tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48570514062593497512024-03-05T02:18:52.120-08:00You Do the Math -- K thru CalculusA blog of tips and recommendations for anyone interested in learning or teaching mathematics.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-91932119550307795922016-10-06T21:53:00.002-07:002016-10-06T21:53:25.267-07:00“Empowerment or Abandonment”Dean Dad has some insightful things to say about the ways <a href="http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2016/10/empowerment-or-abandonment.html">different students react to different teaching approaches</a>.<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At the time, I felt confident in my overall philosophy, even if not necessarily in every single moment. My job, as I saw it, was to create students who didn’t need professors. At some level, I still believe that. After all, when they graduate, they won’t have professors or t.a.’s around to decode things for them. <br /><br />From a distance, though, and in a very different institutional setting, I see a different possible interpretation of what I was doing. Students with some cultural capital, and some academic confidence, could respond to that sort of teaching as a challenge, and some did. Students without much cultural or academic capital could read it as indifference, and respond in kind. That wasn’t what I intended, but intentions only get you so far. If you’re a student with a relatively fragile sense of belonging in college in the first place, someone refusing to help you could look like a sign of hostility, or as confirmation that you don’t belong. <br /><br />The teaching style with which I started was the one I had seen quite a bit as a student. I cobbled together a general theory behind it and went with it. And at the flagship research university where I was in grad school, it worked tolerably well. The students generally were well-enough prepared in traditional ways that they could work with it. They didn’t always like it, but they could work with it.<br /><br />Upon moving to a very different setting, it took a while to make the adjustment. <br /><br />I was reminded of that recently in visiting a class of entering students and hearing them describe their own frustration at some institutional practices designed to empower them. What was supposed to convey empowerment instead made them feel abandoned. <br /><br />The challenge in designing systems for students is in accurately picturing different students encountering it for the first time. Does being told “it’s on the website” come as a relief -- “I don’t have to wait for you!” -- or as evasion (“why won’t you help me?”)? Given the diversity of the student body at most community colleges, the answer is “yes.” <br /><br />The long-term answer (!), I think, is in conceiving of all of our processes as part of the learning experience. Even if the eventual goal is to foster empowered, self-directed learners, some need more initial guidance than others to get there. And that’s okay; people start in different places. I can just imagine if I hired a personal trainer who started with “okay, let’s warm up with a five mile run.” Um, no. Not gonna happen. Maybe someday, but not right out of the gate. Replace “five mile run” with “five page paper” or “FAFSA workshop,” and the same principle holds. If you don’t start within shouting distance of where people are, you’ll lose them.</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-58639454020723934602016-10-06T13:03:00.002-07:002016-10-06T13:03:39.185-07:00Why AP?<br />
I always got the feeling that others saw something in the advanced
placement program that I didn't. It was never entirely clear to me why
people who so often complained that our schools were doing a poor job
teaching secondary-level courses were so damned happy about the same
schools trying to teach college-level.<br />
<br />
I did understand
the argument for key prerequisite courses like calculus or statistics.
Getting those out of the way in high school could be very helpful when
trying to complete, say, an engineering degree in four years. Putting
aside those exceptions, though, there didn't seem to be much point. We
already had a program set up for self-study and testing out of courses.
CLEP-based approaches are flexible, self-paced and cheap. They reward
initiative and independence. They provide an excellent ready-made
foundation when you're experimenting with new methods (If the people
behind MOOCs were serious…). AP courses are, by comparison, expensive,
tradition bound, cumbersome, difficult to schedule, and best serve
students who are already well served by the conventional high school
classroom approach.<br />
<br />
From the moment they were
introduced, AP courses tended to force out more varied and interesting
elective courses for a standard slate of General Ed classes. In terms of
quality of instruction, it was a Peter Principle anecdote waiting to
happen. At best, you had teachers who were good at algebra and geometry
being pushed out of their depth. At worst, you had faculty members who
were good at sucking up to the administration being rewarded with plum
positions.<br />
<br />
Worse still was the inequality question. The
schools that already had an unfair advantage in terms of financing and
demographics were the very ones that could attract the highly qualified
teachers with advanced degrees. <br />
<br />
AP classes also play
to one of the worst trends in education, the bury-the-kids-in-work
approach which brings us to this recent essay from the Washington Post.<br />
<br />
From <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/09/21/why-i-regret-letting-my-teen-sign-up-for-an-ap-course/">Why I regret letting my teen sign up for an AP course</a> by Kate Haas<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My
misgivings started when the homework began to pile up. I knew my son
would have a lot of material to cover — the syllabus had been explicit
about the required reading. But most of his homework seemed to consist
of filling in charts. Night after night, I watched him spend hours
scanning the pages of his textbook for relevant facts about ancient
civilizations. He was not reading to learn but simply to plug correct
bits of information into appropriate boxes.<br />
<br />
“But you talk about this stuff in class, right?” I asked him. “You discuss the Code of Hammurabi, and all that?”<br />
<br />
No, he told me, they did not. They took notes from the teacher’s slideshow presentations.<br />
<br />
This did not remind me of college.<br />
<br />
I
graduated from an academically rigorous liberal arts school. In my
freshman humanities class, I read a book a week: philosophy, literature,
biographies, social science. But my classmates and I did not spend our
time charting the number of syllables in Emily Dickinson’s poems or
listing all the noble houses in Ssu-ma Chien’s chronicle of Chinese
history. We were asked to think critically, raise questions, cite
relevant passages and discuss a work’s implications in the wider world.<br />
<br />
Nothing like that appeared to be taking place in my son’s AP history class. But I kept my mouth shut.<br />
<br />
“I
would enjoy learning about this,” he told me one night, “if the whole
point wasn’t to go through it as fast as possible and then take a
kajillion quizzes.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sure that’s not the whole point,” I said.<br />
<br />
At
back-to-school night, I looked forward to meeting the teacher, who
would undoubtedly put all this in perspective. Instead, she talked for
15 minutes about tests and grading policies.<br />
<br />
At the end, my husband raised his hand. “What’s the main thing you want students to get from this class?” he asked.<br />
<br />
I
leaned forward expectantly. Now, surely, the teacher would mention an
