5 Reasons Why Education Reforms Fail

Veteran teachers have been there, done that, seen multiple attempts at educational reform turn out to be just another failed fad. Worse, superintendents and principals sometimes order teachers around as if teachers were incapable of independent analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These administrators even have the nerve to order highly successful teachers to replace a Best Practice with something else. Any teacher with the temerity to disobey orders and continue doing what works risks termination, or at least a bad performance evaluation for insubordination.

All that happened to a first-grade teacher I knew in California. She refused an order to cease teaching phonics and start teaching whole language exclusively. She never stopped teaching phonics, and each year every child went from her class to the second grade a capable reader. She could not be fired, but the superintendent rated her “unsatisfactory performance due to insubordination” several years running. When reading tests placed California first graders 49th in the nation, shocked administrators ordered teachers to resume teaching phonics. Her superintendent did the same.

But did her superintendent revise her evaluations? No, because, (so the logic went), she had been insubordinate at that time. So much for the value of critical thinking in our schools.

Whole language, properly implemented in conjunction with phonics, is actually quite effective. How did this promising reform turn into yet another failed fad?

To begin with, hardly any teachers got accurate professional development training in whole language. Here is a typical professional development sequence using whole language as the example: (1) First, at the very beginning, just a few teachers either read the original research or learn about it from the original researchers in a seminar where we could ask clarifying questions. I was a member of the second group.

(2)Then, education writers (like me) start writing about whole language. (3)Other education writers (citing me and others) continue writing about whole language. (4)The process goes on for a while, gradually “simplifying,” that is to say, diluting the concept with each iteration. (5)At some point, school districts begin commissioning professional development for their teachers. In other words, school districts hire outsiders to come into the district and teach the teachers how to do a diluted version of whole language.

These school districts often contact universities. I was part of a university professional development provider team. The school district would call my director and place an order. “I'd like five workshop presenters delivered in two weeks. And make it fun and interactive.” No, seriously. My director would call five of us and say, “Go online, look up whole language, and prepare a 90-minute presentation.” We five would carpool to wherever, deliver our presentations at five different schools in the same 90-minute period. We would take questions as if we really knew anything. After our respective presentations, we would meet up for lunch somewhere. If teachers did their own on-line research it would not count, while our expensive second-hand version was worth PD credit.

To be fair, my director tried to match expertise somewhat. My areas were literacy, math, science and foreign language instruction. She never asked me to deliver, for example, a social studies or special education workshop. (But the chair of the department of education once asked me to teach the social studies methods course. I demurred, “I've never even taught social studies.” “That's okay. Just read up on it at the library.” I refused the course, a dangerous thing for an adjunct professor to do).

What happened to whole language in California was that there was a professional development blitz, presenting a diluted version by people who may or may not know what they are talking about. No wonder whole language was poorly implemented.

1. The first reason (classroom-based) education reform efforts fail is that those tasked with implementing the reform are often implementing something else under the reform's name. After that, Jeanne Century's comments come into play.

I have told the story of a failed reform effort. Ms. Century is talking about successful efforts that fail anyway.

Unfortunately for education, the interest in getting improvements to spread has been accompanied by a failure to give warranted attention to a second question: How do we get improvements to last? The phrase “scale up and sustain” is also part of our vernacular, but the “sustain” part often gets short shrift. While it is important to understand spread, it is endurance that separates the tipping of fads from meaningful change. Unless the investments we make in innovations have lasting impact, in the end, we have wasted our time and resources and, most importantly, squandered students’ opportunities to learn.

Her reasons for fad failure:

2.False view of sustainability.

Our research suggests that individuals think about sustainability in one of two ways—as establishing practices and programs that last and stay the same, or as establishing practices and programs that last and change. While it is a seeming contradiction, the second perspective should frame our efforts if we want to bring about improvements that endure. In order to last, innovations must themselves adapt and evolve. Thus, in addition to identifying strategies that work now, we need to invest in mechanisms for improving and adapting those strategies so that they will work in the future.

3.False view of fidelity.

Reformers often choose interventions because they have been proved to be effective, which is good. But then they make two false assumptions. First, they assume that because reforms have been shown to work, people will actually use them; and second, they believe that when people do use them, maintaining fidelity to the original idea is of the utmost importance. The literature suggests otherwise.

While fidelity of implementation has its place and time, many make the case that adaptation doesn’t reduce effectiveness, but rather increases it...Effectiveness is important, but adaptability is key.

4.False view of future usability.

Just as market conditions always shift, so do the circumstances surrounding educational change. This assures that a program put in place today will not likely meet our students’ needs 10 years from now.

5.False view of tolerability of change.

The challenge, then, is finding the “sweet spot” of change, where the new practice or program doesn’t challenge risk tolerance too much, yet is sufficiently different from current practice to move the change trajectory in a positive direction.

It might be fun for the teachers (or even nonteachers) among us to analyze past educational fads in terms of the extent to which each fad possessed the characteristics of accurate training, fidelity, sustainability, future usability and tolerability. We need to raise the bar of expectations for classroom reforms.

Then we will leave the educators of the future with more than a collection of “best practices”; we will also leave them with the knowledge of how to make those practices work for the students of the future.

“Learning Science vs. Doing Science”

In March 2009 Texas adopted new standards for science education. High school students are expected to

In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.

So far, so good. The statement includes all the necessary buzz-words, so no problem, right? Wait, hold the phone, not so fast, says Jonathan Osborne, the chair of science education at Stanford University in this commentary on EdWeek.

As I read what Mr Osborne had to say, I kept getting distracted. Every so often I found myself checking to see if I had not experienced a serious transporter malfunction. Like when I read this statement:

Science education seeks to offer students an understanding and vision of a body of knowledge that is beyond question.

Really? "A body of knowledge that is beyond question"? How did I get from EDWeek to the Onion? But no, I am still on EdWeek. Then I read this:

After all, the stock in trade of the school classroom is knowledge that has been placed beyond doubt.

Huh. I stopped reading and started scrolling. Surely there has to be a snark tag somewhere. No snark tag? This is a serious commentary? So I found my place again and continued reading. Oh, now I get it. He thinks science learning is distinct from science doing. It turns out that Dr. Osborne considers the seemingly innocuous statement "critique scientific explanations" to be code.

Let's look at the statement again.

In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations (my bold) by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.

According to Dr. Osborne, the phrase “scientific explanations” is code for “evolution.”

The political intent is evident. There is only one theory that the supporters of this view wish to see analyzed and critiqued

Is he sure the writers of the standards really have only one theory in mind? Perhaps we can draw some conclusions from definitions of terms repeated throughout the Texas standards document. First, science.

(2) Nature of science. Science, as defined by the National Academy of Sciences, is the "use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process." This vast body of changing and increasing knowledge is described by physical, mathematical, and conceptual models. Students should know that some questions are outside the realm of science because they deal with phenomena that are not scientifically testable.

Seems to me there might be some code in there. If “scientific explanations” means evolution, wouldn't “questions outside the realm of science” mean creation?

Next term, scientific theory.

(C) know that scientific theories are based on natural and physical phenomena and are capable of being tested by multiple independent researchers. Unlike hypotheses, scientific theories are well-established and highly-reliable explanations, but may be subject to change as new areas of science and new technologies are developed

Then I looked at the context of the “code” statement. How exactly did the Texas educators hope students would apply the critical thinking skills developed by examining all sides of scientific evidence? The section containing the “code” statement starts out

(3) Scientific processes. The student uses critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and problem solving to make informed decisions within and outside the classroom.

