Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools has laid her hands on a 34-page transition memo written by Democrats for Education Reform, and puts it online for all to see. She leads with DFER’s touting Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp or Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education over NYC’s Joel Klein (the memo is pretty clear, however, that in DFER’s ideal world, Klein or Washington’s Michelle Rhee would get the job).
Here’s what you won’t read in the DFER memo: anything about curriculum. The word appears only once in 34 pages, and that’s in someone’s job title. The memo to the President-elect lays out dozens of staffing recommendations and a legislative strategy that addresses accountability, teacher quality, and a 20% increase in Title I funding. DFER even suggests the Obama Administration ”steer clear of getting involved in any aspect of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind until it has firmly gotten its footing.” On what kids should actually be learning? Cue the crickets. Chirp.
This is not to single out DFER. Ed reform groups across the board have much to say about funding, structures, choice, charters, incentives and myriad other topics yet virtually nothing about what children are actually taught inside the classroom. There are clear connections to be made between curriculum and reading achievement, but with 15% to 18% of school age children moving in a given year, student mobility alone is reason enough to support a uniform national curriculum. Without it, we institutionalize the gaps and repetitions that occur as student’s move from class to class, school to school or town to town. In particular, low-income children, who move far more often, are profoundly impacted by this.
To her credit, Kati Haycock touched briefly on the issue in her address at the start of the Education Trust National Conference in Washington yesterday, asking educators to consider not just common standards but ”common curriculum, some common lessons and assignments, and a carefully sequenced development of skills, knowledge and vocabulary.”
At least someone’s talking about it. Anybody listening?
“Curriculum…. is such a lonely word,
Everyone is so process-oriented…
The rhythm’s off, but it’s true.
Do we want non-educators to get involved in another area where they have no knowledge?
Actually, I would welcome DFFR or others if they really wanted to listen and learn. But then they would need to learn the difference between National Standards and a National Curriculum. (I would love to see Core Knowledge’s approach to curriculum, and an understanding of why it works, to be spread widely, and I support National Standards, but a national curriculum? I doubt people at the Ed Trust are even aware of the issues involved in that debate.)
Here’s what bothers me about their preoccupation with process. I want my union, for instance, to aggressively fight against a lot of policies. But I would not want a gag rule. For instance, I have absolutely no problem with DFER, Klein, Rhee, or advocates for a national curriculum getting a chance to make their case to Obama. In education, we MUST believe in debate. But when Obama listens to Linda Darling Hammond, notice how angry a lot of “reformers” are. Some of their outbursts sound like a tract from the Know Nothings in the 19th century. “Experts?!?” We don’t need no stinkin education experts with all their evidence, we just need “accountability,” and we need to make sure Obama doesn’t listen to all those smart people who messed up education.
If Obama rejects the advice of educators, that’s life. You win some, lose some, and some get rained out. I’ll still support him.
The DfER’s are “systems” people — incentives, accountability, etc. I don’t think we should expect more from them than that — and I’d agree with John in not necessarily wanting more from them than that.
Education is not a “one size fits all” thing. As a parent, I don’t want some committee of bureaucrats thousands of miles away in D.C. who have no personal knowledge of my child deciding what she ought to learn. I want her teacher empowered to make that decision. We need MORE individual tailoring of the curriculum, not less.
Where would you rather eat- a chain restaurant with a fixed menu dictated from some headquarters in another state or a mom-n-pop restaurant where the chef is empowered to take advantage of the best locally available ingredients?
Let me challenge you on that, CW. I’ve always found the “one size does not fit all” idea curious. Everybody says it, but not everyone considers its ramifications. For example, are you suggesting that my child might need to learn how to add unlike fractions, but yours doesn’t? That your child and perhaps one or two others should learn the difference between a simile and a metaphor, but the rest of the class can do without? Will personal knowledge of your child lead me as her teacher to conclude that she really ought to understand photosynthesis, but not scientific classification, properties of matter or how electricity works (which by the way, I’m going to teach the other children, but not yours)? Is it conceivable that your child, based on your personal knowledge of “what she ought to learn” should study geography but never history? Or that she should be exposed extensively to Shakespeare but leave school having never heard the name Mark Twain or Maya Angelou?
Or is it possible that there are some fundamentals of a sound education that are the birthright of every child? It’s easy to argue that other people’s judgement should not decide what your child should learn. But the opposite is also true. In its absence, you’re leaving to fate and other people to decide what gets left out.
This phenomenon, the utter indifference to curriculum inside the education establishment (which includes the pundits & reformers), has finally driven my husband and me out of the public schools.
Our typical son now attends a Jesuit high school.
The Jesuits have a 400 year history of excellence in the liberal arts disciplines.
They’re the last men standing.
It’s not an either-or situation, CW. In fact, it’s entirely possible — and appropriate, perhaps — for the folks in Washington to identify a core curriculum that also leaves room for individual instruction. You can thus have your mom-and-pop chain and the local chef, too.
I have no problem with saying that by the end of a child’s education, he/she should’ve learned everything in the Core Knowledge sequence. But I do have a big problem with saying that just because a child is in a particular grade, then he/she should be studying certain topics dictated from above. Those topics may be important but completely inappropriate for the child’s individual learning needs at that stage of his/her education.
One of the major reasons I’m homeschooling is because I’ve got a child whose needs are very different from the majority of her agemates. If I were required to follow the California state standards for her grade like my neighborhood school is, that would result in instruction that is completely wrong for her.
Private schools are not required to follow any standardized curriculum and they by and large provide a sound education that typically does a better job imparting the fundamentals than their highly regulated government-run counterparts.
Crimson Wife,
I have a friend in New Mexico who teaches at a CK school that her younger daughter attends (she homeschooled her older daughter using CK materials). The CK school has an interesting approach. You can be in the fourth grade for reading and fifth for math. Thus you are learning everything in the Core Knowledge Sequence, but in a way that suits your needs. I like that approach. Granted, it could be logistically difficult in a large urban school.
Diana Senechal
Crimson Wife, unfortunately, exemplies perfectly the predicament our schools are now in: “I have no problem with saying that by the end of a child’s education, he/she should’ve learned everything in the Core Knowledge sequence. But I do have a big problem with saying that just because a child is in a particular grade, then he/she should be studying certain topics dictated from above.”
Ponder those two sentences for a moment. Then ponder them again.
–pm.