The Cumulative Final Exam

Please excuse the use of quotations, and please treat all quotations as if I'm using my hands to give the quotations signal.

Scenario A: Teacher speeds through all course material and is "done teaching" for the year by May.  They spend the remaining 1.5 months "reviewing" for the final.

Scenario B: Teacher spends time on each concept, working at the student pace to ensure everybody has a good understanding of each concept, differentiating when appropriate.  By the time June rolls around, there are 2 whole chapters (when did learning take place in chapters) that were not "covered". 

Since they both teach the same course, each teacher's students will be taking the same final exam.  After all, what better way to achieve a standardized curriculum than to make the final exam the same for everybody.  What will these final exam scores look like?

The teacher from Scenario A looks like a superstar.  An expert teacher whose students excel on the final exam.  A true veteran.  The teacher from Scenario B looks like a bumbling fool, a novice who can't even "cover their entire curriculum".  This is the teacher that others look at and say "They move too slow." (not sarcasm quotes)

The students from Scenario A look like the best and brightest, and are rewarded by high scores on a final exam that counts for 20% of their final grade.  Yes, 20%!!!  90 minutes of a school year equates to 20% of a student's grade.  The students of Scenario B are punished for having a teacher who cares about everybody learning, and a teacher that is following a district model of formative assessment and differentiated instruction.  They will not have high scores on their final exam, the same final exam that Scenario A's students beasted.

How does it make sense to give the same final exam, knowing that every teacher employs a different teaching style?  Why can't we have some freedom to develop our own final evaluation of what a student knows?  Something that is not necessarily a multiple choice exam.  Here's what I'd do: My End of Year Projects

Card Game: AP Stat Ideas

Below are 4 hands from the game "13" that my students now play all the time now that projects are getting finished and school is ending.  Apparently 2's are the best.  I don't know the rules, and I'm not certain they do either.  I believe you can play straights, multiple pairs of multiple numbers, I don't even know.  Do people besides students at my school play this game(i.e. do you know what a "cutup" is)?  An interesting way to analyze probability anyhow.  Here are 4 real hands dealt during a resource period.  Ideas...who will win?  who has the "best" hand

End of Year Project Topics

This is an incredibly interesting list of project ideas that my students have generated.  I thought I'd share what they're capable of when they have zero restrictions...

10-11 End of Year Project Ideas 

Some highlights if you don't feel like reading through the whole thing...

1. Mythbusters: Mac vs PC
2. Value of a Power Hitter or Contact Hitter in Fantasy Baseball
3. Developing software that is usable exclusively in an AP Stat class
4. Using a test vs. a qualitative measure to assess learning
5. Profiles of countries in a state of unrest to predict revolt (the wiki for this project)
6. Price differences between Ebay and craigslist
7. The chance of finding a 15 to 64 year old male in Luxembourg that is a noble compared to a similar-aged male in Denmark being a noble.  (easily the most unique project ever done)
8. Using Wikipedia, how long it takes for random words using the formula of always clicking the first blue, unbolded and unitalicized word, lead to the end word of Philosophy. On the theory that every word in Wikipedia will eventually lead to Philosphy. Words will be chosen via randomized dictionary words. (based on the fact that clicking the first blue, unbolded, unitalicized word of every page eventually leads to Philosophy)

With a little bit of freedom (okay, a lot of freedom) they come up with some awesome topics and they really enjoy their work in class during these couple of weeks.

How will I grade them?  By writing a list of what the student did well and what the student did not do well. 

A Farewell to Teaching

I'm writing this post to inform everyone that reads this (who knows how many) that at the end of this school year I will be making a career change.  I will be starting down the career path to becoming an actuary, which is a unique opportunity that I am extremely excited about.

I'd like to thank anyone that has taken the time to read this blog for allowing me to share some ideas about education that are unique.  I've continued to blog this year due to the amazing conversations that I've had with colleagues nation wide.  Most of you I've never met face to face, but I enjoyed having an audience to bounce some AP Stat and just general education reform ideas off of.  This is something I would not have done with anybody but my personal learning network on the internet.  Again, thank you.

Feel free to use any of my ideas in any capacity that you wish.  No need to be proprietary, as I'm all about moving education forward.  I encourage you to consult with and contribute to the class wiki that we've started this year, that will hopefully evolve into an online statistics resource for any and every statistics student that would be in need.