Since students are expected to spend 40% of their instructional within the science classroom actually doing science, they are going to have to learn to make some decisions. Those decision-making skills, it is hoped, will serve the students well outside the classroom.

Section 3 then starts with Dr. Osborne's code statement.

A. In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations (my bold) by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.

So first comes the acquisition of scientific skills and next comes the application.

(B) communicate and apply scientific information extracted from various sources such as current events, news reports, published journal articles, and marketing materials [written text] ;
(C) draw inferences based on data related to promotional materials for products and services

The standards repeat the same definitions and expectations within each of the major subject headings, even to the extent that, for example, Section 3A under Aquatic Science is the same Section 3A under Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Space Science, Environmental Systems, Integrated Physics and Chemistry, and Physics—word for word eight times.

Finally, Dr. Osborne defends the inclusion of Darwinian evolution in the curriculum.

Darwin’s place on the school science curriculum is justified because it meets two fundamental criteria.

I presume that he would agree the inclusion of any other topic in the science curriculum also meet both “fundamental criteria.”

First, it is a “big idea”—one that dominates and frames the discipline. For the life sciences, anyone who does not understand its major principles and tenets would be as illiterate as someone studying English who has never heard of Shakespeare.

No argument there. I would add, perhaps provocatively, that the study of English literature should likewise include the many literary allusions from the Bible.

Second, within the scientific community it is not up for discussion. And, as it lies beyond criticism, it is hard to see what value any attempt to evaluate critically the evidence and logical reasoning on which it rests would serve.

Well, scientifically speaking, pretty much everything is always up for discussion. Nothing within science is beyond criticism.

Creationists may argue that the biggest idea is God, and a God such as they postulate would certainly be above criticism. The pot does not complain to the potter. But that is precise why creationism is not science. “It does not matter how big the idea, if it is not falsifiable, it is not science,” so said a scientist (personal communication), not a science educator.

Whatever modifications scientists may make to Darwinian evolution in the future, Charles Darwin's place in the science curriculum forever is assured. If it should happen that Darwinian evolution should find its way to the scientific waste bin as a scientific theory, it will always be around as scientific history.


The Texas standards specifically address evolution thusly:

(7) Science concepts. The student knows evolutionary theory is a scientific explanation for the unity and diversity of life. The student is expected to:
(A) analyze and evaluate how evidence of common ancestry among groups is provided by the fossil record, biogeography, and homologies, including anatomical, molecular, and developmental;
(B) analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record;
[(B) analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record;]
(C) analyze and evaluate how natural selection produces change in populations, not individuals;
(D) analyze and evaluate how the elements of natural selection, including inherited variation, the potential of a population to produce more offspring than can survive, and a finite supply of environmental resources, result in differential reproductive success;
(E) analyze and evaluate the relationship of natural selection to adaptation and to the development of diversity in and among species; [and]
(F) analyze and evaluate the effects of other evolutionary mechanisms, including genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, and recombination ; and [.]
(G) analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.

$133/Month Health Insurance Premiums?

The Truth-O-Meter found that Keith Olbermann had told a “half-truth.”

Olbermann said that for middle-class families, the Baucus plan would mean that "13 percent of what they make could be deducted directly from their paychecks and mainlined to insurance companies, the so-called 'Max Tax.'"

He's right that for people who are uninsured now, the upper limit would be 13 percent, and that money would go to insurance companies. But it's to pay for coverage they don't have now — not a tax — and some people would pay less. And all of the plans under consideration in Congress require people to pay something for coverage. So we rate Olbermann's statement Half True.

The last time I had health insurance, the premiums were 6.9% of my salary. According to Ezra Klein, I had a pretty good deal.

The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser.

In my community, the median income is $42,000. $13,375 out of $42,000 comes to nearly 32% making my 6.9% look wonderful.

And that sums up the problem with health insurance reform. For all the whining and moaning, most people are not feeling much pain. It is like college students complaining about the increase in tuition when what they (some of them, anyway) really mean is that they will not be able to afford as much beer.

Imagine if people who touched a hot stove felt only a small fraction of the pain from the burn. That is pretty much what is happening in our health-care system. It hurts enough that we would prefer it to stop, but without any sense of urgency.

Washington wonks trying to fix this mess face a dilemma: They look at the numbers and see health-care costs crushing our economy, overwhelming our government, swallowing our wages. But the public is not feeling the pain. Virtually no one writes a $13,375 check to pay for their own health care. Most pay 27 percent of it, or even less. The surest way to cut health-care spending would be to make people shoulder more of the burden directly, as opposed to hiding it in taxes and lost wages.

The surest way to cut health-care spending would be to make people shoulder more of the burden directly, as opposed to hiding it in taxes and lost wages.

So things were going okay for me. I thought my premiums were too expensive, sure, but I was managing. Then I got laid off. That is when the premiums became unaffordable, but not simply because I was laid off. After all, the unemployment check came every week like clockwork.

Getting laid off meant I qualified for COBRA. Going on COBRA meant I would have to start paying the both my half and the half the employer had been paying, thus doubling the out-of-pocket percentage to 13.8%. Worse, I would have to pay the premiums out of unemployment benefits, making the percentage a whopping 43.3%. Naturally I declined and joined the ranks of the uninsured. The purpose of COBRA is to help the recently unemployed avoid the sudden loss of health insurance, but unaffordable COBRA is no help at all. I wound up shouldering not just more of the burden, but all of the burden, and I could not do it.

Compared to the 32% I cited earlier, the 13% in the Baucus plan sounds like a good deal. Whether the 13% is taken out of my pay automatically or I write the check to the insurance company myself makes no real difference to my bottom line. If Keith Olbermann wants to call it a “tax,” whatever. But when I consider the Japanese health insurance tax/premium, 13% looks pretty awful.

The average consumer is not feeling enough pain, and powerful stakeholders do not want change.

Of course, providers don't much like the sound of (the public option) because they would see 20 to 30 percent less revenue. And insurers don't much like the sound of that because they could not compete with that sort of buying power. Republicans and centrist Democrats have banded together to weaken the public plan and maybe even remove it altogether. President Obama now promises that the public plan would be open only to the uninsured and wouldn't offer any advantages over private insurers. It won't, in other words, be allowed to save people money.

So if you take sweeping transformative change off the table, you are left with finding a multitude of little tweaks. All these little tweaks together require 1000 pages of legislation.

Added up, they equaled a startling $2 trillion over 10 years. That's a lot of money for policies that have received virtually no attention in the debate.
And yet, this is the quiet promise of health-care reform. The grand theories might fail. They often do. But making the system a bit better, a bit quicker and a bit more agile -- we can do that. And until the stove gets hot enough, it may be all we can do.

But let's get back to the Japanese health care system. I lived there for nearly twenty years. Japanese people have choices. They can self pay (as I did at first), get private insurance (the next thing I did), or participate in one of the two public options (which I did as soon as I qualified). My premiums were about 4% of my salary.

According to the Washington Post, premiums are still about 4% of wages.

Workers at major corporations pay about 4 percent of their salary to a company-based insurance provider. These premiums are limited to $6,000 a year, but the average salary worker pays $1,931, the government says. Job-based insurance in the United States costs the typical employee $3,354 a year, according to the U.S.-based National Coalition on Health Care.

