Teaching Without "Gimmicks"

Diana Senechal wrote a guest column this past week in the Washington Post about "Teaching Without Gimmicks" in which she criticized DCPS's new teacher evaluation framework, IMPACT, for emphasizing "gimmicks" which distract from engagement with texts and ideas.

Senechal writes, "together [these techniques] raise a barrier. Instead of bringing the subject closer to the students, this heap of tools proclaims: “No entrance! The subject is too hard without spelled-out skills, too boring without adornment, and too frustrating without pep talks and cheers!” These techniques may be gimmicky and ineffective in the ideal classroom Senechal is envisioning, one in which every student is on grade level and prepared to eagerly engage with the day's lesson. But Senechal specifically criticizes DCPS for using these methods, and that is why her argument is so problematic.

Despite recent gains, the district traditionally had some of the lowest test scores in the nation. Over half of students are not proficient in reading or math. High schoolers who have been failed by their district for years and struggle with literacy will likely find The Darkling Thrush dense and impenetrable. These students often lack reading comprehension strategies and skills, cannot decode many of the words, and disengage out of frustration. By clarifying objectives, reviewing vocabulary, teaching explicit strategies for analyzing the text and incentivizing hard work, teachers can enable students with behind-grade-level skills to tackle complex subjects.

These practices Senechal dismisses as gimmicks should be rigorously evaluated to ensure that they benefit student achievement, because like any technique, if they don't work they will take time away from learning. As long as they continue to prove effective for educating students who are below grade level, DCPS should encourage teachers to use them. If teachers can teach their students effectively using different techniques, that should be acceptable too.

As for Senechals' criticism of "teaching to the test," again, all I can say is that the testing is not an evil. Charter networks like Achivement First, which have produced outstanding academic results for their students have internally developed interim assessments which are administered as often as every six weeks. Assessing students is necessary to determine whether or not they are learning the material! Teachers and principals use data to provide targeted support to struggling students. A WaPo story covered this phenomenon earlier this year:

At Sousa Middle School, Principal Dwan Jordon has filled a huge white board with the names of each of his 271 students and their standing on last month's DC-BAS, an interim assessment given to help prepare students for the spring DC-CAS: green marker for proficient, red for below proficient, orange if they are on the cusp of proficiency.

"We know our kids 100 percent. We know what kids need extra help," said Jordon, another new, data-focused Rhee hire.

There are legitimate and pressing criticisms to be made of poor standardized tests; they do in fail in many ways including not emphasizing literature. There are two solutions to subpar standardized tests: lobby for the improvement of standardized assessments so that "teaching to the test" means teaching rich content, or develop appropriate assessments internally. Abolishing testing is not one of those two solutions.

Suburban Schools and the Achievement Gap

Yesterday, as part of Inter-Action 2010, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum for Princeton Regional Schools Bonnie Lehet presented to my service group on the achievement gap in Princeton. The well-renowned school district, whose high school has been ranked 6th in New Jersey and 94th in the nation, has had an achievement gap since desegregation in the late 1940s. The current administration is open about the gap and reflective about how best to solve it.

Princeton Regional Schools serves about 3,500 students, of whom 67% are white, 14% are Asian, 10% are Hispanic and 8% are black. This is a high-performing district--their students mean SAT scores on all three sections are above 600--yet two of their schools did not make AYP. Furthermore, as Lehet explained, minority students are disproportionately represented in PRS’s Special Education programs and underrepresented in their accelerated courses. Poverty is part of the problem: four out of six of the district’s schools qualify for Title I funding.

How should comprehensive, suburban public high schools combat the achievement gap? The question is fascinating. Like many comprehensive public districts, Princeton Regional Schools must cater to two distinct populations: one that consists of students from relatively wealthy families, who receive ample academic support and enrichment outside of school, and another smaller population that is largely low-income and minority. Our favorite no-excuses charters, which use proven, effective techniques to ensure that all students are learning at or above grade level, serve populations which are almost entirely urban, minority, and low-income. What can a district like Princeton take away from charter networks like Achievement First, KIPP and Uncommon Schools when the majority of their students don’t necessarily need extra supports because they’re already on grade level and have many academically enriching experiences outside of school?

