some of the more cool projects. Here at Gifted Exchange, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the whole science fair concept, and how bright children often encounter science these days.
On some level, the ISEF was a lot like a normal science fair. Everyone hung out in a giant hall in front of their tri-fold poster boards, which contained a lot of grainy photos of (often) a gloved hand pouring some liquid into a container. On the other hand, there were less props than you normally see at a science fair. Few plants. No vinegar volcanoes. With people traveling, and with strict rules, it's just easier not to put a pea plant on a table to indicate that you put certain compounds on said pea plant.
The students were often undertaking interesting experiments. They measured wave patterns in a tsunami simulation. They gave people spatial reasoning tests after they played Tetris (a concept I will write more about later). I was glad to see that a fair number of high school students are really interested in science. It makes you hopeful about the future.
On the other hand, was a certain humorous innocence to some of the projects. For instance, my editor, Ivan, blogged about an experiment in which a young lady photo-shopped pictures of her mother and her science teacher's husband to change various features, and then asked people who they would vote for for president. The results indicated that appearance did affect how people would vote but, on the other hand, what else were people going to choose on? They had no information about these candidates' platforms, history, etc. A much better experiment would create platforms and histories and rotate them through the photo-shopped candidates, all the while asking who people preferred. If you could see that even people who supported gun control were quite willing to vote for a gun-rights candidate with a stunning nose, you might reach the conclusion that people were more interested in nose appearance than they probably should be. But, of course, this is high school. I was reminded of my own science fair project once which looked at "Probability and Pascal's Triangle." I "discovered" that, when you toss x number of pennies a certain number of times, the number of times you get each quantity of heads does work out to look like Pascal's triangle. In other news, I hear that mixing vinegar and baking soda makes a volcano.
For all their re-discovery of the known, though, the good thing about science fairs is that they change science from a subject in which you memorize definitions for a test to a subject in which you think up questions and try to answer them. I suspected many of the students at ISEF did not actually think up their own questions. They worked with professors who suggested the problem; they had parents in the particular field they were looking at. But they did think through the investigations. Science fairs also give students hands-on experience with science. Some young people did experiments at home, others learned to use lab equipment -- a fun experience which no doubt keeps many people interested in research.
I also realized that certain schools make a point of teaching kids about lab research, and encouraging students to do independent research projects. The existence of science fairs like Intel's (and the Intel Science Talent Search, and the Davidson Fellowships) do dangle a carrot out there for schools and kids to leap after. What may be more amazing is -- given the scholarship money out there, and the prestige that comes to a school from having multiple winners, or even one -- is why more schools don't encourage this. All you have to do is free time up in the schedule, or schedule a research class, and hook people up with a local university. My own excellent high school -- the Indiana Academy -- required everyone to take a "research" class, but I recall no one actually winning anything major as a result.
But as college admissions becomes more competitive, I'm sure more schools will figure this out. It's all a little packaged, perhaps, but it does encourage kids to work hard, and spend their time on independent science projects. I'm curious about readers' experiences with science fair projects, and what your children have learned from making a tri-fold poster board display.
Monday, May 12, 2008
New Scientific American Column: "Where Are They Now?"
A quick personal note that might interest some readers: I just started writing a new column for Scientific American called "Where Are They Now?" This series looks at former Westinghouse/Intel Science Talent Search finalists and winners, and what they're doing with their lives. We're starting with a couple this week, and the series will run weekly for awhile. The first one is on Roald Hoffmann, the 1981 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. I'll be live-blogging later this week from the Intel Science and Engineering Fair in Atlanta.
Precocity and potential are fascinating topics. It should surprise no one that some finalists (like Hoffmann) have made amazing discoveries that have garnered lots of attention. Others are more quietly advancing science, and others are not in the sciences at all, but are doing other things with their lives. This series will also investigate issues of building a scientific career, and how that's changed over time. So please come check it out!
Precocity and potential are fascinating topics. It should surprise no one that some finalists (like Hoffmann) have made amazing discoveries that have garnered lots of attention. Others are more quietly advancing science, and others are not in the sciences at all, but are doing other things with their lives. This series will also investigate issues of building a scientific career, and how that's changed over time. So please come check it out!
Brain Games
Hello- apologies for the long time since the last post. I was on vacation in Peru, which was a wonderful experience. Lima is bustling and busy, with the gorgeous Pacific ocean right there (leading to amazing ceviche!). Cusco, up in the highlands, shows off its snow-capped mountains. Out in the Andean countryside, there are llamas and alpacas, and women carrying babies in woven blankets on their backs. I could never get Jasper (who turns one this week, by the way) to stay in a sling, so I was impressed. The country is both poor in parts and rich in parts. It is thoroughly modern in places (like downtown Lima) but in small villages, the people don't even speak Spanish. They speak the native languages their ancestors spoke before the Spanish conquered the Incas, and pretty much live life as they always have too.
Anyway, one of the great things about travel is it forces your brain to work. You figure out Spanish words on signs, you figure out how to communicate when you don't share a language, and new experiences forge new connections in your brain. In other words, your brain gets a bit of exercise!
This concept has actually been in the news a lot lately. As our society ages, people are increasingly concerned about diseases such as Alzheimer's and the general deterioration of the brain as we age. A few studies have suggested that we can do a few things to preserve brain function. The most important is probably physical exercise. Living a creative life that forces you to think is another.
But there's not much obvious money to be made on those (well, there's a whole industry of commercial gyms, but most people don't go there for their brains!) So enterprising folks turn to another potential brain booster: brain games.
I've just spent the past half hour test driving an online brain game site called Happy Neuron. The company charges about $10 a month for access to 1500 hours of brain games that range from deciphering quotes when each letter is replaced by a certain symbol, to pairing letter-clusters together from a grid to make words. No sooner had I played this for a while (getting absolutely stumped that "me" and "li" could combine to make "lime")than I stopped by the Scientific American website, and saw an ad for another such site called Lumosity. This site also charges $10 a month, and like Happy Neuron, is backed by a team of psychologists and brain researchers.
I am sure there is a free site with similar games out there, and I'd love to hear about it. But anyway, the experience got me thinking. We don't spend much time as adults pondering whether we're challenged in given situations. We don't set aside seven hours a day or so to try to learn. Children have to go to school, and so we worry about whether they're reaching their potential, and whether their classes are meeting their needs. But we don't give much thought to whether adults are reaching their potential. I'm curious what readers of this blog do to keep their adult minds in the kind of tip-top shape that we expect of younger people.
Anyway, one of the great things about travel is it forces your brain to work. You figure out Spanish words on signs, you figure out how to communicate when you don't share a language, and new experiences forge new connections in your brain. In other words, your brain gets a bit of exercise!
This concept has actually been in the news a lot lately. As our society ages, people are increasingly concerned about diseases such as Alzheimer's and the general deterioration of the brain as we age. A few studies have suggested that we can do a few things to preserve brain function. The most important is probably physical exercise. Living a creative life that forces you to think is another.
But there's not much obvious money to be made on those (well, there's a whole industry of commercial gyms, but most people don't go there for their brains!) So enterprising folks turn to another potential brain booster: brain games.
I've just spent the past half hour test driving an online brain game site called Happy Neuron. The company charges about $10 a month for access to 1500 hours of brain games that range from deciphering quotes when each letter is replaced by a certain symbol, to pairing letter-clusters together from a grid to make words. No sooner had I played this for a while (getting absolutely stumped that "me" and "li" could combine to make "lime")than I stopped by the Scientific American website, and saw an ad for another such site called Lumosity. This site also charges $10 a month, and like Happy Neuron, is backed by a team of psychologists and brain researchers.
I am sure there is a free site with similar games out there, and I'd love to hear about it. But anyway, the experience got me thinking. We don't spend much time as adults pondering whether we're challenged in given situations. We don't set aside seven hours a day or so to try to learn. Children have to go to school, and so we worry about whether they're reaching their potential, and whether their classes are meeting their needs. But we don't give much thought to whether adults are reaching their potential. I'm curious what readers of this blog do to keep their adult minds in the kind of tip-top shape that we expect of younger people.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The SAT Prep Game
A few folks commented on the "Are 5% or 10% Gifted?" thread about the wisdom of giving people a previous year's version of a test before an assessment. Is it a good idea or not? Some worry it could affect results; others point out that savvy folks will always find a prep copy of a test, so best to give it to everyone.
