Roosevelt to Teachers: Why Can't You Be More Like Your Brother?

I reported last week that, in advance of receiving the Gates money, some schools in Pittsburgh have suddenly started handing out a flurry of negative evaluations to veteran teachers.  Last night in a meeting superintendent Mark Roosevelt explained the reasoning.  If you're not a "rock star" teacher, they're going to get rid of you and find somebody who is (preferably somebody younger, cheaper, and less willing to object to district policy).

I'm all in favor of hiring the best teachers possible, but here's the problem with the statement: it's based on the theory that exceptions are the rule.  In all other walks of life, we seem to realize that exceptions don't disprove the rule.  Just because your buddy drove home drunk without killing anybody last night doesn't mean that everybody should be able to drive drunk without endangering others.  But apparently the fact that there are a few "rock star" teachers means that everybody should be a rock star teacher.  And Roosevelt has fired a warning shot: be more like them, or find a new job.

It's as if Roosevelt pulled aside every teacher and said "why can't you be more like your brother?"  "Your brother manages to create miracles in the classroom, why can't you?"  For the sake of our kids, let's hope that strategy is more effective in schools than it is in families -- because if not, he's going to find it awfully difficult to recruit and retain a bevy of rock star teachers to come work in a hostile environment.

Today's Random Thoughts

-About four years ago I watched an episode of The Dog Whisperer (a show in which a professional dog trainer visits the homes of people with unruly dogs and shows them how to take control).  My immediate reaction was that the advice he gave sounded exactly like all the classroom management advice I'd been receiving.  I couldn't decide if that meant that people were more like dogs than we realized or that we were treating schoolchildren like dogs.  Either way, enough parents have been using the techniques in their own home that the NY Times felt compelled to write a story on it.

-Lincoln University in Oxford, PA apparently has a requirement that all obese freshman either lose weight or take a one semester "Fitness for Life" course.  25 of the 484 seniors are in danger of not graduating b/c they've done neither of these.

-I've heard mixed opinions on whether or not we actually need a lot more math and science majors in this country, but apparently the White House is convinced that we do since they're starting a multi-faceted publicity campaign to encourage more people to go into math and science.  I don't know, maybe it will result in a couple more people entering the field, but I'm skeptical that a little PR and a friendly robot are going to make a huge splash.  I think the real problem is that most K-12 math and science classes are fairly dry -- and tend to both require more rote memorization and explore fewer connections with the real world than other subjects.

Sunday Commentary: How Much Does Everybody Need to Know?

A few months back I had the chance to read through a yearbook of sorts that had been prepared for an upcoming 50th high school reunion.  The reunion was for a high school in a well-to-do suburb and, as I leafed through it, it became clear that the class had more than it's fair share of Ph.D.'s and others who went on to prestigious occupations.  But I was more struck by something else.

The people in the class were asked to reflect back on things they remembered from high school, and it seemed like an awful lot number of people were still bitter about things that they had to learn back then.  More than a couple people reminisced about an awful class that they took and information that was shoved down their throats and pointed out that they had been right --they never needed or used that information again.

I suddenly thought back on this when reading the comments on Jay Mathews' piece about the algebra of elections this week.  I initially wrote a comment to point out that there were at least three candidates in NY-23, not two as the equation assumed.  And then I read the other comment somebody had written.  It was somewhat accusatory and impolitic, but I think the underlying point has merit.  In the post, Mathews says he doesn't understand the algebra but will take somebody else's word for it.  At the same time, Mathews has been a fairly big proponent of requiring algebra for all high school students.  Which begs the question: if he doesn't need to know algebra, why should the average high schooler have to know algebra?

On the one hand, I think it's only natural for people to think people younger than them should learn everything they don't know.  I can count on one hand the number of professors in my department who have in-depth knowledge of hierarchical linear modeling, but just about all of them would recommend that us students take an HLM class.  And just because I've gotten through life without a good working knowledge of matrix algebra doesn't mean that somebody else wouldn't benefit from it.

But at point have students learned enough?  One can never know enough about whatever field they end up entering, but what about everything else in life?  It seems that the underlying assumption in a lot of discussion surrounding education is that we should teach our students as much as possible.  This sounds good on face -- I'd certainly agree both that people cannot know too much and that the average American doesn't know enough -- but is troublesome in practice.  At what point do we stop requiring students to learn more about a particular subject?  Is knowing algebra enough?  Geometry?  Trigonometry?  Calculus?  While I'm sure everybody can benefit in some way from knowing these things, I'm not sure how much people gain from being forced to learn them (or at least convince the teacher that they've temporarily learned enough about them).

