Too few kids for a class?

It's a common problem, particularly in the primary grades. A school would like to offer an advanced math option for kids at that level of preparation, but there aren't quite enough kids to justify a class. That handful of children can't just go to the next grade's math class, because it isn't being taught at the same time. What to do?

When I was in 4th grade, I remember joining 3 other children sitting in the back of one teacher's classroom. She'd give us a do-now type assignment, go teach the other class, then while that class was working, she'd come back and work with us.

I imagine this sort of arrangement happens pretty frequently, but earlier this week, I saw a more technologically sophisticated approach at a handful of Catholic primary schools in Philadelphia. Teacher Terri Danella instructs a small advanced math class at Resurrection school in northeast Philadelphia. As she teaches, she's being broadcast to 4 other schools (I was watching from St. Peter's near 5th and Girard). She's got a split screen that shows her all the students in the different locations, and when a student speaks up, the camera pans to that child. This makes the format relatively intuitive (when someone speaks, you look at her).

The technology itself obviously costs money, though this was underwritten by the Connelly Foundation, a Philly-focused charity that promotes technology in Catholic education. But it's cheaper than having an extra math teacher at the five different schools. And this method retains slightly more of the human touch than having these children take an online course.

How do your schools handle this issue? What do you do for children who need advanced math?

Testing prep and gifted education

Sometimes I sound like a broken record: gifted education should not be a reward. It should not be the only "good" class in a school or the only "good" school in a district. It should not indicate that a child has achieved something. It should be an educational intervention for children who need it.

But of course, that's not the way many educators and parents see it. I was reminded of this by a press release put out by TestingMom.com, a company co-founded by Karen Quinn, author of The Ivy Chronicles. According to the release, the site had been re-launched, "giving parents a whole new set of tools to help their children succeed in the increasingly competitive world of gifted education."

If it's increasingly competitive most places, that must be because schools are cutting seats -- partly because gifted education doesn't seem like a priority when it's spun as something for kids who've been prepped extensively for a test.

Tests inherently have the reality -- perhaps the problem -- that you can prepare for them. When the stakes are high, people will prepare more (witness the cram schools in a place like South Korea). Certainly by doing logic puzzles, you can prepare for IQ tests, and it's possible you'd do better. When gifted education is perceived as a reward -- or, as in NYC, where it gets you out of paying $40,000 in private school tuition if your kid can score a seat in a good program -- people have every incentive to use test prep products.

I'm not sure what to do about that. Perhaps a good screening program could involve all kids doing some amount of test prep. Almost every law school graduate takes a bar prep course; it's kind of built into the system. But I also think it's important to recognize the limits of test prep. Tons of children take SAT prep classes -- and such classes probably raise their scores. But very few children who've taken SAT prep classes or do SAT tutoring actually get perfect scores. The test is not completely coach-able or you'd see people acing it left and right. A high score still shows something.

I'm curious if blog readers have seen an assessment program for a school or district that they thought was done really well.

In other news: I wrote about the Bedtime Math Problem over at Citibank's Women & Co site.

IQ and Grit

There's a curious narrative running through some big thought pieces lately. The big idea is that Americans are obsessed with IQ. How obsessed are we? We even have gifted programs! But IQ turns out not to be the be-all and end-all of success. Character traits such as persistence matter more -- ergo we should stop pushing children.

The most recent piece along those lines was called "Opting out of the 'Rug Rat Race,'" which ran in the Wall Street Journal's review section this past weekend. It was excerpted from Paul Tough's book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character. There is much to like about Tough's book, but I'm a bit wary of the way some of the discussion is framed.

As regular readers of this blog know, American schools are most definitely not obsessed with IQ, at least to the point of doing much about it. The vast majority of gifted children -- even if they are identified -- are then given nothing more than 90 minutes of pull-out a week. Maybe they'll get to move a year ahead in math, but that's about it. The predominant focus of American education is on getting kids in the middle to meet grade-level tests.

One piece of evidence Tough cites that test scores don't matter is a study of GED recipients. The GED is a test that high school drop-outs can take to show they understand high school material, and hence can go on to higher education or signal to employers that they are the equivalent of high school graduates. Tough cites a study finding that, while GED holders are more intelligent than high school drop-outs, they do about the same in life as high school drop-outs, whereas high school diploma holders do much better. The character traits that got kids through high school seem to matter more.

