There was a letter in the Washington Post last week about group grading. The parent writing the letter was concerned that her child seems to be the one continually saddled with leading things while the hangers-on benefit from her diligence. Hey---we've all been that kid's shoes, but that doesn't make it okay for this classroom practice to continue.

In the reply, it is noted that for that particular district, it is policy that "Grades must be based on individual demonstration of skill and understanding."; however, it is unlikely that group grading has gone the way of the dodo bird. Why? "Teachers will be less likely to say they are giving grades for group work, but the ones I know have found that, for some students, cooperative projects reveal important skills, such as imagination, leadership and bargaining, for which their final grades will look better than they might otherwise have."

What a crock. The information described there is about behaviors---not learning. (And how exactly does one score "imagination, leadership, and bargaining"?) Even if group grades were acceptable, you will still need to base your evidence on learning targets in order to make a valid judgment.

We know from educational research that cooperative learning experiences can be valuable to students. But, as the name suggests, these strategies are to be used while learning---not for assessment. One would hope that school districts are being vigilant about this sort of practice. We owe it to students and their families to give them the best information possible about individual progress and performance.

Labels: articles, grading

Charles Murray thinks that For Most People, College is a Waste of Time. The op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal suggests that a bachelor's degree has an "inflated status" and advocates for some sort of system of certifications instead.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the bachelor's degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics -- and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the local public library?

An interesting proposal, no?

I find my thinking to be somewhere between. While I agree that a BA does not necessarily communicate a certain skill level as it applies to a profession, neither does a certification test. I am certainly living proof of that. If we think only about education for a moment, would there be any test which would be able to measure one's facility in the classroom? What is the best evidence of the ability to teach?

At the end of the WSJ article, Murray writes

Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone -- is one way to help us to recognize that common bond.

Is the answer for teachers something different? Perhaps a graduated license, as many states do with driving? Some kind of permit to start, with a teacher receiving intensive mentoring for one or two years...at the end of which would be a recommendation for a provisional license for a few years...and finally something more permanent five years into a career? (By the way, I think administrator certs should follow the same path.) Many teachers are gone by year five, but would this also help move low-skilled teachers and administrators out of the path of students more easily?

I agree with Murray that there are some antiquated aspects of our higher education system. However, it's not going to go away and is going to be incredibly resistant to reform. If any change is going to be made, it's going to have to come from employers. When evidence other than college degrees is required to get a job, the Ivory Tower might start to pay attention.

Labels: articles

The Horatio Alger Association has released its report on the State of Our Nation's Youth. Findings were summarized in a recent Education Week article (reg. req'd):

• The proportion of students reporting that pressure to get good grades creates a problem for them increased from 62 percent in 2001 to 79 percent this year.
• Over that same period, the percentage of those reporting grade pressure who classified it as “major” has risen 19 percentage points, to 45 percent.
• In the latest report, 21 percent of students said they spent more than 10 hours a week on homework, up 9 percentage points from 2005.
• The latest survey found that the proportion of high schoolers feeling hopeful and optimistic about the country has fallen 22 percentage points since 2003—from 75 percent that year to 53 percent in 2008.
• Eighty-eight percent of the 1,006 public and private school 9th to 12th graders, ages 13 to 19, who were surveyed in April described themselves as confident, and 66 percent said they were optimistic about their own futures. Peter D. Hart, the president of the Washington-based polling company Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey, said in a statement: “What emerges from the research results is a portrait of a generation who believe in themselves and their abilities, despite anxieties about the country.”
• Despite intensive efforts to improve public schooling in recent years, the grade point average high schoolers assigned their schools this year—2.7—is the same as it was in 2001.
• As for their own grades, the proportion of students reporting that they got mostly B’s or better on their latest report cards has fluctuated—from 61 percent in 2001 to 70 percent in 2004 to 67 percent this year.
• In this year’s report, 70 percent of respondents said they were headed to bachelor’s-level institutions—down 6 percentage points from 2005. Over that same time span, the proportion of students reporting plans to attend a community or technical college after high school rose 5 percentage points, to 23 percent.
• Surveyed teenagers reported spending more than 13 hours online per week communicating with friends and entertaining themselves, compared with not quite five hours per week online for homework.
• On a list of possible improvements to their schools, students (38%) say more up-to-date technology would have the biggest impact.
• Students (34%) believe science and technology classes are the most important to take when it comes to succeeding in the global economy.
• Two-thirds (64%) of teenagers report spending time each week playing or practicing a sport for an average of 10.3 hours per week.

The snapshots here are interesting, if difficult to summarize into a cohesive picture. I find it interesting how grades are used as measures within the surveys---can we really relate average GPA to school quality? I also think that the statement about "more up-to-date technology would have the biggest impact" is telling about how today's youth want to learn. Ed research says that teacher quality is the greatest factor for student achievement. Students might not agree. They may be more interested in using various resources to teach themselves, with teachers as facilitators. Social networks are integral for them, but these are the very first things we take away when kids walk through the school doors.

What, if anything, do we do with this information? Is it important that building hope and optimism be a focus---while deemphasizing grades? Should we change the goal of "college readiness" for every child to something broader...something that represents the variety of post-secondary options? How do we take these pieces and make a more personal experience for students in our classrooms?

Labels: articles, students

I ran across an article in Education Week that made me think, at first, that this was going to be another "blame the adults" scenario. While I am all for teachers being responsible for creating a healthy learning environment, I also believe that it is up to students to choose to engage. With the advent of NCLB, teachers and schools are having to take on too much of the "blame" for low student achievement. I admit they're a key piece---and we know that teacher quality is the strongest influence in the classroom---but they are not the only factors in a child's life.

What I ended up liking about Reversing Reluctance in Education Week is that it showcases a program that holds the community accountable---not just the schools. Supporting students is every adult's responsibility as part of the Communities in Schools program. They appear to be getting some good results from their efforts:

While fewer than half of all low-income and minority students in the United States complete high school, 85 percent of CIS students do, and two-thirds of them go on to some form of postsecondary education. In Georgia, the birthplace of the CIS “performance learning center” model, more than 75 percent of center students who were classified as seniors in the fall of 2006 graduated in 2007. Nearly all of them had either dropped out or were on their way to dropping out before joining the program.

