The organic chemistry professor at NYU, who was fired after students complained about their grades, was pundit catnip this week. His story became a cautionary tale that proved a host of societal ills: college is now a “consumer product,” declining standards is bad, college is too punitive on students and professors alike, adjuncts are vulnerable, sometimes a weed-out class is an important wake up call.
Who knew that one incident could have SO MANY ANGLES! SO MANY SOCIETAL ILLS! Pundit heaven, for sure. All these pundits felt that Dr. Jones was a canary in the coal mine, but each had him tweeting a different song.
I didn’t touch the story for awhile, beyond a link and little observation on my blog, because at first glance, the story was nothing new. Organic Chemistry has always been super hard. Student evaluations are important, especially for non-tenured professor.The New York Times could write this same story, but with a different professor and a different college, every single day. It’s odd that this one story took off like it did.
The real reason why this story is important is buried a few graphs down in the article, and did not get quite enough attention. (Yet another societal ill!) Professor Jones, the fired organic chem professor, said while student academic performance has declined in the recent years, grades really took a nose dive after COVID. From the New York Times,
Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter
Apt. 11d 
“Many schools are struggling with major staffing issues right now, and can’t worry about the third grades who can’t read. Parents are going to have to manage this crisis on their own. ”
And this is a big driver for parents going private (or, here in NZ to state-integrated Catholic schools).
Where they can influence the school to care – because they’re contributing significantly to the school operations budget.
Of course, this has always been true. But it’s even more strongly marked when parents see the stark alternatives: State education, which will dump your kid in a box and leave them there; or private, which will work to help your child develop the skills to get out of the box. If you have the money, then you’d have to be pretty negligent to chose option 1.
[Of course, #notallstateschools. But the vast majority]
And, what does that mean for State education – when the highest socio-economic 20% withdraw – along with the cream of the remaining 80% who are given scholarships?
Do we go back to a primary system, which just teaches enough to read/write/figure – so you can work at a low income job?
Do we switch to technical high-schools (similar to the German system) – where the vast majority are learning to work in trades, rather than prepping for college?
Do we just abandon the state system as failed, and give education vouchers? (and what does that mean for the kids no school wants?)
Example from NZ: State-integrated Catholic schools in NZ – are part funded (teacher funding & operations grant (basically a per-capita payment for each child, based on parental income and other factors) comes from the government, school buildings and maintenance come from the Church). They’re required to teach the state curriculum, but can (and do, obviously) supplement with faith-based content. Most importantly, they can have a behavioural charter, and kick kids out if they persistently don’t follow it.
These schools, regularly (by which I mean just about across the board), out-perform all but the most wealthy state and private schools (the ones with the $2million dollar average house price in their zone). Average students from the Catholic schools achieve results which place them in rankings 3-4 places above their decile level.
The significant differences (apart from the religious content – which I decline to believe makes an educational difference): school discipline; parental involvement; respect for staff. Kids don’t learn well when they’re in a chaotic environment.
What does our Ministry of Education do, when releasing the new funding structure? Instead of funding for success, they fund for failure. Schools which are succeeding (especially in lower socio-economic areas – where a lot of the catholic schools are) – are financially penalized. Schools which are failing their students, get a funding boost. Talk about a disincentive!
And, this is against a background of dropping educational standards over the last 20 years (this problem existed well before Covid).
Instead of taking what works well at the Catholic schools, and applying it to the State system, they reinforce failure – throwing money at strategies which demonstrably don’t work.
[NB: when is say ‘state’ I mean ‘national’ – rather than the US state]
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Most importantly, they can have a behavioural charter, and kick kids out if they persistently don’t follow it.
Never underestimate the advantage that accrues from being able to cherry-pick your students.
This is the primary reason I hate charter schools with the fire of a thousand suns. They consistently do not out-perform, in the aggregate, public schools, despite effectively being able to select their own student body. Why allow for-profit schools to siphon off public funds and dump the most difficult to educate students on the public schools if they can’t even leverage this massive advantage?
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My goodness you are a grumpy one, Jay! Yes there is an advantage to the students in a school if their fellows are well behaved. Now, one way to look at your little screed here is that you favor having the twenty-five kids in the class who will benefit if their classmates are well behaved being dragged down by the behavior of the one who would otherwise be expelled?
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My, you are an incompetent amateur psychoanalyst, Dave.
