British Education and Press Also Have Problems

I'm overseas for a few weeks so I've been watching the BBC.  They've been running a story this week that is disappointing to me in that I think it's a little dumb and sensational.  It makes me feel a little better about the US press and their lousy coverage of education issues.

The BBC reporting of a Sutton Trust Research Study is this:

Teachers who give struggling pupils "lavish praise" could make them even less likely to succeed, research into classroom tactics has suggested.

The Sutton Trust education charity has warned that many strategies used by teachers have no evidence to show that they really work.

Listening to this story, one is inclined to think of a country full of well-intentioned but naive teachers that are lavishing praise on students that don't deserve it.  This cheapens the praise, convinces the kids that the teachers are clueless, and has all sorts of other counterproductive side effects.  

 But, the story never says that teachers are actually lavishing praise inappropriately.  And, every teacher guide or textbook that I've read over the last 30 years makes the point that student feedback is important and should be done strategically. For instance, students effort and actual successes should be praised, the student himself (or herself) should not be over-praised. It's the effort or achievement which gets the note. Feedback should be specific and constructive. etc etc.

Now I haven't reach the original study so I don't know if the study suggests that teachers need retraining or not. My suspicion is that most educational researchers are pretty smart and so what they were studying were some nuances of feedback and praise in certain circumstances to see what worked better.  But, I'm guessing, the BBC prefers to stay away from such technicalities and prefers the somewhat sensational story that the teachers need to stop handing our unwarranted praise. Since there is no basis for saying that, they just infer.

As I'm doing. I am infering about what they did but then, I'm a private American blogger writing primarily for my own amusement, not the British Broadcasting System. If I was, I'd be better.

Common Core - Lets Get Real

There is much to argue about in the Common Core but my least  favorite approach to the discussion is when people focus on where it came from as if that was the big issue. It's not, it should be a question of what the standards should be.  

There is endless discussion as to whether the states themselves really initiated the development completely on their own or were the private foundations involved in concept development. The Federal Gov't became supportive of the effort which in my view, is great. Did they push it too hard? Too late? Too early?   Some people see the Feds as more involved than they were.  At the end of the day, who cares? I don't.

 Irrespective of its exact process of creation, the Common Core is the best efforts by the some of the best people to formalize what our students need to be learning to succeed.  As the world changes, we are all competing in national and international markets so the old arguments for regional and state approaches is increasingly less valid.  Also, in the modern streamlined world where cost and waste are no longer tolerated, it is crazy to have independent groups in each state developing standards and having so many versions of textbooks. Crazy!

There are states that are fiercely independent (ie Texas) which will continue to call their standards the TEKS but the TEKS too will probably be updated to be very "Common Core-ish" since this is currently the best approach.

The Common Core is not perfect and there's plenty to argue about.  I personally would have put algorithms and computer science and data analysis and statistics into high school math and perhaps not included Alg 2 and Calculus. My rationale is that high school math should develop advanced analytical reasoning in areas that are most likely to be useful for further study and careers. With 30 years of professional experience, I've never professionally encountered an "X squared" or had to take a derivative or an integral but I sure wish that I was more prepared to deal with probability and understand my digital world.  

I also would have a complete set of standards including science and social studies. Politically, very difficult but in terms of education, it would obviously be the best to have a coherent set of standards.

My point is the Common Core is today's best effort but it's not the be-all and end-all. The people fighting the Common Core are using its origin mostly as an excuse.  They generally have a political agenda which is counter to the economic realities of what our students need to compete in today's world and they focus not on the issue of what is in the Common Core but the trends that it represents.  It recognizes that the future belongs to the highly educated who can deal with technology and communication in much better ways.  This is a very painful reality to those who think the future belongs to the US as some sort of exceptional destiny. While most of today's technology is US born, this could and probably will look very different in 50 years. Fifty years ago, it was unthinkable that any Americans would buy "foreign" cars.  The lax US car and steel industries and some global economic trends go us to where we are today.

The analogy is that we are not destined to be world leaders. The opportunity that we have is to compete. The Common Core and the increasing rigor of education is part of this effort.

 I think entering into the debate of exactly how the CC came to be obscures the point of how important it is that we deal with increasing the 3Rs (rigor, relevance, and relationships) to our educational system for our country's future.

Education TED Talks

This ones about politics by MG Wheeler:



Another TED talk, this one about health (not healthcare):

 

Grading Systems: What they should be!

I wish I read Larry Ferlazzo's blog more often. Everytime I do, I feel enlightened.

I'll quote some of my favorite parts, paraphrased, of his second post on grading. His post is mostly written by Rick Wormeli. 

Grades are first and foremost communication; they are information, nothing more. The moment we make them something more, we corrupt their constructive use. A reporting system built merely to sort humans in order to provide sports eligibility or grant scholarships is destined to be abused and unhelpful in the long term. 

