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March 15, 2010

The Role of Curriculum in Education Reform

by Matthew Levey, at 3:46 pm

Despite a growing popular consensus that teacher quality is the most significant factor in academic achievement, as a parent and taxpayer the costs and practicality of this focus concern me. Chancellor Joel Klein focuses keenly on better teacher quality. I agree a strong teacher is crucial, especially for low-income students. But the value of our efforts to identify high-quality instructors and ease the removal of low-quality teachers is questionable.

For starters, the value-added measurements at the core of the relevant evaluation systems are nascent at best, as their developers readily admit. The Department of Education has calculated school report cards three different ways in the last three years; this is appropriate flexibility for a new concept, but not indicative of an established metric. Notwithstanding its motives, the teachers union raises a reasonable complaint that valued-added measurements are not ready for prime time. When reformers deny this, their credibility suffers as much as the union’s.

But still, let’s imagine we build the world’s best evaluation system. The Assembly rescinds the tenure provisions of the Taylor law, and the UFT cooperates.

Brave New World

picture-23Welcome to Education Utopia. The tool is applied, the data are crunched, and the teachers fall out along a normal distribution, shown at right (Wikipedia explains the math here). 

Starting modestly, we focus on 1,801 teachers two or more standard deviations below average: principals’ multi-factor evaluations are fair, and the 1,801 are removed. Now they have to be replaced with better, harder-to-find teachers, and we must also hire for the usual 20 percent annual attrition.

In year two evaluations improve and our rigor increases. Despite retraining the 10,736 teachers who fall between one and two standard deviations below the mean, only half improve: 5,400 more are terminated. Some overlap probably exists between low-quality and teachers who quit, so this 5,400 may not be completely incremental. And we still need to address attrition.

Now the biggest challenge: training those just “slightly” below average. These 27,000 are more capable of improvement. Only a third are jettisoned, about 9,000. Plus attrition. 

In a few years time, New York City is hiring tens of thousands of new (high-quality) teachers. Just like Los Angeles. And Chicago. And Washington, D.C. And every other major city in America, all of which are now on the very crowded teacher-quality bandwagon. 

The Case for Curriculum

Reform focused primarily on teacher quality raises logistical problems we’re not ready to solve. Knowledgable reformers know we cannot build and maintain an army of superteachers ready for 10- or 20-year careers in Red Hook, Mott Haven and Washington Heights. While teacher quality is important, can the city responsibly assume that it will be able to develop effective tools, win (or roll) over the unions and fix today’s Albany disaster?

Curriculum reform must play an equal role in our efforts. A recent Brookings Institution report noted curriculum’s strong impact on student outcomes. Importantly, in a system as large as ours, curriculum can be developed centrally and replicated at almost no marginal cost, earning a far greater return on investment than merit bonuses for every qualifying teacher or hiring 10,000 high-quality teachers. In short, teacher quality is a long, expensive, politically difficult fix. Curriculum is comparatively fast, cheap, and also effective. 

Chancellor Klein and Al Sharpton, sincerely and correctly, identify education reform with civil rights. And this means a good curriculum is even more critical for disadvantaged kids who get less supplemental learning and exposure. For children from non-U.S. backgrounds to succeed, we must introduce them to the common language and ideas the native-born use. Moreover, our poorest students frequently get moved around, so it’s unfair to make them also adjust to multiple curricula at different schools.

Teacher quality advocates may ask: “How does a good curriculum help a poor teacher?”  I would rephrase the question: “Does a good curriculum make a poor teacher worse?” Lesson planning, delivery of instruction and classroom management — how to teach — are daunting enough without having to develop good content every week. A solid, coherent curriculum improves the odds for new or struggling teacher, and allows master teachers to focus on their kids’ needs or mentoring colleagues.

Our school recently rewrote its social studies curriculum. Apart from being inefficient because the investment paid off for only a small number of students and because it’s likely that the work had been done before elsewhere, this involved costly overtime for several teachers. A credible, centrally-developed curriculum would save money, provide critical scaffolding for students and teachers alike, and allow for enrichment by parents by giving them a clearer sense of what their children are learning. 

Long before reformers questioned her loss of faith in accountability, historian Diane Ravitch warned of the dangers of leaving curriculum to the high priests at Teachers College and the University of Chicago, calling out their romantic theories of child-centered development for what they are: theories. More recently the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, unsparing in its criticism of New York and national curricula and practices, cited as one example our practice of “spiraling” through topics as far less effective than “exposure, then closure” characteristic of high-performing systems like Singapore and Finland. At a well-regarded New York City middle school one math teacher told me, “I spend the first few months of sixth grade ‘unteaching’ what they learn in elementary school.”

