Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

[c1ue]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

I'd be interested in seeing someone on the opposite (not Republican) side respond to the comments on OBE vs. the HOTS.

Certainly 'values clarification' is a very loaded term for me, and highly negative. It more than offsets the loaded term of 'critical thinking'.

[ASH]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

Parents need to teach children to think critically. These unrealistic expectations that Public school teacher in the right school district will be the secret to my childs success is Union propaganda. The smart people in society take an active role in their child's education on a daily basis.

Schools switch curriculum to meet the needs of the political system. If I want my child to read - I need to read with her every day, if I want my child to understand math - I need to find ways to include math in our daily lives, if I want my child to speak well - I need to converse with my child as often as possible.

If the Public would wake up and require ALL elected local-state-and-Federal Politicians to keep their children in public schools the absurd experimental curriculums in public schools would end.....of course this is never going to happen.

My perception is there's tension between the egalitarian desire to give every kid an equal shot at a good school / good job by educating them all to a basic standard, versus the practicality of "tracking" kids to maximize each child's potential. If you're a politician who must answer to the voting public -- or a bureaucrat who must answer to an elected politician -- which set of propositions sound likely to garner the most votes?

#1 All children have the same potential to learn, if we can unlock it, and all deserve the same opportunity to learn, so we should define a level of mastery that every child can achieve and then concentrate our teaching resources on making sure that every child performs to that level.

vs.

#2 Children vary widely in natural ability and personal circumstances, and society should prioritize challenging those children who are best able to learn.

Mind you, #2 doesn't necessarily have to be about natural ability in the sense of a specific measure like IQ -- maybe it just has to do with learning style. But there may be a cost efficiency issue involved with ploughing a lot of resources into teaching every kid in the way that works best for them, versus teaching as much as possible to the students who are easy to teach.

I think that as a politician, you have to promote an education system in which "no child [will be] left behind", because otherwise you will be accused of elitism, or promoting government only in service of your economic class. I think there's a lot of anxiety among parents about their kids not getting into the advanced track in a particular school system, or otherwise not receiving the same quality of education as others receive. So what do you do? You kind of have to level the public school system, because otherwise there will always be more parents of children who aren't in the talented-and-gifted program than there are parents of children on an accelerated track.

At the same time, if your child could use more advanced instruction -- and the public school system can't provide that for political reasons -- that basically leaves private schools. And as the faster learners leave the public school system because they can't get a quality education, the average ability of the remaining population of public school kids drops, necessitating more compromise on education standards.

I'm not sure we can 'fix' the public school system by making members of the political elite school their own kids there, because the distribution of learning ability in the student population is fairly wide, and the 'tracking' necessary to handle that distribution smacks of elitism itself. The only way I see this working is if (a) parents agree that maybe Johnny isn't as good at math as Susie, but (b) that's okay, because there are appropriate tracks for Johnny and Susie that will given them each the best shot society can afford. The problem arises when folks either want to abandon Johnny entirely, or hold Susie back to the level of Johnny's performance.

[ASH]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

there were only a few teachers that had any real impact on my k-12 days.
altho i think the majority of public teachers mean well (and the problems seem to revolve around their unions) it seems like most of em are there because of the fringe bene's

Thanks, lektrode. What I took away from my experience was that "tracking" worked (for me). It's not so much that the four teachers responsible for that school district's accelerated learning program were better than all the others in the district (although, frankly, they were at the top of the distribution). I think the key issue is that they had the freedom to teach to a higher level because their students were a subset of the population for which that was practical. The rest of my classes were with the general population, and we had fine teachers there, too. It's just that those teachers didn't teach the material at the same level, because there was greater need to help slower (or less motivated) learners master the basics.

Of course, there are all sorts of equality problems with tracking, which is why there's the opposite impulse to level the curriculum.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

.. What I took away from my experience was that "tracking" worked (for me)...

It worked for me, too.
In 1969 they identified a group of us in fifth grade and called us honors students. The honors program was dirt simple; we moved from class to class always together as a group and we had a much tougher grading scale. For all the other kids an 80% test score was a B. For us it was an F. We stayed together until high school graduation.
I think it helped a lot to have a class peer group of natural scholars, and be forced to work harder.

[Shakespear]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

My experience was from a Catholic High School where the answer "A,B,C or D" was not the norm. This created more work for the teachers but now I realize that for me as a student it made me think in a non-linear way. I have no contact with k-12 now so I can not comment on what is happening there. However if I understand what is being said here correctly it seems the schools are regressing to slave education level. Sorry but the bell shaped curve rules and there is not too much you can do to change that reality.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

My experience was from a Catholic High School where the answer "A,B,C or D" was not the norm. This created more work for the teachers but now I realize that for me as a student it made me think in a non-linear way. I have no contact with k-12 now so I can not comment on what is happening there. However if I understand what is being said here correctly it seems the schools are regressing to slave education level. Sorry but the bell shaped curve rules and there is not too much you can do to change that reality.