The program has two major components. The first is a focus on relationships between families and school. This includes everyone in the school, not just the teachers. Secondly, these relationships are leveraged to help students "discover" the "I cans...": (1) I can learn; (2) I can have a reason to learn; (3) I can control the learning process; and (4) I can help others learn.

Community is the difference-maker. As CIS co-founder Bill Milliken writes in his book The Last Dropout, this is really an adult problem. It represents the failure of adults to, as he puts it, “provide and model a community that acts as a safety net for young people.” Communities own schools, but frequently forget, ignore, or abdicate their responsibilities to children for most of the day and year. Kids are in school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for 180 days a year. But they are in their homes and communities from 3 p.m. until 8 a.m. during school time—and 24/7 for the remainder of the year. In fact, from birth to the age of 18, children spend more than 90 percent of their lives outside the schools.

Our group has learned how to bring together the people, agencies, and organizations within the community that can support schools by doing the things that schools themselves cannot, particularly connecting to those students whose academic success and social well-being are threatened. We’ve had success linking external supports to the schools and aligning them to support the schools’ responsibility for attendance, grades, and graduation. These include domestic-violence interventions, job training and placement, dental care, mental- and physical-health care, child care, parent education, and more.

When we listen to the stories of students who dropped out, struggled in school, or became overage and undercredited nonachievers, we are often struck by these young people’s creativity and intelligence. Many have survived challenges in their lives, within their families, and on the streets that would have crippled their peers headed to Ivy League schools.

Their failure is at least as much a failure of school systems and communities as it is their own. We need new forms of schooling that teach key academic content in ways that engage these students and prepare them for successful futures, and we need to help them build strong relationships with adult mentors who will support their efforts to stay in school and succeed. And we need to link schools and communities in mutually beneficial, two-way relationships that provide young people with a healthy preparation for a productive future.

Schools have too much on their plates these days. Most of the mandates have their heart in the right place (student achievement), but don't have the necessary funding and support pieces to help schools make this a reality. We're going to have to reach out more to the community. I hope it will reach back.

Labels: articles, schools

There is a very long article by Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) in the May issue of the New Yorker about how we might think that Big Ideas are rare, but that they might be fairly common. It is well worth the investment of reading time as it is a celebration of ideas and the sheer joy of thinking. Thinking about what? Anything and everything. The kind of rambling thinking that happens when you get people together and just let the conversation flow. Real and true brainstorming---the very sort that fills you with energy and makes you believe you can change the world.

I've been thinking about what this might mean to the educational arena. All of the examples in the article are more science or business related: what happens when you bring together smart people with diverse backgrounds and give them an idea to play with. Can we do this with schools, too? We're so regimented in our ways. We depend on tried and true (with good reason). If we have students we aren't reaching, why don't we get together and brainstorm instead? Why do we constantly seek to eliminate possibilities and deduce a solution rather than go out with our colleagues for a pitcher of beer and a conversation?

My hunch is that most people would say that we don't have the time to do so. Does this mean that we are too busy to think? Or, even sadder, that we don't value the creativity that comes in engaging our brains?

Labels: articles

I was reading an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times called How Lies Live in Your Head and it reminded me of one of my favourite demos to do with my students. This exercise comes from Marilee Sprenger's book How to Teach So Students Remember.

• Tell the group that you are going to say a list of terms. They should just listen to the words, not write them down.
• Slowly read the following list: nap, dream, bed, moon, rest, night, snooze, blanket, slumber, drowsy, lie down, pillow, snore, evening, quiet.
• After the list has been read, chat with the group for a moment about memory. (Perhaps some will have played "hidden objects" games before.) The goal is to have most of the list you read moved out of working memory.
• Tell the group that you are now going to "test" them on how well they remember the terms. Ask them to raise their hands if they remember you saying the word dream. What about sleep? Most, if not all, will raise their hands for both. Remind the group that you did not say the word sleep. Why does your brain think it heard the word?

Fortunately or unfortunately, it is surprisingly simple to plant false memories into our brains. The example above deals with associations. The piece in the Times is focused more on presidential campaign "lies" and why both candidates and voters come to believe certain things.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true...

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

One quote that I keep in my workspace at all times is the Thomas Cardinal Wolsey admonition to "Be very very careful what you put into that head, because you will never ever get it back out." This statement was made ~500 years ago, which gives a certain amount of credence to the idea that things happening in Henry VIII's court were likely not all that much less political than our own climate. In the classroom, I am amazed at the number and variety of misconceptions students hold about various science concepts...and the resistance to let those go. Maybe for teachers, it isn't as much about replacing "bad" memories as it is about infusing "good" ones. Can we do more to exploit the brain's abilities to help our students?

Labels: articles, student learning

News media in the area are running a story about a mother who may be charged with neglect after she locked her son out of the house for four hours. The boy had snuck out. She suspects he steals things from her and smokes pot. She called the police and asked that they take him to juvy because he wouldn't follow her rules. The police declined, but did take him into protective custody because he wasn't appropriately dressed to be outside for an extended time.

The comments people are leaving about this story are tragic. A sample is below (including misspellings or other errors):

