New Action – not Unity, not ICE
To read it, click here.
If Brownsville, Brooklyn was a city, what would its schools look like?
Or Morrisania in the Bronx?
Central Falls, Rhode Island?
Not the same, but pretty close.
Look at the description drawn by Tom Hoffman of Tuttle SVC:
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Central Falls is really unlike any other “city” you’ve ever seen. Just imagine carving out a one square mile chunk of the poorest immigrant neighborhood in the closest metropolitan area and calling it a “city.” It is just absurd.
Teaching on topic: Follow up on logarithms
So yesterday I was fretting about logs. But the lessons went ok. I used a small modified bit of Kate(t)’s approach (explicitly, I used her notation as a transition) but stayed true to the puzzle/game spirit.
I’ll share what I thought were two highlights/key elements.
1. The warm-up (I don’t call it that; I don’t call it anything, actually) was: Hand-graph
2. I diverted their attention to a problem that was framed as the “Tuesday Challenge.” As my “challenges” are generally unrelated to the lesson/topic/unit, this was a bit of misdirection.
Without any explanation: L(8) = 3, L(32) = 5, L(1/2) = -1. Find L(0).
And then the first kid with a hand up, I called on, because it looked like 2 or 3 kids figured it out, and I took the answer with no explanation, but I asked the kid to give us the next question. L of what? And so he said L of 16 (it was different in each class) and I asked for new volunteers to find the value of L(16). And I made that volunteer pose a new question. And another, and another. And without explanation you could see the lights turning on and more and more hands going up.
Now, I didn’t call on every single kid in each class, but maybe three-quarters. And others were ready to answer. And when I asked “What is L?” I got a nice batch of responses, including the inverse of $f(x) = 2^x$. (Reverse instead of inverse a few times – that’s from me overemphasizing the exchange of x and y coordinates).
Log laws, applications, etc, those come over the next few days.
Teaching on topic: logarithms
Fingers crossed.
I arrived in a bad spot.
I do not think I properly lined up my ducks before reaching logarithms. And now I’m sort of stuck.
The book, my text, uses “inverse functions” as the segue. And I’ve walked right up to that line, and realized I would have preferred to approach from another side.
Too late.
Blame the book. Blame the over-packed curriculum. Blame the teacher’s poor planning (well, no, please don’t).
I’m not so wild about teaching 
So while I’m not so wild about where I’ve ended up, I’m not sure I have or had a real alternative.
I will use part of the idea from Kate(t)’s neat intro log lesson. And I will make them look like a puzzle. Students like puzzles. And I will separately and carefully get them to graph 
We’ll see. And if I don’t report back…
Petition in support of Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers and students
Go here: Central Falls Kids Deserve Better.com/petition to sign their petition.
Sign Our Petition
Firing Teachers instead of Helping Kids? The Students, Teachers and Community of Central Falls Deserve Better
Teachers and staff at Central Falls High School are making real progress in improving academics and raising test scores. They are invested in their students and their community. And while they recognize there is still much work to be done, they want nothing more than to stay hard at work and continue the momentum.
Yet, District Superintendent Frances Gallo wants to fire the entire teaching faculty. The superintendent has chosen to just blame the teachers, rather than give them what they need – stability and support – to keep the progress going, and kids succeeding.
Sign below to show that you stand with the Central Falls High School community, students and teachers in calling on Superintendent Gallo to do what is right – work with the teachers to build on the improvements that students are showing at Central Falls High School.
To visit their website, click: Central Falls Kids Deserve Better .com
New Year’s Resolution Progress – seeing more films
How’m I doing? I resolved to see at least 40 films this year, up from my usual 5 – 15. And I’m happy to report, it’s been a great start.
January
- A Single Man
- Avatar
February
- Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)
- La Fille du RER (The Girl on the Train)
- Ran
- American Radical
- Fish Tank
- Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces)
- The Oscar-nominated animated shorts
- The Oscar-nominated live action shorts
- Einaym Pkuhot (Eyes Wide Open)
That’s nine so far, not counting the shorts. I’ll throw some reviews in the comments, later.
