Grantcoulson's Blog

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    More from the interview with Siegfried Engelmann. The whole interview is like a field manual on programming, using feedback and developing effective programs.

    ”In fact, in a field tryout of one of our programs, we had one kid tell us this: The kid made a mistake, and the teacher said, "No. Sound it out." And the kid looked at her and he said, "Tell me the word, and I’ll sound it out." And I thought, what a smart-ass kid, but then thought, No!  He just said it all! That’s it! That’s what he believes! He has to know the word to sound it out!’

    Since “the student is always right” in terms that his response is always lawful, sometimes it makes sense to listen to them.

       “Another example is when kids read words in lists they make fewer mistakes than when they read the same words in context. Why? Because in grade one, teachers did eminently stupid stuff, like have them look at the picture, discuss the picture, and then read the words. I’m sorry, Virginia, pictures do not generate specific words! But specific words generate certain features of pictures! So the proper order is: Read the words. What are you going to see in the picture? Here’s the picture. Not the other way around!”

    Whole Language never dies. It doesn’t cling to life because of utility, but because the theoreticians, who can’t teach students, love it.

     “Another thing teachers do is to always discuss, discuss, and discuss. Frame, think, then read. Wrong!  That’s what these poor readers are already trying to do. They’re trying to figure out if there’s some kind of crazy set of rules for them. And obviously, Shaywitz and a lot of others have demonstrated that this approach is inappropriate because it’s asking a kid to read the context just to find out ‘what could that word mean?’ So they’re forever making guessing mistakes and missing words. But if you have them read words in a list, they do just fine.

      So, what implication does that have for a reading program? All kinds. It means that you need unpredictable sentence structures. Why? Because they’ll guess on the basis of sentence structure. "Tim and John said, ‘Let’s go to the lake.’ So, Tim and John"…everybody could complete that sentence. No. So, we would design that sentence so that if the kid said, "went to the lake," it would be wrong. Okay? Why? So we can provide the kid with information at a high rate to change their guessing behaviors.

     Related to that is how you would reconfigure in the program, what they read in text. You know that kids reading words in lists do better than reading the same words in the text. So, what we did was we had a series of stories about this dog named Chee. It’s named Chee because they had trouble discriminating "Chee" and "she". Everything is for a reason. And it’s largely influenced by the feedback we use from a kid’s performance.

       So when Chee gets upset or angry, Chee says random words: "Oh, of, come, for, to, go" — all the words that these kids have had since the first grade, and they’re forever missing when they read them in connected sentences. Talk about a hell of a time!  They would try to read those words and they would stumble on them simply because they were nonsense statements in a deceptively sensible context for what they thought. But after awhile, they would get proficient at it.”   

      If you want to do what works, you get feedback from what you’re doing. You don’t decide, a priori, on the basis of your theory. You look at the evidence. Public Education is run on the basis of INTEND–what we want to do, translated into IS–what we are doing and bothers not at all with DOES–what we’re actually doing. INTEND and IS are surrounded by spin and the usual guardians of nonsense, hyperbole and catchwords. This is all, naturally, the result of perverted incentives in politics and anything funded by the political system is political. How can it be otherwise?

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

More from the Engelmann interview.

       “David Boulton: And how our ongoing assessment allows us to tune our responses to them so that we’re actually meeting what they need along the way in those steps.

Siegfried Engelmann: Right. I agree totally. That, translated into this stair-step program idea, simply means that you can use every single lesson, every single task in every lesson as a test—if you have appropriate criteria.

The rules for how you use the program as a tool for ongoing and absolutely accurate assessment goes something like this: if you have a properly designed program, the kids have to be 70 percent correct on anything that is introduced for the first time on that lesson. The kids have to be 90 percent correct on anything introduced in the past three lessons, from the beginning of the program. At the end of the lesson, the kid has to be 100 percent firm on everything. Another rule is that you have to have the program designed so that the teacher can complete it in a reasonable period of time.

Now, if you use all of the criteria I mentioned, it doesn’t matter what mistake a kid makes. We’ve found, empirically, when we work with kids, in Special Education for instance, we have to move the kids back something like an average of eighty lessons!  In other words, for those kids the starting stair is very low because their teachers are so far from being able to teach to mastery. They’re not even in the ballpark. So, the teachers could go through that lesson three or four times and it would do nothing for their students, because teachers are not evaluating or seriously looking at the skill level of those kids.

Part of the reason is largely because of prejudice. Teachers think that you have to move them along when they’re not getting it, because they are Special Ed kids, “they can’t learn this stuff!” Wrong! If you place them properly, they will progress just like anybody else. They may go a little slowly at first, because they have to learn the skills of how to learn from you, or how to learn from adults.

David Boulton: And they may have confusion brought about by a fragmentary exposure to the things that are downstream from where they really ought to be.

Siegfried Engelmann: Oh, absolutely. Like when you take the kids back to earlier steps in the lessons—now you’re not just dealing with virgin subjects anymore; you’re dealing with kids who have been contaminated, so they’re going to require more practice. Relearning takes anywhere from three to fourteen or fifteen times as much exposure. So, when we design a program, we design it according to whom we’re dealing with.”

