"Compelling" questions -- Wiggins

I'm intrigued by Wiggins' discussion of questions to be raised by teachers...and left in the air, indefinitely. Questions about Questions: NCSS and UbD | Granted, and...

In NYS, a proposed “compelling” question in a model inquiry reads even more like a convergent supporting question than a compelling question:

“Did African-Americans gain their freedom during the era of Reconstruction?”

I don’t think it is picky to say that the NY example seems neither “intriguing” nor “intellectually honest.” It feels like a typical “teacherly” question, the kind teachers and Professors ask and answer in lectures. At the very least, the phrasing strongly suggests that there is a correct answer to be established eventually. So, the question is not intellectually honest. Nor is this question likely to intrigue the average 8th grader as stated.

...here are some possible edits to it:

• To what extent were freed slaves free?...
• What did the country owe the freed slaves? ...
• How does a slave or any person become truly free?

These questions now suggest more honest inquiry than the original. However, ....
At the very least, I would strongly recommend that NYS trainers, facilitators, and social studies supervisors make this point explicit and unambiguous: it’s only “compelling” if it leads to debate and no final “official” answer. Otherwise we will merely reinvent coverage introduced by merely rhetorical questions.

Hmmmm....it’s only “compelling” if it leads to debate and no final “official” answer. Okay by me.

FUNtervals

Fun and games make for better learners -- ScienceDaily

Four minutes of physical activity can improve behaviour in the classroom for primary school students, according to new research by Brendon Gurd.

A brief, high-intensity interval exercise, or a "FUNterval," for Grade 2 and Grade 4 students reduced off-task behaviours like fidgeting or inattentiveness in the classroom.

... FUNtervals involved actively acting out tasks like "making s'mores" where students would lunge to "collect firewood," "start the fire" by crouching and exploding into a star jump and squatting and jumping to "roast the marshmallows" to make the S'more. Each activity moves through a 20-second storyline of quick, enthusiastic movements followed by 10 seconds of rest for eight intervals.

I would expect this to become rote and lose some of its effectiveness after a few weeks or months, but retain some for years...it seems somewhere in between the adult-structured "games" of a gym class on the one hand, and the kid-structured play that Peter Gray talks about. I'd also think that it might be possible to keep it from becoming rote by having some of the eight activities be chosen by groups of kids, and at least one of them developed by those groups as replacements for the original set.

On Being a Student (Temporarily)

I'm not sure how much effort this blog deserves, at this point; I was letting it die without ever really deciding to do so, but it's possible that saving brief notes or at least clips on educational practice and progress will be useful in future, and I do scan blog posts anyway. So.... Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns - The Washington Post

I have made a terrible mistake.

I waited 14 years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for understanding. Most of it!

This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the school this year. My job is to work with teachers and administrators to improve student learning outcomes.

As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10th grade student on one day and to do the same for a 12th grade student on another day....

It's an interesting story, and perhaps all teachers should do that... one or two days per year? There's a postscript to it on Wiggins' blog, at A PS to the guest post on shadowing HS students (and the author revealed) | Granted, and...

I was the first teacher in my school – in 1978 – to tape myself. I thought: well, coaches watch game film; why don’t I? Yikes! I was horrified. I had thought of myself as a good teacher and I was praised for being one. But the tape told a different story. My manner was a bit off-putting; I was a tad sarcastic; I was using phrases like “Well, it’s obvious that…” and “So, anyone can see that…” and I was not as skilled as I thought I had been in checking peripheral vision. I had missed 5-6 kids making a timid attempt to enter the discussion. Without my noticing and imploring them in, they fell back to more passive distanced listening...

It occurs to me that every class minute is a minute of "public" behavior by the teacher; perhaps webcams, available for view by parents, should always be on. (Or perhaps every teacher would immediately quit.)

Common Core Test "Failure"

Edublogger Grant Wiggins writes Failure: the 8th grade NYS Common Core Math Test | Granted, and...

As I have often written here, the Common Core Standards are just common sense – but that the devil is in the details of implementation. And in light of the unfortunate excessive secrecy surrounding the test items and their months-later analysis, educators are in the unfortunate and absurd position of having to guess what the opaque results mean for instruction. It might be amusing if there weren’t personal high stakes of teacher accountability attached to the results.

So, using the sample of released items in the NY tests, I spent some time this weekend looking over the 8th grade math results and items to see what was to be learned – and I came away appalled at what I found.

I'm not sure how far I'd go with this; I basically think that the idea of "high stakes testing" is fundamentally flawed, that it necessarily distorts teaching by forcing an overemphasis on the parts of learning that are amenable to whatever tests you can design. I doubt that his demand for greater transparency and better-written tests would help a lot with my concerns. Still, he's an actual teacher...

The Importance of Choosing the Right Superintendent

We need a new superintendent next year....but how much difference does it actually make? A former superintendent notes recent research at Superintendents and Test Scores | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Here is what the researchers found:

1. School district superintendent is largely a short-term job. The typical superintendent has been in the job for three to four years.
2. Student achievement does not improve with longevity of superintendent service within their districts.
3. Hiring a new superintendent is not associated with higher student achievement.
4. Superintendents account for a small fraction of a percent (0.3 percent) of student differences in achievement. This effect, while statistically significant, is orders of magnitude smaller than that associated with any other major component of the education system, including: measured and unmeasured student characteristics; teachers; schools; and districts.
5. Individual superintendents who have an exceptional impact on student achievement cannot be reliably identified.

Results, of course, are from only one study and must be handled with care. The familiar cautions about the limits of the data and methodology are there. What is remarkable, however, is that the iron-clad belief that superintendents make a difference in student outcomes held by the American Association of School Administrators, school boards, and superintendents themselves has seldom undergone careful scrutiny.

Well, maybe

Standing desks in elementary school

I'm typing this at a standing desk...maybe schools should use them too. Standing desks are good for school-age children too : TreeHugger

The research was conducted at three central-Texas elementary schools, and 374 students from different grades participated in the study.

Students who used the standing desks were found to burn 15 percent more calories than those using traditional desks. Younger students were found to be more willing to stand than older ones.

Researcher Mark Benden told Fast Company that teachers also reported that students concentrated better when using standing desks. However this variable wasn’t measured by the study—but came from follow-up interviews.

It might be worth a try.

Start School Later

I don't seem to have any posts on the Start School Later movement

The Start School Later movement refers to a series of efforts in the U.S.A. by health care professionals, sleep scientists, educators, economists, legislators, parents, students, and other concerned citizens to restore a later start to the school day, based on a growing body of evidence that starting middle and high schools too early in the morning is unhealthy, counterproductive, and incompatible with adolescent sleep needs and patterns.

Yesterday's Science Daily adds the (possibly) latest: Secret to raising well behaved teens? Maximize their zzzzz's

Recently published in the journal of Learning, Media and Technology, this interesting paper exposes the negative consequences of sleep deprivation caused by early school bells, and shows that altering education times not only perks up teens' mood, but also enhances learning and health.
...in puberty, shifts in our body clocks push optimal sleep later into the evening, making it extremely difficult for most teenagers to fall asleep before 11.00pm. This, coupled with early school starts in the morning, results in chronically sleep-deprived and cranky teens as well as plummeting grades and health problems.
There is a body of evidence showing the benefits of synchronizing education times with teens' body clocks; interestingly, while 'studies of later start times have consistently reported benefits to adolescent sleep health and learning, there [is no evidence] showing early starts have a positive impact on such things', add the researchers...

Girls vs. Tests, Boys vs. Classwork

Or perhaps boys vs. work, generally; Why Girls Tend to Get Better Grades Than Boys Do - The Atlantic

girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. They also are more likely than boys to feel intrinsically satisfied with the whole enterprise of organizing their work, and more invested in impressing themselves and their teachers with their efforts.

These days, the whole school experience seems to play right into most girls’ strengths—and most boys’ weaknesses.

On the whole, boys approach schoolwork differently. They are more performance-oriented. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence and an occasion for a high-five. In contrast, Kenney-Benson and some fellow academics provide evidence that the stress many girls experience in test situations can artificially lower their performance, giving a false reading of their true abilities. These researchers arrive at the following overarching conclusion: “The testing situation may underestimate girls’ abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys’ abilities.”

Perhaps we need two-dimensional grades.

Good Fat, Bad Fat, Test Scores

An international comparison suggests that diet has a really major impact on test scores: Breast milk reveals a correlation between dietary fats and academic success -- ScienceDaily

"Looking at those 28 countries, the DHA content of breast milk was the single best predictor of math test performance," Gaulin said. The second best indicator was the amount of omega-6, and its effect is opposite. "Considering the benefits of omega-3 and the detriment of omega-6, we can get pretty darn close to explaining half the difference in scores between countries," he added. When DHA and LA are considered together, he added, they are twice as effective at predicting test scores as either is alone...

The authors seem to think they're talking about cause and effect; both fats are part of normal brain development, 'cos the brain is mostly fat. They might be right. Of course, some of us have been trying to use more omega-3 anyway. I wonder how much it would cost to raise the omega-3 (and lower the omega-6) content of school food.

Algorithms learning about human learning

One consequence of the online-5-minute-lecture (e.g., Khan Academy) approach is that with lessons broken into bite-size pieces, each of which has associated exercises, it's easier to test the effectiveness of any given piece. Khan Academy, Video tasks on the learning dashboard

Many of our exercises are tagged with “curated related videos”—videos that are hand-selected as related to the exercise. Using this as a starting point, we looked at all the videos that were already tagged as related to any exercise. For each of these videos, we compared the accuracy on its associated exercise both before watching the video and after watching it. From there, we selected the top fifty most effective videos, each improving the accuracy on its associated exercise by at least twenty percent, and are now highlighting them on the mission dashboard. When the system recommends an exercise with an associated video on the list of our top fifty related videos, it will automatically recommend the related video as well.

Compare with a human teacher who is trying to see which explanations are most helpful, judging class reaction and then perhaps a weekly quiz...the algorithm is of course completely incapable of what the human does, but on the other hand it has immediate access to individual data about what works for whom. In the not-terribly-long run we should be able to have videos tagged as having different styles (highly compressed v. wordy, words v. equations v. pictures, rules v. examples, humor v. straight exposition...) and automatically choose whichever works for given students based on what has improved their scores in the past. I suppose in the very long run we're moving towards a time and motion study program for small units of learning-effort.

Or then again, maybe not.

August 19, 2014 Board Meeting

HCS, under new management, looks (reassuringly?) unchanged at the just-uploaded BOE Meeting 8 19 14 - YouTube; mostly-familiar names being appointed or reappointed at the beginning, a ten-minute presentation on possibly-somewhat-improved standardized test scores 20 minutes in (but it's hard to judge with so many opt-outs; it does seem that we opted-out much more than most schools) and concluding remarks by Ferdinand about the 35-minute mark; it was only a 37-minute meeting. (And then switched to executive session, of course.) Looks good...

Psychological Trends, Play, and Schooling

I've mentioned psych-prof (and author) Peter Gray both recently (School and Mental Health) and further back (Rethinking School Motivations). Here's a 16-minute talk he gave in June about "the decline of play and rise of mental disorders" in children and young adults, over the past 60 years.

And he says that children and young adults are more depressed than in the Great Depression, more anxious than during the Cold War (with its elementary-school air-raid drills). Narcissism scores (as far back as we have them) trend upwards with later generations, empathy scores trend down. The effects are substantial, and they don't correlate well with economics or wars -- the trends are roughly linear. Here he's thinking of research like Twenge's Birth cohort increases in psychopathology among young Americans, 1938–2007: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the MMPI - Twenge et al (2010) [10-page PDF], summarized at USA Today, and Twenge's own Psychology Today summary of narcissism research at How Dare You Say Narcissism Is Increasing?

The research findings fall into 5 main areas: 1) narcissism, 2) positive self-views and other traits related to narcissism, 3) cultural products such as language use, 4) positive trends connected to individualism, and 5) the validity of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI)....

It's not a cataclysm (yet?) but it's not a pretty picture, and of course Gray has an explanation. He's an evolutionary-psychology guy and he studies play in animals and in hunter-gatherer societies, and he notes that if you want to create high-anxiety depressed rats or monkeys with poor social skills and poor emotional balance, it's easy: just raise them without the opportunity to play. He believes that some or all of the negative trends he sees are due to the fact that self-directed play has been declining throughout those decades. Supervised "play" of the sort we see in gym class or in AYSO games is not a substitute. Well, I suppose that's obvious, or should be. We are raising our kids as if we want them to be emotionally crippled; it's surprising that the effect is not even greater than what we see.

Educational Video on Educational Videos

Derek Muller "completed a PhD in physics education research from the University of Sydney in 2008. His thesis, Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education, was the subject of his TEDxSydney talk in 2012..."

And the talk (6 minutes) is here:
The principal result seems to be that, at least for his subject (simple physics, e.g. of a tossed basketball) and his subjects (introductory university physics students), it can worse than useless to provide a simple, clear, comprehensible demo of what you're trying to explain, and then test them on it. Their answers will not improve, but their confidence in those answers will rise. Why? They will actually remember statements that definitely weren't in the short video they just saw, statements that accord with their existing misconceptions, and those misconceptions will be reinforced...

Huh? Does that even make sense? Sure: they report low engagement on the clear, comprehensible demo... They're not really listening as long as they think they understand the events (and annotations) in the video, so it just reinforces what they think they already know.

How to fix this? Muller's answer: cover the misconceptions first, and use dialogue. Yes, you will annoy people who think you're actively trying to make them feel dumb, but if you don't cover the misconceptions they will not engage.

Ok, it's interesting, and it could be crucial for almost all kinds of education of almost all kinds of students, too. Start With The Misconceptions. Have A Dialogue Character Representing the Teachably Wrong Point of View. Yeah. But for some reason I'm thinking of a dialogue that started with the misconceptions, started with a character named Simplicio, Galileo Galilei's

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII, thus alienating not only the Pope but also the Jesuits...

It is not always wise to clarify misconceptions, at least not from the perspective of wishing to avoid arrest.

Or then again, maybe it's worth it. 

Studying Studies of Studying

I like reading about the Latest (and greatest) Education Research...but it's worth remembering that a large fraction of all research is wrong, and even if it's right it probably doesn't mean what it seems to mean, and even if it means what it seems to mean, it still probably doesn't have the sort of practical application we'd like to see. So it goes...here's an article about how to look at the data, even assuming that the research wasn't wrong to begin with, at How to Read Education Data Without Jumping to Conclusions (Jessica Lahey & Tim Lahey) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

1. Does the study prove the right point? It’s remarkable how often far-reaching education policy is shaped by studies that don’t really prove the benefit of the policy being implemented. ...[A study might show that "doing X works in situation Y" but then we commit to doing X in all situations]... A key step in interpreting a new study is to avoid extrapolating too much from a single study, even a well-conducted one like STAR.

2. Could the finding be a fluke? Small studies are notoriously fluky, and should be read skeptically. Recently Carnegie Mellon researchers looked at 24 kindergarteners and showed that those taking a science test in austere classrooms performed 13 percent better than those in a “highly decorated” setting....