• Let us hope the community rallies around the mother if the facts of this story are true. It's time for parents to tell the police, the state, the ACLU to keep out of the discipling of our children so that parents can teach them a lesson. If the kids don't like it, don't disrespect nor ignore the rules in which your parents lay out for you. I hope the kid goes to juvinile detention.
• They better leave her alone. If a 15 year old disobeys his mom, he deserves to be locked out! Let the little brat learn a lesson. Do the coppers want to coddle delinquents now? The mother needs support from the law!
• I just tell my "kids" who are having a hard time with the rules that if they leave the house without permission I call the cops and say they are runaways. If they do not want to live in the house and follow the rules find someplace that will put up with their nonsense. Most decide to stay because they know what it is like out there. The other part to this is we have to find a way to communicate. I also will take them for a drug test if I suspect they are doing drugs. That is the real wake up call for some. It is not easy but if we don't teach our kids that we are the ones in control they walk all over us. I was once told by a social worker that it was ok to lock a kid out of my house when I was going to be gone. So what are parents to do?
• KUDOS to you mom...and keep it up! Next step...file an At Risk Youth Petition!!! All of us mothers and fathers of these out of control kids need to take back our rights!Unfortunately the "system" here tends to side with the kids...while we as parents are financially and legally responsible for the little buggers actions! The county doesn't care that the kid may have smoked dope! We hauled our kid in while in possession of dope and what happens? Sherriffs office tells us that technically it is US who is in possession at that moment and that they should be arresting US, and to take our kid home!! BTW, you can now buy at home drug tests with immediate results at Walgreens. And when you do call them in as a runaway to 911, make sure Cencon doesn't "lose" the call! Thinking I might need to start a support group for parents of cr@ppy teens....hmm.
• I, myself would sign a petition to get the parents' rights back! SPOILED, rotten teens and children are now taking things WAY too far these days, and are allowed to get away with FAR too much! And what is there for punishment? Take away their TV? So they run away....and then blame US for not letting them back IN!? Punish US for putting our foot down on the bad behavior!? The kid was by NO means freezing to death! Uncomfortable? I don't DOUBT it! Hypothermic? No. The little S**T decided to strut his big, bad self around town with his pals in DEFIANCE of the mother and was JUSTLY punished for it! What's left to do but lock the little brats out?! We can't SPANK any longer! God FORBID we even THINK of it! CPS would be called IMMEDIATELY, whether we did or NOT! Simply for the THREAT of it! And WHO would be in trouble with the law for even the THREAT!? The PARENT! Because little Suzy or Timmy didn't like the THOUGHT of not getting their way and the decided to cry "wolf" or lie through their teeth saying they WERE spanked! I say KUDOS to the mamma for teaching this little brat a lesson! SHAME on the state for attempting to prosecute! SHAME on you! It's you and your child-lenient laws that are allowing society go down the shi**er!
• Have the kid emancipated & give him sui juris rights. Then the mother can move on with her life & not have to worry about the brat living in her house or being responsible for him anymore.
• By the looks of this story, if it correct; Dad is MIA. Even IF he is in the home, he is obviously ABSENT. The lefty liberals say "It takes a village to raise a child", but this is the fallacy. The lefty liberal villagers are really a pack of rabid, ravenous wolves dressed and police officers, school teachers / couselors, child protective service workers, newspaper writers, procecutors, lawyers, and judges salivating for the opportunity to tear down, apart and to peices a single mom, struggling to raise an adopted, fatherless, outta control young man. Tear apart the very last remaining remnant of faimily, as surely and skillfully as the hands of the abortionist. Instead to helping, protecting, serving the community, repairing, and reconciling they lay in wait then viscously attack us, the hands that feeds them.
• This woman should be made an example of. She adopted the kid and acts as though he is disposable. Cute little foster kids turn into teenagers eventually! Lock her up and let this kid go back to his real family.
• Some liberal hack of a teacher/counselor probably filled the kid's head with all kinds of crap regarding his "rights" so he pulls this BS on his mom. Kudos to mom for putting her foot down and showing the future miscreant who lays down the law in the home. The prosecutors had better have more important things to do with their time than harass this mother, she has enough problems as it is.
• Sounds to me the kid needs a good spank. Of course that would be child abuse.

Now, I understand that people who choose to comment on news stories do not represent the full spectrum of population any more than people who comment on blogs. That being said, the "liberal hack of a teacher" in me finds this whole situation sad. There is so much more to the story than can be covered in the news. Whatever is happening in that house isn't good for mom or kid, and I don't think a knee-jerk reaction on either part is going to make a difference. It's hard to tell based on the comments for the story, but I'm hoping that I'm not in the minority.

Labels: articles, teens

School is still in session in this part of the world and end of year duties are keeping me hopping. There are panicked parents of seniors (who are not worried at all that they might not earn enough credits to graduate...but should be). There are crabby students, stressed with the thought of finals and that this cold and ugly weather might last all summer (It won't.). Familiarity is breeding contempt. This is also true for the elementary school. The fever pitch which comes with the end of the year is doing its best to drag us under.

An article in Teacher Magazine about the (ab)use of energy drinks by overscheduled teens caught my eye this week. I have several students in my first period class which are happy addicts. "Monster" is their drug of choice. While I don't like that they have the need to get themselves hopped up on sugar and caffeine, I also can't argue much when I see plenty of others with their lattes or Mountain Dew. I have always assumed that energy drinks are worse in terms of the amounts of caffeine provided, but perhaps those concerns are unfounded: "Some of the drinks contain less caffeine than some brands of coffee. Red Bull and Monster — two of the most popular energy drinks on the market — each have about 80 mg per 8 ounces. A 32-ounce Big Gulp of Mountain Dew contains about 146 mg — comparable to a 16-ounce can of Monster."

As you might imagine, there are still people out there who want to ban the sale of energy drinks to teens; but how does one define the difference between an energy drink and pop/coke/soda? What is it that is actually bad about these? My hunch is that the sugar may be more of an issue than the caffeine, but I'm not sure. I do know that while the sales of juice, milk, or diet soda are okay in schools here before noon, regular soda is not. However, the amounts of sugar in some juices (or fat in whole milk...or sugar in chocolate milk) could be listed as an issue. How do we determine the characteristics of a "healthy" beverage?

What I also didn't realize was that many college age students are combining energy drinks with booze so that "they can drink longer without feeling drunk and drink more without feeling drunk." A true recipe for disaster via alcohol poisoning...and perhaps more accidents on the roads.

I suppose I need to do more to educate myself about the effects of caffeine on teens. I really don't know if there are any worthwhile studies out there. And I don't feel comfortable railing at kids about putting down the coffee, energy drinks, or Mountain Dew without trying to help them see effects other than addiction.

As for me, I'm definitely overscheduled at the moment. And listless. But I'm not willing to go the energy drink route (I rarely do the caffeine thing). It would seem that the better solution is to decrease the number of responsibilities---not amp up the brain to deal with everything in a harried way.