The Class Wiki: http://statknowledge.wikispaces.com

Will the blog continue?  Probably.  Just in a much different capacity and probably be more math nerd related than anything.  Again, to my PLN, thank you so much for contributing so much to my professional development. 

School Reform through the Eyes of Albus Dumbledore

"No spell can reawaken the dead, Harry. I trust you know that. Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I can't help but think of this quote when it comes to education reform, so I'm going to list how things are done the right way and how things are done the easy way in various realms of education.

Implementing Change in a School District
The Easy Way: Write a policy
The Right Way: Have your buildings/staff make the necessary changes they need to help students learn

Technology Integration
The Easy Way: Buy some Smartboards and show the community our commitment to technology
The Right Way: Invest in technology that changes a teaching practice, not technology that isn't much different from an overhead projector

Community Relations
The Easy Way: Cave to whatever demands are placed upon you by the community, tell them you'll do everything they want
The Right Way: Stand up for something and explain to the community how it benefits your district, even if it means spending some money

Instruction
The Easy Way: Hand out some worksheets from a textbook manual and have students follow and copy down what you've done
The Right Way: Find out what each learner needs, and provide them with as much support for those needs as you can

School Structure
The Easy Way: Force all students to assimilate in to one model of what a school is
The Right Way: Provide students with several different options to attend school (brick and mortar, cyber, blended, etc) and have them choose which one works best for them

Grading
The Easy Way: Give points, then slowly and methodically remove them for each successive mistake a student makes. 
The Right Way: Have a list of things that a student does well, and some things they must improve upon.  Constantly revise and add to this list throughout the year.

Grading II
The Easy Way: Use a formula to calculate some type of average to summarize what a student can do.
The Right Way: Students have portfolios, that you can go through and look at to see their strengths, weaknesses, and interests. 

Personnel
The Easy Way: Make decisions based upon tenure/seniority/contract status
The Right Way: Make decisions based upon who is best for your district

A Project per Unit: Understanding By Design in AP

Some project ideas for AP Statistics that are unit specific.  I'd begin each unit by asking these questions and having kids consider just what data they'll collect and how they'll answer these questions.  Then build all the statistics concepts around them as they come up, not as a series of "concepts".

Unit I: Displaying and Describing Data
1.  Market Research: design a product, determine the market for it, determine how much you should charge for it

• Create a coffee stand for your school building
• Pillow-pack: A backpack with a pillow built in to it

2.  Consumer Education: Choose a series of similar products and determine which one is the best for consumers

• I have a number of kids working on an end of the year project comparing all types of smartphones
• Mac vs PC?
• Tablet PC's

3.  What makes a song popular?

Unit II: Displaying and Describing Bivariate Data (probably my weakest ideas)
1.  Have them collect data that makes them think about what a correlation actually shows (not causation, only a relationship between two variables, etc)

• Caloric Intake vs Weight 
• Grams of Fat vs Grams of Protein consumed daily
• Income Level vs Achievement Level in Standardized tests (state tests, SAT's, AP, etc.)

Unit III: Collecting Data
1.  What's the best sample we can get to investigate one of these questions?  I want them to see just how poorly they collected data in Unit I and II

• What proportion of the school district has internet access?
• Revise their sampling methods from previous units

Unit IV: Probability
1.  Design a game of chance that is profitable (run them all together on a casino day complete with fake money to see how profitable it is in the short-run)

Unit V: Inference for Proportions
1.  Continue any of the data collections that were done in the beginning of the year, looking for significant differences (consumer education, market research) - introduces significance, might be boring.
2.  Is there equality that exists between schools/institutions?  What do "richer" schools have that "poorer" schools do not?  Why?
3.  Tell a joke and determine whether or not it is funny.  Possibly look at a comedian's standup routine to determine if they are funny
4.  Type I and Type II Error: Explore wrongful convictions.  Have them explore some court cases that are under contention (OJ Simpson, Mumia, etc) and some court cases that are open and shut (Bernie Madoff).

Unit VI: Inference for Means
1.  Is there an advantage to eating a raw vegan diet vs the traditional "Western" diet? Inspired by recent events as we have recently started a Raw Vegan diet (and have never felt better)
2.  Is there equality between schools/institutions?