3. Does the study have enough scale and power? Sometimes education studies get press when they find nothing. For instance, Robinson and Harris recently suggested that parental help with homework does not boost academic performance in kids. ... For example, ...if some parents who help their kids with homework actually do the kids’ homework for them while others give their kids flawed advice that leads them astray, then parental help with homework might appear to have no benefit because the good work of parents who help effectively is cancelled out by other parents’ missteps.

4. Is it causation, or just correlation? It turns out that the most important way for parents to raise successful children is to buy bookcases....

But none of these are about studies which generate results which simply aren't replicable even when we try to do just what the original authors did. Science Daily recently reported on an analysis of "the complete publication history of the current 100 education journals with the highest five-year `impact factor' (an indicator of how often a given journal's articles are cited in other scholarly work)" at Study details shortage of replication in education research

Replication studies that were conducted by completely new research teams were found to be successful 54 percent of the time. When replications were conducted by the original authors in the same publication as the original findings, 88.7 percent were successful. When replications were in a new publication, but at least one author was on both the original and replicating studies, 70.6 percent of replications were successful.

So when the original authors try to repeat, they report success about two-thirds of the time. Not great, but not really relevant if we want to base policy for other people on the techniques tested...when new people try to do whatever it was that worked for the original people, it works about half the time. And then we can start asking the four questions above.

So, is there a bottom line here? Yes, I think so. The bottom line is "Proceed With Caution."

Interesting Math in Boring Math Classes

Almost all kids find math class to be boring. That included me, even though I was a completely weird kid who loved math and read math books for fun, and when I doodled in math class it was quite likely to produce a snowflake curve, as in Doodling in math: Triangle party | Doodling in math | Khan Academy. That's by Khan Academy's Recreational Mathemusician, Vi Hart, and you'll notice you can use the Khan Academy sidebar to explore her cool mathy videos which I would have loved until I grew up (irony filter applies here -- I do love them, and in my 60s it's probably too late to grow up at all.) She also maintains two YouTube channels, vihart for intricate fun and music, and vihartvihart for strange randomness. (Have you ever counted down with your microwave? I have.)

Today I happened to notice the "math class is boring" theme at 5:20 in an interview with her.
Of course math class is boring, and that is a starting point for her work, but she says it's only administrators who object to the way she's being "insulting to teachers"; she does get lots of feedback from teachers, of course, but teachers know what the problem is, and it's not them.

And what is the problem? Well, it has to do with the standards and the standardized tests...

Hand Sanitizers

In the spirit of complete randomness, Hand sanitizers in classrooms do not reduce school absences in children -- ScienceDaily

All children received a 30-minute in-class hand hygiene education session. In those schools randomly assigned to the intervention group, alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispensers were installed in the classrooms over two winter terms and the children were asked to use the dispensers after coughing or sneezing and on the way out of the classroom for morning break or lunch.

... the length of illness and length of absence from school, or the number of episodes in which at least one other family member became ill. When using school attendance records from all children in the participating schools, the number of absences for any reason and length of absence episode did not differ between the intervention and control schools.

Okay, I'm surprised.

(When you learn something that surprises you, you're being educated. Yay!)

Teaching Entrepreneurship

Yong Zhao keeps explaining that the crucial skills we're not teaching are those of entrepreneurs...Well, here's a single MOOC course that tries to be the capstone of the program we're not providing, at Udacity Blog: How to Build a Startup Available With Certificates, Coaching & Project

Taught by serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, who founded eight startups, with four that have gone public, this class teaches you the key steps necessary to bring your product from concept to market. With the full course experience, you will talk to customers, build a Business Model Canvas, prototype your product, and pitch to coaches.

After completing a final project, you’ll also earn a certificate verifying your new entrepreneurship skills. Don’t let that next million dollar idea get away.

I don't believe that this has college-course prerequisites; I wonder if it would be a good idea to use its ideas as an implied critique of a high-school curriculum.

Reasons to send kids outside

Sometimes the best technology is the kind that's been growing since before there were humans to appreciate it. This spring, Business Insider noted 11 Reasons You Should Go Outside, with links to research papers supporting each reason:

1. Improved short-term memory

In one study, University of Michigan students were given a brief memory test, then divided into two groups.

One group took a walk around an arboretum, and the other half took a walk down a city street....those who had walked among trees did almost 20% percent better than the first time. The ones who had taken in city sights instead did not consistently improve.... ...

5. Better vision

At least in children, a fairly large body of research has found that outdoor activity may have a protective effect on the eyes, reducing the risk of developing nearsightedness (myopia)....

6. Improved concentration

... ...kids with ADHD ... have been found to concentrate better after just 20 minutes in a park. "'Doses of nature' might serve as a safe, inexpensive, widely accessible new tool ... for managing ADHD symptoms," researchers wrote.

... 7. Sharper thinking and creativity

"Imagine a therapy that had no known side effects, was readily available, and could improve your cognitive functioning at zero cost." That's the dramatic opening to a 2008 paper describing the promise of so-called "nature therapy" — or, as a non-academic might call it, "time outside." ...

Another study found that people immersed in nature for four days ... boosted their performance on a creative problem-solving test by 50%.

They also note other kinds of reasons which are real, but not what this blog is about. Speaking very loosely, it looks like trees are better (for your kids' brains) than grass which is better than pavement which is better than indoor activity which is better than sitting down. (Maybe for your brains, too.)

Income and expectations

A few weeks ago, the NYT reported on an international survey of principals, asking if their schools had lots of low-income students. Conclusion? Principals in U.S. Are More Likely to Consider Their Students Poor - NYTimes.com

This much is clear: American students from low-income backgrounds are more likely to struggle in school than low-income students in many other countries .... And American principals are much more likely to describe their students as disadvantaged than principals in many other countries — including some countries that are significantly poorer than the United States. Neither fact qualifies as good news.

It's actually a pretty dramatic effect; consider the graph:

It's put more bluntly at Idiosyncratic Whisk: Regulatory Predestination and the Right to Exit:

In short, we have school districts that are compulsory institutions, school leaders who attribute student failures to poverty, and school leaders who overstate the level of poverty in their schools. Is there a bit of constructed fatalism here?

He's not claiming that the "school leaders" are consciously dishonest. He is obviously thinking that many of the student failures being attributed to poverty must have some other cause, plausibly a cause within the school system, and that all of us have a pretty strong incentive for finding/believing explanations of failure that don't cast blame on us.

Computers Bad? Sometimes...

I meant to post on this a while ago, after seeing articles like Why you should take notes by hand — not on a laptop - Vox. I often post things about how technology can make things better,[update: fixed typo] but technology is all about providing options and sometimes those options aren't good. Take Notes by Hand for Better Long-Term Comprehension - Association for Psychological Science

The results revealed that while the two types of note-takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts, laptop note-takers performed significantly worse on the conceptual questions.

The notes from laptop users contained more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture, compared to the notes that were written by hand. Overall, students who took more notes performed better, but so did those who had less verbatim overlap, suggesting that the benefit of having more content is canceled out by “mindless transcription.”

“It may be that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study this content more efficiently,” the researchers write.

Surprisingly, the researchers saw similar results even when they explicitly instructed the students to avoid taking verbatim notes, suggesting that the urge to do so when typing is hard to overcome.

I posted a couple of years ago about Cornell Notes, which is probably as good as any among the handwritten note-taking systems. I wonder if it works to do the Cornell Notes "step three" (writing later summaries) on a computer. Or if a "step four" involving flash cards generated from the notes might help. Could be.

Or then again, maybe not.

