California: Gov. Newsom Selects Linda Darling-Hammond as Chair of State Board of Education

56 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. West Coast Teacher says:

   February 12, 2019 at 5:42 pm

   Thanks to Newsom for choosing someone who understands issues AND students.

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. Ohio Algebra II Teacher says:

   February 12, 2019 at 5:42 pm

   I’m always scared to say this on here…but seems like great news!

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. amy olga sultan says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:01 pm

   would that Obama had made the same choice

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Andrea Lancer says:

     February 13, 2019 at 7:40 pm

     My thoughts, exactly.

     LikeLike

     Reply
4. Joseph Nathan says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:08 pm

   Agreed. She is a very wise thoughtful person. Great appointment.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • Linda says:

     February 13, 2019 at 1:44 pm

     Nathan’s support for Linda Darling-Hammond is as bad an indicator as Neusom’s selection of CAP’s Ann O’Leary as chief of staff.

     LikeLike

     Reply
5. leonie haimson says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:09 pm

   I guess now we will really see what she thinks about charters, class size etc.

   LikeLike

   Reply
6. retired teacher says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:12 pm

   At least Newsom is selecting someone with legitimate credentials. This is a step in the right direction. When I heard Darling-Hammond speak many years ago in New York, I was impressed by her insight and deep understanding of the issues. She helped shape my understanding of equity which enabled me to become an advocate for my language and ethnic minority students during my career.

   LikeLike

   Reply
7. Joe Herzog says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:38 pm

   Hopefully someone who will “Right the ship of state” for education.Common sense, empiricism, ALL kids held in equal regard.

   LikeLike

   Reply
8. lauren says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:52 pm

   the curriculum is so awful and deadly here. I suppose she “supports” common core. don’t see how anyone could who has a child in public school in Ca.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • dianeravitch says:

     February 12, 2019 at 9:13 pm

     She was involved in developing SBAC Common Core Test and EdTPA

     LikeLike

     Reply
     • Ponderosa says:

       February 12, 2019 at 10:08 pm

       Well, that’s a stain on her record.

       Diane, I’ve been rereading your history of American education, “Left Back” and this time it really strikes me more than ever what a blight (with a few redeeming qualities) the Progressive/Constructivist crowd has been on America. The anti-progressives like Bagley, Demiashkevich and Kandel come off so well in your account, and the progressives seem like such benighted bullies. It’s so sad to read about Demiashkevich’s suicide after being blackballed. And here we are today, one hundred years later, in CA with the same old failed Progressivist wine in new bottles (NGSS and the horrid new history frameworks which covertly undermine the excellent standards you helped author). Kids are learning less and less, and hating school more and more, because of their terrible ideas. And the ideas live on because they’ve excluded competing ideas from the education schools. I’d reckon that fewer than 1% of teachers have read your “Left Back” and so have no idea a grand and noble competing strand of American educational thought exists. I bet even most of the commenters on this blog have not read “Left Back”. Nevertheless I have hope that the constructivist stranglehold will be broken –cognitive science may be finally driving a stake into the heart of their zombie ideas. Are you familiar with this blockbuster meta-study, entitled “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching”?

       Click to access kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf

       I wonder where Linda Darling-Hammond stands in the progressivist/essentialist debate.

       LikeLike

     • Bob Shepherd says:

       February 13, 2019 at 1:56 am

       That’s a truly great book, isn’t it, Ponderosa?!?!

       Years ago, in one of my education jobs, we started a reading group.I insisted that that book be the first one that the group read. A really important work.

       LikeLike

     • retired teacher says:

       February 13, 2019 at 7:55 am

       It has been said that Darling-Hammond has gone to the dark side. Maybe her views have changed, but in the ’80s she was opposed to charters because they lacked equity, and she was in favor of integration of public schools.

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 8:06 am

       ATTENTION ALL SCIENCE TEACHERS

       If you are a proponent of discovery, inquiry, constructivist, or problem based learning you MUST read this study. If you truly believe that learners can gain new knowledge and new understanding more efficiently, more accurately, and with less confusion by constructing or discovering new science content, then you MUST read this study.
       If you are cheerleader for the next Generation Science Standards (i.e. Performance Tasks) and believe the foundational philosophy and methodologies of discovery and constructivism will benefit your students you MUST read this study.