appreciation for the sweep of human history or the importance of an
informed perspective on world events.<br />
<br />
“Test-taking strategies and study skills,” she said briskly. “That’s the main thing.”</blockquote>
<br />
[This post originally ran on the sister blog <a href="http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-ap-another-assault-on-conventional.html">West Coast Stat Views.</a>]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-41206357582653936122016-07-12T02:40:00.000-07:002016-07-12T02:40:00.387-07:00New video -- the Puzzled Carpenter<br />
Make sure to check out the whole playlist.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YR3K8QnfK8A" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-19168590195740027592016-07-04T13:47:00.001-07:002016-07-04T13:47:18.361-07:00Worth Carnahan's Divided Garden Puzzle<br />
<a href="https://youtu.be/ZLw-d5tyJMc">Another video</a> in the Puzzler's Guide to Problem Solving series.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZLw-d5tyJMc" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-6682979115583888272016-06-03T09:00:00.000-07:002016-06-03T09:00:06.272-07:00Attention all history teachers/map enthusiasts/nerds You will want to check out the following from <a href="http://xkcd.com/1688/">XKCD</a> (then the annotation from <a href="http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1688">ExplainXKCD</a>)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/map_age_guide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/map_age_guide.png" height="235" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-39574006854894527982016-06-02T09:00:00.000-07:002016-06-02T09:00:32.347-07:00Cosmo Garvin give us a tour of the Johnson/Rhee machinePerhaps the saddest part is that, even after all this, there are still a number of movement reformers who continue to hold Michelle Rhee up as a martyr being so blunt because she cared so much.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thebaffler.com/salvos/sacramento-shakedown">Sacramento Shakedown</a> [emphasis added]<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For his community work, Johnson was named one of George H. W. Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light” in 1991. The Sacramento Bee described Johnson’s charity as “almost saintly.”<br />
<br />
Looked at more closely, it’s clear that the public benefits promised by Johnson’s various “public–private partnerships” often fail to materialize. Or they come at a very high price. A few examples:<br />
<br />
• St. Hope’s development arm built Oak Park’s signature “40 Acres” building, including a beautifully restored Guild Theater, bookstore, and Oak Park’s first Starbucks. It also took nearly $3 million in city loans and grants. But for years, Oak Park residents complained that St. Hope’s properties were overgrown with weeds and illegal dumping. Johnson’s properties gathered dozens of code violations—racking up tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Today, the St. Hope website still promises that some of those properties “will be renovated over the next five years” or that they are “scheduled for 2007.” But as that last vow makes painfully clear, the website hasn’t been updated in years; meanwhile, the properties sit empty, unbuilt, or unrefurbished.<br />
<br />
• St. Hope also promised to save Johnson’s alma mater, Sacramento High School. Lagging test scores in the early 2000s put Sac High on the state’s list of “failing schools.” Established in 1856, Sac High billed itself as the “second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi,” though the current building dates only from the 1970s. In 2003 the school board gave Sac High to Johnson’s St. Hope to run as a charter school.<br />
<br />
The closure of Sac High was bitterly contested. Groups of parents and activists tried for years to kick St. Hope out and revive it as a neighborhood school. The takeover created an undying enmity between Johnson and the Sacramento teachers’ union. Sacramento Charter High School is a success if you go by test scores and graduation rates. But no real empirical comparison can be fairly made between the teeming comprehensive high school of two thousand students and the small charter school of nine hundred that is there today. <b>The latter has an application process, and the local teachers’ union has accused the school of “counseling out” students who don’t perform. In other words, Johnson didn’t turn around Sac High—he gutted it and established a much smaller, more selective school in its place.</b><br />
<br />
• St. Hope’s “Hood Corps” program was funded with AmeriCorps grants to get young volunteers involved in tutoring at-risk youth and other kinds of community service. In 2008 federal officials found that St. Hope had misused the AmeriCorps money for Johnson’s “personal needs and purposes and/or to provide added free or subsidized staff for one or more of the entities controlled by Mr. Johnson.” In other words, the AmeriCorps money helped pay salaries of St. Hope employees. Hood Corps students were also used to run errands for Johnson, to wash his car, and to recruit students for Johnson’s charter schools. Some were even assigned to work on political campaigns for incumbent school board members who, according to federal investigators, “would be more likely to vote in favor of renewing Sac High’s charter.” St. Hope eventually had to give back more than $400,000 to AmeriCorps, and for a time Johnson was barred from receiving public funds from the federal government.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
There’s another striking difference between KJ’s charitable network and the nonprofit funds that other mayors control. Whereas the LA mayor’s fund is run by a board of prominent citizens, many with backgrounds in philanthropy, Johnson’s nonprofits are run entirely by his friends and political consultants.<br />
<br />
The flagship nonprofit of KJ Inc. is, of course, St. Hope. As mayor, Johnson has been able to leverage, from real estate and other local interests, about $3 million in donations to support the family business. The biggest donors include Sacramento’s biggest sprawl developer, Angelo Tsakopoulos; arena developer Mark Friedman and his family; and Kevin Nagle, part owner of the Sacramento Kings and majority owner of the Sacramento Republic soccer team. Nagle is also on the St. Hope board of directors. All these men have been big donors to Johnson’s election campaigns and to his strong-mayor ballot measure. But while they are limited by strict political campaign contribution limits, they can give unlimited amounts to Johnson’s nonprofits.<br />
<br />
They, along with other business interests, also give heavily to Johnson’s Sacramento Public Policy Foundation (SPPF), which is more closely associated with Johnson’s job as mayor. SPPF collects donations from interested parties who want to curry favor with the mayor, and then distributes the cash to various policy initiatives under Johnson’s direction. For a time, these initiatives included an environmental brand called Greenwise Sacramento and an arts program called For Arts’ Sake. Neither of these groups ever did much, and both are now dead links on Johnson’s website.<br />
<br />
The real project of SPPF is Johnson’s “Think Big” initiative, which the mayor advertises as a way to “promote transformative projects that catalyze job creation and economic development.” But Think Big would be more accurately described as a public relations shop for stadium subsidies, coordinated out of City Hall, with the labor of city employees.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