There's no doubt that familiarity with a test format -- and studying material that will specifically be on a test -- can raise scores. I was thinking about that when I came across this item from Wired News on a new SAT Prep video game. (As they point out, with a market this big, what took so long?) A few years ago, I received a review copy of one of the first of a new genre of SAT Prep novels (see this link for the SparkNotes version; lots of companies do these now). SAT vocabulary words are spaced throughout the book, with definitions in footnotes, so you learn while reading. Of course, kids have always learned new words by reading, but this satisfies that parental urge to make sure no time is wasted learning unimportant words... (sigh).
Anyway, there's no doubt that a kid who plays the SAT prep video game, and reads the SAT prep books, and takes a Kaplan course, will have some advantage over someone with no familiarity with the test. But here's something to think about: the vast, vast majority of people who use these aids do not score a perfect 2400 on the SAT (that number still looks weird to me, I still think in terms of 1600!)
Why not? If the test can be gamed through these tools, why doesn't everyone ace it?
The reality is that -- for all the prepping -- tests like the SAT still measure your ability to solve problems quickly when faced with new information. Even if you've seen 1000 math problems before, you haven't seen this exact one. You haven't seen this exact reading passage, so you haven't been asked these specific questions. For all their flaws, standardized tests still measure your ability to synthesize information and think on your feet.
For this reason, I don't think the test prep industry changes things as much as it might - either for the SAT, or for other tests. The fairest thing to do is probably just what NYC did -- make sure everyone has a copy, and then see what happens.
There's no doubt that familiarity with a test format -- and studying material that will specifically be on a test -- can raise scores. I was thinking about that when I came across this item from Wired News on a new SAT Prep video game. (As they point out, with a market this big, what took so long?) A few years ago, I received a review copy of one of the first of a new genre of SAT Prep novels (see this link for the SparkNotes version; lots of companies do these now). SAT vocabulary words are spaced throughout the book, with definitions in footnotes, so you learn while reading. Of course, kids have always learned new words by reading, but this satisfies that parental urge to make sure no time is wasted learning unimportant words... (sigh).
Anyway, there's no doubt that a kid who plays the SAT prep video game, and reads the SAT prep books, and takes a Kaplan course, will have some advantage over someone with no familiarity with the test. But here's something to think about: the vast, vast majority of people who use these aids do not score a perfect 2400 on the SAT (that number still looks weird to me, I still think in terms of 1600!)
Why not? If the test can be gamed through these tools, why doesn't everyone ace it?
The reality is that -- for all the prepping -- tests like the SAT still measure your ability to solve problems quickly when faced with new information. Even if you've seen 1000 math problems before, you haven't seen this exact one. You haven't seen this exact reading passage, so you haven't been asked these specific questions. For all their flaws, standardized tests still measure your ability to synthesize information and think on your feet.
For this reason, I don't think the test prep industry changes things as much as it might - either for the SAT, or for other tests. The fairest thing to do is probably just what NYC did -- make sure everyone has a copy, and then see what happens.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Ability grouping may matter most for gifted black kids
While the national obsession with testing is often frustrating for teachers, students and parents alike, it does have a silver lining: We are now awash in data on student performance.
These data points are showing some interesting things. According to a recent article in Education Week (go to Edweek.org, then search for "Black-White Gap Widens Faster for High Achievers;" the URL is too long to type easily in Blogger), a series of papers presented at the American Education Research Association meeting this year showed that the achievement gap between high-scoring black and white students grows faster as these children progress through school than the gap between lower-scoring black and white students.
The results are pretty clear. The first study Ed Week mentions, by Sean Reardon, a professor of education and sociology at Stanford, analyzed the findings from the 7,000-student Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (which tracked kids from kindergarten to fifth grade). Reardon found that the black-white achievement gap grew twice as fast among students who scored above the mean as it did among those who scored below the mean. (A link to a PDF of the paper is included from the Ed Week site).
The second study, from economists Steven Rivkin and Erik Hanushek (incidentally, one of my personal favorite researchers), tracked 800,000 Texas children from 3rd grade through 8th grade. They grouped the children into four quartiles based on 3rd grade reading scores, and then compared later test results. They found that the higher the initial scores, the more the scores between black and white students diverged on later tests.
A third study, by Harvard researcher Lindsay Page, sheds a bit of light on these findings. She discovered that differences between schools, as opposed to within schools, contributed more to the black-white achievement gap in recent years. As she noted, "the cost in achievement to black students from attending racially segregated schools increased over the last three decades of the 20th century."
What does this mean? It's actually an important point. It's fashionable to lament that in schools with extensive ability grouping, white students are over-represented, and black students are under-represented, in the top tracks (for an example of one such lament, see this op-ed from doctoral student Beth Rhodes that ran recently in the Roanoke Times). But the reality is that, over the past 30 years, there has been almost no change in the proportion of black and white students actually attending the same schools in order to be unfairly transferred into certain tracks in the first place.
According to Page's study, between 1971 and 1999, the average white student attended a school that was 7-8% black, and the average black student attended a school that was about 60% black. For a variety of reasons -- too many to get into here -- Americans have largely maintained patterns of residential segregation, which then correspond to school segregation. Given recent Supreme Court decisions that limit circumstances in which schools can take race into account for enrollment, this is unlikely to change soon.
(I do want to add, though, that the issue is more complicated than people often think. Last year I had the pleasure of visiting Louisville's Central High School, a fairly strong school which has long played a prominent role in the city's African American community. In the midst of Louisville's desegregation push, Central was required to limit its enrollment to 50% black students, which required it turn down many neighborhood kids, kids whose parents had fond memories of Central, kids drawn to its special programs, etc., all because these kids were black. But the school had to take any white kid who walked in the door. A judge eventually said enough is enough and let its enrollment reflect the make-up of its application pool).
Anyway, Central High School's reasonable results aside, many predominantly black schools are plagued by poor discipline, bad teachers, low expectations, and have a high proportion of students whose families do not particularly value education. These schools often look less like safe, orderly Central, and more like Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in Newark, whose metal detectors and guards, one parent once told me, made the place seem harder to get into than an airport. At Shabazz, in 2007, only 14% of 11th graders passed the math section of New Jersey's High School Proficiency Assessment, which is required to graduate.
For a variety of lamentable reasons, the average academic performance at an average predominantly black school is lower than the average academic performance at a predominantly white school. This affects all children, but it affects one particular group in a particularly horrible way: gifted black students.
As Reardon notes, "the average black kindergarten student with a given level of math or reading skill attends a school with lower mean cognitive skill than the average similarly-skilled white kindergarten student. Initially high-skilled black students will be in schools where they are farther above the median student than similarly-skilled white students. If curriculum and instruction in schools are tailored to the median student in the school, then high skill black students will, on average, receive less challenging curriculum and instruction than their similar white peers, leading potentially to differential rates of achievement growth between such students."
This is a critical point. People who complain about racial disparities in ability-grouping within schools are talking about integrated schools. The majority of black students do not attend highly integrated schools. In an all-black school, it should go without saying that all the tracks, high to low, will be all-black.
And it turns out that creating those tracks may be more important than anyone previously realized. A student who scores at the 98th percentile on tests, who is forced to attend classes aimed at the 40th percentile day-in and day-out, will become frustrated and bored. She surely won't learn as much as she could in a class aimed at the 90th percentile. Would it surprise anyone if, two years hence, her test scores have fallen in comparison to those of a white student also attending a non-tracked class that's, nonetheless, aimed at a different median score?
As the Davidsons and I wrote in Genius Denied, "Foisting 'equality' to the exclusion of excellence on schools hurts bright children, but it does not hurt all bright children equally." Better-off, better-connected parents can make other arrangements when the public schools fail to challenge their gifted kids. Gifted minority kids, and gifted poor kids, are often stuck with the schools they get.
That's why gifted education is most important for these kids. "They don't deserve to be abandoned to boredom and underachievement to satisfy someone else's agenda," we wrote. These new studies show just how dangerous that abandonment truly is.