       “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching”

       Click to access kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf

       Here is an excerpt from the conclusion:

       After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective; there is also evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganized knowledge.

       Please STOP conflating how highly trained, highly specialized professional adult scientists and researchers DO science with the best ways for novice learners (children and adolescents) to
       LEARN science. Our job is build a strong foundation of content knowledge in the long term memory of our students – not to ask them to solve problems or discover known facts, principles, laws, and concepts when they are ill equipped to do so. Stop frustrating your students and start TEACHING them.

       Thanks Ponderosa!

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 13, 2019 at 9:49 am

       Why do you guys pretend that there are only two choices: minimal guidance and maximal guidance?

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 5:23 pm

       Mate
       If the “guys” you are referring to are the authors of the study, you would have to ask them:

       Paul A. Kirschner
       Educational Technology Expertise Center Open University of the Netherlands Research Centre Learning in Interaction Utrecht University, The Netherlands

       John Sweller
       School of Education University of New South Wales

       Richard E. Clark
       Rossier School of Education University of Southern California

       If you want my answer, there is no real, better “happy medium”. These are two very different pedagogies with only one being supported by educational research and the principles of cognitive learning theory and brain development. Unfortunately the NGSS have taken the wrong side of the argument and have no leg to stand on, other than spurious claims and bad intuition. This mistaken approach is rooted in the origins of the NGSS as they were developed by Achieve, “an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability” and is fully aligned with the CCSS. They are made up of a bipartisan group of governors and business leaders (sound familiar?).

       Mark B. Grier
       Vice Chairman
       Prudential Financial, Inc.

       Chairman Emeritus
       Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
       Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
       IBM Corporation

       President
       Michael Cohen
       President
       Achieve

       https://www.achieve.org/

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 5:31 pm

       And yes, constructivist/discovery learning and formally guided/direct instruction are, from a practical standpoint, mutually exclusive.

       Proper science instruction that results in the learning of important facts, laws, concepts, and vocabulary simply cannot be accomplished with a methodology that makes it physiologically impossible.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 13, 2019 at 7:42 pm

       Is it true that the best math-test takers are those who recall more facts automatically? Very probably. Are these the best students, the students who understand math best, who can think and ponder best not just whip out answers? Nope. The idea that “the more facts you know, the better you understand” is simply not true.

       The articles about “the true nature of cognition and learning” are always about “students can solve problems fast if they can recall facts fast”. They are about playing chess, they are about taking timed tests.

       But maybe we misunderstand each other. What kind of instruction do you think this is? What kind of learning is going on here?

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 8:35 pm

       Abington Friends School is an independent Quaker school in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, serving students from age 3 to grade 12.

       About 50 students per grade level
       Co-ed college prep school
       100% 4-year college acceptance
       Average class size: 12
       Student : Teacher ratio is 8:1

       2018 – 2019 Tuition Range:

       Pre-School $21,750 to High School $38,600

       I have no idea if they learned anything. But students in exclusive private prep schools are not the demographic I would use to prove that any pedagogy works.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 13, 2019 at 10:38 pm

       The findings of cognitive science are supposed to be applicable in every situation. Does it say anywhere in the article “our findings of how kids learn are applicable only to those kids’ brains who attend crowded public schools”?

       Note what is absent from this and other “how kids learn” article: the exact description of what they consider knowledge and what they consider learning. I call the article at the end of your link “slippery and foggy”. I even have a suspicion that these findings on how kids learn are about how kids should learn stuff so that they can take tests well. They are possibly about how to learn stuff for “success in today’s world”, which (for the most part) is about getting into a great college via hightACT scores.

