168 Hours, on sale today

Dear Gifted Exchange readers:

This is a big day for me. My new book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, goes on sale today. You can follow the link, above, to various online retailers, and it should be in the business/time management sections of your local Borders or Barnes & Noble as well.

What, you may ask, is 168 hours? It's what you get when you multiply 24 x 7. It's the number of hours in a week.

I think this is a much better way to think about our time than the usual 24 blocks. Is Tuesday or Saturday a "normal" day for you? Considering them both gives a better picture of our time. This book is about how people in general spend their time and how we can all spend it better. In particular, I profile many people who do a lot with the 168 hours we all have each week -- building big careers, raising big families, even getting enough sleep! Drawing upon data from the American Time Use Survey and other research, I make the case that many of the ideas we have of how people spend their time now, and in the past, are wrong. This book is for anyone who wants to get more out of their time and their lives.

An added bonus for Gifted Exchange readers: There is more math in 168 Hours than in any other self-help book you will read, ever. Also, many of the people I profile are scientists. Some might accuse me of repackaging the profiles I've done for Scientific American, but hey - I thought they were interesting people!

Anyway, if you've enjoyed my musings here over the years, you might want to give the book a look. BookPage named it the top lifestyle book for the month, and Library Journal called it "worthwhile."

All right, thanks for reading this self-promotional announcement, and we will be back to gifted topics next week.

Promise Keepers: The MBA Oath

We'll put this post in the category of "broadly related to education."

I recently reviewed a book called The MBA Oath for City Journal. The MBA Oath is a pledge that students at various business schools (most notably, Harvard Business School) have started taking as a way to bring discussions of ethics into people's minds during graduation season.

You can read my review, "Promise Keepers" here. I think it is a rather thoughtful book, with lots of ethical case studies, though I am not sure that I buy the narrative about business needing saving (by students, at that). Let me know what you think! Broadly, ethics is a great topic for students of any level. You can use it to discuss real life issues, but also to introduce students to philosophers and other great writers.

Segregation in Gifted Programs?

No, not the issue people normally complain of -- that children in gifted programs are disproportionately Asian or white. In New York City, a different form of segregation, within gifted programs, seems to be taking place.

The New York Times has a long story about the TAG School in East Harlem. One of three city-wide schools for gifted elementary school students, the school is open to kids who score at roughly the 97th percentile or above. It is located in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood which turns out to be a bit, well, scruffy. The other two city-wide gifted schools are located in much nicer areas. What this has all resulted in is that white parents have chosen to send their gifted young children to the other two schools. And, it seems from the articles, some black and Hispanic parents prefer to send their kids to TAG because they like its demographic make-up better.

In other words, the gifted programs are fairly segregated. Unfortunately, as part of being in a scruffy neighborhood, the TAG school is also not as nice as the other schools. Parents are banding together to do something about that, but the average income in TAG is lower than in the other gifted schools, which makes fundraising more difficult. And since it's located right beside other schools, there is always the issue of gifted kids getting "better" facilities than their neighbors.

It's a tough issue, defying easy answers, and gives an insight into some of the problems school districts still face when trying to serve diverse students. But we can at least be grateful that NYC is trying. Having three schools for gifted students, even if one is not in a great neighborhood, is much better than most cities do!

Cristo Rey, "Skimming," Test Scores, etc.

Over the past few years, I've written several times about the Cristo Rey network of Catholic schools. Indeed, it's been the gift that keeps on giving as far as this freelance writer is concerned. I'm happy editors keep saying yes, because I think the schools are based on a great premise. In order to create affordable, sustainable private schools, high school kids in essence do a "job share" at companies in cities that have a Cristo Rey school. Four kids share a job, the company pays Cristo Rey for the equivalent of a full-time temp, and the money supports the kids' schooling. They are, in essence, working their way through school. They learn a lot about the adult world, and see what they can do later if they go to college. Most do.

I guess I won't be writing about these schools for the Wall Street Journal, since Daniel Henninger's Wonderland column today already covers them ("How About a Good Catholic Story?")

But I wanted to bring up some interesting points here, which I think have implications for education more broadly. Some folks have accused private or charter schools of getting good results due to "skimming" top performers away from the public schools. Cristo Rey specifically chooses kids from the middle of the pack, and then gets most of them attending college a few years later. But of course, this then raises the opposite point: if middling kids can, with a lot of good teaching and hard work, do quite well, does this mean that standardized test scores taken at one point in time mean nothing for a later time?