    Again, the key is the philosophy of instruction leading to the details of the instruction. Find out the problem and fix it. This is the classic switch from “he is” (learning disabled) to “how to” teach the student.

    “For example, if you go through a simple story in which the kids can read three out of four words correctly, so it’s within their ballpark, and you give corrections for the words they miss.  "No, that’s not ‘said’, it’s ‘was’." "What word?" "Okay. Read that sentence again." You just go through it low-key, giving corrections like that.  Then, you have them read the story again. They will virtually always make more mistakes on the second reading than the first. Why?  Because they can’t take the information you’ve given. Why can’t they take it? Because they have a history of not being able to take information from teachers.

Teachers have told them things like, "Look at the first part of a word and guess what word that could be." Teachers have told them, "Read the context, think of the context. What could that word be?" The reason why kids have great excitation in their language areas, poor readers anyway, is because they’re trying to treat the reading task as a verbal task! They’re trying to figure out the meaning before they read the words!”

    How often I’ve seen this. Fixing what’s wrong in the context of teaching what’s right.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

         Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    G.M., known evermore as Government Motors, has lost $4.3B since “emerging” from bankruptcy. In terms only believable to government accounting, this is a positive thing.

     Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a gadfly in relation to vaccination programs, has been “discredited” by actions so hysterical and concerted that one begins to smell a conspiracy. I’m no fan of conspiracies because it requires much more coordination than is within the capability of most. The campaign against Wakefield reminds me of the one against the Sobells who showed that problem drinkers could become moderate or controlled drinkers. I’ve already talked about the Sobells in this blog so I’ll confine my comments to Wakefield.

    Today’s source is from an extended interview of Wakefield by Dr. Mercola on youtube. You’ll have to hover over the ten segments to find which is first, second, etc.. Wakefield makes a number of points. I’ll talk about two that struck me. The first is that interactions among vaccines are virtually unstudied either in combinations given at the same time and/or the “schedule” of vaccinations across several years. Most people are untaught about interactions, preferring a one-to-one causal chain. Dr. Paul Offit is such an advocate of vaccines that he says that 100,000 vaccine antigens could be give simultaneously without harm. The second is that Wakefield is an advocate of vaccinations, given singly and studied extensively.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

   Hans Selye, famous for  studying stress, made a point on how to distinguish a scientist from a politician, using a hypothetical party conversation. When asked what he does, the first graduate student answers, “I’m studying ion transport across semi-permeable membranes.”. The second: “I’m looking for a cure for cancer.” Noble statements do not noble achievements make.

    Siegfried Engelmann and Doug Carmine have written a book, Could John Stuart Mill Save Our Schools?. Some excerpts follow. What strikes me is the minute consideration of the logical-empirical distinction. Standard textbooks are in such stark contrast they appear to have been conceived on another planet from a universe far, far away. There is no logical or empirical analysis anywhere evident. Even a little empirical from testing on a few students would help. The book is not yet published, but Chapter 6 is at zigsite.com.

      “In broad terms, the first and primary analysis is logical. Questions of clarity are approached first from a logical perspective, then an empirical perspective. Is the presentation clear in terms of what we show and the discriminations we teach? In practice, the answer is never definitively yes, but rather, apparently, yes. The empirical analysis renders the final decision on clarity.”

    “The logical analysis is often influenced by knowledge of empirical relationships. For instance, we have learned from extensive applications that nothing may be assumed to be taught to at-risk children unless it appears on at least three consecutive lessons. For programs that teach English to non-English speakers, at least four consecutive lessons are needed before something may be assumed to be taught. When we apply this formula to the first draft of the material, we presume that when the program is field-tested, our estimates will be confirmed. However, we remain perfectly aware that in some cases the practice estimates are wrong. They may vary in either direction—providing too much practice, or providing too little. More frequently the error is in the direction of too little practice.”

    Standard public education doesn’t care about results for two reasons. The first is that education is not designed to teach things but to provide an extended IQ test, so the number of presentations is irrelevant. The second is that presentation of the material is sufficient to pretend learning has occurred. This being the case, neither the logical order nor the results matter.

    So in answer to the title, Could John Stuart Mill Save Our Schools?, the answer is yes, but he won’t because there is no necessity for using anything effective.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

      Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    Canada spent over one billion dollars on the H1N1 campaign including advertising. There were 458 deaths compared to 4,000 from the usual influenza. This might look as if the “campaign” were effective, but other data suggest it stemmed from the mildness of the infection. What happens if you declare a pandemic and the virus does not cooperate? Who do you sue? Which political opponent is to blame? What was the role of capitalism?

    I’ve  known poor people. In each case poverty was honestly earned by laziness, hostility, drug-taking and a variety of activities well-designed to hinder wealth creation and wealth accumulation. A lot of energy went into gaming the system in terms of becoming eligible for “programs” and in instituting lawsuits. Whenever advocates of any welfare program presents a worthy “case”, they always trot out a fantastically unlucky,  morally blameless person who fell on hard times by accident.

