Recently in Curriculum Category

Dear Diane,

We've got to stop agreeing so much! I can't wait to read your new book so I can go into "attack mode" again. I always wonder, however, whether our disagreements are "fundamental" or based on our very different entries into the world of schooling. I think it's a bit of both. Your view that progressive education ideas became dominant at any time defied what I witnessed in schools I subbed in, sent my kids to, etc. (Even as it may well have swept the elite schools of education.) Your belief that there can be a curriculum that all could follow seems puzzling to me given what I also know about the kind of teachers and teaching you sought for your own kids, and even your reaction to CPESS. I just don't believe that if you were a classroom teacher you'd agree to follow someone's curriculum if you didn't agree with it. I'd rather impose a pedagogy than a curriculum, and you the other way around. But I suspect we both have in our head versions of each other's ideas that are not quite what the other means. We'll see.

I wonder at times what it's like to grow up in a society in which there are people whose bonuses are in the millions—many, many millions. Or annual salaries that are beyond most of our imagination in those big numbers we don't quite fathom. Surely, they can't "spend" it? But it represents the power to buy and sell ideas, information, political offices, and on and on. It unbalances the playing field beyond my wildest nightmares. And to get those bonuses when you failed—with built-in contracts that provide enormous pensions and severance pay—regardless of performance! And this from a business world that proclaims, if teachers get a few-thousand-dollar bonuses, they'd better work harder or smarter? Yes, I suppose I'd be less insulted if they offered a million to the top 10 teachers—based on anything they liked! It would be less demeaning.

If I had wanted to make a lot of money, would I have chosen to be a teacher? And to remain for 40-plus years inside the classroom and schoolhouse? I recall that when I got the MacArthur, reporters asked me whether I would now leave and do something more important. I used the money instead to support a teacher-led reform organization in NYC. (I also took my family on a vacation.) But the award was mostly important because it gained me respect—suddenly I was an "expert." Earlier, I had been invited to panels as the "voice" from the classroom, and folks from the university and the business world were there as the experts.

I was, as reader Erin notes, not looking for ways to "tweak" the system or get a few points more on test scores (which were the rage when I began teaching, too); I wanted to figure out (for myself, I suppose) what it would take to create a different life trajectory for ordinary kids. I happened to live in communities where the schools mostly served children of color, so that's where I worked, too. But the issue is broader—because the vast majority of our citizens are—I believe—poorly educated given the responsibility they possess for writing our future destiny.

I discovered, lo and behold, that what worked for the mostly rich kids who attended the independent progressive school I had gone to worked for all kids—with tweaks. If Obama, Duncan, Klein et al would send their kids to schools with small class sizes, then so should other families do the same. If their teachers had a variety of professional perks, so should ours. If their teachers had the freedom to explore new topics, to create environments that responded to children's interests and the world around them—so should it be for others.

Of course, there are more traditional elite schools—but they, too, tend to be smaller schools with smaller class sizes and they teach a full range of human endeavor—the arts, music, sports, etc. Oh, how I envied that, given my inability to give my students both the "basics" and the "extras." I made compromises that seemed immoral to me—but choices I felt we had to accept given time, budgets, and mandates.

I spent last Saturday evening with students and families who came to CPE in 1974 and many years thereafter—we now educate at CPE the children of our children—and hope to be around for their children, too. The power of their ideas—not mine or our teachers alone—was what drove the school. And it helped make it a place that adults enjoyed and were inspired by—constantly in a state of "relearning."

It could be. And, alas, the charters are in many ways less free than we were within "the system"—and most don't use what freedom they possess to be labs for the rest of us. But two quite remarkable superintendents—Anthony Alvarado and Steve Phillips—between them created a K-12 "district" larger than most cities in which school people redesigned what "regular" schooling could be. CPE was "merely" one of many—and many survive, hanging on by a thread, but determined to persist in going against the grain.

Deborah

P.S. Did I tell you about a marvelous book by Garrett Delavan, The Teacher's Attention (Temple University)? Delevan makes the case for smaller schools and smaller classes, or as he calls it "relationship load reduction." Delavan is a high school teacher in Salt Lake City.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:09 AM | Permalink | 68 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

On standardized standards: I'm a fan of disagreements and messiness—and maybe that's beyond the call of Reason. But here's a try.

