Last Friday night, I deposited the kids at my folks’ house and drove into the city to meet my husband and some friends at the Landmark Tavern. It was a splendid evening. I caught up with Andrew and Eliza whom I haven’t seen in far too long. We all met on the Jacob Javitts playground in Washington Heights when our oldest kids were just toddling around the slides. Some of my favorite people in the world I met at that playground, and I still miss those days.
Sadly, nearly all those friends moved away from the old ‘hood in search of better schools for our kids. Andrew and Eliza moved out to Ridgew–. After several months of a fruitless search for an affordable shack in Ridgew–, we ended up in a nearby town with a reputation for good schools and a good commute into Manhattan. The population was more working class and the homes were more modest than Ridgew–, but all assured me that the schools were fine.
At the bar, I talked with Andrew and his new friends. We compared notes about our kids’ new interests, how big they had grown, the color of their hair, and what they were doing in school. Andrew’s kids were getting much more than mine were. His third grader had nightly writing assignments. The parents were regularly invited into the classroom to work with the kids. My kid can’t even get his teacher to check his homework. He has no writing assignments.
I left the bar a little sick. The next day, I set up a meeting with the school principal to discuss curriculum. Steve and I also discussed whether we should sign up Jonah for enrichment classes and whether we should move.
On the one hand, we really like having regular people for neighbors. I like that my kid isn’t growing up thinking that all parents are doctors or lawyers. He doesn’t have the entitlement and the arrogance of the kids that I grew up with. There are such high expectations for kids in those schools that a number of my high school classmates lost their marbles in college. Every once in a while, I get one of the kids from Andrew’s town in my college classes, and they think that they are better than they are. On the other hand, it would nice if my kid learned how to write a proper essay.
I’m going to meet with the principal on Thursday. She’s a smart woman, so I’m curious what she’ll say.
Apt. 11d 
I have the opposite angst, Laura. My child is in a “high achievement” school, where the teacher just told us how they’re gong to learn to write an essay next year. Might sound great, but I left thinking, I certainly didn’t learn how to write an essay in the 2nd grade.
Of course you’ll figure out what’s appropriate for your kid, but I know that having made the other decision, I worry quite a bit about all the reasons why you like what you have now — arrogance, entitlement, pressure, intensity. I fear that my child is in an environment where every passing thought and interest is ramped up into a career goal (the kid turned down an opportunity to participate in an Irish dance event on the grounds that she’d decided that she wasn’t going to go pro).
She’s learning a lot, but I don’t think that’s the point of being seven. I mean, the learning is great, as long as she still thinks it’s lots of fun (and she seems to). But, I don’t think she needs to learn to swot yet.
I’m looking forward to hearing what your principal says.
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Laura, there’s an in-between. My kid doesn’t have nightly writing assignments. But her teacher checks her homework. She is learning how to write an essay using transitions, but the ones she chooses are really awkward. It’s kind of endearing. “So you can see that Puppies in the Palace is about a girl who wants to be a vet.” She loves using “So you can see.”
I met with our principal a few weeks ago about my son who’ll be entering the school as a 1st grader next year. He’s kind of typical of 5.5 year old boys in some ways, but I think he’s a bit more extreme. He’s low on the verbal side, low on the maturity side, but he’s freakin’ scaring me with his academics. But his K teacher is always separating him from other kids because he’s bugging them and I live in fear of my kid being labelled the “bad” one.
Btw, at some point, I’ll have to post in my own blog about my experiences this term with a community service learning project I’m doing with the theme of Civic Engagement and Youth Voting. It’s either a huge disaster or a huge success, but either way, it’s a huge amount of work as I’ve basically thrown out the itinerary and am making it up day to day. Hence my intermittent posting.
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If it’s any comfort, it’s worth noting that there’s reason to believe that many high performing school districts are in fact outsourcing much of the responsibility for teaching to the families. Richard Elmore has written about this. One indication of this is the tremendous amount of tutoring (both paid and parents) going on in high SES school districts. Who’s really doing the heavy lifting here?
I just uncovered a disturbing situation when I started to question the quality of our high school English classes. Among other things, I learned that the purpose statement of our 10th grade English course is, well, just strange. The purpose of the course is to investigate the ethical dilemmas inherent in the human condition. It turns out much class time is spent with the student in groups discussing questions abut “ethical dilemmas” and related topics. Hmm . . . Meanwhile, the head of the department owns a tutoring company that charges $125/hour and up to enable kids to excel in the ways their schools cannot. Hmm . . . Average spending in our school is $20,000 per student.
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I’m curious about the third-grader’s writing assignments, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they are primarily journal entries. I’ve been reading about the poor state of writing instruction (along with math, history, science, etc.) in our public schools, as well as experiencing it with my own kids. The focus on creative writing instead of on fundamental skill building in the elementary grades doesn’t make sense, and may be a big part of the reason that we have many middle- and high-schoolers whose main writing expertise is cut-and-pasting from Wikipedia.
If you’re interested in reading more, and specifically about Susan Wise Bauer’s approach to writing instruction, you may want to check out Kitchen Table Math http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2008/03/susan-wise-bauer-on-creative-writing.html
BTW, I believe it is your friend’s school that has been featured in blogs, YouTube and CBS news for the serious problems due to parents’ discontent about the poor quality math curriculum and alleged mismanagement by the BOE.
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I don’t know what the problem is with writing instruction is, but based on what I hear from college instructors even at fairly elite institutions about student plagiarism, there is a problem. All too often, “writing” means producing a sophisticated patchwork of uncited material, where even the most trivial sentiment needs to be lifted from some other source.
Wendy?
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Yes? You rang? 😉
Well, here’s the thing. I’ve taught at a LOT of different places. I’ve taught (as a grad student) at an elite university. With the exception of a few of the athletes, I’d say most of the kids were very good writers. When I taught at a Northeastern liberal arts college, I felt those students were also very good, with a few exceptions.
Right now I’m teaching at a less than elite university known more for its career-orientedness. These kids rarely excelled in HS and have been attracted to our school because of the pragmatic hands-on approach. Teaching can be a challenge as 75% of what I have to do is make them care about writing. They really just do not care to be better writers. So a lot of it is psychological.
