
Big Ideas That Don't Work in Education - tokenadult
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/13/430050765/five-big-ideas-that-don-t-work-in-education/#
======
reuven
One of my favorite books from the last few years is "The Smartest Kids in the
World." The reporter visits three countries that do very well on the
international PISA test, and talks about what can indeed work in the US and
other countries.

She (and the locals) are very negative about South Korea, but very positive
about Poland and Finland. And she points out that all three countries use a
fraction of the budget that the US does on education, with much better
results.

She also points to the fact that outside of the United States, extracurricular
activities -- not to mention sports -- are not a part of the school
curriculum. If you want to play basketball, then that's great, but don't
expect your high school to care about it, because their job is to worry about
your education, not sports.

I have a PhD in learning sciences (roughly "technology and education"), live
in Israel, and have three children. And the way that the schools here run
depresses me more each year. As the book points out, and as we probably
already know, the forces in charge of schools (e.g., politicians, teacher
unions, and taxpayers) are basically aligned against any real reform. Gimmicks
such as technology look great, but are virtually useless -- a form of
"education theater," as it were.

Israelis talk nonstop about class sizes, but I think that a much bigger
problem is that we pay our teachers nothing, and give them no respect or power
-- and are then surprised that the quality of teachers has declined
precipitously.

From everything I can tell, we would do well to give teachers massive salary
increases, then make it hard to become a teacher and easy to fire bad ones.
Then give the teachers huge freedom to do what they want. And yes, this will
cost money (which the taxpayers don't want to hear), but on balance it seems
to work for most people, most of the time.

~~~
argumentum
"From everything I can tell, we would do well to give teachers massive salary
increases, then make it hard to become a teacher and easy to fire bad ones.
Then give the teachers huge freedom to do what they want. And yes, this will
cost money (which the taxpayers don't want to hear), but on balance it seems
to work for most people, most of the time."

It may not be that expensive, if class sizes are not that important you can
have fewer teachers. The problem (in the US) is that the teacher's unions are
generally against performance based pay, teacher evaluations and firing bad
teachers.

~~~
bsder
> The problem (in the US) is that the teacher's unions are generally against
> performance based pay, teacher evaluations and firing bad teachers.

For good reason: who gets to make those decisions? Parents? Imagine being a
biology or history teacher in the deep South. Children? We already have data
that the most effective teachers are liked least. Administration? Are those
older teachers really poor are they just expensive? Are those "merit" bonuses
going to the best teacher or to the one who volunteered to coach the
basketball team?

The last time a teacher evaluation got implemented in Pennsylvania, they
dropped it in a hurry because too many teachers couldn't pass it and they were
going to have to pay _WAY_ more to import teachers who could.

As has been pointed out previously, firing a genuinely bad teacher is
generally straightforward and the procedure is well-documented. However, the
_administration_ doesn't want to put in the time or paperwork to do it. And,
maybe, just maybe, that administration that's whining about firing and the
overbearing paperwork really doesn't have a case and simply wants rid of the
teacher for political reasons.

~~~
reuven
This is a sticky problem, no doubt. But we need to find a way to get rid of
bad teachers.

Right now, in both the US and Israel (and perhaps other countries), we're in
an extreme and untenable situation, in which bad teachers cannot be fired. In
the elementary school that my children attended (and that my son still
attends), bad teachers were sent off to teach computers. Or science. And so
forth. You can imagine what this tells the children, the parents, and the
teachers about how much we value these subjects.

There was a New Yorker story a few years ago that described how bad teachers
couldn't be fired... and thus were sent to a building every day, where they
checked in and did literally nothing all day. Yes, they received their full
salary and benefits in exchange for doing literally nothing.

I'm guessing that a reasonable alternative is to have some sort of weighted
system, in which the principal's evaluation, parents' complaints, and student
performance all count toward whether a teacher can be fired. The biggest thing
should probably be the principal's evaluation, but perhaps if a teacher gets
fired, they can get another job, in a different school -- but perhaps the
parents' evaluations and the students' performance can be used to determine
how many other schools they can go to before being kicked out of the system
entirely.

> The last time a teacher evaluation got implemented in Pennsylvania, they
> dropped it in a hurry because > too many teachers couldn't pass it and they
> were going to have to pay WAY more to import teachers who > could.

This is perhaps the most important point: Good teachers need to be paid well.
They need incentive to become teachers, and to remain teachers. Which means
that people will have to pay a fair amount in order to get a good education.
In the US, this will mean taxes have to go up, which is a recipe for political
suicide. In Israel, this means taking money away from other things in the
education ministry (since we already pay, per capita, more for schooling than
most European countries).

