[akwoo]

Elianna, on 2014-July-13, 22:49, said:

As to whether my students could solve that problem, I honestly highly doubt it. Especially since they would be taking it at least one year after they've had Geometry. I would guess that many would do it with trial and error if they could do it.

My opinion is that this is a huge problem for society.

Let's take this out of the testing environment and give the students some time to think. Let's also give the student a one short paragraph reminder of what a dilation is and what the center of a dilation is. I think, generally speaking, within a decade or so, someone who cannot figure out the answer to this question in this more relaxed environment is simply not going to be a functional contributor to society (in the developed world). There will be a few people who have a particular block against mathematics or geometry but can solve problems requiring similar intellectual demands in other contexts. But I think that almost all jobs (including farming and plumbing) are going to require intellectual ability equivalent to being able to think through that problem. (Note I consider trial and error a perfectly valid method of solution here.)

I don't know whether the solution is to keep people in school for longer (and make school more effective at fostering intellectual skills in everyone), or create a large permanent generously supported dependent underclass, or agree to limit the technology our society uses. But if we don't solve this, there'll be enough societal conflict that we'll end up nuking ourselves, one way or another.

I'm not optimistic.

[kenberg]

akwoo, on 2014-July-14, 14:35, said:

My opinion is that this is a huge problem for society.

Let's take this out of the testing environment and give the students some time to think. Let's also give the student a one short paragraph reminder of what a dilation is and what the center of a dilation is. I think, generally speaking, within a decade or so, someone who cannot figure out the answer to this question in this more relaxed environment is simply not going to be a functional contributor to society (in the developed world). There will be a few people who have a particular block against mathematics or geometry but can solve problems requiring similar intellectual demands in other contexts. But I think that almost all jobs (including farming and plumbing) are going to require intellectual ability equivalent to being able to think through that problem. (Note I consider trial and error a perfectly valid method of solution here.)

I don't know whether the solution is to keep people in school for longer (and make school more effective at fostering intellectual skills in everyone), or create a large permanent generously supported dependent underclass, or agree to limit the technology our society uses. But if we don't solve this, there'll be enough societal conflict that we'll end up nuking ourselves, one way or another.

I'm not optimistic.

Not only are you not optimistic you may out do me on the pessimism scale, and that takes some doing. But it's complicated. My first wife was an artist. Math made no sense to her, but she could beat me at chess. Go figure. Bridge also made no sense to her.

[mike777]

As I mentioned before serious empirical investigation shows no evidence that raising the general level of education raises income at the country level, but the opposite is true, that wealth leads to a rise of education.

Further Alison Wolf debunks the flaw in logic that education spending in, economic growth out. Morever, the larger and more complex the education sector, the less obvious links to productivity becomes.

I remind people that scholarship and organized education are not the same.

With that said there are noble aims for adopting governmental educational polices such as reducing inequality in the population, allowing the poor to access good literature or increasing the freedom of women in poor countries which happens to decrease the birth rate. Education has the benefit of stabilizing family incomes.

Britain used to have and perhaps still does have as the goals of education to raise values, make good citizens and learning for learning's sake.

[mike777]

kenrexford, on 2014-May-23, 14:15, said:

So, my sixth grade daughter has a c right now in reading. As she is bright, I guessed that she is screwing around. But, to be fair, I decided to go online and see the tests that she takes on reading comprehension. Maybe I could help her?

I am an attorney, which involves a ton of reading comprehension. I scored well enough on the LSAT to get into Georgetown University Law. I was a national merit finalist and high school valedictorian.

I have no clue what the hell the answer was to any of the questions. In fact, I could not even reduce the four choices down to three.

The trick is to be bored with a specific book rather than with the act of reading. Hopefully to not limit her reading to the school material which can lead to a tendency to give up and do nothing or play hooky out of discouragement. Perhaps you might encourage a trial and error approach, not getting stuck, bifurcating to use a legal term , when necessary but keeping a sense of broad freedom and opportunism. Good luck.

[PassedOut]

I expect that we can all remember how irritating it was as a student to have a correct test answer marked "wrong." But teachers are human, and in my school days the occasional mistake was pretty harmless, despite the irritation of us students.

With the common core and good a deal riding on standardized curricula and testing these days, one would hope for stronger quality controls. One would hope, but...



Pearson’s Wrong Answer

Quote

My daughter is fortunate enough to attend an excellent public school and her responsive teacher both sent a note home and called me that afternoon to discuss (I’d scribbled a quick note asking what the deal was along with my required signature on the front of the paper).

It turned out that my daughter had been marked wrong for a very simple reason: the Pearson answer key was wrong.

Now we have a situation where parents and teachers are scouring tests for wrong answers and alerting the companies so that the corrections can be made. Of course this is cheaper for the companies than controlling for quality from the beginning, so the profit margin is better.