There are still programs in most, if not all schools, for "gifted students". There are AP (advance placement) classes in high school and many gifted children get to take higher level courses in lower grades. I have several grandchildren in such programs. But children in other classes are seldom if ever held back. Failing a grade just does not seem to exist any longer. 2 of our grandsons were held back in early grades but that was by their parents because they did not feel they were mature enough to go on to the next grade. That takes some guts, but it seems to have worked out.

[btattoo]

Re: Texas GOP Declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools"

I'd be interested in seeing someone on the opposite (not Republican) side respond to the comments on OBE vs. the HOTS.

Certainly 'values clarification' is a very loaded term for me, and highly negative. It more than offsets the loaded term of 'critical thinking'.

Not sure OBE and HOTS are in opposition...but I'll gently put in my oar here. I'm a teacher at a charter school - we don't explicitly subscribe to OBE, but do subscribe to the idea that all students deserve much better schools than they're getting in the US.

Our approach can be misunderstood and politicized. For example, one of the habits we ask students to frequently reflect on is "evidence." We ask them these sorts of questions: are you using evidence to support their ideas? are you considering evidence for other positions? I suppose one could theorize that this insistence on evidence precludes faith. This person could make an angry speech about it and get attention. This is unfortunate because there is a long tradition of theologians (Aquinas, St. Augustine, etc. etc.) who were fervent evidence-seekers.

Another example of a habit: cooperation. Students work in groups sometimes at our school, and must reflect on how they led, contributed, and worked together. One might presume we are attempting to turn all students into communists, and preventing individual achievement/freedom. On the contrary, we see personalization as a key to making school--where no matter what type of tracking there is places students of varying abilities together--work for all students.

Regardless, I think the basic misapprehension is that one can teach "values" or "habits" the same way one teaches, for example, a traditional history course. Of course this would be ridiculous. To comprehend how a new and better type of schooling can work, one must consider that teachers should coach, offer guidance, and create structures for reflection and for students to work together in meaningful ways.

Perhaps some bad schools do propose to teach "values" the same way "facts" are taught. Such schools should not be acceptable to communities.

[Polish_Silver]

Tracking vs equality

My perception is there's tension between the egalitarian desire to give every kid an equal shot at a good school / good job by educating them all to a basic standard, versus the practicality of "tracking" kids to maximize each child's potential.

--ash

I'll share some anecdotes.

I went to a normal suburban neighborhood elementary school. I really liked my 4th and 5th grade teacher. After I graduated, they started something called "alternative class".
About half the school was devoted to "alternative class", which was a more informal environment, supposedly more adaptable to the personality of each child. Parents using the alternative were required to tutor in the class room, to give the students 1:1 attention. It folded after a few years, and I don't know why.

The next experiment was "structured class". It is still going after 40 years, but the "structured" title may have dissolved. The school is wildly popular, with annual lotteries to determine admission, and parents driving in from all over the solar system to drop off their kids, creating twice daily traffic jams in this quiet neighborhood. Car pooling seems to be physically impossible for Californians. I don't know how the school differs from others, but I think the teachers are allowed to use whips and chains.

A rival theory, is that the structured school is believed to be better, so that parents who obsess about education put thier students in the structured class, and the belief in superiority becomes a self fulfulling prophecy. Check out the Vallemar elementary school --it seems to be unbeatable.

On NPR a few years ago, there was a big discussion about homework. Supposedly it has never been proven that homework really increases knowlege, reading proficiency, or study skills. Some callers asserted that lots of homework just encourages shoddy work or copying. Others claimed that if students were not doing homework they would be wasting away in front of the TV. One caller said that in her area, the schools that people thought were good were Catholic, and the Catholic schools really piled on the homework.

Europe, which is supposed to be more egalitarian than America, separates children into different schools much earlier than the USA does. This may actually be more egalitarian, in that every child gets a suitable environment, rather than forcing children into a "higher education track" which doesn't work for them.

I think vouchers should be tried, which would give parents a real choice of schools.
It would not weaken public schools financially. Public schools are solvent if the income per pupil is maintained. As long as the voucher amount is slightly lower than the existing budget/pupil, the vouchers will actually increase the available $ per child in the public system. The only argument I can see against this is that public schools could become the "school of last resort" for pupils who could not be admitted to the privately administered schools.

However, the public schools already fulfill this function, by having special classes (or even schools) for difficult pupils.
I don't think public schools would be "hollowed out" by vouchers. We'll never know until we try.

[Polish_Silver]

BK's damn good idea!

