Arizona SAT Scores Decline… again

Arizona’s SAT Scores Declined again in 2009.  Sure, they’re trying to say it isn’t so bad – Arizona is still above the national average… a more diverse group than ever took the test this year, etc.  Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Education, Tom Horne had this take on the scores:

“We’re not where we want to be at the end, but we’re doing better than the country as a whole,” he said.

Sugar coat it if you want – the fact still remains that only 26% of the students were deemed ready for college level material.  Of course all, or nearly all, of these students passed the AIMS test with flying colors I’m sure.  For those of you not from Arizona, the AIMS test is the “high stakes” test that all high school students must pass before they can graduate.  Surprisingly only a handful of kids don’t pass, and yes, I do mean a handful.  Sure, they can’t add, subtract, write coherent sentence in anything but “text-speak,” or name the capital of England… but they passed their AIMS test.

21st Century Skills?

21st Century Skills

Why doesn’t it surprise me that P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) is headquartered in Arizona?  I suppose it shouldn’t. (Maybe it’s the heat? … )  Daniel Willingham posted an excellent entry on the Britannica Blog: “Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills.”  He, along with E.D. Hirsch (of Core Knowledge), Diane Ravitch (the writer) and Ken Kay (of P21) recently sat on a forum at Common Core to discuss P21 and its ongoing efforts.

His first assertation is that P21 separates skills from knowledge, believing skills more important.  He quoted from page 6 of their Intellectual and Policy Foundations document (PDF Download):

“With instant access to facts, for instance, schools are able to reconceive the role of memorization, and focus more on higher order skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.”

He summarized it succinctly:

In other words, students can always Google the facts, so teachers can focus on skills.

I don’t how often I have heard statements like that.  “Why do they need to memorize such-n-such?  They can always look it up on the internet?” Or if in regards to math:  “Why does she need to memorize her times tables?  She can always use a calculator?” Please excuse me while I roll my eyes.   First, what if (heaven forbid) little Jimmy/Jane should be without access to the internet or a calculator?  Then what?  Hmmm… occaisionally the internet connection does crash (at least in my area) and perhaps sometime in the future there could be larger outages caused by other problems such as natural disasters?   (Oh what would would little Kendra do if she can’t update her MySpace page then?  Oh my…)

My main concern with this, has more to do with what these kids are looking up.  Wikipedia is a great start for research – but it is hardly the end-all of resources.  It is not fact checked and never will be.  That is not research (and if I were a teacher, I wouldn’t even accept it is a source.)   Sure you can “Google” up facts – but without the background information, you won’t know if what you are reading is true or not.  Without bothering to look things up in “real” books and encyclopedias, kids aren’t really researching; they are copying and pasting.  Hardly a skill, 21st-century or otherwise.

Arizona Does It Again!

The Accountability Illusion

Arizona certainly has a knack for coming in last place (or nearly so!).  The Core Knowledge Blog recently posted “Location, Location, Location” about the Fordham Foundation’s report – ” The Accountability Illusion.”

That’s the upshot of a terrific new report … which looked at 36 actual schools (18 elementary, 18 middle schools) and determined whether each one would make AYP under the accountability rules of 28 different states.  No, they would not.

As they noted… “A bad school in Massachusetts is a good school in Arizona.” Now why doesn’t that surprise me?  We were already 48th (Edit: 49th: 03-04-09) in per-student spending before the current financial crisis hit and our state government decided to slash the state budget, hitting education especially hard (Special Education being unfairly targeted).  I would hazard to guess we are now 49th or 50th…  We were 47th in teacher salary levels.  I would guess we will be lower come next school year, when contracts are up for renewal.

What does all this mean?  It means the children of Arizona, attending public schools do not receive as good an education as those attending public schools in say Massachusetts or Washington state (especially those needing Special Education for some reason or another) – No matter what the State Department of Education says!  It means the teachers in Arizona are not paid fairly for their work and won’t be for the foreseeable future.  It means the education crises in Arizona will continue until these fundamental issues are resolved.

It means I will continue to homeschool my daughter because I don’t see how she can receive the education she deserves with the resources the school is given.  Yes, I pay my taxes that support public schools, and I have no problem paying those taxes in principle.  I would just like to see something for that money.

It’s the Teacher – Not the School

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

It’s the Teacher – Not the School: This isn’t news for me, but the acknowledgment comes from an unlikely source – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  In their Annual 2009 Newsletter, they discuss the U.S. Education system and how they tried to improve it over the past several years through their program.  Despite all their money and effort thrown into the public schools all across the nation (with a few success stories), most of their efforts came up empty.  Their conclusion:

If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Gee… isn’t that what homeschooling is all about?