I also find that a lot of my kids are not typical learners. They process info by speaking/hearing and kinesthetically (hands-on). The former have trouble with writing because for them, they are dealing with two languages, the “foreign” language of writing and the native language of speaking. I have a student coming in in 10 minutes with whom I have to work on verb forms. He writes the way he speaks, which is in the BEV, which means all sorts of dropped -s endings and subject-verb agreement errors.
Re cut-and-paste: well, another huge problem these kids have to deal with is information literacy. I’m dying to teach a course JUST on that. I have gotten kind of mean because I said “If you cite Wikipedia, you know what your audience is going to think of you? High school student.” That made a bit of an impact. 🙂 I just did an annotated bibliography assignment (because I have to anticipate that my students will find one source then stop looking) and I had 2 that had serious cut-and-paste problems and a few that had poor paraphrasing. I still have to work with them on that, but we have our community service today. Gah!
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Your comments have evolved into the standard complaints about schools, but what I’m wondering is why we think third-graders should have “nightly writing assignments.” I’m pretty sure that I don’t want mine to.
I see the tutoring differently — I think that in some high SES schools, the standards of achievement are being set by the highly able students, and the parents are doing whatever they can to advantage their “average” kids. Should the schools do that instead? that is, try to re-define human achievement so that the 75% of the children can perform at the 10th percentile? I’ve still been thinking through what I mean by this argument, but, roughly, it’s that extraordinary 4 yo are developmentally ready to read. Average 4 yo’s aren’t. With a lot of hard work, an average 4 yo can be trained to produce some reading output (I’m not sophisticated enough to understand how closely this output resembles the fluent reading I associate with really knowing how to read). So, we see a lot of effort being put into teaching 4yo these skills, in preschool, where kids do what they used to do when they were six, and in 1st grade. Then, we try to teach 2nd graders how to write essays. Can they, really? Is the average 8 yo ready to write essays? Or are we trying to get all 8 yo to behave like extraordinary ones? I’m focused on early-childhood education, ’cause my children are young, and I know that the brain is undergoing dramatic changes. I don’t know how all this plays out in, say high school, where the brain development is less extraordinary.
(I have an academically extraordinary 7yo, but I can see this pressure also playing out in sports, where my 7yo is, at best, average).
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Wendy’s comment about her “different” learners, makes me think that the same concerns might play out when kids get older, that we’re expecting that all children can be taught to think and learn exactly like one subgroup of children. It’s not an experiment I’m opposed to doing, but I think we’re deluding ourselves if we think we’ve done it already — that is kids used to be able to meet the same high standards, and now they can’t, because they aren’t taught well. I suspect our old style educational system relied heavily on excluding many children from the learning environment.
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On the one hand, we really like having regular people for neighbors. I like that my kid isn’t growing up thinking that all parents are doctors or lawyers. He doesn’t have the entitlement and the arrogance of the kids that I grew up with.
Isn’t it likely that the kids who were arrogant and entitled were that way because that’s how they were raised — not because they lived in a high-income neighborhood? I mean, YOU certainly didn’t grow up to be entitled and arrogant, right? What makes you think your kids will if they live in an area with some large percentage (10%? 25%?) of entitled and arrogant kids.
In any area, there will be a range. In the high-income areas, that range will be the over-privileged jerks down to the “more normal” kids. In the lower-income areas, that range will be from the “more normal” kids down to the anti-academic troublemakers.
There’s nowhere you can live where everyone in the school will be “just like us,” so you have to decide which side of the extreme your more comfortable dealing with.
If it is important that you live with “regular people as neighbors,” then you will probably have to accept that the public school will be geared towards teaching “regular people” — and that means less reliance on kids doing lots of homework.
If I can make a guess, when you talk to your principal about lack of daily writing assignments in third grade, the response will be something along the lines of: “We tried that once, but there was a lot of backlash from the parents, saying we were pushing the kids too hard too early, with too much homework, and the compliance rate was low, so we phased it out.”
She will also say that they don’t have a lot of parental involvement in the classroom because there are very few stay-at-home moms, and most parents work, so the teachers can’t count on a reliable stream of parental support to work into their day.
Not to sound too harsh, but it sounds like you enjoy having “regular people” for neighbors, except to the extent that they act like “regular people.”
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I don’t necessarily want more homework. I want better homework.
We spent 2-1/2 hours doing work with Jonah last night. My dad came over to help out, so I wouldn’t have to completely neglect Ian during that time. What did we do?
30 minutes on the times tables. They expect the kids to learn their times tables, but spend zero time on it at school. I guess drilling is too boring for the teachers, so we have to do it at home.
We had to spend about an hour and a half reteaching Jonah all the material that was poorly taught at school. For example, last week, they went over pronouns at school. Did the teacher get up to the front of the room and give a lesson on pronouns? No. She handed the kids out their workbooks and the workbooks were supposed to explain what pronouns were. Jonah said that she got on the computer and answered e-mail, while the kids were teaching themselves the material. He took a test on pronouns and received a 55%. I spent a half an hour writing out sentences and showing him what they were. He got a 100% on the next test.
I’ve started mandating that he has to write a four sentence paragraph every day at home. Because they do zero writing at school. Nada. Zippo. Other school districts have set up writing workshops where they cover this material. We spent about 15 minutes on that.
Then there was the spelling exercises. For some reason, spelling tests are big deal in this district. So, he had to write his 20 words three times and in alphabetical order. I had him erase his mistakes and rewrite the sloppy words, because his teacher doesn’t do that.
Then we have to do the stupid projects. Next week, he has to do a book report. Will it be a written out essay? No. He has to draw pictures about the book on a T-shirt and then I have to stuff the shirt and sew it up to make a pillow.
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More on high achieving v. low achieving districts…
Actually, I was kinda arrogant when I left my high achieving school district, despite having very good, normal parents. I learned a lot about life at my public college that first semester. Gotta love SUNY Binghamton.
And you’re right that high parental involvement in high achieving districts results from the pressure of the higher income parents. They demand to come into the classroom, while the plumbers and their wives in this town don’t complain. It’s not a difference of working or not working. Most of the women in this town are SAHMs. It’s just a different culture and expectations of schools. A more deferential attitude towards the education administration. They call the male superintendent Mr., while he calls them by their first names.