Briefly:
++++ White Ribbon, Broken Embraces, Ran, Fish Tank
++ A Single Man
+ Eyes Wide Open, Avatar (for the effects only),
– La Fille du RER, American Radical
I hadn’t realized that I had a thing for foreign films. We’ve got German, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Hebrew. Plus loads of subtitles in the shorts. (Russian, Swedish, and an Indian language, probably Hindi? in the live action ones)
Burying a story – UFT on AFT on tenure
January 12, 2010, the president of the AFT gave a speech offering up an attitude favorable to giving back tenure rights across the country. That same day the president of the UFT wrote a letter to members distancing the UFT from Weingarten’s proposals.
Mulgrew wrote, in part: “Her proposals would require a climate of collaboration and trust that simply does not exist here.” and “We also have no interest in teachers languishing in rubber rooms for years on end waiting for their cases to be heard, but the DOE has repeatedly ignored the UFT’s substantive suggestions to speed up the discipline process.”
I wrote about this, New Action had a statement, all well and good. And then, a few days later, I noticed that the letter, really a fairly remarkable letter, had not been covered by the usual gaggle of ICE bloggers, nor by Gotham Schools. What’s happened with those two since?
A Gotham Schools reporter, Elizabeth Green, commented on this blog, saying “Don’t read into our silence. We will be covering the letter.” So the speech was January 12. This was already 5 days later (Gotham Schools posts Monday – Friday, at least five times each day). And generally GothamS publishes what it gets, as it gets it (same day, next day). But it wasn’t until February 4, over three weeks later, under the fairly innocuous headline On linking test scores to tenure, a teachers union stands divided that GothamS buried the story in plain sight. (It’s what I did here, as well. I wanted to draw attention to GothamS, not the presidents, so I intentionally left their names out of the title.) I don’t have a good guess about what their motivation was. I do wonder.
Easier to explain is ICE. If they are running on “Mulgrew’s not tough” and if Mulgrew looks tough, they are better off ignoring him. Which they seem to have done. Funny thing, over on one of NS’s blogs (no links from here), a correspondent wrote:
Nevertheless, I see that current prez Mike Mulgrew seems to oppose Weingarten on this. The jd2718 link above gives Mulgrew’s response, and the New Action NAC position can be found here. It says…
And then she quotes extensively from New Action. And then she finishes with a prediction –
I am sure ICE and TJC will have an opinion on this, but haven’t spoken with them, so I can’t elaborate. Some of those people are far more knowledgeable of union history than I am, so I am sometimes hesitant to write about new issues without talking to them first. Coraggio.
– a prediction yet to be fulfilled. Seven weeks of silence.
A walk in the snow-i-cane
It wasn’t really a snow-i-cane, just a storm. But Friday morning I decided I wanted to make soup, and decided to trudge to Broadway for ingredients:
First stop was my school; a tree lost a branch, crunch, into the garden.
Next a short walk, and the steps – West 229th Street.
For those of you not familiar, way uptown and the west Bronx are hilly. They are laid out across a series of parallel north-south ridges. The closer you get to the Palisades (a parallel ridge), the higher and steeper the hills get. And the jaunt to Broadway goes down, phhoop, one of those ridges. Choices: Kingsbridge (steep) or Sedgwick (steep) or W229 (not a street, just a staircase).
There are many staircases up and down these ridges, but W229 is the most memorable. Not San Francisco, but as close as we get. (W238, heading west of Broadway, is steeper, but shorter). Starting at Sedgwick, W229 drops maybe 60 feet in 8 or so flights down to Kingsbridge Terrace, and after crossing the street, 60 feet more to Heath. Even in the snow, the steps looked well-trodden:
After navigating the steps, it was an easy stroll across the Deegan to Broadway. Here’s a guy cleaning an awning, and my destination (letters with a lovely snow-shadow effect):
Once I’d shopped, my hands were full, so almost no pictures on the trudge back up the hill (different route, no steps). I did stop to snap the last building on the Concourse, and the Mosholu Parkway service road:
A different earthquake
Chile was struck today by a massive earthquake – perhaps 8.8 on the Richter scale.
Haiti’s earthquake last month was 7.0 on the Richter scale.
The Richter scale is proportional to the log of the amplitude of the waves careening through the earth. Makes the distortion of the ground almost 100 times greater in Chile. And how much more energy was released? About 1000 times more.
In Haiti over 200 thousand people were killed, and a million left homeless. Yet, so far, albeit with considerable damage, there are about 100 reported fatalities in Chile.