This was thinking big, indeed. The really innovative part of the KJ Inc. model of governance is the way in which it has studiously blurred the lines between the public and private sector. The players are hard to keep straight without a scorecard. Johnson hired former redevelopment manager Cassandra Jennings to be a liaison between his nonprofits and the mayor’s office. Jennings is on the city payroll, and also on the SPPF board of directors. In 2014 her husband, Rick Jennings—who was on the same school board that gave Sac High to St. Hope—also got himself elected to the city council. Not surprisingly, Jennings has been a reliable vote for his wife’s boss.<br />
<br />
....<br />
<br />
More typically, the operations of KJ Inc. go on with no public scrutiny at all. That’s especially true of Johnson’s use of City Hall to advance his brand of education reform, which seeks to roll back teacher protections and turn many more public schools into charters.<br />
<br />
<b>Johnson served on the board of the California Charter Schools Association. As president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Johnson pushed through pro-charter resolutions to speed the school privatization agenda on a national scale.</b><br />
<br />
<b>As it happens, the charter hustle is a Johnson family business. His (then future) wife and former St. Hope board member, Michelle Rhee, was hired by D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty as the first Chancellor of D.C. public schools in 2007. That year, the city passed reforms that took power away from D.C.’s elected school board and put control of the schools in the mayor’s office. This “mayoralization” of schools is a favorite KJ policy reform.</b><br />
<br />
Fenty would lose reelection in 2010, in part because of Rhee’s confrontational tactics—like her ill-timed announcement that she was firing 241 underperforming D.C. public school teachers (and putting 737 more D.C. public school employees “on notice”) weeks ahead of the mayoral ballot. Once Rhee was sent packing along with Fenty, she was well positioned to clean up on the well-heeled foundation and government-affairs circuits, beginning with the anti-teachers’-union lobbying shop Students First, headquartered just two blocks north of California’s State Capitol and two blocks south of Sacramento City Hall.<br />
<br />
That also happened to be the address of Johnson’s own education-related nonprofit, called Stand Up for Sacramento Schools. On its tax forms, Stand Up’s stated mission is “to ensure that every child in Sacramento has the opportunity to attend an excellent public school.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Standing Offers<br />
<br />
<b>In fact, Stand Up does next to nothing for Sacramento’s public schools. It is mostly a political organization, leveraging the mayor’s office to promote Johnson’s ideological brand of educational reform, and to promote Johnson himself.</b><br />
<br />
<b>This prime directive is spelled out in a 2011 email from Johnson to a potential Stand Up recruit—cc’d to Johnson’s executive assistant, a city employee. KJ says a large part of Stand Up’s function is to support his efforts to “advocate for much-needed legislation around policies such as Race to the Top, ESEA [No Child Left Behind], and LIFO (‘last in, first out’).” LIFO is the practice of laying off teachers with less seniority, a policy much in vogue among educational reformers. Johnson also mentions Stand Up’s support for “parent trigger” laws in California, which enable parents to vote to turn neighborhood schools into charters.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>For more then a decade now, all these policies have been flash points in the ed reform wars. And most of Stand Up’s money comes from outside Sacramento, from the big underwriters of the school reform movement, like the Walmart-owning Walton family and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. In fact, Stand Up has taken in more money in mayoral behests than any of Johnson’s other nonprofits, more than $4 million since he took office.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Early on, Stand Up hosted education town halls and viewing parties for the pro-charter film Waiting for “Superman.” Stand Up promoted Teach for America and City Year in Sacramento schools, over the objections of local teachers’ unions. It supported Johnson’s frequent advocacy junkets to other frontline venues in the school wars, such as his trip to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to stump for a ballot initiative to take power away from the local school board and put it in the hands of the mayor. (Fortunately for the citizens of Bridgeport, the measure failed.)</b><br />
<br />
About the only not-overtly-political thing Stand Up has touched is a reading tutoring program it helped to coordinate in 2011. The actual tutoring work was contracted to another group, which soon took over the project entirely. True to form, Johnson’s “Sacramento Reads” program is now just another dead link on KJ’s website.<br />
<br />
Stand Up’s website contains video highlights of a handful of “education policy summits” in other cities, such as Nashville and Atlanta. These clips show Johnson, Rhee, and other Students First employees giving the ed reform pitch. But those events were nearly a year ago. Stand Up’s Facebook and Twitter feeds haven’t been updated in a year. When I called Stand Up’s directors of operations, and longtime KJ associate from back in the Phoenix days, Tracy Stigler, for an update, he hung up on me.</blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-52843558293129003552016-06-01T09:00:00.000-07:002016-06-01T09:00:03.104-07:00Matt Yglesias may not be helping his cause -- REPOST[I originally posted <a href="http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2013/06/matt-yglesias-may-not-be-helping-his.html">this</a> at the Stat blog in 2013 but it's going to be relevant to an upcoming thread so I thought I'd reintroduce it to the conversation.] <br />
<br />
There was an odd exchange recently between Diane Ravitch and Matthew Yglesias.<br />
<br />
Ravitch wrote a <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/05/tfa-grooms-a-new-elite/">post</a> about James Cersonsky's American Prospect <a href="http://prospect.org/article/teach-america%E2%80%99s-deep-bench">article</a> on Teach for America's political power. She introduced the post with this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Teach
for America began with a worthy goal: to supply bright, idealistic
college graduates to serve in poor children in urban and rural
districts.<br />
<br />
But then it evolved into something with grand ambitions: to groom the leaders who would one day control American education.
</blockquote>
Yglesias's response is rather strange. He doesn't
mention Cersonsky or the American Prospect his post but he only
explicitly addresses points that come from Cersonsky's article; not from
Ravitch. I say explicitly because the <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/06/education_reform_is_made_of_teachers.html">example</a> Yglesias uses is certainly relevant to Ravitch's claim (though definitely not in the way he intended).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I
thought of this over the weekend at my college reunion, where I met up
with an old friend of mine who right after graduation was a science
teacher in a public school in New Orleans. Later, she taught at a
KIPP-affiliated school turnaround venture in New Orleans and then became
founding assistant principal of a KIPP-affiliated school there. Then
she moved back to the Boston area and became principal of a charter
school called Excel Academy. Now she's a fellow at an nonprofit called
Unlocking Potential, but soon she's going to become principal of a
troubled public middle school in a a Massachusetts town whose school
district has been placed in state receivership.
