How are Teachers Evaluated?

The following is an email I sent to a student who wanted to know what I thought about high school students evaluating teachers.

High school teachers have many stakeholders. From the top down, they include the Federal government (No Child Left Behind Act) which mandates continued test score improvements, the State of California, which tells teachers what to teach, the District, which hires and pays teachers, and the taxpayers (the parents), which support the school district. Those actually being taught, the high school students, have no voice in the process other than choosing which classes to take. Even then there are many mandatory classes, and students can perhaps select a certain teacher, but they cannot avoid the class. Why is that? The State has determined that students must learn certain things, and that the State (thinks it) knows better than the student what those things should be. If the parents disagree, they can homeschool or send their child to a private school, but the students still need to learn certain subjects, like it or not. Since that is the case--students learn information that they may not be interested in (Shakespear, geometry, Reconstruction)--it does not make sense for students to be involved in the teacher assessment process. Should slaves assess their masters? Note, however, that students already evaluate their teachers informally on the internet. Comments I have read on RateMyTeacher.com do not give me confidence that high school students can assess teachers properly (even though I do well there, personally). Additionally, all teachers get a reputation and are sought after or avoided based on these rumors, fair or not. 

 

Teachers are evaluated by principals using fair but strict standards based on equity, preparation, engagement, safety, etc. Most students don't pay much attention to these things but they are the essence of good teaching!

 

I would be more comfortable including student ratings in teacher assessments if they were in elective, not mandatory classes, and answered (on a Likert scale) items such as "does this teacher teach to standards" and "did this class prepare me for a career or college?"

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to your query.

Review of Jim Rogers' Investment Autobiography, Street Smarts

credit: sg.asiatatler.com

Famed investor Jim Rogers has published a book that is part autobiography, part geopolitics, and part investment wisdom. Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets (Crown Publishing, 2013) gives his views on investing, which countries are growing more powerful and which are declining, what America must do to reform its society, and the value of raising children. Despite its wide scope, the book does not meander. Rogers engaged me throughout with his ideas about television (like me, he avoids it), politicians, ethics, and what it takes to succeed.

As an autobiography, the book reveals that Rogers single mindedly tried to understand how markets worked and struggled without pause to do so. He enjoyed learning how the world works, so he was motivated to understand markets as well as wanting not to lose money. He worked on holidays and through weekends. He had few distractions as none of his earlier marriages lasted long or produced children. The picture on the left shows Rogers with his third wife, Paige. He now has two Mandarin-speaking daughters as well. Rogers insists that he was successful because of his ability to think independently and willingness to travel and look at  information sources himself.

The two main themes of the book are the transition to Asia as the economic powerhouse as American leadership declines and "a cyclical shift away from financial firms as a source of prosperity" (P. 5) in favor of producers of real goods, especially foodstuffs. (As an aside, brick and mortar education may be replaced by distance learning, and Rogers predicts many of today's elite universities will go bankrupt.)

Rogers states that the United States needs to do five things to be saved: change the tax system, change the education system, institute health-care and litigation reform, and bring the troops home" (P. 241), but he is doubtful that these reforms will occur because of the power of special interests. He suggests that the legislative branch  no longer meet in Washington, D.C., and instead the representatives and senators should in their local areas and meet virtually, avoiding the power of the special interest groups.

Since Rogers conducts his business dealings ethically and believes his good name is invaluable, I found it interesting that he glosses over human rights violations in many of the leading Asian countries, comparing these problems to those in early America:  lack of real democracy in the early years of the American Republic and the existence of a late 19th-century plutocracy. In other words, according to Rogers the United States committed many of the same sins now found in Asia. I find this comparison unfair as our government has committed crimes of omission (because the Constitution limits its powers) rather than commission, such as throwing people in prison because of their beliefs. Rogers' unwillingness to come to terms with Asian oppression is the weakness of this book. He feels that China, Myanmar, and North Korea will eventually change for the better. So invest today! Despite this flaw, the book is well worth reading.

I have previously recommended Rogers' Investment Biker book to my economics students and will add this book to my list of recommended books as well.

See my previous blogs about North Korea here and food prices here and here.

The Biggest Urbanization Program Ever and Food Prices

Source: NYT

According to the New York Times (link here), China is in the midst of a program to move 250 million people from the countryside to cities, joining the 450 million that already live in Chinese cities. China's goal is to be 70 percent urban, and therefore modernized by 2025. A quarter of a billion people will be watching their ancestral villages return to the earth and are pushed into modernity "replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers"

(China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities, June 15, 2013 New York Times)

The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew up as an entrepôt for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives — they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when the money runs out.

Aggressive state spending is planned on new roads, hospitals, schools, community centers — which could cost upward of $600 billion a year, according to economists’ estimates. In addition, vast sums will be needed to pay for the education, health care and pensions of the ex-farmers.

While the economic fortunes of many have improved in the mass move to cities, unemployment and other social woes have also followed the enormous dislocation. Some young people feel lucky to have jobs that pay survival wages of about $150 a month; others wile away their days in pool halls and video-game arcades (ibid).

Economically, city dwellers create demand for goods and services and country-dwellers do not.

The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China’s economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation, utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers consuming only what they produce. “If half of China’s population starts consuming, growth is inevitable,” said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. “Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume” (ibid.)

In addition to moving people from rural to urban areas, the Chinese government is trying to get rid of unsightly hamlets and make way for large industrial projects such as dams. My uncle, fresh from a visit to China, writes: 

Mike,

Here are a couple of pictures of Chongqing showing the poorer area that will soon be demolished and replaced by modern high rise apartments. The other [third picture] shows a modern 'village' on the Yangtze River that replaced a village that now is under the river since the dam was completed. 1.5 million people were relocated when they built the dam.

Will this great experiment work? Will China succeed in creating a massive modern economy, dwarfing the demand for goods and services enjoyed in the United States, or will it create a large underclass of unskilled, slum dwellers? I don't know. I will guess, however, that this urbanization program will create greater demand for food. City dwellers tend to eat more animal and processed products, creating more demand for grains, sugars, and other basic foodstuffs. Farmers, rapidly decreasing in number, eat closer to the base of the food chain. I also believe that China's gamble on urbanization will decrease the supply of food. The government is paving over farmland or giving it to local governments and agribusiness. Meanwhile, brilliant investor Jim Rogers writes:

Until prices  reach a point where growing food is profitable, the world's farmers, who are currently aging and dying, are not going to be replaced. Prices must rise, and they will. In recent years, the world has been consuming more food than it has produced. Those inventories that were so high in the 1980s are now historically low, somewhere near 14 percent of consumption. The world is facing drastic shortages. Food prices are on the way up (Rogers, Jim, Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets, Crown Publishing, 2013, P.28).

