A Heavy Heart

Paul Richardson
Copyright © 2010
My Concern Is For How Our Kids Are Being
Educated, A Little History

• In 1983, the A Nation at Risk report bemoaned

a rising tide of mediocrity and said that if a
foreign power had imposed our education
system on us we would consider it an act of
war.
 More History
• Over a third of a century ago, Robert Kennedy
called the achievement gap between minority and
disadvantaged kids a stain on our national honor.
In the meantime we have spent billions on finding
a solution but the problem is demonstrably worse
now than when RFK made his observation.
Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission
Final Report, (11/05)
 More History
• The 2007 report Tough Choices or Tough Times
points out, “While our international counterparts
are increasingly getting more education, their
young people are getting a better education as
well. And “American students and young adults
place anywhere from the middle to the bottom of
the pack in all three continuing comparative
studies of achievement in mathematics, science,
and general literacy in the advanced industrial
nations.”
 What Experts Say About Our Education
Problem.
• E.D. Hirsch calls the current situation a “perfect storm” of
Bad Educational Ideas. “The reason for this state of affairs
– tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is
that an army of American educators and reading experts
are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education
and especially about reading comprehension. Their well-
intentioned yet mistaken views are the significant reason
(more than other constantly blamed factors, even poverty)
that many of our children are not attaining reading
proficiency, thus crippling their later schooling.
The Knowledge Deficit
 Hirsch continued
• The dominant ideas in American education are virtually
unchallenged within the educational community. American
education expertise (which is not the same as educational
expertise in nations that perform better than we do) has a
monolithic character in which dissent is stifled.
• Principles that constitute a kind of theology are drilled into
prospective teachers like a catechism. The only way to
improve scores in reading comprehension and to narrow the
reading gap between groups is to systematically provide
children with the wide-ranging, specific background
knowledge they need to comprehend what they read.”
 Hirsch again
• Massachusetts got rid of the harmful and
never effective “how-to” based approach (the
Hirsch stimulated Massachusetts Miracle)
replacing it with a content rich approach and
saw their achievement scores soar. Of course,
in Massachusetts the educators didn’t lead the
charge, it was required by the legislature.
 The Progressive Catechism
His view was that subjects should be taught to students
based on their direct practical value, or if students
independently wanted to learn those subjects. This
point of view toward education comported well with
the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive
education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian
skills sharply limited academic content, and this
helped to justify the slow pace of student centered,
discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism.
William Heard Fitzpatrick--David Klein’s A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the
20th Century
 Points from Norm Augustine
Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?
• It seems that the longer our children are
exposed to our K-12 education system, the
worse they do. If we wish to be average by
global standards, we will need to improve a
great deal. Can anyone imagine a football
coach at any American high school greeting
his players on the first day of fall practice by
saying, “This year let’s get out there and try
to be average for the Gipper!”?
 More Augustine
• It can, of course, be argued that comparing averages and
medians tells only part of the story, as indeed is often the case.
But in this instance, further parsing of the data generally
reveals that the United States has a disproportionately small
share of the highest performers and a disproportionately
large share of the lowest performers. Although this is widely
overlooked, it is not simply the poorer-performing students
who are falling through the gaping cracks of our educational
system but also the highest performers who—much to the
nation’s detriment—are frequently being forced to learn in
an environment approaching the lowest common
denominator.
 Final Augustine
• The problem of low expectations has not been confined to
California. Alabama, for example, reported that in 2005,
83% of its fourth-graders ranked as “proficient” on its state
test of academic achievement. But in the most widely
accepted national test, the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, only 22% of Alabama’s fourth-graders
scored at or above the proficient level. In truth, neither of
the measures matters much. What counts today is how
the children of Alabama rank with the children of
Singapore, Moscow, Hong Kong, Delhi, Beijing, and Berlin.
There is little consolation in being first among losers.
 Some specific local examples

• Using example detail info on District 11

• It is not unique in its problems
D11 Math CSAP 09
 Initial Conclusions from the data
• The math teaching process in D11 is performing at an
unacceptable level. It transforms the mostly proficient 3rd
graders into mostly unproficient 10th graders over time. A good
process would start well and end better.
Below Proficient Proficient or Better
Grade 3 27% 73%
Grade 10 68% 32%

• The chart shows that students are advancing each year in math
skill much less than the very weak Colorado standards increase.
 You Might Ask How Other Districts
Do?
Every large district has charts that have the same shape.
– They shift up and down with the “demographic luck of the draw”
for their student population. The following are 2009 CSAP numbers.

