TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2023
The dog which rarely barks: Perhaps and possibly to its credit, the New York Times seems to be expanding its coverage of public school issues.
We'll admit that that's a subjective impression, but it sometimes seems that way to us.
That said, we're not entirely sure that there's much to gain from the new topics which are being considered. We think, for example, of Sarah Mervosh's recent (detailed) report about the way Governor Mike DeWine has banned the practice known as "three-cueing" all across the state of Ohio.
What the Sam Hill is three-cueing? you ask. You're asking a very good question!
In her report, Mervosh answers your question in substantial detail. For the record, we don't mean that, in any way, as a criticism of Mervosh's report.
Instead, our problem is this:
We don't have gigantic confidence in frameworks which hail from our "educational experts." But the Times at least seems to be moving beyond the one topic it most adores—the evergreen question of who will get into Stuyvesant High, and may perhaps move on to Yale.
That said, there was a report in yesterday's Times which returned to that evergreen point of concern. In print editions, the report appeared on page A2. Online, it sits beneath these somewhat discouraging headlines:
Why Some Parents Oppose Smaller Classes
Families hoping to send their children to New York City’s elite public high schools don’t want the number of seats reduced.
Say what? Some Gotham parents oppose smaller classes? Perhaps a bit discouragingly, Barron and Clossom splain why:
BARRON (11/6/23): You write that some parents are against smaller class sizes. That’s almost unheard of. What’s going on?
CLOSSOM: A state law requires smaller classes in all grades and at all schools in New York City by 2028. In city high schools, classes would shrink to 25 students, from 34, bringing them close to class sizes in some suburban districts.
Families that want their children to attend selective public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science worry that their chances could decrease when there are fewer seats available.
Whatever the city does, it’s going to mean some transition pain for some people.
BARRON: How so?
CLOSSOM: Some schools that don’t have a lot of extra space will probably have to accept fewer students. Again, that’s a concern at elite high schools and other specialized schools, which are heavily valued by some low-income and immigrant families as the ticket to the middle class. Any plan that effectively changes how admissions work at those schools is sure to spark some debate.
The colloquy continues from there. But for perhaps the ten millionth time, a certain dog fails to bark.
We can't name the breed of the dog, but the barking would have asked this:
If a lot of additional kids could benefit from the accelerated courses of study at Gotham's selective public high schools, who doesn't the city simply create more schools of that type?
Why doesn't it open a Stuyvesant II and a Bronx Science Annex, thereby doubling the number of available seats? This is the world's most obvious question, but it never arises when writers at the New York Times return to this evergreen topic.
Moses never provided commandments about how many seats there should be at Stuyvesant High and Bronx Science. Putting our mathematics to work, twice as many kids could get admitted to those schools if the New York City Public Schools simply doubled the number of seats!
Coming: A letter concerning (the educational practice known as) "looping"
Three cuing was banned in Ohio because it's basically an alternative to phonics.
ReplyDelete“We have a ‘whatever it takes’ philosophy. Sometimes that is phonics,” he said. “Sometimes it’s something else.”
Students may be taught to use context clues, including pictures, to discern a word’s meaning, a practice known as three-cueing. The practice was banned in Ohio as part of the new mandate and has been criticized by science of reading advocates for taking students’ attention away from letters on the page.
"We don't have gigantic confidence in frameworks which hail from our "educational experts."
ReplyDeleteWhich experts? Here we have three-cuing, supported by some experts, and phonics, supported by other experts. Is Somerby saying he doesn't like either of them, because of those experts? Is there a non-expert system in use in schools these days? Or is he proposing that kids just be left on their own? Did he do that with his own classes back in the late 60s and 70s? Is this the Teach for America attitude coming to roost, where all a teacher needs is enthusiasm, a solid bachelor's level education and love for kids? That has been proven repeatedly to be less effective than what those ratty experts recommend.
Somerby says he is not criticizing the journalist for being detailed, but what is he criticizing when he says he doesn't have faith in education experts?
Perhaps it is that Somerby, with his lack of training in teaching, thrown into a school full of disadvantaged black kids, fears that his own improvised methods may have fallen short and doesn't want any experts to tell him so? It is a bit late to be worrying about that, but can it really be that education experts have learned nothing about how to teach in the 50 years since Somerby hung up his spurs?
