Evidence-based teaching methods for helping students who are at risk for school failure or who have disabilities.
This time the folks at “Weapons of Math Destruction” have raised the spectre of the Follow Through study of early education models. The cartoon characters (has a ring to it, doesn’t it?) are examining a graph showing the results of a comparison of alternative models of instruction.
Follow this link to get to the full site where you can explore at your leisure.
One of the folks at the Access Center wrote to me a while ago to promote its Web presence. There are some free resources available, and some readers might find them instructive.
The Access Center: Improving Outcomes for All Students k-8 (www.k8accesscenter.org), [is] a federally funded national technical assistance center. I am taking this time to introduce you to our free resources. Our resources focus on core content areas - language arts, math, and science - as well as on instructional and learning strategies to provide students with disabilities access to rigorous academic content. We have a series of professional development modules and information briefs that are available on our Web site as well as on a CD-ROM, if requested.
The Access Center training modules are multi-component training packages designed to enhance content and pedagogical knowledge and can be integrated into teacher education coursework and used for professional development. They include:
* Effective Interventions for Struggling Readers: The Alphabetic Principle
* Effective Interventions for Struggling Readers: Fluency
* Effective Interventions for Struggling Readers: Vocabulary
* Effective Interventions for Struggling Readers: Comprehension
* Strategies for Accessing Algebraic Concepts (K-8)
* Enhancing Your Instruction through Differentiation
* Improving Access to the General Curriculum for Students with Disabilities through Collaborative Teaching
* Supervising Co-Teaching Teams: Whose Line is it Anyway?Our information briefs are short documents that cover a range of topics (mathematics, reading, language arts, science, instructional and learning strategies, and Universal design for Learning) and include supporting research and suggestions for facilitating the application of research into practice. Many of the information briefs can be used in combination with our modules as additional research-based references or further examples of teaching and learning strategies. Briefs also can be used to supplement teacher education coursework and provide students with additional resources to explore.
I might’ve mentioned the Access Center previously, because I made an electronic presentation for it a few years ago. That may lower the opinion of the resources even before folks have reviewed them. And, by the way, I’ve not reviewed the materials closely, so I can’t vouch for their utility or accuracy. But, take a look!
Don Hirsch published an editorial in Education Week that tells it true. We need, he argues, to place a greater emphasis on what and how we teach during children’s early school years. Of course, he champions his recommendation for adopting a clear curriculum during the early years, too. But, the big idea is that the primary and elementary grades are very important if students are to be able to excel in high school and college.
The elementary grades are much more important than is apparently credited by philanthropies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has recently been giving many millions to high school reform—with negligible results per dollar. For many years, the philanthropic and policy worlds have placed a lot of emphasis on the two ends of precollegiate education—high school and preschool. They are right about preschool—but not about high school. The general knowledge and vocabulary required for effective learning at the high school level are the fruits of a long process. The way to reform high school is to prepare students effectively in the elementary years to thrive there. If, in recent decades, high school has become a place where students are offered a smorgasbord of watered-down subjects, that is because watered-down subjects are all that our ill-educated students are now prepared to understand.
Link to Professor Hirsch’s editorial (note that a subscription may be required to read the entire piece, but you can get one for free).
Over on d-edreckoning, Ken De Rosa has a wonderful post explaining how some widely discussed educational constructs fail to have the impact that teaching effectively has. He’s constructed normal curves showing the relative effects of class size and socio-economic status on the average achievement when low-level achievement is the base.
Link to Mr. De Rosa’s entry, which has the delightful title, “Your Pet Reform is Suckier than You Think.” In back-channel communication, Mr. De Rosa reminded me of the pages that I have in the old U.Va. “office of special education” on relative effects of different educational methods. I’m sure I’ve referred to them previously in these entries, but let me drop that link one more time: effective methods.
The Division for Research of the Council for Exceptional Children (DR-CEC) awarded Michael Coyne, of the University of Connecticut, its 2008 award for distinguished achievement in research about special education. This prestigious award recognizes Professor Coyne’s substantial contribution to understanding individuals with disabilities and the provision of services to those individuals. According DR-CEC,
The Division for Research recognizes the critical role of research to both current practice in and the future of the field of Special Education through its Distinguished Early Career Research Award. This annual award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding scientific contributions in special education, in basic and/or applied research, within the first 10 years following receipt of the doctoral degree. For the 2008 award, candidates must have received their doctoral degree in 1998 or later. Nominations are sought across all areas of Special Education as well as all forms of research methodology.
Well, folks, I closed the poll about bogus reasons for not teaching effectively. It was a close contest:
Now it’s time to start a new poll. This time we’ll examine bogus reasons for failing to test whether students actually learn what educators say they “teach.”
Continue reading ‘Bogus Bowl III’
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