Just found this article about the School of One, a pilot project in New York City.
Here is another attempt to change the school model to better fit modern students. Interesting to note that the program seems to not reduce the number of teachers or the cost of education, but rather to redirect the resources in a way that allows for more individualized instruction.
Very interesting.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Responding to the response to my response
The Citizen printed a letter in response to my letter of yesterday (see yesterday's post).
Read the response, by Rick Garber, if you wish.
It is always interesting when people manage to undercut their rebuttal with poor grammar. I can see at least two grammar errors in the three sentences.
He also misses the point of my letter. Stern spends almost his entire piece implying that liberal views do not mesh with reality. My response was to show how "illiberal" views also do not mesh with reality. Stern wants to use force to "restrain" people like the boy in question rather than trying to prevent the creation of more boys like this one. How does that make any sense in the context of limited resources? If your boat is leaking, the smart thing to do is to patch the hole instead of spending all your time bailing.
As for Stern's thesis, that evil exists, I don't disagree. But I firmly believe that you cannot decide that this 16 year old boy is evil based on one single account. Also, when it comes to confronting evil, I am much worried about evil in positions of power. There are plenty of dictators, warlords, and terrorist leaders in the world. It seems much smarter to me to worry about confronting them than some kid on Chicago's West Side. But, I guess it is easier to talk about "restraining" a 16 year-old in Chicago than dealing with some of the torturers who are the "good guys" in the War On Terror.
Read the response, by Rick Garber, if you wish.
It is always interesting when people manage to undercut their rebuttal with poor grammar. I can see at least two grammar errors in the three sentences.
He also misses the point of my letter. Stern spends almost his entire piece implying that liberal views do not mesh with reality. My response was to show how "illiberal" views also do not mesh with reality. Stern wants to use force to "restrain" people like the boy in question rather than trying to prevent the creation of more boys like this one. How does that make any sense in the context of limited resources? If your boat is leaking, the smart thing to do is to patch the hole instead of spending all your time bailing.
As for Stern's thesis, that evil exists, I don't disagree. But I firmly believe that you cannot decide that this 16 year old boy is evil based on one single account. Also, when it comes to confronting evil, I am much worried about evil in positions of power. There are plenty of dictators, warlords, and terrorist leaders in the world. It seems much smarter to me to worry about confronting them than some kid on Chicago's West Side. But, I guess it is easier to talk about "restraining" a 16 year-old in Chicago than dealing with some of the torturers who are the "good guys" in the War On Terror.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mind the gap
News stories often give statistics on gaps, differences in achievement or performance between different groups. The comparisons are often based on gender or ethnicity but can look at anything. Over the last little while, articles on education in media often look at various gaps between boys and girls in school.
One thing to watch out for when looking at gaps is that there are different ways to look at a discrepancy between two groups. For example, if we have a group of people who make $20,000 a year and another group who make $100,000 a year, we clearly have a gap. One way of defining the gap is to say that the difference is $80,000 a year. Another way of defining the gap is to say that the second group makes five times what the first group does.
Why does it matter how the gap is defined? To answer, I will continue with my example. Suppose after a series of government programs intended to close the income gap between these two groups that the first group's income has been increased by 50% to $30,000. During the same time the second group's income increased by 20% to $120,000 a year. Let's look at the gap again.
If we look at the gap as an absolute we now see that the difference in income is $90,000 a year. The gap is getting bigger! Does that mean that the government programs were a waste of time and money? Maybe not. If we look at the ratio of incomes, the second group no longer makes five times the income of the first group, the ratio has been reduced to four to one. So one way of looking says the gap is getting worse, another way says that the gap is being reduced. Which one is correct? Well, like most things in life, the answer is "that depends".
And what it depends on is the context of the information. If we are looking at which group is going to be purchasing more luxury vacations, then maybe the straight difference of $90,000 is the more important figure. If we are looking at more basic purchases such as housing or food, the ratio might tell the story more accurately. And, to make things more complicated, there are lots of other factors that probably should be considered before we can accurately talk about the gap. What about taxes? The high income group does not get to keep all of its $20,000 a year gain but taxes will be lower for the other group. That will affect the difference and the ratio too.
The critical thing is to recognize that there are multiple ways of looking at any statistical information and to try and find the one that makes most sense. If you want to improve your knowledge of statistics, I listed some possible websites in the comments section of my blog entry We want everyone to be above average?
Responding to the "illiberals"
This is not directly related to education, but I am proud that the Ottawa Citizen printed my letter to the editor.
I was responding to this piece. My response can be found here.
I was responding to this piece. My response can be found here.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Canada, child poverty, and education
An article in the Citizen today highlights a study showing Canada's worsening rate of child poverty. In terms of child poverty, children under 17 living in households with less than half the median income, Canada was 15th out of 17 countries, beating only the United States and Japan.
This matters to teachers, schools and the education system because poverty makes it harder for kids to do well in school. In the article, Brenda Lafleur, the lead author of the study says "So there are children who don't have enough food, shelter ... but then (the data) looks at how much it costs to go to school," she said. "What does it mean for a kid who can't go on a field trip or join a book exchange or have runners to take gym? All these add up."
