An Eagle article reported that the No Child Left Behind law requires school districts to pay for tutoring services for those low-income students who need help in math and reading, yet there are no standards set for tutoring services. The U.S. Education Department’s Web site says, “The law helps schools improve by focusing on accountability for results, freedom for states and communities, proven education methods, and choices for parents.”
But where is the accountability for results and proven education methods when there are no standards set for the tutoring services, which are racking up a $1 million bill for USD 259 taxpayers?
Posted by Patrice Hein
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
7 Comments
From the article I read, the tutoring program appear to be working. What ever the effect it had on the child – viewpoint, good studying habits, one on one instructions – it’s all positive.
Sounds to me they could easily get accountability by just making a before and after action report, which they probably do.
The Tutor program was most likely separated from the school so it could work without impediment.
And for whatever reason, the school environment or teaching methods was working for the kids.
The better question would be is why the 259 couldn’t teach the children successfully and the tutors can.
Some people do better in smaller groups and have difficulty adapting to large group session learning.
I wouldn’t attack the “lead to gold” results if I was 259. I would carefully examine the reasons why they aren’t producing similar results.
Perhaps it’s nothing but the individualized attention, then again…
Individual instruction by qualified instructors should work, with some caveats.
Kids may be too tired after school to concentrate fully. The human brain isn’t a run-anytime machine. It has activity, recovery and rest cycles. Ignore this, and results can be compromised.
You have to have tutors who like working in a one-on-one situation. It’s a completely different dynamic from large-group teaching, and it takes practice, and an open mind to be highy effective.
The immediate-feedback process is really important. If a teacher assigns a homework set on Monday, it gets turned in on Tuesday, and is returned on Wednesday, the student doesn’t see what she did wrong until two days after doing the work. With one-on-one tutoring, the teacher can immediately examine the work, and intercede in a timely manner, or else realize the student is ready to move on. This can enormously accelerate learning compared to traditional classroom methods.
For example, I had a student who could do algebra problems using algebraic techniques, but who found it faster to use numerical analysis (a valid method), i.e. guess a number value for variable, plug it into the equation, see the result, then guess a new number (”guess check and refine”).
This is a useful skill, but it is limiting if solely relied upon. For kids who take math courses beyond algebra, it is absolutely essential to learn symbolic processing, and that starts with writing simple algebraic equations.
Mathematics is a reading and writing discipline. Basic equations are mathematical sentences. Students who expect to go beyond algebra have to learn how to compose “essays” using the language of mathematics. Mostly short, but even writing 5 coherent statements in 8th-9th grade is a significant mathematical skill. In a technology and science driven economy, math “language-fluency” is highly marketable, in its own right, but it is absolutely fundamental to computer science (what is programming?), engineering and other applied sciences. (So the real question is, What do we want students to be able to do as adults?)
Learning to write in the language of mathematics, like learning to write English and social studies essays, also instills better reading skills as well. So even if somebody doesn’t make a living writing math, it sure helps to understand mathematical-information. Look at a major newspaper. Fifty years ago, they didn’t publish graphs for general-populace reading. Now they do.
For students not going beyond algebra, number-substitution and arithmetic operation-performance may be adequate, and in fact variables do stand for real numbers, but students who solely do this cannot go farther.
If I were teaching a large class, I might not have identified the student’s method. But teaching him individually was a different matter. Moreover, it moved me to required him to write equation-solution steps down, which is to say, express, in writing, orderly sequences of thinking. “Right answers” were not enough.
Is this important? Absolutely.
The mental process of absorbing information, and translating it into a writing exercise reinforces the conceptual subject matter in the student’s mind. It requires the brain to work more.
When a student can examine his or her own work-product directly in front of their eyes, it’s easier for them to catch their own errors. In the industrial age, supervisors corrected workers’ errors. In this age, people (who want to earn a decent living at any rate) have to self-correct.
Examining this work product helps the teacher to identify the things a student correctly understands and things a student doesn’t, which translates into Let’s slow down here, or You’ve got this, you’re ready to move on. This greatly accelerates student knowledge aquisition.
It helps the student to get at least partial credit, rather than none when students write only final answers that happen to be incorrect. As an engineer once told me, “If it weren’t for partial credit, I would have flunked out.”
(This by the way is a reason that overreliance on multiple-choice math tests are inappropriate, and standards that evaluate students using them are misguided, IMHO. The SAT is moving to incorporate more “free-response” problems, and for the AP calculus and physics tests, no credit is given for problems without work being shown.)