Look for food prices to increase, whether inflation appears or not. (See my previous blog on this issue here.)

Child Care--When is it Good or Bad for Children?

Child care is a helpful option for adults. It lets them, especially mothers, have more possibilities after choosing to have a child--free time to work or to get a respite away from children. However, under what conditions is child care good or bad for the children? When do children in pre-kindergarten child care have outcomes as good as those raised by a parent or other primary caretaker?  The Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (link here) by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) gives complex answers to these two questions.

Why look at another government study? "The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), is the most comprehensive study to date of children and the many environments in which they develop" (P. 6). This longitudinal (16-year), national project studied more than 1,000 children from one-month of age.What are the findings?

On the one hand the NICHD study finds that children "who were cared for exclusively by their mothers did not develop differently than those who were also cared for by others" (P.5). On the other hand, "children with higher quantity (total combined number of hours) of experience in non-maternal child care showed somewhat more behavior problems in child care and in kindergarten classrooms than those who had experienced fewer hours" (ibid.) How can we reconcile both statements? One may conclude from this study that longer hours of child care was correlated with children behaving slightly worse--less socialized and less ready for the rules of the classroom. But parent characteristics, that is, whether the parents were emotionally supportive and created a cognitively enriched environment, whether parents had higher education and family income, whether both parents were together and raising the child, and, and whether the parents were psychologically well-adjusted and sensitive to the child's needs (P.25) were more important than the child care (P.5).

If parent characteristics are most important and if middle class families are, in the aggregate, less chaotic than disadvantaged families, child care quality becomes critical primarily for disadvantaged, chaotic households if one takes the research to its logical conclusions. The NICHD study does not support this conclusion (P.15), but other studies do, especially the longitudinal Abecedarian project, which showed cognitive improvements in disadvantaged children up to young adulthood. These disadvantaged kids also developed better health habits, were more likely to go to college and make more money, and were less likely to end up in trouble. The Abecedarian study also positively affected the behaviors of the teenage mothers of these children, making it more likely they would finish their schooling and be self-supporting.

Yet, how many disadvantaged mothers are able to take advantage of high-quality child care such as that offered by the Abecedarian project? Most disadvantaged parents do not have access to high-quality child care, using instead a relative or friend down the street. This care is not as bad as that of Uncle Ernie (in The Who's rock opera, Tommy), but unlicensed and unregulated care by relatives or friends is often poor quality, and, of course, unlicensed and unregulated care at centers is often poor quality as well. The NICHD authors admit that most child care is not high quality (P. 1 5). Low-quality care and low-quality parenting can be poor combination.

Children were somewhat more likely to be insecurely attached to their mothers if they were in lower quality care, but only if their mothers were also lower in sensitivity during interactions with their children (P.13).

These effects were less strong in the NICHD study, stronger in other studies. Insecurely attached children have increased stress and coping problems (Spangler 1993) and are less equipped to handle the rigors of public school. I will give more data on the dangers of low-quality care below.

Now let us leave the world of research and enter the even more murky universe of psychological theory. John Bowlby, founder of attachment theory, wrote that children belong with their mothers. Here is a summation of his famous book, Child Care and the Growth of Love:

• Maternal deprivation is a key cause of mental ill-health.
• Mothers are central to a child’s development with fathers and extended family members providing a supporting role.
• Any maternal separation will adversely affect a child to some degree.
• Efforts should be made to avoid family failure but even state support may not be enough where the fundamental problem is failing parents.
• Adoption should be undertaken as soon as possible.
• Where possible, the mothers of illegitimate children should be given the support to care for their children.
• Fostering, if possible with the extended family or neighbors, should be used for short term emergencies.
• Group care should be confined to treatment, the care of adolescents or the short-term care of younger children and sibling groups.
• In both fostering and group care parental contact should be encouraged.
• Treatment, whether for physical or mental illnesses, should if possible be provided in the child’s natural home and otherwise in homes close enough for parental contact.

NICHD researchers do not find differences in attachment security between kids in day care or at home, but Bowlby, interviewed well after his WWII orphanage observations that were the crux of his theory, was not a proponent of center-based care! And it is a stretch to imagine either Bowlby or (famous attachment researcher) Mary Ainsworth approving of center-based care where the child's primary (love) object can change day-to-day.

As a son and brother of academic researchers, I trust the scientific method over theory or other forms of evidence in determining the efficacy of child care. However, the most vociferous criticisms against child care come from heavily emotional personal stories. Conservative writer Karl Zinsmeister supplies plenty of anecdotal fodder in his article, The Problem with Day Care (The American Enterprise, May/June 1998). Much of it bemoans the lack of ANY high-quality child care.

Author Linda Burton is another person who has described in detail what she came across while scouring her hometown (the Washington, D.C. area) for day care:

In one instance, I found the "absolutely marvelous" family day care provider, recommended by trusted friends, sleeping on her sofa while 11 children (she had informed me that she only cared for five) wandered aimlessly around in front of the blaring TV. Another time, on an unannounced visit, I found that the "highly recommended" licensed day care provider confined seven preschoolers to her tiny dining room. I found them huddled together, leaning over a barricade to watch a TV program showing in the adjacent room.

These are not isolated anecdotes. Anyone investigating the world of full-time day care quickly amasses files of such testimony. A few years ago the Metropolitan Toronto Social Planning Council investigated a sample of 281 day care homes. They reported that a small number were genuinely stimulating, and another small number were out-and-out abusive. The large majority, however, provided care that was merely indifferent. Only a few of the caregivers studied were able to make themselves genuinely interested in each of their individual enrollees. In a significant minority of cases, youngsters were simply ignored most of the time.

Despite the doubts of Bowlby, despite how children cared by multiple caregivers would be a unrecommended practice according to attachment theory, and despite anecdotal evidence, NICHD research has shown few negative attachment effects on children in child care. By 2005, the American Academy of Pediatrics had revised its policy. Based on the NICHD and Abecedarian studies, it's publication, Quality Early Education and Child Care from Birth to Kindergarten (Volume 115, No. 1, January 1) stated a change in favor of child care but only high-quality care (or parenting).

