Month: March 2011

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A Shared or Shackling Curriculum?

The call of 75 national leaders for a common curriculum to accompany the emerging national standards for English language arts and mathematics should be considered judiciously by educators.  The position that schools should categorically resist a common curriculum for some fraction of the school year may be too extreme. However, the impact of such a curriculum on the individual classroom may be seriously underestimated by its proponents.

Curriculum reformers  need to borrow a phrase from the physician’s oath: “First, do no harm.”

School reformers at the highest levels usually underestimate the disruption that a “voluntary” curriculum can cause in K-12 classrooms.  What is pronounced as a friendly suggestion comes down through superintendents and principals as a high priority mandate to teachers. Why? Because their schools will now be judged by how well they perform on the goals of this “voluntary” curriculum.  Curricular pressure on teachers is completely understandable, in this case, because superintendents and principals are judged entirely on their students’ performance on the “voluntary” curriculum.

Moreover,  the ELA and mathematics standards now being touted are a culmination of numerous prerequisite standards that are not firmly in place in some schools, especially struggling high schools.  Take the new standard for reading that involves analysis of so-called “foundational documents” of U.S. History:

Analyze seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, , and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes and rhetorical features (Reading Standards for Informational Text, 6-12, #9)

As worthy a goal as this appears, it comprises so many sub-goals that it might generate a whole new course of study: 1- arcane vocabulary (“a well-regulated militia”?) 2- rhetorical strategies (ever read a “declaration” before?) 3- historical context (what was happening before that “Second Inaugural Address”?) 4- ambiguity (why does no one agree on the First Amendment?) 5- genre (what is  the effect of a”preamble” and the “amendments” on the whole?) 6- syntax ( how does the adverbial clause affect the main clause?) 7- themes (how is the Red Badge of Courage connected to the Inaugural Address?)   8- context and interpretation (how has the meaning changed over time?)

Sometimes I think curriculum and standards writers imagine that topics will merely be “covered” in the classroom and students will be tested on the gist of the meaning. These same writers will then complain that students do not read closely or rigorously and thus stumble on the challenging tasks presented by international tests of reading. Because the curriculum and standards writers have no, or very distant, classroom experience, they forget that “covering” a text does not produce good readers. When new and historically remote texts are added to a curriculum they multiply the topics and the time needed to address them. Nothing worth reading  should be merely “covered.” It should be studied.

The time consumed by these curriculum “suggestions” displaces effective curricula, which may involve students choosing texts to read, genre for writing, and language strategies to address, related to these choices.  The growing edge of writing and speaking, especially, involves reading and writing about non-canonical texts, i.e. texts that relate to students’ daily experiences.   I know curriculum writers tend to belittle young adult texts, even though they are proliferating in subject matter and quality. They assume students are not being challenged by age-appropriate subject matter.

But students learn to write and speak by addressing books and topics from their own experiences, topics which include, conformity, integrity, decision-making, respect, loyalty, independence. These lessons are assimilated and expressed through age-appropriate reading and viewing.  Writing and speaking are complex skills that are first tested on familiar ground before racheting up the difficulty of reading and listening.  Active classroom teachers understand how to bring students up to more challenging texts by “successive approximation.”  Those who abandoned teaching years ago have forgotten that teaching is a continuum of experiences from the familiar context to the remote centuries and cultures. These familiar and age-appropriate texts should not be carelessly discarded in favor of new curricula.

New curricula have a ripple effect on existing curricula, starting as a trickle and ending with a tidal wave.  Curriculum writers may anticipate the trickle and perhaps the stream of curricular change, but seldom do they understand the torrent of prerequisite goals they have unleashed with their “modest proposals.”  They expect to influence the teaching of English and mathematics, but they have no concept of how they may throttle the curriculum from top to bottom.

If a “shared curriculum” can be introduced with the caveat that the best of local curriculum can be preserved, then the change could be beneficial. We could have cross-district and cross-state dialogues about how to infuse these new topics with the old.  We could have celebrations of successful learning units around these topics.  We could have the joy of shared goals, successfully implemented.

But a shared curriculum requires respect for the those who implement it. It should come in increments, with funding for teachers to develop their own units, with  grace periods for implementation, and with caveats for school administrators who fret about test scores. It should be shared constructively and deliberately with schools, not delivered like a subpoena.

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Critical of Critical Thinking

The most troubling question about the study “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is that Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist, like most of his colleagues, does not for a minute question whether the “critical thinking” of college students has been adequately measured by whatever assessment was administered.

It is indeed troubling that “Thirty-six per cent of the students said they studied alone less than five hours a week.” And perhaps alarming that the same students are pulling an average 3.16 GPA.  There are some disclaimers that might be made about “studying alone,” because colleges encourage study groups and collaborative effort is considered a crucial skill of the marketplace.  Did they ask how many hours were spent studying in groups?

But more troubling is the undisputed claim that “after the first two years of college, 45 per cent of the students made no significant improvement in skills related to critical thinking, complex reasoning, and communication” and that two years later the percentage had only improved to 36 per cent.

Does anyone know how these critical skills were assessed? Has anyone taken such a test, in which “critical thinking, complex reasoning and communication” were validly measured? I have not investigated the testing instrument used in this study, but I would think someone would, before proclaiming that college students are dumber than they used to be.

Suppose the assessment of critical reasoning was the time and accuracy it took to fill in a crossword puzzle with the content knowledge expected of college students? Suppose it was a version of the Miller Analogies test, with content expected of a liberal education (be sure to cover art history and music) ? Suppose it was a thirty-minute essay question asking for the causes of terrorism in the Western world? Ask yourself, college graduates, do you want your critical reasoning skills assessed on any one of these tests?