       What you see in the video is kids’ solving a math problem. Do they have background knowledge (content)? Yes. Do they get little (“minimal”) guidance from the teacher in solving this problem? Yes, we probably could say that. So what we can conclude is that in that school, they get both direct and minimal instruction in math. Sometimes this, sometimes that, as they should. Note that the minimal guidance is not exactly minimal, but “just the right amount”: If the kids get a bit stuck, the teacher helps out. He doesn’t wait for the kids to get frustrated. But I am sure he also makes sure, kids learn the facts properly via some method which could be labeled as direct instruction if necessary. Without those facts, they would have a way too hard time solving the problem.

       Can we test what the kids learn in that video? Good luck with that. But do they learn something positive? Just look at their faces. Is it an experience that serves them well? In my opinion, yes. Will they become better test takers? I doubt it.

       What they learn in that video is the most important things in learning math: understanding and motivation. Direct instruction alone doesn’t provide these.

       Does what I am saying above contradict one bit the statements in the article about working and long term memory of cognitive science? I very much doubt it. But it does cast doubt in the absolute superiority of direct instruction in math. And no, I do not advocate for the absolute superiority of minimal guidance either.

       LikeLike

     • ponderosa says:

       February 13, 2019 at 8:58 pm

       Rage,

       I just read through the profiles of all 42 professors at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Most of them focus on race, gender, equity, etc. A few are hard-core nerds who focus on statistics, AI and the like. Of the ones who venture near the stuff we’re interested in, the fundamental mechanics of learning, all seem to be constructivists, including Alan Schoenfeld, one of the architects of Common Core math, and Dov Abrahamson, a prolific author of pretentious, obscurantist articles, including one about the impact on yoga (I’m sorry, “contemplative-somatic practices”) on math learning.

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 9:27 pm

       We both know that professors of education are very far removed from the real world of overcrowded classrooms filled with “challenging” students and the interpersonal group dynamics that can quickly wreck the best laid lesson plan. The theoretical crap they feed their students is less than worthless and will mislead and undermine the effectiveness of any new teacher heading into a high needs middle school in Oakland or LA or Stockton or Fresno, etc.

       They continue to sell the idea that children learn best when they are asked to pretend they are practicing adult professionals, when in fact the main product of this approach is confusion, frustration, and misunderstanding. It is almost impossible to believe that the act of teaching content knowledge is being demeaned by our profession. And it is often done so using the standard barrage of false claims and false assumptions. Here is my message all NGSS cheerleaders and the drivel they use to dispel direct instruction:

       Please stop with the strawman arguments. Stop the bogus excuses for disrupting science education with the latest Common Core version of teaching that flies in the face of all we know about cognitive learning theory and brain development. Stop trying to impose the debunked and failed methodologies of constructivist/discovery learning. Stop painting science instruction as the “memorization of disconnected facts”. Stop suggesting that we teach about atoms (or any other topic) by reciting textbook definitions. Stop suggesting that children with extremely limited, if any, background knowledge can solve problems, construct solutions, or create valid experiments. And above all stop conflating the way that professionally trained adult scientists do real science with the very different school experiences that children need to learn science.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 13, 2019 at 11:02 pm

       RATT: “overcrowded classrooms filled with “challenging” students and the interpersonal group dynamics that can quickly wreck the best-laid lesson plan. ”

       I hope you are not suggesting that cognitive science has different findings of how kids learn depending on what kind of schools they attend: one for urban, one for country, one for crowded, one for fancy-private?

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 14, 2019 at 6:01 am

       “The theoretical crap they feed their students is less than worthless and will mislead and undermine the effectiveness of any new teacher heading into a high needs middle school in Oakland or LA or Stockton or Fresno, etc.”

       RATT, I understand where this (and the rant of Ponderosa) is coming from, but please also note, this is exactly how TFA and similar organizations characterize “traditional” teacher training programs to justify their ultra-pragmatic approach to teacher training.

       Cognitive science’s findings on learning also belong to the category of what you call “theoretical crap”, btw, and hence I doubt they help a teacher in handling a crowded middle school class in Oakland.

