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Re: [Phys-l] How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2



The abstract of my post "How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2" [Hake (2011)], reads in part [bracketed by lines "HHHHH. . . . ."]:

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Haim continued "First, parents and students seem to know something about Stuyvesant that educator assessments clearly fail to discern. . . . . Second . . . very many of Stuyvesant's students graduate at a very high level (certainly by comparison to most other high school graduates) of academic achievement. . . . the real problem is transparent. It is the ceiling effect. . . .City-wide and state-wide assessments are simply not designed for academic institutions."

The above has nothing whatsoever to do with the theme of my post: "It is conceivable that if there were 'Eric Mazurs' or 'John Belchers' at Korsunsky's high-school and the Stuyvesant High School, scenarios similar to that at Harvard and MIT might occur. . . . . [[i.e., realization that students were not learning much from traditional passive-student lecture methods followed by a switch to interactive-engagement pedagogy.]]. . . . , even though all those institutions are regarded as 'elite.' "
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To which Marty Weiss (2011) responded:

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That's nonsense. These schools already have teachers on the high school level equivalence of the Mazurs and Belchers and many others in top universities, who use techniques that have gotten and kept such schools on a high level throughout the years. They use whatever methods work best for the students there, who are selected from the best in the city. The assessments that are used for high schools in general may not be suitable for these students who see such tests as another annoyance to be tolerated. . . . . . The assessments that are used for high schools in general may not be suitable for these students who see such tests as another annoyance to be tolerated. . . . . These tests are a joke; any value added bonus based on such tests is an insult to the teachers who work there."
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If Marty would take the time to go beyond my abstract and scan my COMPLETE post at <http://bit.ly/gxUOAb>, he would find that:

1. I neither implied nor stated that schools such as Korsunsky's high-school or the Stuyvesant High School did not have teachers comparable to Mazur or Belcher.

2. The tests used by Mazur and Belcher were not "the assessments that are used for high schools in general" and are not "jokes."

Eric Mazur used the "Mechanics Diagnostic" test [Halloun & Hestenes (1985a,b). According to Dori & Belcher (2002), John Belcher used "20 multiple-choice conceptual questions from standardized tests (Maloney et al., 2001; Mazur, 1997) augmented by questions of our own devising."

As far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) there have been no reports of such tests being given at Korsunsky's high-school or at the Stuyvesant High School.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the
Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>
<http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com>
<http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake>


[URL's shortened by <http://bit.ly/> and accessed on 27 Jan 2011.]
Dori, Y.J. & J. Belcher. 2004. "How Does Technology-Enabled Active Learning AffectUndergraduate Students' Understanding of Electromagnetism Concepts?" The Journal of the Learning Sciences 14(2), online as a 1 MB pdf at <http://bit.ly/fbOeA8>. See also Rimer (2009) and Hake (2009).

Hake, R.R. 2009. "At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard - REDUX #2, online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/g5qXz6>. Post of 13 Sep 2009 08:31:05-0700. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion list are are also on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at <http://bit.ly/eZpFGb>.

Hake, R.R. 2011. "How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2 " online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/gxUOAb>. Post of 26 Jan 2011 16:14:36-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at <http://bit.ly/eyTZAj> with a provision for comments.

Halloun, I. & Hestenes, D. 1985a. "The initial knowledge state of college physics," Am. J. Phys. 53(11): 1043-1055; online at <http://bit.ly/b1488v>. Contains the "Mechanics Diagnostic" test (omitted from the online version), precursor to the widely used "Force Concept Inventory" [Hestenes et al. (1992)].

Halloun, I. & D. Hestenes. 1985b. "Common sense concepts about motion," Am. J. Phys. 53(11): 1056-1065; online at <http://bit.ly/b1488v>.

Maloney, D. P., O'Kuma, T. L., Hieggelke, C. J., & Van Heuvelen, A. (2001). Surveying students' conceptual knowledge of electricity and magnetism. American Journal of Physics, 69(Suppl.), S12-S23; online to subscribers at <http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v69/iS1>.

Mazur, E. 1997. "Peer Instruction: A User's Manual" (Prentice Hall, 1997), Compadre information at <http://bit.ly/bygvAd>.

Rimer, S. 2009. "At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard," New York Times, 12 January; online at <http://nyti.ms/e3JtYN> (with 74 comments as of 12 Sept 2009 12:51:00-0700).

Weiss, M. 2011. "Re: How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions - Response to Haim #2," online on the OPEN! Physoc archives at <http://bit.ly/f2NT5e > . Post of 27 Jan 2011 11:38:52-0500 to Phys-L and Physoc.