[Grovenet] No Child Left Behind?

[Jeff Cooper]

Steve, you raise many interesting and excellent points. 

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Steve Jerrett <stevedj at teleport.com> wrote:
Jeff,

Your thoughts here produce an interesting dichotomy. You state with pride that you mastered your times tables in 2nd grade and lament the current standards as appallingly low. Then you eschew the very practices that enabled you to learn your math facts, namely rote memorization. "Atavistic" practices, currently labeled as 'drill and kill," are the reason that you and I and most people over 40 learned and still remember our muliplication tables. And the abandonment of rote memorization of essential facts is one reason that you and many others lament the fact that standards are deficient.
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You are correct that I lament deficient standards and that I am appalled by drill and kill as well as an emphasis on rote memorization.  However, I am not against *all* rote memorization, and indeed "times tables" are definitely one thing which needs to be learned by rote.  There is really no other way to do it.  I lament the fact that my kids repeat very similar math exercises year after year and that learning times tables is now a 4th grade standard.  That specific "dumbification" of standards based approach has and will continue to hurt students in math for years to come. There is no doubt that this is one of the reasons why American students continue to decline when compared to their peers internationally.  I also recognize that the modern math algorithms for learning how to add/carry/multiply do little to improve math skills.  Indeed, there is so much effort on learning how to use a calculator properly that I wonder at all if the kids (without parental support) will
 really get the math skills they need.  I regularly "drill" my kids about what 9x6 equals, etc., in hopes of enhancing their education.  I am also aware that there are a plethora of excellent interactive math sites that lie fallow.  Our students should be visiting these sites and having *fun* learning math (not to mention other subjects).  

I do not recommend or condemn any single approach to learning.  Considering the multiple intelligences of our students a wide variety of approaches to teaching is required.  I do believe in teachers as facilitators and that NCLB greatly reduces their freedom to adopt best practices.

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Steve Jerrett <stevedj at teleport.com> wrote:
If you recall, there was much discussion of eduacation theory here on grovenet about ten years ago. A previous superintendent forced a district-wide adoption of a teaching philosophy designed by an individual to reach delinquent (his term) students that he was in charge of. These students were virtually unreachable through conventional means, so he decided to abandon prescribed curriculum and adopt a "child centered approach," adapting curriculum to the needs and interests of the students he was dealing with. I believe, as a last resort, that this was the proper course of action. Unfortunately, this individual decided that this method was appropriate for all children, and he wrote a book and went on the lecture circuit to promote it as such. A handful of school districts bought in to it, and, unfortunately, Forest Grove was one of them. It was abruptly adandoned with the departure of that superintendent in 1999.
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I moved here in 2000 and did not see the "student-centered" approach used in FGSD.  I certainly am a proponent of this approach, as modern educational theory also supports it.  I certainly think that students who have dropped mentally out of the status quo system need something other than remediation, and a student-centered approach *may* work at times with them.  I also understand as an educator that this style of teaching/learning is probably the most difficult to get students (not to mention educators and admins) to embrace.  

Students become accustomed to "tasks" (a word I usually associate with the adjective "onerous") and classroom management generally involves "keeping students on task."  Now, if you can convince a student to become actively involved with their own education, and help them (along with their parents, etc.) to devise an Individualized Education Program where they actually have a voice in what they learn and how they learn it, then they will be more likely to succeed.  As it stands, students have virtually no voice in what they learn or how they learn it, and education is an externalized process... something they *have to do* rather than something that they actually enjoy doing.

I do think that learning should be fun.  It's fun when we're little kids.  It deteriorates as we are processed through the system.  Ask kids across the land how boring school is on a scale of 1-10 and I'm guessing that the average would be about 8 (with some going the Spinal Tap route to 11).  That's extremely unfortunate and again, something that the current system seems unable to address, let alone assess.  Constructivism is extremely difficult to implement and become a mainstreamed approach.  Indeed, when I worked for the College of Education at Pacific, many Masters students rejected it, not understanding it and I'd hear laments of "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do to get an 'A'!"  Indeed, if (since) students are programmed to become more involved with their grades than their learning, there's no doubt that student-centered learning will take a very long time to be adopted in the classroom (if ever).  

