ABOUT EDUCATION

[Ross]

Saxonisms—The wit and wisdom of John Saxon

AUGUST 26, 2016 BY NAKONIA (NIKI) HAYES

Below are some "Saxonisms" that illustrate the wit and wisdom of John Saxon a well known math teacher and math textbook publisher.

Results, not methodology, should be the basis of curriculum decisions.

Fundamental knowledge is the basis of creativity.

Creativity springs unsolicited from a well prepared mind.

Creativity can be discouraged or encouraged, but "creativity" cannot be taught.

Problem solving is a process of concept recognition and concept application.

Problem solving is therefore the application of previously learned concepts.

The "art" of problem solving cannot be taught.

The use of productive thought patterns can be taught,

but the act of "critical thinking" cannot be taught.

Educators cannot teach students to reason; they can hope only to provide students with the skills to reason. Prevailing math teaching methods fail to do that.

Mathematics is an individual sport and is not a team sport.

Students do not detest work; they detest effort without purpose.

On how students think: "Aren't you interested in theory?"

Answer: "No, man, I just want to know how to get the answer."

Beautiful explanations do not lead to understanding.

Teachers are not paid to teach.

Teachers are paid to find a way for students to learn.

You do not teach mathematics with your head, but with your heart.

Making eyes sparkle does not come from erudite mathematics.

Teachers say they are going to teach the children to think.

The children can think already.

What they need to know is the math to use in their thinking.

Dr. Benjamin Bloom says you must overlearn beyond mastery

until you can do it like Fred Astaire said:

"Do the dance while reading Shakespeare."

  I contend that our job is to teach rewarding responses to mathematical stimuli,

to teach thought patterns that have been found to lead to the solutions,

to allow the students to practice reacting to the stimuli with these thought patterns and

to be rewarded with the warm feeling of pride that accompanies the correct answer.

I believe that students should be gently led and constantly applauded for their efforts.

I oppose intimidation in any form. Mathematics classes can become warm sanctuaries

towards which students gravitate because there they are asked

to solve puzzles by using familiar thought patterns.

You grasp an abstraction almost by osmosis through long-term exposure.

You can't put your hand on it. That's the reason we call it an abstraction.

We've never had research that shows how long it takes for students to absorb

abstractions in mathematics. It takes a long time. Then the summer lets them forget it.

Meaningful education research is an oxymoron.

We have more education research in America

than all the other countries and kids are at the bottom.

The math educators spend time at the universities

playing like they're scientists and they publish their papers.

The idea that children can be taught from books that are unintelligible to adults

is absurd. This should be our first check from now on: If we can't read and understand the book, then the book is unsatisfactory.

Most math books are like the Book of Revelation—

horror stories and surprises from beginning to end.

Students see my book as the 23rd Psalm.

It's a nice safe place to go.

Saxon books will win every contest by an order of magnitude.

If it were possible to teach people to think, it would be possible

to teach professors of mathematics education to be mathematicians.

The only difference between a mathematician and

a professor of mathematics education is the creative spark.

[One studies inside the mathematical sciences. The other, the results of those studies.]

We have allowed this fraud, this pasquinade, on education by these people

who are literal and total gross incompetents, and they have destroyed

mathematics education in America to the point that I,

a retired Air Force test pilot who has flown two combat tours,

and whose profession was killing, know more about teaching than they do.

By asking math teachers of America to adopt the new list of fads without testing them, you will cause the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged to widen because inner city schools are so bad that they will do anything that you say so they can protect their rear ends."

It has to stop right here, right now.

The time for inactive skepticism is past.

I'm going to bypass the math establishment because a man convinced against his will

is of the same opinion. I will run over these people with a bulldozer.

Either I am the most brilliant thing to come down the pike,

having doubled some students' test scores, or

the people in charge of math texts are totally incompetent.

  This is more than one man lighting a candle.

When they see the brilliance of this candle,

they're going to have to light their own or be overpowered.

I know I don't make headway by speaking out this way,

but I am determined to change this system of math education.

Our math experts aren't really experts; they have abdicated

all claim to control by their behavior of the last 20 years.

I'm mad, and I'm doing something about it!

It's a joyful, joyous experience, this one-sided battle.

There I am on one side and aligned with me are all the mommas and daddies

and employers. On the other are the major book companies

and their committees of experts.

My side has to win.

I believe I'll be proven right by 2015 or 2020.

John Saxon was West Point graduate with three engineering degrees and a retired U.S. Air Force war hero who began a second career in 1971 as a math teacher, author, and publisher of K-12 mathematics textbooks. From 1981 to 2004, the year his company was sold, Saxon Publishers had distributed seven million textbooks worldwide. More "Saxonisms" can be found in John Saxon's Story, a genius of common sense in math education by Nakonia (Niki) Hayes. Check http://saxonmathwarrior.com.


http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/saxonisms-wit-wisdom-john-saxon/

[Ross]

The Back Door

AUGUST 26, 2016 BY DENNIS IAN

It's so easy to see the junk piling up at the front door of every public school in America. But the back door should capture some concern, too. It's just as unpretty.

