What Works In Education: Scientific Evidence Gets Ignored

nbauman writes "According to Gina Kolata in the New York Times, The Institute of Education Sciences in the Department of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, has supported 175 randomized controlled studies, like the studies used in medicine, to find out what works and doesn't work, which are reported in the What Works Clearinghouse. Surprisingly, the choice of instructional materials — textbooks, curriculum guides, homework, quizzes — can affect achievement as much as teachers; poor materials have as much effect as a bad teacher, and good materials can offset a bad teacher's deficiencies. One popular math textbook was superior to 3 competitors. A popular computer-assisted math program had no benefit. Most educators, including principals and superintendents, don't know the data exists. 42% of school districts had never heard of the clearinghouse. Up to 90% of programs that seemed promising in small studies had no effect or made achievement scores worse. For example a program to increase 7th-grade math teachers' understanding of math increased their understanding but had no effect on student achievement. Upward Bound had no effect."

Comments

No shocker there

[hedwards]

I've yet to see a competently written math book. Most of them are written by and for people with PhDs in mathematics. They'll show one example, fail miserably to explain what they did in any clear way, then later they will refer back to it as what they did in example 3. And the student is expected to be able to figure out what they did. Sure, given sufficient time, a student could reverse engineer the problem, but it's also trendy for teachers to hand out way too many problems as homework, without permitting the students time to understand.

I remember when I was in middle school and high school, the schools were using "integrated math." Which is to say we didn't have algebra, geometry or trig, we had all of them at once and we would start over again the next year. The problem is that just as we were beginning to grasp one of them, we'd move onto the next subject, and the next year, we'd have to start over as we hadn't mastered the material the last time we saw it.

Re:No shocker there

[Cid Highwind]

I remember when I was in middle school and high school, the schools were using "integrated math." Which is to say we didn't have algebra, geometry or trig, we had all of them at once and we would start over again the next year.

It's even better when you have to move to a different school district halfway through that program. Having half of a geometry or trig course under your belt is not going to make being dropped into the middle of advanced algebra suck any less.

Re:No shocker there

[Anonymous Coward]

I've yet to see a competently written math book. Most of them are written by and for people with PhDs in mathematics.

Sounds about right - as a programmer, I've always been appalled by how math is taught. If we taught programming the way we taught math, every program would be unmaintainable. Think about it:

- One letter identifiers for everything. Algebra teaches you to always use x, y, z for variable names. Calculus teaches you to do it for function names. If you run out of those, use greek letters, or just start making up symbols.
- Everything is named after who discovered it, not what it does. Pythagoras's theorem, Newton's method, L'hopital's theorem, Cartesian co-ordinates, Euler's number...
- Formulas are always crammed into a single line, without being spaced out. And without any in-line comments. You're forced to try and understand the entire formula in one shot, rather than piece by piece.

MatLab is a perfect example of why mathematicians shouldn't program. You can look at the source to certain functions (like calculating Euler's number) to see this in action.

Re:No shocker there

[JWW]

My son's pre-calculus book was exactly like this.

Also, when he was studying for his final, I explained a concept that was key to the course to him and he finally got what the concept was about and how to use it and visualize it. The teacher had never discussed it in that manner and had basically just dropped it on the kids to figure out themselves. I was kicking myself for not discussing it in detail earlier, but I had assumed that the teacher would present the concept in a logical, clear and concise manner. I was wrong.

Re:No shocker there

[MobyDisk]

Obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/1201/
For those not sure why this is appropriate: the hypothetical teacher explains the rule, but not how to apply the rule or what use it is. We have all had professors like this. It is why teaching is a whole separate skill from the trade itself.

Re:No shocker there

[rwa2]

This. If there's one thing I learned from my AP Chemistry teacher, it was to pay attention and learn from the textbook. Classroom instruction was for review and socializing the concepts, but if I didn't have an inkling of what was going on in advance of the lecture for labs, I would be totally lost.

Teachers are there to help keep pace and entertain the occasional question... but you can't and shouldn't expect them to spoon feed everything to you and your kin. Yes, perhaps sometimes you might get lucky and find a very motivational teacher that can present the material to you in a series of epiphanies, but that's not the sort of thing you can rely on these days.

Re:No shocker there

[TheSync]

Everything is named after who discovered it, not what it does. Pythagoras's theorem, Newton's method, L'hopital's theorem, Cartesian co-ordinates, Euler's number...

This is the worst part of mathematics for me. I think we need to have a revolution and start calling things like a "Banach Space" a "complete normed vector space".

Euler's number is, of course, the base of the "natural logarithm".

Re:No shocker there

[Hatta]

Sure, given sufficient time, a student could reverse engineer the problem, but it's also trendy for teachers to hand out way too many problems as homework, without permitting the students time to understand.