Why should an earthquake 1000 less more powerful cause so much more human suffering?
Poverty.
and a lack of preparedness. Due to Poverty.
No longer anonymous
This blog has been up for almost four years. During that time I have maintained that I was “semi-anonymous” — that it was not hard to figure out who I am, but that I would not use my name or identify my school on here, and that I would not let anyone to use my name or identify my school in the comments.
It worked, sort of, for a while.
But at this point, anyone who I would prefer not to know, knows, or can find out easily. Some colleagues know. My principal, too. DoE Legal. I can tell that parents and students have visited. (they get, I believe, bored really quickly). UFT folks know. Reporters know. My mommy knows (and shares posts she likes with friends). I am left hiding from exactly whom? IDK.
So a change. I still won’t and you still can’t use my full name, or name my school (in posts or comments). But “JD2718 is…” has been updated with some personal info. It’s a photo from my screen, which is my best attempt at defeating search-engines.
Devlin (repost)
Two years ago Keith Devlin stirred up a storm by writing that teachers should stop saying “multiplication is repeated addition.” At that time I wrote several posts about it. Essentially the math is a little interesting, but pointing fingers at teachers is uncalled for. And I caught him being awfully sloppy. Now he’s written again. Math Mama and Number Warrior both have interesting ripostes. But all I have is a repost:
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
This is about an argument about nothing.
A respected math columnist went after teachers for saying that multiplication is repeated addition, but it turns out that he doesn’t know if many teachers do this. I called him on it. And his response came up short.
Background
Yup. One more Devlin post. Synopsis so far for those of you who weren’t watching the whole multiplication vs repeated addition follies.
Keith Devlin, back last Fall, wishes that he could stop teachers from saying multiplication is repeated addition. He elaborates, big time, in “It Ain’t No Repeated Addition” in July. Denise, who teaches math, thinks about it, and asks, then how should we teach multiplication? That’s when the comments get a bit out of hand. Denise posts again. Some other people post. Even I post.
Mostly the posters and commenters were yelling and screaming about whether or not multiplication is repeated addition. In all of this, the question that matters – how should we teach, was pretty much buried.
Question pops up
Fast forward a few days. I am in New Orleans, setting up classrooms. And I stop to skim a variety of elementary and middle school math texts. And I don’t find the error Devlin is chasing. Instead I find books discussing and introducing multiple meanings of mathematics.
Could there be some texts that say Repeated Addition = Multiplication? Sure. But my unscientific sample didn’t find them. Could some teachers ignore the texts and teach Repeated Addition = Multiplication. I know that some do. But I don’t really know if it is very many. So I wondered out loud if Devlin was jousting with a straw man.
Devlin’s rebuttal
His recent column, he’s making one more go of it, attempts to rebut 6 arguments. It is longer because he will “be quoting from some of the leading mathematics education scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries…”
But when he comes to my arguments, um, no. He provides next to nothing. There is one British ed journal article that says teaching multiplication as repeated addition is a problem (from ten years ago, directed to British national policy, looks like the research was a small study in London.)
And his coup de grace? Studies (one British, one Canadian) that show adults, when asked to define multiplication, respond with repeated addition.
(To look for yourself, find the heading “The Problem Is Widespread” about three quarters of the way down)
Now, think for a moment. Of the various models we may use in teaching multiplication, isn’t repeated addition the strongest? Isn’t that exactly what you would expect an adult, 15 or 30 years removed from grade school to recall first? They remembered what we should expect them to remember – but that doesn’t tell us what they were taught.
Could he have cited something else? Yup. If he found state or national standards telling teachers to teach RA = M, but I don’t think they exist. If he had found studies that said, “teachers do this a lot”… If he could show us texts that do the same… maybe they are there. Josh at TextSavvy might know?
Two things went wrong here.
Like the engineer who comes to a school knowing math but not knowing how to teach it, Keith Devlin arrived to a topic (math ed) that he remembers. He was a student. And he probably remembers better than most. But we are talking memories, not current knowledge here.
And second. Something I recognize. Stubbornness. Look how well he writes. Pick any other column. Pick his recent interview. There’s intellect, there’s quality of expression. He hasn’t poorly defended his position because he argues poorly; it’s just stubbornness without facts supporting it.