Teachers expect schools to change over time. In fact, they make lots of changes every year. Serve a few decades and reforms ... big and small ... become part of teacher-life. Teachers expect to find themselves in new currents all the time.

Way back when, the marijuana stuff had us all alarmed ... and the beer stuff, too. That was everyday teen stuff. We had run-ins with hygiene and sex and cigarettes. And, of course, drunk driving. Daring schools talked about daring stuff beyond classrooms ... like alcohol and divorce ... and physical and sexual abuse. Then there was AIDS. That was extra-delicate and hit the schools with frantic immediacy. The right words were so hard to find. Lots of questions ... and lots of times I felt like I was killing innocence.

Other moments were colored by usual stuff. Usual for adults, trauma for kids. Big difference.

There aren't too many best-sellers about delicate issues that surfaced in schools. No sexy titles like "Beer and the Back Seat" ... which would kill two sins at once. Or "I'll Love You for All of Next Week" ... which might seem cute, but is likely to be an overly graphic how-to manual for very young teens in this age of sexual over-kill. That's the sad trend.

Sexting is now a middle school sport. And cell phones are sex toys. Predator alerts are a part of life and many schools try to prepare for the unthinkable. Schools have become guarded fortresses where teachers where badges and parents are considered intruders until they're cleared as visitors.

Hazing never really goes away ... it just morphs into some new ugliness. Bullying has moved from the playground to the internet ... and it's harder than ever to smother. And now weed splits a dangerous spotlight with opioids. Even the jocks are toying with dangerous drugs. And all of this is piled on top of the usual bravado of the teenage years. I think that's called a powder keg.

That's the reality few ever see. They overlook the fact that schools are intimate communities with all sorts of kids with all sorts of issues. Teachers are more than almost-historians or math wizards or science geeks. They see and hear things that would stun outsiders. And kids whisper to them ... and tell them things because they trust them. Especially when they whisper awful things.

My point? Where does generation after generation of teachers get their wisdom for things like this? ... And for other topics that seem invisible to outsiders? Who makes the greenhorns less green and the naive less naive? Who oracles them?

Know who? The folks at the back door. The door few see.

Those are the master-teachers and they're leaving in droves.

They're walking away from this reform Idiocy and fleeing the know-it-alls and the know-nothing politicians. They're escaping asinine theoreticians and ivy-covered savants who issue edicts about reading, writing, and thinking ... while assuring us all that their absence of any real classroom experience makes them all the more the genius. Sure.

This sudden exodus isn't just the usual changing of the guard. When this brigade of Gray Heads ... these Old Souls ... gather up their experiences and box their lives and leave for good ... they'll be packing up decades of wisdom that will no longer be at the ready for the newbies who are never, ever as ready as they think.

The most important things learned about teaching happen in whispers, asides, or in simple observations. And it's almost always at the knee of some Gray Head who did what we would all come to do later in our own careers ... pass along big and small wisdoms.

It happens in fable form and in funny-sincere recollections of long-disappeared characters. And it could happen anywhere ... at any time. In hallways. At a copy machine. Or the parking lot. In a stairwell or in an empty classroom ... very late in the day ... when the school goes silent save for the sounds of sloshy mops and things on squeaky wheels.

And now those splendid souls ...the Wisdomers ... they're leaving. Vanishing. Repulsed by this reform idiocy that has spun out of control.

And in their moving vans are moving stories young teachers need to know. Informal survival guides. Reference material for soothing young souls and spackling torn hearts. What's in those boxes are manuals for curing failure and repairing kids who've had a bottom-bounce. Those are medicine boxes with un-named elixirs for hurts of all sorts. And all of this magic is flying out the back doors of schools everywhere.

Those master-teachers ... and their wisdom ... are the antidote for this sick reform. But they'll be gone when their wisdom is most needed.

Someday ... not sure when ... but someday ... we'll come to our senses. We'll have a national mea culpa. And we'll get our educational priorities back in common sense rhythms. But it won't be easy. It's gonna be hard stuff.

All of the wisdom-whispers will have disappeared. And "starting from scratch" won't be a cliche any more. It'll be a reality.

Wish us luck. We're gonna need it.

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/the-back-door/

[redcliffsw]

[Ross]

I have never agreed to, "It takes a village". NEVER
I fought Child Protective Services for a year and a half
to remove my nephew from their control and I adopted him.
The Social Workers were very nasty, hateful and iying in court.

