Are after-school math centers really worth the money?: Parents and education experts do the math. (From The Boston Globe Magazine)

A feature story I wrote on afterschool math enrichment centers appeared in today's The Boston Globe Magazine. You can read it online (and see additional links below) by clicking here! I researched and wrote this in the last month or so of my pregnancy, so joke that now I know which math programs my son should try in a few years... A LITTLE BOY, NO OLDER THAN 8, almost leaps out of his chair, screaming, “It’s so easy! It’s so easy!”

Standing at the front of his classroom, Robert Kaplan, a teacher and cofounder of the Math Circle, one of many after-school math enrichment programs in the Boston area, gently chides him. “No, I don’t think it’s easy,” he says. “And it’s not nice to say it is when we’re struggling with the problem.”

It’s not easy for the parents, either, sitting in the back of classrooms during lessons like this and trying to puzzle out a problem themselves. These are folks who have been through the boom and bust of Baby Einstein and Baby Mozart, and who of course want the best for their children’s developing minds. Now they’re trying to decide whether extracurricular math centers, which are spreading through the city and suburbs like a cold in a kindergarten, are worth the investment of time and money.

You can’t drive very far in Greater Boston without coming across one of these schools. Within five minutes of my Framingham home there are four different centers: an ALOHA (an acronym for Abacus Learning of Higher Arithmetic), a Chyten, a Kumon, and the MetroWest School of Mathematics (co-owned by the Russian School of Mathematics). Latha Narayanan, manager of the Framingham and Franklin Kumon centers, calls this small area a “math mall,” and she’s right: Companies with centers in just this corner of the suburbs serve about 1,130 students.

There are at least 14 different programs, with 87 total locations in and around Boston, teaching math enrichment classes to kids (not to mention private tutors, school math clubs, and online instruction). Some of these programs are small – like the Kohlberg Math Learning Center in Harvard Square, which has 12 students, and Girls’ Angle, a Cambridge center with anywhere from 10 to 20 at any time, or Kaplan’s Math Circle, which operates in classrooms on Harvard’s and Northeastern’s campuses and has 156 students and a handful of teachers, including Kaplan and his wife, Ellen. Other programs, like the Newton-based Russian School of Mathematics, which has almost 6,000 students, and the New Jersey-based Kumon, which has 6,192 students in the area, are huge. And they have different teaching approaches: Kohlberg uses a physical learning innovation – blocks made to fit together in groups of 10, 100, and 1,000 – to teach kids in a one-on-one setting; Girls’ Angle offers individualized teaching without a set curriculum; the Russian School offers classroom-based instruction using a set curriculum; and Kumon has a curriculum but offers one-on-one instruction.

With so many programs, parents may wonder if their children shouldn’t be enrolled just to keep pace with their classmates, to say nothing of getting ahead. How can parents know that these programs work and then choose among them?

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!

You can see the print version (as a PDF), with some beautiful pictures, by clicking HERE.

[Note that the answers to the puzzle on page 24 got cut off. The solution is: Next triangle blue (rightside up); 15th is blue (upside down); 44th is white triangle (top facing left). You can also see this online HERE.]

You can also see a PDF version of the web version by clicking HERE.

Sex, Sexual Abuse, and Sports

Given the recent, multiple sexual abuse scandals in sports (from Penn State to Syracuse, and now even the Amateur Athletic Union) it's not surprising that this past weekend two major newspapers published stories on the ways in which sports can provide a breeding ground for pedophiles (click here to read The New York Times' take, "Coaching Gives Abusers Opportunity and Trust," and here to read Minnesota's Star Tribune's, "Sports can act as cover for abusers").  Both pieces highlight that the impacts and complications for boys are different than those for girls.  The NYT explains that girls are far more likely to be abused, but it is suspected that the abuse of boys is under-reported given the hyper-masculine environment of sports and persistent fear about homosexuality. Still, sexual abuse of young girls by adult males is presumed to happen more often. While I understand the context of sports, sexuality, and sex/gender that the writers refer to, I can't help but observe that it is really the sexual abuse of boys that gets the media attention.  This has also been true over the years-- recals the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases and allegations of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts, for example.  What's especially interesting to me, in this moment, is that a similar story about sexual (and in this case, also physical) abuse in youth sports has been pretty much overlooked by the mainstream media: that is the story of Don Peters, Doug Boger,  and "women's" gymnastics.

