A great case for the importance of curriculum

My friend Matthew Levey makes a great case for the importance of curriculum (you can read his entire post at:http://gothamschools.org/2010/03/15/the-role-of-curriculum-in-education-reform):

 

The Case for Curriculum

Reform focused primarily on teacher quality raises logistical problems we're not ready to solve. Knowledgable reformers know we cannot build and maintain an army of superteachers ready for 10- or 20-year careers in Red Hook, Mott Haven and Washington Heights. While teacher quality is important, can the city responsibly assume that it will be able to develop effective tools, win (or roll) over the unions and fix today's Albany disaster?

Curriculum reform must play an equal role in our efforts. A recent Brookings Institution report noted curriculum's strong impact on student outcomes. Importantly, in a system as large as ours, curriculum can be developed centrally and replicated at almost no marginal cost, earning a far greater return on investment than merit bonuses for every qualifying teacher or hiring 10,000 high-quality teachers. In short, teacher quality is a long, expensive, politically difficult fix. Curriculum is comparatively fast, cheap, and also effective. 

 

Chancellor Klein and Al Sharpton, sincerely and correctly, identify education reform with civil rights. And this means a good curriculum is even more critical for disadvantaged kids who get less supplemental learning and exposure. For children from non-U.S. backgrounds to succeed, we must introduce them to the common
language and ideas the native-born use. Moreover, our poorest students frequently get moved around, so it's unfair to make them also adjust to multiple curricula at different schools.

Teacher quality advocates may ask: "How does a good curriculum help a poor teacher?"  I would rephrase the question: "Does a good curriculum make a poor teacher worse?" Lesson planning, delivery of instruction and classroom management — how to teach — are daunting enough without having to develop good content every week. A solid, coherent curriculum improves the odds for new or struggling teacher, and allows master teachers to focus on their kids' needs or mentoring colleagues.

Our school recently rewrote its social studies curriculum. Apart from being inefficient because the investment paid off for only a small number of students and because it's likely that the work had been done before elsewhere, this involved costly overtime for several teachers. A credible, centrally-developed curriculum would save money, provide critical scaffolding for students and teachers alike, and allow for enrichment by parents by giving them a clearer sense of what their children are learning. 

 

Long before reformers questioned her loss of faith in accountability, historian Diane Ravitch warned of the dangers of leaving curriculum to the high priests at Teachers College and the University of Chicago, calling out their romantic theories of child-centered development for what they are: theories. More recently the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, unsparing in its criticism of New York and national curricula and practices, cited as one example our practice of "spiraling" through topics as far less effective than "exposure, then closure" characteristic of high-performing systems like Singapore and Finland. At a well-regarded New York City middle school one math teacher told me, "I spend the first few months of sixth grade 'unteaching' what they learn in elementary school."

Spending more than $20 billion annually to educate 1.1 million children, New York City should use its leverage, as we have on teacher quality, and lead the charge to promote curriculum reform. The content we want our kids to learn is the fraternal twin of teacher quality, and it is high time we stopped treating it like a redheaded stepchild.

 

Matthew Levey is a former president of the Community Education Council for District 2 and the parent of two elementary school children.