       Please also note that what profs teach in college is also influenced by the real world. For example, a teacher training program must teach CC since that’s what the trainee will have to teach to their own students. A couple of years ago, I volunteered to teach CC math to prospective low-grade teachers, even though I knew very well how bad it was. Unlike in other math courses I teach, my aim was not to try to make students fall in love with the subject, but make it as painless for them to learn it as possible.

       LikeLike

     • GregB says:

       February 13, 2019 at 10:00 pm

       Really enjoyed the discussion here. All new to me, doubt I will ever read this, but glad you all explained it.

       LikeLike

     • ponderosa says:

       February 13, 2019 at 10:05 pm

       The new history framework (2016) in CA is to history what NGSS is to science. They want my 12 old students to start aping professional historians before they even know the basic outline of history. Why in the world is this a good idea? Do we want to turn them into professional historians? Even I, a well-read history buff and history teacher, do not consider myself a historian in the slightest! And even if we did think it a good idea to train them as junior professional historians, is aping the professionals the way to do it? I ask you, what professional historian on Earth began his education by aping the professionals? I’m sure every distinguished professional historian on Earth today began his history education by listening to teachers and books tell compelling stories about history and gathering up juicy facts about history. The Constructivist authors of these frameworks imply that putting kids in groups and having them grapple with scantily-contextualized primary sources and answering contorted, mind-numbing Common Core-esque questions about them somehow engenders deeper learning. As you say, it only produces frustration, confusion and hatred of school. This is malpractice mandated from the most prestigious heights of our sick profession.

       LikeLike

     • dianeravitch says:

       February 13, 2019 at 11:31 pm

       Pondersosa,

       I was aprimary writer of the California history-Social science standards adopted in 1988. The emphasis in the curriculum framework was knowledge, beginning with biographies of great men and women in history. We focused on true stories and also emphasized that what we know as “true” evolves as historians come up with new information and interpretations. Frankly I wanted students to fall in love with history, not to pretend to be historians.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 14, 2019 at 6:34 am

       Diane, I think what gets lost in these arguments is the need to tell the students why they should to learn a subject. Grades, a demanding teacher and other pressures cannot and shouldn’t be the reason.

       To tell you the truth, I do not think the reasons are adequately clarified: why teach and learn a subject in the first place, and then why teach and learn each element of it.

       The debate seems to be always about what and how to teach and learn while the why is at least as important. If a kid loves a subject, all the teacher has to work on is not to screw it up for her.

       LikeLike

     • RageAgainstTheTestocracy says:

       February 13, 2019 at 10:16 pm

       Killer rant Ponderosa. Thank god I’m aging out of this unrecognizable profession.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 13, 2019 at 10:50 pm

       The rant was about something which has nothing to do with how the kids learn and are taught in the video.

       LikeLike

     • ponderosa says:

       February 14, 2019 at 8:35 pm

       Mate,

       If you do happen to read Left Back (I think all ed school professors must) you’ll see that your attitudes are the product of a century of energetic conditioning by influential Progressivist propagandists. Like Republican mastermind Frank Luntz, who turned Americans against the estate tax by rebranding it, they have managed to brand good teaching as bad teaching. “Lecture”, “memorization”, “discipline” are dirty words now. I can see that you recoil at the traditional model, as do many. But your dream school is a chimera. Rich teens with a butt load of rich background knowledge can make a subtle problem solving exercise work (though it’s not at all certain that there is any mental value added, even with them). The gauzy methods you prescribe have failed over and over. Foisting them on the general population is neglect and abuse. You are sacrificing them on the altar of your intellectual fetish. You insinuate that dull, unimaginative or reactionary teachers are to blame, but that blame game is finally wearing thin. The problem is not them; it’s you guys in the education schools. It’s your lovely looking but disastrous ideas. Please stop recycling them and start the hard work of putting our profession on solid, not wishful, footing. We must begin by working with the facts, not Progressivist prejudices. Here’s one such fact: kids need to memorize the times tables. This takes a lot of time. It’s worth making taking this time. And then kids need to learn the standard algorithm for long division. And they need to practice it over and over and over, until it’s automatic. This might take a whole semester, where this is the sole focus. Embedding knowledge is the goal, and embedding knowledge is slow. This simple guidance would do wonders for the health of math in our schools. Most modern pedagogy discounts the need for memorized knowledge, and completely underestimates the time and work it takes to do such memorizing.

