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mwengler comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong
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Did some research. The claim that the proposals are poorly written leaps out at me as immediately true. Here's a website with successful grant applications, to be used as models to write them:
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/samples_index.htm
This is the first grant I pulled up (it's not the first, but it -was- the first I felt competent to evaluate, concerning primarily technology):
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/grantkay.pdf
First, the horrible spelling, grammar, and punctuation leap out at me immediately. Second, the claim in the post that grant proposals are written to describe what they're doing, rather than what they're intending to achieve, holds up, for this grant at least.
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/MH%20grant.pdf
This proposal is the best-written I encountered. It describes the specific problems it intends to resolve and the specific solutions it intends to use. Unfortunately, the only evidence it introduces is the evidence that there is a problem. It doesn't provide any evidence that its solutions work. Its stated "Method of Evaluation", moreover, exactly mirrors the claims made in this post - it evaluates whether or not its solutions are implemented, NOT whether or not the problem is solved. (Goal #5 seems like an exception, but remember the stated problem is mental health issues.
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/TARGET.pdf
This proposal is the best I've encountered. It is horribly written, however. (You can skip past the pages and pages of documentation about how exactly the money will be spent to read the goals.) The accountability section has this (this is a proposal, essentially, to buy more modern computers for students and teachers, and to hire support staff):
Note that the accountability, as it pertains to this grant, is - wait for it - to make sure the grant money is spent as expected. You can change curriculum and instruction -without- the computers, remember. (I think this is a pretty sensible grant request, but the accountability measures it proposes provide no actual accountability. "Did we say what we were going to do? Yes? Then our grant was a success!")
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/FLAP%20Narrative.pdf
Setting aside the fact that I've seen better writing from middle school students, this is actually a decently written grant. It has specific goals, implementations, and even has accountability. (Although it does seem confused about who or what is accountable to who or what; the accountability section reads rather like the author's understanding of accountability meant the ability of students to measure their own improvements in performance. Notably omitted is a suggestion that the program's success/improvement rate be compared to non-program success/improvement rates.)
http://www.k12grants.org/samples/2003_Library&Literacy.pdf
A well-written grant I can't find fault with. (Except maybe its questionable notion of scientific evidence.)
So - some of the grants here definitely show symptoms of the problems indicated in the post. Some don't. A couple of these had no business being granted. ALL of these grants were successful applications - that is, the grants were granted.
After this exercise, my position shifted from "This post is credible" to "This post exaggerates the extent of the problem to some degree, but remains a valid criticism of the grant system as it exists."
And I tried to find a grant similar to the iPod/Makeover grant, and found this:
http://www.msmagiera.com/ipad-grant
Okay, not exactly analogous, as it at least pertains to education. However, given the grant's self-evaluation criteria, student scores could plummet and the project could still call itself an overall success. (Actual improvement in student abilities only accounts for a fourth of their apparently unweighted criteria.)
I just read that grant in its entirety. I noticed one possible typo, but did not find other bad grammar or spelling.
The are asking for a grant to get equipment, primarily computers and software, for use in teaching students. It is not really a research project. What is the outcome hoped for from a grant like that? That students will be taught using these computers. They make a feint at claiming it will raise grades or enrolement, but really if I were a science teacher, my real goal would be to get the stuff and sit students down in front of it and teach them with it. I think that is pretty accurately reflected.
I'll look at the ipad grant, and kudos for finding the site and bringing me that much closer to real contact with the kinds of grants under discussion.
Me too. Good thing they're not trying to improve writing ability!
The VERY FIRST SENTENCE has minor punctuation issues and refers to "Excellence in Leaning (sp) Through Technology" - I refuse to believe that the original Senate bill being referred to failed to spell the word "Learning" correctly in its title. :-)
The second sentence puts a space before the colon for no apparent reason.
"The moneys this school is requesting" => should probably be "money", though I'd accept argument to the contrary. "With request to <standard>..." => should probably be "With RESPECT to"
"This shows community support for improvement and a move forward with the support of a technology plan." => You can tell what the writer is trying to say, but the writer is not actually saying it; the sentence is just broken.
"Teachers will...learn ho to integrate this technology" => should be "learn HOW to integrate..."
That's just the first page, and it's not even ALL the issues on the first page. Fortunately, the following pages are much better than the abstract page (which was painful). The second page is missing a bunch of hyphens - that's a problem throughout - but otherwise not too bad.
Third page: "A desired outcome of this project is an increase in tile number of students taking high level science." => change "tile number" to "total number" and possibly change "high level" to "high-level"
"By using MBL’s, less time is required" => change "MBL's" to "MBLs" - it's not a possessive.
"The purchase of this equipment would be in support of Colorado economy." has a missing article; change it to => "would support THE Colorado economy"
"accommodate this set Up." => "setup".
Under IMPACT: "By obtaining these funds and implementing this program more students will be able to participate in hands on leaning" => again, it should be LEARNING, not LEANING. Also it's "hands-on", not "hands on"
"This science lab will be in place alter the grant period is over." => AFTER the grant period, not ALTER.
Much of this suggests a very bad writer - less than 8th-grade level - who is using a spell-checker. But there some other mistakes that seem like the document might have been electronically scanned. For instance, the budget mentions "guides for teachers arid students" => should obviously be "teachers AND students" but I can't imagine a human writer accidentally writing "arid" for "and" and "ri" does look an awful lot like "n".
Agree with everything but:
If you look in an old enough style guide (the current standard is as you say), it will say to use an apostrophe when you pluralize an acronym. Wikipedia agrees.
Quotes from the .pdf, with my corrections:
respect, regard, or reference.
how
hardware, software
in–depth
principles
day–to–day
after
$2,250
Consistently 'moneys' is used where 'money' or 'monies' seems correct to me; I did not count this as an error despite not following a strict style guide. Most other 'errors' are very reasonably scanning errors rather than writing errors; the only error that couldn't plausibly be a scanner error would be 'principal' for 'principle'.
Overall, the writing was simplistic, sentences were short and simple, and would pass a technical writing test. Presented as a model for what complexity and intelligence level of grants are approved, that is very informative. Grant proposals (apparently) should be simple, repetitive, and full of Capitalized Buzzwords that are Important to the Right People.
I actually counted the really short sentences heavily against them mentally, probably too much. Owing to the way I parse sentences, reading the grant was like listening to William Shatner at his... not quite hammiest, but pretty close.
As far as the 2.250 thing, that's actually not that uncommon outside English-speaking nations; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_point#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_comma which lists countries which use decimals as thousands separators and commas as decimal marks. (That may actually help to explain the short sentences, come to think of it.)
An alternative explanation is offered here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5z/problems_in_education/8qqj (Specifically, that the document may have been electronically scanned; this could also account for other apparent spelling mistakes. Handwriting recognition is getting better, but is still far from perfect.)