It was not my attorney's work even in court that got the job done.
It was my political actions and my tape recorder and video camera that whipped them.
It was my speaking up in court when my attorney would not.
It was also the fact that i and my wife told the judge we would submit to psychological
evaluations and pay for them to prove we were not the ugly people that CPS was saying we were.

We paid for and arranged the evaluations to prevent CPS from control and manipulation of them.
Because it was a known fact that CPS actually did manipulate psychological evaluation.
No it does not take a village!

Ad for those that don't know my son does not got to West Elk because of that attitude. West Elk tried to pull that on me. They thought they were the parent. I said no. Plain and simple. That particular School Superintendent was eventually fired. The School is never the parent !

[redcliffsw]

Interesting. 

Just shows the government extending itself.  Not good.

[Ross]

A True Abuse of Opt-Out Rights

September 13, 2016 By Shane Vander Hart

Do you know what is truly abusing a parent's right to opt their children out of assessments? It has nothing to do with what the parent does. What's abusive is when a school selectively chooses students they think will fail and then tell those parents about their opt-out rights.

That is exactly what happened in Alexandria, VA as reported by The Washington Post:



    "As schools were busy readying students for state exams, teachers at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology, a high-poverty school in Alexandria, were poring over data to determine which students would probably not do well on the tests.

    But according to a school district investigation, the effort wasn't aimed at giving those students extra help. Instead, Principal Brandon Davis allegedly told teachers this spring to call the parents of students who appeared on the brink of failing the exams to inform them of their right to opt out of the tests, according to the investigation. Three dozen parents decided to pull their children from the state Standards of Learning exams; no parents at the school had done so the previous year.

    The move, which meant those students' scores would not be considered for state accreditation purposes, probably artificially inflated the school's overall performance and masked the fact that some students were not performing up to standards. It also means the data used to evaluate the school is potentially flawed and presents evidence that a new Virginia law allowing students to opt out of tests without it affecting a school's rating could compromise the ability to assess schools.

Shameful. What's ironic if the school's principal taken the time to inform all parents about their right to opt-out he may have gotten the results he was hoping for."

Read more at: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/education-at-state-level/true-abuse-of-opt-out-rights/

****************************************************************

We have the same kind of lying and cheating right here in Elk County.
I suppose it is alright with the majority of people because they won't stand up against it.
Personally, I was raised with better values and principles.

The personal progressiveness and lack of professionalism in this county is/will destroy it.
That is my personal view and opinion and I will stand by it.

[Ross]

KASB's State Education Report Card –
using facts to mask the truth

David DorseySeptember 2, 2016Education

Truth is, after all, a moving target

Hairs to split and pieces that don't fit

How can anybody be enlightened?

Truth is, after all, so poorly lit

– Neil Peart

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

– Maya Angelou

(I am only posting excerpts to this article.)


KPI's Dave Trabert, in this article, took the report and subsequent ranking to task by exposing that the report is nothing more than a ruse to justify more money to the schools.


Graduation rates. A look at the percentage of students entering post-secondary education who have to take remedial college courses is an indicator that graduating from high school isn't much of an accomplishment anymore.




(KASB also committed a research faux pas by double counting all students in the NAEP analysis).



But the most curious data used in the Report Card is SAT scores. Despite the fact that only 5% of Kansas high school students take the SAT, KASB chose not only to use it in their analysis, but gave it a weighting 6 times greater than the NAEP indicator of All Students at Proficient Level.



The Report Card avoids the incontrovertible truth that Kansas performs about average in a nation that doesn't perform very well.


It should be no surprise that the first statement on the first Power Point slide of the report is "Serving Educational Leaders," since they are the only ones served by this kind of report, not the rest of Kansans.

Read the whole article at: https://kansaspolicy.org/kasb-education-report-card-using-facts-to-mask-the-truth/

[Ross]

( My personal opinion has always been tthat it has always been a great baby sitting service for parents at taxpayer expens
Headstart and preschool both. )

The Push for Pre-K Appears to Be Unjustified

November 2, 2016 By Shane Vander Hart

Education reformers, many of whom pushed Common Core, have pushed universal pre-school on us as well. It wasn't unsurprising due to the age inappropriateness of the early elementary Common Core standards. They would have to promote early childhood education to get kids ready for a "more rigorous" kindergarten.

A Head Start Impact Study showed that any gains made from the program don't stick with kids through kindergarten. This makes me question not only the cost of programs like Head Start.

Brookings Institute wrote about a study done of the Tennessee's pre-K program.

    Dale Farran and Mark Lipsey, professors at Vanderbilt's the Peabody Research Institute, have been following a cohort of 1076 children since 2009, of whom 773 entered Tennessee's new pre-K program through a lottery. The remaining 303 were in the control group, and not given a spot, though about a quarter attended formal pre-K outside of the state program. The subsample analysis was based on matched comparisons of children who did vs. did not participate in the program rather than random assignment.