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And with that, you have the reasons that my wife and I are likely to homeschool. If we’re going to teach the material ANYWAY, we might as well not try to cram it into the evenings.
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bj’s comments about tutoring are in line with the standard educationist’s response to the tutoring craze. They claim it is the result of super competitive parents who need their kids to achieve at high academic levels. Many parents reject that argument as being the main driver in this, and instead see a problem with teaching and curriculum.
I gave an example of a lousy high school English course that is wasting a lot of my kid’s class time. Meanwhile, the department chair is tutoring kids on the side to read and write well enough to gain admittance to a good college. All the stories I know of elementary-level math tutoring around here are about kids struggling with fundamental skills that are somehow not being taught using our latest and greatest reform program.
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It’s always something. Either the school isn’t challenging enough or it’s a pressure cooker. Before you move again or freak out, I would look more at the other teachers. It’s possible you’ve got a dud. Also, you need to remember that your parenting and what’s going on at home (not only the homework help, but having books in the house, going to musuems, talking about ideas) is going to have more of an effect than ANY school. I went to one of the top schools in my town, but our English education was for crap. I was able to succeed because I had an insane work ethic and I read all the time from when I was 3yo to now. I was always reading something, so I picked up a lot of knowledge that I needed. Even the best schools can suck in a variety of ways.
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The problems Laura describes are prevalent in most schools across the economic spectrum.
The kids work on their own or in groups while the teacher acts as facilitator on the side, they provide the students endless exposure to math concepts but leave the drilling of facts to the parents, they assign homework that is not rigorously graded, stupid projects replace academic content with crayola curriculum, etc.
Direct instruction is anathema in most of our public schools.
Sadly, when the parents fail to take up the slack in their kids’ instruction the gap between the haves and have-nots can be expected to grow.
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Laura, that sounds HORRIBLE. Sophie did drilling on times tables in class, but they call it skip counting (i.e., skip-counting 6’s = 6, 12, 18, etc.). They also do spelling tests. They do a pretest on Monday, and if they get any words wrong, they have to write them 4 times or something as homework. Then they do the “real” test on Friday.
This weekend she had to do a project on an animal. She chose a koala, and she had to research the adaptations. We had fun researching on the intertubes, then we decided to foster a koala at savethekoala.com.
She often has to write sentences using her spelling words. The class writes story problems involving math concepts, then the teacher has the kids solve the problems. But homework isn’t really onerous. Sometimes it’s more challenging and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes she has to put her spelling words in abc order. She hates doing that.
This all said, this teacher is *very* different from last year’s teacher who annoying the everliving crap out of me. There was *so* much busy work. I don’t doubt that she did classroom teaching, but I really resented all the stupid homework.
Anyway, long story short: I think there is something in between nightly writing assignments and having to teach the material in the evenings. Also, it all depends on the teacher. You might find Jonah’s teacher next year is much better.
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Tex, the term I’ve heard used is “differentiated instruction.” This means that kids get more individualized instruction within the classroom. I was volunteering at my daughter’s class a few weeks ago. I helped out with overseeing the kids who were doing an assessment (which involved measuring a shape on the floor and determining the perimeter), some kids were working on ongoing science projects that involved creating a life cycle diagram on a laptop computer, and the teacher was doing some work with 3-4 of the weaker students.
Again, I really do like the teacher this year.
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In my view, the social effects of the peer cohort at any given school is likely to have a greater effect on a child’s outcome than a particular instructional style, assuming a basically functional school environment and involved parents who value academics. As others have pointed out, you’re uniquely able to give Jonah the education you want for him, by supplementing with personal (or outsourced) tutoring; he’ll learn how to write an essay one way or another. What you can’t give him are the values he’ll absorb from his peers. At the high-achieving schools, yes, he’ll probably absorb some arrogance and entitlement; he’ll also probably get invested in the meritocratic academic striving that is the yellow brick road to ab elite university. At regular schools, he probably won’t. I don’t know how much you and Steve value an Ivy League admission, but if you value it highly you’ll want to make sure that Jonah’s peers do, too. If you don’t care where Jonah goes to college, don’t sweat it.
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Also, while I agree with those above who say that you probably just have a “dud” teacher, and that the problems you are having are outside of the norm in your “type” of school district, I think that is only half of the story.
The other half is that in high-achieving school districts, the parents don’t take that sort of behavior. Your path through the school system has been smoothed over by the dozens of parents who “aren’t paying these sorts of property taxes so that Mrs. 3rd Grade Teacher can sit there answering her e-mails and not grading the homework, etc. etc.” and so by the time YOUR kid gets to third grade, Mrs. 3rd Grade Teacher has been re-assigned and is no longer your problem.
So, yes, Jonah’s 3rd Grade “dud” teacher is probably a big outlier, but outside of the best school districts, outliers are often allowed to continue to outlie for years and years, rather than getting booted in a year or two.
In deciding where to live, certainly don’t assume that all of your teachers will be this bad, but also take into account the relative likelihood that it will happen again.
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Wow, Laura, you are well on your way to the Dark Side. Welcome!
“30 minutes on the times tables. They expect the kids to learn their times tables, but spend zero time on it at school. I guess drilling is too boring for the teachers, so we have to do it at home.”
Catherine Johnson talks about this issue a lot. She says that many contemporary elementary teachers and experts don’t understand that learning math facts is not a triviality that you can just hand over to parents. For a lot of kids, it’s really hard. In the past, CJ has talked about the Soviet math pedagogy, where education experts carefully worked out how many times an average kid had to do 5 + 3 before it’s automatic. The average child can’t just pick this stuff up in passing–it has to be taught explicitly.
“We had to spend about an hour and a half reteaching Jonah all the material that was poorly taught at school. For example, last week, they went over pronouns at school. Did the teacher get up to the front of the room and give a lesson on pronouns? No. She handed the kids out their workbooks and the workbooks were supposed to explain what pronouns were. Jonah said that she got on the computer and answered e-mail, while the kids were teaching themselves the material.”
