Last Sunday, the Néw York Times had a lengthy editorial lamenting the sorry state of math education in the U.S. the editorial said that our kids find math boring, so they don’t major in math or become engineers. The Times barely mentioned the pernicious effects of standardized testing, which surely mars math tedious.
But the Times writers should visit Pasadena, California, which has developed a model program for the use of technology. It is certainly NOT boring. It demonstrates foresight, planning, vision, and purpose. And it seems to be very exciting!
“In sixth through eighth grade classrooms in Pasadena Unified School District, elective Robotics classes hum with activity as teams of excited kids use laptops to build robots during the school day. Students show off the robots’ abilities in a fun end-of-year “final exam” Expo open to the entire community, and those meeting a basic academic requirement will create and code video game and other apps in the just-launched App Academy at Pasadena High School.
There are no admissions tests, no magnet school attendance restrictions, and no GATE requirements to take the elective Robotics class; interested students simply choose the elective.
For the past three years, Pasadena Unified has offered real technological literacy and computer programming classes for public school children in two out of four high schools (with plans for all) in the district — and yet its big, slow-moving neighbor to the west, Los Angeles Unified, isn’t paying attention. Neither is the rest of California, to its detriment.
Under the direction of a visionary team housed in the Pasadena Education Foundation’s STEM initiative, children in Pasadena Unified’s majority-minority, 68% free-and-reduced lunch schools with many English language learners figure out how to code in hands-on, engaging ways. These students apply math, design, engineering, marketing, and even arts learning to their creations.
The goal is to offer programming and App Academy high school classes across the entire district, and with support from faculty at CalTech, rocket scientists at NASA/JPL, and Pasadena’s burgeoning tech incubator community, they appear on track to achieve this. There’s no reason Silicon Beach on Los Angeles’ westside or Silicon Valley up north can’t help with in-kind assistance — and crucial funding via revenue to the state — to scale this highly effective model to every single school district in California, not just the ones lucky to have a high-tech hub in their backyard.”
How great is that !
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pasadena HS may be doing OK, but John Muir HS has significant room for improvement and I doubt that classes in robotics are going to make much of a difference.
Click to access 19648811936103_11-12_1.pdf
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In this country we have moved so far away from the comprehensive school model. Students will learn from each other if we let them. Tracking may be good for teachers but it does a lot of hidden damage to both individuals and the fabric of the school community. If you ask me, this is where computer-based instruction can be worthwhile. Give the “slower” learners in the robotics class different homework assignments than the “faster” learners but make them truly collaborate and teach each other when they are in class. Focus on process rather than product (although I’d wager the product would be pretty good too).
Why can’t I have a public school like that for my children, Arne Duncan?
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One important lesson faster learners will learn is to hide the fact that they are faster learners from the class if they want to have a social life.
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Are you being snarky?
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Just a little, but isn’t that something that all high performing students have to learn? I am trying to find a moving post that a middle school teacher posted some time ago about this on the blog. I will add the link if Google can help me find it.
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Yes. I think in your average public middle school there is this risk. However, this doesn’t happen in all schools (with many private progressive schools leading the pack on this score). IMHO it all goes back to whether or not the school, as an institution, is focused on creating a learning community or just enough kids that can pass the tests. You will set things up differently depending on which goal you’re reaching for.
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Why do we speak so little about what goes on in High Schools, especially when that is when we can help the most in transiting all students to life, not just college and career.
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I suspect that classes in private progressive schools have a much narrower range if student abilities than public schools.
A friend of mine decided to put his last child in a private school when the child begged to be allowed to stay home from his public junior high. It turned out there was an awards assembly that day, and my friend’s son had done well in a regional math competition and would be recognized (perhaps outed would be a better word) at the assembly.
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The New York Times article is of course utter nonsense. It states that all high school graduates should be prepared to attend college. But only about 25% of the US population has a cognitive level suitable for a college education. Currently a large proportion of college graduates are employed in jobs not requiring a college education. We need more college graduates like we need a hole in the head.
Many engineering jobs do pay good salaries but only about 15% of the US population has the requisite cognitive level for such jobs.
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Jim:
You need to define your criteria and cite evidence to support these rather bold generalizations. In addition, which would you chose, more English, Sociology and Psychology majors or more Engineering, Biotech and Computer Science majors?
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Bad news Bernie,
I know several un or under employed GA Tech grads (High GPA, various forms of Eng.).
The shortage is a myth.
Producing more of them will not produce more jobs.
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Ang:
I will see your anecdote and raise you one. I spoke to a colleague yesterday in the software engineering side of the business and he said that anyone with a computer science background can get a job in the Boston area. He said the outsource market is beginning to heat up again. I guess it depends on what you are willing to do and where you are willing to go..
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Ang:
The real issue is who is likely to create additional jobs in the future. The track record for English and Psych majors is kind of non-existent. Their best bet is a job in some bureaucracy somewhere.