        John Stossel got some opinions from several libertarians about liberty, the government and the relationship between poverty and government. Whenever you’re talking about liberty and\or libertarianism, you’re talking about incentives.

      "It might in some cases be a little cruel," Miron said. "But it means you’re not taking from people who’ve worked hard to earn their income (in order) to give it to people who have not worked hard."

      But isn’t it wrong for people to suffer in a rich country?

     "The number of people who will suffer is likely to be very small. Private charity … will provide support for the vast majority who would be poor in the absence of some kind of support. When government does it, it creates an air of entitlement that leads to more demand for redistribution, till everyone becomes a ward of the state."

      “David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, took the discussion to a deeper level.

"Instead of asking, ‘What should we do about people who are poor in a rich country?’ The first question is, ‘Why is this a rich country?’ …

     "Five hundred years ago, there weren’t rich countries in the world. There are rich countries now because part of the world is following basically libertarian rules: private property, free markets, individualism."

     Boaz makes an important distinction between equality and absolute living standards.

      "The most important way that people get out of poverty is economic growth that free markets allow. The second-most important way — maybe it’s the first — is family. There are lots of income transfers within families. Third would be self-help and mutual-aid organizations. This was very big before the rise of the welfare state."

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

      The Bank of Canada was established 75 years ago to, among other reasons, keep inflation in check. Since then, inflation has only been 19.76% yearly. Mission accomplished.

      When I took economics, in 1973, one of the things we learned was that each dollar spent by the government would produce a “multiplier” effect of stimulating the economy of X3. Each government dollar was worth three private dollars. Long after, it occurred to me that this was nonsense. This assertion has been refuted by almost each bit of research since then. My guess is that government money is a divider, not a multiplier. (You can’t increase wealth by dividing it).

    A controversy has arisen between the Government of Canada and a The Fraser Institute, a libertarian think-tank which questioned the utility of the massive stimulus package recently imposed upon Canada. The government, not surprisingly supported its actions with the Fraser Institute pointing out the uselessness of the exercise.

    The following is from the National Post.

     “Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty must be smarting after being taken to the metaphorical woodshed on this page yesterday by the Fraser Institute’s Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam.

The Prime Minister and his Finance Minister had dismissed as “ideological” and “shabby” a report by the Fraser economists that suggested that the Conservatives’ stimulus program had “virtually no impact” on last year’s economic turnaround.

Yesterday, Messrs Veldhuis and Lammam produced a devastating catalogue of research by some of the world’s leading economists to confirm that the theory behind the government’s Economic Action Plan, like all such “stimulus” plans, is essentially a crock.

One name that didn’t crop up in the critique was that of the father of stimulus, John Maynard Keynes, who manufactured the theory that is still embraced by the activist wing of the economics profession: that is, those who promote programs that fly in the face of economics.”

     And further:

     ““So there you have it,” wrote Hazlitt. “The people who have earned money are too shortsighted, hysterical, rapacious and idiotic to be trusted to invest it themselves. The money must be seized from them by politicians, who will invest it with almost perfect foresight and complete disinterestedness (as illustrated, for example, by the economic planners of Soviet Russia). For people who are risking their own money will of course risk it foolishly and recklessly, whereas politicians and bureaucrats who are risking other people’s money will do so only with the greatest care and after long and profound study. (Emphasis added) Naturally the businessmen who have earned money have shown that they have no foresight; but the politicians who haven’t earned the money will exhibit almost perfect foresight. The businessmen who are seeking to make cheaper and better than their competitors the goods that consumers wish, and whose success depends upon the degree to which they satisfy consumers, will of course have no concern for ‘the general social advantage’; but the politicians who keep themselves in power by conciliating pressure groups will of course have only concern for ‘the general social advantage.’”

    Aside from the part about not working, the economic stimulus plan was just the ticket.

    If you spend other people’s money for your own advantage, you’re not very careful with that money. Incentives everywhere.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    I revisited the Central Fall situation today. Central Falls is a high school in Rhode Island in which all the teaching and support staff have been “fired” because of non-improving test scores.

    I found this video of one of the staff discussing the situation. Notice there is little about academic achievement, but a lot about union activity. Again, the problem is not the lack of learning, but how to keep people employed.

    Some of the quotes:

     “If Jimmy doesn’t do good (sic) on a test…We wonder what’s going on with Jimmy that day.” I doubt if it’s just that day.

    “The children loved Obama.” Of course they did.

     “I think they have an agenda. I think it’s union bashing.” Yah, that’s it.

    I know of many people, myself included, who could turn that school around in three months. Speaking for myself, I would not do it because of the constraints imposed by the government bureaucracy such as the curriculum, seniority and union rules which would render any attempt bootless. If you can’t control the incentives of the teachers, you don’t have a chance. Central Falls students don’t have a chance.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies