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Re: Evaluating the four-year scale-up of Reading Recovery

dickschutz — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:59:36 -0000

It doesn't require a "massive study" costing millions and taking several years to compare instructional programs, only to find that they don't reliably teach children to read. That result has been replicated ad infinitum throughout the English speaking over the last 100 years, but the finding has been attributed to faults of kids and their parents or to teachers lack of "program fidelity."

The research methodology to "solve the reading problem" is straightforward: and it need not entail fancy statistics, large incremental costs, or intrusive assignment of experimental participants to artificial groups. A Natural Experiment is in play in ongoing schools every year, with replication in each successive year. That is, each year parents send schools the best kids they have and expect schools to teach the littlies how to read. A fresh Cohort comes every year.

What you see is what you get, and what the kids get is an instructional Application--a "reading program" in educationese.

The differential "reading programs” schools are providing constitutes the Independent Variable of interest. School personnel will tell anyone who asks what this program is, constituting the Treatment. (You may not like what you are told, but what you see is what you get.)

The Treatment Effect can be determined using the Alphabetic Code screening check currently being administered to all primary school children in England. (Provocatively, in more than 600 schools in England, all children with few exceptions are currently passing this screen, indicating reliably teaching kids how to handle the complexity of English text in written communication as in spoken communication is indeed feasible.) The Check requires no more than 5-10 minutes and can be given and scored by the classroom teacher--akin to the "eye chart" used in driver license screening.

The reading instructional results will vary--we KNOW that. What hasn't been examined is the characteristics of the instructional Apps that are producing the differential Effect. The Population of schools and classes is sufficiently large to make it feasible to draw random samples, near infinitum, to cross check the reliability of the differential program results.

Simple as that. But academicians and researchers are resistant to change in the methodological status quo, and there are many powerful interests within and without academia that have become economically dependent on the "reading problem." It's problematic if-and-when "less research" will be implemented.

Re: Seven things I hope are in the Assessment without Levels Commission report

dickschutz — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 14:57:37 -0000

The Commission has written their report and has published the outline of the substance of the report (See the link in your post), so there really isn't any need to "second guess."--The document is not going to live up to your hope.

The Commision's report is scheduled to be published in September, so we won't have to wait long for it. Whether school personnel or anyone else finds the document helpful remains to be seen. I'd bet, "not much."

The DfE has indicated that the results of future KS 1 and 2 tests will be reported as "scale scores" (Reference the "Beyond Levels" link in your post) The operative concern here is:

"make detailed performance descriptors available to inform teacher assessment at the end of key stage 1 and key stage 2. These will be directly linked to the content of the new curriculum;"

Drafts of the descriptors have been published: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/368298/KS1-KS2_Performance_descriptors_consultation.pdf

Worth noting is an NFER commentary on the descriptors:
http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/99949/99949.pdf

The other matter that warrants careful attention is the new "baseline" test that is to be administered at the beginning of Reception. This measure will have impact in 2022 or 2023, so its consequences will be long-lasting.

Re: Moral facts and the Common Core

dickschutz — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 12:11:42 -0000

How about some "reasoned judgment" for why the flaws that are now being noted in the Common Core were not recognized earlier by the corporate and government promulgators.

Re: No Time to Lose on Early Reading

dickschutz — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 11:57:51 -0000

The K standards for ELA are innocuous until it comes to the “implementation.” Then what make the Standards “harmful to children” is their superficial, cavalier treatment of the English Alphabetic Code--the link between written and spoken English. This cavalier treatment of the Code is common. Psychologists and educationists talk of the “Cracking the code” “the Alphabetic Principle,“ and “Alphabetics,” but the metaphor, the principle, and the term skate over substance and structure of the Code. In doing so they scaffold a faulty pedagogy that doesn’t reliably teach children how to handle the Code.

The harm that the standards do to children is sheltered by placebo effects. That is, some children learn how to handle the Code with no apparent formal instruction. Others learn how to do so despite mal-instruction. For example, such children will “sound out” out the word “airplane” as /ah-ih-rr-pl-an-eh/ What they aresaying sounds nothing like the Rules of Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondences” that characterize the word. But the child’s brain does
some “processing” (whatever that entails), and s/he subvocalizes something like, “Oh, I see how this reading thing works,” and utters the word /airplane/. That’s
all the instruction such children require in reading, per se.

