"Goal is to get rid of all the levels"
What has been a failure?
"Levels," "tracks," anything to nail you as great, ok, tepid, or a failure. Lovely.
My now adult child was so traumatized by the leveling system at Columbia High School that, 4 full years after high school graduation, she wrote her final college essay on this topic. Her professors and classmates were specifically astounded by her references to vitriolic letters and comments that regularly appeared in the News Record and on MOL. Apparently,judging by their reaction, leveling is not the holy grail of education everywhere.
Levels are considered archaic among many of the top educational institutions. However, others should do their own research. I am not going to get into that battle again. I'd have to dream up a new avatar name after another banning.
springgreen2 said:
What has been a failure?
"Levels," "tracks," anything to nail you as great, ok, tepid, or a failure. Lovely.
Everyone of the multitude of different ways the fad has said to teach math, which had to be different than the last way in order to sell the new system and every one an incredibly dumb idea inferior to the standard way the PhD had to deride in order to get a Phd and a contract. Allowing the use of calculators in a low grade so that no one can make change anymore if you give them change after they have put the amount tendered into cash register.
And yes the trend to get rid of tracks. Throwing every student into one big pot for the weaker or indifferent to sink to the bottom.
I am not here to argue. You are the one who has turned argumentative, as you always do.
All I want to do is say that for us in a non leveled environment but in a district considered to be good the lack of levels has been awful for my child because it does not allow for an appropriate learning environment for my child's learning needs. It was only presented as a personal story. But we certainly wish we had had levels in our schools.
Why should your child have access to challenging curriculum and a great teacher, and not someone else's child have the same access?
If the "weaker or indifferent sink to.the bottom" they have a crummy teacher who can't communicate, or doesn't want to.
soma2015 said:
To clarify, we are not saying that if we elected to the Board of Education levels will be off the table. That's not possible, especially in Math. We understand that removing boundaries to ensure a level playing field will require hard work and long term planning. It will require training for our teachers, administrators, and counselors on how to facilitate differentiated instruction properly and how to provide ongoing support for all. It will also require effective communication to students and parents, so everyone understands their options and the process of taking advantage of those options. Right now we have within-school segregation, due in part to the levels that are in place. We can no longer have that, and we must look for ways to solve that!
When we had our student summit the other night, we asked the students about levels. They told us that at a leadership conference they attended at the Univ of Wisconsin. other school districts were very surprised that our district had so many levels. The students asked us to look for ways to reduce the levels and to move to more personalized project-based learning.
We believe in listening to the students, parents, and educators in the district and finding a way to provide access and equity to all students.
Very 2010.
dave said:
No levels means the teacher has to choose between going so slowly as to ensure everyone keeps up, boring advanced learners, or teaching to challenge the more advanced learners while leaving students who need more time to absorb things behind. It doesn't seem like a tenable position.
Dave,
Are you a teacher? Have you ever heard of differentiated instruction? I believe I read that you went to Drew. So did I. I had students in some of my classes who understood nothing at first, but eventually got it. Don't you think that happens in fourth, eighth and twelfth grade? I mean, why bring SOMA back to the 1960s?
That's a nice goal, but I'm not certain how it works out in the real world. So the teacher would functionally be teaching two classes within one classroom? I suppose it might be worth trying, but I would think it would confuse the students as well as the teacher. Would one chalk board be filled with algebraic equations and the adjacent one have an integral calculus problem?
springgreen2 said:
dave said:Dave,
No levels means the teacher has to choose between going so slowly as to ensure everyone keeps up, boring advanced learners, or teaching to challenge the more advanced learners while leaving students who need more time to absorb things behind. It doesn't seem like a tenable position.
Are you a teacher? Have you ever heard of differentiated instruction? I believe I read that you went to Drew. So did I. I had students in some of my classes who understood nothing at first, but eventually got it. Don't you think that happens in fourth, eighth and twelfth grade? I mean, why bring SOMA back to the 1960s?