It's helpful to think of grades as the colored dot posted at our intended destination on a GPS system. (This analogy is thanks to Stan Williams and Emily Rinkema  @CVULearns).

When we want to drive someplace, we insert the address into our GPS and start driving. Our progress towards the address, the colored dot moving across a map, is the grade: it's pure information, a statement of fact for where we are at the given moment in relation to our goal. It is nothing more than this. It is not a reward, affirmation, validation, or compensation.

Our reward for arriving at our destination is...arriving at the destination. 

The grade is NOT the reward, nor can it ever be considered such.

The article goes on to list eight vital elements of a good grading system.  Read it:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2014/05/response_the_grading_system_we_need_to_have.html

Palm Beach Drops Grades

I was just talking to a mother of a second grader. She had been frustrated that her child, who attends a public school in Palm Beach County, never gets grades. She only gets satisfactory (or not satisfactory).  In fact, while she prepares for and takes tests, the results are never revealed to the parents or students.

Now, she's livid. She had expected that started in third grade, they would return to a classic grading system but Palm Beach has just announced: "No grades all through elementary school!"  Her reaction is: "That's retarded!"

Do grades help? Hurt?  What about the reality of grades being something that we all are used to and expect. Who is driving this no grades experiment at Palm Beach?

The Sun Sentinel reported on this last year: "Getting straight A's on report cards is no longer possible at 20 Palm Beach County elementary schools, despite even the best student achievement.

That's because those schools are test labs for assigning pupils new "performance codes" instead of the traditional A, B, C, D and F marks. The school year's second round of report cards come out Monday.

Educators say they are trying to convince parents that the new format — including the terms "exemplary" and "proficient" — is a much better indicator of whether students are mastering state standards for reading, writing, math, science and social studies.

"The biggest obstacle is that it is such a paradigm shift because all we know are grades," said Sharon Hench, principal of H.L. Johnson Elementary in Royal Palm Beach. The school uses the new report cards in kindergarten through second grade, and the old letter grade report cards for third through fifth grades.

School district administrators say they have not decided whether to expand this experiment next year to more of the 107 elementary schools. Officials have learned it's better to take their time rolling out revolutionary changes, after their failed 2009 attempt at systemwide curriculum changes.

So far, what appears to be a small number of parents at the schools where the switch began last year have complained they miss seeing letter grades on report cards, and tests too.

Kari Hansen, mother of a second grader at Berkshire Elementary in West Palm Beach, says it's harder for her to track her child's progress without numerical scores and a corresponding grading scale.

"They are just promoting mediocrity with this new system," she said.

STEM Leadership and International Test Scores

I was just reading Steve Peha's weekly newsletter who pointed me towards an article by Gerald Bracey: this relatively brief blog post.  I'd like to quote it since it makes a significant point about technology leadership,  STEM education, and cross-national test comparisons:

It should be noted that these rankings <PISA Test> are determined by nations’ average scores. ....A publication from OECD itself observes that if one examines the number of highest-scoring students in science, the United States has 25% of all high-scoring students in the world (at least in “the world” as defined by the 58 nations taking part in the assessment—the 30 OECD nations and 28 “partner” countries). Among nations with high average scores, Japan accounted for 13% of the highest scorers, Korea 5%, Taipei 3%, Finland 1%, and Hong Kong 1%. Singapore did not participate.

The picture emerging from this highest-scorer comparison is far different than that suggested by the frequently cited national average comparisons; it is a picture that suggests many American schools are actually doing very well indeed.

Of course, the U.S. is much larger than these other countries and should be expected to produce larger numbers of successful students. But it is only when we look beyond the mean and consider the distribution of students and schools that we see the true picture. 

The Solution to Teacher Quality

Steve Peha, who usually has great judgement, embarked on writing one of the most ambitious articles that I've seen in awhile.  Published in the Washington Post, he attempted to provide a reasonable approach to addressing teacher quality: A 'doable' solution to teacher quality.

He basically points out that some people focus on the bad teachers but that it is very difficult to do much about the bottom 5%.  He also highlights the importance of holding onto and rewarding the great teachers which is also worthwhile but difficult.

He focuses on improving teaching of the average teachers which is the great majority.  As he puts it:

Helping average teachers won’t make headlines, but making even small gains in the effectiveness of 75%-90% of our teaching corps would have a significant effect on student achievement.

And it’s doable.

Nobody needs to get fired. Nobody has to reinvent school. Nobody has to raise taxes to expand the social safety net. We merely need to address the common problems average teachers face by providing optimized solutions that make learning better for children and teaching easier for them.

I, for one, think that we need to address all these issues but that Steve is basically right, the biggest simplest solution is to focus on basic teacher training.  Another person who greatly agrees with Steve Peha, and a good person to have in your corner, is Bill Gates.  He points out that useful PD that helps coach teachers to improve their practice is sorely lacking and easily solved. So he's solving it.