Laura, you should send her an apple. Rather than being a stuffy “sage on the stage” she’s being a “guide on the side.”
“Then we have to do the stupid projects. Next week, he has to do a book report. Will it be a written out essay? No. He has to draw pictures about the book on a T-shirt and then I have to stuff the shirt and sew it up to make a pillow.”
This is what Tex referred to as the “crayola curriculum.” It is epidemic.
I think someone has mentioned this earlier, but note the probable impact of a year of this on children from non-elite families who don’t realize what the school expects of them, or who aren’t for whatever reason able to spend hours every week drilling multiplication tables and sewing pillows. They finish this year not knowing their third grade math facts and not being able to write, but they’ve got some colorful projects to take home. Too bad they’ll have to take years of remedial community college math and writing if they ever want to go to college someday.
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2.5 hours? Aargh. Here’s what we’ve had for homework (first grade, high achieving school for “highly capable” children). 1) weekly spelling words, to practice at home. They test themselves on 8 words each week, and then they bring home 8 more words (if they got the pre-test all right, or 8-the missed words if they didn’t). In my house, practicing these words takes about 10 minutes a week). We usually spend 5 minutes at breakfast two times. 2) occasional (maybe 1/2 weeks) “challenges” which are voluntary problems involving things like “how to dress caterpillars in 4 different colors” or how too drive through all the states without entering any state more than once). 3) “big” projects — in our case a culture box where the kids researched and pictorially depicted their heritage. My daughter spent approximately 3 hours one afternoon on this project, in addition, to more casual discussions over the course of the week.
In class, they do writing (mostly in the form of journals and some stories); they read; they learn their math facts (no drilling of that at home). But, they’re not doing multiplication yet.
Mind you, I can’t tell what other kids in my dd class spend at home. As I’ve said, we spend a max of 10 minutes on spelling words. But, that’s ’cause my dd is a spelling wizard. She always gets her pre-test words 100% right, and then, at most one out of her 8 at home list she actually needs to practice. Her handwriting is better than mine (and would look sloppier if I erased and re-wrote her words :-).
I’ll be intrigued to see how this goes as we move on. I’m pretty much against extensive homework through the 5th grade, but I know the load will increase with time.
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“bj’s comments about tutoring are in line with the standard educationist’s response to the tutoring craze. They claim it is the result of super competitive parents who need their kids to achieve at high academic levels. Many parents reject that argument as being the main driver in this, and instead see a problem with teaching and curriculum.”
Incidentally, I’m not an “educationist” (I’m presuming that means teachers & other educational specialists); I came to my conclusions only as a parent. I honestly can’t say what I think of educational approaches or tutoring as kids get older. My statements about tutoring applied to early childhood education, where I think much of the variability in performance is developmentally driven (I do know something about the development of the brain) and I actively see parents enrolling their kids in Kumon (which I would consider as torture to my own child) so that they can meet the standards set by the seven year olds with the strongest academics (like 4 year olds with private reading tutors).
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bj,
Is there an ethnic component? Asian parents may be doing the stuff you talk about (tutoring to squeeze the last drop of performance out of 7-year-olds) while the equivalent white parents use tutoring just to keep their kids afloat.
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“Is there an ethnic component? Asian parents may be doing the stuff you talk about ”
No, all the parents I’m specifically talking about are white. (reading tutors, Kumon, etc.).
All the Asian kids I know are just brilliant 🙂 with no tutoring. Of course, this is my small and completely biased sample.
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Bummer–I should have had Asian kids. Too late now.
On the tutoring front, my sister has recently drafted our dad to work with her second-grade son on math. My nephew’s second grade class hasn’t been doing math with a textbook for weeks. They don’t have one yet, apparently, but there have been “quilt” type activities. (No textbook in March?, you ask. Me too.) Plus, the math that was being taught was of the non-traditional algorithm sort (horizontal addition without carrying and with lots of tricks that are overwhelming to the 7-year-old mind), and a bunch of the kiddies were struggling. My sister was told the class probably won’t reach subtraction by the end of the year. I don’t know which subject it was in, but she also mentions getting papers back with no corrections. Thanks to intervention, my nephew is doing fine, and will probably have a go at the German school system in the fall. This is our hometown, a logging and farming town with students from outlying Indian reservations a town which was never quite genteel, and which is a bit rougher at the edges now with lots of prison employees, undoubtedly some prison families, a bajillion illegal aliens, and the native meth addicts. Under the circumstances, I bet there aren’t a lot of parents visiting school with uncorrected work and raising hell. Hence the education gap.
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I should mention that my nephew had a phenomenal first grade teacher (an SAHM who had raised her family), and the third grade teachers are supposed to be very good. It’s just this one second grade teacher is sub-par. My nephew’s going to be fine, but any marginal kids in the class are going to wind up a year off track.
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We are in a very low-income public school, but live in a high income neighborhood. This is either the “best of both worlds” or the worst – depending on your point of view. (More than half of our neighborhood goes to private schools.)
We’ve had a fantastic experience with our daughter (3 exceptional teachers in a row). But I’m wondering what our opinions will be when our son starts school next year. I’m not sure he’ll thrive under the “independent worksheet” culture that seems to be everywhere in public schools these days. We shall see.
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Laura: have you seen this math drill site?
http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/math-trainer-multiply.html
I’m thinking that drilling is actually one of those things best done by computer, with neither a parent or a teacher. But, I guess it only works once drilling is really all that’s being done, and the child understands the basic concepts.
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Ha. Work in a non-elite NYC college for a few years and that stereotype about Asian kids will go way out the window.
Damn, I miss teaching in NYC.
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“Ha. Work in a non-elite NYC college for a few years and that stereotype about Asian kids will go way out the window.”
(and watching, was it season 8 of America’s Top Model helped disrupt it too)
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I feel your pain, Laura. I spent a lot of time with my daughter in 1st through 4th grades going over her homework, of course, but also in reteaching her things that were poorly taught — or more accurately, not really taught at all. It was the main reason we made the move to homeschooling — the way I saw it, I was making the poor kid do hours of work after having sat in school for hours and all I could see was that getting worse and worse as the years went by. And she had some really good teachers! It certainly wasn’t their fault. It was more about teaching to the test.