Differentiated instruction is not teaching two classes simultaneously. Teachers still lecture but much of the class has students placed into flexible groups and working on multi-level objectives. For example, you can ask all students to write a summary and opinion. Some will be able to do it better than others, but the assignment is valid for all. When they share their ideas all students benefit (all students benefit from hearing ideas from all levels). That's just a simple example, and it gets more complicated with different arrangements because you have to meet the needs of the students. But, it is better than just teaching the same thing to everyone, becuase even in a leveled class there is great variation in student ability.
Um, how is everyone does the same assignment but some do it better than others differentiated instruction???? I think you need to explain a bit better nan
A major part of the problem this debate always skips away from is what we teach. Like it or not, not all kids go to college. Roughly 40% of the kids who graduate, give or take, do not graduate from a 4-year college. If that is the case, in what sense do we fulfill our responsibilities as a District to prepare them for life?
Over 20 years ago in a fit of political correctness the District abolished all Voc-Ed classes -- electronics, auto, wood/carpentry, even the position of a teacher who placed CHS students into coop positions in local companies. All gone. I know some will say everyone will thrive in differentiated instruction in a physics class or AP lit or whatever, but many will not. The simple fact of abolishing hand-on instruction as instruction not befitting today's students was -- and I will be blunt -- stupid.
Add to this the simple fact that we live in the 21st century, not the mid-20th. The CHS curriculum, today, right now, is mid-20th century. It is all very good, but it does not completely address the needs of today's students as they get ready to go off to college, work or the military.
For example -- there is not a single course in coding at Columbia. Not one. If you take coding it is on-line. Not everyone who takes coding will go to MIT or CalTech. Coding is increasingly a part of many tech jobs for which you do not need a college degree.
For example, aside from the Art classes there is only one teacher in the building who has a "hands-on" course load. That teacher has one section of robotics (last year we had three sections, he taught two and I taught one) and a couple sections of Architectural Model Building. The kids taking these classes are, again, not necessarily your MIT/CalTech/Ivy League crowd. Many are the weaker academically students who just happen to like building things and when they do that, they may get more involved in other work.
So there you have it: one teacher outside of Art classes doing hands on; no coding. Sure sounds like 21st century to me.
About 25% of the District budget, again give or take, is Special Ed. If we had some courses that actually grabbed some of these students' interests, their life inside Columbia would be distinctly better.
Not to pick on any courses in particular, but do realize we spend more on Ping Pong than we do on coding; more on Latin than on Robotics. Whether these other courses should be taught is not for me to say, but to spend more on them compared to coding and robotics -- two disciplines which have and will continue to transform society to the detriment of those completely ignorant of them -- is a complete disservice.
Cars will soon be autonomous; robotics is inexorably killing off middle class jobs including many of those for which college was a pre-requisite, such as lawyers and managers; coding leads to more applications that will sooner or later displace semi-skilled labor and skilled labor. Why we don't teach these and other disciplines like electronics, like synthetic biology and courses at the intersection of these disciplines is clearly beyond me.
In these types of courses there are no levels, only pre-requisites. If we had, for example, Coding IV, Coding III, Coding II and Coding I, then one moved into Coding II by passing with a grade of whatever -- C or B -- in Coding I. Likewise for Coding III, get a decent grade in Coding II. If you study over the summer, take a test to jump up a course, just like in college. Robotics -- same deal. Advanced robotics may have a pre-requisite of Coding I or Coding II and intro Robotics.
I have been in this town for almost 30 years and the discussion is never ending and it will never end. But if, as a District, we refuse to entertain the possibility that what we teach is largely irrelevant to many students, then how we teach may not make such a huge difference.
