Chapter 2 of Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap
In the first part of chapter two Tony looks into whether or not schools are preparing their students for college life and life beyond that. Out of 18 classes that Tony observed, he thought that one of them met the requirements to give the students the ability to succeed in college. In one of his classes he came across a group of AP boys who were doing a lab. Their beaker was smoking in a way no one else’s was. They sat and waited for the teacher to come help them. Tony asked them what their hypothesis was for what went wrong, and they didn’t know what a hypothesis was.
A Tale of Two Cities Tony starts this section by talking about how schools celebrate success in sports rather than success in academics. There are trophies displayed for sporting events, but not for academic successes. Out of all of the high school athletes, only 10% or fewer play varsity, and out of the 10% only a small fraction play professionally. Apparently the education the kids get from school is what most of them will have to fall back on rather than the sports they participate in (who would have thought that?) Tony compared two different schools in this section based on their high test scores and how well they prepared their students for college. He found that both schools were guilty of “test prep” and teaching to the tests rather than making their students think critically and analize data. Overall, not good preparation for college.
You’re in the Army Now This section compares Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools to public schools. DoDea schools typically outperform most public schools even though they have have 40% of their students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals and a 35% transfer and mobility rate. Tony wondered if they prepared their students better for college than the public schools he observed. He discovered that many of the classes are the same in the way that they do not make students think critically and problem solve. He did find one Algebra II class that challenged its students. The teacher wrote a new type of problem on the board and told the students to find two different ways to solve the problem using the knowledge they accumulated through their previous courses. When the teacher walked around the classroom he did not answer questions, but prompted them to think about it in various ways and discuss it with their peers. This is exactly the kind of teaching students need.
The Hidden “Gap” Exposed Tony observed a few elementary schools also and found some of these facts. 5th graders spend more than 90% of their time in their seats listening to the teacher or working alone and only 7% of their time working in groups. In 5th grade 60% of the students’ time was spent improving basic literary and math skills and less than 25% of their time spent on science and social studies. The average 5th grader received five times as much instruction on basic skills as instruction focused on problem solving or reasoning. Why is our students’ learning being divided out this way? Since NCLB students are being tested on reading and math skills and not science and social studies, no school wants to be shown as not reaching their adequate yearly progress, so they teach to improve scores in those subjects.
What about the Competition? In this section Tony discusses the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA develops assessments of reading, math, and science literacy to a sample of between 4,500-10,000 fifteen year old kids in various countries. In 2003 they aimed the test towards checking problem solving skills along with other assessments. Their goal was to measure “cross-curricular competencies.” The children from the United States were ranked behind twenty eight other countries on this assessment. Based on this and the statistics given from the exam, the kids considered to be the most academically talented in the United States are not even close to the kids in our competing countries.
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