I’d be interested in recommendations about multiplication should be taught, but as for this topic, I think this will be my last post.
I’ll take the snow day
…but there was no reason for the announcement to come after employees were already on the road.
Two weeks ago, big storm system moving through, Bloomberg, Tuesday before noon, canceled school for Wednesday. Everyone was grateful for the notice (though I wished they waited until the end of the school day, disrupted classes a bit), not only because good notice is nice, but also because of what Bloomberg did last year.
Last year he closed schools at 6 in the morning. Last district in the neighborhood. And the district where many employees have long commutes, sometimes up to 2 hours. By making the announcement after 5, he put people on the road in treacherous conditions, he put lives at risk.
This time? 5:19 is better. But these calls need to be made before 5, before people get in their cars.
Me? I thought it was going to be borderline conditions, where safety dictated closure, but close enough to the line that the mayor would leave the schools open. Maybe 70-30? But enough worth checking. To bed early, after checking for no notice. Up at 4 to check the computer. No notice. Up at 5 to check, no notice. At 6 I went straight to the kitchen, put on coffee, watered the plants, thought over my lessons, estimated the accumulation (looks like 4″ on the fire escape, but there’s been melting and replacement), strolled over to the living room and the computer lit up with the Schools Closed e-mail.
And now, coffee’s already sipped, too late to go back to bed, a little e-mail, some stretching, and I’m off to school to see which kids didn’t get the message! Maybe I’ll get them some hot chocolate… (I see kids out my window walking towards the local PS)
A strange take on the UFT’s Mayoral non-endorsement
Over at Gotham Schools, a commenter wrote:
Maybe UFT support would not have been enough to elect Thompson, but the neutrality of our leaders in a time of crisis deserves punishment … in the form of a Dump Mulgrew Movement.
And in that same comments section, the discussion continues in a similar vein:
When you think about the UFT tactic of endorsing mayoral control but not Bloomberg’s opponent, and you examine the rationale that it might break down contract negotiations, it’s absurd.
and more, similar comments from a handful of writers.
What’s remarkable, though, is that the writers are supporters and leaders of ICE, the caucus so radical that it, in fact, sat out the Mayoral election.
A movement to dump Mulgrew, because he sat out the mayoral election? to replace him with a caucus that sat out the mayoral election?
New Action is the only caucus to have endorsed Thompson. And we are running (cross-endorsing) Mulgrew at the top of our ticket, despite the mistake.
Was Duncan’s comment on Katrina outrageous?
Of course it was. But most commentators only got part of it.
In late January Duncan said “I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.”
And the whole world called him on speaking well of a deadly tragedy. And there was a correction.
But something else is wrong, very wrong. New Orleans is better now? He should have been called on what has happened since. Every teacher lost their job? The union had to be rebuilt from scratch? Poor kids dead. Poor kids moved away, unable to come back?
Look out, Jamaica and Columbus HS, to what happens to your neediest students as you phase out. You too Maxwell, and Beach Channel. No flood, no apology from the politicians. But those neediest students, those who need more times, they’ll be our local version. Watch them get scattered. Watch Bloomberg and his chancellor pretend they don’t exist.
(My blogging is out of synch after my 3 week break. I’ll be coming back to both new AND slightly stale topics over the next weeks)
Anti-testing from an advanced standpoint
Push back on Advanced Placement exams? From the NYTimes, of all places. It’s an op-ed, but still… Doesn’t the Washington Post have a direct test-link?
Regents/Reorg/Birthday/Snow
That’s four reasons for the blog break for the last three weeks. And now it’s over. I’m back.
Bloomberg panel votes in wee hours to close 20 NYC public schools
Impressed by the changes in school governance? You shouldn’t be.
The votes happened after 3 AM (according to Gotham Schools) with about 100 of the original 2500 spectators there.
Block votes.
Brooklyn rep, Queens rep, Bronx Rep, Manhattan Rep – No.
Mayoral appointees + SI Rep – Yes.
So the makeup of the new PEP – pfffft.
They announced in December, gave a 45 day comment period (because there were so many schools, a few ended up tight. I calculated at least one 47 day period). They held their joint SLT/CECs at each school. And they needed to approve changes 6 months in advance of utilization. It appears that they gave themselves a slim one-month cushion.
