2010 – 2011 School Year Calendar

The school district will present the proposed 2010 – 2011 school year calendar at the December 2 school board meeting. You can find the full calendar here. Highlights include:

• School starts on Tuesday September 7, 2010 and ends on Friday June 17, 2011
• Christmas (or Winter) Break begins with a half day on Wednesday December 22, 2010 and ends with students returning on Monday January 3, 2011.

Never Cease to Remember…….

November 19, 1863

Gettysburg, PA

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

- – Abraham Lincoln

Merit Pay – In PWCS?!

Merit pay may be rearing it’s ugly head in PWC schools.

An effort is currently underway in PWCS to revise the manner in which teachers are assessed and compensated.  The committee meeting to develop the revised performance plan will be presenting it’s recommendations to the school board later this Winter.  One widely rumored aspect of that program is implementing a Merit Pay system.

Merit Pay is one of those things that sounds great on paper and can be highly effective if done properly.  But it’s rarely done properly and is so heavily subject to bias that it generally fails.

Let’s Cram More Kids Into Overcrowded Schools

I’ve lived in Prince William County for most of my adult life. For some reason this county always seems to make really stupid planning decisions. Like over building in one part of the county without having the services like  fire and rescue and schools to support the populations moving in. And we never seem to learn from our mistakes. Take the west end of the county in the Bristow / Nokesville / Gainesville area.

Bristow was point zero in the rapid development that’s been going on in Prince William for the past 10 years. With a VRE stop just a few miles away and easily accessible, and property values that are generally 10’s of thousands of dollars lower than in Fairfax and Loudon, growing families just starting out with young children flocked to the area.

The net effect – extremely overcrowded schools. The four most overcrowded Elementary Schools, the 1st and 2nd most overcrowded Middle Schools, and the 1st and 2nd most overcrowded High Schools all fall within 10 – 15 miles of one another in this area of the county. Several developments in the area aren’t complete, like Morris Farms and New Bristow Village, and several others have already been approved but haven’t started construction yet (like Mayfield Trace). And the county wants to add 300 – 500 more houses to the mix with a brand new development called Avendale.

Pay for Play – In PWC High Schools?

Time to End “Pay-To-Play” in PWCS

Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Kleenex and poster board – what do these have to do with academic success in high school?

A lot more than you may think for children in PWCS.  To cope with the effects of budget cuts resulting in things like increased class sizes and lack of textbooks for students, our teachers have been forced to beg for basic school supplies.   One rather shocking tactic – earn extra credit if you bring in supplies your teacher needs.  And this isn’t supplies just for your child like a scientific calculator or a T-Square – it’s stuff like copier paper, toilet paper, and paper towels.

Children Learn by Practicing

Children Learn by Practicing

That comes as no surprise to most parents.  But trends in education in the last 15 years, especially in math, demonstrate that this statement is nothing short of astonishing.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Over thousands of years, humans have evolved to naturally understand things like facial expressions and social interactions. But a University of Missouri researcher has found there is an ever-widening gap between what humans can naturally learn and what they need to learn to be successful adults in today’s modern society. Schools have traditionally helped bridge the gap between evolution and new knowledge, but in the U.S. more may need to be done.

“Schools need to push children to learn things that they do not do naturally, which is more important as our knowledge of the world continues to expand,” said David Geary, Curators’ Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. “Learning is not always going to be fun and children should not expect it to be. Attempting to engage children by making activities fun, causes those activities to become more similar to what students are already doing naturally and can limit new learning.”

Geary found that one reason U.S. students may be behind students in other countries in subjects like science and math is because American schools have moved away from traditional practices where students learn information through repetition. Instead, U.S. schools often use more group and social interactions to teach topics that can be challenging.

