Revolutionizing Education In America

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................ixIntroduction......................................................................................................................xiChapter 1 Time on Task............................................................................................................1Chapter 2 Factors That Contribute to Time on Task.................................................................................13Chapter 3 Objectives of Education.................................................................................................23Chapter 4 The United States Educational System....................................................................................27Chapter 5 PISA Rankings of Countries on Education in 2009.........................................................................37Chapter 6 The TOTIL Method of Education (Time on Task Independent Learning).......................................................57Chapter 7 Materials for the TOTIL Method of Education.............................................................................69Chapter 8 Comparison of the Learner-Centered Method of Education and the Teacher-Centered Method of Education.....................77Chapter 9 Eight Steps to Follow to Implement the TOTIL Method of Education........................................................87Endnotes..........................................................................................................................91Bibliography......................................................................................................................97Index.............................................................................................................................99

Chapter One

Education in America is in crisis. Now. We must act. Now. No more procrastination. No more first aid. We cannot continue to put band-aids on a seriously infected, deep wound. The patient will soon die. In many cases, he or she already has. We cannot improve our children's education until we change our entire philosophy of education, including our basic assumptions about educational objectives and educational methodology. We must begin by rejecting the myths that are being perpetuated about effective teaching and learning. To start, we must discover the most important variables for a superior education. This knowledge will provide the solution to the problem.

Many research studies have been conducted to discover which variables are most important and to what degree. The most common variables thought to correlate with student performance include: expenditure per student, teacher education, classroom discipline, teacher enthusiasm, parental involvement, number of students per class, socioeconomic class of the students, IQ of students, type and/or quality of the school, public, private, parochial, etc.

Most educational researchers, parents and government officials have believed for many years that the most important variable in educational success is the amount of expenditure per child. This assumption has been discredited. Quality of education in the United States is at an all-time low compared to numerous other countries even though expenditures for education by the United States are at an all-time high compared to other countries. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests for 2009, the United States ranked thirtieth in math, twenty-fourth in sciences and seventeenth in reading out of sixty-five countries tested. However, the United States ranked second highest in the amount of expenditure per child out of twenty-eight OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Apparently, expenditure per child is not the most important variable for a superior education as has usually been assumed. Then what is?

In the 1970's, Jacob Kounin, Ph.D., an educational researcher and professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, decided to conduct a research study to discover the most important variables for effective classroom learning. To accomplish this, he sent graduate students with television cameras into numerous classrooms. These graduate students had been carefully trained in Dr. Kounin's method to ensure consistency in data collection. They spent over one thousand hours televising students and teachers. Since the study was conducted in the Detroit area, it was quite easy to control for socio-economic factors because the researchers could easily get to either the inner-city schools or the more affluent northern suburbs.

From his research, Dr. Kounin concluded that, while many of the variables mentioned in previous educational studies contributed to improved learning, classroom discipline by the teacher was, by far, the single most important variable of all. Dr. Kounin wrote a book entitled Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms in which he discussed his research study and his conclusions.

During my graduate studies, I attended a class in educational psychology at Wayne State University. Dr. Kounin was the professor for this class. On the last day of the course, Dr. Kounin discussed his well-known research study and stated that he still believed that classroom discipline was essential for superior learning. However, he now realized that this was because classroom discipline, and all other variables that had been found by other researchers to be important, had one element in common: increased Time on Task (TOT). I have observed, tested and confirmed the primacy of Time on Task for mastery of new information many times. Dr. Kounin had, indeed, found the essential variable for a superior education. I am indebted to Dr. Kounin for coalescing my thinking on this critical issue.

How does classroom discipline relate to Time on Task? Whenever a student is disruptive, it distracts other students and the teacher for some period of time and decreases Time on Task. My husband's grandfather, George, was a farmer who hired young teenage boys to work for him. He used to say, "If you have one boy, you have a boy. If you have two boys, you have half a boy. If you have three boys, you have no boy at all." Therefore, Grandpa George gave all his hired help chores on different parts of the farm so that they would not interact and be distracted from their chores. This indicates that, in a classroom setting, for the best performance, the teacher must keep all student interaction to an absolute minimum. However, minimizing student interaction is extremely difficult, and as I will discuss later, totally contrary to the present progressive/social philosophy of education.

