Donation of Money from A Major Employer to a School System – Conditionally
[Letter published in The Oak Ridger on or after June 16, 2004]
I was disappointed to see your endorsement of the conditional $2 million donation from UT-Battelle. As you note, the offer comes across as disingenuous; there is a reason that one rarely sees commitments of this magnitude from the private sector and you failed to examine the hidden motives.
The city fathers have wanted to raise taxes for some time but the voters refused to support it. The UT-B offer is obviously intended to sweeten the pot. However, why would UT-B do this? They say that they want to ensure that the high school has a world-class system, but why would they care, since most of their managers live in Knoxville? They say they want to be able to attract new researchers, but most of those will live in Knoxville or other areas anyway.
The most obvious reason is that DOE is pushing them to support local civic organizations and gives them points in the award fee rating for doing so. Thus the “investment” of $2 million will come back to them in part in the form of an increased award fee. In addition, DOE has reasons of its own for having the contractors donate money — lots of money — to Oak Ridge area groups and governmental activities. The more the contractors “donate”, the more credit and good PR DOE gets for making them do so. Besides, if DOE did not “persuade” the contractors to do it, local governments might demand in-lieu-of-tax money or similar payments.
Why, that is just what the City of Oak Ridge was going to do, with the help of the law firm of Baker, Donelson! But then suddenly B, D did a “180” and advised against it because “something BIG” was coming down the pike. Is this offer by UT-Battelle that something big?
If so, consider what that means. It means that DOE, through UT-B, is throwing its weight in the direction of helping the city fathers get their higher tax rate. If this occurred, it would take the pressure off DOE to make a precedent-setting direct payment to the city.
We keep seeing all sorts of similarly odd stuff going on lately. For example, why would the cash-strapped University of Tennessee join the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce and pay the dues? Why would a UT-B manager chair the foundation to raise money for the schools and not, say, a long-time and well-known citizen of Oak Ridge? Why is a mere “upgrade” to a single school proposed to cost almost $60 million?
Money can’t buy love, but it can buy control and access. This whole affair smells worse than a can of week-old sardines. The people of Oak Ridge (with The Oak Ridger in the lead) should find out the details of the $2 million donation. Who proposed what when and, especially, why? If DOE and UT-B are meddling in Oak Ridge civic affairs for their mutual benefit, then we would be foolish to make a faustian bargain and take that money.
Schools Trying To Have Control Both Ways
[Published by The Oak Ridger, October 8, 2007]
Gail Smith’s 9/11[/07] letter to the editor regarding her conversation with Dr. Tom Bailey about the child hit by a car while walking to school illustrated the administration’s tendency to claim or to disavow responsibility for students as it suits them.
Contrast Dr. Bailey’s “not responsible when off school grounds” statement to what happened to my son eight or nine years ago when he was driving home from the high school. Near our home off Emory Valley Road, he thought that the driver in front of him was not going fast enough and he passed her, giving her “the finger” as he did so. The driver happened to be a school administrator and she recognized my son. At school the next day, she informed him that he had detention, a punishment for showing disrespect to her.
As usual, I had to hear about this offense from my son and not from the school people. When I asked the administrator about it, she told me that the school considered its authority to extend over the child from the moment he left home to the time he arrived back at home. Thus her punishing my son was nothing personal, but was a matter of school discipline.
During my children’s time in the Oak Ridge school system, I often thought that the administration wanted to have things both ways. It seems that this situation has not changed.
Business Entrée to the School System
Published in The Oak Ridger, December 29, 2008]
I would like to say “Amen” to John Job’s guest column of 17 December 2008 regarding public-private partnerships by which business gains entrée to the school system.
As Job so effectively pointed out, when a company does not merely donate money, materials, or services, but conditions its donation on students and their relatives’ making purchases from the company, the company has crossed the line from being a donator to being a user. Meanwhile, the school officials who enable this behavior have moved from gracious recipients of donations to panderers, directing the unwitting purchasers into the company’s nets. I agree with Job that such a role for the school officials is pretty appalling.
Some folks with long memories may remember a proposal made by a large corporation some years ago to provide daily televised news services to schools (not in Oak Ridge). The idea was that for 15 minutes or so a day, the students would watch, on televisions donated by the corporation and its associates, a summary of the news of the day, delivered by anchors and reporters just like the national and local news shows on commercial television. The catch was that the donation would not be altogether altruistic: in order to help pay for the programs and the televisions, commercials provided by the corporation and other companies would be included, just as on commercial television. The commercials would specifically target the students, in that they would all be for products and services of interest to a teen audience. The agreement specified that in order to receive a news program, the students had to watch the whole program, including the commercials.
The school officials were all for it — they didn’t see a problem with the commercials. They argued that the kids already watched a lot of television at home and saw lots of commercials; they didn’t see it as the kids being made a captive audience for the companies’ advertisements in a school setting. It wasn’t until the proposal was publicized and a huge public outcry arose that school officials deep-sixed the idea.
Officials in the Oak Ridge School System (including the school board) may not all be in favor of stuff like this, in fact may not all have known about the Woodland-McDonald’s partnership and how it was structured. However, now they do. They should all speak out firmly against it and assure the rest of us that such an activity will never be contemplated again.
Teachers Without Teaching Degrees
[Letter published in the Knoxville News-Sentinel after April 18, 2010]
The News-Sentinel recently reported that the TEACH/Here program was trying to recruit recent college graduates or mid-career professionals. Obviously, on the basis of this, nobody over the age of about 40 should apply.
This week it was reported that Knox County had nine math positions and three science positions unfilled in the fall. They eventually filled the positions, “but it took awhile [sic] to find qualified teachers”.
Two years ago, following my second layoff in seven years and the death of my husband, I considered becoming a high school teacher. I have master’s degrees in physics and nuclear engineering and bachelor’s degrees in physics and math. A continuing need for math and science teachers (as reported by the News-Sentinel) was confirmed by a counselor I spoke with at UT.
Based on my educational qualifications, the counselor classified me as “Highly Qualified”. She told me that I could get a master’s degree in education or pursue a teaching license under the alternative teaching license program then available. In order to get my alternative license, I had to be sponsored by a school system: I had to apply to schools, get hired, and then get my license before school started. I opted for the alternative program because I did not see the point in getting the degree.
