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It’s the curriculum, stupid

January 16, 2012 By

Education reform has ignored curriculum, writes Beverlee Jobrack, a retired editorial director for McGraw-Hill, in Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes How Educational Materials Undermine Reforms.

Mediocrity is the norm, according to Jobrack, writes Erik Robelen in Ed Week‘s Curriculum Matters.

• School and district committees for curriculum selection filled with teachers and others who lack the appropriate expertise, motivation, and time to make the best choices;

• State textbook adoptions focused on whether curricular materials meet state standards, line by line, with little or no attention to whether they actually are of high quality and represent a coherent and well-designed instructional approach; and

• A radically consolidated publishing industry, driven by sales and marketing tems, that has “resulted in a dearth of customer choice, a reluctance to innovate, and huge [curricular] programs that are barely distinguishable from one another.”

Graphics win favor. Innovation does not. ”A group of very experienced teachers selects the textbook that is most like what they are already doing so they don’t have to change their lesson plans or procedures,” she writes.

Common standards won’t change teaching and learning “without real and meaningful changes in the curriculum,” Jobrack believes. The industry will resist change, she says in an interview.

“They’re not changing anything in the curriculum. They are simply relabeling. … If there’s anything missing in a textbook series, the publishers will simply add a paragraph or add a lesson to address that particular standard.”

When publishers produce an incoherent, standard-stuffed curriculum, it’s not surprising that teachers cherry-pick what they want to teach and ignore the rest.

 

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Math gains show curriculum matters

December 7, 2011 By

If bad teachers are the problem, why are kids gaining in math? asks cognitive scientist Dan Willingham. His answer:  Higher standards backed by stronger curricula.

While reading scores have been flat for 20 years, math scores are up significantly. That’s true for fourth graders, who have the same teachers for reading and math.

States that aligned standards, assessments and accountability show the largest math gains, he writes.

Still, high standards are likely necessary but not sufficient to move student achievement. Standards set the goals, but they don’t tell you how to get there. For that, you need a curriculum. It may be that developing a curriculum to meet standards is easier in mathematics than in English; there is little controversy as to the subject matter to be covered, and the order in which one ought to tackle subjects is more obvious.

While we need “a more sensible method to usher hapless teachers out of the profession” and better teacher training, we also need to focus on curriculum design, Willingham writes.

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Bold dissenter — or burnable heretic?

November 30, 2011 By

The Dissenter in the New Republic (subscribers’ only) analyzes education historian Diane Ravitch’s turn against education reform ideas she’d once championed.

Author Kevin Carey seems to attribute Ravitch’s change of heart to her long-time partner’s rejection by Joel Klein. As a new chancellor, Klein started a training program for principals, ignoring the work of an existing and well-respected leadership academy run by Mary Butz, Ravitch’s partner.

Ravitch had good reason to distrust Klein and his reforms, writes Mike Petrilli.

. . . Diane had a point about Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein running schools as if they were “selling toothpaste.” The leadership academy was a perfect example. . . . like many reformers who distrust the reformers who came before them, he didn’t consider that Mary’s program might be worth building on, rather than replacing. And instead of recruiting experienced principals to run his new initiative, he went to corporate America for its funding and design.

Keep in mind that this was the same Joel Klein who was trashing the federal Reading First program for being too prescriptive, lavishing money on Lucy Calkins and her hare-brained “writing workshop” ideas, and arguing that the content of a particular curriculum didn’t matter; what was important was picking one and sticking to it. Klein was agnostic about the education side of education. And that (understandably) infuriated Diane.

. . .  she is right to be suspicious of a school reform movement that still, to this day, has little to say about matters of curriculum and pedagogy.

“Successful movements seek converts; unsuccessful movements hunt heretics,” responds Core Knowledge‘s Robert Pondiscio in an e-mail.
. . . Look, I disagree with Diane on choice and charters, among other things (lest I become the next heretic to be burned at the stake). But I remain deeply appreciative of her unchanged and unflinching support of a core curriculum, and enormously influenced by her overall body of work. The speculation that she would gainsay a life of scholarship merely for the cheap thrill of settling a personal grudge is just plain silly.
Indeed.

In a 1983 essay, “Scapegoating the Teachers,” Ravitch wrote:

It is comforting to blame teachers for the low state of education, because it relieves so many others of their own responsibility for years of educational neglect.

Ravitch was affiliated with the anti-communist left and was a friend of teachers’ union leader Al Shanker, Goldstein adds.

Both Goldstein and Alexander Russo raise the issue of sexism.

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Questing in Digiton

November 13, 2011 By

Last week, I visited the brand-new ChicagoQuest school, created by the Institute of Play, as part of a Digital Media, Technology, Children and Schools conference organized by the Hechinger Institute.  The learn-by-gaming charter school started this fall with sixth and seventh graders and will add a high school.

