Melissa Lowry's Smartypantzed Blog

THANK GOODNESS!  Every state should follow suit!

By ERICKA MELLON

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

March 17, 2011, 8:58PM

Texas school districts no longer could force teachers to inflate students’ grades under a bill the state Senate approved Thursday.

The measure, which now goes to the House, clarifies a 2009 law that prompted a legal challenge from 11 school districts, many of them in the Houston area.

Numerous districts had policies that prohibited teachers from giving students grades lower than a certain number — typically, 50 percent or 60 percent.

District officials argued that their minimum-grade rules were designed to give students a mathematical shot at passing a course after having a bad grading period. But teachers countered that such policies took away their authority and taught students a bad lesson.

“This bill is intended to ensure that Texas school districts may not require teachers to artificially inflate a student’s grade, including report card grades or other cumulative grade averages,” state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said in a statement.

Nelson, a former public school teacher, sponsored the original grading bill and the clarification.

The districts that sued state Education Commissioner Robert Scott over his interpretation of the 2009 law were Aldine, Alief, Clear Creek, Deer Park, Dickinson, Fort Bend, Humble, Klein, Anahuac, Eanes and Livingston.

In an Austin courtroom last spring, attorneys for the districts argued unsuccessfully that the law, as written, applied only to grades on classroom assignments and exams, not to cumulative averages on report cards.

But state district Judge Gisela Triana-Doyal ruled against the schools, saying the law was “not ambiguous” in covering all grades.

The districts decided not to appeal, noting that the Legislature likely would clarify the law against them.

ericka.mellon@nullchron.com

{ 2 comments }

 

Dr. Lidy Pelsser’s study, 64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. 

March 12, 2011

Hyperactivity. Fidgeting. Inattention. Impulsivity. If your child has one or more of these qualities on a regular basis, you may be told that he or she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If so, they’d be among about 10 percent of children in the United States.

Kids with ADHD can be restless and difficult to handle. Many of them are treated with drugs, but a new study says food may be the key. Published in The Lancet journal, the study suggests that with a very restrictive diet, kids with ADHD could experience a significant reduction in symptoms.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Lidy Pelsser of the ADHD Research Centre in the Netherlands, writes in The Lancet that the disorder is triggered in many cases by external factors — and those can be treated through changes to one’s environment.

“ADHD, it’s just a couple of symptoms — it’s not a disease,” the Dutch researcher tells All Things Considered weekend host Guy Raz.

The way we think about — and treat — these behaviors is wrong, Pelsser says. “There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, ‘OK, we have got those symptoms, now let’s start looking for a cause.’ ”

Pelsser compares ADHD to eczema. “The skin is affected, but a lot of people get eczema because of a latex allergy or because they are eating a pineapple or strawberries.”

According to Pelsser, 64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. Researchers determined that by starting kids on a very elaborate diet, then restricting it over a few weeks’ time.

“It’s only five weeks,” Pelsser says. “If it is the diet, then we start to find out which foods are causing the problems.”

Teachers and doctors who worked with children in the study reported marked changes in behavior. “In fact, they were flabbergasted,” Pelsser says.

“After the diet, they were just normal children with normal behavior,” she says. No longer were they easily distracted or forgetful, and the temper tantrums subsided.

Some teachers said they never thought it would work, Pelsser says. “It was so strange,” she says, “that a diet would change the behavior of a child as thoroughly as they saw it. It was a miracle, a teacher said.”

But diet is not the solution for all children with ADHD, Pelsser cautions.

“In all children, we should start with diet research,” she says. If a child’s behavior doesn’t change, then drugs may still be necessary. “But now we are giving them all drugs, and I think that’s a huge mistake,” she says.

Also, Pelsser warns, altering your child’s diet without a doctor’s supervision is inadvisable.

“We have got good news — that food is the main cause of ADHD,” she says. “We’ve got bad news — that we have to train physicians to monitor this procedure because it cannot be done by a physician who is not trained.”

{ 1 comment }

Yeah, yeah.  I know I haven’t been posting too much lately- sorry!  I should be back on track soon.  This is an interesting article I came across today on the Huffington Post.  While the first paragraph is enough to make me gag a bit (don’t get me started on the flawed research behind how female salaries are calculated, etc.), the rest of the article is very interesting.   I agree w/the connection the author makes between girls often viewing their talents in terms of how “good” they are, vs. boys viewing their talents in terms of how much effort they exert at a given task.  Our society values different behaviors from the sexes.  In turn, theses behaviors do shape how we view ourselves and our ability levels.