Unit VII: Inference when Variables are Related (T-tests for Slope and Chi-Squared Tests)
1.  Should you choose one letter over another when taking a multiple choice test? (sorry for so many testing heavy examples)
2.  Do a t-test for slope on any of the bi-variate data collected in Unit II

Most of the inferential statistics can be applied to enhance the projects and work done in the beginning of the year.  See my post on Inferential Statistics Data Collection for others, and of course feel free to lend me your ideas.

Inferential Statistics: A Different Approach

For the longest time I've given thought to providing instruction on inferential statistics in a unique fashion.  If you're an AP Stat teacher, it means a departure from the One-Proportion Z-test, Two-Proportion Z-test, One Sample t-test, Two-Sample t-test, Matched Pair t-test, Chi-Squared Test(s), t-tests for slopes of regression lines.

So here's how I'd start...all data collection.  Spend a couple of days collecting data for each situation.  One of the essential questions I'd like my students to explore throughout the year is "Which model is the most appropriate for data you have collected?"  Here's where we go into depth about why certain models are more appropriate than others...

Data to Collect

1. Number of victories in 100(or so) games of Rock-Paper-Scissors
2. Toss a thumbtack and record proportion of "up" 
3. Drop a piece of buttered toast 50(or so) times and measure how many times it lands "buttered-side down"
4. Give a dummy homework assignment and measure the proportion in each class that complete the assignment
5. Compare batting averages of two baseball players
6. Time how long it will take kids to walk to the pool and back
7. Prices of items at clothing stores (found through browsing catalogs online)
8. Number of each type of animal cracker per box
9. How long it will take you to sort beans on to bulls-eyes with a dominant/non-dominant hand
10. Give the ol' Memory Experiment(groups rate sentence on how hard they are to pronounce/how easily they can form a vivid mental image) and compare number correct for each group
11. Count the number of each color of M&M you receive in a sample of M&M's
12. Change drop-height/rotor length of paper helicopters and record the time it takes to fall

After you spend about a week or so doing data collection, ask students to reflect on how data was collected. Notice also that some activities are done the same way (measuring proportions/means).  I'm fairly certain this has to be done to guide reflections, make kids confused, and ultimately learn something about making generalizations (mathematical modeling at its finest).

Ideas for Reflection:

1. What was measured in each data collection?  How does it compare with other types of data?
2. Which activities were useful for making comparisons?
3. If we're not making a comparison, what can we do with the data we collect?
4. Does it matter than some samples are smaller than others?  
5. Create a display for each activity with the raw data.  Which models tend to be the most appropriate?

I can see this being two weeks of AP Stat where kids think about collecting data and fitting similar models to similar methods of data collection.  Once they start fitting models to each situation for comparison, then you bring about some hypothesis testing procedures.

If you're a Stat teacher or not, provide your suggestions and ideas for data to collect.  It'd be great to get a new type of data to collect from somebody outside of the Stat realm.

AP Stat Test Today

I am sneaking this in before the 48 hour moratorium on discussing anything AP Statistics test goes in to effect.  Hopefully the gentleman in dark suits and sunglasses from the college board that I see lurking outside of my window will understand.

Today my students will take the AP Stat exam.  I have no idea how well they will do.  I'm fairly certain that the students that this test wants to get a "5" will get a "5".  I've told my students that they are much more important to me than a test score.  After all the amazing things we they do in class, it seems rather anti-climactic to summarize them with a number between 1-5.

One of the worries that I have is that I spend most of my year allowing my students to demonstrate what they've learned in whichever way they wish.  Some like to create videos, some create Prezi's, others are content to write a report.  At the bottom of it all is my belief in giving kids a choice in what they wish to do, so that they can enjoy a learning experience other than "listen-do this-receive grade".

But the AP Stat test will not take in to account the freedom of choice and "uber-differentiation" that has made my classroom something everybody enjoys.  I do think that the students who have chosen the most in-depth learning experiences will translate their knowledge to any medium, even if it's some boring old test.  What about the kids that chose to write a report, or chose a learning experience that wasn't all that in-depth?  If I told them to choose something else that would be better in terms of test preparation, then I wouldn't really be giving them their choice at all.

With such a push for meeting individual student needs, how can we only give students 40 questions with 5 different answer choices to show what they know?  On the free response section, how come they have to answer parts (a), (b), and (c) when the most enjoyable part would be to explore option (d) that doesn't exist?