Which is well and good -- but I'm not sure anyone would argue that character traits like persistence don't matter. I'm also not sure how you can control for the life circumstances that lead to people getting GEDs instead of high school diplomas. Beyond that, I think a lot of the folks arguing how much more grit matters than intelligence are looking at the world from their own perches of it. Everyone who works at the New York Times magazine (where Tough is a contributing editor) has a pretty high IQ. Academics look around their academic departments -- where everyone has made it into or through graduate school -- and see that the people who are most persistent and have the most self-control and discipline do best. This does not mean that you could pull two people off the street and only the person with the most persistence will do better in life. Wide differences in intelligence will matter too.

What Tough writes -- that I agree with -- is that many of America's children, "especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than ever, shielded from failure as they grow up." But a big reason kids don't experience failure is that they're never challenged. They're never given work that is truly right at the edge of their abilities... partly because we aren't obsessed enough with IQ. We aren't obsessed enough to make sure that highly gifted children are identified and then put in situations where they'll actually have to work to grasp the concepts they're trying to learn. That is how you learn grit.

I pretty much coasted through school until I went to the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities back in the mid-1990s. This public residential school for gifted children featured extremely challenging classes, and for the first time, I really had to work hard to get good grades. Sometimes, I didn't get good grades -- a flirtation with failure that made me realize I could work harder and change a situation. I didn't have to learn persistence until I was truly challenged. I worry that today's highly gifted kids won't get that chance to be challenged the more people repeat this story that intelligence doesn't matter and that we should just step back and let kids be kids.

In other news: The Davidson Institute just announced the 2012 Davidson Fellows. You can read more about these inspiring young people -- and the amazing things they've done -- at the Davidson institute's website.

Kindergarten orientation

Today was a milestone for me - I accompanied my "baby," now age 5, to kindergarten orientation. He had bright shiny white shoes and an even brighter smile. He was so excited to go wait at the end of the driveway for the bus. Today I got to ride with him. Tomorrow he goes on his own. His class, he told me afterwards, has 14 kids -- this is the upside of taking the PM kindergarten option!

I hope that he'll learn a lot this year and most importantly, will keep thinking learning is fun. As we were hiking over Labor Day weekend, he kept wanting me to ask him math questions. "I love this, mommy! This is my favorite game!" I hope that he'll keep thinking that puzzling through problems is an exciting way to pass the time.

What are your hopes for the school year?

Religious schools and gifted ed

Close to 5.5 million American children attend private schools. The majority of these schools are religious in nature. Over 40% are Catholic, another 15% are "conservative Christian," and a smaller proportion are Lutheran, Baptist or Jewish.

While 5.5 million sounds like a lot of kids, the number of children attending Catholic schools in particular has declined precipitously over the past few decades. Many have closed, and some are trying to reinvent themselves.

One possibility? Take a page from the playbook of a Queens, NY Lutheran school, which just reinvented itself as a school for gifted kids.

Lutheran School of Flushing & Bayside was struggling to attract students. But the folks in charge noticed something. NYC tests and identifies kindergartners for its gifted programs, but then doesn't actually have enough seats in the programs for all the kids identified. So now the school is enrolling children who meet the NYC standard but don't have a seat in the public schools in a program designed to meet their needs.

I think it's a neat idea. In large metropolitan areas, a school for gifted kids offers the best of all worlds: ideally, the academics are tough enough to cause kids to stretch, and they can learn in an environment with their intellectual peers. Because the high population means there's likely a concentration of gifted kids, you can actually fill a school.

NYC has some gifted schools (think Stuyvesant) but not nearly enough. A private Lutheran school is obviously not the perfect solution: plenty of gifted kids aren't Lutheran (and their families won't want them taught as such) and there's the matter of tuition. If public schools exist for kids, and especially when they identify kids as gifted, it's crazy that they then don't actually have to do anything about that fact. But, given that we don't live in a world where that's happening, having other schools around that do try to meet gifted kids' needs is a major plus.

Obviously not all religious schools could or should reinvent themselves this way. But if there were 10 Catholic schools in a city, why not designate one to have gifted & talented education as its niche? If there are 6 Protestant schools in a town, maybe they could have a gifted program at one of them and share some teachers and courses for 2 days a week. This would give parents of gifted kids more options. Because the sad truth is that it's usually assumed that if you can afford private school, that will solve all educational problems. But parents of gifted kids soon learn that even being able to pay tuition is no guarantee that an appropriate education is there in your town for the taking.

Does algebra for everybody help anybody?