My best friend, who used to homeschool her kids, now has them in public school in Virginia. She has them get up an hour earlier every day so that she can teach one of them math (using Saxon) and the other one English grammar/writing. All because they aren’t getting adequate instruction in school.
Both of her children, BTW, have straight A’s — as did my daughter when she was in school.
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I started Kumon with my daughter after her teacher told me not to be concerned that she was struggling with math facts because it was more important that she learn the concepts, and that anyway they would “spiral” back to math facts next year. In third grade my daughter was being sidelined off the track that would have her mastering math facts, long division and fractions in order to handle algebra in 8th grade. This was important to me because she loves animals and talks about becoming a veterinarian or a marine biologist. These types of careers require algebra by 8th grade, which is the standard for the countries supplying us with most of our scientists these days.
From what I’ve observed and read, my experience is not unusual and tells part of the story of the sad state of public education. We have serious problems with curriculum and teacher quality.
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In math concepts and facts don’t have to go seperately. Our school’s curric. has a heavy emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking. There are no drills on math facts. In third and fourth grade there are weekly quizzes on math facts to make sure kids are getting them. Yes we practice at home.
However, these kids are more prepared for higher math than the students that have been taught only algorithms. There is a 20 point difference in math scores between us and the tradtional public schools starting in 6th grade. Most of our kids go into algebra at 7th grade. Middle class kids, with a wide range of IQ’s. Frankly, we’re pretty average.
Our kids do both narrative and expository writing beginning in kindergarten. By 4th grade our kids are blowing other kids out of the water on testing. And there is not writing homework every night. I would be worried if there was. Our kids writing is for authentic purposes, not busy work. They learn grammar, etc. by writing about whatever their class is studying (butterflies, trees, WWII, the water table)and sometimes creative writing. They do a ton of self-reflection.
We do NO teaching to the test. I know other schools that do three paragraph essays every day for months before a writing test. Their kids all score great. But they didn’s write on anything that meant anything to them. So they gain no knowledge other than how to write for that particular test in that particular format. They get into high school and have no idea how to take their writing further.
We figure if we’ve taught you well, you will test well. Most of the time it’s true.
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Lisa:
Are you talking as a teacher or a parent in talking about “our school”? If as a parent, your experience seems much like mine (except that in our school the kids are not middle class, and are selected for IQ, meaning, of course, that the population is completely different).
But, the teaching methodology seems similar, and as you report, I feel fully confident that my kid is getting the facts and an understanding of the patterns and algorithms of math. I also think she’s getting the “technical” writing skills, as well as really enjoying the writing itself.
I’m struck, ’cause I feel like 3 commenters here (at least) have reported satisfaction with their schools (you, me and Wendy). We all report similar curricula (though my school population may be different). Others are not satisfied. So why? Is there a serious problem with curriculum? or teacher quality? Is that true for some of us but not others? Are similar curricula implemented differently in different schools? Are our children different, with different needs? Are our perceptions of similar situations different?
And, I’m particularly perplexed, ’cause of the alignment between politics & our evaluations of our personal school environments. It makes me wonder if our judgment is being influenced by our biases. Of course, since I’m a liberal, I’m more likely to think the conservatives are suffering from bias. I can cite the fact that I’m pretty unlikely to let my biases result in a poor education for my children (I’m pretty sure that any political biases I want to support would go out the window if I thought it was going to impact my children badly). And my child is doing objectively very well. It’s possible that she could be doing better under some other set of teaching and curricular standards, but, there’s not much room for her to move up. But, though I would like to argue that my political bias isn’t driving my educational choice for my own children, I’m not going to argue that liberals in general are more objective than conservatives.
This really bothers me, because we need to untangle it as a society. And, as a scientist, I feel like thinking about how children learn should be possible to do objectively. But reading these sets of comments seems like the two groups of people are just living in different worlds (which, of course, is possible). But, how are the details of those worlds different?
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PS: I take back “more likely to think the conservatives are suffering from bias.” I don’t actually have any reason to think that and the defense that we all just want what’s going to work for our child applies to every parent. If there was a way to go back and edit the comment I’d do so, but I apologize for it in this postscript.
What I really want to talk about is what is different between our evaluations. Biases in perception may play a role, but I take back the incorrect comment that one might expect bias to affect different parents differently.
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“However, these kids are more prepared for higher math than the students that have been taught only algorithms. There is a 20 point difference in math scores between us and the tradtional public schools starting in 6th grade.”
Where are all those “traditional” schools, anyway? I looked high and low in the DC area without finding a single non-reform math school (sad to say, the archdiocese of Arlington’s curriculum was particularly horrifying). “Problem solving” is the norm in a lot of places now, even to the exclusion of traditional algorithms. Hence my nephew’s school, where the second graders aren’t getting taught vertical addition or carrying for addition. At some point recently, arithmetic stopped and my nephew brought home a quilt problem. My dad (who has occasionally tutored high school math and taught math at the local community college), commenting on it, said that the quilt activity would be fine as enrichment, but in this case the enrichment activity was displacing the actual math curriculum.
A good elementary math curriculum will involve both traditional algorithms and lots of problem solving. That’s a fair description of the Singapore Math workbooks that my daughter’s school uses.
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bj, I’m not a teacher, I’m a parent. After several years of volunteering, I’m employed by the school but not in an educational capacity.
I think often a curriclum like ours is viewed as touchy feely, and liberal. Many of the parents at our school are liberals, though we are in a conversative state. But we do have some very conservative parents who are very happy with the methods we use to teach. Sometimes they aren’t wild about the subject matter (a unit on global warming comes to mind), but they always seem to believe we are effective.
Honestly, there are things we would change about the school, and have changed. Nothing is perfect. Parents, teachers and staff put in a lot of hours to make this school run. Sometimes ideas don’t work out. For instance, two of my children have terrible handwriting. I think this goes to lack of emphasis on cursive, etc. The teachers care that the kids sentences are accurate and that they are able to project their ideas, and neatness takes a back seat. Drives me nuts. But my kids are great writers. They move full steam ahead, and usually type.