In Japan, employers pay premiums that match each employee's contribution. In the United States, where health insurance is far more expensive, employers pay private insurers three or four times the amount contributed by each employee.

The self-employed and the unemployed in Japan must pay about $1,600 a year for insurance coverage.

Wouldn't you like to pay $133/month for health insurance? NPR reported on April 14, 2008 that average Japanese family paid $280 per month. The insurance covers 70% of the bill; the patient pays 30% out of pocket. Although a 30/70 sounds heavier than the 20/80 split common in American policies, patients happily pay 30% of a far smaller total bill. In the case of childbirth, the local city hall reimburses families that 30%.

The total rate for Japanese income tax is less than 20% (about 15% for the sum of national, prefectural, and municipal taxes plus the 4% for health insurance) which compares favorably to American tax rates. Think of it. For approximately the same tax burden Americans bear without health care premiums, the Japanese have their health care premiums included.

The government of Japan does not stand between the doctor and the patient in any way. In fact, there is no feeling of government presence at all. Patients go to the doctor, the doctor orders treatment, patients pay their 30%, and go home all done with it. The closest thing to government intrusion is the government's requirement that doctors and dentists participate in the government preventative health program by conducting free physical and dental screenings once a year in every elementary school, kindergarten and preschool. The government also sends new parents reminder notices for free well-baby clinics. That is the extent of government “interference.” The government never contradicts the doctor's order or refuses to pay its portion for services or prescriptions like so many American private insurers do.

Although most Japanese health care facilities are privately owned, there are some public facilities. Doctors usually do not work for the government. They may be sole proprietors of their own hospital which may be quite small, sometimes with as few as four beds. My maternity doctor had one of those little four-bed hospitals, several nurses and a cook. His patients gave birth in the same familiar environment where they received prenatal care.

While many of the large hospitals offer comprehensive care, some hospitals are specialized. For example, a patient with heart disease may go to cardiac hospital. I saw no dedicated out-patient facilities; every facility had the ability to take admissions (except optometrists and dentists). Wait times for service are about the same as in America. Doctors may also work for large hospitals. Patients may go to any doctor or specialist they choose anywhere in the country. A patient's own residence is of no consequence. There is no such thing as a preferred provider network. Thus there is far more consumer choice in Japan than with America's HMOs and PPOs.

Hospital are generally full service, at least from the patient's point of view. Patients do not go to a separate facility for labs or x-rays. If a doctor sent, for example, a biopsy sample to a pathology lab, the patient would never know it. There is no subcontracting of health services generating bills from all sorts of random providers. In the example of the pathology sample, the pathology lab bills the doctor directly who bills the patient. In the case of x-rays, there is no bill for taking the x-ray separate from a bill for reading the x-ray. If a hospital wants a second party to read an x-ray, the hospital pays for it, not the patient. It is crazy that an American hospital signs a contract with an outside radiologist committing a third party, the patient, to paying the contract. If a patient goes to a Japanese emergency room, the patient pays one bill, not multiple bills. Ditto for surgeries.

What is Japan's secret? According to Naoki Ikegami, probably Japan's top health economist, at least one secret is that Japan does not have a single payer system. It has a single payment system.

And the way the government controls the flow of money is that we have multiple payers and multiple providers, but there's a single-payment system -- not a single payer but a single-payment system -- so that all payers must abide by the payment system, and all providers must be paid by the system.

The rest of the interview is quite instructive.

For a pretty comprehensive set of viewpoints see this article and the several pages of comments.

It is strange that Americans are not as knowledgeable about the Japanese system as we think we are about the Canadian system. We should be seeing information about the Japanese health care system everywhere. We should be rejecting American exceptionalism and seriously considering how to incorporate the best features of the Japanese system while rejecting the worst aspects.

What's an Argument? Bring Back Debate Club

When I was in high school, there was an active debate club that competed with all the area high schools. If successful, our team could compete at regional, state and even national events. At the time, it was one of many extracurricular opportunities whose presence I took for granted. Now the arts are gone, recess is replaced by test prep drills, and most extracurricular activities vanish if candy bar or gift wrap sales disappoint. Debate club was one of the first to go by the wayside.

So it is no wonder that recent research on the place of argument in the school curriculum shows that students cannot even define the term, much less formulate an opinion about it. A whole generation of students has grown up thinking “argument” means nothing more than a verbal quarrel, either to be avoided or won, usually by voice volume rather than persuasive points.

Not only are the students clueless, but according to Gerald Graff, so are their teachers.

Graff: I think cluelessness in academia is a major threat to democracy, especially at a moment when talk-back radio, Cable TV talk shows, the Internet, and the reliance of politicians on opinion-polling have made a certain kind of public debate—even if it’s debate within narrowly constrained parameters—more immediately important in American and global politics. In these conditions, one needs not only an ‘informed’ citizenry, but a citizenry that’s sophisticated enough in weighing arguments to spot logical contradictions and non-sequiturs, not to mention outright lies.

Students are not getting an education in argument, and do not miss what they never had. Schools have abandoned critical thinking while the proliferation of so-called critical thinking materials notwithstanding.

Graff: You’re right that many students don’t miss an initiation into the intellectual world of whose very existence they never even learn. No, I don’t see as much concern within academia over this problem as I think there should be. I think we’ve gotten accustomed to a system in which the very few excel in school (and reap the rewards in the vocational world beyond) and the many stumble along and more or less get by, or get through, or fail.

Graff's reason for the apathy is a classic example of the sort of educational obstructionism that pervades our society. We only need a few well-educated elites. There are not enough slots for everyone else.

In some ways such a system suits us academics—it’s not our fault if the majority stumble or fail, we can easily say, that’s just the way it is; only an elite in any society is going to ‘get’ the intellectual club, etc.

Who does Graff blame? Not the parents. The popular weasel strategy of blaming the parents conveniently forgets the fact that parents have to be educated first.

Insofar as this is a common academic attitude, I blame academics more than parents, whom it’s also our job to educate, after all.

Somehow most of our college students are missing out on what should be the goal of their education—becoming a well-informed, thinking citizenry.

...at best I was reaching 15-20 percent of the students in an average undergraduate class and that the remaining 80-85 percent were in some other country or time-zone. Comparing notes with colleagues over the years led me to conclude that most felt the same way. Some unashamedly said they teach to that top 15-20 percent and figure there’s no point worrying about the others.

I have had the same experience. Whereas I was able to persuade just about every member of my junior high and high school classes to buy into my program and reach previously unattainable levels of achievement, I found my college classes to be far more resistant. Some of my college students said straight out, “We don't want to know how or why the math works. Just tell us how to get the answer.” Combine the students' attitude with the new consumer, so-called student-centered approach to education, and there we have a recipe for a generation of ill-educated college graduates.

Professors who refuse to bow to student demands and try to educate the unwilling regardless of their resistance risk unfavorable student evaluations. Professors who respond to market conditions fare much better, and thereby effectively “purchase” great student evaluations. Twenty years down the road, I wonder how many students of the first professor will be grateful for the gift and sorry for their evaluations, and how many students of the second professor will feel they have been royally gypped.

There is a reason, grasshoppers, why I have the big desk and you have the little ones.

Can you imagine a college class where thew books of Ann Coulter Michael Moore are required reading? Dr. Graff can.

I can imagine a good course in which students would read Coulter and Moore for starters and then move on to more nuanced and complicated texts on the same set of issues.

Graff would like a chance to test his ideas.