Next year, I'm going to suggest that none of my students take the AP exam.  There...I said it.  Our reasoning will be that we are going to do something better than answer someone else's questions, we're going to answer our own.

Why Schools Do Not Innovate

This post is in response to Scott Swindells' post of "Where's the Innovation?".

A recent blog post by Seth Godin really resonated with me as to a school district's reluctance to innovate.  He writes:

It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails.

Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that.

You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure.

As soon as you say, "failure is not an option," you've just said, "innovation is not an option."

This is precisely why most schools systems are institutes of non-innovation. Innovation within a school system(okay, within all systems) frequently involves money.  A district doesn't want any money they spend to result in a failure, since taxpayers demand a constant "positive return on investment" (that phrase mixed with education makes me cringe, so I'll only use it once).  Nobody wants to anger our taxpayers by spending money on something that fails.  

This is the failure is not an option approach.

Who decides what kids should learn?

Stop me if you've heard these before...
"Kids these days can't do simple math without a calculator!"
"Kids these days can't write well at all!"
"Kids these days are lazy!"

So what?  What gives you the right to tell students today what they should learn?  You've never met my students, so in my view you have zero authority to tell them what they should be learning.  On the flip side, if you've never met my students, why is it okay to tell them what they don't need? (as you begin making those budget cuts to eliminate foreign languages and the arts)

Ultimately our kids should have the freedom to learn whatever they want.  There should be no reason that every student should have to take Algebra II before they graduate high school.  If they're interested in it or would like to try mathematics, then go for it.  If they have an interest in art, why would we then tell them that they can only take one art course this semester since they have to take 6 other subjects they don't care about?

Imagine if we required every student to take a painting and drawing class every year from 7th grade to 12th grade.  Why does that sound so blasphemous, yet we can easily require them to take a math class (or two) every year from 7th grade to 12th grade?

Don't get me wrong, I see the great benefits in students taking any mathematics courses.  I'm a math teacher.  I want kids to discover their own interest in learning mathematics on their own schedule, not on some mandated timetable. 

AP Stat Lesson: Type I and Type II Errors

THE EXCEL SPREADSHEET
Type I and Type II Errors (housed on Box.net...is there a better way to do this?)
Directions for the activity contained in the spreadsheet.

SKILLS ADDRESSED
Statistical significance, Confidence Intervals related to hypothesis tests, Type I Error, Type II Error, Power, Alpha, Beta

THE CONTEXT
A factory is producing pharmaceutical grade glass vials.  Quality control engineers are employed to see if the factory is producing items at or below the industry standard of 5% defects.  They conduct a sample of size 100 (Mistake #1: I know this violates np>10, but it turns out that you wind up failing to reject a lot and it leads to a good understanding of Type II error) and determine the proportion of their sample that is defective. (Mistake #2: sampling 100 items and getting a proportion defective of 0.063 defective is impossible.  They will need to round to a whole number of successes when using the graphing calculator.)  Based on the results of this hypothesis test, they will decide if the factory must undergo a quality control review or continue with business as usual.


THE ACTIVITY
1ST PART - CONDUCT THE TEST, DECIDE WHETHER TO REJECT OR FAIL TO REJECT
It's dynamic.  Each kid will receive a randomly generated proportion.  They may do this up to 50 times.
First part of the activity: conduct the one proportion z-test using your graphing calculator.

2ND PART - DECIDE IF YOU MADE THE RIGHT DECISION
Unlock the spreadsheet (password: apstat5).  Have them change the fill color of the "True Proportion" column to reveal the true proportion of items that are actually defective.  They then evaluate their decision as to whether it was correct or incorrect.  Cue a whole class discussion on the 4 different scenarios of errors, then slap the AP Stat vocabulary on.

REFLECTION
Two huge mistakes that led to an amazing understanding of errors.  An overly planned lesson would have avoided these mistakes.  It also would not have generated a discussion on appropriate assumptions and conditions for inference.  An overly planned lesson would have also not brought up the question of "How come I'm failing to reject so much when it's false?"  An awesome comment: "I would not have learned this that well if I didn't have to think about those things."

This was 3 days worth of 46-minute classes.  Let's see how they do on the assessment of these skills.

