Obama: Students should serve

Barack Obama believes that all students should serve their communities.

The plan Obama outlined in Colorado Springs called for getting middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service a year and 100 hours a year for college students.

He said the goals would be achieved by making federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs.

But Obama also said he believed young people would rise to the occasion - challenging what he said were "cynics."

"These are the voices that will tell you - not just what you can't do - but what you won't do," Obama said. "Young Americans won't serve their country - they're too selfish, too apathetic or too lazy. This is the soft sell of the status quo. The voice that tells you to settle because settling isn't that bad."

But Stevenson worried it sounded like a federal mandate.

Well, Stevenson is right, it would be a mandate, just as testing is a mandate, you either do what the Feds tell you or you can kiss that Title I money good bye (I have some real problems with this governmental money with strings attached methodology, but that is a post for another time).

Some states, such as Maryland, my home state, have community service graduation criteria, 75 hours of "preparation, action, and reflection". My beef is that it is "forced volunteerism" which kind of negates the point of volunteerism doesn't it. By definition, volunteering is something you do out of personal choice, but if you have to "volunteer" in order to graduate, that personal choice is obviated.

But Stevenson brings up a good point. What would be permitted volunteerism? I don't know the expanse of Maryland's volunteer requirement, but I can be pretty sure it wouldn't involve say, organizing for the Nazi Party of America or the KKK. I would be pretty sure that church volunteerism would be covered as long as it is "community based," i.e. not evangelism or trying to convert people, since that might violate church/state principles.

I also don't like the college service requirement. On a personal level, I attended college after military service and I had to hold down a couple of jobs to make ends meet. I did volunteer activities through my fraternity, but nowhere close to 100 hours a year. I would resent being told I have to volunteer to graduate (which would be the only way the colleges could ensure they had enough volunteerism to ensure they get their federal funds).

Look, Obama encouraging service, including it should be noted, military service is all well and good. But there is a difference between "encouraging service" and "requiring service," the latter is called conscription and it never breeds the community spirit you are seeking.

Instructivist Reform Does Not Address Poor Kids Needs

The debate about Sol Stern's City Journal article on how to best go about reforming our public schools continues. While I tend to think of the debate as it played out in City Journal's pages as largely without effect, Lisa Snell of Reason Magazine is adding her two cents to the debate, pricipally by undermining Stern's citations of the Massachusetts Miracle as the model for an instructivist reform, that is improving the content standards. Writes Snell:

Stern talks up the "Massachusetts miracle," where the state scored first in the nation in the latest 4th and 8th grade math and reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the nation's report card for student achievement and standardized benchmark for every state. The state's average scores on the NAEP have also improved at far higher rates than most other states. However, there is a more nuanced explanation for the uptick in student achievement in Massachusetts. We might ask, "Miracle for which students?"

To be sure, having the highest scores in the nation and highest gains on the NAEP, as Massachusetts does, is an admirable achievement. For a fuller picture of what is happening, however, Education Week's 2008 Quality Counts report for Massachusetts offers more context. Quality Counts notes Massachusetts ranks very low in terms of progress on the student achievement gap between low-income and higher income students. Massachusetts ranks 46th and 50th for the poverty gap—the difference in NAEP scores between students eligible for the free-lunch program and non-eligible students. In 4th grade NAEP reading scores, for example, Massachusetts has a 29.1 point gap compared with the national average of 26.8 points. In fact, the reading gap in Massachusetts has grown by almost 3 points between 2003 and 2007 on the NAEP. For 8th grade NAEP math scores, the state has a 31.4 gap compared to the 26 point national average.

In Massachusetts, middle class and wealthy children have clearly benefited from a focus on content and standards. However, it is less clear how this curricular focus has benefited the most disadvantaged students in the state, who are now being left even further behind.

Students with wealthier and higher-educated parents are thriving under a strong standards-based regiment. But content standards have had little impact on one of the most intractable of education dilemmas. It has not closed the achievement gap between lower and higher income students, where not even 50 percent of these students score proficient in reading or math.

That's the major reason why school reformers shouldn't place too many eggs in the "instructionist" basket. Families still need school choice. Public schools, especially in low-performing urban districts, still need competition, which gives students a right of exit to higher performing schools and gives public schools an incentive to improve in order to keep students enrolled.

As I noted in "A Pox on Both Their Houses," the debate between instructivists and incentivist (those who favor market based reforms like school choice) is largely lacking in any imagination as the two sides begin to calcify their positions as to what is important.