Students do use context clues (cues) to decipher words' meanings while reading. Adults do it too. You can't stop people from doing what works. The catch is that the cuing happens along with and perhaps later in the reading process, to help with comprehension, not sounding out words. Trying to stop students from using context to learn is a ridiculous effort and they are going to keep doing it, because it helps them.
My understanding is you should capitalize "B" when referring to Black kids.
DeleteNo, the correct usage is capital K: black Kids. Simililarly, black Men, black Women, black Folks.
DeleteSome facts presented in the NYT article:
ReplyDelete“A state law requires smaller classes in all grades and at all schools in New York City by 2028.”
“The city needs to hire at least 9,000 new teachers to implement the class size law. That will cost more than $1.6 billion annually, by some estimates.”
Barron:
But isn’t there an upside for the majority of students, who attend nonselective schools rather than selective, elite ones?
Closson: There are many high schools across the city that are under-enrolled. They lost students before and during the pandemic, so some families see this as an opportunity to balance out the system and redistribute students.
They’re worried that if that doesn’t happen, their schools will face budget cuts and drop programs or services that attract families — which could lead to a spiral of continued declining enrollment and still more cuts. These families say that balancing out enrollments would help smaller schools stay afloat.
Somerby says he doesn't have gigantic confidence. What does that even mean? What would it look like? When Somerby makes a vague, unspecified complaint about experts, backed by nothing at all, not even a situation, what does it mean for him to say he doesn't have (lacks) some amount of confidence?
ReplyDeleteIt means nothing, but it does convey a negativity toward experts. We already know Somerby dislikes the whole concept of knowledge and expertise, of learning and experience and wisdom. He objects to the very idea that anyone might know more than another person, although he has never criticized the NAEP on that basis.
Did he perhaps absorb the silly idea that if you put a group of kids in a room, they will teach themselves, no teacher needed? It would be better if Somerby were to articulate what he DOES have confidence about, than to just knock experts at every opportunity.
Corby is adorable.
Delete“We don't have gigantic confidence in frameworks which hail from our "educational experts."”
ReplyDeleteIt would seem helpful if teacher training included methods for teaching reading that have some effective basis in practice. Some of these methods are designed and studied by experts. And state boards of education are concerned with adopting certain preferred methods, I would think.
Of course, when it comes right down to it, Somerby ultimately sides with the parents and Ron DeSantis over the teachers, who may know a thing or two.
I am not an education expert, but I wonder just how important smaller class sizes are. Many possible reforms of New York City education are conceivable. Where does class size rank?
ReplyDeleteMy own experience may be informative. I attended public schools in the Bronx through sixth grade. Classes were particularly large, because of the war baby boom. In fact, an early memory from 1st grade is briefly sharing seat with a classmate. The benches were pretty wide, so two of us could fit.
When my family moved to a suburb, I was not educationally behind my fellow students, despite the large class sizes in the Bronx.
The postwar baby boom.
Delete"The most famous and rigorous study of class size reduction took place in Tennessee beginning in 1985, when some kindergarten students were randomly assigned to unusually small classes through third grade. Test scores in the classes of 13 to 17 students quickly surpassed scores in the larger classes of 22 to 25. Those gains persisted for years.
DeleteOther studies in California, Minnesota, New York City, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin have shown lower class sizes boost test scores, too.
A few studies have also found other benefits, with smaller classes leading to greater classroom engagement and higher attendance. In Tennessee, researchers later found that students in smaller classes in early grades were also more likely to attend and graduate from college."
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/6/10/23162544/class-size-research
The controversy appears to be over how much improvement occurs, and that seems to vary. Administrators want to do trade-offs and want to figure out how much benefit will accrue from doing plan A as opposed to plan B, so some assert that if you cannot specify exactly what size benefit to expect, it may not be worth doing at all (reduction of class size). That is wrong thinking, in my opinion, and strikes me as an excuse not to reduce class sizes.
Those double benches you recall were designed to hold two kids, not an economy measure. It is difficult to tell whether class size harmed you or not because if you were already working above grade level, we cannot tell how much further ahead of your grade level you might have been with a smaller class size. That's why the studies were done using groups of children, not a single child. With large enough groups there will be enough variability to see the impact on children at a variety of levels.
