A throwaway line in this morning’s New York Sun made me throw up my hands and yell, “Yes!” Elizabeth Green, who does very good work to little fanfare, wrote about Sol Stern’s article in the latest edition of City Journal. Stern, a staunch free-marketeer, “no longer believes that charter school or vouchers are a panacea,” according to the piece. That’s all well and good, but what got me was this:
“Mr. Stern’s article offers one idea for a new direction. Tying himself to a group he calls the ‘instructionists,’ he declares that curriculum and pedagogy should be considered along with market solutions,” wrote Green.
The “C” word! Someone gets it! Ed policy types can talk about accountability, data, funding formulas and teacher quality until the ice caps melt, but usually have nothing to say about what’s actually happening inside classrooms. Why? Given the intense pressure brought to bear upon our schools in the last decade you’d think that maybe, just maybe, we’d be just a teeny bit farther along toward proficiency than we are by now. You have to believe one of two things: either teachers are the most passive-aggressive people on Earth, deliberately thwarting accountability schemes. Or maybe — just maybe — we’re focusing on the wrong things. I can just hear James Carville now:
It’s the curriculum, stupid.
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