Teach Effectively!

Headlines in the US national press have trumpeted low levels of literacy and numeracy among college students nearing graduation. The articles refer to a report conducted by the American Institutes of Research, “The Literacy of America’s College Students,” that describes the National Survey of America’s College Students (NSACS). Although the report describes some saddening results, it also presents some pretty predictable outcomes. However, to find alarming content, one has to dig a great deal. Here’s a snippet.

• The average prose, document, and quantitative literacy of students in 2- and 4-year institutions is significantly higher than the average literacy of adults in the nation.
• Across the literacy scales, the percentage of students in 2- and 4-year institutions with Below Basic literacy is significantly lower than the percentage of adults in the nation with Below Basic literacy. Below Basic literacy involves simple literacy skills, such as reading instructions to find out what a patient is allowed to drink before a medical test, or adding up amounts on a bank deposit slip.
• One percent of students in 4-year institutions have Below Basic prose literacy skills, while one percent have Below Basic document literacy, and another one percent have Below Basic quantitative literacy.
• Students in 2-year institutions scored similarly, with one percent having Below Basic skills in the prose and document categories, while four percent are Below Basic in quantitative literacy.

There are about 20 conclusions, but the one that got a lot of press was this one:

Students in 2- and 4-year colleges have the most difficulty with quantitative literacy: approximately 30 percent of students in 2-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in 4-year institutions have only Basic quantitative literacy. Basic literacy skills are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.

Link to the AIR press release about the study. See links at the foot of the page for the details on the study. Disclosure: My colleage, Peg Miller, is a member of the advisory panel that guided the study.

Most outlets have used the Associated Press by Ben Feller (AP Education Writer) story directly. Here’s a sampling:

• ABC News: Study: Most College Students Lack Skills–Study Says Most Students Are Not Equipped for Complex but Common Tasks;
• Black America Web: Study Says Most College Students Can’t Handle Common Tasks
• Boston.com: Study: most college students lack skills;
• CBS News: Many College Students Poor On 3 Rs;
• USA Today: Study: most college students lack skills;
• MSNBC: Reports on college literacy levels sobering–Study: Most students unable to handle complex but common reading tasks;

Given my association with the Division for Learning Disabilities, it’s no suprise that there are materials on TeachingLD.org about highly qualified teachers, but there are many other resources, too. Here is a selection of sites discussing HQ:

Government:

• The US government has precis of the requirements as well as the actual language (PDF) about the topic.
• Many states in the US have pages; these are some of them: Alabama; California; Illinois; Louisiana; Massachusetts Michgan (PPT); Missouri; North Dakota; Oklahoma; South Dakota; Virginia’s Stafford County; West Virginia;

Advocacy:

• The Council for Exceptional Children has resources, too, including a PDF about requirements and another that’s an FAQ.
• The US National Education Association has a page recounting the definition of HQ and a chart providing perspective on what constitutes HQ special education teachers.
• American Federation of Teachers’ materials.
• The American Federation for the Blind has a worthwhile take on the topic.
• On Wrightslaw, Pete and Pam Wright have a Q-&-A about HQrequirements (how’s that for some acronyms?) and an article about New Hampshire (US) teachers of students with MR being eligible to teach with meeting the HQ requirement.

News:

• Maudlyne Ihejirika’s article for the Chicago Sun Times about the risks of HQ for special education.

Please post other resources about which you know.

Many special educators are concerned about the effects of the US federal government’s requirement that all special education teachers responsible for teaching content, e.g., history, must be highly qualified. Although few would like to have the teachers of their children lowly qualified, the problem for special education teachers is that they are often responsible for teaching multiple subjects; they would thus be required to meet standards for being highly qualified in multiple areas—a daunting requirement when laid on top of knowing how to work with students with disabilities. My colleague Bev Johns has tirelessly raised questions about the highly-qualified requirement and her concerns made their way into a story by Maudlyne Ihejirika of the Chicago Sun Times (US).

New rules defining “highly qualified” teachers — expected to be approved
this week by the state Board of Education — may dissuade people from the profession while deepening the chronic shortage in special education, some critics say.

Board of Education’s Rules Committee today will consider guidelines proposed to meet a demand of the federal No Child Left Behind law that all teachers in core subject areas be “highly qualified” by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.

