tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42836909303516024352017-02-07T20:50:27.395-08:00Technology and educationA blog on educational technology.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-79987125605537085462012-12-29T06:48:00.003-08:002012-12-29T06:48:50.512-08:00Project Manistee QuestI'm not teaching any more in a school setting, but I do continue to work with a Boy Scout troop with the kids from my old public school. Scouting is a kind of schooling, with the curriculum being the material and skills that the boys need to master to advance in rank. I was in Boy Scouts, and in later years I have appreciated the skills I learned there -- skills I do not know if I would have learned anywhere else. These gamut of skills range from physical fitness to woodcraft to nature study to campcraft to citizenship.<br /><br />While at my old school, situated in an all-too-common high-need low-wealth urban neighborhood, I came to feel that the students lacked, for the most part, the opportunity to experience nature, to interact with the world in tangible, tactile ways. I felt it was a classic case of the problem that Richard Louv captured with his framing of "<a href="http://www.education.com/topic/nature-deficit-disorder/" target="_blank">nature deficit disorder</a>". This absence of opportunity to interact with nature has a psychological cost, as Louv and others have described. There's a field of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecopsychology" target="_blank">ecopsychology</a> that addresses it. It also (or maybe just another dimension of the psychological cost) hampers kids in school -- science is a great abstraction without any physical, tactile, visual, aural, etc. experience of the world. This is much of what is lost in the replacement of outdoor play with video games and television. Trying to address that absence of connection with the woods was a big part of why I started working with the troop.<br /><br />My big project for the coming year (that being 2013) is to work with a crew of scouts to go on the Manistee Quest, a five-day backpacking trip through the Manistee National Forest in western Michigan. The biggest challenge right now is getting together the lightweight gear for backpacking. (There are lots of reasons for this approach -- I defer to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_backpacking" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> for details and rationale.) Most of what the area troops have right now is heavy, car-camping suitable equipment. And no backpacks.<br /><br />To raise the money for the equipment we will need, I am experimenting with crowdfunding. I have set up a project on <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/1qkvmg" target="_blank">GoFundMe</a>. There's also a button on the sidebar to the right. I am still fleshing out the project page -- I need to add some pictures and then connect it to my Facebook account, but you can see a more complete description of the project there. The equipment we get will stay with the Western Trails District (basically all of the Boy Scout troops on the westside of Chicago), so it is an investment in not just the scouts that will go on the quest this year, but in future years as well.<br /><br />I will post updates here.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-47339849044945711792012-08-13T14:49:00.002-07:002012-08-13T14:49:38.160-07:00The ideology of word problemsI'm reading Vasily Grossman's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writer-War-Soviet-Journalist-1941-1945/dp/0307275337" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army 1941-1945</i></a>, an assemblage of Grossman's wartime journalism. The writing is fascinating and amazing, but translator/editor Antony Beevor is generally peevish and wont to toss in generous heaps of bullshit in his commentary.<br /><br />But never mind peevish Beevor -- in the middle of the book, in early 1943, Grossman is assigned to the Kalmyk steppes, recently vacated by the retreating German army. He reports on what life was like in the city of Elista under the Nazis. Grossman includes an interview with a school teacher who continued to teach through the occupation. The teacher describes the changes the Nazis made to the curriculum, and includes this great tidbit:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Maths: they removed from the textbook all the questions to do with Soviet affairs [and replaced them with]: this number of Soviet aircraft has been shot down, etc. (p. 207)</blockquote>and a few pages later:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">At the school, teacher Klara Fransevna set first-year pupils the problem: 'Two Messerschmitts have shot down eight Red fighters and twelve bombers, and an anti-aircraft gun shot down eleven Bolshevik attack aircraft. What is the total of Red aircraft shot down?' (p. 210)</blockquote>An extreme example, to be sure, but I believe Eric Gutstein made the point that teaching math is also ideological, in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-World-Mathematics-Pedagogy/dp/0415950848" target="_blank"><i>Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics</i></a>?<br /><br />jd <br />&nbsp; <br /><br /><br />jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-59649393767198582692011-09-10T07:43:00.000-07:002011-09-10T17:53:29.879-07:00Losing the propaganda warIt is depressing how clumsy the Chicago Teachers Union has been in its propaganda war with Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.<br /><br />The Mayor and CPS are running circles around the union -- as Chicago News Coop columnist <a href="http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/warren-those-longer-school-days-are-just-a-start/">James Warren describes it</a>, "Emanuel was playing 3-D chess while his union opponent was playing checkers." Much as I dislike Warren's shallow analysis of Chicago education, I to agree with his assessment of how the union is faring in the battle of the length of the school day. The union is coming off like it has its feet nailed to the floor, and, at least from what it looks like in the media, unable to meet the tremendous challenges that the current mayor and CPS administration is throwing at it, not to mention the general crisis in education.<br /><br />First there was the disaster of SB 7, which I don't think the union leadership ever came clean on. The CTU leadership was outmaneuvered, and whoever they pay in Springfield as lobbyists must have been asleep at the wheel. The union's ability to strike was weakened, if not effectively eliminated, and the mechanism was put in place to push through the a longer work day without any real teacher input. The leadership should have come clean that they screwed up, due probably to inexperience. They should have apologized, done the mea culpa, and rallied the rank and file around the challenges ahead.<br /><br />Then there was the CPS Board's incredibly devious initiative to raise property taxes to help cover the hazy deficit they have. I think the public will read this as "the teacher tax" -- overpaid, lazy teachers are why my property taxes are going up. Emanuel and the board slipped in another wedge between the general public and teachers, further isolating them. The union should have vocally opposed the tax increase, but I don't recall seeing anything from the union on it. The union has been good about pointing to waste at CPS, the lack of budget transparency, the scam of TIFs sucking money from education, and giving the top executives there big big raises, but none of that resonates with the public like a tax increase. (Well maybe the fat raises at the top -- why can't that get any traction?)<br /><br />Now, the union is being completely out-maneuvered around the longer school day. The union is incapable of getting its position out. As far as I know, the union was <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> against a longer school day, but you don't see that on <a href="http://www.ctunet.com/">the union website</a>. Partly this is a result of the fact that the home page of the site is basically a blog, so it cycles through responses and positions and news. There is a link to a "better, smarter school day", but from the overall page composition, this appears as an after-thought, not the main front of the propaganda war that the longer school day battle is.<br /><br />Even in the worst kind of business unionism (to which the new CORE leadership was a welcome break) , a union would of course be in favor of more work for its members. The question never was the length of the day, but how it would be implemented -- the better, smarter thing, and how teachers were going to be paid for the extra work. But the union has been consistently portrayed as <span style="font-style: italic;">opposing</span> the longer day. The union's message is not just muddy, but stuck in the mud. The CNC columnist Warren goes so far as to portray the teachers at the renegade, union-sabotaging schools like the brand-new STEM magnet that went with the longer day in exchange for, well, a paltry bribe, as the equivalent of the Solidarity movement standing up to the Soviet monolith of the CTU (and there is a bitter irony there, if you ever followed left politics).<br /><br />If the union could get in front of the debate -- the point should always be, "Yes we agree, we want a longer day. We never opposed it. We care more about the children of Chicago that Emanuel ever will be capable of." Then it could put into perspective the awful longer day strategy pushed by Emanuel -- more work for (virtually) no pay and no thanks, all towards smashing once and for all the teacher's union. I don't really see how most people can accept that asking someone to work 29% more hours for only 2% more in pay is reasonable. But somehow, Brizard and Emanuel can propose such with a straight face, and somehow, this crazy insulting idea is accepted by the general public. Maybe this points to the challenges that the CTU faces trying to fight this propaganda war. Or that the perception of teachers is so awful now, after two years of regular anti-teacher propaganda, that expecting so much more from teachers seems reasonable?<br /><br />If the union could get in front of the debate, then maybe the union could begin to recast teachers from greedy and lazy to the dedicated care-givers and guarantors of the future that they are. Every teacher I know puts in many, many hours of unpaid labor to keep up with all of the tasks expected of them. That basic fact of dedication to teaching children is completely lost in the media presentation. Also, many teachers at my former school -- I would estimate more than half -- worked after school tutoring programs already, providing the extra classroom time that Emanuel et al go on about, for the contracted extended day rate. <span style="font-style: italic;">T</span><span style="font-style: italic;">eachers already work a longer school day</span>.<br /><br />I really want the CTU to succeed here, but the news has been mighty painful of late.