Teachers use rote repetition to make up for actual learning. It's easier for a kid to apply the same pattern 20 times on a sheet of problems than it is for them to sit and think and "reverse engineer" one problem. But that time spent thinking about one problem teaches the kid far more than they could ever learn by repetition.

You identify the problem correctly, but you blame the wrong party. It's bad teachers, not bad textbooks.

Re:No shocker there

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is named after who discovered it, not what it does. Pythagoras's theorem, Newton's method, L'hopital's theorem, Cartesian co-ordinates, Euler's number...

Fun fact: much of it isn't. L'Hospital is a particularly funny example because "his" method was actually invented by someone else (he paid the guy for credit to all his discoveries) while he himself discovered things that were then named after other people.

Re:No shocker there

[operagost]

I pay an awful lot of tax money (and have no kids in school, BTW) for the school district to hire a bunch of test proctors. Yes, I actually expect teachers to teach in grade school and high school! Keeping pace and entertaining the occasional question is for ADULT STUDENTS IN COLLEGE.

Re:No shocker there

[ShanghaiBill]

I've yet to see a competently written math book. Most of them are written by and for people with PhDs in mathematics.

Indeed. One problem with math PhDs is that they want to rigorously prove everything before they use it. So high school students endure weeks of theorems and proofs before they see any practical applications. So it all seems pointless, and they tune out. It is much better to show why you want to learn trig/calculus/whatever by showing the practical uses, and only later go back to the theory. Or even better, just skip the theory. As long as the math works, who really gives a crap about the theoretical underpinnings?

Re:No shocker there

[Khashishi]

The foundations are important, but you don't need to know them before knowing basic math. You aren't building a building. You can add the foundation later.

Re:No shocker there

[Shadow of Eternity]

You forgot the worst part. Teachers that work through the exact three examples in the start of the chapter which are absolutely nothing like the other sixty you'll have to finish in the next 40 minutes and the *HUNDRED* you'll be assigned for homework. My highschool used to, and probably still does, assert that students should expect a MINIMUM of three hours of homework per course.

Apparently they flunked their own math classes because with six classes a day that worked out to 18 hours of homework for a school day that let out at 3 and started at 5... if you weren't in 9th grade. If you were you got to enjoy the privilege of getting up at 4am to catch your bus.

Re:No shocker there

[Shadow of Eternity]

No it's fucking not. We don't pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for an infrequently consulted FAQ. A professor's job is to teach undergraduates a significant and deep understanding of the material, and a graduate professor's job is to expand on that to the point that their students become *producers* of knowledge rather than consumers.

Re:No shocker there

[hedwards]

If you have a good textbook, and a bad teacher, the students can learn anyways. If you have a bad textbook and a good teacher, good luck with that. A teacher gets like 5 hours a week with students, and usually no more. Also, that's with the entire class, so answering individual questions is limited by time. Compare that with the time students spend outside of class studying and you'll see what I mean.

Bottom line is that in the long run, students are going to spend far more time learning outside of school than inside of it, so blaming the teachers makes little sense. Just because you've got your diploma or degree, does not let you off the hook for any new information that comes into being after graduation. It just means that you likely won't have anybody to walk you through it.

Re:No shocker there

[stdarg]

Yes, time is the critical issue. I don't think there's enough time spent learning math for most students. In North Carolina where I live, the high school graduation requirements for math are Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, and another math class of the student's choice. Well half the kids will have taken Algebra 1 and Geometry in middle school! And a smaller number will have Algebra 2 as well. So for the smart half of the kids we're talking about 1 or 2 math classes, 3 if they decide to take AP Calculus.

Statistics is barely mentioned in any of those classes. Statistics is, in my opinion, the single most important branch of math for the mathematical literacy needed in today's society. When you read an article about (ahem) education for instance, you'll see stuff about control groups, whether something is statistically significant, confidence levels and confidence intervals, standard deviations, etc. It's so sad to me that so many people see those terms and their eyes just glaze over.

Even looking at how time is allocated within the math classes themselves, I'd argue that e.g. your typical algebra class wastes precious time on stuff like matrix math, which the student won't use again until linear algebra (which isn't even offered as an AP class in this country afaik). Substituting basic calculus for matrix math would be hugely beneficial, both in terms of utility to the student, and interest to the student. It would have a knock-on effect in other science classes too, like the physics book not having to jump through hoops trying to derive things without using basic calculus.

Re:No shocker there

[ShanghaiBill]

As long as the math works, who really gives a crap about the theoretical underpinnings?

The "theoretical underpinnings" ARE the math.

No they aren't. I once saw a proof that one is not equal to two in several dozen of pages of predicate calculus. But kindergartners don't need to know that to do addition. Likewise, I know that there is no integer solution to a^3+b^3=C^3 without understanding Andrew Wiles's proof (which only a handful of people understand completely). As an engineer, I use plenty of math everyday without knowing (or caring about) the formal proofs.

Re:No shocker there

[ShanghaiBill]

At some point, you are building a building. You can't retrofit a foundation.