I applied to four school systems and got interviews in two of them, one for math and one for physics. I was not surprised not to get these jobs since I was told that other candidates were applying. But what did surprise me was getting so few interviews — if there was such a need and at multiple schools in each system, why not interview me? When I told the counselor this, she sighed, saying that of course the schools always preferred someone with a degree in education.
I applied again last year and got zero interviews, despite my having been tutoring students in math, physics, and Spanish for over a year at Pellissippi State (many just out of high school) and tutoring high school students privately for even longer.
So I wonder just what the public schools are waiting for in terms of suitable candidates.
Excessive Cost of Software Purchase by the Oak Ridge School System
[Published by The Oak Ridger, September 8, 2010]
The Oak Ridge Public Schools Foundation has begun a campaign to raise funds for a $350,000 software program for the public schools that is allegedly needed in order “to help our students achieve success” (The Oak Ridger, 8/27/10).
Gosh, $350K seems awfully pricey for a computer program, however “unique”. Some people may say that if it is private money, then it is no business of anyone else’s what the foundation chooses to spend it on. But it is public business, because money spent on one thing is not available to be spent on other things and because money can skew priorities.
I would bet that there are many teachers who are looking at that figure of $350K and saying to themselves, “Oh, the things I could do in my class with even one one-thousandth of that amount!” I would bet that the initial cost of $350K is just the beginning, that there will be training and maintenance costs for the software that the school system will have to bear, making this a future priority expenditure.
Beyond the cost, how is this thing supposed to work? The quoted spokesfolks seem to tap dance around this, but it seems to be a database whose main selling point is that it shows only “What Matters”, i.e., it regurgitates data in the form of edited reports. It is supposed to create “templates” for student evaluation consistent with Race to the Top requirements, but surely there are existing methods of doing this. Teachers are to be enabled to “collaborate and share lesson plans”, but don’t they do that now with E-mail?
Many good people in this community want to help the schools and may feel that contributing to this cause will help students to learn. But buying software for the administration to play with is not the same as buying books and microscopes and paints for the classroom. True advocates for student learning should oppose this bloated expenditure as an offer we can refuse.
Limitations on Using Computers in Education
[Not published; sent to REASON magazine]
I wrote you recently regarding the limitations on using computers in education (letter sent by E-mail dated 22 September 2010, with reference made to K. Mangu-Ward’s article “Teachers Unions vs Online Education”). After having read your recent interview with Terry Moe, who like Ms. Mangu-Ward is touting the virtues of using computers to teach K-12 students, I would like to reiterate and enlarge on some of the points I made earlier. I hope that in writing on this subject in the future, you will be more skeptical regarding the ability of technology to solve the ills in our public schools.
I respect Mr. Moe for his past dead-on skewering of the teachers’ unions in hampering educational reforms. However, in your current interview with him, he makes some statements that seem to indicate that he is setting up straw men in order to support his positions regarding online education. For example, he states that “customizing education means having one teacher for every child” as opposed to having 30 students and one teacher. But there are certainly choices between these two extremes and as I pointed out earlier, there can be additional one-on-one support of a student if tutors are provided as part of the school staff. Also, when a teacher is instructing 30 students in presenting a lesson over 15 minutes, each student gets the whole 15 minutes of lecture, not 15/30 = .5 minute. Thus the total teaching/explaining time is not divided among the 30 students in one-on-one fashion and one teacher could in fact provide this adequately. Online, the student may get only a few minutes of actual teacher time in personal contact — and that mostly in the form of E-mail-type communication.
Moe also seems to denigrate the role of the in-person teacher in other ways. As I noted previously, students most often do not prefer working on the computer to having an in-person teacher; in my experience in tutoring students taking various types of online courses and in serving as an adjunct instructor in math, nearly all students in fact deplore having to take a course online. Mr. Moe is quite right in saying that an online course is a good option for kids who can’t take, say, AP calculus or Mandarin at their schools. But students who really want to take these courses are usually well-motivated and capable — and usually smart — and they are thus self-motivated to dig in and study. An online course is not a good option for the bulk of students unless they have an authority figure (teacher, parent, or some other such) supervising, guiding, and, yes, pushing them to do their homework and take their tests.
Mr. Moe waxes rhapsodic about the money that can be saved by going to online courses instead of having them taught in person. That may be true, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. At the college where I work, the developmental math course is online. The students are organized into classes, with instructors, but the instructors do not present problems on the board or grade anything except the tests; they serve only as coordinators and tutors while the students’ learning of the material is done on the computer (the Carnegie Learning program). Some of us instructor/tutors have wondered how the college can be saving money if they have to pay all of the instructors (as many as would be needed in a traditional program) and the tutors (who help the kids as they get bogged down on the computer program, which will not let them go onto the next problem until they finished the current one, a huge waste of students’ time), plus the cost of the program license. The students almost universally hate the developmental math program and this particular computer program.
I believe that if most of the high school curriculum were taught as online courses to all of the students except the special needs students, we would see a decrease in the level of understanding of the material by the bulk of the students. I think we would also see a greater disparity of comprehension between those students of higher and lower abilities in math. I say this because students in general tend not to look at the text, but to focus only on the little bits of material necessary to do the homework problems. With in-person teachers, there is someone in front of the students explaining the material, with examples worked, and the students are required to sit through it; with online courses, the students will lose more of the instructional time and coverage by their skimping on the reading of the text material on the screen.
As I also noted earlier, computer grading of answers is most often an all-or-nothing proposition. But as everybody technical recognizes, it is essential to allow partial credit for math, chemistry, and physics work because all students make small mistakes (e.g., slipping a minus sign). With no partial credit, few would ever pass. Beyond this, the notes written on a student paper by the teacher help the student to understand where his errors lie and how to correct them. This is true not only in math and the sciences, but also in English (e.g., in writing essays and book reports) and in learning new languages. English in online courses may be graded only by some never-seen teacher, in the form of a few sentences separate from the work, not in red ink at the particular points of the essay or report. Point-specific comments are very important in all courses and to me this is best done right on the student’s paper. In addition, for new languages listening to tapes or recordings is not the equivalent of hearing the teacher speak the language for most of the five hours a week the course may meet. The online course can certainly not correct the student’s pronunciation in real time. At the college where I work, the online Spanish students submit tapes for the teacher to listen to and I think all they get as feedback is a letter grade.
