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.

Question 1:
Tonja and Edward are participating in a jog-a-thon to raise money for charity. Tonja will raise $20, plus $2 for each lap she jogs. Edward will raise $30, plus $1.50 for each lap he jogs. The total amount of money each will raise can be calculated using the following expressions where n represents the number of laps run:
Tonja: 20 + 2n Edward: 30 + 1.50n
After how many laps will Tonja and Edward have raised the same amount of money?
A. 3
B. 6.5
C. 14.5
D. 20

Question 2:
Which of the following is equivalent to √50?
A. 5√2
B. 10
C. 25
D. 25√2

Question 3:
Highlands Park is located between two parallel streets: Walker Street and James Avenue. The park faces Walker Street and is bordered by two brick walls that intersect James Avenue at point C, as shown below.

What is the measure of ∠ACB, the angle formed by the park’s two brick walls?
F. 96° G. 84° H. 60° I. 36°

Question 4 (last one!)
In music a certain “A note” has a frequency of 440 hertz (vibrations per second).
This is called the first harmonic. The second harmonic of that “A note” is 880 hertz, and the third harmonic is 1,320 hertz. According to this pattern, what is the frequency of the fifth harmonic?
F. 880 hertz
G. 1,760 hertz
H. 2,200 hertz
I. 2,640 hertz

If eight minutes have passed, your time is up. Put down your pencils and close your test booklets.

Here are the answers. If you got them all right, you can maybe pass 10th grade algebra. If you got none right, or you guessed, then you’re in the same boat as Roach. In that case, shut up and listen to what he says.

1. D 2. A 3. G 4. H

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.

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 …

Their first assignment was for each to come to the front of the room to give a brief self-introduction: name, hometown and what they want to learn, and anything else they want to offer. I had the class rosters, and had earlier painstakingly transcribed the hanzi (characters) into pinyin so I could call them up randomly by name. At least that was the process for the first two classes I met. The third, the all-girl class of English education majors, came up on their own one by one after one student told me she was ready and wanted to go first.

Predictably, their confidence and speaking skills are all over the map. Most Chinese students are petrified to speak to foreigners, not because they are naturally shy, but because they fear making a grammar or pronunciation mistake, or being unintelligible. [If you are a tourist in China, and a young person is peering at you with a look of expectancy, they are probably trying to work up the courage to greet you. If they succeed, compliment them for their courage, and if suitable, their speaking skills.] English majors are no exception, especially those who have never had a foreign teacher or contact with tourists.

To lessen their anxiety, I gave them 10 minutes to prepare their remarks. Some chose to write down their self-introduction, others quietly rehearsed what they would say, a few went up and gave impromptu remarks. The results were better than I expected. Maybe it’s me, but the freshmen’s speaking skills seem to improve each year. Or maybe this group is exceptional.

Most of them hail from Hunan, but one student is from Sichuan, the province to the west, and another from Inner Mongolia, which is a “fur piece” from here. I have two groups of Business English students (four-year bachelor candidates) and one of education majors (three-year certificate candidates). They are overwhelmingly female, which has been the trend in our college since I’ve been here. (For that matter, it was also true of the Comparative Lit department at Princeton 35 years ago. Probably still is.) There are all sorts of reasons for the gender disparity, ranging from cultural to developmental, but it does make for rather pleasant working conditions. (Though it makes it really hard to field an intramural men’s basketball or football team …)

Meanwhile, the seniors, whom I do not teach this term to my great disappointment, are anxious about several potentially life-changing events. One is the post-graduate exam, China’s equivalent to the GRE, which will be offered in January. Others are scouting for internships for the spring term, and/or employment after graduation. There is a national Japanese exam coming up in December, and they all have to face the Test for English Majors – band 8 (TEM8) in the spring. None of these exams are walks in the park, so most of the seniors would just as soon skip all their classes (12 a week) to hit the books in the library or surf the ‘Net for jobs. The exams are only offered once a year, and English majors may take the TEM8 only twice, so there is little room for failure.

As I’ve written before, American students have no idea of the intense pressure Chinese students live with. There are about 200 million Chinese attending university each year. That’s two-thirds the population of the USA. These millions are competing for jobs, spots in master’s and doctoral programs, and the future of their families. The exams are the gatekeepers, so it’s SOP for seniors to spend all day in the library preparing for the tests.

