I have written many times about repackaging and recycling failed ideas then and now in education, but so have Larry Cuban (Stanford) and others. The reformists keep bringing back stuff that didn’t work in the past and won't work now. They don’t learn from the mistakes of the past. The current Common Core/NCLB maneuver is left over from the standards+testing+(government sanctions) hatched under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001. The policy fix [test-driven reforms] has led to “many standardized tests and coercive accountability,” along with substantial “federal overreach,” says Cuban. It has also prompted a harsh backlash and opt-out movements against Common Core and its testing.
Dr. Cuban also categorizes the policy fixes: (1) Fix the students (e.g, early childhood education, etc (2) Fix the schools (e.g., school choice, higher standards, etc.), and (3) Fix the teachers (e.g., teacher education, child-centered, etc.). He writes, “School reform over the past century has skipped from one big polity fix to another without a backward look at what happened the first time around.” In fact, "Public and policymaker affections have hopscotched from one solution to another then and now and in some instances, combined different fixes (e.g., extending the school day, raising standards and increasing accountability for schools and teachers, promoting universal pre-school, pushing problem-based learning)."
We keep “fixing” but nothing seems to get fixed properly because “reform-driven policies are (and have been) hardly researched-based,” observes Cuban. Put simply, reform-driven policies or fixes are ideologically driven, not evidence driven. In my opinion, the liberal agenda of reform fixes has corrupted traditional education and has wasted billions upon billions of dollars on ineffective government programs, policy fixes and reforms that don't work, and bad ideas. Consequently, kids do not get the education they need.
Ideologically-driven reforms or fixes are the reason that, in the largest school district in southern Arizona, 87% of high school graduates entering community college in 2014 needed remedial math. And, in an adjacent school district, it is 88%. So much for the policy fixes that corrupt and don't fix! They have hurt students, especially minority students. But, its not only math. Many of the intro courses at Community College today are actually equivalent to top-notch high school courses decades ago. Community Colleges should start with precalculus, not with remedial basic math, or pre-algebra, or high school algebra courses.
[This is the situation: Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, writes, "Dad, can you show me how to do these multiplication problems?" Sure. "No Dad, that's not how we're supposed to do it. That's the old school method. Don't you know the lattice method?" No? Well, what about partial products?" Strogatz's experience uncovers the failings of reform fixes. Students never learn standard arithmetic for automaticity. Instead, they are taught reform math, which is bunch of inefficient, alternative algorithms. Kids raised on reform math, minimal guidance approaches, group work, and calculators often end up in remedial math at community college.]
Lastly, Cuban quotes Andre Gide, a French novelist, “Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” Such has been the state of education reform for at least a century.
We keep “fixing” but nothing seems to get fixed properly because “reform-driven policies are (and have been) hardly researched-based,” observes Cuban. Put simply, reform-driven policies or fixes are ideologically driven, not evidence driven. In my opinion, the liberal agenda of reform fixes has corrupted traditional education and has wasted billions upon billions of dollars on ineffective government programs, policy fixes and reforms that don't work, and bad ideas. Consequently, kids do not get the education they need.
Ideologically-driven reforms or fixes are the reason that, in the largest school district in southern Arizona, 87% of high school graduates entering community college in 2014 needed remedial math. And, in an adjacent school district, it is 88%. So much for the policy fixes that corrupt and don't fix! They have hurt students, especially minority students. But, its not only math. Many of the intro courses at Community College today are actually equivalent to top-notch high school courses decades ago. Community Colleges should start with precalculus, not with remedial basic math, or pre-algebra, or high school algebra courses.
[This is the situation: Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, writes, "Dad, can you show me how to do these multiplication problems?" Sure. "No Dad, that's not how we're supposed to do it. That's the old school method. Don't you know the lattice method?" No? Well, what about partial products?" Strogatz's experience uncovers the failings of reform fixes. Students never learn standard arithmetic for automaticity. Instead, they are taught reform math, which is bunch of inefficient, alternative algorithms. Kids raised on reform math, minimal guidance approaches, group work, and calculators often end up in remedial math at community college.]
Lastly, Cuban quotes Andre Gide, a French novelist, “Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” Such has been the state of education reform for at least a century.
[Note. This post features Larry Cuban analysis about recycling past failures, along with several relevant comments I wrote in 2010.]