Labels: articles, teens

The faculty at Stanford Law School voted last week to approve a grade reform proposal that would eliminate letters and replace them with four levels of achievement. The decision came after a long period of discussion among students and faculty that weighed issues such as collegiality, anxiety and fairness. The debate may be spreading to other law schools across the country.

Stanford’s new system — which will award grades of honors, pass, restricted credit and no credit — resembles that at Yale Law School and Berkeley Law School.

Those who support the change at Stanford argue that shifting from the precision of letter grades to broader categories will reduce some pressure and refocus students’ and professors’ energies on classroom learning. Others worry that de-emphasizing students’ GPAs could disadvantage them with potential employers, although that hasn’t proven to be an issue with new Yale or Berkeley lawyers.

“The new system includes a shared norm for the proportion of honors to be awarded in both exam and paper courses. No grading system is perfect, but the consensus is that the reform will have significant pedagogical benefits, including that it encourages greater flexibility and innovation in the classroom and in designing metrics for evaluating student work,” wrote Stanford Law dean Larry Kramer to students and faculty in an e-mail on Thursday.

There's a whole lot more to be found in the Inside Higher Ed article on Stanford Law dropping letter grades. Is it possible that standards-based grading is making its first forays into universities? As you might imagine, there is some trepidation expressed in the article. Maybe Stanford and Yale can get away with doing this because of who they are.

“Good for them, but this fluffy grading is the luxury of schools in like the Top 5 where grades don’t matter as much anyway,” wrote one commenter. “If you went to a 20-something school like I did, you need to be able to show you were in the top-whatever % of your class to get into BigLaw, let alone Federal clerkships.”

Fluffy grading? You mean grading based on learning? Learning which is collaborative and not competitive? Grading that's fair?

Bring on the fluff.

Labels: articles, grading

I was reading an article asking "Can you become a creature of new habits?" from the New York Times. My answer to the title was "I'm trying...at least in some areas of life."

All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unawares. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life...

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

While I can't claim to be adventurous in all areas of my life, I do find that I am willing to "stretch" professionally. The William Wordsworth quote which kicks off the article seems to highlight the frustrations I have with most of my peers (and groupthink at large within the district): "Not choice, but habit, rules the unreflecting herd."

So, what do we do about that? How do we help our peers move from a comfort zone to a stretch zone...without stressing them? What are the most important areas for this? Technology? Grading? Instruction?

And for kids? If their brains are going to "pick two by puberty," which ones do we want most deeply ingrained? The article suggests that the current standards-based climate emphasizes the first two...but I'm thinking that one from the first pair and one from the second pair might be more valuable. In truth, I like the second pair (collaboration, innovation) best; but having worked with a few people who fit that description, I can say that it's frustrating. You never actually get to a point where you can make actual plans and figure out the details. Mind you, all of the ways of forming habits are available throughout a lifetime---but they are not equally relied upon. As teachers, which do we value most in our students?

You cannot have innovation, unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder. How do you help yourself make that move?

Labels: articles, change

My school district blocks wikis of all creeds and colours---including wikipedia---because it considers them to be equivalent to blogs. And we can't have kids engaged in meaningful reading/writing through social networking, now can we? The horror of it all.

I admit that I have often looked askance at wikipedia. What I've come to realize over the years, however, is that the quality of information is really not all that different from previous incarnations of the encyclopedia (Who wrote "World Book," fer cryin' out loud?). This means that students just need to remember to treat what's written there as they would any secondary source. After finishing Here Comes Everybody, I have acquired another layer of understanding about wikipedia. It's a kind of social contract (or "bargain" as Clay Shirky calls it) in that while anyone can edit pages in wikipedia, you are more likely to find reliable information than not. This is because it may take a lot of effort to come up with poor entries, but only a moment to delete them and replace with higher quality items.

I had been thinking about how nice it would be to use this in the classroom. What a great tool to be able to use with students---give them an article from wikipedia, have them verify what they can, and perhaps even improve the writing and information. Alas, my district will never see it that way...but other campuses do. From Deborah Jones' recent article for AFP:

Wikipedia the upstart Internet encyclopedia that most universities forbid students to use, has suddenly become a teaching tool for professors. Recently, university teachers have swapped student term papers for assignments to write entries for the free online encyclopedia.

Writing for Wikipedia "seems like a much larger stage, more of a challenge," than a term paper, said professor Jon Beasley-Murray, who teaches Latin American literature at the University of British Columbia.

"The vast majority of Wikipedia entries aren't very good," said Beasley-Murray, but said the site aims to be academically sound.

To reach its goal of academic standards, said Wikipedia's web site, it set up an assessment scale on its English-language site. The best encyclopedia entries are ranked as "Featured Articles," and run each day on the home page at www.wikipedia.com.

To be ranked as a "Featured Article," Wikipedia said an entry must "provide thorough, well-written coverage of their topic, supported by many references to peer-reviewed publications."

Of more than 10 million articles in 253 languages, only about 2,000 have reached "Featured Article" status, it said.

As an experiment, last January Beasley-Murray promised his students a rare A+ grade if they got their projects for his literature course, called "Murder, Madness and Mayhem," accepted as a Wikipedia "Featured Article."

In May, three entries created by nine students in the course became the first student works to reach Wikipedia's top rank.

Beasley-Murray said the projects took the students four months, and one entry was revised 1,000 times.

Typically, thousands or millions of people visit a Wikipedia entry, and each visitor is able to edit entries, or even flag an article considered unworthy to have it removed.

Working online with anyone watching or editing "was really hard to get into," said Eva Shiu, a third-year student who worked on the Marquez entry. "But it was really exciting, and I feel like I've accomplished something," she told AFP.

"I got addicted to it ... I was up nights until three or four a.m. in the morning working on it."

Monica Freudenreich, who worked on the Asturias entry, said she liked the fact her contribution will survive online. Usually term papers "end up in a binder than eventually sits under my bed," she wrote on Wikipedia.

The University of British Columbia entries are among some 70 academic projects now registered at Wikipedia, by institutions from Yale University to the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Wikipedia itself invites professors "to use Wikipedia in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works (or doesn't)."

