Fourth grade math scores on NAEP, called “the nation’s report card,” rose from 238 to 240 from 2005 to 2007, while 8th grade performance climbed from 279 to 281, both on a 500-point scale. The 2007 NAEP results were released today.
Those gains continued an overall upward trend in NAEP math scores in both grades that dates to the early 1990s, while reading scores have been more stagnant over that time. While the gains in math were smaller than in some previous testing cycles, they were still statistically significant, as were the increases in reading.
“It shows that the public attention to math instruction and professional development of teachers is having a positive impact,” said James Rubillo, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, in Reston, Va. The movement for stronger standards that dates to the 1980s “has brought math and reading to the forefront of attention,” he said.
In reading, the subject that has seen the greatest investment of federal and state education spending over the past several years, 4th graders’ scores have risen from 219 to 221, also on a 500-point scale, since 2005. Eighth graders’ average mark increased from 262 to 263, which was a statistically significant gain, though that test score dipped slightly from the NAEP reading test given five years ago.
Two point gains on a 500 point scale sound measly to me. That’s less than 1%, after five years of a program that should have produced much more significant gains.
Is the No Child Left Behind Act badly misnamed?
Perhaps, instead of spending money on testing and forcing teachers to teach to the test or else, we should try putting some money into getting the best teachers, by providing significant pay raises, and put more money into providing the resources teachers need to make their classrooms successful — books, projectors, software, film, video, grading machines, classroom tools, classroom supplies (paper and pencils), preparation time, and parental involvement.
<hoax>In other Tennessee news, the legislature is debating whether to call a shovel a “spade,” or to call it a “rake.” One side says it doesn’t matter what you call it, so long as you call it something other than what it is. One legislator made a long, impassioned speech against “a rake’s progress,” saying it isn’t mentioned in the Bible. </hoax>
It the occasionally peculiar language of Utah politics, it’s a desperate move, intentionally below the belt, in hopes of crippling the opposition so a win by default must be declared, even over the foul.
A conservative think tank is distributing a lengthy essay on the history of education in Utah that implies that if Mormons don’t vote in favor of the state’s school voucher law that they could face cultural extinction.
The “conservative think tank” is the Sutherland Institute (SI), which would be a far-right wing group in most other places. SI published a 40-page brief in favor of the Utah voucher plan, and its director, Paul Mero, is on the road in Utah speaking before every Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce and gathering of checkers players he can find. An excerpt appears at their website, and this appears to be the subject of the current controversy.
Education is one of the key values of the Latter-day Saints Church (LDS or Mormon). “Knowledge is the glory of God,” reads one inscription on a gate leading to the church’s flagship school in Provo, Brigham Young University (BYU). Schools were always among the first things built in new Mormon settlements. The University of Utah — originally the University of Deseret — is the oldest public university west of the Missouri, founded in 1850. Mormons take pride in their getting of education, and in the education establishments they’ve created.
Mero’s argument is that the Mormons were forced to give up their private schools for public schools in the anti-polygamy controversies leading up to Utah statehood in 1896. This is a weak hook upon which to hang the voucher campaign. He’s trying to appeal to Mormons who worry about government interference in religion.
The foundations of his argument do not hold up well. “[LDS] Church spokesman Mark N. Tuttle issued a two-sentence response to the essay, saying the church hasn’t taken a position on school vouchers,” the AP article notes.
Utah’s voucher program is the standard vampire voucher structure, taking money away from public schools in favor of private and sectarian schools, and not putting any new money into public schooling. When the Utah legislature passed the program, public opposition was so strong that a petition to put in on the ballot as a referendum captured a record number of signatures in a record period of time.
More to come, certainly.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In old western movies, the bad guys would try to get their way by stampeding the cattle herd of the good guys, knowing that the least that would happen is a lot of destruction, even if they couldn’t exactly control the stampede. Destruction, even mindless destruction, is good for bad guys — in the movies.
I’m not sure why that image popped into my mind this morning. I was reading about the vouchers election campaign in Utah, and then I was looking around the Strong American Schools (SAS) website (“ED in ’08”).
What’s the most-often stated reason for vouchers in Utah? Somehow, the schools are failing.
Which state in the U.S. has the highest graduation rates? At 84% of students graduating from high school, Utah leads the nation in that category. New Jersey is #2 at 80%, and most other states lag 10 to 20 points behind.