When care is consistent, developmentally sound, and emotionally supportive, there is a positive effect on the child and the family.^8–21 Children exposed to a poor-quality environment, whether at home or outside the home, are less likely to be prepared for school demands and more likely to have their socioemotional development derailed.^8–21 The inadequate outcomes of children in poor-quality care often cannot be fully remedied in the formal structure of the K-12 educational system because of the need for noneducational services such as mental and behavioral health care.

As seen in the Abecedarian study above, lasting positive affects were seen when low-income children experience high-quality care. However, as noted by NICHD researchers, the authors of Quality Early Education and Child Care from Birth to Kindergarten write, "most child care centers in the United States are rated poor to mediocre in quality, with almost half meeting less than minimal standards" (ibid.).

Until child care improves in quality, low-income children will continue to suffer. Economically disadvantaged but "good-enough" parents (as Winnicott would say) may get better outcomes by avoiding low-quality child care if they have an economic choice.

Unreasonable Search and Seizure: Democracy and The Fall of the 4th Amendement

from Malcontends.blogspot.com

In the name of security the NSA continues to collect Americans' phone and email data. Please read what the Fourth Amendment says. Is there "probable cause" that ALL of us are terrorists? Of course not, and ex-president Jimmy Carter, in between hurling diatribes at Israel and supporting (at one time, democratically elected) radical Islamists in Egypt, complains that something has been lost.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter … in the wake of the NSA spying scandal criticized the American political system. “America has no functioning democracy,” Carter said Tuesday [July 16, 2013] at a meeting of the “Atlantic Bridge” in Atlanta.(link here or  here)

 As usual, Carter isn't quite correct, but this time he is heading in the right direction. As shown by the writings of Aristotle and the actions of Robespierre, a democracy can be a tyranny. A constitutional republic, however, protects minorities from being trampled by the majority. We are not a democracy; we are a constitutional republic. For example, Congress could easily pass a law restricting the free speech of racists, terrorists, and communists, but the courts would not allow it (I hope). The Bill of Rights, that is, our Constitution, protects everyone's liberties, even the liberties of those that are unpopular, and protects those liberties despite the votes of the majority. Does our democracy function? Yes. Is it able to check the power of the NSA? Currently, no! That is what Carter is really saying. How did this come to pass?

Every three months a secret court approves the NSA's searching of American citizens. The (July 7, 2013) New York Times explains:

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said....In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said. The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said. (link here)

Don't worry. Everything is perfectly legal. Justice was executed in exact accordance with the law in Imperial Rome, Communist Russia, and Nazi Germany too, by the way. You have almost no rights against the NSA's unlawful search and seizure because a secret court,  far removed from any democratic accountability, transparency, and checks and balances, broadened a narrow Supreme Court ruling in order to completely gut the Fourth Amendment. The FISA judges may say that NSA's data mining of millions of innocent Americans does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. I believe that our constitutionally accountable John G. Roberts' judicial branch should give an opinion.

If a 2016 presidential candidate comes out strongly against this abuse of federal power (like, ironically, the 2008 Obama), he or she will get a lot of support, especially from Jimmy Carter.

Postscript July 26, 2013: The Obama administration fights a Congressional  amendment to cut the NSA's budget. Unfortunately, the pro-NSA forces won in Congress, though the vote was close. Could this scandal create a left-right alliance? (links here and here) See also how Obama resembles Bush here in W's Apprentice here John Roberts himself picks the FISA judges (link here).

Energy Consumption Continues to Increase

David Owen's New Yorker article (December 20, 2010), The Efficiency Dilemma should be required reading  (link here) for anyone interested in energy consumption. Owen analyzes Jevons' Paradox: the more the efficiency, the greater the consumption. Owens writes, "The problem with efficiency gains is that we inevitably reinvest them in additional consumption." Refrigerators, computers, dishwashers, driers, automobiles, and air conditioning units are all much more efficient than before. However, we use more of them and total energy use (and greenhouse emissions) has climbed.

Owen writes about his family's experience with home air conditioning, 60 years ago a rare luxury. Today air conditioning is found in most homes in the Midwest and South as well as  in most office buildings and new cars. The costs are less than before so people don't hesitate to use air conditioning day and night.

Owen concludes that efficiency will not bring about lowered energy consumption. Like anything else, making energy more costly will create incentives to use less of it.

Can Government Spend Us Into Prosperity--Evaluating Keynes

New Yorker magazine economics writer John Cassidy defends the father of orthodox macroeconomics, John Maynard Keynes, in The Demand Doctor, (The New Yorker, October 10, 2011, link here). As an AP Macroeconomics teacher, I can confidently state that I and all other AP Macroecon instructors teach Keynesian theory. That is, we show how society benefits from creating "aggregate demand." Governments manufacture aggregate demand by cobbling together large public works projects or, less directly and less powerfully, giving money back to the people in the manner of tax cuts. Despite my or perhaps because of my familiarity with the theory of aggregate demand, a month before Cassidy's article was published I predicted Obama's Keynesian stimulus would fail (link here). Keynes' method of attacking unemployment through public works projects is more controversial than ever. Conservatives blame the Obama stimulus for the worst stretch of unemployment since the Great Depression: 54 months of unemployment at 7.5% or worse (link here), and only 47% of Americans have full-time jobs.

If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn't surprising that economic growth has been so weak.  In June, the number of Americans who wanted to work full-time, but were forced into part-time jobs because of the economy, jumped 352,000 to over 8 million.(Mike Flynn, Breitbart.com, link here)

Liberals argue that Obama's stimulus was a success. If the government had not intervened, we would have entered another Great Depression. This argument fails to persuade me, since it can never be proven one way or another. We cannot go back in time and try a laissez-faire policy, though an uninterested federal government allowed the economy to work itself right out of depressions (or "panics" as they were called) throughout the 19th century. Liberals and Keynesians employ a much better argument by examining the size of the stimulus package. Cassidy writes

He would also have noted that the stimulus was—especially compared with the devastation it meant to address—rather small: equivalent to less than two per cent of G.D.P. a year for three years. Even this overstates its magnitude, given that much of the increase in federal spending was offset by budget cuts at the state and local levels. In its totality, government spending didn’t increase much at all. Between 2007 and the first half of this year [2011], it rose by about three per cent in real dollars.

In other words, the biggest Keynesian spending project ever, worth $825 billion, was too small. We should have spent more than a trillion dollars. Economist Larry Summers calls for another trillion on infrastructure (source here). I wonder if those that advocate for such things figure what might happen if we had a national debt that was even bigger than $16 trillion and what that might do to the economy. According to writer Bill Bonner, even "if America taxed 100 percent of all household wealth, it would not be enough to put its balance sheet in the black" (link here). (Well, never mind; an extra trillion dollar stimulus didn't happen and probably won't any time soon.)

