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Pay teachers more — and less

January 19, 2012 By

Pay some teachers more and others less, writes Jordan Weissmann in The Atlantic.

Not all teaching jobs are alike. In fact, one could say there’s no such thing as “a teacher” at all. There are math teachers and English teachers. There are fourth grade teachers and high school teachers. There are gym teachers and…well you get my point. But while it might seem obvious, it’s also important. Because as two new studies out this week highlight, some kinds of teachers may simply be more influential on students’ educations and lives than others. The way we evaluate and pay them should reflect that.

The first study, an NBER working paper on The Long Term Impacts of Teachers, concluded that students assigned to a high value-added teacher any time between third and eighth grade were “more likely to go to college, were less likely to have children as teens, and made more money as adults” than their peers.

Good English teachers actually had a greater long-term impact on their students’ lives than talented math teachers. But they were also rarer. On the whole, math teachers were just more capable of raising their students’ test scores.

A second study, also an NBER working paper,  Do High-School Teachers Really Matter? concluded “only sometimes.”

Looking at data from schools in North Carolina, Northwestern Professor C. Kirabo Jackson found clear evidence that high school algebra teachers were able to regularly lift their students’ test scores. When it came to English teachers, though, the proof wasn’t there. Meanwhile, good high school teachers’ saw the amount of improvement in their students’ test scores vary much more from year to year than top elementary school teachers.When I spoke with Jackson, he said there were any number of explanations for his findings. Perhaps chief among them: English is considered a harder topic to “move the needle on,” especially in high school. Students learn language inside and outside the classroom.

“Performance bonuses might be more effective for math teachers, who are more likely to see results from their teaching, than English teachers, who might be facing an impossible task,” Weissmann writes. Or perhaps good English teachers should be paid more, because their job is so difficult.

Performance-pay schemes designed for elementary teachers, who have a decent chance at improving their students’ scores, may not be a fair way to evaluate high school English teachers, he adds.

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Real math

April 12, 2011 By

Students learn by solving real math problems, argues Dan Meyer on a wildly popular TED video, Math Class Needs a Makeover.  An algebra teacher and dy/dan blogger, Meyer is now working on a doctorate in curriculum design.

Rejected as a film student, Meyer tells Ed Week about the “narrative arc” of a real-world math problem. Intead of “shark terrorizes seaside town,” it might be “how long will it take me to get to Los Angeles?”

During what he calls the “second act” of a film, the characters encounter obstacles and find out what they need to do. In a math problem, the second act involves measuring, determining a formula, or finding out what information is missing.

The third act brings the exciting conclusion — with potential for a sequel.

Textbooks label the variables, present the measurements  and ask leading questions in an attempt to help students, Meyer says.  That can overwhelm students.

He starts with the hook: The final question.

For example, when teaching high schoolers, Meyer uses the digital projector to display a photo of himself shooting a basketball. Meyer has doctored the photo so that it shows the ball at several different points along the trajectory, stopping at the apex. “When I put that up on the board, the premise of that problem is obvious to every student. I don’t even have to say it. ‘Will the ball go in?’ That’s what we’re all wondering,” he says.

Then Meyer asks the students to figure out what information they need to determine whether his shot will go in. The students discover they have to measure the arc and need a protractor to do so—in a way writing their own second act. A textbook would have provided this information, Meyer says. But in the real world, “When on earth do you get all the information you need before you know you need it?”

The students can then solve the problem on their own.

Then they watch the video to see if they’re right.

Meyer believes in “delegating the sense-making of math to students.”

In my day, people were always rowing against the current, which seemed like a waste of energy. Or they were trying to calculate when trains going opposite directions would pass, instead of reading the train schedule.

 Get the Math, an educational reality TV show produced by WNET in New York, shows the real-world applicatons of algebra, reports Ed Week.

The single-episode program, as well as the companion website, features three short video segments designed to provide an introduction to teen-favored industries—music recording, fashion design, and video game development. . . . the professionals featured in each video offer examples of how they use mathematical knowledge as part of their creative processes.

Then comes the “challenge.” At the end of each segment, the pro gives a pair of two-student teams a specific industry-related algebraic problem to solve. The videos show the teams working through the problems and then presenting their solutions. The idea, of course, is that other students can play along in their classrooms.

The program, lesson plans and classroom activites are available at no charge at www.getthemath.org.

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Flunking 8th-grade algebra

February 18, 2011 By

California eighth graders are supposed to take algebra, according to standards adopted in 2003.  That’s boosted the number of eighth-grade algebra students by 80 percent, concludes a study by EdSource, working with Stanford and American Institutes for Research.  Expectations are high. But performance is just what you’d expect.

Low-scoring students placed in algebra have “almost no chance for success.” Nearly a third of students with “below basic” and “far below basic” scores were placed in eighth-grade algebra.

Not surprisingly, students who were proficient in seventh-grade math tended to be proficient in eighth-grade algebra. “Basic” students in seventh-grade math who were placed in eighth-grade algebra tended to score “basic” on the exam.

Not rocket science.

Low-scoring students should spend eighth grade learing the math skills that will give them a shot at passing algebra in ninth grade, researchers concluded.

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Common Core math asks for more

January 13, 2011 By

The proposed Common Core eighth-grade standards ask for math skills two to three years higher than math skills tested by the federal National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP), concludes a Brookings analysis.

By Common Core standards, NAEP’s number-strand questions are at the fifth-grade level, on average, the report finds, while NAEP algebra questions are at the sixth-grade level.   

Remember that many U.S. students are unable to meet NAEP standards. What will happen when the expectations rise dramatically?