Which means that building a physical building is completely different from learning math. If anything, the concrete practical skills are the foundation, and the formal proofs are the decorative trim. In high school, I had a semester of calculus before I took physics, but many other students in the physics class had not. So the physics teacher did a twenty minute "quick calculus" tutorial, skipping all the theory and just showing us how to get stuff done. For the first time, calculus "clicked" for me. I finally saw the point of it. I learned far more in those twenty minutes than in the entire semester of math class. Mathematicians should be kept as far away from math education as possible.

Re:No shocker there

[ShanghaiBill]

The concrete practical skills may be a foundation for problem solving, but not for becoming more aware of higher math.

The purpose of math classes in elementary/middle/high school is problem solving, not "higher math". We need a lot more cashiers, accountants and engineers that we do mathematicians.

D.A.R.E has no benefit

[hduff]

Studies prove it, yet it continues to be funded with scarce dollars.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[Brett Buck]

"Scarce dollars"? There has been literally trillions of dollars poured into public education over the past 50 years, An absolutely insane amount of money is still being spent - but the quality continues to decline. Anyone who cares about education needs to get this through their head - *money does not solve this problem*. The issue is lack of standards, lack of quality teachers, and endless ivory-tower meddling in the educational process. None of those are solved by money.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[Jawnn]

"Scarce dollars"? There has been literally trillions of dollars poured into public education over the past 50 years, An absolutely insane amount of money is still being spent - but the quality continues to decline. Anyone who cares about education needs to get this through their head - *money does not solve this problem*. The issue is lack of standards, lack of quality teachers, and endless ivory-tower meddling in the educational process. None of those are solved by money.

Yes, scarce, but that's rather beside the point of TFA. So are "quality teachers" and 'ivory-tower meddling" (whatever the fuck that is). TFA seems to make a case for spending more wisely, like buying teaching materials that actually work, or more fundamentally, becoming aware that the data to guide such purchases even exists. Such lack of awareness is inexcusable, but clearly, it is pervasive. How's about we work on that problem instead of parroting the same tired shit you hear on Faux News?

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[Baron von Daren]

I don’t want to get into a huge tangent on this topic, but rest assured there are plenty of school districts in the US that don’t have enough money. While I agree that throwing money at these districts indiscriminately won’t solve anything, it’s pretty hard to build a quality educational systems without sufficient funding. This is especially true in districts where the educational system has to contend children who have difficult home lives and parents who are themselves undereducated. Money certainly can't solve the problem, but it is a significant part of the equation.

We live in a society where those who sell children toys make exponentially more than the people who educate children. That a very simplistic statement, but it touches on the matter of our shared social value system. This gets into a lot of issues concerning market based vs universal public education, but, again, that’s a tangent. The major point is simply that when we move beyond lip-service and rhetoric, education isn’t a core value for our society.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[alexander_686]

Maybe.

There was a study about 10 years ago that showed zero correlation between teacher pay, teacher effectiveness, and academic results between states.

Probably what is more important is teacher requirement, training, and management. If you increased teacher pay today without changing the above you would increasing pay to those who are already teachers or are likely to become teachers.

I have issues with how teacher’s pay is structured. The initial pay is low and most of the benefits are at the backend so it encourages marginal teachers to become entrenched and discourages middle aged people from making a career switch into the profession. (I think there is a rich vein of potential people who hold masters in math, science, or engineering who would make great teachers but don’t want to deal with the initial low pay and would not qualify for some of the bigger retirement packages.)

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[bmajik]

I have issues with how teacherâ(TM)s pay is structured. The initial pay is low and most of the benefits are at the backend so it encourages marginal teachers to become entrenched and discourages middle aged people from making a career switch into the profession. (I think there is a rich vein of potential people who hold masters in math, science, or engineering who would make great teachers but donâ(TM)t want to deal with the initial low pay and would not qualify for some of the bigger retirement packages.)

I think this is pretty insightful.

I recently joined a team of other MS employees teaching Intro to CS at a local public highschool. We're bootstrapping the in-service teacher along with the students so that hopefully she can teach the class herself in the future.

htttp://www.tealsk12.org

People who have come up into CS in the "normal way" and who can do CS can make more money straight out of college in the industry than can ever be made in a lifetime of public K-12 education. And for software people who want to make the switch into K12 later in life when they are financially independent; there are a number of tiresome barriers that prevent them from really doing so.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[mi]

funded with scarce dollars.

The per-pupil expenditures in public-schools nation-wide has quadrupled since 1961. That's adjusted to inflation — the nominal increase is nearly 30-fold. And yet, even the most Illiberal segment commentators — whom you'd expect to try hardest to defend the public schools — acknowledge, that mere 30% of the nation's 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in something as basic and fundamental as reading.