But the experiment has had controversies, including student work that was instantly deleted as not "notable."

"Sometimes it's a disaster," said Beasley-Murray. "But in some ways it's good news ... this was a great learning experience for students."

Too bad it can't be the same for the kids in my classroom.

Labels: articles, student learning, technology

Grading is still a topic near and dear to my heart. I haven't written much about it recently---being swamped with end of year school travails and trying to get data collected for my doctoral study. However, I have been keeping an eye out for news in this area. If interested, you might enjoy having a look, too.

• Some parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, want the grading scale changed so that their children have a leg up on college entrance. They're not interested in what the grade represents or changing anything happening in the classroom---they just want to manipulate the scale itself to make students appear more attractive to higher ed. Colleges won't catch on, right? The title of the article in the WaPo is "Schools to Study Grading Practices," but the bottom line is that this is not what is really going to happen.
• Meanwhile, over at The Faculty Room, there has been a series of posts addressing the question of How do we get beyond the unthinking habits of grading? The responses range from looking to electronic gradebooks as culprits to a lack of consideration about what a grade should mean. Read the whole series, if you can.
• Speaking of electronic gradebooks, some parents are using the web access feature of some of these to watch their child's progress like the stock market. Is having this level of "transparency" about grades really a good idea? Check out I Know What You Did Last Math Class for more details.
  

Labels: articles, grading

Two disconnected articles recently caught my eye as I paged through my RSS feeds. The first one, Male Call: Recruiting More Men to Teach Elementary School, was of interest not just because I am spending my days in an elementary which has only one male teacher...but also because I wondered if anything had changed since I blogged about this very same topic three years ago. The short answer is "no." The interesting part of the more recent article was found in the comments. Many of the commenters blamed low pay as the reason few men are attracted to the profession. It makes me wonder if that is because of some sort of societal expectation that is different from what I posted about in days of yore. Is the pressure on men to perform financially so great that teaching isn't an appealing career option?

Education Week had a different take on things, not confining the pay issue to a particular gender, although they recognize The Teaching Penalty.

Back in 1960, women teachers were paid 14.7 percent more than other women with similar educations. But that trend reversed, and by 2000, women teachers were being paid 13.2 percent less than their educational peers in other fields. Indeed, over the past 10 years the latter trend has accelerated; the pay gap that was a 4.3 percent shortfall in 1996 became a 15.1 percent chasm for all teachers by 2006—a growth of 10.8 percentage points. Teachers were bypassed by the strong wage growth of the late 1990s and, more recently, continued to lose ground while college-graduate wages stagnated.

The rising pay gap will make it difficult to recruit teachers—and present an even more daunting challenge in retaining them. For teachers starting their careers—those between the ages of 25 and 34—the 12 percent pay penalty today is only 0.5 percentage points larger than that of their peers in 1996. But for women who are experienced teachers—those ages 45 to 54—the pay deficit has grown by 18 percentage points over the same period.

Sure, some say that teaching is such a unique profession that it is impossible to compare it with other occupations. But our study took pains to account for the special circumstances surrounding teachers’ pay and benefits. Because teachers’ annual work schedules are different from those of other professions, we compared wages earned for a week of work, rather than the entire year.

Since teachers may receive relatively generous health insurance and retirement benefits, we took total compensation into account—and found that it narrowed the pay gap by just 3 percentage points in 2006. In other words, the 15 percent weekly pay disadvantage based on wages alone translates to a 12 percent disadvantage when you factor in benefits. That’s not enough to transform the big picture, or the big point: Teaching just doesn’t pay nearly as well as the alternatives.

I haven't seen an article which takes a look at the pay issue this way, but I like the approach. It makes sense to include benefits as a factor. Either way, the results aren't pretty.

Maybe it isn't a matter of gender specific issues in terms of what both attracts teachers to the profession and what makes them stay. It is the concrete rewards in terms of money (and what it can provide) and recognition.

Labels: articles, gender, teachers

When I taught in New Mexico, we had all of the eighth and ninth graders in the city. It was the largest junior high in the state---1200 adolescents and a few dozen adults managing things as best we could. Why the kids never realized that they outnumbered us by far and took over the school is still a mystery to me.

The ninth graders were earning high school credits and, in theory, they were supposed to have a certain number of these before moving up to the high school. There was a flaw in this plan, however: some students were becoming perpetual ninth graders. More often than not, it was due to poor skills, but some kids preferred to flunk and hang around to deal drugs to the new crop of kids each fall. It was finally determined that if a student was 17, they had to go to the high school---credits or no credits. (And yes, there were 17 year old freshmen each year.)

I was reminded of this when reading an article in the Washington Post about a DC area school which is experiencing something very similar. Due to a confluence of factors, they are finding out that 17 year old boys don't belong in the same school with 12 year old girls...especially when some of those are students from the local juvenile detention facility. (We had the same deal in Carlsbad.) To its credit, however, the DC school has managed to make a lot of positive changes in its organization and delivery of instruction. It may be that the age vs. credit dilemma will always be part of the public school system. We just need to keep looking for solutions.

Labels: articles, teens

I hope not to burst anyone's bubble here, but the Brady kids might not be a representative sample of child behavior in blended families. In fact, Science Daily is reporting that "on average, adolescents living with half- or stepsiblings have lower grades and more school-related behavior problems, and these problems may not improve over time."

"We cannot assume that over time, children will naturally 'adjust' to the new roles and relationships that arise when families are blended," [Tillman] said. "This research indicates that the effects of new stepsiblings or half siblings may actually become more negative over time or, at the least, remain consistently negative."

Part of what makes stepfamily life difficult for young people is the complexity, ambiguity and stress that come with having nontraditional siblings living in the same home, she said. Stepsiblings who are living together may also engage in, or at least perceive, more competition for parental time, attention and resources than full siblings.

In addition to stressful life changes and ambiguous family roles, stepfamily formation leads to the introduction of a new parent-figure who may be less willing or able to invest in a child's development and academic success, Tillman said. Stepparent-child relationships tend to be more conflict ridden than relationships with biological parents, and stepparents tend to offer children less parental support, closeness and supervision. The presence of a stepparent also generally leads to a decline in the amount of attention and supervision children receive from the biological parent with whom they live. (You can read the whole article here.)

