I'm now @Mathteacher1729

This was my blog before I got on twitter.  You can find all my tweets, blogs, and videos from there.

Short update

http://www.twitter.com/aboutNCLB has been extremely active!  Please check our educational news rss feed (see right sidebar).  I've been watching that and posting relevant links on Twitter.  It is a fun challenge to squeeze as much meaning out of 140 characters as possible.  More blogs to come!  Also - I revamped the site's look. If you're a twitter follower -- thank you!

Anyone who thinks "Alg II is for everyone" should learn some basic statistics.

Source: Requiring Algebra II in high school gains momentum nationwide Washington Post

As a mathematics teacher, this particular issues touched a nerve.

Confusing "correlation" and "causation" is one of the most common errors in all statistics.

These two quotes from the article:

(1) [..] whether learning Algebra II causes students to fare better in life, or whether it is merely correlated with them doing better — because smart, motivated kids take Algebra II — isn’t clear. 

and

 (2) Among the skeptics is Carnevale, one of the researchers who reported the link between Algebra II and good jobs. He warns against thinking of Algebra II as a cause of students getting good jobs merely because it is correlated with success.
“The causal relationship is very, very weak,” he said. “Most people don’t use Algebra II in college, let alone in real life. The state governments need to be careful with this.”

state it very nicely.

xkcd

Here is an example of confusing correlation with causation.  Everyone knows that all heavyweight boxing champions are big, strong, fast, and have boxing skills. In other words, being a heavyweight champion is strongly correlated with being big, strong, fast, and having boxing skills.  This doesn't mean that being big, strong, fast, and having boxing skills causes one to become a heavyweight champion! Sure, it can help, but it is by no means a cause.

The individual must train hard their entire lives, must show extreme dedication and passion for the sport, and usually possess something "special", a strong will, a never-give-up attitude, etc. -- intangibles which are in no  way related to being big, strong, fast, or having boxing skills.  (there are paraplegics who have strong wills and never-give-up attitudes, for examples)

The danger, [Carnevale] said, is leaving some kids behind by “getting locked into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.”

This point is 100% valid.  Students develop at different rates, and those placed in a track which is no longer appropriate for them should be able to move to one which is more appropriate.  Schools should offer algebra II for those students who are ready and willing to take it on.  If there are to few students, hopefully the school will have access to the internet so their students can use a tool like Khanacademy to learn at their own pace.

What math topics should "every student" know before they graduate high school?  

Here is a short list I cooked up, feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

• Arithmetic with positive and negative numbers -- in other words:  how to balance a checkbook
• Elementary propositional logic, specifically that the converse of a statement is not always true.
• Proportional reasoning, specifically "A small percentage of a large quantity can be large" and "A large percentage of a small quantity can be small." as well as "taking a percentage of a percent." -- "The retirement plan will match 10% of up to 3% of your base salary..." 
• Linear vs. Log scale
• Probability, specifically conditional probability and the normal distribution
• Statistics, specifically the importance of sample space and size, as well as the difference between correlation and causation!
• Be able to read a (well-made) graph or chart which includes any of the above concepts 

Obama's remarks on his wishes for his children's education seems to contradict his own policies.

Excellent remarks about Obama's plan for education reform which imply he may not even be aware of the content of the proposed reform. (part 1 , part 2 , Justin Hamilton's reply to questions 1,2,3 Question 4 is now up) .   

The full town hall is here

The question about tests, and Obama's remarks begin at ~ 44 minutes. 

Click here Full transcript.

Here is the question about testing and Obama's interesting remarks: 

 Q My name is Lisa and I'm going to attend my last year here at Bell Multicultural High School. Students go through a lot of tests. Could you reduce the amount of tests? For example, we found a student passes a test, he shouldn’t take the same test next year.

 THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think probably what you're referring to are standardized tests -- because if you're just talking about your math or your science or your English test, tough luck -- (laughter) -- you’ve got to keep on taking those tests, because that's part of the way that teachers are going to know whether you're making progress and whether you understand the subject matter.