In the high-population states and locales, where one would expect the high number of customers to get a better deal through the economy of scale, the per-pupil costs are, actually, even higher. District of Columbia, for example, has spent over $17k per kid in 2010, compared to Kentucky's $10k. NYC spends even more.

Whatever is wrong with the schools, "scarcity of dollars" is not it...

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[tburkhol]

I have watched untold billions of dollars going into worthless educational initiatives and NEA kickback, while we crank out generation upon generation of illiterates, and introduce social experiments disguised as education initiatives.

Per capita spending on students is about $10k/year, summed across all levels of government. For comparison, per capita spending is $16k/year for medicare recipients. Government places a 60% higher priority on keeping retired people healthy than on educating the next generation. In my school district, I pay three times as much for trash collection as for schools. The total spending on education may be a large number, but it is a shockingly small fraction of government spending.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[fropenn]

Have you compared the rent in DC to the rent anywhere in Kentucky? The cost of living in DC is much, much higher and as a result you would expect them to spend more on facilities and personnel. By analyzing only "average" spending, you miss the true tragedy of U.S. public education - we have some of the best public schools in the world and some of the worst. The best schools tend to be attended by the children of the wealthy (if they attend public schools), and the worst are much more likely to be attended by the poor. And while money by itself doesn't "solve" anything, money provides the opportunity to implement reforms and changes that can make a big difference in quality. Improvement without spending more money seems quite unlikely.

Re:D.A.R.E has no benefit

[Baron von Daren]

The market forces that bear upon the toy industry do not apply to universal education. If an individual toy company fails, the impact on society is negligible; not so with the national educational system. I made the comparison to emphasis our social value system.

My original point was that proper funding is a necessary condition for a quality educational system, though it is not sufficient. In other words there are reasons our educational system is failing aside from funding, but the answer is not to cease funding the educational system properly.

This is somewhat of a tangent from that point, but since the market comparison has been made, I feel it is important to emphasis the need for public funding of the primary educational system. It is in the public interest to have an educated citizenry, and it is incumbent upon all citizens to both fund the educational system and have a stake in its efficacy. Markets are not well suited to provide a quality universal education system. Markets are excellent at providing quality private schools that augment the base educational system because individuals have a clear and direct incentive to fund the education of kin (kin used here in the broader anthropological sense which exceeds blood relations). There isn’t as clear an incentive to fund the education of perfect strangers. The educational level of perfect strangers, however, is a kind of externality: the educational level of perfect strangers directly impacts the prosperity of the larger society. Moreover, the children who generally need the most educational resources come from families that have the least ability to fund their children’s education.

That isn’t to say that market concepts like incentives, competition, etc. aren’t important in the educational system, but they have to applied in the framework of a publicly funded, universal educational system. Educators should compete for incentives commensurate with the social gravitas of their role. That’s where I got into the point about shared social values; our society underestimates the gravitas of public education when it comes down to things like funding. Educators should be more respected and better compensated, thus incentivizing competent individuals to excel in the service of public education. It’s kind of naive to expect enough educators to excel purely out of a passion to educate (though that shouldn’t be underestimated either).

Teacher do not know Mathematics.

[jellomizer]

The problem is most education professionals are not so good at understanding Math, and many really do not trust is.

You go to any college and talk to education majors, and ask them why they didn't major in other majors, after they repeat the normal BS, about wanting to help children yadda yadda, It comes down to the fact that many of the other majors that has a clear career path requires much more Math study, and they don't like Math.

Sure we have a few educators like Math and Science teachers who get it, but they are the minority, and the ones who seems to get promoted to positions where they can make decisions, are usually History and English teachers. So they don't know about this research is because they are not looking for it, and they really don't want to find it, because the numbers may contradict what you opinion is, and no one likes that.

We have the State and Unions fighting over these details and little focus on what works.

For once, Dept of Edu gets it right

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I took a quick look at the materials they're publishing, and if you can read a vulnerability report, you can read these. (e.g., http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/mps_pg_052212.pdf#page=16)

This is sad

[Murdoch5]

Again for the Nth time I'm going to fall back on my personal education experience.

I had horrible teachers growing up, when I say horrible, all but one of them was even worth her paycheck . An elementary school teacher should be an expert in all areas that they teach.

In my elementary school ( 1992 - 2000 ) we had one teacher for the entire day, that teacher did math, history, english and etc.... For the school system to effectively work what you need is for that teacher to be an expert in all of those subjects, an expert to the point that they don't require a textbook. The textbook is for the students to assist and supplement the information from the teacher, NOT for the teacher to use as a coverup for not knowing the subject.

So often we as students were told to close the textbooks and just understand the material well a lazy teacher sat at the front of the room and simply just read from it. A big secret to good education is that the teacher should never be doing the students job, reading from a textbook simple means that the teacher is only as qualified as the student and not really doing his / her job.