I first wrote about this story in early October, long before the Sandusky news broke.  But beyond the excellent work of The Orange County Register, which continues to follow developments in the case (for instance, in the past week they reported that a convicted sex offender has regained control of a Colorado gym where he is still around young girls), other major print outlets have virtually ignored this case of abuse.  Sure, it warranted a sentences in the Times' coverage on Saturday. But that is not even close to commensurate to the coverage of male abuse victims.

Will it be the sexual abuse of boys that pushes legislators to better protect youth athletes?  If so, does this seem right to you? Do you believe boys and girls will be equally protected by whatever changes come in the aftermath of these (youth) sports sexual abuse scandals?

UPDATED! What happens when you are first-time parents who study competition and education?

ETA: On January 4th, 2012 we welcomed our son, Carston, into the world. Two days later, his daddy's research on value-added teachers appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Coincidence?! Everyone is doing well and no one has been fired yet! I was correct (per original post below) that this work would get a lot of attention. What do you think? My husband, John Friedman, and I are expecting our first child in about three weeks.  Both of us have spent parts of our careers studying education, childhood, and competition in various forms.  I can't decide if this is going to be good for our offspring, or a total disaster...

John, and several colleagues (including Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan), recently published the lead paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics: "How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star." (If you would like to read a full version of the manuscript, click here.)  In the paper they find evidence that your kindergarten classroom has significant, longitudinal effects on your life, using data from students who were part of Project STAR, a Tennessee program in the early 80s that randomized children into kindergarten classrooms.  These effects include higher earnings, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings.  I guess Robert Fulghum was right that all you really need to know you learned in kindergarten. Can you imagine the kinds of questions we are going to ask before enrolling our child in a kindergarten?!

Currently John is working on another paper (again, with Raj Chetty, and also with Jonah Rockoff), that will surely get a lot of attention as it focuses on the long-term impacts of teachers-- not just kindergarten teachers.  To oversimplify things, teachers who improve students' standardized test scores also improve adult earnings.  A one standard deviation increase in test score raises earnings by about 10% of your yearly salary per year. Really interesting stuff, but I can't imagine the kinds of questions John is going to ask at school open houses and parent-teacher conferences!

As for me, if you read this blog you know that I study kids and competition and various afterschool activities.  So can you imagine the kinds of questions I am going to ask sports coaches, music teachers, etc.?  Since I also write about how these issues often intersect with schooling and college admissions I know how important early education can be.  Recently I checked out websites of some schools around our house to see about tuition and admissions requirements for pre-K, if we go the private school route. Now, if I lived in some cities (oh, like one Big City a couple hundred miles south of Boston), I would be quite behind if I hadn't already been reading up on the options and gotten myself on mailing lists.  Despite being one of the great intellectual centers of the world, Boston isn't quite as intense as this other Big City.  Nonetheless, I started filling out an online form to request more information on a particular school, figuring I have some downtime to read up on places.  When I got to the section on child's info (like name, grade interested in, birth date, etc.), I suddenly realized that putting my due date in as an upcoming birthday would likely not be looked upon kindly by the Brahmin elite!  I wouldn't want to flag myself as a Tiger Mom before I'm even officially a mom... especially because I'm not quite sure I will be a Tiger Mom, preferring more of a "buffet" approach to early childhood parenting.

What do you think: son lucky to have parents who study these issues, or destined for a lifetime of therapy? Personally, I hope for something in between, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them on!