 What is true, though, is, is that we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at. Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn’t a high-stakes test. It wasn’t a test where they had to panic. I mean, they didn’t even really know that they were going to take it ahead of time. They didn’t study for it, they just went ahead and took it. And it was a tool to diagnose where they were strong, where they were weak, and what the teachers needed to emphasize.

 Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let’s find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let’s apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let’s figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let’s make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well.

 Because there are other criteria: What’s the attendance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects? There are other ways of us measuring whether students are doing well or not.

 So what I want to do is -- one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring.

 So, now, I still want you to know, though, you're going to have to take some tests, man. (Laughter.) So you're not going to get completely out of that. All right? (Applause.)

Encouraging students to think critically and teachers to collaborate

 Source: LA Times --Singled-out L.A. Unified teacher shares skills with colleagues

The LA Times wrote an article about an LA Unified school teacher who had a great rapport with students, encouraged them to develop and use critical thinking skills, and eventually ended up sharing his techniques with the rest of the teachers in  his building.   At first the collaboration with other teachers was slow, but it quickly picked up and the teaching and learning environment at the school has improved. Due to budget cuts, this teacher may lose his job.

It was the first time anyone at Broadous Elementary School in Pacoima could remember a teacher there being singled out for his skill and called upon to share his secrets school-wide."A teacher coming forward … that hadn't happened before," said Janelle Sawelenko, another fifth-grade teacher.

This is surprising and saddening.  Collaboration and communication are critical parts of any profession, and teaching is no different.

When the article appeared — followed soon after by a database ranking about 6,000 Los Angeles elementary school teachers — it ignited debate nationwide. Educators, teachers unions and experts warned that publicly rating teachers would pit one against the other.
Seven months later, Broadous teachers and the principal say the opposite has occurred. They've noticed a new openness to talking about what works, an urgent desire to improve. "It's encouraged them to collaborate," said Eidy Hemmati, the school's intervention coordinator.

Administrators at the school should be monitoring their teachers and scheduling regular meetings where teachers can collaborate.  The methods by which the rankings are generated do not tell the full story, they measure only the students performance on standardized tests. These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher connects with or inspires his or her students.  These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher encourages and brings out critical thinking or any thinking skills beyond memorization and matching.  These rankings cannot and do not quantify how well a teacher inspires students to love learning, etc.

Many educators, including many at Broadous, were skeptical of The Times' statistical approach, known as "value-added analysis." In essence, it estimates a teacher's effectiveness by measuring each student's performance on standardized tests compared to previous years. Because it measures students against their own track records, it largely controls for socioeconomic differences.

Firstly, standardized tests are usually multiple choice and measure only memorization / matching of disjointed facts.  Secondly, to address the highlighted point -- students are measured against themselves, but to suggest that this "controls for socioeconomic differences" is absurd.  Students are still at tremendous disadvantage, and even if they are improving against their own scores on a meaningless test, they are still behind better-off students at the same meaningless tests.

Like most districts, L.A. Unified historically hasn't distinguished between its stars and its stragglers, often rating the vast majority of teachers "satisfactory." And the culture of the teachers union values solidarity — during a protest against The Times last year, one of the union's speakers shouted, "We are all John Smiths."
By singling out Aguilar, the Times article had put him under an uneasy spotlight.
"Little by little I felt like I had to prove I was respected not just because of my test scores," he said, "but because of what I'm teaching in my classroom."

