I'm stealing that. You never wrote it.

If you feel this strongly about it and think that this is a better education process (and product) why are you not in favour of vouchers and setting up your own school? Seems to have worked for Montesorri.

I think teachers far too often forget that they sell a service, education. They (teacher unions) act like consultants that every firm in the world would fire but they have a lifelong contract. They complain about the way the company is run. They don't consult with the paying customers, parents. They feel they (and only they) know what is in the best interest of the child. They demand an ever growing budget while providing diminishing returns.

How often do you sit down with your paying customer and ask them what they want? How they want you to provide your services?

How often do you sit down with your customers and let them know "Hey, these are the best practices. This is what I suggest but ultimately it's your call."

Outside of the once a semester parent teacher night, the only time I heard from teachers is when I instigated the conversation. Does that seem like a good way to treat your customers? Does that seem like a smart way to build a relationship with them?

Teachers are effectively third party consultants in the education process. Paid by the school board (or public purse) but the real paying customer is the parents of the kids they teach. Yet they act like no consultant I've worked with. In private practice not many of them would ever be hired a second time. Not because of their abilities but due to the way they treat the customer.

I don't know what this refers to. I can tell you why I have issues with a testing regime as a measure of assessment of students and teachers, but as I've said repeatedly, I don't have an alternative model. This is outside my area of expertise. Ask McP. He seems to know his shit here. I do think if you want to get the smartest people we have teaching (and I think we do) we do need to pay them a lot more than we do--otherwise you're limiting your talent pool to smart and talented people who are willing to make a lot less money than they could elsewhere because they want to do socially meaningful work. But that's not an educational model or philosophy.

And as I said before, the problem with the 'competition model' of school choice (which is not the same thing as trying innovative ideas within the public schools, which also exists) is that it siphons the best students and the best resources from public schools, and since learning is greatly influenced by environment that is a huge problem (to say nothing of the fact that vouchers rarely provide the full costs needed to go to a decent private school). An innovative health plan that lowers costs by only ensuring healthy people isn't that helpful a model.

Why would we ever want our smartest people to be teachers? I want smart teachers, with an excellent set of teaching skills. That does not require our smartest people. That's not to denigrate what teachers do or their importance but to realistically call for an education and skill set required for the job, teaching.

You don't need an advanced mathematical degree or masters in Education to teach grade 5 math.

What you propose would be like having your AP clerk have a CPA designation. Then expect the AP clerk to get paid at CPA rates.

I think it's ridiculous that schools pay more for a Masters degree. They should pay for an increase of performance of the students, or for taking on larger classes or more special need kids in the class.

I think you really need to make a case why we need the smartest to be teachers. Smart has nothing to do with being a competent teacher.

Do you really think that with the per student spent in public school, that if the smart kids all disappeared that you could not effectively do your job?

Hell I would think it would be very easy for a few teachers to band together, set up very small niche schools with almost no overhead, make more money while taking on the very students you think will be left behind. The parents of those students have vouchers of the very same amount as the parents whose loss of their kids you lament.

It's not the job of the healthy kids to heal the sick. But that's part and parcel of your proposal.

It certainly did a good job of crushing her ideals. After the patent office decided that the public perception of the name was generic enough that her schools wouldn't be harmed by other people using the name, her entire vision was crushed. Fewer than half of the Montessori schools operating today actually adhere to her beliefs.



Take this line, and then pair it up with this...



It's an interesting choice you made there. See, fifth grade sits at the tail end of one of the most receptive periods of the brain's development. From our earliest days, up until right about the 5/6th grade mark, we are almost literally built for two things: learning and growing. But that 5th grade mark is literally the last chance dance before the period where heightened physical growth and the onset of puberty begin to drastically drain and reduce our capacity for mental intake.

By the time we hit thirteen, it's become a very closed off affair...reception to new language development efforts at 13 averages nearly identical degrees of success as with people in their 70's. For most adolescents, the brain won't regain it's previous levels of acquisition and retention until approximately their college years. So this would arguably be one of the most important times in a child's life that they have a teacher who has attained a level of expertise in their field, who can act according to that expertise within the classroom, and who can provide parents with what insights they may have since their parents won't have had access to information EXACTLY LIKE THIS.



It's really not, for more than just the reason I illustrated above. The real crime is that it doesn't matter what kind of Masters you earn. Most teachers get their Masters in admin...so they can get a VP position someday. In other words, they're getting paid more for a degree that does not enhance their ability to teach. And THAT is all kinds of bullshit.