I run the Robotics Club. You should watch those kids work after school. They build and they code and they work together. Their robots are hugely complex. They build competition robots. We also have a golfing robot, a humanoid robot and a robot that shoots paper airplanes (try and build one.) We are trying to get a flight club off the ground (no pun intended!) We think we will have an underwater robotics group in cooperation with the US Navy. We also will be working with a company in the building to build a robot that moves alongside the swimming pool and carries an underwater camera to film swimmers -- their kick, their stroke and their turns -- and relay the video to a laptop running Dartfish software (like you see in the Olympics.) I assure you, kids learn a lot about how to use modern tech, coding and teamwork.
Their spirit is very much like the kids in orchestra or the school musical or special dance. They have something that grabs them. Not all kids are into music and dance and singing. Some are into building. Remember when you and later your own kids spent many hours playing with Legos and similar toys? That curiosity we have successfully crushed in our educational system. I submit that having hands on instruction in the needs of a modern society will be a huge help to many of our students.
Jude said:
I have been in this town for almost 30 years and the discussion is never ending and it will never end. But if, as a District, we refuse to entertain the possibility that what we teach is largely irrelevant to many students, then how we teach may not make such a huge difference.
Their spirit is very much like the kids in orchestra or the school musical or special dance. They have something that grabs them. Not all kids are into music and dance and singing. Some are into building. Remember when you and later your own kids spent many hours playing with Legos and similar toys? That curiosity we have successfully crushed in our educational system. I submit that having hands on instruction in the needs of a modern society will be a huge help to many of our students.
Jude for Commissioner of Education.
Jude, I always appreciate your input on these threads. This was fascinating. I totally agree that not everyone is cut out for college. It is sad that our community used to talk about multiple intelligences (is that still a thing here?), but then fail to provide the right kinds of courses for the different kinds of intelligences.
You and the robotics teacher sound like a gift to this district. Now, how do we get more of exactly what you are talking about?
And, thank you!!
- To add to what Jude says, we live in one of the few populous nj counties that does not have an academic STEM magnet high school that kids with a passion in this area can apply to attend, so we need to build everything in-house
I learned Fortran at CHS on a UNIVAC. How did coding become so ignored over the years? Equipment costs?
Rumor I've heard is that teacher died or retired and simply wasn't replaced..."one of these days, when we aren't so busy implementing common core" was the tone I heard. Not sure how close this is to truth, but failure to teach coding is an embarrassment.
dave said:
I learned Fortran at CHS on a UNIVAC. How did coding become so ignored over the years? Equipment costs?
What is lost in this narrative is that almost any course can become a hands on course. Very few students in the 21st century, even academically advanced students, are enthusiastic about lectures, chalkboards, and lessons that have no connection to themselves. That's just a reality. Unfortunately, for many old heads, hands on work conjures up wood shop and sewing classes designed for the "non-academic" student (never the child of persons who are so nostalgic for those days). I would agree about coding, however. It is applicable across several disciplines and has rapidly become a must-have skill in today's job market.
Just one more thought. Who will teach coding? My suggestion is any recent college graduate who is most likely coding on the job right now. Columbia can be in the forefront of implementing a required coding intro course! (Required for every student by the way!) Talk about leveling the income gap!
The new Superintendent is looking for serious and thoughtful input from people in the community, from teachers and students. I think Nov 10 is a day when there is a public session in the CHS library. Might come there to make your ideas known. Check online for details.
My Robotics Club now has 3 teams in the high school and we are recruiting a Middle School team. We have visited MMS and this coming week we are at SOMS. The Middle Schoolers will come to Columbia to work on their competition robot.
Next year I hope to have two Middle School teams, one at each of SOMS and MMS.
In the club the kids use drills, dremels, saws, soldering irons, 3D printers and a variety of other tools. They draw diagrams on our whiteboard. They argue. They try something and see if it works. If it doesn't work, they have to change it. The younger kids go talk to the varsity team members who come over and look at what the problem is and help them.
The club makes big robots with hundreds of parts, many customized. The club is pretty much what a course in Advanced Robotics would be like. Work as a team; come up with a concept and design; try it; try again and again. Get the program to work and re-do that. Make a part if necessary or make 20 if necessary.