The quality of the education that we give our children will be critical to the future economic development of our country and so all levels of government should be working hard on trying to reduce child poverty. But, our federal government is spending its resources on security (not poverty reduction) in the North, home renovation tax credits, and belittling the opposition. Our provincial government, while rightly banning the use of handheld communication devices in cars, is spending its time talking about banning the use of handheld devices while walking and dealing with financial scandals in government-run health and lottery programs. Meanwhile, the local school board is cutting budgets in schools because they are not getting enough money from the province to do everything that needs to be done.
When the next federal and provincial elections come around, I will be asking the candidates in my riding what their party is going to do about child poverty.
This matters to teachers, schools and the education system because poverty makes it harder for kids to do well in school. In the article, Brenda Lafleur, the lead author of the study says "So there are children who don't have enough food, shelter ... but then (the data) looks at how much it costs to go to school," she said. "What does it mean for a kid who can't go on a field trip or join a book exchange or have runners to take gym? All these add up."
The quality of the education that we give our children will be critical to the future economic development of our country and so all levels of government should be working hard on trying to reduce child poverty. But, our federal government is spending its resources on security (not poverty reduction) in the North, home renovation tax credits, and belittling the opposition. Our provincial government, while rightly banning the use of handheld communication devices in cars, is spending its time talking about banning the use of handheld devices while walking and dealing with financial scandals in government-run health and lottery programs. Meanwhile, the local school board is cutting budgets in schools because they are not getting enough money from the province to do everything that needs to be done.
When the next federal and provincial elections come around, I will be asking the candidates in my riding what their party is going to do about child poverty.
Standardized tests: analysing the analysis
In the Ottawa Citizen today there was an editorial that was critical of the performance of the local school boards in the recently released results of testing done by the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) in Ontario.
This surprised me since yesterday I was blogging about a story in the Citizen talking about the same results. That story put a positive spin on the results, even though I felt the analysis was simplistic.
For those who want to look at the actual data instead of the simplistic summaries in the papers, go here and select a grade and year.
I wrote a letter to the editors of the Citizen, pointing out the flaws in the editorial, and I am also going to publish that letter here:
I would like to make a few comments about the editorial “Rising to the Test” in the Citizen on Friday, September 18. For the record, full disclosure: I am a public school board High School teacher in Math and Science (currently supply teaching).
My first comment is about interpretation of the test scores. All the results talk about the percentage of students who meet or exceed the provincial standards. For example, the Grade 3 reading test had 63% of students meet or exceed provincial standards. This makes it sound like 37% of Grade 3 students are failing in reading. However, when you look at the full results, you find that 27% of students achieved a Level 2 result, which is below provincial standards but is about the equivalent of a C. So, 90% of students are either within striking distance of provincial standards, have met the standards, or have exceeded them. Furthermore, in Grade 3 reading 8% of students scored at Level 1, which is approximately a D. In total, 98% of students got a result which would be a pass at school. Looked at one way, only 2% of are Grade 3 students are failing in reading. Yet the result that is put out by the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is 63%. Could that be because if EQAO published a 98% pass rate then people might suggest that we don't need the EQAO?
Another comment I have deals with media interpretation of the results. The editorial states that “most Ottawa schools are underachieving.” Yet an online story in the Citizen yesterday had the headline “Area schools outperform provincial average in reading, writing, tests reveal”. So how did Ottawa area schools go from beating the provincial average to underachieving? The editorial mentions that for the public board “only 73 per cent of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in reading.” But 26% scored a level 2, Meaning that 99% of public board Grade 6 students are at least close to the standard. That does not sound like underachieving to me. If you want to truly claim that our schools are not up to snuff, you need to offer a better explanation than “ Many students in the nation's capital come from homes where the parents have high levels of education”, a statement that offers nothing to show how much better Ottawa should be doing based on this factor.
A third comment is about the statement “Strangely, some critics respond by questioning the value of standardized tests.” There is plenty of reason to be wary of standardized tests and their results, especially when that seems to be almost the only facet of education on which the media report. As an example, look at the statistic for primary math results published in the editorial. Ten years ago the primary math results were 56% (44% below standards) and now the result is 70% (30% below standard). So, in ten years we have gone from 44% to 30% below standards, almost a 1/3 decrease in poor results! Is this because math is taught so much better now than ten years ago? Not a chance.
Sure, some of the improvement is the result of improved teaching practices, but I am willing to bet a large sum of money that most of the improvement is because teachers have learned how to prepare their students for the test. I believe this is true because as a High School Mathematics teacher I see and hear about the Grade 9 EQAO Math test. A common refrain from teachers is that their students understand the questions quite well but have trouble answering them in the form that the test demands. The result is that teachers are forced to spend time teaching their students how to deal with the test format instead of teaching course content. So, results improve not because of more learning of content, but simply because of teaching to the test. If that does not raise at least some questions about the value of standardized testing, I do not know what will.