If the Public would wake up and require ALL elected local-state-and-Federal Politicians to keep their children in public schools the absurd experimental curriculums in public schools would end.....of course this is never going to happen.

--BK

My analogous idea is that children of congressmen would have to join the military when a war started, and be placed in front-line combat units. (If congressmen had no children, then take their nearest relatives, or themselves!)

[c1ue]

Re: BK's damn good idea!

Not sure OBE and HOTS are in opposition...but I'll gently put in my oar here. I'm a teacher at a charter school - we don't explicitly subscribe to OBE, but do subscribe to the idea that all students deserve much better schools than they're getting in the US.

Our approach can be misunderstood and politicized. For example, one of the habits we ask students to frequently reflect on is "evidence." We ask them these sorts of questions: are you using evidence to support their ideas? are you considering evidence for other positions? I suppose one could theorize that this insistence on evidence precludes faith. This person could make an angry speech about it and get attention. This is unfortunate because there is a long tradition of theologians (Aquinas, St. Augustine, etc. etc.) who were fervent evidence-seekers.

Another example of a habit: cooperation. Students work in groups sometimes at our school, and must reflect on how they led, contributed, and worked together. One might presume we are attempting to turn all students into communists, and preventing individual achievement/freedom. On the contrary, we see personalization as a key to making school--where no matter what type of tracking there is places students of varying abilities together--work for all students.

Thank you for the information. It is very useful to understand what is actually being talked about - and I shudder to consider taking any type of informed stance from a political parties web site (any of them).

Regardless, I think the basic misapprehension is that one can teach "values" or "habits" the same way one teaches, for example, a traditional history course. Of course this would be ridiculous. To comprehend how a new and better type of schooling can work, one must consider that teachers should coach, offer guidance, and create structures for reflection and for students to work together in meaningful ways.

I agree with this - I personally doubt that there are too many ways to formally teach values outside of re-education camps.

However, human beings being what they are, I have no doubt whatsoever that kids tend to take at least some of their attitudes from their teachers. If in fact critical thinking can be taught, then at least said kids have some tools by which to re-evaluate the attitudes that are absorbed automatically from the people around them - whether parents, teachers, classmates, or television.

I think vouchers should be tried, which would give parents a real choice of schools.

Real choice implies that the market will provide/support a multiplicity of schools. Choice also means that the schools with better reputations will get a disproportionate share of the better students, and will therefore be perceived by ever more prospects as desirable. Vouchers also allow those who otherwise would pay for private schools to claw back more of their property taxes for their own benefit.

It would not weaken public schools financially. Public schools are solvent if the income per pupil is maintained.

The first statement is false - see above. The second statement may be true, but may not be as all expenses are not 'per pupil'. There is such a thing as economy of scale.

#1 All children have the same potential to learn, if we can unlock it, and all deserve the same opportunity to learn, so we should define a level of mastery that every child can achieve and then concentrate our teaching resources on making sure that every child performs to that level.

vs.

#2 Children vary widely in natural ability and personal circumstances, and society should prioritize challenging those children who are best able to learn.

Mind you, #2 doesn't necessarily have to be about natural ability in the sense of a specific measure like IQ -- maybe it just has to do with learning style. But there may be a cost efficiency issue involved with ploughing a lot of resources into teaching every kid in the way that works best for them, versus teaching as much as possible to the students who are easy to teach.

I think that as a politician, you have to promote an education system in which "no child [will be] left behind", because otherwise you will be accused of elitism, or promoting government only in service of your economic class. I think there's a lot of anxiety among parents about their kids not getting into the advanced track in a particular school system, or otherwise not receiving the same quality of education as others receive. So what do you do? You kind of have to level the public school system, because otherwise there will always be more parents of children who aren't in the talented-and-gifted program than there are parents of children on an accelerated track.

At the same time, if your child could use more advanced instruction -- and the public school system can't provide that for political reasons -- that basically leaves private schools. And as the faster learners leave the public school system because they can't get a quality education, the average ability of the remaining population of public school kids drops, necessitating more compromise on education standards.

I'm not sure we can 'fix' the public school system by making members of the political elite school their own kids there, because the distribution of learning ability in the student population is fairly wide, and the 'tracking' necessary to handle that distribution smacks of elitism itself. The only way I see this working is if (a) parents agree that maybe Johnny isn't as good at math as Susie, but (b) that's okay, because there are appropriate tracks for Johnny and Susie that will given them each the best shot society can afford. The problem arises when folks either want to abandon Johnny entirely, or hold Susie back to the level of Johnny's performance.

I cannot disagree with anything noted above.

However, IMO you're missing a fundamental other factor: inherent advantage.

I say this because in other nations, there are all sorts of ways by which scarce education resources are apportioned to try and turn out the best overall value. These all encompass national testing schemes where the better students are identified and passed into the better schools.

