Educational issues affecting San Mateo, CA (and others too!)
Today, 3/21/2018, my article Pros and Cons of the CPM Math Textbook Series became the most read article on my blog at over 1,040 views surpassing number two It’s AP ex(sc)am time again! currently at 1.020 views. The CPM article is getting on average over 12 views per day from around the country. It appears that parent groups are going to their local school boards and rebelling against this curriculum in multiple locations around the U.S.
Democracy is still alive in our country!
A couple of days ago I reblogged Diane Ravitch’s article highlighting how the California State Board of Education was taken over by charter proponents. Now here is an article about how Ohio’s School Board is under attack by politicians associated with an online learning company accused of fraud.
Stephen Dyer, a former legislator and currently a fellow at think tank Innovation Ohio, wonders why the state of Ohio is considering legislation to have the state dissolve the state board of education. He wonders if the move is payback for meddling with the fraudulent practices of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which rewarded legislators for favoring ECOT and ignoring its inflated enrollments. Is it mere coincidence that five of the eight sponsors of the legislation received generous gifts from the owner of ECOT?
Be sure to read Dyer’s testimony to the legislature on HB 512 and why it should be dropped.
Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, writes that HB 512 is an outrage and is unconstitutional.
“HB 512 is an affront to the Ohio Constitution-a change in governance of the State Education agency must be submitted to Ohioans on a statewide ballot
“HB…
View original post 201 more words
What educators know about the AP course system but are reluctant to tell parents.
We must take action to stop educational experiments on our children.
An important warning from Diane Ravitch about how the CA State Board of Education is overruling local districts and forcing charter schools upon them that they do not want. This drains funds and sometimes facility space from local schools.
The link behind the text “testified to a State Senate Committee on Education” below is to a YouTube video of Professor Heilig’s testimony at the State Capitol. Among the highlights: “At about 40%, the CA Board of Education has the highest charter failure rate of any level of authorizer in CA since 2001.” and, regarding Betsy Devos’ experiment in Michigan, “More than 80% of charters there are for-profit which has led to the Great Lakes State dropping to one of the lowest performing states in the nation!“
Julian Vasquez Heilig testified to a State Senate Committee on Education about why charters should be held accountable and be transparent. As chair of the California NAACP Committee on Education, he cites the findings of the national NAACP, which recommended banning for-profit charters and requiring that all charters be authorized ONLY by the local school district, to be sure that they meet local needs instead of replacing public schools.
Yesterday, the State Board of Education approved two KIPP charters for districts that had rejected them. In California, a charter school can be rejected by the local board, rejected by the county board, and appeal to the state board, which was packed with charter supporters by charter-friendly Governor Jerry Brown.
At the charter hearing, Angela Der Ramos, the CTA State Board liaison for the Dr. Oscar F. Loya Elementary School, said:
KIPP is trying to muscle their way into the SF School…
View original post 182 more words
The public deserves better notification and input into major changes in the math and science curricula.
[ UPDATE on 3/5/2018: The letter below has led to some important contacts, and I hope to provide additional information to the public by the end of this week. ]
In our global economy, especially here in the Silicon Valley area, our children’s future and the future of our economy depends on strong training in mathematics and science. These are the prerequisites for most technical fields.
Unfortunately, California has a checkered history of curriculum experimentation and this has impacted our local schools.
As I indicated previously on my blog, the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) is undergoing a major revision of the non-AP science courses this year, and I am personally seeing the disruption that this causes for some of my students.
As just one example, more students than in prior years have been encouraged to take AP Physics (which is supposed to be algebra-based college level physics) before they have had a good high school level physics class. As a consequence, the Aragon H.S. physics teacher has five AP physics classes this year, no classes using Aragon’s previously excellent regular physics curriculum, while the Aragon AP chemistry teacher has been tasked with putting together a new regular physics class at Aragon in collaboration with other district teachers.
This was done in an attempt to implement the Next Generation Science Standards even though there are no textbooks available that are aligned to those standards. These changes are also impacting the other regular science courses in addition to physics.
As another example of bad consequences for kids, the San Mateo – Foster City School District (SMFCSD) tried to implement the “Everyday Mathematics” program for several years and then abandoned it a few years back. This program was supposedly “highly researched,” but when I personally looked into the research studies tabulated in the U.S. Department of Education’s “What Works” database, every single one of the studies was flagged as being statistically flawed. However, a single study pointed “in the right direction” and the textbook publisher took that fumble and stretched it into a touchdown! I have to wonder if any of the people involved in the curriculum evaluation took the time to examine the “research!”
Every time this happens, children suffer.
They suffer particularly when the mathematics curriculum is disrupted because each subsequent school year clearly depends upon the knowledge gained previously.