This is a stab at teacher's unions and the culture of educators.  Firstly, it implies that teachers unions want all their teachers performing at the same level.  (They should want everyone to be excellent, so that's a fair statement, but certainly not what is implied here.)  "We are all Johns Smiths." is a statement of solidarity with the people -- it's saying that teachers are part of the community and just as invested in the success of the children as their own parents.   They are like any other working man or woman on the street in your neighborhood -- they are your neighbors and friends.   "We are all John Smiths." does not mean "We want all of our teachers to be mediocre, and we don't like outstanding teachers!"   The highlighted quote by Aguilar speaks volumes -- teachers don't care about meaningless test scores, and don't respect teachers who "teach to the test" because (due to the way the tests are constructed) that is an abomination unto teaching and a disservice to the students.   The teachers grew to respect Aguilar because he displayed excellence in teaching by encouraging his students to think critically, introduced innovative, engaging, and appropriately challenging exercises for his students, and then carefully monitored their progress and moved forward making sure they mastered the material as much as possible.

On visits to his classroom, Principal Stannis Steinbeck quickly concluded that Aguilar was not simply "teaching to the test" — a concern among critics of the value-added approach. He had an uncanny ability to connect with his students while commanding their respect.
When she learned later that Aguilar had devised his own method for teaching reading and comprehension, she asked for a demonstration. Steinbeck was impressed: Aguilar forced students to slow down and think before answering questions. Without dumbing down lessons, he broke down key concepts in a way that his fifth-graders, among the grade's least fluent in English, could readily understand.

It is important to note that none of this was made obvious by the Value-Added Assessment.  The VAA didn't have a column or checkbox that said "Innovative methods" or "Genuine bond with students", etc. This is why teachers are fundamentally critical of the VAA method of assessments -- schools pay for these tests, which reveal nothing that could not have been revealed by a simple (free) classroom visit from a principal.  

That night at home, Aguilar made a chart of which students got which type of questions wrong. The next week, he would put them in groups to focus on that particular comprehension skill. 

Sal Khan is perfecting the art of "monitoring for mastery" on an individual level (to coin another educational phrase) with his free software designed to help teachers with the impossible task of "differentiated instruction". Watch Khan's TED talk and demo then give it a try.

PSSA Prepping

Key quotes from an article about a PA school preparing for Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and some analysis on the practices.

• "We held a parent informational breakfast about the PSSAs. We will do it again in February." Administrators' and parents had to take time out of their day to go to this. And how does this work for a family where both parents or the single parent works? Surely many of those children are in demographics that perform poorly on tests, yet the parent(s) can't even get this little help because the meeting is at such a time that makes it impossible for them to go without missing work. I think they're going to choose money to feed and clothe and shelter their children over PSSA tips.
  
  
• "Equally important is to make sure that your children are attending school. As we go through the PSSA coaching books at this time of year, your child is missing crucial test-taking tips and advice with each absence. Scheduling appointments at this time of year should be avoided if at all possible." Evidence they are not only teaching to take the test but also trying to tell the parents what to do with their children.
  
  
• "By nature, we are prepping students for the PSSA throughout the school year. We incorporate PSSA vocabulary and skills into daily lessons. Our assessments mirror the way in which the PSSA questions our students." How does one incorporate PSSA vocabulary? Is there a list in study guides like for the SAT? Also, their tests are testing students the same way the PSSA does. Testing students in only one way does nothing to help their critical thinking skills and problem solving. It teaches to answer a question in one way and one way only.
  
  
• "When we returned from Christmas break two weeks ago we began a countdown to the test and teachers pulled out PSSA coaching materials at all tested grade levels."
  
• "We incorporate daily bell ringers into our classrooms. With this in mind, we hit math and reading anchors to continue to familiarize our students. A social studies teacher may ask the students to correct the grammatical errors in a sentence based off of a topic they were studying. Or they may ask for certain antonyms or synonyms of words they are studying. We'll also do things such as asking students to figure out their own percentages based off of a score on their exam." Cross-curricular techniques and concepts are very important and should be included by a quality instructor, but it should happen organically with complete relevant to the subject matter at the time, not a forced occurrence. If these teachers wanted to teach reading and math all year long, then they would be reading and math teachers.
  