I believe in public education, but I agonize over what has been happening in schools across America for 50 years. We could teach children actual arithmetic--which includes, standard algorithms, long division, fractions, percentages proportions, and equations--straightforwardly, but, instead, we teach nonstandard reform math in "inquiry/discovery or problem-based" group work, which does not prepare typical kids for algebra by 8th grade. Kids don't routinize arithmetic because memorization, hard work, and practice for automation of fundamentals, such as times tables and standard algorithms, have fallen out of favor in child-centered classrooms.
Kids need to memorize times tables and master long division, fractions, percentages, proportions, and equations in elementary school to do algebra in middle school, which is what typical kids in Asian nations do. The problem begins in 1st grade. Furthermore, teachers are often led to believe they are doing the right thing, that is, teaching reform math using minimal teacher guidance methods, because this is what they are continually told to do in professional development or taught in ed school. Common Core is typically misinterpreted by the powers that be as reform math.
In 2010, I wrote: Teachers are taught to be facilitators who use “minimal guidance” instructional methods (discovery, problem-based, inquiry-based, etc.); however, these methods are often ineffective. Sweller, Clark, and Kirschner point out in their 2006 analysis (Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work), “Minimal guidance in mathematics leads to minimal learning,” which is exactly what we have. Inadequate math achievement starts in 1st grade and spirals up the grades through high school. Reformers often use popular ideology, not evidence, to justify or impose their policies. [2010]
Common Core [Math], initiated by state governors for uniformity, advised and written by special interest groups, supported by politicians and the federal department of education, and adopted by most states before the final draft was written is not a solid framework for upgrading math curriculum and instruction to world-class calibre. We can do better. In fact, the 2010 K-8 Core Knowledge Math Sequence has done just that. [2010]
__________
Knowledge Enables Thinking and Learning New Stuff²
We need a pedagogy that liberates and empowers teachers¹ to teach basic knowledge and that enables efficient, “long-term memory” learning.² This requires meaningful, explicit instruction, substantial daily practice, and recurrent review. Unfortunately, the popular trend in mainstream education is to implement “unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches”³ (e.g., discovery learning and its recycled configurations), which not only limit rapid acquisition of basic knowledge in long-term memory, but also are time-consuming and largely ineffective. Indeed, acquisition of background knowledge in long-term memory is essential for thinking and problem solving in academic disciplines like math and science. Moreover, as Daniel Willingham points out, the more stuff you know in long-term memory, the more stuff you can learn because new ideas are built on old ideas.² Thinking in math, at the very least, requires automatic recall of facts and procedures (background knowledge) from long-term memory into working memory.⁶ Even though “critical thinking processes are tied to background knowledge,”² many educators use pedagogies that do not optimize putting key background knowledge in long-term memory. As Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark argue, "The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned."³ [2010]
The fast acquisition of knowledge in mathematics optimizes thinking and problem solving processes. It is knowledge in long-term memory that enables thinking and learning new stuff.²
Sources & Information
1. Peter Wood, “Where Do We start? Reforming American Education,” National Association of Scholars, May 21, 2009. Some wording is similar to Wood’s, so I want to credit him.
2. Daniel Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School, 2009. Willingham, a cognitive scientist, discusses of the intrinsic value of basic background knowledge in long-term memory to enable thinking and learning. Every parent who teaches their child and every educator should read this book.
3. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not
Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching,” Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 2006. "The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned." The method that works best is explicit, strong teacher-guided instruction.
6.Working memory is where thinking takes place.
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Parents should not expect world-class math instruction in elementary school. Sian Beilock (Choke, p. 124) points out that elementary education majors have the “highest levels of math anxiety of any college major in the United States.” Moreover, elementary school teacher preparation programs “include very little math.” Teachers are trained to be generalists. They take "math education" courses, but not math courses. Yet, teaching arithmetic and algebra requires domain-specific knowledge and domain specific methods that optimize rapid mastery of fundamentals in long-term memory. This requires memorization, substantial practice, and solving a wide range of routine word problems. Like parents in Singapore and Korea, U.S. parents should supplement school math with “outside of school” tutoring and instruction. Parents can use the revised 2010 math sequence from Core Knowledge as a guide. In contrast to Common Core, the Core Knowledge math sequence is world-class and leads, grade-by-grade, to Algebra 1 in 8th grade. [Tuesday, December 21, 2010]
Other comments.
- Kids are not fluent in arithmetic needed for algebra.
- Algebra courses are watered down.
- The new Common Core math standards are not world class.
- In NCLB, “mediocre” performance is labeled “proficient.”
- Kids lag behind their peers in high-achieving nations.
- Society says it is okay to be bad at math.
- In school, it’s not ‘cool’ to be smart in math.
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