Teachers with good classroom discipline can often predict which stimuli are likely to elicit disruptive behavior and avoid them, or, once such behavior begins, can stop it quickly. Preventing disruption in the classroom means that teachers have to be totally involved, energetic and vigilant every minute. After a few hours, they are usually quite exhausted and the later classes do not get the same quality of teaching as do the earlier classes. How soon teachers become exhausted, mentally and physically, depends to a large extent, not only on how energetic they are, but also on how many disruptive students they have in each class. It only takes one or two disrupters in each class to produce teacher burnout very quickly.

The main reason it is so difficult for a teacher to keep all students involved in the learning process is because learning in this manner, that is, the teacher-centered method, is, by definition, a passive enterprise for students, not an active one, and when students are bored, they become distracted, and then, either disruptive or withdrawn. However, trying to counteract student boredom by having students and teachers interact, leads to even more distraction and less Time on Task.

After many years of teaching and just as many in research on education, I have concluded that there is one variable that leads to the most Time on Task possible—even more important than classroom management—learner-centered education, that is Independent Learning (IL). With this method there are no teachers, no other students, no distractions and much, much more Time on Task. A synonym for these two terms is "studying." More on this in Chapter 6.

Considering that Time on Task is the most important single variable for achieving a superior education, a closer examination of this variable is warranted. Fortunately, the importance of Time on Task has been well documented by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers: the Story of Success, one of the most interesting and insightful books I have read for some time. The main theme of Gladwell's book is that success can be explained better in terms of generation, family, culture, and economic class, that is, luck, than by intelligence and ambition. However, Gladwell also believes strongly that Time on Task is necessary to take advantage of this luck when it appears. In other words, "the harder one works, the luckier one gets," or, the more prepared one is, the more likely s/he will be able to catch the brass ring when it appears.

Gladwell states that there is a consensus among researchers that approximately ten thousand hours is the optimal number of hours of focused attention and/or performance needed to achieve mastery or expertise in almost anything. Without such Time on Task, other important variables such as ambition, energy, ability, intelligence, luck, etc., are not likely to lead to optimal success. Gladwell gives several very interesting examples to prove his point. I will mention just three: Bill Gates, The Beatles, and Chinese wet-rice farmers.

My assumption, and perhaps that of others, was that Bill Gates was a very intelligent young man from a reasonably wealthy family who went to Harvard; became interested in computers; stumbled into a new idea involving computers; and with a little ambition, family support and entrepreneurial skill parlayed this idea into a multi-billion dollar corporation. While this scenario is partially true, a very important factor has been ignored: Time on Task.

A brief look at Gates' background, taken from Gladwell's book, is in order. When Gates was in the eighth grade, he and a group of friends started a computer club and convinced some of the parents to acquire a computer that was a time-sharing terminal with a direct link to a mainframe computer in downtown Seattle. This was in 1968 when almost all other computers operated with a very slow computer-card system. Gates and several friends spent every hour possible in the computer room programming and teaching themselves to use this intriguing new invention.

Some time later, Gates and his friends began spending time at the University of Washington and, in exchange for computer work, earned free computer time. After this job ended, Gates and his friend, Paul, found a computer at the Medical Center and Physics Department of the University of Washington that was not being used between three and six in the morning. Gates and Paul would sneak out of bed after their parents were asleep and go to the university to steal time on their computer. Later, when Gates was in his senior year in high school, he was hired by a technology company called TRW that was setting up a computer system at the Bonneville Power Station in Washington State.

Gladwell states that, "In one seven-month period in 1971, Gates and his cohorts ran up 1,575 hours of computer time on the ISI (Information Sciences, Inc.) mainframe. This averages out to eight hours a day, seven days a week." From the eighth grade through his senior year in high school, Gates amassed thousands of hours in learning to program computers before he went to Harvard. Time on Task.

