The Week in Ed Science Links (and some poli sci)

Lifted from BOOKFORUM.COM: Playing nice and teaching good

From Philosophy Now, an interview with Randall Curren, author of Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education; playing nice and teaching good: Carolyn Suchy-Dicey considers the dilemma of teaching moral autonomy. A review of An Introduction to Philosophy of Education by Robin Barrow and Ronald Woods. Schools as scapegoats: Our increasing inequality and our competitiveness problems are huge, but they can't be laid at the door of our education system. The flood waters that submerged New Orleans two years ago also sank the local school district. What has happened since the disaster, however, is redefining urban public education. A review of A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South by Adam Fairclough. More on Tough Liberal by Richard Kahlenberg. Making the grade: How do you grow a bumper crop of math and science teachers? From Discover, one universe, under God: Creationism battles for the hearts and minds of America’s teachers. A review of Doubting Darwin? Creationist Designs on Evolution by Sahotra Sarkar. From Church & State, an article on the Religious Right's new tactics for invading public schools. A review of The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square by Joseph P. Viteritti.

[Time Waster Extraordinaire:] WHAT IS YOUR FORMULA? YOUR EQUATION?
YOUR ALGORITHM?

The walls of Obrist's office were covered with single pages of size A4 paper on which artists, writers, scientists had responded to his question: "What Is Your Formula?" Among the pieces were formulas by quantum physicist David Deutsch, artist and musician Brian Eno, architect Rem Koolhaas, and fractal mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

Within minutes we had hatched an Edge-Serpentine collaboration for a "World Question Center" project, to debut on Edge during the annual Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon, the weekend of October 13-14. The plan was to further the reach of Obrist's question by asking for responses from the science-minded Edge community, thus complementing the rich array of formulas already assembled by the Serpentine from distinguished artists such as Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, and Rosemarie Trockel

Self-Interest in Deliberation

It’s the whole journal but scroll down for Jane Mansbridge’s latest. She’s one of the top political scientists/theorists out there today and just about everything she’s written is relevant to discussions of democracy and education. Other cool stuff in this issue. --AS

g, a Statistical Myth

Attention Conservation Notice: About 11,000 words on the triviality of finding that positively correlated variables are all correlated with a linear combination of each other, and why this becomes no more profound when the variables are scores on intelligence tests. Unlikely to change the opinion of anyone who's read enough about the area to have one, but also unlikely to give enough information about the underlying statistical techniques to clarify them to novices. Includes multiple simulations, exasperation, and lots of unwarranted intellectual arrogance on my part.

Boom Times for Dentists but not for Teeth

Less than 25% of Wisconsin’s poor kids have seen a dentist in the last year. Most poor parents in Milwaukee can’t find a dentist who will take the state insurance their kids have.—AS

Less Athletic Kids Often Lonely, Rejected By Peers

A new study looking at the connections between athletic skill and social acceptance among school children has found that kids place a great deal of value on athletic ability, and youngsters deemed unskilled by their peers often experience sadness, isolation and social rejection at school.

Three-quarters Of Adults WIll Be Overweight In 15-20 Years, Report Predicts

The problem of obesity will take at least 30 years to reverse, according to a recent government report on tackling obesity in the UK over the next 40 years. If current trends continue, at least half the population will be obese by 2032. In less than 15 years, 86 per cent of men will be overweight, and 70 per cent of women will reach the same level of obesity in 20 years time.

Psychiatric Problems In Teens Difficult To Pinpoint

Your teen is moody. He's not doing well in school. He wants to be left alone. Does he have a learning disability? Depression? Or maybe he's just a normal teen? Pinpointing a diagnosis of psychiatric and behavioral problems in teens can be tricky, even for experts in mental health. The human brain is still developing during adolescence, and as any parent of a teen can attest, mood and behavior can fluctuate wildly at this age.

Students Prefer Online Games, Even If They Can Lead To Problems

Online video games with thousands of simultaneous players, such as "World of Warcraft," have become hugely popular in the last two decades and are now a multibillion dollar industry. Scientists have conducted a randomized trial study of college students contrasting the effects of playing online socially interconnected video games with more traditional single-player or arcade-style games.

Early Day Care Attendance May Protect Infants From Asthma Later

Day care attendance early in life seems to protect infants and young children from later developing asthma according to new research. Scientists examined the relationship between the age at which day care attendance begins and the amount of immunoglobulin E (IgE) in a child\'s blood. IgE is an antibody produced by the immune system and an indicator of allergic sensitivity.

