The Educated Society

In response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech last Tuesday, Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post has echoed the theme of this education reform blog:

If the President claimed that a child’s education starts at home, “Then why is his administration insisting on pushing policies that evaluate and pay teachers based solely on how well they raise the test scores of their children? How can teachers be responsible for what happens to a child outside of school?” (See Strauss’ full article)

The Educated Society‘s theme is about creating this culture of education through enhancing the family and parents – and not just teachers. The larger societal problem of poverty, which afflicts over 20% of American children, is a primary reason for the low PISA scores in reading, math, and science literacy in 2009. Americans would actually be ranked first if comparable poverty rates were used (see It’s Poverty Not Stupid from Principal Difference). Thus, addressing poverty and family support for parents are vitally important to breaking this cycle.

The fact remains that, with a 21.7% poverty rate, we are higher than most other high-performing nations such as Finland (3.4%) or Japan (14.3%). President Obama clearly understands the primacy of the family as the foundation for children’s growth in his speech, but will not change his education reform direction without critical mass — i.e., only our collective voices can effect a change away from the current trend of teacher accountability and market-based solutions. Along with Valerie Strauss, I gladly supply it here.

Though the provocative stories in Amy Chua’s best-selling book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother have incensed many American parents and educators, the spirit of her memoir should not. In recounting how she raised her two daughters in an exaggerated and authoritarian manner, Chua assertively denounced the laissez-faire approach characterized by western parents.

“To be perfectly honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of western parenting,” Chua admitted recently on the Today show, referring to how Americans prepare their kids for the future. Forcing her seven-year old daughter Lulu to practice playing the violin for hours on end with no breaks (for water or even the bathroom) until she was able to play “Little White Donkey” was just an extreme example of her book’s major themes:

• Chinese parents assume strength in their children, not fragility, and thus push them to be the best.
• High expectations is much more effective than constant praise.
• Practice makes perfect (i.e., effort).

The intense reaction to her story also illustrates the division of the current education reform debate: on the one side, a singular focus on results and achievement through constant practice and drilling; and on the other side, a more holistic development that is child-centered. With a concerted emphasis on accountability and standards, American education is clearly moving towards the former. So now, Chua’s memoir comes at an opportune time to reflect on what we want to accomplish with education reform and with parenting.

Do we want to create a love of learning? Do we want students to think critically? Or do we want to prepare them to ably confront problems and create solutions in life? Though it’s easy to idealize the first two, these objectives are all different sides of the same coin. The last one just seems more grounded in reality, as tends to be the case in pragmatic Confucian cultures.

What about happiness? There doesn’t appear to be a consensus as to which style provides a blueprint for a eudemonic life. For decades, despite explosive economic growth Americans bemoaned underachievement and progressive debasement of societal values. Asian countries have always treasured its culture of education and unity (thus excelling at international tests) but at the cost of individuality, creativity, and perhaps even sanity (see An Education Paradox for a peek into the South Korean education debates). Attempts to study the subjective well-being of countries (i.e. happiness studies) have yielded inconsistent findings.

In the end, Chua’s timely report from the trenches is noteworthy for precisely one reason: In light of a renewed “Sputnik moment” for our economic future (according to President Obama), it forces us to question our parenting and education practices.

Denouncing Chua for rejecting her daughter’s half-hearted birthday card effort is focusing on the minutiae, not the principles behind it. Are there indifferent behaviors we might be unconsciously reinforcing? What is the message received when parents or teachers commend children for a sub-effort performance? The same questions should be applied to all of Chua’s other startling stories.

In fact, her birthday card story reminded me of how I used to require my fifth grade students to compose a year-end teacher appreciation letter (addressed to me!) describing what they had learned most and why they were thankful. They had to read it in front of the class. The idea wasn’t about self-congratulation, but rather, teaching students the importance of reflection and appreciation. We just assume that children will know how to express appreciation if given the chance.

The spirit of Chua’s book, in this respect, is wildly successful.