But another way to look at your little diatribe is that it is the kind of mentality that leads to special ed kids housed in underfunded windowless basements.
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Jay wrote, “They consistently do not out-perform, in the aggregate, public schools, despite effectively being able to select their own student body. Why allow for-profit schools to siphon off public funds and dump the most difficult to educate students on the public schools if they can’t even leverage this massive advantage?”
Presumably, charter school families were one who were unhappy with their choices in the public system…
Also, let’s be honest here–there are a million ways for a public school to squeeze an undesirable family out of the system.
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“Never underestimate the advantage that accrues from being able to cherry-pick your students.”
So what’s the answer?
Parents who have choices are *already* pulling their kids out of under-performing public schools (we can argue until the cows come home over just why they’re failing – but you can’t argue with the reality that they are).
Why should those parents then vote for increased funding for a failing school system which they don’t even use?
Especially when they can see that pumping additional money in, isn’t fixing the problems.
FWIW. The Catholic high-schools schools in NZ don’t exactly cherry-pick. They are required to take the kids from the feeder schools (kids who were in the Catholic primary system). Remaining places are on a ballot system.
Yes – it’s cherry-picking in that you have to have a parent who cares enough to pull their kid out of a failing high-school and apply – but the kids are not being preferntially selected on the basis of intelligence (or sporting ability).
You could argue that it’s ‘cherry-picking’ in that kids with persistently bad or dangerous behaviour will be expelled (they call it something different now, but it’s the same thing). However, my argument is that those kids shouldn’t be in the standard high-school system, either. If you are so dangerous, either through your personal behaviour (fighting, assaulting, intimidating other students or teachers); or your life choices (selling drugs, etc) – why should you be allowed to drag down the education of a whole class of other kids?
The numbers of kids who are at this end of the behavioural spectrum, who have had their lives turned around by the standard schooling system, must be so infinitesimal that it would be statistically zero.
In NZ – for the short time we had what were effectively charter schools – they did, indeed, outperform the state system. And some of them, were *deliberately* designed to take struggling kids (failing in the main-stream system) and had much greater success rates than the standard schools. The common factors, as I said above: school discipline; parental involvement; respect for staff. I’d also add, highly committed teachers who want to make a difference, and are hampered by the one-size-fits-all education system.
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Jay you have certainly done your best to confirm my ‘grumpy’ characterization. Which is okay, you be you. Here is a claim that charters not only have mild positive effects on their students but also have mild positive effects on other schools in the districts where they operate: https://www.educationnext.org/bigger-picture-charter-school-results-national-analysis-system-level-effects-test-scores-graduation-rates/
You might find some introspection worthwhile about why you are so angered by opinions you don’t share. And it does seem to me that there has to be a balancing of the negative effects some students have on other students with the (possibly) positive effects their enrolment on the negative students themselves.
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Why should those parents then vote for increased funding for a failing school system which they don’t even use?
Well then why should *anyone* who doesn’t have kids at all, let alone in public schools, support funding education? You are basically making the argument that schools should be privatized and everybody should be on their own in securing an education for their children. This is how schools are indeed run in most developing countries but we have, thankfully, moved past that in the civilized world.
People pay taxes to support the education of other people’s children, not just their own. And people with a modicum of civic virtue recognize this. When my own kids are done with secondary school (as the last one will be the year after next) I anticipate that I will still support funding public schools, because that is what we do in civilized society.
But you ask
So what’s the answer?
I don’t entirely know (and nor does anyone) but the one thing I am sure of is that when we look to solve the issues surrounding public education, looking to private schools, parochial schools, charter schools, etc, is certainly not the answer, because they all have the superpower of being able to cherry pick the students that they want and being able to discard the ones who aren’t working out. As public schools do *not* have this superpower, suggesting that they adopt the approaches of these other institutions is just crazy talk, doomed to failure.
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Why are you conflating charter schools, private schools, and for-profit schools? Where I live, public charter schools are common, and if they don’t meet certain metrics, the school system can pull the plug on them. I’ve seen bad public charter schools that serve poor African American kids get shut down; regular public charter schools that serve poor African American kids just keep warehousing them….
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Why are you conflating charter schools, private schools, and for-profit schools?
The unifying quality they have in common is explicitly stated in the second half of the sentence that mentions them in the first half. Which, apparently, you did not read to the end of.