This requires a well-stocked voc-ed lab space suited for the 21st century. Everything I have for the club comes from money I have to raise. If the District were to (a) buy into this as just one way of changing what we teach; (b) hire a full time robotics instructor; (c) institute intro robotics and advanced robotics and a course or two in coding -- Java and Python come to mind -- and integrate with CAD; (d) build out a modern and well-stocked lab, perhaps by seeking business partnerships, then we would start down a path of getting kids to do some things that grab them, get them interested in coming to school, and help in some way to prepare them for the life after high school.
We will have robotics team members going off to the elementary schools to promote robotics. Tuscan has invited us and we will get to all of them. My goal, assuming I can carve out more space in our clubroom, is to help FLL teams -- get an FLL table and storage cabinets -- so that those teams have a place to go and can get mentored by the high school and middle school kids.
The Beyond the Bell program does have some elements of robotics and the District in fits and starts has some robotics in the early grades. But it is expensive! Kits are not cheap. The kids need a space to go to, to have the equipment at the ready.
If you want to see a lot of robotics, come to the Nov 15 Qualifier at CHS -- Main Gym and the cafeterias. We will have 36 teams competing and you can see a lot of kids who love to tinker, to code, to build. It is very cool. And why we have to fight like crazy at CHS to get support not only for the club but for basic instruction in things like robotics is beyond me. This my 6th year and the District support has been my travel to St. Louis (twice, for world championships), travel to York PA (eastern super-regional), 3 lab tables, a whiteboard, a dozen stools, a cabinet and more outlets. We have carved out a space in a room run by the custodians (and when we did have voc-ed here it was the auto shop class). That's it. We spend up to $10k a year without District support. So we raise it. Try it some time. In the same 6 years we have had the club, the District spent approximately 60-70 times the total support it has given the club on courses like Latin. There is an imbalance here. Even the support for the course in robotics is lacking -- we need a full-time robotics teacher.
Last year we had a weak year in the robotics club as our core group finally graduated. But in its first 4 seasons the CHS club racked up the best record of ANY high school anywhere, literally -- 5 state championships, 2nd place in world, semifinalist in world tournament, voted top club in NJ by US FIRST. This is entirely possible for a LOT of kids if we give them the chance. And even if a team is not a state champion, the simple act of building a robot and coding it to execute tasks is really a giant step forward for the kids.
This type of stuff when brought into the curriculum will make a huge difference for many kids. Bring in electronics; robotics; coding; synthetic bio; intro to engineering type courses; perhaps courses that integrate tech and art -- we tried to get robots to draw in our robotics classes and that, I assure you, is not easy. No one has been able to give me a reason that makes any sense at all as to why we don't do this.
I admit I am tired of powerpoints and speeches and platforms about how we will all fix education. Maybe. I do know that if we do not change what we teach then we will be wasting a lot of time and money and not improve the lives of many kids, those who need hands on stuff to grab them.
annielou said:
Just one more thought. Who will teach coding? My suggestion is any recent college graduate who is most likely coding on the job right now. Columbia can be in the forefront of implementing a required coding intro course! (Required for every student by the way!) Talk about leveling the income gap!
Oddly enough, a course I took in college did much to prepare me for a life of programming. It was a course in logical thinking and expression. Other than that, I learned all of my programming on the job.
So, while I am not disputing the value of teaching programming, the best programmers will have a solid foundation in math and logic.
Jude said:. . . .About 25% of the District budget, again give or take, is Special Ed. If we had some courses that actually grabbed some of these students' interests, their life inside Columbia would be distinctly better.Not to pick on any courses in particular, but do realize we spend more on Ping Pong than we do on coding; more on Latin than on Robotics. Whether these other courses should be taught is not for me to say, but to spend more on them compared to coding and robotics -- two disciplines which have and will continue to transform society to the detriment of those completely ignorant of them -- is a complete disservice.