Kids' Bike Injuries Are Major Public Health Concern

Researchers concluded that bicycle-related injuries among US children may be a more significant public health concern than first thought. Children and adolescents aged 20 years and younger comprise more than half of the estimated 85 million bicycle riders in the U.S. It has been long-known that bicycle-related injuries result in more emergency department visits for children than any other recreational sport.

Help At Hand For People Frightened By New Technology

A new project has developed ways of teaching people the skills they need to make the most of today's information technology. The researchers found that people who have trouble with IT tend to be poorer, older and less well-educated than average. But their fears about IT were reasonable ones. They did not know how to get help with computers, or how to protect them from viruses. They were alarmed by media stories about the hazards of computer use.

Reducing Class Size May Be More Cost-effective Than Most Medical Interventions

Reducing the number of students per classroom in US primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a new study. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions.

Test After Test Turns Students Off Math

The ever-growing strain of examinations, cramming and top-down teaching is turning students off studying maths at university - according to new research. Researchers in the UK says the pressures caused by cramming for up to 12 exams a year leaves too many AS level maths students tired at the thought of studying more at university.

Power Of Altruism Confirmed In Wikipedia Contributions

Dartmouth researchers looked at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to determine if the anonymous, infrequent contributors, the Good Samaritans, are as reliable as the people who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain.

Mental Disorders Are Disorders Of The Brain

Mental disorders such as anxiety and depressive disorders are disorders of the brain and involve complex patterns of disturbances of cognition (such as perception, attention, memory), affect and emotion (such as depressed mood, panic), somatic functioning (e.g. appetite, heart rate variability) and behaviour. These patterns and disturbances are all associated with disturbances in the transmitter systems of the brain and the central nervous system.

Achen and Bartels on the Democratical Republick

We examine how the notion of popular sovereignty has animated the evolution of American political institutions. We argue that the triumph of democratic rhetoric at the Founding has left Americans with just one remedy in times of governmental failure, namely that reform should move toward greater democratization. More “democratic” institutions have generally emerged (1) when existing institutions have been strained by economic or political crises, (2) when powerful elites have discerned an immediate political advantage in “reform,” and (3) when new institutions could be established with only modest popular involvement. Initially, reform meant extending the franchise and reducing the role of political parties. With time, it has come to mean greater reliance on plebiscitary elements in government. The result has been a gradual ratcheting-up of democratic expectations, and attendant discontents. We illustrate this process in the evolution of the direct primary and the establishment of initiative and referendum procedures in the Progressive Era. We also explore a notable case of resistance to direct democracy: the repeated failure of Minnesota voters to approve a constitutional amendment establishing a statewide initiative and referendum process.

The More the Merrier? Choosing the optimal number of representatives in modern democracies

In representative democracies, the few decide on behalf of the many. But how few?

The Week in Ed Science Links (and some poli sci)

Lifted from BOOKFORUM.COM: Playing nice and teaching good

From Philosophy Now, an interview with Randall Curren, author of Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education; playing nice and teaching good: Carolyn Suchy-Dicey considers the dilemma of teaching moral autonomy. A review of An Introduction to Philosophy of Education by Robin Barrow and Ronald Woods. Schools as scapegoats: Our increasing inequality and our competitiveness problems are huge, but they can't be laid at the door of our education system. The flood waters that submerged New Orleans two years ago also sank the local school district. What has happened since the disaster, however, is redefining urban public education. A review of A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South by Adam Fairclough. More on Tough Liberal by Richard Kahlenberg. Making the grade: How do you grow a bumper crop of math and science teachers? From Discover, one universe, under God: Creationism battles for the hearts and minds of America’s teachers. A review of Doubting Darwin? Creationist Designs on Evolution by Sahotra Sarkar. From Church & State, an article on the Religious Right's new tactics for invading public schools. A review of The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square by Joseph P. Viteritti.

[Time Waster Extraordinaire:] WHAT IS YOUR FORMULA? YOUR EQUATION?
YOUR ALGORITHM?

