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JISHOU, HUNAN — A few days ago, I wrote about an Orange County, Florida, school board member who took a version of the 2010 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for 10th graders and did very poorly on it: he only got 62% on the reading portion and completely bombed the math section.
Rick Roach, who has two master’s degrees, argues that his results suggest that the test is not really testing what students need to know and that the tests pigeonhole students unfairly.
One could also argue, as a few commenters on that post have already, that Roach’s poor reading and math skills are to blame, not the FCAT. He does admit in an email to educator Marion Brady that his math skills are rusty, but I contend that Roach and his detractors are also not considering the time factor.
For example, 10th graders have 70 minutes to answer 58 or so math questions, and 70 minutes to answer about 45 reading questions, from what I can gather from the 2006 exams available online.. That works out to an average time of 1:12 for each math question and 1:33 for each reading question. If any Floridians can correct my information, please do, because those figures don’t seem realistic.
Anyway, my challenge to people who dis Roach and refuse to criticize the test is this. Try these math questions from the 2006 FCAT for 10th graders and time yourselves. I’ll be generous: you have 2 minutes for each one. No cheating. You may use your calculators.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — In 1968 Ray Eames and her husband Charles Eames (of Eames chair fame) released a remarkable short film called Powers of Ten. You may have seen it in a science class, if you were lucky. It opens with a couple having a picnic, then zooms in with ever increasing detail to an atomic nucleus, then zooms out at high speed into outer space. Each step decreases or increases the magnification by a multiple of ten.
You can watch at Vimeo.
Now there’s a Shockwave version of the same idea, by Cary and Michael Huang. A slide control allows you to explore at your own pace.
It takes a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. Nothing showy or (ahem) flashy, but neither was the Eames film.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The trade-off for a week-long National Holiday break this year was seven days straight of teaching, including my first meetings with the 109 freshmen who have enroled in our college.
Unlike American colleges, universities usually bring in their freshmen after everyone else has arrived. At our uni, they arrive during the second week of classes, then have two weeks of military training — mostly formation drills, physical training, and practice with mercifully unloaded rifles. Then we all take off for the National Holiday.
Originally, I was not scheduled to teach the freshmen, but we didn’t start the year with two foreign teachers. My dean rather timidly asked me if I would consider taking on additional classes to help the college out. I agreed to take on oral English for the frosh, which added six classes to my load. If Chinese students need any instruction, it’s in spoken English. I figured missing even a few weeks of class with a foreign teacher would hold them back even further.
Besides, taking on the freshmen means, at least for this term, I will have taught every student in our college at least once.
So, what is this crop of first-years like? Enthusiastic, to say the least. They all seemed to be on pins and needles waiting to meet me, since for most I am the first foreigner they have ever met. The last group I taught (an all-girl class of 43) whipped out their cellphones during the break and took turns photographing each other with me. Others asked me to sign their textbooks. Amazing. Now if I could just get that movie deal …
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One of the staff writers at Danwei.com has written a poignant and illuminating essay about his experience as a high school (senior middle, in local parlance) school student.
Here’s an excerpt describing the typical day in a Chinese high school. Contrast his description with life in your own high school.
I have to say that high school is a monastery and an army boot camp combined. Eleven classes every day. We had to rise before dawn and went to bed after 11. After the last class, we were encouraged to use any bit of extra time for study. There was one student who would go to read his lessons every night in the toilet, because that was the only place where the light would be kept on 24 hours. Everyone hated him, because his breach of a delicate equilibrium that is vital for us to live in peace with each other — he studied just a little too hard. The school encouraged us to be frugal with our time. It had a slogan hanging from the main building: “Time is like water in sponge; if you squeeze harder, there is always more.”
And contemplate this paragraph about the possible consequences of tying teacher pay to students’ performance on standardized tests.
This is a preview of From Danwei.com: What life is like for Chinese high school students . Read the full post (377 words, 1 image, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — I’ve been reading a great book, Liars for Jesus, about the twisting of historical facts (and just plain lying) to support the notion that the USA was intended to be a Christian Nation. I found the following reference especially interesting, so I’m sharing it with you.
First there is a quotation from a constitution (which one, I will reveal later), and an explanation by an author. The subjects are religion and public education.
SEC. 4. All persons have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship against his consent, and no preference shall be given by-law to any religious society, nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted. No religious test shall be required as a qualification for office, nor shall any person be incompetent to be a witness on account of his religious belief; but nothing herein shall be construed to dispense with oaths and affirmations. Religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the legislature to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.
Here’s the gloss:
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JISHOU, HUNAN — From my distant perch here, I’ve heard the news about the film, Waiting for Superman*, which ballyhoos the charter-school model as the solution for America’s supposedly failing public schools.
Oprah, queen of fads-du-jour, had the filmmakers on her show. Bill and Melinda Gates are involved. It’s the latest “big thing” in education, which has been plagued by about a hundred “big things” in as many years, all promising to solve problem X, where stands for the Dilemma of the Moment.
I haven’t seen the flick, but as they say, I’ve read the reviews. While some reviews just gush about the film, a more nuanced review is in The Nation. I encourage you to read it, as a counterpoint to the mostly mindless adulation of the film and its rather one-sided message.
Today I read an article in The New York Times about a huge public high school in Boston that got results, not by adopting the education fad-du-jour, but by doing things the old-fashioned way. Instead of throwing up their hands and declaring “The public school is dead!” teachers at Brockton High School rolled up their sleeves and restructured the school’s instructional plan.
Brockton was among Massachusett’s lowest performing schools, based on state language arts exam scores. A team of teachers, with the support of the principal, proposed a school-wide emphasis on teaching core concepts of reading, writing, speaking and reasoning. Students in every single class, including art and PE, had lessons in at least one of the four core concepts. The results were a dramatic increase in the students’ state test scores.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I just read this at Pharyngula. Words escape me.
 Electricity magically dries this girl's hair Any of my former physics students could write a better explanation of electricity than this tripe. It’s apparently from a homeschooling science text peddled by Bob Jones University.
[The link in PZ's post seems to be broken. The page shown is from the Science 4 textbook, printed in 2004.]
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