Addendum: Writer Lori Gottlieb explored the detrimental effects of “helicopter parenting” in The Atlantic’s How To Land Your Kid in Therapy. It referred to the fascination with Chua’s approach that echoes my post:

“Chua’s efforts ‘not to raise a soft, entitled child’ were widely attacked on blogs and mommy listservs as abusive, yet that didn’t stop the book from spending several months on the New York Times best-seller list. Sure, some parents might have read it out of pure voyeurism, but more likely, Chua’s book resonated so powerfully because she isn’t so different from her critics. She may have been obsessed with her kids’ success at the expense of their happiness—but many of today’s parents who are obsessed with their kids’ happiness share Chua’s drive, just wrapped in a prettier package. Ours is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach, a desire for high achievement without the sacrifice and struggle that this kind of achievement often requires. When the Tiger Mom looked unsparingly at her parental contradictions, perhaps she made the rest of us squirm because we were forced to examine our own.”

A controversial new study has suggested that the best way to learn in school is to take tests. Compared with repeatedly studying materials and concept mapping (drawing detailed diagrams of what one has learned), testing students (also known as retrieval practice) seemed to have had the most positive impact on learning and remembering. A more detailed summary can be found in today’s New York Times article and in the journal Science. Though this testing in this study refers to free-recall, as opposed to standardized testing, it led me to think about how one learns in school versus how one learns outside it.

Since the early 1990s, progressive educators as John Dewey advocated a constructivist learning approach, i.e., creating meaning and understanding through the interaction of experiences and ideas, as opposed to the traditional teacher-centered approach that focused on absorbing knowledge through rote memorization and repeated practice. Ever since then, education has moved towards the former in an effort to make learning more student-centered. However, with the conclusions from this new Purdue study, constructivist educators as Dr. Howard Gardner and countless others will have much to address.

There has always been a constant battle between the best ways to learn, usually pitting advocates of reasoning versus memorization. In education, we have seen a steady progression towards the latter. But how about it life? Which works more?

Do we learn best by trying to internalize and construct meaning or do we understand best through repeated practice? For example, in learning a new language, would it be better to be immersed in a culture or learn it through repeating over and over again? How about in athletics? Do we become better basketball players through dribbling drills or through understanding the dynamics of the game by playing 5-on-5? How about martial arts – does one “get it” more through repeated practice (forms or “katas”) or through two-man simulated combat?

The longer I taught, the more I began to realize: drills and practice are not as contemptible as progressives make it out to be.

Though students learn in different ways, Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia agrees: “It’s virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extensive practice…if you repeat the same task again and again, it will eventually become automatic. Your brain will literally change so that you can complete the task without thinking about it.” (as quoted from a Time magazine article)

Not just in the obvious sense (all children need to memorize the multiplication tables eventually), but I have found that drills can lead to understanding in ways that are less perceptible to the uninitiated.

As a practicing martial artist, I execute solo forms (repeated encyclopedia of movements) hundreds or thousands of times. Such routinization has subtle benefits that inform my understanding in ways that cannot be gleaned from two-man combat. Building that muscle memory through repeated practice over time leads to much more nuanced understanding of how certain moves are meant to be used; It’s not just building muscle memory, it’s also building higher order mental understanding. We start to understand what works and doesn’t work and make micro-adjustments that are refined over time, leading to perfection and eventually to application. Isn’t that the holy grail of learning?

Progressive educators have given short shrift to the ideas of building skills and repeated practice, often confusing it with mere rote memorization. There is no need to do the same double-digit multiplication problem fifty times, but there is a need to build from simple multiplication (single-digit) to complex (triple-digit) in order to understand the importance of place values.

The same concept can be applied to playing the piano, learning a language, or making a souffle. People tend to believe that attitude influences behavior, when in fact the opposite is also true — if not more: John Doe likes blondes (attitude), so he only dates Scandinavian women (behavior). What if he had met a wonderful brunette early in his life? No doubt his attitude would have changed  – a classic example of behavior influencing attitude. This works the same way for developing other skills.

Here’s the takeaway: If you practice harder and smarter, you are already ahead of 90% of people in your similar situation. In any aspect of life.