THE SLIDESHOW

10-11 Errors

View more presentations from christjt.

Coming soon to this post...
The Google Form Assessment
A better version of the spreadsheet that allows any null hypothesis and any sample size.
100 comments on how to make this even better (hopefully)

Good Teachers are Worth their Weight in Gold

The popular line from those that wish to criticize teachers is that "Good teachers are worth their weight in gold".

Every person that says this follows it up with a list of excuses for why we should pay them in dirt.

Treat teachers like they're providing your students with an education.  Treat teachers like people that are developing children into citizens.  They're not being asked to peddle some wares, manufacture something, or generate more money.  They're being asked to nurture and develop citizenship.

A teacher can make one child a great citizen, and in doing so they would outshine all the salesmen in the world.

AP Stat Lesson: Confidence Intervals (Graduation Party)

The Excel file: Graduation Party simulation.

What this Excel file does is simulates a student sending out 1500 invitations to a graduation party.  There is a true proportion of people that will attend, but it is unknown (see the "Population" tab of the Excel spreadsheet is completely blacked and password protected).  If you'd like the unlocked version, feel free to get in touch with me and I can send it along.  Students will conduct samples of 20, 50, and 100 to estimate the true proportion, and once they've generated a sufficient number of each sample size, they'll take a guess as to what the true proportion is.  Discussion follows as to which sample was most helpful to make the guess from.  Most guesses are that the true proportion is between 0.2 and 0.3.

They choose one of their sample proportions for sample size 100 and create a confidence interval for 4 different confidence levels: 68%, 90%, 95%, 99.7% (not randomly thought up by any means).  I chose these confidence levels because in the past I've seen students not associate confidence intervals with a middle percentage.

Collect students intervals using this form: One-Proportion Z-intervals Data Collection Form 
Display their responses here: One-Proportion Z-Intervals Raw Data (pay attention to both tabs, one has intervals and one has whether or not the interval captures the true proportion)

Once they've done some thinking, they will open this Excel file(One-Proportion Z-intervals Displays of Each Interval), providing a visual of each confidence interval.

We follow with having students lead their own discussion.  They'll begin by posting comments to a specific page of the class wiki, in order to get them to jot down an initial reaction to see if what they thought still holds up, or if their thinking needs revision.  A whole class discussion follows, and I challenge them to not allow me to speak for 10 minutes.  This can be difficult for me, but it is extremely difficult for them.

AP Stat Lesson: Unstructured Investigation

Give kids this: Hank Aaron - Home Runs by Pitcher

Let all hell break loose.

I've become quite a fan of "unstructured time" as of late, and I think this is perfect for an AP Statistics class.  I can see my baseball fans in class leaping at this opportunity to explore some baseball stats.  Whatever they wish to investigate, they are free to do so.  For the non-baseball fans, it may be just an opportunity to learn something about baseball.  I owe them some data on what they're interested in.  I look forward to hearing what a student that knows very little about baseball has to say.

Possible investigations:
1.  Comparison of Barry Bonds(or any other great home run hitter) to Hank Aaron. 
2.  Are pitchers today better (as a whole) than the ones Hank Aaron faced? (this comes from listening to Colin Cowherd say that Babe Ruth hit his home runs against guys who drove a milk truck in the off-season)
3.  Just how biased is this website?

Let them come up with how they're going to do any of the above. 

How does change happen?

First of all, check out the new blog format.

Second of all, today we played the Making Change for School Improvement game with the fellow Montgomery County instructional coaches and it was awesome.  Our group successfully moved every teacher to becoming a routine user, but ran out of money to perform a complete curriculum revamp. .  Amazingly, we still had plenty of funding to give our kids standardized tests (kidding).

What I left my meeting with today is that I don't talk to nearly enough people in our district.  I have a great rapport with our teachers.  I am friendly with our administrators.  It's REALLY hard to have a conversation about things that need to change with administrators though.  As a whole, I feel like preservation of the status quo can sometimes be more important to them.  Or, the need for change is viewed as such a huge problem that mere mortals are powerless to do anything about it.

It's become necessary for me to provide data at every waking moment to support what we're doing as instructional coaches.  I'm the one responsible for providing it, when there's a real easy way to collect that data.