We went through a private school – and had several excellent teachers.  They made all the difference in the world for my daughter!  Then we had some not so good teachers.  They made an impact too.  One we are still dealing with.

HSLDA President J. Michael Smith wrote an excellent article in his Op-Ed Column for the Washington Times on 24 February 2009: Home-schooling: It’s the Teacher, not the school. Basically he states that great teaching has nothing to do with teacher certification.  It has everything to do with caring about who you are teaching (your children) and what you are teaching.

I’ll be the first to admit homeschooling isn’t easy… it’s hard!  There are days I’m ready to throw in the towel.  But, I also know that I’m still giving my daughter a better education than she would get in the public schools here where I live.  The private schools, we simply can no longer afford, and the ones we tried were iffy at best (again, it depended on the teacher!).  We also tried a charter school.  It has an excellent reputation, and deservedly so, but it wasn’t for every child, including mine.  And again, my experience was that some of the teachers were excellent, but some were … well…  not so good.

At least now I know my daughter’s teacher cares about her and will work with her on a lesson until she “gets it.”  She won’t give up on her, or leave her behind.  If we have to repeat something… we do.  If a certain curriculum isn’t working, we can change it.

The Carnivals are Here!

Both Carnivals of Education are up and ready.  That’s a LOT of reading!

First the Carnival of Homeschooling presented by Dana at The Simple Pleasures of Homeschooling.  She posts most of her homeschooling “stuff” at her Principled Discovery blog.  I love her quote though:

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Robert Brault

There are of course a lot of thought provoking posts on the Carnival of Homeschooling.  Among them –

• Remember the … What? Considering the very sad state of affairs of public education in history and geography, I’m really not surprised people don’t remember the Alamo.  Or the Maine. Or know where Iraq is for crying out loud! Holocaust?  What Holocaust?  If people don’t learn about it in school (or life), it becomes much easier to forget, to cover up – to deny.
• Lessons Worth Teaching:  Why Homeschool talks about what she is trying to instill in her daughters.  Is all the information we have at our fingertips of the same value?  The answer seems pretty obvious to me.  I really don’t give a hoot about the latest starlet’s trip to rehab, but I do care about what books my daughter is reading.  We need to keep our eyes on what is really important, not the fluff and media hype we are constantly surrounded with.
• Kronos Timeline Idea: I love the timeline idea posted on Biblical Parenting.  Frankly, I don’t have a wall to put a timeline on anyway, so I need something more “compact.”  I do have some papers/cutouts from a kit already, but I want DD to do the work herself customizing and coloring it.  I like the “cheery” look and I bet their kids know when things happened … like the Alamo!
• Using Diaries to Write About History: There are some great ideas and links in this posting at In Our Write Minds about using primary sources and Journals and weaving them into your history curriculum.  The whole blog looks like its worth perusing.
• Oh…can I relate to this one.  Homespun Comic Strip #270:  Homeschooling with cats.  I have to quote: “I love having pets. But some days they are just fur covered distractions with claws.”
• The Real Job of “Socialization” is an excellent posting at Life Without School about what socialization truly is.  What the responsibilities of parents really are.  What the schools should be responsible for… and what they have to deal with in the real world.  Yes… I’ve encountered the rude remarks from strangers about my DD – who have absolutely no clue about our story or our circumstances.

The #191 Carnival of Education is hosted over at Creating Lifelong Learners.  Some interesting reads there as well including How to Teach Science (or not) and one of my favorite blogs (because I’ve worked in a school) Learn Me Good by Mister Teacher Green Eggs and Math.

That’s it for this time.  More next week!

Good Grades = Success?

There is an excellent post on the Freakonomics blog by guest blogger Paul Kimelman: Do Good Grades Predict Success? He and a colleague were recently talking about school and success:

[W]e usually just assume that somehow grades in school (at any level) are predictors of future success, or certainly of intelligence; but I highly doubt it. I tried to find some good studies…

He came up with five main points:

1. The very definition of success is elusive.
2. How do you measure validity of grades?
3. Most middle schools and high schools put so much emphasis on homework versus actual understanding that they are measuring behavior and compliance far more than what has been learned.
4. Creativity and creative people tend to mess up metrics at each level.
5. Any research I could find was done at some university which tended to bias results using university metrics of success.

All of those are terrific points.

How do you define success? Money? Power? Amount of good you can do?  Validity of grades – that’s a can of worms!  Ever hear of grade inflation?  Every kid is an honor student?  Number 3 is one of the main reasons why I believe in homeschooling.  I can be sure my dd really understands what we are covering – not just studying for the test and then forgetting it.

