Student Progress Report Sample Letter: Fill & Download for Free

We're all susceptible to various psychological biases when reading the news. I think it's too hard and too simplistic to say that people of one ideology are more susceptible. It's all part of the human condition.An especially common bias is the confirmation bias in which people tend to favor evidence that supports a hypothesis or belief that they hold. I'm guilty of it. We all are.Confirmation biasIt occurs in finance (failure to seek disconfirming evidence of an investment thesis), science (Eureka! All the evidence so far supports my framework. And my framework and methodology couldn't possibly be suspect), and so on.And it apparently happens on Quora.Case in point: The current top rated answer for this question comes from Stephanie V who argues that there indeed is a neurological difference that supports the hypothesis that liberals are more aware of biases in the news that they consume. Now I think she's an intelligent person. I enjoy reading her answers and have followed her for a long time.Yet I'd go so far as to say that the author and (presumably) the people who upvoted this answer -- many of whom could be liberal -- haven't looked at the underlying studies quoted in the various cited articles.The studies that support this hypothesis are deeply flawed.Here are some problems with these studies:Definition. What constitutes conservative? Do you want a bible thumper from the south? What about a libertarian who happens to be pro-market, pro-pot, pro-gay mariage, and pro-small government? Would Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican, pass muster? The same definitional problem also affects those we would classify as liberals. If you don't have well-defined categories, formulating a comparable corpus of studies can become problematic. Especially when you're reliant on self-reporting as many of these political/neurological studies are.Methodology. In 2007, researchers at NYU and UCLA published a paper in Nature Neuroscience that concluded that self-described conservatives were less adaptable than liberals. This study became widely cited in various mainstream media (ABC, NY Times, Scientific American) and various progressive outlets (Mother Jones) and was widely cited by the likes of Chris Mooney, author of the Republican mind. It's one of the most famous papers of its type.Here's the abstract:Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatismHow did the reserachers test self-identified liberals and conservative for intellectual adaptability? Quoted from the Wikiepdia:Participants were asked to tap a keyboard when the letter "M" appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a "W." The letter "M" appeared four times more frequently than "W," conditioning participants to press the keyboard on almost every trial. Liberal participants made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw the rare "W"Intellectual adaptability -- a very complex capability -- is reduced to a task only worthy of a M&M quality inspector. Yes, they could have substituted performance in Tetris.Slate magazine has a great analysis of this piece: Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid.Here's another well-publicized study that Ryota Kanai of University College London published in Current Biology (2011) that suggests that there are fundamental structual differences in the brains of conservatives and liberals.Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young AdultsFascinating hypothesis. And of course, this study received publicity in places like Time (Liberal vs. Conservative: Does the Difference Lie in the Brain? | TIME.com) without any critical analysis.Sadly, the study relies on a convenience sample by surveying 90 students who happened to be available for study.To quote the wikipedia article on conveience samples (Accidental sampling):The researcher using such a sample cannot scientifically make generalizations about the total population from this sample because it would not be representative enough.Researcher Kanai argues for correlation ("Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults" ) but fails to establish causality. His work doesn't pass statistical muster. This really constitutes what Jonah Goldberg calls "Conservative Phrenology."Don't even get me started on that awful Scientific American article (Unconscious Reactions Separate Liberals and Conservatives) that refers to a 2008 study that takes the contents of 76 college students' bedrooms (convenience sample!) and concludes that the conservatives owned more cleaning supplies and calendars and the liberals owned more travel books showing open mindedness. Insufficiently large non-random sample size coupled with dubious psychographic inferences drawn from a propensity to own cleaning supplies? Simply awful. Blah.Imagine the signification of leftover pizza boxes and unwashed laundry . . . Wait . . . that was probably bipartisan. ;)In an answer to this very question on Quora, we can see an example of how some very well-educated, likely liberal folks have taken a set of dubious studies at face value while responding to a question about bias awareness. Partly because it confirms a belief that liberal folks are just gosh darned more intellectually flexible / smarter / scientifc. It's all quite meta.And yes, I fully acknowledge that conservatives can easily go down the rabbit hole too.What kind of spin do you want on your bias?