This is the argument many recent "myth of the gifted child" type articles have made. I (as you can imagine) don't think this is the case. The Cristo Rey schools do an amazing job preparing kids for college with rigorous course work. On the other hand, their standardized test scores are (as principals themselves have told me) not necessarily what they would like. Good but not great. Which suggests that a good school can boost scores, but in and of itself cannot get everyone from a 50th percentile level to, say, the top 5% of SAT scores. Like everything, test scores are likely a combination of hard work, good training, and some individual factors.

Sometimes these individual factors make schools not a good fit - which is one reason Cristo Rey encourages students who are scoring at the very top levels on standardized tests to apply to more elite prep schools that serve big cities. This enables these kids to have their academic needs met, and ensures that Cristo Rey schools are focusing on a group of kids with about the same level of preparation. It is ability grouping by admission, but it is one of the factors that make these schools work. Kids will be neither failing, nor bored.

International Science and Engineering Fair Winner Announced

Congratulations to Amy Chyao of Richardson, Texas, for winning this year's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair!

Chyao, 15, won $75,000 for a project involving the use of photodynamic therapy, in which anti-cancer drugs are activated by light energy. Other top winners include Kevin Ellis, 18, of Vancouver, WA, who developed a way for speeding up computer programs, and Yale Fan, 18, of Beaverton, OR, whose project dealt with quantum computing.

The fun part about ISEF is that it really is international. As you can see from Intel's press release, the top winners hail from Brazil, the UK, Mexico, and South Korea, in addition to the US. One of the great problems of American education is that much of what we do is not benchmarked against the rest of the world. Comparisons are largely done within states, as though somehow the economy will just stop right there at the border when these young people graduate.

Which is nonsense. In this wired era, my competition is not other writers in New York City, it is anyone who can write in English , or can find a translator, in the entire world. The same goes for science. Companies like Intel hire globally, as do many science departments at universities. Best to get used to seeing early how everyone stacks up.

I covered the ISEF in Atlanta in 2008 for Scientific American; you can read the intro to it here (then search on site for my name for other posts).

SciGirls on PBS

It is a well-known (and much lamented) truth that women are under-represented in STEM careers. This is a problem as a) women comprise the majority of people earning college degrees these days and b) these professions are expected to grow rapidly in the years to come. If women are over-represented among students, but under-represented in STEM fields, we will face a major talent shortage in the near future.

So what to do about it? PBS (with sponsorship from the NSF and ExxonMobil) is now airing a series called SciGirls as one approach. The show features real girls, age 8-12, doing real world, hands-on scientific inquiry. They think of a problem. With the help of mentors, they figure out an experimental approach, and the audience gets to watch their adventures.

I'm looking forward to taping and watching the show. If any Gifted Exchange readers have seen it, please let me know your thoughts. The New York Times ran a a review the other day pointing out that the girls in the show were awesome (but the animated characters were, most definitely, not). I am not sure how much of the gender gap in STEM fields is due to a lack of tween interest. We've been seeing shows touting science and math for years, and you still hear people say, with no shame, that they are "not math people." But it never hurts to show kids doing science that doesn't involve burying your nose in a text book.

Mind in the Making

(cross posted at My168Hours)

Over the past few days I (and apparently a host of other folks) have been reading Ellen Galinsky's book, Mind in the Making. Galinsky is the head of the Families and Work Institute, and is known for her research into both how modern workers combine work and family, and how kids perceive all this. A fascinating study she did several years ago, called Ask the Children, studied what kids wanted from their parents. Keep in mind that this was in the heat of the Mommy Wars narrative, and so many people assumed that the answer would be something like "more time." Nah. It was for parents to be less stressed. Which makes sense. I'd rather have a happy mommy for three hours a day than an unhappy mommy for more.

But anyway, Galinsky followed that impulse to study the modern economy through the lens of children a ways farther down the path with Mind in the Making. In it, she argues that there are 7 life skills that will be critical in the workplace today's children will ultimately enter. These include (1) focus and self control; (2) perspective taking; (3) communicating; (4) making connections; (5) critical thinking; (6) taking on challenges; and (7) self-directed, engaged learning.

