Scrap the iPads, Keep the Pianos, Get a Teacher #4

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Scrap the iPads, Keep the Pianos, Get a Teacher #4” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Superintendant of the Los Angeles Unified School District John Deasy http://bit.ly/1aq9KHo has initiated a controversial one-billion-dollar initiative to equip all students and teachers with iPads. In reaction, L.A. elementary-school teacher Jeff Lantos, wrote an opinion piece in the L.A. Times titled “Scrap the iPads, keep the pianos: Want a device that can inspire, critique and put on a show? Get a teacher” at http://bit.ly/1a9XmZP.

Therein Lantos, recalling his 1986 positive experience with an Apple-funded program at the Open Magnet School in West Hollywood (spearheaded by Alan Kay http://bit.ly/eQCb6t, which placed computers into elementary-school classrooms, first offered strong evidence FOR the value of computers in the classroom.

But then Lantos seemed to switch fields, arguing AGAINST computers in the classroom in comparison with teachers and pianos. Lantos opined that (a) “if one wants a device that can inspire, critique and put on a show, get a teacher,” and (b) if it were to be a choice between iPads and pianos he would scrap iPads and keep the pianos. Lantos ends his essay with: “I have a piano in my classroom. My students start each school day with 15 minutes of singing and dancing. In January, I conducted an experiment. I said to my students: ‘We’re facing drastic budget cuts. We have to get rid of either the 15 laptops or the piano. Which should it be?’ I don’t think I have to tell you the response.”

However, considering Lantos’ earlier-cited strong evidence for the value of computers in the classroom, it’s not clear that everyone would vote the same way as Lantos’ elementary-school pupils. Furthermore, considering the importance of education to the lives of people and to life on Planet Earth – see e.g., “ ‘Where is Everybody’ . . . .” [Hake (2013)] at http://bit.ly/H3roIC (6.8 MB) - the choice for the U.S. should not be to pick one, two, or none from among computers, pianos, and teachers, but to chose ALL three of those benefits and to work towards the reduction of poverty, the root causes of poor academic performance in the U.S. - see e.g., “Hake's Reading List on the Root Causes of Poor Academic Performance” [Ravitch (2013)] at http://bit.ly/12CKARz.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University. LINKS TO: Academia http://bit.ly/a8ixxm; Articles http://bit.ly/a6M5y0; Blog http://bit.ly/9yGsXh; Facebook http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm; GooglePlus http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE; Google Scholar http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3; Linked In http://linkd.in/14uycpW; Research Gate http://bit.ly/1fJiSwB; Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs http://bit.ly/9nGd3M; Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” - H. G. Wells (1920) in The Outline of History.


REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 28 Oct. 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Scrap the iPads, Keep the Pianos, Get a Teacher #4,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives http://bit.ly/1gVRfSv. Post of 28 Oct 2013 14:32:57-0400 to AERA-L and NetGold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Re: David Berliner on "A Nation at Risk" Three Decades of Lies #2

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Re: David Berliner on ‘A Nation at Risk’': Three Decades of Lies #2” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Diane Ravitch at http://bit.ly/13uNGbs has called attention to David Berliner's (2013) “Three Decades of Lies” at http://bit.ly/17ihWIM. “Teacherken” (aka Ken Bernstein) commented on Diane's blog entry (paraphrasing) “Berliner was right in Manufactured Crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1995/1996 at http://amzn.to/PGOfcT) about the ‘Nation at Risk’ report http://bit.ly/ZJ8Tyi of 30 years ago and is right today.” Berliner (2005, 2009) at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj, http://bit.ly/fqiCUA has also been right about “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children’s Educational Achievement” (Hake (2011, 2013) at http://bit.ly/tUU65W, http://bit.ly/XHnEzS.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Google Scholar http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm

"The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations' school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty."
- David Berliner (2005) in "Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform"

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 24 Apr 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Re: David Berliner on ‘A Nation at Risk’': Three Decades of Lies #2” online on the OPEN Net-Gold archives at http://yhoo.it/10dPm4V. Post of 24 Apr 2013 13:27:11-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Berliner, D.C. 2005. "Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform," Teachers College Record, August 02, online as an 872 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj. Berliner argues that: "poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law."

The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement - Redux

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children’s Educational Achievement – Redux”
[Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Among the 263 Comments (as of 4 March 2013 15:27-0800) on Diane Ravitch's (2013) blog entry “Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards” at http://bit.ly/XGpEpK was one by “Penny”" who wrote on 3 March 2013: “We know that poorer (lower socioeconomic) students tend to do poorer in school. How about looking at the true root cause.”