The walls of Obrist's office were covered with single pages of size A4 paper on which artists, writers, scientists had responded to his question: "What Is Your Formula?" Among the pieces were formulas by quantum physicist David Deutsch, artist and musician Brian Eno, architect Rem Koolhaas, and fractal mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

Within minutes we had hatched an Edge-Serpentine collaboration for a "World Question Center" project, to debut on Edge during the annual Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon, the weekend of October 13-14. The plan was to further the reach of Obrist's question by asking for responses from the science-minded Edge community, thus complementing the rich array of formulas already assembled by the Serpentine from distinguished artists such as Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, and Rosemarie Trockel

Self-Interest in Deliberation

It’s the whole journal but scroll down for Jane Mansbridge’s latest. She’s one of the top political scientists/theorists out there today and just about everything she’s written is relevant to discussions of democracy and education. Other cool stuff in this issue. --AS

g, a Statistical Myth

Attention Conservation Notice: About 11,000 words on the triviality of finding that positively correlated variables are all correlated with a linear combination of each other, and why this becomes no more profound when the variables are scores on intelligence tests. Unlikely to change the opinion of anyone who's read enough about the area to have one, but also unlikely to give enough information about the underlying statistical techniques to clarify them to novices. Includes multiple simulations, exasperation, and lots of unwarranted intellectual arrogance on my part.

Boom Times for Dentists but not for Teeth

Less than 25% of Wisconsin’s poor kids have seen a dentist in the last year. Most poor parents in Milwaukee can’t find a dentist who will take the state insurance their kids have.—AS

Less Athletic Kids Often Lonely, Rejected By Peers

A new study looking at the connections between athletic skill and social acceptance among school children has found that kids place a great deal of value on athletic ability, and youngsters deemed unskilled by their peers often experience sadness, isolation and social rejection at school.

Three-quarters Of Adults WIll Be Overweight In 15-20 Years, Report Predicts

The problem of obesity will take at least 30 years to reverse, according to a recent government report on tackling obesity in the UK over the next 40 years. If current trends continue, at least half the population will be obese by 2032. In less than 15 years, 86 per cent of men will be overweight, and 70 per cent of women will reach the same level of obesity in 20 years time.

Psychiatric Problems In Teens Difficult To Pinpoint

Your teen is moody. He's not doing well in school. He wants to be left alone. Does he have a learning disability? Depression? Or maybe he's just a normal teen? Pinpointing a diagnosis of psychiatric and behavioral problems in teens can be tricky, even for experts in mental health. The human brain is still developing during adolescence, and as any parent of a teen can attest, mood and behavior can fluctuate wildly at this age.

Students Prefer Online Games, Even If They Can Lead To Problems

Online video games with thousands of simultaneous players, such as "World of Warcraft," have become hugely popular in the last two decades and are now a multibillion dollar industry. Scientists have conducted a randomized trial study of college students contrasting the effects of playing online socially interconnected video games with more traditional single-player or arcade-style games.

Early Day Care Attendance May Protect Infants From Asthma Later

Day care attendance early in life seems to protect infants and young children from later developing asthma according to new research. Scientists examined the relationship between the age at which day care attendance begins and the amount of immunoglobulin E (IgE) in a child\'s blood. IgE is an antibody produced by the immune system and an indicator of allergic sensitivity.

Kids' Bike Injuries Are Major Public Health Concern

Researchers concluded that bicycle-related injuries among US children may be a more significant public health concern than first thought. Children and adolescents aged 20 years and younger comprise more than half of the estimated 85 million bicycle riders in the U.S. It has been long-known that bicycle-related injuries result in more emergency department visits for children than any other recreational sport.

Help At Hand For People Frightened By New Technology

A new project has developed ways of teaching people the skills they need to make the most of today's information technology. The researchers found that people who have trouble with IT tend to be poorer, older and less well-educated than average. But their fears about IT were reasonable ones. They did not know how to get help with computers, or how to protect them from viruses. They were alarmed by media stories about the hazards of computer use.

Reducing Class Size May Be More Cost-effective Than Most Medical Interventions

Reducing the number of students per classroom in US primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a new study. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions.

Test After Test Turns Students Off Math

The ever-growing strain of examinations, cramming and top-down teaching is turning students off studying maths at university - according to new research. Researchers in the UK says the pressures caused by cramming for up to 12 exams a year leaves too many AS level maths students tired at the thought of studying more at university.

Power Of Altruism Confirmed In Wikipedia Contributions

Dartmouth researchers looked at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to determine if the anonymous, infrequent contributors, the Good Samaritans, are as reliable as the people who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain.

