Teach Effectively!

According to a report from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), a study examining the benefits of providing pre-kindergarten programs in New Mexico (US) revealed that there were significant and important benefits for children. Jason Hustedt and colleagues found that there were significant improvements in children’s language, literacy, and math competence associated with attending pre-k programs.

[Their] results show that New Mexico PreK produces consistent benefits for children who
participated in PreK, compared to those who did not, across all three years of the study. Positive impacts of PreK were found in each of three content areas important to early academic success – language, literacy, and math. Findings in literacy and mathematics were statistically significant in analyses for each school year of New Mexico PreK. Findings specific to our measure of early language were statistically significant for the first two years of the study, and using a combined, multi‐year data set.

I had to wonder what curriculum the New Mexico pre-k programs followed. It appears that about half of the sites do not report the curriculum they use. However, one uses Bank Street, nine use High Scope, and the remaining 60-some use Creative Curriculum. Imagine what kind of effects these pre-k programs could achieve if they used more effective curricula!

Hustedt, J. T., Barnett, W. S., Jung, K., & Goetze, L. D. (2009). The New Mexico preK evaluation: Results from the initial four years of a new state preschool initiative. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

The report is available for free. See the Website for the New Mexico PreK program.

I only occasionally read the Ed Week team blog by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences, but I was avidly gobbling up the content and comments of one recent post. Why? Well, the much admired Mary Damer had waded into the fray and was tossing around a lot of sensible comments. It’s worth reading, so here’s a link to the entry entitled “What Works for Rich Kids Works for All Kids.”

Jay Mathews, who writes columns about education under the general title of “Class Struggle” for the Washington (DC, US) Post, reviewed two books about special education in his piece of 9 October 2009. He gives strong recommendations about What’s Special about Special Education by James Kauffman and Daniel P. Hallahan and about Learning Disabilities: Understanding the Problem and Managing the Challenges by Etta Brown.

I have often wondered what I would do if I discovered I had a child with learning disabilities. The parents I have interviewed who have gone through this seem more patient and persistent than I am. I suspect they got that way by necessity. Now I have found a couple of books that may help parents encountering this issue for the first time.

One book came out in 2005, the other in 2008. They were sent to me by people who read my recent confessions of ignorance on this subject. They both qualify for my Better Late Than Never Book Club, a list of recommended volumes I would have reviewed when they came out if I weren’t so perpetually behind in everything I do.

Alert readers will note that the first title was written by my colleagues and that Jim is a sometimes poster here on Teach Effectively.

Link to Mr. Mathews’ column.

Under the headline “Harvard Offers New Doctorate for School Leaders Who Aim to Shake Up Status Quo” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Schmidt reported that Harvard University announced a grant-funded doctoral degree program to leaders in education. The graduates are supposed to be people who can engender “major school reform.”

The program’s mission will be to train top officials of school districts, government agencies, nonprofit groups, and private organizations who will be equipped to shake up the status quo in elementary and secondary education.

“Our goal is not to develop leaders for the system as it currently exists; rather, we aim to develop people who will lead system transformation,” Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Graduate School of Education, said in written statement.

What reform, one might wonder? Transformed to what? Just any old transformation? I’d like it if the transformation was toward adopting evidence-based practices. Will the graduates of the program know anything about effective teaching?

Read Mr. Schmidt’s article.

Snippet from DCPS framework

A sad note sounded in a document that has many otherwise valuable suggestions: The Teaching and Learning Framework of the Washington (DC, US) Public Schools (DCPS) recommends incorporating learning styles into instruction. Why the developers of this document included the rather-thoroughly debunked learning styles idea eludes me, but it is very clearly there, appearing on the front cover and receiving three pages of coverage starting on page 24 (see image at right).
Continue reading ‘DCPS goes for learning styles bunk’

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a policy paper examining a report the Human Rights Watch and the ACLU about corporal punishment in US schools. It provides a clear and powerful indictment of what amounts to a state-sanctioned assault on children.

A Violent Education
Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools
Continue reading ‘Corporal punishment needs to be beaten’

Among the complex mix of factors affecting effective teaching considered here on Teach Effectively, teachers’ unions is one of several we’ve not discussed. I don’t consider this post to be a thorough analysis of the topic; it’s just observations about one consideration in promoting effective teaching: The role of teachers’ unions in relation to merit or performance pay. Teachers’ unions are a ready target for some groups, and one of the favored concerns is how teachers unions, in the view of some, resist efforts to tie pay to student performance.

Steve Lopez, a top journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times, is wading into this topic. He found a case of a first-year teacher, Susan Requa, who was not re-hired, despite glowing recommendations from Ron Harris, her supervisor at James Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley section of LA. In the belt-tightening that most people and agencies are having to undergo in the current economic situation, Ms. Requa had too little seniority to receive a renewal from the local education agency that employed her for the 2008-09 academic year. Mr. Lopez is planning to talk with A. J. Duffy, who is the head of United Teachers Los Angeles, about Mr. Requa’s case and the matter of seniority.
Continue reading ‘Teachers’ unions can help’

Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, is an interesting read. But I got to wondering about the message of the book. I understand that Gladwell maybe didn’t mean for it to have a message for educators. But, then again, maybe he did. I just don’t know. But I do know that the book left me unsatisfied as far as knowing what to do as an educator is concerned. OK, so timing, luck, opportunity, hard work, a culture of high demand are all important in creating outliers. The implications for educators seem to be that students should work hard and seize opportunities. The implications for teachers seem to be that we should try to create opportunities and encourage hard work. Beyond that? I dunno. We can’t change a lot of the things that Gladwell thinks are important, like when people are born, where they’re born, their families, their cultures. Then, too, I’m thinking that only a relatively small percentage of people can become outliers regardless of any of these things.

Gladwell does mention KIPP as an example of an educational program that shows dramatic results because it emphasizes a culture of hard work and achievement. He says the students in KIPP are chosen through a lottery system. Sounds great! One little issue, though. KIPP chooses through a lottery only those who’ve applied. If you don’t apply, then KIPP doesn’t put you in the lottery. Doesn’t even consider you. Now, I may be a little cynical about proposals to revolutionize public education, but probably if KIPP wants to go head-to-head with other schools, then it needs to select at random from all those potential students who live in a catchment area, regardless of whether they’ve applied. So, KIPP would include students who don’t want to go to school at all and those who don’t want to work hard and those who aren’t motivated to apply—in short, kids at random without any protective screen whatsoever. And KIPP would have to report on drop outs and students suspended or expelled.

Oh, never mind. If you’re looking for outliers… well, welcome to Lake Wobegon North, where all the children are not only above average, they’re all WAY above average!

Actually, Gladwell has some interesting observations. Only thing is (and he never proposed that purpose for his book), they don’t tell us much about how we go about making things better for kids in typical public schools.