~~~
argumentum
I don't think the money issue is a tough sell, if you can demonstrate high
returns on the investment. As it is, the US spends more per student than
everyone else, but gets mediocre results, so people are not confident that
even more spending is going to be worth it.

I think the easiest first step is to spend more on teachers within the current
budgets.

------
mixedmath
I've long been fascinated by what does and doesn't work in classrooms. I'm a
graduate student in mathematics and I end up teaching elementary calculus
courses to undergrads. This also means that I tend to think about what does
and doesn't work in _college_ classrooms.

Two things stuck out to me in this article.

Firstly, Hattie says "Holding students back a grade really does hold students
back, with an effect of -0.16." What does this actually mean? Does this mean
that at graduation, these students perform 1/6 of a standard deviation below
their peers? I'd be more interested if we were also presented with the
alternative: how do students who didn't meet whatever minimal standards for
grade advancement but were advanced anyway (and thus _could_ have been held
back a year, but were not) perform? As an early college math instructor, I'm
very familiar with students who are incapable of performing mathematical
operations from classes which they've previously passed.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder about what it means to perform at
some number of standard deviations above or below others. Is this based on
standardized test performance?

The second thing I wonder is related. As an alternative to the common policy
of "Achievement Standards", he suggests "The alternative: a focus on growth
and progress for each student, no matter where he or she starts." How might
one implement this?

For instance, suppose Albert and Beth are entering basic 6th grade math. Beth
performs really well and for whatever reason Albert is very distracted and
learns almost nothing. The next year rolls around, and Albert and Beth are
entering basic 7th grade math. The teacher cannot teach them the exact same,
as Albert doesn't understand prerequisite ideas. Is the teacher to instruct
normally and then devote additional time to Albert, trying to incrementally
increase his understanding? Does Hattie actually advocate Montessori-style
schools with self-paced work? Perhaps schools should have a lowest-tier math
class which is entirely based on individual students instead of central
instruction? Or in this case, should Albert have been kept back a year?

In many other ways, I like and/or understand Hattie's approach and ideas.

~~~
pbiggar
> The second thing I wonder is related. As an alternative to the common policy
> of "Achievement Standards", he suggests "The alternative: a focus on growth
> and progress for each student, no matter where he or she starts." How might
> one implement this?

One alternative I heard of is called "flipped classrooms". Instead of a
teacher delivering a lecture and then the students doing homework at home, the
students learn the material at home (via video or textbook) and then do their
homework in school, where they can have the teacher give personalized
instruction and help.

At a college level it's kinda like Oxford and Cambridge's tutor system.

------
tokenadult
I can't remember which of my Facebook friends the other day recommended this
article, but I'm glad I read it. I read John Hattie's book _Visible Learning_
a few years ago on the recommendation of a school board candidate (who
succeeded in getting elected) in my local public school district.

As an observer of my children's learning in the local public high school (I
have mostly been a homeschooler, but my second son and third son have recently
been enrolled in the local high school), I see that "formative assessment"
(testing learners on material they are only beginning to learn does indeed
seem to be a very helpful way to prompt learners to learn more. I expect to do
a lot of formative assessment for the new students I will have the week after
next at a school where I am about to begin classroom teaching of middle school
mathematics during the regular school day.

I have read another book by Hattie, co-authored with Richard Fletcher, called
_Intelligence and Intelligence Testing_ , which is also quite good. Those of
you who find this article intriguing and would like to learn more about ideas
that work in education are likely to enjoy reading the longer linked paper by
John Hattie, "What Doesn't Work in Education: The Politics of Distraction,"[1]
which provides more details on the ideas he thinks work and what other ideas
don't work and why.

[1]
[https://www.pearson.com/hattie/distractions.html](https://www.pearson.com/hattie/distractions.html)