Mental Disorders Are Disorders Of The Brain

Mental disorders such as anxiety and depressive disorders are disorders of the brain and involve complex patterns of disturbances of cognition (such as perception, attention, memory), affect and emotion (such as depressed mood, panic), somatic functioning (e.g. appetite, heart rate variability) and behaviour. These patterns and disturbances are all associated with disturbances in the transmitter systems of the brain and the central nervous system.

Achen and Bartels on the Democratical Republick

We examine how the notion of popular sovereignty has animated the evolution of American political institutions. We argue that the triumph of democratic rhetoric at the Founding has left Americans with just one remedy in times of governmental failure, namely that reform should move toward greater democratization. More “democratic” institutions have generally emerged (1) when existing institutions have been strained by economic or political crises, (2) when powerful elites have discerned an immediate political advantage in “reform,” and (3) when new institutions could be established with only modest popular involvement. Initially, reform meant extending the franchise and reducing the role of political parties. With time, it has come to mean greater reliance on plebiscitary elements in government. The result has been a gradual ratcheting-up of democratic expectations, and attendant discontents. We illustrate this process in the evolution of the direct primary and the establishment of initiative and referendum procedures in the Progressive Era. We also explore a notable case of resistance to direct democracy: the repeated failure of Minnesota voters to approve a constitutional amendment establishing a statewide initiative and referendum process.

The More the Merrier? Choosing the optimal number of representatives in modern democracies

In representative democracies, the few decide on behalf of the many. But how few?

Education: an expert on assessment offers sage commentary

this is crossposted from dailykos because I felt it was also relevant to a blog on educational policy

The expert is Rick Stiggins, who is the founder of ETS's Assement Training Institute in Portland OR. The sage commentary appears in the current )Oct 17) edition of Education Week, the national weekly indispensable for news on Education (and even if you are not a subscriber you can register for free to read two articles a week). The article to which I refer is entitled Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences (this link might require you to register before you can use it). Below I will offer all five of the myths, a bit of what Stiggins has to say about each, and as per my custom, offer a few comments of my own.

Stiggins begins his commentary with the following introduction:

America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national, and international assessments at immense cost—and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True, testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things.

As a member of the measurement community, I find this legacy very discouraging. It causes me to reflect deeply on my role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices, or contributing to their problems?

He then tells the reader that assessments impact on school improvement has been seriously impacted by erroneous myths, five of which he wants to share with us.

Myth 1: The path to school improvement is paved with standardized tests. Stiggins traces the historic growth of standardized testing, then notes how it fails to meet most of the needs of those who contribute most to the effectiveness of schools, teachers and students. He concludes his examination of this myth as follows:

We have almost completely neglected classroom assessment in our obsession with standardized testing. Had we not, our path to school improvement would have been far more productive.

Myth 2: School and community leaders know how to use assessment to improve schools. Stiggins points out that most people have no idea of how to use the information from standardized tests, and that they way they are being used - rewarding and punishing - is demoralizing to the classroom teachers and schools who receive the latter. I note that I have described this approach, which is an essential part of NCLB, as "the beatings will continue until the morale improves."

Myth 3: Teachers are trained to assess productively. Stiggins begins by cutting to the heart of this myth:

Teachers can spend a quarter or more of their professional time involved in assessment-related activities. If they assess accurately and use results effectively, their students can prosper. Administrators, too, use assessment to make crucial curriculum and resource-allocation decisions that can improve school quality.

Of course the problem is most classroom teachers are NOT properly trained either in creating nor applying assessments. Sadly, few administrative personnel other than those formally trained in assessment have sufficient training.


Myth 4: Adult decisions drive school effectiveness. Stiggins points out this totally ignores the role of students and the decisions they make, which can be strongly influenced by whether or not they believe they can succeed, because if they don't, they give up. As he rightly notes:

The most valid and reliable “high stakes” test, if it causes students to give up in hopelessness, cannot be regarded as productive. It does more harm than good.

Myth 5: Grades and test scores maximize student motivation and learning. The heart of this myth can be seen in a short snippet of what Stiggins offers here:

Schools operated on the belief that if I fail you or threaten to do so, it will cause you to try harder. This was only true for those who felt in control of the success contingencies. For the others, chronic failure resulted, and the intimidation minimized their learning. True hopelessness always trumps pressure to learn.

Stiggins points out that if our goal is that all children succeed (aka "No Child Left Behind") we must provide a model where success is frequent and failure infrequent. This provides a framework of optimism, in which the student believes s/he can succeed. I will return to this point anon.