       LikeLike

     • Joseph Nathan says:

       February 15, 2019 at 11:45 am

       This post started out talking about Linda Darling Hammond. It’s evolved in part into a discussion of effective teaching. So here’s a brief comment on that.

       When I taught at a district K-12 option in St. Paul, we incorporated service-learning into some of the classes. That is an effort to combine classroom instruction with some form of community service. Not one or the other. Both. We found for many, but not all youngsters, that was effective.
       Two examples.
       1. I taught a class were 6-8 year olds worked on learning math concepts such as area and perimeter. This involved some direct instruction. We also designed and built a playground for the school. We worked with University of Minnesota architectural student. He and I helped students understand and learn math concepts such as the ones mentioned above, along with the playground effort.
       2. In a second class, students learned key concepts of reading contracts carefully, facts about how to protect themselves as consumers, how to set and work toward goals. This involved some direct instruction. Students also learned research techniques (years before Internet and google were created) We also worked on and helped solve more than 100 real consumer problems that adults referred to us. Students successfully resolved about 85% of them.
       Years later, I’ve talked with a number of students involved in these efforts. They said that for them the combination of direct instruction and service was very effective.

       Beyond anecdotes, here’s a link to a literature review on service-learning.
       https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=colleagues

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 15, 2019 at 2:57 pm

       Ponderosa, for whatever reason and not the first time, you claim that I am prescribing something, in particular, that I am prescribing a “minimal guidance” approach to teaching. No, here is what I am doing or not doing:

       1) I am casting doubt, through concrete examples, in any kind of paper that claims to give a “scientific” proof for a teaching or learning method.

       My view is that such a paper will never exist since teaching and learning is not a science; it’s more of an art form than anything else. It is aided by science (as is art), but not one of the sciences. Knowledge, learning, teaching are neither quantifiable nor properly definable, hence they don’t yield to the scientific method.

       So if somebody would claim “I can prove scientifically that the ‘minimal guidance’ method is the way to teach”, I’d immediately give a concrete example that this is bs.

       Of course, the same applies to any kind of claim that supposedly found the most effective way to train teachers or to teach (like TFA or “Teach like a Champion” claims). To me, such claim ignites the same emotions as hearing that somebody found the best way to create art or music and train artists, musicians.

       2) I am not telling you or RATT how to teach, nor do I criticize your methods, nor am I telling you guys how to discipline or not discipline in your classes. You will never find me on any board that would prescribe to teachers what to do in a classroom.

       3) On the other hand, if you show me a paper that you claim it proves that a teaching method is universal, I utilize 1) above.

       4) Even if it doesn’t appear that way, I respect you guys a great deal because you are doing a very important and very difficult job (nowadays, it may be among the most difficult and exhausting jobs in this country), and you still take time to fight for public schools and the kids in them.

       I think my views on teaching are well expressed in this old article by Elliot Eisner, most of which is as relevant today as it was in 1983.

       Click to access el_198301_eisner.pdf

       I think the framing of what teaching and learning are has been set by the reformers and we, unfortunately, followed their lead. They have made many people believe that through some scientific mumbo-jumbo, involving statistical formulas, in-class experiments, cognitive and neuroscience, economic theories, a teacher’s classroom actions can be prescribed, even automated. We fight against their conclusions, but we don’t break out of their fake-scientific frame.

       We need a different frame, and I think one of the four sides of the frame could be

       Teaching is an art form.
       