In 2006, ten Massachusetts public school implemented extended days with more enrichment courses and saw some push-back from wealthy parents who didn’t want their children in school until 4:30 or receiving violin lessons in a 25-student class when they knew they could hire homework tutors and afford private violin lessons for their child. Across the board policies of “new paternalism,” as David Whitman calls it, are probably not a feasible strategy for suburban districts.

In their efforts to close the achievement gap, PRS has created programs targeted at their under-served students which effectively lengthen the school day and year, one of the key practices of high-performing, high-poverty urban schools which Whitman acknowledges in Sweating the Small Stuff. They offer summer school for those students who have fallen behind, and Princeton University’s own Community House program offers three hours of after-school tutoring to minority and low-income PRS students five days a week.

What other key practices can suburban districts offer to the children who are falling through the cracks of their school system? Which key practices should suburban districts be adopting wholesale, if any? I’ve been considering these questions since the presentation and would love to hear others’ input.

My Response to "TFA Dropouts"

A few weeks ago, this article appeared in Campus Progress, and prompted a huge backlash from current and past corps members eager to defend their organization.

I decided to investigate further and move beyond the TFA drop-out issue to see what TFA is doing to improve. It's an incredibly dynamic organization, as a number of the CMs I interviewed pointed out, and demonstrates the potential to be a testing ground for some of the best ideas in human capital development.

Here's my follow-up article, "The Toughest Critic."

Teaching As Leadership -- LIVE!

TFA's Teaching As Leadership site is now live. I have ordered the full book on Amazon and will review it soon.


For now, some very link-y highlights:


-40 page case study on Sophia Pappas, author of Good Morning, Children. Would love to see Early Ed Watch cover this.

-Detailed literacy instruction guides are heavily focused on reading strategies. Robert Pondiscio at Core Knowledge will be quick to slam TFA for this...but KIPP Infinity's Maddie Witter would approve.

-Comprehensive rubric for evaluation. I wonder how this compares with the DC IMPACT evaluation? Jason Kamras is obviously very connected with TFA -- would be curious to see how much they have been sharing best practices.

Heads Up for Spring 2010

Clearly charter schools can do amazing work for the children fortunate enough to attend these institutions. However, an important question is often overlooked: How does a student win such an opportunity?

What are these charter school enrollment lotteries, and how can we be sure that the selection process is "fair"? More importantly, how does each family cope with the stress and apprehension of leaving the fate of their child's education in the hands of random luck? Coming in May 2010 is a documentary titled "The Lottery" which follows four New York City families hoping to win a favorable outcome through their own charter school enrollment lotteries. While there exists abundant testimony of charter school success stories across the country, this documentary will take a closer look into what it takes for a family to even gain access to these educational resources.

Sure to be emotional, but definitely a must see!

Exam period at Princeton

AER will be posting a little slowly during this week and next week during Princeton exams.

If you need a study break, check out Secretary Duncan's letter to Gompers Middle School.

HOT Ed Video of the Week

We've mentioned Green Dot before and the amazing charter schools that this organization has created in the Los Angeles area since 1999. However, one special turnaround story has served as the poster child for Green Dot's work. Locke High School, located in South Los Angeles near Watts, was one of L.A.'s most under-performing public high schools. In a revolutionary move, Steve Barr and his Green Dot organization swooped in to petition the Los Angeles Unified School District for operational control of Locke. The school was restructured into separate prep academies known as the Locke Family of High Schools, and school attendance rates skyrocketed (test scores also improved--a difficult feat in the first year of a turnaround--though not as much as expected; teachers are striving for more growth next year). For Locke High School, Green Dot really did save the day.

Here's a video from a year ago of Drew Carey covering the Watts education "revolt" and the beginning of charter school turnaround at Locke--a radical transformation which we hope to see spread to other urban areas across the country. Stay tuned in February for an AER article about the progress Locke has made, featuring an exclusive interview with Green Dot founder Steve Barr.