Spending more than $20 billion annually to educate 1.1 million children, New York City should use its leverage, as we have on teacher quality, and lead the charge to promote curriculum reform. The content we want our kids to learn is the fraternal twin of teacher quality, and it is high time we stopped treating it like a redheaded stepchild.

Matthew Levey is a former president of the Community Education Council for District 2 and the parent of two elementary school children.

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  • http://themortonschool.blogspot.com Miss Eyre

    You must know Robert Pondiscio at the Core Knowledge blog;if you don’t, you ought to be BFFs!

    LOVE this piece, by the way.  It would make a huge difference to have a strong, coherent sense of what to teach.  It would have helped me immensely as a brand-new teacher.  As well, thank you for calling out the “spiral curriculum” nonsense.  If I have to hear one more time that I’m supposed to be teaching “reading skills” to late-middle and high school students, I’ll scream.

  • Smith

    Regarding the second paragraph: In a case where the unions are right and the reformers are wrong, why do you say their credibility is the same? Are readers to assume that unions are inherently bad and that reformers are inherently good.?

  • http://jd2718.wordpress.com Jonathan

    Good curricula support all teachers, and benefit children fairly directly.

    It is a fruitful avenue to venture out on. But, how will we agree that one curriculum is good and another not so?

    We could look at content, and immediately disagree. Or pedagogy. Ditto.

    I suggest that if a curriculum is good, an average teacher should be able to successfully deliver instruction with minimal supplementary training. How’s that for a start?

  • Michael M.

    Great essay!

    Re “Chancellor Klein and Al Sharpton, sincerely and correctly, identify education reform with civil rights. And this means a good curriculum is even more critical for disadvantaged kids who get less supplemental learning and exposure.”

    More critical than Chancellor Klein being hard-wired to bash traditional public school teachers as the obstacles to said civil rights when not electronically canoodling with Eva Moskowitz?

    I agree with the connection between education and civil rights. I’ll even go as far as education “reform” and civil rights. But in a city with so much de facto segregation, I just can’t bring myself to salute Chancellor Klein on this topic. Not when his solution is to BLAME THE TEACHERS, and seek salvation only through charters (or at least averaging-down salaries).

    To whit:
    “Poor and minority students will never get their fair share of educational opportunity — and are far more likely to lead unsuccessful lives — until administrators and political leaders commit to fundamentally changing the way teachers are recruited, rewarded, and retained.”
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-klein/transforming-the-teaching_b_200616.html

    Translation: Blame the teachers in this racially tinged Race to the Top of the Blame Game.

    Note that Chancellor Klein does NOT suggest that how our teachers are TRAINED, let alone how Principals are “recruited, rewarded, and retained” in his ever-morphing system — one that by design has virtually nullified a generation of their mentors, the highly experienced District Superintendents — has anything to do with it, let alone the curriculum they are provided with.

    Which brings us back to the essay at hand: I look forward to reading the essayist’s and readers’ ideas on how such new curricula should be developed, tested, judged, and implemented. And I agree such is needed; the majority of parents I know and talk to that take it for granted that the public school edumacation their kids are being offered must be augmented with tutors would likely welcome a more fulfilling, challenging, and ultimately rewarding educational experience for their kids, while saving a few bucks out of pocket for what they thought their tax dollars were already buying.

    As an aside, wasn’t an occasional curriculum pearl supposed to be one of the spin-off benefits of the charter movement? Can’t we find some success to clone? Heck, in the current climate, I’ll even take an honest grain of sand over the last few years of self-congratulatory hype. In the meantime, there’s always Singapore Math, available at Amazon dot com and bookstores everywhere.

    All of which begs the question of whether curriculum should be a one-size-fits-all proposition. Sigh.

    – Michael D. Markowitz, P.E.
    Member, CECD2
    (and First VP under ML)

  • Diana Senechal

    Thank you for bringing up such an important idea.

    The curriculum should not tell teachers how to teach. It should specify the works, concepts, knowledge, and skills that students should learn, and this should be of the highest caliber. We may disagree about some of the specifics, but we can weed out an awful lot, steer clear of nonsense, and include challenging, beautiful, important material.