Economist Larry Summers worries about unemployment. If only the stimulus of 2009 was bigger or he could do it twice

Source: New York Times

.

What else went wrong?Cassidy also argues that the government needed to solve the banking and housing problems. "Following the crisis of 2008, both the Bush and the Obama Administrations moved promptly to shore up the banking system, but they neglected to deal with the housing debacle."

I think these excuses are poor, and the culprit can be found elsewhere. The Obama stimulus failed. (The president promised six percent unemployment by 2012 and a reduction of poverty.)  Why didn't it work? The answer may have more to do with a faulty tenet of Keynesian theory--the multiplier. Cassidy writes

a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at data going back to 1980 and found that government investments in infrastructure and civic projects had a multiplier of 1.8—pretty close to Keynes’s estimate [of two].

Well, maybe not. Cassidy discards the research of Robert Barro, saying his work doesn't apply in a recession.

Echoing the arguments that Keynes’s opponents at the Treasury made during the nineteen-thirties, conservative economists like Robert Barro, at Harvard, argue that it [the muiltiplier] is close to zero: for every dollar the government borrows and spends, spending elsewhere in the economy falls by almost the same amount. Whenever individuals see the government boosting spending or cutting taxes on a temporary basis, Barro maintains, they figure that these policies will eventually have to be paid for in the form of higher taxes. As a result, they set aside extra money in savings, which cancels out the stimulus.

Equally powerful is the work of  Stanford and German professors Cogan et al (link here) in their article New Keynesian versus Old Keynesian Government Spending Multipliers, which argues that old Keynsian  models used multipliers that were six times too high. Spending projects lower unemployment much less than was previously believed.

Review of Faith or Fear

Elliott Abrams (source Wikipedia)

In the June 21 J Magazine op/ed, local Conservative Rabbi Menachem Creditor bemoans the shutdown of the Conservative movement's college outreach program. He then explains why the American Conservative movement (USCJ) is declining, but declining it is. "Fewer and fewer synagogues are affiliated with USCJ..."

Elliott Abrams, in his book Faith or Fear, How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, tackles the problem of Jewish continuity. Will Jews in America survive the ravages of assimilation and population decline?

The results of the National Jewish Population Study of 1990, and several other major works of research, draw the portrait of a community in decline, facing a demographic disaster. The term "disaster" is no exaggeration: Jews, who once comprised 3.7 percent of the U.S. population, have fallen to about 2 percent....Demographers predict a drop of anywhere from one million to over two million in the American Jewish population in the next two generations (pp.1-2).

At the same time, however, Orthodox Jews are increasing their numbers. Never has the Orthodox community been more vibrant, opening day schools and synagogues and demanding that marriage stay within the faith. Ironically, " the very Jewish groups who most loudly profess their anxiety about Christians are, with a frequency never before seen in all of Jewish history, marrying them" (P.99). Intermarriage is rampant because antisemitism among Christians has declined significantly over the last 80 years. At the same time much of the non-Orthodox Jewish community has abandoned Jewish ritual practice and injunctions against intermarriage. In its place the mainstream Jewish community has taken up the religion of secularism and liberalism--all religion is an anachronism and abhorrent. So the  liberal Jew cares not about the Christian's faith (or his own) since it is simply a collection of old and ridiculous superstitions, and now, since she no longer demonizes his Jewish background, the two can and will marry.

Can the non-Orthodox denominations of American Jewry be saved from extinction? According to Abrams, it matters less if one is Orthodox as long as Jews use Orthodox tactics: high levels of admission to (private religious) day schools. Jewish communal groups need to lower tuition rates to make this happen. Secondly, mainstream American Judaism must increase ritual observance--more Torah study, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath, etc. Abrams argues that one does not have to become fully Orthodox and completely observant--just ratchet up one's level of ritual commitment. If you do not believe, do it anyway for the generations that will come after you. Only then will American Jews continue to thrive.

Elliott Abrams is, of course, the neocon, responsible for much national policy in the years before the Obama administration. One should therefore not be surprised that his book is a conservative reaction to the problem of Jewish continuity. The other option, Alexander Schindler's idea to convert secular non-Jews and non Jewish spouses has not convinced the children of these unions to stay Jewish (P. 118).

Poor in America

U.S. Poverty Rates Higher, Safety Net Weaker than in Peer Countries (Issue Brief #339, July 24, 2012) argue Elise Gould and Hilary Wething of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

"Poverty rates in the United States increased over the 2000s, a trend exacerbated by the Great Recession and its aftermath. By 2010, just over 46 million people fell below the U.S. Census Bureau's official poverty line..."

When one compares American poverty to comparable and similar developed countries the U.S. is found wanting. American poor, characterized as the 10th percentile in income, fare poorly compared to the American median income, receiving less than half the income of the average worker, far below the international peer average of 62 percent. Secondly, "inequality in the United States is so severe that low-earning U.S. workers are actually worse off than low-earning workers in all but seven peer countries..." Third, in the late 2000s, "17.3 percent of the U.S. population lived in poverty--the highest relative poverty rate among OECD peers." (The relative poverty rate is defined here as the share of individuals living in households with income below half of house-hold size-adjusted median income. Poverty rates are based on income after taxes and transfers.)

The extent of child poverty is even more severe. In "2009 the United States had the highest rate of child poverty among peer countries at 23.1 percent..." and the child poverty gap, the difference between those in poverty to those with median income, is 37.5 percent, again, the highest among peer countries. Thus American poor kids face high relative deprivation compared to the rest of American society.

Lastly, the United States, through taxes and transfer programs, spends little compared with its peers to reduce child poverty. Child poverty is not merely about who can afford a burger and fries. It also affects educational achievement. David Berliner argues that targeted " economic and social policies have more potential to improve the nation's schools than almost anything currently being proposed by either political party at federal, state or local levels" (quoted in American Teacher, January/February, 2013).

So how have things changed during the last two years? The U.K.'s Mail Online reported recently (April 2, 2013) the headline: U.S. sees highest poverty spike since the 1960s, leaving 50 million Americans poor as government cuts billions in spending... so does that mean there's no way out? 

The article states:

As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans — one in six — were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the [U.S. Census] bureau. A family of four that earns less than $23,021 a year is listed as living in poverty. The bureau said 20 percent of the country's children are poor.