What are the Utah voucher advocates using to show “failing schools” when the state leads the nation in graduation?
If Utah leads the nation in graduation, with per capita spending on students in schools ranking near the bottom of the states over the last decade or three, what factor is pulling students from least spending to best graduation? It’s probably the teachers.
Excuse me while I wonder: Why are Utah voters (and the rest of us) in this hand basket, and where are we going in such a damned hurry?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
What would your ideal classroom have in it, especially with regard to technology? Brian Smith wants you to tell him what you need, and what you want, and what you dream about — here, and here.
Pushing the corporation’s training into the 21st century, almost two decades ago for AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines and SABRE (which has been split off subsequently), a group of us in the future-looking department benchmarked corporate and academic training and education. One of our trips took us to IBM’s training center in White Plains, New York — IBM then being considered rather the leader in corporate training and education (running neck and neck with Arthur Andersen; tempus fugit, o tempora, o mores).
IBM put us through a wringer designed to make us think hard. For one example, they asked us why we weren’t benchmarking our own pilot training, which they had benchmarked a few years earlier. Pilot training at airlines in the U.S. was the best in the world, one fellow noted: You hire people who already know how to do the job well, and you have the pick of the best; you train them in simulators and in an intense classroom situations; then when they go to the job, they have trained people behind them to make sure they do it all right; then you call them back every year to refresh with the latest technologies. (Most other training at airlines still is not up to the pilot training standards, which is good for safety as far as pilots are concerned; aircraft mainenance is close behind. One gets an appreciation for true concern about safety when studying that process. But I digress.)
Some people would say the Texas State Board of Education is “troubled,” or maybe even (that journalistic clichéd kiss of death) “besieged.”
The agency it oversees, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), has a director whose term is expired, the agency has taken hits from almost every daily newspaper in Texas for cheating scandals on the state achievement tests which have been roundly ignored by the agency. The legislature voted to eliminate the Board’s showpiece tests, substituting tests that will have TEA personnel scrambling to make ready, and the legislators didn’t send enough money to buy all the textbooks the agency is obligated to purchase under the Texas Constitution. Meanwhile, Texas kids fall farther behind kids in other states. One member of the board is on the lam after refusing to answer a subpoena to a grand jury investigating whether he actually resides in the district he represents as required by law (he keeps a cot near his office in the district, but spends most time at his farm, outside his district — the farm where he claims residency for homestead purposes under Texas property tax law). Statistics out last week show Texas leads the nation in pregnancies among kids of school age, and a study shows that abstinence-only programs, pushed by TEA, are to blame for high out-of-wedlock-teen pregnancy rates.
But that’s just “business as usual” for the top education agency in Texas for most of the last decade or so. Many Texans might have been disappointed, but none were surprised when Gov. Rick Perry appointed Bryan, Texas, dentist Don McLeroy to be chairman of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).
McLeroy’s politics sometimes appear to the right of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s education policies for the state of Georgia in 1864. McLeroy stared at Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and a letter from four other Texas Nobel winners in biological sciences, all of them urging high academic standards for Texas students, and McLeroy voted instead against including evolution in textbooks, in 2003, and for including language pushing intelligent design. Someone, often alleged to be McLeroy, then telephoned publishers and warned them to tone down evolution and play up intelligent design in a fit of sore losership (no investigation was ever conducted). A “great quote” at McLeroy’s website explains (from Paul Johnson, End of Intellectuals):
The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that scepticism.
Is it true that a survey shows more teenagers know the names of the Three Stooges than know the three branches of government?
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra O’Connor warned the National Governors Association that lack of education — ignorance — threatens justice in the U.S. According to the Detroit News:
O’Connor said growing disrespect for judges and erosion of independence of the judicial branch are partly due to students not learning much about American government in school.
“The key to maintaining our system lies in the education of our citizens,” O’Connor told the 19 governors who stuck around for the final day of the summer meeting.
She added in her 12-minute speech that surveys have shown fewer teenagers can identify the three branches of government than can name the Three Stooges.
“Now I enjoy Larry, Moe and Curly, but” it’s distressing that students don’t know the most basic concepts of government, said O’Connor, a Reagan appointee who retired last year after 24 years on the high court.
But, the Three Stooges? That’s almost too perfect a quote. It seems even more fantastic when one considers that the Three Stooges are not broadcast nearly so much as they were in the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s. Where did O’Connor get that factoid?