    I disagree with Jonathan’s assertion that the curriculum is good if it can be delivered with minimal training. The teacher should be well versed in the subject and should know how to convey the material. Curriculum relies on the ability of teachers and schools to interpret it well. But at the same time it relieves them of the senseless burden of figuring out what to teach. They may supplement it; the curriculum should leave room for that.

    I love the idea of putting curriculum at the center of education reform. I dread the thought of a terrible curriculum–a test-prep package, say, or a pedagogical model. There are fine curricula that we could borrow or emulate, and awful packages that we should reject. (I believe that we may be able to agree on such distinctions.) Any curriculum should have input from teachers, scholars, and the public, and there should be forums for discussion of its underlying philosophy and contents.

    We should embrace curriculum not because it is cheap and efficient, but because it is essential. It is not the entire answer by a long shot, but reform without curriculum makes no sense.

  • Jordan Fullam

    Mr. Levey,

    In keeping with your theme of referencing dystopian novels, I’d rather my students and I decide what we ought to study than have Big Brother decide for us. I don’t think I could be a teacher if I were forced to teach an official curriculum.

    Doesn’t the essence of education and intellectual life have something to do with inquiry, questioning, and freethought? Shouldn’t teachers, communities, families, and even the students themselves have a say in deciding what are worthwhile skills and knowledge?

    Your article reminded me of the book “Cultural Literacy” by E. D. Hirsch. Maybe you’re a fan of Professor Hirsch’s work?

    A Pink Floyd video also came to mind, especially the scene at 2min22sec:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_bvT-DGcWw

  • Matthew

    Smith (is that really your name?)

    I am not sure on which topic you believe the unions are right and reformers are wrong. Either way, neither entity is as monolithic as its advocates would have you believe, so it’s rather akin to saying “Republicans believe … ” or “NYC public school parents want…” Doubtless some UFT members are right some of the time, as is the case for reformers.

    Do I think the UFT has lost the teacher quality debate? Absolutely. Do I think stronger metrics for evaluating teachers should be developed? Absolutely. At the end of the day I have no doubt that there is some (not insignificant) number of teachers who do not belong in our schools. Not 50%, but 15% would not surprise me. And they’re not helping the other 85% of you one iota.

    The challenge for the UFT is that they are caught between being a workers advocacy group and a professional association. The ABA sets standards for lawyers but doesn’t defend malpractice claims against its members. The Teamsters, in contrast, don’t set transportation safety regulations, but do intervene in claims against their members. I’m fine with the latter; that’s what I would want the Teamsters to do if I was a member. But as a consumer, I hardly look to them as experts on road safety.

  • Peter

    Why reinvent the wheel? The NYSED website is replete with endless examples

    http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/eblast/

    Unfortunately the NYC DOE philosophy is “outcome based,” let a thousand flowers bloom … and measure the size of the flowers.

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  • Smith

    I was referring to this comment “…the teachers union raises a reasonable complaint that valued-added measurements are not ready for prime time. When reformers deny this, their credibility suffers as much as the union’s.”
    That sounds to me like you are saying the union is right and the reformers are wrong. You didn’t make it clear in that paragraph why the union’s credibility should suffer in a situation where they are making a “reasonable complaint”. And how have they “lost the debate” if you agree with them about value-added measurements?

  • Michael M.

    Great essay!

    Re “Chancellor Klein and Al Sharpton, sincerely and correctly, identify education reform with civil rights. And this means a good curriculum is even more critical for disadvantaged kids who get less supplemental learning and exposure.”

    More critical than Chancellor Klein being hard-wired to bash traditional public school teachers as the obstacles to said civil rights when not electronically canoodling with Eva Moskowitz?

    I agree with the connection between education and civil rights. I’ll even go as far as education “reform” and civil rights. But in a city with so much de facto segregation, I just can’t bring myself to salute Chancellor Klein on this topic. Not when his solution is to BLAME THE TEACHERS, and seek salvation only through charters (or at least averaging-down salaries).

    To whit:
    “Poor and minority students will never get their fair share of educational opportunity — and are far more likely to lead unsuccessful lives — until administrators and political leaders commit to fundamentally changing the way teachers are recruited, rewarded, and retained.”
    – Joel Klein, HuffingtonPost
    http (colon) //www (dot) huffingtonpost (dot) com/joel-klein/transforming-the-teaching_b_200616 (dot) html

    Translation: Blame the teachers in this racially tinged Race to the Top of the Blame Game.