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-32133182731352207262011-06-19T09:01:00.000-07:002011-07-26T16:18:09.519-07:00Art and technologyMy school is losing half of its art position next year. As a "technology school", one may wonder why this might be big deal, but I beg to differ. <span style="font-style: italic;">A technology school without a strong arts program is a perversion of education.</span> It reveals an absolute lack of understanding of cognitive development; and a lack of vision of human beings, education, even the spirit. The decision-makers bow before the dumbest, unhuman aspects of the machine. It is the devil's work.<br /><br />At my school, CPS pays for 1/2 of an art position, and the principal has made up the other half of the position out of discretionary budget money. School budgets have been cut, and my principal is saying that the discretionary money isn't there any more for the school's half of the art position. So next year we will have a part-time art position. By a rough calculation of 2.5 days a week times 6 class periods, she could serve 15 periods a week; we have 20 classes. The math is ugly.<br /><br />This, of course, is especially disruptive for the art teacher. I mean it <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> sucks. It also tears at the social cloth of the school, more so because the art teacher is woven deeply into that fabric. We are all diminished. How much this was weighed in the decision of where to cut and what to cut, I don't know. Very little I suspect. I don't mean to minimize the personal or social aspects of the cut. There is, though, I think, a less obvious part of this -- the revealed lack of understanding, the lack of vision of how art provides the foundation, the skills, the experiences for work with technology.<br /><br />Say, for example, that we take the <a href="http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx">National Educational Technology Standards for Students</a> (NETS-S) as a starting point. The first two standards say nothing about technology operations -- they deal with creativity and innovation, collaboration and communication. The best education theory pushes students to be directors of their learning, and up <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy">Bloom's hierarchy</a> of thinking. We want students to express themselves in many media, with posters and sound and video and photographs. Students cannot do this well without a solid art background. Art is where they learn the phonetics and grammar of media literacy. Art is where they learn how colors combine and clash, about foreground and background, about dimensions and perspective, about highlighting and shading, about seeing critically, about enlivening the imagination and creating. <span style="font-style: italic;">Implementing NETS-S without art instruction is impossible.</span><br /><br />There are other starting points than NETS-S. Hand work is critical for brain development. Learning how to draw, how to color, how to use one's hands to create things and so on -- the kinds of things students do in art class -- is not "just art" but fundamental to developing <span style="font-style: italic;">thinkers</span>. Art also exposes students to the joy of creating. It exposes the possibilities of discovering and expressing feelings. It exposes students to different possibilities for being in the world. And based on the success of art-intensive programs in working with at-risk youth, I can argue that art also helps with students' social and emotional development. Basically, we develop better human beings when we teach them art. When we don't teach them art, we handicap them. Devil's work.<br /><br />The more we inject computers into instruction, the more we need to balance it with traditional art instruction -- working with hands, working with different materials, looking at and really <span style="font-style: italic;">seeing</span> the real world. Computers suck the user into virtual space, imagined by someone else, shallow and incomplete. Students are taken out of the world, which can only be okay if their virtual experiences are tempered by real reality. The more students go into virtual worlds, the more armor of critical thinking and visual literacy they need to protect themselves. The most interesting and exciting computer use I think involves <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_%28learning_theory%29">constructionist</a> tools where the students create and express. But again, the basic units of understanding what to do effectively with these tools are cultivated, in large part, in art class.<br /><br />The slide into the confusion of computerized spaces with real spaces, and computerized instruction with human instruction is the slide into idolatry. In the confusion, the role of the human being, the teacher, is lost. The teacher is reduced to a machine, albeit a resistant machine. And one machine can always be replaced with another. My school will have more computer-based instruction next year (e.g., <a href="http://www.achieve3000.com/">Achieve3000</a> is mandated by our area for next year, but not paid for, approx. $6000), and fewer people to work with students.<br /><br />Given the CPS budget issues, was there a choice? There are <span style="font-style: italic;">always</span> choices. Recognizing choices though requires transparency, understanding, vision. (And, I might add, creativity and innovation, and communication and collaboration).<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-13731814965691505242011-06-12T11:04:00.000-07:002011-06-12T11:20:05.218-07:00An analysis of Scantron testingBelow is a link to a paper (PDF file) I did on Scantron testing at my school. It was done for a course requirement:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gocatgo.com/texts/davis.scantron.analysis.pdf">An Analysis of Scantron Testing</a><br /></div><br />It's written in an academic mode, as opposed to a critical or agit-prop mode, with lots of tables and basic statistics. Of some interest: mode effects overall appear small; a large number of students spoil tests; there is a large discrepancy between Scantron national percentile rankings and ISAT NPRs; there is a relatively high general correlation between school-level Scantron results and ISAT results, which breaks down when you look at individual classrooms. The final "recommendation" in the paper is that the tests should not be used for either teacher evaluation or student promotion.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-53036686026192012092011-05-29T15:15:00.000-07:002011-07-09T14:52:30.254-07:00Drunk drivingWe had a staff meeting at my school on Friday. Classroom teachers received forms for sorting their students into Tier 1, 2 and 3 groups for implementing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_to_intervention">Response to Intervention</a>, or RTI. K-2 grades will use <a href="https://dibels.uoregon.edu/dibels_what.php">DIBELS</a> data to sort students, and grades 3 - 8 will use <a href="http://www.scantron.com/performanceseries/">Scantron</a> data. Since I work on organizing the Scantron testing at my school, and end up sifting through the data, I was especially interested in the choice of Scantron data to slot students into RTI tiers.<br /><br />The form passed out came from our Area office, and uses Scantron National Percentile Rankings (NPR) for sorting. Students in the 24th percentile and up fall into Tier 1 (the lowest priority for special interventions). Students between the 11th and 24th percentiles fall into Tier 2, and students under the 11th percentile fall into Tier 3. (I may be off by a percentile or two -- I'm doing this from memory.)<br /><br />I have written about the problems of standardized testing and "data-based decision making" before, likening it to <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2009/12/where-light-is.html">the drunk looking for his car keys</a> under a streetlight, not because that is where he dropped them, but because that is where the light is. The light in this case is the pale beam of standardized test data -- it doesn't tell us nearly enough about the student, and for many of the neediest students, it is hopelessly distorting. We won't find the keys to student success with the data, but it's easy for administrators to collect, and to pretend that it means much more than it does. Drunk on data, and wandering off course from the outset.<br /><br />For example: After we completed the math testing this Spring, about 8 percent of students at my school dropped more that 100 points from their Fall scores. The numbers were worse for reading -- almost 11 percent of students had dropped more that 100 points. These are big numbers, well outside of the statistical error range. Excepting epidemic of brain injury, such a drop can only be attributed to subjective student factors: boredom, disinterest, a desire to be done with test, difficulty with the computer medium, etc.<br /><br />The belief that these initial numbers were faulty was confirmed when we made students retake the test. Most of the re-takers did much better, erasing most of the drop, and in many cases swinging into solid gains for the year.<br /><br />The point, again, is that testing students is not the same as taking their temperature, and so much depends on the <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2010/05/scantron-round-2.html">subjective factor</a>. But the RTI strategy doesn't appreciate the subjective factor -- it's all about the data, as goofy as it may be. One student at my school went from dropping over 200 points, landing in the 7th percentile, to increasing over 50 points for the year (not a great gain, but keeping him at grade level) after he retook the test -- moving from Tier 3 (deserving special interventions), to Tier 1 (no special interventions). [Value-added alert!] It should be said that the possibility of testing into a higher percentile is not very likely, so the general danger is that students will be assigned to tiers they should not be in, consuming time and resources that perhaps should go to needier students.<br /><br />One of the ironies in all of this is that <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> of teachers I have talked to already have a sense of their students abilities, and could quickly categorize their students without the Scantron numbers in front of them. After all, they assess their students every day. And the teachers can tell which numbers are off. And all would probably say that the time and the resources to provide interventions to all the students that really them is just not nearly enough; and the process to get the help needed is too long and places too much burden on the already over-stretched teacher.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-81598334129045486012011-05-28T09:40:00.000-07:002011-05-28T10:49:15.603-07:00ClarificationI want to clarify <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2011/05/starting-new-class.html">my previous post</a>. As a reminder of one of the many pitfalls awaiting the tech-heavy lesson.