School and Mental Health

The Connecticut Children's Medical Center reports on psychiatric emergencies, and psych prof Peter Gray adds up the data by month in The Danger of Back to School | Psychology Today

Just as I predicted, July and August are the months with, by far, the fewest children’s psychiatric ER visits. In fact, the average number of visits for those two months combined (70 per month) is less than half of the average during the full school months (142 visits per month for the nine months excluding June, July and August). June, which has some school days (a number that varies depending on the number of snow days to be made up), is also low, but not as low as July and August. Interestingly, and not predicted by my hypothesis, September is also relatively low, equivalent to June. It seems plausible that September is a relatively relaxed warm-up month in school; serious tests, heavy assignments, and report cards are yet to come. It may take a few weeks back in school before the stress really kicks in.

I would note that I'm not sure how much of the stress of school is from the sources he describes, i.e. interactions with adults. He has elsewhere written that kids in same-age groups seem to have a lot more negative interactions than kids in multi-age groups. It may also take a few weeks back in school before cliques have a chance to build up to full-strength mutual nastiness.

Or then again, maybe not.

Knowledge Maps and Custom Courses

Take a quick look at the Khan Academy Knowledge Map and then think about The Chronicle of Higher Education asking Are Courses Outdated? MIT Considers Offering ‘Modules’ Instead

People now buy songs, not albums. They read articles, not newspapers. So why not mix and match learning “modules” rather than lock into 12-week university courses?

That question is a major theme of a 213-page report released on Monday by a committee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring how the 153-year-old engineering powerhouse should innovate to adapt to new technologies and new student expectations.

“The very notion of a ‘class’ may be outdated,” the report argues.

Indeed; a course is an administrative tactic, and we may be moving beyond it. At every level. I posted about the idea a couple of years ago, in Open-Source Learning. Perhaps it's getting somewhere.

Or then again, maybe not. Comments at Slashdot

Games and Cognitive Skills

I've posted before about educational computer games, at Math Games Research, about games from Quizlet sets and the related "Purpose Games", and about more idiosyncratic augmented reality games.

Today I see that an Oxford study reports that video-game playing for less than an hour a day is linked with better-adjusted children, study finds; it's better to play than not, but moderation is good. So what can you do with an hour a day? Go back in the literature and see Video game 'exercise' for an hour a day may enhance certain cognitive skills

Non-gamer participants played five different games on their smartphones for an hour a day, five days of the week for one month. Each participant was assigned one game. Some played games like Bejeweled where participants matched three identical objects or an agent-based virtual life simulation like The Sims, while others played action games or had to find hidden objects, as in Hidden Expedition.

After this month of 'training', the researchers found that people who had played the action game had improved their capacity to track multiple objects in a short span of time, while hidden object, match three objects and spatial memory game players improved their performance on visual search tasks. Though previous studies have reported that action games can improve cognitive skills, the authors state that this is the first study that compared multiple video games in a single study and show that different skills can be improved by playing different games.

You may be imagining an hour a day spent sitting, and I suppose this can be done on a bus, but actually, I'm imagining an hour a day on a treadmill.

Or then again, maybe not.

Community

Lest it be thought that this blog is only about tech, here's a thought on community-building, specifically Breaking Down the Natural Isolation and Insulation of High School Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

If you wanted to isolate teachers from one another, no better way is to organize the school by grades, have departments, and a daily schedule that leaves little time for teachers before, during, and after classes to work together in a community focused on better teaching and student learning. These structures left unattended insulate and isolate teachers from one another. The dilemma is plain: How to create a community of teachers working toward common goals within a structure and culture dedicated to keeping teachers apart from one another?

Here is a veteran teacher in the sunset of his career with “school smarts” and wisdom gained from decades of experience in a high school who knows that building community begins with knowing who sits next to you.

So every now and then groups of people (teachers, students, both) should have meals together where somebody gets a turn for a few minutes to do a self-introduction, covering specific things that might be a basis for future collaboration or simply friendship. Not complicated, not technical, but something for schools to keep in mind.
Or then again, maybe not.

Chromebooks in education

Gadgets come and gadgets go. A few years ago I thought netbooks would become standard courseware; then tablets; now chromebooks? From a couple of weeks ago: Chromebooks Are Outselling iPads In Schools - Slashdot

Apple thrilled investors earlier this week when they revealed that they had sold 13 million iPads to schools and claimed 85% of the educational tablet market, but that wasn't the whole story. It turns out that Apple has only sold 5 million iPads to schools since February 2013, or an average of less than a million tablets a quarter over 6 quarters. It turns out that instead of buying iPads, schools are buying Chromebooks. Google reported that a million Chromebooks were sold to schools last quarter, well over half of the 1.8 million units sold in the second quarter. With Android tablets getting better, Apple is losing market share in the consumer tablet market, and now it looks Apple is also losing the educational market to Google.

So, for people who haven't been following this development...I'd already heard people claiming Chromebooks and education: A perfect match | ZDNet

Chromebooks, in general, are good choices for schools. They're lightweight, durable, inexpensive, secure, and fun to use....

He makes a good point about Chromebook having "the most secure operating system," and I knew about Google's own Chrome for Education and Chromebooks for Education Overview - YouTube pages, and "Manage 10 or 10,000 Chromebooks with ease"... Also about collections like Free Technology for Teachers: 30 Ideas for Using Chromebooks in Education. However, I hadn't noticed Private school’s Chromebook program explains why Google’s laptops have captured nearly 20% of the educational market - TechRepublic:

So, the school began throwing things out there to see what would stick. They got some iPads, Android tablets, Lenovo tablets, and Chromebooks. The wow factor was high with the iPads, and the school was convinced they were going to be an iPad school, until the kids started trying to produce content on them. At this point the focus shifted to entirely to the Chromebook and Google Apps, where content was easy to produce and collaboration came naturally.

In public schools, Google In Education: Chromebooks A 'Right Time Technology' For Passaic, New Jersey School District

Google‘s Chromebook — and by extension Chrome OS — is being adopted by our education system at a brisk pace. As of February 2013 more than 2000 districts in the United States have deployed Chromebooks to their students and faculty. I’ve reported on Chromebooks before, but I wanted to take a deeper dive and explore the benefits as perceived by superintendents and IT directors.

And I also hadn't realized how well you can Use your Chromebook offline - Chromebook Help. It really does look good. So maybe we're actually moving towards the One True Technology which won't be forgotten five years from now.

Or on the other hand, maybe not.

Independent (online) learning

A freshman survey from UCLA found High School Students Not Waiting For Schools To Go Online

"Students who chose to independently use online instructional websites are also more likely to exhibit behaviors and traits associated with academic success and lifelong learning."

So, never mind what the school does -- make sure your kids check out Coursera and Khan Academy and CrashCourse - YouTube (with the individual "courses" like Biology (That's Why Carbon Is A Tramp: Crash Course Biology #1) and World History and so on), not to mention random excellence like SciShow Space and MinutePhysics and MinuteEarth, individual user channels like Vi Hart (a recreational mathemusician who works for Khan Academy) and SmarterEveryDay, and ...
There's a lot of cool stuff out there. Learning it has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with grades. On the other hand, learning it helps a lot with later "academic success and lifelong learning."

Fractions

Every now and then, when we consider where education should go, it behooves us to pause and reflect on where we're coming from. The .Plan: A Quasi-Blog: Why the Third Pounder hamburger failed

One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, ... the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. ... instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.

Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.
--Elizabeth Green, NYT Magazine, on losing money by overestimating the American public's intelligence

Her source for the story is mentioned by Kevin Drum in The Great Third-Pound Burger Ripoff. I'm skeptical of the moral drawn by Green -- in fact I've tried to teach computer science to bright Colgate students who had major difficulty with fractions or even with "You know how many feet and inches tall you are; you know how many inches there are in a foot; what is your total height in inches?" I ended up attributing this to "Math Anxiety" as described by the books of Sheila Tobias, and I don't think that's what Green is talking about counteracting... Still it's a good story, and it might very well be true.