To look at the “true root cause” see, e.g., the poverty-related references from my complete post “The Contentious Common Core Controversy” [Hake 2013)] at http://bit.ly/Y7ocMv:

1. "Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success"[Berliner (2009)] at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA;

2. "Eight problems with Common Core Standards" [Brady (2012)] at http://wapo.st/15Z4kTg;

3. "The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement" [Hake (2011)] at http://bit.ly/tUU65W;

4. "For Obama's New Term, Start Here" [Kristof (2013)] at http://nyti.ms/WnEhU2;

5. "Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics" [Marder (2012)] at http://bit.ly/KPitWM (scroll down);

6. "Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance: Poverty, Literacy, and the Development of Information Capital" [Neuman & Celano (2012)] at http://bit.ly/ZVCsil
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Google Scholar http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm

“So much orchestrated attention is being showered on the Common Core Standards, the main reason for poor student performance is being ignored - a level of childhood poverty the consequences of which no amount of schooling can effectively counter.”
- Marion Brady (2012) at http://wapo.st/15Z4kTg.

REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 04 March 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement – Redux,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/XHnEzS. Post of 4 Mar 2013 15:38:45-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.




:

Effects of Poverty on U.S. Children’s Educational Achievement Redux

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Effects of Poverty on U.S. Children’s Educational Achievement Redux” [Hake (2013b)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Barriers to Better K-12 Math Education: Poverty and the Inadequate Undergraduate Education of Prospective K-12 Teachers” [Hake (2013a)] at http://bit.ly/V6azOZ. Ed Wall (2013b), in his Math-Learn post at http://yhoo.it/10CO8af, made 2 points: (1) My statement that Wall implied that the dumbing down of elementary school mathematics in the U.S. is due to Math Education Researcher's preoccupation with the secondary years is “more than a little un-thoughtful.” (2) His post “Re: Do We Learn All the Math We Need For Ordinary Life Before 5th Grade?” [Wall (2013a)] at http://yhoo.it/W6fn5y had more to do with (a) his agreement with David Hawkins - see signature quote - which Wall assumes I have refuted, and (b) people such as myself who “ ‘imply’ that children are less than capable because of their socioeconomic status.” [Non-subscribers to Math-Learn can access Wall’s post by taking a minute to “Join this List” at the Math-Learn archives http://yhoo.it/fF6D9w.]

Here I refute Wall’s 2 points with emphasis on Wall’s incorrect point 2b: “people such as myself ‘imply’ that children are less than capable because of their socioeconomic status.” On the contrary, I implied that children in poverty are less capable of academic achievement than children not in poverty.

I think that children in poverty are probably just as inherently capable as children not in poverty, but societal and home factors conspire against their academic achievement. For example many of them: (a) are subjected to poor teaching, (b) attend dilapidated schools with high student and teacher turnover, (c) have academically uninvolved parents, (d) partake of few out-of-school enrichment activities, (e) have limited access to books, (f) receive inadequate nutrition, (g) live in slums, (h) come from broken families, (i) are threatened by gang violence, (j) have few academic role models, and (k) suffer from environmental hazards such as lead poisoning.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

“. . .I will look primarily at our traditions and practices of early schooling through the age of twelve or so. There is little to come after, whether of joys or miseries, that is not prefigured in these years.”
- David Hawkins (2001) in The Roots of Literacy, p. 3.

“Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates. . . . . Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty”
- Ladd & Fiske (2011)

“For the short term, preparing teachers in mathematics and science is a wise and useful step toward improving schools. As quickly as possible, we must understand the link between poverty and educational outcomes in the U.S., devise solutions, and finally test and implement them. . . . . I hope that proponents of teacher quality and charter schools will recognize the weakness of a single-minded approach before it is too late, and that we will not damage public education, let down our most vulnerable students, and lose technical leadership we take for granted.”
- Michael Marder (2012)


REFERENCES [URLs shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 19 Jan 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013a. “Barriers to Better K-12 Math Education: Poverty and the Inadequate Undergraduate Education of Prospective K-12 Teachers,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/V6azOZ. Post of 16 Jan 2013 15:40:33 -0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/SPOkQ8 with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2013b. “Effects of Poverty on U.S. Children's Educational Achievement Redux,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/VC0jza. Post of 19 Jan 2013 09:49:56-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Hawkins, D. 2001. The Roots of Literacy. University of Colorado Press. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/h3cbtf.