Reformer of the Month: Zeke Vanderhoek

The average salary of a charter schoolteacher in New York is $50,000, according to the American Federation of Teachers. But at a new school in town—The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood—the average teacher salary is almost triple that. TEP teachers, who come from all over the country and from many different backgrounds, are paid a salary of $125,000, with the possibility of bonuses that, though paltry by Wall Street standards, are shocking in the education world.

More Pictures from SFER's "Charter Friday" Visit to Uncommon Schools

The library at Excellence Boys -- read, baby, read!

Uncommon Schools: Where Dreams Are Made

by Emily Myerson '12

What's it like inside some of the nation's best charter schools? A few weeks ago, a group of Students For Education Reform (SFER) members and I visited two schools in the Uncommon Schools network: Bedford Stuyvesant Collegiate and Excellence Boys Charter School. Uncommon Schools is a charter management organization (CMO) that operates extremely high-performing charter schools for low-income students in New York and New Jersey. Uncommon Schools has all the markers of a great CMO: their schools have 25% more class time by extending the school day and year, ensure success with an accountability and data-driven approach, and employ high-caliber faculty members whose focus is devoted to students’ progress.

Hope for the Future

Wow -- 2009 is over and we are entering a new decade. One of my New Year's resolutions is to expand Students For Education Reform to other campuses in 2010 so that college students will get excited about education reform and become actively engaged in their communities, whether through tutoring, advocacy, internships, or jobs with organizations like KIPP and Teach For America.

U.S. News & World Report Rings in the New Year with Ed Reform

The January 2010 issue of U.S. News & World Report is one which should not be overlooked. The issue is full of compelling articles and op-ed pieces pertaining to education reform issues for the new year and how Obama's administration plans to address these issues with such programs as Race to the Top.

While one article outlines Race to the Top and its incentivized means for aggressive and immediate reform, another set of opinion pieces features various education experts reflecting on 2002's No Child Left Behind bill and what we have learned in the past eight years since its implementation. Furthermore, in highlighting the successes of the charter school movement, U.S. News leaves us all wondering one thing--what is holding back the states that still have no registered charters from engaging and participating in what U.S. News calls "The Charter Schools Revolution"?

For additional reading, The Center for Education Reform provides one take on this dilemma in their 2007 document.

HOT Ed Video of the Week

Okay, so this one is a little old. But there's been a little KIPP v. Uncommon rivalry on the Students For Education Reform listserv this week, so I felt the need to post this video, courtesy of Whitney Tilson.



Full text of "Read Baby Read"

You gotta read, baby, read.
You gotta read, baby, read.
The more you read,
The more you know,
And knowledge is power
and I waaant it!

Notice how the teacher then immediately transitions to end with the students sitting up and ready to learn. (And yes, Uncommon and Achievement First and all the others do great cheers too.)

Update: A source at Uncommon has reminded me that they also do the "Read, Baby, Read" cheer, and in fact use a longer version. Stay tuned for a post tomorrow about SFER's visit to Uncommon Schools! Here's another of Whitney's videos while you wait.

Winter Break Reading: Why Don't Students Like School?

In Daniel T. Willingham's new book, Why Don't Students Like School?, he attempts to answer nine questions that teachers would like to ask him, a cognitive scientist at the University of Virginia. In doing so, he goes about debunking the "trendy notion" that people have different learning styles, and advocates for drilling the basics and repetitive classroom exercises. As the Wall Street Journal's review says, "Mr. Willingham is not in favor of merely making learning 'fun' or 'creative.' He advocates teaching old-fashioned content as the best path to improving a student's reading comprehension and critical thinking." (For those unfamiliar with ed reform, this belief places him firmly in the E.D. Hirsch/Core Knowledge camp.) Ironically, the review also criticizes Willingham for his use of "pointless" large pictures in the book--maybe he should have listened to his own advice about cutting fluff and improving content. Perhaps this isn't a surprising criticism coming from a newspaper known for its text-density and lack of images, though.