--------------------------------------
Jude - While I appreciate your viewpoint, I think it is a bit over influenced by your enthusiasm for STEM. Just because a student receives special education services, does not automatically mean they need "hands on" courses or don't find inspiration in Latin. I had this issue with my son who struggled in school and was often bored. Counselors and others would often suggest, "maybe he should think about going to a trade school. We need more plumbers." While meaning well, these people did not realize that my son's issues had little to do with the offerings at school and were internally driven. While he was not excited by his literature or math classes, the thought of auto mechanics, computer programming or anything STEM excited him even less. He did seem to sort of like ping pong, though. Kids with pronounced ADD and other issues often have difficulty paying attention or finding enthusiasm for anything, including coding, robotics, Latin, cosmetology, etc. You can not assume that STEM type classes or trade schools are inherently more interesting than other topics for all students, nor the solution for students with disabilities.
I would be glad to see computer programming and other topics taught in high school, as I'm a big fan of well-funded public schools with lots of opportunity for a wide range of subjects. But, I don't believe that the focus needs to be job training or shoving everyone into "21st Century Skills" a non-definable phrase. People in the 21st century still need to think, and benefit from learning subjects not currently seen as "marketable."
Who said about shoving kids into a skills curriculum? Let me be clear and blunt: not having these kinds of courses leads the District into a difficult position -- learn our classical education program or be unsuccessful in school and possibly in life.
My point on the Special Ed budget, given its size, is that some of these courses will help kids. It is pretty hard to claim the opposite. Who said making them into plumbers? Not me. I said the stuff needed for the 21st century includes electronics, coding, robotics, synthetic biology. That is where science, engineering, medicine and the economy are headed. Hence, jobs head that way to. I submit there is nothing wrong about preparing kids for life and preparing for life includes teaching them things they will need in life.
We teach certain things that are applicable across pretty much all fields -- reading, writing, basic math, logical thinking. Some students -- perhaps not every student, perhaps not yours -- gets excited by academic work. Some need hands on. Others do not. But denying the opportunity for hands on means those kids are not served well. I cited Latin and Ping Pong as they, while fun for some, are not particularly critical for success in the 21st century. If a kid wants to take them, we have them as courses. But to not offer coding and robotics means that there is an assumption that those just aren't the things that count for education. That is dead wrong.
Maybe I mentioned this in another thread. if I did, I apologize for redundancy. Back in the summer I wrote an Op-Ed piece on autonomous cars for the Asbury Park Press and affiliated newspapers. While working on the article I noticed three publications on the newsstands all at the same time:
Foreign Affairs ran a cover story called "I Robot" and it was about how robotics and coding are reinventing the economies of many nations and what that may mean for the US and for the middle class and for kids growing up;
The Atlantic ran a cover story on how coding and robotics are disemboweling the middle class in terms of jobs and salaries and careers;
Then there is an automobile publication on how and why cars will drive themselves.
Think down the road (again, no pun intended) and one can see the slow demise of cab driving, bus driving, interstate truck driving -- all sooner or later will be replaced by self-driving vehicles. One can get involved as someone who can help effect this change or one can wait and let change affect you. In 20 years I assume there will be no need for Driver's Ed classes as cars will drive themselves.
Every year more lawyers get replaced by Watson-like systems (Watson was the IBM computer that won Jeopardy) in civil cases. The largest contributor to Wikipedia has been a bot that trolls the Internet and writes short fact based articles, sometimes thousands every day. Soon in many chain stores there will be no cashiers -- all payments by apps. The list goes on. It is in our interest to help kids navigate this future by giving them some tools. If we wait and simply say they can pick it up on their own -- perhaps, but with many being trained in high school, community colleges and four-year colleges, the day where one picks it up on their own is fast going away.
I recently did a college visit with my senior and an economics professor we spoke to was shocked that there were no coding courses at the high school.
It was actually kind of funny He asked my senior what languages he knew and the response was "English, and 5 years of Spanish." The professor looked at us hopelessly.