Disruption

I strongly doubt the "2015" here, but I think "The Futurist" is right to think that the education industry is headed for a multi-faceted disruption of the general sort that he describes: the jobs and careers that will best survive in the 21st century will require skills that we now associate with a college degree, and personality traits which we often signal with a college degree, but they don't actually require a degree of any kind. And that opens us up to changes in education. The Futurist: The Education Disruption : 2015

Google, always leading the way, no longer mandates college degrees as a requirement, and has recently disclosed that about 14% of its employees do not have them. If a few other technology companies follow suit, then the workforce will soon have a pool of people working at very desirable employers, who managed to attain their position without the time and expense of college. If employers in less dynamic sectors still have resistance to this concept, they will find it harder to ignore the growing number of resumes from people who happen to be alumni of Google, despite not having the required degree. As change happens on the margins, it will only take a small percentage of the workforce to be hired by prestigious employers.

...  the ever-increasing variety of technological disruption means that the foremost career of the modern era is that of the serial entrepreneur. If universities are not the place where the foremost career can be learned, then how important are formal degrees from these universities? Since each entrepreneurial venture is different, the individual will have to synthesize a custom solution from available components.

... Udacity, Coursera, MITx, Khan Academy, and Udemy are just a few of the entities enabling low-cost education at all levels. Some are for-profit, some are non-profit. Some address higher education, and some address K-12 education. Some count as credit towards degrees, and some are not intended for degree-granting, but rather for remedial learning. But among all these websites, an innovative pupil can learn a variety of seemingly unrelated subjects and craft an interlocking, holistic education that is specific to his or her goals. ....
(Moody's has already downgraded the outlook of the entire US higher education industry). But most importantly, the most valuable knowledge will become increasingly self-taught from content available to all, and the entire economy will begin the process of adjusting to this new reality.

Parts of this are certainly true.

(Virtual) Flash Cards

Flash cards help in the memorization part of almost anything you might want to learn, in school or out of it; virtual flash cards can be organized and presented in ways that physical flash cards can't. (They can also support audio and video components.) Consider Cool Tools – SuperMemo + Anki

In high school, I tried to learn Spanish, and failed. In college, I tried again, and failed again. Then, in my thirties, I discovered SuperMemo, and within a year I had memorized thousands of Spanish words and phrases and was finally on my way to speaking Spanish.

SuperMemo is software premised on the idea that there is an ideal time to practice any item you are trying to remember. You want to practice when you have almost forgotten it. Too soon, and you waste your time, and even interfere with long term memory formation. Too late, and you’ve lost the trace, and have struggle to learn it again....your ideal time to practice can be predicted from your history of attempted recall. ... None of them are perfect from a usability point of view. But any of them will work far, far better than random study of flashcards. These tools will not give you all the pieces of the learning puzzle, obviously. Memorization is only one step. But it is a crucial, difficult, first step, and it is wonderful to get a boost.

So....imagine a school where one part of course preparation is the preparation of flash card sets, building up year by year; better yet, imagine a Khan-style "One World Schoolhouse" where part of the preparation for each five-minute video is a flash card review set (to go along with, and become part of, the list of quiz questions).

Meanwhile, of course, you can use flashcards on computer, tablet, or smartphone (the open-source AnkiDroid Flashcards - Android Apps on Google Play, or the $24.99 AnkiMobile Flashcards on the App Store on iTunes for iPhone/iPad, or the open-source Windows/Mac/Linux Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards for your desktop or laptop) for the memorization part of anything you'd like to learn. Isn't there something you'd like to learn?

Out of Basement Readiness

A note from Yong Zhao at the beginning of this month: Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » College Ready vs. Out-of-Basement Ready: Shifting the Education Paradigm

The Common Core and most education reforms around the world define the outcome of schooling as readiness for college and career readiness. But as recent statistics suggest, college-readiness, even college-graduation-readiness, does not lead to out-basement-readiness. ...
They are the “boomerang kids,” writes a New York Times magazine article last week. These were good students. They were ready for college. They paid for college (many with borrowed money). They completed all college requirements. They did not drop out. And they graduated from college. But they are back in their parents’ basement for there is no career for them, ready or not.
The reason is simpler than many would like to accept: education has been preparing our students for an economy that no longer exists. ...
The “boomerang kids” are not poorly educated, but miseducated. They were prepared to look for jobs, but not to create jobs. They were prepared to solve problems, but not to identify problems or ask questions. ...
the more successful these reform efforts become, the more “boomerang kids” we will have.... ... The Common Core wants your kids to develop career readiness, but ask the question: who is equipped to create the careers they will become ready for?
So my 4th of July suggestion: Stop the Common Core or ready your basement for your college graduates.

Well, it's not entirely an educational problem; regulatory frameworks normally (necessarily?) favor those who already have a seat at the table. so an increasingly regulated economy has less room for the innovation that creates jobs, even if the innovators are prepared to do their part. But I think he's right: it is partly an educational problem, and our reforms are moving in the wrong direction.

Or then again, maybe not.

Aiming High

Sometimes, aiming high just means that you miss. Unintended consequences of raising state math, science graduation requirements -- ScienceDaily

Raising state-mandated math and science course graduation requirements (CGRs) may increase high school dropout rates without a meaningful effect on college enrollment or degree attainment, according to new research. To examine the effects of state-mandated CGRs on educational attainment, researchers looked at student outcomes in 44 states where CGRs were mandated in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bottom line: Looking at the article, it would seem that the main effect of enhanced requirements was that some students who would have finished high school but weren't going to college anyway still didn't go to college, but also didn't finish high school. (And my solution? I think they might be looking at the wrong problem....I'd be promoting German-style apprenticeship programs as more helpful to the students being affected here.)
update:What I'm talking about there is CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Expanding Apprenticeships

Today apprentices make up only 0.2 percent of the U.S. labor force, far less than in Canada (2.2 percent), Britain (2.7 percent), and Australia and Germany (3.7 percent). In addition, government spending on apprenticeship programs is tiny compared with spending by other countries and spending on less-effective career and community college systems that provide education and training for specific occupations. While total annual government funding for apprenticeship in the United States is only about $100 to $400 per apprentice, federal, state, and local annual government spending per participant for two-year public colleges is approximately $11,400. Not only are government outlays sharply higher, but the cost differentials are even greater after accounting for the higher earnings (and associated taxes) of apprentices compared to college students. Given these data, at least some of the low apprenticeship penetration can be attributed to a lack of public effort in promoting and supporting apprenticeship and to heavy subsidies for alternatives to apprenticeship. ...

"Unlike programs in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, the apprenticeship system in the United States is almost entirely divorced from high schools and serves very few workers under the age of twenty-ive.

Worth thinking about.

Or on the other hand, maybe not.

Transportation, Technology, Education -- Long Term Trends

This post has nothing to do with any decisions for this year or next, except possibly for the Superintendent search where some people might want to ask candidates for their thoughts about long term trends. The bottom line is that this week's news on transportation technology may make a cost-saving merger more feasible but less necessary, in interesting ways.

First, remember (for those who have followed my previous arguments) that I came to oppose the merger when I learned that it would shift costs (from teaching to transportation) without appreciable overall net savings. There were other issues, major issues, but it was at that point that I stopped thinking "unfortunate necessity" and started thinking "nonsense." I did, however, note that transportation costs per mile might go down, e.g. if natural-gas bus transport options improved. And this week I do see a possible future lower-cost option.

