To boost achievement, stop doing stupid things

Stop doing stupid things is the first part of Michael Petrilli's education-reform agenda. Resist the "tyranny of bad ideas," the Fordham chief writes. Look for "what works," also known as "following the evidence" or "common sense."

Education leaders and policy makers are trying to align reading with "evidence and common sense," he writes. It should have been obvious, yet the "basic notion — that we need to teach kids how to read via direct and explicit instruction in decoding letters and words — was denied in many U.S. classrooms for decades."

The next step, he writes, is to get smart and sensible about math instruction. "Some still resist the obvious notion that little kids need to learn their math facts to the level of automaticity, meaning knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide quickly and effortlessly." They think children can develop conceptual understanding without the basics.

I think the underlying bad idea is: Let's skip the boring fundamentals and get right to the good stuff! That may work for the children of college-educated parents, who teach the basics at home, but it doesn't work for kids who aren't on the prenatal-to-Yale pipeline.

Petrilli also wants elementary schools to teach children "about the world they are inheriting, via exciting and engaging instruction in history, science, literature, and the arts," which "is not only their birthright and essential to informed citizenship, but also is the only proven way to build vocabulary and reading comprehension." Some schools narrowed the curriculum to reading skills only -- and didn't even do a good job of teaching reading.

Schools could group students with others at the same readiness level in reading and math for at least for part of the school day, he writes. Putting every child the same age in the same class, and telling teachers to "differentiate" instruction for children at very different levels, hasn't worked well.

"Reforms" in grading and discipline practices have lowered expectations and achievement, Petrilli argues. "We banned the use of zeros for kids who failed to turn in assignments or bombed their tests, even if they put in zero effort." Instead of detention, schools now "put kids in Kafkaesque 'restorative circles'" or "look the other way." We need to "recalibrate," he writes.

High schools say they're moving past the “college for all” era, yet "the many course requirements still on the books . . . leave little room for students to do real career training (like internships or apprenticeships)," Petrilli writes. "We keep adding new course requirements (coding! Financial literacy!) while never taking any away."

Petrilli also wants to reform personnel and spending practices, but concedes it's very difficult. He asks: "How do we deal with the all-powerful teachers unions, their capture of elected school boards, and the plain fact that the public education system is, among many other things, a gigantic jobs program?"

Teacher pay has been flat, even as education spending has soared, he notes. Nearly everywhere, the new money has gone to hire more teachers and a lot more support staff, counselors and administrators. "We’ve stumbled into a model whereby we offer mediocre pay to teachers and then try to help them be more effective by surrounding them with lots of other bodies," he writes.

Implementation is important, concludes Petrilli. He's not sure how to address that, but he suggests Mike Goldstein's ideas for "some sort of management training system that we could put in place so that school districts have a cadre of professionals who are great at implementation, regardless of the initiative."