Friday, July 6, 2007
AIM (Small School) Program
Smaller, Better High Schools
New York City is making impressive strides toward the goal of replacing large and often dysfunctional factory-style high schools with smaller schools where children have closer contact with faculty members. The small schools quickly improved attendance and promotion rates. And a new analysis by the city shows that the 47 new schools opened since 2002 have also achieved significantly higher graduation rates.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg made small schools a central part of his education reform program and has committed the city to opening at least 250. In contrast to traditional high schools that sometimes have more than 3,000 students, the new schools have a target size of fewer than 500. That allows them to bring down class size as well. The goal is to create an intimate learning environment where course offerings are both novel and rigorous and every student knows every teacher.
Critics worry that the new schools would handpick the most desirable and most easily educated students, leaving behind children with special needs or limited language skills. But the city insists that more and more of those students would be included as the schools build their faculties and capabilities. The city will need to make good on that promise.
When it comes to graduation rates the new small schools are already a clear improvement. Schools in poor neighborhoods that once graduated less than half of their students are now seeing graduation rates of 80 percent or even 90 percent. The city, which calculates its overall graduation rate at 60 percent, still has a long way to go, especially in impoverished, minority communities. But the data so far suggest that the small school movement is at least part of the solution.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Let FREEDOM Ring! Re-Tool, Re-School, Re-Invent (America's Competitiveness)
Published Online: July 3, 2007
NEA President Uses Economic Competitiveness to Strike at NCLB
Philadelphia
Tapping into widespread concern about the nation’s economic competitiveness, National Education Association President Reg Weaver charged here yesterday that the federal No Child Left Behind Act won’t “prepare [our children] to compete with children from India and China.”
In a keynote speech before more than 8,000 delegates to the teachers’ union annual Representative Assembly, Mr. Weaver contended that the nearly 6-year-old law is eroding the “excellent education” most public school students now get while doing little to effectively close the achievement gaps that disadvantage black, Hispanic, and American Indian children.
“The so-called ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act assumed that schools by themselves could close the achievement gaps. But we can’t close the achievement gaps without bridging other chasms in our society,” such as the ones caused by poverty and unemployment, Mr. Weaver said to cheers.
On the other hand, he continued, even children who are not behind on their basic skills lose out in the more important realms of problem-solving and independent thinking as teachers endlessly prepare them for tests.
The NEA president, soon to begin his sixth and final year at the helm of the 3.2-million member union, called on citizens and policymakers to invest in the “human capital our nation will need to remain strong and prosperous.” Such investments would include many longtime goals of the NEA, for example, universal preschool education, smaller class sizes, and better pay for teachers.
Couching the goals as “an education bill of rights for children” as he spoke in the city where the U.S. Constitution was written, Mr. Weaver said that among the rights was that to have “multiple measures”—and not a single test score—used to determine student learning. Since the NCLB law’s enactment, the union has criticized reliance on state standardized test scores both as a means to chart options for students and to determine a school’s standing under the federal law.
Many delegates reflected the popularity of Mr. Weaver’s message by wearing red T-shirts emblazoned with the NEA logo and bearing the slogan: “A Child Is More Than a Test Score.” Also highly visible, this time on the curtains around the hall, were references to the group’s 150th birthday. The union had its beginnings when 43 educators joined together in Philadelphia in 1857 with the purpose of promoting education nationally.
A Proposal
One part of Mr. Weaver’s speech, though, seemed aimed more at those in policy circles than at his immediate audience of teachers, education aides, cafeteria workers, and other union members. In a long passage that failed to grip listeners, the president set forth the outlines of a plan for “an economic-development extension service” that he said would help increase productivity in the high-tech sector in much the same way the agricultural extension service helped boost it among farmers.
In contrast to Mr. Weaver’s statements over the past several years that he didn’t “know or care” where the money would come from for big-ticket changes such as a minimum salary of $40,000 for every teacher, this proposal specifies bankrolling the proposed new service with about $50 million in tax breaks states now use to attract industry—about the same amount currently lost through “federal tax loopholes.”
The plan, though vague, is in line with the NEA’s promise to drop its naysaying and focus on a new “positive agenda.” It is also a recognition that, in a climate of economic volatility and skepticism about public spending, costly changes to education will be difficult to make and need a hard-nosed rationale.
Mr. Weaver contended that the money now being saved by businesses would be better spent on designating economic-development centers at major universities, which would in turn establish research stations dedicated to fostering innovation in the businesses “that will drive the 21st-century economy,” such as alternative energy and biotechnology. The knowledge developed there would be made available at local schools and more broadly through extension agents, the union leader said.
“A program like this would empower millions of entrepreneurs across the United States to start businesses and create jobs,” Mr. Weaver asserted. It would also allow new money to flow to schools as part of upgrading the preparation of future entrepreneurs, he said.
Election Critical
“Our approach to education funding has not changed significantly in at least 30 years,” the NEA president said. “But we won’t be able to provide a great public school for every child without adequate resources and investments.”
Mr. Weaver even took a swipe at the trillion dollars he said had been spend on the war in Iraq, contending that the spending—whatever its worth for national security—threatened the nation’s economic security.