As the mom of a girl who loves math/science and would much rather spend the day catching frogs than making up dance routines- I’ve never heard another six year old girl declare, “Cockroaches are so cool!”- my interest has been peaked.  I’m going to experiment with how I praise my daughter and comment on her accomplishments and failures.  I encourage all of you moms with girls to do the same.  Maybe, just maybe, it will have a positive influence on a generation of learners.

Written for the Huffington Post on 2/2 by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.

Successful women know only too well that in any male-dominated profession, we often find ourselves at a distinct disadvantage. We are routinely underestimated, underutilized and even underpaid. Studies show that women need to perform at extraordinarily high levels, just to appear moderately competent compared to our male coworkers.

But in my experience, smart and talented women rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they’ll have to overcome to be successful lies within. Compared with our male colleagues, we judge our own abilities not only more harshly but fundamentally differently. Understanding why we do it is the first step to righting a terrible wrong. And to do that, we need to take a step back in time.

Chances are good that if you are a successful professional today, you were a pretty bright fifth grade girl. My graduate advisor, psychologist Carol Dweck (author of “Mindset“) conducted a series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material.

She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls’ IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up.

Why does this happen? What makes smart girls more vulnerable and less confident when they should be the most confident kids in the room? At the 5th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science. So there were no differences between these boys and girls in ability, nor in past history of success. The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty — what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result.

Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: More often than not, Bright Girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice.

How do girls and boys develop these different views? Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children. Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their “goodness.” When we do well in school, we are told that we are “so smart,” “so clever, ” or “such a good student.” This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don’t.

Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., “If you would just pay attention you could learn this,” “If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.”) The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren’t “good” and “smart,” and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.

We continue to carry these beliefs, often unconsciously, around with us throughout our lives. And because Bright Girls are particularly likely to see their abilities as innate and unchangeable, they grow up to be women who are far too hard on themselves — women who will prematurely conclude that they don’t have what it takes to succeed in a particular arena, and give up way too soon.

Even if every external disadvantage to a woman’s rising to the top of an organization is removed — every inequality of opportunity, every chauvinistic stereotype, all the challenges we face balancing work and family — we would still have to deal with the fact that through our mistaken beliefs about our abilities, we may be our own worst enemy.

How often have you found yourself avoiding challenges and playing it safe, sticking to goals you knew would be easy for you to reach? Are there things you decided long ago that you could never be good at? Skills you believed you would never possess? If the list is a long one, you were probably one of the Bright Girls — and your belief that you are “stuck” being exactly as you are has done more to determine the course of your life than you probably ever imagined. This would be fine, if your abilities were innate and unchangeable. Only they’re not.

No matter the ability — whether it’s intelligence, creativity, self-control, charm or athleticism — studies show them to be profoundly malleable. When it comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort and persistence matter a lot. So if you were a Bright Girl, it’s time to toss out your (mistaken) belief about how ability works, embrace the fact that you can always improve and reclaim the confidence to tackle any challenge that you lost so long ago.

{ 0 comments }

The value of quality early childhood education programs?  PRICELESS!

Value of Early Education? What’s the Bottom Line?.

{ 0 comments }

This is an article from the New York Times- I took it from a post at Gesell.org.  This is an interesting read- well worth it!

When Drake Roth was 18 months old, he would read the names of characters in “Thomas the Tank Engine” videos from his playpen as they flashed across the screen. At 2, he was onto cereal box labels; at 3, his preschool’s director told his mother to watch what reading material was within his reach on the kitchen table.

But in kindergarten at Ethical Culture School, a private institution on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Drake seemed to be losing ground, with assignments like learning a letter of the week. The Roths did what parents lucky enough to gain a toehold in an elite school might consider unthinkable: They pulled him out, anxious that despite Ethical Culture’s top reputation, the philosophy that the school shares with a number of its peers — that kindergarten is more of a social year, not an academic one — was not letting Drake bloom.

Public elementary schools are federally mandated to teach reading almost from Day 1. But private schools in New York, many of which sent out their admissions decisions on Friday, set their own curriculums, and even some of the most prestigious choose not to teach reading until first grade or later. So as more and more children are being encouraged to read before they are out of Pull-Ups, these schools’ deliberate approach is causing friction.

At the Calhoun School, also on the Upper West Side, Steve Nelson, the head of school, said a week rarely went by without a parent expressing fears about the pace. “Those who get anxious think that education is like a race and you’ve got to get running fast, and if you don’t you’re going to fall behind and then you’re going to lose the race,” he said. “That’s not the right way to look at education.”