Now that’s funny, my daughter is failing in a math class, and I’ve asked all year for tutoring.
Mark Schooley: Your writing style and analysis seems uncannily similar to the now departed from the WE Blog, Heartlander.
As a K-State engineering graduate back in the slide rule (pre-calculator) days — I can relate to some of what you say.
I recall that personally I didn’t like to use formulas to solve problems unless I derived them first so I knew exactly what they did.
I also remember that engineering professors certainly required students to show their work when solving math problems. In return, many professors would give 95% for a solution for showing the setup and substituting in numbers but not actually coming up with an answer. This made sense in those days when multiplying and dividing 15 or 20 numbers on a slide rule became an onerous task particularly when performing a timed examination.
I agree with you that multiple choice tests without showing work are virtually worthless. In tight classrooms containing up to 30 students — copying someone elses answers is pretty routine.
Sometimes, miracle of miracles, an entire classroom of students somehow comes up with the SAME WRONG answer!
Wonder if Heartlander and Apophis ever got together at a neutral site for coffee?
P_Mom, the best way to get a tutor for your daughter is to have the school which she attends (assuming it is a Title I school) fail to meet AYP for the requisite number of years; then the tutoring must be provided. Otherwise, you will need to employ one for her.
Dr. Schooley, there is something very important you touch upon in your post, IMHO; the fact that Mathematics is a “reading and writing” discipline. Many folks of my acquaintance do not seem to understand this; I confess to not being able to understand why, as it appears very obvious to me. This just emphasizes the need for all to learn to read, by which I mean the ability to not only “know” the words as encountered, but to critically examine and comprehend how the same are used to impart the meaning sought by the author. Similarly, a student must learn to write; in non-Mathematical writing, I submit this includes learning the rules of grammar, one of those tasks that is not fun, entertaining (although some of it may be made so) and is just plain hard work, much as memorization of the multiplication tables, e.g.
It is difficult, as you note, in a classroom of many students for a teacher to provide individual attention. Smaller class size would help with this, but unless there is a true one-to-one relationship, no classroom teacher will be able to provide each student with the individualized assistance which may be required.
Finally, with respect to multiple choice standardized tests, you are spot on, IMHO. I am also one who matriculated and graduated with my degree (not engineering) “pre-calculator”, becoming quite familiar with my slide rule, log tables, etc. Partial credit also saved me on more than one occasion.
Vaughn,
In math, you can’t go very far without mastering its grammar rules. Mathematicians became prolific writers at a time in which parchment was expensive, and it was useful to develop compact expression for complex idea presentation.
Do you know when the term “computer” was coined? In the 17th century. The first “computers” were men who had outstanding math-operations skills who were employed by master mathematicians to do repetitive computation procedures, in which accuracy was essential, such as generating tables of 14-place logarithms.
On slide rules, remember when math teachers hung up their 6-foot teaching rules over the blackboard? I got a cheapo bamboo slide rule at a young age. Moved up to a Pickett eyesaver yellow metal model in high school. Then an Asian friend showed up with a circular Pickett rule with spiral scales, which were equivalent to a 28-inch straight rule, “With this, you can often get 4-place- precise answers rather than 3.” “Cool!Every nerd surrounded him to check it out, and some of us decided to follow suit.
I still have the circular, because it represents inspired thinking and superb machining.
Of course, you, JWink and others remember that just using the rules’ basic functions implicitly taught us about logarithms, since slide rules’ log-scale “magic” was the quick conversion of multiplication and division into addition and subtraction.
Several years ago a kindergarten teacher gave me a Chinese abacus. I found a book on how to use it, and discovered it to be an amazing instrument too. The slide rule is an extraordinary analog-estimating machine. The abacus is a discrete operations machine.
On calculators, they’re superb tools. TI and HP nearly-simultaneously introduced scientific calculators capable of doing trig, log and exponential operations in 1971. Both gave 10-digit decimal outputs that were ersatz-precise (if you’re only given 3-4 digit data to work with, 10 digit answers are bogus.)
HP decided to develop products for practicing engineers and scientists (and even mathematicians), as well as university students in these disciplines, while TI took, and totally dominates pre-university education. The HP49g+ and its successor HP50 blow TI-83’s, 84’s and 89’s away. Suppose you want to write (e^3x +sq rt (2x))/5. HP enables students to write this in standard (textbook) form, with a raised exponential, the square root symbol, and a long division bar instead of parens. Even something simple such as the entry 48/18 generates a solution 8/3. Sine 60 or in rad mode sine pi/3 generates (sq rt 3)/2 with a square root sign, not “sq rt” as I’ve written here, and no parens.