It’s interesting how in education, there is such an aversion to practice, drilling or testing, but not so in athletics, music, or any other life skills. Both active/critical learning and rote memorization has its place in school — and in life. Think about how we become proficient in any task or behavior in life, then think about if our education supports that.

In order to address 21st century needs, this 5-part series explores the need to create a “culture of education” in the U.S. amid the misguided clamor for accountability and market-based reforms that merely distract from real changes. Part 1 addressed the importance of four interdependent components in building a culture of education in the United States: school; parents/family; government; and community. Part 2 asked why there is so little discussion of parent accountability in education reform. Part 3 reflects on the importance of community and culture. Part 4 will emphasize the need for the government to change existing social policies to make it easier for families to emphasize education.

In a culture of education, the school, family, community, and government need to work cooperatively — one aspect working without the other three can only improve learning and education by so much. Currently, policymakers have been consumed with piecemeal efforts like teacher accountability, putting millions of dollars into research and systems that determine the teachers’ effectiveness on student achievement. No doubt the teaching profession need continual improvements, but not at the expense of developing students and family. The government will need to be a big part of that, but not in the way they have been currently operating.

Right now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other accountability hawks have created a culture that encourage market-based solutions to public problems. What’s wrong with that? Essentially, a market-based mentality will always result in clear winners and losers in a system that claims to leave NO child behind. The “losers” will be the same as the ones before — the poor and the disadvantaged. Activist Joanne Barkan wrote a comprehensive indictment of the current trend of market-based reforms in her article entitled Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy.

So what should the federal and state government’s role be in education reform? Simply to create social structures that facilitate family commitment to education.

This, on top of regulating fairness and uniformity. As I mentioned in Part 3, there is too much “noise” in society that distract families and students (especially the disadvantaged) from focusing on their education; the American popular culture of excess — from entertainment to foods — drowns out priorities.

Here the government must counteract such competing interests through robust family policies on a broad social as well as a tactical level in order to emphasize a culture of education. Unfortunately, our policies are less “pro-family” than those in other developed countries. (See chart below)

The unpaid time American parents are allowed to take off from work takes an economic and psychological toll that cripple their ability to prepare school-ready children – particularly the at-risk parents. Same with early child care and sick leave. Simply put, the more family-friendly the policies, the less parents need to worry about survival, and the more they can nurture a school-ready environment for their child. Other tactical policies need to continue encouraging and rewarding pro-education behavior. This includes incentivized tax-breaks and deep discounts for ALL:

• Books, supplies, and uniforms
• Educational shows and performances
• Private tutoring and other educational supplements

Sustained government action will help to create this culture of education, supported by family, school, and community accountability. The key to building momentum is not by trying to change people’s behavior through nanny state policies (i.e., trying to do what’s best for you); but rather, to understand how people are and change their default behavior by providing better, more attractive choices.

Don’t take away the french fries, just put it in the back.

This means that the government rewards good behavior without encouraging the bad. Look no further than how the government subsidizes certain agricultural crops. Corn is heavily subsidized, which dramatically decreases the cost of manufacturing snack foods and soda that has played a role in the obesity epidemic (particularly among those in poverty). “We have made it more expensive to eat in a very big way, ” says Dr. Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition and agricultural economics at UNC and author of The World is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race. “If we cut the subsidy on whole milk and made it cheaper only to drink low-fat milk, people would switch to it and it would save a lot of calories” (excerpted from Fixing a World That Fosters Fat). Make no mistake, choice architecture has a stronger influence over the health (or education) of a nation than outright mandates.

Imagine the impact if our elected officials apply these subsidies in education. If a parent could take her 10 year-old child to see March of the Penguins, a highly-acclaimed documentary for $5, or see The Dark Knight for the regular-priced $13 (in NYC), which would they go see? On the whole there would be a lot less tendency to see the latter. Now multiply that by ten movies a year for all families, and the difference across the nation would be staggering. This idea can be applied to not just families, but even businesses:

What if natural whole foods like fruits were heavily subsidized? Cheetos would be more expensive than a pound of apples. The implications for the health of the poor would be immense.