Plato once said "bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."  While I'd caution against taking that to mean that we should all "unschool" our children, I think it's fair to say that we should have an open conversation around this question: at what point should we consider students knowledgeable enough to start deciding the topics about which they'd like to learn more.

Reality NeGates Rhetoric

Ambler Winkler is gushing over the Gates grants that were just announced.  And in one sense, she's right -- it's a heck of a lot of money.  But I wouldn't be so eager to buy the Gates rhetoric that this will lead to an “array of measures that will be viewed by teachers, unions, administrators, and policymakers as reliable and credible indicators of a teacher’s impact on student achievement.”

I'm hearing from people in Pittsburgh that the response of administrators to the impending grant has been to start handing out negative evaluations left and right and that teacher morale has reached a new low.   Be sure that what teachers' unions are pressured into doing isn't always popular among the rank and file.  And be sure that any reforms not popular with the rank and file won't go down quite as planned.

Hopefully this is just a stumbling block, but I'm not certainly not ready to declare the initiative a success before it even gets underway based on potential and rhetoric.

Today's Random Thoughts

-Apparently Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve school lunch quality in the U.K. may have led to improvement in both attendance and performance on standardized tests

-Speaking of odd things that influence academic performance, this piece in Newsweek runs down a few decades worth of research into the relationship between noise and academic performance (hat tip: Alexander Russo).  I've been reading some of this research for a project I'm working on, and there's actually more evidence that noisy environments (both at school and at home) negatively influence test scores than there is regarding all but a few other social/environmental factors.

-There was some hoopla about teachers selling their lesson plans.  But that's the not the right question.  The right question is why teachers should have to buy lesson plans.

-Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl says he has the needed votes in city council to pass the tuition tax he proposed last week.  Five of the nine city council members stepped forward at a press conference today and said they'd vote to levy a 1% tax on college tuition in the city of Pittsburgh to help address longstanding budget problems.

More on "Stall Day"

Yesterday I wrote about a plan at a Pittsburgh high school to raise money by allowing students to force their teachers to count coins instead of teach.  Well, apparently they weren't the first school to think this as a good idea (hat tip: CP).  Here's a video from another school that's apparently done this already:

update: the video (actually, the whole site) seems to be working on and off.  In case it's not working while you're reading this post, here's a synopsis: The video seems to be a promotional pitch for "stall day" aimed at kids in a high school.  They show a classroom with a teacher teaching when two kids raise their hands and gleefully yell "it's stall day!".  They then proceed to dump a bunch of pennies on their teacher's desk and make remarks as their teacher proceeds to count and roll the pennies instead of teaching class.

A few things caught my eye in this video:

1.) Students can donate very little money and waste a lot of class time (how long would it take you to roll, say, 200 pennies?)

2.) The glee the students take in stopping class is troublesome.  I would've felt the same way when I was a teenager, but adults have a responsibility to teach kids that learning is a reward -- not a punishment -- if they want them to succeed in school and in life.  And actions speak louder than words.

3.) In some schools, allowing the kids to tell the teachers what to do for a few minutes might be a cute idea.  But in many schools it's not.  In schools already overrun with discipline problems (i.e. run by the kids), empowering kids to treat their teacher like dirt for a few minutes isn't going to help the situation.

4.) I'm even more convinced that this is the second-worst school fundraising idea I've ever heard.

A Fundraising Plan that Should've Stalled Out

Last week, the cash-for-grades fundraising scheme at a North Carolina elementary school came to light.  Shortly thereafter, it was announced that the principal will be retiring.  Well, here's the second-worst fundraising idea I've ever heard:

Pittsburgh's Carrick High School is holding a series of fundraisers for a student service-learning club, the last of which is called "stall day".  The fundraiser was approved by the school's administration and yesterday faculty were asked to approve a day on which to hold it (they voted to do it on the last day of school before Christmas).  What's stall day?  Here's how it was described in an e-mail to teachers:


"Stall day is a day where students can bring in money and stall your teaching.  If the students yell stall, then the teacher must stop teaching at that moment and count the money that is given to you at that moment.  However, each teacher can set their own precedent for their classroom.  If there are no rules, then students can stall your classroom all period.  Maybe you let students know that you will only accept money within the first five minutes of class, or accept the money as the students are walking in the door.  Then when the bell rings, you will count the money before you begin teaching.  It is up to you how you structure your classroom.  I will have buckets to place in all of the teachers classroom.  I will have students come and collect the buckets at the end of the day."


Yes, you read that correctly: students can pay to stop class.  The school has apparently deemed it appropriate to encourage students to behave rudely (i.e. interrupting their teachers).  And, maybe even worse, they've chosen to send students the message that learning is a punishment and should be avoided at all costs (literally).