This post talks about the materials that the students can use to assist in there education. Well in my school we had the resources but the teachers and support staff just weren't trained on how to deploy and use the materials. The computer lab was off limits because ALL of the teachers had no clue how to really use them, the science lab was closed because the teachers and staff didn't know how to setup or use the equipment.

This is my problem with the school system, it's setup to protect the teachers and it leaves the students on the side of the road. I pointed this out in my school several times when I was there and every time I was given an excuse, "The teachers work very hard and it's not there job" or "The government wants us to teach this way so we are". It's sad and horrible, the school system ( in Canada ) is in the shitter. I have little cousins right now and from what they tell me the system hasn't changed.

So what's my point? Well here is the big secret to making the education system work, HIRE QUALIFIED TEACHERS AND GET THE RIGHT MATERIAL IN PLACE!!!!!! That's it, it hasn't happened yet at least from what I've seen and been through. Simple answer to a not complicated question.

To any teacher that doesn't fit into what I just explained I don't want to bash you. I know good teachers and good school exist, they do and they are great, just the majority of the system is broke and that shouldn't make the good few look bad.

Re:This is sad

[GodfatherofSoul]

You don't need a PhD in math to teach 10th grade geometry. I'm not in the education mix, but I doubt that's our problem.

Re:This is sad

[multimediavt]

I went through grade school from 1977-1985. Most of that was spent in San Jose, California as Silicon Valley exploded. I had great teachers and an amazing Gifted and Talented education program. The teachers were completely versed in all the subjects they taught: history, English, math, sciences. They were paid poorly and some had second jobs. The school system was ok, but this was before most of the budget cuts that happened under Reagan. In 1983 we moved to Virginia where the system didn't know what to do with me (I was doing math and english a level higher than everyone else in this system) and as a result I had to take sixth grade math and English again. That really tilted the scales of me ever liking the Virginia educational system. It was funded better, but did less with it as you saw 15 years later with your experience. The good teachers dried up in k-12 because they could stay in school as long or a little longer and become university or college professors, or become researchers or consultants. All these vocations pay better and have better benefits, so as the k-12 budgets get cut less qualified people want those jobs. So, the downward spiral begins. When the measure of life is done in currency this problem with k-12 education shall remain. The good, qualified teachers that are in the system today are not there for the money. Hopefully, they have well paid spouses or enjoy a meager life doing what they love. These people are few and far between, however.

Re:This is sad

[Notabadguy]

My college experience was USMA (West Point).

Most faculty at military academies are also military officers. My freshman year, my instructor both looked and sounded like Major Payne.

Epic instructing example #1: (Read the instructor lines in Major Payne's voice)

The entire classroom is instructed to take to the chalk boards and work out a problem. Our instructor left the room to give us time to work on it. He returned 10 minutes later (everyone was stuck - no one had solved it). He addressed me.
Instructor: "Cadet! What is the answer?"
Me: "Sir, I do not know!"
Instructor: "Well, if you DID know the answer, what would it be?"
Me: "Sir, I do not know!"
Instructor: "You have all failed me! Class dismissed."

No answer, no walk-through...he didn't know either. I went to his office at the end of the day with my textbook, because I couldn't follow the logic in one of the example problems in the text-book.

Me: "Sir, I am stuck on this example problem. I don't understand the progress from Step B. to Step C.:
Instructor: "Read it again!"
Me: *reads again* "Sir, I still don't understand how to get from B. to C."
Instructor: "Read it again!"
Me: "Sir, I have read it again, and don't understand it!"
Instructor: "Then you have failed me! Your personal failure train is now departing my office! Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga Wooo wooooooooo!"

The highest grade in my class at mid-terms was a D, which is failing at West Point. I passed with a B- by spending my free period sitting in the back of the class of another instructor teaching the same material, and soliciting that instructor's help during lunch and after classes to understand the material.

Small class size

[DavidHumus]

One piece of evidence that's been around for quite a while is that smaller classes are better. However, this translates directly into higher costs, so there's a lot of incentive to ignore this.

So much does not work

[EmperorOfCanada]

Very often every system in education becomes hijacked by some interest group. Textbooks are a great example. Looking through my daughters' very expensive textbooks I can see that the science and math textbooks were written by non mathematician/scientists. One of my favorite questions went something like Jamal has 5 candies that are 5 different flavours; how can he distribute them among his 5 friends? Write all the ways. WHAT? Or just the usual questions that are missing some element such as you have a triangle that is 2 units on the bottom side and 3 units high. How long is the remaining side? But there is no picture of the triangle. Is this a right-triangle. Are they talking about the hypotenuse? And then one of the best. A grade 10 math textbook with a section on parabolas. My daughter was assigned the usual questions 1-20 at the end of the chapter. I don't quite remember how to find the vertex or some such so I leaf through the textbook to find out how. All it does is define the parabola and give some examples of how they can be used for things like flashlight reflectors. But absolutely no math involving the parabolas. None. Lots of parabola questions but no math. This was not some kind of workbook but a textbook where they had just been sloppy.