For each of these skills, Galinsky suggests games and techniques that will help parents build these skills, based on academic research done by various programs in child development around the country. By sheer volume, this makes Mind in the Making useful for just about any parent. You are guaranteed to pick up something that you'll think is a good idea. For instance, as I've been cranking through, I remembered that watching TV is generally a bad idea for kids, which is what gave me the fortitude during a patch of single parenting this week to keep the set off. I was reminded that blocks help build geometric competence, so Jasper and Sam and I played with them for a while last night. I had Jasper "read" me his stories so he could make connections between pictures and ideas (and work on communication skills). I let him struggle up the chain-link ladder on the playground by himself. I asked him questions like "why do you think Sam is crying?" ("He wants to feed!" -- ok, that was an easy one. But he's still learning perspective taking!)

She makes good arguments that kids do not learn how to write, adequately, with an eye toward getting ideas across (and of course I love the suggestion of having kids write their favorite author!) She also describes the silliness of our widespread math phobia. "Traditionally, parents in the US have viewed mathematics learning as a kind of talent or ability that some people had and some people didn't have," she writes, but this is just not an option for the jobs that will exist 15 years from now. Math is like walking. Yes, some people simply can't do it, but the vast majority of us can and it is just as serviceable to get around in the world.

Of course, since children's brain development is a small (if growing) field, she winds up citing many of the same researchers (like Alison Gopnik) again and again, to the point where I started thinking they should be bummed about not getting cover credit. Galinsky also has the misfortune to have her book come out 7 months after Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's NurtureShock. I believe they were written simultaneously, but they plow much of the same ground (especially on the topics of self-regulation and Carol Dweck's work on praising children for effort rather than ability), so people who read NurtureShock may find much of this familiar.

The premise of the book -- that these are the skills kids need in the future, so here's what parents should do to nurture them -- is also a little thin for larger socioeconomic reasons. Well-educated parents already do much of what she suggests, and their kids are probably going to do well in the global economy anyway. It's the at-risk kids who most need the help. But if you have the kind of parent who studies a book on children's brain development with an eye toward implementing the findings, you are by definition not at risk. So hopefully the preschool and daycare teachers serving such kids will also pick up the book.

Nonetheless, Mind in the Making offers a lot to mull over, and I think parents of gifted kids in particular will enjoy Galinsky's lauding of "lemonade stands" -- which she uses as a metaphor for a project or topic that a child, on her own, becomes passionate about. Toward the end of chapter 7, she shares a story from a parent of a 3.5-year-old girl who is absolutely obsessed with bugs. Finding a spider at a friend's house, she spends the whole meal under the table talking with her new friend. She has similar obsessions, in turn, with dinosaurs and volcanoes (they name a fish Hot Magma).

"I enjoy all of this because I can feel like a kid again," the parent says, "learning about this giant, amazing world as if for the first time. I hope she always stays this curious, this questioning. I hope she has teachers who act graciously toward her and her thirst for learning. Above all, I hope she never stops seeing this world as an incredible place."

I think most of us hope we can say the same for our children.

Evidence on Teachers

I am just back from a wonderful week-long vacation in California (I finished my first marathon! Don’t ask my time. Let’s just say I finished). Anyway, May is a great time for education stories, so I anticipate slightly more frequent posting until my book (168 Hours) comes out May 27 and things get crazy.

On today’s agenda: more evidence of the fact that teachers matter. None of us particularly likes standardized testing. But as the movement to tie children’s test scores to individual schools and teachers heats up, researchers are finding some fascinating things in the data this movement is producing.

First, twins are often assigned to different classrooms. This creates a natural experiment, since identical twins in particular have the same genes, and most likely the same home environment. So if they’re in the same school but separate classes, then at least some of any difference can likely be attributed to the experience they’re having in their classrooms.

In general, according to a new study from Florida State University, this turns out to be pretty much the same experience. Genes and home environment are most predictive of educational outcomes. But in cases where twins strongly diverge in their reading ability, in many cases, their teachers also have divergent quality ratings. This reinforces previous findings that differences in schools between great teachers and awful teachers are often bigger than between schools.

A whole industry of researchers is currently trying to isolate what makes a “great” teacher. But another recent study found one thing that definitely does not: anxiety about math. According to a study from the University of Chicago, girls whose female early elementary school teachers feel most anxious about their math abilities pass this belief – that math is something boys do – on to their pupils. That’s a problem since elementary education majors apparently have the highest levels of math anxiety of any college students. I'm not sure what to do about that except that, over time, our society needs to start believing that teaching, like engineering, is a math-intensive field, and requires a high level of competence. It is not a field for people who aren't "numbers people."

