Poverty and education
Posted using ShareThis
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Merit pay and math teachers
President Obama's big plan for education .... reward good teachers and remove bad ones. Great idea, Mr. President. Now ... how do you propose to implement it? How do you define a "Good Teacher" or a "Bad Teacher"?
Maybe something like this?
Good Teacher .... a teacher whose students have better test scores than they did the previous year.
Medium Teacher ... a teacher whose students show no improvement over test scores from last year.
Bad Teacher ... a teacher whose students have worse test scores than they did the previous year.
To you, Mr. President, and to the General Public, these definitions probably sound pretty good! And we should reward the Good Teachers with more money .... Fire the Bad Teachers ... and encourage the Medium Teachers to try harder to do better. Right?
The test scores we will be comparing from year to year should be the standardized tests implemented in all states due to No Child Left Behind. Right? These tests are already in place and being used to measure all kinds of things, why not use them to measure a teacher's worth?
This type of plan is doomed to fail and will only create a worsening deficit in the quality of education in our public schools. Allow me to try to explain from the point of view of a high school math teacher in Texas. This explanation itself will test my teaching skills .... let's see if you can follow along.
Say I am a High School Geometry teacher. Regular Geometry ... not Pre-AP or Honors ... just regular 10th graders taking Geometry for the first time in High School. I feel that I should teach GEOMETRY to these students.
In April of their 10th grade year, these students will take the state mandated TAKS test. The state mandated TAKS test for 10th graders tests their knowledge of Algebra I and 8th grade Math. It does NOT test their knowledge of Geometry. However .... my merit pay will be based on how my 10th graders preform on the 10th grade TAKS test.
So ... here is my quandary .... do I teach the subject I have been assigned to teach, which is Geometry, or do I teach the subjects which my students will be tested on in April, which are Algebra I and 8th grade Math?
If I teach to the test, I will not be covering the Geometry .... if I teach the geometry, I risk the chance of my students not preforming well on the State test, and that could cost me my merit pay and maybe even my job. But if I don't teach them the Geometry, when will they learn it?
The 11th grade TAKS test tests Geometry and Algebra I .... but the students are sitting in Algebra II at that time. Should their Algebra II teacher focus on teaching the Geometry to them during Algebra II? His or her merit pay will be determined by how well the 11th graders can do Geometry on the test. So who will teach these students Algebra II? And when?
I felt strongly I needed to teach Geometry to my Geometry students. My new principal felt otherwise .... she wanted higher test scores. She ordered me to teach to the TAKS test. I said NO .... she said YES ... I said I QUIT! Which is how I ended up running my own tutoring business! ((And very happy for it, thank you!)) Now I earn my Merit Pay by getting repeat business.
This is just one small example of how difficult and troublesome it would be to implement Merit Pay in Texas High schools. One tiny example.
Other issues:
Maybe something like this?
Good Teacher .... a teacher whose students have better test scores than they did the previous year.
Medium Teacher ... a teacher whose students show no improvement over test scores from last year.
Bad Teacher ... a teacher whose students have worse test scores than they did the previous year.
To you, Mr. President, and to the General Public, these definitions probably sound pretty good! And we should reward the Good Teachers with more money .... Fire the Bad Teachers ... and encourage the Medium Teachers to try harder to do better. Right?
The test scores we will be comparing from year to year should be the standardized tests implemented in all states due to No Child Left Behind. Right? These tests are already in place and being used to measure all kinds of things, why not use them to measure a teacher's worth?
This type of plan is doomed to fail and will only create a worsening deficit in the quality of education in our public schools. Allow me to try to explain from the point of view of a high school math teacher in Texas. This explanation itself will test my teaching skills .... let's see if you can follow along.
Say I am a High School Geometry teacher. Regular Geometry ... not Pre-AP or Honors ... just regular 10th graders taking Geometry for the first time in High School. I feel that I should teach GEOMETRY to these students.
In April of their 10th grade year, these students will take the state mandated TAKS test. The state mandated TAKS test for 10th graders tests their knowledge of Algebra I and 8th grade Math. It does NOT test their knowledge of Geometry. However .... my merit pay will be based on how my 10th graders preform on the 10th grade TAKS test.
So ... here is my quandary .... do I teach the subject I have been assigned to teach, which is Geometry, or do I teach the subjects which my students will be tested on in April, which are Algebra I and 8th grade Math?
If I teach to the test, I will not be covering the Geometry .... if I teach the geometry, I risk the chance of my students not preforming well on the State test, and that could cost me my merit pay and maybe even my job. But if I don't teach them the Geometry, when will they learn it?
The 11th grade TAKS test tests Geometry and Algebra I .... but the students are sitting in Algebra II at that time. Should their Algebra II teacher focus on teaching the Geometry to them during Algebra II? His or her merit pay will be determined by how well the 11th graders can do Geometry on the test. So who will teach these students Algebra II? And when?