These data points are showing some interesting things. According to a recent article in Education Week (go to Edweek.org, then search for "Black-White Gap Widens Faster for High Achievers;" the URL is too long to type easily in Blogger), a series of papers presented at the American Education Research Association meeting this year showed that the achievement gap between high-scoring black and white students grows faster as these children progress through school than the gap between lower-scoring black and white students.
The results are pretty clear. The first study Ed Week mentions, by Sean Reardon, a professor of education and sociology at Stanford, analyzed the findings from the 7,000-student Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (which tracked kids from kindergarten to fifth grade). Reardon found that the black-white achievement gap grew twice as fast among students who scored above the mean as it did among those who scored below the mean. (A link to a PDF of the paper is included from the Ed Week site).
The second study, from economists Steven Rivkin and Erik Hanushek (incidentally, one of my personal favorite researchers), tracked 800,000 Texas children from 3rd grade through 8th grade. They grouped the children into four quartiles based on 3rd grade reading scores, and then compared later test results. They found that the higher the initial scores, the more the scores between black and white students diverged on later tests.
A third study, by Harvard researcher Lindsay Page, sheds a bit of light on these findings. She discovered that differences between schools, as opposed to within schools, contributed more to the black-white achievement gap in recent years. As she noted, "the cost in achievement to black students from attending racially segregated schools increased over the last three decades of the 20th century."
What does this mean? It's actually an important point. It's fashionable to lament that in schools with extensive ability grouping, white students are over-represented, and black students are under-represented, in the top tracks (for an example of one such lament, see this op-ed from doctoral student Beth Rhodes that ran recently in the Roanoke Times). But the reality is that, over the past 30 years, there has been almost no change in the proportion of black and white students actually attending the same schools in order to be unfairly transferred into certain tracks in the first place.
According to Page's study, between 1971 and 1999, the average white student attended a school that was 7-8% black, and the average black student attended a school that was about 60% black. For a variety of reasons -- too many to get into here -- Americans have largely maintained patterns of residential segregation, which then correspond to school segregation. Given recent Supreme Court decisions that limit circumstances in which schools can take race into account for enrollment, this is unlikely to change soon.
(I do want to add, though, that the issue is more complicated than people often think. Last year I had the pleasure of visiting Louisville's Central High School, a fairly strong school which has long played a prominent role in the city's African American community. In the midst of Louisville's desegregation push, Central was required to limit its enrollment to 50% black students, which required it turn down many neighborhood kids, kids whose parents had fond memories of Central, kids drawn to its special programs, etc., all because these kids were black. But the school had to take any white kid who walked in the door. A judge eventually said enough is enough and let its enrollment reflect the make-up of its application pool).
Anyway, Central High School's reasonable results aside, many predominantly black schools are plagued by poor discipline, bad teachers, low expectations, and have a high proportion of students whose families do not particularly value education. These schools often look less like safe, orderly Central, and more like Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in Newark, whose metal detectors and guards, one parent once told me, made the place seem harder to get into than an airport. At Shabazz, in 2007, only 14% of 11th graders passed the math section of New Jersey's High School Proficiency Assessment, which is required to graduate.
For a variety of lamentable reasons, the average academic performance at an average predominantly black school is lower than the average academic performance at a predominantly white school. This affects all children, but it affects one particular group in a particularly horrible way: gifted black students.
As Reardon notes, "the average black kindergarten student with a given level of math or reading skill attends a school with lower mean cognitive skill than the average similarly-skilled white kindergarten student. Initially high-skilled black students will be in schools where they are farther above the median student than similarly-skilled white students. If curriculum and instruction in schools are tailored to the median student in the school, then high skill black students will, on average, receive less challenging curriculum and instruction than their similar white peers, leading potentially to differential rates of achievement growth between such students."
This is a critical point. People who complain about racial disparities in ability-grouping within schools are talking about integrated schools. The majority of black students do not attend highly integrated schools. In an all-black school, it should go without saying that all the tracks, high to low, will be all-black.
And it turns out that creating those tracks may be more important than anyone previously realized. A student who scores at the 98th percentile on tests, who is forced to attend classes aimed at the 40th percentile day-in and day-out, will become frustrated and bored. She surely won't learn as much as she could in a class aimed at the 90th percentile. Would it surprise anyone if, two years hence, her test scores have fallen in comparison to those of a white student also attending a non-tracked class that's, nonetheless, aimed at a different median score?
As the Davidsons and I wrote in Genius Denied, "Foisting 'equality' to the exclusion of excellence on schools hurts bright children, but it does not hurt all bright children equally." Better-off, better-connected parents can make other arrangements when the public schools fail to challenge their gifted kids. Gifted minority kids, and gifted poor kids, are often stuck with the schools they get.
That's why gifted education is most important for these kids. "They don't deserve to be abandoned to boredom and underachievement to satisfy someone else's agenda," we wrote. These new studies show just how dangerous that abandonment truly is.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
NYC debates: Are top 5% or 10% gifted?
New York City has made a number of positive changes to its gifted programs recently. In the past, different districts had different standards, and the application process was far from standardized. This meant, inevitably, that more savvy parents were better able to navigate the system, and that being gifted meant something different in some districts than others. This year, all children were able to take a 2-test screen for giftedness, and anyone who scored in the top 5% (on a national scale) would be guaranteed a seat in a gifted program.
This was as fair and straightforward a way of assessing giftedness as possible. Using two tests enabled scorers to look at multiple data points, and since the two tested different things (one aimed to be more of an intelligence test, and one more of a school readiness test) the tests were supposed to give a more complete picture.
Unfortunately, the results didn't turn out the way many people in the city wanted. This article from the New York Times explains that only 1,637 of about 50,000 kindergarten and first grade applicants met the 5% cut-off. Currently there are 4,649 kindergarten and first grade children enrolled in the city's gifted programs.
Not only was the overall number lower than people expected, some districts didn't even produce enough top scorers to field a single full class. District 7 in the South Bronx, for instance, had only 5 children score above the 5% cut-off.
So what did the New York City schools do? To their credit, they didn't revert to the old standard whereby the definition of giftedness changed from district to district. Instead, they changed the definition of giftedness overall. Now, students who score in the top 10% on a national scale on the two tests will be eligible for a seat. This raises the total number to about 3,000, and produces a full class of 13 children in the South Bronx (even so, District 16 in Bed-Stuy will have only 5 children qualify under the 10% standard; last fall 34 children enrolled in gifted programs. Previously enrolled children are not affected by the new standard).
What can I say? There is no magic number that makes someone gifted. Ten percent is no more arbitrary than five. I think 10% is politically more difficult to defend than interventions for the top 0.1% kids who cannot be served in normal classroom environments. Many kids in the top 10% can be served in rigorous, regular school programs as long as they're ability-grouped to some extent. Or they can skip a grade and be served well in the next class up. The problem is that New York does not, as a general rule, have a lot of rigorous schools or grade skipping. So gifted education winds up filling this gap. Since they had the teachers, had the seats and had the budget, they choose to fill the programs, rather than re-jigger the whole concept.
What do you think, readers? Did New York City do the right thing?
This was as fair and straightforward a way of assessing giftedness as possible. Using two tests enabled scorers to look at multiple data points, and since the two tested different things (one aimed to be more of an intelligence test, and one more of a school readiness test) the tests were supposed to give a more complete picture.
Unfortunately, the results didn't turn out the way many people in the city wanted. This article from the New York Times explains that only 1,637 of about 50,000 kindergarten and first grade applicants met the 5% cut-off. Currently there are 4,649 kindergarten and first grade children enrolled in the city's gifted programs.
Not only was the overall number lower than people expected, some districts didn't even produce enough top scorers to field a single full class. District 7 in the South Bronx, for instance, had only 5 children score above the 5% cut-off.
So what did the New York City schools do? To their credit, they didn't revert to the old standard whereby the definition of giftedness changed from district to district. Instead, they changed the definition of giftedness overall. Now, students who score in the top 10% on a national scale on the two tests will be eligible for a seat. This raises the total number to about 3,000, and produces a full class of 13 children in the South Bronx (even so, District 16 in Bed-Stuy will have only 5 children qualify under the 10% standard; last fall 34 children enrolled in gifted programs. Previously enrolled children are not affected by the new standard).
