The Importance of curriculum

Below is an email from my friend Robert Pondiscio, who specializes in and advocates for improved curricula.  In it, he takes issue with my line, responding to Ravitch, in which I wrote: "Saying you want a good teacher in every classroom and a well-rounded, rigorous curriculum is as trite as saying you're for motherhood and apple pie."  Robert's email begins:

 

I hope you will drop from your repertoire the idea that supporting a well-rounded, rigorous curriculum "is as trite as saying you're for motherhood and apple pie." I've heard this line from you often, and it displays, to be brutally frank (and please forgive my irritation), a nearly complete lack of understanding of standard classroom practice--including what goes on at some of the schools you regularly praise.  E.D. Hirsch has spent much of his career painstakingly documenting the content-free teaching that goes on in most U.S. elementary schools and the historical reasons for this.  Indeed, in his last book, The Making of Americans (which I believe I sent to you) he devotes an entire chapter to describing what "60 years without a curriculum" has done to academic achievement. 

 

My response: perhaps trite is the wrong word.  I'm certainly not dismissing the importance of teacher and curriculum quality – in fact, nothing is more important.  My point is that this is non-controversial – everyone's been saying this for decades, but nothing has changed.  The key issue is HOW do we improve on our current state of too many lousy and mediocre teachers and watered down curricula?  THAT'S what's hard – and my point is that Ravitch has no answers.

 

I asked Robert to answer the question I posed to Ravitch (which she ducked): what are the specific steps John White and Cami Anderson might take to improve the curricula in their schools.  Here is his answer:

 

A.   Don't make the mistake of thinking reading comprehension is a "skill" that can be tested and taught in the abstract.  See it for what it is: a function of a child's general knowledge.  Then commit to rigorously and aggressively implementing a content-rich curriculum--building background knowledge and vocabulary--from the very first days of school.

B.   Don't be lulled into the reasonable-sounding but wrong-headed idea that you're helping kids by making more time for reading instruction and less time for science, history, music, art, etc.  Reading achievement correlates with general knowledge.  They are not two different things, but the same thing.  Drench kids in rich content across subject areas.  Be diligent, patient and stick with it.  As E.D. Hirsch has pointed out, language comprehension is a slow-growing plant.  We all want quick fixes.  Sorry.  There aren't any. 

C.   Understand that "standards" and "curriculum" are not the same thing.  English Language Arts standards tell what students should be able to do (find the main idea, compare and contrast, etc) not what students should know.  The standards don't tell teachers what to teach.  Confusing standards and curriculum tacitly encourages bad teaching practice and wastes precious class time, by encouraging schools to work on inferencing or finding the main idea on any old piece of text, pushing students who come to school with less general knowledge even further behind.  The content matters. The authors of the Common Core State Standards take pains to note that "building knowledge systematically in English language arts is like giving children various pieces of a puzzle in each grade that, over time, will form one big picture.  At a curricular or instructional level, texts—within and across grade levels—need to be selected around topics or themes that systematically develop the knowledge base of students."   This idea needs to be front and center in curriculum planning, especially in the crucial elementary school years where the battle is won and lost.  If we continue with the same old, how-to, skills-driven, anything-goes, content-neutral approach to reading that dominates our classrooms now, nothing will change.  Nothing. 

D.   Learn from schools that implement a coherent, carefully sequenced curriculum like the Carl Icahn charter schools and P.S. 124 in New York City.  Ask the middle school teachers of kids who benefitted from such content-rich curriculum if they are not better prepared than their peers for academic success.

E.    Stop treating curriculum as beyond the scope of ed reform.  If you spend all your time working on structural changes and the content of kids education stays the same--even if you get a great teacher to deliver a bad curriculum--all you're doing is creating a new flavor of bad. 

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Email from Robert Pondiscio, rpondiscio@aol.com:

 

Hi Whitney,

 

I hope you will drop from your repertoire the idea that supporting a well-rounded, rigorous curriculum "is as trite as saying you're for motherhood and apple pie." I've heard this line from you often, and it displays, to be brutally frank (and please forgive my irritation), a nearly complete lack of understanding of standard classroom practice--including what goes on at some of the schools you regularly praise.  E.D. Hirsch has spent much of his career painstakingly documenting the content-free teaching that goes on in most U.S. elementary schools and the historical reasons for this.  Indeed, in his last book, The Making of Americans (which I believe I sent to you) he devotes an entire chapter to describing what "60 years without a curriculum" has done to academic achievement. 

 

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a staunch charter school advocate, parent activist and avid reform fan who described a visit to a well-regarded charter school--one that you have praised frequently.  She pronounced herself aghast at the horrible curriculum in literacy and math that she observed.  I described the email and school visit without identifying the school in a recent blog post on the Core Knowledge Blog titled "Building a Better Edsel."  My point, one that I make often, is that a vision of education reform that attempts to fix only the structures of schools without attending to what children learn makes no more sense that trying to fix the manufacturing processes at at Edsel plant.  Sure, there may be lots of problems at the plant, but the BIG problem is the product itself. 

 

The dominant method of teaching in U.S. elementary schools treats reading comprehension as a "skill" that can be learned, practiced, mastered and applied to absolutely any text.  As UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has pointed out, this is demonstrably wrong.  Dan's YouTube video, "Teaching Content is Teaching Reading" should be required viewing for anyone who comes within 100 yards of a classroom.  The bottom line is that there is nothing rigorous about the curriculum most American children get in the crucial elementary school years.  Similarly there is nothing trite about calling for a coherent, rigorous curriculum because the overwhelming majority of our children aren't getting one. I firmly believe that if you spent a few moments learning about how children are taught to read in this country and closely examining the literacy practices at even the schools you support, you would share my outrage and more clearly understand how inattention to curriculum is equal or greater to any of the threats to education reform to which you regularly draw attention.

 

I just came back from Denver where I was lucky enough to address a group of state elected officials and ed reformers on this issue at the Education Commission of the States.  I spent the better part of an hour unpacking for them what's wrong with the dominant ways we teach reading in our schools.  I have already been invited to reprise my presentation for state ed officials in Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Not one person said, "Yeah, but this is like mom and apple pie."  It is closer to say that they were surprised and dismayed to learn about the orthodoxies of literacy instruction in the U.S.  One member of the audience, a Teacher of the Year in her state, took pains to say words to the effect of "If you have any doubts about this, don't.  This is exactly what's happening in your schools." 

 

As the holder of one of the loudest megaphones in ed reform, you are doing a disservice with your oft-repeated "mom and apple pie" line.  I consider my reform credentials to be in pretty good order.  There is a reason why I focus on curriculum as a reform lever: it is because of my earnest belief that the dominant, content-free standard form of literacy instruction we give to kids -- most particularly low-income kids -- is the No. 1 problem.  Not the only one.  But one which, left unaddressed, will all but guarantee that all other reforms fail or underperform. 

 

I implore you to learn more about this issue.  And if you are unable or unwilling to do so, at the very least, please refrain from dismissing curriculum as an issue.  It is a very real problem, even in schools that you support.  By blithely dismissing it, you are hurting the very cause you work so tirelessly to promote.  Plain and simple.

 

Sincerely and respectfully,

 

Robert