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."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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?
Friday, February 29, 2008
What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story in today's Weekend Journal section on the Finnish education system, and "What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?"
This strange little Nordic country, whose language is very different from neighboring Norway and Sweden (or anywhere else for that matter), has posted scores at the very top of international skills comparisons. The Program for International Assessment (PISA), which tested 15-year-olds, placed Finns at the top of the heap in science. Only Taiwanese students did better in math; only the South Koreans did better in reading. American students didn't come close to their Finnish counterparts in understanding these concepts. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal tells the story of a Finnish senior, Elina Lamponen, who studied abroad at Colon High School in Michigan. When she came back to Finland, she had to repeat the grade.
International comparisons aren't particularly useful if all they inspire you to do is beat yourself up. The best thing to do is to figure out what other countries do well, and then figure out if these best practices can be implemented elsewhere. We've looked at Singapore math on this blog. What about Finnish math, science and reading? The Wall Street Journal attempts to answer these questions.
Unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal notes several times in the article that there are no gifted classes in Finland. This is misleading. There aren't "pull-out" type classes featuring Robin Hood, bugs, Egyptology, the culture of Japan, etc. But according to this report of gifted education in Europe, Finnish parents have the right to enroll their children in school early if they want. Many of the elementary schools are ungraded, which allows children to accelerate.
The WSJ offers a few other ideas about Finnish educational success. One is that kids learn to read very early because American television and movies tend to have Finnish subtitles, rather than dubbing. If you want to know what's going on, you have to learn to read. Few American kids feel so motivated.
The students are relatively homogeneous, both in terms of race and economic status (there's not much of a Finnish underclass). Some people cite the relatively relaxed educational environment as a plus. Students and teachers may call each other by their first names. There aren't a lot of rules. There also aren't any truly elite universities, so the competition to get into a good school isn't so intense (if there are any Finnish readers of this blog, I'd love to hear if that's true).
But here's what I think is the key point, from the WSJ and my other reading: The education culture in Finland is one of excellence and intense individualization. Finnish teachers are expected to customize lessons for students. As the WSJ quotes one education expert saying, "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs." And they are good entrepreneurs. In Finland, teachers are trained extensively. They must have master's degrees, and 40 people apply for every job. They earn about the same as their American counterparts. But, through treating teachers like professionals, and only choosing the best, Finland has managed to get an excellent teaching corps capable of individualizing lessons for slow learners and quick learners alike.
Another note: Finland spends less per student than the U.S. does.
Unfortunately, I worry that people reading the WSJ article and looking to take away ideas for educational improvement in the US will only seize on the "no gifted classes" idea. That would be a shame. In an environment where the teachers are uniformly excellent, where individual lessons are customized and where acceleration is possible, you don't necessarily need specific gifted classes. But I don't see many American education reform efforts combining all these elements yet.
This strange little Nordic country, whose language is very different from neighboring Norway and Sweden (or anywhere else for that matter), has posted scores at the very top of international skills comparisons. The Program for International Assessment (PISA), which tested 15-year-olds, placed Finns at the top of the heap in science. Only Taiwanese students did better in math; only the South Koreans did better in reading. American students didn't come close to their Finnish counterparts in understanding these concepts. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal tells the story of a Finnish senior, Elina Lamponen, who studied abroad at Colon High School in Michigan. When she came back to Finland, she had to repeat the grade.
International comparisons aren't particularly useful if all they inspire you to do is beat yourself up. The best thing to do is to figure out what other countries do well, and then figure out if these best practices can be implemented elsewhere. We've looked at Singapore math on this blog. What about Finnish math, science and reading? The Wall Street Journal attempts to answer these questions.
Unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal notes several times in the article that there are no gifted classes in Finland. This is misleading. There aren't "pull-out" type classes featuring Robin Hood, bugs, Egyptology, the culture of Japan, etc. But according to this report of gifted education in Europe, Finnish parents have the right to enroll their children in school early if they want. Many of the elementary schools are ungraded, which allows children to accelerate.
The WSJ offers a few other ideas about Finnish educational success. One is that kids learn to read very early because American television and movies tend to have Finnish subtitles, rather than dubbing. If you want to know what's going on, you have to learn to read. Few American kids feel so motivated.
The students are relatively homogeneous, both in terms of race and economic status (there's not much of a Finnish underclass). Some people cite the relatively relaxed educational environment as a plus. Students and teachers may call each other by their first names. There aren't a lot of rules. There also aren't any truly elite universities, so the competition to get into a good school isn't so intense (if there are any Finnish readers of this blog, I'd love to hear if that's true).
But here's what I think is the key point, from the WSJ and my other reading: The education culture in Finland is one of excellence and intense individualization. Finnish teachers are expected to customize lessons for students. As the WSJ quotes one education expert saying, "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs." And they are good entrepreneurs. In Finland, teachers are trained extensively. They must have master's degrees, and 40 people apply for every job. They earn about the same as their American counterparts. But, through treating teachers like professionals, and only choosing the best, Finland has managed to get an excellent teaching corps capable of individualizing lessons for slow learners and quick learners alike.
Another note: Finland spends less per student than the U.S. does.
Unfortunately, I worry that people reading the WSJ article and looking to take away ideas for educational improvement in the US will only seize on the "no gifted classes" idea. That would be a shame. In an environment where the teachers are uniformly excellent, where individual lessons are customized and where acceleration is possible, you don't necessarily need specific gifted classes. But I don't see many American education reform efforts combining all these elements yet.
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