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“Which, apparently, you did not read to the end of.” This rule you claim about ending a sentence with a preposition is one up with which I will not put…..
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There is a fair amount of data on outcomes in New Orleans. Unfortunately, closing poorly performing schools isn’t a panacea, resulting in the most vulnerable students having to find new placements frequently. In this report, a family describes a pair of siblings who have been in 3 schools, though neither is yet in 3rd grade: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/when-choice-doesnt-feel-like-a-choice/2015/08
“I don’t want to do this again,” Bailey recalls thinking when he first heard rumors that the school was going to get shut down. “I was in denial. … We just came from a failing school.”
. . .The golden rule in the charter sector is if a school fails to perform—academically, financially, or legally—it gets shut down. . . .
In the decade since the storm, New Orleans has seen an unparalleled amount of school turnover.
New schools open. They get handed off to new charter operators. They close down. ”
(and, the school was shut down for violating the special education laws, one of the few rules of education that have teeth)
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Unfortunately, closing poorly performing schools isn’t a panacea, resulting in the most vulnerable students having to find new placements frequently.
Stability is also underrated. I read a study once that concluded that switching schools (aside from natural progression from primary to secondary that one did with their entire cohort) set a student back by half a year. Having moved continents three times during my kids’ education, I find this plausible. In our case, at least the international experience made up for academic adjustments. Switching schools three times in the same city doesn’t convey the same consolations.
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You’re begging the question here.
Why should *any* taxpayer be paying for a schooling system which is failing – and is getting worse results, over time rather than better ones?
It’s worse for parents, because they are not only having to pay for private education (whether entirely, or supplementing with tuition) – but are also have to pay for the state education system as well. You bet, they’re angry.
If you want to argue that state education is a public good (and, I’m not opposed to that argument), then you have to be open to radical solutions to turn around the failing state education system.
“I don’t know, but it’s not charter schools – because I hate charter schools” – isn’t exactly cutting to the heart of the issue.
And, solutions which exclude the frankly dangerous kids from State schools *should* be on the agenda. Why does one child’s ‘right’ to education – over-ride the right for the other 29 kids in the class to be in an environment which enables them to learn?
Because right now, what you get is (figures imagined – but the pattern is obvious).
Class of 30. 1 bad apple (violence, drugs, whatever), 5 kids following his lead (why not, there are no consequences), 10 kids pulled out to go to private schools and/or transferred to ‘better’ schools (parents shifting houses, if needed). Leaving 14 kids whose learning is significantly impacted – because they’re stuck in an environment where learning basically doesn’t happen – and certainly isn’t valued.
Amazingly, school sports teams have no issues with tossing badly behaving kids off the team; but when it comes to education – which is, after all, the reason they’re *supposed* to be there – suddenly it’s all about the ‘rights’ of the problem kid; and zero care for the rights of their classmates.
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It’s worse for parents, because they are not only having to pay for private education (whether entirely, or supplementing with tuition) – but are also have to pay for the state education system as well.
It’s not worse for parents. It’s the same for parents as everyone else. Taxes aren’t user fees. As a parent you pay taxes the same as everyone else, to support the public good. And then if you want to send your kids to a different school than the one that is offered, you are free to do so. But your taxes are to support the public education system, not to pay for access to it for yourself.
I pay (through taxes) for a lot of things I don’t use or benefit from. Rural services is the most prominent in my mind. If I was on a privatization jag (which I am not) I would privatize the rural roads and infrastructure, where the value for money in these expenditures is very low. That is a bigger money sink than public schools, by a long chalk.
If you want to argue that state education is a public good (and, I’m not opposed to that argument), then you have to be open to radical solutions to turn around the failing state education system.
If one does not believe that state education is a public good than you are not a debate partner for me. You are a political enemy that I have no common ground with, who I am only interested in utterly defeating (politically) and salting the earth under your feet. Of all the positions I would take, privatizing government services such as education and defense are the ones where I draw the brightest of lines and will not ever willingly compromise. I am not interested in instituting the education system of Botswana in the United States. No, never.
That isn’t to say I am not open to reforms and even radical reforms. Of course, part of the problems that exist today are due to the radical reforms we instituted in the US starting in the 1950s. Many of the worst performing public schools in the US are in the South, where the (functional) public schools were more or less privatized, but access was only extended to white students. When someone talks about privatizing schools, this is what that means to me.