The rules are expected to be approved by the full board Thursday. They would require middle school, special education and some high-school teachers of more than one academic subject to pass as many as 10 different state evaluations, rather than an earlier proposed, single evaluation that would cover multiple subjects. There are exemptions.

“NCLB allows Illinois to offer one single multi-subject [evaluation] process for veteran teachers teaching multiple core academic subjects, but ISBE has not designed a process that will meet federal approval,” charged Bev Johns, chairwoman of the Illinois Special Education
Coalition.

This is an important issue for those of us concerned about the quality of teaching provided to students in schools. To the extent that the highly-qualified requirement drives effective teachers out of teaching, it will turn out to have the opposite effects that the US government officials hoped. To the extent that it forces more students with disabilities to receive their content-area instruction from teachers who meet the highly-qualified standard but do not know how to teach them effectively, it will be a bane to special education.

Link to the article by Ms. Ihejirika.

That’s the title of John Stossel’s look at education in the US. He’s got a strong indictment of what’s passing for education in US schools. Because I don’t get TV (in lots of ways), I didn’t see the broadcast. But I learned about it via this medium we call the Internet. Here’s one snippet from his print piece:

I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn’t read.

So “20/20″ sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to.

Using computers and workbooks, Dorian’s reading went up two grade levels — after just 72 hours of instruction.

His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian’s progress but disappointed with his public schools. “With Sylvan, it’s a huge improvement. And they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re on point. But I can’t say the same for the public schools,” she said.

I’m happy for Dorian but a tad skeptical about the sudden improvements in his reading. It’s not hard to show such results when one starts at such a low level and then depends on what appears to be one standardized test. I’d be interested in seeing data about words read per minute in well-known materials. Still, on its face, this doesn’t look good for the quality of education Dorian got.

Stossel uses most of what he finds as an argument for privatizing education. I’m not yet ready to buy the conclusion, but I keep edging—in tiny increments—closer to thinking about throwing in with some folks who’d like to create a school predicated on teaching effectively.

Still, “Stupid in America” paints a pretty discouraging picture. It’s yet another illustration of the need for teaching to be predicated on students’ outcomes.

Link to the print article and link to the video segment.

In a column for Newsweek, George Will argues that, because schools and colleges of education harbor some professors who spout nonsense about education and students’ outcomes are deplorably low, not having those institutions would improve education. Basing much of his case on an article by Robin Wilson in the 16 December 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Will cites instances of teacher educators promoting a political view inconsistent with his, a view which he apparently sees as the root of the ills in US education.

The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education. Consider The Chronicle of Higher Education’s recent report concerning the schools that certify America’s teachers.

Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct “disposition,” meaning those who do not embrace today’s “progressive” political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the “professional disposition” teachers need. She is now studying to be an aviation technician.

Although I do not share his political views, I share Mr. Will’s disdain for much of the anti-intellectualism popular among some of my colleagues and common in some schools of education. Like my former colleague Don Hirsch, I consider the maleducation promoted by some of my colleagues as an insult to liberal education, producing the exact opposite of the expressed goals of progressivism.

However, I do not see the solution arising from the demise of schools and colleges of education. To conclude that ed schools should be closed because of the views of some among my colleagues is analgous to arguing that because some columnists make mistakes, newspapers should cease publishing columnists’ work. Instead, let’s get to the important job: Preparing prospective teachers to teach effectively.

The matter of what they should teach—which I suspect is an unstated part of Mr. Will’s concern—is a legitimate subject for debate among the populace. (I have my own views and would be glad to discuss them.) Once the public has reasonably agreed on the goals of education, it is then really a technical matter of determining how to teach (in humane ways) so that students reach those goals efficiently. To provide the pedagogical knowledge and skills to teachers for such teaching, we’ll benefit from having schools and colleges of education that focus on effect instruction.

So, yes, let’s cut the claptrap out of teacher education, but let’s not presume that we need to kill the patient to remove the tumor.

Link to Mr. Will’s commentary. Link to Robin Wilson’s article (note: subscription required). By the way, Newsweek tracks blogs that comment on columns; here’s a link to the page summarizing the discussion of Mr. Will’s column.

