Philippine Basic Education

As parents, we simply want the best for our children. The adage that says children need to be challenged is fairly common among both parents and educators. Thus, it is only expected that we want our own children to be attending schools with high scores in standardized tests and challenging learning experiences. An article in the Washington Post  five years ago illustrates how great a length a parent will go to simply to place his or her child in an advanced academic program: "When a contributor to a local parenting listserv recently solicited recommendations for an “educational consultant” to help get her child into Fairfax County’s program for “gifted” students, readers were quick to attack. “My God!” wrote one parent, “this is wrong!”" Sadly, that one parent who says, "this is wrong", is more likely an exception. Labeling students and creating tiered schools unfortunately can actually harm basic education and a recent 50-year longitudinal research study shows...

Two nights ago, I attended a meeting of the Title I Parents Advisory Committee of Fairfax County Public Schools. Title I schools in the United States are schools that have at least 40 percent of its students qualifying for either free or reduced-price lunch. Title I schools are provided additional funds by the federal government to help address the academic achievement gap based on family income. The main topic of that evening's meeting is parent engagement, as numerous studies have shown, parent engagement correlates with succesful academic outcomes. One issue raised in that meeting is the difference between parent's involvement and engagement. A large percentage of students' parents often come to school events such as Bingo Night, Talent Shows, Multicultural Dinner, and other social gatherings but when it comes to meetings of Parents Teachers Associations, the attendance is usually low. To analyze the relationship between what a parent does and how a student performs in...

A former associate editor of the Bedan Roar, a publication of the San Beda Manila Senior High School, recently wrote an opinion on DepEd's K-12 on CNN Philippines . Feeling despondent, Cristina Chi writes in her first paragraph, "Today, it appears that the first students to graduate from K to 12 have been forgotten and swept in the dustbin of history. After enduring two additional years of high school where the implementation was unclear for teachers and students all throughout, the guinea pigs of the K to 12 reform have every right to be distressed at the Department of Education’s lack of evidence of its success." Above copied from CNN Philippines Although Chi laments about how ineffective DepEd's K to 12 has been, her article is actually a good example of critical thinking and writing. So, perhaps, going through a poorly designed educational system can ironically lead to learning how to think critically. Chi exemplifies how a student can excel not because b...

At age 15, my classmates and I were already studying calculus in high school. Surprisingly, I still chose to take algebra during my first semester in college. Everyone would have thought that I was misplaced especially if one knew that I had already taken not just calculus, but also linear algebra and analytical geometry. But I still enjoyed my algebra class in the university. I might not be gifted after all because I did not feel bored. I did not feel that the course was lacking in challenge. This is the greatest concern that proponents of gifted education raise with regard to the gifted. Rachana Bhatt wrote in A Review of Gifted and Talented Education in the United States , "Advocates for gifted education argue that special curricula are needed for high-achieving students so they do not become disinterested in school, which can lead to low achievement and poor work habits." It is equally true, however, that every child needs to be challenged and my algebra instructor defini...

Education Week  reports on the latest ACT exam results, a standardized exam that measures college readiness in the United States. Apparently, this year, the average score in the math section is a 20-year low. More recently, going as far back as 2014, the percentage of students reaching the math college readiness benchmark is actually declining. Thus, the trend is not just toward lower scores but also toward lower number of college-ready high school graduates. Above copied from Education Week Above copied from Condition of College and Career Readiness 2018 And it is not just math. From the above graph, performance in English is also on a downward trajectory. Adding to this worry is encapsulated by a remark from ACT mentioned in the Education Week article: In general, test scores tend to decline when the pool of test-takers gets larger and includes more students of varying skill levels. The most recent class of ACT-tested students was smaller, however, and its d...

