Rewards for Learning

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Here’s a more interesting New York Times education article, this one about rewards for student achievement. I have some comments:

  1. I can see why the programs paying for good A.P. scores haven’t met with much success. A student’s grade on an A.P. test is dependent on how well he or she learned to read and write years before. You can’t take struggling students who lack basic skills and get them to do college-level work just by offering some cash.

  2. There are ways to reward students without sending the message that learning is a chore. Younger students could choose a more challenging book or math game as a reward for completing a lesson; older students could work on a self-directed research project that interests them. Those kinds of rewards are effective at the individual level, but they’re hard to put in place across entire schools for a randomized trial.

  3. One strategy is to ask the students themselves what would motivate them.

Charters Cause Chaos

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Charter school opponents predict chaos if public schools are run by independent organizations. Then, when the charters gain market share, it’s funny to watch opponents search for the panic and confusion. This is the best they could come up with in the New York Times today:

Publicly financed but managed by independent boards, charters are not bound by the city’s calendar. Still, even though the parents might be accustomed to having class when the city system is on holiday, the cellphones of the school’s leaders were flooded with confused calls.

People didn’t know whether there was school or not because the calendar for charters isn’t standardized! Good thing the phone lines were still up. Charters haven’t managed to shut down all methods of communication … yet.

Special Education Controversy

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Some parents in the Francis Howell School District recently filed complaints about the use of padded seclusion rooms in schools. To me, padded seclusion rooms sound outrageous in a regular neighborhood school, although some commenters on the article say that increased mainstreaming brings some children with severe behavior problems into schools that have no choice but to use these rooms.

Anyone have thoughts on this? (Other than speculations that Nadya Suleman’s children will end up in these rooms in a few years?)

Getting Ready to Teach

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Edudiva is back, blogging about teacher preparation. She describes a conversation that occurred while helping a friend apply for a job (very appropriate subject matter for these economic times, I might add). The friend needed to submit a statement about her philosophy of education along with her resume; she thought she’d include the “philosophy” she wrote for an education course. After all, the academic who taught the course had liked it. Edudiva told her to go back to the drawing board, and added these valuable comments about ed schools:

Teacher ed schools need to focus on helping teachers improve their teaching rather than trying to sound more academic by encouraging or even accepting the overuse of jargon. The prestige they seek will come from success rather than imitating other so-called soft sciences.

One aspect of the education system that stands in the way of what Edudiva envisions is the refusal to measure teacher quality. Sure, there are some broad “studies,” but there isn’t enough evaluating teachers and promoting based on the results, at the school level. I’m reminded this quote from an article in the Post-Dispatch about a change in testing:

If a particular teacher or school gets especially good results, others can learn why — though schools shouldn’t use the scores to evaluate teachers, says Ann Jarrett, teaching and learning director with the Missouri National Education Association.

As the above sentence shows, teachers’ unions can spot the threat of merit pay from a mile away. Teachers aren’t recognized for what common sense might identify as areas of achievement, like improving their students’ test scores — the “success” Edudiva recommends as the basis of prestige. So, they have to find other ways to stand out. And one way in which they distinguish themselves is by speaking a top-secret education code.

Interesting Article About Octomom

Posted on by David Stokes

As a follow-up to Sarah’s post from a few weeks ago about the octomom, a Post-Dispatch columnist has a nice article today that asks some good questions. I am the first to admit I don’t know the answers. I don’t like the idea of laws controlling this situation, but I could be persuaded. Most importantly, people need to understand how they will be condemned and ostracized by others when they do things like implant multiple embryos as part of fertility treatments into a woman who already has six children. The doctor is as much to blame here as the woman. And, because media interviews conducted since Sarah’s initial post indicate that this woman appears to be nuts, the state should probably play a role in monitoring the children. It will already be paying for the next 18 years of their lives. …

I Say Missouri Should Refuse the Stimulus Unemployment Funds

Posted on by David Stokes

We haven’t written much about the stimulus plan on the blog. It is more of a national issue, and it is all just too depressing for words. Dr. Joseph Haslag recorded a great radio commentary about it, though, if you would like to listen. But now some in Missouri are discussing the wisdom of letting the camel’s nose under the tent for the new unemployment insurance rules. I commend Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and the legislative leadership for possibly resisting the unemployment portions of the “stimulus plan.” The St. Joe News-Press has the article here, and thanks to Combest for the link.

This is something I can write about because it is a tax I pay. My wife and I pay unemployment taxes for our child’s caregiver, and five times a year I calculate the tax and mail it in. (Four times for the state, and once for the feds.) This is not withheld from a paycheck, it is entirely employer-paid. I love what the Lt. Gov. said here:

“We are here to say no,” Mr. Kinder said. “This is essentially a federal bribe to change state law permanently, and the bribe lasts two years.”

And, after those two years, employers are going to have to pay higher taxes permanently. They have already increased the state’s unemployment tax wage base for 2009 — and I think that increase is the only increase employers should be forced to pay. As I said, the whole thing is just so depressing, pun intended.

Tea Party Protest at the Arch

Posted on by David Stokes

I just quickly want to do my part to spread the word about tomorrow’s protest of the nationalization of our economy. Tomorrow, aka Friday, February 27, at 11:00 a.m. down at the foot of the Arch. The e-mails I have gotten say Wharf Street on the river. I always thought it was Leonor K. Sullivan Blvd., but it is probably just two names for the same street. (Sort of like Delmar and you-know-who in the city.) If you need directions to attend, let me remind you that it is at the riverfront base of the largest monument in the United States, so if you still need directions, you should probably just not come in the first place.

Dentists Go for the Jugular

Posted on by David Stokes

Apparently, some dentists are upset that, god forbid, people are making money on something that involves teeth but does not involve them. So, they have gotten a bill introduced to regulate teeth-whitening procedures. The bill proposes that anyone offering teeth-whitening services, like spas, etc., has to offer it under the supervision of a dentist. The Columbia Daily Tribune has this story. House Bill 766 would basically eliminate those kiosks in malls that offer the service quickly and inexpensively.

I realize that several people have died in these mall procedures, but the market should still determine whether people get to use the service. Oh, wait! That didn’t actually happen. Nobody could possibly be hurt getting their teeth whitened, and this bill is nothing but the worst kind of rent-seeking activity by the dental lobby. It is a great example of what I and others have said in our studies about occupational licensing: Licensing never comes about because the public demands a solution to a need. It ALWAYS comes about because existing practitioners are trying to limit their own competition, and legislators eagerly agree.

I hope the majority of the legislature sees this for what it is — a naked attempt at small-scale, legalized monopoly by the dentists.

Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Decrease Freedom When You Can Increase Safety

Posted on by David Stokes

Red-light cameras, ahoy! Just another step toward a day when we have to put on our safety helmets to get out of bed in the morning, and only after having signed a notarized affidavit that anything done within that same bed the night before was fully consensual, non-discriminatory, in total compliance with all ADA regulations, properly permitted by local authorities, undertaken only after ensuring all taxes on the location were paid in full, all participants had passed a health screening beforehand, and all legal documents pertaining to the potential results of the activities within same bed on prior evening had been read, signed, and dated, before undertaking the authorized removal of one’s safety helmet and initiation of any activities that perhaps might involve another kind of safety helmet anything at all.

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