What can I say? There is no magic number that makes someone gifted. Ten percent is no more arbitrary than five. I think 10% is politically more difficult to defend than interventions for the top 0.1% kids who cannot be served in normal classroom environments. Many kids in the top 10% can be served in rigorous, regular school programs as long as they're ability-grouped to some extent. Or they can skip a grade and be served well in the next class up. The problem is that New York does not, as a general rule, have a lot of rigorous schools or grade skipping. So gifted education winds up filling this gap. Since they had the teachers, had the seats and had the budget, they choose to fill the programs, rather than re-jigger the whole concept.
What do you think, readers? Did New York City do the right thing?
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Alleged Engineering Shortfall
This morning's Wall Street Journal op-ed page Notable & Quotable section contained an interesting excerpt from education reporter Jay Matthews' current Wilson Quarterly article on US schools and the US economy.
It's no secret that American schools are not producing as many top-rated engineers, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists and the like as our economy requires. However, Matthews points out that perhaps our statistics on the engineering gap are, dare I say it, more evidence of our problem with math.
Article after article (and the US Dept of Education) has noted that China turns out 600,000 engineers a year, and India 350,000. The US? Just 70,000. However, the China numbers come from the China Statistical Yearbook, a government publication which seems to be exaggerating. As Matthews notes, a later McKinsey Global Institute report found that about half of those engineers would be considered mere technicians in the US. The 350,000 in India figure -- originally calculated by Fortune magazine -- has not been reproduced, and the NSF claims it's likely lower.
A 2005 Duke report, apparently, found that the US graduates 137,437 engineers with at least a bachelor's degree a year. India cranks out 112,000, and China 351,537. Yes, that Chinese number is higher, but China's population is well over three times that of the US. A Washington Post article quoted educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey as saying that "That's more U.S. degrees per million residents than in either other nation."
The point is not that the US shouldn't be concerned about our supply of engineers. My guess is that American colleges are cranking out more "recreation" or "leisure" studies majors than top-notch engineering graduates.
But those of us who write about education should be careful not to use hyperbole when we don't need to. The truth is, a lot of the talk about losing our scientific edge amounts to concerns about how immigration has changed. These days, top scientists may come to the US for a while, get a green card, and then move around between the US and their home countries in a more circular fashion. This is a trend in the internationalization of science, and needs to be discussed in its own right, rather than relying too much on national numbers (though they do look good in op-eds!)
It's no secret that American schools are not producing as many top-rated engineers, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists and the like as our economy requires. However, Matthews points out that perhaps our statistics on the engineering gap are, dare I say it, more evidence of our problem with math.
Article after article (and the US Dept of Education) has noted that China turns out 600,000 engineers a year, and India 350,000. The US? Just 70,000. However, the China numbers come from the China Statistical Yearbook, a government publication which seems to be exaggerating. As Matthews notes, a later McKinsey Global Institute report found that about half of those engineers would be considered mere technicians in the US. The 350,000 in India figure -- originally calculated by Fortune magazine -- has not been reproduced, and the NSF claims it's likely lower.
A 2005 Duke report, apparently, found that the US graduates 137,437 engineers with at least a bachelor's degree a year. India cranks out 112,000, and China 351,537. Yes, that Chinese number is higher, but China's population is well over three times that of the US. A Washington Post article quoted educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey as saying that "That's more U.S. degrees per million residents than in either other nation."
The point is not that the US shouldn't be concerned about our supply of engineers. My guess is that American colleges are cranking out more "recreation" or "leisure" studies majors than top-notch engineering graduates.
But those of us who write about education should be careful not to use hyperbole when we don't need to. The truth is, a lot of the talk about losing our scientific edge amounts to concerns about how immigration has changed. These days, top scientists may come to the US for a while, get a green card, and then move around between the US and their home countries in a more circular fashion. This is a trend in the internationalization of science, and needs to be discussed in its own right, rather than relying too much on national numbers (though they do look good in op-eds!)
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
New Jersey Governor's School... RIP?
For the past two years we've been following the saga of New Jersey's Governor's School. Every summer, this program allowed the state's brightest high school students to attend one of several programs (in the arts, engineering, sciences) free of charge. The programs allowed kids to meet other kids who shared their interests, spend the summer doing something productive, do "real" lab work or work with professional musicians, etc. Historically such programs (which exist in at least 17 states) have been free of charge in order to draw kids from all backgrounds. Many families do not have the disposable income necessary to pay for multi-week camps, particularly if there are multiple children in the family. They may not necessarily be poor (in which case other scholarships for summer camps may become available) but they are not well-off enough to afford the $5,000 or more a month-long camp could cost.
A little over two years ago, New Jersey decided that -- given the limitations that are always a factor in any public budget -- Governor's School would go on the chopping block. Alums and state luminaries who were alarmed by all this quickly raised enough money to keep the programs open for the summer of 2006.
Unfortunately, this temporary reprieve has been just that: temporary. Two years later, Governor's School is still largely out of the state budget. Many of the original large corporate donors have moved on. They gave money initially because of personal connections, but their larger mission is not the education of bright children, so ongoing gifts do not make sense for them. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for instance, gave $652,000 in 2006, but nothing in 2007 or 2008. Sovereign Bank gave $200,000 in 2006, but nothing in 2007 or 2008. Since the Governor's School Board has not been able to raise enough private money during the budget limbo, they are scaling back programs considerably. GS Arts will be 10 days instead of longer. GS Engineering requires a longer project, so it will cut slots (possibly to 40 from 100).
People can certainly quibble over whether the state should be paying for special summer programs for bright children (though it pays for remedial summer school). But what's particularly fascinating is that New Jersey is a very wealthy state. Most other states with Governor's Schools are not nearly so wealthy. And yet, they still support most or all of their Governor's School projects with state funds. Arkansas and West Virginia, for instance, fund 100% publicly. Even Louisiana, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, funds more than 50% of its Governor's School out of state funds.
One can only assume that the New Jersey powers-that-be have decided that all smart kids are rich, and hence their families should pay for any additional education they think they need beyond the 180 days a year the state allots them in their local public schools. It's an interesting theory. Anyone who's met extremely bright kids knows it's false, but unfortunately, the middle-class status of most works against them. They're not well off enough to afford private summer schools, but not bad off enough to attract corporate philanthropy or government largesse that seeks to target the "underprivileged." The result is the decline of an institution that once made New Jersey proud.
A little over two years ago, New Jersey decided that -- given the limitations that are always a factor in any public budget -- Governor's School would go on the chopping block. Alums and state luminaries who were alarmed by all this quickly raised enough money to keep the programs open for the summer of 2006.
Unfortunately, this temporary reprieve has been just that: temporary. Two years later, Governor's School is still largely out of the state budget. Many of the original large corporate donors have moved on. They gave money initially because of personal connections, but their larger mission is not the education of bright children, so ongoing gifts do not make sense for them. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for instance, gave $652,000 in 2006, but nothing in 2007 or 2008. Sovereign Bank gave $200,000 in 2006, but nothing in 2007 or 2008. Since the Governor's School Board has not been able to raise enough private money during the budget limbo, they are scaling back programs considerably. GS Arts will be 10 days instead of longer. GS Engineering requires a longer project, so it will cut slots (possibly to 40 from 100).
People can certainly quibble over whether the state should be paying for special summer programs for bright children (though it pays for remedial summer school). But what's particularly fascinating is that New Jersey is a very wealthy state. Most other states with Governor's Schools are not nearly so wealthy. And yet, they still support most or all of their Governor's School projects with state funds. Arkansas and West Virginia, for instance, fund 100% publicly. Even Louisiana, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, funds more than 50% of its Governor's School out of state funds.
One can only assume that the New Jersey powers-that-be have decided that all smart kids are rich, and hence their families should pay for any additional education they think they need beyond the 180 days a year the state allots them in their local public schools. It's an interesting theory. Anyone who's met extremely bright kids knows it's false, but unfortunately, the middle-class status of most works against them. They're not well off enough to afford private summer schools, but not bad off enough to attract corporate philanthropy or government largesse that seeks to target the "underprivileged." The result is the decline of an institution that once made New Jersey proud.