Over the past two decades or so, there's been a push to raise standards in schools with the goal of increasing the number of kids who graduate college and career ready. There are certainly logical reasons to do this. In California, for instance, entrance to the state universities requires a certain set of courses. Yet many students, over the years, have graduated from high school without having taken those courses. If students later want to try college, they need to take remedial classes to do so.

One form this push for higher standards has taken is "algebra for all" requirements. The idea is that all 9th graders will take algebra, so they have the background for college prep math and science in later grades. But some studies have found that requiring students to take algebra doesn't actually result in higher college enrollment rates. And now a new study finds that algebra-for-all has a downside: less progress for higher achievers.

You can read the Education Week story on the study, published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, here.

In essence, what happened is that schools eliminated remedial courses. By putting lesser prepared students into the same 9th grade math classes as more advanced students, the schools created more mixed (heterogeneous) groups, skewed toward a lower level of preparation than before. Teachers naturally teach to the middle of the group. An experienced teacher who can see that half her class hasn't quite grasped the concept she introduced is going to spend more time on it, assign more homework on it, and so forth. But there is a limited amount of classroom time, and so the teacher doesn't delve into more advanced topics, or move as quickly as she would if she could see that 70% of the class had mastered the material. Students who could handle more didn't get more.

As the article notes, any talk of grouping students by readiness (some say ability, but I prefer readiness) causes controversy. It is certainly possible that one could create a mixed-readiness class that met every child's needs. But doing so is very, very hard to do in real life as opposed to in educational political theory. Worse results for high-achievers without corresponding gains for students who needed more help doesn't sound like a result anyone would aim for.

It's OK to be wrong

(Cross-posted at LauraVanderkam.com)

Over at CBS MoneyWatch today, I have a post on “5 reasons you should fail more often.” This post came out of an experience last week on vacation of doing puzzles with my 5-year-old. I realized he seemed hesitant to try pieces, in part because he viewed trying a piece in the wrong spot as making a mistake -- something one wouldn’t want to do. This was obviously slowing the puzzle-doing down considerably. I don’t care about doing puzzles quickly but I do hope my child doesn’t get too hung up on the idea that everything has to be done right the first time. I hope he doesn’t think people are “good” at puzzles and “bad” at puzzles and trying a piece in the wrong spot indicates that you are “bad” at such things.

I’ve written before of Carol Dweck’s famous experiments on praising children for effort rather than ability. When children view their performance on a task as a result of some innate and unchanging characteristic -- you’re a smart kid or you’re good at puzzles -- they become risk averse. After all, failure would show your label is wrong. So best not to attempt anything too difficult, and put that identity in question. When children view performance as a result of how hard they are trying, however, then failure is less scary. Maybe you just didn’t try hard enough. You can always try harder, whereas you cannot magically become more smart.

So I dutifully spouted such motherly advice as “Look, I’m trying pieces in the wrong place too! That helps me figure out where else they might go! We just have to keep trying. That’s the fun of puzzles!” I praised my kid’s effort and made sure not to say “wow, you are good at puzzles” or any such thing.

But broadly, I have been thinking of other activities that reinforce the idea that trial and error is part of life, and not a case of Error with a capital E. Blogging for different outlets has certainly helped me with this. One of the beautiful things about blogging is I can try lots of different ideas. Some get no attention whatsoever -- the blogging equivalent of failing -- and some just explode. Oftentimes, I am completely wrong about what people will find interesting. Good to put things out there as concepts before I invest too much time in them.

The Olympics is also a good example of the inevitability of failure (with a little f). The best volleyball teams give up points against good competition. Imagine how many times those divers belly-flopped as they learned those beautiful somersaults! If they failed once and stopped they certainly wouldn’t be competing now. Missy Franklin doesn’t win every heat she enters. In her amazing 2-events-in-10-minutes performance yesterday, she squeaked into the finals in her first swim before winning gold in the second.

How do you teach your children that getting something wrong, or losing, isn’t always, or even often, bad?

Obama's $1 billion master teacher program

Two years ago, an advisory group on scientific competitiveness recommended that the US create a "master teacher" corps in STEM fields. These highly compensated teachers would mentor other teachers, create new lesson plans and aid in professional development. Recently, the White House threw its weight behind this idea, calling on Congress to create a $1 billion master teacher program for science, math and technology.

While it's unclear any new spending will get passed these days, it's a fascinating idea. Several years ago, I wrote about a program called Math for America that provided extra professional development and bonus checks for math majors who became teachers. People with STEM degrees may be in more demand in industry, so education represents a potential income cut that might not be as pronounced for an English major. A program that paid them more and gave them an elite status could help with recruiting.