Dr Geary in part of a 10 year program of study on Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning, Development, and Disorders through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.  According to his biography, “ The objectives of this program are to explore the critical genetic, neurobioligical, cognitive, linguistic, socio- cultural, and instructional factors that influence normal and atypical development in math and science.“  The study is in it’s sixth year identifying the mechanisms that contribute to mathematical learning through algebra and the mechanisms that underlie learning disabilities in mathematics.  

I guess drill and kill wasn’t so bad, after all …..

You can read the full article here (H/T to NYHOLD).

NSF EHR sends more money down the drain

The Directorate of Education at the NSF is one of the largest sources of cash for educational research and educational program development in the United States.  If your child’s school uses Investigations, Every Day Math, Connected Math, or any other such “fuzzy” math programs, you can thank the good people of the NSF Education Directorate because much of the money to develop those programs came from them.  Money from the NSF for more traditional programs, like Saxon, has been scarce.

The NSF has funded the development of virtually every constructivist / standards based/ reform math program in existence in the US.   It’s done more than just fund the development of these programs, it’s funded the development of programs to convince school districts and parents of the need for them, to train teachers on how to teach them, and to assess how effective the programs really are.

And what does the NSF Education Directorate have to show for the hundreds of millions of dollars it’s spent funding research to assess the effectiveness of the math programs it developed and sold to school districts around the country?

Little to nothing.

You see, scientific research is supposed to, well, meet the minimum standards of quality to be reasonably relied upon.  But the NSF Education Directorate, apparently, doesn’t require that the research it funds meet those standards.  The result, bogus education studies that can’t be relied upon and wasted money.

The National Math Advisory Panel (NMAP) ran into this problem when they began assessing that state of mathematics education in the United States.

“The Panel’s systematic reviews have yielded hundreds of studies on important topics, but only a small proportion of those studies have met methodological standards. Most studies have failed to meet standards of quality because they do not permit strong inferences about causation or causal mechanisms (Mosteller & Boruch, 2002; Platt, 1964). Many studies rely on self-report, introspection about what has been learned or about learning processes, and open-ended interviewing techniques, despite well-known limitations of such methods (e.g., Brainerd, 1973; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Woodworth, 1948).”

So did the US Dept of Education’s What Works Clearing House when they attempted to gauge the effectiveness of the four most “popular” elementary mathematics programs.  The WWC’s study was hindered by the fact that:

“No studies of Investigations in Number, Data, and Space® that fall within the scope of the Elementary School Math review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Investigations in Number, Data, and Space®”.

Amazing, isn’t it?  Here are hundreds of supposedly scientific studies, funded by the NSF, which are supposed to gauge whether the new math programs are actually effective, and they can’t be relied upon.

Yet those studies are still being circulated and used by sales people to convince schools and parents of the need for these constructivist programs.

And it’s not just the NSF that backs bogus studies which show how wonderful constructivist program are. The textbook publishers are part of the game as well and debunking their claims is as easy as picking up the phone. Who can forget the research of one of our citizens which demonstrated that more than 60% of the schools cited as Evidence of Investigations Success by Pearson Publishing, Investigations Publisher, are no longer using Investigations.  PWC Schools own department head defended Pearson’s bogus list.

As long as school board members remain complaint and refuse to do their own research and challenge the assertions of school system employees, as long as parents and politician’s prefer ignorance to knowledge, as long as teachers cower in fear of reprisal, our children’s education will continue to suffer.

Sources

1. National Science Foundation Systematic Initiativesby McKeown, Klein, and Patterson.

2. School math books, nonsense, and the National Science Foundation, by David Klein, Guest Editorial to be published in the American Journal of Physics, December 2006

3. List of a couple of the NSF Grants funding Connected Mathematics
9986372
9980760

4.  Who’s who in the math wars – follow the money

Lets Kick Boys out of Math and Science

Title IX is coming to math and science.  So says this article by Christina Hoff Sommers from the April 14, 2009 edition of the Washington Post.

Most of us know of Title IX as the federal law which requires that universities ensure equality in men’s and women’s athletics. And we’ve all noted the rise in women’s athletics as a result.