Time Mag: Is Cash the Answer?

A quick question for Gifted Exchange readers: do you reward your children for good grades? What do they think about this?

My family used to go out for ice cream if we got good report cards, and I can't say that it particularly affects me much now. My husband, the way he tells it, used to get to go out for King Crab Legs if all four kids got straight A's (which I guess they usually did). It seems to have left quite an impression on him, because every time we're at a restaurant that serves King Crab Legs, he orders them.

The question of whether rewards work has long been debated in education. Dan Pink's Drive (which I reviewed for City Journal here) makes the case that pay-for-performance doesn't work if you want the most creative results. The strongest motivation is intrinsic: you do something because the action itself is pleasurable to you.

No one argues that we would love to have kids learning because they love to learn. I also think it's not particularly controversial to say that a lot of kids don't necessarily show this kind of motivation (or at least schools haven't tapped into it). So what should be done?

This past week, Time magazine ran a cover story about a recent, multi-city study that looked into whether cash awards can boost student learning. You can read the article, "Is Cash The Answer" by following the link in this sentence. The experiment was run by Roland Fryer, a young Harvard economist who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks himself, and would like to figure out a way to boost the performance of at-risk kids.

The answer to whether cash is the answer? Maybe. As Time reporter Amanda Ripley writes, "The results are fascinating and surprising. They remind us that kids, like grownups, are not puppets. They don't always respond the way we expect." For instance, in New York City, paying for higher test scores did not lead to any measurable effect on end-of-year standardized tests. In Washington DC, rewarding for five different activities improved reading skills. In Dallas, paying kids to read boosted reading comprehension scores by the equivalent of being in school an extra 3 months (which is quite a big difference).

Fryer and his team have puzzled through the differences, and seem to have taken a few things away from these results. First, incentives work when kids can actually directly control how they will do. Getting a grade is pretty subjective, but you can control if you read a book, or if you show up for class or don't get in a fight. And second, you have to know how to achieve success. As Ripley puts it (quoting another economist), if I ask you to solve a third-order linear partial differential equation right now, and you don't know what I mean, it really doesn't matter if I offer you a million dollars. You're not going to be able to do it. If a kid doesn't know how to do better at geometry, cash doesn't help. But kids do know how to read through a book. They know when they have successfully done that. Hence the Dallas program, which paid for that, had the most success in jump-starting learning. Read enough books, and you get better at reading.

So what does this have to do with gifted education? Many highly gifted kids do, intrinsically, love to learn. Their brains are good at learning, at figuring things out. As parents, we want to be careful not to step on this joy. On the other hand, other things -- like turning in homework on time -- may not be so natural, and may be an area that's more ripe for rewards.

Parents are spending more time with their kids -- is it because of college admissions?

Earlier this week, Tara Parker-Pope's Well blog over at the New York Times highlighted findings from a recent study that American parents were spending far more time with their kids than a generation ago. College-educated parents in particular have really stepped up their game -- moms and dads -- which the headline deemed surprising (since more women are in the workforce now than in years past). I don't find it surprising (as I blog about over at My168Hours.com) but what's most interesting is a thesis that doesn't make it into the Well column. The husband and wife economist team, the Rameys, who ran these numbers, speculate that parents are investing more time in their kids because college admissions has gotten more competitive.

In a paper called The Rug Rat Race, they speculate that there are far more college-bound children now than in recent years, and that this surge in college-bound children is concurrent with the rise in investment of parental time. It's a crowded cohort, so you have to do something to make your child stand out.

I don't know about this explanation -- though they do some interesting calculations. On the whole, it seems like a negative gloss on a mostly positive thing: that parents value their time with their children, and so are more likely to engage in that during their non-working hours, instead of other hobbies or housework. Some of it may be sparked by increased competition. But it may just be a broader change in culture, too.

Davidson Young Scholar Success Stories

The Davidson Institute offers several programs for highly gifted young people. We've covered the opening of the Davidson Academy several years ago, and the winners of the annual Davidson Fellows awards, but I also wanted to call readers' attention to the Young Scholars program, which is one of the institute's biggest efforts, now reaching 1600 young people. When kids are accepted into the program, they are eligible for consulting services which can help parents and educators decide on the best way to meet their needs. Every child is different, of course, but by the time you've studied what works and what doesn't for 1600 highly gifted kids, there are some pretty robust best practices.

