Improved and Improving Students Abilities in Mathematics

     Over the past generation (or two), the mathematics abilities of students in the United States has improved.

     Take a minute and let that opening sentence sink in a little bit.  We are constantly hearing about how poor our nation's students do in mathematics compared to other nations; sometimes we hear the same comments compared to previous generations in the United States.  But the truth is, we are improving when in comes to mathematics abilities of our students.

        The graph (above) depicts the average NAEP mathematics scores for 4th and 8th grade students since 1990.  NAEP stands for the National Assessment of Educational Progress.  It is sometimes referred to as the Nations Report Card.  Among many other subject areas, NAEP periodically tests the math abilities of 4th, 8th, and 12th grade students throughout the United States.  This test is given to a representative sample of students in every state.  It is a "low-stakes" test and only aggregate results are determined.  (That is, there are no individual student results reported for NAEP tests.)

     We can see the overall increases over this time period on this graph.  While this is good news, it is also fair to say that students in the United States need to do much better than they are currently doing in mathematics achievement if we ever hope to rival our counterparts in other some other nations.  The ability of American students to reason and problem solve in mathematics is lacking.  Even students who appear to do well in math classes--as indicated by their grades--sometimes struggle in higher level math classes that require reasoning and understanding.

     So while we are improving in overall math ability over the past couple of generations, we need to continue to improve (and quicken the pace of improvement) if we want our students to be successful in world that they will inherit.

     This requires a change in the way mathematics is taught in United States.  We need to de-emphasize "grading" and re-emphasize "learning".  Students (and parents) who are only concerned about grades sometimes overlook the main purpose of schooling--which is learning.

     So let's keep the positive trend in rising math ability going.  We must.

Caring Adults in Every School

     I always hear about the value of relationships in education.  When a teacher builds a strong relationship with her students, her students tend to have better achievement.  I've also (often) been reminded that some students do not have the positive influence of a responsible adult in their home life (or their outside-of-school-life) and YOU may be that only such person in that student's life.

     I think that teachers who take these point to heart are able to make a difference in the lives of their students.  I also think that they help to create a learning environment in which students are comfortable and more able to do their best all of the time.  And it makes sense...Wouldn't you rather have a teacher who cares about you as a person than having a teacher that barely knows your name?

     I am a mathematics supervisor.  So often I see students who have always struggled in math class and they begin each school year thinking that they won't do well.  Some teachers view this attitude as "The students don't like me." when the real issue is "The students don't like math."  (Actually, I think the real issue is, "The students don't like being in an environment where they are pretty sure that they are going to fail and/or not understand on a regular basis.)  Teachers who are able to establish a good relationship with these students enable them to try and work hard and do their best everyday.  They may not get the "A" every time, but they change their attitude toward the subject (and maybe their attitude toward their own abilities) and things improve.

     Just like in life, a little caring goes a long way.  Fortunately, most teachers get into the profession of teaching because they already are very caring people.  They want to work with students and they want their students to be successful and they do everything they can to make that happen.  Think about your favorite teacher...Why is he or she your favorite?  Chances are, it has something to do with the way they treated you and chances are, they were probably very nice to you and made you feel that you were capable of doing anything.

Lower Dropout Rates

     According to a recent article from the Pew Research Center (see article here), the U.S. high school dropout rate dropped to 7% last year.  It has been going down since 2000 when the national dropout rate was 12%.  Educators know that earning a high school diploma may not be a ticket to live-long success.  But without one, you are pretty much guaranteed to experience many struggles in your life--not the least of which would be trying to build a middle-class life for you and your family.

     Hispanic and Black dropout rates have significantly declined since 1993.  Hispanic student (today) comprise 25% of our nation's public school students.  In 1993 their dropout rate was 33%.  Today it is down to 14%--and it has been steadily declining since 1998 despite a 50% rise in the population of young Hispanics in our country.  The dropout rate for Blacks has declined from 16% in 1993 to 8% today.  Black youth represent 16% of our public school students.

     Public schools do everything they can to keep students in school and to encourage completion of their high school diploma.  We encourage students to become involved in school teams and school clubs.  Students who are involved in school are less likely to dropout.  (I have to be honest, I can't find data on that last statement.  But I've heard it from many sources over the years and it makes sense--to me--to be true.)

     We also know that when students can connect with an adult in the school, they are more likely to stay in school and to finish high school.  Once again, relationships is the key.

     This is a major win for our public schools and even more of a win for our students--and for our country.  An educated society leads to less people in jail; less people on welfare; more people working; more taxes being paid; and so on, and so on, and so on.  It all begins with education.  Lowering the dropout rate is very, very good news.

