DaveShearon

Not All Kodak DX7590's the Same

I love my Kodak DX7590 given to me by my sister- and mother-in-law.  In fact, I was so pleased with it, my sister-in-law, Barbara, decided to buy her one.  Handy, since we can use the same docking cradle when we're here or at her place.  BUT, we learned something over Christmas.  Apparently without any notice to consumers, Kodak sells some DX7590's with different, and less capable, software packages.  Barb bought hers at Sam's and it has fewer focusing options in it's menu.  And, hers often gets unfocused pictures while mine are sharp when we're taking the same scene from virtually the same location.  Frankly, I think this is quite poor on Kodak's part.

Logic-free Education Professors

Today's NY TImes has a story about the Time Tracker, a surprise toy hit that some parents are apparently buying and using with small children to make them more time conscious in preparation for standardized tests.  Now this seems dumb enough to me, but what really seemed dumb was this quote:

I've come across a tremendous proliferation of everything else to help people do better on tests, but never these things," said Martin Carnoy, a professor of education and economics at Stanford University, referring to the Time Tracker. Such toys, he says, are likely to be bought by parents who want to give their children an edge in the testing that begins in some school systems in the third grade or even earlier.

"Lower-middle-class parents are concerned about their school quality and their children's grades," Professor Carnoy said. "The upper middle class is less concerned about the quality of the school than about the performance of their own kids on these make-or-break tests."

ARRRGGGHHH!!!   Come on!  Couldn't we have some evidence of decent thinking skills from professors of education?  In the first place, what gives this yahoo credibility in his opinion about what "lower-middle-class" and "upper middle class" parents want for their kids?  Is he a personal expert?  Has he researched this area?  Or is he just running off at the mouth without letting knowledge prove a hindrance?  And why doesn't this surprise me from a professor of education. 

In the second place, what "make or break tests"?  I defy anyone to show me a test anywhere in this country that makes or breaks a child's opportunities in life.  Come on, folks!  Think!  The SAT?  Are you kidding?  Are you suggesting that a high SAT score makes for a happier life?  Wanna bet?  The data's not going to back that one up. 

How about what the SAT generally is believed to measure:  intelligence.  Really, are the most intelligent people you know also the happiest?  Are their families stronger, more loving, and more resilient?  Are they better liked and have a wider group of friends?  Do they find more satisfaction in their jobs and hobbies?  Now, tell me again about these make or break tests.

So, what's really going on here?  Who REALLY HATES standardized tests?  Education professors!  Why?  Because those tests are making them and most of what they have "developed" over the years look REALLY USELESS.  So, in that classic move of the logically unhinged, they attack the messenger.  Smart, real smart.  Maybe they should have flunked a test somewhere along the way.  Might have helped them get a better handle on reality.

Unusual Agenda Setting

The December 20th issue of the Nashville City Paper had a front page story on a mother, Kanaan Dopp, who wants better options in Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) for her profoundly gifted (140+ IQ) son.  She has succeeded in getting this high on the agenda of our Director of Schools.  How did she do this?  Through careful documentation that this was a high-priority issue in accordance with goals and objectives set by the school board?  Nope:

Dopp’s mission landed on Director of Schools Pedro Garcia’s radar after she recently found herself in line ahead of him at the Nashville airport.

Since telling her story, Dopp has spoken to Garcia’s cabinet and parent advisory council and inspired a trip to Denver where public funding pays for a gifted program in every school.

Denver has an urban school district like Nashville’s with 72,000 students and a diverse student population.

Metro Chief Instructional Officer Dr. Sandy Johnson said the trip for a five-member Nashville delegation was paid for with professional development funds that are sometimes used for seeing firsthand what other schools are doing.

“You have to look outside if you’re going to grow as an organization,” Johnson said, adding they recognized the need to do more in the area of gifted education.

Weird.  How many CEO's of companies with a $500 million plus budget set their agenda and go flying off across the country based on a conversation in an airport line?  If this was such an important problem, why wasn't it already on our agenda?  And why can we go look at excellence elsewhere, but ignore it in our own back yard?  Or, was it that this fits the bill for administrative passion?  It's a "program" they can control, rollout, and manage.  It's a "feather-in-the-cap" kind of thing that they can point to when applying for that next job.  That's a lot sexier than focusing on teacher engagement and improvement, student culture, and other tougher but more meaningful problems.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I do think some (not all) really gifted kids struggle in normal school environments and could benefit from more association with peers more on their intelligence level.  This could be a good program.  Should it have priority on leadership time?  I doubt it.  I suspect those who've spent their careers in MNPS working with (and fighting for) gifted students (Beth O'Shea, for example) could have put together a team and come up with a proposal.  But, of course, that would have meant passing on the glory.  Regardless, it's a weird way to run a school system.

A Lookout Believer

I got this last week in an e-mail from one of our system developers:

Dave, I finally got around to installing Lookout and I now see why you think so highly of it – what an awesome utility!   I spent 10 minutes with Outlook search trying to locate a specific email from earlier in the year that had an attachment of interest– I gave up.  I installed Lookout, let it index folders and the attachments.  When it was done, I found what I was searching for earlier in like two seconds.  I’m going to let it index all of documents and a zillion text files I have containing pieces of code and SQL syntax.

There are other search tools out there, and some may be better.  But Lookout is extraordinarily useful, plugs in to Outlook, searches files as well as e-mail, and the price is right!

Turning Over Rocks

A business associate who strikes me as an optimist said to me this last week, "My Dad always said you have to turn over a lot of rocks to find the right thing."  Classic example of the energy and action orientation of optimists.  Man, are they fun to work with, or what?