I felt strongly I needed to teach Geometry to my Geometry students. My new principal felt otherwise .... she wanted higher test scores. She ordered me to teach to the TAKS test. I said NO .... she said YES ... I said I QUIT! Which is how I ended up running my own tutoring business! ((And very happy for it, thank you!)) Now I earn my Merit Pay by getting repeat business.
This is just one small example of how difficult and troublesome it would be to implement Merit Pay in Texas High schools. One tiny example.
Other issues:
- Teachers whose students already top out the tests and have no way to improve. Do those teachers get Merit Pay?
- Teachers who teach something besides the core curriculum subjects of Math, Science, English, and Social Studies .... do those teachers get Merit Pay?
- Teachers who are assigned non-English speakers and all the tests are in English ... will these teachers lose their jobs?
- In Texas 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grade tests are High Stakes Tests .... the students must pass them to move on. But 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th grade tests have no strings attached ... the students will be promoted regardless of their performance. Would you want your paycheck tied to the performance of a high school sophomore on a standardized test which holds nothing of value to him?
Next: More thoughts on Merit Pay and how I would LIKE to see it done.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Teacher injects mind-numbing drugs with administrators encouragment
As I mentioned in my previous article Strangers give me Fodder, I am planning to write a series of articles based on A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart.
I am not a Mathematician. I am a Math Teacher. And Lockhart makes what I do look and feel like I'm injecting mind-numbing drugs directly into my students' bloodstreams while the school administration and their parents hold them down. The kids struggle and kick and scream .... but we all calmly and passionately tell them over and over and over again that it is for their own good and they will thank us some day. And we smile and prime the syringe.
I am not a Mathematician. I am a Math Teacher. And Lockhart makes what I do look and feel like I'm injecting mind-numbing drugs directly into my students' bloodstreams while the school administration and their parents hold them down. The kids struggle and kick and scream .... but we all calmly and passionately tell them over and over and over again that it is for their own good and they will thank us some day. And we smile and prime the syringe.
And across the country my readers sigh .... "Yeesssss ... that is how it was .... that is how it is ...
"
And I feel pulled many ways .... Lockhart has put many of my own emotions into his Lament. In fact, his Lament goes a long way towards explaining why at age 45, after 22 years of classroom teaching, I couldn't take it anymore. Yet there are also several parts of the Lament I feel compelled to question. Probably the "teacher" in me vs the "mathematician" in me.
So .... without further ado .... the opening lines of A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart ...
A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are
put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.
As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures
right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”
In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out
the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”
In the higher grades the pressure is really on. After all, the students must be prepared for the standardized tests and college admissions exams. Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint. “It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college
when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. Nevertheless, it is important that every member of society be able to recognize a modulation or a fugal passage, regardless of the fact that they will never hear one. “To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. Most of
them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; they just want to take the minimum number of music courses and be done with it. I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”
Waking up in a cold sweat, the musician realizes, gratefully, that it was all just a crazy dream. “Of course!” he reassures himself, “No society would ever reduce such a beautiful and meaningful art form to something so mindless and trivial; no culture could be so cruel to its children as to deprive them of such a natural, satisfying means of human expression.
How absurd!”
Ha!! How absurd for sure!!! Lockhart also goes on to use a "paint-by-numbers vs. Art" nightmare in a similar fashion. Very well written. Very apt. Then he follows with this ....
Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being
done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soulcrushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.
Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.
Amen to that, Paul Lockhart!!! He sure knows what the students say!!! The other thing they say a lot is "when are we ever going to use this?" Sadly ... my answer to that was always .... "Well ... you'll need it to pass the standardized tests and you'll need it for your next Math class." Totally true statements on my part, but not really an answer to the real question my students were asking .... which was ... "When are we ever going to use this in our real day-to-day life in the Real World?"
Descarte's Rule of Signs? Well, you will use that whenever you are sitting around wondering what the graph of a really long high-powered polynomial looks like and you don't have a graphing calculator handy.
Cramer's Rule? Well, you will use that whenever you are working on solving a matrix equation which you created from a system of equations which you created from a real-life problem involving milk and bread and eggs and how much you spent on these 3 items on 3 different visits to the grocery store.
You get the drift ....
My thoughts on all of this tomorrow ..... feel free to comment today ...
Friday, January 02, 2009
Strangers online give me fodder for writing
Happy 2009 to Everyone!!!
I have recently had the pleasure of taking several days off from work. I did not go anywhere. No family came to visit. But I got to spend hours and hours on my computer ... one of my favorite things to do! I read and I blogged and I message-boarded and I Facebooked and I IM'ed to my heart's content. I love the Internet.