Friday, April 04, 2008
More on Smaller Class Sizes
Given that class size reduction is a key (and costly) component of many school reform efforts, I'm happy to see that it's being studied extensively. In the past few weeks, we've looked at a study from Kenya that showed that class size reduction is most effective when accompanied by ability grouping, and a rehash of the Tennessee STAR study that found that smaller classes benefit higher-achieving students more than lower-achieving students.
Now, a new study looking at schools in four countries (US, UK, Hong Kong and Switzerland) asks another question. If we assume that small classes are better for kids (which, I want to stress again, has not been proved conclusively -- it is very hard to isolate variables), why would we suppose that would be? Is it because teachers teach differently when they have smaller classes? Or is it because students behave differently in small classes?
According to research presented at the American Education Research Association conference in late March (and written up in this article in USA Today), it's not the former. In small classes, many teachers continue to teach as though they still have a large class. They make presentations that don't necessarily involve the students; they don't demonstrate what the students themselves will then do. But the students themselves spend more time on task. It seems that teachers are better able to maintain control in smaller classes, and so more time is spent on learning, and the students are able to spend more time engaged with the teacher than they are in larger classes.
It's a tricky issue. Perhaps if teachers were trained to better leverage their smaller classes, then small classes would result in more benefits. But it's hard to know. The article notes that in two of the four countries studied, the results were inconclusive. Indeed, some countries with the best academic results have the largest classes! This article (and chart, about halfway down) shows that while we quibble over whether classes have 20 or 25 pupils, in South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan (high scorers all), class size averages over 30 students.
My own opinion? From what I've seen of various studies, I'm currently thinking that teacher quality and (much harder to control) student quality matter most. By "student quality" I mean kids coming to school ready to learn, well-fed, well-rested and safe, and firmly ensconced in a culture that values education. After that, ability grouping is probably the most important factor. After that, class size. So yes, we can spend billions to make classes smaller. But paying brilliant teachers $150,000 a year and removing any teacher who can't keep up is probably a better idea, even if it means class sizes of 30 or more.
Now, a new study looking at schools in four countries (US, UK, Hong Kong and Switzerland) asks another question. If we assume that small classes are better for kids (which, I want to stress again, has not been proved conclusively -- it is very hard to isolate variables), why would we suppose that would be? Is it because teachers teach differently when they have smaller classes? Or is it because students behave differently in small classes?
According to research presented at the American Education Research Association conference in late March (and written up in this article in USA Today), it's not the former. In small classes, many teachers continue to teach as though they still have a large class. They make presentations that don't necessarily involve the students; they don't demonstrate what the students themselves will then do. But the students themselves spend more time on task. It seems that teachers are better able to maintain control in smaller classes, and so more time is spent on learning, and the students are able to spend more time engaged with the teacher than they are in larger classes.
It's a tricky issue. Perhaps if teachers were trained to better leverage their smaller classes, then small classes would result in more benefits. But it's hard to know. The article notes that in two of the four countries studied, the results were inconclusive. Indeed, some countries with the best academic results have the largest classes! This article (and chart, about halfway down) shows that while we quibble over whether classes have 20 or 25 pupils, in South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan (high scorers all), class size averages over 30 students.
My own opinion? From what I've seen of various studies, I'm currently thinking that teacher quality and (much harder to control) student quality matter most. By "student quality" I mean kids coming to school ready to learn, well-fed, well-rested and safe, and firmly ensconced in a culture that values education. After that, ability grouping is probably the most important factor. After that, class size. So yes, we can spend billions to make classes smaller. But paying brilliant teachers $150,000 a year and removing any teacher who can't keep up is probably a better idea, even if it means class sizes of 30 or more.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Reducing Class Size May Increase Learning Gap
Ever since the first battle over passing No Child Left Behind, there's been a lot of discussion about closing the achievement gap between children of higher and lower socioeconomic status in schools. It appears quite possible that Congress will not reauthorize the bill. While this won't be the end of frequent testing and accountability as a way to close the achievement gap, people will definitely be throwing out other new ideas as well.
One popular one is the idea of reducing class sizes in the early grades. The oft-cited Tennessee STAR study, which randomly assigned thousands of young children to smaller or larger classes, found that children in general achieved better test scores when they were assigned to smaller classes. Other studies have cast some doubt on this finding, but for purposes of argument, let's say it's true.
Here's the thinking: children of lower socioeconomic status often arrive at school without a lot of the school preparation middle class families take for granted. Kids and parents may not necessarily read together. Kids might not know letters and numbers. Intuitively, it seems like giving the less-prepared kids more time and attention from teachers -- in smaller classes -- might help them catch up.
But this turns out not to be the case. According to a new look at the STAR study by Northwestern professor Spyros Konstantopoulos in March's Elementary School Journal, smaller classes do boost all students' achievement levels, but they also increase the achievement gap. It turns out that smaller class sizes benefit high achievers more than lower achievers. So while all students do better, high achievers do much better, and lower achievers do a little better.
It's not clear why this would be, but it complicates the "small class size" argument. Since we know that reducing class size and tracking by ability increases test scores more than simply reducing class size alone (see the Kenyan study from a few weeks ago) it's possible that ability grouping could help close the achievement gap. But perhaps not -- one would have to test all these variables at the same time.
Personally, I think it's more important that everyone do better than that you close the achievement gap, but not everyone thinks that way. For instance, many politicians and others lament the "growing gap between the rich and poor" at every opportunity, even though almost everyone in the US is better off materially than they were 50 years ago. Sometimes people view relative position as more important than absolute position, and so we will see how the education community interprets these latest results. Anyway, it's food for thought.
One popular one is the idea of reducing class sizes in the early grades. The oft-cited Tennessee STAR study, which randomly assigned thousands of young children to smaller or larger classes, found that children in general achieved better test scores when they were assigned to smaller classes. Other studies have cast some doubt on this finding, but for purposes of argument, let's say it's true.
Here's the thinking: children of lower socioeconomic status often arrive at school without a lot of the school preparation middle class families take for granted. Kids and parents may not necessarily read together. Kids might not know letters and numbers. Intuitively, it seems like giving the less-prepared kids more time and attention from teachers -- in smaller classes -- might help them catch up.
But this turns out not to be the case. According to a new look at the STAR study by Northwestern professor Spyros Konstantopoulos in March's Elementary School Journal, smaller classes do boost all students' achievement levels, but they also increase the achievement gap. It turns out that smaller class sizes benefit high achievers more than lower achievers. So while all students do better, high achievers do much better, and lower achievers do a little better.
It's not clear why this would be, but it complicates the "small class size" argument. Since we know that reducing class size and tracking by ability increases test scores more than simply reducing class size alone (see the Kenyan study from a few weeks ago) it's possible that ability grouping could help close the achievement gap. But perhaps not -- one would have to test all these variables at the same time.
Personally, I think it's more important that everyone do better than that you close the achievement gap, but not everyone thinks that way. For instance, many politicians and others lament the "growing gap between the rich and poor" at every opportunity, even though almost everyone in the US is better off materially than they were 50 years ago. Sometimes people view relative position as more important than absolute position, and so we will see how the education community interprets these latest results. Anyway, it's food for thought.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Tuition Game
I have a column in today's USA Today called "The Tuition Game." The piece talks about recent big changes in financial aid at some elite colleges, and the self-help requirement. My point is basically that -- given the size of endowments at elite universities these days, and their newly generous aid packages -- it's interesting that these colleges still drum students themselves for token contributions. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., all require that kids on financial aid work 7-12 hours per week, and often over the summer, to contribute financially to their own education.
Let me say right up front that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. One of the reasons I think kids don't take high school so seriously is they don't have to work to pay for it. I fully approve of kids working while going to college. But given that elite colleges don't need the money a kid working 10 hours a week will cough up, it's important to realize that this is a philosophical choice more than anything else. Elite colleges believe that kids on financial aid should work in the cafeteria, answer phones at the campus center, deliver newspapers, or whatever other jobs are available on campus in order to earn their keep.
