Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Education in the United States

So… I've been reading that the US is not as advanced as a lot of other nations with regard to education (at least according to an International test.) And not only are we behind Singapore and China but Finland and Canada also place higher. I have been learning that many of our brightest minds are brought in from other countries. Michio Kaku says that our educational system is stuck in the 1950s. I am curious, in your opinions what would have to happen to fix our educational system? I have a friend from China who said that the kids there are pushed so hard to excel that they are burnt out by the time they get to college, so I don't think pushing kids too hard is the right idea- but I don't really imagine that's happening in Canada. I think creativity is important as well. I am just wondering if anyone on these boards has an idea what should be happening in the US.

Most likely you are speaking of the PISA? PISA 2015 Results as presented Dec 6, 2016.

Meanwhile many young US citizens with the brightest minds are being manipulated to "even out" in order to "close achievement gaps" and "close excellence gaps". Some may find this ironic.

Dr. Michio Kaku's bigthink blog is here, and his website is here; These provide some background and context for his viewpoints.

Some past threads on PISA, and the comparative pros-and-cons of various international approaches to education include:
- 2012 PISA results are out,
-The Pleasures of Teaching to the Test,
- School in Finland gets more like homeschool,
- The Bright Students Left Behind,
-Seattle Public Schools to end tracking.

Current US policy which strives to close achievement gaps and excellence gaps often does so by capping the growth of students at the top, including gifted students. IMO, the antidote is cluster grouping students by readiness and ability regardless of chronological age. The focus must change from equal outcomes to equal opportunities, while acknowledging that some may be more motivated to utilize the opportunities presented... which often requires both hard work and sacrifice. Students must be encouraged to foster their internal locus of control.

One might also wish to look at various characteristics of students in countries which are said to be scoring higher on the PISA, such as percent of student body which are immigrants (both legal and undocumented/illegal), percent of children age 6-15 who attend school, percent of student body which participates in the testing.

The Chinese do well academically, but so do Chinese-Americans in the U.S.. White Americans do better than most Europeans. When you control for race, U.S. test scores are pretty good. You can look at the graphic "2012 Pisa Overall Scores" at http://www.unz.com/isteve/new-pisa-test-results/ for the statistics behind these assertions.

OK, I'll bite. I've read a lot about PISA and standardized testing, trying to understand what does and doesn't impact these scores. Given our own extreme frustrations with our school system, I have to admit I am always a little startled when Canada ranks so high.

I think the simple answer is that Canada, comparatively speaking, lacks the extremes of the US in education (and in most domains, for that matter). The US has extraordinarily great schools - and extraordinarily bad ones. In Canada, what we have is consistency: pretty much universally OK schools. They serve the vast majority of students reasonably well. They can be pretty bad with academic outliers, but they (mostly) offer consistency across SES and other domains. Yes, of course we do have some schools full of children from poor families, or new immigrants, or other marginalized populations, and they're not doing as well as they could be, and we could do way more and better. But at least those kids are getting the same as everyone else, not less. In our district, our low achievers link a lot more to unremediated LDs than to poverty.

In contrast, I have seen a lot of research along the lines of what's summarized in this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/business...ool-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/

Here I am going to attempt to tread carefully, as I don't want to divert this thread into politics, but it's hard to avoid, as the education system as a whole is such a small piece of educational outcomes. So the more complex answer to why Canada can manage this consistency is that we do a lot to even things out long before children ever hit school. We have less poverty, and we do a lot to reduce its impact, especially on kids. We have one-year paid parental leave, universal health care (so good preventative care, but also no financial issues from catastrophic costs), as well as other pieces of the social safety network. We pay teachers very well, and subsidize daycare. (PISA says teacher pay isn't crucial, but my impression is that teacher salaries in the US are unusually low). Our system for community sponsorship and support of new immigrants is getting a lot of attention lately for how well it gets newcomer families up and running and fully functional in society. There's lots of pieces like this, all aimed at putting some money in up front, so that in the long run, more people are more fully engaged in society, and better employed, for more of their lives. As a re-read this, it sounds like socialism run amuck, but actually it costs a lot less in the long run.

This isn't intended to sound like some smug look-how-great-we-are. It's hardly utopia up here, just a different model. We screw up lots, all the time. I spend much of my time ranting about all the things we do wrong. And the Canadian obsession with equity makes us awful at dealing with outliers. Tall poppy syndrome, big time. I drool, often, about some of the opportunities I read about in this forum. And of course lots of people still do fall through the cracks. But when they do, most don't fall quite as far, and there's more ways for them to find their way back up. The result is that when I just did a quick google of "social mobility Canada vs US", I found pretty broad agreement that children born in poverty in Canada are far less likely to stay there. So all that to say, if you want to improve US educational outcomes, the challenge is far more complex than curriculum (ours, for the record, sucks. We are most definitely NOT "pushing too hard". We do great in PISA anyways).