Ladd, H.E. & E.B. Fiske. 2011. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” New York Times Opinion Piece, 11 Dec.; online at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub.

Marder, M. 2012. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics,” Journal of Scholarship and Practice 9(1): 8-25; the entire issue is online as a 2.7 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/KPitWM, scroll down to page 8.

Barriers to Better K-12 Math Education: Poverty and the Inadequate Undergraduate Education of Prospective K-12 Teachers

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Barriers to Better K-12 Math Education: Poverty and the Inadequate Undergraduate Education of Prospective K-12 Teachers” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Do We Learn All the Math We Need For Ordinary Life Before 5th Grade?” [Hake (2013)] at http://bit.ly/10sYmKl. Ed Wall, on Math-Learn at http://yhoo.it/W6fn5y bemoaned the “dumbed down elementary school mathematics education curriculum.” [Non-subscribers can access Wall’s post by taking a minute to “Join this List” at the Math-Learn archives http://yhoo.it/fF6D9w.]

I argue that the dumbing down of elementary school mathematics in the U.S. is not due to Math Education Researchers’ preoccupation with the secondary years, as implied by Wall, but primarily because of “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement” [Hake (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/tUU65W; and secondarily because U.S. Mathematics Education Researchers (MER’s) have not devoted enough attention to the POSTsecondary years, as dramatized by an excerpt from a Galilean dialogue in “Re: Math Education Research” [Hake (2003)] at http://bit.ly/LKpg4G.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

“. . . I will look primarily at our traditions and practices of early schooling through the age of twelve or so. There is little to come after, whether of joys or miseries, that is not prefigured in these years.”
- David Hawkins in The Roots of Literacy, p. 3.

REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 16 Jan 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Barriers to Better K-12 Math Education: Poverty and the Inadequate Undergraduate Education of Prospective K-12 Teachers,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/V6azOZ. Post of 16 Jan 2013 15:40:33 -0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Hawkins, D. 2001. The Roots of Literacy. University of Colorado Press. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/h3cbtf.

Re: The Word Not Mentioned in the Debate: Poverty

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “Re: The Word Not Mentioned in the Debate: Poverty” [Hake (2012)]. An abstract is:

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ABSTRACT:
Diane Ravitch in her hard hitting "Diane Ravitch's blog" http://dianeravitch.net/ wrote in an entry "The Word Not Mentioned in the Debate: Poverty" at http://bit.ly/RfuGY4:

“Poverty. Lots of talk about the middle class. Tax cuts for the middle class. Saving the middle class. Doing more for the middle class. Not one word about poverty. No mention that nearly 25% of the children in the world's richest nation live in poverty. Not one word.”

The overriding influence of poverty on educational achievement has been noted in, e.g. (alphabetical order by author):

1. “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2005)], at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj;

2. "Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success" [Berliner (2009)] at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA;

3. “Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances” [Duncan & Murnane (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/nCkmKv;

4. “Economic inequality: The real cause of the urban school problem,” [Duncan & Murnane (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/rv3rMO.

5. “To Improve Schools, Fight Poverty, Education Expert Says” [Gosier (2011)], online at http://bit.ly/qyrBSL - the expert is Stephen Krashen http://bit.ly/Ui9xm1;

6. “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2” [Hake (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/ozuZEn;

7. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011b)], online at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ;

8. "Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain? #3” [Hake (2011c)], online at http://bit.ly/jy61UB;

9. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” [Ladd & Fiske (2011)] at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub;

10. “Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data” [Marder (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF;

11. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics” [Marder (2012)] at http://bit.ly/KPitWM;

12. “The hard bigotry of low expectations and low priorities” [Ravani (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/sUZ17T;

13. “Unaddressed Link Between Poverty & Education” [Schaffer (2011)] at http://bit.ly/tbckql.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

“Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.”
- Ladd & Fiske (2011)

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 04 Oct 2012.
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Re: The Word Not Mentioned in the Debate: Poverty,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/QJWvds. Post of 4 Oct 2012 12:56:14-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. An abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists..

Ladd, H.F. & E.B. Fiske. 2011. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” New York Times, Opinion Piece, online at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub.