Another Gladwell example of Time on Task that lead to enormous success is from the experience of the musical group, The Beatles. In 1960, The Beatles, a not-especially-talented high school band from Liverpool, England, accepted a job from Bruno, the owner of a nightclub in Hamburg, Germany. Bruno's club offered a huge nonstop show with bands that would play constantly to catch the in-and-out traffic.

At Bruno's club and others in Hamburg, The Beatles, who were used to playing only their best songs over and over again in one-hour sessions were required to play eight hours a night, seven nights a week. According to Gladwell, by the time The Beatles appeared in New York in February of 1965, they had performed twelve hundred times, which is more than most bands play in their entire careers. According to Philip Norman, who wrote The Beatles' biography, Shout, "They were no good onstage when they went there [Hamburg] and they were very good when they came back." Time on Task.

Just one more example of the results of Time on Task from Outliers, and perhaps the most important one for purposes of this book, will help to explain the success of an entire ethnic group—the Chinese. In Outliers, Gladwell attributes the legendary work ethic of ethnic Chinese to their cultural legacy of extremely hard work in the unusually labor-intensive task of wet-rice farming. According to Gladwell, "Some estimates put the annual workload of a wet-rice farmer in China at three thousand hours a year." This cultural legacy of hard work by the farmers in China spread to other countries of East Asia: Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, and may help to explain the present academic success of students from most of the major Asian nations. Most continue to act as their ancestors did. They have maintained the ethic of hard work and long hours, which is their cultural heritage.

Several years ago, when my granddaughter was attending middle school in Irvine, California, I told my daughter-in-law about my theory of Time on Task. Months later Lari came to me and said that she agreed with me about Time on Task. When I asked why, she explained that a large percentage of the students in my granddaughter's middle school were ethnic Chinese and that almost all appeared to be very high achievers. One day Lari spoke to a Chinese parent at a social gathering and asked her why she thought Chinese students seemed to do so much better than non-Chinese students in academic settings. The parent said, "extra work." Then she explained that most Chinese parents insist that their children spend extra time outside of school on their academic or skill subjects, such as math or piano. She commented that one half-hour more per day amounts to over 100 extra hours per year. Time on Task.

To further demonstrate the importance of Time on Task, I will examine the success of a recognized, academically-superior charter school in the United States highlighted in the movie Waiting for Superman. The main theme of this movie is that public school teachers and teacher unions are to blame for the present poor condition of public education. Another theme is that, while regular public schools are bad, charter schools are good, even though the movie pointed out that fewer than one in five charter schools are performing better than regular public schools. This movie shows the angst of parents who must win a lottery for admission of their children to charter schools because they are overcrowded.

Much has been written about this academically exceptional college preparatory public charter school in the South Bronx in New York City called KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy Middle School. This school was begun in 1994 in a fifth grade class in inner-city Houston, Texas, by two teachers, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin. Levin left Houston in 1995 to establish another branch of the school in the Bronx. Currently there are approximately one hundred KIPP schools throughout the country. An examination of the special characteristics of these schools is warranted to help determine what factors might explain their phenomenal success. KIPP students made dramatic gains on the 2009 California API standardized tests and KIPP schools were the recipient of the National Excellence in Urban Education Award.

The primary objective of KIPP is "to ensure that our students develop the academic skills, intellectual habits, and character traits needed to succeed in top-quality high schools, colleges, and the competitive world beyond." Feinberg and Levin attribute much of the success of KIPP to its outstanding teachers who receive regular training and professional development throughout the school year through the KIPP Foundation. Teachers exchange lesson plans and gain new skills to improve their classroom practice. Feinberg and Levin also stress the importance of strict discipline and extra Time on Task.

Students at KIPP attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each week day, half a day on selected Saturdays, and an extra month in the summer. They are also expected to do two to three hours of homework each evening. According to KIPP research, this amounts to sixty percent more Time on Task than students are required to do in other public or private schools.