       LikeLike

     • ponderosa says:

       February 15, 2019 at 8:34 pm

       Mate,

       I appreciate the measured tone of your response, and I think of you as far more thoughtful, intellectually honest and intelligent than most ed school faculty I’ve met. You’re actually willing to discuss, whereas most ignore or probably just think to themselves, “I can destroy this heretic if I need to.” However, lacking the perspective that Left Backgives, you seem blind to the ways that Progressives in the education schools have indeed been telling teachers how to teach. They have engaged in a hundred year campaign of demeaning traditional methods, such as learning by heart; so much so that it is an extremely rare teacher who will so much as admit to having kids memorize anything, or lecture, or use punishments, or demand neat work. The UC Davis/Berkeley cabal that just staged a coup d’etat of CA education with their awful new history “frameworks” are in fact telling us how to teach: we must make the “shift” (their euphemism for “Throw out your well-crafted direct instruction lessons”) to the inquiry approach.

       Among the many great quotes from Left Back:

       In 1934, Maude McBroom, principal of the progressive University Elementary School at U. of Iowa, “was an ardent supporter of the activity program but admitted frankly that such schools were problematic…She acknowledged that children too often became accustomed to mediocre standards of workmanship particularly when they engaged in projects far beyond their ability [bingo: this is NGSS and Common Core]. They also wasted time on superficial activities….Too often ‘inaccurate and half-baked ideas were permitted to go unchallenged and were accepted as the truth.’ [bingo: few teachers question the ed school authorities today, despite their professed love of critical thinking]. McBroom concluded that teachers had gone overboard in their desire to have children do ‘less memorizing and more imagining.’ No one, she said, ‘has ever done any imagining worthy of the name who did not have a vast store of memorized facts and thoroughly understood experiences out of which to build his imaginings [this is why colleges tell us HS graduates “can’t write” even though writing is an obsession in K-12 schools: kids have little besides their immediate experience to write about. What was Shakespeare’s education? Memorizing Latin writers’ work].'”

       Maude McBroom saw through the fraud. Sadly she would find the schools of 2019 still suffering from Progressivists’ half-baked ideas. We don’t learn.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 16, 2019 at 4:47 pm

       “However, lacking the perspective that Left Backgives, you seem blind to the ways that Progressives in the education schools have indeed been telling teachers how to teach. ”

       Every single assumption in the above statement is wrong, Ponderosa.

       Here is a general 4-step recipe for making a potentially big mistake in almost anything, from car repair to relationship repair to education repair.

       1) Notice that something is not going well.

       2) Spend a lot of time and effort in figuring out what is wrong

       3) Since 2) is an unpleasant experience, you come up with an idea (maybe even develop a theory) on how to fix the problem.

       4) You run around and convince as many people as you can to repair the problem using your idea.

       Step 4), even in science, is a mistake without extensive experiments, but in most cases, 3) or even 2) might be too much, and of course 1) may turn out to be a false alarm.

       Examples:

       Direct instruction doesn’t work in math, and may lead to passive, overly obedient and bored students in many other subjects; my idea for a fix is minimal guidance, so let’s all do that from now on.

       Minimal guidance hasn’t worked even in math, so my idea for a fix is to go back to direct instruction everywhere and all the time, so let’s go people.

       My car stopped, a voice inside me says, the carburetor is at fault, so I take it out and apart,…(luckily my family at this point stopped the process)

       I, Oprah, am here for you, so tell me about your relationship problems, and I or my beloved Dr Phil will fix them all for you.

       I, Bill Gates, am telling you, people, there is a huge problem in public education, so I have a fix, backed by science and my money…

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 17, 2019 at 10:36 am

       Here is a talk by George Lakoff, very well known cognitive scientist about the importance of arts education but towards the end of the talk, at 35min 12 sec, he talks about the basics of learning. I give the link so that it should jump to the right place, but WordPress often doesn’t honor such instruction.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 17, 2019 at 11:21 am

       It did work, it does jump to 35m and 12 sec. Anyways, what he says there is that learning is not just about committing information to long term memory, and also, that students need to care about learning the material, and this caring is what teachers need to ignite by showing empathy.

       So yeah, teachers need to shell out the right amount of discipline, caring, content, activity, and since the “right amount” of each is highly dependent on the subject, the kids in the class and their age, thinking that there is some kind of unique recipe is foolish.