Re: Growing Inequalities - Response to an EvalTalk Subscriber

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “Re: Growing Inequalities - Response to an EvalTalk Subscriber” [Hake (2012)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Re: Growing Inequalities - Response To ‘Haim’ ” at http://bit.ly/JHkbY9, an EvalTalk subscriber wrote to me privately (paraphrasing):

“You wrote: ‘Math-Teach’s ‘Haim’ responded at http://bit.ly/KSpXrz and seemed to suggest that: (1) immigrants from Latin America are responsible for a significant fraction of poverty in the United States, and (2) income inequality can be reduced by restricting Latino immigration.’ If you are right about what he said, I think he is remarkably ignorant of the long history of income inequality and poverty in America and woefully ignorant of its underlying causes.” The latter are well delineated by Noah (2012) in The Great Divergence http://bit.ly/Kgex2i.

I agree with the EvalTalk subscriber regarding “Haim's” ignorance. In a later Math-Teach post the person who hides behind the pseudonym “Haim” wrote at http://bit.ly/JuVXps (paraphrasing), “. . . .Hake was referring to the classical Marxist metric of ‘The Gap’: ‘The rich get richer, the poor get poorer’ sort of thing. . . . .This gives the socialists a lot to talk about. . . . They implement policies that will naturally cause incomes to diverge, then they blame us for the divergence. They play exactly the same game in public education. They implement policies everyone knows will do terrible damage (social promotion, anyone?), then they scream bloody murder about the damage.”

Is it possible that “Haim” is actually a REAL PERSON??
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake

". . . .from 1980 to 2005, 80 percent of the total increase in American's income went to the top 1 percent."
- Timothy Noah (2012, page 25)


REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 27 May 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Re: Growing Inequalities - Response to an EvalTalk Subscriber,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/MRy8ZT. Post of 27 May 2012 13:34:19-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Noah, T. 2012. The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It. Bloomsbury Press, publisher’s
information at http://bit.ly/Kgex2i, note the “read an excerpt - pages 10-27 of Chapter 1, “Paradise Lost.” Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/KLw98C, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature.

Re: Growing Inequalities - Response To "Haim"

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “Re: Growing Inequalities - Response To ‘Haim’.” The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Re: Growing Inequalities” at http://bit.ly/JVmTOi, Math-Teach’s “Haim” responded at http://bit.ly/KSpXrz and seemed to suggest that: (1) immigrants from Latin America are responsible for a significant fraction of poverty in the United States, and (2) income inequality can be reduced by restricting Latino immigration.

I quote excerpts regarding poverty among: (a) foreign-born Latino families, from Timothy Noah’s book The Great Divergence http://amzn.to/KLw98C; and (b) Hispanic children, from the U.S. Census Bureau http://1.usa.gov/KGCpet, that, I think, cast doubt on “Haim’s” suggestions.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake

“For the short term, preparing teachers in mathematics and science is a wise and useful step toward improving schools. . . . . .[But]. . . As quickly as possible, we must understand the link between poverty and educational outcomes in the US, devise solutions, and test and implement them. Britain briefly tried to substitute public relations for aircraft safety and paid with the loss of its commercial aviation sector. I hope the United States can avoid a similar error, that proponents of teacher quality and charter schools will recognize the weakness of the evidence before it is too late, that we will not damage public education, let down our most vulnerable students, and lose technical leadership we take for granted.”
Michael Marder (2011)


REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 24 May 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Re: Growing Inequalities - Response To ‘Haim’, ” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/JHkbY9. Post of 24 May 2012 15:26:28-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Marder, M. 2011. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality,” to be submitted, online as a 3.3 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/fjUquC.

Re: Growing Inequalities

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post
“Re: Growing Inequalities.” The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: H.G. Callaway, in his Dewey-L post “Growing Inequalities,” pointed to “The Great Divergence” (Smith, 2012) at http://bit.ly/KdKesH]. Smith wrote: "Timothy Noah (2012) writes in his essential new book The Great Divergence http://bit.ly/Kgex2i, “the US has a level of inequality greater than found in Nicaragua, Guyana, or Venezuela, nations that most Americans would be ashamed to consider competitors. How did this happen? How did America end up with Third World levels of inequality?”

What all this got to do with John Dewey? I think Dewey would be appalled by “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement” (Hake, 2011b) at http://bit.ly/tUU65W that currently plagues the U.S.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake

". . .let's not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let's agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question."
- Helen F. Ladd & Edward B. Fiske (2011)

REFERENCES [All URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 23 May 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Re: Growing Inequalities,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/JVmTOi. Post of 23 May 2012 12:50:17-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Ladd, H.E. & E.B. Fiske. 2011. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” New York Times Opinion Piece, 11 Dec.; online at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub.