At Allen-Stevenson, an all-boys private school on the Upper East Side, tasks like decoding, or putting letter sounds together to figure out how to pronounce words, start in first grade — even for students already able to read, said David R. Trower, the headmaster. In kindergarten, the children do what educators call pre-reading or reading-readiness activities: listening to books read aloud, name-writing or making up stories.

The school speaks pointedly about its approach in each admissions interview and in open houses, to avoid clashes with parents who think “my kid is really good at this and I want him to move faster and I want him to get more,” Mr. Trower said.

“That kind of approach is pressured in my view,” he continued. “There’s enough of it to follow in their lives.”

This is not much comfort for parents who expect that high tuition means accelerated instruction, and who find themselves torn between buying into a school’s methodology and fearing their children will wither on the vine. Drake’s mother, Sharon Roth, said parents “get very blindsided by schools’ reputations.”

“I don’t think any child should ever be told that they should wait to learn,” she said, “anymore than a child should be placed in an environment where the pace is too quick for them.”

After kindergarten, the Roths switched Drake to the Speyer Legacy School, a private school for gifted children on the Upper West Side that opened in 2009. The Ethical Culture School, which is affiliated with the Fieldston school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, would not address the Roths’ situation specifically, but affirmed its methodology: “We provide lots of informal instruction in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and teach a variety of strategies for becoming fluent readers,” Ginger Curwen, a school spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “In first grade, our approach to reading becomes more formalized.”

Not all schools stave off formal reading instruction in kindergarten. “That stops the growth and could make education potentially a stultifying experience,” said Bo Lauder, the head of Friends Seminary in Lower Manhattan. At Trinity, another sought-after private school, reading instruction begins in kindergarten and is differentiated according to each child’s skill.

Stephen M. Clement III, who heads the all-boys Browning School on the East Side, said that “many of the early childhood programs are getting much more academic,” and as a result, “our curriculum has probably increased in its pace as well.”

“You meet the boys where they are,” he said.

But other schools hold fast to their slow approach. Melanie Griffith said her daughter Emma was reading chapter books at 4, but when she entered Calhoun, she was restricted to sing-alongs and teacher-led story time.

At times Ms. Griffith, a fitness instructor, said she and her husband wondered, “Are we doing her a disservice because she is so capable, by not putting her in a situation where they are challenging her more?”

They eventually were convinced that Calhoun, which is known for progressive methods, was right for Emma, who is now 11; her two younger brothers also go there, one of them a second grader only now beginning to read. “It takes a little more trust in the process,” Ms. Griffith said. “A little more of a deep breath than sometimes New York City parents allow themselves to take.”

Schools like Calhoun and Allen-Stevenson point to studies showing that early reading does not necessarily guarantee future success. “Being able to decode words is not a direct line to heightened I.Q.,” said Dr. Stephen Sands, a pediatric neuropsychologist and assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center. “Reading is part of academic achievement, but intelligence is part of a different dynamic.”

And small children who can read are not necessarily comprehending the text they rattle through, said Peggy McNamara, a reading and literacy specialist at Bank Street College of Education on the Upper West Side. Language-rich environments, like classrooms where children must speak in full sentences or are asked to make up their own tales, are what foster learning, she said, not the ability to breeze through “Hop on Pop.”

These arguments are not stopping the steady push toward earlier reading, with some preschools like Garden House and several Montessori programs specializing in producing tiny bookworms. Junior Kumon, which offers reading and math instruction to children ages 3 to 5, says its enrollment in young reading classes has tripled to more than 6,000 since it opened in New York City in 2007.

Dr. Jane Ruman, a fertility specialist whose daughter Annamaria Bacchetta, 4, takes weekly Junior Kumon reading and math classes after preschool, sees early reading as a pre-emptive measure. Annamaria is applying to private schools this year, even some that wait to teach reading. “I don’t have to worry that my child will get left behind if she’s not quite up to that non-interventional education,” Dr. Ruman said.

She also echoed the belief of some parents that the ability to read will bolster her child’s chances of being admitted to a top school. Officials of some of these schools insist that this is not so, and the E.R.B., the standardized test required by most for admission, does not have a reading component.

“It’s not as though we have two extra points for reading Dr. Seuss,” said Mr. Trower, the head at Allen-Stevenson.

Calhoun goes further: If a family seemed fixated on Junior’s uncanny ability to read James Joyce, Mr. Nelson said, “that would probably be a liability in our admissions decision.”

Even so, anxious parents are often unwilling to change tack. “You can’t just send your kid away and hope for the best,” Dr. Ruman said. “I am also doing this for me. I am doing it so I feel like I’ve done everything I can for my daughter’s education.”

{ 0 comments }