I am requesting that both local districts take no further action on major curriculum shifts in math and science without first sending out email or other notifications to parents that such changes are under consideration.
I have served previously on local school committees and know that putting these items solely on Board agendas does not insure that the issues will receive the recognition and public discussion that they deserve. The obviousness of this fact is plain to anyone who looks at the lengthy Board meeting agendas on the local district websites.
Furthermore such agenda items are often relegated to the end of lengthy meetings that deal with routine district business. This requires parents to sit through a couple of hours of discussions irrelevant to their concerns before they can discuss issues that may have major impacts on their children!
As one parent said to me recently about the school systems, “They just wear you down” and make people give up. Also if they do not like your opinion, one is often met with stony silence.
Regarding the SMUHSD science changes, I have met in person with both the Director of Curriculum and Assessment and later with Superintendent Skelly as I wrote previously on my blog.
Members of the SMUHSD Board have remained conspicuously silent for the last two weeks despite my having directed emails to them about this topic (I have also copied the SMFCSD Board).
Perhaps they have “public meeting” Brown Act concerns about replying to me, but the Board’s own Bylaws clearly state that “Individual contacts or conversations between a Board member and any other person are not subject to the Brown Act. (Government Code 54952.2)”
I would still like to know directly from Board members what they thought was the rationale for making this science curriculum change without the availability of a standards-aligned textbook.
As I stated previously after my conversation with Superintendent Skelly (and I emphasize that it was a cordial discussion), I left the meeting with the feeling that, once again, this train has left the station and there is no way to recall it.
My ongoing purpose is therefore to try to ensure that these kind of decisions do not happen again without greater public scrutiny.
PLEASE, make sure that all parents in the both the SMUHSD and SMFCSD are notified by email or regular mail if another major curriculum change is contemplated, especially in mathematics.
Our children are more than test statistics to be used to illustrate progress for the local districts. I see their problems one-on-one, face-to-face on a daily basis. I just wish that others could do so as well; perhaps that would put an end to this.
This article was originally published on 3/5/2016 on our local Nextdoor newsfeed, but I refer to it so much that I am reposting it here.
In the June 11, 2012 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Jill Tucker, the Chronicle’s education reporter, wrote a front page article about the Common Core standards.
http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/…
In the article, she talked about the ongoing standards debate and quoted the following official:
“Is it still necessary for kids to learn their times table when they can pick up their iPhone and ask Siri what is 20 times 2?” asked Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.
That was almost four years ago, but I have never forgotten this quote.
Wondering how people with such ideas rise to positions of influence, I looked up Mr. Domenech’s resume on the web (http://www.aasa.org/DanDomenech.aspx) and found out that he had taught 6th grade before moving into school administration and eventually on to his national position. His work also included time working for McGraw Hill, a major textbook publisher and the force behind the Everyday Mathematics program. Once again we see the incestuous relationship between the publishing industry and the educational establishment…
In an earlier article in my series I described a similar situation in our local schools when the San Mateo Foster City School District (SMFCSD) decided to stop grading for spelling when my oldest daughter was in 5th grade (around 1996). The given reason was that everyone has spelling checkers on their computers and thus memorizing spelling words was no longer important! Clearly this kind of thinking is seriously impacting our education system.
When I taught in San Francisco, I remember catching a student using Google during a computerized math assessment test to look up the answer to 5 x 3!
Clearly there is a perverse logic to Mr. Domenech’s position as my San Francisco student demonstrated. It IS true that students can use calculators to do basic arithmetic. However, had Mr. Domenech ever taught algebra, he might have realized that the first method of solving quadratic equations, such as x^2 + 12x + 36 = 0, is called “factoring” and requires that a student be able to find two numbers that, for example, multiply together to give 36 and add together to give 12. At this point students who never learned their arithmetic facts are seriously hobbled. They can plink away on their calculator buttons for a long time to no avail, and thus they fail math. Thank you, Mr. Domenech, and thanks to similar people of influence in the education establishment.
But wait? Aren’t there computer algebra systems that can solve these quadratic problems? Yes, there are. However, if we follow this line of reasoning to its end, we will end up learning nothing. Eventually machines will do everything for us, leaving us free to enjoy the pleasures of eating and procreating.
But that’s too cynical! Won’t machines free us from drudgery and allow us to do more creative work? Yes, if they are used correctly. But to be creative, one must develop *new* ideas or art forms. If one has no idea about what is already known or has already been done, then every kindergarten crayon drawing is judged to be the Mona Lisa. True creativity requires mastery of a body of knowledge. This has always been judged to be our uniquely human attribute, and we should not abandon it!