Broadly, the idea also hints at extending the reach of knowledgeable teachers. This raises the whole class size issue again. In recent years, there have been several programs to reduce class sizes. The problem is that if it's already hard to get good math teachers, getting more of them is going to be even harder. If you have to dip lower into the applicant pool to get smaller class sizes, the class sizes might not wind up being the deciding variable.

So what I'd love to see is this master teacher idea combined with a blended learning program, so that even more kids could get access to the best math lectures, and work on problem sets, and then get one-on-one time from master teachers, who could potentially handle classes with 40 kids or more with an instructional aide. Maybe that aide could be a student who's a math major, apprenticing with one of these master math teachers. It's an idea...

What do you think of the master teacher idea?

The trouble with "broadening reach"

Humans are social creatures. Like anyone, gifted kids enjoy being around their real peers -- people who understand them and can have conversations on the same level. In big enough districts, a good way to offer this is to create magnet gifted programs that pull kids from lots of schools to receive instruction targeted at a higher level. Gifted kids get challenged and, as a side benefit, they often learn there's more to their personalities than just being "the smart one."

I have never understood why so many people are so opposed to such programs, but they are -- and a recent article from Gazette.net on Frederick County, Maryland showed one way school districts have found to disband such programs while trying to claim they're still serving gifted kids' needs.

The argument? Claim you're broadening the reach of your gifted teachers. Rather than send kids to a magnet program, keep them in their home school. Then send around your gifted teachers to do enrichment programs for an hour or two at a time at each school. That way, more students can participate.

But why, exactly, do more students need to participate? If there are gifted kids who aren't being served by the magnet program, make more seats in the magnet program. If the kids and their parents don't want to go to the magnet school, a grade skip or subject matter acceleration can work for individual cases. I suspect that the desire to broaden reach is really that school districts don't like creating special programs for "the 1%" (to borrow a phrase from a different subject). By sending gifted kids back to their home schools, their test scores get included in those schools' results. Gifted education becomes a small and more easily cut part of the day. And as teachers struggle to meet everyone else's needs, the needs of gifted kids will be forgotten.

School officials may argue differently. According to the article, "School board President Angie Fish said on June 28 she understands how parents ... can be concerned. But she also was confident school staff will ensure advanced learners receive the services they need, regardless of the other challenges of their schools."

Sure. Except that it usually doesn't happen.

Disrupting class

I recently read Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn's book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Christensen is best known for his book The Innovator's Dilemma, which chronicles how various industries have been wiped out by technological progress over time. Personal computers ultimately replaced the mainframes of yore, but in the early years, they didn't compete for the same market. Disruptive innovations usually come in from below. They're much cheaper. Only over time do they become better. But become better they do. Meanwhile, established companies focus on better serving their existing customers, but as a result, they don't change to accommodate the disruption until too late.

The question in Disrupting Class is what this will look like in education. The book was written in 2008, so the predictions are already almost obviously old, and yet many that seem obvious haven't entirely come to pass either. Education is a resistant entity. If what you want to do is listen to a lecture on the quadratic equation, there is no reason not to hear it from the absolute best conveyer of the quadratic equation on the planet. Any kid who wants to take any language should be able to (Disrupting Class features a speculation about a high-achieving student wanting to take Arabic, and being able to through an online class). Years ago, I had a history teacher whose approach to US history involved putting questions and answers on the chalkboard, which we then spent the time in class writing down. What a waste of time when, these days, you could be listening and watching lectures from the best professors of US history around. Kids could look at those same questions and answers on a computer. And yet in many cases, these things don't happen.

Why? There are vested interests, of course. But even in the theoretically more efficient and adaptable private sector, established companies can almost never innovate into new versions of their same industry. So Christensen, et al, see disruptive innovation coming from outside the usual channels. Hence, Khan Academy. Online and digital learning is more likely to take hold first in after school programs, summer school programs, and in alternative education programs (credit recovery, juvenile detention centers, etc.) Charter schools, likewise, might give it a whirl. At first, it's not as good. But over time, it gets better. And eventually, school will look very different.

Or at least that's the idea. The authors predict that by 2014, about 25% of kids will be doing some kind of digital learning, and it will be at a tipping point. We're probably not that close now, but the field is changing rapidly, so it may not be too far off.

Fitting in

Over in Australia, a recent study of the state of gifted education has found that gifted kids face enormous pressure to fit in. According to a story in The Age, the report finds that children frequently face bullying when they don't conform to the social standard ruling everyone else their age.