Schools, teachers, and reading tests take credit for these "Advanced" children, and that fogs the research and practice of reading instruction.

I won’t try to unpack the harm of all the K the Standards individually or collectively; the slog would surely lose everyone, if I haven't already done so.
Two examples are sufficient to provide proof-of-point.

Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding

As Pondisco says, that sounds innocuous. The thing is, there's no
such child as an “emergent –reader.” Emergent reader texts are not “real books.” They are highly structured texts, with illustrations and phrase repetitions and a few key words embedded in the repeated phrases that are transparently cued by the illustrations. These contrived texts are easily memorized by most children, but “memory reading” is an oxymoron. Memorizing words individually by shape is
harmful: there are too many shapes and too many words.

But children and and a lot of other people believe that the child is “reading.” When they discover much later that children are “reversing letters,” “mis-reading,” “guessing” and otherwise flubbing their reading, the earlier mal-instruction is
chalked up as “signs of Dyslexia.” That’s harmful.

Associate the long and short sound with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

A single Alphabetic Code does enable both spelling and reading, But the Code is
comprised of individual Grapheme/Phoneme CORRESPONDENCEs, not associations of “long and short sounds with common spellings.” Instructionally, the Code Correspondences that entail the short vowels are “no problem.” They are all one-to one. The instructional complexity is in the long vowels, where the phoneme Correspondences entail several different graphemes.

As with the first Standard, the texts are not “real books,” and “sight words” is a synonym for “memorized words.” The rhyming texts facilitate the memorization.

Again, the mal-instruction typically goes unrecognized until much later, and again when it is recognized, the “deficit” is attributed to the child rather than to the unintended mal-instruction.

That’s harmful.

Re: How to end the education reform wars

dickschutz — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 11:25:50 -0000

So now "educational reform" has morphed into "educational reform wars" with ridiculous elements in the reform. And your advice to superintendents is, "Seize the sensible center, grab the ball and run with it, and demand charter-like freedoms."

The only problem with that wise advice is the "implementation"--which the Supts get stuck with. The same problem, unfortunately holds for the "educational reform movement."

Meanwhile, when the Supts get back to work, what are they going to do with the students who are being failed by the "new and better tests" spawned by the Common Core State Standards as the "old and bad tests" associated with the old and bad state standards?

Seems to me they may have difficulty finding the "center" the "ball" and the "freedoms." But if they're qualified, they should have no difficulty "cutting the ties and coming out swinging."

Re: An ode to Common Core kindergarten standards

dickschutz — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:57:48 -0000

What make the K- Standards and the “interpretations“ of the Standards provided here “harmful to children” is the superficial, cavalier treatment of the English Alphabetic Code--the link between written and spoken English. This cavalier treatment of the Code is common. Psychologists and educations talk of “Cracking the code” “the Alphabetic Principle,“ and “Alphabetics,” but
the metaphor, the principle, and the term skate over the substance and structure of the Code. In doing so they scaffold a faulty
pedagogy that doesn’t reliably teach children how to handle the Code.

The harm that the standards do to children is sheltered by placebo effects. That is, some children learn how to handle the Code with no apparent formal instruction before they enter school. Others learn how to do so despite mal-instruction. For example, a child will “sound out” out the word “airplane”as /ah-ih-rr-pl-an-eh/. These sounds bear very little resemblance to the Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondences” that comprise the word. But the child’s brain does some “processing”, and s/he subvocalizes something
like, “Oh, I see how this reading thing works,” and utters the word /airplane/. That’s all the instruction such children require in reading, per se.

Schools, teachers, and reading test results take credit for these instructional placebos, and that fogs the research and practice of reading instruction.

I won’t try to unpack the harm of all six Standards or of the other K standards; addressing the first two should be sufficient to provide proof-of-point.

Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding

There is no such child as an “emergent –reader.” Emergent reader texts are not “real books.” They are highly structured texts, with
illustrations and phrase repetitions and a few key words embedded in the repeated phrases that are transparently cued by the illustrations. These contrived texts are easily memorized by
most children, but “memory reading” is an oxymoron. Memorizing words individually by shape is harmful: there are too many shapes and too many words to try to memorize.

But children and instructors believe that the child is “reading.” When they discover much later that children are “reversing letters,” “mis-reading,” “guessing” and otherwise flubbing the “guided reading,” the earlier mal-instruction is chalked up as “signs of Dyslexia.”