If you want to see the effect that an instructional coach is having, GO INTO A CLASSROOM  and see.  Look at what is happening in the classroom first, then decide what additional data (if any) that you need.  As a statistics teacher, my recommendation is to gather data to assist in making an informed decision.  Please try to avoid gathering data to support an argument for/against.  It turns litigious and confrontational.

I had the pleasure of speaking with @kenrodoff about how his administrative team walked through classrooms for 6 hours as part of an ISTE site visit and was amazed at what was happening with technology. Hopefully this leads to a continued and improved support for instructional technology within their district.  Honestly, I have no doubt about it.

My classroom door is wide open for anyone that would like to visit.  My students and I would love to share what we're doing with you.  I have no reservations and I don't get scared when an administrator walks in to my room.  I want you to come in.  I want to share.  I want to be seen because I believe what I'm doing is in my student's best interest.  I am proud of the fact that what happens in my classroom is different than every other classroom in the district.  I have no idea how well my students will do on an AP Exam, in fact, I don't really care.  I care that my students are producing something they genuinely care about and are interested in.

Here's some of the great things happening:
Probability presented through Penalty Kicks
Binomial vs Geometric Probability: A Jimmer Fredette Example
Experimental Design: Pokemon and Smash Bros

PA Education Budget...Am I reading this correctly?

To all my fellow educators in PA, readers in PA, and educators nationwide, please visit the link below and open the Excel file.

PA Dept of Education Budget

Check out line 10, the line for "PA Assessment".  Yes, that 36, 590 is in thousands.

Compare with line 9, the line for "Information and Technology Improvement".  4,266.

Pick jaw up off floor.

A statewide system of standardized testing is costing us $36, 590,000, yet they are calling for teacher layoffs?

Am I reading this correctly?  Please tell me if you have a different interpretation. If I am reading this correctly, then every person in the state of PA needs to see this.

Big props to Scott (Tuesday's With Swindy) for pointing me towards this.

You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All (about Hypothesis Testing)

I really like sharing things that work really well.  I don't know if it's a good idea on it's own, but this worked great considering we've done a lot of remediation (for students that needed it) and a lot of projects that delve deeper into statistics.  They are working with basics of statistics all the time, so tying it together into making statistical inferences is fairly easy when they have a good foundation.  I'd also like to think it has something to do with the way we've interacted with hypothesis tests in class.

Thumbtacks - Introduction
It begins with this form (Inference for Proportions) and handing out one thumbtack.  In their own brain, students decide what they think it is and what it would take to convince them it was wrong.  Then they toss the tack to be able to compare their observations to a model they've developed.  Sounds a lot like your entire hypothesis testing/inferential statistics unit.

The NCAA Basketball Tournament - A Basic Example
Kids then made predictions for the NCAA tournament and we tested just how good they were at doing so by comparing their proportion of correct first round picks to randomly guessing (p = 0.5).  A big question that came up was "Are we just doing this for the first round?" and in true teacher fashion I said, "Yes.  Now how come we're only doing it for the first round?"  Cue a killer discussion about large enough sample sizes and the Success/Failure condition.

Back to Thumbtacks - Put it into practice
Fire up the laptops and open up what the rest of your classmates thought (What They Thought).  Immediately they began to think "Why did this kid think they were incorrect when they got a lower proportion that what they thought they needed to be incorrect?"...a not so formalized way to think about a standard of proof and a low enough p-value to reject the null hypothesis.  This was one of those points in class where I said nothing and let their brains piece together what they were looking at.  I clarified what we were looking at, asked them to pick case that they thought was theirs and test the original hypothesis.

Conclusions
On the board, write your p-value and whether or not you rejected your original hypothesis.  As a class we'll have a look at everyone's p-values and decisions, then decide who has correctly rejected/not rejected.  They all argue about what p-value is considered "low enough" that you have to reject.  One of those moments where again, I say nothing and they develop an understanding of alpha-levels.  Not so formal...yet.

Projects/Practice

Pick another one of those contexts from the Inference for Proportions form and investigate it.  I think I'm going to add some more situations/contexts.  I'm also not sure that they ever need to fill out that form more than once...

What's Left to Do?
Sit back, relax, and let the 5's on the AP exam roll in.  Dress it up.  Put all the formal AP Exam terms/vocab/stuff to what they've already understood.  Then....
1.  So what really is the true proportion (Confidence Intervals)
2.  Is what we got really that different? (two proportions)
3.  Repeat procedure for sample means instead of proportions

Feel free to go to our class wiki for any supplemental exercises/materials.