New timelines, new opportunities for public comment – partial pffft. There was a little (unproductive) satisfaction in discomfitting the superintendants who were forced to sit and listen to us, and the Mayor’s Chancellor, who got heckled off his blackberry the only two times he tried to use it last night. And perhaps we’ll learn that they blew deadline details.
So today or tomorrow our union will haul them into court. Is the UFT seeking an injunction? To nullify the vote? Sometimes I know this sort of stuff in advance. Today, I don’t. Maybe there are details of the law that will help us.
And none of this is really a surprise. Except maybe winning the SI vote on the procedural delay (didn’t matter) and all four major boroughs on the big vote (last month I was sure about only Manhattan and the Bronx).
But at 3 in the morning it was mayoral dictatorship, and this morning’s sun is not (yet?) the dawn of a new day.
January 2010 Math B – last minute tips
The exam is less than two hours away. Is there anything else you can do?
1. There are formulas in the back of the test. Look at them. Use them.
2. There will probably be a problem that asks for the area of a triangle, and involves an angle. Look at the formula, and use it. There’s usually no way to give partial credit for 
3. Don’t rush the multiple choice. Try as many of them as possible. Do them a second time. Cover your answers, and try them again. The multiple choice give no partial credit, so it is worth going slow enough to really maximize credit.
4. Plug in the multiple choice answers, and see which works. If they ask something like “Which expression is equivalent to 
5. No blanks on parts II, III, or IV. Write something for each question. State facts that are important. State formulas that you will use. Ultimately, garbage will earn nothing, but in scraping around you may hit a key concept. Give the graders something to look at.
6. If you do work on the calculator, explain it on the test paper, or transcribe it onto the test paper. If you figured something out from a graph, make a sketch and show the window settings.
7. Don’t spend all your time on the hardest questions. If you are pretty sure you have something right, make sure to go back and check and recheck. Sometimes it is more important to fully claim points that should be yours, to maximize your points, than to struggle for points that you probably won’t get.
Good luck.
Bronx UFT Flyer: Bronx Rally, PEP Rally
Click link for PDF.
January 25th Rally At Bronx Courthouse To Protest Bronx School Closings
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and the UFT are co-sponsoring a rally outside the Bronx Supreme Court on Monday, Jan. 25, at 4 p.m., to protest the DOE’s unjustified proposal to close seven Bronx schools. Parents, educators, students, alumni and community activists will be coming out to keep the pressure on the Department of Education.
The citywide Panel of Educational Policy will vote on the school closings the following day.
“The DOE thinks it can close seven Bronx schools and not disrupt the lives of the students, their parents and the fabric of the community,” said UFT Borough Representative Jose Vargas. “They’ve denied the supports and resources that these Bronx schools need to help our students, especially our students with the highest needs.”
Please join us outside the Bronx Supreme Court at 161st Street and Grand Concourse at 4 p.m. to tell the Department of Education what we think of its plan to close our schools. For more information, visit the BronxClosingSchools page on YouTube.
Rally for schools Monday in the Bronx, Tuesday in Brooklyn
1.
Rally against school closings.
Monday. 4PM.
Bronx County Courthouse.
Do whatever you do best: attend, encourage others, publicize.
What if it rains? Maybe we will go into the building?
Rain or Shine, we will protest.
2.
PEP
Tuesday
Brooklyn Tech. 6PM. Sign up to speak at 5:30. Line will form earlier.
Arrive in time to line up. The earlier, the better. For real. There’s less than 3000 seats. And there will be people on the other side of the issue. Public transport strongly encouraged.
It may be a long evening. But they’ve limited the agenda to the school closings and only a few more issues.
3.
Rally outside PEP
Tuesday
Brooklyn Tech. (outside, on Dekalb) 4:30 – 7:00 (likely times)
UFT Marshals will direct members to the rally.
We have an interest in keeping things orderly. We will have a crowd full of teachers (and students?).
2/3.
These are separate events. Logistically, you won’t be able do both. Rally outside. Or hearing inside. You should know in advance.
Subway is best. IRT (2,3,4,5) to Nevins. Or D to Columbus Circle and change for A, B, or C to Dekalb. They’ve scrambled the trains in Brooklyn: the D Does NOT Do Dekalb.
4.