The University of Delaware (where I started out teaching computer science in 1980, back when the ARPAnet was a few sites, and international email waited until midnight to be picked up and sent via 1200-baud modem) now reports on "V2G" (Vehicle-to-Grid) electric vehicle technology; Science Daily says Diesel bus alternative: Electric school buses that power grid could save school districts millions

Choosing a V2G-capable electric bus over a diesel bus would save a school district $6,070 per bus seat, or $230,000 per bus over the vehicle's 14-year lifespan. Even with taking out the medical and climate change costs associated with diesel pollution, school districts could still save $5,700 per seat.

"They could save a large amount of money while also shifting away from the consumption of diesel and enhancing school children's health," the authors write in the paper.

There is still a way to go before such V2G-capable school buses become a reality, however. Electric school buses are uncommon, with the first Trans Tech all-electric school bus tested in California earlier this year.

While electric school buses can be cost-competitive without providing V2G services, the V2G technology would produce substantially larger savings for school districts.

That's pretty cool, and it might work -- and if it had worked already as part of the merger plan, I suspect that the numbers would have looked quite different and we'd have merged, despite the problems it would have caused in other directions. However, this week also has a much more in-the-news transportation technology announcement, in the "Official Google Blog" at Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle

We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls.

And what will the long-term impact of these be? Until this week, I had mainly thought of driverless cars in the context of urban driving. But now I take seriously TreeHugger's Google unveils its designs for a self-driving car, and it will change our cities and suburbs:

The self-driving car will certainly affect our cities, given that you need far fewer cars when they are shared and they don't need parking, but the real revolution is in the suburbs, which suddenly make a lot more sense. Grandma isn't stuck in the house all day; the kids get driven to school and to soccer practice; mom can work while the car drives to the office. Parking lots and garages disappear as the cars are shared and always on the move....

Tim de Chant says...

Self-driving cars are one of the biggest threats to the future of cities... As people’s commutes are freed up for other tasks, including work, they’ll stretch their daily trips, once again allowing them to live where they want. And as we’ve seen, people want to live where they have more space.

So it may well be that improved transportation will reverse the decline in upstate population.... Or not.

It's hard to predict, especially the future.

Thinking about STEM

Usually I think about STEAM rather than STEM (include Art), or general geeky stuff like Consumer and Education: 4 Robots That Engage Students in STEM | Robotics Trends, but here I'm just thinking about a specific example. Consider the video of an exploding whale and consequent discussion on Wired Magazine at What’s the Pressure Inside an Exploding Whale?

A whale is a really nice, contained package with a big, big layer of blubber around it that’s designed to keep everything in and keep water out while it’s diving. So they actually make fairly good balloons [..]

And, like most mammals, when they die and they aren’t scavenged—-or they’re too big to be effectively scavenged—-their viscera begins to decompose, whatever contents were in their stomach. That produces methane and hydrogen sulphide and a couple other gases, which are going to begin expanding, especially if it’s sitting in the sun for a couple of weeks.

Eventually, they can explode.

So let’s make a rough, back-of-the-envelope style of calculation, to estimate the pressure inside a bloated beached whale that’s about to explode. The idea is to get a ballpark estimate, that’s within an order of magnitude of the actual result.

Why, you may ask? Because SCIENCE. That’s why.

Here’s the game plan. I’m going to open up the above video in the handy physics video analysis software Tracker....

Now, imagine your ideal high school science curriculum. Does it include this? If not, why not?

NY Merger Study in the News

In April, the Syracuse Post-Standard had an article with an HCS picture at the top, reporting that Report says change in New York law might encourage school mergers:

Syracuse, NY - The movement to merge New York's 700 school districts has virtually stopped since 1996 hamstrung by a process of multiple votes and tax disparities,...
A report by the New York State Association of School Business Officials shows that since 2010, some 30 school districts have studied merging but failed to complete the process for a variety of reasons. ...
The report says the obstacles to school mergers are: fear of change, fear of the loss of local identity, the perception that the merging communities are incompatible, higher costs and property taxes, more time needed to transport students and job security for school employees....
Most recently in Central New York voters in the Hamilton Central School District overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to merge with the Morrisville-Eaton Central School District in a December advisory vote.

The NPR summary of the NYSASBO report was slightly simpler: Study finds New Yorkers don't want school mergers, but of course citing the same "obstacles". The report itself is at 1398091412_NYSASBO School Merger Study April 2014 (1).pdf.

Nowhere, so far as I can see, is it mentioned that the proposed merger plan for the merger which Hamilton voted down was not actually going to save money; the economy of scale offered by getting all the kids into one place (reduced staff) was almost precisely balanced by the diseconomy of scale imposed by getting all the kids into one place (increased transportation). That could change, of course; plans which actually close buildings are more likely to save money anyway, and I've mentioned before that it would be possible, with a little more reduction in the school populations, to close and sell the elementary school building that's inside Morrisville, take those students to the MECS building north of town, and bring the 12th, 11th, ... ? grade MECS students to HCS -- which would let some of them sign up for Colgate classes, too. I'm pretty sure that would save money. (It might be possible even now, but the SES merger-study group didn't think so.)

I'm not sure how live an issue this really is; I suspect that most New York parents are thinking instead about the Common Core Standards. But I'm sure it will come back; the state can balance a budget with high enough taxes, but those taxes have been fueling a vote-with-their-feet anti-tax movement: to Florida, to Texas, or just to neighboring states with lower taxes. So the state will need to save money -- state promises of long-run aid should not be relied upon. It would be wonderful to think that they'll only push for mergers that actually save money, but I have no confidence that this will be the case.

Patrick Curtin as Interim Superintendent

The HCS top web page today announces that

The Hamilton Central School Board of Education is pleased to announce that Dr. Pat Curtin will serve as Interim Superintendent for HCS beginning in July 2014. Dr. Curtin's vast experience as a interim superintendent for many schools in our area (most recently Stockbridge Valley), as well as his familiarity with Hamilton Central from having previously been employed here as a business manager, make him uniquely qualified to lead the district as we undertake an extensive search for our next Superintendent. Dr. Curtin will work with the administrative team, faculty and staff, community members, and the Board of Education at Hamilton to address the current challenges facing the district and to continue the excellence of our academic programs and extra-curricular offerings within the context of those challenges.

Radio Free Hamilton says a little more.


For 2005, Zoominfo records ZoomInfo Cached Page

The Morrisville-Eaton Central School District appointed Dr. Patrick Curtin as Interim Superintendent of Schools at a special meeting on Monday, September 26th....
Curtin is a retired superintendent from Vernon-Verona-Sherrill. His retirement in 1998 marked a thirty-six year career in education. He served twenty-seven of those years in various administrative roles at the VVS school district. He also taught and served in administrative roles at area schools, including Canastota and Oneida. Most recently, he was the Elementary Principal at Sauquoit Valley Elementary School. Since 1998, he has served as Interim Superintendent for several area schools, including Oriskany, Sauquoit Valley, Clinton, and Madison.

And in 2011, we see Madison Central School District names interim superintendent

Dr. Patrick Curtin has signed on as interim superintendent effective July 1 through Feb. 1, 2012 with the option to extend his contract. He was officially appointed at a special meeting of the board of education on Monday night...
Curtin previously served as interim superintendent with the district from 1998-2000. Prior to that term, he served as interim superintendent at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill Central School District from 1991-1998.

His most recent interim post was at Stockbridge Valley, where he oversaw another failed effort to save money with a merger: New year brings changes in several Madison County districts | syracuse.com

Students at Stockbridge Valley Central School will return under the watch of Interim Superintendent Patrick Curtin.
Curtin began his tenure in May and expects to remain through the 2012-2013 school year.
He previously served as interim superintendent at Madison Central School, as well as other local districts.
...Committees at Hamilton, Morrisville-Eaton, Stockbridge Valley and Madison Central schools continued to meet this summer to discuss the possibilities of two sets of mergers.
Committees from the Madison and Stockbridge Valley communities spent the summer sharing information about academics, athletics and other programs.
Representatives from Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton also have been holding similar meetings.