Finally, as I suggested in my earlier letter, there are physical and psychological reasons why working at a computer may not be superior to working with pen and paper. For example, when you have to go back and forth from screen to paper (as when working math problems whose problem statements, diagrams or illustrations, and solution blocks are on the screen), the paper and screen are not simultaneously in your field of vision as the paper and a textbook could be. You also have to take your hands back and forth from the paper and pencil to the mouse or keys. All of this shifting back and forth constitutes a mental interruption. It is not a small thing and it is one reason why students generally prefer working with a textbook (except for the cost for the book, of course). I think that it is no surprise that Calculus III is not offered online at my college — following proofs and examples for screen after screen and trying to grasp diagrams on screen without being able to make your own little notations on them is very trying. Mr. Moe does not seem to consider this type of issue when he advocates a much wider use of online education.
Another psychological issue is that with some computer programs (such as the developmental math computer program I mentioned above), the program prompts the student with little pop-up boxes and work boxes as to the next thing to do. Consequently, when presented with a paper test that gives only the problem statement and not the familiar computer screen layout for that type of problem, the students find themselves at a loss as to how to begin the problem or continue it once they have started. For this reason, when the program was first implemented the students were all failing their tests, which they work on paper for partial-credit grading although they enter the answers by computer for an initial computer grading. The developmental math honchos then put into place a requirement for a paper pre-test so that the students could practice working from scratch, so to speak. If the students had done the homework problems on paper, they could have skipped this pre-test step (or at least it would have gone much faster) and the students and the instructors could have saved the time spent on it. Even with this measure, instructors in the courses beyond developmental math (college algebra and precalculus) have noted the shakiness of the problem-solving ability of many students coming from the developmental math program into their courses.
Mr. Moe may have become too theoretical, too far from the trenches to appreciate the points I make above. But I hope that you (and he, if you share this letter with him) will reconsider the implications of a significant expansion of online education.
Regarding Online Courses
[Not published; letter sent to REASON magazine on September 22, 2010]
Regarding Katherine Mangu-Ward’s article “Teachers [sic] Unions vs Online Education”, some good points were made, e.g., not letting the unions control content. However, Ms. Mangu-Ward should not believe all the hype about the efficacy and desirability of online courses.
I have master’s degrees in physics and nuclear engineering. I tutor part-time at a local community college, covering all levels of math, physics, and Spanish. I have tutored many high school kids in these subjects and have also been an adjunct instructor in developmental mathematics (the former remedial math).
At the community college, many kids (including some high school kids) are taking courses online, either because of their work schedules or because the instructor cannot meet students at the school. Besides that, the school has for the last several years used an online teaching software course (Carnegie Learning) for all students in developmental math, while having the “Instructors” serve as tutors and coordinators of the classes. Because our tutoring center is free to all students, I see both students in the online courses and in the traditional courses.
Almost universally, the kids dislike the online courses and many say they wished they had signed up for the traditional classes. This is particularly true for math. One problem with the online mode is that there is no teacher up front showing the step-by-step working of a problem. This means that the student must still read the text and the example problems, usually onscreen, which is not as congenial for most of them as reading a book that they can annotate and bookmark. There are pop-up hints, but often they do not address the real issue with an answer. Another problem is the submission of homework and quizzes, typically done by filling the answers in boxes. If you don’t round properly you lose all credit because the literal-minded computer requires an answer that is exactly correct. With hand grading, the student can receive partial credit and can also have the benefit of the teacher’s identifying where the problem-solving went off the tracks.
The students taking language courses listen to recorded speakers and repeat phrases, but that is no substitute for hearing a real person speaking the language in a continuous coaching fashion for 3-5 hours a week. They also need immediate feedback and correction in a way that students in other courses do not, and the online courses cannot provide this.
I can see a great advantage in having online course for, say, an art appreciation class, where a student could watch and listen to an online video showing various works of art, with a moving arrow pointing out the features of each. This could also work well for music classes, with printed comments regarding the music appearing onscreen as the music plays. But for so many other subjects, online courses are at best only a weak substitute for the real thing. Money may be saved, but at some cost to the student’s understanding.
Software Purchase by the Oak Ridge School System
[Published October 28, 2010]
I am disappointed in The Oak Ridger.
Last month I wrote a letter to The Oak Ridger regarding the campaign by the Oak Ridge Public Schools Foundation to raise $350,000 to purchase a does-it-all computer program for the Oak Ridge school system. In particular, I questioned the high cost and usefulness of the software and I wondered who was pushing for the purchase. It seemed clear to me that in its article announcing the campaign The Oak Ridger was simply regurgitating the public relations press release (PRPR) issued by the Foundation and was not examining the basis for the alleged need for the software.
After my letter appeared in The Oak Ridger, a friend called to say that she had asked a friend of hers who is associated with the Foundation about the campaign. Her friend replied that the Foundation board had approved the proposed expenditure without much inquiry because “they” asked for it. When I asked my friend who “they” were, she was not sure. Obviously how this all came about is rather murky.
I thought that my letter might have generated some doubt in the minds of many as to the wisdom of this expenditure and as to how the proposal came about, but this doubt apparently did not extend to the staff of The Oak Ridger. In a subsequent article on ORAU’s donation of $25,000 to the campaign, the same words and even entire sentences were used that were used in the original article. I.e., The Oak Ridger was using the same PRPR stuff to write its article and was not asking the Foundation to explain any further at all.
So I reiterate my concern about the proposed expenditure of so much money for a single piece of software for a small school system. Please, The Oak Ridger, dig into this further on behalf of the community.
School Board Decisions Questioned
[Published in The Oak Ridger, May 10, 2011]
The Oak Ridger recently published yet another gang-bang piece on the subject of why the Oak Ridge school system desperately needs more money, this time authored by the entire school board (ORSB). It seems to be an attempt to make it look as if everybody who’s anybody agrees with the need for more “technology”. But this need is arguably nonexistent as stated.
