Ann Marie Banfield

Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire school near you?

Bedford started using Competency Based Education a few years ago after the grand opening of their new high school. One of the first things parents noticed was the number of students failing their competencies and then were required to take summer school.

I think parents support a rigorous academic education for their children. If that means students cannot advance to the next grade or must attend summer school that might be a needed consequence. The question is, does Competency Based Eduction provide that academic rigorous course of study?

First, let’s look at where Competency Based Ed. came from. Competency Based Education is Outcome Based Education. Outcome Based Education is yet another attempt to reform a failing public education system. Outcome Based Ed. focuses on “learning outcomes”. But what are learning outcomes? I would suspect parents would automatically assume outcomes meant their children would master the academic content presented in a lesson. The parents would be wrong to make that assumption.

Some of the most vocal opponents to OBE point to a reform method that shifts focus away from academic content to one that focuses on attitudes, behaviors and values. In other words, the outcome may not always be that a student master long division. The outcome may require a student to alter their value system.

Two of the ten competencies that New Hampshire school officials now want students to master, and which the teachers are supposed to promote and measure, are the “ability to get along with others” and “self-management.” Many New Hampshire students are entering college in need of remedial education and now teachers have to focus on non-academic skills. It’s no wonder that many teachers will tell you privately, this is a waste of time and effort.

While these skills may be worthwhile in some classes,…

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In our little town of Bedford, a controversy is brewing.  Recently parents of a high school student discovered a book had been assigned to their son in a Personal Finance class.  After reading the book, "Nickel and Dimed,…On Not Getting By In America!" the parents determined this book was not appropriate reading material for a 16 year old and wasn’t quality material one would expect to find in a Personal Finance class.
 
They went through the proper channels in an effort to either remove the book or remove parts of the book they found to be the most offensive.  Some of the most offensive parts to the book were: the profanity, references to Jesus and people of faith that readers would find offensive and instructions on how to clear your urine if you use drugs prior to applying for a job.
 
I think the average person expects a personal finance text to offer students information on banking, insurance, balancing a checkbook and other important financial matters that will face these kids as they move into adulthood.  What we found was, a book written by a social activist being used in  a Personal Finance class in an attempt to change the values, beliefs and attitudes of the students.
 
The book was brought to a review committee when the Administrators decided it was appropriate reading material.  The Committee listened to their concerns, read the book and decided the book is acceptable as instructional material because "its instructional value outweighs its shortcomings."
 
So what are we trying to teach students in Personal Finance?  Instructional value in what?  The author is an avowed Marxist pushing her own Socialist agenda on those who read her books.  Does Personal Finance now equal political indoctrination?  That certainly seems to be the instructional…

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Bullying is all over the news lately and some of these stories end in tragedy.  It’s created national attention and schools seem to be responding to the public outcry.
 
I guess what I do not understand is, why are those who’ve allowed this to become an epidemic escaping accountability?

I sat in on the hearings before the House and Senate Education Committees and listened to the many students who came before the legislators to tell their stories.  Time after time these students received little or no action from the school administration.  You could sense their desperation and their tears spoke volumes.
 
Bullying has many consequences on the students who are harmed.  Administrators who’ve lost the will and the courage to confront bullies have only added to this problem.

New Hampshire passed an anti-bullying Bill that I believe will be challenged in court at some point.  However if it is challenged, our…

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Guest post by Mary Grabar:

Disparagement of knowledge  was evident at the National Council for the Social Studies conference I attended last November in Atlanta. There, 3,200 teachers were continuing their studies in pedagogy, and gaining continuing and graduate credit to bump them into higher salaries. Most worked for public schools, so taxpayers footed the bill: the $267 registration fee, plus membership dues, travel and lodging, and the hiring of substitute teachers.

I estimate that about a third of the presenters at these workshops were affiliated with universities, mostly education schools; others included high school teachers, government officials, curriculum producers, or the staff of left-wing non-profits engaged in education. At such workshops, taxpayers are helping teachers learn new techniques for advancing the cause of "social justice" in classrooms from kindergarten to college.

The idea of social justice is opposed to traditional American notions of justice based on individual rights, without regard for group membership. Social justice is Marxist in conception and typically adopts a far left agenda: acceptance of homosexuality and alternative lifestyles, radical feminism and abortion rights, illegal immigration, cultural relativism, equality of outcomes in education and work, and a redistribution of wealth.

"Social justice" is often promoted through student-directed learning, most recently called "constructivism," because students are supposed to "construct" their own knowledge. This kind of constructivism, however, fails to improve student learning. Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark say it all in the title of their 2006 Educational Psychologist article, "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching."

All of those names are used by education theorists to put a new spin on what Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark accurately call unguided learning or minimal guidance learning. They conclude, "After a half-century associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners."

One of the studies they cited found that medical students who used problem-based learning (PBL) made more…

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This is the Letter to the Editor to the Laconia Daily Sun (page 6) that I wrote after seeing an article there that the New Hampton School (a private school) announced that they had gone "IB":

To the Editor,

After reading about New Hampton School adopting the International Baccalaureate Program, I thought I’d write to let you know how it’s working in Bedford.

There is much more to the IB program than what is being sold to the community. It surprises me that those selling a program that is supposed to help students think “critically” fail to provide “critical” information to the community.

The IB uses a constructivist methodology in the classroom. Studies show students fall behind those taught in a “direct instruction” setting.

For a better idea on what constructivism is all about visit (Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching) and (Structure More Effective in High School Science Classes Study Reveals).

A great deal of time is spent “discovering” knowledge in a constructivist classroom. While IB students are re-inventing the wheel, students in a similar AP Physics class, would be learning more material in the same time.

In an constructivist classroom, the teacher becomes a “facilitator” or “coach”. Parents and students need to read the studies above to critically analyze how this puts students behind their peers. Who is able to think critically? Those with the most knowledge? Or those with only a fraction of that knowledge?

This might be why a Santa Ynez former IB teacher wrote an op-ed piece praising the school for abandoning the IB program. He writes about the teachers never supporting the program and after about a decade, due to budget constraints, praised the Board for discontinuing IB. He continues by addressing the “myths” surrounding the IB program as being a ticket to elite institutions of higher learning. He says that’s certifiably false and that AP has an edge over IB.

Bedford recently turned down every tax proposal on the ballot. Teachers will be going without raises but they will be hiring an IB Coordinator and sending our tax dollars to the IBO in Switzerland.

In a community that must live within a budget, the administration must prioritize how they will spend our money. The message seems to be that they are going to continue to siphon money from the budget to sustain the IB program at the expense of: teacher salaries and classrooms that need heat.

This program, due to it’s affiliation with the United Nations has caused deep divisions in our community. Taxpayers are not going to approve of a school’s proposed tax hikes when a program aligns with an organization that’s known to undermine national sovereignty.

The portions of the article can be found after the jump:

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