 Notice that we have grown the number of poor from 46 million to nearly 50 million and child poverty has decreased from 23 to 20 percent (though I suspect a rounding error). The Mail Online claims that the level of poverty is the worst since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs started. Who's to blame? Liberals that say budget cuts are at fault and conservatives that say budget deficits and policies anathema to capitalism are to blame.

Lastly, the Wall Street Journal writes "the number of recipients in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), reached 47.3 million, or nearly one in seven Americans" in January, 2013. "Though annual growth continues, the pace has slowed since the depths of the recession."

Examining the SNAP website myself, the participation level in January, 2013 was 47.7 million, only 20,000 less than the record the month before and three million more than fiscal year 2011. The poor seem left out of the recovery.

Obama's $9/hour Minimum Wage

The American people can assess the political merits of Obama's proposed $9 minimum wage easily enough--the rights of employers (liberty) versus societal responsibilities to the workforce (equity). Obama does not trust business, big or small, and believes that government must intervene to protect workers. One will agree or disagree with the president depending on ones political leanings. Liberals and a few moderates will support raising the minimum wage, but most citizens, conservatives and the majority of moderates, will not.

Evaluating the minimum wage controversy from an economic perspective is even more clear. The diagram (left) of a minimum wage, a type of price floor, shows that without government intervention, level Qf workers are employed. After the government mandates a price floor above the free market equilibrium point, a minimum wage, the amount of workers employed drops to Qd. In other words, according to economic theory, the minimum wage increases unemployment. How much? The unemployment (the surplus) is the difference between Qs and Qd. (The supply line is the supply of available workers at different price levels and the demand line is the demand that employers have for those workers at different price levels.)

The higher wage brings out a greater supply of workers. In this case, more teenagers will flood the job market, looking for that $9/hour instead of going to summer camp or on a trip. However, the demand for these workers falls because much entry level labor is not worth $9. Thus there is a surplus of workers and greater unemployment than before.

That is the theory. Cal professor David Card, interviewed in the UC Berkeley alumni magazine disagrees, but only partially. Here is part of the interview:

In 1994 you published a study with Alan Krueger that found that raising the minimum wage would not create higher unemployment. Given the more recent economy and the growing number of fast food and retail workers demanding a $15 per hour wage, do you believe your findings from 20 years ago still apply?
David Card: Currently the federal minimum wage is $7.25. So a rise to $15 would be more than a 100 percent increase in the minimum. Our New Jersey-Pennsylvania study focused on a 19 percent rise in the minimum wage (from $4.25 to $5.05). I don’t think one can extrapolate from a 19 percent rise to a 107 percent rise. In fact, faced with a $15 minimum wage, I suspect that employers in many low-wage areas of the country would simply refuse to comply. Realistically there is not much chance of more than a 25 or 30 percent rise in the minimum. For that range of increase I think our results would still be relevant. In fact, a number of studies since our work have confirmed our finding that the employment losses associated with a modest rise in the minimum wage are barely detectable.

On the other hand, tying increases of the minimum wage to inflation, a "never-ending escalator" of cost increases for business, has disasterous potential. See the study here.

Will the minimum wage help the few workers that get entry level jobs? Yes, but not much. A full time worker making $9 an hour earns $18,000 per year, well below the poverty line.  Nations do not become wealthy by enacting price floors. Instead, countries enrich their citizens by increasing productivity. The best way to do that is to better American education and increase research and development.

Differentiated Instruction and Teacher Development

Why Use Differentiated Instruction

Teachers must assess the abilities of different learners, fast and slow. PLC experts demand that all kids learn, not just the gifted kids. Therefore, teachers must adjust their practice for students of different abilities. If teachers don’t adjust enough, some kids will be bored or shut down, leading to classroom management problems, and not all will learn. If the teacher adjusts too much (in the extreme, giving every student an individualized lesson) the lesson plan becomes overly fragmented and the lesson loses any forward momentum. Therefore, the instructor must employ differentiated instruction carefully.

Categorizing student abilities as high, medium, and low provides differentiation and allows for most variation in ability. (See below for a better model.) I ask myself, how will low/medium/high ability students handle this lesson, and what do I have set up in the lesson itself to allow these three different ability kids to excel? Teachers can benefit from incorporating pairing and group work in lessons, because it allows all types of kids to master the material. I avoid special lessons for the low achievers. I would rather give them extra help or extra time and use pairings and group work.

What to do right now: Experiment with pairing and group work as shown below.

Pairings

At the beginning of the school year give the kids five minutes (literally) to find four partners—their 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 partners. You can also do this for them to better assure randomness and a more homogeneous selection of partners or go the other direction and make sure that certain students of different abilities are working together. Later in the year, you may yell out, “Work out the reading problem with your 9:00 partner,” and everyone will know what to do and will get help from a stronger student or teach a weaker student.

Group Work

As noted above, jigsawing material works as a fun way to get kids work together to learn long readings. The stronger students take the lead in presenting the material to the rest of the class. These gifted kids know they must simplify the material for everyone else.

Advanced Work Cleverly Hidden through Choice

If I add choice to assignments, I can trick advanced kids into tackling advanced work. Many advanced kids, unfortunately, do not want to do more work and have an uncanny ability to avoid working longer than everybody else, so I offer a question that requires less time than other questions but a higher level of thinking. The gifted kids will usually bite.

Another Model for Differentiating Students

I am exploring a more complicated alternative to organizing students along one axis: high, medium, and low aptitude. I have experimented with monitoring two criteria, aptitude and willingness to work. I then differentiate instruction based on ambition in the classroom as well as ability. The Wechsler (WISC) IQ test can be substituted for ability if the assessor does not have historical grades for the student. Why use an IQ test? Outside of California, where the IQ test has been banned from schools for political reasons, IQ tests correlate very well with K-6 scholastic achievement, more modestly for the higher grades. French psychologist Alfred Binet developed the IQ test to quickly find students that needed extra help in school. As a Californian I have to make an educated guess about a student’s ability. I usually base my inferences on the student’s performance in my class, performance in earlier classes, and state test scores. Please note that I have not yet directly addressed cultural diversity and language issues.

If a student prefers not to present in public, look the teacher in the eye, or win at a game (forcing others to lose) he may not perform as well as he could in some assessments. This student may be assessed more accurately through traditional paper and pencil tests and group work that emphasizes cooperation over competition. The teacher can then more confidently evaluate this student’s willingness to work and his abilities.

