Deadlines Are For Kids

Anyone else remember "Trix are for kids"? Well, I'm becoming more and more convinced that, today, deadlines are for kids.

I hear endless discussions about deadlines and due dates. About how we need to teach kids responsibility. And how they need to have "consequences" when they don't turn in their assignment on time. (Never mind that both the assignment and the deadline are often pretty arbitrary, but I digress.)

So, let me share just a few examples from the last couple of weeks in my neck of the woods.

1. My school district is implementing a new unified password system. As part of that, staff members have to answer 5 challenge questions in advance so that, if they need to change their password in the future, they can do it themselves via a web interface. The district sent out very detailed instructions for how to do this, a process that takes less than 4 minutes. A couple of weeks later 40% of staff still hadn't done it, so they sent me a reminder to send out to my staff, which I did. The "due date" was March 18th. Two weeks later (including a week off for spring break), and I've had multiple staff members come up to me and say, "Sorry, I didn't get to that, can I still do that?"
   
   
2. We're 12 weeks into the semester. In one particular class there are 3 grades in the grade book: Week 1 participation, Week 2 participation, and a grade from January 15th.
   
   
3. In another class, they took a test on March 18th. No grade (and, more importantly, no feedback, as of yet). Also three quizzes from before that that still aren't in the grade book.
   
   
4. In yet another class, last grade is from February 28th.
   
   With all three of these classes the problem isn't so much the lack of grades (although that is still problematic when students are held accountable for their grade), but the lack of feedback. How can students learn from their work if they don't get timely feedback?
   
   
5. We have a monthly newsletter for parents with articles that our submitted by many different staff members that is created in Publisher, then converted to PDF, and posted on our website. (I know, I know. Monthly. PDF. But this is progress, keep in mind that until two years ago we printed and mailed 2400+ copies of this 15-20 page newsletter each month.) I'm not sure the newsletter has ever been done on time. And, pretty much every month, there are at least two or three corrections that have to be posted because of mistakes (typos, incorrect information, etc.).
   
   
6. We're trying to get some new computer science courses approved in my district. Part of the process is to present the info to a committee in my building. The week before the meeting I sent all the information to them. Admittedly, there was a lot of information so, anticipating that might be too much, I specifically pointed them to the one (page-and-a-half) document they should definitely look at which summarized the courses, and then they could drill deeper if they really wanted to. I get to the meeting and it appears as though none of them have looked at it. They ask me to write the courses on the white board so they can see them.

Do I ever miss, or stretch, or forget about deadlines? Sure, of course I do. But I also don't enforce (often arbitrary) deadlines for students, then scold and punish them (including docking their grade) when they don't meet them. That's not to say that I don't think deadlines can have meaning or importance, but it means that I think we need to keep in mind the bigger picture of what we're doing here.

So my question is, for all the teachers who are represented in numbers 1-6 above, what are you going to do the next time a student misses a deadline?

Data-Driven Schools: Homework

In my school's student handbook we state,

Homework is an expectation . . . Achieving students do homework at least 5 out of every 7 days . . . Do homework Sunday through Thursday, take Friday and Saturday off! . . . Average nearly two hours of homework each night.

Since we're increasingly encouraged to be "data-driven", I have a few questions.

Let's start with the "two hours of homework Sunday through Thursday." This has been an expectation since I started at Arapahoe . . . in 1991. I wonder what kind of "data" we based the two hours on. Why not 1.5 hours? Or 2.5 hours? Or for that matter, why not 111 minutes instead of 120? (We have an overly fond appreciation for numbers that end in 5 or 0.)

What kind of research did we do to determine that 120 minutes was the appropriate and most effective amount of homework each night? I'm one of only about 4 or 5 staff members who've been here since 1991, we've never done any research on this since then that I know of, and I don't know of any research that was done before then, so I suspect there is none. So if we just made up this number, how is that "data-driven"? Perhaps we need to sit down and rethink this and decide if that's truly the best number.