I've been trying to think about whether or not my own classroom experiences would provide anecdotal evidence about this study. I have had an abundance of students over the years who had step- or half-siblings. Maybe that is why it is so difficult to call to mind any specific instances...or be able to differentiate enough between students who have grade and/or behaviour issues. Or maybe (right or wrong) when I look at a kid, their family composition isn't among those things which first come to mind.

In the end, I suppose the idea of such a factor on classroom performance becomes one of those "So what?" sorts of things. It's something to be aware of, but I don't have any influence over it. It's not up to me which parents marry and bring kids under one roof. I suppose I just teach them the best I can...and hope they'll defy the odds.

Labels: articles, student learning

Washington has (finally) finished its math standards revision---at least for k-8. This is the segment I'm most interested in, and I have to say that I like what I see. (You can learn more here about about the new standards, if you like.) The language has been cleaned up. It is very clear what a child should know and be able to do in terms of meeting the standards. Teachers no longer have to guess whether or not kids "understand" certain things. As an instructional coach working with elementary teachers in the realm of math, I feel much relieved about the new standards. (We'll see where the new curriculum choices lead us.)

In terms of math instruction, the New York Times recently reported a study suggesting that the fewer real-world examples of math used, the better. This might seem counter-intuitive to what we usually think about the relevance of learning, but it may be that students get caught up in remembering the "two trains leaving A and B..." parts and not so much in how speed and direction are important. A severe limitation of this study was that it was conducted with college age students. The authors want to generalize to younger students, but I'm not sure that this would bear out. It would be interesting to see, however, so I hope that more research is done.

Labels: articles, instruction, standards

An editorial in the Detroit News caught my eye this week. There's definitely some hyperbole involved, but that just makes it all the more interesting. Here's the start:

Detroit Public Schools teachers are following a suicidal path if the union members continue to be the major obstacle to reforming the city's schools.

They have to accept their share of the responsibility for the district's failure and recognize their jobs depend on regaining the confidence of parents who are increasingly choosing other education options.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers is among the country's most militant education unions. It has fought efforts to improve teacher quality, instructional rigor and more effective spending. The union's resistance to change, combined with the incompetence of Detroit administrators, has placed the school system at risk.

There are plenty of articles and reports out there about the decline in the public school system in the city. Nancy over at Teacher in a Strange Land has lived and worked in Michigan for many years and has her own unique insight on the issues. I can only look at things as an outsider as such, but the kinds of roadblocks described ring just as true here.

I'm not convinced that charter schools or other private initiatives will solve any of the problems. We still have the same students, families, and accountability measures. In many cases, we have the same teachers and administrators. I would agree that significant changes to the system may be necessary, but I think its shameful that the schools themselves don't make the push for it.

Those Detroit teachers who want a better working model and better results from their classrooms should not allow themselves to be held hostage by union factions.

The union is holding leadership elections this fall. Teachers who want change should use those elections to make an impact. Currently, militant members tend to control the union.

But in other cities, teachers tired of their union's knee-jerk resistance to change are making their voices heard. And in some case, they're actually leading the reform movement.

In Los Angeles, teachers have voted to turn over their public school to a charter operator that puts students' needs first.

The New York United Federation of Teachers is teaming up with the charter school operator Green Dot to open a high-performing school. The Chicago affiliate is exploring such a venture as well. Green Dot is unionized, but under a contract that rewards performance rather than seniority.

AFT-Michigan President David Hecker says his union would be interested in working with Green Dot to transform an existing troubled Michigan public school. It's a small step, but potentially an important one.

By now, Detroit teachers must realize the path they're on leads to destruction. Their tired cry for more state money has gone unanswered and, given the economy, will continue to be. Their only hope for maintaining their jobs, and what for many is their life's calling, is to embrace reform.

Teachers who wield union contracts to block changes that could benefit students will find themselves on the street, and that's where they belong.

Meanwhile, a school board member in an area district has resigned because union leadership there has harassed her family and her to the point where she can't continue because she is "unwilling to subject [her] innocent children to organized abuse by this teachers union." For more on area union woes, click on over to see what Dr. Pezz and Ryan have been dealing with. Teachers in right-to-work states should be envied.

Labels: articles, union

At least once a week when I arrive at my afternoon job, I can smell the school lunch from the parking lot. The intense aroma of garlic wafted across as it simmered in spaghetti sauce this past Monday...the seasoned breading on the chicken bits greeted me on Thursday. I have to say that I have had this experience nowhere else. The school lunch actually smells appealing. (I can only imagine how breakfast must be since I am not there in the mornings.) Considering that ~85% of our kids are eligible for free/reduced lunch, it's a good thing that the food can stimulate the senses as well as fill the stomach. No food is actually cooked in our school---the bulk of the work is done elsewhere in the district and then trucked over to us. Warming ovens (or refrigerators) keep the food in a ready state for everyone until serving time. The lunchroom is a buzzing place. Kids know how to enter their number into the keypads, pick up their trays, and get their food. For those of you who haven't been in a school cafeteria as of late, you will notice that milk no longer comes in cartons. It actually comes in bags like the one pictured above. You'll just have to imagine the scene with hungry children stabbing straws into these.

I have been thinking about the importance of our lunchroom because of some recent articles about the federal school lunch program. Susan Levine has a new book out with a historical perspective on the program (full review can be found here):

Nutrition advocates who wanted to see all children, rich and poor, fed nutritious lunches had to settle for “a school lunch program that was designed primarily as an outlet for surplus food.” Though the program would benefit millions of children, it was not especially well designed. In great part, the food that came to lunchrooms consisted of whatever happened to be in surplus at the moment, be it dried beans, beets, or butter. The program was housed in the Department of Agriculture, so farmers’ interests came first, and the Department did little to oversee states’ operation of their lunch programs. Indeed, from their perches on the Senate agriculture committee, Russell and his colleague, Allen Ellender, saw to it that states’ rights were defended from federal intrusion. State and local officials were free to set whatever criteria they pleased for participation in the program.

