I’m not trying to butter up the folks at Ed Week.  Really.  I’ve been meaning to mention for a while how much I love the title of their blog that follows all things curriculum — “Curriculum Matters.”  Obviously, we agree.

Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution deserves the credit for reminding me how much I like it.  Curriculum Matters’s Catherine Gewertz posted a blog about his 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education, released last week.  Loveless addressed a range of topics, including reminding the world that the data suggests a tenuous connection if any between the quality of standards and student achievement.  By extension, Loveless argues that “despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards—not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states—the study foresees little to no impact on student learning.”

That seems like a big jump. We agree that standards aren’t enough.  So what does matter?  Well, curriculum matters.  And what, increasingly, is the task of curriculum-making based on?  STANDARDS, of course.   It seems to me a bit of a silly shell game to walk around talking about how standards don’t matter when every educator knows that quality standards can be a crucial ingredient in improving education. Having bad standards certainly doesn’t help.  And it seems like more than just a shell game, but a real exercise in putting one’s head in the sand, to dismiss the CCSS as unlikely to have impact because they are merely standards.

Are the CCSS perfect?  Of course not — no standards are.  But they are far better than what most states had.  The mere existence of the standards does not guarantee that students will do better.  But their mere existence has created an unprecedented opportunity to enhance the content and improve the quality of instruction in every classroom in 46 states and DC.  The standards have caused districts to look closely at curriculum, professional development, and much else that hasn’t been working and to consider big changes. Could all of this school and district-level focus on improving the content and quality of classroom instruction leverage meaningful improvement on a significant scale?  I hope even the most seasoned DC education wonk would say “yes.”

Lynne Munson

Miller does not understand how children learn to read.  You simply cannot teach reading effectively if you aren’t building students’ academic vocabulary in history, science, and other core subjects. Students’ reading skills will stagnate after 4^th grade if they have not been fed, and do not continue to get, a hearty diet of literature, social studies, and the sciences.  So sending the signal—as dropping assessments does more clearly than perhaps anything—to Kindergarten through 3^rd grade teachers that history and science are less important than reading and math skills is perilous.

Unfortunately, most other states already have sent this signal.  The home of Washington and Jefferson is among the last holdouts that put a strong emphasis on history testing at the elementary level.  A 2008 report by StandardsWork found that they were one of just six states that that had mandatory social studies testing every year between 3rd and 8th grade. Things have only gotten worse since. And not just at the elementary level.  Last year we wrote about Maryland’s decision to scrub – again, supposedly for budgetary reasons – its high school graduation exam in Civics and Government.  These short-sighted decisions at the state level, along with national level threats such as the recent move to drop required science testing from NCLB, paint a grim picture for the content of public education.  And they do so at an odd and perilous time.

Forty-six states and DC are in the throes of implementing the new Common Core State Standards in ELA and Mathematics.  The full name of the ELA standards is the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (my italics).  These standards are not intended to drive history, science, and other subjects from the curriculum.  In fact, because of the strong emphasis the standards put on the importance of using informational (non-fiction) books, they are a wonderful platform for teaching students MORE about history, science, the arts, etc.  The standards are intended to be implemented in the context of a “well-developed, content-rich curriculum” (a quote from the CCSS’s preface), not in an intensely narrow, skills-only context.

While legislators in Virginia and elsewhere insist that elimination of the tests in no way minimizes their support for the content, we know from studies, including a recently completed study by our organization, that “what gets tested gets taught.”   Ninety-three percent of respondents in Common Core’s recent national survey of school teachers blamed high stakes tests in math and reading for the narrowing of the curriculum they see occurring.

Let’s not treat education like an expendable piece of infrastructure that can be mined for cuts when the budget gets tight.  In the end, narrowing our children’s education is the most costly mistake any state can make.

Lynne Munson with Emily Dodd and Barbara Davidson

The essential premise of the book- that the most important component of school reform that will drive student achievement is the choice of curriculum that they are taught- is one that Common Core supports and is working actively to promote.  Indeed, Porter-Magee astutely articulates this position in her post when she writes “standards alone will do little to drive student achievement if they are not implemented via, among other things, a thoughtfully designed curriculum.”  Though this solution is neither quick, nor easy, Common Core believes that an internal approach to school reform that focuses on the content students are taught, the methods and practices teachers use, and the effective implementation of this content is what truly effects student achievement, and ultimately creates better schools.