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This is one of those tough, ongoing questions for those of us who care about, and think about, education. As noted in other comments, maybe you got a dud. As also noted, however, in better school districts your chances of getting a dud have been reduced by involved, smart parents who will not accept that level of service for their kid. My wife and I both grew up in working class/middle class towns. The doctors and lawyers lived two towns down where the schools were better. We both were fortunate, got reasonable educations, got to good colleges, graduate schools etc. Now we live in the high-achieving town with all the doctors and lawyers. The quality of education we are getting for our kids, for us, greatly outweighs the downsides of the entitlement feeling that many of the families/kids here do indeed have. We thought carefully through whether we wanted to spend our parenting time teaching what we felt should be done in the schools or talking carefully to our kids about overinflated expectations, entitlement, the fact that they are extremely lucky to be where they are and have what they have. We chose the latter. It isn’t easy, and we hear about the high school kids here and their stress at feeling that have to take 5 APs to keep up, etc. It isn’t going to be easy as they get older. But, so far, it is working out well. We see our kids doing much more, including writing essays, much sooner than we did eons ago in our elementary and middle schools. They are doing math that involves algebra much sooner than we ever did. They can handle it and really like the challenge. It makes them light up. We are lucky that we eventually got to here. It took some thought, some luck (in terms of jobs and salaries), and some choices. I could ramble on, but I’ll stop. Good luck thinking about this. It’s a very difficult set of questions, especially when the answers involve a great deal of effort on your and your husband’s part or, even more difficult, a move.
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bj,
I think the Kitchen Table Math crowd would say that if children are extremely bright and talented and have an intellectually rich home and extracurricular environment, they can get over almost any bump. So those kids aren’t suitable for a role as the canary in the coal mine. Disadvantaged children whose parents just send them to school and don’t do anything else about education are the control group you need.
Some teachers may be able to pull off using reform math materials and do a super job. However, there frequently seems to be a sort of fatal intersection between progressive pedagogy and teacher quality/conscientiousness. As I’ve told Laura, collecting and not correcting work beyond adding a smiley face is something I’ve heard so many times it can’t be a coincidence.
As to politics, most of the leading anti-reform math people are not part of the traditional right, perhaps because they are operating out of traditionally liberal places like the Seattle area, suburban New Jersey, suburban NY, etc. I grew up in the 80s hearing my dad and aunts and uncles (all evil conservatives) getting mad as hornets over stuff that was going on at their kids’ public schools (the goofy grading scales, the four period day, the Blockbuster curriculum, etc). I can’t help but be very wary and particular about schools, but I would have a hard time working up the sort of outrage that the Seattle/NY/NJ contingent has, because it’s not a surprise to me. I was actually half-expecting to homeschool, at least up until I noticed what a tough kid my oldest child is. We found a classical school that we love and that does a lot of stuff I couldn’t do (Spanish and Latin and Aristotelian logic!!!), so homeschooling is on the back burner. I’ve started up my afterschooling of my kindergartener again (even though it’s not academically necessary), since I’ve noticed that it sweetens her disposition and makes her less prone to angry explosions. We’re doing a Kumon coin counting workbook right now, when I think of it.
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Also, I think that for liberals who are discontented with their children’s school, there’s a lot bigger sense of betrayal. You pay your taxes, you send your kids to the best school you can, and everything is supposed to come up roses. Hell hath no fury like upper-middle class parents who are paying five figures in property taxes and whose child is struggling with arithmetic.
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Chrisa left the following comment over at Kitchen Table Math (note the familiar theme of uncorrected work):
“But I want to get back to feedback for a second. Why does a teacher need a NCLB test to tell them their students can’t add single digit numbers? I can tell you why:
“They aren’t grading the homework, or they’re grading for effort not results.
“Both of my daughters get insufficient feedback, if any at all from their math assignments.
“It seems like the teachers have a schedule to keep, and they’re not expecting enough from their students. If you are a teacher, ask yourself why you are asigning problems:
“1. Is it busywork?
2. Is it practice makes perfect
3. Is it to provide you feedback?
4. Is it to provide the student feedback?”
April 3, 2008 3:10 PM
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“I think the Kitchen Table Math crowd would say that if children are extremely bright and talented and have an intellectually rich home and extracurricular environment, they can get over almost any bump.”
See, I don’t see it this way. I don’t see the teaching methodology as something she’s “getting over” but instead something that she’s thriving with (and that includes learning the technical stuff, grammar, spelling, math facts). The alternative methods seem like they would suck the fun out of it for her, and that she would do what I might imagine doing in those circumstances (ignoring it all for burying my nose in a book). As it is, she checks on the tadpoles, cooperates with the other students in learning about cultures, and reads aloud to them, and listens to them read aloud to her.
So, I’d put the possibility that “bright” students can manage under the “progressive” educational system to be an example of different kids needing different things, rather than certain kids succeeding in spite of it all.
I do agree that this sample doesn’t tell us how we should teach every kid, and that has been one of my thoughts on many of these debates, that the open-ended investigative methods (for math, grammar, reading) work for a subgroup of children, but not necessarily every child, and possibly, work for the high end, but not the average.
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bj, it not only works for the average child but even for below average child. We have about 40% gifted and 20% special ed. They are all learning under investigative, inquiry based methods. People excel in different areas, and we can learn from everyone. The students find this out working with each other. Some children might need additional support or assignment modification, but everyone learns best when their natural curiosity is sparked.
Email me- I think our kids may go to schools in the same network.
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“Getting over” was the wrong term to use. What I should have said is that children like yours are very privileged and primed to learn every fact that comes their way. They’re sticky, so to speak, and at this point, knowledge just adheres to them without their doing much. (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I noticed something similar when I was a language learner. Early on, I could maybe identify one or two words in ten in a stream of normal spoken Russian, so it was very hard to pick out new words, let alone get the gist of a sentence. Later on, the proportion was reversed, and only one word in ten or twenty was unfamiliar. At that ratio, learning was just about instantaneous, even without a dictionary or an explanation of what the word meant. Often I was able to pick things up instantly from context. I think that’s where your daughter is. The rich get richer.)
