I’m glad that Quest to Learn is the subject of media attention and debate. Unfortunately, this particular article leaves readers only partially informed about how Quest to Learn operates. Nowhere in the article is the word “charter” mentioned. The article lists both public and private sources of funding, but provides no information about who runs the school. The reference to “New York City education officials” may cause readers to conclude mistakenly that Quest to Learn is managed by the New York City Department of Education.

And this sentence gives an erroneous impression about Quest to Learn’s admissions (emphasis mine):

Select sixth graders can look forward to playing video games such as “Little Big Planet” and “Civilization,” as well as non-digital games ranging from role-playing scenarios to board games and card games.

It implies that Quest to Learn is exclusive, when in fact students are admitted through a lottery just like at other charters.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen reports on charter schools that portray them as regular district schools with special powers. That was something that bothered me in Outliers, when Malcolm Gladwell didn’t identify KIPP as a charter. Perhaps this journalistic tendency can be attributed to the newness of charters, and charter school coverage will become more accurate when the schools have been around longer.

The post Quest to Learn in the News appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I highly recommend reading this chapter. You’ll be inspired by Marita’s determination and by the many examples of how KIPP has changed people’s lives for the better.

Here are some thoughts on “Marita’s Bargain”:

1. I was annoyed that Gladwell doesn’t identify KIPP as a charter school, instead calling it an “experimental public school.” KIPP is indeed innovative, but not because it’s been given some license to experiment that other public schools are denied. KIPP’s policies and curricular choices would be legal for other schools to adopt; it’s just that traditional public schools usually don’t go out of their way to find best practices. I would expect a book like Outliers, which is premised on systematic generalization, to point out the different incentives that charters and traditional schools face, as well as the divergent outcomes for students that result.
2. Gladwell seems to imply that KIPP’s success stems entirely from the extra time its students spend on schoolwork. The omission is understandable, because there isn’t space in a short chapter to analyze all the causes of school achievement, but readers should keep in mind that dedicated principals, well-qualified teachers, and sound instructional methods enter the mix. Which adds to my frustration with Gladwell — why doesn’t he ask what brought these factors to the “experimental” school? Was it a stroke of luck?
3. I love the quotes from Marita, especially her comments on how hard she’s working at KIPP, and how her friends and family respond to her efforts. This middle-school student is making great sacrifices to get the best education she can, and I’m sure she’ll go far. Maybe she’ll appear in another Gladwell book some day, for her own scholarship or research.

The post More Thoughts on Outliers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Gladwell gives two explanations for Asian dominance on international math tests: First, he writes that Asians enjoy an advantage in learning math facts because of distinctive features of their language; and, second, that Asians’ perseverance — a direct result of their traditionally labor-intensive agricultural practices — allows them to master complex ideas that Western students give up on too soon.

I don’t know enough about linguistics or neuroscience to evaluate Gladwell’s first claim. But I’m intrigued by his second idea, that long hours of study and determination help account for the Asian math miracles. Gladwell cites a study showing that on an international math test, countries’ math scores were perfectly correlated with students’ willingness to fill out a long questionnaire about themselves — a list of questions unrelated to math. It looks like there’s a connection between patience for lengthy tasks and math success. If we take those cultural attitudes toward studying and transplant them to the United States, maybe we could replicate the Asian successes.

Here are a few things schools could do to change their math culture:

1. Spend more time on math. My impression is that schools (at least, good schools) integrate reading into several subjects — science, social studies, etc. — but that math practice stays in the math classroom. Teachers could do more to reinforce math lessons throughout the day, especially in science, and schools could allot longer periods of time for math instruction.
2. Simplify the elementary curriculum. State standards are part of the problem here, because the convoluted curricula making the rounds in the U.S. were designed to appeal to public schools. Covering more topics isn’t always better. Schools should cover a few mathematical principles each year, building up depth over the course of several weeks. Skipping around from counting to geometry to probability and back again encourages short attention spans and superficial understanding.
3. Tailor assignments to individual students. A student has little reason to persevere in trying to learn a difficult concept if the class will soon move on, whether he or she has mastered it or not. There’s no need to hold everyone back while a few students catch up, but schools could assign more independent work so the weaker students continue to review the previous material. Individualized assignments would also give the best students a chance to develop their math skills beyond grade-level requirements.

The post Thoughts on Outliers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; and Outliers: The Story of Success, begins with a scout trying to determine whether Mizzou quarterback Chase Daniel has the tools to be a successful pro quarterback. Of course, the answer is that nobody knows, but despite this ignorance, NFL franchises guarantee tens of millions of dollars to untested signal callers in hopes that they have found the proverbial needle in the haystack.

How does this relate to education? It is just as impossible to predict which aspiring teachers will turn out to be effective in the classroom, yet public schools across the nation are similarly forced to make long-term commits to teachers before they have any idea of whether they have what it takes to help kids learn. As with the NFL, the stakes are very high because research has shown that the quality of a student’s teacher has an enormous influence on that student’s learning — far more than factors such as class size or facilities, or even a school’s overall reputation. But because of agreements struck with teachers’ unions, most public schools find it very difficult to terminate teachers that prove to be ineffective. Thus, a few poor hiring decisions can cripple a school’s efforts to teach its students.

Gladwell’s article offers amazing insight into these challenges, and even proposes a few novel solutions that might make it easier for our nation’s schools to identify and retain the talented teachers who are vital to our children’s educational success. You owe it to yourself to give this article a read.

The post The Quarterback Problem appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post A Different Take on the Math Wars appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I mustn’t be the only person with flashbacks to the Pope’s visit to St. Louis in 1999. Then, as now, the predicted traffic nightmares never materialized. Back then it was the Post-Dispatch that bore much of the blame for hyping the papal traffic fears (if I recall, it was something like hours-long traffic jams into Illinois), although this time I have found them to be very reasonable on the I-64 debate, with an exception here or there.

It is probably too early to read much into today’s success. Many people may still be on vacation, kids are not back in school, and plenty off people probably (and wisely) planned to change their schedules at least today of all days. But perhaps we can read something into the way things went today. I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s terrific book "The Tipping Point," which talks about how little things, when done right, can have a huge impact. What if a number of little things were done right in the planning for this project, by MoDOT, other governments, the contractors, and individual commuters, so that in the end this project will not be the predicted traffic nightmare we all feared?  What if just enough commuters switch to just enough alternate routes that they can handle the increased traffic without horrible jams? And what if just enough people change their work schedules, or use mass transit, or carpool, that there are enough fewer cars on the road during the project so we can all get by (literally and figuratively)?

Nobody denies the major changes we will all have to deal with over the next two years, but today was a very exciting beginning for this very important project.

The post Papal Visit 2, Traffic Nightmare Boogaloo appeared first on Show-Me Institute.