This blog is about 3 stories.
1. The start-up year for a very different sort of Graduate School of Education. It's a tiny subset of...
2. ...The much larger, national effort to transform teaching and teachers. That is a big subset of...
3. ...A multi-kajillion-dollar effort to improve the ludicrous odds (7% or so) of a poor kid ever getting a college diploma.
Posted: January 3rd, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 7 Comments »
Ben is leader of KIPP Philadelphia Elementary Academy. He writes:
People often asked this question (do KIPP middle school methods work with Grade K kids) with an understandable amount of skepticism. As I told them, it wouldn’t. We were going to build strong student culture in a way that made sense for our age students, while also reflecting the big ideas that have been the foundation of KIPP’s success for almost 20 years.
He describes various methods, including: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: January 2nd, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 9 Comments »
I enjoyed recent comments from teachers Ines and Paul. I’ll share them in a bit. First let me tell you a basketball tale.
There are 2 key ideas to absorb about the Triangle Offense.
1. It’s been the key strategy of the 2 best NBA teams in recent memory. Michael Jordan’s Bulls and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. Both coached by Phil Jackson.
2. Other NBA teams do not copy it.
Now think about No Excuses charter schools:
1. A very explicit and particular approach to school culture been the key strategy of many of the top 100 schools (as measured by test score gains) in the nation that serve mostly poor students (as measured by % whose families qualify for free lunch).
2. Other high poverty schools do not copy this approach (including most charters). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: January 1st, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 2 Comments »
Jorge Miranda was principal of MATCH. Last year he moved with Molly to SF. Now he is director of high schools for KIPP national, so gets to see an array of schools across the USA.
He wrote a thoughtful comment on the blog. So I’m reposting it here with his permission. He writes:
This post definitely caught my attention (even though I’m currently on vacation and probably shouldn’t be reading your blog posts, MG).
When introducing the demerit system to the MATCH Corps I always made a point to explain that the demerit system was the worse form of behavior management except for all the others (my apologies to Churchill for the liberal paraphrasing). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 31st, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »
Posted: December 30th, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 5 Comments »
Email exchange a year ago with a former MATCH Corps fellow. He now works in another charter school far south of Massachusetts, and he gave me permission to share.
He wrote:
I think MATCH’s demerit system comes up short on Rafe’s 1-6 scale of teaching kids appropriate ways to behave…. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 27th, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 2 Comments »
This photo was snapped yesterday by “photographynatalia.”
Posted: December 27th, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 6 Comments »
MIT economist Josh Angrist wrote me a note. He suggested I read four studies of interventions on college persistence.
I’ve done two randomized evaluations of college retention/grade treatments on community college campuses. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 26th, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 5 Comments »
In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about college persistence. Not access/admission. Persistence is what happens once a kid has:
a. chosen a college,
b. taken an aid package, and
c. shown up for Semester 1
Specifically, I’m interested in persistence of MATCH School grads and those of similar charter schools. These are generally kids from poor families. College is expensive. One would expect financial barriers to be the key obstacle to persistence.
A few days ago, I blogged about the story of 2 rich guys who’d offered a bunch of middle schoolers that they’d pay full tuition if the kids ever made it to college. I asked you to predict how many of 59 kids ended up with college degrees (Answer: 11).
Today’s question concerns giving grants (not loans) to collegians. They were given:
A $1,750 grant per semester for up to ten semesters (fall and/or spring semesters), making the total maximum award $17,500 per student. Students are first chosen for the award after they begin college (thus it does not affect the decision whether and where to attend) and the grant is transferable among all public colleges and universities in Wisconsin.
How much did this grant bolster college completion rates? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 23rd, 2011 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 2 Comments »
Randall, Laura, and I were recently chatting about spanking. Its disappearance from school and home.
Two interesting articles.
First, Darshak Sanghavi in Slate:
Primary care physicians tacitly approve of corporal punishment. According to well-designed surveys, 70 percent of family physicians and 60 percent of pediatricians think “striking of the child’s buttocks or hand with an open hand … leaving no mark except transient redness” is Read the rest of this entry »