While I'm glad to see this issue get some attention, I can't say I'm surprised. Growing up in "normal" schools in heterogeneous classes, the gifted child soon gets one identity: the smart kid. While a few other attributes can expand that identity (massive athletic talent, for instance) generally "the smart kid" is what you're stuck with. You soon learn that "the smart kid" is not necessarily the cool thing to be. So you don't stick up your hand. You don't ask a lot of questions. Or you do, and suffer the consequences.

People always talk about how heterogeneous grouping helps with socialization, but I think this world view misses what happens in real life. In a homogeneous grouping, the gifted child gets a one-dimensional personality. In a heterogeneous grouping, where "smart" isn't necessarily the biggest thing distinguishing you, the gifted child can discover other aspects of her personality, and how to relate to people in ways that aren't just about being the smart one. You learn that maybe you can be funny. Nice. Inquisitive. A prankster. Or anything else. These social skills are good to know, because eventually, many people wind up in semi-homogeneous situations on their own. At university, for instance, or in the workplace. It's probably safe to say that most software engineers at a major tech company are pretty smart. So what else do you have going for you? Unfortunately, many gifted kids don't get to think about this until much later. Or they dumb themselves down to fit in -- and miss out on opportunities for a better life later on.

Summer reading time

I have fond memories, from when I was a kid, of using my summers to read. Summer hours seem to have less filling them, and while I read on the bus to school, skipping that daily commute and the 6 hours in the classroom opened up many more hours for paging through books. I'd get so absorbed that I have a memory of absentmindedly walking around the yard with my head in a book, feeling something sharp, but ignoring it. Later I looked down and saw my toe was covered in blood. Never even noticed!

This is the first summer that my 5-year-old can read in a way that would make reading fun. I've started reading aloud the Winnie-the-Pooh stories to him (before this year he couldn't sit through a whole one...they're not short!) He reads through his dinosaur and astronomy books, but I'd love to introduce him to some easy reading but enjoyable books for young readers. I welcome suggestions. The first chapter book I read was called something like Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims, but I'm not sure it was great literature. I loved the Little House on the Prairie books, too, but I'm curious if little boys get as excited about those books as I did.

Of course, I'm also nostalgic about all this summer reading because it seems these days I rarely read novels. The last one I made it through was Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, and that was almost a year ago now. I think I'm reading and writing too much for work now, and it takes some of the fun out of digging into something meaty. Maybe I'm hoping that reading through some literature with my son will put me back in that frame of mind. What are you reading with your kids? To your kids? And what are they reading on their own?

Note: A purely self-promotional aside... I have a new ebook out this week called "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast." You can read a review here at MoneySavingMom, and an excerpt at FastCompany.com. Available in Kindle, Nook and all other e-reader formats. It's short and cheap ($2.99). Thanks for checking it out.

In praise of abnormal childhoods

USA Today has a quick post today on Sho Yano's graduation from medical school at age 21. Yano also earned a PhD in molecular genetics and cell biology, but that wasn't in the headline -- I guess people still like the image of Doogie Howser, MD, all these years after that show!

My favorite lines from the post: "The average age of students entering medical school in the U.S. is 23, and there were schools that refused Yano admittance because of his age. School officials worried that the difficulty of medical school would hurt Yano's ability to have a normal adolescence, the Tribune reports...."I never understood that," Yano said. "Why would being allowed to challenge yourself be considered more damaging than being totally bored?"

Exactly. There is nothing "normal" about being bored in school, or about being forced to learn certain things and not learn others solely because of your birthdate. If being able to learn to your full potential is an abnormal childhood, well, I'm all in favor of being weird.

NYC's gifted programs...and mine

I lived in New York City for 9 years, and my oldest two children were born there. We'd started thinking about the whole school question before we left -- though we didn't get very far down that road before moving to Pennsylvania instead.

Anyway, this past week, the NYC school system mailed out its letters informing parents whether their K-3 child landed a spot in one of the city's gifted programs. Unlike many school systems, NYC has quite an elaborate network of GT classrooms. On the other hand, getting in one is not all that straightforward. A child is tested and is labeled gifted if she scores above the 90th percentile. But there aren't actually enough seats in programs for the students who receive that label. Some 13,508 students got scores high enough to qualify. Of those, 7,562 applied for spots (the others presumably chose private schools or found other non-GT programs they preferred -- maybe a neighborhood school or a language immersion program). Of these, 5,486 received offers. The other confusing part is that there are two tiers for the program. Scoring above the 90th percentile qualifies you for "regular" gifted programs, but scoring above the 97th percentile qualifies you for "citywide" gifted programs. These, at schools like Hunter, are the most popular. But because more kids score above the 97th percentile than there are seats, in effect, you have to score at the 99th percentile.