    Note that Chancellor Klein does NOT suggest that how our teachers are TRAINED, let alone how Principals are “recruited, rewarded, and retained” in his ever-morphing system — one that by design has virtually nullified a generation of their mentors, the highly experienced District Superintendents — has anything to do with it, let alone the curriculum they are provided with.

    Which brings us back to the essay at hand: I look forward to reading the essayist’s and readers’ ideas on how such new curricula should be developed, tested, judged, and implemented. And I agree such is needed; the majority of parents I know and talk to that take it for granted that the public school edumacation their kids are being offered must be augmented with tutors would likely welcome a more fulfilling, challenging, and ultimately rewarding educational experience for their kids, while saving a few bucks out of pocket for what they thought their tax dollars were already buying.

    As an aside, wasn’t an occasional curriculum pearl supposed to be one of the spin-off benefits of the charter movement? Can’t we find some success to clone? Heck, in the current climate, I’ll even take an honest grain of sand over the last few years of self-congratulatory hype. In the meantime, there’s always Singapore Math, available at Amazon dot com and bookstores everywhere.

    All of which begs the question of whether curriculum should be a one-size-fits-all proposition. Sigh.

    – Michael D. Markowitz, P.E.
    Member, CECD2
    (and First VP under ML)

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  • Michael M.

    Re “teacher quality”:

    In today’s political climate, one simply cannot bring up that topic in good faith without understanding you are a) contributing to the bloodsport du jour known as “teacher bashing”, and b) ignoring all other variables — outside the teachers’ control — that affect student performance.

    It’s easy to imagine any particular teacher being successful in one environment (wealthy kids in small classrooms with experienced principal and supportive parents), and less so in another (at-risk kids in overcrowded classrooms, etc., etc., etc.)

    Besides, per the theme of this essay, if curriculum matters so much, how many of the hypothetical 15% per author’s comment above would suddenly look like 85 percenters, perhaps displacing some other 85 percenter who had been successful with a curriculum that worked for them and for that teacher’s set of students?

    In sum, again, I am interested in looking at ALL components of student success. But even “curriculum” keeps the focus too narrowly on teachers (or worse, sets them up to simply be the “curriculum deliverers”), and lets off the hook many other variables in the DOE’s control, including school overcrowding and class size.

    Next, I am leery of introducing the notion of “taxpayer value” here. What next: are we going to slip into a debate over teacher quality… on a point-per-dollar basis? Our current public education system’s philosophy of “competence” over “excellence”, if combined with “teacher value”, would make for a risky brew, especially in a tight economy.

    e.g.
    (All other things equal, same school, same grade, same pool of kids — with same prior year scores — etc.)
    Teacher A gets paid $100k and her kids averaged 3.3 ;
    Teacher B gets paid $50k and his kids averaged 3.2 .
    Teacher C gets paid $50k and her kids avergaged 3.2…. but with a wider range than Teacher B (a bunch of 4′s offset by a bigger bunch of 2.9′s!!!)
    “Taxpayer” perspective?: Get me two B’s and help Kleinberg bash the union. Teacher C left too many below “competency”, and Teacher A is too pricey.

    Last, what about teacher-pupil “chemistry?” In my own experience back in the day as well as my family’s current experience, that has been critical, and there’s been a big range, even amongst well-regarded teachers within a given grade in an excellent school.

    I would suggest that if your kid “connects” with his or her teacher, that’s “priceless.” If Teacher D gets my kid to love going to school, has control of the class environment, and inspires creativity, curiosity, and citizenship… the rest is gravy. How then to reward Teacher D when the following year Teacher E inherits a kid who previously had Teacher D?

  • Matthew

    Jordan,

    As you and your students know, covering a complex topic in 950 words is tough.  If I was not as clear as I could be, I apologize.

    Teaching literature, reading, and writing will always involve instructor choices. So no, I do not imagine that Joel Klein telling you that Brave New World is superior to Animal Farm is a good use of his time or your skills. But were NYC to put a stake in the ground and say that 20th century dystopian authors like Huxley, Orwell and Koestler were important and that your kids should understand them and their influence, would that offend your sense of independence? As I see it you would still need to determine the best way to deliver this knowledge, to modify or differentiate it for your different classes and children. 

    The specific point I want to make is that a standard curriculum provides a scaffold for teachers. But it doesn’t mandate that the building they construct has to be wood on the first floor, stucco on two through five and brick thereafter.  For experienced teachers this may be superfluous – maybe they love Ray Bradbury, or their kids will respond better to  science fiction, so they will modify.  For newer or less successful teachers, I would expect it can’t hurt.