Triumph and Tragedy in Scholastic Chess

I have a soft spot for scholastic chess. In 2005 I started studying chess as part of my dissertation research (which is forthcoming as Playing to Win: Raising Kids in a Competitive Culture). One of the things I loved the most about the chess scene is the diversity of people who meet and engage over the board.  At many tournaments you can walk in and see men, women, boys, girls, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, rich, poor, young, and old shaking hands before their games... And then shaking hands at the end again, before retiring to the "skittles rooms" to analyze one another's moves. It's really a beautiful thing.  I already can't wait for my husband to teach our son "how the pieces move." During my time exploring parents' motivations for enrolling their then-elementary school-age kids in chess tournaments I met many wonderful families and kids. It was a particular thrill recently to see one of these "kids" (who is really almost a man) written up in The New York Times for his chess accomplishments. Jehron Bryant is now 15 and he was recently named a chess master.  His current chess rating is a remarkable 2219 (and I'm guessing he'll soon perform higher than that number when he takes his SATs, for which I know he has been studying).  What's even more remarkable is that Nigel, Jehron's twin brother, is also close to becoming a chess master, with a rating of 2099.

Nigel and Jehron are part of a remarkable group of African-American chess-playing teenagers in the New York City area, Dylan Loeb McClain explained in his article.  Three other teens-- Justus Williams, Joshua Colas, and James Black, Jr.-- became masters before their thirteenth birthdays.  Why is this so remarkable?  A quote from grandmaster Maurice Ashley (the first black GM, and only African-American GM) sums it up nicely: "Masters don’t happen every day, and African-American masters who are 12 never happen... To have three young players do what they have done is something of an amazing curiosity. You normally wouldn’t get something like that in any city of any race.”

While there is much to love and applaud in the scholastic chess world, there has also been recent tragedy.  A few weeks ago, at the National K-12 Championships held in Dallas, another young chess player of color, and of great potential, died unexpectedly.  Quinton Smith was a junior at Estracado High School in Lubbock, Texas.  He was one of two representatives from his school; they only had money to pay for two of their eighteen students to attend nationals and Quinton won his spot after an intrasquad tournament.  In addition to being part of the chess team, Smith was on the mock trial team, the tennis team, and involved with the drama club.

Quinton Smith's death was officially designated as "unexplained."  After losing his first four games, and taking a bye for the fifth game, he appears to have gone up to the roof of the hotel and either fallen or jumped.  No one seemed to know how he got up to the roof.  Dr. Daaim Shabazz's entry on The Chess Drum offers a particularly sad description of what occurred.  I'm not the only one to think this was likely a suicide, though I couldn't find any verified reports online.  Chess teacher Elizabeth Vicary wrote on her blog: "I assume his tournament performance had something to do with his death: that he was used to being smart and successful and just couldn't take the frustration and pain of so much losing."  Vicary used the opportunity to talk about how to make decisions and recover from mistakes/errors with her own students.

Just as all competitive endeavors can bring the joy of victory, they also bring the agony of perceived failure.  For most kids learning to deal with loss, and learning how to recover, is an important life lesson/skill that they can acquire by participating in a variety of competitive activities, like chess, as I've written about before.  But for a small group, this lesson may be too much to take-- especially if they have become accustomed to success. Unfortunately it seems as if Quinton Smith may have fallen into this category.  Hopefully parents and teachers/coaches can learn from this tragedy how to better identify kids who may wilt in the hothouse of competition and give them special attention or ease them into larger competitive endeavors.

NECN Appearance on Andover Sports Hazing and Parents' Right to Question Coaching Credentials

In the aftermath of a hazing incident at a summer basketball camp, two Andover High School students have been expelled, the franchised basketball camp (Hoop Mountain) has been kicked off the college campus where the camp was held, and a legal investigation is underway as well. I appeared on NECN's The Morning Show (NECN is the regional cable news network for New England) to discuss how parents can try to prevent, and protect their children, from hazing by asking questions of and about coaches and camp counselors.

(Note: I am in fact 36 weeks pregnant here. I don't always look like this! I will be able to show my son his first-- in utero-- television appearance someday though.)

For more of my thoughts on protecting youth from potentially predatory or untrustworthy coaches, teachers, and camp counselors, check out this piece on the need for state coaching certifications, this piece on summer camps, and this on questions you should ask of all your child's afterschool instructors.

(Also, in case we needed any more disturbing reminders about who we allow around our children, this story came out today about a children's casting agent sexually abusing kids [I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you can become a children's casting agent and never go through a background check to make sure you aren't a pedophile.]).