If this derails this thread, I will apologize and immediately delete. I have spent an awful lot of time pondering this question, but I know politics is pretty raw right now, and it is not my intent to inflame.

I think indigo's recommendation would work, or at least significantly improve education in the US, but politically it is very difficult due to the links between performance/SES/race.

DS has learned math primarily through independent study online and I wonder if accelerated kids could not have more of their learning via online resources enabling a higher teacher:student ratio, freeing up teachers to spend more time on kids that are not performing as they should. The disadvantage is that accelerated kids would have less teacher instruction but at least they would get more challenging material and be able to work at their own pace.

Unfortunately, the "greatness" of a school is measured by the performance of its students. A reluctant student body, not encouraged at home to embrace the struggle of academic challenge, nor to master self-discipline, may lag behind in academic/intellectual performance and achievement as compared with students from homes which value education (including the struggle and self-discipline, hard work and sacrifice inherent in academic challenge).

Agreed!

Some may say that the US puts in so much money "up front" that some parents may find receiving those funds to be more palatable than engaging in society, becoming employed, and taking on tasks such as volunteerism to help others... all of which involve risk of "failure", including subjecting one's self to competition, and being evaluated by others.

Before DS began school I was not in favor of taxpayers spending significant funds on preK programs for kids from lower income families. I have always felt that if parents are going to have kids they need to invest the time in raising the children, it is not for the taxpayers to do this for them.

After a few years in the school systems I think something must be done to try and bring these kids up to a higher level when they begin Kindergarten so at this stage I am very supportive of more spending up front.

Recently, we toured a boarding school that my son is applying to and it was interesting to note that very few classrooms had smartboards (actually I did not see one but presumably some might have them), instead chalkboards or whiteboards. In our area there is a movement to ensure every classroom has the latest technology and I have always felt like it was a waste of money.

On what, specifically? For example, on encouraging parents to value education (including the struggle and self-discipline, hard work and sacrifice inherent in academic challenge) so that they both role model and support their children in embracing academic challenge? Or spending on programs and policies intended to provide "equal outcomes" regardless of effort in parenting and studying/learning?

Early research (Hart & Risley) showed the lasting value from positive parental interaction with a child. More recent studies (Head Start) indicated that any gains from early childhood programs tend to disappear by 3rd grade. Here is a roundup of prior discussions which touched on this:
- This old post has links to information on both studies.
- The work of Hart/Risley has been mentioned/summarized/linked to in these old posts: 1, 2, 3.

I would tend to agree as most homeschools would not be early adopters of technology such as smartboards and yet homeschooled children tend to perform/achieve quite well. I do believe that exposure to some form of technology is important... whether laptops, i-pads, i-pods, online exercises/classes, smart phones, apps, fit-bits, etc, and I believe that learning typing/keyboarding skills is important. That said, I am a proponent of books, as they offer advantages such as stability of content, publication history (version, copyright date, author/s, ISBN), ability to thumb through, and no data tracking of readers.

I doubt you could change parental behavior so would rather put funds into something along the lines of HeadStart, although I am surprised that any gains disappear by 3rd grade...both surprising and depressing.

In our area there is a ongoing effort to re-integrate the largest school district as there is a concentration of poverty. The kids that are from families with funds will simply move so I do not think this will have any overall positive impact. What is interesting is primarily it is a conversation about blacks/whites whereas if you go to any advanced academic competition Asians comprise 90%+ despite only comprising 5-6% of the population in the schools.

While some may form rather insular groups by ethnicity, and not assimilate, I prefer to focus on individual motivation, to the degree that is possible when the topic is how children achieve/perform as a whole, by country, and by demographic.

While some may find it difficult to change parental behavior, the qualifications to receive government funding (collected from taxpayers and redistributed) could change, rewarding desired behavior. There is an old saying, "What you reward, you get more of." ***

These choices may detract from, or negatively impact, the level of in-home educational support for these children.

I don't agree about our education system being stuck in the 1950s. The 50s was when the space race started. US schools were much better then (and in the 60s). I have math books from those decades, and they're way more rigorous than the current ones (also coherent and clearly written by people who understood the subject matter). Poor textbooks are a big part of our problem, IMO.

Another problem is that many teachers lack subject knowledge. This problem is worst at the K-8 level in public schools and some religious schools (e.g. Evangelical Christian schools that reject evolution, etc.). We don't like to talk about this fact (teacher bashing!)