If we all agreed on everything, or even came close, democracy would be an inefficient and cumbersome business and a luxury we could ill afford in tough times. Yet getting agreement is no easy matter. Democracy was "invented" to do that—when needed.

My default position: leave it to those most affected to settle it. Of course, that doesn't work a lot of times. Sometimes what one individual or group wants requires collaboration, or interferes with what others want, or is unfair to a minority, e.g. unconstitutional! Then we have to go up a notch. And up. In today's complex, interdependent world, all three reasons often come into play. Furthermore, to remain a self-governing people one needs to ensure that self-governance itself is protected, e.g. severely unbalanced power undermines its foundations.

Passing the idea of democracy on to the next generation is also no easy matter. It's not intuitive, we're not born democrats. Children need to see, feel, hear, and touch what "society" itself means; best of all in a setting in which there are diverse subcultures, viewpoints, and, thus, disagreements to be contended with.

I quote John Merrow: "In an era when many of us are embracing Twitter, Facebook, and other 'virtual communities,' we may think that walls are breaking down everywhere...but a new report by the Knight Foundation tells us that real (geographic) communities matter more than virtual ones." 'Learning' democracy can't rest only on 'virtual' realities.

In small schools or communities, decision-making is often bitter and nasty—but there's a better chance of being heard, of coming together on how to proceed. Under the best of circumstances well-intended and sane disagreements can produce heat. But also enlightenment.

In a political group I once belonged to, whose ideas placed them far from the center of power, we had fierce arguments and votes on who was "right" about all manner of big and small questions—carried out with all the trickery displayed on the U.S. Senate floor. I was the member of a faction that tried to remind us that we only needed to vote about how to spend our very limited shared resources. Meanwhile, the various ideas espoused were too important to be settled by a vote. I was unpersuasive.

I may be equally unpersuasive on whether we should vote or delegate to one national body of experts the designing of the 'one right curriculum' from K-12. It's too important. At most, I'd like us to agree that, at least by 18, all our children should be strong and knowledgeable citizens.

I don't even want us to demand we teach children that democracy is best. I'm prepared to put up with some students who defend dictatorship. Many highly educated adults, after all, agree. But I want young people to have a deep and engaged experience with the dilemmas underlying the democratic idea, its history, and its practice. I'd even like us to become experts on parliamentary rules—especially rules about attacking someone personally (ad homonym)—versus attacking their ideas.

I want them to reach adulthood as experts on democracy.

But even if we could all agree on that purpose, the way to go about it is a different matter. What form of curriculum this implies is a discussion that I'd like every school, school board, and community to discuss. I think, in addition, we should teach the old-fashioned 3Rs—ideally in a thoughtful manner. And then let many flowers bloom: provide choices between advanced math vs. advanced art, music, drama; between 19th vs. 20th Century literature; studying ancient Asian or ancient Mediterranean civilizations; woodwork or cooking. For their own sake. When kids get close to graduating, school and family can help young people explore all their future options (audit colleges classes, take apprenticeships, study the job market, job shadow), as well as demonstrate that they can seriously defend their work and their ideas—with evidence and reason.

Somewhere along the way kids and the rest of us should take a break—to work at long-term and worthy projects, put on theater productions, sing in choruses, make our own meals—in short, a solid "non-academic" communal experience. I'd pick age 13. (For reasons which may be obvious.)

Then comes assessing our work. Linda Nathan's marvelous and highly readable new book, The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test: Lessons from an Innovative Urban School is a must-read. She explains how she abandoned the "Habits of Mind" she had created at her former school (Fenway H.S.) when she started the Boston Arts Academy—because that particular faculty and board didn't find the fit persuasive enough and designed their own. One size doesn't... (Although a no-stakes, more traditional test, plus a sophisticated sampled test—NAEP plus—might be an okay add-on.)

The building of a curriculum is part of what makes being a teacher such a pleasure, and challenge. The school becomes a center of learning for everyone. I remember with a thrill how deeply the kids and I got involved in understanding the Supreme Court during the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings. (And, what a shame it was that CPESS wasn't studying the U.S.S.R. at the time of its collapse.)