<br /><br />I am teaching a course at <a href="http://dom.edu/">Dominican U</a>., Integrating Technology Into the Curriculum. On the first night of class, I have the "candidates" (how DU refers to folks in the teacher education program, to distinguish from "students", whom the future teachers will be teaching) get set up with the basic Web 2.0 tools. They create a blog if they don't have one already, set up a <a href="http://www.wikispaces.com/">wikispaces</a> account to work on a <a href="http://teched-su2011.wikispaces.com/">course wiki we create</a>, and they set up a <a href="http://www.diigo.com/">Diigo</a> account to begin a professional library of web resources and also to experience social bookmarking.<br /><br />For blogging, I suggest <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Google's blogger,</a> mainly because it is what I am familiar with. I haven't created a new blogger account in a while, but "it worked fine when I tried it".<br /><br />In class, however, things went differently. After the candidates created their blogs, Google prompted them to enter a phone number as a final confirmation step. I assume this is to prevent mass creation of bogus blogs for whatever spammish purpose. The confirmation process was a surprise to me, beyond the inscrutable, illegible "type these letters" images Google usually uses. The privacy warning flags went up immediately in most everyone's mind I think, compounded by having watched, a few minutes earlier, <a href="http://www.theonion.com/">the Onion</a>'s <a href="http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/">Google Opt-Out Village</a> hilarity, which only compounded the distrust). "Okay, I'll sacrifice myself for the class. You can use my cell number if you don't want to provide your number." Except we were in the "Lower Level" of Parmer Hall (trans. "basement"), with no cell signal. So big embarrassment. As soon as I did get a cell signal, I received a dozen or so texts from Google for the new blogs, but the texts did not identify which blogs they went to, so they were useless.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.theonion.com/video_embed/?id=14358" frameborder="no" height="225" scrolling="no" width="400"></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.theonion.com/video/google-opt-out-feature-lets-users-protect-privacy,14358/" target="_blank" title="Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village">Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village</a><br /><br />I understand why Google has the additional confirmation steps. But the cell phone number request seems too much, especially if you are trying to create the accounts someplace where there is no cellphone coverage. Perhaps an email address confirmation is too easy to automate and circumvent Google's defenses. I don't know what a better mechanism might be, but it certainly interfered with what I hoped to do.<br /><br />And hence the previous post, done during class to illustrate how to make a blog posting, and how to comment on a blog posting.<br /><br />Now, I think a fundamental rule of using tech in the classroom is to go through all of the steps first, before class -- a dress rehearsal. Which of course I didn't do. On the other hand, perhaps it was the multiple attempts to create new blogs from the same IP address or pool of IP addresses perhaps triggered some additional confirmation process. A classic quality assurance engineering problem -- not testing under the actual conditions of use -- and how do you easily simulate, ahead of time, a class of students doing the same thing at the same time? Yes I know there are special apps to simulate multiple users doing something at the same time, but I don't see using such for the case described above. Experience is perhaps the better guide -- I have seen similar problems when creating GMail accounts in a class, so I should have known there might be issues.<br /><br />Memo to self: In the future, ask adult students to create their accounts before class. For younger students, stick with sites where I can create their accounts.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-13118646726801212442011-05-09T18:17:00.000-07:002011-05-09T18:18:22.554-07:00Starting a new classHaving problems with Google's new account verification scheme.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-68358162974321875622011-05-08T10:50:00.000-07:002011-07-09T14:56:25.461-07:00Common Core and mathThe new <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/">Common Core State Standards</a> (CCSS) are coming, ready or not. Illinois and 43 other states have adopted them. As if everything else going on in education wasn't enough, CCSS will be a Big Deal for teachers in all grades when they go into effect in the 2014-15 school year (which right now sounds like it is sometime in the 23rd century).<br /><br />For a good write-up about CCSS in relation to math education, see the latest column by the J. Michael Shaughnessy, president of the <a href="http://www.nctm.org/">National Council of Teachers of Mathematics</a>, titled "<a href="http://www.nctm.org/about/content.aspx?id=30009">CCSSM and Curriculum and Assessment: NOT Business as Usual</a>". From his write-up, expect new curricula, lots of PD and powerpoints, and much general wailing and gnashing of teeth as the oil tanker of math education is turned.<br /><br />Two things stand out for me re: <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/mathematics">the math standards</a> (especially the way Shaughnessy explains it).<br /><br />One is the emphasis on both math content and math <span style="font-style: italic;">practice</span>. According to CCSS, there are eight math practices that students should master:<br /><ol><li>Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.</li><li>Reason abstractly and quantitatively.</li><li>Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.</li><li>Model with mathematics.</li><li>Use appropriate tools strategically.</li><li>Attend to precision.</li><li>Look for and make use of structure.</li><li>Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.</li></ol>With the exception "model with mathematics" (#4), the math practices outlined in the new core standards are more generally life-persistent skills in thinking and solving problems. If teachers are allowed to organically infuse the classroom with these practices, education may well look very different.<br /><br />The other thing about Shaughnessy's write-up that stands out for me is how standardized testing will change to reflect the new standards. He includes links to some initial draft assessments, including the <a href="http://map.mathshell.org/materials/">Math Assessment Project (MAP)</a> and the <a href="http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/tools-for-teachers/">Inside Mathematics</a> initiative. The sample assessments are much more about solving problems -- "performance tasks" -- than simple skill assessment (as is the case of most of the current standardized tests).<br /><br />This emphasis on performance tasks is supposed to be reflected in the two initiatives to revamp standardized testing. (Illinois is supporting the <a href="http://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Research_News_and_Advocacy/Summing_Up/Articles/2011/AchieveCOMAPPARCC%281%29.pdf" title="AchieveCOMPPARCC">Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC)</a> initiative; the other one is <a href="http://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Research_News_and_Advocacy/Summing_Up/Articles/2011/SBAC_Overview.pdf" title="SBAC_Overview">SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)</a>; both are supported by the Department of Education.) Both initiatives will be administered online. PARCC calls their tests, to be administered four times a year, "next-gen assessments".<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/styles/large/public/PARCC-Design-Web_1.PNG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 401px; height: 283px;" src="http://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/styles/large/public/PARCC-Design-Web_1.PNG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />I am not sure how "performance tasks" (think of ISAT's extended response as a possible example) will be done online, if at all. Both consortia are talking about computer-adaptive tests for portions of the tests, which makes me wonder how they will be different from, say, the <a href="http://edperformance.com/">Scantron Performance Series</a> tests we are taking right now. From PARCC's powerpoint, it appears that the assessment process will drive the instructional frameworks that will end up driving the implementation of CCSS. This doesn't have to be a bad thing (that is, tail wagging dog), it all depends on whether really good assessments can be developed from CCSS that actually can assess a student's math <span style="font-style: italic;">practice</span>.<br /><br />The general drift in math standards, to me, reflects similar changes made to the <a href="http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students.aspx">National Educational Technology Standards</a> (NETS), revised in 2007. NETS focuses not on technical skills, but on <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> the tools are used. Only one of the six NETS for Students standards refers to technique ("<strong style="font-weight: normal;">Technology Operations and Concepts"), the other five emphasize creativity, communication and collaboration, information fluency, critical thinking, and citizenship. That is, both CCSS math practices and NETS emphasize a meta-approach to learning -- how to <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span>, how to <span style="font-style: italic;">create</span>.<br /><br />The mere existence of NETS does not mean of course that they are implemented in a deep way. Nor will the mere existence of thoughtful standards for math practice mean that they will improve math education. So much depends on if teachers will be allowed to implement them.<br /><br />jd<br /></strong>jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-19308918599077832212011-03-20T16:19:00.000-07:002011-03-20T17:28:41.708-07:00Tedious techI accidentally clicked on an old <a href="http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/">Parallels</a> <a href="http://edubuntu.org/">Edubuntu</a> virtual machine instead of Windows, and thought, okay, might as well update it -- it was several hundred days (over 800? is that possible? not launched since I played around with <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2008/11/edubuntu-and-thin-client-computing.html">setting up an Edubuntu server at the school</a> in late 2008? Which never went anywhere.)<br /><br />Several hours later, after downloading and installing all of the packages, cleaning up, rebooting -- oops, the X server wouldn't load, so no GUI. It was probably to be expected -- I have held off on upgrading the Parallels Desktop client -- I felt Nova was just randomly changing the product to keep a cash stream flowing. But this update might actually be necessary to get the latest Edubuntu to work.<br /><br />So the new Parallels finally finished downloading, but before I upgrade it, I'm thinking I should back up the Windows disk images, just in case. So I do that backup, and twenty minutes later, I'm ready to install Parallels 6, but the installer informs me that an update is available, and I should download that.