Race to the Top

[PassedOut]

Conservative columnist David Brooks thinks Obama is doing at least one thing right: The Quiet Revolution

 

When Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to office, they created a $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund. The idea was to use money to leverage change. The administration would put a pile of federal money on the table and award it to a few states that most aggressively embraced reform.

 

Their ideas were good, and their speeches were beautiful. But that was never the problem. The real challenge was going to be standing up to the teachers’ unions and the other groups that have undermined nearly every other reform effort.

 

The real questions were these: Would the administration water down their reform criteria in the face of political pressure? Would the Race to the Top money end up getting doled out like any other federal spending program, and thus end up subsidizing the status quo? Would the administration hold the line and demand real reform in exchange for the money?

 

There were many reasons to be skeptical. At the behest of the teachers’ unions, the Democrats had just shut down a successful District of Columbia voucher program. Moreover, state legislatures around the country were moving backward. They were passing laws prohibiting schools from using student performance as a criterion in setting teacher pay.

 

But, so far, those fears are unjustified. The news is good. In fact, it’s very good. Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform.

One of the huge long-term problems on Obama's plate is raising US educational standards, and that is vital to reversing the decline the US is experiencing in many areas. This will take many years but, like infrastructure improvements, will pay off big time in the future.

 

Pulling our own sons out of school to teach them at home was a big decision and necessitated a big family commitment, but Constance and I determined that it had to be done. Not everyone is in a position to do that, though, and the education of our nation's children should not depend upon chance factors like where they live or who their parents are.

[mike777]

Side note.

 

 

During the 1800's and up to about 1970 or so teaching was one of the few jobs really smart women could go into.

 

I dont recall the exact numbers but roughly 40% of teachers scored in the top 10% in school since then this number has fallen to around 7% today.

 

Also note Hawaii just agreed with its local teacher's union to cancel school on almost all Fridays.

[kenberg]

It's my view that the sort of things that can be tested on standardized exams is only a small portion of an education. However, we have reached such a sorry state thatI concede that we need these. There are some basics that do need to be learned, if for no other reason to not make you look to others like a complete fool.

 

I suppose my skepticism of tests is somewhat self-protective. Two experiences:

 

In around seventh grade I was given a multiple choice IQ exam in school, graded electronically. At the end of the exam the teacher said "please turn in your special pencils that you used to record your answers" . Oops. I wonder if they have a category; Too stupid to use the correct pencil.

 

 

As a young adult, I bought a book by the psychologist Hans Eysenck called "know Your Own IQ" OK, I'll try again. It had, as I recall, several different exams and the reader was instructed not to score any of them until he had taken all of them. That devoted I was not but I took the first one. I scored it, and it suggested that I consider a career in semi-skilled labor. Instead I considered not taking any more IQ tests.

 

Anyway, improvement in education is desperately needed.

[blackshoe]

I'm not sure that IQ tests measure anything useful. Seems to me they make too many assumptions. :P

[Winstonm]

I'm not sure that IQ tests measure anything useful. Seems to me they make too many assumptions. :P

The people I have met in my life that could embarrass me with their intelligence also happened to have extremely high IQs. Those people who seemed slower or dimwitted invariably had low IQs. I doubt these occurrences are coincidental, and what they test is problem solving ability.

 

It doesn't take much intelligence to invade a smaller, weaker country; understanding whether or not you should is problem solving.

[kenberg]

I have a great idea for a test. Someone writes a sentence, for example "I had a hamburger for lunch" and we see how many posts are required to convert the topic to a discussion of US military action.

[luke warm]

:)

[kenberg]

A further thought or two.

 

At the risk of embarrassing Fred, I regard his Bridgemaster deals as far superior to any of the software I have seen that is intended to help students learn mathematics. I have some thoughts about why this is so.

 

 

In Bridgemaster, the assumption is that the person using it wishes to improve his bridge skills. Of course, you might say. Consider public schools. Once you set an educational standard, for example you decide that all high school students must learn algebra to get a diploma, then you have to a large extent lost the strong position of presumption of interest. "That's too hard." "Why do I have to learn this?" "Where will I ever use this?" And so on. BUT! Not everyone is disinterested. What is really needed is some software a la Bridgemaster that would cater to those who have made a decision that they really want to get good at this stuff. For example, when I was in hs I reported my algebra II book as lost because there was material in it that was not covered ni the course and I wanted to finish it myself over the summer. I also sat in on a physics class at the university that summer, and then during the school year Paul Rosenbloom gave Saturday lectures on mathematics for interested hs school students. I was not the only nut case interested in such things, and there needs to be support for this group as well if we are really going to race to the top. Standards, and the usual support structure for meeting standards, are not relevant to these kids. My granddaughter, for example, met the Maryland high school mathematics standards when she was in seventh grade. She is at quite a good public school but not every kid is, and not every bright kid interested in mathematics (or physics or poetry) is at a good school. Some resources would be beneficial.

 

 

Race to the top needs to have many aspects to it. The large group of semi-literate high school graduates presents a problem needing to be addressed but if we are to be competitive in the world, the needs and opportunities relevant to other groups must be addressed as well.