Homework? More like "1st Period"-work

At our school, the typical student will take 7 courses for the entire year.  If that student has AP Stat with Mr. C on their schedule, this means that a student has 6 classes in which they will have homework.  6 other classes with one hour of homework assigned each night means approximately 6 hours of homework.

Some careful accounting as to how those 6 hours that could be spent working on homework are actually spent.
Hour 1: Facebook
Hour 2: Call of Duty
Hour 3: Facebook
Hour 4: Facebook
Hour 5: Facebook
Hour 6: Being a 17 year old....and throw in a little Facebook

I don't think that I"m very far off for the general population of high school students.  Knowing that this is the truth, just why do we assign homework again?

Where do those hours get made up?  During the 6 hours they are in school, simply because that is how  you earn the points for homework completion.  Do it in AP Stat, show it in Pre-Calc, consume points, repeat tomorrow morning in AP Stat.  And it's Trigonometry Worksheets.  Is my AP Stat class really less exciting than trig worksheets?  Not a chance, but the homework "points" are more exciting as they appease the grade monger in all of us.

I'm all for allowing my students to make a choice about what they will be working on in class, as long as that choice involves learning.  Consistently in my 1st period class (and each other class that I teach), the choice is made to fill in some unknown quantities for some triangles that nobody cares about (not even the teacher that assigned the homework) Why are you assigning homework if it's getting done in AP Stat?  Can't they do that work in your class?

I don't assign homework.  I don't plan on ever assigning homework again.  I plan on assigning worthwhile assignments that students can make the choice to complete at home if they want to make it even more awesome.  I plan on doing things that are valuable in class so that students do not need to work at home.

Imagine if your job gave you a minimal amount of time each day to complete everything for the next day for your 6 different classes and your boss told you, "Just do the rest of it at home."  Oh, wait.....

Well, anyway, back to my 46 minute planning period :)

What defines "failure" in education?

This week is state testing week in our school district.  Watching these kids go through this procedure, I can't help but feel bad for them.  This is what their schooling career comes down to, in the eyes of the people giving out money and deciding whether or not they are a part of a failing school.  Read that last sentence again.  Really?

So you're telling me if the students in my class decide they want to solve the world hunger crisis using what they're learning and what they know, this won't be factored in to the final decision as to whether or not they fail? What if we decide to use our knowledge to assist those in need in Japan?  Just how much of an impact do we need to make before this is acknowledged before test scores?

Those two outcomes get us a nice article in the newspaper, but we could still be considered "failures" without the right test scores.  How is this right?  How does it change?

A Crazy Idea for Professional Development

We are required to do 14 hours of documented professional development.  I'm sure that this hour requirement is similar at most school districts.  I could do 14 hours of professional development standing on my head.  My estimation is that I spend 5 hours a week reading the professional writings of my colleagues, and another 5 on Twitter engaging my colleagues in professional discourse.  Not to mention the discussions I have with colleagues that I actually work in the same building with. 

When will professional development be more than just an accumulation of hours?  It is a necessity in our classroom to differentiate instruction so that we nurture the interests of our students and provide them with a customized learning experience.  The extent of differentiation that goes into our professional development is the variety of 2-hour workshops in the district catalog to pick from (as long as you pick 7). 

Everybody choosing from the same pool of workshops leads us to a situation in which we have a large number of people with an average skill level.  What better way to generate organizational inefficiency than not nurturing experts? 

So my proposal for professional development: A Portfolio.  A teacher and a principal can have a discussion that begins with "Show me what you've done to become a better educator."  What follows is a look at the portfolio, talk about what's been learned, talk about interest level, what was good, what wasn't so good.  The principal can provide some feedback and suggestions as to where to go next.  Maybe this conversation is a little bit better than putting a check mark next to the teacher that has successfully completed the 14 hours?


A district would still offer the same catalog, but employees would not be limited to taking just those courses.  You can expand your offerings as need be, when you find there are a number of educators looking for something that just isn't offered.  The district catalog becomes customized for the individuals that need it, not the other way around. 



I'm not even going to mention how happy this proposal would make the educational outsider that thinks teachers have no incentive to improve when they get tenure.  Okay, I mentioned it.