</blockquote>
The part about reunion caught my eye. That's a lot
of jobs for a 2003 graduate (Matt Yglesias '03 as they say at Harvard)
so I did a little digging. I may have missed some important details but
here's <a href="http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Komal-Bhasin/1190847932">what</a> <a href="http://www.unlocking-potential.org/meetourstaff.html">turned</a> <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/9/24/paying-it-forward-tucked-between-a/">up</a>:<br />
<br />
Barring a really astounding coincidence, Yglesias is talking about an educator named Komal Bhasin. Here's Bhasin's job history:
<br />
<br />
She taught from 2003 to 2005.
<br />
<br />
With a bachelor's degree and two years teaching experience, she was named assistant principal of a school.
<br />
<br />
With a bachelor's degree, two years teaching
experience, and two years experience as an assistant principal, she was
named principal of a different school halfway across the country. (You
will often find sudden promotions within a school where you're dealing
with known quantities. Putting a fledgling assistant principal in charge
of a different school in a different region is much more unusual,
particularly an administrator with almost no teaching experience.)
<br />
<br />
With these qualifications, and five years experience
as a principal, she got a principal-in-residence with a high-profile
education reform institute -- a relatively short tenure and thin resume
for this kind of position.<br />
<br />
Obviously, there's a limit
to how much we should infer here, but Bhasin has indisputably gotten a
series of promotions that were surprising given her job history,
education and (as far as I can tell) publications and she has also
gotten considerable <a href="http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2008/12/hgse-faculty-members-participate-in-panel-on-educational-inequality/">exposure</a> as a rising star in the reform movement .<br />
<br />
Just
to be clear, I am sure that Komal Bhasin is a smart and dedicated
educator and may well be an excellent administrator. Nothing should take
away from that, but it is also true that, given what we know, her
career path would seem overwhelmingly to support the idea that she was
being groomed for a Michelle Rhee type leadership role just the way
Ravitch suggests.<br />
<br />
In other words, Yglesias came up with a great example, just not for his side.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-6832008315005492602016-05-31T01:08:00.000-07:002016-05-31T01:08:54.683-07:00Dudeney's HoneycombThe object of this puzzle by Henry Dudeney is to find the hidden proverb. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-EG95qKmG3Z2kBp2T3YopZsYsQ8QY1zERnSLgiP0KqqBDD7xFuZih7I5N1ApawwES8oJLBY45V3l1A6JcVOjdj2raXurA1U0uuOsd6xF36lfZgtkcMwNAOP5XW9FHXD0lZBlvEBwLupV/s1600/Dudeneys+Honeycomb.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-EG95qKmG3Z2kBp2T3YopZsYsQ8QY1zERnSLgiP0KqqBDD7xFuZih7I5N1ApawwES8oJLBY45V3l1A6JcVOjdj2raXurA1U0uuOsd6xF36lfZgtkcMwNAOP5XW9FHXD0lZBlvEBwLupV/s400/Dudeneys+Honeycomb.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I'm thinking about doing a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEccTojAcsRFO9W6Y8EdHHqv1UWfe7vHE">Puzzler's Guide to Problem Solving</a> video on this, but I'm still working through the applicable heuristics. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-74754311728379105892016-05-29T20:59:00.001-07:002016-05-29T20:59:13.577-07:00This is, of course, root beer and non-alcoholic wine<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GiEjw6KQYBw" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-70279379864293518062016-05-29T20:54:00.002-07:002016-05-29T20:54:42.204-07:00TFA's enrollment woes – the importance of putting numbers into context[Originally posted at <a href="http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2016/05/tfas-enrollment-woes-importance-of.html">the statistics blog</a>.] <br />
<br />
This <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/04/12/teach-for-america-applications-fall-again-diving-35-percent-in-three-years/">Washington Post piece</a>
by Emma Brown on the problems at Teach For America is interesting on a
number of levels, definitely something you should take a look at if
you've been following the story. [emphasis added] <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Applications
to Teach for America fell by 16 percent in 2016, marking the third
consecutive year in which the organization — which places college
graduates in some of the nation’s toughest classrooms — has seen its
applicant pool shrink.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
TFA
received 37,000 applications in 2016, down from 57,000 in 2013 — a 35
percent dive in three years. It’s a sharp reversal for an organization
that grew quickly during much of its 25-year history ["grew quickly" is
certainly true in terms of budget, not so much in terms of members. See
below -- MP], becoming a stalwart in education reform circles and a
favorite among philanthropists.<br />
<br />
Teach for America now
boasts 50,000 corps members and alumni; some have stayed in the
classroom and others have gone on to work in education in other ways,
joining nonprofits, running for office and leading charter schools. Its
alumni include some of most recognized names in public education,
including D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and her predecessor,
Michelle Rhee.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
The declining interest means that <b>TFA is providing fewer corps members to school districts each year:</b>
The organization generally accepts about 10 percent of its applicant
pool, and it refuses to lower its bar for admission, [Elisa Villanueva
Beard, TFA’s chief executive] wrote. <b>This year’s corps is likely to be several hundred smaller than last year’s.</b><br />
<br />
“These
shortfalls matter. Corps members are good at their work,” she wrote.