What if the government subsidized the production of educational entertainment? More studios would produce them.

What if they subsidized the manufacturing of educational computer games? The educational market would be saturated more software games like I Love Science and less Guitar Hero.

The net effect would be to marginalize less-educational offerings without trampling over free choice, but the biggest gain would be the gradual change in a society towards education. Families would be more apt to consume educational goods instead of being influenced by the whims of popular culture and the market. They just need a little nudge, as I wrote more about in my post, Willing Ourselves to Change Won’t Work. By investing in the family (as opposed to teachers and accountability), the government would have a more meaningful and long term impact on education in the U.S.

There is strong consensus that poverty is at the root of America’s education problem — not teachers or public schools. Poverty in turn, affects a child’s learning and achievement, and subsequent opportunities in life. To say that schools can overcome poverty, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested in a recent article in The Washington Post is to underestimate its intransigence, as I explained in my previous post. Tackling poverty must be part of education reform.

I won’t rehash why charter schools are not the answer or why reforms on teacher accountability and evaluation are misguided; they can be better explained in What Education Reform Never Addresses or in other articles (see Diane Ravitch’s lucid indictment of charter schools, Matthew Di Carlo’s synthesis of educational research on current reforms, or Joanne Barkan’s comprehensive expose of market-based education reform).

According to National Association of Secondary School Principals Executive Director, Dr. Gerald Tirozzi, America’s low ranking on the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results erroneously suggests our students are faring poorly compared with other countries. In fact, that misinterpretation can be more accurately attributed to America’s relatively high poverty rate. Had the report excluded schools with the highest poverty rates (calculated as students qualifying for free or reduced lunch), the U.S. would have jumped to first place. At 21.7%, the U.S. has the highest level of impoverishment, compared with other high achieving OECD countries: Finland 3.4%; Canada, 13.4%; and Japan 14.3% (some like Korea do not report these rates). See detailed comparisons when applying similar rates in It’s Poverty Not Stupid from Principal Difference.

Here is the obvious take away: poverty drags America down and is reflected in the increasing social inequality and the achievement gap. So how can it be addressed in education?

For one, schools — where children spend no more than 20% of their time — cannot be the sole or even main solution. The problem is just too big for schools to take on alone. There needs to be a combination of solutions: one more broad-based, and one more education-focused. For the former, Tina Rosenberg reported on a phenomenally successful social program called conditional cash transfers:

The idea is to give regular payments to poor families, in the form of cash or electronic transfers into their bank accounts, if they meet certain requirements.  The requirements vary, but many countries employ those used by Mexico: families must keep their children in school and go for regular medical checkups, and mom must attend workshops on subjects like nutrition or disease prevention.  The payments almost always go to women, as they are the most likely to spend the money on their families.  The elegant idea behind conditional cash transfers is to combat poverty today while breaking the cycle of poverty for tomorrow. (See full NYT article)

According to Rosenberg, the program fights poverty in two ways: 1) it gives money to the poor; and 2) in the long term, it gives children more education and better health. Known as Bolsa Familia in Brazil since early 2003, this program helped decrease the poverty rate from 22% of the population to 7%. Mexico has seen similar improvements with its program Oportunidades, with lower rates of malnutrition, anemia, stunting, maternal and infant deaths, and teen pregnancy, and with rates of children entering middle school increasing 42% and high school in rural areas by 85%. Such programs are now found in 14 countries in Latin America and 26 other countries, according to The World Bank (New Yorkers may remember a similar pilot-program by Mayor Bloomberg called Opportunity NYC that was pulled after seeing mixed results).