You can read several success stories of different students in the program, and how those best practices worked here. You can find out how to apply here.

In Defense of AP

Many, many years ago, I took several AP (Advanced Placement) classes and AP exams in high school. I had quite a range of experiences with them, too. I got 5s (the top score) on the Calculus BC, Chemistry, and Biology tests. I believe I scored a 2 on the AP Physics exam, which is a pretty poor showing. The tests felt very different, too. I was completely lost in the physics one, whereas I knew, in the middle of the biology and chemistry ones, that I was pretty much going to ace them. There was nothing I didn't know cold. I was clearly the same person, with the same work ethic (positive or negative) for all these classes, and given my calculus scores, presumably had enough math knowledge to deal with physics, so why the incredible difference in outcomes?

I was thinking of this as I read a recent article in USA Today called "Advanced Placement: Good for top students, oversold for others?" Harvard Education Press has recently released a book showcasing research into the College Board's AP program. The results, according to the article, are pretty mixed, but I believe this is a question of what you think the AP should do.

As USA Today quotes Philip Sadler, a Harvard prof and one of the co-editors of the book, here is the value proposition of AP for students: "Advanced Placement courses offer you an opportunity to study a subject in a very rigorous and demanding fashion. You will probably be in a class that has fewer students, those students will likely have stronger backgrounds, and there will be fewer student discipline issues than you have experienced in other courses. Your teacher will have a strong subject matter background and excellent teaching skills."

In my calculus, biology and chemistry classes, this was definitely the case, and I am far from the only one of my classmates who did well on the exams. But the fact that a course is AP can't necessarily make up for deficits or unevenness in teaching and preparation.

This is an issue because in recent years, many school districts have decided to roll out AP courses very broadly. Many cited a study finding that kids who attempted hard classes in high school were more likely to go to college. So why not offer AP, have kids challenge themselves, and watch the college enrollment rates go up?

That's a reasonable idea, but the reality is that many kids aren't prepared for the rigor of AP classes, and their teachers are equally unprepared to teach them well. They can lack subject matter expertise or teaching ability. So if you want to go this route, you're going to have to be prepared to watch a lot of students fail at least in the near term. And as the USA Today article indicates, there are schools where basically no one gets above a 2. There are also schools where the majority of kids score 3-5. The AP program is standardized, but it can't be completely standardized. It is hard to get around the reality that some kids don't come into AP programs ready to deal with them and that teachers matter. Period.

But I don't think this is a problem with the program. I think that it is what it is -- a great way for top high school students to try rigorous classes and stretch their brains. I still have a soft spot in my heart for chemistry and biology, and when I was writing a column for Scientific American for a while, I found that my basic knowledge from the AP on these topics was enough to converse with leading scientists. Knowing that my knowledge would be tested at the end of the class and that the results would mean something compared with all other high school students was very important to me. Coming from Indiana, I had no idea whether what I was learning would match up against the brightest kids from around the country. The AP exams let me see that. There was no wiggle room. Your score is your score, and a sympathetic teacher can't give you a top score just because you were the sharpest kid in her class. It is benchmarked for everyone, and at a level of very high standards. I wish more of American education was like that.

Tennessee and Delaware win Race to the Top

So the winners of the first round of competition for the Race to the Top grants have been announced, and Tennessee and Delaware have come out ahead.

While a number of people had fretted that a dozen or more states would win awards, thus watering down the impact, the selection of only two is promising. It makes this a real competition, and hopefully will empower reformers. As someone with vaguely libertarian leanings, it does bother me that the federal government compels people in all the states to send in tax money, and then doles it back out. But given that our government is definitely not moving in a libertarian direction, I'm glad to see that some federal dollars are being used in a way that could improve educational outcomes. Plus, with only two state winners, we'll be able to track if things do change.

The Race to the Top announcement has gotten me thinking what would be on my educational wish list. Next up? A Race to the Top for raising the performance of America's top 5% of students against the top 5% of students in other countries, as measured by international benchmarks... I have been pondering what that would look like. Flexible but frequent "readiness" grouping (aka ability grouping). Lots of acceleration, so kids would be challenged. And a focus on identifying and nurturing the talent of the best and brightest, much as we have coaches for nurturing athletic talent. What is noticed and measured and rewarded gets done, and gifted education could definitely use a race to the top.