“Our school and district partners want to hire far more of them than our
current recruitment effort is producing.”</blockquote>
<br />
This
certainly sounds like a big deal, but a few seconds on Google and some
very quick, back of the envelope
calculations reveal just how small these numbers are in relative
terms.To put things in perspective, there
are over 3 million full-time teachers. A drop of several hundred
applicants won't be all that noticeable, even if all of them were going
to high-need areas (<a href="http://www.rocketcitymom.com/teach-for-america-explained/">and quite a few aren't</a>).<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2015/10/teach-for-americas-aspect-dominance.html">As previously discussed</a>, TFA is a minor player viewed as a supplier of teachers, but in terms of fundraising, it's a big deal.<br />
<br />
From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America">Wikipedia</a>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<table class="wikitable sortable jquery-tablesorter" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border-collapse: collapse; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.1875px; margin: 1em 0px;"><thead>
<tr><th class="headerSort" role="columnheader button" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); cursor: pointer; padding: 0.2em 21px 0.2em 0.2em; text-align: center;" tabindex="0" title="Sort ascending">Year</th><th class="headerSort" role="columnheader button" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); cursor: pointer; padding: 0.2em 21px 0.2em 0.2em; text-align: center;" tabindex="0" title="Sort ascending"># of Applicants</th><th class="headerSort" role="columnheader button" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); cursor: pointer; padding: 0.2em 21px 0.2em 0.2em; text-align: center;" tabindex="0" title="Sort ascending"># of Incoming Corps Members</th><th class="headerSort" role="columnheader button" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); cursor: pointer; padding: 0.2em 21px 0.2em 0.2em; text-align: center;" tabindex="0" title="Sort ascending"># of Regions</th><th class="headerSort" role="columnheader button" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: url(data:image/gif; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); cursor: pointer; padding: 0.2em 21px 0.2em 0.2em; text-align: center;" tabindex="0" title="Sort ascending">Operating Budget</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2003</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">15,708</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">1,646</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">20</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$29.8M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2004</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">13,378</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">1,626</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">22</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$34.0M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2005</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">17,348</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2,181</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">22</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$38.4M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2006</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">18,968</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2,464</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">25</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$55.6M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2007</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">18,172</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2,895</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">26</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$77.9M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2008</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">24,718</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">3,614</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">29</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$122.3M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2009</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">35,178</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">4,065</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">35</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$153.4M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2010</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">46,359</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">4,493</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">40</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$176.0M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2011</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">47,911</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">5,066</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">43</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$229M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2012</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">48,442</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">5,800<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-21" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America#cite_note-21" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[21]</a></sup></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">46</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">$244M</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2013</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">57,000</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">6,000<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America#cite_note-22" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[22]</a></sup></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">48</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If all TFA did was recruit six thousand
new teachers a year, there would be no way to justify these budgets, but
of course, that was never the main focus. TFA is an advocacy group with
a stated mission to "enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible
of our nation's most promising <b>future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement</b> for educational equity and excellence." [again, emphasis added]<br />
<br />
Though
the organization is sometimes coy on the point, the focus has never
been on leading from the classroom. The positions of real value are
administrators, think-tank fellows, politicians, and education
journalists, and the program is set up to help them rise to those spots,
<a href="http://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2013/06/matt-yglesias-may-not-be-helping-his.html">often at exceptional speed</a>.
We can go back and forth on whether a decline in the influence of TFA
would be a good thing or a bad, but we probably don't need to worry
about what the loss of "several hundred" prospective TFA members will do
to the teaching pool.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-45169227463743669622016-05-28T08:00:00.000-07:002016-05-28T08:00:17.697-07:00If we really want to close the achievement gap...Perhaps the first step is simply making sure poor children receive adequate nutrition.<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://microeconomicinsights.org/impoverished-children-access-food-stamps-become-healthier-wealthier-adults/">Microeconomic Insights</a> via <a href="http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/05/impoverished-children-with-access-to-food-stamps-become-healthier-and-wealthier-adults.html">Mark Thoma</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Adults who participated in the Food Stamp Program, renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008, as children are healthier and better off financially than poverty-stricken families who did not have access to the program, according to findings in joint work with Douglas Almond and Diane Schanzenbach (this paper and a companion paper Almond, et al. 2011). Children with access were more likely as adults to graduate from high school, earn more, and rely less on government welfare programs as adults than impoverished children who did not have access to SNAP. Women, in particular, are substantially more likely to self-report they are in goffc905od health and are more economically self-sufficient in adulthood. We find no additional long-term health impacts for children from more exposure to the program during middle childhood, but individuals with access to food stamps before age 5 had measurably better health outcomes in adulthood with significant impacts for those in early childhood.</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-13600070596370666272016-05-27T15:42:00.001-07:002016-05-27T15:42:17.512-07:00Remember that old saying about trying the same thing and expecting different results?Here's an <a href="http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2016/03/third-times-charm.html">interesting one</a> from Dean Dad that I've been meaning to go around to for a while:<br />