I agree that the results of standardized testing offer information that can be valuable when looking at how our well schools and boards are educating students. But the results need to be treated with care because the tests do not cover the whole curriculum, there are issues of teaching to the test, and there are issues with interpretation, especially as the results are often presented in a simplistic manner by the EQAO.
This surprised me since yesterday I was blogging about a story in the Citizen talking about the same results. That story put a positive spin on the results, even though I felt the analysis was simplistic.
For those who want to look at the actual data instead of the simplistic summaries in the papers, go here and select a grade and year.
I wrote a letter to the editors of the Citizen, pointing out the flaws in the editorial, and I am also going to publish that letter here:
I would like to make a few comments about the editorial “Rising to the Test” in the Citizen on Friday, September 18. For the record, full disclosure: I am a public school board High School teacher in Math and Science (currently supply teaching).
My first comment is about interpretation of the test scores. All the results talk about the percentage of students who meet or exceed the provincial standards. For example, the Grade 3 reading test had 63% of students meet or exceed provincial standards. This makes it sound like 37% of Grade 3 students are failing in reading. However, when you look at the full results, you find that 27% of students achieved a Level 2 result, which is below provincial standards but is about the equivalent of a C. So, 90% of students are either within striking distance of provincial standards, have met the standards, or have exceeded them. Furthermore, in Grade 3 reading 8% of students scored at Level 1, which is approximately a D. In total, 98% of students got a result which would be a pass at school. Looked at one way, only 2% of are Grade 3 students are failing in reading. Yet the result that is put out by the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is 63%. Could that be because if EQAO published a 98% pass rate then people might suggest that we don't need the EQAO?
Another comment I have deals with media interpretation of the results. The editorial states that “most Ottawa schools are underachieving.” Yet an online story in the Citizen yesterday had the headline “Area schools outperform provincial average in reading, writing, tests reveal”. So how did Ottawa area schools go from beating the provincial average to underachieving? The editorial mentions that for the public board “only 73 per cent of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in reading.” But 26% scored a level 2, Meaning that 99% of public board Grade 6 students are at least close to the standard. That does not sound like underachieving to me. If you want to truly claim that our schools are not up to snuff, you need to offer a better explanation than “ Many students in the nation's capital come from homes where the parents have high levels of education”, a statement that offers nothing to show how much better Ottawa should be doing based on this factor.
A third comment is about the statement “Strangely, some critics respond by questioning the value of standardized tests.” There is plenty of reason to be wary of standardized tests and their results, especially when that seems to be almost the only facet of education on which the media report. As an example, look at the statistic for primary math results published in the editorial. Ten years ago the primary math results were 56% (44% below standards) and now the result is 70% (30% below standard). So, in ten years we have gone from 44% to 30% below standards, almost a 1/3 decrease in poor results! Is this because math is taught so much better now than ten years ago? Not a chance.
Sure, some of the improvement is the result of improved teaching practices, but I am willing to bet a large sum of money that most of the improvement is because teachers have learned how to prepare their students for the test. I believe this is true because as a High School Mathematics teacher I see and hear about the Grade 9 EQAO Math test. A common refrain from teachers is that their students understand the questions quite well but have trouble answering them in the form that the test demands. The result is that teachers are forced to spend time teaching their students how to deal with the test format instead of teaching course content. So, results improve not because of more learning of content, but simply because of teaching to the test. If that does not raise at least some questions about the value of standardized testing, I do not know what will.
I agree that the results of standardized testing offer information that can be valuable when looking at how our well schools and boards are educating students. But the results need to be treated with care because the tests do not cover the whole curriculum, there are issues of teaching to the test, and there are issues with interpretation, especially as the results are often presented in a simplistic manner by the EQAO.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The old models of education are truly starting to be challenged
Here's an interesting article about a new thrust in online education.
The article postulates that it may be a decade or two before online courses really shake things up for universities. I'm guessing that some time after that a similar model for High School education is going to rock High Schools across North America, if not the whole world.
What is a cash-strapped school board going to do when a company like StraighterLine offers to teach all the Math classes for a flat fee per student that is way less than it costs that board to teach those classes? I'm pretty sure a bunch of the school boards are going to grab those savings. And once several boards prove that the online classes are as good as the old-style classes, then the dam is truly going to burst.
I had been thinking that my job as a High School teacher was recession and technology proof. Looks like I was wrong.
The article postulates that it may be a decade or two before online courses really shake things up for universities. I'm guessing that some time after that a similar model for High School education is going to rock High Schools across North America, if not the whole world.
What is a cash-strapped school board going to do when a company like StraighterLine offers to teach all the Math classes for a flat fee per student that is way less than it costs that board to teach those classes? I'm pretty sure a bunch of the school boards are going to grab those savings. And once several boards prove that the online classes are as good as the old-style classes, then the dam is truly going to burst.
I had been thinking that my job as a High School teacher was recession and technology proof. Looks like I was wrong.
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