Photo: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by Matt York, Associated Press
Steve Schafersman dutifully follows events at the Texas Education Agency, particularly with regard to textbook selection, and particularly with regard to biology textbooks. As head and chief instigator and chief bottle washer for the Texas Citizens for Science, he still gets little notoriety for the good work he does — all volunteer.
Shafersman says important stuff to know. So, when he sends along an editorial from the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram pointing out ethical and legal lapses at the agency which appear to be the work of the chief lawyer of the agency, one should read it. That lawyer, by the way, is probably in line to be the next head of the agency.
TEA has suffered from politicized leadership the last few years. Since Mike Moses left the agency, Texas education has drifted, and lack of leadership from TEA has not helped. Controversies over silly things are almost invited; serious issues, like cheating on the state’s graduation test, go unstudied and unremedied. I take the liberty of publishing the full editorial, below the fold — please read it, especially if you’re in Texas. Since Texas influences education so heavily, especially in textbook selection, everybody who has a kid in U.S. schools, who did have a kid in U.S. schools, who was educated in U.S. schools, or lives in a state that has schools, has a dog in this fight. Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
New teachers, especially teachers from alternative certification programs, have all sorts of stories about people who observe and supervise their training and work.
There is the guy whose district bought laptops for every high school student and insisted teachers use the computers daily, but whose principal refused to look at the on-line courses he had developed to meet the district’s guidelines (and whom the principal subsequently rated down for not having the lesson plans the principal refused to look at). There is the drama coach whose supervisor complained the students shouldn’t have been out of school for the state competition, which they won. There is the mathematician from the telecommunications industry whose supervisor didn’t know geometry, or algebra, or calculus, and insisted the teacher should be offering multiplication table timed quizzes to advanced math classes. The guy whose principal thought history documentaries selected from the school’s libraries were just Hollywood movies, and therefore inappropriate for history classes.
More than enough horror stories to go around.
One teacher tells a few horror stories from his student teaching days, but tells us he went on to get his school’s distinguished alumnus award. And so, he shares some of his best material, here: Horace Mann Educated Financial Solutions, “Reach Every Child.”
It would be interesting to take into effect that teaching is one of the few jobs where people expend large quantities of their own money to do their job. I was a principal in a large urban district before I left education for a private sector consulting job. Part of the reason I left was the paper rationing that occurred during my last two years on the job. Our school district limited our teachers to three sheets of paper per student per week in an attempt to cut costs. Even the best, most engaging hands-on learning takes more than three sheets per week. Add in the lunch menus, report cards, and parent letters that need to go home and it would guarantee that our paper supply usually ran dry by March 1 or so and my teachers ending up buying their own paper.
Could you imagine the uproar that would occur in the mortgage department of a bank if suddenly employees were required to buy their own copy paper? Why is that acceptable for our teachers?
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service even has a specific standard deduction for teachers to use to cover the materials they take to the classroom, that would be supplied by other employers, that should be supplied by the schools. Isn’t it odd that we make provisions in the tax code to try to offset this error, rather than try to fix it?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
When the elder Fillmore’s Bathtub son attended intermediate school, he complained of the discipline. So did a lot of other good kids. We got a call from a parent asking if we’d join in a meeting with the new principal, and hoping to learn things were really hunky dory and offer assurances to our son, we went.
Only in America can a state get what it votes against, maybe.
Utah’s Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s opinion would require the Utah State Board of Education to implement school vouchers now, even though the state legislature did not intend the implementation now, and even though the people may reject the plan for vouchers in a November election.
Complicating affairs is a “technical amendment” passed by the legislature after the original voucher authorization legislation, to correct problems in the first bill. The referendum is on the first bill; the amendment was billed as a “clean-up” bill fixing technical problems with the first bill. But the attorney general now says that the amendment can stand alone, and consequently the law would require the Board to implement a law they oppose, even if the people reject the law.
So, of course, the courts may be asked to parse out the truth and the law.
If you’re not confused yet, stick around. Mark Twain famously said no man’s life, limb, nor property is safe so long as the legislature is in session. Utah’s corollary is that nothing is safe even after the legislature goes home.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn’t controversial in Finland; it is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can’t we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?
Why not? Why can’t we treat our citizens as well as the Finns? Their system boosts their economy and leads to great social progress — which part of that do we not want?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 