<br /><br />And at the same time, I have been trying to get my tweets -- which I don't do very often -- to automatically show up on my Facebook page. The <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/">Twitter app for Facebook</a> (which has a useless and ambiguous interface) is supposed to do that, but for some reason it stopped working. Sorting out problems with <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a> seems like a hopeless cause. I found another Facebook app called <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/">Selective Tweet</a> which only posts tweets that end with #fb. That seems to work, and the help page is, well, helpful.<br /><br />While trying to write this, the Google search widget on this blog has stopped showing search results. Not a Firefox 4.0 issue, as it happens with Safari too. Finding help on Google products is a tedious process, sifting through Google Search results, with no date filter (the blogger search widget seems to have a history of problems).<br /><br />I tried to make this post as boring as the process that it documents. But it is also a test to see if the change I made to <a href="http://twitterfeed.com">Twitterfeed</a>, to post these blog updates to both Twitter and Facebook, works. Because every word is precious.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-38266860835379202982011-03-13T11:46:00.000-07:002011-03-14T07:46:57.248-07:00Diane Ravitch in Chicago<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ITQfPjdt940/TX0RoJ6snFI/AAAAAAAAARE/jig-LDpmW_8/s1600/ravitch_talk.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 242px; height: 324px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ITQfPjdt940/TX0RoJ6snFI/AAAAAAAAARE/jig-LDpmW_8/s400/ravitch_talk.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583638494563834962" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://dianeravitch.com/">Diane Ravitch</a>, author of <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465014917">The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education</a> and frequent critic of what she refers to as "corporate education reform" spoke to over 400 people on Saturday (March 12, 2011) at the UIC Forum. The event was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.ctunet.com/">Chicago Teachers Union</a>.<br /><br />An iPhone is not the easiest thing to take notes on, but here is an assortment of what I was able to take down. The bits below end up sounding like tweets, and it so happens Ravitch is a prolific <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/DianeRavitch">tweeter</a> ("I am not on Facebook").<br /><br />"Is this an age of insanity or an age of stupidity?"<br /><br />"[Corporate education reformers are ] standing on children to push agenda. School reform as a front to destroy public sector unions."<br /><br />Referring to events unfolding in Wisconsin and there potential impact on education there, "Where is Arne Duncan? Will Arne Duncan meet me in Madison? Where is President Obama?" And "Money was not the point. -- killing collective bargaining was the real goal.<br /><br />"We can't let the corporate reformers destroy public education."<br /><br />"The NCLB mandate [that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014] is utopian. It can't be met. No country has done it. NCLB is a timetable for the destruction of public education. Private entrepreneurs are waiting in the wings." By analogy, if NCLB was extended to police departments: "If the United States is not crime-free by 2014, close all of the police departments, and give a badge to anyone who wants one."<br /><br />"The future of public education is in the balance. It is the cornerstone of democracy. It should not be privatized."<br /><br />Synonyms for Race to the Top:<br /><ul><li>NCLB 2.0</li><li>Race to the Trough</li><li>Dash to the Cash</li></ul><br />On testing:<br /><ul><li>"Testing is not the same thing as instruction." </li><li>"Take test scores with a box of salt." </li><li>"Testing is not a science." Testing is a social construction.</li><li>"Data is just a representation of reality, it is not reality." </li><li>"How can you evaluate teachers on data that is meaningless."</li><li>"We need a broader vision of education. We need tests for diagnostic purposes. But high stakes testing is a corruption of the test."</li></ul>Poverty is the the problem, not teachers. Where the Harlem Children's Zone (Geoffrey Canada, hero of Waiting for Superman) succeeds, it is because it is an antipoverty program. Poor children arrive at school with an achievement gap already in place. Teachers had nothing to do with that. Education in the United States as a whole is not failing, only poor peoples' schooling.<br /><br />"Merit pay makes no difference." See work by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594488843">Daniel Pink</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming">Edwards Deming</a>.<br /><br />See <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/">http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/</a><br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-63819941982463531522011-02-21T08:37:00.001-08:002011-02-21T10:06:50.395-08:00Solving math word problemsA teacher asked me a question re: strategies for solving word problems. This is what came to mind:<br /><br />1. Consider the popular 4-step problem-solving strategy (adapted from Michael Polayi, appears in the MathThematics text; there is a good description on the this <a href="http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/lessonplans/steppro.htm">Scholastic.com page</a>) as an overall approach. The basic steps are:<br /><ol><li>Understand the problem</li><li>Make a plan (there are lists of basic strategies like "guess and check", "use a formula", "draw a picture"; see the Scholastic link above for a longer list).</li><li>Carry out the plan</li><li>Look back (review, reflect, evaluate)</li></ol>2. As part of step 1, understanding the problem, Ms. Schumacher at our school has students mark the problem text in different ways to isolate the key parts of the problem. She has her students underline the portion of the problem that says what to do, or what the question is asking for. They circle numbers or number words that are important to the problem. And they draw boxes around the actions they need to perform on the numbers (see next point). Reading math problems is a kind of literacy, and this deconstruction of the text can help comprehend the problem.<br /><br />3. Again related to step 1: Since reading math problems is a kind of literacy, students need to understand the vocabulary of math. There are addition words, subtraction words, and so on for each basic math operation. For example, addition words are words like "sum", "plus", "add", "increased by". Subtraction words are words like "less", "difference", "decreased by". Being able to recognize key math words, and what operations they are calling for (as well as what order to put the operands in) is important. <a href="http://www.purplemath.com/">Purplemath</a> has a <a href="http://www.purplemath.com/modules/translat.htm">table of "key words"</a>. Here is <a href="https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/dvoraktechacademy.org/pub?hl=en&amp;hl=en&amp;key=0ApD9Y5bhOuKgdHlfT3lqLXZkWGwxYTZzZjRTQWVpeWc&amp;output=html">a link to a table students and I put together</a> last year. (It is also important to be able to determine what is important information for solving the problem, and what is extraneous or irrelevant information).<br /><br />4. Students have different skill levels when it comes to what strategies they might use, but it might be useful to reinforce that a strategy that works is a good strategy, the main trade-off being effort to arrive at a solution. Guess-and-check (or using "brute force") is okay if you have the time and patience; algebraic methods are very flexible and powerful but may be prone to error if the student isn't comfortable with them. It is also important I think that students recognize that a combination of strategies is frequently used (e.g., I find it useful to first draw a picture or diagram, or make a table, to understand the problem before thinking of an algebraic solution).<br /><br />5. The last step is very important. Is the answer reasonable? Does it actually solve the problem? Was there an easier way to tackle it? Will it work for other problems?<br /><br />6. Regarding teaching strategies:<br /><ul><li>Whatever can be done to help students de-code the problem can help. I am thinking of comprehension strategies used with other kinds of texts.<br /></li><li>A think-aloud of how the teacher might approach the problem could model the problem-solving strategy for the students.<br /></li><li>After students have highlighted the key parts of the problem (what the problem is asking for, the key numbers, the operations), modeling how to put the pieces together can help.<br /></li><li>A KWL chart might structure the process, especially if students are familiar with the format. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Know</span> part, "what do we know already?" = the numbers and operations that the students have highlighted. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Want to know</span> part = what the problem is asking for. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Learned</span> part is the problem solution.</li><li>Having students make up their own word problems for other students might help them understand the structure or genre of math word problems.</li><li>Writing in a math journal about what they did to solve a problem might help gel the process for them.</li><li>Re: thinking about general problem-solving strategies, posing practical problems for the students might build their confidence in their problem-solving abilities and connect with strategies they already use, but don't think of them as such ("activating prior knowledge"). For example, a million dollars is waiting for you at the Lincoln Park Zoo -- how are you going to get it?</li><li>Having a context for understanding a word problem is important. If the problem deals with things the students don't know anything about, it is hard to understand what the problem is asking. This starts to slide into the area of math and social justice -- presenting math in terms that connect in deep ways with the lives of the students. Students need to be engaged enough with the material to want to solve the problem.</li><li>There are lots of other words that have math meanings, separate from different ways of referring to the basic operations and relations. See the ISBE <a href="http://isbe.net/assessment/pdfs/Math_Frameworks_Glossary.pdf">Math Frameworks Glossary </a>for words and definitions that are important to know when approaching word problems.</li><li>Being able to talk to students about how they solved or didn't solve a problem can be very useful for understanding their thinking and the source of possible misunderstandings.<br /></li></ul>This just touches on some strategies. Any comments are welcome. <a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/105137.aspx"><span style="font-style: italic;">Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction</span></a>, by Joan M. Kenney et al. (an <a href="http://www.ascd.org/">ASCD</a> book) has insights into different aspects of math and literacy.