The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post
“The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children’s Educational Achievement” [Hake (2011)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Why Minnesotans Excel at Math and Other Mysteries of the Nation's Report Card” [Hake (2011)], EDDRA2’s Gary Ravani wrote (paraphrasing): “That children in Minnesota and Massachusetts excel at math could be explained by the fact that those two states have child poverty rates (14% and 15% respectively) well below the national rate of 22%.”

The overriding influence of poverty on educational achievement has recently been noted in, e.g. (alphabetical order by author):

a. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances [Duncan & Murnane (2011)] at http://bit.ly/nCkmKv;

b. “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2” [Hake (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/ozuZEn;

c. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” [Ladd & Fiske (2011)] at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub;

d. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality” [Marder (2011a)] at http://bit.ly/fjUquC;

e. “Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data” [Marder (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF;

f. “The hard bigotry of low expectations and low priorities” [Ravani (2011b)] at http://bit.ly/sUZ17T;

g. “Unaddressed Link Between Poverty & Education” [Schaffer (2011)] at http://bit.ly/tbckql.
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To access the complete 9 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/tUU65W.

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
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“. . .let's not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let's agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.”
Ladd & Fiske (2011)

REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 14 Dec 2011.]
Hake, R.R. 2011. “The Overriding Influence of Poverty on Children's Educational Achievement” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/tUU65W. Post of 14 Dec 2011 09:56:02-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Ladd, H.E. & E.B. Fiske. 2011. “Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?” New York Times Opinion Piece, 11 Dec; online at http://nyti.ms/vx3nub.

Re: Evaluations Ignore Education Factors

Some blog followers might be interested in “Re: Evaluations Ignore Education Factors” [Hake (2011)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: James Horn his ARN-L post “guest column on TN teacher eval system," pointed to his Knoxville News Sentinel “Guest Column: Evaluations ignore education factors” at http://bit.ly/swBD8v.

Therein Horn wrote (paraphrasing): “Almost no one, especially researchers, would agree with Mike Edwards’ “Guest Column: Grading teachers vital to education” http://bit.ly/stuQKU contention that teachers are the most important factor in a child’s education. What the research. . . . .[[My insert: as is typical in newspaper articles, no references are given!]]. . . consistently shows, rather, is that teachers are the most important school-level factor in student learning, and that other non-school factors including family income, parental influence, health, poverty and safety combine to shape a child’s school achievement in ways that even the greatest teachers cannot account for.”

In this post I list over 30 Definitive Academic References supporting Horn’s contention that NON-SCHOOL FACTORS ARE IMPORTANT IN SHAPING CHILDREN'S SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT. Readers may wish to suggest additions to this list.
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To access the complete 23 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/tSY6rE.

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 [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 6 Nov 2011.]
Hake, R.R. 2011. “Re: Evaluations Ignore Education Factors” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/tSY6rE . Post of 6 Nov 2011 18:41:49 -0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2

Some blog followers might be interested in “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: ARN-L’s Bob Schaeffer (2011) in a post “Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems” alluded to a Chicago Tribune Op. Ed. http://bit.ly/rv3rMO of that title by Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane (2011a), drawn from a book http://bit.ly/nCkmKv Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances [Duncan & Murnane (2011)].

Regarding the influence of economic inequality on K-12 education, some subscribers might also be interested in these six items:

1. “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2005)], online as an 872 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/ff8BVj ;

2. “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success” [Berliner (2009)], online as a 729 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA;

3. “To Improve Schools, Fight Poverty, Education Expert Says” [Gosier (2011)], online at http://bit.ly/qyrBSL - the expert is Stephen Krashen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Krashen ;

4. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain? ” [Hake (2011a,b)], online at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ and http://bit.ly/jy61UB;

5. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality” [Marder (2011a)], online as a 3.3 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/fjUquC;

6. “Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data, ” online at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF [Marder (2011b)], online at http://bit.ly/nYC6eF.

*************************************************

To access the complete 15 kB article please click on http://bit.ly/ozuZEn.

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

“For the short term, preparing teachers in mathematics and science is a wise and useful step toward improving schools. . . . . .[But]. . . As quickly as possible, we must understand the link between poverty and educational outcomes in the US, devise solutions, and test and implement them. Britain briefly tried to substitute public relations for aircraft safety and paid with the loss of its commercial aviation sector. I hope the United States can avoid a similar error, that proponents of teacher quality and charter schools will recognize the weakness of the evidence before it is too late, that we will not damage public education, let down our most vulnerable students, and lose technical leadership we take for granted.”
Michael Marder (2011)


REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 12 Oct 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/ozuZEn. Post of 11 Oct 2011 19:59:34-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists.

Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain? #3

Some blog followers might be interested in discussion-list post “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain? #3” [Hake (2011b)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a previous post titled “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain?” I pointed to the analyses of physicists Michael Marder and Dhruv Bansal (2009) at http://bit.ly/hYbbLe, which suggested that “educational outcomes for students from wealthy and poor families are very different in Texas.”

More recently Reeve Hamilton (2011) in a recent report in the Texas Tribune titled “Is Poverty the Key Factor in Student Outcomes?” http://bit.ly/mpkki0 did an excellent job of showcasing Marder's (2011) work by means of an interview and video clips of Marder explaining his graphs of mathematics achievement vs poverty concentration in Texas.

Hamilton wrote: “[Marder] sat down with the Tribune to talk about the role of poverty in educational outcomes, why he thinks charter schools are not necessarily the answer, and why he likes to think of the public education system as a Boeing airplane. . . . .[[more accurately, the dysfunctional British de Havilland Comet whose malfunction, like the malfunction of the U.S. K-12 educational system, was continually misdiagnosed - see Marder (2011) at http://bit.ly/fjUquC.]]. . . .

********************************************

To access the complete 15 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/jy61UB.

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

“For the short term, preparing teachers in mathematics and science is a wise and useful step toward improving schools. . . . . .[But]. . . As quickly as possible, we must understand the link between poverty and educational outcomes in the US, devise solutions, and test and implement them. Britain briefly tried to substitute public relations for aircraft safety and paid with the loss of its commercial aviation sector. I hope the United States can avoid a similar error, that proponents of teacher quality and charter schools will recognize the weakness of the evidence before it is too late, that we will not damage public education, let down our most vulnerable students, and lose technical leadership we take for granted.”

Michael Marder (2011)

REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 3 May 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “Is the 'Teacher Effect' the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ. Post of 7 Apr 2011 17:51:59-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/ifvkSz.

Hake, R.R. 2011b. “Is the 'Teacher Effect' the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” #3” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/jy61UB. Post of 3 May 2011 13:02:37-0700. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Marder, M. 2011. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality,” to be submitted, online as a 3.3 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/fjUquC. See also Marder & Bansal (2009).

Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?

Some blog followers might be interested in discussion-list post “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In his PhysLrnR post Rob Spencer pointed out that Sanders & Rivers (1996) in “Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement” concluded that “Within grade levels, the single most dominant factor affecting student academic gain is teacher effect.” This post considers four items relevant to Spencer's post:

I . VALUE-ADDED ASSESSMENT (VAA) criticized earlier in (a) “First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!” [Hake (2010a,b)], and (b) “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” [Hake (2011a,b)]; and in this post by reference to (c) “Using Student Progress To Evaluate Teachers: A Primer on Value-Added Models” [Braun (2005) http://bit.ly/gZiJdH], (d) “Challenges of Value-Added Assessment” [Doran & Fleischman (2005) http://bit.ly/dF6CuB], (e) “Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers” [Baker, Barton, Darling-Hammond, Haertel, Ladd, Linn, Ravitch, Rothstein, Shavelson, & Shepard (2010) http://bit.ly/h8k5Fw], (f) The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education [Ravitch (2010) http://amzn.to/faJ9JZ].

II. SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES) stressed by Bernard Ricca, who pointed to Toni Feder's 2009 Physics Today report on Marder & Bansal (2009). Their statistical-mechanics study of “Flow and diffusion of high-stakes test scores” http://bit.ly/hYbbLe indicated that: Poverty is a more powerful influence on test scores than value added by teachers and schools. The case that poverty is an overriding influence on students' classroom achievement has been forcefully argued by David Berliner in “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2009) <http://bit.ly/ff8BVj>], and “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success” [Berliner (2010) <http://bit.ly/fqiCUA>].

III. LESSONS FROM THE PHYSICS EDUCATION REFORM EFFORT suggest that: (a) high school, college, and university courses employing “Interactive Engagement" (IE) methods result in average normalized gains g(ave) in conceptual understanding that are about two standard deviations greater the g(ave) achieved by traditional (T) passive-student lecture courses [Hake (1998a,b; 2008); (b) “Teachers who possess both content knowledge and ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ are better equipped to deliver IE instruction” [Hake (2002)]; and (c) paraphrasing Wells et al. (1995): “teacher expertise is the critical factor in improving introductory physics instruction.” I suspect that the growing body of educational research in disciplines other than physics will eventually show that these same lessons apply to most other academic subjects.