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It is wonderful to see examples of individual schools, but how about an example of a 40 year program that has helped over 100 schools develop their own individualized versions of experiential learning for HS seniors that is more than making someone “college and career ready” but is a real transition transition to post High School Life.
http://www.wiseservices.org.
http://bcove.me/8e4gbwxw
Everyone seems to be grumbling about something; high-stakes testing; the Common Core (its roll-out, design or both); the property-tax levy cap; plans to collect student data for some digi-cloud; the general loss of local control over schooling; and on and on.
So it was refreshing to visit Woodlands High School in Greenburgh on Friday and catch up with Vic Leviatin. I first met Vic 25 years ago when I was starting at the Journal News and Greenburgh was one of the school districts I was assigned to cover. At the time, Vic was about 15 years into nurturing something called the Woodlands Individualized Senior Experience. That’s WISE to you.
The idea behind WISE made too much sense. High school seniors are often stuck in a post-SAT holding pattern, waiting for prom and graduation. So the WISE program encouraged them to set up a project or internship focused on something they were actually interested in. Students had to get a mentor, keep a journal and go out there in the world to do and learn.
Leviatin retired in 1991. The following year, he started WISE Services, a non-profit consulting biz to help other high schools launch their own senior programs. I wrote about it in 1992, around the time the Cold War ended.
Now I’m back on the education beat (mostly covering the grumbling) and WISE is turning 40. So I returned to the WISE room at Woodlands, where Vic picked up in mid-sentence from the last time I saw him. Pushing 75, the guy is a force of nature—smart, deeply committed to education, impatient with bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and an evangelist for the benefits of treating students like adults and setting them out to find their own muse.
“Do you believe that 17-year-olds still have to raise their hands to go out and use the bathroom” he said. “Why do we do that? The business world wouldn’t do that. These kids are smart. Old people get intimidated because they can text and use these devices while they’re doing other things. But they can. We should treat them like adults. Let them think.”
Check out these numbers. More than 3,500 Woodlands students have gone through WISE. And thanks to WISE Services, more than 45,000 seniors at over 100 high schools in several states have taken on some sort of project connected to a hobby or a course of study or a possible career path. (Sounds like “college and career readiness,” all you education reformers.)
When I visited Woodlands, I met several 17-year-old seniors who are just getting their projects moving. Brianna Warner is looking at costume design. Katrina Chin wants to study why some videos go viral. Taylor Ha plans to take pictures of people at different points in time and ask them how they changed on the inside between photos. Alonzo Louis wants to figure out how to improve the transportation system and traffic flow in White Plains (The citizens of central Westchester are rooting for you, my friend).
Paula Ramirez told me that she’s studying self-hatred awareness. I was intrigued but confused and asked her what she meant. “I want to educate people on the troubles some people go through every day,” she told me. “I want to understand why people hurt themselves by not eating or cutting themselves or when things lead to suicide.”
These young people are impressive. They’re focused and serious because they care about their projects. They’ve been given free rein to prove themselves. At a time when everyone seems demoralized by a move toward data-driven, one-size-fits-all education, the WISE program promotes an individualized experience. It’s in the name. There has got to be room for something like this in our public education system.
I met a fellow named Mandel Holland, who did his WISE project in 1985 about physical fitness and had Leviatin as his mentor. Now he’s back at Woodlands as a social studies teacher, mentoring today’s WISE students. “Students do always realize what a great program this is at first,” he said. “But then they get into it and can’t believe how lucky they are.”
Tyron Postell said he was a “knucklehead” back in his Woodlands days before WISE led to him in 1994 to work with kids at Greenburgh’s Highview Elementary School. He developed an interest in attending college as a result and is now also back at Woodlands focusing on, as he put it, “conflict resolution.” “WISE was life-changing for me,” he said.
WISE or WISE-influenced programs can now be found all across the Lower Hudson Valley. Croton-Harmon, Scarsdale and New Rochelle have had programs for more than 20 years. About a dozen staff members from WISE Services visit their client schools on a regular basis to help each craft the best possible local programs.
These days, Woodlands High begins preparing many freshmen by getting them to think about their interests and possible projects for down the road. In Shehnaz Hirji’s English class, students work in teams to prepare video projects. “We want to expose them to research so they have a foundation for their WISE experience,” she said.
Numa Rousseve, a thoughtful gentleman I remember well from my days covering Greenburgh, serves on the WISE board and is now a staff member visiting client schools. He told me about a recent visit to the Eagle Academy for Young Men in the Bronx and the challenge of getting students to think about education in a very different way. “We don’t want them to do something their teacher might want them to do or something they would feel safe doing in front of their classmates, but what they really want to do,” he said.
Vic smiled. “We really have got something here, don’t we,” he said.
– See more at: http://www.wiseservices.org/wp/2013/11/04/after-40-years-wise-still-helping-h-s-seniors-follow-their-passions/#sthash.ZQhr3bIB.dpuf
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More Engineering, Biotech, and Computer science majors would be much more economically productive but the higher cognitive demands of such fields limits the supply.