Lynne Munson

Touted by my tour guide as the “most beautiful building in Washington,” the Library is an intricate, meticulously designed shrine to knowledge and learning.  Upon its walls are inscribed reverent phrases from Wordsworth, Tennyson, Keats, and Shakespeare on the quest for enlightenment.  Every way I turned I saw floor-to-ceiling panels or sculptures or architectural elements promoting poetry, law, commerce, history, art, science, or religion.  Covering one wall of the entrance to the famed reading room in the east corridor of the Jefferson Building, there is a large mosaic of Minerva, the Roman god of wisdom.  She is portrayed gazing at an unfurling scroll which displays an extensive list of fields of learning, including architecture, law, statistics, sociology, botany, biography, mechanics, philosophy, zoology, etc.  I was struck by the variety of topics the library’s designers took care to highlight and extol, and by the ideal they subscribe to in their work; that each subject should be celebrated as representative of human wisdom, and given equal value, esteem, and attention.

Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the Library of Congress was that it be a universal resource, where Congress and American citizens could become knowledgeable on any subject.  He was adamant that the Library contain a comprehensive wealth of knowledge on all subjects because he believed that the American legislature needed to a grasp of a wide array of ideas and topics in order to govern effectively.  He wrote in a letter to Congress supporting the inclusion of a diversity of books that there was “no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”[1]

Jefferson also believed an educated citizenry would in turn create a powerful and prosperous nation. As interpreted by the Library of Congress, education does not simply mean that citizens should have the skills needed to read, write, calculate, etc., but that they also be able to use these skills to do things like conduct experiments, discuss literature, explore history, debate religion, and ask questions about anything and everything.

The Library of Congress is intended to be the ultimate source of information and knowledge in America. It remains a national reserve of priceless educational treasures where any citizen can come to better themselves through learning. And yet, if you took an average public school class to visit the library today, how many of the students would even know the names and references etched on the walls of the building?  Our schools and curriculums have become so bogged down, and obsessed, with ensuring students have the basic skills they need that the rich and exciting content that makes learning meaningful is being lost.  Students aren’t encouraged to learn because it is their human right and responsibility to become enlightened and informed, instead they are encouraged to learn the skills they need to pass a test.

It is time to reaffirm our national commitment to the pursuit of deep, complex, and comprehensive knowledge, and to recognize the value of all the diverse fields of study that the Library of Congress represents.  As Americans we are so fortunate to live in a country that allows, and encourages, education for all of its citizens; there are so few countries that provide this opportunity, and fewer still with the wealth of publicly available resources to do so.  It is time we made the Library’s mission to “further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people” a mission that every school, teacher, student, and citizen can embrace and fulfill.

Emily Dodd

You can learn more about the Library of Congress, and its history, here.

Sometimes a Christmas TV special delivers more wisdom than it intended.  Like millions of other parents I watched “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” this past weekend with my kids.  They absolutely loved it.  My 5-year-old daughter was saddened when the other reindeer teased Rudolph, and touched by Clarice’s affection.  My 3-year-old son shouted “SCARY” when the Abominable Snow Monster growled over the mountaintops and swatted at Cornelius.  Both keep skipping around the house singing “Silver and Gold.”  My kids’ reaction was no different than mine when I first saw the show not long after it debuted in 1964.

What strikes anyone who watches Rudolph today is how basic this stop-motion classic is.  The set for the show appears to be made of little more than felt, foil wrappings, beads, and plastic snow.  The characters are of course puppets, made of wood, wool, faux fur, and vinyl.  If you look real closely you can see the lead wires on the puppets’ hands—and the dirt on Santa’s gloves.  This is low-tech.

Rudolph is one of a handful of 60s-era shows that continue to dominate the Christmastime TV lineup.  The others—you could name them—include  “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”  These shows are successful, of course, because they are beautifully crafted interpretations of great stories, either from books or from song.  It is the quality of the storytelling that keeps these tales around.   They not only don’t suffer from their low-tech-ness, but their simplicity helps us to focus on the story and characters.

Even though the broadcast and cable networks generate oodles of new shows every holiday season that they hope will enter this vaunted lineup, none has made it (though Polar Express appears to be making a good run for it.).  Most of these shows are faster-paced than the old stand-byes and, needless to say, far more slick.

My point (yes, I’ve finally gotten there) is that technology is no replacement for quality content.  A great story—no matter how simply told—will still shine through.  And a poor one—no matter how aided by special effects—will still fail.

One can draw a similar parallel between curriculum and education technology.  A curriculum rich in literary, historical, artistic, and scientific knowledge can of course make good use of new technologies, as long as they are smartly used in the service of the content and skills a teacher is trying to teach.  Such a curriculum also can work unaided.  But a weak, content-free curriculum based on vacant ideas such as “reading strategies” and relying on dry, incoherent basals containing “leveled” excerpts will fail, no matter how actively one tries to animate this dead material on a SmartBoard.

Lynne Munson

According to Field teachers they had to give students phony grades because the principal required them to spend all of their instructional time on math and reading.  A third grade science and math teacher told investigators his request to teach science for 10 minutes twice a week and social studies for 10 minutes once a week was denied.  Field’s principal told the teacher that students would “pick up” science knowledge though math lessons on creating and interpreting graphs.  According to a school counselor:  “I do not know of science being taught in 3^rd or 4^th grade, and I am unaware of social studies being taught at all.”

