Teach And Learn

Implementation

The recent report from RAND entitled "Evaluating Comprehensive School Reform Models at Scale" highlights a facinating finding that really ought to get lots of attention. Making things work in schools is a difficult, messy business. Well designed interventions--from the ones highlighted in this report, to new mathematics or science programs, to others--are really difficult to implement well, and that has negative effects on their success.

So what's to do? Certainly focus on leadership development, but also establish clear metrics and mechanisms to collect data about how implementation is going, so that mid-course corrections can be applied before it's too late. Focusing on the fidelity of an enactment is really important, and I'd argue that most school systems don't have the organization or the business processes in place to do that well.

Fuzzy Policy, Not "Fuzzy Math"

Jere Confrey's commentary about mathematics improvement in Education Week (Fuzzy Policy, Not 'Fuzzy Math,' Is the Problem) should go a long way towards reframing the debate about mathematics performance in the country and what we should do about it. Confrey reminds the math-phobic journalists and policy agitators that the new NCTM Focal Points wasn't a dramatic shift anywhere and that the polarization within the mathematics education community doesn't get us anywhere. Her seven recommendations describe how we can "reject the long-standing federal neglect of the instructional core: the curriculum, pedagogy, and formative assessments that make up everyday classroom practices in K-12 math." Hear, hear.

Atlas Of Science Literacy, Part 2

Congratulations to the folks at Project 2061 for announcing that the second part of the Atlas Of Science Literacy will be available soon. The first version is a great resource for curriculum developers, one that I've used it both with my staff for curriculum selection and with NBPTS candidates looking at scope and sequences over time.

Particularly given the increasing interest in "learning progressions" in K-12 science, I expect this document to receive lots of attention. If it's anything like it's predecessor, the attention is well deserved.

Songs For A Frustrated Special Education Teacher

I love Tiny Mix Tapes. A few weeks ago, they wrote up this mix in their automatic mix tape generator.

Songs for a burned out special education teacher who became a college grad in May 2003 at a school that cost $35,000 a year and now has her hair pulled out for her by her students, cleans up shit, piss, and cum and spends the day dodging sexual advances from horny teenage boys while also attempting to avoid being punched in the face or strangled or bit by her darling cherubs after having moved to the 'burbs in a state where after 3 months she still doesn't know a soul and spend the weekends and vacations staring at the ceiling and talking to the smoke of a burning candle because she's a depressed, neurotic loser.

Ouch. "Elephant Ears" is still on my mix for the year, for sure...

Rocket Science and other Misconceptions

This MSN article entitled Is Teaching Easier than Rocket Science? (there's been other versions of this available in the past) raised some insightful dialogue in several places, particularly on the math-learn discussion list.

I particularly like this comment from John Clement. The idea about understanding student misconceptions is woefully lacking in most of our teacher preparation programs, and is a reason why even well-meaning induction and support programs can't be very successful without some focus on content.

Actually "good" teaching is harder than rocket science, and rocket scientists do not generally make good teachers. In science, engineers often make very poor teachers because they do not understand inquiry. So they teach by didactic methods only, and as a result the students never resolve their misconceptions.

Teachers need to actually have more than content specialists. They also need to know some practical psychology, have a grasp of pedagogy, and also understand student misconceptions. Teachers have to be experts in both the subject and in teaching. Unfortunately schools do not seem to understand this. They will assign teachers to subjects they have never studied, and give them types of students that they were not trained to handle.

Coke and Mentos, Redux

I just can't get enough of the Coke and Mentos phenomenon. Here's another experiment, sure to get lots of play in science fairs and classrooms all over the country. Too much time on their hands, indeed.

Data-driven To Distraction

This recent EdWeek editorial ("Data-driven to Distraction") by Andy Hargreaves has some great insights. Data-driven decision making remains essential to schools and school leadership. As a concept, however, it's quickly become incredibly misused and misunderstood. Hargreaves points that out nicely--I particularly like the like his quote that "teachers are no longer the drivers of reform, but the driven." Sadly, data has become an excuse not to think.

I see evidence of this all the time. There's the push to "analyze the data" just to find the areas that need improvement--often done using tests without discerning power between items or that measure multiple domains on items, and done in ways that involve looking a  charts and graphs without asking questions about what schools should do about them. Thanks for this dose of reality.

Who likes math?

The Brookings study about happiness in student learning is best skewered by Sara Mead at The Quick and the Ed. There's lots of great data in there, but the sense that happiness doesn't matter in teaching mathematics isn't the big idea.

Reinventing the Square Wheel

Most of District Administration is puff, but I'm finding more and more I like reading Gary Stager's columns about technology. In Reinventing the Square Wheel, he actually slams PowerPoint and most of the typical ed tech juggernaut, and he doesn't mince words: "PowerPoint sucks the oxygen out of educational computing." Congratulations--with him and Larry Cuban (his "The Laptop Revolution Has No Clothes" in EdWeek is wonderful) focusing on these issues, perhaps we'll bring a bit more strategy to the educational technology world.

Stager closes his piece with a bit on podcasting. I'm not quite as enamoured with this as an educational tool as Stager is--it's certainly great for communicating, but just creating RSS feeds of MP3s isn't going to change student achievement levels dramatically. I think of it more like websites and email lists--essential tools for doing work in the year 2006, but not something unique to teaching and learning. Focusing on the instructional core  will make the difference.

Google Teacher Academy

Looks like I'm not the only one who things that the Google Teacher Academy might be more about making converts to the Google cause than actually helping teachers and students. I mean, how hard is it to use Google in your classroom?

That said, it does seem like they might know what they're doing. Kudos to them for keeping it local in order to build community, and I lo ve the required videoclip upload as part of the application process.