It's definitely important to communicate your intentions and plans with parents...I find it unfortunate that most teachers, at best, send out a single page flier regarding the upcoming quarter. However, while reducing a child's education to a series of "blurbs" is inefficient at best, most planning and rationale CAN be explained on paper or electronically.

It's also true that some teachers mistake their understanding of pedagogy as making them more capable parents...and therefore see themselves as someone capable of providing parenting advice. This is a behavior that principals should address immediately and directly. But the opposite is true as well...teachers end up working with a LOT of parents who believe that their experience as parents makes them as knowledgeable about education as anybody, and they almost universally advocate the exact least effective practices. There's a big difference between "I'll have mine medium rare" and having a parent arguing vehemently with you because they want their child to spend the entire year doing something they don't realize is actually completely noneducational. Part of the function of a professional is to ensure a higher quality product, as you said, than an individual without your skill set could achieve

This bothers me.

Okay - so if we teach kids rote memorization they will be worse off. This presupposes that if we give teachers the space they need to implement their innovative teaching methods, that they'd be better off. So, when teachers are given specific measures that must be taught, what prevents from them using their innovative teaching methods to get students to learn the rudimentary information that is taught on the standardized test? If your methods are better than rote memorization, then doesn't it follow that by using these methods that students will perform better on the straight forward, multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank type of tests?

WHAT IS IT about the state standard that prevents teachers from implementing these methods that results in lowest common denominator teaching methods? Is that you don't want to teach the information demanded by the board of regents? What?

I'm fascinated by the language thing. I actually believed it until I went to another nation and actually tried to learn their language. I haven't been in the Horn for years now, but if I run into Somali's around Columbus I can speak it and hear it like I was still there.

I'd love to perform an experiment where we just summarily take people and inject them into societies with alien languages and see just exactly how long it takes them to learn it. How much of our ability to absorb a new language rests in the comfort of the first language we're already comfortable with? How much of our "ability to learn" is genetic, and how much of it is "I just don't want to learn this."

I guess we just need to start teaching fifth graders calculus.

Strange - from K-8th grade I learned addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, basic geometry, exponents, scientific notation. In the eight years after that I learned algebra, functions, complex trig, exponential and hyperbolic functions, the theory of math, limits, differential and integral calculus, differential equations, taylor series, infinite series, optimization, linear algebra, matrix algebra, numerical methods, boundary value problems, initial value problems, gradients, calculus in three dimensions, fourier transforms - plus all that engineering stuff.

Seems like elementary school is largely wasted...

McP - You made some excellent points and provided food for thought. I still disagree with you regarding the Masters. While grade 5 may be an important time, is there anything inherent in teaching grade 5 that requires an elevated skill set than teaching grade 4?

For a company AR is extremely important. The company dies without money coming in. That still doesn't require your AR clerk to be the smartest in the company or be a CPA and MBA. It requires they have the skill set required to get the job done. Any more than that is wasted resources.

While you may be the expert in the field of education, you are still the hired consultant. It may frustrate you to work for people who don't always listen to your suggested best practices but that comes with the consulting territory. I have a feeling that if you sat down with me at the beginning of the school year and said "this is what I want to achieve, this is my game plan and this is my methodology" that I'd say "great, just tell me how I can help". I've yet to have a single teacher do this. Mistaking fliers for communication is something you should shave learned as part of your teaching skill set. The best I ever got was me initiating communications and the single parent teacher night each semester. The I know best so I'm not going to tell you anything approach is lame, rude and insulting.

If you have a great idea about how to teach kids but can't (or worse yet won't) tell it and sell it to your customers, don't blame the customers.

I think a large part of the problem is that teachers don't act professional and fail to establish open, fluid and frequent communications with their customers. It's not just unfortunate that many teachers, at best, send out a single page flier it should be viewed as dereliction of duties. I would venture that about 90% of the communications from teachers that people get is from the union complaining in news stories. In any other field, someone constantly running down their employer, complaining how much things suck would look for new work not be demanding a raise.

Great point about the Masters. I would be willing to pay more for a teacher with a Masters degree in Education if they took on a larger class size or a more difficult mix of kids. But that same Masters with no additional productivity gains, why would i pay more for that?

Mentioned in another thread:



...and, in fact we're pretty unremarkable in our actual classroom spending. TONS of the money that's filtered into public schools goes towards social service, support for poor families, and the like.



At the fifth grade level, the math is incredibly simple. But the pedagogy remains crucial...if you've explored the other education thread at all, everything I ended up being as a teacher was birthed in my Masters courses.

But, like I said, most teachers who get their Masters don't get it in curriculum or instruction. In fact, I was just looking to possibly get my Doctorate in curriculum, and went looking around. There are 17 Administration Doctorates available in the field of education, within driving distance of me, and exactly ZERO that are actually related to education. That's sad, to me, and I blame it on lack of interest.



Like I said, I completely agree that teachers need to be more communicative about their plans and intentions. More than anything, I often find myself wondering why they write to parents the same way they'd talk to the child. Jesus Christ.

I'll admit to not doing this as well as I should have. My only defense is that so many of the parents in our area either didn't speak English, worked nights, didn't have consistently working phone lines, or had the (surprisingly common) attitude of "He's my problem when he's at home. He's yours when he's at school. Leave me the fuck alone," that it was pretty defeating. I've often wished I'd done it better, though.



My experience is that a non-administrative Masters does exactly that.



If your point is that adults are capable of learning a new language, and are thinking that such a statement has anything to do with what I wrote, then you're accidental second point is that you need to reread my post.



And if your point is that schools scaffold learning, enhancing and building upon the growing background knowledge dished up in previous years, then no shit. If your point is that study skills, motivation, and curiosity can help to reduce the negative effects of the 11-20 period, sure. If your point is that your strong background in the most essential and universal of concepts and skills allowed you to later on effectively acquire more focused addendums, then cool.

I could turn this into a thread all by itself, but let me just illustrate a few examples in a feeble and ultimately useless attempt to help summarize the premise entire:

1. Children who experience traumatic brain injuries effecting the linguistic section of the brain overwhelmingly recover full language abilities. Adults who suffer similar injuries not only rarely recover, but any improvement they do makes appears to cease its expansion after about five months.

2. American children typically receive their second language training during the 8th-12th grade period, right in the swamp of that pubescent downer. In most other countries, second language acquisition starts in elementary school. Not only do nations that conduct second language training equal to ours in time and effort, but prior to the age of 10, get better results....so do the ones that do less SL training than we do.

3. One of the key components of the development occurring around age 13 is brain lateralization. Up until that point motor and linguistic skills develop very simultaneously, and as a result they often feed each other. This is also part of why children with traumatic injuries can recover to a higher degree than adults...cerebral specialization is still in a state of onset. Once the hemispheres have separated, language acquisition becomes more difficult.

4. Having acquired your native language makes you more capable of acquiring others. People who have developed a strong use of their native language acquire new languages far faster than those who haven't. People who have not reached what linguists refer to as a "functional command" of their native language by age 13 struggle to acquire either. Feral children recovered prior to the age of 13 often manage complete and functional command of language, with help. Feral children recovered at or after the age of 13 do not. Now, feral children are not so common a phenomenon to result in any definitive statement by themselves, but compound that with this:

5. In studies of deaf children who began learning ASL at birth, versus those who began learning it after the age of 8, the children who began learning it at birth a stronger and more functional handle on the language than those who started later...even when assessed more than 15 years later.

I had a sixth point, but I forgot it. So there we have it.

I don't see why you're being so hostile. I'm being sincere. I am fascinated by the concept of a language, how the brain digests it, learns it, understands it, etc. In the discussion of mathematics I, in more or less terms, was highlighting what you list. In another way I am questioning whether we make efficient use of our "brain growing" time period. If I'm really most capable of learning before I'm 13, then in a way I feel entirely cheated that I spent SO MUCH DAMN TIME during my formative years learning the same things, over and over, and over, and not more time enhancing what had already been built up, improving my studying skills, capturing my curiosity and maximizing it, and more effectively enabling me to acquire more focused addendums.

I'm not so sure that comparing brain injuries from children to adults is really apt. A childs brain is still growing new brain power, and has the ability to "remap" itself quite efficiently. The adult brain, not so much. You're not controlling for the brains ability to absorb language. If you wipe out the language section of my brain, I'm likely screwed, but I'd challenge that if you sent me to China for ten years, that I'd know and understand Chinese better after that period of time than the vast majority of their 5th graders. Living in a Francophone nation for a couple years, I know how other nations treat second languages. I "learned Spanish" from 7th-11th grade in the pubescent downer. My grades were outrageously high, I thought the classes were a joke, and I left not being able to speak a lick of it (that whole rote memorization to get me to pass the standardized test thing.) But I am fascinated that when it came to Somali and Arabic, that I learned, and understood both, far better through self-education and forced immersion than when I just could have cared less about Spanish aside from getting a 99 on my report card. I am merely questioning WHAT AMOUNT of the language learning is will, desire, state of mind, brain health, and genetics.

If I became deaf tomorrow from some traumatic injury I would not be AT ALL thrilled about learning ASL, and I don't think I'd ever really have the will to master the language like I master my ability to read and speak now. I would likely learn just enough ASL to get by.

I also question the brains ability to absorb new knowledge if it ceases the learning process for any meaningful period of time. The engineers in my company are in a constant state of learning. But it's a struggle to teach our assemblers the most basic mathematics.

Hostility wasn't my intention. Or, maybe more correctly, I probably grew slight in that post out of a more generalized frustration. You have always been open and nonjudgmental on the subject of education when we've talked about it in the past. I recognize and appreciate that.



I agree that the most valuable years are not being used well. However, as mentioned in the other thread, my opinion is that the biggest mistake we make during that time is to make students when we should be making learners. Put another way, we take children who are primed to become academic explorers and instead train them to be passive believers. Certainly, we don't always succeed in that...but when people complain about a lack of intellectual curiosity and problem solving in later years they're unknowingly complaining about this moment.



No, I'm actually illustrating your first point and acknowledging your second. Note the part where I identify successful acquisition of the primary language early in life as a powerful prerequisite for second (or third) language acquisition later in life. The concern, then, is that literacy and language acquisition is essentially in the elementary grades. Remember that I was initially illustrating the importance of quality teaching in the early grades.



These are unquestionably all factors. But, of course, there is a huge correlation between confidence in ability and motivation (or, in this case, will), as well. This is where we lose a lot of students. I actually just submitted a paper on this...sort of about this. It was about how teacher accountability concerns reveal our perceptions about learning, and how that ought to impact the way we assess learning. But part of that was a discussion on the impact of perception.

Regardless, success in the fifth grade is one of the primary determiners of high school graduation.



I agree with this.



This is true, as well. And, in a lot of ways, it goes back to will and therefore perception of ability. Adults who rank themselves as "highly capable" in a field tend to continue learning in that field regardless of economic reward.

I'm going to toss this small final point from my article, knowing that the removal of context threatens to make it incorrectly sound like a "softy" touchy-feeling assessment defense:

have you ever linked your article here?

I think only two of my published pieces are available online in full text form, and one requires a log in. The rights have reverted to me by this point for a couple of them, though (and with the unpublished one, I can just block out or delete six weeks from now if it gets picked up), so I don't mind copy-pasting from the original documents.

It doesn't really matter. There's a lot in each one that would just busy up discussion, or that is either age or content specific. And, frankly, articles are very limiting in that you have 1,500 or 2,000 words to make a preselected point, so you chop more than you keep. I usually end up embarrassed by them.

I understand. I'm usually making arguments here that I'd have thousands of words to make elsewhere. I'd still be interested in reading if you were willing to post/share.

I'll gladly dump a few other things in the other thread.

McP - I think I'm catching on here a little. From your perspective unions aren't a large part of the problem, It is how we teach kids that is. How we currently teach kids is not aligned with how they learn at that age, and what we teach kids is not aligned with how they learn either. I'd have to bow down to your experience and expertise here and say sure "you're right". As the customer I'd have to ask;
- Can the right teaching be done at current budget levels?
- Do the current teachers have the skill set necessary to make this change?
- Do teaching schools have the right skill set to start producing teachers would excel under the new paradigm?
- Does the right teaching skill set and methodology cut work as effectively across all socio-economic classes?
- Are there any groups of students who will be left behind under the new paradigm?
- How would teachers be reviewed for competency under the new paradigm?
- Can you sell the new paradigm to the public and your customers?

For all the harping I've done about teachers not communicating correctly, the same holds true for me and just about everyone I know. We can all do the actual, we just get lazy pr frustrated or feel too overloaded with work to communicate as we know we should. But I would be fired if I communicated with my customers like most teachers do.

interesting questions

Also, McP, how much of a consensus is there in the education field about how children learn and whether or not our methods encourage that. Do you represent conventional wisdom, a vanguard movement, something marginalized or ascendent?

I think that, after an initial adjustment period, it would actually cost less than the current model. It would require quite the overhaul of how we spend the money, so I don't think there would be a drastic change in the initial period, but in a fantasy world where these changes were enacted on a national level I'd say budgets would be reducible by 10% within 5 years without negative result.

How could that be? Well, I'm not opposed to assessment but, for example, at my school students took a total of 8 or 9 every year...many of them several days in length. The money that goes into testing and the millions invested in test prep could easily be filtered into better and more consequential places. Rote practice requires a lot of workbooks, worksheets, printables, toner, copier repair, and copier replacement. That would change quite a bit. I'm also not exaggerating when I say that opting not to pay classroom teachers more for Masters degrees unrelated to either their field, pedagogy, or cognitive psychology would save millions of dollars.

Lastly, I think there are ways other than school choice scenarios that the outside world can be involved and can influence education. I've advocated this scenario in the other thread:



That's a win-win in my mind. It has more to offer high schoolers a more rewarding and enriching experience, it allows the community into the school, it produces a better working public, and it gives companies a chance to build their brand and enhance their image. It also takes some of the financial pressure off the school itself.



Quite a few of them do. A lot of the time, if you ask around a school and find out who the "rock star" teachers are, you'll find that they are people who are coming up with small or contained activities that adhere to constructivist models. And it wouldn't be hard to get everybody else there, really...the problem is that there's a very real sense of impossibility. It feels too big to a lot of people. In fact, there's a defeatist dismissal among a lot of teachers that it can even be done. They're so used to having what they can do dictated to them that they consider constructivist education a flight of fancy.



Constructivism is actually the basis of teacher college prep work, now. But most teachers, as mentioned above, brush it off as disconnected from reality or as fantasy, because it's so far removed from what they're expected to do. And, like anybody, they're impacted by the memories of their own education. It's away from the known. It feels a little like stepping off a cliff.



Yes. My experience is that the difference is most pronounced in urban or low-English speaking areas.



Probably the best way to phrase it is that it would be possible for a school to adapt this model and still fail to universalize their educative process, while traditional structures make it impossible not to. I'll be putting some stuff up in the other thread when I get the chance that will explain this further.



Ha ha. As I noted, I just got done researching and writing an article on the topic of determining competency...among learners and educators. That article literally represents the very first time I've started exploring that question. I'm not sure yet how teacher quality would be addressed under this model, but I'm thinking a lot about it these days.



Change doesn’t happen overnight, obviously. It happens slowly, as a series of now-possible events that support and combust each other over a long period of time. It's a naturally scaffolding event. There's a trend in education right now called "flipping the classroom," and it's got good intentions. What some teachers are doing is assigning a Kahn Academy video, or recording a lecture of their own, so that when students come into class the introductory teaching moment is already done. What they're trying to do is "flip" it so that the concept introduction becomes the homework, and the practice attempts that would normally be homework are done in class with teacher assistance and guidance. That's something, okay, but if you focus on interactive multimedia exploration events rather than passive media you're getting closer, and if you make the practice a part of the exploration that's another, and...etc.

What I mean is, I doubt you could sell the whole nation (or even all the teachers) that we need to take the effort to completely redefine. But incrementally, it's sellable. I think that, if those teachers who have already been sold on "flipping" could be met on the level they're currently at and brought one step forward...for example, sold on how easy it is to use simple programs to make interactive learning activities, where their students actively engage with the material and get feedback that helps them analyze and redirect their efforts...that might be the first step to getting them to really embrace student-centered learning.



I got an incredible amount of "Wow, what are you doing? Oh. I couldn't do that." Even at the district level...the top brass were coming down and observing my room and taking notes, especially after I started getting published, and I'd be talking about ways to make the information available or whatever, and they'd kind of dismiss the idea. "Well, I mean, we can't have everybody doing this sort of thing. But it really works for you."

It really works for you. Always that. Just two words that need to get excised.

edit: I thought of another example of the incremental climb approach. While they weren't nearly as developed, there were at least three other teachers in my building who had started using student-run help desks by the time I left. One step at a time, you know.

So what about constructivist education leads standardized testing not being applicable? What about the standardized test leads to completely discarding the constructivist model?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we DO NEED a barometer on what our kids are learning at school. It can't turn into a free for all with the kids learning what they want, or the teachers pushing instruction in the areas that they feel are most important.