More fundamentally, and perhaps surprisingly, the program simply was not designed to feed all the children that needed to be fed. Federal appropriations were not pegged to the number of needy children, and states were required to contribute matching funds, which often were raised by charging pupils for lunch. The program provided no aid to old schools that lacked cafeterias. So, many nonwhite, poor, and undernourished students in crumbling schools did without while white, middle-class kids in new buildings were able to purchase meals on the cheap.

Unfortunately, Levine’s narrative concludes without giving the reader a good sense of how well the school lunch program currently operates. We read that in the 1970s, it was turned into an entitlement program and put on permanent appropriation. We also learn that the feds’ underfunding of the program provoked local officials to start contracting out cafeteria operations to private providers, like Sodexho. The feds also get called out for loosening regulations to permit junk food vendors into the schools.

But the reader does not get the sense that the program now works better than it ever did. Which it does. Agricultural interests, though potent, no longer dominate the program. Today, most of the federal support for the program comes in the form of cash, not surplus food. Administrative tweaks have helped to reduce discrimination and create more uniform operations nationwide.

Still, the program is not what it could be. Since Levine wrote a straight history, she did not include any suggestions for improving the program. So, for the sake of provoking discussion, please allow me to suggest a few possible reforms. First, make the National School Lunch Program free to all children. This would wipe out the stigma that deters children from participating in the program, and would also save localities heaps of paperwork. Second, decouple the program from the surplus commodity program entirely. Children should eat food that is good for them, not what farm lobbyists want them to eat. Third, require the federal government to pay the full cost of the meals served and forbid schools from having vending machines and ala carte dining. No parent of any sense allows her kid to choose pizza over broccoli and to graze on junk food each day. Why should schools? Fourth, have the federal government deliver the federal school lunch dollars directly to each child in the form of a meal debit card, good for one school lunch per day. This would cut reams of red tape and goad schools into serving desirable meals that meet current national nutritional standards.

Meanwhile, over at the WaPo, the current economic considerations of the program are raising some concerns about just how much families who pay can actually afford for a school lunch.

Each year Uncle Sam, in an effort to ensure the neediest children get healthy meals, gives schools a little more cash to help feed students. But school officials nationwide say the federal share hasn't kept pace with rising costs. This year, the U.S. Agriculture Department is giving schools $2.47 per lunch to serve free meals to children from the poorest families, up from $2.40 last year, a 3 percent increase. In the same time, milk prices rose about 17 percent and bread nearly 12 percent.

The federal government provides $2.07 per meal for students eligible for a reduced-price lunch and 23 cents a meal for students who pay full price. Schools also receive some foods, including meat, cheese and canned goods, purchased by the federal government.

School meal programs across the country are run somewhat like restaurants, relying on federal and state subsidies and profits from meal and snack sales and catering services to buy food and pay workers. Rising labor costs, coupled with the recent push for healthier meals, which has meant serving higher-priced foods such as whole grain breads and fresh vegetables, has squeezed budgets. Soaring food prices make it even harder to break even. "We do not want to serve our students highly refined sugar and flour products, which are more affordable," Parham told the House Education and Labor Committee, "but we are continually being pushed down this path."

Matt has a much better summary of all of this than I could hope to write here. At the moment, I'm just trying to think about what all of this will mean with the youngsters I work with each day. Will it mean smaller servings? Less nutritional food? Fewer students eligible for meals? For some of our kids, the breakfast and lunch served by the school is all they get to eat. We have kids who try to hoard leftovers (although the rule is that no food is allowed to leave the cafeteria) because they're just plain hungry...and it's a long time between Friday's lunch and Monday's breakfast. Is this what a 7-year old brain needs to be focusing on?

Labels: articles, equity, students

A recent summit at the American Museum of Natural History made the case for the support of a "science generation" as a national imperative. The idea was noble enough---how can science education be improved and what is needed to make change happen---but after reading the summary in Education Week, I'm not so sure that the discussion moved things in the right direction. Here's a summary of the major ideas that were proposed:

• a laptop for every child
• more college science scholarships, new programs to train science teachers, and more research funding
• national standards for science

First of all, I'm not convinced that America is ever going to be able to compete with China and India in terms of the science, math, and technology workforce we develop. It has nothing to do with smarts, and everything to do with sheer numbers. This doesn't mean that science isn't an important area for children to engage and for citizens to develop an understanding of---but rather that should be the goal in and of itself.

Secondly, all of the ideas listed above will have absolutely no impact on student achievement in science unless classroom instruction changes. Just because every student has a laptop does not mean that teachers will give up their overhead projectors and whiteboards. Ditto for standards. They are the end, not the means. And all of the scholarship and professional development money in the world will make no difference if that doesn't make permanent changes to they way science in the classroom is currently presented.

I certainly support NSF funding (with significant increases), but if Congress and private business really want to make a difference at the public school classroom level, they need to provide money for strategies and practices that support student learning.

Labels: articles, science, student learning

The field of education is replete with "educationese": all manner of terms which make us feel special and enlightened. They are the pretentious secret handshake of the profession. It was with great relief that one of the terms associated with grading is not nearly as precious as "transparent" or "capacity." It is darned plain. The word is "hodgepodge," and it is used to refer to a single grade which represents both learning and student behavior (e.g. on-time work, effort...).

Hodgepodge was the first word to come to mind when I read the piece in the WaPo on Do Grades or Standardized Test Scores Make the Student? The mother writing in is distraught because even though her son is topping out on AP tests, the SAT, and other standardized indicators---he is having trouble getting into college because his GPA is only a 3.275. Why is there the disparity? Because her son doesn't do his homework. He knocks the top off the classroom tests---he shows that he knows the information---but he doesn't play the game. Therefore, his teachers average in a lot of zeros. Their grades represent the hodgepodge problem. If they only considered learning, the child would have a 4.0.