I have also encountered students, usually from impoverished families, that work hard in class, but do nothing at home. They may be working a job, watching siblings, or simply be partial to a belief system that limits school work to the time spent in the classroom. These kids may be best assessed by examining their in-class work, but grades will deservedly suffer if no work is done outside the classroom. A college-prep high school curriculum demands some homework from students. What if a student does not have sufficient academic English skills to succeed in your class?

This problem can be best addressed by making literacy issues a part of your everyday curriculum. There are plenty of native-born American kids that don’t understand the meaning of key vocabulary words such as imperialism, totalitarianism, and Cold War. Teachers must address literacy issues for everyone. Once you address the literacy issues, you can better assess the English as second language (ESL) student’s talents as laid out  below. If a student does not have a good enough grasp of English to put a few sentences together on paper, that student should be in a special sheltered class specifically tailored for kids that need to work on English as well as the curriculum. This is an administration issue, not a teaching issue.

Yet despite everything, if you have students in your class with a poor grasp of English you can still assess whether they are hard workers and whether they have academic talent—ask them about their school experience in their country of origin and check on their current math grades. I want all kids to learn, and I am pained because I have had very limited success teaching kids with little or no English skills placed in a regular (not a sheltered) class. The best I can do is to enlist other kids from the same ethnic group to help teach the ESL student and use the text book publisher’s Spanish resources, which of course, are of little help if the student doesn’t speak Spanish.

If you keep diversity issues in mind, you may find a two-criterion model, below, helpful in analyzing differential instruction in your classroom.

Willingness to Work versus Classroom Ability or IQ

Ambition or Willingness                                    Student

to Work

High                 B                                              C

                                                                                               

                                                                       

                                                                                                                       

                        Low                 A                                             D

 

Low     Ability or IQ                 High

                                   

Student A has low ability and does not try to learn the material. She skips homework assignments and gives up on the class. To pass the time she talks to her friends and mocks you when your back is turned. Would this child pass the class if she worked harder? That is the million dollar question. If the answer is yes, the teacher must work with all stakeholders (parents, counselors, coaches) to motivate the student. Occasionally a “deal” will help, such as “I’ll pass you with a D minus if you pass the final with a grade of C.”

If the answer is no, we have encountered student B, and administration and counselors must work together to place the child in an appropriate class. Neither the student nor the teacher is well served by leaving student B in a class where failure is guaranteed. An immediate intervention is in order.

Student C, the denizen of AP classes and honor rolls, makes teachers look good, though student C would probably do well even if the teacher lectured in Aramaic. Paradoxically, the most ambitious and experienced teachers instruct at the AP level, but the mid and low level classes require better classroom management skills and more time differentiating instruction than the AP classes.

Student D tries, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to get by with natural talent and information learned previously, usually outside the class. Student D is either lazy or placed in a class that does not interest her. This type of student acts as a poor role model for the rest of the class and reinforces the insidious stereotype that good students are born, not made. I want to kick these kids upstairs to the AP classes, where they are forced to perform or perish. If a D kid is stuck with me in a regular (not advanced or AP) class, I must grit my teeth and bear the frustration. These kids are used to getting by on raw talent, and my track record inspiring them to work has been rather disheartening. I was, more often than not a D kid in high school myself and didn’t start working hard until college. Perhaps if I was forced into social studies AP classes, which were nonexistent in my school at the time, I would have matured faster. A quick way of identifying whether a student is an A, B, C, or D student is by examining who feels most frustrated in the teacher-student relationship. This frustration may express itself overtly by angry acting-out behavior by either teacher or student unless both work together to solve the problem. (See below.)

Determining student type by assessing who is frustrated

Student Type	A	B	C	D
Who’s frustrated	both	student	no one	teacher
Typical comments	Teacher: “This kid doesn’t want to pass” Student: “I hate this class.”	Student: “This class is too hard.”	Teacher: “I want 150 kids like him.”	Teacher: “This lazy kid will get his comeuppance some day.”
Possible solutions	Meet with student and parents.	Put the student in a remedial class or give the student tools to catch up.	Pray for more of these kids.	Encourage the student to enroll in an advanced class.

Most teachers balk at creating three or four variations of each lesson in an attempt to service the A, B, C, and D student types. In addition to the pairings and group work mentioned above, I have had success with interactive projects and student-centered activities. These projects and activities have enough inherent appeal and changeability that all but the most shut-down students participate in the activity and learn. These activities include:

• Writing skits and performing them
• Composing a political cartoon
• Participating in a mock trial
• Presenting with a group where all get a role

Long Range Goals for Improvement

Many of the best teachers leave teaching for the administrative track. While I can’t fault those attracted to power and leadership roles (as well as much more money), escaping the difficulties of the classroom, one can improve one’s skills and monetary situation on the teacher track as well. As a professional, the mindful teacher acts like any other professional—doctor, lawyer, or CPA—and works to hone her craft, whether or not the state demands one do so.

Competency in Core Fields and Successful Classroom Management

My graduate training was in psychology, not history, but I have a background as a voracious reader of history. As a “backdoor history teacher” my preparation was good enough to pass the state board exams for social studies but not good enough to feel comfortable teaching most history classes. I continued my reading of history, state standards under one arm and a book under the other, selecting areas of history where I felt unprepared. Additionally, I researched and wrote lessons most nights for a couple of years.

After sufficient preparation, we teachers demonstrate competency in the core classes of our discipline. In social studies, for example, one must master modern world history and American history. I became more skilled in managing a classroom, however, by watching master teachers, reflecting how my classes were going, and setting out a goal on how I wanted my classroom to work. One teacher told me that I could have whatever type of class I wanted. What he meant was that teachers can have a quiet disciplined class or a more boisterous group—it is completely up to the wishes and skills of the teacher.

Specialized Training

Many states require high school teachers to earn a masters degree. If not, get one anyway when you can. A masters degree in history makes you more marketable than a masters degree in education, but they are both worthwhile. You are more likely to be hired by the school you want, and you will earn the most off your district’s salary schedule. If necessary, max out on the number of units you need after getting the masters degree. I make between $1,000 to $6,000 per year and after ten years $10,000 to $60,000 more than teachers with the same amount of experience, simply because I have taken more classes and earned an advanced degree.

What to do right now: Pursue your District’s enrichment opportunities and ask if the training can receive course credit. Often the answer is yes. Every teacher should max out on coursework needed to earn the most on the salary schedule.