On a personal and self-promotional note: Gifted education is one of my favorite topics, but I also write about many other things. One of my other favorite things to write about is time use, and I have a book coming out May 27 called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Why 168 hours? It's the number of hours in a week! I'm keeping a blog at My168hours.com in advance of the book coming out, and would be very flattered if any GE readers wished to spend a few minutes of their 168 hours checking it out. I'm hoping to build up a readership and get people talking.

Ok, now back to gifted education. :)

America's Real Dream Team

Thomas Friedman has a great column in this weekend's New York Times, "America's Real Dream Team," also covering the Intel Science Talent Search.

He lists the names of the finalists to make an obvious point: Most of these young people are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Their projects are incredible, showing imagination, technology and drive -- the three factors that will produce the jobs and economic growth of tomorrow. America's immigrants have always done well on these fronts. A great reason to keep the doors open, and something I remember when I run through Battery Park (from where you can see the Statue of Liberty) here in New York.

He also interviewed Amanda Alonzo (the star teacher who helped mentor two finalists this year, including the 2nd place winner). She told him that San Jose real estate agents are now advertising what she's done in Asian newspapers so potential immigrants know exactly where to buy a house! These agents are on to something: We should be competing for the best and brightest in the world, and their children. As a teacher at Thomas Jefferson told me at the Intel STS public day, when he's traveled to other countries such as Russia, "They are putting a lot of effort into their best and brightest." Some teachers, such as Alonzo (who told me she took her 1-month-old infant along with her to the International Science and Engineering Fair last spring-- phew!) do this, but it needs to be a much more coordinated effort. As the Time magazine cover story this week on "The Workforce: Where Will the New Jobs Come From?" points out, ultimately only innovation creates jobs and growth. If we want jobs and growth, we need more innovators. The Intel STS suggests where we can find them.

2009 Davidson Fellow Erika DeBenedictis Wins Intel STS

Erika DeBenedictis, a 2009 Davidson Fellow, won the Intel Science Talent Search last night for her project developing a software navigation system to help improve spacecraft travel through the solar system. Her research looked at gravity and how the planets move to help create "easy transit routes," (per the Intel press release) which will "ultimately help spacecraft move faster and with less fuel." You can read about her Intel project here, and about her Davidson Fellowship here.

(I also interviewed her for a Wall Street Journal article last fall on why it wasn't a bad thing for kids to be very busy).

She's a very impressive young lady and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from her in coming years. In the meantime, now that she's won another $100,000 in scholarships from Intel, I'm not sure there is a college that's expensive enough to cover all her winnings!

Observations from the Intel Science Talent Search

I went down to DC yesterday to interview folks at the Intel Science Talent Search finals for a City Journal article (slated for the autumn issue). As I go to more of these events (Siemens, Davidson, ISEF and Intel STS) I am continually struck by how certain schools show up again and again: the Texas Academy of Math and Science, Thomas Jefferson (in VA), Ward Melville in New York, Montgomery Blair (in Maryland) and a few others.

One of those this year was Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California, which had 2 finalists (and 6 semi-finalists). Unlike some of the others, Lynbrook is a regular public high school and doesn't have a long institutional history of sending kids to the Intel (or Westinghouse) finals. It only started happening a few years ago.

Why? Because of a young teacher named Amanda Alonzo, that's why. You can read this profile of her in the San Jose Mercury News.


Basically, she got excited about scientific research and invested the time in starting a program and mentoring her students. Over the past few years it has paid off. Several of her students are now going to get loads of scholarship money, and possibly have more college choices than if they had not been Intel finalists or semi-finalists.

It's a fascinating thought experiment. Clearly, the latent talent was there at Lynbrook. But a motivated, talented teacher helped develop it. If Mrs. Alonzo was teaching somewhere else, would there now be a major research program at another school? Would her students have done what they did? It is hard to know. The two I interviewed at Intel yesterday were obviously incredibly bright and hard-working and came up with their own ideas, so it is quite possible they'd still be there. But probably several of Mrs. Alonzo's students who didn't make it to the top reaches, but learned a lot about science in the process, will pursue careers in the field. The question is whether Mrs. Alonzo can be replicated.