Encourage members to call 311. Here are some good points:
- Parents, students, educators, administrators, community residents and the public at large are overwhelmingly and adamantly opposed to the closings. Thousands upon thousands of them have come out to public hearings to explain how their schools are working, educating our city’s most vulnerable students and making a critical difference in their lives.
- The schools targeted for closing educate a significantly higher percentage of high-needs students — English language learners, special education students and poor students – than surrounding schools.
- The criteria for closing schools seem to be a moving target, with different DOE measures being cited in different cases; and some of the schools on the list have made progress on every measure or received bonuses for improving scores.
- Rather than address the needs of struggling schools and provide resources and support, the DOE’s response is to walk away and shut down the schools. But this will simply displace vulnerable students yet again, pushing them further to the margins – and sets up the next round of closings. It does not address the real needs of high-needs learners at all.
- Tell the Bloomberg administration that these proposed school closings represent a fundamental abrogation by the DOE of its duty to educate all of our city’s children.
The full list of the NYC proposed closings:
- Bronx (7): Columbus, Smith (partial), New Day, Monroe Academy of Business and Law, Global Enterprise, School of Community Research and Learning, FDA III
- Brooklyn (5): Maxwell, Robeson, Metropolitan Corporate Academy, Academic and Social Excellence, PS332
- Manhattan (5): Norman Thomas, Choir Academy of Harlem, Academy of Environmental Science, ACE, Kappa II
- Queens (3): Jamaica, Beach Channel, Business Computer Applications HS
The full list of the NYS “Persistently Lowest Achieving” (next round of threats)
- Bronx (7): Columbus, Kennedy, Grace Dodge, Jane Addams, Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology, Monroe Academy for Business and Law, PS 65 Mother Hale
- Brooklyn (11): Sheepshead Bay, Grady, Dewey, FDR, Maxwell, Robeson, Boys and Girls, Metropolitan Corporate Academy, Cobble Hill School of American Studies, School for Global Studies, Automotive
- Manhattan (6): Washington Irving, Unity Center for Urban Technologies, Chelsea, Norman Thomas, Graphics, Bread and Roses
- Queens (10): Newtown, Grover Cleveland, Queens Vocational, Flushing, August Martin, Beach Channel, Richmond Hill, John Adams, Jamaica, Long Island City
January ’10 Math Regents: Algebra, Geometry, Math B
Over the next few days I will be writing extensively about the three New York State math exams that students are about to take.
When: Math B is Tuesday morning. Geometry is Thursday morning. Algebra is Thursday afternoon.
Who: Algebra is for all students. Can’t graduate without it. Geometry is for students who just finished the course. If you passed the course you have a very good shot at passing the exam (though it doesn’t always happen.) You need to pass the Geometry Regents (and the Algebra II/Trig Regents, when it comes out) in order to get the Advanced Regents Diploma. Math B is for older students who just finished an associated course (might have been called Math B, might have been called something else) and/or who need one more math Regents for the Advanced Regents Diploma.
Other math exams? Nope. Math A is gone. History. Never going to be given again. And Algebra II/Trig won’t arrive until June.
Answers? I may post answers here soon after the exams.
Questions? JMAP is usually the first to post the entire exams. Keep checking back on their JMAP Regents Page. Last year it took a week? The exams themselves will be posted, eventually, by NY State Education Department. They are slower.
Discussion: I will open threads to discuss specific questions. Check back soon after each exam. The Association of Mathematics Teachers of NY State runs a discussion for teachers at this MathForum link. It gets quite interesting as teachers debate bad questions and scoring problems.
Tips: Eat in the morning what you normally eat. Bring pens, pencils, your calculator, extra batteries. Arrive a little early at your exams.
Tips: Answer all the multiple choice. You can sometimes work backwards from the answers to see which works (let x=2 or x=1 or x=0 or x=10 and see what makes sense). For the open questions, write something for each one, even if you can’t finish. Remember, part of nothing is nothing, and there’s no partial credit for nothing.
Tips: When you arrive at a question you cannot do, it’s ok to skip ahead. Make a note about what you skipped. Remember, before you turn in the exam you must answer every multiple choice, even if you have to guess at a few. And remember, no blank short answers! You have 3 hours to take the exam. That’s a long time. Make sure to take a break (bathroom or otherwise) about halfway through. Putting your head somewhere else for 3-5 minutes will allow you to come back a little fresher.
