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Late bloomers are rare

October 18, 2011 by

Children’s academic future is decided by third grade: Average students rarely turn into high achievers in later years. So warns K5 Learning after re-crunching the numbers in Fordham Institute‘s study, Do High Flyers Maintain their Altitude? (pdf.)

Graph of likelihood of becoming a high achiever in math in grade 8 vs grade 3 math achievement

While Fordham looked at progress for children in the top 10 percent, K5 Learning looked at the also-rans.  Children who performed in the bottom 1/3 in reading or math in grade 3 had less than a 1% chance of being high achievers by grade 8.  Even average students in grade 3, (between 40 and 60 percentile) had less than a 5% chance of becoming high achievers later.

Kids performing in the 60-70 percentile range in grade 3 had about a 8-9% chance of becoming high achievers by grade 8.

“High achiever” is defined as scoring in the 90th percentile or above in reading and math. It is possible to have a decent life with less exalted performance.

K5 Learning provides “reading and math enrichment.” If you hire a tutor, will your 60th percentile second grader turn into a Harvard-bound third grader? There are no guarantees.

 

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The tutored rich

June 12, 2011 by

After paying for very expensive private schools, wealthy New Yorkers pay subject-matter and SAT tutors to ensure their children can compete for Ivy League colleges, reports the New York Times.

One mother paid $38,800 for tuition at Riverdale Country School and another $35,000 for a tutor to help her son through a single class, Integrated Liberal Studies.

Last year, she said, her tutoring bills hit six figures, including year-round SAT preparation from Advantage Testing at $425 per 50 minutes; Spanish and math help from current and former private school teachers at $150 an hour; and sessions with Mr. Iyer for Riverdale’s equally notorious interdisciplinary course Constructing America, at $375 per 50 minutes.

More than half of the students at the city’s top-tier schools hire tutors, the Times estimates.

“It’s no longer O.K. to have one-on-one coaching for sailing but not academics,” says Arun Alagappan of Advantage Testing, whose 200 tutors bill $195 to $795 for 50 minutes.

More and more, parents are hiring tutors to turn B+ students into straight-A contenders for Ivy League spots.

Gone are the days of a student who was excellent at math and science just getting by in English and history; now, everyone is expected to be strong in everything (including fencing, chess, woodworking and violin).

I noticed this when my daughter was at Palo Alto High. The top students were expected to take AP classes in everything — though I don’t think any of them had  tutors. I wonder if the college craziness has escalated in the competitive public schools too.

Michael Ruse compares intensive tutoring to athletes bulking up on steroids.

In London, Gwyneth Paltrow and husband Chris Martin are advertising for a $100,000-a-year tutor for their children Moses, five, and Apple, seven, reports the Daily Mail. Slackers need not apply.

American Resident quotes the ad:

“The ideal candidate will have received a classical education, including Latin and Greek, and be familiar with such elements as the history of thought from a philosophical perspective. He or she should also be musically fluent and play at least one instrument well. In addition, language skills are essential and the Tutor should have fluent French and at least one other of Spanish, Italian, Mandarin or Japanese. The Tutor will also need to be fit and healthy, enjoy many sports and pastimes both indoors and out, including painting, art, or art history and drama, as well as sports such as chess, tennis, fencing or a martial art.” ….. when the tutor collects the boy from school, they might stop by an art gallery on the way home!”

Ex-Pat Tutor thinks it’s a bit too much to ask, even for $100,000.

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Unbundling the schoolhouse

March 20, 2011 by

It’s time to “unbundle” the schoolhouse, writes Rick Hess in Customized Schooling: Beyond Whole-School Reform, edited by Hess and Bruno Manno. Without necessarily “reforming” the whole school, it should be possible to provide high-quality services, such as algebra instruction, virtual tutoring or parent engagement, Hess and Manno argue.

The “whole-school” assumption that every school must find ways to serve every academic need of every individual student has overburdened educators and institutions. As a result, they have trouble doing anything especially well.

Specialized providers of tutoring, language instruction, art and music classes, etc. shouldn’t be limited to serving only affluent parents — or starting their own charter school — Hess and Manno writes.

Also in the book: Chris Whittle on the emergence of transnational school providers; Checker Finn and Eric Osberg on “educational savings accounts” which permit parents to customize services; Joe Williams on empowering parents to make smart choices; Doug Lynch and Michael Gottfried on informing parents about the quality of specialized education services; Jon Fullerton on data systems that support choice andBurck Smith on introducing cost sensitivity into K-12 schooling. Ted Kolderie and Curtis Johnson discuss the policy implications.

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Reading what?

March 5, 2011 by

Good readers need background knowledge — not just skills — concludes John Merrow after talking to E.D. Hirsch, Mike Smith and Linda Katz about reading development.

(Hirsch) explained what is called “the Matthew Effect” to Virginia’s legislators . . . “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” . . .  the more you have learned, the more you are capable of learning and likely to learn. The reverse is also true: the less you know, the harder it is for you to acquire knowledge.

“You have to read about something, whether it’s baseball or Patrick Henry or space travel or a pet dog,” Merrow concludes.