The educational technology standards report ORSB mentions was published by an organization that advocates technology for the schools and was partly funded by Apple Computer, among others. ORSB says that the technology is to enable students to become not just technology users but “informed, responsible, and contributing citizens”. That seems like a tall order for mere machines and code to provide.
ORSB says that everyone wants technology education: parents, employers, communities, and “the nation”. Employers, for example, want employees who are “honest, reliable, literate, and able to reason, communicate”, etc., using the technology. Why would they think that use of computers would increase honesty or reliability, much less literacy in the classical sense and much, much less the ability to reason?
Considering all the money that has been spent on technology by the OR school system in the last few years, ORSB’s claims that Oak Ridge is falling behind in the technology arms race are not credible. ORSB argues that the young need all this technology in order to be able to compete in the world. It has been clearly established that foreign languages are best taught when individuals are young, but this has not been demonstrated for, say, using the Internet. It could be argued that older people are better at doing general searches on the Internet — for example, they tend to know more synonyms. Some people don’t get really accomplished at using the computer until they go to college or work, where they quickly pick it up by taking short courses or being shown by a mentor. It is not rocket science, after all.
The ORSB claims that instructional software is needed, but gives no details. Readers may be thinking that they are talking about math and language drill software and word processing software for kids to write their essays with, along with some new computers for the kids to use while doing it. But what is detailed as part of the ORSB’s list of what is necessary to turn kids into responsible citizens and reliable workers is things like printers and toner (when were these invented, again?), LCD projectors and their light bulbs (I was giving talks using overhead projectors twenty years ago), and software for human resource functions such as background checks (isn’t that an administrative function and not a core educational function?).
I believe that there are limits to what “instructional software” (such as actual courses online) can achieve in improving students’ mastery of the material and thus their test scores; the best resource in accomplishing that is the teachers, God bless ’em. The ORSB and the school administration seem to be shoving everything but the kitchen sink into their list of visionary goals that technology is supposed to help us reach — while they pad their wish list with items that are not directly supporting the educational effort. It may be money wasted.
Tennessee Educational Standards and No Child Left Behind
[Letter published(?) in the Knoxville News Sentinel after August 17, 2011]
Recent articles in the News-Sentinel illustrate what is wrong in American education today: decision makers are going around in circles trying to avoid grappling with the obvious problems.
Tennessee had been dumbing down standards so its student performance figures showed, e.g., 91% proficiency in math. But when Tennessee raised its standards as per the No Child Left Behind Act, the true figure was shown be only 34%. Tennessee has not been able to raise proficiency rates and so needs a waiver to buy more time. US Secretary of Energy Arne Duncan hinted that it would be granted, saying that Tennessee had done “a great job” in its waiver application, was “showing courage” in revealing the true figures, and should be “rewarded” with a waiver.
Coming clean about something you’ve done is not courageous if you did it only because you were backed into a corner. The feds say they will require accountability if a waiver is granted — but they also said that back when NCLB was enacted. So Tennessee will likely not have its feet held to the fire even after the waiver expires.
Similarly, it is no surprise that an assistant school superintendent in Oak Ridge opposes using TCAP scores as part of student grades: he states his opposition in terms of motivating students with “a stick”, but another explanation could be that TCAP scores are more objective and thus more revealing of a school system’s failures. You would think that the Oak Ridge school system’s alleged excellence would insulate it against low TCAP scores, but apparently that is not the case.
Some school systems view technology as the solution to performance problems, e.g., the system proposing to be the regional go-to place for online courses. The difficulties with underage students’ taking courses online are numerous, but the biggest one is providing appropriate supervision and guidance. Whether a student is taking such a course at home or at school, he has to be very self-motivated or well supervised by a parent or teacher. And anyone who has ever taken a math course online and has had to ask questions via E-mail or even phone knows how hard it is to get an adequate explanation.
Other school systems use the “New and Improved!” approach to show motion on improving student test performance. The Knox County school system has started a STEM school, committing scarce resources to a select group of students (e.g., equipping them with iPads) at a time when some of its other schools are underperforming significantly. The description of the cooperative teaching approach seems odd; how effective teaching can be when the math teacher has to tie her teaching schedule to when the physics teacher is going to cover “force in motion”, whatever that is?
Knox County says that the STEM school money is mostly from a federal Race to the Top grant but that the STEM school was already in the works before the grant. Is this just a demonstration project, which may fold up quietly in a few years due to ineffectiveness or a lack of funds to keep it going?
The STEM program puts great emphasis on motivating students to learn. In my day kids were motivated to learn by the need to get a job and support a family some day; somehow we were moved to become engineers and scientists and doctors. The old approach was to help kids learn; the new one seems to be to coax them to learn. Will teaching now consist of a constant wooing of the students to gain their attention? Will a geometry teacher not resent having to take class time to have an architect come in and relate his work to the lesson on angles? Will we old dogs who know our STEM stuff still be working into our eighties because the new blood will simply be too math- and science-challenged to be trusted to design bridges and plan pipe layouts?
Most old dogs trained in STEM think that if you want kids to learn, you have to make them recite the multiplication table over and over, find congruency in dozens of pairs of triangles, balance pages of chemical equations, and drop ball after ball in physics lab. Assignments must be graded and errors indicated by the teachers. If this is done, there will be no fears about performance on the TCAPs or in future jobs. In short, you have to set the students up to succeed.
Trying To Get a Job As a Teacher
[Published by the Knoxville News Sentinel, March 22. 2011, but heavily edited]
In his 17 February [2011] letter, Marvin Mathiak blamed teacher unions for the inability of school systems to replace bad teachers by requiring in effect a union card — a teaching degree — for prospective teachers. Perhaps unions alone are not responsible for the obstacles to replacing teachers, but Mathiak makes a good point about how difficult it is for non-education majors to be hired.
After a 2007 layoff, I read that qualified teachers in math and the sciences were needed. I decided to try to become a high school physics or math teacher. I visited a [University of Tennessee] UT advisor who counsels people like me. She said that I could get a teaching degree the usual way (which would take several years); get a master’s degree in education from UT or another institution (which would take at least a year); or try to obtain what was then called an “alternative license” (which would allow me to teach the next semester). I chose the last option: to get hired directly by a school system, which would become in effect my sponsor for a teaching license from the state. The advisor determined that I was “highly qualified” in terms of my education and advised me to take one course in Developmental Psychology, which I did.