That’s harmful.

Associate the long and short sound with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

A single Alphabetic Code does enable both spelling and reading English/ But the Code is comprised of individual Grapheme/Phoneme CORRESPONDENCEs, not associations
of “long and short sounds with common spellings.”

Instructionally, the Code Correspondences that entail the short vowels are “no problem.” They are all one-to one and are part of the 30-40ish (depending upon where the instructional cut is made) Basic Code Correspondences. If the English Code were like the Spanish or Russian Code, reading could be taught in a matter of a few months by teaching kids how to handle the Basic Code.

The instructional complexity is in the long vowels, where each phoneme Correspondences entails several different graphemes. Mixing Basic Code and Advanced Code instruction is havoc for children.

As with the first Standard, the texts are not “real books,” and “sight words” is a synonym for “memorized words.” The rhyming texts
facilitate the memorization.

Again, the mal-instruction typically goes unrecognized until much later, and again when it is recognized, the “deficit” is attributed to the child rather than to the unintended mal-instruction.

That’s harmful.

The other four Standards are similarly harmful, but I’ll spare you the unpacking for now.

Re: Holtthink: Edu, Creativity, EdTech, Administration — Taking on Larry Cuban and the The Lack of...

dickschutz — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 10:51:52 -0000

Yes, you did refute Larry’s “claim that there is no data to prove ed technology is effective.” But that and some pocket change will buy a cup of coffee. Professional researchers in EdLand are inclined to promote “data”to a fault. Russell Ackoff explains”

An ounce of information is worth a pound of data. Information is data that
has been processed to make it useful.

An ounce of knowledge is worth a pound of information. Information is answers to “how to” questions in the form of instructions.

An ounce of understanding is worth a pound of knowledge. Understanding is answers to “why” questions.

An ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of understanding. Wisdom is not just doing the thing reliablywith the least resources; it’s doing the right thing right.

EdLand is awash with “data,” and our “information” provides “evidence” to support any claim that anyone wants to make.

No one (in their right mind) would disagree with “The right tool is important.” The show stopper is “which tool for what.”

Re: Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten?

dickschutz — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:22:26 -0000

Well, since you asked, I invite you to start by reading the papers that can be accessed on the Social Science Research Network:
http://ssrn.com/author=1199505

Re: One size fits most, even in the suburbs

dickschutz — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:10:46 -0000

Thanks, Jean. The information you supplied was sufficient for me to google the reference to Dataclysm.

The thing is, "curly fries" happened to be an ad that Facebook users clicked as "Like" because these users happened to have Friends that are "smart," with this and other data, the "computer" could predict "intelligence" without using any "test." "Data" can also predict whether or not you are pregnant and a lot of other personal information.

This is scary/promising (depending on your perspective) but it really has nothing to do with Petrilli's blog or with Common Core. Mike and the Core folks have been very clear about their positions

Re: One size fits most, even in the suburbs

dickschutz — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 11:57:51 -0000

Ok. I'll bite.
Will you supply us the reference for the curly fries IQ test, please?

My theory is that the promulgators and promoters of the Common Core and its accoutrements ate too many curly fries. I'd like to test this proposition against the Duncan-Petrilli proposition that "white suburban mom's" are the root problem.

Potatoes are a root vegetable, after all. Most people like them and want them for their children. But when rendered as curly fries, there are "issues."

Re: Holtthink: Edu, Creativity, EdTech, Administration — Taking on Larry Cuban and the The Lack of...

dickschutz — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 20:11:31 -0000

Viewing electronic devices and their accoutrements as "ed tech" inherently implies that their use will reliably deliver some specified desirable educational consequence. The lit you cite provides evidence that the Communication Technology has potential in education, it really doesn't provide any evidence that the potential has been operationalized anywhere in any way. Nor does the lit cited provide any clues whatsoever on specific steps that can be taken to realize the potential.

While you "take on" Cuban, you disagree with his argument, but you don't refute it.

Viewing pencils, textbooks, and electronic mobile/desktop devices as "the same" is not productive. Pencils and textbooks have been with us for thousands of years. They are not promoted as "ed tech" and their uses are well-known. Moreover, they are "low-cost, low maintenance." Info Tech systems are very recent. They are "high cost, high maintenance," . and the human infrastructure involved is much more complex.