These studies you reference are incomplete as they do not account for (not an expert) DIC doing OK in large classrooms.
DeleteI went to school with David when he moved to the suburbs and I remember him well, he was the slowest student in the class by a mile; time marches on, some things change, some things do not.
DeleteActually, David was bright. Sometimes unpleasant, conceited and whiny.
DeleteWhy aren't there more seats in science high schools and similar special programs? Somerby knows the answer to this. It is because of school district budgets and funding. It costs more money to build and staff and equip such specialized schools because the teachers need better training (science and math degrees), the textbooks are technical with illustrations and formulae that cost more to produce, so they cost more to buy, and labs full of science equipment are needed for hands-on science learning. Supervisory staff also need more training.
ReplyDeleteWhen you reduce class size, you need more classrooms to teach the same number of students (without increasing enrollment as Somerby wants). If the science high schools are already at full capacity (to meet parental demand), then they will either have to decrease enrollment or build more rooms (often done using temporary modular buildings that are inadequate for science teaching needs (no lab stations, no wiring or gas or water in the room, no safety showers, no storage space for materials, no computers and other lab equipment). The schools must expand just to meet the needs of currently enrolled students. Buildings cost a lot of money.
Is Somerby stupid that he doesn't understand the needs, much less the difficulties of getting more money for schools? The solution of adding more schools is obvious but so are the obstacles -- people don't want to pay for them, especially not for someone else's kids to attend, and especially not for poor and immigrant kids to attend.
Somerby needs to sit down with a few of his Other friends and ask them what it would take to get them to fund such schools for immigrant and poor kids. Meanwhile, today he gets to knock the NYTimes and NYC and some school experts over a solution he knows cannot be implemented due to funding, while pretending that it is a lack of district will that prevents this ever-so-obvious solution from being implemented.
Somerby thinks he is Very Special, and prefers a society where Very Special people make all the decisions for everyone else; however, this falls apart when he encounters Very Special people who prefer equality and well being over right wing notions like hierarchy and meritocracy.
DeleteIt’s a tragic way of thinking - essentially boosting and subsidizing already privileged people at the expense of everyone else, particularly since Somerby, in reality, is Very Common.
Anonymouse 5:47pm, I think you are absolutely right to the point of you saying “however”.
DeleteNo one would stand Somerby’s gentle hall monitors and they’ll absolutely rebel against the speech police that you champion.
“ No one would stand Somerby’s gentle hall monitors”
DeleteThus, Somerby’s idea about “hall monitors” (whatever that means) is doomed to failure before it is ever tried. Seems kind of like … a bad idea, if it doesn’t take this “reality” that you claim into consideration. Whether that makes Somerby’s idea fatuous is a question.
mh, don't overthink it. It’s the impulse of modern liberals taken to various extents.
DeleteYou mean well.
Corby prefers this topic, education, over the painful topic of Mideast violence.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to prefer talking about Corby to discussing any other subject.
DeleteI like being the center of attention. I am Corby.
DeleteI miss Mao. Mao is dead. Long live Mao.
DeleteMao was a dork. Corby is great.
DeletePaul Campos takes a quick look at fascism:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/11/fascisms-mobilizing-passions-and-the-apocalyptic-fantasies-of-trumpism
Google acquired all on-line work from home from $ 16,000 to $ 32,000 a month. The younger brother was out of labor (WZ99) for 3 months and a month agone her check was $ 32475, engaging at home for four hours a day, and earning may be even bigger….
ReplyDeletethus I launched.............
Google acquired all on-line work from home from $ 16,000 to $ 32,000 a month. The younger brother was out of labour for 3 months and after a month her check was $ 32475, engaging at home for four hours a day, and earning may be even bigger….
ReplyDeleteThus I Launched.............> > Www.Smartcareer1.com
Even the conservative Kevin Drum prefers Biden over Trump.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/a-brief-comparison-of-donald-trumps-america-vs-joe-bidens/
Kentucky re-elects Andy Beshear.
ReplyDeleteOhio approves abortion rights.
I look forward with wild anticipation Gov. Youngkin reaching out to the democratic legislature and listening to the others who kicked his ass last night.
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ReplyDeleteHere is I started.…………> > Www.Smartcareer1.com