Though conditional cash transfers programs can impact a child’s education, it does not address the parents’ education, only their indigent struggles. In the United States, a concurrent parent education program is needed to fortify the social program. As mentioned previously, the issue of parent accountability has been completely overlooked by the current administration as well as in public discourse, but is integral to comprehensive education reform if past research is any indication. Renowned sociologist James Coleman wrote two important documents that highlighted the critical role of family. The Adolescent Society (1961) pinpointed the pervasive anti-intellectual culture of our youth that was reinforced by parents since the the mid-1900s that has led to the devaluing of educational achievement. Coleman’s second document, the 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity (better known as The Coleman Report), was the seminal report that revealed the predominance of student background over school-based variables as resources, teachers, or social composition. Since then, advocates have bemoaned the absence of adequate emphasis on parents and families, despite countless empirical studies of the middling effects of charter schools, merit pay, or unreliable measures for teacher effectiveness. Sociologist Jonathan Cole of Columbia University summarized:

…the key to changing educational outcomes lies not only in the schools but also in our homes. It is distressing to see critics of parent’s lack of effort in instilling the value of knowledge and education in their children get kicked in the face for their criticism. Until we can transform the relative value families place on educational achievement, efforts to reform the curricula and the types of teachers in the schools, while marginally making a difference, are not apt to do much to cure the larger educational maladies that we suffer from. (See full article here)

Teacher Amy Weisberg echoes my thoughts in her article If We Want to Fix Education, Start at the Beginning: “Parents must be held responsible for meeting their children’s basic needs and supporting their children in their educational program. We need to teach those who do not know, how to become better parents [emphasis added], in order to provide a supportive home environment that complements the educational program. Parenting is a life long responsibility and providing education and training for parents can have a positive impact on our students.”

What better way to get to disadvantaged students than through educating their parents? Along with public social support, they will be given that second chance to start their child off right — before the child is even born. Yes, not just parent education, but a prenatal one, where poor mothers-to-be can be more easily reached through hospitals and free clinics. This is the crucial period where parental attitudes and mindset can be affected, not when the child is already 3 years old. Skills and knowledge that middle class parents take for granted, that surprisingly, many in poverty are simply unaware of, such as:

• Good nutrition
• Creating a rich environment for your child to grow up in
• Reading to them from Day 1
• Setting limits
• Developing habits of mind
• The dangers of [video games, overstimulation, etc.]

The goal of parent education? To develop school-ready children. Talk about creating educational equality and leveling the playing field. These two components will go a long way in eradicating poverty from schools.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote an article in  the Washington Post, School Reform: A Chance for Bipartisan Governing, emphasizing the important role both Democrats and Republicans have in rewriting NCLB to address its “one-size-fits-all mandates, its teach-to-the-test mentality, and its lack of teacher investment. Particularly interesting was his statement that “school districts and their local partners in inner cities and rural communities are overcoming poverty and family breakdown to create high-performing schools, including charters and traditional public schools. They are taking bold steps to turn around low-performing schools by investing in teachers, rebuilding school staff, lengthening the school day and changing curricula.”

Can those bold steps for schools really overcome poverty?

I am aware of no studies that conclusively show this. The Bracey Report (2009), from the Education and the Public Interest Center and the Education Policy Research Unit, deconstructed research of programs that have claimed to close the achievement gap. On the whole, claims of schools overcoming poverty are inconclusive at best, and downright deceptive in some cases. Most success stories, like Harlem’s Promise Academy, actually show very modest improvements – gains were limited to only one year, one grade, and one subject. All this, after Promise Academy:

1) Mandated that students below grade level spend twice as much time in school as their public school counterparts;

2) Provided free medical, dental, and mental-health services and high quality nutritious cafeteria meals for its students;

3) Provided support for parents, such as food baskets, meals, bus fare, etc.; and

4) Made a concerted effort to change the culture of achievement, surrounding students with the importance of hard work in achieving success.

In other words, the student health and non-academic interventions were just as important as the academic changes. The changes holistically addressed school achievement and poverty at the same time in order to gain debatable improvement in one school, one year, one grade and one subject! CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, Geoffrey Canada, of documentary Waiting for Superman fame, has invested extraordinary time and devotion (not to mention financial support from private interests), but still have difficulty making significant progress. Other evaluations of charter school progress, such as that of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (the most extensive system of vouchers and charter schools in America that matches 3,000+ students) show achievement growth comparable to local public schools. If positive results are this difficult for charter schools, how can we possibly scale such efforts for nationwide improvement?