And, solutions which exclude the frankly dangerous kids from State schools *should* be on the agenda. Why does one child’s ‘right’ to education – over-ride the right for the other 29 kids in the class to be in an environment which enables them to learn?
Taking such measures would certainly improve schools. But there is this idea of path dependence, where the options we have are constrained by the events that brought us to this point. In the past, in the US, when we excluded students who were “problems,” they were disproportionately minority, mostly black. (Also, students who were in need of special ed.) When you say you want to do this, then there is massive and justified pushback from black parents (even black parents who are appalled by the dysfunctionality in the schools) who look at history and are appropriately skeptical that their kids (even the good ones) will be the ones targeted in these efforts. (I’ve only had my kids in Australian schools, not NZ, so I don’t know the issues there, but it would not shock me if there was similar pushback from the Maori community for similar reasons.)
So any solutions that we impose are going to have to acknowledge this historical reality and the constraints that it imposes.
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Here’s what I totally agree with: Public education is a non-negotiable part of a functioning democracy. We need an educated population to make informed decisions in the voting booth and to become workers in our capitalist society. A free education to all children is simply a must for any modern, functioning country.
Here’s where things get murky. Black Americans are overwhelming in favor of charter schools and even vouchers, because the current system is not working at all in places like Newark and New York City. People are begging for charter schools in those areas. And the charter school big chains, like KIPP and Success Academy, are killing it on exams. They’re getting their kids into great colleges and they graduate from those colleges. Now, their methods maybe controversial, but there’s not doubt that parents of color are banging on the doors to get their kids in those schools. I just wrote a long internal report on Success Academy for an education outlet. I could go on and on their methods.
New York City has public school choice. Meaning that parents can choose between a variety of magnet, neighborhood, and charter schools. Having that mix might be the wave of the future.
But public schools are in trouble right now. Serious problems. Underreported problems. Right now there are large numbers of students, who are not receiving any education. Either they’re not showing up or the quality stinks so badly. But the economy is what’s going to really drive the nails into the coffin. They’re not going to be able to repair the roof or hire teachers soon. Not joking.
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It is empirically the case (that is there is data) that the exclusion of “problem” children falls disproportionately on Black children, who were also excluded from funded public schools in the South for much of the history of public education (followed by the segregationist academies and the undermining of public education: “Private schools in the South were established, expanded, and supported to preserve the Southern tradition of racial segregation in the face of the federal courts’ dismantling of “separate but equal.”: https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-private-schools-and-race-in-the-american-south/).
There are a number of radical approaches I would support and fund. Charter schools are not one of them because I believe the current evidence shows that charter schools are less stable, staffed by a transient workforce and produce most of their gains from excluding unwanted children (not always Black children, but “problem” children, and problem parents, and those with greater needs, including the subsection of children who have the right to a free and appropriate public education under US federal law),
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Wow. Absolutely none of that is true about charter schools.
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What isn’t true about charter schools? That they are segregationist academies?
I wasn’t trying to say that, just pointing out the history of southern segregation and the subsequent shut down of the public schools in opposition to integration.
It’s a history that affects my thinking on systems that encourage even parent led school choice, which I do feel is often used to avoid specific students in public schools. In the South post Brown, it was to avoid Black students, but now, it is to avoid the harder to educate students, the problem students, including the ones with special needs who consume more resources and teacher time. It’s an underlying motivator for choosing magnet schools, private schools, charter schools, religious schools even when parents don’t admit it, and say they are looking for the arts school, or the project school, or the gifted school. And parents of all colors with easier to educate children benefit from leaving the harder students behind.
And, the commenters here arguing in favor of the charters are arguing in favor of them specifically because the hope is that charter schools have more power to exclude those problem children.
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This is a pre-pandemic poll but I don’t see the support for charters as “overwhelming” in non-white populations: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/05/21/democrats-views-on-charters-diverge-by-race-as-2020-elections-loom/. Large numbers have no opinion, but less than 50% support charters among all groups (though non-white Democratic voters support charters more than white v Democratic voters. Other polls show other variations (https://www.laschoolreport.com/america-divided-public-support-for-charter-schools-is-growing-but-so-is-opposition-new-poll-finds/) but I don’t think there’s overwhelming support among any group (except, potentially Republicans, who in that poll are the most likely to support charters with Blacks being the next category, and the only two >50%).