District Gr10 P+A District Gr10 P+A

Co. Sprgs 11 32% Adams 12 24%
Academy 20 48% Poudre 42%
Falcon 49 32% Doug Cnty 43%

– I am not in any way saying that the gap kids can’t learn if they are
expected to and educators believe they can.
– The next slide shows why that has to be addressed.
 NAEP vs. TIMSS, 8th grade Math

Singapore 73
S. Korea 65
Hong Kong 64
Japan & Chinese Taipei 61
Belgium (Flemish) 51
Netherlands 41
Hungary, Slovak Rep., Slovenia, 39 to 35
Canada, Russia, Australia
Czech Rep., Malaysia, Bulgaria, 32 to 29
Finland
United States 27
% Proficient or Higher, examples, from American Institutes for Research (2007)

©
How do Colorado standards stack
up against other states?
 Colorado Achievement Standards
CSAP Tests
The Proficiency Illusion, Thomas Fordham Institute and
NWEA, October 2007
• Compared state achievement rigor across 26 states including Colorado.
They looked at reading and math NCLB cut scores across all grades for all
of those states.
• Colorado ranked lowest in both reading and math, while South Carolina
ranked highest. The differences were BIG!
Conclusion: Colorado has set the standards at very low levels. Why?
– Makes it easier to avoid NCLB sanctions?
– Makes it easier to “feel good” about our performance?
– Afraid the public will not tolerate higher standards which would highlight the weakness
of the education their children are receiving?
– Deathly afraid of the “everyone” provision?
Average Ranking of States according to difficulty
of reading cut scores across all grades
Average Ranking of States according to difficulty
of math cut scores across all grades
 Colorado Specific Comments
The Proficiency Illusion

This study linked data from the 2002 and 2005 administrations of
Colorado’s reading and math tests to the Northwest Evaluation
Association’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)
assessment, a computerized adaptive test used in schools
nationwide. We found that, for purposes of complying with the
federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Colorado’s definitions
of “proficiency” in reading and mathematics are much less
difficult than the standards set by most of the other 25 states
in this study. In other words, it’s easier to pass Colorado’s tests
than those of almost all other states.
 Colorado Achievement Standards
CSAP Tests - 2

Assessing the Role of K-12 Academic Standards in States:

Workshop Summary, Nat’l Academies Press, 2007
• Different methodology, using the NAEP performance of states
to determine the relative differences in standards for subjects
and grade level.
• Same basic conclusion—Colorado is at the bottom of the
pack.
• Yes, I know that for NCLB purposes the CDE waved a magic
wand and defined partially proficient as proficient. They
didn’t have much faith in our education process, did they?
What is progress toward 100% Gr 10
proficient or better?
What is progress toward 100% Gr 10 proficient or better?
Time to 100% prof or better for tenth grade