  
• "Throughout the year, we are always discussing PSSA testing strategies along with any type of testing going on." & "We provide direct instruction on test-taking skills." There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the strategies taught, e.g. elimination of answers you know to be wrong. That is how decisions are made in real life. The problem is the reasoning behind the strategies is always geared towards, "You have to answer the question, so here are some ways to get it right" instead of a more friendly "If you don't try, you'll never know if you were right." If one is looking to buy a new brand of chips at the supermarket, can he possibly know which kind he will like if he's never eaten them before? Of course not. He can eliminate the flavors he knows he will not like or brands that use artificial ingredients to be better equipped to make a selection he will enjoy, but it is not certain. But there is no pressure to get the right chip on the first try. Instead, there is a sense of adventure at trying something new and uncertain, a creative thought process, and a learning experience that makes an even bigger impact if he gets it wrong. These are important qualities that will continue to lack in education if students are never allowed to try just for the sake of trying.
  
• "We also do a PSSA Prep Celebration. The day before the actual PSSAs, we will hold a large assembly with [the] Superintendent as our keynote speaker. We talk about the importance of the exams. Cheerleaders do cheers and we get excited for the challenge." So, more time is being taken away from instruction to get students "excited" for the tests. Some schools even go so far as to spend money to get students pumped up. Money that they keep claiming they don't have, yet it appears for things like this. And why is this necessary? To try to interest older students who know the tests are a waste of their time, or to relieve younger students who feel the immense weight of these tests on their shoulders.
  
  
• Practice tests also play a role in the preparation. "We prep the students prior to PSSA testing. Leading up to the tests, we take the 4-Sight exams which are in correlation to the PSSA. We do these four times a year." When are students not being tested in broad swaths of time? When is there time for individual class assessment by the teacher? When is there time for subjects that aren't being assessed for NCLB?
  

Source: Times Observer

$40M spent on testing contract could have served DPS better

Todd Farley, author of "Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry" and former employee of a company owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt talks about his experience visiting the Detroit Public School system. Readily apparent are the amount of time and resources spent on the standardized assessment of students by people who do not know what is going on in that community.

"DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb is attempting to solve DPS' $327-million budget shortfall by closing nearly half of Detroit's schools, increasing class sizes in the remaining ones to as high as 60." Yet the school had just completed a 15-month contract worth nearly $40 million, more than 12% of DPS' entire budget shortfall, for HMH's "managed instruction" in reading and math. Where did those millions go? "Some of those millions were used to pay for the tests I helped slap together (mostly recycling passages and questions that had been used many times before) and to sponsor my travels to Detroit." This included meals where "they [the company employees] nonetheless reveled in wine or cocktails and big, delicious steaks. It was a great night to work in standardized testing."

One might think, okay, a couple employees having a nice dinner, that's not so bad. But it wasn't a couple. At the school where teachers were recruited to put their stamp of approval on the tests "there were nearly 20 of us standardized testers on site that day (test developers, senior test developers, supervisors, project managers, customer service reps)...there were nearly twice as many of us than them."

And what would these people, "who had jetted to Detroit from Chicago and New York (and Minneapolis and Missouri and New Mexico)" be able to offer these teachers? Very little. Because "when some of the teachers told us about the conditions they experienced each day (a lack of textbooks in classrooms but a surfeit of students, metal detectors at front doors, cars stolen right out of school parking lots), Mr. Farley's feeling only confirmed the teachers' suspicion that these testers "had no idea what went on in the Detroit Public Schools and, frankly, that we had little to offer. "

Mr. Farley summed it up nicely: "I'm still hard-pressed to see the benefits of sending those millions to Boston to line the gilded coffers of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Wouldn't the city of Detroit have been better served by spending that money to keep its schools open or to hire teachers, coaches, staff or security? Isn't all of that a better way to give the city's kids a chance to succeed than paying tens of millions for the 'expertise' of a bunch of people who will have no more than cursory interactions with the city of Detroit? Wouldn't that money have been better spent on something other than buying me dinner?"


I think any of us with some sense would call a resounding "YES!!!"

Source: Detroit Free Press