(and, more examples of Black parents of children with SpED not being able to access charters: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/in-depth/2019/11/18/351500/in-struggle-to-fix-special-education-texas-charter-schools-still-lag-behind/)
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/05/21/democrats-views-on-charters-diverge-by-race-as-2020-elections-loom/
” Charter schools educate disproportionately large shares of black and Hispanic children. Support for charters looks reasonably strong and stable among black and Hispanic Democrats, but it looks weak and is plummeting among white Democrats. The result, I argue, is a risk that growing ideological opposition to charters among white Democrats will have tangible, unwelcome consequences for families of color.”
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(yes, the differences could continue to diverge until Black families showed overwhelming support, but that’s not what polling shows now)
Charters are part of what I’ve commented on before with respect to private schools: easier to educate children (including the easier to educate non-white children) leave public schools, leaving the public schools the task of educating the most vulnerable, the ones with the most needs, and special needs children.
Charters can benefit the easier to educate among children of color, too and it is not surprising that parents of typical to educate children of color in public schools in big cities see them as a potential solution for their children.
An example of another charter operator, in WA State, that didn’t exclude ELL & SpEd children, but did not provide them with services: https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-charter-school-chain-promised-a-world-class-education-instead-they-billed-the-state-and-let-kids-sit-there-quietly
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From the article about Impact schools in WA state: “Four percent of students at Impact schools receive special education, compared to 14% in nearby public elementary schools, state records show.”
“Special education services are an added expense for schools — sometimes, a considerable one. State records show Impact did not budget for that expense. Impact’s budgets project its schools will have as few as 1% special education students in their first years in operation.”
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The charter schools that I just studied in NYC has a 15% special ed rate. The most severely impacted kids go to specialized schools, as they do in every neighborhood school in NYC. All non-verbal autistic kid in the city goes to a specialized public school system.
And it’s not like the public schools are doing a wonderful job with special ed kids. They may take them, but they put them in the basement and don’t really educate them. That was our experience. Ian is now in a private school (which is paid for by the public school which finally admitted that they didn’t have a good program for him) and is finally getting an education.
Don’t use special education as a reason to hate charter schools.
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I just need to point out that the conversation here wasn’t what kind of system was best for children with disabilities. It was what kind of schools were going to get *stuck* with the disabled kids who were going to be expensive, bring down standards, and disrupt the education of the AP kids. Nice.
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Sorry, have lost the reply thread, here
Laura said: “I just need to point out that the conversation here wasn’t what kind of system was best for children with disabilities. It was what kind of schools were going to get *stuck* with the disabled kids who were going to be expensive, bring down standards, and disrupt the education of the AP kids. Nice. ”
We have an instance of a special school (the current government is philosophically opposed to ‘charter schools’ – so they tried to get past the Ministry of Education by using the ‘integrated schools’ model – it works sometimes) – turned down.
This was a school specifically designed for kids with a variety of special needs – who are being failed (and very badly failed) by the current integrated education system. It was not for the non-verbal kids – or those with very severe functional disabilities (who are already catered for with a different model) – but for the ‘ordinary’ kids on the spectrum or with ADHD, etc. for whom the current education model/environment quite simply does not work.
It had outstanding success rates.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/124602265/parents-take-fight-to-parliament-over-state-school-for-diverse-learning
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/125672364/parents-devastated-as-government-rejects-state-school-for-children-with-special-needs
The justification from the Minister was
“In a letter informing Poole that his application was unsuccessful, Hipkins said one reason for declining it was “that there are available supports for all learners in existing state schools”
Which is a blatant lie – and has been called out as such by parents of kids across the education spectrum.
[The other criteria were around MoE preferring to own land, while charter schools prefer to lease – which is a flexibility issue having nothing to do with education. And the new school not adding to ‘network capacity’ (by which they mean that there are failing schools in the area – where these kids could be dumped)]
I do (and more importantly, the parents of those kids do) think that an alternative form of schooling is a better solution (not least because their kids actually get an education). But the educational establishment isn’t willing to look at the evidence – because they’re so blinded by their pre-conceptions of what ‘good’ education looks like.