• The overall trend line increases about 7% in 5

years or about 1.4% per year.
• The current level of 32% prof or better leaves
only 68% improvement required.
• So, 68 divided by 1.4 gives only 48.6 years or so
to get to 100% prof or better at the current
rate. That is only sacrificing 2 generations of
kids to uncompetitive skills in the global
competition.
D11 Grade 10 CSAP Disaggregated Math, Prof
or Better
 Kill’em With Kindness
John McWhorter, who is black and is now a linguistics professor
at Berkeley, remembers that in high school he “quite
deliberately refrained from working to my highest potential
because I knew I would be accepted to top universities without
doing so.” He goes on: “Imagine telling a Martian who
expressed an interest in American education policy: ‘We allow
whites in only if they have a GPA of 3.7 and a SAT score of 1300
or above. We let blacks in with a GPA of 3.0 and a SAT of 900.
Now, what we have been pondering for years is why black
students continue to submit higher grades and scores than this
so rarely.’ Well, mercy me—what a perplexing problem!”
Michael Barone, H.A., S.A.
 Effectiveness of Math Teaching Process
As in any process the quality of the “final product” is the
real measure of success or failure. That is, how
perfect is the finished TV or car? In education, “What
is the diploma worth?”
“Don’t worry, the math feature doesn’t work too well
but they can read, sort of.”
In math education we measure results in the third
through tenth grades and each grade level result must
be considered in the context of how it contributes or
detracts from the final result (10th grade in this case).
What is the Approach of the Top Competition
Globally?
A quote from the Singapore Ministry of Education
is instructive, from their Nurturing Every Child,
booklet (2006), “Teach Less, Learn More--
Syllabuses will be trimmed without diluting
students’ preparedness for higher education.
This will free up time for our students to focus
on core knowledge and skills”
Their approach is the antithesis of the American
“mile wide, inch deep” time wasting approach.
 What must the elementary piece provide if
success at higher grade levels is important?
• Mastery (not a passing acquaintance) with
foundational elements:
– Math facts, drilled to automatic level so never have to think
about it again. See Daniel Willingham’s Why Students Don’t
Like School, where he notes that drill is important to
handling increasing complexity (at higher grade levels)
– Operations proficiency, including fractions, standard
(optimized) algorithms for long division, multiplication,
order of operations, etc.
– A strong sense of how the number system works; base 10,
base 2.
 Why isn’t it happening?
Two main reasons
• Too little math subject knowledge among
teachers, esp. elementary.
• Misunderstanding of hierarchical nature of the
study of math. The goal in elementary math
must be providing the foundation for higher
level study, NOT being able to solve arithmetic
problems with a calculator or simplistic, non-
universal algorithms, even though that is what
is tested at the elementary level.
 What Can the Research Tell Us?
Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, Liping Ma

Background—she compared Chinese elementary

teachers to American elementary teachers
• Chinese teachers have 2 to 3 years of “Normal
School” training after a 9th grade education
• American teachers have 16 to 18 years of
formal education
• Her research used the TELT* study model.
Teacher Education and Learning to Teach Study
 Background 2
• Chinese students typically outperform U.S.
students on international comparisons of
mathematics competency in spite of the extra
education level of U.S. teachers.
 An Example Problem
Ma used in her research

1¾÷½
 An Example from Ma’s Work
Teachers’ Knowledge of Division by Fractions
 The Bottom Line
• Ma’s research found
– “Even expert teachers, experienced teachers who
were [inappropriately] mathematically confident,
and teachers who actively participated in current
mathematics teaching reform did not seem to have
a thorough knowledge of the mathematics taught in
elementary school.”
– Teachers’ subject knowledge correlated very well
with their student’s achievement.
– Number of math courses taken in college did not.
 Conclusion
• If improving student math achievement is
important then teachers must have
“upgraded” math knowledge.
• Harmful “constructivist” curricula for example,
Whole Language (and its derivatives) and
Everyday Math must be thrown out.
Why doesn’t it get better after decades of
having the problem well defined?
The Progressives’ Education Fiefdom
 Final Words from E.D. Hirsch
speaking on Book TV

The bottom line is that the current educational

methods yield the results favored by
`progressive' and `liberal' educators, while
their methods drive everyone down,
particularly the poor. Hirsch says,
“It is hard to conceive of a greater social evil.”
 Other Hirsch Comments
• Our schools need to teach the founding principles of the
Enlightenment and the blessings of liberty, not an
intellectual tyranny.
• The last 50+ years have been characterized by; technically
wrong ideas, fragmented courses, watered down texts.
• Critical thinking skills are powerfully knowledge dependent,
meaning that the current goal of teaching critical thinking
skills in a content-free environment is a waste of time.
• The “how to” approach has always failed and always must
fail.
 How about reading?
• I did a regression analysis on D11’s 2008 CSAP reading
scores, using the % of free and reduced lunch and
grade as independent variables.
• The result showed that the correlation of the model
was 97.4%
• The overall reading at proficient or better was centered
on 80% for those not eligible for free or reduced lunch
and centered on 60% for those eligible for free or
reduced lunch.
• Thus, reading performance is unacceptable as well.
 Finally
Since we can’t bear to face and fix the abysmal
state of our public education failings, we need
to do one thing. Teach our kids to say
Lei yiu mut yeh low see
That is, phonetically in Chinese,
How may I serve you master?