     The next hurdle to clear is raising the college graduation rate--which is well below 50%.  But that's a topic for another post.

Change What You Do (or else improvement will never happen)

     It seems we are constantly hearing and reading statistics that say American students are not achieving very well.  We rank low in reading and mathematics compared to other industrialized countries.  A quarter of our children never graduate from high school and the graduation numbers are even worse in college.  Our poor children and learning disabled children and minority children have lower rates of achievement than our white and economically advantaged children.

     All of this is true.  And we don't like it; and we want it to change.  We want all students to be successful; we want all students to graduate from high school; we want all students to be grow to be capable, responsible adults.  But this is a difficult problem--as is evidenced from the years and years of data with very little improvement on these fronts.

     Something has to change.  We cannot keep teaching the same way we have always taught and expect different results.  Teachers give their best everyday.  It isn't a matter of "not trying" or "not doing our best".  We have to do things differently.

     If I knew the solution(s) to this problem, I would tell you.  The best I can do is offer my ideas:

     (1)  We need to instruct students in a way that they respond to; we need to know what they "get" and what they don't get--so we can help them.
     (2)  We need to use more technology in a more effective way.
     (3)  We need to be more concerned about learning and less concerned about grades.
     (4)  We need to use valuable classtime for addressing student questions and much, much less classtime forcing students to complete worksheets.  (If they already know how to do the work, why force them to show us again and again and again.  If they don't know how to do the work, why force them to do ten problems that they can't do.)
     (5)  We need to increase student engagement every minute of every class.  There should be less teacher-talk and more student-talk.

     What are your five best ideas for changing teaching?  If you could do anything in your classroom to help students to learn better, what would you do?  We have to do something different if we want different (and better) results.

Faculty Lounge of the 21st Century

     I am taking a MOOC (That is a: Massive Open Online Course) on Coaching Digital Learning (check it out here).  Recently they held a twitter chat and I said that the PLN's--Personal Learning Networks--are like the faculty lounge for the 21st century (see tweet here).  This tweet got a lot of retweets and favorites; a lot of people seemed to agree with this comment.

     I know that a lot of educators are on Twitter and I've heard (read) many say that they learn a lot from others on Twitter.  But, it is not just Twitter.  I believe that professional learning today and in the future will come from sources outside of our schools and school districts.  And many of these sources will be regular teachers with full class loads who also happen to be very well connected.  These are the teachers who tweet and blog and write books and speak at conferences and are always very willing to share their experiences.

     Back in August (2014) I planned a Professional Development session on digit learning and all of the speakers came to us via Google Hangout.  From the comfort of their own homes or offices, four companies spoke and interacted with 250 teachers.  We could see them and they could see us.  We spoke to them and they spoke to us.  But it was done without them having to board a plane and come to our school district.

     I am going to do it again in December as I plan a meeting with all of the Mathematics Supervisors in Maryland.  This time the topic is Using Technology in the Classroom.  The speakers will be influential people that I have discovered via their tweets and blogs.

     This is how we learn in the 21st century.

Three Wishes for Education

     As I begin my 27th year in education, I would like to look ahead and think about the three biggest things that I would like to see in education in the United States.  These things may happen before I retire (still a long way off), they may happen before I die (hopefully a longer way off [!] ); but I hope they happen.  So rub the lamp; here are my three wishes.

#1) Poor students learn just as much and just as well as rich students

     We are constantly bombarded with data that shows poor students having lower achievement than their richer peers.  We (in education) know why this happens.  It's not just that they lack money for adequate, nourishing food.  Students from poor families come to school in kindergarten already behind their richer peers.  They have less books in their home.  They have a higher percentage of parents who didn't finish high school and/or never went to college.  They live in more dangerous neighborhoods compared to rich kids.  They don't always have a space at home to study or to do homework.  They don't always have an adult in the home who can help with homework.  When they get sick, they don't go to the doctor as much or as quickly as richer kids; so they get sicker and they miss more school.

     The list goes on and on.  And it's all true.  Poor students have many, many disadvantages when it comes to schooling and learning.  Add to this list that all of their teachers went to college, graduated from college, and probably (most of their teachers) were never poor--since the percentage of poor students going to and completing college (still) remainings embarrassingly low for Americans.  So many of their teachers have little or no experience at what it's like to be grow up in a poor household.

     And so, for all of these reasons (and more) poor students in America have lower achievement than rich students.  I feel that America's public schools have a moral responsibility to these children to see to it that they get a great education and that they succeed in education.  It is our responsibility to prepare these students for the world that they will inherit.  It is our responsibility to see to it that each and every poor student does not continue the cycle of poverty but ends poverty for themselves and for their children.