However, in the place where the rubber meets the road, the urban districts, the battle lines are not nearly as clearly defined. Indeed, you will see charter schools and other choice programs working with both a market approach and changes to content standards, in the same facility. The truth of the matter is that a combined approach is probably the one way in which a true change in the education of poor, minority and otherwise disadvantaged kids will occur and the achievement gap actually closed.

The debate will continue to rage as each side tries to find support for its position. Yet, we may be decades away from finding out which side is right and may even never find out. Educational entrepeneurs, on the other hand, will eventually find a way and they are the true direction finders.

Sex Ed Program Attacked Again, School Board Quite Self-Righteous

The People's Republic of Montgomery County School Board is under attack again for its sex education policy.

A parents group is asking a judge to halt an explicit sex-education curriculum implemented by a Maryland school board that teaches homosexuality is innate and provides depictions of "erotic" sex techniques.

Brandon M. Bolling, of the Thomas More Law Center, told Judge William J. Rowan III that state law requires that information presented in public schools be supported with evidence, and the teaching that homosexuality is "innate" lacks that support.

"The Maryland law says you have to teach something that is factually accurate," he told the judge. "They are not doing that. That is illegal."

The group is also attacking demostrations of condom use as portraying "erotic techniques of sexual intercourse." The last, while probably not appropriate for class, is a bit of a stretch. Further:

Declaring homosexuality to be 'innate' is a direct attack upon the ex-gay community and the possibility of changing one's sexual orientation," said Peter Sprigg, a Montgomery County resident and board member for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. He also served on the Citizens Advisory Committee that reviewed the curriculum.

"This statement was inserted into the curriculum at the last minute and was never reviewed by the Citizens Advisory Committee. It also directly contradicts the statement elsewhere in the curriculum that 'sexual orientation results from an interaction of cognitive, environmental, and biological factors,'" he said.

Bolling said the Maryland State Board of Education had abdicated its responsibility by allowing Montgomery County arbitrarily to decide that classroom discussions of oral and anal intercourse did not violate a state law against discussions of such "erotic" techniques.

Montgomery County educators have defended their decision to present the explicit sexual instruction to students. They also say any criticism of the curriculum "intrudes" into their right to teach children.

This last statement by the Montgomery County school board goes to demonstrate just how large their moral superiority extends. The School Board is elected-therefore under the political philosophy of our nation, their power and "right" to education is delegated to them by the people--the voters. They have no more "right" to teach than I have. In fact they have less right, since I have the right to teach my children as I see fit. They do not have the right to teach children in any manner they see fit.

Like it or not, a curriculum is, in part, a political document. It is the public expression of what we as a political body determine to be important to teach our children. Criticisms of curricula are just as valid as criticism of the school board's decision to draw school assignment lines--and even more important. The mindset of "we are educators and we know best" must be challenged at every opportunity.

Preschool Priorities-- Are We Killing Childhood?

My children attended pre-school, largely to give them someone to play with since the neighborhood kids are older than them. However, with all the hubbub about universal pre-school, I am left wondering if in our rush to educate our kids, we are educating them right out of childhood?

Tennessee Approves Tougher Student Standards

From Ed Week:Tennessee Approves Tougher Student Standards:

The state Board of Education has approved tougher standards for Tennessee students and dropped the Gateway exams.

The new guidelines include math all four years of high school and mandatory chemistry or physics in addition to biology.

The requirements will take affect in the 2009-10 school year and will affect current 7th graders.

The Gateway exams are a series of tests that have been required for students to get a diploma.

Other changes approved Friday include aligning language arts and math standards for students in kindergarten through 12th grade with national standards.

Instead of the Gateway exams, the state is proposing a series of 10 year end tests that would account for 25 percent of a students grade (enough to save a struggling student, but not enough to tank a good performer.

The goal is to have the exams in 10 courses: English 1, 2, and 3; algebra 1 and 2; geometry; U.S. history; biology; chemistry; and physics. The exams have yet to be developed.

Here is going to be the test for Tennessee, will they stick with the 10 tests when students start failing them?

Clay County (Florida) School Board Adopts Pro Creationist Standards

I don't know all the details behind this move by my home county. I grew up going to Clay County schools, from W.E. Cherry Elementary, Orange Park Middle School, Orange Pary High School for two year and graduating from Middleburg High School. I was always well schooled in science and I don't think that is going to change.

By stating that evolution is a theory in the guidelines is true. It is just a theory because we don't know for certain, at least I don't and I consider myself pretty well educated (thanks in part to these same Clay County Schools). I don't know the politics behind the move and I am most certain that they are complicated to say the least. Clay County has always had a sizeable population of evangelical Christians and tends to be quite conservative.

