Another education "horror story"

History Instruction as Therapy
by Mère Fâchée

In the mid 1990’s, my oldest daughter was in 5th grade in an elementary school in a large district in south King County. As a part of the history curriculum, she was required to read a novel set during the Revolutionary War. I do not know the name of the book, but its general plot concerned a young boy (12 or 13) who, against his parents’ wishes, ran off to fight in the war. The story concerns the things that happen to him as a result of his decision to disobey his parents.

Why reading fiction is considered appropriate for the study of history escapes me. However, my complaint has more to do with the homework assignment given to the students concerning the book. The front of the sheet had general questions about the reading that would have been appropriate for a 5th grade literature assignment. The back page delved deeply into the children’s relationships with their own parents. It asked things like, “Have you ever disobeyed your parents?” There were more detailed questions as well. I don’t remember exact wording, but it was something like, “Tell about a time that you disobeyed your parents. Tell what happened and why.”

I was able to discover this assignment before my daughter had completed it only because she had been out of school ill and this was one of the assignments she had to complete as part of her make-up work. One of the other mothers brought it to my attention and I was able to search through her assignments and find it before she had completed it.

I challenged the teacher about it and he didn’t see anything wrong with it. His response was, “But their answers are so interesting!” I’ll bet they were at that. I understood his reaction better a little later, when I found out that his undergraduate degree was in child psychology. He did respect my wishes that my daughter not be required to complete this – or any – assignment that was not strictly academic, with me as the judge of anything questionable.

This teacher has since become a principal.

Education "horror stories"

When parents of public school students deal with the education system they can get into frustrating situations. Sometimes they think they are the only ones having this problem. In fact, many families may have faced the same situation. Hopefully, by posting some true stories, other parents won't feel alone and they can feel more confident about confronting their school officials.
Here is a true story.


The Beginning of the End of Math Education
by Mère Fâchée

In the mid 1990’s, my oldest daughter was in 4th grade in an elementary school in a large district in south King County. She was struggling with her math homework and asked for help. It turned out to be long division, a three-digit number divided by a one-digit number. I began to help her by covering up the last of the three digits in the three-digit number with my finger and asked, “How many times does nine go into twenty-nine?”

She shocked me with her response. “I don’t know. I forgot my sheet at school?”

“What sheet is that?” I said.

She explained that the teacher had given them a chart – zero through nine across the top and also down the side, with the multiplication products filled in. The students were not required to learn their multiplication tables. They were allowed to use the chart as a crutch, with the idea that they would eventually learn by use of the chart. Learning by osmosis, I guess.

This was not just this teacher’s weakness. When I brought up the subject, she said they no longer required the students to learn their multiplication tables. It was the way the new curriculum was designed.

I remember drilling multiplication tables in class in 3rd grade when I was a child. Without that basic skill, long division is difficult at best. Moving on to higher math such as algebra and calculus would be impossible. Try figuring out least common multiples, least common denominators, or greatest common factors with just a multiplication chart or a calculator. Lack of facility with this very elementary skill is crippling.

The WASL is a train wreck

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning - WASL is like a train wreck. There has been no shortage of people--parents, teachers, students, citizens--who have tried to tell legislators and administrators that it is a train wreck, but to no avail. The WASL is flawed on so many levels, each of which could be a blog topic in itself, or even a complete dissertation. Here are just a few problems:

• The WASL is not valid or reliable. Agencies and boards which have claimed that it is valid and reliable are all connected in some way with the assessment.


• The WASL results are not released in time for the scores to be of any help to teachers.


• The WASL results come out in a format that makes it difficult for teachers to figure out what weaknesses to address


• The standards that the WASL is designed to assess have been rated F by the Fordham Foundation.


• The entire curriculum has been sacrificed. It is now only about teaching to the WASL.


• Parents who have viewed their child's completed WASL have seen discrepancies in grading and errors in some items, but they must sign a muzzle-agreement so they can't tell others what they saw.


• The WASL is not a test of right and wrong answers. It is an "assessment" of the student's thinking PROCESS.


• Students are made fearful and anxious, worried they won't know the answers, when they will actually be graded on their thinking PROCESS.


• The WASL is unbelievable expensive. Changing to a simpler right-and-wrong-answer test would not only save millions of dollars, but would also set the curriculum back on track to teach facts and information.

The WASL is based on the wrong standards, it assesses the wrong things, and it is based on the wrong goals. It is a train wreck.

The WASL -- a money pit

The WASL has been an expensive experiment. The original education reform law stated that the assessment was supposed to help teachers identify what students did or didn't know.

The trouble is, the individual results come back too late for remediation and they are too secret for anyone to see. The score report is so vague, it is hard to figure out what to teach to improve the students' scores.

Besides that, the WASL is not a measure of knowledge anyway. It is an assessment of thinking PROCESSES. A student could get a math question right, but lose points for not writing an explanation of his or her PROCESS which matches with the grader's list of acceptable processes.

Millions of dollars have been spent on the WASL and the related activities. No one knows (or no one is revealing) the exact cost. There is no line item called "WASL" in the budget. The expenses are hidden under categories such as professional training, printed materials, motivational awards, payroll, or other areas. Millions of dollars have also been spent on textbooks to match the PROCESS-oriented curriculum. Sadly, it is not just money that is wasted, but also the students time and their future opportunities.

Just what are Higher Order Thinking Skills?

Not only is education different now compared to how it was a few decades ago. The way educators TALK about education is different now too. Parents and grandparents need to learn a completely new vocabulary. Words they thought they knew have been re-defined.

Here's a phrase you'll hear a lot: "We teach 'higher order thinking skills' ." But what do the education theorists really mean?

Educators like to use Benjamin Bloom's "Taxonomy of Learning". Dr. Bloom, a big advocate of "mastery learning", pictured learning as a pyramid with higher order thinking skills on the top.

Imagine a pyramid with 6 floors. He put the learning and understanding of basic facts and information on the bottom two levels. Applying, Analyzing, and synthesizing those facts came in that order, on the next three levels. On the top level he put evaluation which involved making higher order judgments about all the information.

You can see that higher order thinking skills depend on solid lower order thinking skills. The problem is today's public school curriculum does not emphasize developing the basic skills such as multiplication tables and spelling and grammar rules. Instead, education theorists call practicing such basic skills "drill and kill".

Here is an article by Jay Mathews, Washington Post staff writer, about higher order thinking skills. Read it and make up your own mind using ...you guessed it...higher order thinking skills: "The Thinking Behind Critical Thinking Courses" .