I suspect it might be hard to tell the difference between a well-executed progressive classroom and a well-executed non-progressive classroom (unless you look closely at tell-tale areas like reading, writing instruction, and choice of math curriculum). At a recent birthday party, I was talking at length to a liberalish parent from my daughter’s class who had moved his son from one of the best suburban public schools to our classical school. He found the old public school rigid and used a bunch of progressive education buzz words to describe what he liked about our school, and I think he was basically right. On the other hand, I suspect that the looser progressive curriculum makes the system more vulnerable to poor teaching, and it provides potentially endless excuses for why children aren’t learning (different learning styles, developmental appropriateness, etc.). I’ve also heard from Kitchen Table Math that progressive private schools can be rather good, perhaps through having well-qualified teachers and not letting kids fall through the cracks. The dark side of progressive pedagogy in the public system is the way in which it can provide cover for neglect and inequity.
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Lisa V,
That’s interesting what you’re saying about special ed. Catherine Johnson, who has two autistic boys and quite a bit of experience with special ed issues, says that direct instruction is crucial in special education. Maybe we could get her in here to talk to you about it?
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“The dark side of progressive pedagogy in the public system is the way in which it can provide cover for neglect and inequity.”
I agree with this — I do worry when recognizing the reality (and I completely believe it’s a reality) of differences in the way different people learn excuses us in teaching some of them. And, I further believe that assessment is a necessary part of learning (I have no excuses for children not being given feedback on their work, though I don’t necessarily think it should be through teachers “correcting” the work).
Re special ed and direct instruction, I’d suspect it depends on the kind of special education need, no?
bj
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bj,
Yeah. Note how the kids working alone without input on their pronoun assignment could be termed “working independently” and “taking responsibility for their learning.” (I already used up the “sage on the stage” vs. “the guide on the side” upthread, but that would work here too.)
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While I’m sure everyone would consider our school progressive, lack of assesment and feedback is not a problem. First off, we take all the standardized tests everyone else is required to because of NCLB. We don’t teach to the test, instead we focus on students who are prepared and active learners. For the most part, they test well. We are often significantly above district, state and national averages. When we aren’t, we use that data to evaluate our programs or individual students.
Internally, our kids get a ton of feedback, from teachers, rubrics, and peers. Our report cards are 8 pages long. There is no unevluated work. We don’t use grades- which are really easy to just pump out- and instead use comments and analysis on many things. Obviously a spelling test or something is right or wrong and gets a percentage.
I don’t think every child would do well with us or our methods. There is no single method of education that serves every child well. I think that is equally true whether a child is gifted, average, or a challenged learner. You have to find the way that makes sense to them.
And really, what a luxury for us as parents to be able to debate educational styles. Or maybe it’s a hardship. I really do think choice is a luxury, though sometimes we agonize over it enough to make it hardship.
In the end, I know my kids would likely be okay anywhere. I know that we are lucky to have somewhere they really thrive.
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I’m really an agnostic on teaching methodology. I see it less about different learning styles with the students and more about the teaching styles of the teachers. Some teachers can make chalk interesting.
When I had my powwow with the principal yesterday, she showed me some new writing program that a consultant was pushing on them. It broke down the writing process into so many stupid steps that it was really, really boring. It was a progressive style of assignment, but it was done very badly.
After my talk with the principal yesterday, I am more disgusted with my kid’s education than ever. It’s more than just his teacher; it’s the low expectations for the kids in this school. It comes from above. She let slip that it was a Title 1 school, so clearly the teachers don’t think that these kids can handle more challenging material.
I’m going to have to do enormous amounts of supplemental work in the next few months. If we move, and we might have to, he’ll need a tutor to catch him up with the kids in the new town.
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An anonymous teacher left a comment including the following sentence over at KTM, explaining what it’s like to work at a struggling school: “We have consultants pouring over us like hot fudge at an ice cream shop.”
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Laura, I agree, the best method in the world can be implemented badly, and the worst can be made palatable by good teachers.
It’s interesting that a Title 1 school who I assume is eligible for all sorts of funding and program enhancements doesn’t take advantage of those effectively. Or seemingly doesn’t.
But I have seen in my oldest daughter’s high school that classes for regular students (not AP) have ridiculously low expectations. It makes me sad that they aren’t trying to make children rise to a competent level and instead just let them coast because they assume they can’t do any better.
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Lisa V,
Feedback from a ‘rubric’? Please explain as I want to get the lingo before I have to deal with a grade school. Our son’s big accomplishment for last week was learning that two cookies are more than one cookie and that four cookies are more than two cookies. My big accomplishment: not saying “Holy Sh*t, you can count” while we were having a snack. Unfortunately, we are having trouble with the concept of ‘three’ and, especially, the concept of how many cookies are reasonable for a snack.
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Amy, if I wanted to read KTM, I would….
I’m at a conference right now (lunch break–I gave a presentation and have been small talking and I need the down time!) and we’ve been talking a lot about teaching and learning (obviously :). Good teachers do matter. But they have to go through a learning process, so we would have to build that into any educational program. Furthermore, there is something inherent in good teachers that makes them want to try new things in order to reach more students. I find most good teachers to be somewhat restless yet adaptable people. In other words, what I’m saying is that there will be some failures in teaching, and I think that’s intrinisic, somewhat paradoxically, to *good* teaching.
I have other thoughts, but it’s time to go back. I can’t find a single diet Coke in this place and I’m about to lose my mind.
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A rubric- this is a total parent, lay person understanding btw, so read at your own risk- is a table, chart, guide, set of standards that you use to evaluate work.
The standards are set for that individual assignment. The classic example I always see used is let’s say you are making a pie.
Things that are important about the pie- appearance, taste, texture are laid out in a chart. Then someone evaluates your pie based on the standards set, either it exceeds expectations, meets expectations, or is below expectations in each category. Then there are likely comments about why the evaluator used thought each of these things. Then they add them all up and say your pie meets expectations based on X.
There is usually criteria within say appearnce that you know ahead of time is important- like that it’s flakey or golden or whatever.
Often students are given an example of exemplary work before they start their own pie so they know the expectations. Sometimes students are asked to contribute to the rubric – “what do you think would be needed for this essay?”