But I still find this stuff irritating.

[kenberg]

from the site:

Quote

However, these are not the olden days. These are the days of high stakes testing. These are the days in which our kids' high school graduations hinge on tests created by the very same company — Pearson – that screwed up the answer to this question.

The world has become, in some ways, very unforgiving. There shouldn't be errors, but it is in the nature of life that there are errors. I am ok with forgiving the occasional error by a publisher, especially if they are quick to acknowledge and correct it. But my real hope is that we can forgive fourth graders. Some time back I saw Baby Boom, an ok Dianne Keaton movie where she becomes the caretaker for a young child. She is at teh playground and the mothers are all discussing the impotance of getting their kids into the proper pre-school that feeds into the proper school I am not so sure that it is really an exaggeration. I like being a kid, mistakes and all.

[PassedOut]

Since I took note of this, I did a quick search to get a handle on how significant this problem is. Found more than I care to go through. Here are a few:

Minnesota

Quote

Pearson has held virtually all of Minnesota's testing contracts since 2007. The state paid Pearson about $25 million during the 2009-10 school year for its services.

Nearly 180,000 students — in grades five, eight and high school — took the interactive, online science exam this year. The state first administered the test in 2008.

This isn't the first time Pearson has been blamed for a scoring error.

In April 2006, the company was sued for an error that affected the SAT scores of more than 5,000 college-bound students.

In that case, 4,411 students got incorrectly low scores and more than 600 had better results than they deserved on tests taken Oct. 8, 2005. The company settled in late 2007 for $2.85 million.

And in 2000, more than 47,000 students received incorrect math scores on Minnesota's Basic Standards Test due to mistakes by Pearson; 8,000 were erroneously told they had failed. In some cases, students missed out on graduation ceremonies.

Pearson was sued and in 2002 agreed to a settlement, which provided $4.5 million in attorneys' fees and expenses and up to $7 million for the students.

New York

Quote

Over the past several weeks, a series of errors by test-maker Pearson PLC have come to light, ranging from typographical mistakes to a now-infamous nonsensical reading passage about a pineapple. This is the first year of a five-year, $32 million contract the state awarded to Pearson, which also publishes textbooks.

To date, 29 questions have been invalidated on various third- through eighth-grade math and English tests, which are used in New York City to determine whether students are promoted to the next grade.

Pearson didn't return a request for comment.

New York

Quote

As many as 7,000 city elementary- and middle-school students were wrongly barred from attending their graduation ceremonies this year because education officials mistakenly thought they had failed state exams.

New York

Quote

Nearly 2,700 New York City students were wrongly told in recent weeks they were not eligible for seats in public school gifted and talented programs because of errors in scoring the tests used for admission, the Education Department said on Friday.

The company that both created and scored the tests, Pearson, has apologized for the mistakes, according to the department, which is now scurrying to notify parents that pupils originally locked out of the coveted programs are instead able to apply for seats.

New York

Quote

New York State’s attorney general is investigating whether the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, acted improperly to influence state education officials by paying for overseas trips and other perks.

New York

Quote

Three weeks after New York City disclosed that thousands of students had been wrongly excluded from eligibility in public school gifted programs, the Education Department said that roughly 300 additional students received incorrect scores because of another mistake by the testing company.

Dennis M. Walcott, the schools chancellor, said on Friday that the Education Department was considering terminating the contract with the company, Pearson.

Iowa

Quote

A formal complaint has been filed with state ethics regulators alleging that the Iowa Education Department director violated state law by accepting a free trip to a conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The complaint alleges Jason Glass violated the law when he was one of a dozen state education officials who accepted the trip, paid for by the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the largest developers of educational assessments.

Oklahoma

Quote

Every spring students in grades 3 to 12 sit take Oklahoma's standardized tests in a variety of subjects. Companies that have multimillion-dollar contracts with the state are responsible for developing, administering and scoring the exams. They also must analyze the results.

State schools Superintendent Janet Barresi announced last week that errors were made by the testing company Pearson Education Inc. when calculating school and district accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Barresi requested a review of the $16.7 million contract with Pearson. That contract is for Pearson to develop, administer and score the state's third-grade through eighth-grade exams.

Virginia

Quote

Pearson, the world’s largest education and testing company, provided incorrect scorecards for more than 4,000 students in Virginia who took an alternative assessment last school year.

Mississippi

Quote

A scoring error on an exit test has prevented five Mississippi high school students from graduating, and another 121 students were affected.

And on and on...

[mike777]

Yes, this seems yet another example where govt run programs mess up and they gets even more money and more power b e cause of its failure. Destruction is not an option where it could be replaced by something else or 100 something others.