Reading about all this has me pondering what we're doing with my 5-year-old next year. We moved to a school district outside Philadelphia that is known for being good. Certainly the offerings of contests and courses dwarf anything I experienced at the local schools in Indiana I attended for a few years. His elementary school is about a mile from our house. To enroll him, all I had to do is show up at the district office with his immunization record and birth certificate. I'm really quite grateful to have skipped all the stress of figuring out if he'd have a spot in a certain program, applying to private schools, and all that.

I have no idea if my son is officially gifted or not. We'll likely have him tested next year. But on some level, I'm not sure it much matters yet. Kindergarten is half day here. So he'll be in school for a grand total of 2 hours and 45 minutes per day. If it's all playing on the playground, we'd deal, because my son winds up doing a lot of academic work at home. He writes stories, reads books and informs us of various things he's learning about dinosaurs and planets. We sometimes do our bedtime math problems. Or we stumble into it. He's become obsessed with this guide book on San Diego (we might visit in August). He's informed me multiple times that it's 77 degrees in August (per the average high in the table). But he was trying to figure out, does that mean it's 77 degrees on August 1? or 10? or 20? So we started discussing the concept of averages (which I'm having a hard time explaining, by the way).

Anyway, I feel like next year will be about easing into school, seeing how it goes. I'm glad to have avoided the high stakes system of NYC, even though I'm glad NYC even has a system. What are your school plans for next year?

How not to ruin a prodigy

Today's Wall Street Journal profiles Todd Schmitz, the coach of champion (and likely Olympics-bound) swimmer Missy Franklin. Franklin, 17, stepped into Schmitz's program at age 7. The curious thing about their relationship is that Schmitz's program isn't one of the elite Olympic feeder swimming programs. Indeed, the youth club Franklin swims with doesn't even have its own pool. Schmitz rents space in various Denver pools and lugs equipment like his digital clock around in his truck.

As the article notes, Franklin's parents know they could put their daughter in a different program. But as her father says, "Why would we?... We have a kid who is happy and who keeps swimming faster."

Schmitz's methods are a bit unconventional -- but the deeper one reads into the profile, the clearer it because that the bit about having "a kid who is happy" is very important. Franklin trains hard, but takes the weekends off. Schmitz monitors his swimmers for burn out, and if they're tired, he'll launch a game of water polo. Drills turn into play -- "A lot of this is about simply playing around in the water," Schmitz told the WSJ. He cross trains the kids on dry land which, among other things, helps avoid injury. All told, Franklin probably swims about half the yardage of elite college swimmers. But it seems to be enough. Franklin is the world champion in the 200-meter backstroke, and will be a swimmer to watch in London this summer.

Reading the article, I was reminded of the parallels -- and things that should be parallels -- between athletic prodigies and profoundly gifted young people whose main talents lie in other fields. In athletics, we naturally see the role of a coach. Practice tends to be supervised, with a coach offering immediate feedback. Ideally, for a young talent in other fields, much of practice time would feature coaching too. Here's what needs work. Here's how you improve. Proper practice is a skill that many people never learn -- it doesn't necessarily come naturally, as anyone who's listened to a kid bang out a song on the piano knows. Math can be practiced. Writing can be practiced -- with a good coach offering immediate feedback on drafts so one can learn how to improve.

But there's also the broader question of how to nurture talent without leading to a prodigy flaming out. Here, I think Schmitz is on to something. Getting to be world-class in any field takes a ton of work and practice. But if it isn't fun, then it's hard to stick with a rigorous practice schedule year after year after year. Kids often have lots of interests, even if they appear to have prodigious talent in one. While Missy Franklin clearly enjoyed swimming from an early age, the article notes that at age 7, she was a bit reluctant, sitting out some sprints. A coach who insisted on making her swim when she didn't want to might have squelched the joy that these days has her getting faster and faster. How to nurture that joy is a question that all adults who work with talented young people need to ask.

The class size kerfuffle

I like following politics in general, but seeing the "big stories" of the past few days has reminded me why I'm glad I'm not covering politics as a reporter full time. Yesterday's big campaign story was that Mitt Romney said that class size was not key to student success. The White House issued a statement asking what planet he lived on, as if this were a cut and dried issue.