Sunday Commentary: How Should We Measure the "Achievement Gap"?

Though the term "achievement gap" was first used to reference something rather specific -- the difference between the standardized test scores of White and Black students -- it's now used quite broadly.  I've heard "achievement gap" bandied about in reference to gaps in test scores and other measures of academic performance and outcomes between members of both different races and different classes.  Which leads me to this question: can we close the achievement gap without closing the "achievement gap"?

In other words, is it possible to successfully raise the test scores of low-SES and minority students to the same levels as other students without actually solving the real problem?  Every time I hear about another miracle school that closed a large portion of the achievement gap, I can't help but wonder this.

And I think the answer lies partially in how we conceptualize the achievement gap.  Is the difference in test scores between different groups the actual problem, or just a symptom of the problem?  For me, and I think for many others, it's the latter.  The actual problem is that too many low-income children live in worse neighborhoods, attend worse schools, are less likely to graduate from high school or college, and are subsequently both more likely to have lower quality-of-life later on and to cost society by committing more crimes, relying more on welfare, etc.  The causes of the difference in achievement are myriad, as are the causes of outcomes later in life -- less knowledge, as measured by standardized tests, are only one of many causes of worse academic and professional outcomes later in life.

If the problem goes beyond test scores, then how should we measure the "achievement gap"?  Do test scores sufficiently capture the problem -- i.e. will a change in test scores beget a change in all the outcomes that concern us more?  My gut feeling is that this won't necessarily happen.  It's not hard to imagine a school in a poor neighborhood where students score well on tests, but are still much less likely to graduate from college, obtain prestigious jobs, etc.  And that hypothetical worries me: what if we closed the achievement gap and nothing changed?  Would we still pat ourselves on the back and move on?

Or perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way.  Maybe changing achievement levels isn't our ultimate goal.  Maybe we should be trying to close gaps in graduation rates or degree attainment.  Or maybe we should be trying to close gaps in non-cognitive skills like self-control or executive function.  Or maybe we should be trying to close gaps in content knowledge (which is different from, though related to, testing reading or math skills).  Would closing any of these gaps be more meaningful than closing the test-score gap?  I'm not really sure what the answer is.  But I suspect that none of them are enough on their own.

To truly close the gap in academic performance and life outcomes, we probably need to close gaps in both academic achievement and a number of other areas.  So if we're going to continue to say that we want to close the achievement gap, let's not define "achievement gap" too narrowly.

Interesting Factoid of the Day

Skimming through the latest Bracey Report, I calculated the following statistic from the table on page 3:

If we look at achievement scores on the 2001 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Sweden ranks first with a median score of 561, while the U.S. is a little further back with an average score of 540.  If we look only at the at the students who attend schools where less than 50% of the students are in poverty (I assume measured by the percent eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, but I'm not sure), then we have a sample comprising 63.6% of the American population.  And their average score is 564. 

In other words, the average American student attending a school that doesn't rank among the poorest third in the country out-achieved the average student in every other country that took part in the assessment.

I don't know whether other, more recent, international assessments would yield similar results, but we do know that our top students out-achieved the top students in most other G-8 countries, while the opposite was true for our bottom students, on the PISA 2000 Literacy test.  Two pieces of data don't warrant a strong conclusion, but both indicate that our top students are doing pretty well while our bottom students lag far behind -- which would indicate that we should spend most of our time trying to pull up those at the bottom.

Today's Random Thoughts

-The Christian Science Monitor has a piece asking if a longer school day will close the achievement gap.  In some ways, I think a longer school day is a no-brainer.  But I have two main reservations: 1.) If we're doing things wrong now, is doing things wronger for longer a good plan?  2.) Can we justify only lengthening the school day for certain districts, schools, or kids, or should we lengthen the school day for everybody -- including those who are doing ok?  If we do the latter, will it close the achievement gap?

-Carnegie Mellon has an interesting new idea to help researchers find survey participants.  They've created a "research cafe" in downtown Pittsburgh full of computer terminals and such that spit out coupons, gift cards, etc. for participants.

-The Freakonomics Blog weighs in on Roland Fryer's research on the Harlem Children's Zone.  I'm not sure if his working paper has changed since the last time I weighed in, but the claim that the school can close the achievement gap is still being made.  I've already discussed a lot of my concerns with the way people are interpreting what's happening there, so I have a different question today.  Hypothetically, if the school did, in fact, close the achievement gap, then what?  Are equal test scores really our end goal?  More on this on Sunday.