Dissertation writing

Last week I suggested that EdSec Arne Duncan’s plan to hold teachers accountable for - and to evaluate, retain, pay, and promote them based upon - their classes’ standardized test scores would be invalid, unless they factored in the “one bad apple” effect of disruptive students, which recent research suggests causes lower test scores for their entire class.

Here’s another factor that demands to be added: student homelessness –

The National Alliance to End Homelessness has predicted that at the current rate, the recession will result in 1.5 million additional homeless people within two years. According to the advocacy group First Focus, nearly two million children will be impacted by subprime foreclosures, including some half a million Latino children and more than 280,000 Black children. In a national survey of school systems, several hundred districts reported a surge in homeless children last fall compared to the previous school year.

I’m serious. Bleating “No excuses” to teachers for poor classroom performance when their desks are filled with homeless students is unfair to teachers and students - and the schools that face closure for low test scores. No homeless student is going to have the emotional stability needed to excel in class. Simply being bullied in high school transformed me from an A to a C student. Imagine the effects of homelessness on Mary Quaker’s grades:

For many families, staying intact may mean staying on the streets. The dilemma may be deepened by a looming fear of separation by child welfare authorities, who may place children in foster care.

For Yolanda James’s 16-year-old daughter, Mary Quaker, the threat of separation dwarfed material hardship. She struggled through living in a car, even sleeping in her school gym when her mother could not afford a motel, but she clung to what mattered. “I just wondered,” she recalled, “is she going to put us somewhere so we can be able to eat and take a shower and all that? I’d always tell everybody, ‘Just don’t split us up. We’ll all get through it together.’”

So Secretary Duncan, please commission some economic think tank to factor homelessness into your value-added data metrics.

A refreshing take on Bible study.

I’m halfway through the first of 24 lectures from Yale’s Religious Studies: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) course from 2006. Click on that link and you can download all the lectures as videos, plus transcripts of them, and course reading assignments (unfortunately, the readings themselves aren’t included, so you’re stuck with either buying the texts yourself, or playing the classic college student game of skipping the reading altogether and relying wholly on the lectures to understand the content).

It beats the hell out of American Idol.

She’s a good lecturer, though I’m tempted to quibble with some of her characterizations of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian culture and religion already. But I’ll wait until she gets into it more deeply in future lectures.

Religious Studies not your bag? The world of Open Courseware surely can fill it with something to your tastes. Check out Open Yale’s full online (and again, free) course offerings to see for yourself.

It doesn’t end with Yale, of course. I’m also following UC Berkeley’s Modern European History course. Check here for all of Berkeley’s courses that offer video lectures in all their departments.

Finally, there’s iTunes University. You can download podcasts on many subjects there as well. (And read this little piece of research showing students learned better watching lectures on their iPods than they did sitting in the lecture hall.)

Search Google for “Open Courseware” for more.

High school, maybe even middle school, teachers should consider showing some Yale lectures to their students. The level of language and concepts seems entirely appropriate for teens, at least in the introductory courses. It might demystify the realities of college for these students, and lower their anxieties about what college demands. And you can certainly do worse than a Yale professor for a “guest lecturer” in your classrooms.

From the Department of “Enough, Already!” The College Board, “non-profit” purveyor of the SAT, PSAT, AP, and other money-makers from the bubble-sheets-equal-intelligence economic bubble, is poised to inflict yet another standardized test on our students - this time in middle school.

Where will it all end? College prep bubble-tests for newborns?

This is no idle kvetching session. School districts - that means you, taxpayers - will end up paying for this new test, if the College Board isn’t stopped, which means they won’t have money to spend on more constructive ways to help our students learn.

Read more below, or just cut to the chase and sign this petition to Obama, EdSec. Duncan, Congress, and state governors to say NO to a middle school SAT clone.

