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From Gunpowder to the Next Big Bang by Thomas L. Friedman
There is a techie adage that goes like this: In China or Japan the nail that stands up gets hammered, while in Silicon Valley the nail that stands up drives a Ferrari and has stock options. Underlying that adage is a certain American confidence that whatever we lack in preparing our kids with strong fundamentals in math and science, we make up for by encouraging our best students to be independent, creative thinkers.
Throwing out the baby with the bath water
The posting below, by Lloyd Bond, senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) looks at the importance of the evolution, as opposed to revolution, of ideas in teaching and learning.
Bond points out that research shows that cognitive development occurs in stages. Certain fundamentals or skills must be mastered before higher level abilities can develop. In the continuing debate on how best to teach subjects like reading and math, extremists on both sides of the debate overlook the role that the other approach needs to play in helping students develop the appropriate skill set.
It is #18 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives produced by the CFAT
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PEOPLE Program: The Debate continues
(With apologies to readers – it is not possible to respond using the comments feature on the blog.)
Response to Lucy’s Post on PEOPLE program
JOAN: Tempting though it is to rebut your arguments tit for tat I am not sure it will necessarily be productive.
RESPONSE: I would be interested in a “tit for tat” response to my comments on the reasons why the PEOPLE program is needed.
JOAN: Let’s back up and look at the assumptions underlying this program. The first is that minority students are not getting adequate preparation in their home schools. You assert that this is true in the well-staffed, well-funded Madison school district because of institutional racism. You believe your visual review of a school proves your point. That’s not particularily strong evidence.
RESPONSE: I think you need to go back and read what I wrote. I said,
“All of the above examples are conditions that I have witnessed first hand or, in one or two cases, have heard of from other parents – including parents of white students. When the above conditions disappear and/or white students experience these same conditions, we can talk about equity.”
Nowhere did I say or imply that my comments were “based on a visual review of a school.” It is true that there is no systematic, methodologically defensible, study of how students of color and their parents fare in Madison’s schools. I would welcome a well-crafted study of this nature.
Response to Lucy’s Post on PEOPLE program
Lucy,
I feared this would become personal. Tempting though it is to rebut your arguments tit for tat I am not sure it will necessarily be productive. If necessary I will, though I prefer to look past your anger which now seems aimed directly at me.
Let’s back up and look at the assumptions underlying this program. The first is that minority students are not getting adequate preparation in their home schools. You assert that this is true in the well-staffed, well-funded Madison school district because of institutional racism. You believe your visual review of a school proves your point. That’s not particularily strong evidence. This isn’t about ability but preparation and motivation. West is tough on all kids, just for the record. (And for the commenter below who mentioned that a kid with a 3.6 from West might not be in the top 10%, you’re exactly right–one B in four years and you’re out of the top 5%, two B’s and you’re out of the top 10%, historically anyway. But then what does that say for the student with a 2.75 at West who can get into UW through the PEOPLE program?)
Here is why I commented. What troubles me is whether this will be a fruitful program or just a bandaid, which is why I expressed the hope that this was designed in a way to measure genuine success as defined by actually graduating from college.This is assumption number one, that this program is not just about getting minority students on campus but actually successfully graduating. And I don’t think it out of line to then ask whether it is a cost-effective program.
But more important, at least what could be gleaned from the story, it sounds to me like UW alters its admission requirements for those who attend faithfully the PEOPLE program. I have a big problem with a different set of rules for those participating in a program not open to all students.
As I said in my first post, I had first-hand experience tutoring minority students from Milwaukee. They clearly needed the kind of advance preparation this program offers. Thus, I am not opposed to a summer program, but I have serious questions about bending the admission rules. Moreover, it is beyond me how someone could successfully attend and graduate from UW with such low admission scores. I say that as someone from a blue-collar family who was a Wisconsin honor scholar, Phi Beta Kappa/honors undergrad, UW MS (teaching assistant) and UW law degree, (to succumb for a moment to a tit for tat.)
I am also here to tell you that my children did not for the most part feel supported in MMSD. Welcome to the club, in other words. However, they did have the advantage of an intact, financially secure family, college-educated parents and alot of opportunities low-income kids miss out on. So let me repeat that I’m not opposed to offering college prep classes to kids who need it. But I still think they need to meet the same standards at the end of the day. Otherwise, we may as well gift them with a college diploma, skip the four/five year investment of time and energy, and just strip away the facade that this is supposed to be about advanced education.
A RESPONSE TO JOAN’S POST ON THE PEOPLE PROGRAM
I was saddened and disappointed by the tone, content, and assumptions underlying Joan’s recent post on UW-Madison’s PEOPLE program and feel a need to respond as a parent who is engaged in trying to address cultures of racism in Madison schools and as a graduate and staff member of UW-Madison. I’ve interspersed the responses with Joan’s original wording:
More on Math
A reader forwarded this article: Jay Mathews, writing in the Washington Post:
So when I found a new attack on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the nation’s leading association for math teachers, by a group of smart advocates, I saw a chance to bring some clarity to what we call the Math Wars. For several years, loosely allied groups of activist teachers and parents with math backgrounds have argued that we are teaching math all wrong. We should make sure that children know their math facts — can multiply quickly in their heads and do long division without calculators, among other things — or algebra is going to kill them, they say. They blame the NCTM, based in Reston, Va., for encouraging loose teaching that leaves students to try to discover principles themselves and relies too much on calculators.
Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age
John Seely Brown (Brown was Chief Scientist at Xerox PARC, where many of the technologies we use today, including, ethernet, Laser Printers and the GUI were invented):
My interest here today is in looking at the notions of learning, working and playing in the digital age and how today’s kids—growing up digital—might actually be quite different from what we might first think. But, more particularly, how by stepping back and looking at the forces and trends underlying the digital world, we may have a chance to create a new kind of learning matrix, one that I will call a learning ecology.
I became interested in learning ecologies because of their systemic properties. We need to view higher education from a systemic perspective, one that takes into consideration all of the components—k-12, community colleges, state and private colleges and universities, community libraries, firms, etc.—that make up a region. This, in turn, raises additional questions about how we might create a regional advantage such as in the Research Triangle in North Carolina or in Silicon Valley. For example, is there a way to extend science parks, that typically surround universities, into also being learning parks and from there into being learning ecologies by combining the knowledge producing components of the region with the nearly infinite reach and access to information that the internet provides? And, if so, might this provide an additional use of the internet in learning—one besides just distance learning. But first, let’s consider what the Web is and see how it might provide a new kind of information fabric in which learning, working and playing co-mingle. Following that we will then look at the notion of distributed intelligence which has a great deal to do with the social basis as well as the cognitive basis of learning, and how those fold together. Then we will look at the issue of how one might better capture and leverage naturally occurring knowledge assets, a topic as relevant to the campus as to the region or to the firm. Finally, we will come to the core topic of how all this folds together to lead to a new concept of a learning ecology.
Background on John Seely Brown: Clusty
Demand Student Centered Decisions
Decisions: Adult or Student-centered? by Dr. John Benham, Music Advocate
Why do I include this as an issue of music advocacy? Because, it is my observation that the lack of a student-centered decision-making process is the number one issue in education!
Math Curriculum Board Meeting Video Clips
The Madison School Board Performance & Achievement Committee met monday night, to discuss “Research-Base Underlying MMSD Mathematics Curriculum & Instruction” Here are some video clips from the meeting:
- Connected Math Presentation, including East High School Math Evaluations
- Closing Presentation Comments
- Ruth Robarts asks for math performance data & Juan Jose Lopez supports this request
- Ruth Robarts & Superintendant Art Rainwater discuss the District’s math scores
- Johnny Winston, Jr. comments on the math curriculum
- Carol Carstensen comments on the math curriculum presentation
- Bill Clingan’s Comments
- Bill Key’s comments
- Oliver Kiefer’s comments
JUDGING THE QUALITY OF K-12 MATHEMATICS EVALUATIONS
On Evaluating Curricular Effectiveness: Judging the Quality of K-12 Mathematics Evaluations (2004)
Curricula play a vital role in educational practice. They provide a crucial link between standards and accountability measures. They shape and are shaped by the professionals who teach with them. Typically, they also determine the content of the subjects being taught. Furthermore, because decisions about curricula are typically made at the local level in the United States, a wide variety of curricula are available for any given subject area.
Under the auspices of the National Research Council, this committee�s charge was to evaluate the quality of the evaluations of the 13 mathematics curriculum materials supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (an estimated $93 million) and 6 of the commercially generated mathematics curriculum materials (listing in Chapter 2).
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Madison Math Curriculum Discussion
Reminder: The Madison School Board Performance & Achievement Committee will meet monday night, 11.29 @ 7:00p.m. to discuss “Research-Base Underlying MMSD Mathematics Curriculum & Instruction” Room 103 Doyle Administration building [Map].
Committee will meet on reading – December 13
Monday, December 13
5:00pm – Peformance & Achievement, Doyle Admin Building, Rm 103
Research-Base Underlying MMSD Classroom Reading Programs
Alternative Programs
Apparently this committee meeting comes as a response to the Isthmus article on the failures of Reading Recovery.
Board will discuss math curriculum
This announcement was posted on the MMSD Web site:
Monday November 29th, 2004
7:00pm – Performance & Achievement, Doyle Admin Building, Rm 103
* Research-Base Underlying MMSD Mathematics Curriculum & Instruction
If you have questions or concerns about the math curriculum, I’d guess that you might want to attend this meeting.
Madison Superintendent Declines $2M in Federal Funds Without Consulting the Board
On Friday, October 15, Madison School Board members received an e-mail from Superintendent Art Rainwater announcing that the district will withdraw from a federal program known as Reading First.
In subsequent interviews with local newspapers, Rainwater estimated that the decision means forgoing approximately $2M in funds for materials to help students in the primary grades learn to read. The Cap Times
Wisconsin State Journal
Whenever the district qualifies for such federal grants, the Board votes to increase the budget to reflect the new revenues. To the best of my knowledge, the superintendent has not discussed this decision with the Performance & Achievement Committee. He has certainly not included the full Board in the decision to withdraw from Reading First.
The memo follows (click on the link below to view it or click here to view a 200K PDF):
Schools Chiefs Lead The Way in Pay Trends
From Education Week an article by Catherine Gewertz
New data from a survey of more than 500 school districts show the average salary of their superintendents has risen by more than 12 percent over the past decade in inflation-adjusted dollars, and that of their high school principals by more than 4 percent, while the average teacher salary declined by nearly 2 percent.
The salary survey of employees in precollegiate public schools also shows that the gap between teachers� and superintendents� salaries grew a bit wider in the same period. In 1993-94, the superintendents were paid on average 2.4 times as much as teachers. By 2003-04, the difference was 2.75 times.
The data come from the National Survey of Salaries and Wages in Public Schools and were released to Education Week this month by Educational Research Service as part of a research partnership.