Take five sections of freshman composition at a university and teach them using the ‘argument templates’ discussed extensively in Clueless and other methods for demystifying academic culture. Closely monitor the writing done by the students over the course of the semester or year, and compare their work with that produced by a randomly-chosen control group of a different five sections of the same course. I like to think the results would dramatically bear out my claims. If they didn’t it would be back to the drawing-board for me.

Yet he observes sadly that universities seem unconcerned about product beyond job training.

But it’s symptomatic of the incuriosity of higher education about what students actually get out of college that one never hears about such experiments even being tried.

All Politics---and Education—is Local. Well, Maybe

According to a commentary in the September 10, 2009 online issue of EdWeek, U.S. Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, the public outcry over the President's speech to students was not about indoctrinating our children with socialist philosophy. Mr. Kline believes a more fundamental issue was at stake. More fundamental than socialism? What the president learned this week was that all education, just like all politics, is local.

President Obama delivered a positive, uplifting message to students this week. The fact that many Americans were rubbed the wrong way by what amounted to a federal recommendation about what to teach, and how to teach it, is a signal that no matter how well-intentioned, education reforms simply cannot be dictated from Washington

In Japan, where the national Ministry of Education dictates all sorts of education policies, even in Japan, the nagging and unspoken noise that education is primarily a local issue constantly plays in the background. It is all too true that if the Ministry of Education is for it, then the Japanese teachers union is against it. Japanese teachers spend enormous amounts of time discussing, demonstrating and otherwise agitating against Ministry of Education policies.

If socialist-leaning, group-oriented Japan with its highly centralized education system where every class in the country in any given grade is on the same page of the textbook on any given day finds centrally-dictated policy so onerous, of course, those highly individualistic Americans would be in near revolt over the prospect of education reform dictated from on high.

Mr. Kline suggests the response to the president's speech was symbolic of growing powerless frustration.

...many local communities are growing frustrated as they perceive a more active, intrusive federal government making more and more decisions about how their children are taught.

Maybe you were thinking No Child Left Behind is Exhibit A of an “active, intrusive federal government.” For Mr. Kline, Exhibit A would be the lesson plans the White House provided as a supplement to the speech.

...the nagging fact remains that the federal government—not local teachers or school boards—developed a very specific lesson plan for implementation in classrooms all across the country.

Except... The federal government, as well as many other governmental bodies, have been providing lesson plans for years and years without public protest. One comment to the citation lists a few:

A short list of federal government developed lesson plans:

The National Archives Lesson Plans
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/

National Institute of Health Curriculum Supplements
http://science.education.nih.gov/customers.nsf/WebPages/CSHome

U.S. Department of Agriculture Lesson Plans
http://soils.usda.gov/education/resources/K_12/lessons/

National Park Service Lesson Plans
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/descrip.htm

U.S. Department of Energy Lesson Plans
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/education/lessonplans/

U.S. Department of State Lesson Plans
http://future.state.gov/educators/lessons/

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Teacher Lesson Plans
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers.html

NASA for Educators
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html

FBI for Kindergarten - 5th Grade
http://www.fbi.gov/fbikids.htm

CIA for Parents and Teachers
https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/parents-teachers/index.html

All kinds of entities provide optional lesson plans. It might be as laudable as a public utility promoting energy conservation. It might be construed as inappropriate commercialism exploiting impressionable (and captive) children. All of these publicly available lesson plans are optional. I agree with Mr. Kline that “something else is at play.” However, that something else is not fear of indoctrination, and it is not the optional lesson plans.

Related Post at School Crossing,When a President Speaks:6 Reasons to Object to Objectors.

Place Value Part 5: Applications of Place Value

So far we have completed four parts of the place value series:

Part 1: The Chocolate Factory which covered the regrouping or trading aspect of place value and explored regrouping in base ten and other bases.

Part 2: Base Ten for Young Students which introduced several games and trading activities to help young children acquire a solid foundation in place value.

Part 3: The Bake Sale demonstrated the role of place value in long division.

Part 4: Geometry of Place Value demonstrated the dimensions of a cube in terms of place value and explored the geometric representation of the quadratic equation.

In the conclusion of the series, Part 5, Applications of Place Value, I will show you a sampling of interesting applications of place value to some real-life situations.

Fractions

It is sometimes easy to add and subtract fractions by putting fractions in place-value-type columns. The usual addition and subtraction with regrouping requires students to conceptually pack or unpack “boxes” (See Part 1: The Chocolate Factory). What if I want to add 3 5/7 + 2 4/7?



The denominator, 7, means that the “whole” has been divided into seven equal pieces. Notice that instead of packing in boxes, the student creates “wholes.” With nine-sevenths, there are enough pieces to make one whole with 2 pieces or two-sevenths left over. There is that word, “leftover” again. In The Chocolate Factory, “leftover” was used to label the ones. Here we are using it to label the pieces, helping students to transfer and integrate concepts.

If students need to “borrow” (the current term is “exchange”) in order to subtract fractions, then they would have to cut up a whole into the necessary number of equal pieces. In the case of 4 2/5 – 1 3/5, the student creates two place-value columns, the place value of one being the “wholes” and the place value of the other being the “pieces.”



With fractions of unlike denominators, the procedure is essentially the same with the preliminary step of finding common denominators.

The Olympics and Time

The odometer of a car is obviously a place value representation, but have you noticed that the clock at the bottom of an Olympic race is formatted in terms of place value with colons marking the separation between hours, minutes, seconds, and hundredths of a second? As the race progresses, the clock gathers hundredths into seconds, then seconds into minutes, minutes into hours. The expression of a runner's time might be 2:14:52:27.
Thinking of time in terms of place value columns simplifies addition and subtraction.

Here's a (sort of) real life problem that occurred in my house recently. My son was invited to watch Lord of the Rings at a friend's house. If the DVD starts playing at 4:17:48 pm and the movie lasts 3 hours 44 minutes and 25 seconds, will my son be able to catch the 8:15 bus home?



Starting with the seconds column, 48 seconds plus 25 seconds equals 73 seconds which is 60 plus 13 seconds. Since 60 seconds equals one minute, cross off the “60” and carry the one to the top of the minutes column. One minute plus 17 minutes plus 44 minutes equals 62 minutes which is 60 plus 2 minutes. Since 60 minutes equals one hour, cross off the “60” and carry the one to the top of the hours column. One plus 4 plus 3 equals 8. The solution: The DVD will end at 8:02:13 pm. The answer: The DVD will end at 8:03 pm, in time to make the bus. “Packing” seconds into minutes and minutes into hours is just like packing chocolates into boxes and boxes into cases.

Subtraction is a matter of unpacking then. Suppose we want to work backwards. If the DVD must end by 8:10 pm to make the bus, what is that latest time it can start. The problem is 8:10:00 minus 3:44:25.



We must subtract 25 seconds from zero seconds. So we just unpack one minute or dump a minute into the seconds column. Since we unpacked one of the 10 minutes, there are 9 minutes in the minutes column and 60 seconds in the seconds column which still represents the original ten minutes but in a slightly different form. Now it is easy to subtract 25 seconds from 60 seconds. Now we have to subtract 44 minutes from 9 minutes. Simple. Just unpack one hour into minutes, leaving 7 hours and giving 69 minutes. Now it is easy to subtract the 44 minutes. The solution: the latest the DVD can start playing is 4:25:35 pm. The answer: the latest the DVD can start playing is 4:25 pm.

(An small digression: I have twice made a distinction between the solution and the answer with the movie problems. I did not make this distinction with the fraction problems. The fraction problems did not require the distinction because they were context-free problems.