Reminding his members of “elements in our nation today who would like nothing more than to use the challenges of our schools as an excuse to destroy” public education, the union president urged them to “demand a seat at the table” in every discussion of education and to engage in politics. He pointed to last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down voluntary school desegregation by race as a reason to elect the right president in 2008.
Delegates are expected to hear from eight presidential candidates this week, seven Democrats and one Republican. Yesterday, they heard from Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., along with John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and former vice presidential nominee. All three took the opportunity to criticize the NCLB law.
Returning to favorite themes to cap his speech, Mr. Weaver declared that “on our 150th birthday, there ain’t no stopping us now.” He said he expected the union to help elect a president who is “a friend of education” and will help close achievement gaps, reduce the dropout rate, and fix the No Child Left Behind Law.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Having FUN (LEARNING) is a REWARD in ITSELF!
Money for Nothing
Philadelphia
NEW YORK CITY has decided to offer cash rewards to some students based on their attendance records and exam performance. Diligent, high-achieving seventh graders will be able to earn up to $500 in a year. The plan is the brainchild of Roland G. Fryer, an economist who has been appointed as “chief equality officer” of the city’s Department of Education.
The assumption that underlies the project is simple: people respond to incentives. If you want people to do something, you have to make it worth their while. This assumption drives virtually all of economic theory.
Sure, there are already many rewards in learning: gaining understanding (of yourself and others), having mysterious or unfamiliar aspects of the world opened up to you, demonstrating mastery, satisfying curiosity, inhabiting imaginary worlds created by others, and so on. Learning is also the route to more prosaic rewards, like getting into good colleges and getting good jobs. But these rewards are not doing the job. If they were, children would be doing better in school.
The logic of the plan reveals a second assumption that economists make: the more motives the better. Give people two reasons to do something, the thinking goes, and they will be more likely to do it, and they’ll do it better, than if they have only one. Providing some cash won’t disturb the other rewards of learning, rewards that are intrinsic to the process itself. They will only provide a little boost. Mr. Fryer’s reward scheme is intended to add incentives to the ones that already exist.
Unfortunately, these assumptions that economists make about human motivation, though intuitive and straightforward, are false. In particular, the idea that adding motives always helps is false. There are circumstances in which adding an incentive competes with other motives and diminishes their impact. Psychologists have known this for more than 30 years.
In one experiment, nursery school children were given the opportunity to draw with special markers. After playing, some of the children were given “good player” awards and others were not. Some time later, the markers were reintroduced to the classroom. The researchers kept track of which children used the markers, and they collected the pictures that had been drawn. The youngsters given awards were less likely to draw at all, and drew worse pictures, than those who were not given the awards.
Why did this happen? Children draw because drawing is fun and because it leads to a result: a picture. The rewards of drawing are intrinsic to the activity itself. The “good player” award gives children another reason to draw: to earn a reward. And it matters — children want recognition. But the recognition undermines the fun, so that later, in the absence of a chance to earn an award, the children aren’t interested in drawing.
Similar results have been obtained with adults. When you pay them for doing things they like, they come to like these activities less and will no longer participate in them without a financial incentive. The intrinsic satisfaction of the activities gets “crowded out” by the extrinsic payoff.
An especially striking example of this was reported in a study of Swiss citizens about a decade ago. Switzerland was holding a referendum about where to put nuclear waste dumps. Researchers went door-to-door in two Swiss cantons and asked people if they would accept a dump in their communities. Though people thought such dumps might be dangerous and might decrease property values, 50 percent of those who were asked said they would accept one. People felt responsibility as Swiss citizens. The dumps had to go somewhere, after all.
But when people were asked if they would accept a nuclear waste dump if they were paid a substantial sum each year (equal to about six weeks’ pay for the average worker), a remarkable thing happened. Now, with two reasons to say yes, only about 25 percent of respondents agreed. The offer of cash undermined the motive to be a good citizen.
It is as if, when asked the question, people asked themselves whether they should respond based on considerations of self-interest or considerations of public responsibility. Half of the people in the uncompensated condition of the study thought they should focus on their responsibilities. But the offer of money, in effect, told people that they should consider only their self-interest. And as it turned out, through the lens of self-interest, even six weeks’ pay wasn’t enough.
Obviously, the intrinsic rewards of learning aren’t working in New York’s schools, at least not for a lot of children. It may be that the current state of achievement is low enough that desperate measures are called for, and it’s worth trying anything. And we don’t know whether in this case, motives will complement or compete.
But it is plausible that when students get paid to go to class and show up for tests, they will be even less interested in the work than they would be if no incentives were present. If that happens, the incentive system will make the learning problem worse in the long run, even if it improves achievement in the short run — unless we’re prepared to follow these children through life, giving them a pat on the head, or an M&M or a check every time they learn something new.
Perhaps worse, the plan will distract us from investigating a more pertinent set of questions: why don’t children get intrinsic satisfaction from learning in school, and how can this failing of education be fixed? Virtually all kindergartners are eager to learn. But by fourth grade, many students need to be bribed. What makes our schools so dystopian that they produce this powerful transformation, almost overnight?
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)