Advanced Placement Courses

After one shows competency in the most critical aspects of teaching—competency in core fields and demonstrated skill in running a classroom—many teachers enjoy specializing with advanced placement (AP) course offerings. These courses demand a superior level of knowledge and greater skills in curriculum mapping and time management. Teachers instruct and build relationships with the most talented and motivated students in the school, who eagerly pursue college-level work. In addition to strengthening your teaching capabilities, these classes heighten school board interest in your teaching. Why? Parents love AP offerings, and they will encourage their children to take these classes in the future. “If you build it, they will come.”

When I started my current teaching position, my department offered one AP US History section. Now we have two sections of AP US History and also fill multiple sections in AP European History, AP Government, and AP Macro/Micro Economics. The school population remained stable throughout. Simply having the courses available manufactured their own demand for them.

Always On the Look Out

I am always on the look out for primary source documents worthy of including in lessons. Social Education, the official journal for The National Council for the Social Studies includes ready-made lessons using primary source documents. I also scour books, newspapers and magazines, both online and print editions. Most of us have certain areas of history that we really enjoy. For example, I have read many biographies on Theodore Roosevelt and when I start reading the next one, will mark pages with sticky tags, hoping to use quotes from these sections for my AP US History class.

Working on Lesson Plans

Those that prefer creating lessons in a more institutionalized setting have plenty of opportunities. I studied American history and wrote lesson plans for a three-year (Teaching American History) TAH grant. These lessons were shared with the group, edited after receiving feedback, and then uploaded to a website for all teachers. The government awards TAH grants throughout the United States, though I think you will have more luck finding one in a major metropolitan area.

Leadership Roles

A teacher doesn’t have to become an administrator to find leadership opportunities. Schools need committee chiefs. In the last few years my school administration has looked for teacher leaders for a technology committee, a number of Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation committees, student activities, Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), social studies, foreign language, English, physical education, math, science, and special education departments, and department fundraisers. Additionally, my state gives experienced teachers opportunities to mentor new teachers through the California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program. Other states have similar training programs.

Summing Up

Buffeted by societal changes and increased demands for performance but also benefiting from increasing availability of tools to analyze ones style and evaluate performance, teaching  has become a cutting-edge profession. Mindful teachers must examine the process, what is going on in the classroom as they teach, and the product, the data that proves that students are learning. I hope that you continue to reflect on your teaching--what works and doesn’t work—and make adjustments in that never-ending quest for excellence and learning.

Using Assessments in Teaching

Formative Assessment Validity

A trendy and popular movement in education, the professional learning community (PLC) may revolutionize teaching practices. In a nutshell, the movement professionalizes the practice of teaching by forcing teachers to rigorously analyze their practice by using a powerful tool--collaborative examination of assessment data. The data, properly collected and presented, shows how much teaching and learning value the teacher adds to a student, and, more importantly, the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher’s practice against specific state standards. Therefore, the teacher knows what she must do to improve and knows where to find assistance, by collaborating with another member of the department that has more success teaching that particular standard. After reading Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, I am less confident in the power of comparing small samples of assessment data. When we compare larger, “normal” and therefore more randomly selected student samples, I feel more confident that the differences between teacher outcomes are statistically valid. Certainly, teaching technique must be analyzed somehow, and I am more comfortable examining the teacher’s method itself (which is what this writing is attempting to do) and less comfortable relying only on outcomes.

Looking closer at assessments, the linchpin of the PLC process, teachers have many different types of formative and cumulative at their disposal. If a department chooses to improve assessments for PLC work, the assessments must be common to the department at minimum, and later common to the entire district. In order, easiest to hardest to grade, teachers may use for their assessments multiple choice, fill-in, short answer or short essay questions. Longer essays force students to recall and not just identify the answer, and also compel students to critically analyze and synthesize data. Thus long essays may enjoy the highest validity of all assessments, but they are also the most difficult and time consuming to grade. By developing a detailed rubric and training teachers in using the rubric, teachers can work together to avoid reliability issues that usually mar grading across different assessors. Multiple choice tests require no rubric and the reliability between teachers is perfect—all teachers use the same key. However, since multiple choice tests often show ability to identify concepts rather than to work with them in any useful practical way, I have doubts about their validity in judging the “whole” student. I believe that the AP Board assesses students using both multiple choice and essays for good reason. As a one-time AP exam reader, I can vouch for the excellent rubrics and training readers received using those rubrics when grading essays. (See Figure  below for looking at the tradeoff between assessment validity and cross-teacher reliability.)

Reliability Versus Validity of Assessments

Validity of Assessment

High

                                                            D                     E

                                                                        C

                                                                                                B          A        

                                                                                   

 

Low                                                                 High

Cross-Teacher Reliability

A: multiple choice assessments

B: fill-in assessments

C: short answer assessments

D: essays without rubric

E: essays with rubric

Point E, the essays with rubric, combines the highest level of validity with a moderately high level of cross-teacher reliability. Unfortunately, essays take the longest to grade and since the department must create a rubric, demand much preparation time. Teachers consider time a precious resource as well as validity and reliability. (See figure below.) Multiple choice tests are popular since they are graded quicker than any other assessment—you just run them through the scantron machine, and if you are as quick as I, at 20 per minute.

Time Needed for Grading

Time Needed for

Preparation of Assessment                                  E

High

                                                A                                

                                                    B     

                                                            C

                                                                                    D                                

                                                                                   

Low                                                                 High

Time needed for grading assessment

A: multiple choice assessments

B: fill-in assessments

C: short answer assessments

D: essays without rubric

E: essays with rubric

However, multiple choice questions take a lot of time to compose. Teachers are not trained to create multiple wrong answers! The short answer test may offer a reasonable compromise between test creation and time to grade and take the least amount of time when both test composition and grading time are taken into account. Teachers may prefer one formative assessment over another based on both time constraints and the level of validity needed. After administering the assessment, teachers may chose to re-teach a lesson or make other adjustments to future lessons to increase student learning. Successful teachers, in the spirit of the PLC movement, work with their colleagues to find successful strategies for re-teaching.

Informal Formative Assessments

Teachers that include a formative assessment, and therefore check for understanding at some point in every lesson plan, will ensure that more students learn. These assessments can be created by the seat of one’s pants, without preparation, and are usually labeled as “informal” assessments. These may include a “ticket out of class;” asking a specific student the answer to a key concept, and then (if that fails) getting the student to partner up or asking everyone in the class; splitting the class arbitrarily in half and debating a controversial point; and engaging in games. My favorite three games, baseball, jeopardy, and flyswatter (matamoscas) can be created quickly when needed and are so enjoyable that the students ask to play them if there are a few minutes left in the period.

