Schoolwork too easy? February 7, 2001 BY ROSALIND ROSSI EDUCATION REPORTER About three-quarters of sixth- and eighth-grade Chicago math class work poses little or no challenge, focusing instead on repetitive work sheets with "dumbed-down" computation problems, Chicago researchers said Tuesday. Yet, more complex work produces bigger test gains--even for previously low-scoring students, the Consortium on Chicago School Research concluded. The consortium summed up five years of research and unleashed six studies on Chicago public schools, which, all told, sounded a warning bell for Mayor Daley's school team. It also produced a blueprint for improvement. One report concluded that Chicago test score gains are shrinking. Others said the typical Chicago classroom greets students with mostly unchallenging math and writing work, which can translate into at least one-third smaller test score gains in math and reading than challenging work. The recipe for success, the studies implied, lies in better teacher training that focuses on more progressive, or "interactive," teaching methods that produce more challenging work and bigger test gains. Some fretted the studies would divide the system into two camps: the progressives, who encourage complex, real-life problems requiring elaborate answers, vs. "back-to-basics" traditionalists, who use more "didactic" teaching and short-answer skills practice. "The either-or sets up two camps," traditionalist Barbara Sizemore, retired dean of DePaul University's College of Education, told symposium participants Tuesday. "I believe you should meet the needs of kids, not the needs of pedagogy," Sizemore said. "If a kid needs didactic instruction, he gets it. If he needs interactive instruction, he gets interactive." Consortium director Anthony Bryk, author of several of the studies, quickly cautioned that some skills practice is clearly necessary. "The question is the right balance. Kids need to learn algorithms," Bryk said. "But they also need to apply them in real work." But such application is missing from much of a typical Chicago classroom day in math and reading classes, Bryk said. He cited a consortium study that followed two classrooms in three grades in up to 19 schools for three years, through 1999. It found, based on six assignments reviewed annually per classroom, at least 80 percent of sixth- and eighth-grade math work and 52 percent of third-grade math work posed little or no challenge to students. Bryk called the schools "typical" of the system in terms of race and poverty levels, and estimated 75 percent of sixth- and eighth-grade classrooms systemwide probably feature mostly low-quality math assignments. The study characterized challenging work as assignments that require students to organize, interpret or analyze information, to learn material in-depth rather than superficially, and to elaborate on their answers. Bryk offered as an example of unchallenging work the kind of work sheets that many parents grew up on, featuring repetitive practice in one kind of math problem, such as adding or subtracting fractions, that have one right answer. In language arts, Bryk cited writing assignments that asked students to identify parts of speech in single, isolated sentences as non-challenging. High quality work included a student-written fable that told the story of a forest king who valued persuasion over threat of force. Yet in writing, the consortium found, more than a third of third-grade assignments and roughly half of sixth- and eighth-grade assignments were unchallenging. In addition, classrooms with the most challenging work had roughly five months more of reading and math gains--about a half a school year more--than classrooms with the least challenging work, one study found. Low-quality assignments translated into gains of less than a school year--or the national average--while high-quality assignments translated into gains above the national average. Most importantly, Bryk said, both previously low-scoring and previously high-scoring students produced bigger test gains when confronted with challenging work. "The good news is, when students are given high quality assignments, they learn more," Bryk said. "One doesn't have to dumb down instruction to get better test scores on skills tests. In fact, exactly the opposite is true." Chicago Schools Chief Paul Vallas, who swept into office in 1995 touting "back to basics," noted that one consortium study touted the gains of a "direct instruction," highly traditional Chicago school. He agreed more teacher training is needed, and said new sessions this spring will include a mix of approaches for schools scoring below national norms. But, Vallas said, "We won't abandon back-to-basics. The system has gone more toward back-to-basics for five years, and we have five years of rising elementary scores and four years of rising high school scores to prove it." -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