A good subject to study has legs—in the present, the past, and the future.

Deb

P.S. I am also less sanguine than you, Diane, about who will be making these decisions, not to mention the compromises that leave us teaching too much.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:40 AM | Permalink | 11 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

"To the extent that we can teach students to seek evidence and rational explanations, we will reduce magical thinking and encourage the application of reason and intelligence." —Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences, Sept. 29

We agree! That's my "core."

We also agree that Arne Duncan's agenda lacks evidence or rational explanations. Why? Partially because he ignores his own privileged schooling as irrelevant for all of those millions of "others." He's creating a system, a big business. He forgets that business data doesn't always speak for itself. Witness our current crisis.

Well-educated or not, all of us fall back on "common sense" and "street smarts." It's not a bad idea. But our street smarts differ (and which ones are relevant is tricky). Evidence that seems out of synch with our own experiences should make us pause. We need open minds, but not naïve or vacuous ones. The idea of a good education for democracy requires the recognition that one may be wrong. But one can also be right. Such an education requires respect for the evidence of our daily experience, too. Thus, self-interest, our individual slant on life, plays a role under the best of circumstances.

Personal experience: as a teacher, I have not found a student's past test performance on commercial standardized tests to be useful evidence. Unless. Unless I'm able to go over them, item by item, with the students at my side explaining their own reasoning. Yes, tests always tell us something, but what they tell us is a very different question. It's hard to "reason" me out of this conviction, but I do learn from my colleagues. (For public information about the state of education we can do better with low-stakes sampling.)

What I'm most interested in is the highlighted sentence above: how my students tackle knowledge claims. How they wrestle with their own, their neighbors', and society's dilemmas—how they make judgments on matters central to their and our future—including where to get advice.

My point about Dante, Shakespeare, et al was based on someone else's list of what every educated person should have read (or be able to pretend to have read). There are many such lists floating around. My school had its abbreviated list, too. For kids who've been exposed in the normal course of life to virtually nothing on those lists, the assumption that they can all be "covered" and memorized without damage to our core agreement above is the crux of the dilemma. Doing them together is time-consuming! Since the habits of using evidence and reason can't wait until we pour all the facts into children's heads, a good education must engage in both together. "Even" 5-year-olds learn by reasoning about the world while trying it on for size.

Even great teachers of important subjects are not The Answer. I took an amazing physics course with David Hawkins in Colorado one summer. I drove away with a seemingly deep understanding of one or two basic principles...or so I thought. On the drive east, they slipped away after about 650 miles. But what didn't slip away was my fascination with physics. I actually think I had good science teachers in both high school and college. But they couldn't get through to a roomful of teenagers as "out of it" as most of us were—particularly when it came to modern "counter-intuitive" science.

I liked my high school history teachers, but most of my smart friends found them "bor-ring." And mathematics? I didn't come near to learning what I wish I had, either about its beauty or its practical value. Why, if beauty matters, do we teach five times as much math as all the arts put together—without catching its beauty or its usefulness?

Yes, we are amusing ourselves to death, but in part because we are not "amusing" ourselves in our classrooms. My dictionary suggests that amusement includes pleasure. There's no reason tough stuff can't be a pleasure to take apart. Poor science education, as you say, that tries to fill the bucket (brain) makes us more, not less, susceptible to magical thinking. Because in the hurry to "cover" a lot, we teach scientific laws as though they are merely the word of authority. I always kept the textbook at my side when looking in the microscope in bio labs to be sure I was seeing the "right thing." I threw out all the potted plants that my kindergarteners had dutifully planted the week before—in a controlled experiment—when I discovered Monday morning that the ones in the closet were doing fine and the ones on the window sill had all died! My favorite college physics teacher did the same with an experiment with marbles rolling down a ramp. At just the critical moment when the teaching of science should have come into play, we both were too afraid the "kids" would learn the wrong thing.

In the effort to cover it all, even the best-educated are often cheated. Especially when it comes to judgments about what's in the best interest of all of us. (Fortunately, they may be somewhat better off regarding their own self-interest.) To better level the playing field we cannot cover everything in ways consistent with your highlighted motto. That's one dilemma. Nor do I expect that the "experts" who are in a position politically to write such standards (the details) are likely to be the best of their kind. (And, god help us, surely not the testing companies that turn them into test items with one right answer! Which, for teachers, is the real curriculum.) That's a dilemma, too.

