The Four Sweetest Words

September 16th, 2009

The four sweetest words in the English language are “I told you so.”  Here’s the response of Ken Kay, the head of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, to Common Core’s letter:

We have never advocated, in any context, the teaching of 21st century skills separate from content. It is clear that you can’t just teach students to think, you have to teach them to critically think, problem solve and innovate about something – knowledge is the base of learning.”

Right.   Exactly as predicted.  I told you so.

OK, we’ve all had our fun.  Basta.  Enough. Ken, whaddya say?  Let’s marry P21’s skills to the Core Knowledge Sequence and show everyone that we’re all on the same side.  To heck with national standards.  Together, we can roll out a first-rate national curriculum that everyone can get behind.   

Have your people call my people, Ken.  OK, I don’t have people.  But get in touch, Ken.  Really.  We can do this thing.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Curriculum | 2 Comments »

What’s He Got That I Ain’t Got?

June 2nd, 2009

What do the high performing nations of the world have that the U.S. lacks?  Rich, deep academic content, according to a new report. 

“Each of the nations that consistently outrank the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences,” writes Lynne Munson, the executive director of Common Core in Why We’re Behind, a study that compares America’s educational quality to Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands and Switzerland.

The nine nations studied differ greatly in how they deliver their broad, rich curricula.  “Some have a national curriculum and standards but no tests,” Munson notes.  “Others have both, and some leave everything up to the states. Interestingly, no state-based nation in our sample currently has a national curriculum or standards, though one is attempting to develop some.”

So what is the common ingredient across these varied nations? It is not a delivery mechanism or an accountability system that these high-performing nations share: it is a dedication to educating their children deeply in a wide range of subjects.

It’s not possible to prove with absolute certainty that there is a cause and effect link between the content taught in high-performing nations and their performance on the PISA exam, Munson notes.  ”But, considering these nations’ enormous geographic, demographic, cultural, and governmental differences what other explanation could there be?”  Common Core’s report calls for more research into the relationship between content and achievement. “This research should be done now because if what this report suggests is true—that a comprehensive, content-rich curriculum is the key to high achievement—than we have a lot of work to do here in the United States,” she concludes.

What do we have that better performing nations lack?  Data, perhaps.  And if we’re reading it right, it’s telling us we need to start spending a little more of our ed reform capital looking at what our children are actually doing in class, and a little less time on structural issues.  If you want to fatten the calf, surely we can do better than our present steady diet of thin gruel in between all those weighings.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Curriculum, Research and Reports | 9 Comments »

Arguments For and Against National Standards

March 17th, 2009

Mike Smith says he ”somewhat skeptical” about national standards.  A senior adviser to Ed Secretary Arne Duncan, who favors them, Smith gave the keynote at a Library of Congress Forum on American Education in the 21st Century Monday.  Taking care to say he was speaking only for himself, not Duncan or President Obama, Smith noted his biggest concern is that “you can’t keep ideology or politics out of the ball game,” according to Ed Week’s Mary Ann Zehr at Curriculum Matters.

He put in the category of “weak” arguments the idea that the nation needs common standards because, as matters stand now, all 50 states set different proficiency levels. The argument is weak, he said, because the proficiency levels can be standardized. Another bad argument for common standards, he said, is that even though policymakers and educators acknowledge they don’t know much about what constitutes high-quality standards or assessments, they claim it would be beneficial to create a single, nationwide system.

But Smith also said standards could foster a common curriculum. “The potential to develop a common curriculum is the ‘core reason’ that he supports the advancement of common standards,” Zehr reports. 

Read the rest on Mary Ann’s blog; Ed Week’s Politics K-12 also weighs in on Smiths “eyebrow-raising” speech.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Curriculum, Education News | 11 Comments »

“Black History is American History”

February 19th, 2009

Overlooked in Attorney General Eric Holder’s controversial ”nation of cowards” remarks yesterday:

We have to recognize that until black history is included in the standard curriculum in our schools and becomes a regular part of all our lives, it will be viewed as a novelty, relatively unimportant and not as weighty as so called ‘real’ American history.

Er, what standard curriculum, Mr. Attorney General?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Education News | 1 Comment »

Learning the Right Lessons

December 19th, 2008

Finland, widely seen as the top-performing school system in the world, has merit pay and teachers unions and tenure.  It has school choice and a national curriculum.  “American education reformers across the political spectrum have lauded the Finns’ investments in parental leave, early childhood education, and national curriculum standards,” writes Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect. ”Education liberals point to the value the Finnish system places on teacher autonomy, while conservatives and libertarians laud Finland’s ability to coax excellent achievement out of students despite large class sizes and relatively few hours in the classroom.”

