I have long lauded Sara Mead as one of the few voices in ed reform who truly get it on the importance of curriculum and instruction. Last week she expressed frustration with the lack of attention in Waiting for Superman to what actually happens in the classroom. It’s not just the movie, I noted in response. Ed reform in general is indifferent to instruction and curriculum. Sara’s latest post takes some issue with that and accuses me of painting with too broad a brush.
I’ll concede the point for the most part. Beyond the “specific and narrow set of voices that are trotted out as the counterpoint to teachers unions,” she writes, there is a broader group of reformers who are deeply engaged on instruction. She cites the reaction to Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion as an example. Citing Rick Hess’ work she observes that focusing on instruction and ignoring structural change “is unlikely to produce dramatic and sustained improvements.”
“But on the flip side, even if I had a magic fiat wand I could wave and fix all the structural issues today, that would still leave a lot of curricular and instruction problems that would prevent our schools from delivering the results we need for kids. Case in point: D.C., where a strong charter school law provides many of the structural conditions reformers are seeking, but we’ve got a lot of lousy charters–in many cases because of their failure to deliver solid instruction and curriculum. Ultimately, structural reforms deliver improved outcomes only by changing what children experience in their classrooms and schools. Reform narratives that assume structural reforms alone will generate better results without improvements in curriculum or instruction risk offering an underpants gnome theory of educational improvement.
This is precisely the issue. Structural changes are a means to an end. If their purpose is not to improve the end product, then what’s the point? If the charter school across the street from a failing district school offers the same watered down curriculum, then it’s merely offering a second flavor of bad. If it uses data to diagnose reading problems and prescribes an extra dose of ineffective reading strategy instruction or additional test prep, forgive me if I don’t see that as revolutionary, interesting, or anything other than counterproductive. If larding on more of what isn’t working leads the school to conclude that the teacher is the problem, then we’re truly chasing our tails.
My lone complaint about Sara’s post is her conclusion that if those of us who are focused on teaching and learning “want to engage more reformers more productively around curriculum and instruction, they need to start thinking creatively about ways to overcome these factors–not just complain about them.” I think Mead underestimates the tunnel vision of many ed reformers (I remember one who dismissed curriculum reform as “mom and apple pie”). On the flip side, I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone who suggests curriculum alone is the road to improvement. There are too many moving parts to credibly think pulling any one lever is the answer. So I’ll be clear: Charter schools? Love ‘em. Teacher quality? Hugely important. Curriculum reform rests on effective implementation. Data? Yes, please. More, more, more. Accountabilty? You betcha. (But would it be OK if we agree what I’m supposed to teach and how you’re going to assess it before you make broad, sweeping conclusions about my effectiveness. Pretty please?).
Let’s be frank: Ed reform needs to raise its game on curriculum and instruction. Schools on the leading edge of ed reform, especially ”no excuses” charters, may be doing a bang-up job getting low-income minority kids into college. But their college success rates are still nothing to brag about. Academic preparedness is strictly a function of better curriculum and improved instruction. I’ll take Mead’s advice and temper my “complaining” about ed reform. And perhaps ed reform structuralists will take a longer view and acknowledge that there are a few holes in their theories of change that might be plugged by attending more closely to curriculum and delivery of instruction.
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Pingback by Picking Fights With Friends « The Core Knowledge Blog « Parents 4 democratic Schools — October 14, 2010 @ 12:28 pm
The problem IMHO is that the call for a better, more rigorous and content-rich curriculum has been turned into a call for a national curriculum. And that, to me, would make a bad situation even worse. State standards have had a really negative impact on government-run schools as all kinds of wonderfully educational activities have been dumped because “___ isn’t on the standards”. That absolutely breaks my heart
I don’t have a problem with the government coming up with a list of topics to be covered within a particular phase of schooling (primary, elementary, jr. high, sr. high) and then setting “exit exams” based on mastery of those topics. But the schools ought to be empowered to decide for themselves the precise sequence.
Comment by Crimson Wife — October 14, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
In Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen and his co-authors wrote: “School committees’ and administrators’ responsibility is to educate the children in the geographic expanse over which they preside and do it well. It is not to protect and defend the particular schools that previously had been built in their area.”
Christensen gives credit to efforts of the last ten years to develop and require standards and accountability, and the attempts to increase the supply of quality education through chartering laws. However, Christensen notes, “it is a mistake to confuse either the permission to create new schools or setting rigorous standards with learning. What matters is what happens in class, whether physical or virtual.” (Disrupting Class, xiii).
Comment by Rich Haglund — October 14, 2010 @ 1:42 pm
The bottom line is that curriculum and instruction are prerequisite to a quality education.
As Mr. Pondiscio said, there are a lot of moving parts that matter, but charter schools, teacher quality improvements, use of data, and accountability measures (among others) mean next to nothing if we don’t get the curriculum right and deliver it well. Furthermore, having a solid curriculum and delivering it well will yield results even without many of the other “moving parts.”
@Crimson Wife
Giving teachers a list of topics is not sufficient. You need specific content objectives to construct meaningful curriculum and a precise sequence must be dictated because sequence matters a lot.