--Rosie Raymond-Sidel '12, opinions editor
 
Editor's note: A teacher friend of mine says, "different representations work for different kids and concepts at different times...Presenting information in a variety of ways is just good teaching." She's not a fan of multiple intelligence theory, but she added that "it's worth keeping in mind how certain children at least prefer to learn; maybe it's true that kids who love to draw don't actually learn any better by drawing vocabulary meanings than by writing out the definitions, but at any rate they're a hell of a lot more willing to do it." -Catharine Bellinger (Jan. 7, 2010)

HOT Ed Video of the Week

Check out this moving segment aired on 60 Minutes about Geoffrey Canada and The Harlem Children's Zone. Some of our own writers and editors visited The Harlem Children's Zone a few weeks ago and will personally attest to the special nature of this charter school--The Promise Academy--and the impact that it has had on children and families in the area. How can you not be inspired after watching this?!

Part Two is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z64_eIq9TrI.

HT: Whitney Tilson.

Old News, Great Views

I wanted to post this old NYT article that appeared before this blog was up and running. Eva Moskowitz, principal of Harlem Success, is truly a force to be reckoned with -- and a force for significant positive change in New York -- in the education world.

Mainly, I want to share this quotation, which I think encapsulates the difference between excuses and "No Excuses."

“It is the accumulation of the hundreds of minute decisions that is the difference between mediocrity and true excellence." -Eva Moskowitz

That's all.

Indiana Considers Adopting School Assessment System Similar to NY, FL

Good news from Indiana -- the AP reports this morning that Superintendent Ton Bennett wants to make schools more accountable for student learning. "I would love to have a statewide system of accountability that means something and that people understand," said Bennett.

Indiana already had a rating system in place, but they weren't using hard-hitting language that made sense to parents. Originally in 2001 when IN started rating their schools, "the final category names were a compromise that avoided more derogatory terms, including letter grades for schools." The letter grades, Bennett's administration hopes, will help parents understand how well schools are educating their students.

I thought it was interesting that one of the school board members was worried about the effect the grading system might have on students and teachers. It's important to consider the ramifications policy decisions will have for students. In this case, though, it's a case of considering what is better for students: giving them an inflated sense of self-confidence, or making sure their schools are held accountable for what they are teaching and ensuring that every student receives a high-quality education.

Geoff Canada's Visit to Princeton

I love going to Princeton. Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone fame, stopped by my Civil Society and Public Policy class this week. He gave a brief intro about his thoughts on civil society and then opened the floor to Q&A. People try to describe Canada’s charisma, but really words can’t describe it. He exudes intelligence, street smarts and success, and is able to connect with his audience instantaneously on a very personal level. I get the feeling one of his biggest strengths is adapting to his audience, whether it is in the boardroom, the auditorium at Promise Academy or a Princeton classroom.

Canada joked that this was the first time he had been in a classroom where each student their own laptop, and was even more amazed by our Kindles. This small comment brings me to my first point. I am shocked and excited by comments like this one and the similar reactions to SFER (Whitney Tilson said the last time he met with college students was when he was help setting up TFA with Wendy Kopp, nice.) College students are an untapped resource who should be brought into the education reform loop before we fill out our TFA applications en masse. SFER can facilitate these conversations, but the big players in the ed world need to be reaching out to college students more. Yes, we may be a great to hire after graduating, but we also are voters, community organizers and future leaders.

Canada’s opening spiel emphasized that we, students, were growing up in a very interesting part of history. While most college students are concerned about how the financial crisis affects their ability to get investment banking internships, Canada is concerned about the growing dichotomy between the different classes in America. He is concerned that, like the anger felt by the African American community when he was growing up, a new anger will be arise as those living in increased poverty see others getting bonuses at the end of this year that are greater than the amount of money that those living in poverty will ever see in the course of their lifetime. A note for the ed reform obsessed: it is crucial to remember that Geoffrey Canada is NOT an education reformer. Yes, he is doing great things in the ed world. But first and foremost he is committed to reforming how this country deals with poverty. Canada sees education as only one step in the greater problem of changing the culture of impoverished communities like Harlem. This is not to say he disagrees with Klein’s “we’re never going to fix poverty in America until we fix education,” approach.