Of course if we did that, then we'd probably also want to look at the research on the effectiveness of homework in general. Alfie Kohn has been a longtime skeptic on the value of homework, so much so that he wrote a book called The Homework Myth. In that book he argues that the research shows no support for homework at all at the elementary level, and at the high school level there is only a weak correlation between homework and increased test scores (and, of course, that then leads into the debate about whether those test scores are meaningful or worthwhile). It's fair to say that he advocates for no homework at all, other than reading or self-assigned homework.

He recently wrote an article in the Washington Post about a new study that looked at homework and its effect on test scores and grades. In terms of test scores,

Was there a correlation between the amount of homework that high school students reported doing and their scores on standardized math and science tests? Yes, and it was statistically significant but “very modest”: Even assuming the existence of a causal relationship, which is by no means clear, one or two hours’ worth of homework every day buys you two or three points on a test. Is that really worth the frustration, exhaustion, family conflict, loss of time for other activities, and potential diminution of interest in learning? And how meaningful a measure were those tests in the first place, since, as the authors concede, they’re timed measures of mostly mechanical skills? (Thus, a headline that reads “Study finds homework boosts achievement” can be translated as “A relentless regimen of after-school drill-and-skill can raise scores a wee bit on tests of rote learning.”)

And the effect on grades?

There was no relationship whatsoever between time spent on homework and course grade, and “no substantive difference in grades between students who complete homework and those who do not.” This result clearly caught the researchers off-guard. Frankly, it surprised me, too. When you measure “achievement” in terms of grades, you expect to see a positive result — not because homework is academically beneficial but because the same teacher who gives the assignments evaluates the students who complete them, and the final grade is often based at least partly on whether, and to what extent, students did the homework. Even if homework were a complete waste of time, how could it not be positively related to course grades?

And yet it wasn’t. Again. Even in high school. Even in math. The study zeroed in on specific course grades, which represents a methodological improvement, and the moral may be: The better the research, the less likely one is to find any benefits from homework. 

It's important to note that not everyone agrees with Kohn's interpretation of the data, but even most of what I've read in support of homework tends to show it having a relatively small effect on student "achievement" (I prefer the word learning, myself), and often ignores the question of whether this work should be done at home or could be done at school.

I find it interesting, however, that we haven't looked at any of the research, or any of the dialogue between folks like Kohn and Willingham, we've just decided it's good, and that two hours five days a week is the optimal amount. So why do we assign homework?

In general, I think there are three main reasons that I've heard teachers use (and have used myself).

1. Students need the practice.
2. I can't cover the curriculum unless I give homework.
3. It teaches responsibility.

The research provides little or no support for number one. What little support it does give could be accomplished by giving them time in class to practice. At what point did we decide that school was so important that we decided to assign students a "second shift" of work at home after school was purportedly over?

Which leads to number two: there's not enough time to cover the curriculum. I agree with the diagnosis 100%, but not the treatment. Instead of assigning homework (and assigning students a "second shift") in order to cover the curriculum, we should change the curriculum.

I struggle with the increasing emphasis on covering more, and more advanced topics, earlier and earlier, and the emphasis on curriculum over learning. For example, we are now teaching topics in Algebra I (typically a freshman course) that we used to teach in Algebra II (typically a junior course). Why? And does it matter if you learn Algebra by age 15, or would it be okay if you mastered it at 16? (Or 25 for that matter?) We say we want to create lifelong learners, yet our policy is that they must learn things at certain ages that we determine (and standardize for all students). It's as if we think there's an expiration date on learning.

As far as the third reason, I have yet to see any research that shows that assigning homework teaches responsibility. In fact, anecdotally, I would say that it does not. How many high school teachers have you heard complain about students not doing homework? Yet we've been assigning them homework for years, shouldn't that have taught them responsibility by now? But, even if it did, would that be the best way to teach them responsibility? I would suggest that giving them meaningful and important things to do might teach them responsibility better than assigning homework of dubious value.