<blockquote>
In fact, students taking a class for the second time pass it at lower rates than students taking it the first time. The third time at lower rates than the second. With each new attempt, the percentage who pass gets lower. (To be fair, the sample size gets pretty small once you hit really high numbers of attempts, so it’s hard to say if the percentage keeps going all the way to zero. But it never reverses direction.) You’d think it would get easier, but the data suggest otherwise.</blockquote>
<br />It's possible that DD is being partially rhetorical with that part about expecting it to get easier (he's a smart guy, so my first impulse is to assume the best). Of course, it's generally true that reviewing material increases comprehension (particularly when there's a decent foundation to build on, something you usually don't have with students who failed the class before), but it's also true that approaches that have been tried twice and have failed both times are unlikely to succeed on their third try. <br /><br />When I was teaching, I always tried to avoid simply repeating myself when students didn't understand what I had just said. The very fact that they were confused meant that I needed to try a different approach. If I were to become an administrator (and hell was frozen and pigs were flying and ... ), I would extend this way of thinking to the course level, first by collecting good diagnostic data and then by devising courses with different styles and instructional methods better suited to this population of students. This is one of the rare occasions where a MOOC might be my first choice.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-53797488999341517242016-05-27T03:44:00.002-07:002016-05-27T03:46:02.300-07:00a 102 year old bit of perspective...From Sam Loyd<br />
<br />
The problem with many of the education reform movement ideas is not so much that they're wrong, but that the reformers think they're the only ones to come up with them.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVyq_jlDCxZok8Bt8vm35d1OCl3VuuO7WBwJk3yZ5nWBodIXMidu9NL4gUx5gMQRHhefBooQpGXz5aoR3zM2qnOHcAjz4pfFudmMH7S2CYCuNztbH-tFrSZNkpxtm0y2v86gYkqIIwWRs6/s1600/copyright.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVyq_jlDCxZok8Bt8vm35d1OCl3VuuO7WBwJk3yZ5nWBodIXMidu9NL4gUx5gMQRHhefBooQpGXz5aoR3zM2qnOHcAjz4pfFudmMH7S2CYCuNztbH-tFrSZNkpxtm0y2v86gYkqIIwWRs6/s320/copyright.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCMxnh-YMTZVx8bty8n89OuCR3JROumFEmlzuYFHaG3InCfNNddCeVvJQswSvjgJuhRCQDIeTDzZR7dj80pylqysnf73S77yjTO5eNyWGkeKqEhnfz9x-EBCngTo4IKcnWQgfouEBj4so3/s1600/Royal+Road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCMxnh-YMTZVx8bty8n89OuCR3JROumFEmlzuYFHaG3InCfNNddCeVvJQswSvjgJuhRCQDIeTDzZR7dj80pylqysnf73S77yjTO5eNyWGkeKqEhnfz9x-EBCngTo4IKcnWQgfouEBj4so3/s400/Royal+Road.jpg" width="292" /></a></div>
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<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-64051874839024778172016-05-26T01:47:00.001-07:002016-05-26T01:47:04.242-07:00Another in the Puzzler's Guide to Problem Solving series -- turn GRASS GREENAnother <a href="https://youtu.be/HVGvqjFtq0k">Lewis Carroll inspired doublet video</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HVGvqjFtq0k" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-32925145831819574452016-04-25T21:04:00.000-07:002016-04-25T21:04:05.415-07:00Word puzzles and problem solving -- another video in the seriesAs mentioned before, the plan here is to focus on content and fast turnaround while keeping the production quality adequate for now.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ESemfaDrozQ" width="420"></iframe>
In terms of content, the idea behind this particular series is to use the puzzles to introduce general problem solving concepts such as thinking about what aspects of a specific problem make it easy or difficult and how that information can suggest a direction for approaching the solution.<br />
<br />
These aren't yet where I want them to be, but they're moving in the right direction. Let me know what you think.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-77213228368433080852016-03-30T16:05:00.002-07:002016-03-30T16:05:57.729-07:00More quality control issues -- Regents exams editionMath teacher and blogger Patrick Honner has been looking closely at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_Examinations">NY State Math Regents exams</a> and found <a href="http://mrhonner.com/archives/5695">questions like this</a>:<br />
<br />
<br /> If<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=f%28x%29%3Dx%5E2+-+6&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=f%28x%29%3Dx%5E2+-+6&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Find<br />
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=f%5E%7B-1%7D%28x%29&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=f%5E%7B-1%7D%28x%29&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" /></a></div>
<br />
(sorry about the formatting)<br />
<br />
If you remember your junior high algebra, you probably spotted the mistake here. This function doesn't have an inverse. Honner goes into detail on this point but I suspect everyone reading this knows where he's going, Sufficed to say, unless we add a condition like "for x greater than or equal to zero," the correct answer would be "does not exist."<br />
<br />
Here's the answer that gets the student full credit (which is definitely not a function). <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cpm+%5Csqrt%7Bx%2B6%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cpm+%5Csqrt%7Bx%2B6%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
They get half credit if they leave off the plus-minus (which would actually have been the right answer if we had included the previously mentioned condition). <br />
<br />
As Honner puts it: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
In summary, you get full credit for the wrong answer, but if you forget the worst part of the that wrong answer (the plus-minus sign), you only receive half credit! So someone actually scrutinized this problem and determined how this wrong answer could be less correct. The irony is that this conceptual error might actually produce a more sensible answer. The further we go, the less the authors seem to know about functions.</blockquote>
It gets worse. Following an outcry from teachers:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
The next day, the state gave in and issued a
scoring correction: full credit was to be awarded for the correct
answer, the original incorrect answer, and two other incorrect answers.
By accepting four different answers, including three that were
incorrect, you might think the Regents board would have no choice but to
own up to their mistake. Quite the opposite.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here’s the opening text of the official <em>Scoring Clarification </em>from the Office of Assessment Policy:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<em>Because of variations in the use of </em><img alt="f^{-1}" class="latex" src="http://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=f%5E%7B-1%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0" title="f^{-1}" /> <em>notation throughout New York State, a revised rubric for Question 32 has been provided</em>.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There are no variations in the use of this notation, unless they wish to count incorrect usage as a variation.<em><strong> </strong></em>I
understand that it would be embarrassing to admit the depth of this
error, which speaks to a lack of oversight in this process, but this
meaningless explanation looks even worse. This is a transparent attempt
to sidestep responsibility, or, <em>accountability</em>, in this matter.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
I realize New York is a big place, but between <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/14/when-the-teachers-edition-is-wrong/">Eureka Math</a>, the <a href="http://youdothemathkthrucalculus.blogspot.com/2016/03/revisiting-battle-for-new-york-schools.html">Success</a> <a href="http://youdothemathkthrucalculus.blogspot.com/2016/03/short-version-policies-that-stress.html">Academy</a> schools and this, the state is more than pulling its weight when it comes to blog fodder.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-81279828928413244022016-03-28T17:50:00.002-07:002016-03-28T17:50:18.063-07:00More on Success Academy and disciplineYes, there is a pattern.<br />
<br />
Cyril Josh Barker writing for <a href="http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2016/mar/17/mothers-call-state-lawmakers-help-after-alleging-a/">the Amsterdam News</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Fatima Geidi and Elizabeth Eloheim, who say their children were pushed out of Success Academy charter schools, brought their issues to lawmakers, urging them to protect students’ rights not increase taxpayer funding for charter schools. The mothers claim their children were victims of abusive disciplinary actions.<br />
<br />