    The bigger point that I am driving at is a mono focus on Teacher Quality as the only solution is rather like “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.” Pleasant in its simplicity but given what we know today and can sell politically, unsuitable for resolving the challenges we face on its own.  Curriculum reform on its own is not a panacea, but it deserves better consideration than it gets at present.  

    For folks like yourself who are at the top of your game, curriculum may all seem elementary, but the reform conversation is not about you, it is about those 35% who are not yet “above average” but who, with support and time, could be. 

  • http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog Robert Pondiscio

    To Matthew’s point there were three things that amazed me when I taught in the South Bronx: 1) There was no curriculum; telling me what to teach was ostensibly an insult to my professional judgment and discretion. 2) My classroom was sloppy with administrators, mentors, Aussies and Teacher’s College consultants all of who were eager to tell me HOW to teach, some (like TC) rather adamantly. 3) No one seemed to see any problem with this arrangement.

    Having come from outside education, I was comfortable with the idea that you hire qualified people to perform a specific set of tasks, then hold them accountable for the results. Of all the cues and lessons we are supposed to take from the world of business, it’s a little surprising this one hasn’t gained traction. Or even been considered.

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  • http://www.sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink

    Re: “Importantly, in a system as large as ours, curriculum can be developed centrally and replicated at almost no marginal cost, earning a far greater return on investment than merit bonuses for every qualifying teacher or hiring 10,000 high-quality teachers. In short, teacher quality is a long, expensive, politically difficult fix. Curriculum is comparatively fast, cheap, and also effective.”

    I believe this comment is loaded with assumptions and certainly belongs in the land of utopia.

    When Randi Weingarten is complaining about teachers not having authority over reform, she is (I hope) talking about their direct involvement in writing, revising and planning from sound curriculum. And I agree with her, tempered by the belief (from experience) that to be most effective curriculum must be both organically built (using a coherent and comprehensive process) at the school level and uniform throughout the school community.

    So when Randi says teachers don’t have enough time to collaborate, she’s also right about that.

    Good curriculum is NOT centrally planned and it is NOT cheap. In fact, good curriculum and good teaching are interrelated. Teachers who are involved in planning and revising curriculum, together with their colleagues who teach other subjects and grade levels, are more invested in the content they are delivering and gain valuable insight that they cannot access simply by reading a teachers’ guide.

    Finally, unfortunately, quick fixes are usually not sustainable ones.

  • http://jd2718.wordpress.com Jonathan

    Diana wrote: “I disagree with Jonathan’s assertion that the curriculum is good if it can be delivered with minimal training.”

    She misread.
    me: “If it is good, it should require minimal supplementary training”
    DS: ” “If it can be delivered with minimal training, it is good”

    These are not the same idea. Not close.

  • Diana Senechal

    Jonathan, you are absolutely right. I said it backwards. But I was in fact disagreeing with your point.
    A good curriculum does indeed require substantial training (not to mention education). It should have enough substance that a teacher would need to know a lot in order to teach it. In the best of worlds, if we had a first-rate curriculum, teacher preparation programs would include courses on the curriculum. Prospective teachers (or existing teachers) would study and review the topics in depth and plan lessons around them.

  • Michael M.

    ML,

    Re “but the reform conversation is not about you, it is about those 35% who are not yet “above average” but who, with support and time, could be. ”

    a) Note per Lake Woebegone that the average would move. Zoiks!

    b) I question the goal that education, even public education, should be about “meeting standards.” It should be about maximizing each student’s potential. The standard should be a reference pont — neither a floor nor a ceiling.

    c) And what of the other 15%?

  • http://jd2718.wordpress.com Jonathan

    Diane, you seem to have missed my point. Do you know what “curriculum” means?

    I suggested that an average teacher should require minimal supplementary training. I was writing about someone who already could teach. And I was writing about training beyond the training to become a teacher.

    For those of you curious, certainly Investigations (TERC) would have failed this test.

  • Jordan Fullam

    Mr. Levey,

    You asked: “Were NYC to put a stake in the ground and say that 20th century dystopian authors like Huxley, Orwell and Koestler were important and that your kids should understand them and their influence, would that offend your sense of independence?”

