Ashley Berner

New national report provides recommendations for re-opening brick-and-mortar schools

Special to redefinED May 14, 2020

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: redefinED guest blogger Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, and David Steiner, the institute’s executive director, comment on their new report, jointly released with Chiefs for Change, that outlines relevant research and provides key recommendations for reopening K-12 schools when public officials deem it safe to do so.

COVID-19 brought face-to-face learning around the world to an abrupt halt. Now, after weeks and months of remote learning, some countries are beginning to open the schoolhouse. Others, including most U.S. systems, will not resume brick-and-mortar operations until August or September. The first order concern is, of course, the health of our families and teachers.

But education leaders already are wrestling with critical issues that are next in line, such as: How will we structure instruction to maximum effect? What additional supports should we build into the school year to prepare for abrupt changes in the future? And, most importantly, what is the best way to accelerate, rather than remediate, student learning in the wake of COVID-19?

To answer these questions, our team at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy partnered with Chiefs for Change to evaluate the research on interventions that work for students in normal times and in the wake of crises such as SARS in Hong Kong or tsunamis in Japan. The result is The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?

Our guidance is evidence-based, represents the collective wisdom of our country’s forward-thinking chiefs, and offers concrete steps to scale up excellence. It is also sector-agnostic; the changes we suggest apply to district, charter, and private schools alike. A summary is below.

First, add hours and days of learning time to the school calendar, in line with international norms. Students in many countries take shorter summer holidays (6-8 weeks instead of 12!) and experience more days of instruction. Extending the academic year has lots of benefits, such as stanching the summer learning loss that particularly affects low-income children, and allows more young people to hold part-time jobs throughout the year.

Second, redesign staffing models to maximize instruction and social-emotional support. Teachers have different strengths. Some possess extensive content-knowledge expertise and deliver highly effective instruction; others are incredibly adept at connecting with kids and making them feel known and seen. Changing the model makes sense. Instead of aiming for smaller class sizes across the board, we should let “master teachers” lead larger classrooms, while teachers who are demonstrably excellent at providing individualized academic support and personal relationships can lead smaller mentor groups.

Third, help students build habits of self-direction and self-regulation. There are many ways to promote these capacities, but two that we mention in the paper are building in practice time for remote learning models and allowing meaningful consequences for academic success and failure. Too few American classrooms enable the “productive struggle” of letting students wrestle with a problem until it’s satisfactorily solved; too many assessments lean heavy on teachers without placing commensurate responsibility on students to learn the material. This needs to change.

Fourth and finally, use this opportunity to ramp up the rigor of classroom instruction. Remediation toward grade-level reading or math does not work in the aggregate; students who start behind usually stay behind. Instead of addressing students’ missing skills, we should be accelerating their access to knowledge-rich materials that challenge and delight them. Skills can be learned along the way. Teachers’ professional development should meanwhile revolve around excellent use of high-quality materials – the ones they actually use in the classroom. For their part, leaders should embrace – and incentivize – content-rich assessments that are integrated with strong curricula, in every tested subject, thus creating a virtuous circle around student learning.

We know that “high expectations” matter for student success. But copious studies from around the world lead us to the much more profound, and much more specific, nature of the “high expectations” that really do narrow achievement gaps and accelerate social mobility: expect students to master, synthesize, and deploy knowledge-rich content. (For more on why curriculum matters, see recent posts on this blog (here, here, here, and here). And keep in mind that two things matter: what we teach and how effectively we teach it.

COVID-19 has been devastating for entire domains of American life. There is much we cannot control as we look ahead to Fall 2020. One thing we can do, together, is use the unexpected pause on business as usual to design education for the better.

May 14, 2020 1 comment

Ashley Berner Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Course Choice Customization Education Equity Education Research Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Why curriculum matters for parents and guardians

Ashley Berner May 5, 2020

Ashley Berner

Editor’s note: This commentary from Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is the fourth in a four-part series that examines the importance of high-quality materials for state leaders, schools, and parents.

In the past few weeks, this column has explored why curriculum matters in general; why it matters for state policymakers; and why it matters for private schools. Now, we turn to why curriculum matters – or should matter – to parents and guardians.

For shorthand purposes, I use the term “content-rich curriculum” below to indicate a sequenced, spiraled, knowledge-building course of study in all the major subjects, including English Language Arts (ELA), math, social studies (with a focus on history and geography), science and foreign languages.

Such an approach is not primarily about “skills,” which scholars as different as Diane Ravitch and E.D. Hirsch call out as insufficient. Rather, it is about learning specific content, and through that process, acquiring the skills that are necessary to integrate and engage creatively with what one knows.

With that in mind, here’s why families and guardians should pay particular attention to the curriculum their child’s school supports.

First, a content-rich curriculum, delivered effectively across the K-12 experience, is likely to accelerate your child’s academic achievement.

To make this concrete, what if you found out that if the school switched from a run-of-the-mill curriculum to a higher-quality one, your child could add months of learning to the schoolyear? Research studies have shown precisely such effects with specific curricula (summary, here). Studies also show the opposite: When schools turn away from a content-rich approach, students lose ground.

But it isn’t enough for the school to bring in a high-quality curriculum; they have to help teachers wield it well. It takes time for teachers to “get” a curriculum from the inside and make it their own in the classroom. New teachers in particular need mentoring from more advanced peers and from instructional leaders. Research supports this finding, as well (here and here).