Meanwhile, we need every potential juror and voter alike to know how to reason well, to deal with uncertainty et al. We need 100 percent of them to have had a shot at using their minds well, day after day after day for 12 years; at working through ideas, arguments; and, piqued by unexpected phenomenon or claims. They all deserve wise expert guidance that can catch them when they slip, shift the subject when needed, ask uncomfortable questions and more. For that we need a very different kind of schooling—for all. It won't happen overnight, but it's worth moving toward. Back to "Alice in Wonderland." If we don't care where we're going—and the only measure is a standardized test score—the more difficult reforms won't be tried, until we fail once again with the latest fads. The vocabulary section generally tells the meat of the story. It's a measure not of the test-taker's intelligence, but the language of his community and peers.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:57 AM | Permalink | 20 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Alternate title: What Does the Best and Wisest Parent Want?

Dear Deborah,

I am glad to see that you are trying to draw us back to the issues where we have genuine differences! You and I agree that testing and accountability—as currently practiced under NCLB—have become enemies of good education. We would probably disagree on the value of testing. I do think that testing, when sensibly deployed, is valuable. I am not part of any anti-testing movement. I think it is important to know how students are doing, as compared with their past performance and as compared with others in their grade or age group, and even as compared with their peers in other nations. I also see the value of testing for admissions purposes, as there would be no point in bringing a poorly prepared student into a highly selective institution; he or she would certainly fail. The biggest problem today is not testing, but the misuse and abuse of testing, the way that schools, districts, states, and now the federal government are misusing the results of tests to make high-stakes decisions about teachers, students, principals, and schools.

The list that you draw up to describe the kind of curriculum for which schools should be accountable reminds me of the recently released core curriculum standards developed in English Language Arts and mathematics by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Like you, they would be comfortable with non-specific outcomes, though they do not make recommendations for history, science, the arts, and other subjects.

We could get into a heated argument about literature, history, and the arts. I don't agree that the value of these subjects and of what is taught must await empirical evidence. While it is not true that "everyone should" read Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Homer, and it is likely the case that only a tiny proportion of the population has done so, I don't think that this far-out reference should be used to bludgeon anyone who would argue for specific curriculum content.

I don't agree that knowing history leads any to repeat and relive old enmities. Most old enmities are based on ignorance, fear, and misinformation. The more we know of history, the better able we are to defuse ignorance, fear, and misinformation. Nor do I agree, as you suggest (I hope playfully), that America's success "correlates with its disdain for history."

As for science, I suspect that superstition and belief in supernatural phenomena and conspiracy theories is the result of poor education in science. To the extent that we can teach students to seek evidence and rational explanations, we will reduce magical thinking and encourage the application of reason and intelligence.

For better or worse, I will always side with those who favor more education, not less. We have words for those who don't know history, who have not read worthy literature, who know no science, and who are indifferent to the arts (and think that their doodles while daydreaming belong in a museum): Ignorant. Those who have no basis for reaching an educated judgment rely on hearsay, biases, prejudices, and the opinions that they picked up from their family and friends.

Thomas Jefferson said it first: Those who expect to remain both ignorant and free in a state of civilization expect what never was and never will be.

The Founding Fathers were themselves highly educated. They knew the muck of ignorance that had produced war after war in Europe, unending conflict over religion, and bitter enmities. They wanted something better in the new nation they were creating. To read their writings is to see how widely they read in history and literature, and how much they cared about learning the principles of science. To read them is to raise questions about whether we are as well educated today as they were. Some are, most aren't. As Neil Postman titled one of his books, we are amusing ourselves to death and allowing popular culture—often degraded and corrupting—to determine the content of our minds.

Jefferson would be appalled. I think John Dewey would be, as well. It was Dewey who wrote that what the best and wisest parent wants for his child is what we should want for all children. I expect that Jefferson, Dewey, and that "best and wisest" parent could find common ground were they to break bread together. I would like to be there when they do!