    I would have to answer, Yes. As much as love the authors you mentioned, I am certain that they would become stale and dead after being included in a standardized curriculum and taught year after year at a specific grade level. Not to mention the fact that there are thousands of authors worthy of study in addition to the three you mentioned above. I teach AP English and regular 12th Grade English; and I think the College Board and the NYC DOE, respectively, are right to not prescribe texts for these classes. They offer “suggested” reading lists, but teachers ultimately have the freedom to choose what they teach.

    So, I agree with Principal Kitchen Sink: curriculum should develop organically at the level of the school. When teachers have this freedom of curriculum, they can 1) choose texts that work best with their particular students (culturally responsive teaching) and 2) choose texts that they (the teachers themselves) are most passionate and knowledgeable about.

    The second point above is more important than people sometimes assume. Here’s an example of why: my students often tell me about an English teacher they had who loved Drama. This teacher loved Drama so much, the students tell me, that everything they did in this teacher’s English class was related to Drama: they read plays, acted out plays, etc. The students, in fact, called the class “Drama Class,” despite the fact that it was listed generically on their transcripts as “E7″ or “E8.” It was obvious to me that this teacher loved Drama so much that it rubbed off on the students and they had a positive learning experience as a result. Shouldn’t we let this teacher have her Drama Class?

    I myself am like the Drama teacher in a sense, except I have different areas of interest and expertise. I love philosophy and social theory and I usually teach literature that I can situate in a context that is friendly to those disciplines. My high school students have studied Plato, Nietzsche, Feminism; they’ve studied social issues including homelessness and the achievement gap; they’ve read literary authors as diverse as bell hooks, Dostoevsky, and Emerson; and I’ve even used lyrics to popular rap songs in lessons. And I don’t teach the same units every year, either. That would be boring. I want to learn new things, too, along with my students.

    Thus, the thought of having to conform to an official curriculum has always been a most unpleasant one for me. I do, however, understand your point that a standardized curriculum could serve as an anchor for new teachers until they are comfortable enough to be more creative. The problem with that, though, is NOTHING works that way in the school system. The message we teachers get is, Do it or watch out! Everything is mandated; conformity highly valued and deviation punished.

    Of course, I am writing from the perspective of a high school English teacher. Maybe your suggestions apply more to the lower grades? To subject areas other than English? I’m not sure yet. But in any case your article has given me a lot to think about so thanks for that…

  • matthew

    Mr. Fullam,

    I appreciate your thoughtfulness and kind words.

    Certainly I am influenced by my experience as an elementary school parent. I would not want to be so prescriptive as to say “We favor Dystopians, and Chekov, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller need not apply.”

    Certainly introducing children to great writers early on puts them in a much better position to be able to appreciate the choices their teachers make as they get to high school, and perhaps middle or elementary schools would want to be more prescriptive. Certainly if you yourself do not love your subject matter it is quite a challenge to make your students appreciate it. So yes indeed, drama for the drama queens and Koestler for the teachers for whom the glass is half empty.

    But the bigger picture is we are more alike than different. Surely there are not 300 paradigms you face as a teacher; you’ve got your high achievers, the ones who struggle, the group in the middle, your recent immigrants, etc. Of course this is all a simplification but I find it hard to believe any teacher out there is struggling with a challenge that at least a few hundred other have faced. Why not use well thought out curricula to help teachers meet that challenge most efficiently?
    A lot of concern about ‘prescriptiveness’ comes out when we discuss literature and writing. I wonder if math and science teachers feel differently? It would seem to me that we ought not to struggle too hard to determine the three or four most effective routes for teaching the the Pythagorean theorem? Everyone needs Algebra, right?

    Either way I repeat that my primary concern is less with the specific curricula that would emerge from an informed inquiry, and more with the belief among some reformers that by focusing on teacher quality alone we can achieve the results we all desire. In this set of exchanges alone I think there has been more thoughtful discussion than I’ve heard in several years of following and participating in the reform “debate”

  • Kelly

    New York State has standards – big ideas that guide what we teach. The city, at least in my subject area, has published a detailed, grade-by-grade scope & sequence that is an incredibly helpful document in determining how much time to spend on what and when. Is that what you’re looking for? Or do you want actual out-of-the-box curriculum materials that provide all the lessons to go with the scope & sequence? Even that is, to some degree, provided, at least in my subject area, with a couple of different options that schools can choose among.