NB: the parent in the article who was quoted as paying for an in-class teacher aide – was then formally approached by the Ministry of Education and told that she was no longer allowed to do so! Massive public outcry – and MoE had to back down
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/127059899/education-ministry-apologises-after-parents-told-to-stop-paying-for-sons-teacher-aide
When the educational bureaucracy demonstrates zero interest in changing a model which is evidently failing (not just this kind of anecdotal evidence, but dropping literacy/numeracy rates across the board) – parents need alternatives.
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I was curious so I looked the data up for Chicago, which has a ton of charter schools of all sorts:
“Of 18 cities studied by a University of Arkansas research team, Chicago was the only one where charter schools enrolled a larger percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, 15% compared to 14.1%. On average, the study reported that the 18 cities charter schools enrolled 9.5% of students with disabilities, while traditional public schools enrolled 13.1%”. (https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2021/7/27/22596683/chicago-charters-enroll-more-students-with-disabilities-than-traditional-schools-but-funding-unclear)
Here’s the report from the Arkansas team: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/wordpressua.uark.edu/dist/9/544/files/2018/10/charter-school-funding-support-for-students-with-disabilities.pdf
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wow. thanks for the data!
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I’m just grateful I no longer have school age kids. I hated it as a child, I always felt guilty when my kids attended, but it is so much worse now.
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“Also, let’s be honest here–there are a million ways for a public school to squeeze an undesirable family out of the system.”
Not true. Public schools can (and do) fail to meet the needs of some students, and the families may then decide to leave, but it’s their choice, not the school’s. And I would add that it is certainly true that parents choose charter schools. In my area, they make that choice not so much on academics but on school climate; the presence of highly disruptive students in their local public school is what makes parents seek alternatives. Why are those students present? they cannot be excluded, although they may be designated to receive special ed services All by way of saying that Jay has a point.
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We regularly have headlines here over persistent bullies (bullying to the level of police intervention) who are *retained at the same school* (because nowhere else will take them – and the ‘statistics show’ that excluding them from school is bad for their future).
Zero consideration given to the mental (or even physical) wellbeing of the bullied kid who is faced with their smug tormentor on a daily basis. And what that does to the education quality of the other kids in the school – let alone the bullied one.
Yep. You should have a chance to turn your life around. Nope. It should not be in the same school where you have created a climate of fear.
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One of the overlooked aspects of this is class size–the chemistry course had over 200 students, which seems a lot to me, especially at the high tuition folks pay for NYU. I think they would be surprised that community college organic chemistry, which is also taught for pre-med majors, at least at mine, has about 25 kids in it and runs about 6oo bucks for the course. I think these large lecture courses are going the way of the dodo because they really aren’t about pedagogy but cost. Yet all the “innovators” out in education technology land think they’re the norm. Instead, I think smaller tailored sections work much better and give the student a feeling of intimacy with an instructor and course material. Someday we’ll worry less about what decal we have in the back of our car windows and more about what kind of education we get.
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burkemblog wrote, “One of the overlooked aspects of this is class size–the chemistry course had over 200 students, which seems a lot to me, especially at the high tuition folks pay for NYU.”
Oh my goodness, yes!
For NYU tuition, I’d expect a personal tutor for everybody.
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I once asked a person at the front office at big R1 U why he was taking his calculus class at the community college, even though he had free tuition at the big R1, and he said because the class was better at the CC, that everyone knew that.
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Same in California. The CC science classes are smaller and instructors are much more available. Plus with the overcrowded UC system students can easily have an answer for why they took their basic science classes at the CC – the course was full. (Medical schools tend to prefer you to take these classes at 4 year institutions but often understand difficulties like filled up classes, at least when it comes to California).
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I’m not opposed to the pedagogy of big lecture classes — I think they can be a way to present material to facile learners. But, I do have a tougher time explaining why that can’t just be a video lecture in the modern age when video lectures can be well recorded & rewinded & provided with links to additional informative material.
(Mind you, I saw the product of recorded class lectures back in the day 30+years ago, with dancing equations for public television. And they were dreadful for what we were supposed to be learning)
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Here’s one possible argument as to why it can’t be recorded: at some point, students have to do hard things that are possibly boring for them, and they are more likely to do those hard and boring things if they are stuck in a place with a lot of other people and a professor to keep things going and verify that they are there. The whole “flipped classrooms are awesome” thing depends on students doing the hard, boring things alone in a room, whether it is reading or watching a lecture.