As stated above, in KIPP schools a great deal of emphasis is placed on discipline. Both rewards and punishments are used. One form of discipline is called "benching." In benching, students are isolated for a day. As a result, they are not even allowed to eat with other students. As a reward for good behavior or academic achievement students receive a paycheck at the end of the week in KIPP dollars. With these dollars they can buy end-of-the-year trips, including trips to Washington, D.C., Utah, the East coast or the West Coast. KIPP administrators believe that this concept will generalize outside the classroom. Children will learn that they are not entitled to anything. They get things because they earn them.

KIPP schools, like other charter schools, receive much less funding from the districts than do regular public schools, and they usually spend less per student than do larger school districts, even though teachers receive larger salaries. The reason for the larger salaries of KIPP teachers is that they work many more hours per year than do other public school or private school teachers.

Can the above description of KIPP schools help us to determine which characteristic(s) of KIPP schools might account for their extraordinary success? It is obviously not due to superior I.Q. because the students are not screened. It is not due to the advantages of economic class because over eighty percent of the students are from low-income families. It is not due to past achievement because entering students are usually one to two grades below grade level. It is not due to more money from the government because they get less. Given my own experience, I am not inclined to give much credit to the ongoing training and development of KIPP teachers or any other teachers. I have found "teacher days" to be mostly a waste of time, a day off. While it is possible that some teachers may get some minor benefit from hints from other teachers about particular techniques on how to teach a particular concept or how to improve discipline, I do not believe that it is really possible to teach someone else to be a better teacher. More importantly, while further teacher education may make teachers more educated, academically and/or pedagogically, this is not the preferred goal. The preferred goal is to educate students, not teachers, that is, to use a learner-centered approach, not a teacher-centered approach.

Regarding the difficulty of teaching someone to be a good teacher, my own experience is a good example. When I was a college student I was looking forward to the few education classes I would take to become a credentialed teacher so that someone would teach me how to teach. This did not happen. In education classes, we talked about child psychology, educational psychology, the management of the school, etc., but nothing about how to teach the subject or how or when to discipline students.

Once I realized that I was not going to get any help in teacher education classes, I assumed I would get it during my student teaching internship from the acknowledged superior teacher to whom I was assigned. Ms. Howard allowed me to watch her teach a class for two days.

Then on the third day she said to me, "O.K., do it."

"Do what"? I asked, perplexed.

"Teach the class," she replied.

Now, imagine yourself in exactly the same predicament. What would you do? How would you start? I'm sure you know from personal experience that it is very difficult to control just three or four children who are together. Now, imagine that you not only have to control thirty boisterous students sitting closely together, you also have to teach them. Exactly how would you proceed? If you don't think you could do it, what makes you think teachers can do a good job of it?

Ms. Howard watched as I taught.

Afterwards, I asked, "How did I do?"

"Fantastic," she replied. "It would have taken me a week to cover that much material."

I was flattered for about three seconds until I realized that she was telling me that I had gone much too fast. That was the last comment or criticism she ever made relative to my teaching style or methods. The point is, I had to learn for myself—or not. Teaching is not a skill that can be taught.

"Teacher days" are comparable to required education classes for continued credentialing for other professionals, such as psychologists or medical doctors. These professionals usually select a course in a pleasant, vacation-oriented locale, spend a few hours in class, and then hit the slopes in a nice ski resort or escape to a golf course. Professionals who want to update or improve their skills or knowledge do it on their own.

If I do not give much credit for the superior success of KIPP schools to the ongoing training and development of their teachers, then to what do I attribute the dramatic success of KIPP schools? Time on Task. Consider that, as has been stated above, students have a twelve-hour day. All in all, they spend sixty percent more Time on Task than in a regular public or private school. In addition, due to the better behavior of fellow students because of their strict discipline, they are less distracted which leads to even more Time on Task.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Revolutionizing Education In Americaby DORIS LECLERC BALL Copyright © 2011 by Doris Leclerc Ball, PhD. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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