The only reason I can figure as to why we don't do this in the US is because fundamentally this scheme is relatively egalitarian. While certainly wealth matters, ultimately the tests dictate the results.

However, in the US increasingly it is wealth which differentiates. Wealth allows buying a house in the best school districts. Wealth allows tutoring to maximize SATs and get into the prime prep schools. Wealth allows endowing a new building so your kid gets into Harvard. Certainly this has always existed, but the previous 1% dynamic seems to percolate almost all the way down now.

Thus while the rich in every nation send their kids to Harvard, in Japan for example there is a clear track for a poor but smart and hardworking kid to get into Waseda - the smart but poor (or at least, not rich) people's university.

This track is increasingly unavailable in the US.

[ASH]

Re: BK's damn good idea!

I cannot disagree with anything noted above.

Framed, and mounted on my wall.

However, IMO you're missing a fundamental other factor: inherent advantage.

I say this because in other nations, there are all sorts of ways by which scarce education resources are apportioned to try and turn out the best overall value. These all encompass national testing schemes where the better students are identified and passed into the better schools.

The only reason I can figure as to why we don't do this in the US is because fundamentally this scheme is relatively egalitarian. While certainly wealth matters, ultimately the tests dictate the results.

However, in the US increasingly it is wealth which differentiates. Wealth allows buying a house in the best school districts. Wealth allows tutoring to maximize SATs and get into the prime prep schools. Wealth allows endowing a new building so your kid gets into Harvard. Certainly this has always existed, but the previous 1% dynamic seems to percolate almost all the way down now.

Thus while the rich in every nation send their kids to Harvard, in Japan for example there is a clear track for a poor but smart and hardworking kid to get into Waseda - the smart but poor (or at least, not rich) people's university.

This track is increasingly unavailable in the US.

Do you suppose one reason we don't do this in the US is our federal structure, with a significant portion of education policy and spending devolved to the state -- and even local -- level? That creates the opportunity for many local initiatives like magnet schools with competitive admissions or even busing programs, but also impedes formulation and implementation of any sort of coordinated national education policy to identify and educate unusual talent.

[c1ue]

Re: BK's damn good idea!

Framed, and mounted on my wall.

Darn it, I'm destroying my reputation for argumentativeness...

Do you suppose one reason we don't do this in the US is our federal structure, with a significant portion of education policy and spending devolved to the state -- and even local -- level? That creates the opportunity for many local initiatives like magnet schools with competitive admissions or even busing programs, but also impedes formulation and implementation of any sort of coordinated national education policy to identify and educate unusual talent.

It can be argued that way, but the problem with that argument is that even within each state there is no coordinated state education policy. I wonder even within cities if that is true, though at least theoretically each school district should be consistent...

When I see this much degree of disorganization despite the tremendous benefits of doing so, I have to wonder if it is human nature or deliberate action. As I noted above, there are actually many reasons why at least some people would want an inequitable education system.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: BK's damn good idea!

he only reason I can figure as to why we don't do this in the US is because fundamentally this scheme is relatively egalitarian. While certainly wealth matters, ultimately the tests dictate the results.

It is not "egalitarian" but "meritocracy". We still have some low cost colleges that cater to the "poor but smart/hard working students".

New York City, for many years used this idea in it's public schools. Students who were good academically went to particular schools, some even differentiated between science and humanities. Rothbard talks about it on Von Mises. (San Francisco had a similiar system--top students went to Lowell High school)
When he was a student, there were lots of Jews in the top schools. Later, orientals were over-represented. He said the schools never had to do "affirmative action" because they could show they were consistently operating on a merit basis, not favoring ethnic groups.

[shiny!]

Re: BK's damn good idea!

I cannot disagree with anything noted above.

c1ue, are you OK? Does it hurt?

;-)

[Polish_Silver]

Vouchers are more egalitarian than elitist!

Real choice implies that the market will provide/support a multiplicity of schools. Choice also means that the schools with better reputations will get a disproportionate share of the better students, and will therefore be perceived by ever more prospects as desirable. Vouchers also allow those who otherwise would pay for private schools to claw back more of their property taxes for their own benefit.

--C1ue

Not using vouchers depends on public school administrators to do a good job, with no corrective mechanism other than school board elections. What about putting some
choice directly in the hands of parents, rather than politicians?

Choice under vouchers does depend on markets creating a variety of schools.
In my local community we have Montessori schools, Einstein Academy (ADHD specialized) , and Classical Academy (christianity & classics emphasis).

Schools perceived as better do attract better students. Is that bad? Should MIT be forced to enroll drop outs? If choice and competition is good at university level, why is it bad at the elementary level?

Right now, choice is only available to those who can afford posh neighborhoods or private schools. Vouchers would give comparable choice to everyone!