Because I’ve not had regular access to television since circa 1985, I miss a lot of potentially interesting information (to say nothing of basketball). Thus, I wasn’t surprised when I found that I had missed the US Public Broadcasting System broadcast of a series about children and disabilities, “Gowing Up Different,” in 2001. I came upon the Website for this show because of a reference to a sound stream included in the segment.

The show provides a Quicktime demonstration of the quality of sound yielded by the technologies underlying cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are a combination of electronic devices (a microphone to sense sounds; a processor that selects and manipulates those sounds; a receiver and transmitter that convert the sounds to electric impulses; and electrodes that use the impulses to stimulate the brain) implanted under the skin on a person’s head; they can help a person who is deaf or hard of hearing to “hear.” I am fascinated by cochlear implants, as they provide an opportunity to study naive learners’ acquisition of the very complex skill of understanding spoken language.

It would be enormously helpful for educators and psychologists to study naive learning. We rarely have the chance to do so because learners come to us with so much—and such spotty—knowledge. Young children have usually, as the misdirectors of whole language noted, already learned to associate some symbols with spoken words (see the m-shaped arches [more likely the entire array], say “MacDonalds”) and perhaps even some letter names; they usually know that reading requires one to hold a book and say something. They are not naive learners. Individuals who have hearing devices surgically implanted suddenly have access to sound, something they haven’t had before. They are naive learners. What are the normal progressions in acquiring understanding of speech? How can we facilitate that acquisition efficiently?

I’ve often wondered what it is like to hear with someone else’s ears (and—teehee—assorted connected equipment). This was a helpful and interesting, if small, demonstration.

Link to the simulation and to Scientific American Frontiers, the show where it appeared. (I note that there is also a show about autism. I guess I’ll have to watch TV here on my 17-in, aging iMac.)

In an editorial about a publically supported voucher program, the St. Petersburg Times (FL; US) gets a lot right. The editorialist notes that few students (and families) who are eligible for vouchers have actually used them to seek better educational opportunity. The writer argues that public schools need resources rather than the threat of losing students to private schools and that many public schools face daunting challenges, regardless of whether there is a voucher program.

The obstacles facing some of the schools deemed as chronically failing are not simple ones. At Miami Edison Senior High School, for example, three-fourths of the students are poor, one in five speak another language at home, and one in seven are diagnosed with a learning disability. That’s one reason the Department of Education’s “Assistance-Plus” plan, which provides more sanctions than resources, has so far fallen short.

There are myriad other problems with the voucher program, as Liz Ditz has reported repeatedly, but this editorial writer catches this particular problem accurately: “If public schools are failing to teach reading, then give them the tools and resources to do better. Handing out as many as 170,000 new vouchers does nothing to improve the instruction.”

Motivation is over-rated. Only those students who know how to perform a task will be affected by motivation; those who do not know how will show no improvement when motivation—positive or negative—is applied. Similarly, schools are unlikely to change simply under the threat of losing students (including the tiny amount of funding that accompanies each student); we have to show them how to teach effectively.

Link to the editorial and a link for a Google search for “vouchers” on Liz’s I Speak of Dreams.

How are special education legal events like football instant replays? James McCusker—an economist, educator and consultant who writes a column for The Daily Herald (Everett, WA; US)— contends that the latter illuminate the burden-of-proof issues in the former. He starts with references to referees reviewing football plays, moves to a bit about Shaffer v. Weast, and then discusses current legal challenges to funding of special education in his neighborhood. Mr. McCusker concludes that the burden of proving whether and how much special education is appropriate will involve a calculus that integrates the expense of providing effective special education.

For the most part, parents of special-education students are reasonable people, and this has helped keep budgets from bursting. Still, special education manages to be heartwarming, heart-breaking, effective, questionable and often staggeringly expensive – all at the same time. And it has been extremely difficult, both emotionally and legally, to establish any real standards of cost-effectiveness for it.

Ultimately, the economics of special education will force us to confront the issue. This confrontation will take place in our courts, and the key legal issue will be the burden of proof: who gets to say how much is effective, and how much is enough. And that is when, just as in a hotly contested football game, all our efforts to ensure fairness will pay off.

When someone performs that calculus, I hope that he or she includes the savings that can be realized from providing effective instruction.

Link to Mr. McCusker’s column.