We have heard from our online teaching staff that students typically will not watch instructional videos of more than about 15 minutes – but ideally, about 5 minutes. Of course you can split your 3-hour/week course – say it’s typically about 2/3 lecture 1/3 discussion – into 2 hours of online lectures, say 8 15-minute lectures, or 24 5-minute lectures. Or you can use someone else’s version of that – making really good videos is hard, and the fancy ones require time, skills, and money. But in the end, the student has to watch and understand all of them. (And expecting them to get that material by reading is even harder.)
Fun “fancy pedagogy” story from a recent provost candidate. The guy suggested that our classrooms should be set up more like sports bars, where people gathered around tables of four, and because it’s hard to see a lecture/powerpoint/etc. if you’re in this configuration, there would be televisions around the room so that everyone could see one in any direction. My response: In the classroom where I teach, the clock on the wall – synched to all the other clocks in the 4-story building with about 40 classrooms – has been broken for the last three years and we have been told it can’t be fixed. This is really the solution?
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And yet Great Courses (I think they have renamed) is well done. Also, I have taken some Udemy, etc courses for data science through work (we did a study group) and those were also well done. I did learn far more than I expected and I do attribute it to the course, not the group. I’ve also seen poorly done Udemy courses. So the instructor matters. but they aren’t just watch the video. Well done Udemy courses force you to engage with the material. I think poorly done large lectures at in person universities do not force engagement. That’s the problem.
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“Fun “fancy pedagogy” story from a recent provost candidate. The guy suggested that our classrooms should be set up more like sports bars, where people gathered around tables of four, and because it’s hard to see a lecture/powerpoint/etc. if you’re in this configuration, there would be televisions around the room so that everyone could see one in any direction.”
Ugh. Please PM me the name of that candidate in case they ever try to apply at our college. That said, our current provost seems decent and like they intend to stay.
When I was in college, I took as few large classes as I could, mainly because I would fall asleep in large classes (hey, you try walking up a huge hill in the snow and getting to the warm lecture hall and NOT falling asleep). But in “elite” universities, the draw of these large classes is often the professor. We had quite a few of these at my university, and they often lectured in a hall that held 1000 students. (Example: https://www.ithaca.com/opinion/guest_opinions/a-tribute-to-my-cornell-professor/article_f0d08d28-30f2-11eb-a74e-d3e7eeae6b9d.html)
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“The whole “flipped classrooms are awesome” thing depends on students doing the hard, boring things alone in a room, whether it is reading or watching a lecture. ”
“But in the end, the student has to watch and understand all of them. (And expecting them to get that material by reading is even harder.) ”
I think you have answered my question of how a video isn’t just a replacement. I’ve been hearing how few super intense, highly capable students actually succeed in watching the video lecture for the 9 AM class they skipped even with good intentions. And, when you’ve skipped 5 of them, you now have five hours to watch, and there’s never enough time for that. I agree that the discipline to watch the video alone in your room and not as an event that is fixed in space and time and out of your control is difficult to find in the typical human being and that’s one of the facts of human nature that’s ignored by people trying to scale up education.
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It’s common in science to have a larger lecture class and then small discussion sections and lab sections. The smaller sections are usually led by graduate students TAs so the teaching can be uneven which is another issue.
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Oh god how I hated that. It was so nice when I took classes at CCSF to have the instructor for lecture and lab be the same. The labs made sense with the lectures and the instructors were experienced professionals.
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amen
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We’ve talked about this before, but college STEM pedagogy can be not-so-awesome.
I’ve also had a thing with my older kids where the college lab had a somewhat weird relationship with the lecture. So some students wound up having their lab day BEFORE the lecture relating to the lab and some had the lab day AFTER the lecture. It often felt really haphazard–there’s not enough attention paid to making sure that students are introduced to the material before turning them loose in the lab.
I’d be super curious which set of students gets better grades.
In general, I feel like there should be more research done on college STEM pedagogy, given how gosh darn expensive college is.
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UT Austin has some initiatives doing the kind of study you suggest here — comparing the timing of the lecture class with respect to the lab. There are those who argue that doing the lab first might be beneficial (though I think there’s some decent research results suggest that doesn’t work when the students are entirely novices to the field).
UT has some results on regular low stakes quizzing improving learning as does UVA. I’m not finding all the links, because I think one of the consistent results is that effect STEM learning often involves student discomfort, a period of not understanding and evaluation of ones understanding that is hard to convince students and teachers to engage in.