Switching education from an industrial model to a more medical model was not that difficult for me and my students and their families. We found my system worked better than traditional grading because the motivation and reward system is built into the program so there is far less unproductive time.Letter grades are unnecessary for parents teaching basic survival skills and doctors attempting to prevent or diagnose the disease. They are also unnecessary for any educator who can tell a student's state of mind based on a writing or artwork sample or who can design a few essay questions with scoring rubrics.Even young students can be taught to partly manage and evaluate their own education processes using a few simple models. They get much better with practice. The basic concepts can be taught to an adult in a few minutes while a child would take a day or two for the same task. Once the students and their families experience their first success the teacher's job is to provide opportunities for future successes. In a few weeks the students and their families begin to find their own growth opportunities and begin to use the teacher as a higher-level educational consultant and less as a trainer of basic process. Effective and early communication between the parent and teacher are very important to the student's progress.The broad strokes of the program include a weaving together of a modified version of Bloom's educational taxonomy, the scientific method, and the emotional cycle of change. Bloom's taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) allows the students to see the next step in their learning; the scientific method allows the student to plan the next step, and understanding the emotional cycle of change allows the student to experience emotional rewards from learning as well as escape the inevitable low points in a challenging learning process. Eventually, students don't experience the low mood points because they anticipate the emotional rewards of success.The free preview of my book as a little more complete explanation of the process that worked for me and my students. The title may seem inappropriate to the grading topic but it’s not. Stronger Parent-Teacher Communication: Customizing Better Outcomes in Less Time : Robert W. Stein------Some additional thoughts on grading.The letter and percentage grades that most people think of as applying to school are designed to serve an industrial model of education. Industrial pursuits are generally binary – the job is complete or it's not. When industrial pursuits are not binary they are just numbered – he can attach 50 buttons per hour. Letter, raw count, and percentage grades can work for industrial models because they make it easy for mid-level managers to report production to their bosses who manage the broader corporate enterprise. This may have been appropriate in the early days of public education when the parents of the students were largely illiterate themselves. These kinds of grades may also still be appropriate for occupational training that serves industrial objectives. (Herman can correctly identify, by sight, 75% of the machine screw thread sizes commonly used in our industry.)Letter grades are not used in endeavors where multiple complex criteria must be evaluated. While many decisions come down to binary evaluations, it's a common joke for people to talk about getting a letter grade on a social skill or medical test.

Back when I was an eleven-year-old in the 6th grade, I lived in a poor mountain community in Northern California. Most of the townspeople relied on the lumber mill to provide for their meager income. There were a lot of people barely scraping by on what little money came in.Times were tough.A lot of times the mill shut down and families were forced to move out of town to find employment elsewhere.I lost a lot of friends that way.Kids went hungry. There were a lot of skinny children up in those mountains. A lot of those kids were wearing shoes with holes in them.In the snow.Desperate times.Judge Richard Eaton was an “old-timer” in Shasta County. A pioneer. He was an octogenarian with a kind heart and a flush bank account. He married my grandparents!He was an avid outdoorsman and angler. He enjoyed coming up to the mountains to fish. Sometimes, he would stop by our small classroom and give nature lectures.He would bring in a stuffed raccoon, or a taxidermied owl and set it up on a desk in front of the class and give his talks. We would sit wide-eyed, fascinated, listening to him describe how the animal hunted for food, or built a nest or comfortable burrow, warm enough to survive during the winter snows. He was a natural storyteller and had a way with words.We would raise our little hands and ask question after question, enthralled and intrigued with his wisdom. We were always thrilled to have Judge Eaton stop by. We hugged him goodbye when it was time for him to leave. I'd see his wrinkled face break into a big grin as tears welled up in his eyes, hard to break away.I could feel his pity for us skinny little waifs.One day, a letter was sent home to all the parents in my class.It said we had the opportunity to attend National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D) Camp for one week at no charge to the parents!This was an expensive gift to attend a weeklong camping adventure, what with meals, transportation, insurance and staff provided for an entire crop of school children!The generous gift of partial scholarship, provided by Judge Richard Eaton, in cooperation with the Shasta County Board of Education, made it a possibility for every single child to attend, no matter their financial circumstance!Exciting news!N.E.E.D Camp was a place where the kids learned about the environment; survival skills in the wilderness, wildlife, geology, ecology, plant identification, weaving fish traps and shelter building, as well as learning how to use a compass and reading topographical maps. It was all covered in the week-long school.Before we left for camp, we were given a three- day supply of “ImmunOak” in our daily orange juice. Poison oak didn't grow in the mountains, but was plentiful at N.E.E.D Camp. Back in those days, the FDA hadn't yet banned the magic elixir, so I drank down my disgusting anti-venin like a good girl, and to this day, thirty-something years later, I still am immune to poison oak!The day we departed, we were packed into a bus with all our gear, kids, teachers and high school counselors, and made the hour-and-a-half long journey to the camp. We arrived at camp, got our cabin assignments, and settled in for our