But what should I do?

I can just hear the cry that titles this post, in a plaintive, whining tone, from the professor of education quoted in this Washington Post article on how value-added analysis is spreading across the country:

David H. Monk, dean of the College of Education at Penn State University, said that as a former inner-city teacher, he is intrigued by the method's potential but has some doubts.

The value-added model "is entirely dependent on test results and can be only as good as the tests, which can miss important outcomes," Monk said. "The model is also retrospective and reveals more about where past successes occurred than about what needs to be done."

I'm going to ignore the standardized thinking about tests and focus on just how badly the "what needs to be done" comes across.  I've heard this over and over from educators complaining about TVAAS, "It doesn't tell us what to do!"  Really.  What can you say to that?  I always wondered if these folks didn't understand how badly unprofessional this made them appear, or if they just didn't care. 

A thermometer reading doesn't tell a doctor what to do.  Neither does a blood pressure reading, blood sugar count, or any of the high-tech diagnostic tools available today.  Knowing what to do in the face of a complex, challenging situation is the hall mark of a professional.  Too bad all a professor of education can do is complain that one source of data isn't all encompassing, might not be totally error free, and doesn't include instructions on the appropriate response.

Thank goodness many professional educators have had much more productive responses.  Read the article.  Like everything from Jay Mathews, it's worth your time.

Value-Added for Improvement

I'm a big proponent of value-added analysis as a component of a useful education data system.  That view is gaining ground, as this article from the December 2004 School Administrator shows.

Let me add some personal knowledge to this part about Chattanooga's use of value-added for professional development:

Using the teachers who show the highest gains as best-practice tutors for other district teachers is exactly what officials in the Hamilton County, Tenn., schools, which include Chattanooga, have been doing for the past several years, says Dan Challener, president of Chattanooga’s Public Education Foundation.

“Through precise research we’ve been able to identify about 75 teachers who consistently posted well above national and local average gains,” he says. “And what we then created is a research network with those teachers.”

The district also has created a set of classroom videos featuring the high-gaining teachers so that if other teachers want to study the classroom practices of those teachers, they can simply refer to the videotapes, Challener explains.

I've talked with the woman who's doing her doctoral dissertation around this project.  In addition to just making the tapes and having the least effective teachers watch, they bring in the teacher on the tape to talk about what they were doing and why.  It turns out that the ineffective teachers do not even see much of what was going on until it is explained to them.  This is in agreement with observations from The Teaching Gap that less-experienced teachers do not pick up on as many things from a tape of a classroom session as do  more-experienced teachers.

Conclusion:  value-added data can help identify highly-effective teachers.  These teacher-leaders can then be engaged in positive deviance professional development programs.  A lesson-study system would serve to infuse successful concepts and approaches throughout school faculties, plus it would increase the sense of pride and professionalism of teachers and the communities perception of excellence in their schools.

Sanders Award

Way to go Bill!

For more info on value-added, click here.

Education Advocacy Group Honors SAS Researcher with New Award

Sanders Award Recognizes Ground-Breaking Educational Improvement Work

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 22, 2004--An Ohio-based education advocacy group has created an award to honor a nationally-renowned SAS researcher and statistician for his groundbreaking work in improving educational accountability. Dr. William Sanders received the inaugural Sanders Award during the first-ever National Valued-Added Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Shadow Warriors

I am almost finished listening to Shadow Warriors:  Inside the Special Forces by Tom Clancy, with Carl Stiner and Tony Koltz.  A few observations:

• Given time to plan, the US Military will accomplish the military objectives of the political goals set by civilian leaders with a minimum loss of American and opposition lives.
• Given insufficient time to plan, the US deaths will go up some, the opposition deaths will go up exponentially.
• US military leaders are the smartest, most educated, best trained, and most disciplined ever.  So are the soldiers they lead. 
• In the Special Forces, this translates to a 120 minimum IQ, fluency in languages and culture of target areas, multiple masters degree, and a psy-ops unit that, in the first Gulf War, included more than 50 Ph.D.'s. 
• In Panama, when it was learned Noriega was a practitioner of witchcraft, a warrant officer with a masters in the subject was available to explain and interpret the displays found in his homes and offices.
• Shwartskoff wasn't a  big fan of SF, and may have underutilized them in the liberation of Kuwait.  However, the teams attached to all coalition forces provided a bridge for language and communications technology, as well as operational and tactical expertise.
• Logistics, logistics, logistics.
• We need to worry about a gap between a culture of discipline, responsibility, respect and relgious faith in the military and one of license, "rights", self-promotion, and secularism in significant parts of the rest of society.

Accountability Nazis

Bill in Idaho (ht: Chris Correa) read a washingtonpost.com story about DC schools "killing music because of NCLB."  He was moved:

This article illustrates the dangers posed by of the drill-and-kill, test-em-till-they-drop tactics of the accountability nazis who have hijacked education the education reform movement

Hmmm.  DC Schools.  Over $12,000 per student per year.  Lack of money?  Let's try gross incompetence, politics as sport, self-interested adults, and, I suspect, outright theft.  But, of course, it is so much FUN to blame the tests, and it sure does make the public forget to "follow the money!"

Seriously, though, it's easy to josh Bill a little, but what's the problem with reporters? Why can't they ask a penetrating question once in a while?  Why are they so easily spun?  Too much group-think?  Myron Liberman identified poor education reporting as one of the killers of public education.  Of course, there's always the exception:  Jay Mathews.  A reporter like him in every city would be a great step forward for education.