Stiggins argues that we have learned that we need to asses for learning rather than do what we have been doing, which is assessment of learning. He points out there is a well-established research base to prefer the former over the latter.

He also argues that our approach to assessment now, which is isolated, even if it includes benchmarks and interims as well as annual assessments, needs to be replaced with a system that includes ongoing in-class assessment. For this people at all levels of the educational system need to be properly trained. Stiggins also points out that policy makers - often themselves NOT educators - also need appropriate training in and understanding of assessment. I will return to these points as well.

Before I offer a few more comments of my own, I want to offer the close from Stiggins, because I think it is crucial in understanding the nature of the issue of proper use of assessment:

Of greatest importance, however, is that we acknowledge the key role of the learner in the assessment-learning connection. We must begin to use classroom assessment to help all students experience continuous success and come to believe in themselves as learners.

Let me begin with that last quote. I am a firm believer that one important - and often ignored - purpose of our schools should be to empower all of our students to be life-long learners. That will not happen unless they experience success in the controlled learning environment of school. How we use assessment can help or hinder that learning process. As a classroom teacher, my experience is that if students can learn from their mistakes and self-correct, if they do not see assessment as something punitive, but rather as supportive, they have less fear of being assessed. They become more confident, and as a result perform better, even on assessments that are quite difficult. Our current approach to testing and to test preparation seems totally contrary to my experience.

Far too many involved with education do not properly understand assessment. It is a minor part of teacher preparation programs, and is not always part of administration and leadership programs. Increasingly teachers are pressured to use pre-prepared testing material provided by textbook vendors. That does not mean that one is necessarily using canned tests, although that happens far too often. Instead there are item pools, groups of questions from which one can select. In theory these items have been vetted to ensure that they are not biased or poorly constructed, but the reality is far different.

Often in courses with high stakes end of course tests one is inclined to construct tests from released items from former tests. Of course, that presumes that such items were themselves properly constructed, which from my experience in Maryland I will assure is NOT always the case. I will let my students go through such items to familiarize themselves with test construction, and the kinds of items they will encounter. I generally will not use such items for an actual graded test, but that is my idiosyncratic approach: I want my students able to provide their own answer to a question, not merely pick which among four or five choices stinks the least.

If I were to focus on only three points from Stiggins, it would be these:

(1) we need far better understanding of the proper uses of assessment at all levels of the educational process, from the highest level of policy maker to the individual classroom teaching

(2) Most assessment will continue to be done at the classroom level: teachers and students need the more immediate feedback classroom level assessment provides. It seems to me that our assessment for accountability purposes should not be in isolation from or in ontradiction to in class and in school assessment, but instead should use these as basic building blocks. This requires rethinking how we do assessment, but we are not on totally new ground. Here I strongly recommend those interested in this subject explore what Nebraska has been doing. One can look at the website for STARS, which is the state's "School-based Teacher-led Assessment Reporting System." I also suggest looking at the webpage of Doug Christensen, who is Nebraska's Commissioner of Education (and who served as a panelist at Yearlykos 2007).

(3) If our goal is truly to leave no child behind, perhaps rather than insisting that the child be squeezed into a standardized model of assessment that is not fair to all children we think about ensuring that we provide assessments upon which the child can build, that is, experience success, have some understanding of her own learning, and thus gain some control over his own success.

I do not believe we will totally do away with mass-produced tests, largely prepared by for-profit entities (and even the ostensibly no-profit ETS acts more and more like a for profit entity). Such tests are one form of assessment. They should not be the only form, nor should they be the primary method of how we assess learning. Assessment should be much more geared towards being formative, towards helping the learner and the instructor - helping both in enabling the learner to improve her learning. Unfortunately our approach has been increasingly summative, measuring at the end when it is too late for that measurement to provide meaning for the student, or information to improve instruction for the cohort of students being tested. And then we use the performance on such summative measure to punish and praise, to rank and compare. That seems inimical to the idea of leaving no child behind, if the result is to say too bad, you don't graduate or your school is no good. ha ha. Too bad you wasted a year or more.

I am not an assessment expert. Stiggins is, and those who would like to know more about his ideas can go to the website for the Assessment Training Institute, or perhaps peruse the links at this google search.


Maryland schools were closed today. I was catching up on things, including dental appointments and back reading. I did not get to the Stiggins commentary until mid-afternoon. I hope this diary gets some visibility, because I think the ideas are important, but I am not going to obsess over it.

Do with it what you will.


Peace.