Teach Effectively!

Bev Johns, president of the International Association of Special Education (IASE), wrote to me about the IASE conference in Hong Kong this summer.

The complete tentative Program for IASE in Hong Kong is now available at www.iase.org along with many helpful suggestions for attendance. We will have presentations from over 30 countries.

The International Association of Special Education (IASE) is holding its 10th Biennial Conference in Hong Kong from June 10 – 14, 2007.

Link to the IASE Web site for more information.

I applaud the effort by people to bring the matter of education to the fore in the coming US elections. ED in 08 is one such group of people; it is a campaign supported by a small group of philantropists and others that aims to promote public awareness of the need for improvements in education in the US.

Strong American Schools is a nonpartisan public awareness and action campaign offering a voice to every American who supports “ED in 08.” Our goal is to ensure that the nation engages in a rigorous debate and to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election. We expect candidates to offer genuine leadership rather than empty rhetoric and tell voters how they intend to strengthen America’s schools so all students receive the education they deserve.

I hope that the rigorous debate addresses the need for effective education. We need to help these folks understand the importance of evidence-based instruction. I plan to write to them.

Link to ED in 08.

I’ve added a copy of the slides for the presentation by Charles Hughes and Donald Deshler to the list of availble documents available on the page covering RTI issues. Please see “RtI Commentaries” in the navigation element under “pages.”

I had the pleasure of hosting a series of important presentations on the currently hot topic of response to intervention at the 20 April meeting of the Council for Exceptional Children in Louisville. I have posted a page providing links for PDFs of many of these presentations. As I can get the others uploaded, I shall post additional entries reminding folks of where to find these papers. If you are reading this page on the Teach Effectively! then you can find a link to the page in in the section of the navigation element headed “Pages.” For a direct link, click here.

According to a report issued by a group called “Teacher Leaders Network,” which characterizes itself as “an active community of talented teacher leaders from across the nation, dedicated to student success and the transformation of teaching into a true profession,” teachers are willing to support plans that tie teachers’ pay to levels of student performance. There appear to be a lot of conditions for this stance from what I have read, though.
Continue reading ‘Performance pay’

Michelle Pruitt, who blogs at Columbia Parents for Real Math, claims that “myths about math education are still alive and well in Missouri.” She’s convinced—and she provides time-series data supporting her convictions—that students’ readiness for algebra has declined in Columbia (MO, US) Public Schools (CPS).
Continue reading ‘Maththatworks’

Reading Rockets, a Web site that I like a lot, is sponsoring a special day to promote reading. The DEAR Day, 12 April, is predicated on (sign) a widely-used-but-ineffective practice: encouragement of silent reading. DEAR stands for “drop everything and read.” It’s a means to encourage sustained silent reading. Continue reading ‘DEAR me’

A report from the US Department of Education which revealed that use of educational software in schools has yielded little improvements in students’ outcomes is receiving lots of media attention. For examples, there is a front page story in entitled “Software’s Benefits On Tests In Doubt: Study Says Tools Don’t Raise Scores” by Amit R. Paley in the Washington (DC) Post and there is coverage under various headlines (e.g., “Study Eyes Effect of Education Technology” on Fox) by Nancy Zuckerbrod, the AP Education Writer.

The study on which these and other folks report examined reading and mathematics software that had previously been identified as effective and was then used in 132 schools (439 teachers), with the products introduced according to an experimental design. Based on assessments administered a year later, students experienced no significant changes in their reading or math achievement.

1. Test Scores Were Not Significantly Higher in Classrooms Using Selected
Reading and Mathematics Software Products. Test scores in treatment classrooms that were randomly assigned to use products did not differ from test scores in control classrooms by statistically significant margins.

2. Effects Were Correlated With Some Classroom and School Characteristics. For reading products, effects on overall test scores were correlated with the student-teacher ratio in first grade classrooms and with the amount of time that products were used in fourth grade classrooms. For math pwith classroom and school characteristics.

I’m not terribly surprised by this. Most software is not predicated on appropriate instructional principles. But, there are other concerns, too. For example, as is the case in studies where multiple products are compared in aggregate, it is likely that they overall results mask some differences at a lower level. The research team promised software companies that the outcomes for individual products wouldn’t be identified, but there are likely to be different effects by product; some are likely to be more effective than others.

Even more importantly: Even if you have great curricula and instructional packages, it matters how they are used. You can put the teacher’s book that describes an excellent set of lessons for teaching reading on the teacher’s desk, but that’s not going to cause reading scores of the students in that classroom to rise. Even good technology won’t do much good unless it’s used appropriately. (To their credit, the researchers here observed in classrooms and have examined some of these issues.)

Link to stories by Ms. Paley and Ms. Zuckerbrod (Fox version). Link to a site from which you can read HTML pages about the actual report; alternatively, download the full report, which is the result of a study by a large team of researchers associated with Mathematica Policy Research and SRI International, by clicking here (PDF).