Archive for March, 2011

Parlez-Vous Français? Odds Are, No

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

A new report from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) shows a promising enrollment increase in foreign-language courses and programs.

But it’s only a slight increase ― from 8.6 million students in 2005 to 8.9 million students in 2008. In fact, foreign-language course-taking decreased in seventeen states. Nationally, only one in five K-12 public school students is taking a foreign language. And, of those students, most are taking foreign language at the high-school level.

These numbers are all the more troubling in light of data from the Center for Applied Linguistics, showing that rural schools and schools whose students are of low socioeconomic status (SES) are disproportionately less likely to offer foreign language instruction.

Confession: I’m not an entirely objective commentator. I had a year-long stint as a foreign language teacher at a French école primaire (elementary school). While the French aren’t anywhere near the top of the PISA charts, they are in-line with the trend in high-performing countries. They are teaching foreign language early, with the goal of near-native proficiency.

In an interview with Ed Week’s Eric Robelen, ACTFL education director said, “We’re still woefully behind almost all other countries of the world, particularly industrialized countries. … When you look at all the other countries that surpass us on the PISA tests, they all have early-language programs, they start children learning language in elementary schools.” Smart practice, for one, because studies have shown that students who take at least one foreign language tend to do better on standardized tests.

The President and Secretary of Education have challenged US students to garner critical language skills. But their talk of a well-rounded education isn’t translating into policy: the President and the DOE continue to focus on STEM initiatives at the expense of other education areas. And the President has proposed consolidating funding for foreign languages into a broader fund, focused on promoting a “well-rounded education.”

Unfortunately, with the President’s (technology-heavy and science-light) STEM-obsessed track record, the words “well-rounded education” ring a bit empty.

Stephanie Porowski

Posted in Foreign Language | 2 Comments »

Assessing, for What?

Friday, March 11th, 2011

This blog is written by Emma Bryant, a New Tech High School teacher who is describing her first-hand experience with 21st century-skills education. Emma Bryant is a pseudonym.

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At my school, we expect our students to become proficient in skills that, presumably, will aid them in the 21st century. We assess our students’ mastery of several skills-based learning outcomes: critical thinking and innovation, communication, work ethic, collaboration, information technology, and technological literacy. We also assess students’ content knowledge (which usually accounts for 15-20% of a student’s overall grade).

But, looking over my students’ grades, I notice odd disparities between students’ content performance and their performance on the six skills. For example:  several students had overall grades (the average of all seven learning outcomes) in the 80s, but their content grades were down in the 60s.  And, while the class averaged 82% in “critical thinking and innovation,” the average content grade fell a good seven points lower.

Having first hand experience of the assessment process, I would argue that the grading schema at my 21st Century School masks a failure to deliver content knowledge effectively.   And that the schema overlooks the fact that acquiring deep content knowledge means thinking critically about content. Knowing the content well, as something other than a laundry list to be remembered, involves interpreting it and engaging it at a deep, critical, and meaningful level.

Proponents of my school’s approach to learning would argue that students are thinking critically and communicating even if it is about things besides content. They will say that students are thinking critically about the latest recording software, or that they are raising their communication grades through learning to make better eye contact with an audience.

As a teacher I wonder constantly about the value of substituting these skills for content. Would I rather see my students have a deep understanding and appreciation for a particular scientific principle, or a working knowledge of this year’s edition of a specific brand of photo editing software?  One is lasting, while the other can be rendered irrelevant by a single upgrade. To me the choice is simple.

Emma Bryant

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Teacher Perspective | 2 Comments »

Art Works?

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

The latest data from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) show arts programs in the midst of drastic budget cuts.  Only 50 percent of 18-year-olds surveyed report receiving any arts education in school. And the numbers are worse for minorities. Only 26 percent of African-Americans surveyed report having arts instruction in school.  And only 28 percent of Hispanics (down from 47 percent in 1982).

Recent scores on the NAEP Arts assessment show similar gaps. In 2008, black and Hispanic students scored significantly lower than White and Asian students. Cuts in school programming forced the NAEP test to focus primarily on the visual arts and music, instead of all four arts areas (dance, music, visual art, and theatre) – so much for a well-rounded arts education.

Arne Duncan encourages schools to “cut smart:” to reduce shortsighted cuts, especially in the instruction of the arts. Yet, the arts verge on nonexistent in President Obama’s new budget plan for the Department of Education. Instead, STEM education is its top priority. Science, technology, engineering and math training is the focus.  In practice, the emphasis of STEM education is often more on technology with little science, engineering, or math to go with it. Don’t students need to know about more than technology to succeed, even in the 21st century?

Research shows that children are more likely to be successful with a strong background in the arts. The best and brightest recognize the importance of music, dance, and visual arts in K-12 programming. So why aren’t we making the arts available to all of our students?

Meagan Estep

Posted in Arts, Assessment | No Comments »

Science Manuals—For English Class

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Over the course of the coming months Common Core will be publishing a series of guest blogs by Emma Bryant, a New Tech High School teacher who will be describing her first-hand experience with 21st century-skills education.  Emma Bryant is a pseudonym.

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This year, tenth graders in my “21st Century School” aren’t suffering the annoyances that accompany studying poetry, fiction, or even non-fiction texts. Instead, students are writing instructional manuals, describing scientific processes, and using a science textbook to learn literacy skills in a joint English/Science class. No, these students are no longer plagued with requirements to read boring literature ‒ there’s simply no use for it in the utilitarian 21st century.

The process begins with students being asked to design a new piece of science equipment for use in the lab of a fictional company’s research and development unit. Using pieces of information gathered primarily from internet searches, a handful of journal articles, and much team work (95% of class time), students set out to complete their task.

Once the new equipment is created, students wrote about how to use it. With just a little imagination, the students’ “user’s manual” satisfied state English Language Arts requirements. In all fairness, I did not study each and every manual. So who knows ‒ there could have been a real literary gem hidden away. But somehow I doubt it.

Teachers facilitated the development of literacy skills with passages of the science textbook, as well as portions of manuals. Students read sentences on scientific subject matter and details on user instruction. Teachers administered vocabulary tests on scientific terms and instruction manual jargon.

In the end, students created some interesting designs and, to varying degrees, applied basic elements of science to the design process. On the whole, however, science content played second fiddle to other requirements ‒ the use of specific design software, credit for communication and collaboration, and the hard-to-define, but still-assessed, “innovation.” And “English” fared even worse.

With a world of literature waiting ‒ a world of human experience for the reading ‒ it’s a travesty for dry (but useful!) manuals to take its place.

Emma Bryant

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Teacher Perspective | 3 Comments »