This is a fun little story about Roland Fryer, MTT Summer Academy, and moi. Back in April I blogged the following about unsubstantiated assumptions I hold about teaching:
I don't have any objective rationale for believing that calling home to report bad behavior/praise good behavior has any effect on student motivation or engagement. Someone please link me to the study. I'd love to be validated. This is sort of a cornerstone of the school I work at and the certification program I'm enrolled in.
To which user "MG" (hmm..) replied in the comments:
Hombre, while of course I'm with you on the need to study this stuff empirically, I would add that there's a difference b/w "any objective rationale" and an randomized study (or many).
Evidence is a continuum.
Doesn't it look like this "MG" is scoffing at my notion? Keep that in mind.
SO. Two weeks ago MTT admin Orin springs on us that Roland Fryer's Ed Labs is running with an idea for a study from MTT founder Mike G. (That's right. ROLAND FRYER is going to use our fair school as a test tube for a randomized study. NBD.)
But what, oh, WHAT are they going to test?! Settle down, italicized inner monologue, I'm about to tell you.
They going to test the effect that heavy doses of both positive and negative parent phone calls on student motivation and engagement. I won't get into the scientific details of this study just yet, because a) I don't totally understand them and b) they'll distract from my innuendo.
I rule.
Oh, PS. MG last week became a Daddy x2. Welcome to the world, Daphne Aviva Goldstein.
ReplyDeleteDAG, yo!
This is Daphne's dad talking.
ReplyDeleteYou make it sound like I took the phone call idea like that dude took George Constanza's idea of naming a kid "7." (Which Pru rejected. Not just 7. All numbers).
I've long been a randomized parent phone call experiment guy. Probably since 2003 when I realized Charlie Sposato's magical parent phone call formula was often resisted, even by our own staff, let alone the outside world.
And Charlie never claimed to be the creator of this. In fact, the top viewed story on EdWeek this week was a teacher talking about his penchant of making parent calls. He has 180 students (hs teacher).
I'll send you a January email exchange with Roland so you know this was well underway with him when you blogged, so you won't shoot me weird looks when I'm eating Qdoba. I just wasn't ready to roll it out.
But the search to find someone to study this (and many other things) goes back even farther, to Kenny Wang and the first notions of creating an Ed School that would study stuff like this. I think it's in the 2006 business plan.
(It also makes the experiment harder to conduct when you write about it in advance! Could influence the observers if they stumble over here. So pipe down and celebrate Lebron to Knicks instead, if ur tweet source holds up).
My April comment to you still stands. You thought "while of course I'm with you" = scoff? I meant: I'm with you, I love randomized trials, obv.
My point was that I think you (and previous tutors for the past 6 years, and MTT cohort 1) DO have SOME objective rationale for believing parent phone calls.
Even w/o a randomized experiment. Your knowledge of the effect of calls by Charlie and MATCH tutors and teachers -- you can evaluate/weigh that evidence for yourself.
There's plenty of stuff like that which you'll come across in your career.
That evidence might add up to 3 out of 10, and our limited randomized experiment might move that to, say, 6 out of 10 (randomized is great, but it's such limited dosage, such short time period, such unusual measure of impact). That's the continuum.
Make sense?
Also...
It's not Roland himself. It's a couple doctoral students he rustled up for us - Matt and Shaun, who are great.
Paper trails suggest you're on the level. Though I maintain that I rule by association.
ReplyDeleteLeBron to Knicks is a done deal. I'll be saving the I told you so until after paternity leave.