Cleaning Out My Bloggy “Rough Draft” Box: Six Squibs
Posted: December 29th, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
Hi folks,
Some random thoughts that I never fully developed into blogs.
1. Eng v Math
Why is it harder for a teacher to generate student gains in reading than math?
There’s a great thing about teaching math. You can fail fast.
Explain problem. Kid tries. Quick feedback on whether he understands. Boom. Chance to adjust quickly.
Not true in teaching English. You fail slowly. It takes too long to figure out if you’re succeeding.
2. Teacher Coaching Win
UVa Ed School dean Bob Pianta created a teacher coaching program. Did well in a randomized trial:
On average, gains were equivalent to increasing the achievement status of every student in a class taught by a teacher who had been in MTP-Secondary from the 50th to the 59th percentile, and to preventing one student from otherwise failing the end of year state assessment. These gains were the same across content areas as well.
Interesting, no gains in first year. Only a full year after the coaching.
3. Provocateur
Tim Knowles from U-Chicago: “Colleges of education are a cartel, with no competition, no transparency and no external pressure to change.”
4. Funny Analysis of Why Boston Charters Succeed
To my knowledge, no one has advanced the following proposition: these schools outperform because….we’re very crowded.
The top charters in Boston have about half the space per student as traditional schools. Roxbury Prep: 14,600 square feet for 200 kids, or about 80 square feet. A typical Massachusetts middle school provides 150 to 200 square feet per kid.
5. Tech Tech Tech
Does K-12 have a technology discovery problem?
Or a technology integration problem?
I think it’s the latter.
6. Ed Med Schools Must Change
Here’s a recent big report on how Graduate Med Schools should change. Bottom line: measure outputs, not regulate inputs.
Effective implementation of our recommendations will require that accreditation and certification entities rapidly adopt outcomes-based standards and evaluation measures, and diminish time-consuming process measures
My draft box is cleaned up! Yay.
This is not research-based or peer reviewed, but my theory for why reading gains are much harder is that learning to read well is much harder–especially if you didn’t grow up being read to from a young age and reading throughout elementary and middle school.
You can take someone in the 9th grade who has learned almost no middle school math and fill in those gaps with tutoring while teaching algebra. But nothing that I’ve witnessed can make up for the years and years of non-reading.