We walked into Code Worlds, which teaches both fractions and grammar as codes, and were greeted by a petite, very self-possessed seventh-grade girl, who explained the class was trying to restore rationality to the town of “Digiton” and compete to help farmer Al Gorithm calculate his harvest. A very articulate boy joined us, displayed his map of Digiton and joined the discussion.

The school tries to create narratives and games to motivate students to solve problems and think in terms of systems. Students — nearly all are black or Hispanic — range from way behind academically to advanced.

We tap into kids’ natural curiosity by giving them a “mission” — a hugely complex task that they can not solve with their current knowledge and understandings. These missions create reasons to learn. Students actually do something with their learning, right on the spot. Our approach sparks the drive to think critically, to keep trying, to persist for solutions.

We also visited a lab where students can play physical games: I tried moving mirrors with a partner to direct a laser to the target. Allegedly, we were learning geometry and maybe physics. Maybe, maybe not.

I liked the school’s very thoughtful curriculum design, which includes teaching the Common Core Standards and “21st century skills.” Game designers work with teachers to come up with ideas, look at what works and redesign curriculum.

In every room, students were working — or faking it convincingly.  One class was looking up an article on Aristotle on their iPads and taking notes. Not very gamey, but ambitious for middle schoolers. I told a girl that Aristotle had been Alexander the Great’s tutor — and then explained Alexander the Great. She looked interested.

When we talked to four students — including the very articulate boy from Digiton — we asked what was different about ChicagoQuest. They didn’t talk about the games or the technology. They said they liked the fact that there’s no fighting or cursing.  One girl said teachers at her old school had walked by a fight, pretending they didn’t know it was happening. One of ChicagoQuest’s “core values” is “Nobody walks by.”

Other core values are: “Respect all things,” “Be tenacious,” “Win and lose with grace” and “Get in the game: Play fair, play fully.”

Digital learning will prove itself — or adapt — argues Katie Salen, a game designer and DePaul professor who co-founded Quest to Learn two years ago in New York City.

. . . video-game companies develop products with users. They might issue an early version with kinks or bad ideas. And then it’s a dynamic process where user feedback helps the designer improve a game. There’s constant fixing. The video game is ever evolving.She’d like to see schools experiment with education software in the same way, rather than waiting for definitive proof that certain products work. The more students play with educational games, the more game designers can make them effective.

The MacArthur Foundation folks, who are providing most of the money, sounded offended by questions about effectiveness. I agree it’s too soon to tell, but it’s a valid question. (Reading and math scores for the New York Quest school are average for sixth graders and above average for seventh graders.)

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Educational insanity

November 6, 2011 By

After 20 years of education reform focused on reading and math — and billions of dollars in spending — NAEP results show little improvement, writes Lynne Munson of Common Core. It’s educational insanity, she writes, using Einstein’s definition: “Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.”

We’ve tried to bring market pressures to bear through charters and choice.  We’ve attempted to set high standards and given high-stakes tests.  We’ve experimented with shrinking school and class sizes. We’ve focused on “21st century skills” and used the latest technologies. We’ve collected and analyzed data on an unprecedented scale.  We’ve experimented with a seemingly endless array of “strategies” for teaching reading and math and have tried to “differentiate” for every imaginable “type” of student. And we’ve paid dearly in tax dollars and in other ways for each of these “reforms.”

Interestingly, all of these reforms have one thing in common (aside from their failure to improve student performance except in isolated instances):  None deals directly with the content of what we teach our students.

Teaching knowledge “of things like standard algorithms, poetry, America’s past, foreign languages, great painters, chemistry, our form of government, and much more” works for all students, Munson writes, citing International Baccalaureate, Latin schools curricula and Core Knowledge. Ignoring curricular content is nuts.

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To end cheating, open up tests

September 17, 2011 By

Instead of boosting security for test questions to prevent cheating, why not have open tests? asks Eric Hanushek on Education Next.

He proposes developing a very large bank of test questions that cover the entire curriculum from basic to advanced topics. All questions would be made public. Teachers could teach to the test, knowing they’re covering the entire curriculum. Critics could challenge test questions they think are misleading, irrelevant or otherwise inappropriate.

Then, move to computerized adaptive testing, where answers to an initial set of questions move the student to easier or more difficult items based on responses.  This testing permits accurate assessments at varying levels while lessening test burden from excessive questions that provide little information on individual student performance. Such assessments would not be limited to minimally proficient levels that are the focus of today’s tests, and thus they could provide useful information to districts that find current testing too easy.  Students would be given a random selection of questions, and the answers would go directly into the computer – bypassing the erasure checks, the comparison of responses with other students, and the like.

This is how the FAA tests applicants for a private pilot license, he writes. There are so many possible questions that it’s easier to learn the underlying concepts than to memorize all possible answers.

Students spend less time taking adaptive tests, because they’re not asked lots of too-easy or too-hard questions. Teachers get the results immediately.