Then there is the technology. They are so lost. So so so lost. They have just grasp at technology. The usual result is that they buy big systems where moodle would be fine. But at no point do they really leverage the technology much. A great example is both of my daughters' schools have robocalls to tell me about things like vaccinations, school trips, etc. This is very annoying in that the calls usually waste most of the call telling me things that I don't care about. The worst part is that the critical bits are at the end. So I hear about things like congratulations to some student for winning a sack race in Kalamazoo and then in the end learn that some critical form needs to be turned in by 9am the next morning. Hello please use at least email. Maybe a website? The 20th century is calling and wants their robocaller back! I wonder how much they pay for this service?

But there is a wonderfully effective way to use computers in education. You look at student's marks. You then look at the pattern of the marks as the student's pass through various teachers. I am not talking about standardized tests but just comparing the marks of various students in the same classrooms. The key being that you can see that when a batch of students hits a truly great or terrible teacher that their marks will thrive or suffer for years to come. Bad teachers are like boulders in the stream; they result in much turbulence and waves far beyond their position in the time stream. Both of my daughters hit the same terrible math teacher. I tutored both of them past this disaster of a teacher but many of their co-students may have lost any hope at a career in STEM as their grade 10 math would then suck with little time left to recover to the point where they could leave HS with a good mark in Pre-cal let alone Calculus.

Re:So much does not work

[JWW]

But there is a wonderfully effective way to use computers in education. You look at student's marks. You then look at the pattern of the marks as the student's pass through various teachers.

What?!!! That would allow you to actually truly measure teacher performance and effectiveness. It would make bad teachers absolutely impossible to miss.

WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE???

Re:So much does not work

[Gryle]

I agree with most of what you say, but I do want to point out that robocallers are still the most effective means of direct communication with parents in low-income / below-the-poverty-line neighborhoods. In college I volunteered my Saturdays working with kids in a particularly poor neighborhood of the city.* Every household had at least one cellphone with a basic plan (calls and text messages, no Internet access) so parents could either get in contact with their employer or go job-hunting, but most households couldn't afford Internet access. The local public library branch had Internet access but it was limited to an hour per patron per day and most parents could only make it over there once a week, if that. Most of the parents held service jobs such as janitorial work or day-laborer construction so Internet access at work wasn't a given. Robocallers in such areas are more reliable that hoping the parents make it over to their local civic-center or library this week to see what's up at their child's school. Now, could the schools structure their robocaller messages more effectively? Certainly. But the technology itself still as a place for the time being.

*San Antonio TX. 2008-2010. As an illustration, at the time statistically 1 out of 4 kids were almost entirely reliant on the school system for their meals. This means they ate two meals a day at the school cafeteria, breakfast and lunch, and went to bed without dinner. They went without any kind of substantial nourishment (maybe a bag of chips on Saturday) between lunch-time Friday and breakfast Monday morning.

Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago

[GodfatherofSoul]

He talked about a very successful text that all the teachers loved. The thing I remember most was each section ended with 20 question, but only TWO were on the current chapter. The other 18 were review. The idea was to reinforce knowledge and not turn learning into a cram-and-forget cycle. He'd also talked about a text-selection process that had started a cycle of dumbing down content to make students look smarter. In the Google age, it might be possible to track down that book. Heck, it might be possible to track down *him*.

Re:Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago

[istartedi]

When I was struggling with calculus my first year, and a lot of concepts hadn't gelled, I had an idea. I decided to go to the library and see if there were any better calculus texts. I found Calculus Made Easy and believe it or not, it actually made good on its promise. I aced my first semester calculus exam, with much thanks to that book. The biggest take-away was that they actually showed the relationship between summations, limits, and integrals. All of that material had been covered by other texts, and by teachers of course; but they had never related it. The "genius" of the invention of calculus was in that relationship, not just a bunch of dry examples of limits, series, and integrals.

And yes, this was actually more than 20 years ago. The copy I read was dug from the depths of the multi-story engineering library stacks at UVa, and even then it was an old copy. Now you can probably download it...

Re:Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago

[NJRoadfan]

I can see why it was buried. You wouldn't want students finding out about a textbook that is only $17! There is no profit in that.

Re:Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago

[istartedi]

You wouldn't want students finding out about a textbook that is only $17!

Actually, the version I read was the original which is now in the public domain. According to Wiki it's available as a free download from Gutenberg. It's British so the language was a bit odd in some places. Its approach to calculus was enlightening though, so things like that didn't get in the way and it was actually kind of charming.

The $17 is probably worth it if you're an American who doesn't like to infer meaning and/or work around quaint olde dialect.

Finding the link to the free version is "left as an exercise for the reader".

Re:Story from my Math teacher 20 years ago

[digitrev]

Well, I never met a math exercise I wouldn't at least try. Here you go.