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Note that I think the NYU prof takes that and adds unnecessary meanness if not cruelty. To make the discomfort acceptable, when it is not used to merely pluck some individual students out of the ground and toss them into the compost, everyone, including the teacher has to treat the discomfort as temporarily and not immutable, that nurturing, resources, training, and exercise and practice can change the discomfort into competance.
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Vanderbilt Center for Teaching has done some interesting research and even run free online classes on science teaching pedagogy. I haven’t looked at them in a while but it was interesting when I tried to do a MOOC from them ten years ago. Alas, the class wanted us to spend more time than teachers really had to spare and I didn’t finish – exactly the problem with most MOOCs where people drift off and don’t finish without the accountability of a real classroom.
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“Alas, the class wanted us to spend more time than teachers really had to spare and I didn’t finish – exactly the problem with most MOOCs where people drift off and don’t finish without the accountability of a real classroom.”
I have the time, and still drift off. I think the discipline to stay engaged is hard, especially when the work becomes more difficult. I think there’s misinformation that circulates around teaching, especially among people who don’t try to teach people who find the skill being taught difficult. There are some things humans learn easily without significant taching, walking, for example, and a language, for most of us (though not all). Some learn reading, and a second language easily. A few learn math, calculus, organic chemistry (a very few) with little teaching or external discipline. And, because of those examples of easy learning people think there might be a magic that teaches everyone everything
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As bj said (we seem to be quoting each other), ” I think there’s misinformation that circulates around teaching, especially among people who don’t try to teach people who find the skill being taught difficult. Yes, yes, yes.
I tried to take the famous Harvard computer class online – pandemic summer experiment – and though itwas extremely well-done, it was hard for me to stay focused and do the work. I’m not bad at math but I am a humanities person. I did about a month’s worth of assignments diligently, but then gave up. On the up side, it gave me more empathy for students who struggle with the kind of reading and writing assignments I give in my class.
Great Courses are for people who are excited about learning a specific topic – and even for these, they can be hard to finish (I liked the one on the history of Africa but never got back to it after this summer’s road trip).
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I’ve realized I’m a harsh perfectionist who only gives critical advice when I am showing others how to do things. It’s taken me years to realize that the method is counter productive to learning except the few (and they are a minority of students) who learn exactly the way that I do and have (either through history or personality) been trained to learn the same way that I have.
I was recently looking over the shoulders at a sewing class and one of the students (an adult) in her first day of class, sewed a seam and smiled up at me and asked “isn’t this perfect”? I think I was supposed to smile back and say wonderful for your first day and then, potentially, but maybe not today, point out the couple of jigs in the straight seam. Instead, I suspect I looked grim and said the seam wasn’t perfectly straight. She seemed to be able to handle my version, but after I did it, I realized all the times the method of giving only feedback on what needs improvement drives learners away.
(Mind you, I can take the critical advice and I’ve been in classes where I’ve told teachers when I’ve been asked that I want harsh feedback, usually in art and craft)
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Sorry, kind of lost in the threading.
af quoted the following:
“Of 18 cities studied by a University of Arkansas research team, Chicago was the only one where charter schools enrolled a larger percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, 15% compared to 14.1%. On average, the study reported that the 18 cities charter schools enrolled 9.5% of students with disabilities, while traditional public schools enrolled 13.1%”.”
I think we have to be at least a bit cautious here, because a) charter schools tend to serve a poorer, higher-minority clientele and b) it’s not necessarily that easy to get a kid classified as having a disability and doing so may require a lot of social and economic capital.
Charter schools are likely to contain a lot of kids that do not have official disability papers but who would qualify as disabled…if they had middle class parents with the resources and desire to pursue and pay for the documentation. We have to expect significant disparities.
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/race-class-contribute-disparities-autism-diagnoses/
“White children are about 19 percent more likely than black children and 65 percent more likely than Hispanic children to be diagnosed with autism.”
“Autism prevalence rose almost evenly among high-, middle- and low-socioeconomic groups between 2002 and 2010, the researchers found. The rates increased from 3.9 to 9.3 per 1,000 children in the low-socioeconomic group, from 6.2 to 11.6 in the middle class and from 7.9 to 13.4 in the high-socioeconomic group.”
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