~~~
lfowles
> but my second son and third son have recently been enrolled in the local
> high school

Just curious, but why the change? (if not due to Life)

~~~
tokenadult
They felt like trying out the local high school. That has had some distinct
trade-offs. The local high school is on an improving trend line, so it has
been a better experience for my third son than it was for my second, who is
now done there and about to start his university studies.

------
com2kid
The world already has a proven educational model that works, the quarterly
college system. Three 5-credit classes per day.

I wouldn't suggest it for grade school, but at least for high school, why not?
No grade levels, you have 3 quarters (and use quarters, semesters are just a
cost saving measure) per regular year, 4 years.

(FWIW, a quarter of math in a community college is roughly a year in high
school.)

Tell students that they have 3 quarters of math to complete at minimum in 4
years. If they fail one quarter, there is lots of time to take it again. Why
have the idea of grade levels at all?

Remove 80% of responsibility from teachers for passing or failing, remove all
standardized tests, and let's go to a model that we know works.

Edit: To clarify, I am not suggesting we import the ivy league "Make half the
students drop out through stress" system. I am proposing a quarterly system of
learning where students are free to take the level of course work that is most
appropriate to their needs.

~~~
x5n1
1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete.
yeah it works. the reason we have the modern schooling system is because most
apes of our species are not meant for school or jobs. it's a way of training
them for both.

~~~
com2kid
> 1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete.

For what reasons though?

I am advocating a more community college model, smaller introductory class
sizes, with a faster paced, but shorter term curriculums, that don't hurt as
much if any one particular course is failed. A more targeted model than "grade
level".

Traditional universities have a high attrition rate not just due to course
work, there is a huge cultural shift, a complete loss of one's traditional
support network, a lack of structure that used to be imposed by parents, and
many new opportunities for distraction.

I'm not proposing we add any of that to high school! :)

------
inguinalhernia
From the article: "In a new paper, "What Doesn't Work In Education: The
Politics Of Distraction," published by Pearson Education"

So the NPR piece is based on a publication from Pearson, who has a huge
financial stake in the US education market.

[http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-
education-1150...](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-
education-115026.html)

How curious.

~~~
rayiner
Akamai has a huge financial stake in the Internet, so do you ignore their
"State of the Internet" reports? By virtue of Pearson's business they also
have huge systematic insight into the education system. Not worth dismissing
the results of the study simply based on that association.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Did anyone say that they should be ignored or dismissed?

------
WalterBright
> Hattie argues that if parents had the right to select the best teacher in a
> given school, that could truly be empowering. It would also be challenging
> to implement.

Challenging is an understatement. I suggested that once, and my what blowback
I got!

~~~
tbrownaw
Because that many students can't all be assigned to the same teacher? Because
it pushes people towards making choices based on internal details vs outcomes?

~~~
tjl
There's one professor I was a TA for who was loved by the students. He taught
the course more like a high school physics course than a university course.
But, when his students got to higher level physics courses, they were lacking
in the basic skills taught in those courses so we'd have to spend extra time
covering that material. Also, to break them of bad habits they had. He was the
only professor to directly contradict me in front of the students. I had been
marking like I had in other courses (he hadn't given any guidelines) and
students complained so he made me re-grade everything, totally undercutting me
in front of them. He should have let the assignment mark stand and change the
marking going forward.

I have no doubt that students would have preferred that professor, but their
skills and knowledge would suffer from that choice. Taking the easy road will
catch up to you eventually.

~~~
syntheticnature
My favorite EE professor, in hindsight, was the one that had quizzes every
week, and only semi-scheduled. Friends who had gone through her course before
warned me about how 'awful and strict' she was.

At the time, I hated it, until I realized come the final that I'd never been
permitted to slack off and so needed to do much less to get myself ready for
it.