    I’m not strongly for or against those materials… I think they can be immensely helpful in providing continuity to kids who do not have a stable school experience and in providing resources and tested (hopefully, ideally) ideas to new and even to experienced teachers. On the other hand, lots of teachers seem to hate these materials. The resistance to giving up one’s favorite unit or lesson or whatever can go too far at times, but the truth at the core of it is that the best teachers modify to suit the students in front of them, and we resist being asked to conform. Some seem to think that there’s no “best way” that any organization or company could ever come up with, which is bogus… kids do make predictable mistakes as they learn and with research and testing there should be more proven materials available so that we do not each have to learn these lessons on our own as teachers.

    Anyway, when I’ve had curriculum materials to use, my job has been easier on a day-to-day basis but less intellectually challenging (a bit), because I like planning and thinking about how to present material. I learned a lot from the materials I was asked to use, though, and have taken a lot of ideas and continued using them in my new setting.

    Certainly, a clear, consistent scope & sequence seems helpful. But these exist already, in many of the subjects.

  • Diana Senechal

    The ELA “curriculum” in most NYC schools (at least through middle school, and in many high schools) is not a curriculum. It is Balanced Literacy (or its relative, the “workshop model”), a pedagogy that focuses largely on “reading strategies.” Where literature is taught at all, it is subordinated to the “strategy.” A lesson might include a “read-aloud” from Mark Twain, but only to illustrate, say, the strategy of “visualization.” The teacher reads a passage from Huckleberry Finn, does a “think-aloud,” and then puts the kids in groups so they can visualize on their own, with their “just-right” books.

    A real literature curriculum puts literature at the center. Such a curriculum would include British, American, world literature; ancient literature and mythology; lots of Shakespeare. It would involve close study of comedy and tragedy, of epic and lyric poetry; of literary nonfiction; of rhetoric and logic; of grammar and composition. A curriculum like this would not be easier to teach; it would require extensive preparation and thought. But how much more interesting, how much more beautiful, how much more challenging than strategies!

  • JB

    Let’s be clear that some subjects both lend themselves to, and benefit from, a prepared curriculum that teachers execute without having to invent. Beginning reading. Spelling. Math at all levels. Chemistry. Foreign language. Others, less so: literature is the good example that is given above. It’s a given that even when teachers are using a prepared curriculum, they adapt to fit the students they’re interacting with, especially when the students are struggling, and especially when they are themsleves “producers,” as they are when learning to write.

    And I agree with Diana that the over-emphasis on reading strategies is deadening.

  • http://themortonschool.blogspot.com Miss Eyre

    I agree with JB and Diana so much: reading strategies ad nauseam is a wonderful way to strip any fascination or nascent passion away from any historical topic or work of literature.  My principal told me the other day that I should be doing reading strategy lessons in social studies.  When do I let the kids develop an actual interest in history?

  • matthew

    KS,

    I’ve followed your thoughtful posts on a number of topics.

    I think my reference to curriculum reform was “comparatively fast,” not “quick.” I couldn’t agree with you more that too many people peddle too many quick fixes.

    I imagine a solid curriculum would feature a fair amount of teacher input. When Randi says there is not enough time for this, I presume she means between 8-3 when kids are in school? Like you, I took work a “day job” and have to do my reform reading and writing after my kids are in bed. And alas I get no ‘comp” time or per session payments.

    If the ideal curriculum is both “organically built” but “uniform throughout the school community” I’m confused. Is that therefore “centrally designed”? Or do all curriculum designers agree on the same ideas? I know this seems a snarky reply, but I am honestly confused.

    France uses a curriculum so centralized that my friend’s son who attends the French school here in New York was able to visit a former classmate in Paris and pick right up where he left on in his school the day before. Finland and Singapore are also pretty centrally-determined curricula, at least from what I have read. Horace Mann was apparently wowed by the Prussian state system, which I think was equally centralized.

    In any case KS, as I said previously to Mr. Fullam, I don’t propose we abandon our interest in better defining and then judging teacher quality. I just want to see reformers spend at least as much of their time thinking about the content delivered to our children and how we can improve that too.

  • Pingback: Read: Teachers Unions Slam Obama Edition | Dropout Nation: Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education Edited by RiShawn Biddle

  • http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/ Anthony Manzo,Ph.D.