A close look at Finland “does more to quiet than to fan the flames” of U.S. education reform debates, Goldstein concludes.

The point of studying other nations’ school systems is not to find the silver bullet but to realize that there isn’t one. In the United States, the education debate has been framed as a zero-sum game. We’ve been told again and again that we need to make hard choices between labor protections and doing what is best for children. But a good education system can include merit pay, as well as strong unions and tenure. It can have relatively short school days and large classes but also national curriculum guidelines. Teachers can have autonomy in lesson planning while simultaneously being held to high professional standards. Universal day care and pre-school on one end of the education spectrum can be matched by a commitment to vocational preparedness on the other.

If the United States committed to taking education as seriously as the Finns do, Goldstein concludes, “the universe of possibilities would open up wider than most of us can imagine. That is a long-range project but one whose goal should remain in the back of education reformers’ minds, even as they fight out the day-to-day political battles sure to come.”

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Education News | No Comments »

Sunshine Is Still The Best Disinfectant

August 6th, 2008

There are several important threads — the need for national standards and assessments; rethinking the difference between a highly qualified teacher and a highly effective one — at the ongoing NCLB discussion at NewTalk. But one comment raised by CK Board member Diane Ravitch jumps out:

My own preference would be for Congress to authorize national testing (à la NAEP), based on coherent curriculum standards, but without stakes or sanctions. The federal role should be to provide accurate information about student performance. It should be left to states and districts to devise sanctions and reforms. These jurisdictions are closer to the schools and likelier to come up with workable reforms. If states and localities don’t want to improve their schools, then we are in deeper trouble as a nation than any law passed by Congress can fix.

We assume accountability needs teeth to be truly enforceable, but Diane is right — an apples to apples comparison of how schools fare against each other seems likely to pour more sunshine onto what’s really happening than 50 states racing each other to the bottom by lowering proficiency standards. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Educational Policy | 11 Comments »

Magic Bullets Frustrate Reformers With Elusive Ways

August 2nd, 2008

The magic bullet for raising tests scores is….constant assessment? Tracking the progress of individual students? Parental involvement? All of the above?  An AP story quotes Colorado educators who have discovered — mirabile dictu! – there is no single magic bullet.

Apropos of that, the best post I’ve read this week comes from Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, who asks on the Gadfly, “Are we sure that “improving teacher quality” is the panacea that so many have suggested? Is it possible that our current fascination with ‘human capital development’ is misguided? That both presidential campaigns’ embrace of this issue is ill-considered?”

Yes, the research is quite clear that the quality of a student’s teacher has a greater impact on that student’s achievement than anything else that schools can control. It’s also clear that low-income and minority children are much less likely to be taught by “high quality teachers” (however defined) than are affluent and white children. So reformers make the jump: If we could just fill every classroom with society’s “best and brightest,” we’d have our education problems licked. Or, they continue, if we could just get our most talented teachers to serve in our neediest schools, we’d have our achievement gap beat.

The problem obviously, is that we’re unlikley to fill every classroom with the best and the brightest–the numbers are simply too great–and other favored solutions like merit pay are equally unlikely to work at scale.  “Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket?” asks Petrilli.

Petrilli’s measured and thoughtful post offers a useful roadmap.  As Donald Rumsfeld did not say, “You go to school with the teachers you have.  Not the teachers you wish you had.” 

Forgive the inelegant analogy, but raising student achievement may not be a disease we’re going to cure, but rather a chronic condition we can manage with a cocktail of interventions and strategies.  One of those strategies ought to be a national core curriculum and common standards. It would certainly be a great help (not a magic bullet) in improving teacher quality, since it would enable teachers and staff developers on improving the craft of teaching–focus on the “how” of teaching, instead of what to teach.

More: Joanne Jacobs agrees with Petrilli on the relative lack of superstar teachers, but has questions about the efficacy of technology

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Curriculum, Educational Policy | 8 Comments »

Eduwonk’s $5 Billion Challenge

June 4th, 2008

Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham poses the following thought exercise: What would you do with $5 billion to improve American education? Great idea.

