It's important. Parrott for SBOE District 12

It's tempting to think that votes in many parts of North Texas don't matter. The Republican candidates are bound to win locally. But I am going to argue that those in the 12th district for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) need to take this election very seriously. Note that district boundaries have been redrawn, so you may not know which district you are in.

I particularly exhort my Republican friends to not just vote party line here. If you are worried about the extremist influences in your party, and more importantly if you care about the kind of education we have in Texas, this is where you need to draw a line.

I do not actually know very much about Lois Parrott other than what I've been reading over the past weeks. I haven't spoken with people who have worked with her. My support for Ms Parrott is based substantially on the fact that she has stated unambiguously that she opposes the Religious Rights' attempted take-over of school textbooks and curricula in Texas.

Miller has abandoned reason and the center

I've (mildly) supported her opponent, Tincy Miller, in the past, and so I need to explain why I am now unequivocally opposing Ms Miller. Tincy Miller, as the the Republican candidate will still probably win (although the 12th district also contains substantial parts of Dallas County, so there is still a fighting chance for a Democrat). Miller's experienced, and has been reasonably professional. In her previous terms she's been an odd sort of swing vote between the radical Creationist and anti-Historical faction and the professional faction. I would have preferred someone who did more to stand up to the people who make Texas a laughing stock of around the world, but I also had a certain admiration for the non-ideological, pragmatic, "good governance" Republicans that I found when I first moved to Texas seven years ago.

But pragmatic, consensual Republicans have been getting turfed out. They either get replaced by people on the Radical Right or they move dramatically to the right themselves. Miller has done the latter. I held my nose (and my tongue) as Miller courted endorsements from the Texas Eagle Forum and other very conservative groups during her primary battle with fiercely anti-intellectual the Tea Party candidate, Gail ("Pilgrims were Commies") Spurlock. I had hoped that Miller would move back to the pragmatic center after she had the GOP nomination. This has not happened.

In a recent candidate's forum (full video hosted by the Richard League of Women Voters), Miller has stated (incorrectly) that scientists agree that Creationism and Intelligent Design should be taught along with natural selection. Miller also stated some sort of endorsement for school-led prayer. She has refused to respond to the Texas Freedom Network's questionnaire.

You don't have to be on the left to fear the right-wing take over of the SBOE

Miller is displaying her unwillingness to stand up to the faction that have tried to remove Thomas Jefferson as an enlightenment thinker from textbooks, that have wanted to teach the bizarre historical theories of the discredited David Barton, that have fought at every opportunity to undermine teaching of the most fundamental principle in the biological sciences, which has led to them refusing to rely on educational and subject matter experts. This faction has not just made the Texas a laughing stock of the nation, but also of the world. The same world in which our children will be living, working, and studying.

In the past, Miller has been erratic in standing up to that faction; but over the past four months she's been signaling that she will be joining them (possibly giving then an outright majority on the board). So while Parrott may be to the left of most of the voters in the 12th District, this isn't about left/right; it is about sanity versus the ridiculous. Miller has done everything she can to indicate that she will not challenge the ridiculous.

Your vote will matter

Now I don't know whether Miller's shift reflects her genuine convictions, fear of future primary battles from the right, or a look toward an expanded political career. Either way, she shouldn't be on the board, and if she does end up on the board she should be reminded by a strong showing for Parrott that there are voters who will not tolerate an anti-intellectual ideological and deeply embarrassing and destructive board of education.

Education wrap-up

Tomorrow, Monday, February 1, I begin my student teaching at Vines High School in Plano. In two ways this means that this will be my last blog posting on education and education policy for a while. This post will contain a list of brief topics I had wanted to get to at some point. But first an explanation of why this will be my last posting for a while.

The most important one is time. Student teaching is a more than full-time activity. I find it hard to believe that I will have time or energy for anything else. Indeed, this will be my first full-time position since 1997 when I requested to go from full-time to part-time at the Cranfield University Computer Centre. (And, unlike in Plano which has loads of centres and theatres it's not an affectation for Cranfield, in England, to have a computer centre.) I will be less active with my Facebook presence, and I will be less active here.

The second reason for cutting down in posting about education policy was that during the Plano Student Teacher orientation we were advised to not make public statements about the school district. I suspect that if I examined the legal basis for this, I would find that as someone now affiliated with PISD I would not be allowed to say anything that could be taken as a reflection of PISD policy. So I doubt that I could be forbidden from blogging if I included appropriate disclaimers. But instead of trying to cut close to what is allowed, I will steer clear of anything that might conflict with policy. Only a few of my postings have specifically addressed PISD, and in those postings I think I've been very positive about the school district. It was my first choice for student teaching and will be my first choice when I hit the job market.

Once I am fully settled into a teaching position I will explore what kind of public posting would be acceptable. As I've said before I have absolutely no desire to stir up trouble. I should also point out that by refraining from commenting on education, I am much less likely to accidentally violate any confidentiality concerns. (Not that I think I am likely to make that mistake, it may be a concern of others I work with.)

So now I'll just produce a brief list of things that I wanted to address at some point.

In praise of Arne Duncan

I really like US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. I like his commitment to finding solutions that work. From his ideas about longer school days and years to his attempts to get usable data that enables us to see what (and who) works well and what (and who) doesn't. He's not making friends with many teachers' unions, but they aren't protesting too much because he does have a lot of money to through around.