Re: Teacher evaluations: Uncle Sam, exit stage left

dickschutz — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 19:00:10 -0000

The biography of the Feds and teacher evaluation is a subchapter of a longer biography of the standards-standardized tests-sanctions policy that has had bipartisan and corporate/academic support since the 1980's. The larger biography could be titled Out-of-Ignorance, Out-of-Mind, Out-of-Sight.

The SSS policy failed, but schools, teachers, and kids in the aggregate are "about the same." The most positive and likely-lasting consequence of the SSS policy is that it brought pre-collegiate education to a national level of media attention. With el-high treated as "local news," comprised of occasional human interest stories, high school sports, and an annual article that spun local testing results as "gains," there was no possible way to effect sustained impact on the ed enterprise at any governmental level. The increased attention el-hi will get in the up-coming election campaigns is evidence of this positive consequence.

The regrettable thing is how little new was learned about the workings of the el-hi system in the SSS era. About all we have are obsolete bumper stickers--Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top. One valuable "take away," however, it that "education-building" domestically is as challenging as "nation building" internationally. Still and all, on the basis of what has gone on before and is going on now, there is a basis for optimism both at home and abroad.

Re: Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten?

dickschutz — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 15:31:42 -0000

The only "harm" in delaying reading instruction is that through either incidental learning or through inadvertent mal-instruction the child may acquire faulty ways of going about handling written text. Once established, these faulty patterns are very difficult to correct. Teaching the child early can instructionally-inoculate against these risks.

There is no reason whatsoever that reading instruction in K should interfere or impede in any way other instruction of choice. The reason that Scandinavian countries can delay reading instruction without risk is that the Alphabetic Codes for their language are essentially one-to-one letter/sound correspondences. Teaching children how to handle the Alphabetic Code can be reliably done in a matter of months.

Instruction in other matters can and should be done concurrently, but trying to "integrate" the instruction results in a dog's dinner for all of the matters.

It really doesn't take "a study" to determine that enabling children to handle written communication will assist students "later on in school and in life." What it takes is a "proper use of school resources" to reliably teach the kids how to do this.

Re: Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten?

dickschutz — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 10:33:34 -0000

"The clear thrust of Common Core in kindergarten is to ensure that kids enter first grade ready for success—recognizing letters, understanding the sounds they represent, and knowing that words are collections of these letter-sized sounds."

And there's the fatal flaw in the CC. The entire CC is structured upside down--from an undefined "ready for college and career" base to "ready" for each successive grade trickling down to Kindergarten. The "Standards" provide no information whatsoever on how this cumulative "readiness" is to be accomplished. That is magnanimously left up to individual teachers, who--if "qualified"--are certainly capable of getting the job done. (If they don't--as measured by "tests," fire them.)

The sheer quantity of more than 90 standards a K teacher must meet makes the CC inhumane for both the kids and teachers while cherry-picking the standards makes the job easy for test constructors.

As for reading instruction, the "thrust" of the K standards totally misses the point. The core of reading lies in the English Alphabetic Code, the link between written and spoken communication. The Code consists of 170+ letter/sound Correspondences. Any child who can speak in full sentences and participate in everyday conversation has the prerequisites for beginning instruction in how to handle the Code. With few exceptions, all children entering K are "ready."

A child who can handle the Alphabetic Code is able to read any text with comprehension equal to that were the communication spoken. A few children will be able to "graduate" from formal instruction in reading per se before they enter K. Some will acquire the proficiency by the end of K. Virtually "all" can be taught by the end of Grade 1, with the near-null remainder clearly identified as needing further instruction.

It's true that by "reading graduates" will be "recognizing letters, understanding the sounds they represent, and knowing that words are collections of these letter-sized sounds"--just as they will be "speaking prose." But the CC "thrust" is irrelevant and counterproductive to the instructional accomplishment.

Re: Nine questions: What does it even mean to oppose the Common Core?

dickschutz — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 19:45:59 -0000

The same questions could be
turned around to be asked of a candidate supporting the Common Core?

1. Do you mean that I can pick and choose the CC Standards I like; that mandated tests will test only those standards; and
teachers be evaluated at least in part on the basis of the standards I pick? Have you actually read the standards?

2. Do you mean that you support the role the President and the Department of Education playedin coercing states to adopt the Common Core?

3. Do you mean that you think states should be forced to continue to pledge allegiance to the Common Core?

And so on. You get the point.