In the first year that I applied to school systems I had two interviews, one each in math and physics. I was not surprised not to get either job because there were five or more applicants for each position. But the next year I did not get a single interview. I reported this to the UT advisor; her regretful comment was that after all, the school systems preferred to hire people with an education degree even if they were not as qualified in the subject matter. I gave up trying to be hired.
Since that first year, I have been tutoring math, science, and Spanish at Pellissippi State and privately. I have also tutored French and have helped students with their term papers or their Shakespeare plays. I was a math adjunct instructor last year. On this basis, I do feel confident that I could teach math or physics to high school students without having to take courses in “Curriculum” or “Educational Policy”.
But the various school systems don’t seem to agree with that.
An Advertisement Masquerading As An Article About Schools
[Letter published in The Oak Ridger after January 13, 2011]
Regarding the full-spread two-page piece in The Oak Ridger on 10 January: if you didn’t look closely at the fine print, you would not know that it was not an article but an advertisement paid for by the Oak Ridge Educational Foundation.
It was purportedly the minutes of a round table discussion by school representatives and officials of the foundation, but it read more like a script, with the moderator asking leading questions and the panelists trotting forth their prepared wording. (The Methodist Medical [hospital] guy trotted his out twice, in exactly the same words.)
But the most significant points were three statements about the $350K tracking software that the foundation is currently trying to raise money to cover and about the timeline for its use to make a difference. First, although we knew from earlier information that the software has been purchased and is in use, it is now claimed that its use is bearing fruit, producing “rich” conversations among the teachers and “tremendous results” at “critical check points”. As usual this is only asserted and no actual data are offered to back it up.
Second, the moderator asks why the foundation purchased the software, suggesting that in fact it is the foundation and not the school system that is on the hook for the money. If it was actually the school system that made the purchase, gambling on the foundation’s promise to raise the money for it, then that raises questions about where the school system got the money and where it is shown in the budget. But if the foundation did indeed pay for it, where did it get the money? Is it paying on the installment plan (what is their credit rating?) or did some large business front them the money? Or did the school system agree to pay back whatever the foundation was unable to raise? This is a public interest issue.
Third, the principal of Oak Ridge High School states that the (educational) weaknesses are “built from kindergarten through the 12th grade” and are “not something that can be understood or revealed in a matter of minutes, days, weeks, or a semester” (e.g., by the software program). That seems a remarkable statement from an official of a supposedly topnotch school, but it does accord with an earlier prediction of mine that the school officials may use the software as a way to buy time when the disappointing report cards come in for the schools under the new state standards.
I urge The Oak Ridger and the public to take an interest in this issue.
Correction To Letter Published March 22, 2011 About Trying To Get a Teaching Job
[Written March 25, 2011; don’t recall if it got published]
I appreciated the News-Sentinel’s printing a letter of mine recently. However, in the editing process two important points were lost.
First, in my original letter I stated that the [University of Tennessee] UT adviser had determined that I was “highly qualified” to teach math and physics. Note that this was on the basis of a formal evaluation of my qualifications, according to state-approved guidelines. Since the newspapers had been reporting (and still do report) that school systems were looking for qualified math and science teachers, I believe that I had reason to think that I would be a strong candidate to be hired.
Second, I pointed out that the UT advisor commented “regretfully” that school systems prefer to hire people with degrees in education. Her tone and some other comments she made to me indicated that the problem of exclusion of non-education folks as teachers was not news to her or her program. I think that this is the reason that all those “become a teacher in months” programs have sprung up at several local colleges — one simply has to have been vetted by the education people or one does not get in. This is not a “rule” as your heading over my letter put it, but a prejudice.
Several of my fellow tutors and adjuncts have, like me, had successful careers but retired early or were laid off and now would like to teach. One went well into a post-degree teaching program, while another actually completed it. None of them has ever been able to find a job teaching in the public schools. So we here we all are, working only part time at low wages and with no benefits. We like the students and they like us, but it would have been nice to have been able to work with kids earlier in their learning curve.
Points Made About Learning
[Published in The Oak Ridger, May 19, 2011]
I hadn’t intended to speak at Monday’s [Oak Ridge] City Council budget meeting, until I saw that all of those speaking for approval of the school part of the budget were teachers or school administrators (except for Mr. McBride, who made an economic competitiveness argument). The school people may be citizens, but they are also highly interested parties.
I would like to expand on the remarks I made at the meeting. I was a very strong student in high school and college; I was highly motivated and had a supportive mother. But that would not have gotten me very far if my teachers had not been a very capable group. We had no frills in my small town high school, but we did have a solid program, especially in math and English. Thanks to that, I was well prepared to go on to college.
But so were most of my fellow students prepared for their future courses. We had four tracks: general/vocational, secretarial, college prep, and advanced college prep. What you took and the level to which it was taught were tailored to what you needed to succeed in your future track. I bet that if you asked older Oak Ridgers about their elementary and high school studies, you would find that they too had a thorough grounding in the three R’s — that they too did their zillion problems in fractions and percents, calculated points (with their slide rules) for plotting linear and quadratic equations, diagrammed sentences, and spotted umpteen split infinitives. This thorough grounding is what will enable kids to score well on the ACT and the SAT.
We did not have a lot of “technology”. But here’s the thing about technology: you learn it as you need to learn it. So when I needed to learn Fortran for my Numerical Analysis course in graduate school, I was able to take the university’s quickstart course. Later, with a few extra tips from others, I was able to program as I needed to in my work, including altering a specialty program’s data library at ORNL as suggested by the code author.
I doubt the need for the huge technology components of the school budget. I certainly agree that students should be taught to use a keyboard, a computer, a word processing program, and a spreadsheet; CAD students should learn the CAD protocols. But so much of school technology seems to be just bells and whistles, e.g., getting the latest equipment for making videos. Worse, much of the desired technology seems to be for the purpose of making administrators’ lives easier, not for instructing the children per se. So I hope the school board considers each item carefully before it approves a high-technology budget like the one proposed.
Problems With Current School Curricula
[Published by the Knoxville News Sentinel, November 19, 2011]
I am a math tutor. My private students are middle and high school students from Knox County and Oak Ridge. This year I have heard some disturbing things from my tutees about what is going on in their schools.