And it’s important that all children have common reading experiences — shared content. Finally, closing the vocabulary gap is best done in situations that replicate how vocabulary-rich children in the study acquired their larger vocabulary — through conversation, not in cold classrooms where drill is the M.O.

Merrow is touting the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

I’m tutoring two first-grade boys, one of whom has really struggled. On Monday, he doubled his reading speed. On Thursday, he enjoyed reading.

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The lessons of Kumon

March 7, 2010 by

Kumon is booming in New York City and its affluent suburbs, writes  Paulette Miniter in City Journal. Parents who pay high taxes for public schools and/or private school tuition are paying even more — $85 to $150 a month — for Kumon classes.

. . . John LaMagna of Cortlandt explained why he had brought his son to Kumon. “It helps with the basic fundamentals of reading and math, which kids just don’t learn today,” he said. “Multiplication tables up to 12—like I did as a kid.”

Toru Kumon, a Japanese high school math teacher, “believed that kids needed to have a strong foundation in the basics — phonetic awareness and those memorized multiplication tables, for starters — before they could excel at a more advanced level.”

The curriculum consists of more than 20 defined skill levels for math and reading. New students take a free placement test, get started at a skill level below their current abilities, and move up in small increments. In order for students to advance, they must achieve a perfect score on a test within a set amount of time. The idea is that a child who demonstrates both speed and accuracy shows full mastery of the material.

Students complete worksheets at home and visit a Kumon center once or twice a week. U.S. enrollment has doubled since 2001.

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Tutoring software that cares

December 24, 2009 by

Tutoring software that senses the student’s emotions is being tested by researchers, reports Education Week.

It’s not clear yet that sensitive software will produce better results, but one experiment by University of Massachusetts and Arizona State researchers boosted the pass rate on state geometry tests by 10 percent.

The system picks up on students’ emotional states through hundreds of sensors embedded in the computer, students’ chairs, and other aspects of the students’ learning environment.

Sensors worn like a bracelet around the wrist detect changes in students’ pulse and in moisture levels on the surface of the skin. Sensors embedded in the chair cushions identify nine different postures a learner might take. Leaning forward, for example, suggests engagement, while a student leaning to the side might be bored or frustrated. On the computer mouse, pressure-sensitive sensors signal whether a student is squeezing harder in possible frustration.

The researchers also collect data on students’ emotions through a video camera embedded on the computer. It trains its focus on the student’s eyebrows, mouth, and nose, discerning whether the learner is smiling, frowning, or yawning.

The tutor can identify changes in students’ moods more than half the time, researchers say.  Animated tutors “mirror those emotions and offer an appropriate response,” emphasizing the importance of effort.

What the researchers have found in some of the studies so far is that the emotion-sensitive tutors, besides boosting students’ average achievement, seem to lead to improvements in the way that students think about math and their own math abilities. They are more likely after their tutoring sessions to agree, for instance, with statements saying “mathematics is an important topic” and to believe they are good at it. Students also seem to get bored with the tutor less quickly than they do with the unenhanced system.

The emotion-sensing tutor worked best for girls, low achievers and special-education students.

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What works for struggling readers

October 2, 2009 by

One-to-one tutoring by teachers is the most effective intervention for struggling readers, concludes a Johns Hopkins research analysis.

1. One-to-one tutoring works. Teachers are more effective as tutors than paraprofessionals or volunteers, and an emphasis on phonics greatly improves tutoring outcomes.

2. Although one-to-one phonetic tutoring for first graders is highly effective, effects last into the upper elementary grades only if classroom interventions continue past first grade.

3. Small group tutorials can be effective, but are not as effective as one-to-one instruction by teachers or paraprofessionals.

4. Classroom instructional process approaches, especially cooperative learning and structured phonetic models, have strong effects for low achievers (as well as other students).

5. Traditional computer-assisted instruction programs have little impact on reading.

The review lists reading programs with strong evidence of effectiveness; the list includes Success for All (developed at Johns Hopkins) and Direct Instruction.

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The athlete’s way through college

April 2, 2009 by

Most Division I basketball players leave college without a degree, reports the annual Academic March Madness report. At University of Connecticut, one of the Final Four teams, the graduation rate is 25 percent.

While a select handful of these players will move on the NBA, the vast majority of those that do not graduate will be left with little academic training, minimal career options, and only the fading glory of college hoops as compensation. And the schools these players “studied” at won’t shed any tears — having already made millions of dollars off their talents.  

But non-athletes do even worse, writes Andrew Rotherham on USA Today.

At the typical four-year college or university, according to federal data, fewer than 40% of students graduate in four years, and only 63% finish within six. Minority and low-income students are much less likely to graduate.

As long as athletes are eligible to play, writes Rotherham, their universities provide the support they need to meet minimal academic requirements.

The problem isn’t preferential treatment for athletes. It’s the conspicuous absence of such support for poor and minority students who would benefit from tutoring, special study halls and other programs to help them adjust to college life.

I’m not sure poor and minority students would benefit from taking easy classes, getting special privileges from instructors and letting their tutors write their papers and take their finals. When athletes lose their support systems, many are unable to pass enough classes to earn a degree. That doesn’t seem like a system to emulate.

Via Eduwonk.

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