Matching Grant by Dick's Sporting Goods to Keep JV Going

A matching grant is available for Hamilton JV Sports, with five weeks to raise $4,089. 5% funded as of April 17th. Hamilton Emerald Knights - Sports Matter

This team will only receive The DICK'S Sporting Goods Foundation matching grant if at least $4,089 is pledged by Friday, May 23rd 6:00pm ET.
Hamilton Central School has a long, proud history of providing enriching extracurricular opportunities for its students. This has historically included athletic activities at the modified, junior varsity, and varsity levels when participation numbers warranted all three. However, JV sports have not been a part of the overall school budget for the last three years. The athletic budget itself has been cut by approximately $50,000 over the course of the last six years. For the past three years, we have been fortunate to receive donations to keep our JV programs running. Budget constraints are an issue again in the upcoming year and we are asking for your help to keep these opportunities for our student athletes.

update:More info at HCS Teams With Dick's Sporting Goods for Grant

Note on Fall Sports

With reference to the fall sports discussions around the approved budget, and more particularly to the Superintendent's blog post at Will There be Girl's Soccer in the Fall of the 2014--15 School Year? - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD, Heather Cigeroglu urges by email:

  In a small school numbers are always an issue with sports. I understand Denny's reason for changing it but disagree with the finality of the switch being based on a student survey. Another issue is whether or not all students really understood the survey's intent or consequences or even got to take the survey. After reading Denny and Jen's response on the blog it seems, and I could be wrong, that if volleyball moves to the fall and there are not enough players then the sport to be merged with another school would be soccer. Is volleyball not able to be combined with another school?
  Regardless, there are girls who have quite a stake in this switch and thus a meeting with Denny, Jen, Brian, Bill and/or Diana, the ladies who intend to play volleyball or soccer, and their parents should indeed be held as soon as possible to work this all out and find the best possible solution for the students involved.

Budget approval -- report from Astrid Helfant

Astrid Helfant (BoE candidate) with quick report on yesterday's meeting:

Here's a quick summary of tonight's Public Budget Hearing. Ellen [Larson], please read over it and see if some items need editing or if I left out some things that you consider important. ... The end result is that the Board approved the budget this evening.

- The BoE is looking to hire an interim Superintendent starting July 1st. Erin asked the salary for someone with a doctorate which is $135,000 according to Diana. Barbara proposed the possibility of hiring a permanent superintendent in the middle of the school year starting the spring semester. Matt responded that this would be fine in terms of the budget; such a mid-year hire could be accommodated. My question (which I did not ask) is whether the quality of candidates is better during for a normal July 1st starting time compared to a February 1st starting time. 

- The tax levy of 2.21% and the intent not to override the levy was submitted by March 1st. Although this is not binding, it was clear that the Board had no intent of overriding the levy. From my conversation with Terry Monte during the meeting it was clear that the Board may anticipate a worse budget year coming up as Terry gathered from a Superintendent coffee she attended. It would thus make more sense to avoid an override of the tax levy this year, as we may very well need an override next year. Diana did remind us that in a letter she received a year or so ago from David Valesky, Valesky stated that he anticipated a full restoration of the GEA within the next two years. Since this letter was sent a year ago, that may mean that we should have our GEA restored for the 2015-2016 school year. Of course no guarantees here. 

- I mentioned again to Diana, Matt and the Board that Carolyn is very interested in being involved in the foreign exchange initiative. I asked Diana who the Colgate Alumnus is that is part of the Southern-Westchester BOCES. She was very good about sending Debbie Kirley to retrieve his name for me: Jeff Donnelly. Diana and he had email communication. The full intention is that he is considering up to 5 boys most likely from China paying $14,000-$20,000 HCS tuition and who all may be living in a house provided by Colgate supervised by a house parent. This monetary amount of $70,000-$100,000 has not been included in the budget as there are no guarantees here. With the HCS Sevis rating good to go, we are however all set for students from abroad to come. HCS just needs to facilitate their visas.

- I brought to Diana, Matt and the Board's attention Stephanie's question regarding a second full-time art position. I threw in there the option of the 0.5 or 1.0 second library position. Diana first clarified that with Bill Magee's $50,000 Bullet Aid, HCS is able to maintain Jenn Brigg's 0.5 library position. Which means the total librarian staff is 1.5 FTE. The response was that since we cannot count for sure on the foreign exchange funds, we are unable to include such increased staff position(s) in the current budget. Maybe next year?

- Much talk was about the JV, Varsity and Modified Sports. David Ellis had a conversation with Jen and was particularly concerned with how the HCS administration presented their Sports budget to the public. The perception was that JV sports' funding was contingent upon a grant requested from Dick's Sporting Goods. The money received from Dick's would need to be matched by the Sports Boosters. This is however not the case. Based on the enrollment surveys for all sports, only those sports with enough enrollments to create a team are currently budgeted for. Any additional teams to be created based on unanticipated sign-ups will have to come from this grant. Dennis Roy said that no matter what happens with the numbers, money can be shuffled and the teams will play. It's a matter of getting the numbers. Gary Weeks and Morgan among others asked questions in addition to David Hollis about the sports budget.

- The "Enrichment" position is indeed cut. However, this position cut does not mean HCS students will no longer receive enrichment. Also, Johanna B. (Ag teacher) will hopefully continue to offer the Enrichment Bunch Program, though this is contingent upon funding from the Emerald Foundation as well as help from a second teacher.

- None of the other administrators (besides Diana, Matt and Dennis) were there. I was going to ask the attending Principals what their opinion was about a reduced (interim) Superintendent position (0.75 FTE). Do they think this would be feasible? Could they themselves make up for the reduction in administrative staff? Could they take on the extra responsibility? Again, I didn't get to ask this question, but would very much have liked to.

and Ellen Larson doesn't see anything to change in there, so here 'tis.

Update:Radio Free Hamilton has a report at HCS Board Approves Budget With 1.16% Increase

The HCS School Board tonight approved a preliminary 2014-2015 budget of $12,260,960, which is an increase of just 1.16 percent over the current spending plan.

And Dr. Bowers' blog has information on athletics at Will There be Girl's Soccer in the Fall of the 2014--15 School Year? - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD

Opt-Out Info Links: Information from a Parent

An HCS parent who prefers anonymity wanted to share some research on the opt-out "movement":

Here are some of the links I think are worth considering:

Letter and position paper by three NYC teachers (the position paper is quite thorough):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/04/teachers-refuse-to-administer-standardized-tests/

Letter from District 2 NYC principals to parents:
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/07/top-scoring-nyc-district-will-protest-ela-tests-this-friday/

Letter to NYS Commissioner King and the NYC Schools Chancellor by a parent/CUNY prof:
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/04/nyc-parent-cancel-the-tests/

History of the Common Core:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/

Letter by Award-Winning Principal Carol Burris:
http://www.liparentsforeducation.com/common-core-2/principal-i-was-nave-about-common-core-by-carol-burris/

On Market-Based Education reform, specifically regarding Pearson:
http://www.alternet.org/education/corporations-profit-standardized-tests?page=0%2C0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/pearson-pays-77-million-in-common-core-settlement/2013/12/13/77515bba-6423-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/24/a-brief-history-of-pearsons-problems-with-testing

Building the Machine (Common Core Documentary)--39 minutes long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc

update:

This link has feedback from teachers and principals who have seen this year's test, as well as some parent feedback:

http://testingtalk.org/responses/?region=NY

To these I (TM) will just add a link from Science Daily this week: Education: States' standardized tests have a negative impact on parents' civic engagement -- ScienceDaily

New research from a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found that parents of public school students in states with more extensive and stringent student assessment systems express lower trust in government, less confidence in government efficacy, and more negative views of their children's schools, thereby threatening civic engagement and the potential for future education reform.