If we could trust teachers to do all of these things on their own, NCLB and the entire accountability movement would never have happened. If the education community had done a better job of policing itself over the last few decades, the fed would not be lumbering into the fray with a stack of regulations to impose upon us.
And as far as good things going by the wayside because they aren’t in the standards goes… shame on the teachers. Standards represent a minimum, not a limit. Teachers should know better.
Comment by Anthony Guzzaldo — October 14, 2010 @ 4:42 pm
@ Anthony- I agree with you that sequence matters a lot in certain subjects such as math. But in others the exact sequence of topics is pretty arbitrary.
Does it *really* matter whether I choose to follow a strictly chronological sequence in history rather than concurrently covering world and U.S. history the way CK does so long as we both arrive at the same place at the end? Does it *really* matter that I pick a central theme for science for the year (e.g. biology in 1st, astronomy & earth science in 2nd, etc.) rather than doing a mish-mosh of the various topics the way CK does? Does it *really* matter if I choose to wait until 6th grade to do a thorough poetry unit rather than piecemealing it out over 4th, 5th, and 6th grades the way CK does?
I think we can come to broad consensus on whether a given topic belongs in primary, elementary, jr. high, or sr. high. But the “if it’s Thursday of the 8th week of 3rd grade, then your student needs to be studying X, Y, and Z” approach is a terrible development for U.S. education.
Comment by Crimson Wife — October 14, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
Yes, curriculum and instruction are prerequisites to a quality education. While curriculum can be specific and objective, what about instruction?
There are a number of effective instructional strategies that can be successful in a variety of classroom circumstances. Instruction appears to be the elusive variable in this sojourn toward an improved mousetrap.
So how do we begin to identify what instructional practices/strategies can be identified as successful and under what circumstances? Or do we leave these decisions to individual teachers to discover on their own?
I have a problem with the latter of these two paths. While I believe some teachers are capable of navigating this difficult path, there would be too many that could fall into the pattern of selecting the most expedient strategy (for them) and the students be an afterthought.
Comment by Paul Hoss — October 14, 2010 @ 9:59 pm
Crimson Wife, Yes and no. While there could be quite a bit of leeway regarding the specific sequence, two constraints come to mind: 1) children move and it is their sequence that matters most to each of them and 2) complexity of thought and analysis matter greatly and it helps if the content topics to be covered progress in a fashion that builds upon prior knowledge.
For a home-schooling parent who can indivualize instruction and remember all that a child has covered, perhaps the sequence could be rather flexible. But for school children who change teachers yearly, it would be better if that sequence was predicatable and transferable between schools.
Comment by Erin Johnson — October 15, 2010 @ 2:23 am
Paul,
I couldn’t agree with you more. When I highlighted the importance of instruction, I did not mean to imply that teachers should have daily instructional practices dictated to them.
However, I do believe that teachers should be selecting from practices that work and should not engage in those that don’t. I agree with you, too, that many teachers will not or cannot discover those effective instructional practices on their own.
The proof is in how many teachers continue to engage in practices that research has shown to be either totally ineffective or that are much less effective than alternatives.
I am not blaming teachers, entirely. When you examine what practices are taught in teachers cert. programs, in the vast majority of professional development seminars, and in building school improvement initiatives, it is easy to understand why it is so hard for teachers to discern whether a given practice is or is not effective. The waters, so to speak, are awfully muddy.
I like Dr. Willingham’s idea of education research professionals taking the initiative to review and evaluate research reports to help teachers make these distinctions. Other professions police their own practices, theories, etc., why can’t the education profession?
Here’s a link to Willingham’s take on the issue:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/is-education-research-all-drec.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Comment by Anthony Guzzaldo — October 15, 2010 @ 9:08 am
Crimson Wife,
You asked if sequence matters in history… the answer is “yes, it matters.” It is not arbitrary.
In history, you may not be building upon previously acquired skills like in a math class, but students have to have background knowledge and context in order to progress through increasingly complex historical topics and to comprehend the internal structures of historical events and themes.
For example, students who learn about the Enlightenment and political reform in Europe prior to learning about the American Revolution will have a much deeper understanding of the history than students who don’t. Yet, before high school the American Revolution is (in my experience) taught with no regard to the global context. Sequence matters.
Here’s another example… I teach AP Government. While the AP does not require a particular sequence, I teach my students about the mass media, interest groups, and political parties PRIOR to teaching them about the institutions of government because it is too difficult to understand how these institutions function without having prior knowledge of the role of the media, interest groups, and political parties. Sequence matters.
Having said that, I do not support the idea of defining what teachers will teach on which day (i.e., on the 3rd day of the 8th week…), but that does not mean that sequence is arbitrary.
Comment by Anthony Guzzaldo — October 15, 2010 @ 9:20 am
There’s also a difference between curriculum that is sequenced, and curriculum that requires each teacher to be on p. 48 on day 12. The latter is harmful, the former often crucial. As a first grade teacher many years ago, I would have sunk like a stone if I had had to invent my own reading curriculum. But, because my school used an effective, highly sequenced, phonics-based curriculum (which I was free to supplement by reading high quality children’s literature to my students), I got to stand on the shoulders of researchers and master teachers.
Comment by pinetree — October 15, 2010 @ 9:52 am
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