Canada would probably correct Klein’s sentence to read, “We’re never going to fix poverty in America until we fix the culture in poor communities.” Canada complained that Paul Tough’s book focused too much on the charter schools and made them seem like the center of HCZ. Of the 8,000 kids HCZ serves only a fraction are in HCZ's charter schools. HCZ has already sent 500 kids to college, none of whom came from Promise Academy seeing as they have yet to reach 12th grade. It is through community organization, community mobilization and community education that Canada believes changes will come. Canada knows first hand that “nothing good has ever come of a kid hanging on 114th street; things happen because kids aren’t under the watch/eye of caring adults in a caring community.” Good schools are only part of his equation to solve the problems presented by poverty. Good schools combined with health care, prenatal classes, after school activities, community trust and much more are all essential parts of Canada’s model of lifting his community in Harlem out of poverty.

- Emily Myerson '12

emyerson@princeton.edu

The Charter Funding Myth

Today's editorial in the LA Times about the Obama administration's praise of charter schools makes a couple good points: charter schools are not the panacea for the problems in urban education, we need to wait to see if charter takeovers of district public schools work, and federal education policy needs to include support for a variety of methods of education innovation.

One point they make, however, seems to be inaccurate. The editors wrote that KIPP schools "spen[d] significantly more per student than the public school system does, relying on private contributions to make up the difference." I saw that according to their 2008 Report Card, KIPP LA Prep spent $6,749 per pupil and KIPP Academy of Opportunity spent $6,647 per pupil. According to the New America Foundation's Ed Budget Project website, LA Unified spends $13,341 per pupil. That doesn't seem to be significantly more. In fact, it's significantly less. LA Unified spends about TWICE as much as KIPP LA schools.

Now, I took into consideration that the KIPP Report Card might not have included figures for the additional fundraising the organization does. I've emailed the KIPP Foundation's CFO to find out if the LA Times article is correct. Until then, check out KIPP's explanation of how their funding model works:

As primarily public charter schools, KIPP schools typically receive 60 to 90 percent of the operational revenue and none of the capital expenditure revenue of district schools.

It costs additional money than is allocated to operate a KIPP school in order to pay for the extended day, week, and year. KIPP estimates this additional cost at roughly $1,100 to $1,500 per student. This additional money pays for the extended schedule, staff salaries, and annual field trips. For example, KIPP teachers typically earn 15 to 20 percent more in salary than traditional public school teachers for this extra time.

In addition, as primarily charter schools, a majority of KIPP schools incur additional costs in non-core education areas such as facilities and busing, which district schools traditionally do not incur. This also increases the level of per-pupil spending at KIPP.

Since charter schools receive less public dollars than a traditional public school, KIPP spends the same or less per student than most (if not all) urban districts spend on average even with additional fundraising. For example, the KIPP schools in New York City spend less per-pupil educating their students than the average New York City middle school per-pupil expenditures. One of the ways that KIPP schools do this is by being relatively lean on administrative costs.

There seems to be a persistent myth that charters are more expensive than traditional public schools.* Charters are excellent at cutting extraneous costs, and as a result typically spend their dollars much more efficiently than many public schools. The LA Times needs to get their facts straight and cite some sources before making additional sweeping claims about school funding.

*I've linked to a couple sites dispelling those myths

Something to be thankful for in NY

The blogs are abuzz with the news that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just announced that the city will use student achievement data to evaluate teachers, and subsequently use those evaluations to determine tenure. Read the full press release here (via Eduwonk).

Now that's something to be thankful for.

More on Alternative Certification Programs

Here's a hilarious quote from the NYT article that prompted Catharine to blog about TeacherU's model. I don't know why reporters waste their time trying to report the other side of this story; I for one wouldn't be able to do it with a straight face...but something tells me the reporter, Jennifer Medina, also recognizes the humor.

William J. Baldwin, the vice provost at Teachers College, said that in expanding the certification process, the state would be treating teaching as something to be trained for, rather than a sophisticated profession.

“I could identify critical shortages in health care, such as primary care physicians, and I don’t think people would be open to allowing certifying doctors that came from an alternate path,” he said. “I think they are responding to the right concerns, but I am not sure this is the right solution.”

Baldwin's quote is so funny because, duh, nobody would allow a doctor with an alternative certification to enter the profession. This is because the existing certification route for doctors provides them an academic grounding in their field AND actually prepares them for hands-on clinical work with patients. As Medina reports, Arne Duncan recognizes this difference between the two professions, saying last month that "[education] schools should focus more on hands-on classroom work, similar to medical residencies that aspiring doctors must complete."