<br /><br />Since most real-world problems that require math present themselves as word problems, I think it is important that students are fluent in translating them into math terms, and using math tools for finding solutions. It is one of the important ways that math becomes meaningful.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-3499794497219308782010-12-30T13:31:00.000-08:002011-01-01T08:48:52.027-08:00The Best ClassroomsI saw a reference to the article below in a mailing from <a href="http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/">The Alliance for Childhood</a> (more play!):<br /><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2271733/"><br />Brilliance in a Box: What do the best classrooms in the world look like?</a><br /><br />The title of the article (by Amanda Ripley, and appeared in <a href="http://www.slate.com/">Slate</a>) pretty much sums it up, but there are a couple of stand-out lines:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking."<br /><br />"'In most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms,' says Andreas Schleicher, a veteran education analyst for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who spends much of his time visiting schools around the world to find out what they are doing right (or wrong). 'I have no explanation why that is the case, but it does seem that those systems place their efforts primarily on pedagogical practice rather than digital gadgets.'"<br /><br />"But the most innovative schools around the world do not tend to be the ones with the most innovative technology inside them."<br /><br /></blockquote>There are other observations about what may be making schools successful -- pedagogical skill, parent involvement, length of school day -- no great surprises there. The technology aspect, though, was the standout for me.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-20444966117573349762010-12-28T14:58:00.000-08:002010-12-28T17:31:22.820-08:00Making Khan Academy-type lessons on the iPadI like, very much, the spirit of the <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/">Khan Academy</a> videos (free!), and the content too (1800+ per the website, and growing). They are also available on the iPhone and iPad. If you have never seen them, they are basically screen captures of Sal Khan writing on a computer screen, with narration of what the instructor is doing. According to the site, this is how he does it:<br /><blockquote>I use Camtasia Recorder ($200) + SmoothDraw3(Free) + a Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80) on a PC. I used to use ScreenVideoRecorder($20) and Microsoft Paint (Free).</blockquote>I wanted to see if I could make the same -- creating something specific to my class, using my Mac, without buying anything new. I have an iPad, a MacBook, and am playing around with Apple's relatively new <a href="http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/">Magic Trackpad</a>. Seems simple enough, right?<br /><br />The Magic Trackpad didn't work very well as a drawing tablet. The <a href="http://tenonedesign.com/stylus.php">Pogo stylus</a> I have required a lot of pressure to draw with. Fingers were okay but it seemed unnatural, and difficult to simulate the click-drag combination required to draw with a mouse (which I find equally difficult to use to write legibly). The trackpad works well as a mouse replacement, but it really isn't a drawing tablet.<br /><br />The iPad is a great tablet platform. <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-ideas/id364617858">Adobe Ideas</a>, for example, has nice line-smoothing drawing ability, and with a stylus, it is very easy to draw legible handwriting (like Khan!). Plus, the iPad has the audio recording hardware, and an app like <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paperdesk/id367552067">PaperDesk</a> includes both drawing tools and recording tools. However, there is no sanctioned way to capture video of the iPad screen from what I can tell (single frame captures are part of the iPad OS, press the home and power buttons at the same time). There is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nb6-ixKiOY">software for jail-broken iPads</a> (ScreenRecorder + FullForce) to record the screen, but I'm not ready to jail-break my iPad.<br /><br />Another approach is to display the iPad screen on the Mac. You can use something like <a href="http://cydia.saurik.com/info/veency/">Veency</a> on the iPad (a VNC server), and record that portion of the Mac screen, but again, this requires a jail-broken iPad. Another way to get the iPad video signal to the Mac, without jail-breaking is to use a converter from <a href="http://www.screencapturenews.com/2010/05/25/capture-and-record-video-from-apple-ipad/">Epiphan</a>, but it lists for $299.<br /><br />An app like Whiteboard, which allows you to share whiteboards with other iPad users, would probably work if there was a Mac version of Whiteboard (and so capture the Mac version of the Whiteboard using screen recording software on the Mac).<br /><br />My current, albeit crude, solution, is to use a web-based whiteboard-sharing software, <a href="http://www.groupboard.com/products/">GroupBoard</a> (free for up to five collaborators). Groupboard has an iPad app (free). I created a shared online whiteboard by creating a page on a site I manage, and included the one line of HTML that Groupboard provides. On the iPad, I logged on to the Groupboard whiteboard I set up. I did the same using my browser (Firefox) on the Mac. On the Mac, I used <a href="http://store.shinywhitebox.com/ishowuhd/main.html">iShowU HD</a> ($29.95) to record the activity on the screen, in this case capturing what showed in Firefox. I used the built-in microphone on the Mac to record the narration (the sound recording was handled by iShowU as it recorded the screen activity). I used my Pogo stylus to draw on the iPad, and narrated as I drew. Here is the result:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/18255711" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/18255711">Khan Experiment 1</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5277498">James Davis</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p><br />It worked pretty well. The handwriting is rather blocky on the shared whiteboard, but passable. Groupboard has a text tool which I used for the title. Unfortunately, the controls for the Groupboard app are on the bottom of the screen, so it is easy to rest my palm on the buttons when drawing and accidentally select the settings options (but this doesn't show on the video because only whiteboard drawing is shared to the Mac). The Groupboard app crashed when I tried to change the text size and line width, so I just avoided those.<br /><br />The challenge of talking coherently while drawing at the same time and managing the drawing application tools is a real skill, and makes me appreciate all the more what Sal Khan has achieved. I blather on a bit at the beginning, before drawing anything, so patience.<br /><br />jd<br /><br />P.S. I would love to hear of other ways people have done this on the Mac, and especially with an iPad.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-35364536177673824282010-11-21T11:24:00.000-08:002010-11-21T11:57:50.443-08:00Playing around, web tools and teaching mathBig surprise. A blog titled "Technology and Education", and here is a posting that is actually about technology used in education.<br /><br />Here is an embedded <a href="http://presentation.brainshark.com/">Brainshark</a> presentation on using wikis for math instruction. Brainshark allows you to upload a PowerPoint presentation (also supports <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice</a> presentations), and then record audio for each slide. The audio-enhanced presentation can then be shared using embedded HTML (as is the case here).<br /><br /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="422" height="351" id="bsplayer95041" name="bsplayer95041"><param name="movie" value="http://www.brainshark.com/brainshark/viewer/brainshark.swf" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="flashvars" value="pi=942563503&dm=5&pause=1&host=www.brainshark.com&eurl=zGVz174bBhz2W5ez0" /><!--[if !IE]>--><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.brainshark.com/brainshark/viewer/brainshark.swf" width="422" height="351" id="bsplayer95042" name="bsplayer95042"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="flashvars" value="pi=942563503&dm=5&pause=1&host=www.brainshark.com&eurl=zGVz174bBhz2W5ez0" /></object><!--<![endif]--></object><br /><br />And here is a short video experiment with students to portray math concepts. The video is extremely rough -- I made a big mistake in shooting the video that made it very difficult to get the exact special effect I wanted. It's close, but not quite right: next time, shoot each student separately. I shot the student who appears twice separately, but included the middle student, the one holding the equals sign, in both clips. It was difficult to get rid of one of her, so I finally ended up just shifting the video position slightly so one clip overlayed the other. Just don't look too closely. And our green screen is a bit ratty. Editing was done in <a href="http://tryit.adobe.com/us/cs5/premiere/">Adobe Premiere</a> (CS4). It is mainly proof of concept, to give the kids an idea of what to do when we get to the project. The video is shared via Vimeo. As you can see, I didn't get the still frame right.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17031025" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/17031025">The Symmetric Property</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5277498">James Davis</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p><br /><br />And here is a comic strip (again an example for the students), using <a href="http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/">MakeBeliefsComix.com</a>. I like the MakeBeliefsComix simplicity of creating comics with the site -- no logins; and easy to use, intuitive tools. The downside is students can't save comics and go back to edit them, and there is no jpg export. Students need to either print the comic to a PDF file, and convert, or do a screen grab of the comic on the web page. Students can also email a link to the comic to the teacher.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iz9b9R2I7FE/TOl2fQx4nhI/AAAAAAAAAQs/89Bj_xPDgxk/s1600/sum.comic.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 151px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iz9b9R2I7FE/TOl2fQx4nhI/AAAAAAAAAQs/89Bj_xPDgxk/s400/sum.comic.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542091095908326930" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The classroom wiki is barely getting started, but here is a link:<br /><br /><a href="http://dvorakalgebra2010.wikispaces.com/">Dvorak Algebra 2010</a><br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-7806788330865406482010-11-14T09:02:00.001-08:002010-11-14T09:02:39.277-08:00Technology portfolioI suppose this is ready enough for release into the wild. This is totally self-promotion, but ...