The movie problems were word problems or story problems. They have context. I teach students to find a solution, then interpret the solution to find the best or most reasonable answer to the question. Home clocks are not like Olympic clocks, and rounding by the rules does not always produce the best answer. In the case of the second movie problem, rounding to 4:26 pm might cause my son to either miss the bus or run like the dickens to catch it.

In real life, people cannot stop when they have found the solution. They must then apply the solution to the situation, or context, in the most reasonable way. We are failing to teach our children critical thinking when we allow them, even encourage them to conflate solution with answer).

Base Clocks

Number base clocks are a manipulative that use the student's internalized understanding of clock time as a peg to hang the concept of bases. A base-7 clock means that a rotation of 7 “minutes” equals one base-7 “hour.” Using a variety of base clocks as aids, students can become quite adept at adding and subtracting in different bases. It is even possible to extend the skill to multiplication and division in bases as well.

Calendars

Calendars can also be used to teach in place value especially if you confine yourself to hours, days, weeks, years because the months are not uniform “packages” of days or weeks. In calendar math, the number 14 would be 1 week, 4 days. The number 305 would be 3 months, 0 weeks and 5 days.

You can use the calendar to explore interesting patterns numerically as Michael Naylor does. Although he does not specifically target place value, the algebraic pattern partly follows from the place value of a calendar.

Fast box addition (Grades 6-8)
Have a student choose a 2 x 2 box and demonstrate how you are able to quickly give the total. Tell your students the secret: Add 4 to the first number and multiply the result by 4. Have the class test the result on several boxes.

The secret is algebra; if the first number is x, the other numbers are x + 1, x + 7 and x + 8. The total is 4x + 16, which is the same as 4(x + 4).

Have your students outline a 3 x 3 box and ask them which is greater – the sum of all of the numbers or 9 times the center number? Relabel the center number as x and write all the other numbers in terms of x as shown here:

When adding all of those terms, the constants cancel (–8 + 8 = 0, –7 + 7 = 0, etc.) so all that is left 9x. The total of all nine numbers, then, is 9 times the center number.

One teacher considers the calendar as probably the one math essential for her kindergarten class even though she may not necessarily focus on place value. Her website lists activities and links.

Conclusion

What we see today is that although regular number bases maintain column values in terms of powers of the base, place value is way more flexible. Each place, or column, can be whatever it needs to be as long as it is in terms of groups of the preceding place.

To summarize:
Fractions: Wholes, parts
Olympic Time: Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Hundredths of a Second
Calendars: Years, Months, Weeks, Days
Gettysburg Time: Score, Days

You can have more fun working in multiple places with
Historical Time: Millenia, Centuries, Decades, Years, Months, Weeks, Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Hundredths of a Second. That's eleven places. Once the students understand grouping and ungrouping, they do not worry about the number of places. The more places, the more fun.

Maybe you can think of some more ways we use place value everyday.

Resources

O'Block Books sells manipulatives.

So does Creative Teaching Press.

Base ten packing set from Digi-Block.

"Great Source" for calendar math.

When a President Speaks: 6 Reasons to Object to Objectors

I remember President Kennedy urging us kids to be physically fit, and the national president's fitness program that went with it. Anybody else out there earn a Presidential Fitness Award while they were in school? In fact, the program has followed us into adulthood.

Another president is planning to give a speech to school children urging fitness of another kind, educational fitness.

During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.

Why the furor?


Because of the breathtaking opposition.

Unbelievable. Maybe there is no grand tradition, but presidents have addressed remarks to schoolchildren from time to time. Ronald Reagan in 1986, George H.W. Bush in 1991, George W. Bush in 2001.

My problems with all this hullabaloo:

First, the objections are premature. It is silly to object to figments of the imagination. Wait till the president actually says something objectionable in the speech before objecting to it.

Second, the objections break the Golden Rule. In the nutshell, the right is worried that the president may voice a tenet or two of liberalism. I have trouble believing they would object to a Republican president voicing a tenet or two of conservatism. I am not letting the left off easy; they will violate the Good-for-Goose-Good-for-Gander principle when it suits them as often as the right does. As Shakespeare might say, “A pox on both their houses.”

Third, the objections are largely ad hominem. The objections are not criticizing the speech on its merits (probably because the speech has yet to be broadcast). Ad hominem is one of the defining marks of lack of critical thinking. What a lousy role model to set before our kids.

Fourth, the objections are misplaced. Edweek reports that White House efforts to quell the furor have been ineffective.

But the planned 15- to 20-minute noontime speech—and, especially, a menu of classroom activities (for younger and older students) suggested by the White House in connection with it—continued to draw denunciations...

Especially?! I looked at the “menu of classroom activities.” The White House's companion lesson ideas for elementary students and secondary students have no leading questions and emphasize strategies for comprehension. The secondary lesson plans ask students to create a specific action plan for meeting their goals. Maybe it is about time we adults directly ask students what they want, and then find specific ways to help them, instead of creating burdens for students in the name of reform.

Fifth, the objections are politically-motivated disturbance in the guise of concern for our children.

Finally, sixth, and perhaps most importantly, whatever happened to free speech?

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech (bold added) , or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

What have we come to when a subset of the public maintain foul language is protected speech, and a subset of the public agitate to pre-censure the freedom of the President of the United States to encourage students to study hard and stay in school? Even stranger is that both subsets very likely contain many of the same members.

The White House has a video of the President's speech here.

Place Value Part 4: Geometry of Place Value

So far we have completed three parts of the place value series:

Part 1: The Chocolate Factory which covered the regrouping or trading aspect of place value and explored regrouping in base ten and other bases.

Part 2: Base Ten for Young Students which introduced several games and trading activities to help young children acquire a solid foundation in place value.

Part 3: The Bake Sale demonstrates the role of place value in long division.

Today, Part 4: Geometry of Place Value will explore place value within a quadratic equation. We will further show that each monomial can be modeled geometrically.


Review

The expression, 5x² + 6x + 3, appeared in The Chocolate Factory, as a summary of the chocolate packing activity. Five cases and six boxes were packed with three leftover chocolates. Where x stood for the number of chocolates per box, five cases and six boxes could represent different absolute numbers of chocolates. If x =10, or 10 chocolates per box, then ((5 times 100) + (6 times 10) + 3) chocolates, or 563 chocolates came down the conveyor belt, I Love Lucy style. In fact, this episode of I Love Lucy was the inspiration for the math activity.

If the chocolates are packed in boxes of five then the 563 means ((5 times 25) + (6 times 5) + 3) or 158 chocolates came down the conveyor belt. So a quadratic equation can be thought of as an expression of place value in any base. In fact, a polynomial of any degree can be seen as an expression of place value. Missing terms are represented by zeros. So 2x⁶ + 5x⁵+ 3x² + 7x + 2 would be 2,500,372_{base x}.

Now we can see where the analogy to place value breaks down. If x = 6, then a term like 7x would be “illegal.” Once six “boxes” had been packed, those six boxes would immediately be packed into one “case,” so in base 6 the last three terms would properly be 4x² + x + 2, either way, the last three terms represent 152 “chocolates.” Obviously I have just been speaking to adults initiated into the joys of algebra, not children.