When failure does happen, the feeling is catastrophic. As an example, I will relate the story of G., a senior who has failed TEM4 twice. The TEM4 scores came out four weeks ago on a Wednesday. As with the TEM8, English majors just have two cracks at this exam. G.’s score was four points below passing, and she disappeared from view for five days. Mortified by her second failure, G. retreated to her home, all but convinced that her dream of going to postgraduate study was gone forever.

To be frank, G. is not a strong student, but she has a lot of potential. Her English grammar is atrocious, but her writing and speaking skills have made several quantum jumps since freshman year. She works hard, conscious of her weaknesses, and has set her sights on studying linguistics at Zhongnan University, one of the best schools in China. Perhaps the goal is little too high, like a C-student hoping for admission to Princeton, but not impossible in her case. As long as she doesn’t blow the postgrad exam.

I met G. for dinner on a Friday, two days after the TEM4 results came out. She put on a brave face at first, but after an hour was in tears. It seems she has failed nearly every major examination in her academic career. She was convinced after taking the TEM4 the second time that she had passed it, but in fact she didn’t. There was some kind of equipment trouble during the listening portion of the test, so G. was not able to hear all the passages clearly. Through her tears, she confessed she was convinced she would probably also fail the postgrad exam and the TEM8, the possibility of which would leave her completely adrift. She has made no other plans other than to go on for further study.

I encouraged her as best I could, and offered whatever help I can. And the next day, G. sent me a text saying she had re-dedicated herself to prepare for the postgrad exam, no matter what the final result may be.

Over that dinner date, we touched on an interesting cultural difference. One of her teachers, Prof W. had expressed surprise that G. had chosen Zhongnan University, and had bluntly told G. her chances of admission were next to zero. (G. apparently had no idea Zhongnan was so hard to get into, which I can fully understand. I was as ignorant of Princeton’s reputation when I was a junior in high school as G. was of Zhongnan’s.) On the one hand, G., who already has self-confidence issues, was absolutely crushed by Prof. W.’s frank assessment. On the other hand, she appreciated the advice.

G. then noted than both I and David, another foreign teacher at JiDa, both invariably encouraged our students, no matter what their abilities, and seldom told students they could not do anything. She asked why. To be honest, I didn’t have a ready response, since the question had never come to mind. After a couple of minutes, I told G. that I always encourage students to do their best and to accept challenges. I told her I knew she is not a strong student, but she works very hard and has made huge strides in the last three years. Further, I see no reason to point out her shortcomings, since she already knows them quite well, but saw every reason to tell her to try to overcome those shortcomings and seek her dream. Perhaps, I said, Americans and Englishmen are more optimistic about the future than Chinese; past failures do not always mean future ones.

We discussed another student, well known as one of the laziest in the senior class, who nonetheless plans to study abroad next year. Neither G. nor I could understand how this student, who studies very little and seems indifferent to receiving low marks, expected to succeed. In this student’s case, I told G., I would not be so encouraging and optimistic. But, people do change. Many students find China’s universities stifling. Studying in a Western university might inspire them to be better students. No one can predict the future.

So, there’s my teaching experience this month in a nutshell. Boundless enthusiasm among the freshmen; oppressing anxiety among the seniors. Every day a new challenge.

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.

It was not only the students dealing with a lot of stress, but the teachers as well. A teacher’s salary was determined by how many of the students that they were responsible for went to university. Even the school principal would be evaluated on such statistics. At my junior year, a girl committed suicide. Not a big surprise. There are always weak ones who just can’t make it. That is how natural selection works. The cause of the suicide was that the girl’s head teacher asked her to forgo the college entrance exam. Not that he hated her personally. He simply talked to all the students who were deemed hopeless and would only dilute the average results of the class. The girl refused. The teacher told the girl something that must have been very humiliating, and she drowned herself in the sea that afternoon.

It’s a different world here for students, folks. College is a picnic in comparison to the final three years of secondary education.