But if Harvard, Yale, and the others believe it's good for kids on aid to work to pay for their education, why don't they think all kids should work for their education? One of the biggest benefits of an elite education is the connections you forge with classmates during non-class hours. If kids on aid are working all the time, and wealthier kids are not, it contributes to an already-too-prevalent class divide on elite campuses.
I'd like to see these elite colleges require everyone to work to earn their keep. There's no reason not to; tuition represents only about 60% of the cost of a student's education at private universities, so every student is -- to some degree-- on financial aid. I see no reason that there should be a distinction between kids on obvious financial aid and those on less obvious aid. Furthermore, private colleges can ask for whatever they want. They could require all students to learn origami for graduation if they felt like it. You can always go elsewhere.
For an example of a college that does have a work requirement, I highlight Berea College in Kentucky. This fascinating institution has less of a class divide issue because, well, all students are from families earning less than about $50,000 a year. The college charges no tuition, and to keep costs low, asks all students to work what comes out to about 10-15 hours a week. Berea administrators have found that this requirement boosts community and keeps students academically engaged. On the whole, I think those are pretty good outcomes.
Let me say right up front that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. One of the reasons I think kids don't take high school so seriously is they don't have to work to pay for it. I fully approve of kids working while going to college. But given that elite colleges don't need the money a kid working 10 hours a week will cough up, it's important to realize that this is a philosophical choice more than anything else. Elite colleges believe that kids on financial aid should work in the cafeteria, answer phones at the campus center, deliver newspapers, or whatever other jobs are available on campus in order to earn their keep.
But if Harvard, Yale, and the others believe it's good for kids on aid to work to pay for their education, why don't they think all kids should work for their education? One of the biggest benefits of an elite education is the connections you forge with classmates during non-class hours. If kids on aid are working all the time, and wealthier kids are not, it contributes to an already-too-prevalent class divide on elite campuses.
I'd like to see these elite colleges require everyone to work to earn their keep. There's no reason not to; tuition represents only about 60% of the cost of a student's education at private universities, so every student is -- to some degree-- on financial aid. I see no reason that there should be a distinction between kids on obvious financial aid and those on less obvious aid. Furthermore, private colleges can ask for whatever they want. They could require all students to learn origami for graduation if they felt like it. You can always go elsewhere.
For an example of a college that does have a work requirement, I highlight Berea College in Kentucky. This fascinating institution has less of a class divide issue because, well, all students are from families earning less than about $50,000 a year. The college charges no tuition, and to keep costs low, asks all students to work what comes out to about 10-15 hours a week. Berea administrators have found that this requirement boosts community and keeps students academically engaged. On the whole, I think those are pretty good outcomes.
Monday, March 24, 2008
A birthday party for a budding scientist
I subscribe to a rather humorous number of magazines, one of which, Cookie, is extremely humorous in its own right. Written for a small, urban demographic of well-to-do moms, it's full of tips on taking your kids to Sweden, dressing them in Kenneth Cole, and sporting Tod's or Chanel rain boots yourself when school drop-off time looks like it will be a bit overcast.
Of course, moms who take the kids to Sweden will not be content to merely send the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for a birthday party. They want something a little more fun, authentic, and possibly educational. Which leads me to the way-cool "Good Chemistry" birthday party idea featured in the April issue, which even families who aren't into Chanel rain boots will enjoy.
We start with the outfits. Cookie recommends handing out safety glasses ($6 from stevespanglerscience.com) and lab coats ($24 with embroidered names from labwear.com). Kids can sip juice from flasks ($3.50 from homesciencetools.com). They can also eat Jell-O made in Petri dishes ($5.50 for 20 from homesciencetools.com). As Cookie explains, "Jell-O is a scientific wonder in itself...gelatin powder is made of long molecule chains. When you add hot water, those chains break. But as the mixture cools, the molecules rebond around pockets of water, resulting in that wiggly consistency."
No lab party is complete without goo and other crazy substances, so Cookie recommends setting up three "experiments." The first involves making snow from polymers that expand in liquid (purchase Insta-Snow Powder from stevespanglerscience.com). You can also make slime -- a non-Newtonian fluid which can behave like both a liquid and a solid -- from the Atomic Shaker Slime kit (also from stevespanlerscience.com). To make test-tube lava lamps, order jumbo test tubes from the same Steve Spangler Science, and fill halfway with water, and halfway with vegetable oil (perhaps squeezed from wash bottles; $2.25 each at homesciencetools.com). Drop in Alka-Seltzer and food coloring and watch what happens.
A little over a year ago on this blog, we discussed the decline of home chemistry sets. Many scientists got their start by blowing things up in their garages, something that -- in this age of liability and worries about crystal meth labs -- is becoming increasingly rare. I'm not saying that you need strong oxidizers to make a good party, and certainly making goo isn't particularly intense as science lessons go. But kids don't get to do much hands-on these days in school, and there's always this idea that science is this strange, slightly dangerous foreign thing. A birthday party like this makes it cool. So kudos to Cookie for sharing the idea.
Of course, moms who take the kids to Sweden will not be content to merely send the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for a birthday party. They want something a little more fun, authentic, and possibly educational. Which leads me to the way-cool "Good Chemistry" birthday party idea featured in the April issue, which even families who aren't into Chanel rain boots will enjoy.
We start with the outfits. Cookie recommends handing out safety glasses ($6 from stevespanglerscience.com) and lab coats ($24 with embroidered names from labwear.com). Kids can sip juice from flasks ($3.50 from homesciencetools.com). They can also eat Jell-O made in Petri dishes ($5.50 for 20 from homesciencetools.com). As Cookie explains, "Jell-O is a scientific wonder in itself...gelatin powder is made of long molecule chains. When you add hot water, those chains break. But as the mixture cools, the molecules rebond around pockets of water, resulting in that wiggly consistency."
No lab party is complete without goo and other crazy substances, so Cookie recommends setting up three "experiments." The first involves making snow from polymers that expand in liquid (purchase Insta-Snow Powder from stevespanglerscience.com). You can also make slime -- a non-Newtonian fluid which can behave like both a liquid and a solid -- from the Atomic Shaker Slime kit (also from stevespanlerscience.com). To make test-tube lava lamps, order jumbo test tubes from the same Steve Spangler Science, and fill halfway with water, and halfway with vegetable oil (perhaps squeezed from wash bottles; $2.25 each at homesciencetools.com). Drop in Alka-Seltzer and food coloring and watch what happens.
A little over a year ago on this blog, we discussed the decline of home chemistry sets. Many scientists got their start by blowing things up in their garages, something that -- in this age of liability and worries about crystal meth labs -- is becoming increasingly rare. I'm not saying that you need strong oxidizers to make a good party, and certainly making goo isn't particularly intense as science lessons go. But kids don't get to do much hands-on these days in school, and there's always this idea that science is this strange, slightly dangerous foreign thing. A birthday party like this makes it cool. So kudos to Cookie for sharing the idea.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Intel, part 2
An article in the New York Times from two weeks ago confirms that contests such as the Intel Science Talent Search actually do inspire high schools to beef up their science offerings -- including their laboratory offerings. One might expect this in top-notch districts with buckets of extra money. But, in fact, Intel is even sparking such a renaissance in less well-to-do districts. You can read the article, "A Science Prodigy in an Unlikely Place," here.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Seeking Intel/Westinghouse Winners and Finalists
Last week, Intel and the Society for Science and the Public announced the winners of the 2008 Intel Talent Search. You can read the announcement here.
(A few of these folks are familiar faces to those who have been following the Davidson Fellows awards over the past few years. First place winner Shivani Sud was a 2006 Davidson Fellow Laureate, and second place winner Graham Van Schaik was a 2007 Davidson Fellow who received a $10,000 award).
Over the past several years, awards like Intel and Davidson have changed the name of the game when it comes to high school science projects. Suffice to say, the vinegar and baking soda volcano won't cut it anymore... The existence of these awards creates incentives for high school students to do independent lab-based research. Hopefully many will leverage the experience to continue in science research-based careers.