Besides perverse battles over technology such as the above, teaching methods also lead to educational battles. In math there is the ongoing struggle between frequent practice advocates versus “spiraling” used in Everyday Mathematics and the CPM high school math series. Instead of synthesizing the best from both approaches, these methods often turn in to either/or partisan battles. Practice is derided as “drill and kill” by spiraling advocates, and spiraling advocates ask for “patience” when students are not retaining newly learned skills using their methods. Students will supposedly learn the material later.
Once again, why can’t we rely on common sense?? If students are immediately forgetting material, the teacher clearly needs to have them practice it more. However, it is always a good idea to reinforce previously learned material by coming back to it at a later time. We all know both of these issues from our own learning experience. The problems really result from trying to cover too much material during a school year. “Spiraling” lets one forge ahead with the promise that “students will get it later.”
Unfortunately, advocates on both sides usually can not say when beneficial practice transitions to “drill and kill” or what is the best division of time between current topic practice versus spiraling back to older topics. This decision can *not* be codified much to the dismay of school administrators. It clearly requires a skilled teacher using their best judgment regarding the needs of the students in his/her class. In my opinion, understanding the material should have priority over sticking to a curriculum schedule.
Clearly we need to purge our education system of ridiculous ideas. If someone in authority advocates ideas such as those mentioned in the Chronicle article above, teachers reviewing the proposed curriculum changes AND parents need to speak up immediately and demand to see supporting evidence. Do NOT settle for vague references to “research,” but demand that anyone advocating a new school program be able to back it up by presenting solid evidence of its effectiveness. As I have shown in this series, often these ideas have been promoted based on shoddy research which no one questions and which is often conducted by people with a financial interest in the outcome.
As an example, the “Research Brochure” for Everyday Mathematics states on p. 8, ”The U.S. Department of Education What Works ClearinghouseTM (WWC) recognizes Everyday Mathematics as the most effective core elementary mathematics program in the country.” However, when one goes to the Dept. of Education website one finds that they reviewed 92 studies, none met statistical standards, only one was partially acceptable, but even it did not show a statistically significant improvement!!
(Note added on 3/1/2018 – this article was originally written two years ago; returning to this Dept. of Education link today shows that only 34 studies total are listed in the database. I am certain about the original number of 92 cited above in 2016 and believe that the bulk of those studies must have been dropped from the database!!! Nonetheless, the conclusion remains true that there is still only one study recognized as having “Substantively important positive effects found.” This remains below the higher standard of “statistically significant positive effects” used by the WWC.)
Remember, if a proposal seems radical and disagrees with common sense, the burden of proof should be on the person proposing the curriculum change, but it seems that too often in education we bow to authority based on the name of some School of Education that did the “research” without ever looking at the details of the study ourselves. We then reap the rewards of our laziness.
To be honest, I was not involved in the Everyday Mathematics program implementation in the SMFCSD, so I do not know for certain whether it is being abandoned due to defects in the program or due to problems with its implementation. Unfortunately, too often there is minimal time for professional development for teachers, so I would expect that implementation issues will *always* be part of the problem in any curriculum change.
(ASIDE – I would NOT advocate making room for more professional development by making the school year even shorter; we should raise teachers salaries by paying them to get this training **during the summer.**)
When I returned to teaching, I frequently collected high school teachers’ opinions on why so many students were struggling with math. High school teachers were often frustrated because, by the time the students were their responsibility, their math foundations were already shot. As in other professions, teachers are hesitant to criticize their colleagues, but, the opinion that I heard most often (usually expressed in hushed tones) was that they thought too many elementary school teachers did not have adequate training to teach mathematics properly.
Should we be surprised? I would think that most elementary school teachers choose the profession primarily because they enjoy working with young children, not because their passion is math and they have a burning desire to teach it to six year olds.
So how do we resolve this issue? I moved from Massachusetts to California in 1963 in 5th grade. In Massachusetts, we studied French, but Spanish was the foreign language taught in California’s elementary schools. Our 5th grade teacher did not know Spanish, so we had a daily lesson that we watched on TV (I still remember this lesson being interrupted by a news flash that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas). There was also a roving native Spanish-speaking teacher who came to our classes every few weeks.
If we have trouble training all of our elementary teachers in mathematics education, why can’t we train roving math specialists who go into each class daily for the math lesson of the day? Of course, money is probably the objection. We always seem to approve bond issues for new buildings, but buildings do not teach our kids. I am not an expert in school finance law, but is the system so hog-tied that there is no way to raise money to pay for such people? Instead we seem to be caught up in a never-ending battle to find the next magic textbook that will fix the problem. Meanwhile the publishers keep laughing all the way to the bank.