This is very common with secondary school teachers---there is plenty of research out there documenting just how very unwilling they are to let go of hodgepodge grading. The primary reason cited is that teachers believe that work ethic behaviors are important. I agree with this, but I don't agree that they belong with a grade for learning. They should be reported separately. As a teacher, do you care more that the student has learned the material...or that he learned it in exactly the way you prescribed at the specific moment in time you prescribed it?

It is my suspicion that hodgepodge grading tends to play "Gotcha!" with boys (especially gifted boys) more than any other population. (This would be another great research project for someone.) I've had any number of young men over the years who refused to do their homework, but could ace any test. Punishment by zeros was in no way motivating. They had their own learning goals and that was that. I sense a similar attitude in the young man described in the WaPo article and also in something happening to Ms. Bees (read Part I and Part II of "Wonder Mother"). A young man turned in a project late: "He received a 248 out of 250 before the 50% penalty. The note I left him on his project indicated how disappointing it was for me to have to give such a low mark to such a good project, and that I hoped he would manage his time better in the future." Guess what? Mom is upset now---as she should be. In this case, Ms. Bees is only applying the grading practice set forth by the mentor teacher she is paired with, but one hopes that this lesson becomes more instructive about best practices in grading rather than parent dodging---because frankly, the practice (long-standing or not) is indefensible.

I would love to relegate the word "hodgepodge" to the same dustbin in which other educationese terms belong, but I don't see that its application is going to disappear anytime soon. As long as teachers---and colleges---continue to value grades more than learning, hodgepodge will be part of the classroom.

Labels: articles, educationese, gender, grading

...five miles a day in cardboard shoes....and so on. Have you been waiting to pass along this rant to a child who complains about having to walk between home and school? You might have to wait to pass along this chestnut for a lot longer. Kids aren't walking to school anymore.

It's not necessarily because they're spoiled, lazy or over scheduled. According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or biked to school in 2004, compared to more than 50 percent who did so in 1969.

Why? Part of it is the structure of the environment---fewer sidewalks and tree-lined streets are built these days. Some of it is distance. Although not described in this current article, I remember seeing a study describing that the new cul-de-sac and other neighborhood layouts discourage walkers because it takes longer to get to stores and schools than a traditional block plan.

It seems a shame to know that this piece of cultural history is declining, but I do notice that fewer and fewer sidewalks and safe places for kids to walk are being built these days. If you see the same thing in your area, encourage your neighbourhood to apply for a federal grant to build sidewalks. You can find more information on this and other safe route ideas at the National Center for Safe Routes to School organization.

Labels: articles, safety

I once saw the following saying posted in the faculty room of an elementary school: Somewhere in America, a future President of the United States is sitting in a classroom; let us hope she is having a nice day. When I think back to my own elementary experiences, I remember very few classmates ever mentioning that they wanted to be President (let alone girls), but there was always one---or at least somebody who had ambitions for a leadership role. According to the Washington Post, those days are gone. Many potential leaders of tomorrow are rejecting the idea.

A survey commissioned by the Girl Scouts of America included a random sample of more than 4,000 children ages 8 to 17. The youths defined leaders as people who prize collaboration, stand up for their beliefs and values, and try to improve society. It found that a majority of children and youths in the United States have little or no interest with achieving leadership roles when they become adults, ranking "being a leader" behind other goals such as "fitting in," "making a lot of money" and "helping animals or the environment."

There is further information in the article concerning some of the reasons cited by both gender and ethnic groups as to why they are either uncertain of their leadership abilities or unwilling to assume the role. If there's going to be more and more people choosing "follow" or "get out of the way," where will tomorrow's leaders come from?

Labels: articles

How much forward progress can we expect a school to make within a month? A year? Can we measure student achievement in terms of weeks...or do we need a broader time span to adequately assess any gains that are made? I wondered about this while reading Glimmers of Progress at a Failing School in a recent Sunday edition of the New York Times. It's about an elementary school in Newark which is now in its seventh year of being a "failing" school. There seems to be an abundance of anecdotal evidence that change is happening---but what will test scores show?

As I watch the day-to-day efforts of teachers and paraeducators to help support student learning, I think about how those tiny baby steps each session will eventually add up. The problem is, will anyone outside notice? A child receiving intensive interventions may double their score on progress monitoring tests, but still be within the range of intensive services. For kids who aren't yet able to meet the standards, it would appear that this type of progress is still worthy of recognition and celebration. It means the schools are on the right track. Change takes time. Schools didn't become failures overnight---and we can't expect that they will be exemplary at the snap of the fingers, either.

I worry about the staff who work so hard every day to help kids move forward. As a coach, I fret about their stamina---and how to nurture that---in the face of a world which doesn't recognize the little moves forward and just the big steps back. How do we make the fruits of their labours more tangible and easily recognized? What can we do to hold the impatience of achievement at bay?

Labels: articles, NCLB, schools

Are you not the firstborn child in your family? Did you always have a sneaking suspicion that the eldest child received more attention and privilege than you? You may very well have been right.

A new study by Joseph Price of BYU has concluded that on average, firstborn children between the ages of 4 and 13 get more than 3000 "quality" hours of time with their parents than do their siblings. Quality time with parents includes minutes spent together on such activities as homework, meals, reading, playtime, sports, teaching, arts, religion and conversation.

Why parents spend less time with children as a family ages was not studied, but Price offered some reasons, including fatigue, age and a waning novelty. Another factor is that as the firstborn ages and has more "appointments" (school, soccer, playdates...), that tends to drive the family schedule.

As a classroom teacher, it is often obvious where kids fall in the birth order, especially the youngest. More than once, I've watched my attention-seekers and said, "I'll bet you're the baby of the family, aren't you?" Kids are always surprised. "How could you tell?" I suppose now I could use the graphic on the right to point out the number of minutes a day they've lost out on...and how they're trying to make up for it in my classroom.
There's much more to read and ponder in the article in the Washington Post on how Quality Time Seems Stacked in Favor of Firstborns.

Labels: articles, parents

• $275K salary? Check
• $2M consulting budget? Check
• Lincoln Town Car with driver? Check
• Bodyguard? Check

If you have these things, you too, can be the superintendent of Clayton County schools in Georgia.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Fewer qualified candidates, rising expectations, and a near-impossible job description are creating a new b