       LikeLike

     • ponderosa says:

       February 17, 2019 at 12:12 pm

       Mate,

       Have you read The Learning Gap by Stevenson and Stigler (https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Education/dp/0671880764)?
       It focuses on the math teaching methods in Japanese schools (circa 1990). I’d be interested to hear your take on it. What I remember most about it is that it claimed Japan had brought the bulk of the population up to a relatively high level of achievement in math, whereas the US only succeeded with the top 1/3 or so. And that Japanese teachers used “lesson study” to improve their practice (this doesn’t happen in any school I’ve worked in).

       From Kirschner:

       “Our understanding of the role of long-term memory in human cognition has altered dramatically over the last few decades. It is no longer seen as a passive repository of discrete, isolated fragments of information that permit us to repeat what we have learned. Nor is it seen only as a component of human cognitive architecture that has merely peripheral influence on complex cognitive processes such as thinking and problem solving. Rather, long-term memory is now viewed as the central, dominant structure of human cognition. Everything we see, hear, and think about is critically dependent on and influenced by our long-term memory.” [My emphasis added]

       He goes on to summarize numerous studies that show chess players become skilled not by building up some generic reasoning muscle in their brain, but because they memorize scads of scenarios on the chessboard and quickly find a solution in long-term memory (think iPhone photo storage with killer retrieval capacity). Don’t skilled mathematicians operate in the same way –deploying memorized scenarios and other information? There is no “skill area” of the brain outside of long-term memory.

       “We are skillful in an area because our long-term memory contains huge amounts of information concerning the area. That information permits us to quickly recognize the characteristics of a situation and indicate to us, often unconsciously, what to do and when to do it. Without our huge store of information in long-term memory, we would be largely incapable of everything from simple acts such as crossing a street (information in long-term memory informs us how to avoid speeding traffic, a skill many other animals are unable to store in their long-term memories) to complex activities such as playing chess or solving mathematical problems. Thus, our long-term memory incorporates a massive knowledge base that is central to all of our cognitively-based activities.”

       Ergo, math teachers should dedicate themselves to stocking students’ long-term memories with helpful information, no?

       What I see, by contrast, is an abject failure to stock kids’ memories. They don’t have to memorize times tables. They don’t even have to memorize borrowing for addition! They don’t have to memorize how to read an analog clock. And everyone I know who talks about Common Core or other forms of integrated math tells me that the curriculum skims over complex topics superficially and moves on before kids have mastered the material. Many learn nothing (although it’s possible that a caring teacher has made them want to learn, I suppose. But this wanting goes unfulfilled). Implanting knowledge in memory depends on slowing things down and practicing until it’s embedded. The fashionable math militates against stocking the long-term memory. In other words, it seems to me, it militates against learning.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 17, 2019 at 3:40 pm

       If what’s written above about the role of long term memory and accumulated information in it was true, the more mature the mathematicians or scientists are, the better they would be. But the majority of greatest discoveries in math and theoretical physics were done by teens and twentysomethings who knew notoriously little about their field. When people think of Einstein, they think of him like this crazy looking but wise old man

       

       but he looked like this when he made his first truly great discovery (and 10 years later, he was finished with great discoveries)

       

       In any case, one of the mistakes many education “designers” make is to try to assert that kids should imitate what scientists do in their profession. Comparing the mastery of chess and the mastery of math is a similarly problematic analogy (you may have better luck in comparing chess to taking a timed test in math, but that’s not math).

       As for the Japanese study: what’s achievement in math?

       Again, I agree that kids need to learn content, I agree that kids need to memorize the multiplication table. But I do not agree that the more info, the more direct instruction kids get the better they become in math.

       Having said that, I also admit that the meaning of “better in math” is not exact, “what’s important in math” is not exact, “what math content is important for kids to learn” is not exact, and the actual purpose of math education in K-12 is not exact. This also means that math education is not one of the sciences where you can assert, let alone prove, the superiority of one method over all others. I suspect the same is true in the education of the other sciences as well.

       LikeLike

     • Máté Wierdl says:

       February 17, 2019 at 3:52 pm

       I think that fact that, similarly to artists, teachers become better with age should indicate that teaching is more art than science.