[PassedOut]

mike777, on 2014-October-11, 13:25, said:

Yes, this seems yet another example where govt run programs mess up and they gets even more money and more power b e cause of its failure. Destruction is not an option where it could be replaced by something else or 100 something others.

Pearson is a private company. Governments hire Pearson to run their educational testing programs to get the benefit of expertise and technological innovation in education and to obtain economies of scale. If the government-run social security program made such inexcusable errors in the checks it sends out each month, you'd have a valid point.

Pearson can (and might well) fail, even after gaining favor from administrators by supplying gifts and junkets.

[mike777]

PassedOut, on 2014-October-11, 13:36, said:

Pearson is a private company. Governments hire Pearson to run their educational testing programs to get the benefit of expertise and technological innovation in education and to obtain economies of scale.

Pearson can (and might well) fail, even after gaining favor from administrators by supplying gifts and junkets.

Per your posts the governments are not getting what they paid for yet they keep paying more and more. Pearson may fail but those government programs and jobs are not allowed to fail along with the company, hence the problem.

Being from Chicago I agree that crony capitalism and "gifts" are likely involved, hence the inherent built in problem


btw I am all for experimenting and I assume many of these experiments will fail and that is ok as long as we keep the error small rather than catastrophic. The problem becomes when failure and destruction of the program is not option.

[kenberg]

From the link labeled Minnesota:

Quote

8,000 were erroneously told they had failed. In some cases, students missed out on graduation ceremonies.

I may have mentioned before that I graduated from college (Univ. of Minnesota, B.S. 1960) in August instead of June. I thought that I had graduated in June, I accepted a job in Maryland based on this belief, quit my job in Minneapolis, and got out of my apartment lease. A couple of days before we were to leave I got a letter saying that I was not graduating because I had an Incomplete in Numerical Analysis. I tracked down the Prof, who explained that he had given me an Incomplete because he had lost my final. "But it's OK, I found it again." "Have you changed my grade?" "No, but I will". Would you like me to take the change of grade slip to the office for you?" "No, I'll do it".
A tricky situation but I survived it and, eventually, the grade got changed.


But back to the present. I think that the word "unacceptable" is often used too easily but in this case it seems that it could be applied with gusto. There are a lot of serious issues in testing about which reasonable people can disagree. Saying that errors should be very few and very far between is not one of them. You might think forking over some cash to settle a lawsuit would have gotten their attention but apparently not.

It's very destructive.

[PassedOut]

From the Post: Teacher: The day I knew for sure I was burned out

Quote

Here in the United States, we continually examine teaching data to understand why other countries are doing better than we are. One thing nobody ever talks about is that teachers in the U.S. have a larger workload than teachers in almost any other country. According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the average secondary school teacher in the U.S. puts in 1,051 instructional hours per year. Instructional hours are the hours spent actually in front of kids—in other words, about half of the job, the other half being time spent planning, grading and collaborating with other teachers. In Finland, the average teacher teaches 553 instructional hours per year. In Korea, 609 hours. In England, 695. In Japan, 510.

When teachers in other countries are not in front of students, they can do the other half of a teacher’s job: planning curriculum, grading papers, calling parents, conferencing with students, creating assignments that meet every student’s needs, meeting with other teachers, innovating, thinking, learning. Here in the U.S. we do not give teachers that time. With Common Core on the horizon for LA Unified, we’re planning to blow through at least a billion dollars to train teachers in an entirely new philosophy of teaching. I have to wonder exactly when this training is going to happen. There were literally days when I did not have time to go to the bathroom. What else could I cut out of my day? Breathing?

I miss my students every day. Despite everything, I loved teaching. For every dark day, there were moments of immense pride at what my students had accomplished. I plan to go back. But I’m terrified of burning out again. If the United States is serious about attracting and retaining good teachers, the first thing we need to do is give us the conditions we need to get our jobs done right. Just about every other country in the world does. Why can’t we?

Because the free-lunchers vote against paying reasonable taxes.

[cherdano]

kenberg, on 2014-June-12, 11:38, said:

Another few words, and then I will try to shut up.

kenberg, on 2014-June-13, 06:07, said:

I am struggling with all this,

Yup, you...

kenberg, on 2014-June-13, 06:52, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-13, 12:16, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-14, 07:01, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-14, 08:28, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-14, 09:02, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-15, 07:46, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-16, 06:20, said:

kenberg, on 2014-June-19, 09:29, said:

did struggle with this

[kenberg]

Some of my struggles are more successful than others.

[blackshoe]

A "normal" job is 40 hours a week, or 173 hours a month, or 2046 hours a year, less holidays and vacations. A teaching job is apparently half that — outside the US, at least. Inside the US, if "instructional hours" is supposed to be half the time, and those hours amount to 1000 or so, that is half the time. Except... teachers only teach 9 months out of the year, or about 1550 hours, so their "instructional hours" amount to 2/3 of their time, allowing 1/3 of their time to do the other half of the job. Okay, I get it. But why do teachers in other countries get off so easy? Especially considering that the quality of education elsewhere may be better than in many places here? Not to mention that the quality of education across the US varies widely. Something's wrong with that picture, too.