IV. IS THE 'TEACHER EFFECT' THE DOMINANT FACTOR IN STUDENTS' ACADEMIC GAIN?" Judging from the all above:

(a) if “academic gain” means “gain in higher-level learning for U.S. K-12 students,” then the answer is: “NO! POVERTY is the dominant factor” - see ‘I’ and ‘II’ above, and the next most important factor is the degree to which ‘Interactive Engagement’ is provided by courses and teachers - see III above”;

(b) if “academic gain” means “gain in higher-level learning for students in higher education” then the answer is: “The dominant factor in promoting academic gain is the degree to which ‘Interactive Engagement’ in provided by courses and teachers - see III above.”

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To access the complete 69 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ.

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

“The [Race to the Top] initiative should support research based on data that links student test scores with their teachers, but should not prematurely promote the use of value-added approaches (which evaluate teachers based on gains in their students' performance) to reward or punish teachers.”

“Letter Report to the U.S. Dept. of Education on the Race to the Top Fund” [NRC (2009)]

REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 08 April 2011 and shortened by http://bit.ly/.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ. Post of 7 Apr 2011 17:51:59-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

NRC. 2009. National Research Council, Board on Testing and Assessment (chaired by E.H. Haertel), “Letter Report to the U.S. Department of Education on the Race to the Top Fund,” online at http://bit.ly/dOg8v6.

Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” [Hake (2011b)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a previous post “The Ceiling Effect #2” [Hake (2011a)] I noted that Sheila Tobias (2011), in a recent APS News editorial “Teachers in the Crosshairs. . .”, called attention to the “Value-Added Inequity” (VAI) experienced by a Houston high-school physics teacher who reported that her students entered her course with high test scores. As a consequence her students achieved relatively small pre-to-posttest gains (a consequence of the ceiling effect) and she, in turn, received a relatively small value-added bonus.

EDDRA2’s Michael Martin responded that the Houston teacher’s Value-Added Inequity" (VAI) is “best appreciated as a grossly unsophisticated process being employed by fundamentally incompetent administrators.” But EdResMeth's Tony Milanowski wrote that, as he understood it, the model used in Houston was based on the report “SAS EVAAS Statistical Models” [Wright et al., 2010 at http://bit.ly/hPrO7s] which converts Item-Response-Theory-based scale scores to Normal-Curve-Equivalents - but such sophistication evidently did not prevent the VAI experienced by the Houston high-school physics teacher.

Other VAI's were described by PhysLrnR's Boris Korsunsky and Math-Teach's Haim. Boris wrote (paraphrasing): “My own bonus was zero. Massachusetts used a value added method that took into account a town's average parental income. Since my town is by far the wealthiest in the state, we are often ranked ‘below expectations’ in various state-produced rankings - even though Boston magazine has repeatedly ranked us No.1 in the state. Similarly, Haim wrote (paraphrasing): “The value-added formula for evaluating schools in NYC resulted in Stuyvesant High School (one of the top academic institutions in the U.S.) earning a ‘B’.”

Consistent with the above VAI’s, reports by recognized experts critical of the use of value added measures to grade teachers are: (a) “Letter Report to the U.S. Department of Education on the Race to the Top Fund” [NRC (2009)], (b) “Getting Value Out of Value-Added: Report of a Workshop”[NRC (2010)], (c) “Problems With The Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers” [EPI (2010)], (d) “Grading teachers on value-added measures falls short” [UCLA Today (2010)], (e) “Error Rates in Measuring Teacher and School Performance Based on Student Test Score Gains” [Schochet & Chiang (2010)], (f) “Hurdles Emerge in Rising Effort to Rate Teachers” [Otterman (2010)].

Despite the above criticism, the Department of Education has designed its “Race to the Top” scoring system to reward states that use value-added calculations in teacher evaluations.
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To access the complete 41 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/fN1HmD .


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

“The [Race to the Top] initiative should support research based on data that links student test scores with their teachers, but should not prematurely promote the use of value-added approaches (which evaluate teachers based on gains in their students' performance) to reward or punish teachers.”
“Letter Report to the U.S. Dept. of Education on the Race to the Top Fund”
[NRC (2009)]


REFERENCES [URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 18 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 this blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at 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 15:34:47-0800to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

NRC. 2009. National Research Council, Board on Testing and Assessment (chaired by E.H. Haertel), Letter Report to the U.S. Department of Education on the Race to the Top Fund, online at http://bit.ly/dOg8v6 .