Hat Tip: Carnival of Education

Is Scripting for Teachers a Denial of Their Professionalism

Via Joanne Jacobs comes the question of whether or not teaching using a script is actually worth the effort. Linking to a post by Education Gadfly's Liam Julian, Jacobs wonders if Julian's analogy holds up. Julian writes,

The popular value of ___________ creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed ________ practices."

Replace the first blank with the word "doctor," the second with the word "medical," and you've constructed a commonsense sentence that will garner nods of agreement. Replace the first with "teacher" and the second with "instructional," however, and you've got on your hands a 40-year-old dogfight.

The above sentence is originally found--with the words "teacher" and "instructional"--on the Direct Instruction website. One also finds out on the website "that 32 of 34 qualifying studies demonstrated a positive effect of Direct Instruction on student achievement" and that the practice, which provides teachers with scripted classroom-lessons, is effective in improving academic performance in a bevy of subjects and has a positive effect on students' social skills.

Direct Instruction is not promoted only by its own website, either. Others think highly of the practice (see here, here, here, and here, for example).

Yet, despite the reams of data showing Direct Instruction's effectiveness, the approach remains controversial, in large part because of educators who find its methods stultifying. The practice is being attacked nationally and locally. After administrators in Providence began this year using Direct Instruction in seven of the city's lowest performing elementary schools, Roger Eldridge, a dean at Rhode Island's Feinstein School of Education, told the Providence Journal that teachers would be "jumping through hoops." Others lamented that teachers would lose their ability to be creative in the classroom.

But when doctors use specific, scripted methods, nobody suggests they are "jumping through hoops" or despairs because surgeons can't be "creative" in the OR. It's worth asking: Why do we want our public-school teachers to be "creative"?

Medical training is scientifically-based and prizes results over creativity. Would that this were so in education. A 2006 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality found that, out of 72 randomly selected education schools, only 11 taught all elements of the science of reading. The report's authors wrote, "The decision about how best to teach reading is repeatedly cast as a personal one, to be decided by the aspiring teacher." Reid Lyon, former chief of child development at the National Institutes of Health, has compared such teacher-centered practices to child neglect.

It is foolish to believe that big-hearted 22-year-olds will know, intrinsically, the best way to teach reading to a class of second graders, just as it is foolish to think that newly minted doctors can on their own derive the best way for treating a particular pathology. Surely, though, veteran teachers can teach without rigid, Direct Instruction curricula? Not necessarily. A comparison to the medical profession suggests that even the most grizzled teachers (and their students) may benefit greatly from scripted procedures.

I have often linked the medical and legal professions practices and continuing education as a model for the teaching profession. There is a certain symmetry to the matter and a certain dissonance as well.

For the most part, to answer Joanne Jacobs' question, I think the analogy holds up well. There is a one big caveat. Doctors are treating one patient at a time, often in isolation from other patients. While a series of patients may present with the same symptoms and require the same treatment, often responding in the same manner, a teacher is not dealing with one child at a time in isolation, but with a classroom.

But to be honest, I am not sure that is a reason to completely ignore the success of Direct Instruction as a methodology. Clearly, just like doctors, most students will resond to the standard presentation and instruction. It is only the outliers, those students whose performance is clearly not the norm, that would require a different intervention. Doctors have the same sort of procedures as well. If the standard treatment is not working, that is when doctors have to get creative.

Clearly in medicine results matter, more so than we may want to admit. We pay doctors to know the standard treatments and then we pay to address the non-standard presentations.

One of the most common criticisms I recieve about supporting things like Direct Instruction is that it does not treat each student as an individual and medicine treats each individual separately. But think back to what was just written, doctors can treat patients with the same symptoms in the same way. Yes, each individual is respected but the doctor categorizes them by treatment methodology.

Teachers and schools do the same thing. No offense to all the teachers out there, but you do. I am not passing judgment, it is simply a matter of human nature. Go to any kindergarten classroom (and yes, I have been in more than a couple) and children are grouped by ability for certain activities, like reading or writing instruction. It makes instruction easier and allows the teacher to make the most of their limited time. While the concpet of tracking is looked upon with disfavor, it is nonetheless happening on a de facto basis if not in actuality.

Grouping students is not necessarily a bad thing so long as those groupings are not fixed or long term. What Direct Instruction allows, just like treating patients with the same symptoms in the same manner, is for the professional to find the outlier faster and then tailor a "treatment" plan quicker.

Does Creativity Matter?

Eduflack has some thoughts.