My favored reform, not surprisingly, is a national curriculum. That would cost about a buck, since it already exists and merely needs to be implemented. What to do with the other $4,999,999,999? Two ideas:

  1. Scrap existing state tests in favor of a random testing arrangement. If schools only know that they will be tested twice a year, but don’t know which day, grade, or even the subject to be tested, the only way to guarantee good results would be to actually educate kids. Keep existing state reading and math tests, if you like, but use them for diagnostics, not to determine AYP. Until the laws of human nature are repealed, it’s naive to think the current prep-and-test regimen will do anything other than narrow the curriculum, and stress the heck out of teachers and kids. If you insist on testing (and there’s no reason not to; as public servants schools and teachers need to be held accountable) then you have to have a testing strategy that encourages the results you seek. Random testing would also give you a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening in schools. But prepare yourself, it’s worse than you think.
  2. This one idea will make me unpopular in certain circles, but teaching in a struggling inner city school, and observing in lots of others has solidified my belief that nothing matters more to student achievement than a positive, productive school environment. In a good environment, virtually any curriculum or pedagogy will work. You could put Nobel prize winners in front of every classroom in a dysfunctional school to no good end. Use the money to hire teachers for one-on-one home tutoring for our most disruptive students. The vast majority of kids come to school, even in our most challenged schools ready to learn, but their education is sacrificed minute by minute by constant disruption and discipline problems. I don’t know of any data on this, but I’d bet that the achievement gap is really a time-on-task gap. It is hard to overstate just how profound this problem is. Vast amounts of learning time are sacrificed to discipline problems, and the need to organize classroom management around behavior issues changes the entire classroom dynamic. It turns the teacher into an entertainer, not an instructor. If a child chronically demonstrates that he or she is cannot participate in a classroom setting, that’s a terrible shame. But by allowing that child to completely dominate and alter the school and classroom environment to the detriment of others, we lose not just that child but damage 24 others. Educate that child at home on the school’s nickel, and you help establish the positive, productive, achievement-oriented environment that is a prerequisite of success. This by the way, is probably the real secret of KIPP’s success. Every kid is down with the program. If not, they’re not a KIPP student anymore. The best schools — public, private and charters, show they’re serious about learning. Struggling schools will not improve until we show the students who are ready to learn and fully invested in their education that they’re the most important people in the building.

Feel free to cross post your best ideas here and over at eduwonk.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Opinion | 2 Comments »

“We Are All In The Same Boat”

May 8th, 2008

Core Knowledge trustee Diane Ravitch serves up a stirring and eloquent argument for a national core curriculum over at Bridging Differences:

“I maintain that our diversity makes it hard for us to forge a national core curriculum, but our diversity makes it necessary that we do so. In a nation as diverse as ours, we need a common language and a large fund of shared values and references in order to talk to people who do not share our religious, cultural, ethnic, or racial background. In order to maintain a democratic society, we need to be able to communicate and exchange ideas, to sustain diverse coalitions, and to recognize our common goals and work together with others who are different from us. Collaboration requires some mutuality, and such mutuality is not possible without the ability to communicate and to recognize that ‘we are all in the same boat,’ we are part of the same community even as we are members of many other, different communities.”

Ravitch also performs a nifty bit of intellectual jujitsu, pointing out that we already have a de facto national curriculum whether we like it or not, driven by test and textbook publishers. “In effect, our highly decentralized system of schooling has left the issue of what to teach to commercial interests, those who write the standardized tests and those who compile the textbooks that are sold in every state. So, I would contend that we have a national curriculum; that it is in the hands of the marketplace and the educational publishing industry; and that it is no substitute for the national core curriculum that would emerge if we set our collective minds to the task of writing it. We have a default curriculum. I think we can do much better.”

Hear, hear.

Tags: ,
Posted in Core Knowledge, Curriculum | 7 Comments »

Attention Seeking Behavior

April 24th, 2008

“No fewer than seven bills that would alter how history is taught are currently before California’s legislature,” reports The Economist. “One is a measure about Filipinos. The others would encourage or force more lessons about African and Latin American cultures, American Indians, the “secret war” in Laos, the deportation of Hispanics in the 1930s, the desegregation of Mexican pupils and the Italian contribution to California.”

Each of these attempts to legislate content face an uphill slog. The magazine notes that California Democrats tend to support such measures, but Governor Schwarzenegger tends to veto them. But a larger battle looms: “Next month a group of academics and bureaucrats will begin holding public hearings on an overhaul of the curriculum framework—the first full one since 2001,” the Economist reports. “The coalitions that have been formed to push for legislation will no doubt make their feelings known.”

This presages what a debate on national content standards might look like, but that is not an argument against the attempt. In Bridging Differences recently, CK board member Diane Ravitch noted, “I see a national curriculum as the product of a professional consensus, one that involves subject-matter experts, teachers, administrators, and even end-users of the public schools like college professors and journalists. I also see such a curriculum evolving from careful research on international curriculum standards about what students at various ages are expected to know and be able to do. And I envision a curriculum that in toto amounts to not more than 50 percent of the school day, so that there would be many variations and additions depending on the state, region, and locale.”

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Educational Policy | No Comments »

« Older Entries