The problem for both sides is that it's an incredibly nuanced issue. In our political debates, we tend to like story lines that focus on very few variables. From the left, perhaps: raise taxes and the debt will disappear! From the right: cutting defense spending makes America less safe! But with education and many other issues, there are so many more variables.

This is definitely true with class size. Some studies (most notably a long, longitudinal one from Tennessee) found that reduced class sizes correspond with higher student achievement. On the other hand, Mitt Romney could point to other studies finding that class size was not strongly correlated with student success. Both can be right. Studies can find all kinds of things when there's many variables! On this blog, we've looked at a study out of Kenya finding that cutting class size in half only helped if the students were then grouped by ability in the smaller classes. Teachers often prefer working in smaller groups, and find it better for discipline purposes, but what if you change the whole class structure? Some of the schools I visited in California for this blended learning project could have as many as 48 kids in a class, but they were all getting more instructional time, because they rotated through direct teacher instruction, small group projects, and adaptive learning programs on computers. KIPP Empower LA, an elementary school that's doing blended learning, has 28-30 kids per kindergarten class, and saw these children's test scores improve more over the year than any other KIPP school (which tend to be high-performing charters already). The kids got more small group time with the teacher because of the class set-up -- but that didn't require small classes.

Just think of all the variables involved. Small classes might be good, but if teacher quality were more important, then small classes might not help matters -- because it would force you to dip deeper into the applicant pool than you might want.

But all these matters are not easily discussed in sound bites -- so we tend not to get thoughtful discussions in campaigns.

Digital learning and acceleration

I spent the past week out in California, visiting several schools that are using digital/blended learning strategies. Done right, blended learning means that kids are getting practice on skills using technology that provides instant feedback: you got this math problem wrong, so let's work through to see what you don't understand. Or you got it right, so let's try a harder one. With computers doing the basics and the grading, teacher time can be re-deployed from large group instruction to small group projects or individual tutoring. Class sizes can be larger. Schools can be cheaper and, with teachers analyzing the data to see exactly what kids know and don't, schools can be better. Utopia!

But does it work in real life?

This is where a lot of educational ideas founder, and certainly, blended learning is going through some growing pains. At one school I visited, I was informed that they're switching software providers because they're getting data...but it's useless. At another, student reading passages were differentiated (the level of difficulty depended on your reading preparation) but if you finished early, you sort of waited for the next assignment from the teacher, instead of moving on. And in another, a big chunk of the computers didn't work because they were old. And the capital budgets for new computers in CA are not so generous at the moment.

On the other hand, many of the schools were getting positive results despite some challenges. At KIPP Empower LA, the kids who started kindergarten in 2010 came in with 64% scoring basic or below basic on the STEP literacy test, and 36% scoring proficient or advanced. By spring of 2011, 96% of the kindergartners were proficient or advanced. Blended learning isn't the only good thing going on there, but it's certainly part of it. Good educational technology is the equivalent of "deliberate practice" -- the kind of intense practice that professional musicians engage in, addressing their weak points and repeating skills over and over. The KIPP kids are getting an extra hour a day of pure deliberate practice on reading and math skills. Is it any wonder they improve?

Most people are excited about blended learning for the possibility of getting lower-performing kids up to grade level. I'm personally more excited about the potential for acceleration. At one middle school, the principal and teachers had implemented blended/digital learning for math. The teachers did a lot of assessments through the year, using the data, and found that a few sixth graders had mastered pre-algebra concepts by the middle of the year. So...they got to start algebra. Right then! No waiting around for a new school year to start. A child who demonstrated mastery in algebra got to start geometry.

People get a little worried about acceleration because it often involves going to "different" classes, and tends to involve whole units of years. But there's no reason it has to. In the past, people have always done independent studies, but I know from personal experience it's easy to fail when you're trying to teach yourself. Educational technology gives more feedback, so failing is more difficult.

The Question of AP Exams

Over the past decade, the number of students taking AP exams has basically doubled. These tests are supposed to show whether high school students have mastered college-level coursework. Offering AP classes can be a way for schools to challenge students and AP classes are the closest thing we have right now to a common, high-standards curriculum. The AP Calculus exam, or AP Biology exam is the same over the whole country, and a 4 score in California means the same thing as a 4 score in New York.

Of course, just because a class is offered doesn't mean students are learning -- and the AP exams show this rather well. According to this article from the Associated Press (another AP!) the proportion of students scoring the lowest number on the exam -- 1 -- has also risen dramatically, from 13% to 21% over the past decade. In addition, there are whole school districts where no one is passing (scoring a 3 or above). As the article notes, "In Indiana -- among the states pushing AP most aggressively, and with results close to the national average -- there were still 21 school districts last year where graduates took AP exams but none passed."