Teaching is a low-prestige profession here, but when its members collectively have the lowest SAT, GRE, and Miller Analogies scores, low prestige isn't surprising. As for low pay driving the problem, average salaries in districts around here are $75-90K. Yet our public schools are still generally lousy. Places like Russian Scool of Mathematics, Mathnasium, and other tutoring places are very popular here. There are at least 4 within walking distance of my house.

Parents make a big difference, but I don't think we should dump on parents working two low wage jobs without benefits just so they can make ends meet. They can't barely make the rent, let alone Kumon, may not have subject knowledge to help their kids, and are probably don't have the bandwidth anyway. I think that US society is very quick to dump on people it sets up for failure.

This is where Canada and other nations do so much better than us. But we don't acknowledge this fact. Instead, we claim that the white and Asian kids in America do as well as high scoring PISA countries, which strikes me as a justification for ignoring the effects of poverty via an unsubtle claim about inherent lack of ability in some groups? I doubt very much that, for example, poor white kids in Appalachia are outscoring their peers in Finland or Canada.

Our narrowly focused high-stakes tests are also a problem. We favor industrial measures where low-tech solutions are called for. We give the kids passages to read, followed by multiple choice questions testing "comprehension," instead of asking them to read a whole story or a novel, talking about it, and then writing a paragraph or a paper. IMO, we choose an edu-diet of fast food over balanced nutrition. And then we wonder what's wrong. Throw in fads (whole language, no wrong answers in math, Common Core), and the results are predictable.

It's complicated. And I think that ideology on the left (Equity!) and right (The free market!) just makes it even more so.

Val - so what do you suggest the US does to improve the education system?

As I mentioned earlier, I always felt like folks should not have children if they cannot afford to raise them but have come around to supporting more of some sort of Head Start initiative. Indigo referred to a study indicating that it was shown that unfortunately Head Start has not been found to have lasting impacts. From what I have seen locally, schools and teachers want more money but have not come up with any ideas on what they will do that might improve something.

I agree with you that it is very complicated but what you seem to have done is to bash responses so far without having any of your own suggestions.

I agree that many older textbooks (including math) are better that what is issued today.

This compares with a median household income of $51,939 as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, September 2014.

In general, teachers in government schools enjoy a strong labor union. In addition to above-average salaries while working 9 or 10 months rather than a full 12-month year, many have strong employment benefits packages. This may include full tuition reimbursement for successfully completing coursework toward obtaining higher degrees, post-retirement pensions, and life-long post-employment health insurance benefits. Some teachers "retire" from one district, and collect a pension while being employed by another district.

I agree.

Here I will add that the "Affordable Healthcare Act" (also known as Obamacare) has provided incentive to many companies to cut the average work-week from 40 hours (with benefits) to under 30 hours (without benefits).

Some may say that the way in which in which a society sets people up for failure is by funding (rewarding) self-defeating behaviors... which may tend to encourage more of the self-defeating behavior, even through multiple generations.

Unfortunately, all of the above may negatively impact the in-home educational support for some students.

LAF, another direction worth looking into is the impact of institutionalized racism, segregation, and poverty on the education system. Disparity across the nation is the result of many factors.

I had a couple of suggestions in my post: read whole stories or novels instead of excerpts, discuss them, and write paragraphs (ETA: younger kids) or papers (older kids) about them.

Also, I thought that math books written by people with subject knowledge was implicit. I'll also add that it helps to have writers with subject knowledge who have also taught and who know the points where kids get stuck.

Alternatively, and more cheaply, we could just use the old ones. The Brown/Doliciani books that I've mentioned many times here are a prime example. They run from pre-algebra through introductory analysis (called precalc these days, but analysis is much different).

Science: embed the scientific method in all teaching. Instead of presenting facts only, teach how discoveries are made and how they must be proven. EVIDENCE. This theme is essentially lacking from pedagogy today, and IMNSHO, the problem is due to teachers who don't know what the scientific method is and books that give it a page in a sidebar. It has to be integrated.

Grammar: bring that back. Schools don't teach this subject like they once did (the National Council of Teachers of English took a position against it in 1985). I know that my kids have had minimal exposure. Grammar lessons should be accompanied by lot of writing. My class started writing stories at the end of first grade. By second grade, it was common. My kids didn't do anywhere near as much of that as we did as kids. And everything was corrected by our by our teachers.


You may have changed your opinion somewhat, but you make it sound so simple, like no one ever loses a job or gets sick. Medical bills are the #1 cause of US bankruptcies. So should pregnancy rights be restricted to people who will never lose a job or get sick/injured? I know you're not suggesting that there should be a license to get pregnant, but the quoted statement is just so...simplistic.