According to the article, in an October 2009 letter to women’s rights groups President Obama stated that Title IX had

“an enormous impact on women’s opportunities and participation in sports.” If pursued with “necessary attention and enforcement,” the same law could make “similar, striking advances” for women in science and engineering.

Sounds great, right?

Sure, if you’re a woman or have only daughters. But what about boys, our forgotten demographic?

No one questions that Title IX pushed Women’s athletics to heights it might not otherwise have achieved. But those advances came at a cost. A cost borne by male athletes.

The article cites Howard University as an example.

In 2007, the Women’s Sports Foundation, a powerful Title IX advocacy group, gave Howard an “F” grade because of its 24-percentage-point “proportionality gap”: Howard’s student body was 67 percent female, but women constituted only 43 percent of its athletic program. In 2002, Howard cut men’s wrestling and baseball and added women’s bowling, but that did little to narrow the gap. Unless it sends almost half of its remaining male athletes to the locker room, Howard will remain blacklisted and legally vulnerable. Former Howard wrestling coach Wade Hughes sums up the problem this way: “The impact of Title IX’s proportionality standard has been disastrous because . . . far more males than females are seeking to take part in athletics.”

What happens if we apply the same equity standard to academics?

While slightly more males than females obtain degrees in math or science related fields, like computer sciences and engineering, women now achieve far more Bachelor’s Degrees than men and out pace men by significant margins in obtaining advanced degrees in social and life science and education.

In the 2008 SAT, boys outperformed girls slightly by 33 points in math (and that gap has been closing rapidly), boys and girls scored statistically the same on critical reading, and girls outperformed boys slightly by 13 points in writing. Nationwide, girls have higher overall grade point averages and attend college at higher rates.

With higher grade point averages and virtually identical SAT scores, perhaps we ought to be asking why proportionately fewer women pursue degrees in science, math, and engineering than men, AND why significantly fewer men than women pursue degrees in social and life sciences and education before we enforce Title IX’s equity mandates on academics?

Remember the Howard example?

Title IX requires equity – if the school is 67% female, then 67% of the students engaged in sports must be female and only 33% can be male. Interest is irrelevant. What matters is complete equity, even if that means tossing boys sports.

Applying those same standards to academics, if 67% of the student population is female, then 67% of those obtaining degrees in engineering must be female. Interest doesn’t matter. So if 100 students apply to the College of Engineering, and only 20 of those 100 are female, in order to maintain equity and have 67% of the Engineering students be female, only 10 males can be admitted. 100% of the women applying to the program will be admitted while only 12.5% of the males will be.

That’s not equity. That’s sexism. And it means that boys will be kicked out of math and science to make way for girls.

National Academic Standards

For a number of years now there’s been a growing movement to establish national academic standards.    The Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has come out in support of national standards, has expressed plans to revise NCLB to create those standards.  Duncan claims that states would be allowed to choose whether to adopt the national standards, but choosing not to participate could cost the state it’s federal education funding.

The article from Bloomberg covers the Duncan’s statement.

What might national standards look like?

Achieve, Inc is a national education reform organization whose intent is to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments and strengthen accountability for students throughout the US.

To support that purpose Achieve has developed benchmarks (a code word for standards) for English and Mathematics. Take the time to read through them, because National Standards are coming our way.

VA to help establish National Standards

The Governor of Virginia has announced that Virginia will participate in the effort to establish national academic standards for Mathematics and English.

“This process respects state sovereignty and our federal system while recognizing that America’s future prosperity hinges on the ability of our public schools to produce young men and women who can hold their own with their brightest peers in the developed and developing worlds,” said Governor Kaine.

The programs stated goals are to develop standards in English-language arts and mathematics by late summer of 2009 for high school students, and elementary and middle school standards in both subjects by the end of 2009.  Participating in the program does not require a state to adopt the standards.

You can read the press release here.