That, of course, has been the problem: we take one “successful” small program (that spent a lot of money and time) and believe that we can scale it up to meet the needs of over 1.1 million NYC public school children, never mind a whole nation. Schools cannot overcome poverty on its own, according to education historian Diane Ravitch, who asserts that research consensus shows teachers account for merely 10 to 20 percent of achievement outcomes in her article The Myth of Charter Schools. In fact, nonschool factors matter more, she claims:

According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factors within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers…it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.

This conclusion echoes the results of the seminal 1966 Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, long buried in politically-incorrect controversy.

In the end, Arne Duncan’s educational mandate is limited; after all, his reforms can only affect what goes on in schools. For this reason the national education reform debate must include a robust nonschool component addressing poverty and family improvement. I have written more about this in my previous post, What No Education Reform Ever Addresses.

We know new years resolutions never work. It just relies too much on willpower, which sad to say we have little of. Here are what a couple of studies found:

1) In the 1970s, two researchers conducted a three-hour workshop on energy efficiency with 40 recruited participants. Post-survey data of this workshop indicated that the subjects knew and cared much more about energy efficiency for their home than before the workshop. But when it came to action afterwards, the researchers couldn’t believe the results:

One person lowered the temperature on the hot water heater. Two additional people had installed insulating blankets around their hot water heaters — but they had done it before the workshop. Eight people did install low-flow shower heads — after all 40 participants had been given the low-flow shower heads at the workshop. If these were people who cared enough about energy efficiency to attend a three-hour workshop, what hope was there for people who didn’t? (See NYT article on this study).

2) In a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), four researchers studied employee behavior regarding 401K contributions. Though almost everyone agrees on the importance of contributing to their retirement fund, less than 40% actually opted in.

As much we we talk about changing the politics in Washington, changing education reform, or changing any status quo inaction, there is a clear rule of thumb, maybe two:

Rule 1: Just because people agree with something doesn’t necessarily mean they will do it.

Rule 2: People tend to follow the path of least resistance.

In other words, finding the magic bullet that will create sustainable action is difficult at best. Willpower alone, it seems, is not enough. Neither are motivational speakers. What do most people do? They settle for passive decision-making, which essentially means they do nothing. If people can’t seem to turn beliefs into action, then what works?

Choice architecture, according to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of the best-selling Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. It is the art of manipulating how choices are presented, or gentle nudging, if you will. Look at how grocery stores present their layout — flowers, baked goods, or produce artificially lit up in the front in order to stimulate the senses. Snacks are set up at the check-out counter to increase impulsive purchases. In other words, engineering people’s behavior in order to produce a desired effect. Thaler’s favorite example is the simple etching of a fly in men’s urinals, which encouraged men to aim, spill less, and made bathrooms cleaner — all without forcing compliance.

The researchers for the NBER manipulated this path of least resistance regarding 401K contributions. Instead of opting in to the program that required filling out paperwork, employees were automatically enrolled, only opting out if they didn’t want to participate. Contribution rates soared to nearly 100%. Ramit Sethi, personal finance guru and author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, preaches the same idea when it comes to creating systems for saving money — all your accounts should be automated so that you don’t have to worry about depositing checks, missing payments, or transferring funds when a balance runs low. Simply changing the default wipes out people’s inherent passive decision-making that lead to problems in the future, and puts less pressure on individual willpower. That’s why the requisite New Year’s resolution to lose weight rarely works.

So how can we engineer behavioral change in education? People’s habits and attitudes are notoriously difficult to change, so how do we “design better choices” for administrators, teachers, parents, and students to make and thereby increase their productivity, growth, and achievement? I am curious to know what readers think, and will end with one example used in various school districts nationwide. By simply moving recess to before lunch instead of after, researchers at the Montana Team Nutrition program found that students were hungrier; they wasted less food, drank more milk, and overall felt less rushed. As a bonus, students were calmer after lunch, and teachers gained back ten minutes of instruction time. What are some of your ideas?