Converting exact solutions to decimal approximations is a two-button procedure, and you can set the HP’s to give 1, 2, 3, or other digits to avoid pseudo-precision for science-class problems. For math problems, exact answers with sq rt and pi symbols, and e, are really instructive.
The 49g/50 are outlawed by ACT, but are allowed by the College Board for SAT and AP exams. The latter test-makers figure that even though the HP can solve algebraic equations, simplify matrices, factor complex formulae, et al., a student must be highly math-capable to know when and how to use the HP’s functions.
TI has made great contributions to 6-12 education. But they’re vision is also somewhat limiting. There is a value to helping kids learn to work with irrational and transcendental numbers and functions–understanding that there are no actual decimal or algebraic representations for these– and read and write exact mathematical expressions in compact form.
Vaughn,
Mathematicians became prolific writers at a time in which parchment was expensive, and it was useful to develop compact expressions for complex idea presentation. The symbology, grammar and syntax rules of mathematics don’t correspond to those for English, social studies or basic foreign-languages. Which makes mathematics language- learning really hard.
Do you know when the term “computer” was coined? In the 17th century. The first “computers” were men who had outstanding math-operations skills who were employed by master mathematicians to do grueling computation procedures, in which “ciphering” accuracy was essential, such as generating tables of 14-place logarithms.
On slide rules, remember when math teachers hung up their 6-foot teaching rules over the blackboard? If they had had ultra-fine gradations, you could have gotten 6-decimal place accuracy with them. I got a cheapo bamboo slide rule at about age 13. Moved up to a Pickett eyesaver yellow metal model in 11th grade. Then an Asian friend showed up with a circular Pickett rule with spiral scales, which were equivalent to a 28-inch straight rule, “With this, you can often get 4-place- precise answers rather than 3.” “Whoa!Every nerd surrounded him to check it out, and some of us decided to follow his example.
I still have the circular, one of my treasures that I will never give away or sell, because it represents brilliant thinking and superb machining.
Of course, you, JWink and others remember that using the rules’ basic functions implicitly taught us about logarithms, since slide rules’ log-scale “magic” was the quick conversion of multiplication and division into addition and subtraction.
Several years ago a kindergarten teacher gave me a Chinese abacus. I found a book on how to use it, and discovered it to be an amazing instrument too. The slide rule is an extraordinary analog-estimating machine. The abacus is a powerful discrete operations machine.
On calculators, they’re superb tools. TI and HP nearly-simultaneously introduced scientific calculators capable of doing trig, log and exponential operations in 1971. Both gave10-digit decimal outputs that were ersatz-precise (if you’re only given 3-4 digit data to work with, 10 digit answers are bogus.)
HP decided to develop products for practicing engineers and scientists (and even practicing mathematicians), as well as university students in these disciplines, while TI took, and totally dominates pre-university education. The HP49g+ and its successor HP50 blow TI-83’s, 84’s and 89’s away. They have an interconvertability between algebraic and Reverse Polish Notation, the latter being faster for number crunching.
Suppose you want to write (e^3x +sq rt (2x))/5. HP enables students to write this in standard (textbook) form, with a raised exponential, the square root symbol, and a long division bar instead of parens.
Even something simple such as the entry 48/18 generates a simplified 8/3, rather than 2.6666666667. Sine 60 in degree mode, or sine pi/3 in rad mode generates (sq rt 3)/2 with a square root sign, not “sq rt” as I’ve written here, and no parens, which is exactly correct. Key-in sq rt 32, hit enter and the display shows 4 x sq rt 2 (with the sq rt symbol).
Converting exact-representations into TI- decimal approximations is a two-button procedure, and you can set the HP’s to give 1, 2, 3, or other digit outputs to avoid pseudo-precision for science-class problems. For math problems, exact answers with sq rt , pi and e symbols, are highly instructive.
The 49g/50 are outlawed by ACT, but are allowed by the College Board for SAT and AP exams. The latter test-makers figure that even though the HP can give exact mathematical representations, solve algebraic equations, simplify matrices, factor complex formulae, et al., a student must be very math-capable to know when and how to use the HP’s functions.
TI has made very good contributions to 6-12 education. But their vision is also somewhat limiting. There is a value to helping kids learn to work with irrational and transcendental numbers and functions–understanding that there are no exact decimal or algebraic representations for these– and read and write exact mathematical expressions in compact form.
Mark