~~~
tjl
One of my favourite professors in the department was a prof who had a review
on RateMyProfessors.ca as "I'd say she worships Satan, but I think Satan
worships her." She was a tough but fair prof and generally only got respect
from her students in her upper year elective classes.

She's fairly short and she's had some terrible disrespect from students in the
past. She had a student who preceded to lecture her on how to set a midterm
because they had taught swimming lessons (after they had got their midterm
back and done poorly). She's even had death threats from students who were
upset with her. None of this would have happened with my PhD supervisor who
was about 6'5" and intimidated almost every student.

------
WalterBright
"We never have a debate of relativity — why are we spending billions on things
that have small effects?"

Because there is hardly any topic more intricately entangled with politics and
emotions.

~~~
mjevans
The article mentions a comparison of spending and effect on outcome.
Establishing that there seems to be a decided minimum effort required to
educate a child to any degree; but that past that point there are examples of
other countries having /more/ success with less funding spent (than the US).

I think more granularity of data in that statistic would be useful; is this
money actually being spent on the child or is it instead being squandered
within a bureaucratic structure? Or does some externality that is a cost in
one model but not the other left out of view?

------
rewqfdsa
There is no problem in education. Our only problem is that we keep lying to
ourselves about it. Not all children are equally gifted. Not all _groups_ of
children are equally gifted. The only reason we have such a hard time tackling
with contemporary social problems is that their real solutions are at odds
with political correctness.

The challenging task isn't coming up with solutions that will help, but
finding solutions that will both help and not violate certain taboos.

Never in all of history has society ever benefited from lying to itself.

~~~
blakeja
Exactly what I would have said. Most of my friends and family are teachers and
the stupidity of ideas like "no child left behind"..."teach to the lowest
common denominator"...are the kind of complaints I have been hearing about for
quite some time.

Stop with the Orwellian political correctness and teach kids the level they
are capable of. End of story.

------
kaa2102
Great article and food for thought as politicians and education reformers push
school vouchers, Common Core, union-busting, etc., and other theories without
really measuring, testing or optimizing the option's ROI. The idea has been
"well let's just try something new" without rhyme or reason.

------
littletimmy
I don't get why Americans have to reinvent the wheel here. There are countries
in the world (Finland, Singapore...) who have public education figured out.
Just put aside your pride and do what they do. It involves less testing,
hiring and retaining better teachers, and making sure kids are not in poor
broken homes.

~~~
jff
> It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making
> sure kids are not in poor broken homes.

ah, hide the hard one at the end :)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> ah, hide the hard one at the end :)

Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally.
Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class.

Then again, this is America. We try everything else first before the right way
(apologies to Churchill).

~~~
Goladus
> Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally.
> Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class.

Income equality is hard when you start tracing where the income actually comes
from. Furthermore, the parent said "broken homes," not merely income
inequality. A poor household can still be a stable and positive environment.

------
timthorn
If you're interested in education policy and research, the Festival of
Education is a great event to hear many of the leading thinkers. This year, as
well as this report being given out in hard copy, we had Dylan Wiliam
(referenced in the NPR article), Carol Dweck, Ken Robinson and many others
speak. A definite English flavour but plenty that's entirely transferable.

[http://www.festivalofeducation.com/](http://www.festivalofeducation.com/)

~~~
tiglionabbit
Can I watch videos of the talks online?

~~~
timthorn
Unfortunately they aren't recorded. :(

------
animefan
Odd that the conclusion of such a meta-analysis would be a list of what _doesn
't_ work. Surely we should be as interested in what _does_ work.

~~~
_delirium
One of the links goes to a chart from the study author that ranks
interventions by estimated effect size: [http://visible-learning.org/hattie-
ranking-influences-effect...](http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-
influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/)

There's a definition of some of the terms here: [http://visible-
learning.org/glossary/](http://visible-learning.org/glossary/)