When she went back to school this fall – the areas we had covered in homeschooling, she had down.  She understood them without a problem.  The areas the teachers went over in class, she simply did “not get.”  We would go over them at home.  She would take a test.  She would then promptly forget them.  But she still remembers what we studied while homeschooling.  Perhaps because she had time to “digest” the information, go back over it if need be and repeat as needed and apply the information?  I don’t know.  But there is a huge difference between the two.

Perhaps the most telling paragraph in his post has nothing to do with education but with persistence – something our culture seems to seriously lack.

If you look at those who have commonly advanced our thinking, our abilities, our technologies, and our economy (through business sense), many did poorly in schools, yet they persisted. The persistence may have been the critical element, and it would have perhaps been lost had they been encouraged more.

I have mixed feelings on this.  I believe our children need to be encouraged but not babied.  There is a difference.  We need to give them the tools to succeed in school (no matter what type of schooling they are in).  Then the students need to do the work.  Sometimes it is a struggle.  It is hard work to memorize the times tables or irregular spellings. There is no way around it.  But if we encourage them properly, they can feel a real sense of confidence and self-esteem (not the fluffy snow-job they give out at schools these days) once they succeed in their tasks.  The kids know if they truly accomplish something or not.

Back to Square One

Yep… we’re back to square one.  We’ll be homeschooling our DD once again!  (YAAAAY!!!!!)

Many people probably think this means more stress and more work for me.  Not really.  I’ll basically pick up where I left off from before.  As far as the stress – I have to tell you – the last 7 weeks have been he** !  It feels like years have gone by.  I honestly did not have time to take her to go buy her new shoes since school began (She was sick one weekend, I another).  She had tons of homework the rest of the time.  The poor girl has been up until 10pm a couple days a week, every week – just doing homework.  She has had no time to do the things that interest her (let alone go to the dang store to buy some new shoes!).

Nope… I’m done with it.  Not sorry to give up driving her to and from school every day (There is no bus service) and not sorry to spend every evening helping with homework, watching her struggle with assignments beyond her comprehension.  I know she’ll miss some aspects of the school, but she still asks me everyday when we can homeschool again.  So I know she’ll be happy to start up again.  She’ll be happy to see the kids she knows from the homeschool group again too!

Yep… this is a good thing.  Thank you Lord… just thank you! 😀

Those Pesky Homeschoolers: Part 2

To continue my previous post on Are Homeschooled Kids at a Disadvantage on the Opposing Views Debate …

The California Federation of Teachers states:

Every parent wants the best education for his or her child.  All parents have the right to be involved in the education of their own children, and are entitled to seek the type of education that they believe best addresses their child’s needs.

At the same time, all students deserve to have a quality education. These two goals-parents’ rights, and quality education–might, under the best of conditions, come together in excellent education delivered at home.  But home schooling also has the potential of creating an inadequate overall education. While public education is certainly not perfect, it does provide for common standards, transparent evaluation processes for teaching and learning, administrative oversight and accountability, and the opportunity to learn within a diverse community. Home schooling often fails to meet at least some and sometimes all of these criteria.

Well… where to begin… Of course all parents want what’s best for their children’s education.  And yes they ARE entitled (by law) to seek out the type of education that is best for their children.  This is NO thanks by the way to the teacher’s unions.  The state and teacher’s unions have fought tooth and nail against both homeschooling and charter schools.   Way back when, they even fought against private religious schools (Pierce v. Society of Sisters 1925).  The type of parental involvement the teacher’s union wants in this case, is the the type and kind that they can dictate.

“All students deserve a quality education. ” Who can argue with that?  We all want that for our own children and for all the children of this country… do we not?  Ideally, parental rights and quality education do come together.  It can happen with any type of education, be it public school, private school, charter school or homeschool.  Often, it does not, especially with the first example, I am sorry to say.  My own experience with private schools has shown me that it can happen just as often as it doesn’t happen.

I take issue with the part of ‘homeschooling having the potential to create an inadequate overall education.’  Sure it has the potential… just as public schools do.  There seems to be plenty of proof of the inadequacies of the overall education received in public schools though – just read the varied reports from “A Nation at Risk” written in 1983 all the way down to “Diploma to Nowhere” released earlier this month.

Public Education has no “Common Standard” – each state sets its own standard.  Then each district interprets the state standard from there.  NCLB was supposed to help on that issue by setting a common bar, but the law instead again lets each state set it’s own standard.  So magically all states are again “above average.”  Amazing!