       LikeLike

9. Joe says:

   February 12, 2019 at 6:59 pm

   Just seeing if I can make comments. WordPress snookered me.
   LD-H is a good choice, I hope.

   LikeLike

   Reply
10. LeftCoastTeacher says:

    February 12, 2019 at 7:39 pm

    Darling-Hammond is a good choice. Probably. I think. I hope. The Kirst endorsement is a bit unnerving, as was Darling-Hammond’s recent neutral statement about charters, but there is probably more politicking at play behind it all than is being stated publicly. … I hope.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

    Reply
    • ciedie aech says:

      February 13, 2019 at 1:19 pm

      sad to now have so much worried “hope” where Darling-Hammond is concerned

      LikeLike

      Reply
11. Paula says:

    February 12, 2019 at 7:45 pm

    That’s good for our side. She definitely gets it about public education and the value of our teachers. Change a coming and it’s about time.

    LikeLike

    Reply
12. JohnOgozalek says:

    February 12, 2019 at 9:10 pm

    Good news. Time to bring the nation back around. This is how it begins.

    LikeLike

    Reply
13. LisaM says:

    February 12, 2019 at 9:42 pm

    Just recently there was discussion that she had gone to the dark side? I can’t remember what blog, but it was quite the heated discussion and everyone was so disappointed that she had bedded down with the deformer crowd.

    LikeLike

    Reply
    • leonie haimson says:

      February 13, 2019 at 12:27 pm

      LDH debated Diane and Carol Burris on the value of “choice” and charter schools here https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/11/09/linda-darling-hammond-vs-diane-ravitch-carol-burris/and here https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/11/04/why-it-matters-who-governs-americas-public-schools/

      LikeLike

      Reply
14. Linda Mele Johnson says:

    February 12, 2019 at 9:58 pm

    An experienced educator for educational leadership! Now that’s a new one!

    LikeLike

    Reply
15. Caligirl says:

    February 12, 2019 at 10:41 pm

    There are things that one can agree or disagree with her …but she is highly knowledgeable and she has been in education for years and that is more than can be said about others that have been appointed to high positions in education these days.

    LikeLike

    Reply
16. Wait, What? says:

    February 12, 2019 at 10:45 pm

    In retrospect, we all should have made a splash that PRESIDENT Obama did not choose her for Secretary and the crazy Republicans would have given her devos’s job just to spite Obama.

    And…
    Why must everything be extremist either / or here.

    Obama likes charters and common core to the point where people wrote in years ago they weren’t sure about him.

    Dr. Darling-Hammond doesn’t think all testing is bad and objective standards are good.
    She’s smart, objective, remarkably experienced, and as well-read and researched as one can be. She’s a teacher.

    LikeLike

    Reply
17. Jimmy Kilpatrick says:

    February 13, 2019 at 8:50 am

    Sad day binging this gal on board. She was a failure in the school she started for one. She understands like IBMs Gertner that schools are a gravel train for her likes to make big bucks. The zealots that follow her crazy beliefs have destroyed too many inner city kids.

    LikeLike

    Reply
18. James McDermott says:

    February 13, 2019 at 10:07 am

    Jim,

    This is good news. Linda Darling-Hammond is extraordinary.

    Dad

    LikeLike

    Reply
19. BA says:

    February 13, 2019 at 1:37 pm

    Gavin Newsom pulled the plug from California high-speed rail project. Not completely, mind you, keeping the idiotic segment between Merced and Bakersfield – who will ever ride it? What an idiocy. Not expecting anything good from him.

    LikeLike

    Reply
20. Linda says:

    February 13, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    Neusom’s $45 mil. for Wall Street’s SIB’s- described at A Wrench in the Gears, 2-5-2019,
    “Adverse Childhood Experience….”

    Still, he’s better than any Republican.

    LikeLike

    Reply
21. Linda says:

    February 13, 2019 at 2:02 pm

    Neusom should have chosen Diane Ravitch or someone she recommended form NPE.

    LikeLike

    Reply