first time away from home.Goodbye Mommy!It was great!We caught tadpoles and learned about their development. We hiked seven mile loops, through caves (filled with bats) and over waterfalls, collecting specimens to write our reports in the field, amidst trickling creeks and wildflowers. We took water samples from the natural watershed and observed fish in the streams as we tried our hand at catching some in our homemade traps.We didn't have any luck.We watched the deer feeding on the grass right outside our cabin, and learned to identify species of birds. We glassed bald eagles and spied on squirrels and raccoons.We were even dropped off, solo, without a light, on a pitch-black trail one dark night, and had to hike back, in the dark woods, alone, to find our way back to the rest of the group by ourselves. Frightening!I was proud of myself that I didn't cry.This is stuff “city kids” don't learn about in the classroom.This wasn't any regular classroom!Judge Eaton spoke at the camp. He gave a slideshow on bears. It scared me to know I was out in the dark with them. It also made me proud. I learned survival skills at a very young age from N.E.E.D Camp.Afterwards, while he was packing up his projector and the other kids had finally moved away from him, I got up the nerve to approach this gray-haired icon.I said hello and introduced myself. I told him my grandparents names and told him he had married them long ago. He pretended to remember. He smiled at me kindly.Judge Eaton -all images courtesy GoogleI thanked him for giving me a scholarship to attend N.E.E.D Camp. I told him I had learned so much and that I was very appreciative.His eyes got wide and he looked shocked. He pulled me into a hug and knelt before me, eye-level.“Child, in all these years I've been providing this fund, you're the first young person to say those words. I appreciate hearing them, but I always want you to remember, that whenever you give a gift, you should never, ever expect to hear a word of thanks in return. Ever! Because the gift is in the giving, itself. Not in the praise we receive for giving it. Do not expect to be congratulated for it. Do you understand me?”I nodded my head and turned away, disappointed in the rebuff.What a weird, old guy!Of course, I didn't understand him, then.I was only a child.But I thought back to that moment over the years, and one day, I finally caught up to his wisdom.I understand perfectly what he means now.Beautiful.Those simple words changed me forever.When I give a gift, I don't expect to receive accolades or thanks. I don't expect the recipient to express gratitude or overwhelming graciousness; my heart already feels thankful for the beautiful blessing I've bestowed. And that's a gift in itself. A gift I've given to myself.By the time I had made it to high school, I had garnered such respect for N.E.E.D Camp, that I went back and volunteered as a camp counselor when I was seventeen.Somehow, I was assigned a cabin of little boys, instead of girls.Those little guys were a handful, but it was a great experience all over again.Today, it is part of the curriculum of most Shasta County schools for their students to attend the camp. It is a requirement as part of passing the grade level.Over 70,000 students have attended the camp over the years and have acquired basic outdoor skills other students in classrooms throughout the USA will never be required, nor even think are important to learn about!Because those students aren't mountain kids.They probably don't need to worry about being lost in any area bigger than a mall!Like we do.I'm thankful to both Judge Eaton and the Shasta County Board of Education for making a difference. N.E.E.D Camp quite possibly played a part in saving my life later on in life. And the experience changed me forever.The Record Searchlight (April 11, 2011)Since 1971, more than 70,000 students have increased their knowledge of environmental science after going through the weeklong camping experience at the Whiskeytown Environmental School in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the school will host a free barbecue with live music and a history lecture Saturday.Sponsored by the school and the Shasta Historical Society, the lecture will cover topics of interest before the school arrived amid the environmental revolution in the beginning of the 1970s. Clinton Kane, park ranger, will be the main speaker.As a general campground in the mid-1900s, church youth groups seasonally used the area for a camp. Before this period, the land served as a stomping ground for the American Indian community. The history, Kane said, has yet to be fully recovered. "It's still a work in progress in terms of learning about the history and putting it together," he said. "I'd like to go as far back as to the mining use of the history, but it's kind of sparse."During the Gold Rush era, the area became a major transportation route for miners heading toward Weaverville from Redding. Inside the park, miners, along with farmers and ranchers, worked on the mining hot spots during the 1850s.The school, a National Environmental Education Development (N.E.E.D.) camp, specializes in improving environmental education for elementary and middle schoolchildren. "Facilities and institutions like the N.E.E.D. camp provide a special dimension to the youth of our community," said Pat Carr, Shasta Historical Society lecture series coordinator. "Oftentimes, they aren't going to get it in the classroom. This is an opportunity to take the classroom outdoors. And the fact that this has been going on for 40 years with 70,000 students makes us appreciate these extraordinary treasures that are in our mist."Fifth- and sixth-graders across several counties make reservations at the school for the overnight trips where students stay in cabins and enjoy campfires. During their stay, they build onto what they've learned of the environment in the classroom with hands-on activities with naturalists. This usually lasts a week. The school offers day camps for younger children starting at the kindergarten level.With generations of children and later their children heading to the camp, Kane said it has become somewhat of a tradition for north state students."It's kind of a tradition in Northern California," he said. "But, unfortunately, with the budget crisis happening on the state and federal level, we don't know if the school will continue as it did back in the day."A downward economy and budget cuts have decreased revenue for educational programs like this one. Whiskeytown may be one of the few N.E.E.D. camps left in the country, Kane said.