What? No Fourth Dimension

Obviously you can use standard base ten blocks to model quadratic equations. If we assume that x represents base 10, for 4x³ + 3x² + 7x + 2, we would use 4 large cubes, 3 flats, 2 rods, and 2 small cubes to model the expression. However, if all I meant by geometry was geometric solids, I would not have meant much. The geometry is more interesting, and becomes clearer when you look at a set of blocks in a different base, say, base 5, the small cube looks the same as a base ten small cube, but the rod is five cubes long, the flat is a square of 25 cubes, the large cube is 5 flats stacked or 125 cubes.

So the rod of any set of base blocks determines the base of the set. If we look at the large cube of any base, we see that any one of the 12 edges shows x¹, the first dimension, any one of the six faces shows x², the second dimension, and the whole cube shows x³, all three dimensions. Now we run smack into a physical limitation of manipulatives; not one can show more than three dimensions. The power of math is that math is the language of imagination. We can imagine a fourth dimension, x⁴ and beyond, even if we cannot model it. How fun is that?

Interestingly, we can also show x⁰ on the cube. Remember for any x, x⁰ = 1. Cubes of varying bases are all different sizes, or volume. The x¹, x², and x³ is different on each cube. But since x⁰ = 1 for any base, it stands to reason that x⁰ or 1 would have an identical appearance no matter the size of the cube. In fact, it does. You can find x⁰ at any vertex, that is to say, the corner shows 1, the zero-th dimension, if you will. In fact, the vertex is a geometric point, described as having no length, width or height.

Multiplication with Base Ten Blocks

So far we have spent a great deal of time establishing that x² means x times x, and that we can show x times x geometrically, by using a flat from a base block set. The flat has a square shape which we would expect from an expression like x-squared. But let's consider a rectangle shape. Now we are not multiplying the same number by itself, x times x, the very definition of squaring, “the product obtained when a number or quantity is multiplied by itself”.

With a rectangle, we are multiplying two different numbers, x times y (or length times width, the formula for the area of a rectangle). Using the cubes from a base blocks set, we can model 5 x 3.






Math educators call this type of diagram a multiplication array. Now lets try 13 x 11.





To show the factor 13 along the top, I used a rod and three small cubes. The factor 11 is along the side with a rod and one small cube. One rod times one rod equals one flat (square, and you expected a square, right?), one rod times three small cubes equals three rods or three lengths. Then, one small cube times one rod equals one length, and one small cube times three small cubes equals three small cubes.

Combining like terms, that is, similar objects, together, we have one flat (10² or 100), four rods ((3 times 10) + (1 times 10)) or 40, and three small cubes (1 times 3, or 3) for a total of 143 which I could express as(1 x 10²) + (4 x 10) + (3 x 1) .

What if we wanted to multiply (x+3)(x+1). I am using the magenta to stand for x, a number we don't know, also called a variable.




The product is 1x² + 4x +3, and geometrically, the product is the picture of a quadratic equation showing both its factors above and to the left of the crossbars. I recommend manipulatives that elucidate the geometry of quadratic equations, available, for example, the Montessori Binomial Cube and Creative Publications Algebra Lab Gear. Remember we have shown that the magenta rod could stand for any value, that is, for any base.

We can show three factors and therefore three dimensions with the same model by standing a rod and/or stacking small cubes vertically in the corner where the crossbars intersect. If I were to stack four small cubes in that intersection, I would be modeling (4)(x+3)(x+1) or by multiplying the x-factors first, (4)(x² + 4x +3). You could think of it as stacking four layers of the x-factor product. In fact, the formula for volume is height times base, or height layers of the base.

In terms of base blocks, the product would be modeled with 4 flats, 16 rods, and 12 small cubes. If we are working in base ten, we would have 400 + 160 + 12. We can exchange 10 of the rods for a flat, and 10 of the small cubes for a rod, ending up with 5 flats, 7 rods, and 2 small cubes or 572.

If I were to stand a rod in the intersection, I am modeling 10 layers of 143 or 1430. In the upper left hand corner of the product there would be ten flats stacked which I can exchange for a large cube worth 10x10x10. Completing any other exchanges, the product would consist of 1 large cube, 4 flats, 3 rods and 0 small cubes. If I were to stand a magenta rod in that intersection. I would be modeling (x)(x+3)(x+1). The product would have 1 magenta cube, 4 magenta flats, 3 magenta rods and 0 small cubes or x³ + 4x² + 3x.

The Candle Problem: How to Damage Motivation

Herbert Kohl says we are missing the boat, motivation wise, in an open letter to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education.

Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, “We are learning how to do good on the tests.” They did not say they were learning to read.

Mr. Kohl sees a fundamental contradiction between what we say we want and what we are doing to get it.

It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test.

What, for Mr. Kohl, motivates learning, at least for learning to read?

...reading is a tool, an instrument that is used for pleasure and for the acquisition of knowledge and information about the way the world works. The mastery of complex reading skills develops as students grapple with ideas, learn to understand plot and character, and develop and articulate opinions on literature.

Nowhere does Mr. Kohl mention extrinsic rewards. Teachers have observed, and Robert Slavin's research has confirmed the dissipating effect of extrinsic rewards.

Robert Slavin's position--that extrinsic rewards promote student motivation and learning--may be valid within the context of a "facts-and-skills" curriculum. However, extrinsic rewards are unnecessary when schools offer engaging learning activities; programs addressing social, ethical, and cognitive development; and a supportive environment.

Not only do extrinsic rewards fail to motivate, except in limited cases, but research has also found that extrinsic rewards actually sabotage motivation.



So what's with the ubiquitous classroom token economies? Why must teachers have jars ofmarbleson their desks? Are we deliberately sacrificing long-term learning benefits for short-term classroom management? How about pay-for-performance or merit pay? First. And foundationally, EVERYONE deserves to be paid FAIRLY. “Getting the issue of money off the table,” as Dan Pink says.

If our society want to motivate the highest performance from teachers, then give them:

Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose

NOT merit pay.

Merit pay is inherently unfair. The bug-a-boo with merit pay is that teachers have so little control over the factors that impact student achievement. What do we say, for example, about the student who actually scored worse after his first year with me only to leapfrog three grades the second year with me.  Should I have lost pay the first year?  I was still the same great teacher.  I had no idea his alcoholic uncle moved in with him and his mom that first year. What do you do if you are a great teacher in an environment where just about everything seems to be conspiring against the kids? And what if you are lucky enough to teach in a school where kids have all kinds of advantages and their scores show it regardless of who is their teacher? Policy-makers have not figured out any equitable mechanism for awarding merit pay.

Western Education has the Wrong Mindset

Science educators know full well that school textbooks lag at least a generation behind the times. Teachers who do not take the initiative to independently keep up and supplement the textbook with current information are teaching possibly out-of-date stuff. Sad to say, the vast majority of teachers teach the book, especially at the lower grades where the lifetime foundations for critical thinking are laid.

Hans Rosling, a professor of public health, in a presentation to the US State Department, marvels that the Western world is a generation behind in its understanding of the global situation, especially regarding the developing world.

My problem is that the worldview of my students corresponds to the reality in the world the year their teachers were born.

In Dr. Rosling's words, “Their mindset does not match the data set.”

We have a world that cannot be looked upon as divided.
...snip...
The world is converging.

We have completely misunderstood the HIV “epidemic.”

There is no such thing as an HIV epidemic in Africa...It's not war...It's not economy...Don't make it Africa. Don't make it a race issue. Make it a local issue and do (appropriate) preventative approaches.

Dr. Rosling has made his data presentation software available for free at Gapminder.