There was an interesting profile of Duncan in the New Yorker recently. I didn't feel that it was fully up to the standards I usually see in the New Yorker, but it was still a worthwhile read.

Incentives to cheat

Cheating on the high stakes tests is something that has been going on for a while and has been excellently described in the first chapter of Freakonomics. And there are more reports coming in. The set of rules in place to present cheating is enormous. Administering and document these tests has become a huge undertaking, not least of all to prevent teacher and administrator cheating.

Instead of adding more rules to deal with particular avenues of cheating, we need to correct a fundamental design flaw. The people who have the most to lose by poor test scores are exactly the people who administer these tests. The teachers and school principals have much more at stake than the actual students. In some cases their jobs are at stake. Yet these are the same people who administer the tests. No matter how much we like to think about the integrity of teachers and school administrators, this is a terrible position to put them in.

I don't know exactly how it should be done, but this kind of testing should be administered by outsiders. Maybe contract with something like ETS or other organizations whose business depends on their reputation for fair administration of tests. Maybe use teachers for a different school district. What ever we do, we should not have the people who have most at stake with these test scores administer the tests.

Statistics, Not pre-pre-Calculus

Arthur Benjamin has proposed something that in a three minute video of his TED talk changed my view about math curriculum. It is a simple point that he makes better than I could summarize.

I haven't thought through this in detail, but as I watch kids, most of whom will not go on to calculus, learn how to factor or divide polynomials, I can't help thinking that Arthur Benjamin is on to something. One problem in changing things is that most people like me (math geeks who go into teaching) like algebra and analysis more than we like statistics. Although I would enjoy learning a branch of mathematics that I have no formal training in, it would certainly involve retraining, not to mention entirely new curriculum development.

A gripe about relevance

I have been told in my teacher training that I should try to make a connection between everything I teach and the lives of my students. I've been told that students don't like or do well in math because they don't see the relevance. I feel that math is being held to a higher standard than other fields. When in English students are taught the difference between a metaphor and a simile there is no demand that it be made relevant. In history it is great to teach about the Roman Empire, but exaggerating its relevance for most students is probably seen as a sham. In so many subjects we are teaching kids how to think about the world and ideas. Yet when it comes to math, people seem to feel that we need to pretend that all of the skills are immediately relevant for their lives.

It's good to learn mathematics because by studying it makes people smarter. It is about learning how to think in a particular way. Being able to think mathematically is very useful even if the particular skills taught are not. I believe that this is also true of the study of other fields as well. Each opens up a way of thinking that will benefit students for the rest of their lives. Insisting that it is practical and constructing contrived applications only communicates that we are lying about the need to study math. We need to tell our students the truth: Learning math makes your brain work better.

And finally, my résumé.

My student teaching is the last requirement before I can receive my Texas Mathematics 8–12 Mathematics Certification. So I will be looking for a job soon. Thus, I link to my résumé (PDF).

How to count and compare

The bottom line of this rant is that being ranked 4th out of 16 in graduation rates is perfectly respectable, but it is misleading to present this in a way would lead people to infer a ranking of 4th out of 51.

I've complained before that there is often no good way to compare education results from state to state. And I've stated my suspicion that this is deliberate.

Some good news is that Texas is joining an effort to provide comparable information on graduation rates, even though the state is ducking out of an effort to develop ways to compare student performance. And this is summarized in a report (PDF) titled, The National Governors Association Compact Rate: A Comprehensive Approach to Improved Accuracy and Consistency in High School Graduation Rates. This report extolls the virtues of having a consistent measure that allows one state's results to be compared with another. I wish that the people, (well Governor Perry) who want to withdraw from efforts to have comparable data for student achievement would apply the same thinking that they've used for reporting graduation rates.

If anyone doubts that politicians and officials try to spin results to make things look good for them, it is instructive to read the one sentence announcement of the graduation report on the TEA website.

A new report shows Texas has the fourth highest graduation rate among states using National Governors Association methodology.

Reading that announcement you might think that Texas ranked 4th out of 51 (50 states, plus the District of Columbia). This would certainly put a very positive light on Texas education. You have to read through the report to find so far only 16 states are using this measure; so Texas ranks a respectable 4th out of 16 instead of the implicated 4th out of 51.

Note that the announcement is perfectly true. But without including the fact that only 16 states were involved instead of 50, it invites readers to draw an incorrect conclusion.

I applaud the effort to provide a consistent metric for calculating graduation rates across states. And I am gratified that Texas does well among the 16 states that have reported this way. (More states are coming on board according to the report.). More transparent reporting is in the public interest. Now let's do this (as most other states are committed to) for achievement as well.

All teachers need math

Scientific American has an article, Observations: Little girls are made of sugar and spice, and learn that math is not nice, pointing out research by Susan Levine that math anxiety can be passed from female 1st and 2nd grade teachers to their female students. This ends of propagating the myth that boys are better at math than girls.

College students majoring in early elementary education in the U.S., of whom 90 percent are female, hold the highest level of math anxiety compared to students majoring in other subjects. And elementary students emulate the behavior of same-gender adults more than opposite-gender adults.

The study appears to have been carefully conducted. The recommendation is that math training be a larger part of the education of those going into early elementary teaching.