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Finns aren’t satisfied with math scores

October 13, 2010 By

Despite acing the PISA tests in math, the Finns aren’t satisfied, reports Flypaper. Finnish mathematicians think the test is poorly designed (pdf).

[O]ne has to consider the possibility that the first place in the PISA study is a Pyrrhic victory: are the Finnish basic schools stressing too much numerical problems of the type emphasized in the PISA study, and are other countries, instead, stressing algebra, thus guaranteeing a better foundation for mathematical studies in upper secondary schools and in  universities and polytechnics.

PISA measures the ability to answer simple problems, the mathematicians conclude.  That’s not good enough.

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Can’t fail, won’t learn

September 22, 2010 By

Since the post on special-ed inclusion generated so much debate, here’s Mr. W on trying to teach Algebra B (the second semester of Algebra 1)  to a girl with poor math skills, a pushy parent and an IEP (Individual Education Plan).  He recommended she transfer to lower-level class after learning she’d failed Algebra A the year before, failed Algebra 1 in summer school and scored “far below basic” in general math on the state exam.  She’d earned a D on the first test and was getting 0′s on the daily work.

. . . the parent emailed the dean, counselor, special ed teacher, and principal and said my recommendation was an “easy-out remedy” for me instead of enforcing the IEP.

. . . So now it looks like the parent is going to modify the IEP and potentially make me change my grade scale for one student. At what point will parents realize that these kind of actions hurt the student more than help?

Earlier, Mr. W was forced to pass a student with a 34 percent average, “because the parent didn’t want the student to fail.”

He predicts this student’s IEP will be changed so she can’t fail — and won’t learn. Next year, the IEP will guarantee she “passes” geometry and so on until college. What then? “We are creating a generation of students who think they are ready for the real world and aren’t,” Mr. W writes.

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Schools try algebra on iPad

September 11, 2010 By

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is piloting the first full-curriculum algebra app for iPad, notes edReformer.  More than 400 eighth-graders in San Francisco, Long Beach, Fresno and Riverside will learn on iPads loaded with the algebra app. They will not use a textbook.

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Against core standards

August 2, 2010 By

Today, California’s board of education is expected to adopt the Common Core Standards already approved by 30-odd states.

Dissenters Bill Evers and Ze’ev Wurman believe California will trade eighth-grade algebra for an “obese, unteachable” math course. Despite the state standards, many eighth graders can’t handle algebra.  Yet Evers and Wurman argue that setting the bar high has helped students.

Over the past decade and a half, California’s Latino student population has almost doubled from 30 percent to over 50 percent, many of them facing special learning challenges. Yet the number of students taking algebra by eighth grade has jumped from 16 percent to 60 percent, while the success rate has jumped from 39 percent to 48 percent since 2002. In 2002, only a third of high school students took Algebra 2 by grade 11; now more than half take it, and with increasing success rates.

More importantly, between 2003 and 2009 the number of African American students successfully taking Algebra 1 by grade 8 more than tripled from 1,700 to 5,400; the jump among Hispanic students was from 10,000 to 45,000; and for students from low-income households, from 12,000 to 49,000. Algebra 2 in high school shows similar results. Finally, since 1997, California State University freshman enrollment has doubled from 25,000 to 50,000, while remediation rates in mathematics have dropped from 54 percent to 37 percent.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, a veteran of the “math wars,” warns that going from “fuzzy crap” math — as the state education secretary called it — to eighth-grade algebra was a tough fight: “Once you’ve captured turf, you have to hold it.”

Massachusetts, another state with high standards, already has adopted the common core. Sandra Stotsky, who helped create the state’s standards, protests the decision.

In a New York Times’ Room for Debate last year, Stotsky said English teachers aren’t prepared to teach the common core English Language Arts standards, which call for students to learn to read scientific and historical texts as part of English class.

Go here to read Common Core’s Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade: Why California and Massachusetts Must Retain Control Over Their Academic Destinies by Stosky and Wurman.

Pushed hard by Arne Duncan, all but a few states seem certain to adopt the new standards. How will they implement them? That’s another question.

Update: Minnesota will not adopt Common Core Standards; they think the math standards are unclear and want to retain local control.

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Unteachable

July 24, 2010 By

If California adopts common core standards in math with an algebra supplemnt, the result will be unteachable, argue Bill Evers and Ze’ev Wurman, both dissenting members of the standards commission, in the Sacramento Bee.

Because of the distortions the proposed standards will cause, the Algebra I course in eighth grade will be burdened with an unteachable and unlearnable number of topics (about 70 standards in one year). Topics like the Pythagorean theorem and scientific notation (how scientists write large numbers in a simplified form using exponents) will now be taught in Algebra I. Yet these and many other algebra-prep topics have been part of pre-algebra courses both in California traditionally and in high-performing countries.

Currently 60 percent of California students take algebra in eighth grade.  Under the new stndards, only the best students will be prepared to pass eighth-grade algebra, they write.

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Music students excel in algebra

June 17, 2010 By

Middle school students who study music do better in algebra, concludes a study by Barbara Helmrich of Baltimore’s College of Notre Dame. From Miller-McCune Online:

Students who studied a musical instrument did the best, followed by students who sang in a choir. Those who didn’t study music had the lowest algebra scores.  The effect was especially strong for black students.

Middle-school music instruction “takes place during a time (age 10-12) in which a proliferation of new synapses occurs in the developing brain,” Helmrich writes. She thinks music helps form and strengthen new synapses.

The particularly robust results for African-American students suggests “offering music education in middle school might present an alternative strategy for narrowing the achievement gap” between students of different races, Helmrich writes in the Journal of Adolescent Research.

Of course, there could be correlation-causation issues lurking.

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