[PassedOut]

In Bridgemaster, the assumption is that the person using it wishes to improve his bridge skills. Of course, you might say. Consider public schools. Once you set an educational standard, for example you decide that all high school students must learn algebra to get a diploma, then you have to a large extent lost the strong position of presumption of interest. "That's too hard."  "Why do I have to learn this?"  "Where will I ever use this?" And so on. BUT! Not everyone is disinterested. What is really needed is some software a la Bridgemaster that would cater to those who have made a decision that they really want to get good at this stuff. For example, when I was in hs I reported my algebra II book as lost because there was material in it that was not covered ni the course and I wanted to finish it myself over the summer. I also sat in on a physics class at the university that summer, and then during the school year Paul Rosenbloom gave Saturday lectures on mathematics for interested hs school students. I was not the only nut case interested in such things, and there needs to be support for this group as well if we are really going to race to the top. Standards, and the usual support structure for meeting standards, are not relevant to these kids. My granddaughter, for example, met the Maryland high school mathematics standards when she was in seventh grade. She is at quite a good public school but not every kid is, and not every bright kid interested in mathematics (or physics or poetry) is at a good school. Some resources would be beneficial.

These observations really struck a chord with me.

 

Although I always got good grades (in our family bringing home anything less than an A was a very uncomfortable experience), I didn't really get excited about school until my sophomore geometry class. The idea of constructing proofs appealed to me so tremendously that I read each chapter of the text over and over and completed even the exercises that were unassigned.

 

That experience really changed my outlook toward education. Somehow it clicked that I was responsible for my own education and that teachers, professors, and books were resources that I could use for my own purposes.

 

With my sons, I saw the same thing, and of course the internet was an additional resource for them. My oldest son loves history and politics. My middle son loves drawing, painting, and 3-D graphics. My youngest son co-authored a book on computer programming at age 14 and was written up in Microsoft's employee newsletter. During our home schooling days, our main challenge was finding ways to teach our sons the subjects outside of their all-consuming interests.

 

Also, I also love Bridgemaster and always recommend it to my bridge playing friends. It's like the AutoBridge deals that I used to learn bridge, but on steroids.

[mycroft]

I think that one of the things that needs to be taught (but isn't, because the writers of the textbooks and the teachers already have that, by nature or otherwise) is why we're teaching what we are.

 

In school, yeah, the curriculum is fixed and you are taught what is needed for you to learn, whether you like it, or want to, or not. But "why do I have to learn this?" and "when would I ever need this?" are questions that can be answered, and if they are, successfully, "It's too hard" becomes less likely.

 

In Math, we do word problems, and people trip over them (they can do 52/2 = 12 . 2 + x, but they can't do "how many more biweekly payments are there in a year than twice-a-month paychecks?") That's *intended* to answer the above questions - to show that there is actually a reason why we're teaching this abstract stuff, and to teach how to convert from the real-world problem to the abstracted world. In my experience, we utterly fail at both, and that's because "isn't it obvious?" Well, no.

 

As far as Bridgemaster goes, the other thing about it is that the evaluation is private. I'm much more willing to make mistakes, especially ones that after explanation seem stupid, if only the computer is going to know.

[Winstonm]

I don't think this is helping educational standards:

(Military) Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft.

[MattieShoe]

When I was in school, I noticed something... My classmates could READ, but they weren't... fluent? It was like watching people trying to listen to a foreign language, where they're internally translating it to the language they're comfortable with in order to process it. And I think part of the reason is because schools emphasize quality over quantity.

 

And the quality they pick is wildly unsuitable! All Quiet on the Western Front may be a classic, but you totally lose the dichotomy between the front lines and the home time when you read it ten pages at a time across 18 weeks. They had us read Animal Farm in 7th grade. 7th graders don't know enough Russian history to understand the allusions to Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. They don't know Boxer was a reference to the Boxer rebellion, or what the proletariat is. It's just a story about talking animals to your average 7th grader. And Shakespeare! The guy's plays are amazing, but they're PLAYS. There's a rhythm and feeling to them that's meant to be heard and seen, and it's totally lost when kids are sounding them out word by word, struggling to even find the surface meaning of the prose. These may be compelling to adults with a lifetime of experience and knowledge, but to kids, they're just a chore. And Dickens! Oh my lord, I LOVE to read and I STILL hate Dickens. I think adults pick these books to impress each other.

 

I learned to read with the same kid books as everybody else, but I got "fluent" reading a berjillion crappy hardy boys novels. They have no literary value whatsoever, but the practice they gave me was invaluable. From there, I moved on to pulp sci fi and fantasy. It wasn't WHAT I was reading, it was that I was reading a LOT. With all those hours of practice behind me, I could read books without sounding them out. With a huge library of pulp in my brain, I could read significant works and identify themes and symbolism without painfully piecing it together. I could recognize when the author is using a utopia/dystopia comparisons, or that this represents a coming of age, and that represents a loss of innocence, whatever. It wasn't Shakespeare or Chaucer or Steinbeck that gave me this, it was the hundreds of pulp novels I read.