    In 2013, the authors released their short-term findings, which were positive. Children in the "consenting subsample" who participated in the pre-K program did better on achievement tests at the end of the pre-K year, and they received higher ratings from their kindergarten teachers. Teachers said they were better prepared for school than the control group, had better work skills, and were more positive about school. These findings mirrored those of past studies.

    But the authors' 2015 follow-up report was less optimistic. By the end of kindergarten, the achievement test boost for treatment group children in the consenting subsample had disappeared. By the end of first grade, teachers rated the same children's work skills and preparation as weaker than the control group; the effects reversed. By the end of second and third grade, control group children did better on academic tests than treatment group children.

They note that Tennessee's approach is more academic-oriented. Isn't that the point of pre-K post Common Core?

It shouldn't be shocking that this won't work, and now there is data that backs it up. States seeking to expand pre-K should seriously reconsider.


http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/push-pre-k-appears-unjustified/

[redcliffsw]

As long as the governments are running the show in education, it's all unjustified.

It's indoctrination - that's been the governments' goal since Reconstruction - still is.

That's how the Republicans changed America to the giant socialist state that it is today.

The only argument is how much to spend.  And it goes on and on - nothing changes except for the worse.

That's America and its government mandated education system. 

[Ross]

A "Brain Drain" at U.S. Department of Education
Post-Trump

November 10, 2016 By Shane Vander Hart

Politico's Morning Education reported this morning that the U.S. Department of Education may see a lot of people jump ship prior to President-Elect Donald Trump's inauguration.




    EDUCATION DEPARTMENT COULD SEE BRAIN DRAIN: The Education Department appears poised to lose a significant chunk of its institutional knowledge, as some career employees with decades of experience are looking for the exits because they're unable to stomach a Trump administration. Some younger employees who joined the Education Department after being energized by President Barack Obama might head for the doors, too. That's according to several former senior department officials familiar with the post-election mood at the agency.

    — The Education Department is focused on Obama's final months, which will include work on equity issues related to the Every Student Succeeds Act. But spirits are low, with current and former staffers exchanging emails to check in with each other and offer support, sources say. Everyone is still trying to process the election results and they're uncertain about what's next, as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to downsize the department, or maybe even eliminate the entire agency. The previous two decades have been a long and intense period of work for many, said Massie Ritsch, a senior communications official during the president's first term, who was later nominated for assistant secretary for communications and outreach. "What's disheartening is so much of that work is seemingly at risk." Ritsch added, "There will be people who will say, 'I just can't do this transition.' I think you'll see people who represent decades and decades of service say they're done."

Is this supposed to be a bad thing because I'm just not seeing it? The U.S. Department of Education does not educate. These are not teachers. Education is not done irreperable harm as a result of their defection.  These are bureaucrats who have helped work to federalize education. If they can't get on board with devolving education back to the states, provided that is what Trump actually does, then they probably need to go.
Related
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In "Candidates on Education"
None of Trump's VP Candidates Are Strong on Common Core, Ending Fed Ed
None of Trump's VP Candidates Are Strong on Common Core, Ending Fed Ed

In "Candidates on Education"
President-Elect Donald Trump on Education
President-Elect Donald Trump on Education

In "Candidates on Education"

Filed Under: Federalized Education Tagged With: Donald Trump, U.S. Department of Education
About Shane Vander Hart

Shane Vander Hart is one of the administrators and frequent writer at Truth in American Education and an advocate with this network of grassroots activists this website represents.   He is the editor of Caffeinated Thoughts, a popular conservative Christian multi-contributor website based in Iowa that focuses on state and national politics, culture, current events, and faith.  He is cofounder of Iowa RestorEd, a grassroots group that wants to restore Iowa's place at the top U.S. K-12 education.  Shane also is the online communications director for American Principles Project.  Feel free to follow Shane on Facebook, Twitter, or on Google Plus.
Comments

    Anne G. says   

    November 10, 2016 at 1:51 pm

    It can be described best as a body drain, not a brain drain and it is not a bad thing. The Trump administration should not replace those who left. That is a win for everyone.
    Reply

        Shane Vander Hart says   

        November 10, 2016 at 3:58 pm

        Totally agree!
        Reply

    Deborah Guebert says   

    November 10, 2016 at 9:00 pm

    Couldn't be better news. An early start on that swamp-draining agenda. Hopefully will save some time for those who will have to clear their way through the morass later. May they have the perseverance and stamina to see that project through.
    Reply

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
- Donald Campbell

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/federalized-education/brain-drain-u-s-department-education-post-trump/