I Love Eureka! Physics

Here is a complete episode guide.

It is pretty expensive to purchase the entire series. Here is one source.

Here are a handful of the first episodes:

Episode 1-Inertia




Episode 2-Mass



Episode 3-Speed



Episode 4-Acceleration Part 1



Episode 5-Acceleration Part 2



Here is a video player.

Enjoy.

The New School House Rock

Give a listen to Georgia teacher, Crystal Huau Mills, her students and friends performing their version of Grammar: the Musical, entitled Grammar Jammer, available on DVD.
Crustal Huau Mills wrote the lyrics and her friend, Bryan Shaw, put them to music. When they were all done, they had thirteen songs.

The teacher, who is played by Crystal, falls into a dream world where her class and some of her co-workers are transformed. Many of the normal classroom objects come to life to help her reinforce the underlying lesson behind each song. The clock, the flag, the globe, a crayon, the computer, the ruler, her class pet, a goldfish as well as the dictionary all spring to life to help her teach the class.

The New School Year: My Top Ten To-do

Number 10. Go through your closet and get your own school clothes ready to go. Update or accessorize your outfits. I know I did not like wasting time trying to figure out what to wear, or discovering at the last moment I had forgotten to dryclean or mend something.

Number 9. Get to know those important unsung heroes, the backbone, of the school. The janitor, school secretary, librarian, the cafeteria ladies, the recess monitors, the school nurse.

Number 8. Figure out your rules and consequences for violation. Have a behavior management system in place. Make sure your rules and consequences are compatible with school policies and the general practices of other teachers. Talk to other teachers early to shut down efforts by students to play teachers off each other before it has a chance to begin.

Number 7. Rehearse routines with students every day until following the routines is automatic. Think about: how do I want students to enter the room and record their tardies? Do I want a student monitor to help me with roll, leading the pledge of allegiance, lunch money collection, other? What is the procedure for turning in homework? How should they set up their desks for start of class. When are pencils to be sharpened? Bathroom procedures? Papers for absent students? What kind of behavior do I expect when there is a substitute? Make sure EVERYTHING is spelled out so that they know exactly what to expect.

“Design some method to manage and keep track of daily paperwork -- especially for absent students. If you have all of your students regularly asking you for their work, you’ll lose your mind. There are so many options out there. My favorite is to have a hanging folder for each student in every class. If I pass out papers, the student at the front of the row is responsible for filing the handouts for every absent student in the appropriate folder. When the student returns they know they can look in their folder for all their work.”

Number 6. Communicate with parents before school starts.

“You can start communication with parents before the first day of school. Teachers can call home to welcome students and talk to the parents before school starts. I like to send postcards to new students introducing myself. Other teachers hold special class events such as class picnics in the park or an ice cream social before the first day. An opening letter from you on the first day of school is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the families you will work with. Along with the letter, I also send home a family survey. The data gathered provides insight and invaluable information about my students and families right from the start. Here are some things I include in my family survey:

• What languages are spoken at home?
• Is there someone to help your child with homework?
• Emergency phone numbers, emails, updated address
• Food allergies/Health issues/Diet
• Celebrations and Cultural Awareness
• Child’s Strengths
• Special Needs
• Interests and Talents (parents love this)
• Areas of Concerns, if any
• Expectations for the year
• Questions”

I also plan for open house. I like the custom of Japanese teachers who visit the homes of every student. Take a little gift with you, maybe something the students can use in your class. Oriental Trading has tons of ideas. I like these crayon-shaped erasers.

Number 5. Write a week's worth of lesson plans for the substitute teacher BEFORE you are so sick you cannot even lift your head. I like to base my substitute teacher plans on that last “optional” chapter of the textbook, the one no one ever gets to. As a hands-on science teacher, I preferred to interrupt my regular lessons over burdening a substitute with overseeing an experiment.

Number 4. Plan your first day of class. Start out with an engaging activity that also provides students with a chance to learn and practice something to help them be successful during the year. I had my students to a simple experiment on the first day as a vehicle for teaching them lab rules and procedures in an interesting way.

Number 3. Find another teacher, whether in your grade level or field or not, to partner with, peer mentor each other, and integrate materials. You may want to integrate with more than one teacher at your grade level and with teachers in other grades.

Examples of multi-grade integration suitable for k-8 schools:
Have students create some sort of science teaching aid, like paper models of body systems, and use their teaching aid to teach younger students in another grade. Or invite a younger class to be lab partners with middle school students for a class period.

Examples of within-grade integration suitable for a middle or high school:
Coordinate spelling words with the English teacher. In my case, a word like “hypothesis” might be an extra credit word. Or combine assignments, so that a lab report written in my class get graded for data analysis and conclusions, but the same report gets graded in English class for English mechanics. Or coordinate with the math teacher to teach the metric system in math class at the same time the science teacher is teaching the metric system for gathering quantitative data.

Number 2. Get your supplemental materials together for the first unit, and make a list of the supplemental materials for subsequent units. Put a note on your calendar about a week or so before the end of a unit to remind yourself to gather the listed materials together for the next unit.

Number 1. Know your material, Read over your curriculum several times. Write out a scope and sequence for the entire year. Invariably you will make adjustments as the year progresses, but you will be able to prevent becoming bogged down if you keep an eye on the destination.

Finally, do something nice for yourself.

“Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?”

That's today's question on the New York Time's Room for Debate feature.

The debate suffers from confusing graduation from a school of education with the process of credentialing, understandable since graduation from a school of education is usually a prerequisite to a credential.

But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.”

Do you agree with Katherine Merseth? Are you a graduate of a college of education? Maybe you are old enough to have started teaching before a degree from a college of education and possession of a credential were taken as proof of quality and competence.

See what the nine respondents and the myriad of comments (477 as I write) have to say and feel free to add your own two cents. Personally, I think it is instructive that of the nine respondents, only one is actually a school teacher. Our society does not have much use for someone who wants to be the best teacher they can be, and spend their whole life “making a difference” everyday for students. The only viable career ladder in education is outside the classroom. What is worse, many of the career ladder positions either do not require or do not value teaching experience. For example, a principal needs only three years in the classroom.

A teacher who waits too long to get on the career ladder may find it an unwelcoming place. Such teachers applying for positions outside the classroom may be rejected with a dismissive, “All you have ever done is teach” comment.

Anyway, here is a potpourri of excerpts from the debate:

Michael Goldstein wonders if someday proven experience might trump an embossed piece of paper.

Many education schools have already been wrestling with their mission. Is it to do education research and pose larger questions? Or is it to train 22-year-old schoolteachers to be ready for Day 1 in September?

If merit pay indeed becomes more common, then teachers are likely in turn to become more demanding customers — they will want more practical guidance.
One result may be a new labor market in education schools, where top veteran schoolteachers, those who know how to map backward from an algebra final or how to enlist challenging kids, are prized as lecturers, in lieu of ivory tower theorists.

On the other hand, Margaret Crocco thinks practical training is exactly what the colleges of education offer.

What T.F.A. represents for some parents are young people with knowledge, skills, intelligence and ambition. These parents may assume that such attributes aren’t found in those who enter teaching through traditional teacher preparation programs, which typically invest more time in education courses — addressing the “how” of teaching — than does Teach for America. As far as these parents are concerned, teaching boils down to talking

Patrick Welsh, the only practicing teacher on the panel, gets right to the point.