One of my eighth-grade tutees has a math book with a front section that includes the headings “Twenty-six weeks before test”, “Twenty-five weeks before test”, etc. (referring to the state standardized test). Under each heading are five problems; the book states that the students should work one each school day of the corresponding week. The intent seems to be that class time will be taken for this, even if the day’s type of problem is not in the teacher’s lesson plan for that day.
One problem was a stem-and-leaf plot. The student told me that he had been taught this in a previous year, but he had forgotten how to do it. This type of plot is normally a minor topic in statistics, so I was surprised that time would be taken for it in middle school — especially with a student like this one, who is in a slower math course and who when he first came to me did not know his multiplication tables. Another tutee now in high school told me she too had studied stem-and-leaf plots earlier in school.
Two of my students told me that their respective teachers are not allowed (by their school administrations) to complete a topic and go on until “90%” of the students in the class can pass a test on that topic. Thus the progress of the brighter children is being retarded by the inability or unwillingness of some other children to master the material.
Another student told me that her teacher does not use the textbook, only the workbook, because the workbook is more closely tied to the standardized test. The workbook seems to me to be defective in content and design. For example, there is a team cup-stacking exercise that is supposed to help students understand linear equations. But the workbook’s guidance does not allow the equation the students are supposed to come up with to incorporate the base (the y-intercept, or b) correctly. (This same exercise was done correctly at Pellissippi in developmental math when I taught it as an adjunct.) After several very wordy “think about it” pages, the workbook finally presents “y=mx+b”. The b is presented properly in later exercises, but the disparity in the handling of b between the cup exercise and the other exercises is never resolved.
Most shockingly, another student said that her teacher told the class that the statewide Algrebra II standardized test results were so bad that the great majority of students failed. So state education officials “curved” the test results to get the passing percentage up to an acceptable level. This student added that when the teacher said that, another student spontaneously exclaimed, “That’s not right!” (Bless her heart for saying that.)
Kids know when games are being played. Heaven only knows what hypocrisy lessons they are learning from seeing all this go on. I do not think my students (with all their different teachers, schools, and school systems) are making this stuff up, nor do I think that the teachers are misinforming the students about what the teachers are now being required to do by the higher-ups. Students should be tested and teachers certainly should be evaluated (and the inept ones axed), but it is not clear that the state and the school administrations actually know how to do this effectively.
Oak Ridge School Finance Issues
[Published(?) in The Oak Ridger on or after April 23, 2012]
I second Trina Baughn’s recent exhortation to our fellow citizens to keep on top of the Oak Ridge school system’s finances and to ask our City Council members to do the same. I share Leonard Abbatiello’s belief that the state of school finances as presented by our elected officials sounds very fishy.
We “school activists” presently asking questions about school financial matters are not part of some monolithic cabal formed to undermine the school administration. We all came to a mutual sense of concern from different directions.
I felt my antennae start to quiver back when the Educational Foundation was formed as a vehicle to spearhead the fundraising effort for the new high school — and to lobby public officials and the public to raise taxes to pay for it. (“Vehicle” was the word The Oak Ridger used at the time.) Many had deep misgivings about that, but nobody could have imagined, based on the optimistic story floated by the Foundation, the Board of Education, and the school system, how much high school debt the City of Oak Ridge would today be on the hook for.
I was alarmed when it was announced that the Foundation would raise money to buy tracking software for the school system, at a cost of $350K. This was spoken of as a future action, but surprise! It turned out that the software had already been acquired and was in use by the school system. Soon the fundraising effort seemed to have been discontinued. To my knowledge, it has never been disclosed who actually paid for the software. It is reasonable to suspect that the Foundation gave the school system what they had collected and that the school system had/has to pay the balance of the cost — i.e., most of it. It is also reasonable to ask whether the balance is part of the money that the school system now claims to need so desperately.
In his response to Ms. Baughn’s most recent column, Mayor Beehan summarizes what we now know about the high school financing issue. That is, the Board of Education and the school system decided not to contribute their portion of the increased tax revenues that by the 2004 referendum were to go toward paying off the mortgage on the new high school; they claimed that there was an oral agreement that the school system had to pay for only five years. The reason they did not want to pay was that a county vote in 2006 had raised the overall county tax rate to the max and scooped up most of that extra revenue. Thus Oak Ridge got far less of the increase and the school system faced having to cut other spending in order to meet its mortgage obligation.
But Mayor Beehan glosses over how this problem is to be resolved by the City Council and the BOE, saying, in effect, that “we’re handling it, so don’t worry about it”. He makes it clear that the city will likely be picking up part of the mortgage cost, meaning that we will have to have a tax increase pretty soon. We just wanted to be told that explicitly and to be informed as to what factors are going into the decision before it is made and presented as a fait accompli. Aren’t we as citizens entitled not to have this important decision made as a back room deal?
The mayor doesn’t seem to think so. His tone is rather patronizing and his choice of words implies that we peons who are not in the loop couldn’t possibly understand all the intricacies of this situation and should just butt out. He utters a business platitude (“a new approach that looks at how we do business top to bottom” — huh?). But he also says that “we need to remain civil as we do the public’s business” — implying that somebody hasn’t been civil. His chiding tone implies that it isn’t he or the BOE. I guess we must be the ones he means. Ouch!
The BOE and the school system keep telling us that all this spending is “for the children”, but somehow the children don’t seem to be doing all that much better than those in school systems that spend far less. Surely we citizens deserve an explanation for that. If our leaders can’t use our gargantuan school budget effectively, then maybe Oak Ridge voters should clean house and elect people who can.
Tin Ears In Comments on State Workers, Students, and Educational Standards
[Published(?) in the Knoxville News Sentinel on or after August 7, 2010]
Several prominent folks have recently made statement that show their tin ears.
Knox County Mayor [Tim] Burchett gave employees an extra week of vacation for their “hard work and dedication to Knox County”, saying that it would boost morale and “it doesn’t cost any additional dollars”. Considering the economy, why would he give this perk to his underlings, who have full-time jobs with benefits as many other East Tennesseans do not? Why give it to those in some offices, but not others, and regardless of merit? No extra money passes to the employees, true, but their annual productivity goes down. Productivity is a measure of efficiency, of bang for the buck, and is thus a factor in measuring accountability — except for government employees.