The Big Money on Slate has more:

Before the financial crisis hit, eighth-graders across the country were scheduled to take a new test this fall, their first to get into college. The exam is called ReadiStep, and it’s a new standardized test that simultaneously says it’s “low-stakes” while also being a “vital step” toward getting ready to get a bachelor’s degree. It’s all multiple-choice, and it’s split into three parts: reading, writing, and math. The test will offer teachers “insight into students’ academic progress and early feedback that enables them to help students create a road map for success.” Plus, administering the exam “helps create a college-going culture”—don’t we have one already?—and the results are “predictive” of PSAT scores. PSAT scores, of course, are predictive of SAT scores, which are predictive of where one gets into college. ReadiStep is poised to become a new rite of passage for American youths.

But the test is not provided by the federal government. Nor is it a brainchild of state and local school boards or mandated by No Child Left Behind. It’s provided by the College Board, the same organization that administers the PSAT and the SAT. It was originally supposed to launch this fall, but was postponed due to economic circumstances. . . . For students, ReadiStep is the gateway to a life of bubble-sheets and No. 2 pencils.

For the College Board, it’s another way to make tons of money.

ReadiStep will cost 10 bucks a pop, which will likely be paid by school districts. That money goes straight to the College Board, just like all of the revenue generated by its other standardized tests. Read more….

The article sheds much light on the true nature of the selfless-sounding entities known as “non-profits.” The president of the “non-profit” College Board pocketed a saintly salary of

$673,757 in 2006, an 88 percent increase from his initial starting salary,” and “the College Board has 10 senior vice presidents and 28 vice presidents; senior staff members make an average of $239,374 in compensation. These numbers are presumed to have gone higher since 2006.”

Who needs profit when two years at a non-profit can make you a millionaire? Thanks, charitable donors and taxpayer-financed government grants!

Again, please sign the petition here. This is getting ridiculous. Let’s spare our 12-year-olds the anxiety of thinking bubbles determine their fate, and instead teach them that they have much more control over their lives than those bubbles do.

University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham tipped me off to his latest video, on one of EdSec Arne Duncan’s pet subjects: “Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures.” Willingham gives “six reasons in three minutes” that the idea of evaluating teachers by the value-added “growth model,” as reasonable as it sounds, is still unfair. Worth a watch, and good for a couple of chuckles to boot. (I wonder if Perez Hilton plans to sue.)

Besides Dan’s six, what other flaws in this idea can you add?
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Shrinking education budgets make this resource of “free eBooks that can supplement or replace classroom texts” worth a share. I just discovered it via eSchool News. Here’s their write-up:

“E-Books Directory” is an online resource that contains links to freely downloadable eBooks, technical papers, and documents, as well as user-contributed content, articles, reviews, and comments. Launched in 2008 as a free service to students, educators, researchers, and eBook lovers, the directory is a database-driven web site that uses PHP scripting language and the MySQL relational database. As of press time, it listed 1702 eBooks in 391 categories, including children¹s books, history, humanities, literature, science, and mathematics. Under Classic Literature, for example, users will finds links to such iconic texts as Anna Karenina, Beowulf, Don Quixote, Great Expectations, Little Women, and more. The site says it does not support copyright infringement, nor will it link to web sites that trade copyrighted material. http://www.e-booksdirectory.com

I checked out some of the subject areas in the directory, and was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the books are less than a decade old, and often from some of the most reputable university presses, when I expected to find only very old, public domain works.

A few keepers from a 30-minute skim:

University of Houston’s Digital History U.S. History Textbook looks great for high school classrooms. No need to pay Houghton-Mifflin or MacMillan $100 per textbook when this one’s available for free. Spend those dollars elsewhere.

A Century of War is a collection of polemical essays that could extend any discussions of the wars of the 20th Century.

Indians Before Colombus, though dated (1955), is a University of Chicago Press text. Per the authors, “We have tried to tell the story of the Indians by piecing together the bits of available information. The data we have presented are accurate, and we have tried to set forth the facts as interestingly as possible.”