I wonder ....

[PPH]

... if competing private schools advertise their curriculum, including the 'What Works Warehouse' scores of their teaching materials relative to the public school offerings.

Re:Creation

[TWiTfan]

It's been my experience that the vast majority of textbooks are chosen by how much money the textbook company is willing to donate to whomever gets to choose the textbooks, not by their inclusion or exclusion of any particular political position.

Why would technically brilliant want to teach?

[walterbyrd]

If you are smart enough to master master, and real science, then couldn't you earn about 3X as much as a teacher?

Re:Why would technically brilliant want to teach?

[jythie]

Heh. Anyone who thinks teachers get a bunch of free time during those 'breaks' has never been (or dated) a teacher. They generally have to spend their holidays working off the clock, and a huge percentage of that '2 month vacation' goes to off the clock preparation for the next two semesters. School workloads assume that teachers will put in those extra hours, even if they officially do not.

Re:Why would technically brilliant want to teach?

[Belial6]

I have known teachers, and your comment is BS. I will grant that English language teachers frequently have to put in a lot of hours. When they assign reports, they must read them to grade them, but in most other subjects, grading is often done by students or machine. It just doesn't take that long to grade a math test.

The issue of preparation for the next two semesters is also a red herring. New teachers will have to put in a good number of hours as they develope their skills in teaching. They will make lesson plans, see that parts don't work and adjust them for future years. Once a teacher has a few years under their belt, they should not be spending huge amounts of time figuring out what they are going to do.

One of the big issues with discussing teacher's pay is that those who advocate for the teachers tend to make a conglomerate of all the worst parts of every teacher's situation to make them look like victims. They take the hours form the English teacher who has to work long hours grading essays, the pay from first year teachers who are on the low side of an above average paying job. They take the knowledge required for a High School level A.P. Science or Math teacher and the social environment from a remedial language class in the roughest inner city school they can find. They then claim that this is the standard working environment for teachers. In the process, they lose credibility.

Just two weeks ago, a friend that works in a local grade school tried to pass off the claim that "once all of the hours worked are accounted for, teachers are only making about $2/hour."

Re:Rule of thumb

[PPH]

I would think that well written text books and effective materials would make it easier for mediocre faculty to teach. That would (IMO) be a part of their score.

Just BS from teacher's unions

[walterbyrd]

For example: Korea has huge class sizes, and they kick our ass in math and science.

Propaganda from teacher's unions always say to just, randomly, throw money at the problem.

Re:Just BS from teacher's unions

[wickerprints]

I personally have had teaching experience in the US at the high school level, and as an Asian-American, I don't think it's BS. Korea is a different country with very different cultural attitudes towards the value of learning, parental responsibility for child rearing, and the importance of fostering individuality rather than collective standards of behavior, compared to the US. Therefore, educational and classroom models that apply in Korea may not apply in the US, and vice versa. You cannot assume that just because a different model exists and is successful, that other models must be intrinsically flawed.

Look at what American kids are like, and compare that with Korean kids. You will find they hold very different notions of acceptable social behavior. You'll also find that Korean students are FAR more respectful to their teachers, not necessarily because Korean teachers are more knowledgeable or strict or experienced, but because Korean society as a whole places much more value on the educational process. The parents drill it into their kids, and the kids see the evidence of what constitutes a successful future in how their society rewards those who emerge at the top with respect to higher education. This is also true of China, Japan, and Singapore, among other Asian (and non-Asian) nations.

Take a Korean teacher and put them in front of a class of 30 American students, and see how long their pedagogical and disciplinary model lasts. American students know that they can't be punished and ultimately can't be held accountable for their own bad behavior--the worst that can happen is their parents have to discipline them at home, and how many American parents, with their own lack of self-control, really have what it takes to do that?

Re:Just BS from teacher's unions

[JasterBobaMereel]

Put American kids in a Korean class .... and watch them suffer!

If your teachers cannot discipline you and your parents don't and don't push you in a subject then you have no motivation to do well ...In Korea you are pushed by parents, teachers, and classmates to excel ...it's cool to be good at maths, it's not cool to be a slacker ...

for math?

[Comboman]

I might agree with you for virtually every other subject, but math is about the only thing that can be measured accurately using standardized testing. 3 X 3 = 9, whether you memorized the times tables or counted it out on your fingers. No matter what method you were taught, you should get the same answer. There are no cultural biases to deal with and even difficulty with understanding English shouldn't affect the outcome.

Re:Creation

[Lumpy]

Those are not Educators, they are terrorists.

TFA

[Jamori]

Since the summary is full of links not-to-TFA, this might be useful:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/applying-new-rigor-in-studying-education.html?pagewanted=all

Richard Feynman on textbooks

[MobyDisk]

Richard Feynman's story on textbooks was eye-opening: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
(Thanks BobTree)

Re:Sych evidence is bound to be ignored...