[University of Tennessee] Coach [Derek] Dooley knew Tyler Bray had a history of irresponsible behavior even before the vandalism incidents, but he said Bray had matured. Finding out he was wrong did not seem to make him reconsider. He termed Bray’s behavior “silly” and “pre-pubescent”, as if it were that of a ten-year-old. Besides downplaying the destructive and sneaky nature of the vandalism, he joked about it: Bray “missed the trash can”. If athletes think they can get away with anything, Dooley’s attitude illustrates why.
Finally, there is [Tennessee State] education commissioner Kevin Huffman. Regarding the TCAPs
[standardized tests]
, he said that “we are gratified that so many districts were able to significantly grow results”. Besides the egregiously split infinitive, does one really “grow results”? I suppose most of us have sighed and accepted that people now “grow” their businesses, but must we accept the phrase “grow results”? This sounds like Business-speak jargon, not English. Why would the commissioner of education not sound like, well, an educated person?
How did these folks get to be where they are, if they are so clueless in their public speech?
[Letter published in The Oak Ridger on or after February 5, 2012]
No doubt Pat Postma has the best intentions in her public comments on school plans and finances. But you know what they say about the construction materials for the road to Hell.
Regarding the recent exchange between Ms. Postma and Trina Baughn, in considering how influential the information each provided will prove to be in the future, my money would be on Ms. Baughn. The reason is substance.
Ms. Postma is still quoting verbatim from the Educational Foundation/BOE/OR school system playbook: the schools “are in an ambitious state of reform”, the assessment software is “a balanced assessment system designed to provide timely feedback regarding student understanding to teacher leaders within the building”, leaders can “make real-time instructional decisions”. This undigested matter from the PR releases is no more helpful this year than it was last year in helping us to understand whether the software is either necessary or effective.
Tellingly, she also says that “we” are “aggressively addressing those issues” that Ms. Baughn called into question. Is that the Foundation “we” or the school system “we” (of which Ms. Postma is not a part)? Is the Foundation overidentifying with the school system and thus not maintaining its independence?
Meanwhile, Ms. Baughn seems to be following in the footsteps of Pat Fain, Leonard Abbatiello, Francis Kovac, and the late John Reeve in trying to track the paths of the individual dollars through the labyrinths that are our civic budgets. But Ms. Baughn is not the only one whose antennae quiver with skepticism and alarm every time school finances are discussed by city officials. As we saw with Enron, you can have all kinds of audits and still end up with fuzzy math applied to the bottom line. So citizen oversight is important in keeping politicians straight.
That goes double for the school board and triple for the Foundation that draws in most of the charitable dollars directed at the Oak Ridge schools and then spends them on school officials’ pet projects. Is this because so many of the Board of Education members have school ties (two former teachers, one daughter of a longtime principal, one husband of a teacher)? It must also be noted that because the Foundation is independent and private, its finances are not open to public scrutiny. That is unsettling, given the large sums of money involved (we’re not talking crayon money here). If the Foundation can put over the funding of a $61M school rebuilding project, it is a civic force to be reckoned with — and to be watched carefully.
I hope that everybody will pay careful attention to the school budget in light of the 2/5/12 Knoxville News-Sentinel comparison chart of local school systems. The Loudon County , Maryville, and Oak Ridge school systems are the same size, but spend respectively $8.5K, $9.2K, and $12.1K per pupil annually, while posting reading scores of 7%, 3%, and 8% respectively at the “below basic” level, 78%, 70%, and 72% at the combined “proficient” and “basic” levels, and 15%, 27%, and 20% at the advanced level. We thus are not doing any better for the bulk of the kids than schools that spend a quarter to a third less than we do.
Let’s spend smarter, not higher. Ms. Baughn’s research can help us get there. Ms. Postma…..not so much.
Oak Ridger School Board Member Criticizes Two Citizens
[Published in The Oak Ridger on or after February 19, 2012]
Keys Fillauer’s recent columns in The Oak Ridger and The Oak Ridge Observer mention two “citizens”, presumably Trina Baughn and me. He says that these citizens do not (in their recent op-ed pieces in The Oak Ridger) provide “facts” and implies that they are acting less than honorably by not saying these things to his face (i.e., by not looking him in the eye and saying these things to him personally).
I can’t speak for Ms. Baughn, but in my public writings, I generally name people or give other information (e.g., “City Council members”) that allows readers to know who I am talking about. Besides, if I give the name of someone whose letter or column or action I am criticizing or praising, readers can search the Web site of The Oak Ridger in order to see what the other person wrote or did and compare it to what I say. That serves to advance clarity in public discourse, I believe.
Beyond that, Mr. Fillauer says in several places that the two citizens are not presenting the facts, as he, by his multiple headings of “Fact”, clearly believes that he is. But consider an example. He says that one citizen (me) said that only 54% of the K-8 students were proficient in math (after the state’s resetting of academic performance standards); he asserts that that is not factual because the citizen did not also include the fact that the whole state declined to 41% percent in this category.
Well, I didn’t originate that 54% number; I got it from the Knoxville News-Sentinel, which got it from the official state data set. So it is a fact, regardless of what other facts may be regarded as relevant with respect to it, as Mr Fillauer should concede since he included the Web address for the state data set in his column. Also, viewed from an educational perspective, Mr. Fillauer’s contention sounds like the kid who flunked but who claimed when reprimanded by his parents that “Everybody else did worse, so really I did pretty well”. (No, kid, in absolute terms you flunked, even if your failing grade was higher than others’.)
As another example, Mr. Fillauer says that the other citizen (Ms. Baughn) claims that there was a gentleman’s agreement on the funding method for the High School. She didn’t originate that statement, as anyone knows who has been following the controversy regarding whether the school system has to follow the unwritten agreement to reimburse the city for part of the bond service costs. This was also discussed in detail at a recent City Council and Board of Education work session (complete with lawyers) that Ms. Baugh, Mr. Fillauer, and I all attended. He may dispute the interpretation of this fact, but interpretations are in the realm of opinion. So it seems that his claim that Ms. Baughn’s statements are not factual really boils down to her not agreeing with his opinions.