I first got the Internet in my home in 1997. And one of the tools I have had on every computer I have owned since then is Yahoo Messenger. I honestly rarely use it lately, but I always have it up and running. On Wednesday, New Year's Eve 2008, I spent almost the entire day chatting back and forth on Yahoo Messenger with a young lady from near El Paso, TX. I have never met this person, but she contacted me wanting advice on passing the Exit Level TAKS Math test. I offered her my advice and tried to sell her my product. She did not buy my product, but she did take my advice and she is now set to graduate in June 2009. Yet now it seems that whenever she has a question about Math, or about life in general, she will pop on messenger and chat with me. She is a nice girl. But she is NOT good at Math. She keeps trying and trying and trying and has for years, but she just doesn't get it. She is, however, gifted in Languages and wants to major in French and Spanish in College and become a translator. She is also curious about Japanese and Portuguese. But she is very worried about Math keeping her from her dreams.
To be honest ... so am I.
I also was contacted on Yahoo Messenger by a stranger. He wanted me to add him as a friend. Eleven years of experience on Yahoo Messenger has taught me not to add people who contact me out of the blue ... for lots of reasons. I denied him, but asked if I knew him. He tried again. I said "No" again. He tried again! He finally told me he wanted to talk Mathematics. Hmmmm .... intriguing .... I convinced him to just IM me and chat with me for awhile. Turns out he is a college student majoring in Math and he has been reading my articles and he wanted to share an article with me. We chatted for awhile and I did end up adding him as a friend.
This young man also mentioned that if he had gone to high school in Texas, he probably would not have graduated. Took him 2 tries to pass Algebra II as it was! And now he is a Math major in college? I asked him what changed and he tried to explain. He said he finally got to see the beauty of Mathematics in college. He plans to go for his Master's .... then a PhD ... and be a college professor.
He sent me the link to the article he wanted me to read. We continued to chat as I glanced at it .... 25 pages long! Yikes!! But I saved it. After we finished chatting, I read the first page and immediately knew why he thought I would be interested in the article.
I spent this afternoon working my way through the article and I have decided to do a series of my own articles based on this article. It is fascinating! I agree with parts of it and disagree with other parts ... makes good fodder for writing!
I'll start the articles this weekend. But if you would like to read the 25 page article first, here is the link .... http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas .... or Hanukkah ... or Winter Solstice Celebration .... and I wish everyone a very happy 2009!
I have recently had the pleasure of taking several days off from work. I did not go anywhere. No family came to visit. But I got to spend hours and hours on my computer ... one of my favorite things to do! I read and I blogged and I message-boarded and I Facebooked and I IM'ed to my heart's content. I love the Internet.
I first got the Internet in my home in 1997. And one of the tools I have had on every computer I have owned since then is Yahoo Messenger. I honestly rarely use it lately, but I always have it up and running. On Wednesday, New Year's Eve 2008, I spent almost the entire day chatting back and forth on Yahoo Messenger with a young lady from near El Paso, TX. I have never met this person, but she contacted me wanting advice on passing the Exit Level TAKS Math test. I offered her my advice and tried to sell her my product. She did not buy my product, but she did take my advice and she is now set to graduate in June 2009. Yet now it seems that whenever she has a question about Math, or about life in general, she will pop on messenger and chat with me. She is a nice girl. But she is NOT good at Math. She keeps trying and trying and trying and has for years, but she just doesn't get it. She is, however, gifted in Languages and wants to major in French and Spanish in College and become a translator. She is also curious about Japanese and Portuguese. But she is very worried about Math keeping her from her dreams.
To be honest ... so am I.
I also was contacted on Yahoo Messenger by a stranger. He wanted me to add him as a friend. Eleven years of experience on Yahoo Messenger has taught me not to add people who contact me out of the blue ... for lots of reasons. I denied him, but asked if I knew him. He tried again. I said "No" again. He tried again! He finally told me he wanted to talk Mathematics. Hmmmm .... intriguing .... I convinced him to just IM me and chat with me for awhile. Turns out he is a college student majoring in Math and he has been reading my articles and he wanted to share an article with me. We chatted for awhile and I did end up adding him as a friend.
This young man also mentioned that if he had gone to high school in Texas, he probably would not have graduated. Took him 2 tries to pass Algebra II as it was! And now he is a Math major in college? I asked him what changed and he tried to explain. He said he finally got to see the beauty of Mathematics in college. He plans to go for his Master's .... then a PhD ... and be a college professor.
He sent me the link to the article he wanted me to read. We continued to chat as I glanced at it .... 25 pages long! Yikes!! But I saved it. After we finished chatting, I read the first page and immediately knew why he thought I would be interested in the article.
I spent this afternoon working my way through the article and I have decided to do a series of my own articles based on this article. It is fascinating! I agree with parts of it and disagree with other parts ... makes good fodder for writing!
I'll start the articles this weekend. But if you would like to read the 25 page article first, here is the link .... http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas .... or Hanukkah ... or Winter Solstice Celebration .... and I wish everyone a very happy 2009!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