Diane

P.S.: Please let's turn to Arne Duncan's latest statement about his plans for the renewal of No Child Left Behind!

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:17 AM | Permalink | 50 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

A good narrative is worth a dozen treatises. For good and for bad, we are a species that needs a good story. It’s why simplified history has appeal—we always want to give it a good beginning, middle, and end with a useful moral lesson. We tend to seek, therefore, the “evidence” that supports our story line—and moral. It’s very hard to avoid, especially for those who are required to have a “story line” for every subject—such as presidents. In short, you can’t be President and not delegate, and you can’t delegate without a large measure of trust. He’s simply made the wrong leap of faith.

It’s also true that some story lines, and the facts that fit them, become so commonplace that they are hard to dislodge by counter-facts. Whenever I write a public essay claiming that our schools are not in a state of historic decline, fact-checkers call to ask for citations. They do not ask the same of those who claim the opposite. This is the way of all media, and the only thing worse would be the absence of public media to catch the mis-facts in Obama’s education speech.

I’m worried these days not only about the distortions you quote, but by the dismaying state of the American press. See The Nation story by John Nichols and Robert McChesney, on "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers." I grew up thinking the daily newspaper was part of the landscape of democracy. But both TV news and the daily press may be things of the past. That’s a loss for which democracy, above all, may pay a heavy price.

I may quarrel with journalists (why didn’t they catch Obama’s facts?), but it’s a lover’s quarrel. They’re not living up to their calling, and bloggers cannot replace them. This is a public policy issue just as critical to the 2lst Century as K-12 schooling. It’s part of the nation’s “education” crisis.

Using the current public schools as best we can to prepare future adults to exercise good judgment about whatever media is available (which hopefully will include writers they disagree with) is essential! K-12 test scores give us no clue to this. Sometimes our opponents' challenges are critical, including the readers of our letters! Schools should be about preparing us to dig deep enough to make sense of truth claims, to act even on incomplete knowledge, and later to change our minds.

I’m a reformist, not a revolutionary, because revolutions in human habits don’t work. Humans resist discontinuity and unpredictability. We may be “wired” that way? In any case, I’m sympathetic, not hostile, to caution. So I’m betting on exploring what “works” within the context of both shared ends and different ends—honoring both continuity and change at the same time. They needn’t be poised as enemies. We need to see how we can invent rules of the game that honor differences, that can fit within the larger tent. We need to gather long-term data about the trade-offs embedded in alternate models of schooling: the KIPPS and the Mission Hills. Maybe the best of each is what we seek.

While we cannot produce miracles even with expanded hours, days, or even resources, we can produce impressive results if we dare build a consensus among families, neighbors, students, and faculty—school by school. The tendency to fit our facts to our biases is inescapably part of our competition with each other. Maybe Hirsch, KIPP, the MET, and the Coalition can fit under a common tent even if they appear to be in contradiction to each other. What policies would be good for them all, might be the better question to ask, Diane.

This would be easier to do if the President of the United States used his bully pulpit to initiate such a conversation rather than repeat alarmist slogans. And yes, Diane, I suspect there’s a purpose in this constant reiteration of bleak facts and non-facts. (Otherwise, why is there no cheering over our incontrovertible high international test score standing in literacy, or why is the NAEP data on pre- and post-NCLB so rarely made public?) But since you and I are right about the value of public education (of course), we have a good shot at either out-arguing them or winning them over. Hopefully, during the coming four years—if we are bold enough to imagine that we can coexist—we can see “reform” as something beside a horse race or marketplace with winners and losers.

Deb

P.S. Mike Klonsky’s blog, Small Talk, points up more misleading data:

"Philanthro-capitalist, short-seller, and former AIG boss, Eli Broad, is interviewed in Forbes magazine as saying:

In the last 10 years, we've [The Eli Broad Foundation] done a lot in training superintendents. Bill Clinton told me when he was governor 16 years ago there was one charter school. Now there are 16,000. Now we have districts offering teachers bonus pay for improved student achievement. Things are improving.

[Klonsky:] Eli, do your homework before you speak. There are approximately 4,500 charter schools in the U.S.—not 16,000. Better redo your business plan."

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:32 AM | Permalink | 31 Comments | TrackBacks (0)