So, where does that leave us? If we truly believe that "data-driven" is the way to go, then the data is telling us that we need to step back and reexamine both our assumptions and our practices. I've previously suggested with textbooks that the default should be to not get a textbook, and then we have to justify why we need one. I would propose something similar for homework, the default should be no homework, any homework we assign should be justified. And that justification has to be well thought out and can't rely on any of the three reasons above, and has to also take into consideration the social and emotional health of our students.

And what about "average two hours of homework each night Sunday through Thursday"? Show me the data.

Transparent Algebra: Homework

So, I’ve previously talked about going back in the classroom and about my initial thoughts on assessment (thanks for all the very helpful feedback), so in this post I’m going to talk about my plans for homework.

Homework is one of those crazy things that I’m completely for and completely against. (While that may sound a little nuts (or a lot nuts), I cling to this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.) On the one hand, I believe that students practicing their skills is helpful to their learning of Algebra. And, given the limited time I meet with my students, there’s the practical matter of fitting it all in. (As I noted in a comment on the assessment post, I’m estimating I’ll see my students for only about sixty periods – five of them shortened – in the fall semester.)

But on the other hand, I think homework is very problematic. I think the research is very mixed in terms of its effectiveness, and in my own experience I saw similar results. For a traditional homework assignment like I gave in my previous incarnation as a math teacher (perhaps 1-31 odd, or even a more thoughtfully picked selection of problems), I would typically see the following results:

A certain proportion of my class would be able to do all the homework with little or no problem. These were students that probably didn’t need the practice.

A second segment of my students wouldn’t even attempt the homework, for reasons ranging from they just didn’t want to, to not enough time, to not enough understanding. Some of these students still did well, others did miserably.

And the final group of my students in the middle would attempt the homework, but become very frustrated either because they couldn’t do it, or because they did it but did it incorrectly, so they effectively reinforced doing it wrong.

So one of the basic problems with homework (at least how I implemented it), was that the students too often weren’t reinforcing skills they already had, they were struggling with skills they had yet to master (at least for those last two groups). What they needed was to be able to work on those problems when I was available to help, or when others were available to help, but not on their own where if they were confused they just ended up frustrated or, worse, cementing incorrect procedures in their brains. (Note: I do think it’s a good thing for students to wrestle with complex problems, but I don’t feel like that was what was happening in my homework assignments.)

So my current thinking is to approach homework differently. I’m going to borrow an idea from a science teacher in my building, Brian Hatak (who, in turn, borrowed it from Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams). My plan is to deliver the traditional lecture portion of an Algebra class as the homework, thus freeing up class time to explore the mathematics and pursue some interesting problems, as well as provide time for guided practice and collaborative work.

Since Algebra is very much skill based, my hope is to provide short (less than 10 minutes), targeted instructional videos that students can watch (and rewatch if necessary) that focus solely on the skills, one skill at a time. Now I want to be clear that these videos typically will come after inquiry and exploration in class. I want my students to, as much as possible, play with the mathematics and formulate their own approaches before seeing the formal procedure. (There will be times when I’m sure I won’t accomplish this inquiry first/video second plan, either due to time constraints or creativity constraints on my part, but I’m hopeful I’ll get better at this over time.) But if I’m going to provide the class time to do all that, then I still need them to have the opportunity to focus on the procedure and master the skill as well, which is where I’m hopeful the video will come in.

So, part of the feedback I’m asking for on this post is simply about that strategy. Is it a good one? Terribly flawed? Are there ways to improve it? But there’s a second reason for this post and it’s what I’m struggling the most with right now. Do I create these videos myself, or try to use resources that have already been created and are freely available online?

My initial thought (as you’ll see in a minute) was to create my own videos. That way I could make sure they were short - many of the resources online are much too long and teach more than one concept in a video, and part of my pitch to my students is going to be “give me 10 minutes.” My videos would also be targeted to the specific concepts that I want/need to convey at the time I want/need to convey them, and would fit in nicely with the rest of my course design. But as I discover more and more resources online, some of which have much higher production values than mine would, I wonder if it makes sense to make my own. (Especially when you figure in the considerable time investment necessary on my part – it takes much less time to build a set of links than to create my own videos, upload, and link.)