The irony is the utter neglect of critical evaluation of a study that purports to measure the critical reasoning of college students.  How can we claim to know such things without knowing the nature of the assessment? The news media are the most uncritical arbiters of news about education in the literate world. They accept every test at face value. Heaven forbid we might test journalists this way.

I admit I am disturbed by the findings of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, because, regardless of the validity of their thinking assessments, where there is smoke, there is fire.  I try to learn what I can from studies that probe the learning habits of college students.

But I think it either hypocritical or delusional that the news media in general and Bob Herbert, in particular, would report on studies of student competence and knowledge, without asking if the tests were valid.  This is a classic case of uncritical thinking.

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Another Day of Small Things

With the slashing of the $25.6 million needed to fund the National Writing Project, my microcosm has finally gone macro, and my writing has abandoned its purpose to address “small things.” Having vented yesterday about how politics corrupts and confounds education, I’ll get back to the microcosm, where I should be living and writing.

I enjoyed the conversation between John Stewart and Diane Ravitch last night, as they reflected on what hard work teaching is.  They took the insider’s view: how much the needs of a community added to the burdens of teaching.  What the outsiders (read “politicians”) seem to ignore is that teaching is responsive to need. Teachers don’t just browbeat their students into learning. They try to engage them.

The military has a different philosophy: take the needy and make them strong. This is a lot easier to do when you feed, lodge and live 24 hours a day with your recruits. It is also easier to do with young people who have attained majority: 18 years on this planet. It is also easier with volunteers.

Retired military officers have been recruited to be teachers, principals, and superintendents in schools. I have never heard one of them say that education was analogous to the military. Inevitably they say it is far more difficult to manage a classroom or a school system than to drill a platoon. When politicians assume that a heavy hand is all that a school needs, they are ignoring the experience of the best and most altruistic officers the military has to offer.

Teachers understand the basic needs of the learning equation. They see the how enervating the lives of their students can be. They differentiate assignments, call caregivers, tutor after school, help absent students catch up during their lunch periods, consult with special education teachers, meet with guidance counselors, visit the nurse’s office, read assignments delivered by home teachers, and so it goes. Do politicians ever imagine that a teacher’s day could be so splintered? Don’t they imagine that the teacher stands in front of a room, gives a test, delivers a lecture, and goes home to forget the trauma of education?

Yeah, maybe at Phillips Exeter Academy. And maybe not.

So I end where I began. How the funding of education reflects an ignorance of what it entails. But today I feel better about what I am writing. Because I am thinking of the small things: the ten-minute intervals that constitute public education and the way teachers face those intervals with resolve. Trying not to ask, Am I getting paid enough to do this?

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Politics and Education: A Failed Marriage

Politics and education just don’t mix. The disconnect between so-called budget-reforming governors ( particularly in Wisconsin, Indiana and New Jersey) and the national sentiment about teachers shows that politicians do not get education.  They view it as a budget item, rather than a national priority.

Public opinion polls consistently support teachers, especially local teachers, and the current N.Y. Times poll  supports their right to bargain collectively by 2 to 1.  Although Governors Walker, Daniels and Christie have tapped into the budget-cutting spirit of their constituents, they are taking on the wrong adversary, when they seek to de-professionalize education.  They are bringing a machete into microsurgery.

Pay attention to the destructive impact of government on education in the current fiscal climate. New Jersey’s teachers have been publicly excoriated by a governor who presumably wants to recruit better teachers to his schools. Providence’s mayor has laid off an entire teaching force, clearly a publicity stunt, and thoroughly demoralized an entire school system. The governors of Indiana and Wisconsin have attacked the collective bargaining rights of their teachers, because they were  not willing to make wealthy tax-payers help offset the deficit.  And our Congressional representatives have blithely wiped out funding for critical literacy programs, in particular the National Writing Project, because we can not afford $30 million to fund the most successful professional development program in the United States.

In Linda Darling-Hammond’s study of three countries with superior performance on the Program in International Student Assessments exams, she found several shared national policies on education. In a comparative study of Finland, South Korea and Singapore, she found that all three countries actively recruited and paid for the education of superb teachers for their schools, and that they separated the national administration of schools from the political process.

The study is summarized in Chapter Six of Darling-Hammond’s book The Flat World and Education, which highlights major differences in the recruiting, educating and mentoring of teachers between three nations and the United States. Regarding “National Teaching Policies” she says they

recruit able teachers and completely subsidize their extensive teaching programs, paying them a stipend as they learn to teach well. Salaries are equitable across schools and competitive with other careers, generally comparable to those of engineers and other key professionals (193).

Teacher education is modeled on the education that the professional ministry wants throughout the primary and secondary systems, and it continues into the early years of teaching where expert teachers are paid to mentor the first- and second-year teachers in the most difficult years of professional orientation.

But the national administration of education in all three countries is also de-coupled from the political institutions. This strategy affects the entire program of teacher education.

these systems are managed by professional ministries of education,which are substantially buffered from political winds. Frequent evaluations of schools and the system as a whole have guided reforms (193).

The reforms to schools and professional development of teachers in these three countries are a remarkable contrast to the reform incentives currently engineered by federal and state governments in this country. See Darling-Hammond’s remarkable book for the details (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010).

When will our lunacy stop? When we can perform a decisive poli-tectomy on our education system.  Politicians have mucked up our national program with alternate diet and binge budgets, with short-term reform programs, with pandering to the testing establishment, with demonizing the “enemies of reform,” and by declaring we will have to do better with less.  How would that fly in Finland, South Korea, and Singapore?

Teachers know they can do better, more than any politician could imagine. They just need the opportunity. They need better leadership. The marriage of politics and education has failed miserably.  Set them free to do what they do best.