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Math Plus Reading Does Not Equal Learning
I stirred up some conservatives in the Twitterverse earlier this week with my thoughts on unions and charter schools. In particular, I was asked how I'd explain the success of Harvest Prep, a charter school in north Minneapolis. You can read a glowing profile of the school by conservative columnist Katherine Kersten here. That profile and data from the Minnesota Department of Education go a long way to explaining Harvest Prep's “success”.
First, a description of what Kersten calls Harvest Prep's “top-notch instruction”:
Every day, Harvest devotes 100-minute time blocks to reading and math. In early grades, the school teaches phonics and math facts using “drill and kill” methods that would drive most education professors shrieking from the room.
The results of this speak for themselves:
(Data from Minnesota Department of Education)
Harvest Prep handily beats state math averages, and has recently pulled ahead in reading. But in science, the school lags far behind.
Now, math and reading tests are administered to more grades than the science test, but the gap we see here is more than statistical variation. The gap we see is a poignant testament to the perils of our narrow testing obsession.
There's no question that Harvest Prep has achieved impressive results in its math and reading scores, and it has been highly lauded for its achievements in this area. Unfortunately, the data above support the hypothesis that what isn't tested isn't taught (or at least not with the same intensity).
We need to remind ourselves what the goal of our education system is. It's not just about scoring well on the tests we have, it's about comprehensive student readiness for post-secondary success. To punish and reward schools using just one and a half subjects (reading comprehension being only one part of English/Language Arts) is to encourage a narrow-minded focus on low-level testable skills. The MCAs disproportionately assess students at the lowest levels of learning; the skills necessary for critical thinking, effective creation, and original problem-solving don't make the cut.
We need to reverse these twisted incentives and reopen the debate about what we test and how we use that data. To do otherwise is to risk encouraging the development of increasingly narrow pedagogy that hurts our students' chances in the long run.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education Classroom Methods Student Assessment
5 Comments
December 12, 2011 at 9:29 am
But in Kenwood Middle school, Lakeville, because it went to national for a few times. More students sign up with science olympiad club in schools. So it promoted students’ interest in learning science.
I found my 2 kids benefited from attending the club. At least, allow them to read more.
Reading, Science and even math are inseparable. Once reading improved, other subjects will improve also.
Science teachers in middle schools, high schools should encourage students to sign up. Now it seems more schools are not participating even.
I noticed my son joined the History Day when he was in 7th grade. He entered in State competition. But he didn’t earn any prize at State. but when he was in 8th grade, his English or history teacher never sign up for “History Day” event at all. So he had no chance to attending it.
From this, I learned school hold big responsibility for students, right?
I feel all schools should actively sign up these useful activities. This will trigger students’ interest in learning various subjects.
December 11, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Yi Li,
Harvest Prep has good results on the math and reading tests because their teaching is mostly about those tests. Low science scores show that preparing students for the math and reading tests does not lead to success in other areas. Instead, the school seems good at “beating the test” without building broader learning.
I am sure that Harvest Prep will soon find ways to do well on the science test, too. But what about writing? Social studies? World language? Art? The Harvest Prep approach, built on over-emphasizing specific tests, means that if something isn’t tested, it isn’t taught.
What’s more, there are plenty of math and reading skills that aren’t tested by the MCA. The vast majority of MCA questions come from the bottom two levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (“remembering” and “understanding”), a few come from the middle (“applying,” “analyzing,” and “evaluating”) and none at all come from the top (“creating”). Because higher level skills aren’t tested, they don’t get taught, yet these are the skills necessary for students’ future success.
If we rely too much on test scores as our measure of how “well” a school is doing, we confuse a few low-level skills with broad and deep learning.
As for Science Olympiad, as a proud former member and three-time co-captain of Century High School’s SO team in Rochester, MN, I can testify to the fun and exciting learning opportunities that come with that activity. (For what it’s worth, over my four years with the team, CHS placed 5th, 6th, 6th, and 2nd place at the state competition, a fairly successful run.) However, at its largest, the Century Science Olympiad team had maybe 30 of the school’s 1800 students. Clubs like SO are good indicators of how well a school’s top students perform. They are less useful as measures of overall quality and don’t drive learning for most students.
December 10, 2011 at 8:47 am
We should give big applause to Harvest prep school for achieving such good result in math and reading.
In future, they may take steps to improve their science teaching, etc.
In entire MN schools, Science level is lower than other areas, compared to national level.
I can see that by this fact:
How many schools (Middle schools and high schools ) participating Science Olympiad competiton event. This is a national competition event.
I feel we are lucky that we live in Lakeville. So my kids have chance to join in science olympiad club and participate in the state competition.
Look at nearby school districts: only Lakeville, Apple Valley districts participated. not Burnsville, Farmington, not even Edina district.
Even in Lakeville district itself, only one of the 3 middle schools participated. We are lucky that my kids were assigned to Kenwood Middle school. So science teachers at the school are strong advocates to encourage students to join the science club. 2 Lakeville high schools are participants of the event too.
In fact, to join science club, it really increase students’ range of knowledge. stimulate their interest in learning, observing their environments.
Kenwood middle school represent state of MN to the national competition 3 years in a row in the past. I don’t understand why 2 other middle schools not join? Is it because their science teachers don’t have the initiative? or school pincipal don’t encourage it.
Why not all schools participate in this club events?
Look at East and West coasts, middle school and high schools are so eager and popular to participate in this event. No wonder their science test level are higher.
December 9, 2011 at 10:58 am
The point of school—college—any level of education is to teach the student to THINK. To analyze and reason. And to teach us where and how to find information—not everything is on the Internet.
Rote information and memorization are pointless talents if the student does not have the analytical skills to use that information.
We’ve already seen the results of that failure to think and to reason in our society. We don’t need more of it.
Alfred Einstein allegedly said, and I am not quoting: Don’t memorize things you can look up. And he also refused to learn his own phone number because he could always look it up.
Michael Diedrich says:
December 12, 2011 at 10:14 am
Yi Li,
As I said, I agree that SO and other activities provide great additional learning opportunities. I’m all for encouraging schools to offer these sorts of activities, but I also recognize that they depend on the interest and availability of students (and if it takes competing at the national level to generate student interest, most schools aren’t going to see that bump). In other words, I think extracurricular activities provide a boost to those students that participate, but they are too scattershot in their effects to be expected to raise overall performance in many areas.
You say, “Reading, science, and math are inseparable,” and predict that improvements in reading will lead to improvements in science. If we look at the Harvest Prep data, however, we see that improvements in reading did *not* lead to improvements in science. I suspect this is largely because the school’s focus on MCA-level reading skills takes away its time and emphasis on science.
Authentic increases in reading comprehension do lead to improvements elsewhere. However, the drill-and-kill approach taken by Harvest Prep is mostly good for raising MCA scores for lower-level reading skills. High MCA scores look good, but they may hide deeper weaknesses if the school has tried to beat the test like Harvest Prep.