<br /><br />Here is a link to the portfolio I put together for the <a href="http://myclass.nl.edu/tie/">Technology in Education Masters program</a> I am in at National Louis University. We are nearing the end of the program, the portfolio is meant to demonstrate some understanding of the Illinois State Board of Education's <a href="http://www.isbe.net/profprep/CASCDvr/pdfs/27470_techspec.pdf">Technology Specialist requirements</a> and the International Society for Technology in Education (<a href="http://www.iste.org/welcome.aspx">ISTE</a>) <a href="http://nets-tf.wikispaces.com/">technology facilitator standards</a>:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://technology-in-education-portfolio.wikispaces.com/Technology+in+Education">A Technology in Education Portfolio</a><br /></div><br />It does include a personal philosophy on technology in education, as well as a list of resources and readings that I have found useful and/or important.<br /><br />Comments welcome, either on the portfolio discussion pages (requirse a <a href="http://www.wikispaces.com/">Wikispaces</a> account), or here.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-12045843406155376152010-11-11T16:25:00.000-08:002010-11-11T16:36:23.196-08:00Why do it by hand?<span style="font-style: italic;">I posted the following in an online discussion with some of my peers at other schools. I was questioning whether new technologies were making a significant enough of a difference to justify the cost and students could still do neat projects without computers; there was a response about how animated students get using technology, and yes, projects can be done on poster board, but why should they? Which got me to thinking, and this is how I responded:</span><br /><br />Some reasons I can think of:<br /><br />1. Doing projects by hand develops eye-hand coordination. Hand-work is critical to brain development.<br /><br />2. It develops measurement skills. I see low scores fairly consistently on the Measurement standard (ILS #7), which I suspect is due to the fact that kids never measure things. More cooking, sewing, woodwork!<br /><br />3. It develops an appreciation for materials and how they work together. Also textures, and what the tools of visual arts are: crayons vs markers vs watercolor vs tempera vs etc. Photoshop effects make a lot more sense if you know their real-world analogs<br /><br />4. Overall design: the computer screen can be quite limiting when you want to see the overall effect, at 100%.<br /><br />5. Designing without the computer screen can be relaxing and less stressful I think -- not sure if that is universal, but at least a personal observation.<br /><br />I do not disagree with the excitement re: computers, but I also think of it like a sugar rush. And I am not saying that I would want to go back to doing layouts with press type and rubber cement, but I am glad I did that once because it makes what the computers do more understandable.<br /><br />I am wondering if maybe technology education should recapitulate technology evolution -- learn the old way before you learn the new way.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-80944867097000477682010-11-07T11:59:00.000-08:002010-11-07T12:34:37.857-08:00Who makes education policy in Chicago?I saw this Chicago Trib blog posting (on the <a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/">Clout St. blog</a>):<br /><a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/10/emanuel-sitting-down-with-city-education-leaders-as-he-plots-schools-policy.html"></a><blockquote><a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/10/emanuel-sitting-down-with-city-education-leaders-as-he-plots-schools-policy.html">Emanuel sitting down with city education leaders as he plots schools policy</a></blockquote><br />It struck me for how much it says about who really shapes education policy. (Hint: It's not teachers.)<br /><br />The article is about Chicago mayoral wannabe Rahm Emanuel meeting with people who can both inform his education policy, and also fund his mayoral campaign. According to the item, Emanuel met with "nine local education leaders". They include:<br /><ul><li>Penny Pritzer, of the extremely wealthy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritzker_family">Pritzer hotel, finance, etc. family</a>, and one of the heads of the<a href="http://www.ptffoundation.org/"> Pritzer Traubner Family Foundation</a> (see below).<br /></li><li>Ellen Aberding, president of the<a href="http://www.joycefdn.org/content.cfm/programs-education"> Joyce Foundation</a> ("Working to close the achievement gap by ... promoting innovations such as charter schools")</li><li>Juan Rangel, CEO of the United Neighborhood Organization, "one of Chicago’s most influential Hispanic organizations that has opened <a href="http://unocharterschools.org/">several charter schools in Chicago</a>."<br /></li><li>Bruce Rauner, venture capitalist and chair of the private-equity firm GTCR, who also serves on the board of the <a href="http://www.thefundchicago.org/">Chicago Public Education Fund</a>, "we are defining venture capital for public education, the next generation in school improvement" and "aims to be the best vehicle for private sector investment in public education". Penny Pritzer is the chair of the fund. What exactly they do is an <a href="http://thefundchicago.org/index.php?tray=topic&amp;tid=top55&amp;cid=171">interesting read</a>, if you can get past the management-babble. The fund provides substantial seed money to get projects going, including most of the alternative certification programs at CPS, including the one I came in on (Chicago Teaching Fellows), as well as AUSL and Teach for America. Another objective is "<span style="">drive student performance by differentiating compensation for principals and teachers."</span></li><li>Brian Simmons, with another private equity firm, Code Hennessy &amp; Simmons LLC, and also on the board of the Chicago Public Education Fund.</li><li>Julia Stasch, a vice president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. </li><li>Robin Steans, a former Mayor Daley chief of staff, and now director of <a href="http://www.advanceillinois.org/">Advance Illinois</a>, an education policy group. Steans is a member of the wealthy Steans family which made its money in banking, whose <a href="http://www.steansfamilyfoundation.org/">foundation</a> has been a major funder of a number of North Lawndale community projects. Advance Illinois focuses on teacher evaluation programs ("base teacher evaluation on performance, including the ability to promote student achievement"), "support[ing] districts to use compensation more strategically", and tying teacher training accreditation to teacher performance.<br /></li><li>Beth Swanson, executive director of the <a href="http://www.ptffoundation.org/">Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation</a>, and a former budget officer of CPS. "<a href="http://www.ptffoundation.org/portfolio.html">Partners</a>" of the Pritzer Traubert Family Foundation include AUSL, the organization that manages turnaround schools for CPS; the Noble network of charter schools; and Teach for America.<br /></li></ul><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-67876123682889574682010-10-10T13:41:00.000-07:002010-10-10T14:44:02.865-07:00When do we get to teach?It is Sunday, and I just finished putting together the testing schedule for my school for a new round of tests our Area Office (at the behest of CPS CEO Ron Huberman) has mandated for us.<br /><br />We just finished the first of three yearly Scantron assessments on Friday. Next week we begin what has been referred to at my school as the "Riverside test", after the test's publisher. All third through eighth grade students will take an hour-long reading and an hour-long math test. The test is administered online, which means the two computer labs at the school will be unavailable for the next six or seven school days (plus occupying the computer carts for several hours).<br /><br />I don't think we will find out anything we didn't know already, especially with the Scantron test just finished -- if CPS can't trust the Scantron results, why pay the close to $10 million in test setup and subscription fees for it and its close cousin, the NWEA assessment? [ Aside: I am looking at contracts <a href="http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_Education/Documents/BoardActions/2010_06/10-0623-PR33.pdf">10-0623-PR33</a> and <a href="http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_Education/Documents/BoardActions/2010_06/10-0623-PR34.pdf">10-0623-PR34</a> from the June 23 Board of Education Report, you can also see them on the <a href="http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/contract_history/2011_00.xml">CPS Procurement and Contracts listing</a>. Click on the line item numbers to see any of the contracts. I'm guessing this is part of Huberman's effort to make CPS dealings transparent, which credit where credit is due, if there, it's Pretty Neat.)<br /><br />I started compiling a list of what's wrong with all of the testing that CPS is asking us to do. Here are my main topics so far:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. It is based on bad science.</span><br />(insults the intelligence, fetishizes data, misuses data, misuses and abuses statistics, gives science and statistics a bad name, is based on the very narrow world-view of the worst empiricism, demeans human beings, robs the world of its soul, etc.)<br /><br />And as a result,<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. It hurts students.</span><br />(I'm thinking of stress, anxiety, theft of learning time; it sorts students into false categories, stigmatizes students according to one narrow definition of success, focuses on the lowest order thinking skills, distorts purpose and nature of education, etc.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. It hurts families.</span><br />(same as above, it is also misused to mis-measure school "progress" and so used to close neighborhood public schools, and when public schools are closed, communities are undermined)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. It hurts teachers.</span><br />(data are (is?) abused to provide false evaluations of teachers, distorts the profession, demeans the role of teachers as teaching professionals, distorts curriculum, sets teachers up as fall-guy for failures of economic system, social priorities, government, politicians, educational-industrial complex, etc.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. It wastes the public's money.</span><br />(out-of-pocket cost of testing services, test administration costs, opportunity costs of test administration, lost teaching time, infrastructure costs, misdirection of administration and teacher time. In this category you can put me assembling schedules, talking to teachers, explaining the tests, proctoring, diagnosing and resolving technical issues, fixing rosters, training how to find test results, explaining what they might mean and won't they don't mean, tracking down students who missed the original test date. One might say, "quit your kvetching, that's your job" except it's not my job, at least on paper -- I am supposed to be helping teachers figure out ways to use new technologies to support creative learning.