Everyone has some sense of humor including me and I do find some posts on the web that share student's unusual answers to test questions rib-tickling. One site actually has a collection of such posts, " Hilarious Test Answers from Kids " by Robert Wabash, which even ranks the answers by readers' votes. One case comes from either a physics or chemistry exam. Above copied from  Hilarious Test Answers from Kids If you were the one teaching these topics, the above maybe distressing if this comes from one of the students in your class. But if this student is not in your class, you have to agree that this is quite funny. This is why these posts generally turn out to be quite viral in social media. Recently, there is one that has become viral on social media in the Philippines. It is from Lola Nidora, a character in the noontime soap opera Kalyesere . Above copied from Lola Nidora The above test question is asking the student to illustrate through a sketch ho...

The quality of education or lack of it is often equated to inadequate resources. Lack of materials, a poor curriculum, being underprivileged are among the factors frequently cited as obstacles to good basic education. There is one factor, however, inside the classroom that can still make a significant difference even amidst dire conditions. It is the teacher. For this reason, numerous efforts have been made to design ways by which a teacher can be evaluated and then hopefully supported. Unfortunately, there is not much solid evidence of teaching evaluations that actually work. The National Council on Teacher Quality in the United States has recently released a report that cites six places that appear to have teaching eveluation systems that benefit both student learning, and teacher retention and effectiveness. One of the six places is the state of New Mexico. Its teacher evaluation system especially caught my attention because it is definitely a system in which teacher evaluations ...

Having access to information at your fingertips sounds great. This is what technology has to offer. Of course, access comes with not so good things as well. In terms of privacy, using a global positioning system application, for instance, can collect and store data on one's whereabouts. And for information, greater access can also mean greater misinformation. With Facebook, sharing has become too easy that most do not even ask the question if something is indeed worth sharing or not, or more importantly, if the information is correct or not. The innovative educator blog has provided the following rules: If you have not verified something is true, keep it to yourself. If you don’t have the time to verify it, keep it to yourself. If you like the idea, and don’t care if it’s verified, keep it to yourself. If you don’t care if it’s true, you think it is interesting and want to share, keep it to yourself. If you can't help yourself because you love sending spammy chain mess...

Teachers should teach children not what to think but how to think. At first sight, this statement may sound reasonable but it is in fact false. No one conceives ideas out of nothing. How we think is shaped by what we know. This is especially true when it comes to matters that are controversial or judgmental. How we think is also influenced by how we feel. More importantly, it is shaped by our beliefs. And when it comes to impressionable individuals, especially children, it is often a lot easier to copy how one thinks than to understand or grasp what one actually thinks. Young minds can be easily persuaded or even pressured to accept what adults say. For these reasons, a teacher inside a classroom of students must be careful, thoughtful and considerate since he or she is really in front of a captive and impressionable audience. Critical thinking should remain adherent to facts, but by its very nature, it should not likewise serve a teacher's set of beliefs or agenda. As teachers, we...

English is considered as a primary academic language. Most books and journals on almost every discipline are often written and published in English. English, however, is not the mother tongue of a significant number of children. Even in the United States, one can easily find elementary schools where a significant number of students are not native English speakers. Although one may regard this as a challenge for schools, having a mixture of non-native and native English speakers in one classroom actually provides an excellent opportunity for a genuine bilingual education. Unfortunately, most programs choose either immersion (in which students abandon their native tongue in favor of English) or transitional (in which the language spoken at home is used in the early years simply as a support for instruction). This is perhaps due to practical reasons as bilingual education requires more resources. For one, teachers need to be proficient in the native language and culture of their students ...

More than four years ago, before my daughter started kindergarten, she had the opportunity to see the room where I give lectures to my General Chemistry class. She was surprised how big the lecture hall was and that seats were fixed in place and were arranged in rows. To her it was pretty clear that the classroom was mainly for students to listen to what I had to say. She said, "Your class just sits and listens to you. In my class there's playing, and reading books, and listening to teachers, and "circle time", and nap. And your class just listens. Why?" Back in 2012, Richard Clark, Paul Kirschner, and John Sweller wrote the following in the American Educator : "Decades of research clearly demonstrate that for novices (comprising virtually all students), direct, explicit instruction is more effective and more efficient than partial guidance." The authors, Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller actually wonder why educators and education policy makers...