I stand by my criticism of harsh attitudes that blame people for circumstances beyond their control --- attitudes often held by people who don't have to struggle through a life of stress and hopelessness. Some people live with a level of stress that's so immense and distracting, it precludes an ability to do homework consistently. Mom and dad are shouting about how to pay the rent AND buy a needed medicine (at full price because they don't have insurance), the heat got turned off, there's no internet at home, and there's nothing but white bread for dinner.

The thing is, American society is so very harsh. People here can be so judgmental about others. It's almost become a blood sport. There's also this idea that anyone can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Where's the constructive compassion?

This stuff just doesn't happen to this degree in places like Canada or Denmark, because medical care is a right and because wage laws ensure that people can live on the earnings of a single full-time job. Schools are funded equally, and they 1) spend their money well and 2) don't have to go begging for art or science supplies. Less stress helps improve outcomes. This is what I mean by constructive compassion.

I agree with pretty much everything that has been said so far. I especially feel strongly about ability grouping. I also believe that mixed age classrooms in general are better. My grandfather is over 100 and went to a small schoolhouse with all different ages. He paid attention when the teacher taught the older kids math and ended up learning it well ahead. He wasn't great at reading though and learned that with his age mates (mate). There was no set differentiation or acceleration, the kids just grouped by what they were ready for purely on their own. Certainly that works best if you have 20 kids total in the whole school (my grandfather's grade had 2 students, he always jokes he was the 2nd best student in his class!), but I think it also says something important and interesting even if it's no longer feasible.

My other thing that I feel strongly about is teaching beyond academics. How will a child living in poverty ever learn to manage money for instance? How will a kid who sees adults in their life making poor choices daily ever learn to be a good decision maker? We need to spend a lot of the day teaching real life skills to children, especially those children who are not learning it at home. IMO, this is an important part of breaking the poverty cycle. Will a child who realistically is not going to go on to college someday be better served with tons of state testing and instruction beyond their ability to get the best test results possible or academics at just the right level freeing up so much instructional time for learning about good nutrition and how to make a budget?

We need to teach all students to be better critical thinkers. To understand and interpret statistics and navigate a world full of advertising and politics. We need to teach logic rather than just textbook math. When you focus so much getting everyone up to a certain level on a test of a very limited number of subjects all else gets less time. I'm sure that the young person flipping burgers for a living and barely able to support herself and her 2 kids even with some public assistance would have been much better off learning some budgeting and decision making skills than learning a bunch of unconnected math she will never use.

When I went to school we had 4 groups in each grade. Group 1 was college prep and there were 3 other groups. The 4th was remedial. We were given tests for placement, but each year some moved up and some moved down. We took entirely different classes or different versions of the same class or went at a different pace. People learned what they needed to learn to go on to the careers they were best suited to. If your dad was a mechanic and you wanted to be a mechanic too you could just take what you needed to to graduate and do what you wanted with your life. Over a third of my classmates went to vocational school for high school. I started college early. My school was actually not very good in general (poor, rural area), but ability grouping was one things they got right.

I would also argue that the assertion that less able kids benefit and so do more able from mixed ability classes sounds ridiculous to me. More able children are frustrated. They are held back in their learning and development. They often end up being more intolerant of the slower kids who are holding them back and who they are often tasked with tutoring (to help them master the material better too, of course). And the less able kids honestly feel stupid. They know they are slower. I personally would rather have a hard time mastering addition in 3rd grade with other kids in the same boat than with a bunch of kids who are learning times tables and a few who seem to get everything the first time the teacher presents it and complain about waiting for me to finish up my work each day. I honestly think ability grouping leads to better self esteem and more effective teaching of all abilities.

OK, said my bit. Not that it will make any difference. Our solution was to leave public education entirely and do homeschooling and we are now trying out private gifted school. I'm not sure that public could ever meet my sons needs and prior experience makes me hesitant to ever try again. What could they do with a first grader who has mastered elementary math? The elementary teachers aren't likely to have the expertise to teach higher math even if they had the time and the inclination. This leads into better teacher training of course. I'll never forget the day in 3rd grade when I realized I was smarter than my teacher. While he was spectacularly unintelligent even for an elementary teacher in my district, it was still hard for me to cope with listening to and supposedly learning from someone who I could think circles around. Soon I was smarter than all of my teachers. And I was never identified as gifted. How much harder must it be for the most gifted children to deal with being taught by people who can't even understand at the level they can understand at? So, yeah, better and more highly educated teachers who are compensated accordingly, I'll add that to my most important points:) OK, that's really it!

