Archive for October, 2011

Caution for Digital Literacy Enthusiasts

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

In a letter to Time, Annie Murphy Paul says “we’re overestimating how much computers will teach our kids” and undervaluing the importance of content knowledge:

“There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate, to name three of the ’21st century skills’ so dear to digital literacy enthusiasts. But such skills can’t be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to a joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you’ve already mastered. Nor is there any reason that these skills must be learned or practiced in the context of technology. Critical thinking is crucial, but English students engage in it whenever they parse a line of poetry or analyze the motives of an unreliable narrator. Collaboration is key, but it can be effectively fostered in glee club or on the athletic field. Whatever is specific to the technological tools we use right now—and these tools are bound to change in any case—is designed to be easy to learn and simple to use.”

Read on, here.

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Technology | No Comments »

Hakim on National Science Framework: Not Visionary, Not Exciting

Monday, October 24th, 2011

“The average person’s body contains about 100 trillion cells, but only maybe one in 10 is human.”

That sentence made the front page of the October 11th Washington Post. And, yes, most of your cells and mine are not the familiar nuclear cells diagramed in textbooks. Rather, they are microbial cells—bacteria and archaea–that pass on their information buddy to buddy, in a process called horizontal gene transfer.

We are just beginning to understand the implications of that process and of the role those 90 trillion microbial cells play in your life drama. “We’re seeing an unprecedented rate of discovery. Everywhere we look, microbes seem to be involved,” says a Colorado University scientist quoted in the Post. Microbiology is today’s revolutionary science; the excitement in the field is palpable. The American Society of Microbiologists now has 38,000 members.

After reading the Post article I decided to see if any of that excitement is conveyed in the National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 science education, a document intended to lead to another, which will frame a common core science curriculum for states. The assumption is that this well-intentioned blue ribbon committee-effort will update and improve science education in this country and make our children able to compete in today’s global economy.

I read the 300 page NRC document to see if that is likely. Does it describe good science? Good pedagogy? No: The science is not challenging enough. The pedagogy it suggests is not likely to be imaginative.

In the section on biology bacteria and viruses are mentioned briefly, but archaea not at all. That’s out of date science. Archaea are one of the three forms of life, known as domains, broadly accepted as the base of the evolutionary bush. (At the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, even t-shirts for kids now come with the three-branched bush of bacteria, archaea, and eukaryota.)

Something else that’s not mentioned in this document: scientists. You won’t find Darwin, or Newton, or Einstein. The story of science, its history, is not suggested or even hinted at here.

Which leads to the pedagogy.

The report lists endpoints and boundaries for each grade in each subject. Those endpoints are not challenging. Good teachers will see the document as dumbed down; ordinary teachers will be constrained by the boundaries. Yes, for low-performing schools, they will provide guidance and goals. But, overall, this is not visionary science, it is not exciting science. It does present a mostly sound overview of basic concepts. If things go according to plan, 41 already-hired teachers will use this lengthy but undistinguished document as the basis for what will essentially be a set of national science standards. This is really worrisome.

Joy Hakim

Joy Hakim is the author of The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way, Newton at the Center, Einstein Adds A New Dimension, copublished by Smithsonian Books and the National Science Teachers Association. Hakim serves on the board of Common Core.

 

Posted in Math and Science, Standards | 1 Comment »

Reversal of Fortune in California

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

A new law in California eliminates California’s arts and foreign language high school graduation requirement by allowing students to take a career-technical education (CTE) course instead.

Sound familiar? AB 1330 is nearly identical to a bill vetoed by then-Governor Schwarzenegger last fall at the urging of Common Core, among others.  By signing AB 1330 into law, Governor Brown damages the teaching of the arts and foreign language in his state and guarantees thousands of students will graduate high school unqualified for admission to California’s public universities.

The new law continues a trend in California (and across the nation): With budgets tight, more than three-quarters of California’s school districts have reduced their art and music offerings over the past two years. One quarter of those districts have dropped the classes entirely.

The University of California and California State University systems require high school students to graduate with an education across the liberal arts, including courses in the arts and foreign language. In fact, arts and foreign-language courses are twice as likely as CTE classes to be certified as college-prep courses.  To be considered for admission to California’s public universities, students must complete fifteen year-long UC-approved school courses with a grade C or better:

History and Social Science, 2 years

English, 4 years

Math, 3 years

Lab science, 2 years (3 recommended)

Foreign Language, 2 years (3 recommended)

Arts, 1 year of dance, drama, music or visual art

Elective, 1 year

The law is packaged as dropout prevention. But easing graduation requirements doesn’t lower dropout rates. In fact, rigorous graduation requirements have been found to reduce the dropout rate for high poverty students. The law’s actual effect will be reduced post-high school options for all of California’s more than 6 million public school students. The law also sends the clear message that the arts and foreign language are not as important to the state as the other subjects.

As states, districts, and schools continue to focus more narrowly on reading and math at the expense of subjects like art and foreign language, we’re disappointed to see California follow this trend.

Stephanie Porowski

Posted in Arts, Foreign Language | 2 Comments »

The “Continuous Narrowing” of ESEA

Monday, October 17th, 2011

In September 2009, when reauthorization of ESEA seemed imminent, Secretary Duncan said, “Let us build a law that discourages a narrowing of curriculum and promotes a well-rounded education that draws children into sciences and history, languages and the arts in order to build a society distinguished by both intellectual and economic prowess.”

Now, more than two years later, Sen. Harkin has released a draft ESEA reauthorization proposal. And, in spite of the Department’s significant influence, the draft bill’s support of the “well-rounded education” Duncan touted is, well, almost undetectable.

The document is 860 pages long. Student achievement in “Core Academic Subjects” is referenced a dozen times, but specifics never arise. This tome contains no mentions of chemistry, physics, or biology, for example. Music gets four mentions; art only one. And history and civics just two. How are we going to improve education if no one is willing to talk about the substance of what is being taught?

Meanwhile, the shape, method, and approach to accountability measures continue to be tweaked, tuned, and obsessed over. The big news the draft contains is a reinvention of the current accountability system, scrapping AYP’s strict performance targets in favor of a measure of “continuous improvement” for all students and for particular subgroups.

But “continuous improvement” will do nothing to address ESEA’s intense focus on math and reading at the expense of the rest of the liberal arts. Although the bill would shift testing requirements to include measures for student growth, required tests would continue to measure student achievement in only math, reading and science. And the science test would remain inconsequential to “continuous improvement.” Why not widen the lens of the “continuous improvement” measure to include other subjects? It is an idea that would present many challenges and face many obstacles, but it is at least worth discussing.

Writing about the unintended consequences of NCLB, Diane Ravitch and Checker Finn predicted, “Rich kids will study philosophy and art, music and history, while their poor peers will fill in bubbles on test sheets. The lucky few will spawn the next generation of tycoons, political leaders, inventors, authors, artists and entrepreneurs. The less lucky masses will see narrower opportunities.”

We know that is happening already. And if anything resembling Harkin’s draft becomes law, the problem will only get worse.

Lynne Munson

Posted in Arts, Assessment, Curriculum, English/Language Arts, ESEA, Foreign Language, History/Social Studies, Math and Science | No Comments »