Many Field Elementary students also missed out on art, physical education, and music classes because they were pulled out of these “specials” for extra tutoring in math and reading.  A music teacher reported giving students all a grade of 95 because after the first six weeks of school she “never got to see them in music again.”  In one affidavit a math instructional coach reported “90 percent of third graders did not attend specials because of TAKS [Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills] tutoring.”

Field has earned the state’s highest school rating–“exemplary”—the last two years.  That judgment is based significantly on students’ performance on state reading and math tests, of course.

So, is what happened at Field a singular, potentially criminally extreme example of educational negligence?  Perhaps.  But the pressure that spurred Field’s principal is felt by public educators nationwide.  And this is far from the first time we’ve seen folks buckle under that pressure and do the wrong thing.  We’re reminded of the well-documented cheating scandals in DC and Atlanta.

Pressure can be an effective source of motivation.  It can also be used as an excuse to do the wrong thing—and to get others to go along.  As we begin to implement the CCSS and the new assessments to come we need to keep these stories in mind.  With its emphasis on informational text, academic vocabulary, and research, the CCSS in ELA provides an opportunity to fight curriculum narrowing, not an excuse to give in to it.  Social studies, science, and the arts are among a wide array of core subjects that can be taught in powerful ways via the new standards.  They should also continue to be taught in their own right, in part because no student will become a strong reader, writer, or researcher without the key knowledge those subjects impart.  No one should make the mistake Field did—and many other schools are likely doing in less dramatic ways–and set these subjects aside.

Lynne Munson

Education Week’s Sean Cavanagh highlights Dick M. Carpenter and Haning Hughes’ analysis of this trend and its effects on policy:

Because governors create policies based on how they define the purpose of education, Carpenter and Hughes contend. The emphasis that governors place on ‘economic efficiency’ is likely to feed states’ overall interest in standards, assessment, and accountability, the authors say.

Even as governors voice concern over college- and career-readiness and high dropout rates in high school and higher education, they continue to champion reforms that have had only minimal impact. Perhaps if governors shifted their educational rhetoric to emphasize the importance of building a knowledgeable and engaged citizenry, their policies would align to encourage education rooted in quality content, with positive impact in the classroom.

Gubernatorial rhetoric rings strikingly similar to that of the skills-centric movement; both find basis in economic rationales for reform. And both have resulted in little to no improvement in the state of our education system, as testified by our students’ test scores. This is because education in skills, without basis in knowledge, leads to minimal learning.

Far too often, those outside of education take it upon themselves to define it. But it is up to the people within education—educators and advocates alike—who understand and live its inner-workings, to call for a better definition.

Hillary Marder

But the reality is that these results are appalling — particularly if you consider the massive federal funding increases, intense reform debates, and the incessant promises of new technologies that have dominated the education discussion for nearly two decades. We have spent a great deal and worked very hard but gotten unimpressive results.  And this is in reading and math where, to the detriment of so many other core subjects, we’ve aimed nearly all of our firepower.

Einstein* defined “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.” Well, my bet is that Einstein would have deemed NAEP data absolute proof of America’s educational insanity.

We’ve spent the last twenty years attempting to make what, on the surface, appears to be a diverse, creative, and wide-ranging series of reforms to public education.  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.

Maybe we need to give content a chance.  What I mean by “content” is the actual knowledge that is imbedded in quality curricula.  Knowledge of things like standard algorithms, poetry, America’s past, foreign languages, great painters, chemistry, our form of government, and much more.  There are a few widely used curricula (e.g. International Baccalaureate, Latin schools curricula, Core Knowledge) that effectively incorporate much of this knowledge base. And performance data strongly suggests that these curricula work for ALL students.

So let’s draw on such successes and, sure, conduct more research, do more experiments, and spend more money.  But let’s do it to build a shared understanding what our students need to learn— the content they need to learn.  Then let’s use the best technology available and make the kind of investments we need in professional development to teach that content effectively. In light of the poor results other approaches have yielded, is there any other sane course?

Lynne Munson

*Attributed.

“There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate, to name three of the ’21^st century skills’ so dear to digital literacy enthusiasts. But such skills can’t be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to a joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you’ve already mastered. Nor is there any reason that these skills must be learned or practiced in the context of technology. Critical thinking is crucial, but English students engage in it whenever they parse a line of poetry or analyze the motives of an unreliable narrator. Collaboration is key, but it can be effectively fostered in glee club or on the athletic field. Whatever is specific to the technological tools we use right now—and these tools are bound to change in any case—is designed to be easy to learn and simple to use.”

Read on, here.