I noticed long ago that the idea of "year round" primary and secondary school classes would require a lot more teachers. So would reducing the teachers' "instructional hours" workload. Yet there's already a shortage of teachers. How do we resolve that problem?

[mycroft]

Ed, "a teaching job is half that"; come on. That's like saying that 2000 hours/year is a FTE, so these lawyers who only spend 300 hours in court are really slacking. What do they do the rest of the time? It's like saying that 2000 hours/year is an FTE, so those Navy pilots who clock 2-300 flight hours a year; what do they do the rest of the year? I bill about 1200 hours a year; never mind the fact that that's nowhere near all my job, nowhere near all of that is either client or client-system facing.

All those lessons they're teaching - where do they come from? All the assignments; where do they come from? And how are they marked? For teachers in lab courses, those take no time to set up/tear down/keep stocked/keep safe/... Oh, and do you want teachers who haven't learned anything themselves for the last 20 years? Better allow some time for continuing education.

Now let's look at all the other stuff teachers traditionally do (and you can tell what happens when they don't, any time there's a "work-to-rule" campaign). Someone has to supervise recess/lunch room/hallways, study areas, and so on. Of course, that's unpaid time. So is all the coaching for teams that occur after hours, all the driving of teams to games; band practises, club supervision...and all of that is stuff the teacher does "for the love of the students".

But only hours in the classroom should be paid, I guess, because that's the only "real work". And it should be paid at assembly worker rates, not even trades rates (sure, they don't get paid the company's hourly charge rate, but they do quite well; partly because they get paid only when they're on the job).

They may only work 200 days a year (180 with students) instead of the "250-holidays" we do; but most work more *hours* in those 180-200 than we normal workers do. And a surprising amount of the "holiday weeks" is spent preparing for the 1st day of class, because the few days before the kids arrive isn't enough.

Oh, and people were up in arms when I was in school because there were 40 people in the class (which does, in fact, work out to about a 18-1 student-teacher ratio; for these and other reasons (there are a number of teachers with nearly zero instructional hours. You might have heard of them; they're called "Principals", and they're counted as teachers for STR). Part of the reason for the success of the teaching is that 40 is a *small* class now.

How do other countries do it? They admit that teaching is a valuable profession that requires prep and analysis time, and enough teachers, and that's worth enough to society to *pay for it*. The U.S. have the lowest taxes in the developed world. There's payback on the back end, especially if they're also going to have the largest prison system and the largest military in the developed world as well. This is part of that payback.

[blackshoe]

Mycroft, you have completely misunderstood my post. Either that or you think this is a courtroom and your best strategy is attack.

[Elianna]

blackshoe, on 2014-December-15, 20:22, said:

Mycroft, you have completely misunderstood my post. Either that or you think this is a courtroom and your best strategy is attack.

I initially took your post in exactly the same way.

FYI, I work about 12 hours a day on schooldays, and probably around 4 hours a day on weekends.

There also certain teacher only days that are training, both during the week and over summer. This year I had about 20 of them, for 8 hours each.

So 12*180 + 4*40 + 8*20 = 2,480 hours total in the year.

In other words, I don't do 1/2 of my job in 1/3 of my time, I end up working MORE time than "normal" workers. Other countries reduce the teaching time to even it out, so that those teachers DO have closer to 2,000 hours of work. From what I know talking to friends who are teachers in those countries, teaching is a job highly valued by their societies, and so they have more training, higher wages, and more job security, so more people want to become teachers. I don't know that I believe we have a teacher shortage, I think that we have a capable teacher shortage. Whenever my school has an opening, we always have 20+ applications per position, but maybe 18 or so are not people that we would want to see in front of our students.

I really think that I would be a better teacher if I taught only three periods a day (instead of the five I now teach), plus I think that I would be a better person to be around, and more likely to not feel burned out, like I am afraid that I might feel in a few years, if I continue on like this.

[PassedOut]

blackshoe, on 2014-December-15, 20:22, said:

Mycroft, you have completely misunderstood my post.

If your point was that education in other countries is superior to the US because teachers in other countries have more time to prepare, you could have avoided misunderstanding by stating that directly. My opinion is that teaching the young is an immensely important profession and should be valued accordingly.

[cherdano]

blackshoe, on 2014-December-15, 20:22, said:

Mycroft, you have completely misunderstood my post. Either that or you think this is a courtroom and your best strategy is attack.

I reread your post after this comment. I still do not understand it.

If one reader misunderstands a post, we should blame the reader. If many readers misunderstand a post...