Finally, Mr. Fillauer deplores what he calls negativity, by which from his column he seems to mean people’s criticizing city officials and the city in general. He implies that this sort of thing should be squelched prior to publication by the newspapers’ fact-checking of columns. It is difficult to see how this would have prevented publication in the case of Ms. Baughn’s and my op-ed pieces. Perhaps he also thinks that the newspapers should tone-check submitted letters and columns to ensure that the tone is properly positive and optimistic about the city, in line with the recent concerted campaign to foster city boosterism. The message appears to be that if you don’t have something nice to say about the city, sit down and shut up.
In any case, for those readers trying to sort out fact from fiction, I suggest that they not get it from those folks who seem to feel that any criticism of the city, the school system, or any city official is out of line.
Push-Polling the Citizens on School Finance Issues
[Letter published in The Oak Ridger on or after March 7, 2014]
Trina Baughn has discussed stories floated by city officials and the school board about school system finances; Leonard Abbatiello has rightly termed these a “shell game”. The latest stories are that the city yet again “has” to bail out the school system by caving in on the sales tax allocation issue, the school system “has” to have city money to fund new bleachers, and a private company “must” be hired to provide cheaper substitute teachers and aides. Meanwhile, the brazen school system proposes to spend a million dollars on technology devices and further seeks to provide a tablet for every student. Already the Chamber of Commerce has jumped on board that train.
A review of how we got here may be instructive. In 2003, some school official told a DOE contractor that the high school needed extensive renovation. DOE was giving credit toward the award fee for “community involvement” (apparently to appease locals and avoid being pressured by local congressmen to go to a permanent “in lieu of taxes” scheme), so the contractor made the rebuilding of the high school its priority community project.
A huge campaign began to persuade voters to agree to a complete rebuild and approve a sales tax increase. A contractor manager, as a “loaned servant”, became the de facto project design manager; another manager chaired a fundraising committee at the educational foundation formed to raise money for the rebuild. The chairman sold it as a recruiting tool, saying that when speaking to world-class scientists, “I have frequently found it difficult to overcome the impression left by a high school facility that is old and outdated.” The contractor and others announced that they would donate millions to the foundation – but only if voters approved the sales tax increase. (The foundation also said that only two-thirds of its fundraising goal would go toward the high school, thus allowing its contractor donors to distribute largesse later for other school projects they desired.)
The foundation phone-polled 400 Oak Ridgers. 20% wanted a new building at a new site; 25%, renovation and expansion of the existing site; and 38%, renovation of the existing site. 59% were said to favor a property or sales tax increase if it was dedicated to the school, 32% wanted no tax increase, and 9% were unsure. Subdividing the 59%, 17% preferred a property tax increase, 12% a sales tax increase, and 30% a combination. This was arguably a push poll, but the contractor-chairman declared that the community agreed that the high school had to be fixed “now” and were willing to fund it.
Even The Oak Ridger got into the act, publishing guest editorials in favor of the new school and articles emphasizing the need to attract “young families” to Oak Ridge and featuring families donating to the foundation, along with an interminable series of pictures showing the high school principal pointing at a crack in a school wall.
The conclusion was inescapable that everybody who was anybody was voting for the new “world class” high school. Under the barrage of persuasion, voters approved the referendum (and the contractor got the full award for community involvement).
In a guest editorial, yet another contractor official revealed how this was done. Everyone involved, from the high school principal to corporate executives, understood that the referendum was a political campaign. A major selling point was that the sales tax increase would be dedicated exclusively to renovating the high school. The poll of citizens served to identify a base of likely supporters, who were then approached by mail or phone. Some 5000 copies of a “glossy 12-page brochure” illustrating the high school’s structural problems were distributed. Speakers gave talks at civic clubs and senior living centers. The Oak Ridge corporate community, in “a series of coordinated announcements” leading up to the election, made five-year commitments to the high school, all contingent on passage of the referendum. By election day, the campaign knew exactly which groups were most likely to vote. Using voting records and lists of PTOs and high school alumni — and with high school students working the polls(!) — the referendum received majority support in every precinct.
As with the past, so with the present. Each decision about financing the school system that has been taken by the school board and the city was clearly already set up before it was briefly presented to the public — i.e., each was a done deal. Nowadays the city and the school system hardly bother to sell the deals at all. When they do, the parties involved carefully enunciate the same message and try to divert the public’s attention, e.g., as recently when city officials and school board members said of the cave-in to the school’s demand not to fund the high school renovation fully, “Let’s get beyond this” and “not look back.” No real explanation was forthcoming.
Oak Ridge residents showed their good hearts back when they voted yes in the sales tax referendum. But now that we all realize the many efforts made to snow us, time after time, we would be fools to allow those making those efforts to stay in office. I say let’s vote the obfuscators out.
Mistake on Educational Television Undermines A Good Practice in Mathematics
[Published(?) in the Knoxville News Sentinel on or after August 4, 2015]
Last week I saw part of an instructional TV show called TN Learn. The teacher was showing how to solve two simultaneous equations. As a Pellissippi State math tutor, I was interested to see how he would do it.
He pointed out that the coefficients of x and y were different in the two equations, so that one equation had to be multiplied by a number to make either the x or y coefficients match. (I approved.) He put parentheses around that equation and put the number on the outside to make it clear that the number had to multiply every term in the equation. (Yes, yes.) He drew the “implies” arrowhead sign to the right of that equation and rewrote the transformed equation beside it; he did the same for the untransformed equation. (Good – the student could see the new pair of equations in correct working position for the next step.)
But then he added the constants, in this case -60 and +37, and got +23. (Oh, heck, an error.) This was not necessarily worrisome: mistakes are part of math and surely after he had found the values of x and y, he would plug them back into the original equations to assure that they worked.
But he didn’t! Nor did he have a cheat sheet with the correct answers that he could surreptitiously check. He just segued on to the next problem. This teacher obviously knew how to solve simultaneous equations and he seemed to enjoy teaching. But proper instructional technique for this type of problem would surely include verification of answers and investigation of discrepancies. The teacher’s failure to show this process and the apparent failure of the producers to have the video checked before it was shown suggest one answer to the question of why Johnny can’t compute.
