How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2” [Hake (2011d)].

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ABSTRACT: In my post “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions?” [Hake (2011c)], I wrote:

“. . . . demonstrations that the less-than-stellar value-added assessments of Korsunsky's high school and Stuyvesant High School are inequitable would require meaningful value-added measures such as normalized average pre-to-posttest gains on valid and consistently reliable tests of higher-order learning. . .”

Math-Teach's “Haim” responded: “The problem is that you are not sure what you are measuring."

NONSENSE! In the case of Harvard, the higher-order learning consisted of conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics.

Haim continued: “First, parents and students seem to know something about Stuyvesant that educator assessments clearly fail to discern. . . . . Second . . . very many of Stuyvesant's students graduate at a very high level (certainly by comparison to most other high school graduates) of academic achievement. . . . the real problem is transparent. It is the ceiling effect. . . .City-wide and state-wide assessments are simply not designed for academic institutions.”

The above has nothing whatsoever to do with the theme of my post: “It is conceivable that if there were ‘Eric Mazurs’ or ‘John Belchers’ at Korsunsky's high-school and the Stuyvesant High School, scenarios similar to that at Harvard and MIT might occur. . . . . [[i.e., realization that students were not learning much from traditional passive-student lecture methods followed by a switch to interactive-engagement pedagogy.]]. . . . , even though all those institutions are regarded as ‘elite.’ ”

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To access the complete 18 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/gxUOAb .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“Above all things we must be aware of what I will call ‘inert ideas’

- that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind

without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1929, 1965) in The Aims of Education

REFERENCES [URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 26 Jan 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “The Ceiling Effect #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/hUnHZe. Post of 12 Jan 2011 16:19:49-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/gLWr7W with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011b. “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/fN1HmD. Post of 18 Jan 2011 15:34:47-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/h23shQ with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011c. “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g25OHd. Post of 22 Jan 2011 14:50:14-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/gnLPjH with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011d. “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions – Response to Haim #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/gxUOAb. Post of 26 Jan 2011 16:14:36-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists. See also the relevant previous posts Hake (2011a,b,c)].

Whitehead, A.N. 1967. Aims of Education and other essays. Free Press. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/fIUbXB. First published in 1929. Note the “Look Inside” feature.

How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions?

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions?” [Hake (2011d)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a previous post “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” [Hake (2010b)] I implied that the less-than-stellar value-added rankings of Boris Korsunsky’s high school and Stuyvesant High School (each with top-tier reputations) were examples of “Value-Added Inequities.” I thank Catherine Johnson for correctly pointing out that those two appraisals were not necessarily inequitable - they could, in fact, be correct.

Two cases in point are the less-than-stellar value-added assessments of instruction at two elite institutions: (1) Eric Mazur's traditional 1990 calculus-based introductory course at Harvard, and (2) traditional introductory courses in electromagnetism a MIT. Both assessments are correct as judged by the value-added assessment provided by the average normalized pre-to-posttest gain on valid tests of students' conceptual understanding. Fortunately, in both cases “interactive engagement” pedagogy greatly improved normalized the pre-to-posttest gains in those courses: (1) Mazur switched to “Peer Instruction,” as is engagingly described by Mazur (2009) in “Confessions of a Converted Lecturer” on UTube at http://bit.ly/dBYsXh; and (2) John Belcher instituted TEAL (Technology Enabled Active Learning), as is cogently reported in the New Your Times by Sarah Rimer (2009) in “At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard” at http://nyti.ms/e3JtYN .

In my opinion, demonstrations that the less-than-stellar value-added assessments of Korsunsky's high school and Stuyvesant High School are inequitable would require meaningful value-added measures such as normalized average pre-to-posttest gains on valid and consistently reliable tests of higher-order learning developed by disciplinary experts, not the value-added measures that characterize “Race to the Top,” and that have been called into question by the many expert panels listed in my previous post “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?”

It is conceivable that if there were “Eric Mazurs” or “John Belchers” at Korsunsky's high-school and the Stuyvesant High School, scenarios similar to those at Harvard and MIT might occur, even though all those institutions are regarded as “elite.”

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To access the complete 36 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/g25OHd.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“I point to the following unwelcome truth: much as we might dislike the implications, research is showing that didactic exposition of abstract ideas and lines of reasoning (however engaging and lucid we might try to make them) to passive listeners yields pathetically thin results in learning and understanding - except in the very small percentage of students who are specially gifted in the field.” - Arnold Arons (1997, p. vii)

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 22 Jan 2011.]

Arons, A.B. 1997. Teaching Introductory Physics. Wiley. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/bBPfop . Note the searchable “Look Inside” feature.

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “The Ceiling Effect #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/hUnHZe . Post of 12 Jan 2011 16:19:49-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/gLWr7W with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011b. “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/fN1HmD. Post of 18 Jan 2011 15:34:47-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/h23shQ with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011c. “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/fAvRpA . Post of 19 Jan 2011 11:36:22 -0800 to AERA-L, EDDRA2, Math-Teach, Net-Gold, and PhysLnR.

Hake, R.R. 2011d. “How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g25OHd. Post of 22 Jan 2011 14:50:14-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists. See also Hake (2011 a,b,c).

The Ceiling Effect #2

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Ceiling Effect #2” [Hake (2011)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Sheila Tobias (2010) in a recent APS News “Back Page” editorial “Teachers in the Crosshairs. . .”: wrote:

“In Houston, where a new value-added formula is being used to grade teachers’ skills, ‘N.Y. Times’ education writer Sam Dillon found a high school physics teacher out of the running for high bonuses because, as she reported, ‘My kids come in at a very high level of competence, scoring well before the semester begins.’ After she teaches them for a year, they continue to score well on a state science test but show less measurable ‘gain’ than other classes, so her bonus is small compared with those of other teachers. The teacher has invented a term of her own to characterize this distortion. She calls it the ‘ceiling effect.’ We might call it a saturation effect.”

It's unfortunate that the teacher’s bonus assigners were not aware that it’s the “average normalized gain” [g] = ([%post] – [%pre]) / (100% - [%pre]) [the square brackets [. . .] indicate class averages], often used in physics education research, that can (in some cases) be used as a gauge of relative course effectiveness, NOT the absolute average gain [G] = ([%post] – [%pre]).

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To access the complete 11 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/hUnHZe .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net>

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 12 Jan 2010.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “The Ceiling Effect #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/hUnHZe . Post of 12 Jan 2011 16:19:49-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Tobias, S. 2010. “Teachers in the Crosshairs: The Impact of ‘School Choice,’ ‘Reform,’ and ‘Accountability’,” APS News 20(1), January; online at http://bit.ly/fc6jEj .