Eloheim alleges that her daughter, who attended Harlem 1 Success Academy, and her family were targeted because they questioned the abusive practices and policies at the charter school.<br />
<br />
“It was one of the worst experiences of our life, and the long-lasting effects are devastating,” she said. “The school used deprivation of bathroom privileges as a discipline practice, which is inhumane.”<br />
<br />
Geidi said her special needs son faced multiple suspensions when he was a student at Upper West Side Success Academy for things such as walking up the stairs too slowly.<br />
<br />
“He was often accused of being too emotional,” Geidi said. “He has special needs but never received his mandated services and supports. At nine months pregnant, I finally gave in to the pressure of withdrawing my son, which is what the school wanted all along. The role of the school is to educate children, not displace them.”</blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-84599545849054621042016-03-22T07:00:00.000-07:002016-03-22T07:00:26.916-07:00The quality control problems continueA tutor with an after school program here in LA brought in this one. I believe it was from an eighth-graders homework assignment. <br />
<br />
He said the problems had seemed straightforward at first. Each had two sentences that described relationships between two numbers. He walked the student through the steps of translating each sentence into an equation then using substitution to get one equation with one variable.<br />
<br />
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The trouble started when he looked at the instructions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfTsPhgtWyDTJnzjUhrJ1Np9cbRdY_bsBDv-WVfi1DO7oZEEn-FURQsZ3YBpLcbquoISLjUrM02EhyzmXrIbK3Tcd6xBdbKzMpj7fJzgmH37foP1eaW_mWI3Yz20PA6iQjEphll0xTZDR/s1600/Multi-step+crop+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfTsPhgtWyDTJnzjUhrJ1Np9cbRdY_bsBDv-WVfi1DO7oZEEn-FURQsZ3YBpLcbquoISLjUrM02EhyzmXrIbK3Tcd6xBdbKzMpj7fJzgmH37foP1eaW_mWI3Yz20PA6iQjEphll0xTZDR/s400/Multi-step+crop+1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The tutor immediately saw two problems. For starters, the first step
(converting each sentence to an equation), greatly confusing the
student. Worse still, the answer in the example was simply wrong: the
solution to 8n = 112 is n = 14, not n = 14 <i>and</i> 98. This is the
sort of thing that you gently correct when a student does it, not the
sort of thing that should slip past a professional proofreader. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmocbT37zoHTOGtY6rrBEy7Yx7djk8ayMMCV-kAPJf0PnBqsvc8ByshCnquBuerT03D6pz1KG9leoz97E38si4PcWs24IYD8-PDJo9XBrle-eFI_R59bRpNs38H_Ah0NqR-zAOjfk5UEkT/s1600/Multi-step+crop+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="26" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmocbT37zoHTOGtY6rrBEy7Yx7djk8ayMMCV-kAPJf0PnBqsvc8ByshCnquBuerT03D6pz1KG9leoz97E38si4PcWs24IYD8-PDJo9XBrle-eFI_R59bRpNs38H_Ah0NqR-zAOjfk5UEkT/s400/Multi-step+crop+2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Going by what I see working with that program (admittedly a small and unrepresentative sample), most handouts these days seem to come from large companies. Back in my teaching days, I almost always made up my own handouts. I can understand the potential advantages of using ready-made educational materials -- creating these things is a time-consuming job -- but what I can't understand is how the quality control can be this bad.<br />
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I've been over this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/14/when-the-teachers-edition-is-wrong/">before</a>, but the list keeps getting longer.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-64971794018179858672016-03-21T17:11:00.001-07:002016-03-21T17:11:30.365-07:00I don't actually need an excuse to post a Theremin video... but if I did, I would point out that a clip of the instrument followed by a quick discussion is a great way of opening a lesson on the Cartesian coordinate system.<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Etherwave_Theremin_Kit.jpg/740px-Etherwave_Theremin_Kit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="323" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Etherwave_Theremin_Kit.jpg/740px-Etherwave_Theremin_Kit.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin">In case you've forgotten</a>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The theremin is distinguished among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The thereminist stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennae. The distance from one antenna determines frequency (pitch), and the distance from the other controls amplitude (volume). Higher notes are played by moving the hand closer to the pitch antenna. Louder notes are played by moving the hand away from the volume antenna. Most frequently, the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement. Some low-cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna. While commonly called antennae, they are not used for receiving or broadcasting radio waves, but act as plates of capacitors.</blockquote>
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Plenty of choices for the video (just Google 'Theremin'). This one ought to go over well. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mW0B1sipLBI" width="420"></iframe>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-79485543767942093602016-03-17T22:29:00.003-07:002016-03-17T22:29:34.313-07:00"Four times as likely"I would have liked to have seen more detail in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/us/charter-schools-suspend-black-and-disabled-students-more-study-says.html">NYT piece</a>, but it's still worth reading. <br />
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Black students are four times as likely to be suspended from charter schools as white students, according to a new analysis of federal education data. And students with disabilities, the study found, are suspended two to three times the rate of nondisabled students in charter schools.<br /><br />These inequities are similar to those in traditional public schools, where black and disabled students are disproportionately disciplined for even minor infractions, and as early as preschool — although on average, charter schools suspend pupils at slightly higher rates than traditional public schools.</blockquote>
What we could really use here is some kind of a breakdown by type and chain. Charters are, by design, a diverse group. I strongly suspect that disaggregation would reveal certain pockets were generating more than their share of suspensions and disciplinary overreaction. <br />
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Based on data from the 2011-12 school year, the report found that charter schools at the elementary, middle and high school levels suspended 7.8 percent of students, compared with 6.7 percent of students in noncharter schools. Among students with disabilities, charter schools suspended 15.5 percent of students, compared with 13.7 percent at noncharters. At the extreme end, there were 235 charter schools that suspended more than half of their students with disabilities.<br />
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Crossroads Charter School in Charlotte, N.C., suspended close to three-quarters of all black students in 2011-12. Adrian Sundiata, the operational director at the school, said it was now using more disciplinary measures to address infractions like taking a cellphone to school or using profanity, including after-school detentions and community service.</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-90799133656941126842016-03-16T00:48:00.000-07:002016-03-16T00:48:18.013-07:00Revisiting "The Battle for New York Schools: Eva Moskowitz vs. Mayor Bill de Blasio"When following the education reform movement, it is enormously useful to step back from time to time and look at who was saying what a few years ago. As recently as 2009, it was almost impossible to find serious critics of the movement in the mainstream media (to highlight how much things have changed, I put together <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Things-Saw-Counter-Reformation-statistics-questionable-ebook/dp/B00N4R0JR0">an e-book collection of my 2010 education posts</a>, annotated but otherwise unrevised). <br />
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As far as I can tell, the Washington Post was the first of the major papers to start turning a tough, critical eye towards initiatives like charter schools, Common Core, and <i>Glengarry Glen Ross</i> incentive systems. Recently, the New York Times has been aggressively investigating problems at Eva Moskowitz's Success Academies, but this is a relatively new position.<br />
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This 2014 NYT Magazine <a href="http://Daniel Bergner">piece</a> by Daniel Bergner is interesting on a number of levels, not the least of which being a reminder of how things have changed.<br />
