Evidence-based teaching methods for helping students who are at risk for school failure or who have disabilities.
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.
Sphere: Related ContentA 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.
Sphere: Related ContentUS Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke to the National Education Association today, calling on its members to work with him toward the goal of ensuring that “every child in America is learning from an effective teacher—no matter what it takes.”
That’s a noble goal. In my view, it requires that educators shed their allegiance to theory and adopt effective teaching practices. That’s what it takes.
To be sure, there is a lot of emphasis on high-stakes testing. Mr. Duncan even discussed it as one of the four features of his plan for reforming education. The effective teacher idea is another of the four. High-stakes tests (which need reform of their own, in my view—that’s another post) are only part of the game. Another is using evidence to guide instruction.
But even in the absence of results on high-stakes tests and from pristine research projects, educators can ascertain whether they’re using effective methods. That is, we can devise our own means of ascertaining whether teaching practices are effective at a more micro level. In a lot of ways, the process is relatively simple:
Sure, I’ve simplified it here. Sure, the goals and objectives would need to be integrated in a fashion consistent with an epistemology of various subject areas. And, you’ll have to cut me a little slack about my use of words such as “tell” and “correct”; telling would need to include providing materials to read, for example. But the idea is just about as simple as I’ve sketched it here.
The area of early reading has been mapped according to this perspective on teaching. We can say how we would recognize a competent reader (i), what the component skills are (ii), and how to teach those skills. But the to-be-learned material doesn’t have to be elementary level reading. If the area is chemistry and the objectives were conducting an experiment using electrophoresis, I think we could perform a similar analysis.
Of course, the real trick will be to get people on board with such thinking. Mr. Duncan seems to want to do something like that, but he’s talking about things at a much grander scale.
Remarks of Arne Duncan to the National Education Association—Partners in Reform
Sphere: Related ContentHoward Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences seems to occupy a special place in the pantheon of education memes. I was reminded of this when I read “Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius” by Christopher Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson’s essay—it appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the news source of record for higher educators—politely explains that sustaining Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory is not a good idea.
Rational analyses of the MI evidence by Dan Willingham and Lynn Waterhouse have shown that there are problems with both the theory itself (e.g., most of the eight intelligences are highly correlated, meaning that they are likely measuring the same “thing” for the most part) and its application in education (e.g., methods based on MI do not lead to better outcomes).
Mr. Ferguson’s essay continues in that same tradition. He makes a strong case for his conclusion that “Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was a great idea and worth investigating. It’s just not panning out.”
Continue reading ‘Multiple intelligences ain’t’
Peter R. Orszag, Director of the US Office of Management and the Budget, posted an entry in the blog for his office that emphasizes points I make on Teach Effectively. Here’s the lead
Building Rigorous Evidence to Drive Policy
One of the principles motivating the President’s Budget is that, as a nation, we haven’t been making the right investments to build a new foundation for economic prosperity — and we need smarter investments in education, health care, and social services.
But, in making new investments, the emphasis has to be on “smarter.” Many programs were founded on good intentions and supported by compelling anecdotes, but don’t deliver results.
This is good stuff. “Smarter” is a worthwhile emphasis. Good intentions are the pavement for just about every reform in education, but that doesn’t mean that the path goes in the right direction. The path has to lead to better outcomes for students. If a path hasn’t been proven to go there, then educators should go a different way. So far, the “educational investments” are mostly words, so we’ll have to see how they evolve, of course.
Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion: In education, we need some way to reward practitioners who employ evidence in determining their actions. That means we need objective standards (not just what people say they are doing) for assessing the degree to which practice is guided by evidence. Then we need to collect the data about those folks’ (buildings’, local education agencies’) practices and their students’ outcomes.
Link to read the entire entry.
Sphere: Related ContentSpeaking to researchers attending a conference sponsored by the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that educational reforms should be be predicated on research about effectiveness.
“Education reform is not about sweeping mandates or grand gestures,” Duncan told the group of researchers who conduct research for IES, which is an independent section of the Education Department. “It’s about systematically examining and learning, building on what we’ve done right, and scrapping what hasn’t worked for kids.”
Continue reading ‘US ED Secy Duncan: Effectiveness data should drive reforms’
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DCPS goes for learning styles bunk
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).
Sphere: Related ContentContinue reading ‘DCPS goes for learning styles bunk’