So, embedded below is a “proof of concept” video I created for solving two-step equations (view it full screen and HD, particularly if you’re close to my age or older). And here is a link to a video from the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education on essentially the same concept. (I haven’t looked carefully yet, but my guess is that they will have all or almost all of the concepts that I would create videos for as part of this series.) Should I create my own, or tap into theirs?

Before you watch my proof of concept video, let me briefly describe some of the thought process as I was creating it:

• A reminder that this comes after exploration/inquiry in class and is intended to solidify the Algebra procedure. Students will also have ample opportunity in class to practice, with help from me and other students (more on that in a future post). By shifting the "lecture" to outside of class, it allows me to maximize the effectiveness of the time I'm face-to-face with students.
  
  
• I was going for an “I do, we do, you do” approach in the video. That leaves off one step that I think is very important, “we do together,” but my hope is that is what will be happening in class.
  
  
• My goal was to make the video no longer than necessary, yet still have it be absolutely clear (which, of course, allows me to be my naturally overly wordy self). I wanted to keep it under 10 minutes, both because that’s the YouTube limit and because I think any longer and I’m likely to lose them (or the concept is too complex to convey in a video like this).
  
  
• I toyed with the idea of doing some post-recording enhancements in Camtasia (arrows, highlights, callouts, key words, etc.), but, at the moment, have decided against that both because it would add tremendously to my production time and because I’m not sure the enhancements wouldn’t end up being distracting instead of helpful. I also toyed with the idea of trying to make it more interactive, but eventually decided to keep it simple. It’s meant to be a resource, not the entire instructional plan.
  
  
• On average, students will have about two videos per week, although that will vary. On nights when they don't have a video they will likely have something else to do, but it will not be a big 'ole long problem set like I used to give. Perhaps some reflection or other writing assignment, or a few targeted problems or inquiry, or simply study/work time for retakes of the assessments.

So, here's the embed. (Again, full screen and HD will look better.) If you watch the video (and I hope you do), please watch the entire video (8:15, I'm hoping many end up shorter than this one) so that you can see all five parts (Learning Goal, Explanation/Examples, Guided Practice, Self-Check, and Closing) and see how they work together (or not).



Let me anticipate three tech-related questions before they arise.

• What if students don’t have net access at home? I’m in a school where almost all students do have access, and most of them broadband. I did a non-scientific, but presumably still reasonably valid survey of 332 students about a year ago, and 83% had broadband, 1% had dialup, 14% didn’t know the speed (so I’m thinking probably broadband or they would know), and 2% didn’t have Internet access at home. Even so, my plan is to call all of my students in June (once they’ve been scheduled into my class) and touch base with the parents to make sure they have access. If they do not, then we’ll change their schedule (plenty of other Algebra sections for them to be in without adversely affecting the rest of their schedule) and then move another student into my class (who I would then call and ask about access).
  
  
• Isn’t YouTube blocked at your school? While I anticipate most students accessing this from home, I do want them to be able to access it at school during their unscheduled hours or before or after school. I picked YouTube because students are familiar with it and there are no upload or bandwidth limits, but it is problematic because YouTube is blocked at my school (although staff can override that block). Thankfully, my crackerjack IT staff at the district found a way to whitelist a specific channel on YouTube. While there are still some kinks to work out, students will be able to view these videos as long as I link to them within the channel. If they try to go directly to the video URL outside of the channel, they would be blocked (although they could get a staff member to override that if necessary).
  
  
• What’s with the gold background? Our school colors are black and gold.

So, I’d love your thoughts on both the strategy and the implementation. Again, please keep in mind this is just one piece of the instructional puzzle, subsequent posts will focus more on what we do during class time.