Building a Better Teacher

The cover story of the New York Times magazine this past week, Building a Better Teacher, dealt with the increasingly popular topic of improving America's teaching corps. Author Elizabeth Green makes the point that with 3.7 million teaching jobs in the US, you can't simply hope to attract a better caliber of teacher in the future. Your best bet for improving student outcomes is raising the skill-level of the vast majority of teachers who are neither great nor awful.

Teaching and managing a classroom are, it turns out, skills like any other. Some people are naturally better at them than others, but most people can become better than they currently are with focused, deliberate practice. It's a fascinating piece, and worth checking out.

Common Core Standards

Today, the National Governors Association released a draft of its core standards for grades K-12. Almost all the states (well, 48 of them) have signed on to this idea of creating standards that define what students should know at any given grade level.

I've been reading through the standards (available here) and I think there is a lot to like about them.

For starters, the math standards were specifically benchmarked against countries that routinely eat America for lunch in international comparisons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea). And so they are far from the lowest common denominator standards that some folks had fretted about. Kindergartners need to know how to count by tens, to understand what adding and subtracting are as concepts, and to think about geometric concepts such as 2- and 3-dimensions. By 6th grade, students are learning to think algebraically about problems (if I can walk half a mile in 10 minutes, how can I use that information to figure out how many miles I can walk per hour?) By 7th grade, students are learning about probability concepts--if I guess on 10 true-false questions, what are the chances I get 7 right?--and in 8th grade, they're thinking about the slopes of lines and concepts in solid geometry that in general many kids these days get around to in 10th grade.

Some critics in the news articles about these standards have said so what, what's the point in learning concepts earlier? That doesn't mean you'll really know them. But I disagree with this -- the earlier things are introduced, the more time you have to think about them. And waiting to introduce concepts until later has had the effect of watering down standards, to the point where 4th graders are still working on addition because you have to fill time with something.

The National Governors Association also released the language arts standards, and at least on the writing front, I'm cautiously optimistic about them. Many of the student writing samples in the appendix are pretty good (one 4th grade short story blew me away, though the authors of the standards pointed out that it may have been edited -- then again, so is all professional writing!).

I think it is encouraging that the common standards will be aimed high, and I also think it's encouraging that we will have common standards, in part because I hope this will pay off for gifted kids. If we define as a nation exactly what an 8th grader should know, then it raises an obvious question. If a 10-year-old knows what an 8th grader should know, why can't that 10-year-old be in 8th grade? This question exists now, but because there are so many varying standards on 8th grade knowledge, there is always wiggle room. Common standards help take that away -- which I think is a good thing.

Idaho encourages gifted kids to graduate early

Acceleration is good for gifted kids -- allowing them to move through school at a rapid pace without dredging up some of political issues that dog other accommodations. Now the state of Idaho is realizing that acceleration can be a money-saver for governments, too.

According to the Associated Press, a new Idaho plan would pay kids to graduate early. (Direct URL: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMyjdWG670FdForgcXMTVOa4MY1QD9E7AU780 -- I have been having trouble with Blogger on getting the whole URL in these links lately).

Kids who finish high school up to three years early would be eligible for a scholarship of $1600 for each year they don't do. That sounds like it would be a new expense for the state of Idaho, but of course it isn't. Every year that a kid spends in the Idaho public schools costs the state $4593. Not only will the kids have the opportunity to move on to more challenging work, the state will save about $3000 a year. The one problem, of course, is that tuition at a place like the University of Idaho runs more than $1600 a year, but at least this is a start.

Primary Sources

Today, the Gates Foundation, partnering with Scholastic, released the results of a survey of 40,000 American teachers. You can read the press release (and find links to the main report) here.

There were several interesting results. For instance, more teachers thought that supportive leadership, time to collaborate, and quality curriculum were important for retention than thought that higher salaries were essential. About half of elementary school teachers said they'd be willing to have parent-teacher conferences in kids' homes. Teachers endorsed the idea of clear standards, common across the states. And perhaps most interestingly, only 10% of teachers said that tenure was a good measure of teacher performance. Some 42% said it wasn't a good measure at all. This suggests a potential difference in belief between rank-and-file teachers, and teacher union leadership (since years of service and graduate degrees tend to be the most commonly allowed standards for differences in pay).

In recent years, the Gates Foundation has moved on from its initial Small Schools programs (which turned out not to work that well) to focusing on teacher quality. This report is a first step in figuring out what teachers think, in order to enlist their support in future reforms.