I have a likely unpopular view point to add. I think we need a complete overhaul of everything students learn in public education. I think there is a lot of math taught that is never ever used. I think most people will graduate and never again write a research paper. Science and history/government might be fine but I'd put more emphasis on understanding medical and child development issues under science. I'd also add a how to live on "insert median household income here" while saving for retirement classes.

There is a huge disconnect between what is taught and what people need to know. Learning how to weigh salary and benefits packages, negotiate a lease, compare credit card offers, convince a city council to pass an ordinance or do home maintenance is far more relevant than learning about something like iambic pentameter.

I also think there'd be more cultural buy in if education was more relevant.

What KJP said is what I was trying to say. Only a lot more coherently and succinctly. I know that I personally use almost nothing I was taught after elementary school in my daily life. I am a person who loves to learn and to know things, but that actually hinders me more than it helps (I waste a lot of time on stuff that is not important that I could put to much better use).

Agreed! I've also posted about this in the past... meanwhile many schools are creating anthologies of passages/excerpts for students to read, out of context.

Agreed!

Agreed!

I would tend to agree. There is a difference between making self-defeating choices, and dealing with a set of circumstances beyond one's control.

While many can, and some are unwilling to, it is probably untrue that anyone can.

I'm familiar with heroic levels of volunteerism, as well as sacrificial levels of monetary donations and goods to those in need.

Possibly you mean it is government-funded, using taxpayer money?

Some might say wages are better determined by supply and demand?

US schools spend $12,296 per pupil (2012 figures), including teacher benefits, such as advanced degrees, health insurance, pensions.

The US expenditure per pupil exceeds that of Canada and Denmark, which are both reported as approximately $10K (2012 figures).

More reports available from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Browsing these statistics and those of State Departments of Education show that low-performing districts may actually spend more per pupil.

Me, too.

Agreed!

Absolutely! Excellent to teach life skills such as financial literacy, planning, weighing outcomes, decision making. That said, fortunately many children may still learn these these skills and concepts at home, from their parents.

Yep!

I believe these links provide the research/findings/facts which support this:
- http://www.casenex.com/casenet/pages/virtualLibrary/gridlock/groupmyths.html,
- http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/rbdm9204/rbdm9204.pdf

Well, it just might... especially as other parents find areas of agreement, and support grows for these ideas.

Agreed!
Teaching these life skills (along with nutrition which was mentioned upthread by another poster) may keep kids more engaged now, and better prepared for life scenarios in the future.

That said, I will mention that a debate has been ongoing for decades: the value of liberal arts education (sometimes called classical education, or the education of free people) -vs- career-oriented education (sometimes called vocational training, or the task-oriented training traditionally given to peasants). These may be viewed differently depending upon one's place in the current economy. In a shrinking economy, more families may be drawn to vocational training for employment in manual tasks which cannot be easily outsourced, providing a semblance of job security, financial stability, and more control over career length.

Another thing to add to a dream curriculum: critical appraisal of scientific literature. There is a lot of reporting in the lay media about science, ranging from nutrition research to climate science, which frequently over or under represents the validity of the research or the conclusions that can be drawn. I think in the modern world people need to have a rudimentary ability to understand the difference between the results of a single poorly conducted study, a well conducted study, and a rigorous body of research. They also need to understand why studies may legitimately get different results.

While the US is different than NZ simular claims are made. The statistics though say that it is a small minority that have more kids to stay on a benefit longer or who are teenage benefit mums. The highest number of people on the sole parent benefit are divorced women in their thirties and it is usually temporary. MMore common is a child who isn't getting the support they need becsuse both parents work long hours at poorly paid jobs leaving kids cared for or caring for siblings.

NZ is dropping in the PISA ratings because despite being similar in set up to Canada and having a relatively consistent schooling system we have a huge variation of scores. We have about 20% of kids whom we have been compketely unable to lift academically.

ETA. The expert on the radio the other day claimed that this problem was caused by ability clustering. He argument was that kids in China were getting an hour maths from the teacher every day whereas because of having to teach a bit of the class at a time kids here only get 3 short sessions a week. I remember that though when I was at school and instruction was about 10 mins to all then 50 mins working in silence. I can't see why the teacher can't do 10 mins with four groups a day. As far as i can see it is more that insuffucent time is allocated in the first place.

I need to find the source, but believe that the Headstart story is not as simple as the gains even out and thus it isn't worthwhile. (Besides, don't we hear that all the time about "kids evening out by third grade" in a very different context re: giftedness?) Will try to find the research/summary I heard and post it.

Possibly the info you are looking for was linked upthread here or here?

The first link points to a post including:

Have there been tests comparing adults on common core type concepts after school? A 5, 10, 15 and 20 years later view would be interesting.