For writing teachers, the tasty-looking Less Than Words Can Say. The blurb:

Mitchell takes examples of bad writing and rips them to shreds. While some would think these mistakes don’t really matter, Mitchell insists that they do, because they are revelations about the mind that wrote them. Thus examples of bad writing that come from “educators” are given special attention; if educators have twisted minds, what can we expect to have happen to their charges?

Oh, snap.

Here’s a fun bit from Mitchell’s work that every student (and academic) should read:

Whatever else Churchill may have been doing in those days [when Hitler was preparing to attack Britain], he was always providing the English with words. With words he formed their thoughts and emotions. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,” said Churchill. Millions answered, apparently, “By God, so we shall.”

Imagine, however, that Churchill had been an ordinary bureaucrat and had chosen to say instead:

“Consolidated defensive positions and essential preplanned withdrawal facilities are to be provided in order to facilitate maximum potentialization for the repulsion and/or delay of incursive combatants in each of several preidentified categories of location deemed suitable to the emplacement and/or debarkation of hostile military contingents.”

Check out the full list of titles here. I’ve only scratched the surface, or, put differently: “A full accounting of the plenitude of literary and non-literary selections available to education professionals and consumers alike at this website are beyond the scope of this weblog entry. Those interested in learning more about this phenomenon are advised to access the comprehensive listing here.”

A quick follow-up to the Open Courseware (”Attend Yale in Your Underwear” - sue me for feeling jiggy) post from a couple of days ago. I’ve been exploring more over the last couple of days, and am very impressed by UCBerkeley’s Open Courseware package. The six-minute video below gives you a tour of the videos, lecture notes, and slideshows Berkeley makes available with its offerings.

We hear a lot about teachers needing to be content experts in their assigned courses. For those who feel like they need a refresher, this fits the (no cost!) bill unbelievably. Administrators take note, and save your professional development funds accordingly.

Enjoy (and a special thanks to Prof. Peggy Anderson at Berkeley/Stanford for the help, and the great survey of modern European history) [Update: I don't know why the YouTube is so small. Hit the full screen toggle for a much better view.]
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Here at the end of the school year the caps of jubilant graduates, along with Spring, are in the air. As you might expect, the graduation process at Sudbury schools is strikingly and refreshingly unique. In this post, I’d like to share what a Sudbury diploma has to say about the purpose and possibilities of education.

First off, I should point out that there is considerable variation in how individual Sudbury schools graduate students. However, one near constant is a focus on the following thesis: diploma candidates must demonstrate that they have taken responsibility for preparing themselves to become effective adults in the larger community. A Sudbury diploma is not about accumulating academic credits; rather, it is about whether a student is truly ready to assume adult responsibilities.

Over several months, would-be Sudbury graduates must prepare a series of written and oral defenses of the above thesis. They work with advisers; they draft and revise; they receive feedback and answer challenging questions. Diploma candidates talk about skills they’ve mastered and lessons they’ve learned, about their next steps in life and the ways in which they’ve readied themselves for what lies ahead. Finally, some group of individuals—whether the entire school (including parents), or a smaller panel from a student’s school or other schools—grills candidates and votes on whether the thesis defenses were successful. All in all, this is a far more demanding process than experienced by most students. Indeed, how many of us adults would enjoy defending our life choices in front of a critical panel?

Individual Sudbury schools are always tinkering with their diploma processes (constant innovation being one of the strengths of the model); indeed, controversy periodically erupts over whether even having a diploma process represents a sort of external assessment antithetical to the model. Yet nearly all Sudbury schools do have the sort of graduation requirement I’m describing, and I think it’s because the importance of rites of passage persists even in modern times.

In traditional cultures, the rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood involves a period of separation, a time of physical and emotional trials. The youth who make it through these trials are then welcomed into the ranks of the adult members of the community. Sudbury schools put their diploma candidates through the trials of digging deep, tapping their reserves of courage, resourcefulness and persistence. As a result, our graduates possess integrity and strength of character; they know how to chart a course in life, how to get things done while being good to themselves and their community.