 I'm a data guy myself--I would love to approve of more data collection, but once you start making decisions based on that data, well, as I quoted a while back:

Campbell’s law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making,” ... “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

Pretty Good News from April 8 "Community Leaders/Fiscal" Meeting

(Updated below with comments from others who attended)
Every now and then, things have to go somewhat less wrong: otherwise everybody would understand that the Universe really is plotting against us all, and we'd be permanently braced for it. So this evening our oft/rescheduled meeting revealed that

• The GEA improvement in the just-released final budget run is $68K; (still not good, but less bad)
• Our State Assembly representative, Bill Magee, produced $50K in "bullet aid"; it may indeed be true that Our view:'Bullet' aid clear indication that system is wrong - News - Uticaod - Utica, NY, but in this case at least it is certainly plugging a hole left by, as the article puts it, "the state’s long-broken school funding formula". Again, less bad.
• I've written before on the possibility (and desirability, not just on financial grounds) of appealing to international students. Now it looks like the Southern Westchester BOCES is setting up an exchange student program to which we need only say "yes", for an initial version with probably five students, paying HCS $14-20K each in addition to the money that pays for their stay and supervision here; that's obviously complex, and takes most of the money that their parents pay. Astonishingly, this could happen next year and could add another $70K--$100K to the budget. (The tuition may be less than the average cost of educating an HCS student, but is far more than the marginal cost; it's mostly "profit".) In this case HCS benefits from the Colgate connection and the fact that Homeland Security has already investigated us, costs being paid by a previous student's family.
• Classrooms for special education, a huge expense for HCS, are being reshuffled in complex ways; Molly (BoE President) wanted to comment on the cleverness of the juggling act, without which "we'd be in a very different place."
• And for the moment, the resource officer is off the budget.

What with all the savings, it appears that we keep our full-time art teacher (1.5 art teachers total). Only the "supplemental innovation/enrichment" person is cut. Diana argues against looking for a part-time superintendent...hmm...dunno. Molly says, in response to the observation that we have a few more administrators than comparably sized schools, that she checked on specifics and was told that "for historical reasons" we list a couple of positions, such as the technology directory, as an administrative post where the "low-administration" schools would list the people doing this as teachers. This is plausible, and overall the news is much less bad than it seemed this morning.

Update on Opt-Out Our opt-out percentage may have been high, with almost a quarter of the affected students sitting out the test, but the protest has been heard and it wasn't just us: about 30K students in the state opted out, a vote of no confidence on the current nysed administration has gone through, the new administration is sounding different, the test is invalid and there's no way it will be used. I will probably update with other notes (we talked about telepresence and such) and maybe with more links Real Soon Now, but that's all for the moment.

Update: notes from other attendees:
Susan Marafino adds

I mentioned that [Carolyn Hsu] would be a good person to be involved with the potential exchange student program with Southern Westchester BOCES. The coordinator happens to be a Colgate alumni - Diana couldn't recall his name.  HCS would apparently be the first school to be part of this BOCES exchange student program, and  one appeal for choosing our district, besides the Colgate connection, is that we already have the SEVIS rating.

I missed the first minute of the meeting, but after the meeting Bud Ballinger confirmed that the strings position was being restored to current levels including 2nd and 3rd grade.

Lastly, Diana mentioned, following a question from Astrid about JV sports, that the girls soccer program was being cut because "there aren't sufficient numbers".  This is on the heels of girls volleyball being moved to the fall.  To my understanding, there has been no discussion of this in any BOE meeting to date, so it was surprising to hear it presented as fait accompli.  Considering that the last item on tonight's agenda was "asking for collaboration and transparency as a two-way street", this certainly merits further discussion at the next board meeting, as well as with student athletes and their parents, and Sports Boosters.

Heather Cigeroglu then added

Just a few other notes to point out...

• Susan had mentioned the shift of girls volleyball to the fall. In response, Diana mentioned that Jen Dean should be asked about this because it was Jen and Denny Roy that made the switch based upon a student survey that was given.

• There will be potentially 4 positions opening up at HCS if the budget is passed: 

       2 Guidance Positions (long-term maternity leave) 

       1 Art Position (not sure if full or part is being advertised)

       1 Special Education Position

* I was hoping that the .5 art teacher would somehow be able to extend their position by teaching courses that the technology and innovation coordinator may have taught so not to completely loss that portion of the curriculum and also to be a support to PBL since this is how art teachers have always approached their material. I don’t think I was clear on my intention, I think many people thought I was just advocating to bump the part-time to a full-time position which was not the main intent. Following my comment, Audrey Miller made a great point that although it would be great to have two full-time art teachers there is still only one librarian for the school. An excellent point really.

• Currently the Board is looking into Interim candidates and once he/she is decided on they will then focus their energies on a full superintendent search. 

• The PBL (Project Based Learning) model http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning is just beginning to become incorporated as part of the curriculum at HCS. Diana explained that she prefers to refer to it as process-based learning, placing more emphasis on the process than the product. I have to agree with her on that. 

  Audrey Miller seemed very positive about the experiences her 1st graders are    

  having with the PBL approach. 

• Also, for at-risk students or students who prefer a “hands-on” approach to learning BOCES will be offering a model similar to Tech Valley to 9th and 10th graders. http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/morning_call/2014/03/tech-valley-high-school-model-to-be-replicated.html  If i’m not mistaken, High school programs at BOCES are currently only offered to students in 11th and 12th grade. They hope this program will help catch students before they lose complete interest in school and fall behind.

Astrid Helfant said

Let me add to this Diana's rebuttal in response to my letter to the Board regarding a 0.75 FTE (interim) superintendent position. Her comments included that it would not be of benefit to HCS to reduce the superintendent position. She of course emphasized that she had nothing to gain from advocating this on behalf of HCS considering she's leaving her job this summer. Diana stated that those schools that have reduced superintendent and / or shared principal jobs are of lesser educational standing compared to schools that have no part-time upper level administrator positions. Also, according to Diana, HCS would not be able to hire as good a candidate if it were seeking to fill a less than full-time slot.

Furthermore, and Molly chimed in here, they both critiqued the earlier comparison Ferdinand and I vocalized during a board meeting regarding HCS having 6.0 FTE administrator positions compared to other similar sized schools with only 4.0 administrator positions. Such a comparison, they stated, is invalid as Hamilton includes its Technology Director as part of administrator staff, whereas other schools may include this position under teaching staff. So in essence, according to this argument, we'd be comparing apples to oranges.

Thanks also to Stephanie for backing me up on this reduced superintendent position by underscoring at the end of this discussion that my original letter to the Board suggested this may make sense for the interim job, which does not necessarily mean this is the way to go for the long term.

 and finally, Stephanie McClintick did some research on the athletic issue:

I wrote to Brian Rose who had no idea that there was a possibility of canceling soccer at HCS in the fall. He met with the Jen Dean, the AD this morning, and said that there would be girls soccer.

And a note from me (Tom Myers) -- I had been supporting the part-time interim superintendent idea, and wasn't immediately convinced by Diana's rebuttal: in particular, Diana commented that we could pay less and get a "manager" but not an "educational leader" and I wasn't sure that was bad. Thinking about what Astrid said and back to Diana's remarks leads me to think I was wrong. If we're hoping to get new things to happen, such as the international student project or electrical cogeneration or telepresence in any of its forms or whatever, then we do need more. The Bottom Line for me is that we're probably doing okay for next year... Yaaaaaay!! But there are several troubles on the horizon. So it goes.