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I would humbly submit that none of these domains have “higher cognitive demands” than another. They are just different. This kind of thinking contributes directly to our current situation in which it is novel for a robotics class to be a general elective.
Using myself as an example, I am not very good at spatial reasoning. I’m pretty good at book learnin’. However, to truly excel at the things for which I have more natural proclivity, it would be great if I had better spatial reasoning skills. A student like me would probably not be the one to go on to MIT and invent the latest biotech wonder after taking this robotics class. However, by being in the class, I would have strengthened certain capacities that could be used to innovate another field. And the students who excelled more easily would have had a chance to understand my challenges. They could develop empathy and clarify their own understanding of the material by helping me understand what they grasped more easily.
I challenge anyone to seek out the “top” people in any field. True excellence defies notions of “higher” and “lower” cognitive demands. Different tasks draw on different capacities. However, the ability to leverage disparate capacities at a high level is often associated with excellence.
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Don’t bother trying to convince this racist clown of anything, Emmy – you’re wasting your typing.
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Emmy,
I agree with your post…I double majored in a science and a humanity. One was not easier than the other.
I went to college to become educated, not trained.
But as Dienne said, don’t wast your time with those that insist on spewing repeated nonsense.
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I find this interesting. In our school system we once had science coordinators. At that time they used a system called “Science a process approach” in which students were given age appropriate materials with which to do experiments. They were then asked to observer and ask what they had seen happen. In other words to develop critical thinking skills along with observing “scientifically” the world around them, in short to develop science thinking. This is what at least one of the major scientists of our time was recommending, not the test book – yes -oftentimes boring process which told them “what to think”. Of course our school board could not condone such unorthodox schooling. They must learn the “facts” as they were presented. Both science coordinators obtained their doctorates and went on to teach at the college level and obviously were NEVER replaced. Heaven help us if children learned to develop critical thinking skills and learned to think scientifically. Only by learning the presently perceived “facts” could they be considered educated.
The math curriculum as described in this blog seems like a similar approach. As neither a science or math teacher I do not pretend to be an expert in the field. I only know that our desks, the science coordinators and mine, as music coordinator were next to each other and I heard him trying to defend his approach from parents who could not understand what he was doing. Again, heaven help us if we implement the latest educational ideas which the most ignorant cannot understand. We are told to find the best ideas but when we do, God help us.
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“Again, heaven help us if we implement the latest educational ideas which the most ignorant cannot understand.”
LOL.
I am sorry this happened at your school. What a great opportunity and now what a great loss.
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This happens because “orthodox” thinkers will be the majority of stockholders in any school district. The only escape for the “unorthodox”, even if they are a substantial minority of stockholders in the district, is to band together outside the traditional system. This is why unorthodox approaches to education are always schools that families choose, most often private schools.
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Stakeholders of course.
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This is also why charters are, in general, such a huge disappointment. One could image a school where this approach to science prevails and works so effectively that other schools in the community gain the confidence and political backing to implement what the charter has done.
What is additionally tragic about this story is how the school lost people with PhDs who were willing to work with this age group. An excellent curriculum attracts the investment of curious and knowledgeable people. Hum-ho approaches that fail to inspire will only encourage such people to use their time and talent elsewhere.
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Gordon:
When you say “our school board could not condone such unorthodox schooling. They must learn the “facts” as they were presented.” What actually was said at the school board? What brought the science coordinator’s potentially subversive pedagogy to their attention? It sounds like his students were the one’s complaining to their parents. It seems to me that other things were happening. Were there budgetary issues?
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This is exactly the kind of good news we all need to hear!! Yay for the home team, and thanks to you, Diane, for continuing to champion public schools!!
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Ang – Starting salaries for engineers are over $60,000 with excellent benefits. In petroleum engineering starting salaries for new grads with no experience are up to $80,000. Six figures in a few years are routine. Obviously engineering fields could become saturated if enough people get degrees in them but there isn’t much sign of that happening any time soon.
Why such high salaries? I think the difficulty of learning these fields keeps the supply limited in relation to the demand.
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1st district math test (3rd grade) avg. score was 83% (30 students);
2nd district math test (3rd grade – but was a hybrid between CST & CCSS)
was 72% (32 students). However, I taught the NY Engage math module
1 on multiplication unit yet the students were tested on subtraction with
regrouping, multiplication, & division. My district told us to teach the NY
module yet tests us on something else. LIFE!
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I’m probably too late here, but if anyone’s still reading… the comments at the subject NYT editorial were interesting. Among math educators & mathematicians, there was a common thread that reflected something I read long ago, comments by Chinese math educators on US methods in the wake of a cultural exchange. Their primary criticism of math ed in the US was that formulae tended to be taught as rote ‘right ways’ to handle certain types of questions, learned via accurate application to sets of data. They said that in Chinese schools, as early as practicable, students were divided into groups, given sets of data & a question, & encouraged to find different ways to find accurate answers, then learn to derive formulae from the results.
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