Mobilization for Math/Science Education - Role of Higher Education

For an earlier version of this post see Hake (2009).

According to Stephanie Lee's (2009) Inside Higher Ed report " 'Mobilization' for Math and Science Education," Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation, said:

 

"The quality of math and science learning at colleges and universities ultimately begins with solid instruction at the K-12 level. While higher education remains  strong, it is clear it cannot continue without a strong foundation."

Taking issue with Gregorian, "Steve" in his comment "Higher Education Responsibility" at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/11/study#Comments wrote: 

"From experience I know that the quality of math and science learning at colleges and universities ultimately DOES NOT begin with solid instruction at the K-12 level, it begins with the quality of math and science learning at colleges and universities. For far too long higher education has 'passed the buck' by not producing qualified teachers."

RIGHT ON, STEVE! The NSF's (1996) report "Shaping the Future" put it this way [my insert at ". . . . [insert]. . . ."]:

 

"Many faculty in SME&T. . . .[Science, Mathematics, Engineering, &  Technology]. . . at the postsecondary level continue to blame the  schools for sending underprepared students to them. But, increasingly. . . .[but not conspicuously]. . . .the higher educationcommunity has come to recognize the fact that teachers and principalsin the K-12 system are all people who have been educated at the undergraduate level, mostly in situations in which SME&T programs have not taken seriously enough their vital part of the responsibility for the quality of America's teachers."

In consonance with the above, physicist Don Langenberg (2001, p. 23), (at the time) Chancellor of the University of Maryland System, put it succinctly:

"Although we in higher education are very skillful at ignoring the obvious, it is gradually dawning on some of us that we bear a substantial part of the responsibility for this sad situation [the state of K-12 education]."

 

How sad is the state of K-12 education in the U.S.? According Schmidt, Houang, & Shakrani (2009):

 

"The consequences of our scattered approach. . . .[to K-12 education]. . . .are obvious - low standards by international comparisons, mediocre student performance (especially in eighth and twelfth grades), huge inequalities in curricular opportunities, and loss of future job possibilities. . . . Today the performance gap between the most and least proficient students in the United States is among the highest of all OECD countries [OECD (2007)]. Unless the American education system begins to prepare all of its students for post-secondary education and the changing workplace, disturbing trends in international comparisons will only worsen."

A point that I failed to make in the earlier version [Hake (2009)] of this post:

That the “performance gap between the most and least proficient students in the United States  is among the highest of all OECD countries” may well be associated with the fact that (quoting Berliner (2005), “poverty in the US is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations.”

REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy http://tinyurl.com/create.php .]

Berliner, D.C. 2005. "Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform" Teachers College Record, August 02, online at  http://epicpolicy.org/files/EPSL-0508-116-EPRU[1].pdf  (852 kB).

BHEF. 2001. Business - Higher Education Forum (a partnership of the American Council on Education and the National Alliance of Business), Winter, "Sharing Responsibility: How Leaders in Business and Higher Education Can Improve America's Schools" online as a 248 kB pdf at  http://tinyurl.com/lhenqd .

Hake, R.R. 2009. "Mobilization for Math/Science Education - Role of  Higher Education," online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at  http://tinyurl.com/ntu4tv .  Post of 13 Jun 2009 16:49:08-0700 to AERA-L, ARN-L, ASSESS, Biopi-L, Chemed-L, EDDRA, EdResMeth,  EvalTalk, Math-Teach, Net-Gold, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, Physoc, POD, & RUME.

 

Lee, S. 2009."'Mobilization' for Math and Science Education" Inside Higher Ed, 11 June; online at  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/11/study .

 

NSF. 1996. Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology, A Report on its Review of Undergraduate Education by the Advisory Committee to the NSF, chaired by Melvin George, online at  http://tinyurl.com/m93862 .  Also online as a Google book preview at  http://tinyurl.com/n72qh7 . This report is one of the few that emphasizes the crucial role of higher education in determining the quality of K-12 education.

 

OECD. 2007. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, "PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World," online at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/28/39722597.pdf  (360 kB).

 

Schmidt, W.H., R. Houang, & S. Shakrani. 2009. "International Lessons About National Standards," online as a 180 kB pdf at http://tinyurl.com/lqtaj9 .