No one every spoke to me this way when I was in the classroom. They should have.

But piled on top of this, is a huge amount of confusion with regard to what constitutes a curriculum. My own local district hired a group of consultants to perform a curriculum audit some years back. The startling conclusion was that the district did not have a curriculum. Despite a selection of texts, and some course names that could be identified as the same from school to school, the variation in content was wide. With the advent of state academic content standards, we tend to think that we have curriculum corralled. We do not. Some districts have sliced the content standards into “pacing guides,” with the assumption that teachers will then cull the available curricular supports (meaning text books)and find ways to disseminate the learning. Some purchase curricula–particularly for early reading or mathematics. Every “curriculum” or textbook salesperson will swear that their curriculum aligns to the standards of the state. What this means is that every possible jot and tiddle from every one of fifty states is in there somewhere. Some large districts may even write their own “curriculum.” Other districts may simple “adopt” the state standards as their “curriculum.”

Dr. William Schmidt studied math content actual taught across two states in comparison to the content standards of the states. He found a wide variation in what was being taught, across each state, but within districts as well. His big research concern has been the progression of content within schools. If the curriculum is left up to individual teachers–in spite of content standards–the risk of poorly coordinated coverage of content is great. This is particularly important in mathematics where concepts build on top of one another.

Approaches such as backward design, with specified tasks, strategies and measures of accomplishment across a well-mapped set of curricular objectives, are very appealing–particularly in terms of rallying teachers to work together and utilizing the best abilities of classroom teachers. I don’t know many districts that have access to the kind of teacher planning and collaboration time to be able to pull this off. In addition, we know the the skills and abilities of our teaching force tend to be maldistributed across student income levels and this could easily become an excercise in reinforcing achievement gaps.

But it returns to my mind the number of exploratory studies that I have looked at that find teacher collaboration to be one commonality across schools that have shown improved achievement over time. Robert is right, it takes a careful approach that includes a broad range of strategies. Curriculum must be built at the same time that school culture is nurtured and discipline looked after and community relationships built. For the most part, when I have seen research with the kind of effect size that makes us sit up and pay attention, it has been from looking at models that group indicators together.

Whitehurst’s study was eye-opening to me because it points out that the most effective rememdy — curriculum — is not part of the ed reform discussion. It’s not saying the other elements–standards, charters, merit pay, etc.–should be dropped. Merely that curriculum yields more benefit and at a much, much lower cost. To further my analogy, it’s as if we’re building the hospitals, training the doctors, investing in medical technology, but suggesting medicine doesn’t matter.

After decades of failure and hundreds of billions spent, I would hope we’re ready to hear the “curriculum matters” argument and put it at the forefront of ed reform efforts.

But that is not all what his data and those of most good research in education indicate to me. The tell me that the best evidence is that the best schools get most things right. A better curriculum, better teachers, higher standards are all common to great schools especially those schools that beat the demographics. Ideas like incentive pay help. Getting rid of bad teachers and improving the teacher corps in general are important elements for improving education. Lowering class size in the earliest grades can help.

The point is that effects are cumulative. The message to me is that the more practices that have a positive effect that a school embraces, the better the outcomes.

Run out of pearls, hey Robert?

Since there’s hardly anything startling in the observation that a good curriculum generates good results the better question would be why it’s an insight that seems to have been so widely ignored.

The nature of these kind of problems (at least in engineering) is that it is often unclear which particular limiting factor is in play at any given time. Robert, I believe, is correct in identifying curriculum as the current problem. Unfortunately, as Andrew points out, even if the curriculum problem is solved, other factors quickly become the limiting ones in improving student achievement.

There are plenty of other candidates for the next limiting factor as well. Parental involvement, neighborhood culture, political factors unique to each state or school district, and others all play a role.

Furthermore, at each level of the problem – federal, state, city, district, school, classroom, student – the answer may be different.

We can’t expect any single answer to school reform to do much. All we can do is try to identify the factors at play in any given environment and fix them as best we can.

Until schools become something else – collaborative environments where teachers work together to achieve a common goal with the _school’s_ students – all the issues that Andrew mentions will continue. Part of this is historical, but part of it is money. There aren’t extra staff to allow teachers time to coordinate their instruction, observe each other, get to know each others students or generally learn the curriculum. This extends to administrators, who often don’t have time to ensure that classroom teachers are using the curriculum that has been put in place.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/

But schools still have huge differences in achievement levels. Do the curriculum standards need improvement? How? Are other factors at work?