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:

No one has a right to regulate our consciences or our worship for us. The right of each one to obey his own conscience in the matter of worship cannot be defeated by any law. This applies to his right to attend such church as he chooses, or not to attend; and to helping in the erection and support of any church or religious organization. That a person belongs to any particular church, or does not belong to any, cannot be urged as a qualification or disqualification for an office, nor deny to any suitor in court the right to call him as a witness. This does not say, nor does it mean, that the state, or the law, or the court, only, shall not apply the “religious test;” it means that no one has a right to apply that test. If a voter votes for a candidate solely because of that candidate’s religious belief, that voter violates the letter and spirit of this section of the bill of rights. As all the people have the right to their religious belief, it is right that the law shall not give any preference to any religious body or organization, but that it should fully protect each body in the enjoyment of its own organization and mode of worship. As education makes better citizens, the state ought to encourage it.

The constitution quoted is that of the state of Nebraska (1875), which according to that document cannot foster or support one religion over another. Hm. And that state should also encourage and provide public education. Hm hm. Most states have similar provisions in their constitutions. You should read yours sometime.

The commentary is not from some wild-eyed liberal/commie/socialist/marxist, but an educator named M.B.C True, who wrote a civics book for the Nebraska school system.

In 1885.

A hundred twenty-six years ago, people understood the the principle of the separation of church and state, and the necessity of government (that is, the taxpayers) to provide an education for all children.

Why are these ideas so hard for some people to understand now?
——————————————————————-
Reference:
True, M.B.C., A Manual of the History and Civil Government of the State of Nebraska, Leach Shewell and Sanborn, Boston and New York, 1885.

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.

The sudden spike attracted the attention of researchers at Harvard, who study the performance of public schools with large low achieving minority populations. Brockton is included in a recent report (Note: PDF file) on 15 highly successful schools, more than half of which are public schools. Brockton is the largest, with 4,100 students.

The Harvard report, “How High Schools Become Exemplary,” pinpointed five common characteristics of the 15 schools, which include public, parochial, private and charter schools.

1. Someone took responsibility to lead the change process.
2. There were mission statements and focused priorities.
3. There were strategies and plans for high quality adult (teacher and parent) learning.
4. There were clear and usable criteria for judging quality work.
5. The plan was skillfully and relentlessly implemented.

Given that change can often feel threatening, the researchers also identified six “fears,” and discussed how the various schools addressed them.

1. Wasting time and energy (teachers are pretty cynical about education fads-du-jour).
2. Losing autonomy (Teachers like to run their own show in the classroom).
3. Experiencing incompetence when trying new things (Old dogs and new tricks).
4. Being socially isolated (The old “sucking up to the principal” stigma.)
5. Experiencing unpleasant surprises (Sometimes new things just don’t work).
6. Having more work to do (Believe it or not, teachers don’t have much free time).

Not surprisingly, these are the same challenges and fears that every classroom teacher faces with his or her students. A good part of being an effective teacher is to have a clear goal for the entire class, clear expectations for all the students, and consistent benchmarks for assessment, while at the same time being encouraging and supportive. The teacher is the leader, taking responsibility for teaching the class, but at the same time, a good teacher should also inspire the students to be responsible for their own education.

Expand this model classroom environment to an entire school, the report seems to say, and you will have an effective school. It takes the cooperation — and the hard work — of everyone, administration as well as teachers (and unions). It requires them, as leaders, to bring students and parents on board, and to explain that, in education, there are seldom quick results. As Brockton High School demonstrates, it takes at least two years before improvements can be seen.

Patience and determination are the way to success, not a wholesale dismissal of the public school system. While charter schools have been successful, not all are, a point which Waiting for Superman glosses over. In fact, some charter schools are no more effective in educating their students than public schools. The answer is not to privatize education, but to take what we already have and work really hard to make it effective. Politicians and right-wing nutjobs continue to tear down public school teachers and school boards for their supposed failures and shortcomings, but in fact these educators are the very people who can turn America’s schools around. Change can happen from within. The teachers at Brockton chose to ignore the naysayers, and took a pig’s ear and turned it into a silk purse.

They didn’t stand around waiting for Superman to arrive.
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* [Update at 9:26 pm China Time] Since writing this post, I have learned that one of the producers of Waiting for Superman is Walden Media, owned by Philip Anschutz. Anchutz is a rich, right-winger who has funded, among other things, the Discovery Institute, the Intelligent Design “think tank” in Seattle. More details are at Daily Kos. What it means, I am not sure, but the right wing — and especially the Tea Party — have lately been very anti-public schools.

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.]