Nor am I advocating that this should be the only ends all approach in the classroom.  As I mentioned, there are certainly things that students need to memorize (such as times tables).  Nor will the constructivist approach work with all students, ever.  Indeed, no one approach will work with all students, ever.  However, I am reminded of a staff development day back in California where the presenter stated "Direct instruction is the best instruction, period."  So ended any discourse of pedagogy before the staff development day began.  I know that direct instruction and didacticism has its merits, but in today's world where professors can put lectures on teachertube, isn't it time that we started to transcend past instructional methods and start moving into the 21st Century? 

The same applies in K-12 education.  Rather than having students learn facts about China to be tested later, wouldn't it be at least reasonable to have them engage in global project based learning with their Chinese peers?  Perhaps working on environmental issues and writing collaborative papers... the list is endless yet it isn't examined because it doesn't easily check into an NCLB or Oregon State standards box.  

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Steve Jerrett <stevedj at teleport.com> wrote:
Also, circa 1989, the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) proposed a radical departure from past teaching practices. They declared practices such as rote memorization of facts as destructive and a waste of time. They adopted a method called "integrated math'" where instead of learning math sequentially, they recommended spending a small amount of time on many subjects each year.

At long last, they have revised their recommendations to a practice that" 
integrates the standards, building on background knowledge and creating a solid foundation for high school mathematics." In other words, a move back toward fact based, sequential practices.

It is difficult to pinpoint the effect of individual practices when researching achievement levels, so we may never know the full effect these practices had on two decades of children. I can say with some certainty that, had the NCTM adopted their philosophy 20 years earlier, you probably wouldn't be sharing your early math achievments today.

Steve
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I facilitate a Math Resources group at Tapped In (http://www.tappedin.org).  Many have given the same arguments as you have regarding the "new" approaches to math and how the changing algorithms in an effort to move forward have really dropped things back.  I tend to agree with both you and the math educators at Tapped In.  I find it appalling that students are taught more about how to use calculators than how to problem solve.  Again, I'm more appalled that with all the emphasis that NCLB places on Math and Reading that that the standards are really so low, and that 2nd graders don't learn times tables!  

My "solution" involves more interactive uses of math sites where students may have fun and learn a wide variety of math skills based on their individual abilities, rather than tracking individual students to state grade level standards.  Indeed, I find the whole "state level standards" appallingly atavistic. Learning one "thing/course" independently at a time, then moving to another class where you learn another "subject" is a woefully outdated way of teaching and learning.  I remember when I taught "Animal Farm" in Vallejo to middle school students.  They objected when I started talking about the Russian Revolution saying "hey, this is English, not Social Studies!"  Uh... riiiigggghhhtttt!  We need to integrate and teach across curricula rather than pigeonholing and separating it.  

Old style course separations again represent steps backwards that we're not dealing with in standard K-12 schools.  I believe the charter school approach faces these issues much more realistically and perhaps our mainstream public schools will start to move in this direction.  However the forces of mandated high $take$ tests make it extremely difficult for administrators to consider whole scale reforms.  Teaching to tests may be status quo and de rigeur, but aren't necessarily ways of reaching students or improving learning.  I didn't teach to tests in Vallejo, yet I received a bonus of $500 for raising their test scores.  I didn't teach to tests at Richmond High, but had many low achieving students published internationally ( look at http://snurl.com/netc1 )for an article I wrote in part about that).  

Yes, I believe that tech can be used to much better effect than it is currently. Again, why have SmartBoards without computers?  Why not have 4 computers per class in middle and high schools?  Why not support students and educators to start to really think outside the box and become truly actively involved in ways heretofore unimagined? 

Regards,

Jeff Cooper


       
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