It seems to me that the Common Core is a dead man walking matter. That is, if any ESEA reauthorization makes it through Congress (which is still “iffy”), the bill will essentially gut both NCLB and “Race to the Top.” The Common Core was just the leading edge of the four “Assurances” of RttT that would have “all students graduating from high school college and/or career-ready by 2020.” No one today is talking about “meeting that goal,” and enough states have dropped out of the two Testing Consortia that we’re no closer to having a ”common metric” than we were before the CCSS was promulgated.

One of the un-noticed positive consequences of NCLB is that it boosted matters of el-high schooling to a national level of media attention. The media are handling the attention very primitively so far, but they will likely get better at it in covering the impending Common Core “debate.” Maybe not, but we’ll see.

Re: Differentiated to death

dickschutz — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 18:47:32 -0000

You make a compelling case
that trying to differentiate instruction for students with undifferentiated
prerequisites and undifferentiated aspirations is a fool's torture for both the
students and the instructor. No matter how hard the instructor tries,
the instruction will fail. In this sense the analogy to the Holy Grail is
apt. But the resolution lies in differentiating the students' prereqs and
intents, not in differentiating the instruction.

Re: The Innovation Mismatch: "Smart Capital" and Education Innovation

dickschutz — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:15:47 -0000

"One of the most poignant summaries of the market for innovative technology solutions in education is that it is forever in its infancy."

The thing is, the "solutions" are in the mind of the "innovator." The term "technology" outside education references "how to"--the means of reliably accomplishing a specified outcome at a specified cost. In education, "technology" references dumping some form of equipment, these days typically electronic, into schools with a "theory of action" that it will "bring millions of America's students the much-touted yet much-delayed benefits of the technology revolution in education,"

The "theory of action" amounts to a Christmas wish. One would do as well writing a letter to Santa Claus. The scenario Ms. Weiss sketches here follows in the same tradition. The two examples of market successes she touts would have little if any market were they not artificially propped up by the Federal-Corporate "partnership." That "stimulation" is yesterday's educational era. The "new normal" is less, rather than more money.

Yesterday's educational era unfortunately did not increase US educational capacity. There is reason to expect that austerity will foster educational capacity building. But it won't be done via failed education belief systems and methodology.

Re: Dear Mr. President

dickschutz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:37:15 -0000

Faith doesn't only apply to religion, TFT. You have faith in science, don't you. You have faith in your friends, family, your students, and so on.

Sure, I'd prefer action too. But both the photos and DADT are extraordinarily complex matters. Due deliberation doesn't seem to me a bad action--not a faith breaking course.

I join you in the "feeling the pain" of kids and teachers. I keep contending that the kids and the teachers are the strength of the el-hi enterprise, not the weakness. The weakness is at the top of the Ed Chain. My biggest disappointment with the Administration is that to date they have done nothing but compound the problems created by the Bush administration. But that has been going on in a bipartisan mode since Bush I and the Governors and state officials were then and are now in on the act, so I don't assign the blame to President Obama.

By all means, continue to keep the pressure on! More pressure is needed.

Re: Dear Mr. President

dickschutz — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:32:18 -0000

Hey, Teach. It's still early. We're lucky that there is any US or world economy left. The foreign and domestic situations that President Obama inherited, were truly daunting. He hasn't yet fulfilled some of his campaign promises. But I don't know of any that he's reneged on. The health care fight is still going on, and he's now in the thick of it leading the way. He's also leading in trying to settle the long-time Palestinian-Israeli conflict and acting in a more even-handed way than his predecessor. He's "rethinking" Afghanistan. He's turned around the Star Wars initiative. He's working to close down Gitmo.

Back at the ranch in education. He has done only good things for higher ed, in my view. In el-hi dumping billions into ARRA is bailing out a lot of states and LEA"S. Secretary Duncan's "Race to the Top" "reforms" are misguided, but you can't expect President Obama to be familiar with the nuts and bolts of the enterprise. That's on Rahm Emanuel's and Secretary Duncan's charge cards.

Neither Secretary Duncan nor President Obama has yet played any NCLB cards. The Secretary is ostensibly "listening," but how he does this when he's doing all the talking and following the same script each time is a bit puzzling.

To conclude that the new boss is the same as the old boss fails to acknowledge the old boss's "heritage" and the new boss's accomplishments. I'm "keeping the faith!" Yes, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief, but that's what faith involves.