Link Round-up: New York, New York

• Ex-Gates director looks to open a charter school in New York

• Schools’ Grades Reflect Persistent Disparity

• CUNY's got math problem: Report shows many freshmen from city HS fail at basic algebra

• It's time to tear up the teachers' contract that protects mediocre educators, dooms kids to failure

• Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions

• Programs to Certify Teachers May Grow

Regarding the last article, I'm surprised they didn't mention TeacherU, the alternative certification program at Hunter College School of Education (former dean David Steiner is now the State Education Commissioner). TeacherU is a partnership between Hunter and three high-performing charters: KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First -- they've even got a nifty little "UKA" logo. How is TeacherU different? They focus on learning how to be an effective teacher instead of traditional ed school "theory classes." They only have Saturday and summer classes so the master's program doesn't interfere with teaching. There's no hundred-plus page master's thesis: candidates must simply (or not so simply) prove that they have had a positive differential effect of at least one grade level on student achievement. Test scores are not the only measure, but they are a part of it. Thus, to graduate from TeacherU, a candidate must show that he or she is an effective teacher, not an effective education theorist.

When I visited Achievement First Crown Heights Elementary last week, I spoke with a second-year TFA corps member who is also in his second year of TeacherU. He described how great it was to be supported through classes about issues that actually arise in the classroom--from classroom management to student assessment. At TeacherU, he said, they learn best practices from the best teachers there are. What could be better?

Supporting First-Gen Students through College

Check out this Boston Globe article about a new foundation that sends low-income, high-achieving urban students to college on a full merit-scholarship--and then provides them with the support structure they need to graduate. What does that support look like? A "posse" of friends also receiving the full-ride scholarship.

Here's a quote: Research shows that integration into a community is important for college retention, Perna said. Having a posse of peers with similar backgrounds creates a bridge to the new institutional climate while helping maintain relationships at home, she said.

I don't know what Beverly Daniel Tatum would have to say about this but it sounds like a good idea to me. It's especially interesting in comparison with this NY Times article from last summer, about a program at the University of Cincinnati that houses first-gen students (who opt-in) together. A KIPP teacher described the program highlighted by the NYT article as "KIPP does college," but the group of Princeton students on my Breakout trip thought it sounded overly-strict and socially isolating. I think both programs--the Posse Foundation and the Gen-1 Theme House--have their merits, and since both emphasize CHOICE (you don't have to participate in either one if you are a first-generation college student), I find that I'm okay with the way they operate, despite my classmates' trepidations.

What to Read This Morning

1) Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, who you might know as the authors of Freakonomics, blogged about Roland Fryer's working paper on the Harlem Children's Zone today. Fryer is currently a visiting professor here at Princeton, so stop by and visit him. Fryer found that the Promise Academy charter schools are crucial to the success of the program overall: Fryer and Dobbie attribute the program’s success to the high-quality schools or the combination of high-quality schools and community programs but find that community investments alone cannot close the gap. Interestingly, when we spoke with Paul Tough last week, he mentioned that he thought Fryer did not give enough credit to the community programs that are part of HCZ, such as Baby College and the after-school tutoring programs.

2) The WaPo editorial board criticizes Duncan and the Obama administration for making over the new teachers' contract in New Haven, CT. Flypaper was all over it yesterday, so check out their take on the issue. My feeling is that Duncan thinks he needs to make the teachers' unions feel rewarded for being slightly more flexible. He's taking the 'you win more flies with honey' approach, so let's hope that's successful.

3) Meanwhile, in North Carolina, students can buy better grades.

4) Is it literally impossible to fire bad teachers?

5) The reform train is moving in Boston. Check out the MA union leader whining about it here:

Union leaders expressed concerns about scaling back teacher contract provisions. Under the proposal, if a teacher is not rehired at a school being converted into an in-district charter school, then the teacher would have 12 months to find a job at another district school or would be let go, regardless of seniority or good performance reviews.