Practicing tips: Look at the previous exams. (Check jmap for them.) Do the exams. Check the answers. Look at the NY State Integrated Algebra secret suggested vocabulary list. Look up any words that surprise you.
Can states improve their education by copying states that are doing worse?
Tom Hoffman, focused on standards, wonders out loud why Rhode Island is emulating low and middle performing southern states and not higher performing New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Read it here.
The answers are missing (though I think they are implied):
- No, they can’t improve by emulating states with weaker education systems.
- And the implied question: then why are they copying them? Because it is part of a conservative, anti-public education, anti-union, pro-privatization surge.
Corporate-style education reform does have goals. I just don’t think that “improving education” is among them.
Quadruple Jeopardy
Schools in New York City are measured by Progress Reports, by Quality Reviews, by New York State criteria, and by No Child Left Behind criteria. The criteria, what they look at, and how they measure them, are all very different.
Three of these measures rely, in part, on test scores. We know that there are serious problems with using scores – how do they take into account how much the kids already knew? – and some of the test are just lousy. The NAEP is widely regarded as a good measure of progress – and none of the other tests have scores that line up with that.
The state and city measures are largely contradictory. The State list of schools to be restructured includes schools that got As from the City. And schools the City is closing, the State says are doing just fine.
Enough of the measures are tied to student socio-economic status that we can draw a safe conclusion: if you are poor, your school will probably fail one of the four tests. Congratulations to Dewitt Clinton for escaping this year. But the New York State list was just released, and four additional Bronx schools got caught: JFK, Jane Addams, Grace Dodge, and Fordham Leadership.
The full list of the NYC proposed closings:
- Bronx (7): Columbus, Smith (partial), New Day, Monroe Academy of Business and Law, Global Enterprise, School of Community Research and Learning, FDA III
- Brooklyn (5): Maxwell, Robeson, Metropolitan Corporate Academy, Academic and Social Excellence, PS332
- Manhattan (5): Norman Thomas, Choir Academy of Harlem, Academy of Environmental Science, ACE, Kappa II
- Queens (3): Jamaica, Beach Channel, Business Computer Applications HS
The full list of the NYS “Persistently Lowest Achieving”:
- Bronx (7): Columbus, Kennedy, Grace Dodge, Jane Addams, Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology, Monroe Academy for Business and Law, PS 65 Mother Hale
- Brooklyn (11): Sheepshead Bay, Grady, Dewey, FDR, Maxwell, Robeson, Boys and Girls, Metropolitan Corporate Academy, Cobble Hill School of American Studies, School for Global Studies, Automotive
- Manhattan (6): Washington Irving, Unity Center for Urban Technologies, Chelsea, Norman Thomas, Graphics, Bread and Roses
- Queens (10): Newtown, Grover Cleveland, Queens Vocational, Flushing, August Martin, Beach Channel, Richmond Hill, John Adams, Jamaica, Long Island City
Notice the numbers of large high schools. Notice the number of vocational high schools.
DoE backs down (partially) on Smith
Yesterday’s announcement that the DoE would keep Smith’s automative program was welcome. Anything that limits the closures is good.
Take 1: They felt the pressure from us. They felt the pressure from the kids. They felt the pressure from the alumni. They felt the pressure from the community. But, that pressure’s been almost everywhere.
Take 2: They felt the pressure from the businesses that use Smith’s students as interns, and that hire Smith graduates. And within that, they especially felt the pressure from BMW who relies on young workers with certifications that are not widely available, but that Smith offers.
Take 3: The DoE may now claim it was listening to us (we were going to close 20, but because we carefully listened blah blah blah)
Take 4: This is a CTE school. A vocational school. (Vocation from Latin “voc-“, I think, for “calling,” as in vocal cords.) A 13 year old entering that building should take all the core academics and have a CHOICE of vocational programs. I don’t want a 13 year old to check off “automative” and be stuck with that for the rest of his life. A vocational school for children, where transfers are nearly impossible, where the choice is being made very young, must have multiple programs.
Take 5: The DoE partially retreated on one school. It is not enough.
Demonstrate.
Write.
Call.
We have less than a week before the PEP. Let’s turn up the pressure!
JD2718 