Our kids have been doing this since kindergarten. It’s easy for them to understand as a simple “A” was for you and I. Only they know a lot more going in, and how to achieve it.
My daughter’s high school English teacher last year was very excited to introduce rubrics as this cool new method to her class last year. But my daughter and her friends had been doing for 8 years, and they had to sit on their hands because the teacher didn’t want them explaining it wrong. At our school, these kids would have been a supplement after her lesson and shown others how to do it.
Oh, and I say holy shit all the time to my kids, frequently in reference to homework.
Laura, sorry, for taking up so much space today. It’s my day off and I obviously need to pay you rent.
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Thanks for clearing that up Lisa. My grade school had a similar deal under a different name. We didn’t get letter grades. It was V (very satisfactory), S (satisfactory), U (unsatisfactory) and “Being a year old than most of the other kids might help him if he wants to play football when he gets to high school.”
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“Amy, if I wanted to read KTM, I would….”
Wendy,
Don’t tell me you didn’t like the hot fudge line (which was relevant–Laura mentioned ed consultants)! At least one other mention of KTM was pertinent, because bj was writing about the connection between individual politics and preferred teaching methodology. Then there was the KTM parent I quoted who also was having her child’s work go uncorrected–I needed that to back up my assertion that handing back uncorrected work is a fairly wide-spread phenomenon, rather than a freak occurrence. I’m sure I must have included a couple unnecessary KTM cites, but at least 50-60% were pretty directly connected to stuff going on in this thread. If KTM has a weakness, it’s maybe its too quick suspicion of whatever schools are up to. However, in fairness to KTM, that suspicion is well-earned, and in part a product of public schools not treating parents as equal partners who need to be respectfully listened to.
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I wonder if our school is using the same writing program as the one being proposed in Laura’s school. Last year the fourth graders spent endless class time in various pre-writing exercises. Group discussions, circles & spokes, Venn diagrams, pictures, lists, who knows what else. My daughter’s teacher finally conceded it wasn’t working for her. When I saw the writing program that some homeschooling parents were using so successfully, it became even clearer to me that our school’s approach was yet another in an endless line of mediocre innovations being tested on our children.
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Furthermore, there is something inherent in good teachers that makes them want to try new things in order to reach more students.
That’s interesting, and consistent with the love affair that the educational establishment seems to have with “innovation”. Unfortunately, from everything I’ve read, the research in K-12 education is miserably substandard compared to other disciplines. Furthermore, they’re allowed to use our children as guinea pigs in their ongoing quest “to try new things”.
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Laura, I’m sure you feel fortunate that you have the means to be able to move to a better school if you decide that’s better for your children. Although, some may wonder why you don’t just give your school a chance with the new writing program. Or with the other ways they say they’re trying to improve education.
Wait, I forgot that waiting for the schools to improve is just for parents who don’t have the money to move.
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“Furthermore, there is something inherent in good teachers that makes them want to try new things in order to reach more students.”
True. On the other hand, there’s this sort of institutional deathwish thing where whole schools, districts, and states engage in experiments that any reasonable, well-informed person would see were a mistake without the need for experimentation. Take, for example, the 4-period day experiment. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea at the time to some people, but anyone who knew anything about math, music, or foreign languages would know that if you study one of these subjects for 4 months, drop it for 8, and then resume for another 4 months, you are very nearly beginning with a clean slate the second time.
I don’t think major educational experiments should be engaged in without prior permission from the subjects or their parents. As somebody said on KTM once (sorry Wendy!), it is unethical to do even harmless medical experiments on human subjects without their informed consent.
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bummer, laura. I was hoping that the principal would make it all make sense. But I guess not.
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I’m occasionally bitter also, but I don’t insult people on their own blogs (unless they are Ron Paul supporters). It’s not that I feel supporting Rep. Paul is somehow less worthy of respect than any other views, its just that it is impossible to disagree with a Ron Paul supporter without leaving them feeling insulted.
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And with that, you have the reasons that my wife and I are likely to homeschool. If we’re going to teach the material ANYWAY, we might as well not try to cram it into the evenings.
Exactly. If I had it to do over again, I would homeschool.
I live in a “high performing” district, funding $22,000/per pupil. Parents, tutors, and students are doing the heavy lifting — and, yes, we’re cramming our remediation into the evening hours.
Last night, at 10 pm, I was on the phone teaching sin, cosine, and tangent to the son of a friend. She’s on her way over now to learn beginning trig from me; in exchange, she’s going to explain lunar eclipses & why we always see the same side of the moon to me.
My district is indifferent and, when pushed, openly hostile to parents who ask why their kids aren’t learning these concepts at school.
The answer is simple:
a) some kids are learning (true), so if your kid isn’t, that’s his problem
b) if the kid doesn’t learn, it’s up to him to “seek extra help.”
If extra help doesn’t help and you’ve got the nerve to point this out prepare for war.
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And with that, you have the reasons that my wife and I are likely to homeschool. If we’re going to teach the material ANYWAY, we might as well not try to cram it into the evenings.
Right.
We’ve had the same experience Tex has had. ($22,000 per pupil spending in our district) Parents, tutors, and, when they’re old enough, students are doing the heavy lifting.
And, yes, we’re cramming it all into evening & weekend hours.
Last night at 10 (this is a Sunday evening I’m talking about) I was on the telephone explaining sine, cosine, and tangent to a friend’s child. She’s on her way over here now to learn beginning trig; she’ll explain lunar eclipses and why we always see the same side of the moon to me.
Some parents do have the nerve to ask why their kids can’t learn these things at school. It’s a good way to make enemies, but some of us ask anyway.
The district’s answer:
a) some kids are learning these things at school (true), so if your kid isn’t, that’s his problem
b) if your kid isn’t learning what he’s supposed to be learning it’s up to him to “seek extra help”
Good luck finding a teacher in his office during designated “extra help” hours, but never mind.
Of course, we can always hire a district teacher to tutor.
Fees: $80 to $120/hr
If I had it to do over again, I would homeschool. In a heartbeat.
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sorry — didn’t mean to post twice (thought my original comment was lost)
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