It seems pointless to spend billions teaching people things they don't use and won't remember. I had an argument with an adult about whether Colombus sailed on the Mayflower. Seriously. Why bother?

Just teach kids how to learn, how to be healthy and how to make good decisions.

Teaching kids how to learn means presenting stuff to them, getting them talk/write about what they think about it, remember it, and apply it. It's not a process that be written out in steps and tested. It's a skill that's acquired through time and practice.

If we were to remove history, novels, and other "pointless" things from the curriculum, we'd look back on today as being a golden age of good schooling and well-rounded citizens.

The capacity to make a decision comes, in part, from knowing about what happened to other people when they made a decision (hence the phrase, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.").

Thank you all your viewpoints were all very interesting and "educational" .

I haven't had time to go through all the links but what I've read on here has helped me understand what is going on.

Regarding puffin's post about ability grouping… there has been a trend at some of the private schools in our area to do "flipped" classrooms… the kids watch a presentation by the teacher explaining what they are teaching them for homework, then students work the problems in the classroom with their groups and the teacher. So they learn the basic idea the night before then practice by doing problems in the classroom.

FWIW, these were a trend in our public schools, as well. They worked for DD, but I'm not sure if they would work for all kids.

I want my kids taught at school, preferably by knowledgeable teachers who answer questions and discuss things. I noticed a tendency in my kid's last school to direct queries to Khan academy or google. If the teachers aren't teaching but instead being homework helpers i vote we pay them half as much and have twice as many.

One of the aims of the "flipped" classroom was to help create equal outcomes by not allowing interested, involved parents to see what their children were working on, thereby avoiding the possibility of some children receiving parental supervision, guidance, or assistance with homework.

Meanwhile, "flipped" classrooms were often promoted as having children do their homework in the teacher's presence so the teacher would know who was struggling, and what concepts they found difficult, so the teacher could help them. I find this highly implausible, as a teacher would not typically have time to observe and tailor individual help to multiple pupils during the class period.

Since the homework my kids receive rarely relates to what they are learning and they don't have textbooks or workbooks I would propbably be more help and have more input in a flipoed situation. For my kids i guess school would be like a long study hall.

It assumes the child has an environment at home that includes the technology to watch and absorb the lesson. Also that they are home in time to do so. Unfortunately, that's a leap of faith in our society.

Some schools have been assigning each child a laptop, i-pad, or other technology device. The camera and/or microphone may be remotely turned on to observe the child's use of the device, the study environment, etc. This is not entirely new... see posts from 2013 (1, 2, 3). GPS software can track the location of the device. Those running more sophisticated software can track the amount of time a student spends on each page, even track a student's eye movements across the page while reading. Hence my statement in this post upthread, about being a proponent of books.

Common Core has ushered in extensive data collection on students.

Here is a link to a discussion on flipped classrooms, from 2013.

I read your post yesterday,and afterward found an article in magazine about PISA.There was mention of new book,Cleverlands by Lucy Crehans,which goes over the data collected.Its still unavailable from Amazon.

Yes! Here are some links:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1111661/cleverlands/,
https://www.lkmco.org/cleverlands-inside-the-worlds-best-classrooms/,
https://vimeo.com/131028201.

You can get it from amazon.co.uk. Their new copies are out of stock, but used copies are available.

There's a brief excerpt here.

I'll add something to my list of school reforms in the US: cut down on homework, and no homework until middle school. And, oh...no summer homework for AP classes.

I must agree. Sadly, environments in disadvantaged children's homes are not exactly conducive to such 'flipped' methodologies, and I strongly suspect that it may only serve to widen the gaps between those who have advantages at home and those who do not-- and those advantages are far from only being financial.

DD, by virtue of being in a cyberschool, had a lot more of this canned, pre-recorded "teaching" than most kids have, and I can honestly say that this was a terrible pedagogical thing for her personally. In college, it's fine-- but then again, most of the content delivery in college is different to begin with. Some subjects, it works better than others.


Ditto on the "look it up on Khan/YouTube," too. YUCK.






To those noting that schools don't teach 'practical' subjects, let me add to Val's already excellent explanation of why subjects like world civ, art history, or literature are emphatically not wastes of time.


I was in fact taught a very pragmatic set of financial/life skills in a basic literacy course which was required by my state for high school graduation.

In 1980-something. Early 80's, in fact. I never learned some of those things anywhere else, honestly-- and I'm not sure how my peers learned them. From parents, maybe? I am not sure.

But from that course, I understood what a home inspection was for, how compound interest and insurance work, how to budget and reconcile a personal financial/banking statement, and the like.