     It is my number one wish that our public schools do a better job with our most vulnerable students.  In fact, we must do better.

#2 Learning is more important than getting grades

     It probably isn't fair to say this, but a lot of the time I feel that so many of our students are more concerned about getting grades than they are about learning.  I hope that isn't true for the majority of our students, but it certainly seems to be true for many of our students.  We created a monster when it comes to grading and it is out of control.

     Students stay up late and worry endlessly not about whether or not they will learn something, but instead, whether or not they will get this or that grade.  It has led us to a system where many students are great at (what I call) "playing school".  They do what they're told, they read the book, they turn in their homework, they take the test, they get the grade.  And one week later they couldn't tell you anything they learned from that unit of study.

     This is a major reason why so many students begin college and so few finish college.  Heck, this is a major reason why so many students do great in (say) Algebra 1 and do lousy in Algebra 2.

     We have to do a better job and emphasizing the learning and de-emphasizing the grading.  Students need to be rewarded for actually learning.  When they do, they will feel a great sense of accomplishment and will celebrate the learning--and care less about the grading.

     We don't give grades when children learn to ride a bike or play the piano or do a magic trick or hit a baseball.  Yet children find great enjoyment in doing these things--all without grades.  My second wish is for students to find enjoyment in learning--in conquering a difficult subject or a difficult learning task--and succeeding.

#3 All students graduate from high school

     The high school graduation rate in the United States is around 75%.  (Note: In our colleges, the graduation rate is even lower.)  This is a serious problem for our nation and is certainly a serious problem for the people who don't have a high school diploma.  The statistics for people without a high school diploma are awful.  Higher rates of unemployment; lower wages; higher percentages on welfare; poorer health; and (worst of all) a much higher chance that their children will not graduate from high school.

     There have been studies that tell us that many high school dropouts leave school for non-academic reasons.  They don't feel a connection to the school or they don't  feel as if any of the adults care about whether they stay in school or leave.

     We have to take a hard look at what we can do in our schools to keep students in school and to help them to graduate.  I know that this is being done in a lot of places--this isn't (unfortunately) a new problem.  But our economy in the United States is not kind to people who don't have a high school diploma.  This is a problem that can be solved and it will improve the lives of millions of young adults as well as improving the communities all over our country.

     These are my three wishes for education in the United States.  What are your three wishes?  Let me know.  Leave a comment or use the Twitter hashtag #ThreeWishesForEducation.

Hot Dogs and High Jump

     Take a look at this data from the Famous Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest:

Year               Winning Amount

1990                           16

1991                          21.5

1992                           19

1993                           17

1994                           20

1995                          19.5

1996                           22

1997                          24.5

1998                           19

1999                           20

2000                           25

2001                           50

2002                          50.5

2003                           44

2004                          53.5

2005                           49

2006                           54

2007                           66

2008                           59

2009                           68

     Look at the amount of hot dogs eaten by the winners in the 1990's.  Now look at the winning data from the 2000's.  Specifically, look at the difference in the winning numbers from 2000 to 2001.  Yipes!  What happened???  Is this data correct???  The number of hot dogs eaten jumped (tremendously) from 25 in 2000 to 50 in 2001.  How is that possible?

     The answer is Takeru Kobayashi from Japan.  He "changed the game" when it came to hot dog eating contests.  Not being from the United States, Kobayashi didn't have any preconceived notions about the way to eat a hot dog.  He knew that this contest was all about eating as fast as you can.  So he devised a new way to eat a hot dog in this contest.

     Kobayashi took the hot dog out of the bun, broke it in half, and ate the two halves together.  He just put both of the halves in his mouth at the same time.  Then he took the bun, squished it into a ball (with one hand), dunked it in water, and shoved it in his mouth--in one bite.  All together, it took him about ten seconds to eat one hot dog and bun.

     Kobayashi found a different way to eat hot dogs that no one had ever thought of before.  Up until his first appearance at the hot dog eating contest, everyone ate their hot dogs the same way and the winning amount only grew very slowly from year to year.

     The same thing happened in the world of high jumping.  For decades high jump competitors used a high jumping style called the Western Roll (or Straddle).  But in the 1968 Olympics, an American High Jumper named Dick Fosbury used a different technique.  He jumped with his back to the crossbar and went over the bar with his head first and his feet last.

     Once again, no one had ever seen this before and few people had ever tried this technique.  Within a short amount of years however, all world-class high jumper would use this technique (known as the Fosbury Flop).  It is considered far superior to the Western Roll.  Our current high jump world records would never have been achieved using the old technique.

     Dick Fosbury realized that the human limits of high jumping were quickly being reached with the Western Roll technique and he decided to look at high jumping in a completely different way.