Transparent evaluation process for teaching and learning?  Administrative accountability?  Is this the teaching style du-jour?   Just try to find out what and how your child is taught at the local school.  Just try to get a clear answer from the local school board on anything.  The district I live in uses Everyday Mathematics for the 1-6 Math program.  It is not the most popular among the parents here, and the district has taken a lot of heat from the parents for using it.  Despite the protests and demands of the parents to start using a better program that would actually teach children math, the district continues to use the program because ‘they know best.’  So much for accountability.

Homeschooling doesn’t fail to live up to any of these things.  It is simply different.  It’s comparing apples to oranges.  I worked in my dd private school and teaching a class full of 25 kids is totally different than teaching your own children.  What works in one, does not work in the other – simple as that.

Common standards won’t work because each child/family/situation is different.  That is the beauty of homeschooling.  If the child doesn’t get adding mixed fractions in one day, you can repeat it in the next lesson and the next and so on, until they do get it.  With a room full of kids, you can’t do that.  You have to keep moving.  The child has to get help from the parent or a tutor or as often is the case, simply not learn it. There are general guidelines that most homeschoolers follow for what their x-grader needs to know.  Some are ahead of that, others behind.  By the end of high school, I think it pretty much evens out.

As far as accountability, it varies from state to state how accountable homeschoolers are.  Some have more over-site than others.  Some have to show more “proof of progress” than others.  Some have certain subjects they are required to teach.  Some must register with their State Department of Education/County Department of Education.  This mish-mash of regulation is a reflection of the chaos of the education system as a whole.

In general homeschoolers would rather just be left alone.  Who wants to be told what to do all the time in regards to educating their children.  It’s like having a bad mother-in-law!  Personally, I don’t have a problem with registering as a homeschooler with the local Dept. of Education, being required to teach certain subjects and of having to take a standardized test every two years or so.  I would like to choose my test among several because I believe some are better than others.  But other than that I don’t think the state should be telling me how to educate my child.  I certainly can’t do any worse than some of the public school results I’ve seen.

Okay… I’ll step off my soapbox now.

Those Pesky Homeschoolers

The website Opposing Views recently hosted a discussion – Are Homeschooled Kids at a Disadvantage? The debate occured between the HomeSchool Association of California and the California Federation of Teachers.  In case you didn’t realize, California was the hotbed of Homeschool Legal Action earlier this year – and the issue has been resolved.

The premise of the debate is presented as:

Each year more than a million children are homeschooled in the United States, and that number is steadily growing. While some parents believe homeschooling is an ideal situation, others fear that a student’s education can be severely hindered in such an environment. When making a decision about your child’s education, which is the more reasonable school of thought?

Topics for the teachers included: Standards and Parental Involvement.  The Homeschoolers are concerned with the Benefits of Homeschooling, Myths of Socialization and How Well Homeschooling Works.  Valerie Bonham Moore at Home Education Magazine Online gives a great rundown of the article, as well as her own take on the debate.  She makes some wonderful points about the realities of education one’s children at home!  Well worth the read!

More thoughts on this tomorrow….

Diploma to Nowhere: Ed in ’08

Diploma to Nowhere – Says it all.  Ed in 08 has recently released a report ( Diploma to Nowhere ) detailing how poorly American High School students are prepared for college – and one could add for the real world as well.  Are we getting our money’s worth in public education?  I think not.  Not when we have to spend millions of dollars in remedial education every year for college freshmen who can’t handle English 101 or College Algebra 101.

What are we going to do about it though?  We need to do something or our country and our future is at risk.  Parental choice is the bare minimum.  I need to be able to choose what is best for my child(ren) be it public, private, charter or homeschooling.  Every family should have those choices open to them because every family and situation is unique.  What works for one may not work for another.

If we value education in our families and in our country, then we need to show it – not just by throwing money at it and hoping it will get better.  But, by putting effort and determination into fixing the real problems with education.  Most of those can be fixed by administrators taking responsibility for running the schools properly, by actually assisting the teachers and backing them up as they should.  By providing money to appropriate programs instead of wasting it on unnecessary things.  Education can be fixed by teachers taking responsibility for teaching students instead of standing by and having students “teach” each other.  It can be fixed by teachers communicating with students and parents about what is truly going on instead of just covering their behinds.  Education can be fixed by students actually taking responsibility for learning instead of waiting to be entertained.  It can be fixed by parents valuing education and making sure their children value education too.  By making sure their children know how to behave properly realize their will be consequences if they don’t do their best work in school.

But… I guess I’m dreaming here…