In terms of what I've found most useful in a vocational sense, yes, that course was among the most valuable I ever took-- and I have a PhD, which is most emphatically not in economics/finance.

I'm also noting with some amusement that dividing education neatly into "practical-- vo-tech" and "pure education" leaves those who go to that great bastion of vocational training, (medical school) being solidly grouped with auto mechanics and electricians.

I guess it's a matter of perspective, but there are a number of white-collar professions which require substantial amounts of such "vocational" training-- but often only once a liberal arts or 'pure' educational foundation has been laid with an undergraduate degree.

And my opinion is that we tend to treat mathematics entirely improperly in K-12 education and always have (well, for at least 35-40 years)-- by seeing all of that math as preparation for calculus, and not as an ever-expanding and imminently practical, necessary toolbox for understanding and evaluating the world around us. I'm a big fan of applied mathematics, which I believe nearly everyone can learn to some degree-- and not so much (in primary and secondary, at least) of theoretical mathematics for it's own sake. I'm all for trig and calculus for those students who ARE headed in those directions in life. It's just that I would rather that every student learned algebra 1 concepts very thoroughly, and not half of the ideas in geometry and trig as well. If students learned about half as much as the curriculum theoretically covers, but truly[ learned it, the world would be a much improved place.

I'm all for proofs (real ones-- not the balogna that passes for them now) in geometry-- but because of what they teach students about critical thought and logic and problem solving. Not because I think that most students are going to use that geometry regularly. They won't. You know what most of them will use and seldom even SEE before leaving high school?

Statistics, that is what. I'd love for algebra II to be replaced by a year of statistics-- with ability tracking into a "you're going to be taking advanced mathematics" versus "this is the end of the line, probably, unless you take college algebra."

Perhaps it has partly to do with subject matter. My DD has had flipped classrooms a couple times for science; her AP bio teacher this year uses that approach, She loves it. There is a relatively short video lecture most nights (or kids can use the textbook for the assignement, whichever the student prefers) and then the kids are set free the next day. All of their labs are self-designed, so she and her lab group, who have no problems with understanding the presented material, can spend their time applying the lessons without being slowed down by the need for questions and clarifications from other stiudents. (Our school encourages all students to take as many advanced classes as possible, so large variability in student readiness for the classes persists, just like in the non-tracked middle school classes, but that's another issue.) The kids who need help with questions have direct access to the teacher, often one-on-one or in small groups, while,the kids who don't need it aren't held back. I can't speak from the experience of weaker students, but for my kid it's fantastic. If she is organized and speedy, sometimes after working on the lab she is able to complete homework, lab write up stuff, or work on the next day's lesson during some of the class time. This is a huge bonus in her day, which is more often than not filled with unnecessary but mandatory review/repetition and slow pacing, leaving a boatload of homework every night, which will be reviewed in painstaking detail during class time the next day, a real waste of time from her perspective. (Especially, as spaghetti noted, there are lots of kids who just don't bother to do the homework, doubly punishing those who did.)

I'm not sure how math would lend itself to this format, honestly, but for lab science I think it's great. I't does help that the video lessons are well-done, and also that a textbook option exists for those who learn better that way. I know my DD wishes more teachers used this format.

I will probably get banned for this but here goes my understanding of the kernel of the education mess we have in the USA.

The elephant in the living room is that there are huge disparities, even controlling for household income, number of degrees attained by birth parents etc, between average IQ AND Achievement scores across racial lines.

This means that any attempts at tracking like ability students gets reflexively shot down for perceived lack of diversity.

It means that standardized test ceilings are brought down to a level at which it is impossible to distinguish the brilliant from the just-above-ok.

It means that the focus is on forlornly trying to get the LHS of the bell curve 'camel' through the high achievement 'eye of a needle' let alone up to average.

When intelligent children have to wait for the others to catch up then, naturally, this inhibits their ability to soar.

Why as a country we cannot have civil debate on this important topic that concerns the competitiveness and ultimately the quality of life of the entire country just leaves me flabbergasted.

N.B.
While there are notable exceptions like the Ashkenazim, the Igbo and the Russo-Finns, they are exceptional and relatively minute populations.

Well goodbye everyone - this post will undoubtedly OFFEND someone which will cause me to get banned.

I learned a lot from you all here and you have all helped me to better deal with raising an extremely bright and sometimes quirky beautiful daughter - THANK YOU!

Great,thank you.My searching led me there,it slip my mind though.

Re: madeinuk's post.

IMO, the fact that disparities exist isn't germane to the fact that US textbooks are lousy by any objective standard, that the teaching pool's SAT and GRE scores are very low, that high-stakes tests focus on a narrow set of skills, and that homework in the lower grades is of dubious benefit. Etc.