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. It destroys education.</span><br />(teaching to the test, lower-order thinking skills stressed, casts children as learning machines, narrows goal of education, used to falsely quantify school "performance" to provide false rationale for school closings, privatization.)<br /></blockquote>And here is a link supplied to me by Sharon Schmidt to "a zillion position type papers from FairTest": <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/k-12/high+stakes">The Case Against High-Stakes Testing</a><br /><br />As one teacher at my school said when I informed her of the looming next round of tests, "When do we get to teach?"<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-58866144788021816932010-10-02T14:01:00.001-07:002010-10-02T14:46:10.493-07:00Race to NowhereI attended a screening of the new documentary <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.racetonowhere.com/">Race to Nowhere</a> last Thursday, at the <a href="http://www.chicagowaldorf.org/">Chicago Waldorf School</a>. It is an important film I think, but left me unsatisfied.<br /><br />The unsatisfaction (not dissatisfied, mind you, just not satisfied) isn't a fault of the film itself -- it does a fine job of addressing the issues it sets out to address, namely the heaps of work and stress laid on children today out of a mad desire to make it in the crazy world of adults. The title comes from a comment by one of the students interviewed in the film, but appropriately echoes the Obama administration's abusive Race to the Top initiative.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Race to Nowhere</span> I think benefits from being released at the same time as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Waiting for Superman</span> film, an attack on teachers and public education by the same filmmaker that made Al Gore's <span style="font-style: italic;">An Inconvenient Truth</span>. (If you are in education and by some strange phenom have not heard of <span style="font-style: italic;">Waiting for Superman</span>, check out <a href="http://notwaitingforsuperman.org/">Rethinking Schools' site set up to address the convenient untruths</a> in the film.)<br /><br />While <span style="font-style: italic;">Waiting for Superman</span> is doing an effective job helping to mis-frame the debate around public education, <span style="font-style: italic;">Race to Nowhere</span> addresses only a slender part of the issue -- and don't get me wrong, it makes no pretense of trying to address the totality of the problems facing public education. But that's the lack of satisfaction for me -- I was hoping for something total.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Race to Nowhere</span> focuses on children who see themselves having a chance in the mainstream world, either because their parent(s) are there already and are pushing them along, or the students have the academic interest or drive, and possibility, of getting a precious scholarship and attending a top university. The film reminds the viewer to return to the basic question of "what is education for?" (And so it seemed appropriate that it was screened at the Waldorf school, an pedagogical tradition which has managed to keep its bearings about what education should be for.) One section of the film portrays a teacher driven from the profession by testing and the narrowing down of what education is and can be. A major theme in the film though is the amount of homework that the students work hard at doing, and the other pressures of school and expectations students face, threatening health, and in one case in the film, driving a student to suicide. And there it became clear that this film was addressing only part of the world of education.<br /><br />A whole other part is immersed in poverty, where for whatever reasons, the students have been disengaged from education, or maybe never were engaged. Most of the students I have worked with never stressed about homework, as far as I can tell -- most of them never did it (so much so that in my area, the percentage of final grades comprised by homework has been reduced to five percent). The film addressed one side of the Great Divide in America.<br /><br />To be fair, the film does include a few students from poor communities who are struggling along with the well-off students to keep up with classes, homework, after-school programs and community service. But largely absent are those other students, the ones that see only limited opportunity or have given up on school entirely. So while this is an important film, it isn't the film to counter <span style="font-style: italic;">Waiting for Superman</span>.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-72364611127671992002010-09-05T07:22:00.000-07:002010-10-02T14:00:59.053-07:00Democrats and teachersI think we've known this, but I don't remember actually seeing it in print. Here is a concise summary regarding the Obama administration vis-a-vis teachers:<blockquote>To a degree that almost nobody anticipated 19 months ago, Mr Obama ... has alienated the largest single historical provider of cash and volunteers to the Democratic party – namely the teachers’ unions.</blockquote> The quote is from a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91015f8a-9a7b-11df-87fd-00144feab49a.html">an article</a> in the London-based <a href="http://www.ft.com/home/us">Financial Times</a> article published back in July. The article refers to the "astonishingly small sum of cash" dangled in front of states by the Department of Education in the Race to the Top competition. Race to the Top basically undermines teacher workplace rights by undercutting due process and seniority via the misdirection of teacher evaluations and charter schools. "The teachers’ unions, meanwhile, have been left gasping at the speed with which their objections have been overruled, often by Democratic-run state governments."<br /><br />What I think is especially interesting is the Democrats willingness to undercut what, as noted above, has been one of the pillars of the party. It really is quite significant I think, the making visible of a sea-change that as been in process for several years. This change was emphasized to me by the source of the reference to article. I saw the reference in Nasser Saber's blog, <a href="http://dialecticsoffinance.blogspot.com/2010/08/conspiracy-theory-3-mother-of-all.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DialecticsOfFinance+%28Dialectics+of+Finance%29">The Dialectics of Finance</a>. Saber is (or at least was) an NYU professor of finance, and the author of one of the best books that I know of on the workings of the economic system today, <span style="font-style: italic;">Speculative Capital</span> (see t<a href="http://dialecticsoffinance.blogspot.com/2010/08/conspiracy-theory-3-mother-of-all.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DialecticsOfFinance+%28Dialectics+of+Finance%29">he blog page</a> for a concise summary). For Saber, this strange contradiction of the Democrats shouting out a big F U to its base is resolved by recognizing that speculative capital calls the shots today, and all of that old stuff, like a trade union movement and public education for all, just gets in the way.<br /><br />On a perhaps related note, the tune being "let's beat on teachers", <a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=44232">Huberman has come out in favor of publishing teacher "performance" data</a>, according to WBEZ (see a <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2010/08/la-times-lies-lies-and-more-lies.html">previous post</a> related to publishing teacher evaluation data in Los Angeles). CPS is supposed to work out an evaluation system with the teachers union, per BEZ, "<span id="ctl00_content1_lblTranscript">but if an agreement is not made within 90 days of negotiations, the district can create a plan on its own."<br /><br />jd </span>jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-30407492301728773952010-08-31T05:00:00.000-07:002010-08-31T05:09:44.687-07:00New report critiquing value-added measuresThe <a href="http://epi.org/">Economic Policy Institute</a> has released a new report, "<a href="http://epi.3cdn.net/724cd9a1eb91c40ff0_hwm6iij90.pdf">Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers</a>". The report is authored by a number of big names in the education and assessment field, including Dianne Ravitch, Robert Linn, and Linda Darling-Hammond. Click <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/new-study-blasts-popular-teach.html?wprss=answer-sheet">here</a> for the <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/">Answer Sheet</a> write-up about the report, which also includes the Executive Summary.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-37990402803466537442010-08-22T07:46:00.000-07:002010-08-22T08:58:08.899-07:00Falsely identifying "bad" teachersHere's a link to a recent study from the U.S. Department of Education on likely problems when using test scores to evaluate teacher (and student) performance (referred to in my <a href="http://dvorakedtech.blogspot.com/2010/08/la-times-lies-lies-and-more-lies.html">previous post</a>):<br /><br /><a href="http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104004/pdf/20104004.pdf">Error Rates in Measuring Teacher and School Performance Based on Student Test Score Gains</a><br /><br />The study, by Peter Schochet and Hanley Chiang at Mathematica Policy Research (which develops schemes for value-added measures for school districts, including <a href="http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/Newsroom/Releases/2010/DCPS_VAM_7_10.asp">the District of Columbia Public Schools</a>, where <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/the-problem-with-how-rhee-fire.html">teacher evaluation came into play on the recent firings</a>), has some interesting findings:<br /><ul><li>"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors">Type I and II error</a> rates for comparing a teacher’s performance to the average are likely to be about 25 percent with three years of data and 35 percent with one year of data." [Type I errors are "false positives" -- you think the hypothesis is true when really it isn't; Type II errors are "false negatives" -- you think the hypothesis is false when it isn't.]</li><li>"These results strongly support the notion that policymakers must carefully consider system error rates in designing and implementing teacher performance measurement systems based on value- added models, especially when using these estimates to make high-stakes decisions regarding teachers (such as tenure and firing decisions)."</li><li>And this powerful statement: "Our results are largely driven by findings from the literature and new analyses that more than 90 percent of the variation in student gain scores is due to the variation in student-level factors that are not under the control of the teacher."