    The Galen Education Project – Tract 1
    Education is the Guardian of the Past & the Trustee of the Future
    The Well-Intentioned ‘Race to the Top’ Leaves Only Teachers Behind
    It will take unprecedented courage to take command of our own narrative and reduce our vulnerability
    There are some great teachers, and even some great Teacher Preparation programs, but these are random occurrences where consistency is essential. The reason is simple: Professional Education is missing fundamental standards found in all other professions. There is no standard curriculum, no sincere effort to identify Best Instructional Practices, and truckloads of weak consultants and players with diluted degrees serving up their own brands of Faculty Development. Courses with the very same title and syllabus can be as different in principles and practices as is Lightening is from a Lightening Bug. To be called a profession it is imperative that a profession, one way or another, needs to convene an ongoing forum to collect and prioritize the core content of principles and practices that every member ought to know. Ironically, Teachers worldwide are being held to standards for annual yearly progress of their students. Meanwhile, Professors, Learned Societies & commercial schools, and some painfully self-serving non-profit foundations and Universities never even address the need for solid pedagogic content. Worse, those that do publish material under titles referencing Best Practices are quite simply hype, if not fraudulent. With few exceptions the current crop of in-charge “Leaders” – who once were mere administrators – dangerously resembles the Investment Bankers who remain in charge of the economic systems that they nearly bankrupted. Perhaps the only way to expose and reform this systemic disaster would be a class action by teachers &/or parents & students against all of us who have been complicit in these myriad layers of self-interest actions bordering on malpractice.
    Since the likelihood of legal action is a remote it would be wonderfully unprecedented for a leveraged agency, such as the US Department of Education or a sate department of Education to hold a virtual convention of the nation’s leading educators to consider and ideally endorse a covenant of principles and more importantly prescriptive practices. Ideally this would occur on an open-access website that transparently allows these to be challenged, tweaked and further specified for different age-grade-linguistic & situational conditions. Additionally, such a rolling convention also could address differentiated staffing based on what schools are expected to do, and with a differentiated set of Best Practices for each function as exist between doctors and nurses, attorneys and paralegals, etc.
    Schools are expected to carry-on three essential although overlapping functions: 1. Teach new concepts, content and a positive disposition toward self-directed on-going learning; 2. Provide assessment and targeted supervised practice in these objectives; and, 3. Operate a massive custodial role that keeps students in school for at least seven-nine hours a day for about 200 days a year for about 13 years, and now through at least 2 more years of college. Our labor market and economic system depend on schools to meet these criteria. The problem is not the expectations, but that staffing, resources and organization do not reflect these societal expectations. And, sadly there is no coordinating free market in which to gain access to the best pedagogical ideas and practices. But, this is another complex issue requiring several additional paragraphs that have now become all wrapped up, if not convoluted by vouchers and charter schools.
    Meanwhile, please consider joining the websites below offering a potential startup means of getting the current system moving in the right direction. As an aside, taxpayers would be grateful since increasing classroom effectiveness and adding differentiated staffing could bring about efficiencies that could save billions of dollars with even the smallest degree of adoption. With your support we hope to formally organize ourselves around the title: The Galen Project in honor of Claudius Galen (131-201) a great teacher-practitioner, compiler and systematizer of Greco-Roman medicine, physiology, pharmacy and anatomy. Please join the narrative at: http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network And…http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/
    Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus,
    University of Missouri-KC, (ret.) CSU-Fullerton
    avmanzo@aol.com

  • http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/ Anthony Manzo,Ph.D.

    If by “spot revenue” you mean dollars needed and spiraling costs, this is another question, but one for which there are several possible answers. Since space is limited, please allow me to suggest that you look up one such very viable answer (or email me and I’ll send you a copy):
    Unbelling the cat: Unleashing the e-commerce solution
    National Association of Secondary School Principals. NASSP Bulletin, Feb 2001 by Manzo, Anthony
    Partnerships between education and commerce could well usher in the beginning of a new kind of economy that provides substantial financial-and social-rewards for schools and for society in general.
    By the way, I wrote an entire chapter on Entrepreneurial Literacy in the 2, may be the 3 edition of our text (Content Area Literacy:Wiley Publishers, 2001). No one bought it. Teachers and their newly crowned “Educational Leaders” could use a course or two in Social Entrepreneurship – we must and can raise boat loads of money for our own support. It would take a bit of a change of the current (begging) culture, but let’s face it, America is broke. Our very survival depends on being adaptive. More than that we must teach our children to become part of this now global Free Market society so that they will be able to not merely take jobs but to make a jobs. Please pardon me if this sounds patronizing, but this is yet another story that most of today’s Educational Leadership training schools have yet to even discover.
    Best,
    Tony Manzo
    avmanzo@aol.com

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