“It’s like returning to the days of old, when before collective bargaining a superintendent or principal could let a teacher go without cause,’’ said Anne Wass, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. “If there are teachers in a school who are truly underperforming, then the principal should evaluate them and then follow the process for termination.’’

Uh, see item 4, and also "The Rubber Room."

6) Every middle schooler in the country might want to move to Hawaii right about now, but their parents wouldn't be too happy with the SEVENTEEN three-day weekends planned for this school year. The decision to close schools on Fridays was made as a response to budget cuts.

7) Summary of Race to the Top from the NYT here.

What should college pedagogy look like?

Last Friday Jay Mathews covered the little-known book "The College Fear Factor" by Rebecca Cox. The book details how and why community college students struggle to achieve in college: mainly, professors focus on content knowledge, not pedagogy, intimidate students, neglect to set explicit and clear expectations, and fail to create a culture of support and success in their classrooms. This spells disaster--and drop-out--for student who are lacking background knowledge or study skills.

As a college student who just received a C on a midterm for introductory course, a class which I took at the AP level in high school, I've found myself considering the questions Mathews poses lately. I certainly should be prepared seeing as I took the course at an AP level, I attend all the lectures, take notes, do the readings, hand in my problem sets, attend the school-sponsored study halls led by peer tutors, yet I still find myself with an embarrassing grade. I know what I'll do next -- I'll go to office hours, order the supplementary study guide to the text and find a tutor, but still, this comment left on Mathews' column by "speakuplouder" resonates with me:

"One thing I have noted seems to be a growing pedagogical gap between ed reformer expectations for K-12 teachers and none for post-secondary instructors. Increasingly the expectation for K-12 teachers is the idea that it is their responsibility for what or if their students learn. There seems to be no teacher responsibility for student learning at the college level.

Students who are nurtured or coddled in a very supportive early education environment are then thrust into a college culture where they are totally responsible for their own learning. Some college prep courses may help students learn the necessary study skills but I wonder if this is enough."

Is there any room for me to feel unfairly treated by my professor and TA for their lack of appropriate scaffolding in this course? When the professor says in lecture that class performance on the test was excellent despite the fact that a sizable number of students scored below 80%, am I right to feel frustrated? I don't think professors should lower their standards, but I do wish that they felt more responsibility for providing all of their students, even in large lecture classes, the necessary resources to rise up to par, whether that means choosing better TAs to lead more intensive precepts, providing more feedback for student work, or building more scaffolding into the class.

This conversation clearly ties into the idea of a grade deflation policy, which at Princeton suggests that less than 35% of students in any department during any one semester should be receiving A-grades. If we take grades to be an assessment of the student's grasp of the subject material, and the policy intends to recalibrate inflated letter grades so that C once again means "average grasp," B means "good grasp," and A means "outstanding grasp?", does this mean that the academic faculty at Princeton has pledged that 65% of their students will not have an outstanding grasp of the subject material? Why is this attitude permissible for college professors but not for K-12 teachers?

These questions also delve into the struggle of even the best no-excuses charter schools to instill less tangible skills like self-motivation, hard work, dedication, resourcefulness and perseverance in their students. Presumably, students with these skills will find a way to succeed in educating themselves even in difficult situations, including the Big Scary College Lecture. "Trev1," another commenter on Class Struggle, expounded on this line of thought:

"One view of a university education is that it demonstrates that a person has the persistence and self-discipline to stick with something for an extended period and deal with setbacks. On this view, college students should be given much less "scaffolding" (i.e. the assistance needed to bridge the gap between their potential and their current ability). This doesn't mean no scaffolding, but just that they should be expected to be much more independent than high-school students.

Professors are survivors of this sink-or-swim system, where persistence leads to graduate school, research publications, then employment in academia, so they have little sympathy with undergraduate students who don't understand the research driven agenda of university culture. I'm not saying this is how universities should be, just that if college education is to be improved, a clear understanding of its objectives is needed before anything can be achieved."

There's a lot to unpack in this conversation about why students are failing college courses, but I agree with Trev's last thought: if our goal in reforming K-12 education is specifically to prepare all students for success in college, we need to reach a solid understanding of the objectives of a college education. And perhaps those objectives could use some reform, too.