Which leads me to my main point on this blog post -- what are former Intel (or Westinghouse, who used to sponsor the competition) winners up to these days? I suppose some are in science. Some are probably working in finance or consulting. Some are probably caring for children, and some are doing other things. The Society for Science and the Public website lists the winners back to 1998, but I suspect that -- academic training taking as long as it does these days -- many of these folks are still in school. I would love to track down some Westinghouse winners from earlier days. What have they learned about building a scientific career after their initial success? What are the joys and woes of science -- or if they left science, why did they do so? What advice would they give to young scientists? What was good and bad about the way they learned science in school?
If anyone has any information on finding former winners and finalists, or if you are one, please email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. Thanks!
(A few of these folks are familiar faces to those who have been following the Davidson Fellows awards over the past few years. First place winner Shivani Sud was a 2006 Davidson Fellow Laureate, and second place winner Graham Van Schaik was a 2007 Davidson Fellow who received a $10,000 award).
Over the past several years, awards like Intel and Davidson have changed the name of the game when it comes to high school science projects. Suffice to say, the vinegar and baking soda volcano won't cut it anymore... The existence of these awards creates incentives for high school students to do independent lab-based research. Hopefully many will leverage the experience to continue in science research-based careers.
Which leads me to my main point on this blog post -- what are former Intel (or Westinghouse, who used to sponsor the competition) winners up to these days? I suppose some are in science. Some are probably working in finance or consulting. Some are probably caring for children, and some are doing other things. The Society for Science and the Public website lists the winners back to 1998, but I suspect that -- academic training taking as long as it does these days -- many of these folks are still in school. I would love to track down some Westinghouse winners from earlier days. What have they learned about building a scientific career after their initial success? What are the joys and woes of science -- or if they left science, why did they do so? What advice would they give to young scientists? What was good and bad about the way they learned science in school?
If anyone has any information on finding former winners and finalists, or if you are one, please email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. Thanks!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tracking: The Kenyan Experience
"Tracking," or "Ability Grouping," or "Readiness Grouping" as we sometimes call it here, is a controversial subject. While most schools engage in it to some extent (at least for reading groups and math), many educators aren't entirely comfortable with its broad use. The "diamond in the rough" concept is deeply ingrained in the American imagination, and people worry that an unpolished kid consigned to the Vo-Tech track will be forever limited in his achievements by the distinction.
So I'm always interested to see studies that examine whether tracking has a negative effect on children assigned to the "slower" track. The answer, according to one recent study of Kenyan school children, is a resounding no. In fact, not only do students in both higher and lower tracks do better on tests than their peers in heterogeneous classrooms, the teachers are actually more likely to show up for class.
This fascinating finding is part of a larger study looking at all sorts of school reform ideas that occasionally gain followings here in the US as well. For instance, in Kenya, reducing class size in and of itself did not boost test scores (though to be fair, the reduction was from 80 students to 40 per teacher -- a reduction to, say, 15, might have produced more results). However, reducing class size, coupled with instituting a 2-track system, raised test scores by 0.25 to 0.31 standard deviations, and not just in the upper track. "Both lower and higher achieving students benefited from tracking," the paper notes. Indeed, students in the lower track were more likely to be promoted to the next grade than their peers in the non-tracked classrooms.
The paper also puts to rest a worry about kids right on the dividing line between tracks. Students who scored in the 5th or 6th deciles (meaning the margin of error on their scores could have put them in either track) improved equally well whichever track they were assigned to, compared with their heterogeneously grouped peers. "The average quality of peers does not appear to matter, while homogeneity does," the authors write.
Perhaps one of the reasons kids learned more in the tracked classes is that the teachers actually showed up in the classrooms more often. From the data in the study, it sounds like Kenya has a reasonable problem with absenteeism in its schools. But civil service teachers were 8.6 percentage points more likely to be in class teaching in tracked schools than in non-tracked schools. "One interpretation is that teaching is easier and thus more pleasant when students have less heterogeneous levels of academic preparation," the authors postulate.
As we've discussed on this blog before, excellent, professional, brilliant teachers can teach a class of kids at various levels, and achieve great results for most of them. Unfortunately, excellent, professional, brilliant teachers are not as numerous as we might like for a variety of reasons including pay, training, working conditions, etc. Merely decent teachers have a harder time teaching kids whose readiness levels span the full bell curve. Teaching kids of vastly differing levels is frustrating and exhausting. In Kenya, the response is to not show up. In American schools, the result can be disengagement and mediocre results.
All of which leads me to this conclusion: It's one thing for de-trackers to talk about some ideal world where our learning communities are little democracies where students learn collaboratively and bring along slower learners out of a sense of shared responsibility. But most of us live in the real world. And the reality is that tracking fails better. If you get a mediocre teacher, you can still get OK results. That's what the Kenyan experiment found.
So I'm always interested to see studies that examine whether tracking has a negative effect on children assigned to the "slower" track. The answer, according to one recent study of Kenyan school children, is a resounding no. In fact, not only do students in both higher and lower tracks do better on tests than their peers in heterogeneous classrooms, the teachers are actually more likely to show up for class.
This fascinating finding is part of a larger study looking at all sorts of school reform ideas that occasionally gain followings here in the US as well. For instance, in Kenya, reducing class size in and of itself did not boost test scores (though to be fair, the reduction was from 80 students to 40 per teacher -- a reduction to, say, 15, might have produced more results). However, reducing class size, coupled with instituting a 2-track system, raised test scores by 0.25 to 0.31 standard deviations, and not just in the upper track. "Both lower and higher achieving students benefited from tracking," the paper notes. Indeed, students in the lower track were more likely to be promoted to the next grade than their peers in the non-tracked classrooms.
The paper also puts to rest a worry about kids right on the dividing line between tracks. Students who scored in the 5th or 6th deciles (meaning the margin of error on their scores could have put them in either track) improved equally well whichever track they were assigned to, compared with their heterogeneously grouped peers. "The average quality of peers does not appear to matter, while homogeneity does," the authors write.
Perhaps one of the reasons kids learned more in the tracked classes is that the teachers actually showed up in the classrooms more often. From the data in the study, it sounds like Kenya has a reasonable problem with absenteeism in its schools. But civil service teachers were 8.6 percentage points more likely to be in class teaching in tracked schools than in non-tracked schools. "One interpretation is that teaching is easier and thus more pleasant when students have less heterogeneous levels of academic preparation," the authors postulate.
As we've discussed on this blog before, excellent, professional, brilliant teachers can teach a class of kids at various levels, and achieve great results for most of them. Unfortunately, excellent, professional, brilliant teachers are not as numerous as we might like for a variety of reasons including pay, training, working conditions, etc. Merely decent teachers have a harder time teaching kids whose readiness levels span the full bell curve. Teaching kids of vastly differing levels is frustrating and exhausting. In Kenya, the response is to not show up. In American schools, the result can be disengagement and mediocre results.
All of which leads me to this conclusion: It's one thing for de-trackers to talk about some ideal world where our learning communities are little democracies where students learn collaboratively and bring along slower learners out of a sense of shared responsibility. But most of us live in the real world. And the reality is that tracking fails better. If you get a mediocre teacher, you can still get OK results. That's what the Kenyan experiment found.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Math Doesn't Suck!
So this week I found myself reading actress and mathematician Danica McKellar's new book, Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail. I am not entirely sure what to think of it.
The cheery blue cover (and cute photo of the lovely Ms. McKellar, of Wonder Years and West Wing fame) bears a striking resemblance to Teen magazine. Cover lines scream "Are you a math-o-phobe? Take this quiz!" "Horoscope inside!" and "Do you still have a crush on him?" This last line is somewhat misleading; there is very little about crushes covered in this book. The crush reference comes from an intro to the Greatest Common Factor section, in which McKellar notes that often times, it seems like you have a crush on one guy and then...a few months later you have a crush on another guy who actually has a lot in common with the first guy. OHMIGOD!! This is kind of like math, because numbers have a lot of factors in common too and...
Math Doesn't Suck continues on in this fashion as it covers decimals and percents, fractions, basic algebra, etc. There are various drawings and notes interspersed throughout; repeated "What Do You Have to Say?" text boxes contain such assurances as "Smart girls are cool. They are generally fun to be around and good to have conversations with," -- Mackenzie, 19.