There are also a number of specialized schools serving low income children with poor results. "Baltimore's Academy for College & Career Exploration, where 81 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced price lunch programs in 2010, added three AP classes in recent years. Over the past two years, just two of 62 exams taken by its students earned a 3."

Some argue that these low passing rates show that offering AP classes is a waste. The classes are probably smaller than others, and hence resource consuming, and the teaching time spent on AP classes would be better spent making sure kids don't have gaps in their prior knowledge.

Which makes sense except...we spend a lot of time and energy on making sure no child is left behind. Much of American policy is focused on bringing low achievers up to the bar. Even if no one is passing the AP exams, offering more challenging classes is at least throwing more advanced students a bone. Would it be better if more passed? Of course. But thinking in terms of offering AP classes isn't a bad mindset for a school. Ideally, some with low pass rates will keep that mindset but offer new ways of preparing for the classes and teaching them over time -- maybe digital learning strategies or other such things. Sometimes it's about student preparation, and sometimes the AP class just isn't well designed or taught (which digital learning/distance learning could help solve). I only scored a 2 on the AP Physics exam in 11th grade, but scored a 5 on the AP Calculus BC exam, a 5 on the AP Chem and a 5 on the AP Bio. I don't think it's that I wasn't capable of understanding physics. While of course I am ultimately responsible for my own learning, I think the class wasn't as good as the others, and that showed in the results. The good thing about AP exams is that at least they show that -- unlike watered down state level tests.

Did you take AP classes? Are your children taking them? What do you think about them?

A little nudge toward college

One of the current major public policy goals in the US is to increase the number of students going to college. Historically, children from lower to moderate income families have been less likely to enroll, even if they've done well enough in school that college is a possibility.

Money is obviously one barrier, but there is at least some financial help out there in the form of Pell grants (and loans) from the government. The problem? Policy makers have long suspected that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) has inadvertently become a barrier by being too complicated.

So over the past few years, some folks who care about this issue have been running a fascinating study. Many low-to-moderate income families get help with tax prep. Why not have tax professionals help these families with high school aged kids fill out FAFSA at the same time?

The results, according to publications of this study, have been positive. When families visiting H&R Block got help filling out FAFSA, their children were more likely to enroll in college vs. a control group that got information about financial aid eligibility, but didn't get any help actually filling out the forms.

Going to college is a huge decision, and earning a degree can have a massive financial benefit in one's life. So it's disconcerting that something as simple as a complicated form can have such a deterrent effect. It gets at the point of Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's book, Nudge -- that choices can be profoundly influenced by small things, like how easy something is, and whether someone you trust behaves in a way that shows a choice is a good idea. Given how simple this is to have tax preparers help with FAFSA, it seems like a good policy to pursue.

High school, only shorter

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature ("High school, only shorter") on the handful of states that now give scholarships to students who complete high school early. If it takes you three years instead of four, the state is saving cash. So why not split that bounty, and give a small scholarship to be used to start college? Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, South Dakota and Idaho all have programs that create an incentive for kids to start college early.

I love this idea, and it may be working. According to stats from the WSJ article, some 2.9% of students who were sophomores in 2002 graduated from high school in three years or less, vs. 1.5% in the 1990s. The availability of online classes is helping this (since that's how many students earn the additional credits -- or through summer school).

The "pros" are obvious: if you've finished high school, why stick around? It's time to move on to more challenging work, or to start your working life earlier. What was most fascinating to me, though, were the "cons" the journal listed, which show how entrenched the idea is that high school is just part of American life. What about prom? What about senior class trips? Perhaps students will be "socially or emotionally unprepared for college" and, of course, graduating early "requires more work."

I get the hesitation. We live in an increasingly fractured society. Experiences like prom or homecoming and the supposed glory of senior year are some of the few universals we still have. From the vantage point of dull jobs, bills, and the responsibilities of raising families, people like to look back and view ages 17-18 as the best years of their lives. But prom is a relatively recent tradition. And as Nicholas Myers of Indiana, now enrolled in Ball State, told the WSJ, "Nowadays we have CEOS in their 20s... If I get out a year early, that's a year extra of pay... That's a whole year of my time that I can do whatever I want -- make some money, invest some money or just relax." Exactly. For all the worry about "hurried" childhoods, I see no reason to prolong it if the child is ready to grow up.

But I'm curious what other people think. Do you have fond memories of your senior year of high school? Do you think your children will?