The credentialing game in public education may have once been a well-meaning effort to create some measurable criteria to maintain standards, but it has turned into an absurd process that forces both teachers and administrators to waste time jumping through hoops that have little or no relation to their job performance...

bureaucrats, obsessed with rules and numbers, would rather hire a mediocre but “fully certified” prospect than the brightest, most promising applicant who lacked the “education” courses...

one of the brightest... teachers in the school ... was told he would not be certified unless he took a basic composition course, a low-level course he had been exempted from at the University of Virginia on the basis of his Advanced Placement score in high school.

I understand that young man's frustration. I was denied a math credential in one state because I did not have College Algebra in my transcript. Never mind that I had been exempted by the college placement exam.

Mr. Welsh's recommendation? “hire enthusiastic candidates who exhibit knowledge and love of their subject and a passion for communicating that knowledge and love to students” credential or no credential.

Jeffrey Mirel allows that maybe colleges of education deserve criticism, but they are improving.

Attacked for being purveyors of progressive educational snake oil, for providing inadequate instruction for pre-service teachers, and for pervasive anti-intellectualism, schools and colleges of education are among the favorite targets of educational reformers...

For a long time ed schools did not focus specifically on how to teach challenging content to all students. But that is changing.

Colleges of education need to start by being more selective about the applicants they accept.

Some of those applicants may actually be practicing teachers going for their masters. Arthur Levine laments the motivation of some of those applicants.

This system lacks quality control and too often encourages universities to offer quick, low quality graduate programs in order to attract those teachers who may be more interested in salary bumps than professional development.

James G. Cibulka, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), is delighted that the NCATE is having such a big influence.

About half of our accredited institutions have aligned their master’s programs with NCATE’s propositions, and some have designed master’s programs to help prepare candidates for board assessments.

If you think teacher credentialing is more about state indoctrination than best practices, Martin Kozloff, a professor of education himself, is inclined to agree.

a master’s degree in most education subfields further stamps in the “progressive,” “child-centered,” “constructivist,” “developmentally appropriate,” postmodernist, pseudo-liberationist baloney that infects the undergraduate curriculum, and which leaves graduating ed students unprepared to provide their own students with coherent, logically sequenced instruction...

And if you ask graduating master’s students who have managed to escape indoctrination (because they are fortunately endowed with a wide streak of skepticism), they will tell you that they learned nothing new. Yes, many teachers with master’s degrees in education are more skilled teachers. But this is not because they got a master’s degree. They went for a master’s degree because they are intelligent, were already skilled teachers (self-taught), and had the gumption to go back to school.

I know when I went back to school for my masters, I was young and idealistic, and just wanted to be the best teacher I could be. I wish someone had told me what a waste of time and money the masters degree would be, especially a masters in education, and more especially a masters in curriculum development (as opposed to school administration). The masters degree has rendered many an out-of-district teacher virtually unemployable as the receiving district does not want to pay the higher salary. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Finally, some common sense from Linda Mikels, the principal of Sixth Street Prep School, a charter elementary school in Victorville, Calif.

The art and skill of effective pedagogy is arguably equally critical to effective classroom instruction. While most aspiring teachers hope to develop these skills through university coursework, in reality the most effective training is acquired through an apprenticeship at a high-performing school with a highly effective classroom teacher. As with most trades, the craft of effective pedagogy is one that is best developed in the context of the “workplace.”

In other news, Bill Gates notices the obvious.

“We don’t know the answers because we’re not even asking the right questions and making the right measurements,..Better teachers are more likely to result in higher achievement than other approaches such as lowering class size...

Place Value Part 3: The Bake Sale

Place value is such a fundamental concept that we should ensure the students recognize place value and its significance wherever it occurs. An activity I call “The Bake Sale” highlights place value in the operation of division. I will present just one example. Of course, teachers can have as many examples as groups within the classroom. The groups should not be too large, not more than three of four students per group.

The scenario: They are getting ready for a bake sale. They have a platter of cookies and they want to make sure they will have enough cellophane bags to package the cookies. In today's example, the platter has 173 cookies and they will be packing 6 cookies to a bag. I use beans for cookies and little squares of paper for the bags. So the students would start with 173 precounted beans.

The first concept I want them to see is division as repeated subtraction. They are to remove 6 beans at a time, just as if they were really packing cookies, and place them on a square of paper. As they do so they place a tally mark. Very young children would have a specially designed “worksheet” for recoding each “bag.” For example, a page of squares that the students color as they “pack” each “bag.” When they are through, the number of squares with beans and the number of tally marks or colored squares on the worksheet should be the same.

Older students will want to cut to the chase and simply perform the long division. But one purpose of this activity is to help students see the math behind the procedure, and besides in real life, they really would be subtracting 6 cookies at a time, repeatedly, until there were no longer enough cookies to pack a bag.

They should have 28 bags with 5 cookies left over. Some older students already know that the “real” answer is 28 and 5/6, or maybe 28.83 or ... depending on what decisions they make. Some will be sure that the answer is 29 because they learned to round somewhere along the way. Some of them may believe an answer with a remainder (as in 28 R5) is juvenile, and not as good an answer as some of the other possibilities. Students must always be reminded that math is the servant, not the master.

Later in the activity students will see that the “juvenile” answer is the most useful answer.

Once they have determined the answer, it is time to revisit the standard algorithm with a variation. Rewrite the division problem like this:




The green lines show the place value columns. In a class discussion, we establish that a 2 goes above the 7, not because 6 goes into 17 twice, but because the 7 is in the tens’ place, 6 is going into 170 (17 tens) 20 times. The 2 is really a twenty. Students need to be reminded continually what the numerals really signify as they complete calculations. Otherwise, students are merely manipulating abstract, meaningless symbols.

Because we are writing the division problem with Arabic numerals, naturally each digit and its columns represent a place value. Since 6 roundly goes into 170 twenty times, meaning we can show 20 repeated subtractions in one step, we write a 20, not a 2, over the 173. Since we have filled 20 bags at once with 6 cookies per bag, we have removed or subtracted 20 x 6, or 120 cookies from the platter. We show this very concrete action by subtracting 120 from 173, leaving 53 cookies on the platter. We remove enough cookies to fill eight more bags, that is 48 cookies, leaving 5 cookies on the platter, not enough to fill a bag. We needed 28 bags.

Although not “wrong,” 28 and 5/6, 28.833, 28.83 or 29 have no practical utility in this scenario. Students will have an easier time evaluating the reasonableness of an answer if they are encouraged to keep the context and the numbers together. When they round to 29, they are saying 29 what? 29 bags. By the end of the activity, it should be clear that 5/6 of a bag is not helpful and that typical rounding serves no useful purpose. I require students to write their answers in complete English sentences. The answer to this problem is not “28,” or even “28 bags,” but something like “we needed 28 bags to pack the cookies.”

The finished problem would look like this:






The format looks a little different than the standard algorithm, but the significance of place value is preserved. This type of format did not have a name when I first started using it, or perhaps I mistakenly thought at the time that it was an innovation of my own. I was little surprised when the format began appearing in textbooks as “scaffolding.”

Incidentally, at every opportunity we should insist that students read numerals correctly. Simply reading numerals correctly can prevent confusion. “And” marks the spot between “wholes” and “parts.” Although the answers with fractional parts served no real purpose in this activity, of course there are other contexts where the fractional part is important. In any case, some of the other possible answers would be read “twenty eight and five-sixths,” “twenty eight and eighty three hundredths.” I would use “twenty eight point eight three” only for dictation purposes, not for mathematical purposes.