Just because there are disparities doesn't mean that the US education system isn't fundamentally flawed. If the disparities were to disappear tomorrow, the kids would still have math books that present ideas out of order, history books that used the word "immigration" to describe slavery, and a near-total lack of grammar books. And the teachers would still lack subject knowledge.

Cricket makes a great point-- but I have to wonder if the reason why it is preferable isn't ultimately more of a band-aid approach to the underlying problem of placement in a course which is really slightly beneath that ideal proximal zone of development.


Because I can definitely recall DD preferring this sort of thing when her chief goal was to get through the class assignments as efficiently as possible, if that makes sense.

Why waste time doing both the reading, attending class, writing up notes, etc. etc. if you *could* get an A by just watching the videos and acing assessments, right? (Which, to be clear, she did do in a few of her high school classes).



Also-- flipped pedagogy has ALWAYS been a thing in STEM coursework. We just didn't call it by the trendy moniker, and we had more realistic expectations that no, NOT all students were going to be doing the reading before coming to class-- therefore, you couldn't take it to such extremes that you left kids in the dust if they weren't well-prepared.

Besides, the average student STILL needed the second mode of hearing it from an expert teacher during in-class time prior to using the material in applications to solidify and consolidate learning.

But that is always what my classrooms looked like. About 30-40% "content delivery" and about 60-70% students working with that material to cement understanding.

Also-- inquiry-based lab exercises are a thing now, which is also extremely trendy. Problem is, most students are not really well positioned to LEARN much from them. It becomes a matter of them finding the right protocol on the web, or cajoling it from someone who got an A in the class previously or something.

I really do not like that student-derived lab thing. I know it's very popular in higher ed, too, but it's really not well suited to lower-division post-secondary students, even-- there is simply too much that they need to SEE/experience and too little time to do it in to permit that kind of 'exploratory' stuff in most classes.

I mean, it's a great idea-- just not at the expense of other learning that takes place with more conventional expertly-written lab exercises, and thoughtful questions in write-ups.

Re: Val's post Re: madeinuk's post -
Agreed!
However the corollary may be: If the fundamental flaws in US education regarding teacher expertise and textbooks were to disappear tomorrow, there may still be disparities.

Some may say that the current focus of the US educational system on equal outcomes may also be a fundamental flaw, and that the fix may be focusing on equal opportunities, while recognizing that some may be more motivated to utilize the opportunities presented... which often requires both hard work and sacrifice.

As another poster mentioned upthread, "the education system as a whole is such a small piece of educational outcomes."

Parental choices, including budgeting/financial decisions and nutritional habits, may detract from or negatively impact the level of in-home educational support for some children. To the degree that some parents may not be instructing their children in these life skills, and may not be role-modeling positive choices, government schools may take on this role in teaching children these life skills in addition to academics, so that future generations may benefit. This recaps several pages of posts by various people, upthread.

New research shows:
Potential short-term test score gains from preschool may not just disappear, but may be offset by long-term harm from pre-school. Children were found to suffer academically and also in their behavior, resulting in more school disciplinary actions.

Research Reveals Long-Term Harm of State Pre-K Program
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...veals-long-term-harm-state-pre-k-program
By Peter Gray, Ph.D.
January 31, 2022
Psychology Today

We’re not in the US, but wrt Indigo’s post about preschool teaching vs play based learning and their relative advantages, our experience is that the absence of structured teaching in preschool is not an issue at all in today’s digital age. I was a time-poor working parent when my kids were young and their day care centres were entirely play based so DS started school not fully knowing the alphabet (which at the time was a great source of anxiety for me). Fortunately, iPads had just become available, so the year before he started school, we gave him his own with unlimited wi fi access. With this, he watched countless instructional YouTube videos on a broad range of topics. He arrived at the conclusion, just as he was starting school, that in order to properly pursue his interests he needed to learn to read and fortunately the school had a fantastic set up which suited him well. They were trialling completely open classrooms for their kindergarten cohort of 57 kids, supervised by three teachers, the same number of teacher’s aides and parent volunteers, to teach students in small groups based on abilities assessed in the first week.

Without knowing the alphabet, DS started in the very bottom group (the top group were fluent readers), but he was so eager to learn, he made rapid progress and was moved up every couple of weeks. By the end of kindergarten, he was the most advanced student in the year and past the highest formal level set for structured reading and so could read pretty much anything. Meanwhile, he had been surfing the internet and watching educational videos without regard for the level/age to which the contents were aimed, so his comprehension development matched his reading progress. Since then, he has been an independent self-directed learner and class work serves mainly as revision.