[Lumpy]

Yeah and TV rots your brain.

Coma on back when you have real scientific information to back up your wild statement.

Variable students

[gurps_npc]

Part of the problem is that what works for one student doesn't always work for another.

You can't expect a child with dyslexia to learn from the same program that works for an excellent reader. Less serious learning issues have similar effect.

One thing I never understood is why we don't have a public boarding school option for those kids whose parents clearly are the problem.

If your parents are homeless, drug addicts, or convicted felons, you have about a 50% drop out rate. If we just offered them public boarding schools, we could save those kids - at far less cost over the long term than what those drop outs will end up costing the government.

Boarding schools can go for as low as $25k / year, vs regular schools at half that while a year in prison costs over $100k If just save just one out of 8 of those kids from a life of prison, we come out ahead.

Re:Creation

[RazzleFrog]

If you mean climate control then there are overwhelming boatloads of scientific evidence if you look for it. Years of data compiled and analyzed.

And what do you mean "supports the Bible"? I mean the bible doesn't even support itself with all the endless contradictions. There is no science in that. Not sure what SD is.

Re:Creation

[RazzleFrog]

The problem in Texas is that they ARE trying to influence the textbook companies and since they are one of the largest purchasers of textbooks they actually could potentially have some success. Except for the whole separation of church and state thing that keeps kicking their ass in court.

Re:Moral of the story....

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Yes, if you want your kids to be both ignorant and socially retarded, then please homeschool them.

While I will agree some home schooled kids receive a good level education, considering that it also requires significant discipline from the parents usually home schooled children come from families of highly opinionated and socially maladjusted adults that are simply pushing their own narrow minded views of life on their children.

For instance a religious parent is going to skip over the bits of "science" that don't align with the Bible, or a vegan parent is going to force their children to be vegan. And then on top of that the parent controls every aspect of social interaction of the child with other children, they are going to pick and choose only children from other families with a similar narrow-minded outlook on life. If you want to hide your children from being able to make their own decisions in life when they become an adult, then clone their minds to your exact POV through home school. The role of a parent is to guide their child to adulthood, not to make carbon copies of themselves.

And yes, social interaction is a lot more important in the long run than IQ. IQ is nothing, its a measure of how well you can retain information. Having a high IQ but then being socially awkward means you probably won't have a lot of success in life. It might not be fair, but applying for a job is a social experience, your resume can be full of glowing recommendations from your, um, parents, but you ain't getting that job if you can't demonstrate compatibility with the culture of the company you are applying for.

Hiding your child from social interaction just to selectively shove information into their brains, does that sound like a great idea? I mean homeschooling is pretty much just a step away from being a cult with a lot fewer members.

Re:You don't need PhD to figure this out

[MickyTheIdiot]

This is predicated on not treating a school as if it was a factory.

This is a problem no one wants to talk about...

Re:Creation

[MightyYar]

Are you in one of those countries throwing bananas at black people? Or one of the ones that bans parapets on mosques? Or maybe you live in a country with a blanket ban on genetic engineering in crops? We all have our embarrassing vices.

Re:Creation

[jythie]

At the college level it is more likely to be by teacher's opinions (outside core or common classes), but high school and below they are usually chosen by school boards, which rarely have people on them that are actually familiar with eduction or the topics being taught.

The advance copies to teachers are usually so the publishers can get reviews which they then submit to school boards in aggregate.

Re:Creation

[Glothar]

"Teacher Opinion" might be a little misleading. It's not really bribes like the OP suggested, but the reality is somewhere in the middle.

I've known a number of teachers who were part of textbook selection committees. The shortest one I remember was a six-month process. The last one I heard about was a ten month process (the entire school year) and involved looking at two dozen books, narrowing the field and requesting full materials on just five, and some back-and-forth on supplying samples of online/digital materials (many of which were still being produced).

Were any of the teachers bribed? No. Did any of them get free material? Nope. Did any of the administrators get any... perks? Can't say. I'd assume not. That said, the process was not purely based on the selecting the best book. Instead, it was based on picking the least-bad book. The books being examined were history books and every last one of them showed a bias toward a some group. For example, one of the books spent an entire chapter on the history of Texas. Texas is big and all, and it's story is interesting, but I don't think it warrants more pages than the settling of the (rest of the) West, or industrialization or World War I (!!!). However, Texas buys a lot of books, so books are written to appeal to Texans, even to the point of including pseudo-factual propaganda about how special and cool Texas is.

So, no bribes that I know of... except for the fact that all the major developers pander to a few select parts of the country.

Re:Creation

[RazzleFrog]

Here - Bill Nye can help you with that.

And here is a list of contradictions. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html

You obviously haven't read much of it if you didn't realize it contradicts itself. The Gospels don't even agree on details and most of the stories of Jesus you hear around Christmas and Easter are actually picking and choosing from the different Gospels to make a somewhat coherent fable.