Jude said:
Who said about shoving kids into a skills curriculum? Let me be clear and blunt: not having these kinds of courses leads the District into a difficult position -- learn our classical education program or be unsuccessful in school and possibly in life.
You seem to promoting the idea that there is an educational "Sputnik-like" crisis here. Either we all jump on the STEM bandwagon or face failure and doom. I'm not so sure, especially for students at risk. Where is the evidence that offering classes in programming, robotics, etc. successfully engages students not served in a regular balanced liberal arts college prep program? If these students are struggling in basic classes, how are they going to handle the math and focus demands of STEM topics? You are ignoring all of the issues that led these students to be either classified or alienated from school.
Once again, I am in agreement with you about offering these courses because they would be valuable to SOME students. But if it comes down to limited budgets, I'm not sure I would support a vast expansion of STEM classes if it meant less art, literature and ping pong.
Is it really the job of a high school to prepare students for employment in what you describe as the last remaining viable career, the one slated to destroy liberal arts jobs with robots (and STEM careers won't be robotized as well?). I agree we have a bleak living wage employment picture, but STEM as THE solution? Not so much. I worked in corporate IT on Wall Street for 15+ years. During the time, Americans were routinely replaced with lower wage workers from other countries, often brought in with special visas claiming there was a shortage here. My job was eventually reinstated in Ireland. I remember one American programmer telling me he did not want his child to follow in his footsteps because there was no future in programming anymore and he was worried about his job. Likewise, I have met biology and other science majors while working as a substitute teacher, because they could not find employment in their fields. I know at least two former programmers who are now working at for peanuts in other fields because they could no longer get work. Others have taken huge pay cuts to stay employed. I can imagine what the pay scale would be if every high school student was trained to program (one of the reasons for corporate push for this). The biggest future job growth is in low paying service type jobs, not "21st Century" skills. Given the fates of many technologically skilled American workers, it's difficult to buy into the essential need for high school STEM tracks.
As for proving an alternative to traditional course work for alienated students, where is the evidence? Many students with disabilities find school in general challenging and shut down. You can not assume that the issue is lack of "hands on" classes. I am sorry they discontinued high school vocational tech. That was a mistake, but lets not romanticize it. Last summer I met up with a high school friend I had not seen since we graduated in 1975. He had attended the Vocational Tech program and that had not worked out well for him. He said the training he received only qualified him for very low level, difficult to find jobs. After a few years he got frustrated and went to college and became an engineer and now does very well. So, one has to wonder if he in fact belonged in a college prep program all along. Also note, some students figure out what they want to do later. It's not over if you don't get job training in high school.
Oh, and by the way cars are not going to drive themselves. I saw an article saying that this will not work because a computer could not predict what the other drivers would do. It takes a human to do that.
I know dozens of programmers. Nearly all of them feel like they were deceived about the future promise of the field way back when. The reality is, on any given day I'm positively surrounded by highly-educated tech types from India with better degrees, better experience, and at most half the salary cost. Half. At most. That curve doesn't seem to swinging back upward anytime soon from where I sit. YMMV.
ETA: And now Eastern Europe as well
I worked in IT for many years and, from what I've seen, the field is no longer as attractive as it once was, because much of corporate America has either outsourced the work or is hiring people from overseas (via the H1B program) at lower salaries and usually via contract arrangements with minimal employee benefits. My peers who remain are the few who are managing the outsourced and contract workers for the most part. But most of us have either changed careers or taken early retirement when we could (or both.)
Programming is kinda STEM but weakly so in my opinion. Many with backgrounds in areas other than STEM can pick it up.
Getting a degree in Computer Science still has a lot of value whereas just being a programmer may not.
That said, coding is an important skill to have today. And it can be fun too. It would be great to have it in HS but can be learned later too.
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Pretty much. It certainly has been a failure. But my only point here is to report that from experience that no levels is an awful situation for average to somewhat below average students. Pretty much every day we at some point say as we deal with what is happening in school that it would be so much better if they just had levels and put kids in the appropriate class.