• Baseball (also mentioned above in my [students’] favorite things): allows students to pick a question that is easy or difficult. Students ask for a “single” (easiest), “double” (medium difficulty), “triple” (hard) or “home run” (very difficult). When a student gives a correct response to the question, she goes to one of the four “bases” I have set up around the room. If she gets the answer wrong, she, the batter, is “out” and her team continues with a new batter. If it’s the third out, the other team bats. Each team scores runs when hitters are batted in by others or home runs. Rules for baseball are only loosely enforced, always in a way that allows me to emphasize material they ought to know. Unprepared or lazy students may ask for a home run question to avoid showing the class how little they actually know. When that happens, reserve home run questions for high achieving students or make a miss of a home run question worth two outs. I recycle home run questions, using them for a “double” or “triple” question later since we have lost the novelty of the question, and another student may have looked up the answer to the question. I can play a few innings of baseball in fifteen minutes.
• Jeopardy: demands more teacher preparation than baseball. In my advanced classes I often assign students to come up with answers needed to run the game. These answers must be categorized by topic and by level of difficulty. Harder answers are worth more points. Try to run the game similar to the television show. The winning group can win a nominal prize such as a picture taken with a digital camera.
• Flyswatter (matamoscas): answers must be set up on the board before class, either by the teacher or by advanced students. Typically the composer creates 20 one- or two-word answers that match questions the teacher will give to the contestants. Two contestants compete. Each contestant has his back turned to the board (and the answers), turning towards the board, rolled up newspaper (or flyswatter) in hand. The first contestant that swats at the correct answer on the board wins that round and faces a new contestant. Both Jeopardy and flyswatter require mere identification of the answer. Teachers can compose questions that require higher order thinking, a la Bloom’s Taxonomy, for baseball.
• Interactive lecture: resembles a conversation on two levels. First, the teacher converses with herself, paraphrasing actual history. What might FDR have said to officials in the State Department right before meeting Stalin at Yalta? (Play it out.) What was Reagan’s conversation with Gorbachev as they tried to hammer out an arms control agreement? (Play it out.) Second, the teacher asks questions to students. Why did FDR need Soviet help at the end of WWII? How did Reagan get Gorbachev to go along on arms control? An interactive lecture presents material in a more entertaining fashion and checks immediately for understanding.

The informal formative assessments above and formal formative assessments fulfill two objectives: they show if the students learned the material and, since it’s usually necessary, gave an opportunity to review the material in an enjoyable way. Occasionally, I let students know that I will be using the same questions they encountered on an informal assessment on a formal assessment. Since the formal assessment counts for a grade, I have now increased interest in learning the material. What if only a few kids have not learned the material? Should the class be held back for the benefit of a few? Perhaps the top students need to work with the laggards. I prefer that slower learners get the benefit of some remedial opportunity built into the school structure, such as a study hall or mandatory tutoring opportunity. PLC writers have demonstrated how this can be done. (See figure.)

Remedial Opportunities when Students Don’t Learn

Informal formative assessment                                       Teacher reviews material         

Students learn

Students do not learn                            Remedial Opportunity

For this model to work, teachers need to have enough slack time in their curriculum mapping for a small amount of re-teaching time, but the greatest responsibility for re-teaching falls upon the system already in place such as a school day study hall.

Homework as Formative Assessment

I use homework primarily (though not exclusively) as a formative assessment—to find out what the kids do and do not know. Since I use homework as an instrument to determine where teaching should go instead of an opportunity to engage in new learning, I keep the assignments short and infrequent. I prefer the bulk of new learning to take place in class where I am available to help with understanding of concepts, vocabulary and writing technique. The education literature does not show a strong correlation between the amount of homework assigned and student performance, especially with at-risk students. Therefore, when I do assign homework I use it primarily to give me feedback and not as an opportunity to grade.

Summative Assessments

Summative assessments do not enable much learning to take place—since after the summative there is no second chance—but, ironically, these assessments are the ones that give both teachers and students headaches and ulcers. Final exams, standardized tests such as the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), CST in California (AKA the STAR test), ACT, SAT, and AP exams, and music auditions put both teacher and student under a microscope. These high stakes tests determine who graduates, who goes to a four-year school, and under NCLB, whether a school that receives federal funding can continue under its current leadership and teaching staff. Since the feds keep raising the bar, increasing numbers of schools have become low performing schools. If the government makes no changes to the process, in a few years all schools will be low performing schools, and, if they receive federal funding, will be subject to corrective action.

Summative assessments can be gut-wrenching experiences for both teacher and student, but we can also make these assessments interesting learning experiences. A final exam can contain an essay prompt that asks for synthesis—asking the student to retell or put facts together in a creative way, using critical thinking. Examples could include questions like the following.

• US History: Show parallels between the 1968 and 2008 Democratic Convention.
• Psychology: Evaluate this clinical vignette and write up this patient under Axes I and II.
• Describe how your membership in groups and your beliefs about the meaning of life have made you who you are.
• World History: Explain why the French and American Revolutions progressed differently.
• Economics: show both theoretically and practically why Keynesian economic policies will (or won’t) work and give historical examples from the crash of 2008 that back up your opinion.

How Teachers Benefit from Summative Assessments

By analyzing state testing results through the number crunching software of Data Director or by hand, teachers can examine the correlation of semester grades with the state test scores. When a teacher discovers a gross discrepancy, such as top test scores but a class grade of C, he needs to explore the reasons why. (See figure.)

Standardized Testing Results Versus Classroom Performance for the Individual Student

Standardized Testing Results
High	Quadrant I Ideal	Quadrant II Unmotivated but bright student or test results may have been altered. Classroom assessments may have little predictive validity.
Low	Quadrant III Student may have “bubbled” test, randomly picking answers or student may have cheated his way through the class. Schools must make standardized tests meaningful and important. Teachers must defend against cheating.	Quadrant IV Expected valid score. Schools must intervene to help low-achieving students learn.
Classroom Performance	High	Low

Teachers expect students to fall within quadrants I and IV. Gifted students usually do well on standardized tests and earn high marks in their classes. Poor students usually do poorly in both testing and grading. Problems arise when students fall into the other quadrants.

What to do right now: work with your department and come up with a plan to better the performance of students in quadrants II and III. Why does your quadrant II student refuse to work at his potential? How can I arrange my assessments to prevent the quadrant III student from cheating or how can I get her to take the standardized tests more seriously?