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On the topic of scores, the U.F.T. and Ravitch insist that Moskowitz’s numbers don’t hold up under scrutiny. Success Academy (like all charters), they say, possesses a demographic advantage over regular public schools, <b>by serving somewhat fewer students with special needs, by teaching fewer students from the city’s most severely dysfunctional families and by using suspensions to push out underperforming students (an accusation that Success Academy vehemently denies)</b>. These are a few of the myriad factors that Mulgrew and Ravitch stress. But even taking these differences into account <b>probably doesn’t come close to explaining away Success Academy’s results</b>.</blockquote>
First off, even at the time "vehemently" did not equate to "convincingly." There was already an enormous amount of evidence behind these accusations. Letting SA's denial go unchallenged did Moskowitz a huge favor, as did the unsupported claim at the end. Little more than a year later, the NYT itself was reporting on the Success Academies' "got to go" lists.<br />
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[Diane Ravitch was extremely upset both by how Bergner handled her interview and wrote a stinging <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/07/the-ny-times-magazines-puff-piece-about-eva-moskowitz/">post</a> in response.]<br />
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As bad as this section was, the really troubling part (at least for me as a statistician) came later.<br />
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In talking to dozens of current and former Success Academy employees and parents, the critique with the most staying power involved the schools’ overly heated preparation for the state exams. A former fourth-grade teacher recounted that network employees made <b>a minivan run to Toys “R” Us</b> and returned to unload a mound of assorted treasures in the back of her classroom. “It was a huge pile,” she says. “We called it Prize Mountain.” She would remind the pupils that <b>a good score on a practice test meant a gift from the mountain</b>.<br /><br /><b>Teachers also chart students’ results on the practice tests, posting their names and scores on classroom walls.</b> Yet I heard from parents like Natasha Shannon, an African-American mother of three girls in Success Academy schools, that although the public posting could be painful for the children, it was important nonetheless.<br />
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...<br /><br />For her part, Moskowitz asserts that the public charting is one aspect of the network’s emphasis on feedback, not only for the students but also for the faculty. Throughout the year, whether or not test prep is underway, scores on quizzes and writing assignments are analyzed at network headquarters. Each teacher’s outcome is tabulated, and bar graphs are instantly available to all faculty members. <b>The teachers whose classes lag are responsible for seeking out advice from those who top the graphs,</b> just as the students with red or yellow stickers by their names are guided to emulate the topic sentences of those whose stickers are green or blue.</blockquote>
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Couple of points here.<br />
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1. We can go back and forth on different methods of rewarding academic performance in other contexts, but in this case we're talking about <i><b>diagnostic</b></i> tests. Doling out special rewards and punishments can and probably does undermine the quality of the resulting data. The fact that Bergner (and, to be fair, most reporters covering the story) seem completely unaware of fundamental education concepts is disturbing;<br />
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2. Even more disturbing (though we can't blame this one on Bergner.) is the fact that one of those model teachers whose advice was being sought was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/nyregion/mother-of-girl-berated-in-video-assails-success-academys-response.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2">Charlotte Dial</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-69604232357501300972016-03-13T15:30:00.000-07:002016-03-13T15:30:25.757-07:00NASA's Real World MathematicsAs I've mentioned before, there are a lot of great resources for educators at the <a href="https://archive.org/">Internet Archive</a> and it's all in the public domain, which mean you can re-edit anything you find to fit your needs.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://archive.org/embed/RW_SpaceWeather_oc" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="640"></iframe>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-61411657158761382442016-03-11T08:00:00.000-08:002016-03-11T08:00:20.579-08:00He ought to know...Elwyn Berlekamp is one of the authors of the classic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_Ways_for_your_Mathematical_Plays">Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays</a>. One of these days I need to open up a substantial thread on Winning Ways. In the meantime, here's a cool video from Dr. Berlekamp. <br />
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How to always win at Dots and Boxes - Numberphile <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KboGyIilP6k" width="560"></iframe>
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwyn_BerlekampUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-87384400246324162692016-03-10T08:00:00.000-08:002016-03-10T08:00:30.576-08:00A different kind of name-the-states map<span id="goog_1411661064"></span><span id="goog_1411661065"></span>The cartoonist who created this explicitly say that it would be unfair to erase the names and use it as a name-the-states quiz, but I think it would make a great activity for small groups.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857051406259349751.post-69742399221503891372016-03-09T16:08:00.002-08:002016-03-09T16:08:36.719-08:00Short version -- policies that stress small children to the point where they throw up are probably bad policiesI am generally nervous about quoting overly partisan news sources. Even when the arguments are compelling, I am uncomfortable with discovery processes that seem to start with the conclusion.<br />
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That said, the Nation is a good magazine with a solid history of investigative journalism behind it. So, with the caveat that a publication this liberal will probably be hostile to charter schools (something we probably couldn't have said 10 years ago), this <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/why-has-charter-school-violence-spiked-at-double-the-rate-of-public-schools/">article</a> is definitely worth checking out for anyone who's been following the debate.<br />
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In particular, this caught my eye:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Brenda Shufelt, a recently retired library who served public school and Success Academy Charter School students at a co-located school library in Harlem, noted that as charter schools rapidly expand, they may be taking in more high needs kids, many of whom cannot conform to one-size-fits-all disciplinary approaches.<br />
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“In my experience what would often happen is that charter school students would be so rigidly controlled that the kids would periodically blow up,” says Shufelt. “At PS 30, some of our kids would have meltdowns, usually because of problems at home, but I never saw kids meltdown in the way they did in charter schools. They were just so despairing, feeling like they could not do this. I was told by two custodians, they had never had so much vomit to clean up from kindergarten and elementary classes.” </blockquote>
I realize that we have been hammering away at this thread for quite a while and I apologize for going over familiar ground in the next few paragraphs. Feel free to skim if you're a regular reader, but the following points do need to be emphasized.<br />
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Many of these techniques are remarkably hard on kids. Even if there were no other issues and the methods were accomplishing everything their supporters claimed, we would need to have a serious discussion as to whether or not they were worth the physical and emotional toll they are taking.<br />
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But there is considerable reason to question those alleged accomplishments. For starters, a lot of students do not make it all the way through the program. These kids pay a double toll, dealing with the stress not only of the no-excuses program but also of the disruption of being pulled out of one school where they have made friends and established relationships and put into another school where they are surrounded by strangers. Even for those kids who make it through, there is considerable evidence that the improvement in test scores is largely limited to one exam and does not translate into the areas we are really interested in.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0