My current school had its sixth graduation ceremony last weekend; what a great opportunity it was to reflect on the kind of community you get when children are respected and trusted with both freedom and responsibility. More than mere communities, our schools are extended families, with all the benefits and general connectedness that come from having multiple siblings, aunts and uncles who know you very well (okay, sometimes too well) for many years.

The Sudbury diploma process underscores our balance as a demanding yet supportive environment that values both the needs of the individual and the welfare of the community. Thus our graduates end up teaching us valuable lessons about how to live deeply and authentically, face uncertainty with confidence, choose happiness and make dreams come true.

image by isabisa

(Note: If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll consider posting a follow-up with excerpts from actual thesis defenses. Approximately 1000 pages of thesis defenses are available for purchase here.)

I keep trying to schedule an interview with Steve Hargadon, godfather of the Classroom 2.0 social network, but living on the opposite side of the planet from the U.S. tends to get in the way. This is a shame, because I get a lot of inquiries from educators wanting to know more about the vital world of teaching with technology.

So take the following plug as an invitation to check out Classroom 2.0 by participating in tomorrow’s live event. The details:

A message to all members of Classroom 2.0

Date: Sat., May 30, 2009
Time: 9:00am Pacific/10:00am Mountain/11:00am Central/12:00pm Eastern
Location: In Elluminate at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live (Links to other time zones and meeting room can be found at http://live.classroom20.com/.)

This Saturday, May 30th Kim Caise, Lorna Costantini, and Peggy George will be hosting another Classroom 2.0 LIVE show. As an extension to the Classroom 2.0 Ning community, Classroom 2.0 “LIVE” shows are opportunities to gather with other educators in real-time events, complete with audio, chat, desktop sharing, and sometimes even video. A Google calendar of shows is available at http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html. If you haven’t used Elluminate before, we encourage you to view this tutorial to prepare for the Elluminate session: http://www.elluminate.com/support/faq_recordings/FirstTimeUser.jsp

The topic this Saturday is: “Student Web Radio Broadcasts” with special guest Matt Montagne, creator of the Gator Radio Experience on Ustream. Please join us as Matt shares his experiences with his student web radio broadcasts. Links for more information can be found at http://live.classroom20.com. We strive to make our shows beginner-friendly although they are designed to be conversations around using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. If you’ve never participated in a live webinar, don’t be afraid to come and observe. ‘Dip your toes in’ the conversations until you feel comfortable enough to “jump into the conversations with both feet”! We want to encourage “experienced Web 2.0 users” to join us by contributing and extending the conversation by sharing real-life examples and tips/suggestions.

On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com) you’ll find the recordings for our recent “Interactive Stories and Handhelds” show with special guest Tony Vincent. Click on the “Archive” tab to view recordings.

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Marshmallows are sort of bubbly, so don’t let your bias for bubble-tests dissuade you, College Board: there may be a way to mark up the marshmallows and make a pretty penny off this. We can use it to look 2nd-graders in the eye and tell them they’re not on track for college.

(Seriously, this 5-minute video is worth a watch for both its psychological suggestions and its comedy. Kids do the darnedest things.)
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The video below about Shell Oil’s criminal behavior in Nigeria should be of interest to socially conscious car-drivers, English teachers who teach Joseph Conrad’s (awful, in my view) novel, The Heart of Darkness, and history teachers who teach Euro-American colonialism. The video spotlights a current legal case against Shell. I always find that history and literature come alive more when connected to examples from our own world that show this isn’t a dusty issue from yesteryear. “The Horror” lives on today.
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Any questions about the veracity of the video can find more info here.

Want to boycott Shell and other socially irresponsible oil companies, and buy your gas from those who rank higher for their ethics? According to this site, Sunoco and BP (Amoco, ARCO, am/pm) rank highest, and deserve your business. Costco, Shell, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips and, worst of all, Exxon-Mobil rank lowest on social responsibility.