Overall, the book is fun and, as UCLA math prof Veeravalli Varadarajan notes on the back cover, "A brilliant and successful effort to bring a little glamour to the teaching of mathematics." There's nothing wrong with trying to make math accessible and interesting to girls. Math Doesn't Suck explains the reasoning behind problems and why these concepts make sense in the real world.
But there are also a few problems with this book. The biggie for me is... this is middle school math? One of the reasons we're so far behind other nations mathematically is that 7th and 8th graders are still learning fractions and percents. I maintain that reasonably bright kids should be able to learn pretty much all pre-algebra math by 6th grade. And yet, as this book shows, much of the middle school math curriculum around this country remains more about marking time than anything else. This is not McKellar's fault, but she could have thrown some more geometry, statistics, slightly higher level algebra, etc., into the mix.
The constant references to being "smart" or "dumb" are also annoying. As we've talked about on this blog before, there's a danger to talking much about kids' abilities as if they were fixed, unchanging labels. Kids who think of themselves as "smart" -- as a state of being -- become afraid of being "dumb." And so they don't like to try hard things. There's no reason to think that assurances to girls that it's OK to be smart should be exempted from this rule.
And finally...as a girl who never needed her math wrapped up in pink paper, I worry that this book will feed into the stereotype that girls are only interested in math insofar as it relates to horoscopes, crushes, babysitting, clothes, cell phones, etc. Someone who thought girls were not naturally good at math would not be dissuaded from that thought by a book offering constant reassurances that you can do this! Really! You're a smart girl! Math is OK!
That said, if Danica McKellar gets a few more girls interested in math, or helps kids understand concepts despite boring or incompetent teachers, then she will have done a real service. So I hope there's a lot of that going on. Heaven knows we need it.
The cheery blue cover (and cute photo of the lovely Ms. McKellar, of Wonder Years and West Wing fame) bears a striking resemblance to Teen magazine. Cover lines scream "Are you a math-o-phobe? Take this quiz!" "Horoscope inside!" and "Do you still have a crush on him?" This last line is somewhat misleading; there is very little about crushes covered in this book. The crush reference comes from an intro to the Greatest Common Factor section, in which McKellar notes that often times, it seems like you have a crush on one guy and then...a few months later you have a crush on another guy who actually has a lot in common with the first guy. OHMIGOD!! This is kind of like math, because numbers have a lot of factors in common too and...
Math Doesn't Suck continues on in this fashion as it covers decimals and percents, fractions, basic algebra, etc. There are various drawings and notes interspersed throughout; repeated "What Do You Have to Say?" text boxes contain such assurances as "Smart girls are cool. They are generally fun to be around and good to have conversations with," -- Mackenzie, 19.
Overall, the book is fun and, as UCLA math prof Veeravalli Varadarajan notes on the back cover, "A brilliant and successful effort to bring a little glamour to the teaching of mathematics." There's nothing wrong with trying to make math accessible and interesting to girls. Math Doesn't Suck explains the reasoning behind problems and why these concepts make sense in the real world.
But there are also a few problems with this book. The biggie for me is... this is middle school math? One of the reasons we're so far behind other nations mathematically is that 7th and 8th graders are still learning fractions and percents. I maintain that reasonably bright kids should be able to learn pretty much all pre-algebra math by 6th grade. And yet, as this book shows, much of the middle school math curriculum around this country remains more about marking time than anything else. This is not McKellar's fault, but she could have thrown some more geometry, statistics, slightly higher level algebra, etc., into the mix.
The constant references to being "smart" or "dumb" are also annoying. As we've talked about on this blog before, there's a danger to talking much about kids' abilities as if they were fixed, unchanging labels. Kids who think of themselves as "smart" -- as a state of being -- become afraid of being "dumb." And so they don't like to try hard things. There's no reason to think that assurances to girls that it's OK to be smart should be exempted from this rule.
And finally...as a girl who never needed her math wrapped up in pink paper, I worry that this book will feed into the stereotype that girls are only interested in math insofar as it relates to horoscopes, crushes, babysitting, clothes, cell phones, etc. Someone who thought girls were not naturally good at math would not be dissuaded from that thought by a book offering constant reassurances that you can do this! Really! You're a smart girl! Math is OK!
That said, if Danica McKellar gets a few more girls interested in math, or helps kids understand concepts despite boring or incompetent teachers, then she will have done a real service. So I hope there's a lot of that going on. Heaven knows we need it.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Learning to Lie
The cover story of Feb. 18th’s New York Magazine (no, not the Lindsay Lohan one) is a fascinating look, by writer Po Bronson, on "Learning to Lie."
For all we value honesty, almost all children lie at some point. Bronson postulates that children learn this habit from their parents. They see us lie to telemarketers, lie to be polite when people give inappropriate gifts, lie to avoid conflict, etc. Research shows that fear of punishment does not make children lie less. Rather, they learn to lie less as they learn to think about how other people might feel – in other words, as they become socialized to be empathetic.
To curtail the habit, Bronson recommends making sure that even small lies are noticed, and assuring the child that telling the truth will be better (because you won’t react unreasonably). You should also avoid entrapping kids and putting them in positions to lie unnecessarily. Bronson recounts noticing his 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter scribbling on the dining room table with a washable marker. “Disapprovingly, I asked ‘Did you draw on the table, Thia?’ In the past, she would have answered honestly, but my tone gave away that she’d done something wrong. Immediately, I wished I could retract the question. I should have just reminded her not to write on the table, slipped newspaper under her coloring book, and washed the ink away. Instead, I had done just as [McGill University child development professor Victoria] Talwar had warned against. ‘No, I didn’t,’ my daughter said, lying to me for the first time.”
The article in general is worth a read, but most fascinating for our purposes is the link between intelligence and early lying. “Bright kids – those who do better on other academic indicators – are able to start lying at 2 or 3,” Bronson writes. The article quotes Talwar saying that “lying is related to intelligence.” While truthfulness is a virtue, lying requires skill. As Bronson notes, “A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require… That puts parents in the position of being either damned or blessed, depending on how they choose to look at it. If your 4-year-old is a good liar, it’s a strong sign she’s got brains. And it’s the smart, savvy kid who’s most at risk of becoming a habitual liar.”
I’m curious if readers of this blog have found that to be the case. Are gifted toddlers capable of telling very tall tales? How do you stop them?
For all we value honesty, almost all children lie at some point. Bronson postulates that children learn this habit from their parents. They see us lie to telemarketers, lie to be polite when people give inappropriate gifts, lie to avoid conflict, etc. Research shows that fear of punishment does not make children lie less. Rather, they learn to lie less as they learn to think about how other people might feel – in other words, as they become socialized to be empathetic.
To curtail the habit, Bronson recommends making sure that even small lies are noticed, and assuring the child that telling the truth will be better (because you won’t react unreasonably). You should also avoid entrapping kids and putting them in positions to lie unnecessarily. Bronson recounts noticing his 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter scribbling on the dining room table with a washable marker. “Disapprovingly, I asked ‘Did you draw on the table, Thia?’ In the past, she would have answered honestly, but my tone gave away that she’d done something wrong. Immediately, I wished I could retract the question. I should have just reminded her not to write on the table, slipped newspaper under her coloring book, and washed the ink away. Instead, I had done just as [McGill University child development professor Victoria] Talwar had warned against. ‘No, I didn’t,’ my daughter said, lying to me for the first time.”
The article in general is worth a read, but most fascinating for our purposes is the link between intelligence and early lying. “Bright kids – those who do better on other academic indicators – are able to start lying at 2 or 3,” Bronson writes. The article quotes Talwar saying that “lying is related to intelligence.” While truthfulness is a virtue, lying requires skill. As Bronson notes, “A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require… That puts parents in the position of being either damned or blessed, depending on how they choose to look at it. If your 4-year-old is a good liar, it’s a strong sign she’s got brains. And it’s the smart, savvy kid who’s most at risk of becoming a habitual liar.”
I’m curious if readers of this blog have found that to be the case. Are gifted toddlers capable of telling very tall tales? How do you stop them?
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