</li></ul>To reiterate: The first point means that when using three years worth of student test data, <span style="font-style: italic;">chances are about 1 out of 4 that a teacher would be falsely identified as a "bad" teacher.</span> Bad odds when a career and livelihood are at stake.<br /><br />jd<br /><br /><br />Some related links on the report:<br /><br /><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/study-error-rates-high-when-st.html">Study: Error rates high when student test scores used to evaluate teachers</a> from The Answer Sheet blog (very good blog!)<br /><br /><a href="http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/rolldice/">Rolling Dice: If I roll a “6″ you’re fired!</a> from the School Finance 101 blog.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-46079637716446982792010-08-19T17:36:00.000-07:002010-08-22T10:52:14.264-07:00L.A. Times: Lies lies and more liesOn Sunday, the L.A. Times began publishing an important series of articles on teacher evaluations (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story">Who’s Teaching L.A.’s Kids?</a>). Important because the Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation’s second largest (Chicago is third); important because it appears in a major newspaper; important because they printed teachers names with the data, upping the ante in attacks on teachers (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-teachers-react-20100817,0,4846188.story">Duncan came out in support of publishing teacher evaluations</a>); important because it previews what I suspect will be the same kind of arguments that will be used by Huberman’s administration against Chicago teachers.<br /><br />I am late to the party on this -- I first saw a note of it on the <a href="http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district-299/2010/08/la-times-identifies-high-low-performers.html">District 299 blog</a> (required reading to keep up with CPS news), then on the <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-the-huge-problem-wi.html">Answer Sheet blog</a>, and the L.A. Times piece story <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129282823">showed up on NPR yesterday</a>. I’m slow (actually, ironically I suppose, or sadly, I have been mushing and sorting students by their ISAT scores for an upcoming area observation).<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story">Who’s Teaching L.A.’s Kids?</a> article looks at local student standardized test scores on a by-teacher basis, using a "value-added" statistical model, and based on that model, identifies teachers as "effective and "good" teachers versus "ineffective" and “bad" teachers.<br /><br />On reading the article, I was reminded of Mary McCarthy’s famous quip about Lillian Hellman (and unfair I think), "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Every word in the L.A. Times article is a lie, including "and" and "the". In this case, not unfair.<br /><br />The article doesn’t have to be "true" of course -- we are in a propaganda war, after all. The tactic of the Times authors is to dress up some statistics bullshit in a pretty hat, and parade it around as science, ergo truth. Everyone is so wowed by the hat, that they fail to recognize that underneath the hat, it’s just, well, just bullshit. But if enough scientistic magic power words are folded into the story, words like "Rand Corp.", "senior economist and researcher", "reliable data", "objective assessment", "effective", the narrative sweeps along and reaches it’s obvious, stinking conclusion.<br /><br />Here is the essence of the Times’s method:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students' progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student's performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors. Though controversial among teachers and others, the method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration.<br />...<br />The approach, pioneered by economists in the 1970s, has only recently gained traction in education.<br />...<br />Value-added analysis offers a rigorous approach. In essence, a student's past performance on tests is used to project his or her future results. The difference between the prediction and the student's actual performance after a year is the "value" that the teacher added or subtracted.</blockquote><br /><br />There have been a number of challenges raised to value-added measures on methodological grounds (in particular, misidentification of “bad teachers -- see <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/study-error-rates-high-when-st.html" sheet="">Study: Error rates high when student test scores used to evaluate teachers</a> from the Answer Sheet blog. Also from the same blog (which is Really Good by the way), <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-the-huge-problem-wi.html">Willingham: Big questions about the LA Times teachers project</a>. I have started a list of links <a href="http://www.diigo.com/list/jidavis1/Value-Added-Measures">here</a>.)<br /><br />But I think there is a more fundamental, worldview-type fault with the general approach demonstrated in the LA Times article, the Big Lie that makes everything in the article a lie, even "and" and "the". It’s not merely the concept of "value-added" as a metric, but the overall economic approach to education.<br /><br />Through the lens of economics, teachers go to the education factory. They work on human widgets. At the end of the day, teachers have hopefully added value to the widgets. Value is added if the widgets score higher on multiple choice tests. The greater the change in test scores, the more value that has been added, and the more productive the teacher is.<br /><br />Implicit in the economic argument is that the education factory must strive to be as productive as possible (i.e. raise test scores as much as possible). Teachers have a greater effect on students than any other single factor, so education reform should focus of identifying the most productive teachers. School districts must then devise incentives to keep the most productive teachers (hence merit pay). Or researchers need to determine what makes for a productive teacher (e.g., <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html">Building a Better Teacher</a>, from the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times Magazine</span> last March), and teach that in teacher education programs (hence let <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/education/19regents.html">Teach for America certify its own teachers</a>), and/or suss that out in teacher recruitment or on the firing line in the first couple of years of teaching (see Malcolm Gladwell’s piece "<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell">Most Likely to Succeed: How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?</a>").<br /><br />Most all of the research on this approach -- what gives this approach its academic patina of respectability -- points back to the work of <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=" hanushek="">Eric Hanushek</a>, an economist at the Stanford's Hoover Institution. He has been working on quantifying the effect of individual teachers, and trying to isolate the teacher effect in education since the early 1970s, and continues to work on it today. His work, and the work of people around him, is the academic foundation, the theory on which most of the official education rhetoric, from Obama to Duncan to Huberman (from what I can tell anyway), is based.<br /><br />This economic model is taken a step further with the "value-added" notion. I’m not sure where the concept arose but it is an obvious extension of Hanushek’s work. CPS uses a version from the <a href="http://varc.wceruw.org/index.php">University of Wisconsin’s Value Added Research Center</a>, as does New York City, Milwaukee and Dallas. The LA Times study referred to above was done by researchers at the Rand Corp. A company called <a href="http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/">Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.</a> was noted in <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/were-some-dc-teacher-dismissal.html?wprss=answer-sheet">the Answer Blog</a> as the contractor for the Washington, DC teacher evaluation system, which uses a value-added component (and <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/the-problem-with-how-rhee-fire.html">used in the firing of teachers there recently</a>.)<br /><br />As noted above, "value-added" can be calculated in different ways, but all approaches are based on standardized test scores. As is the case for Hanushek’s work. Here is Hanushek's (and collaborator Steven Rifkin's) statistical justification for saying standardized test scores mean something:<br /><br /><blockquote>One fundamental question––do these tests measure skills that are important or valuable? –– appears well answered, as research demonstrates that standardized test scores relate closely to <i>school attainment, earnings, and aggregate economic outcomes</i> (Murnane, Willett,and Levy 1995; Hanushek and Woessmann 2008). The one caveat is that <i>this body of research is based on low-stakes tests that do not affect teachers or schools</i>. The link between test scores and high-stakes tests might be weaker if such tests lead to more narrow teaching, more cheating, and so on. (from Hanushek and Rivkin’s <a href="http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/1001371-teacher-quality.pdf">Using Value-Added Measures of Teacher Quality</a>, p. 2; emphasis added)</blockquote><br /><br />The economic view of education, as the above indicates, assumes the goal in life is earnings and/or academic attainment. If that assumption and mindset is rejected, then the rationale of standardized tests having any meaning evaporates, and the whole argument collapses.<br /><br />jd<br /><br />P.S. I skipped over their important caveat re: that the justifying research assumes that tests are low-stakes, which is <i>not</i> the case today with ISAT, ACT, Scantron, etc. The current <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/us/19brfs-GOVERNORWANT_BRF.html">cheating controversy in Atlanta</a> speaks to the greater incentive to cheat as stakes get higher. In a more perfect world, tests would be part of a bigger assessment profile, and then they might mean something. In the words of Hanushek and Rivkin themselves, the standardized test score data is suspect.jdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283690930351602435.post-40171425614786849692010-08-13T09:40:00.001-07:002010-08-13T09:46:46.441-07:00Report on Ren 2010 and chartersThe <a href="http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/issue/index.php?issueNo=156">August, 2010 issue of Catalyst Chicago</a> features a number of articles on Renaissance 2010 and charter schools in Chicago.<br /><br />Also see the "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/us/13cnccharters.html">Many Chicago Charter Schools Run Deficits, Data Shows</a>" article by Sarah Karp, deputy editor of Catalyst Chicago, that appears in the New York Times. The article gives a peek at the finances of charters.<br /><br />jdjdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085126297255347466noreply@blogger.com0