Does Hanushek’s idea make sense?

 

 

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Many districts aren’t ready for new standards

September 15, 2011 By

Only half of school districts are working on implementing the Common Core Standards their states have adopted, according to a Center on Education Policy survey. Some are waiting for state guidance on how to adapt curriculum, instruction and assessment and add learning materials.

“What it says to me is that there is a large percentage that don’t seem to understand the train that is about to hit them,” said William H. Schmidt, a Michigan State University education professor who is conducting his own research on districts’ readiness for the new standards. “That, to me, is somewhat scary.”

Superintendents disagree on whether the new standards are more demanding, reports Education Week.

Fewer than 60 percent of the districts said they view the new standards as more rigorous than their states’ previous guidelines. Fewer still—55 percent in math, and 58 percent in English/language arts—said they believed the standards would improve students’ skills.

Two-thirds of the districts anticipate the need for new curriculum materials in math, and 56 percent anticipate a similar need for the literacy standards. About half the respondents said they thought the new standards would demand “fundamental changes” in instruction.

Surveying superintendents overstates districts’ readiness for the new standards, Schmidt told Ed Week.  “In his work surveying 700 districts, he said, he has found that teachers know less about the standards than do staff members at district headquarters.”

 

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Life’s a carnival

September 14, 2011 By

Bellringers is hosting the Meet the Teacher edition of the Education Buzz Carnival.

Darren wonders if official collaboration time is overdone.

Mister Teacher could use help with the new math curriculum, which chews up most of his class time trying to get reluctant third graders to perform High Level Tasks.

Notes from a Homeschooling Mom is hosting this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.

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National standards: Good idea or good riddance?

September 8, 2011 By

Good riddance to new national standards, writes Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who’s a centrist voice in the education debate. Common Core Standards, adopted by more than 40 states and pushed by the Education Department, “won’t help and won’t work,” Mathews argues.

Such specific standards stifle creativity and conflict with a two-century American preference for local decision-making about schools.

. . . We should focus on better teaching methods and better training of teachers, as well as school structures that help educators work more as teams. Those teachers could then employ whatever methods and standards make sense for their students.

Mathews was persuaded the national standards movement will collapse by reading Jay Greene, who argues that neither the states nor the feds can afford “a ton of money” to change curriculum, testing and teaching to make standards meaningful. Not even the Gates Foundation can afford it, Greene writes.

(Greene) says the digital learning industry, a growing financial and political force, will soon realize that the new standards will frustrate innovation.

“No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top grants are likely to be the high water mark of federal involvement in schools,” Mathews predicts.

States can borrow good standards from other states without creating one set of standards for everyone, he argues. If the tests developed to go with the new standards “probe conceptual understanding in ways state tests fail to do,” then there will be demand to use those exams.

While recruiting, training and supporting good teachers is important, curriculum isn’t chopped liver. I’d like to see states with good standards stick with what they’ve got, at least until the Common Core Standards and tests prove their worth. But plenty of states have nowhere to go but up.

I’m also not persuaded national standards are doomed. Still, it’s odd that nobody will defend the rigor and quality of Common Core math standards for an Education Next forum.  “Common Core advocates seem to have already grown impatient with public give-and-take and eager to declare the issue settled,” writes Rick Hess, who sympathetic but skeptical about the Common Core effort.

 

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Teachers can learn from tests

August 31, 2011 By

Once a foe of standardized testing, Ama Nyamekye improved her teaching by analyzing her students’ scores on New York’s Regents exam, she writes in Ed Week.  When she asked her sophomores to take the English Regents exam a year early, she discovered “holes in my curriculum.”

I once dismissed standardized testing for its narrow focus on a discrete set of skills, but I learned that my self-made assignments were more problematic. It turned out they were skewed in my favor. I was better at teaching literary analysis than grammar and punctuation. When I started giving ongoing standardized assessments, I noticed that my students showed steady growth in literary analysis, but less growth in grammar and punctuation. I was teaching to my strengths instead of strengthening my weaknesses.

Grading is subjective, she writes. Emotionally invested in her students’ success — and implicitly judging her own effectiveness — she was quick to see signs of achievement.

By contrast, her students’ Regents essays were graded by English teachers who didn’t know them and who used detailed rubrics.

When I “depoliticized” the test, I found a useful and flawed ally. The exam excelled where I struggled, offering comprehensive and standards-based assessments. I thrived where the test fell short, designing creative, performance-based projects. Together, we were strategic partners. I designed and graded innovative projects—my students participated in court trials for Shakespearean characters—and the test provided a rubric that guided my evaluation of student learning.

All her students who took the exam passed it. Most earned high scores.

Nyamekye left teaching in New York City to work as a communications consultant for nonprofits and write a book to be titled The Call to Teach: Building Careers on the Front Lines and Fault Lines of Public Education.

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