Ask the school: Which curriculum do you use in each subject in each grade, and why? Do you provide curriculum-specific professional development for teachers, and if so, how frequently?

Second, a knowledge-rich curriculum can help ensure that your child is actually prepared for college and career.

The “actually” is important. Many schools offer high school diplomas that do not really reflect career and college-readiness (see here and here).

How do we know? Because of the high number of high school graduates who must take remedial courses in college or trade schools. Depending on whose numbers we use (here and here), somewhere north of 40 percent of high school graduates take remedial courses in math, English, or both.

Why is that important? Because remedial coursework does not count as credit-bearing. Thus, worst-case scenario, young people end up spending hard-earned money (either their own, their parents’, or the federal government’s) on required classes that don’t count toward college completion. This hurts first-generation students disproportionately (here). As a result, some state legislatures have worked to end remedial coursework categorically, and some institutions – such as the City University of New York – offer robust academic and social-capital support, successfully, in lieu of remediation.

The good news is that students who take more rigorous courses are better prepared for life after high school (with other positive community effects, besides). Research studies have borne this out again and again.

Ask the school: (Elementary) How many of your graduates go on to selective middle and/or high schools? How many of your graduates are prepared for honors courses in middle and/or high school? (Secondary) What percentage of your graduates can take credit-bearing courses in four-year colleges, community colleges, or trade schools?

Third, a content-rich approach will help your child become a more adept adult citizen.

How so?

Think of launching an adult into the world who does not know the capitols of U.S. states, the geography of the Middle East, the belief systems of the world’s major religions, or the 20^th century’s encounters with totalitarianism in various forms – but can vote. Sadly, this is, in fact, the trajectory on which today’s K-12 students (in the aggregate) are set.

Last month, the U.S. government released the results of the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics, history, and geography, and the results were stunningly low: The percentage of American kids who were proficient or above in U.S. history, geography or civics did not rise above 27 percent in fourth, eighth or 12th grades. In fact, in each of these three subjects, the proficiency rates went down with every year in school. For example, only 12 percent of American seniors were proficient or better in U.S. history. Wow.

Granted, raising the next generation of citizens isn’t exactly top of mind for most of us when we enroll our children in school. But citizenship has remained the central justification for public funding for education in democracies around the world since the early 18^th century (for a summary, see here).

It isn’t just content that matters; teachers can help students disagree with civility, something that researchers call an “open classroom climate” and that generates an independent, and positive, effect on long-term civic behaviors (summary, here). This, too, is something parents and guardians should ask about – particularly in middle and high school.

Ask the school: What does your history, geography, and civics curriculum look like? Do you require kids to memorize capitols and demonstrate knowledge of geography? What priority does the school place on civil disagreement? How does it support teachers in creating this space for students? What opportunities exist for students to participate in debates, Model United Nations or mock courts?

What about the case of religious schools that use worldview-specific materials? Let the parent be wise. While some religious curricula also are rich intellectually, others are decidedly not. Those of us who are religiously observant and select schools that correspond with our beliefs need to look under the instructional hood. The questions above still apply. Remember that while many democracies actually fund religious schools on equal terms, they still require these schools to provide an intellectually robust learning pathway (earlier post, here). Why should American religious schools offer less?

What about independent college preparatory schools, which seldom adopt curricula but rather ask faculty to design their course of study and select materials appropriately? Studies suggest that, in the aggregate, such schools have an outsized, positive impact on academic and civic outcomes (see here and here). But “the aggregate” isn’t every school.

In schools that have been accredited through a rigorous process (such as by an affiliate of the National Association of Independent Schools), the course catalogues often are sufficient to reassure parents and guardians about intellectual heft. Parents should, however, be aware that independent schools can be as susceptible as their peers to pedagogical trends – not all of which are helpful. A careful examination of the programs of study before enrollment, and attentiveness to knowledge-building during homework sessions with your child, are still important.

In the end, no school is perfect; every school has strengths and weaknesses. What if the district school to which your child is assigned, or the school you chose based on other factors, has only modest academic ambitions for your child – and the curriculum reflects it? What if the school is either unwilling or unable to use higher-quality materials?

You may decide out of necessity or good conscience to stay where you are, but to supplement your child’s academic progress on your own. Here, too, knowing what your child is learning, and when, makes finding resources that are content-rich (our Institute’s suggestions here and here), easier. It also makes dinner conversations more interesting!

May 5, 2020 0 comment

Ashley Berner Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Course Choice Customization Education Equity Education Research Featured Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

Why curriculum matters for private schools

Ashley Berner April 28, 2020

Ashley Berner

Editor’s note: This commentary from Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is the third of a four-part series that examines the importance of high-quality materials for state leaders, schools, and parents.

Family background dictates a hefty portion of students’ academic outcomes (samples from the voluminous literature here, here, and here). It isn’t a shock to find out that kids from well-resourced homes out-score their less advantaged peers on standardized tests and high-school completion rates.

We all hope for schools that nullify the predicted trajectory, that push against the odds and facilitate social mobility. But because these schools are sadly a rarity, the field debates whether we should put our education reform eggs in the school-improvement, charter, and choice baskets, or rather into funding to diminish economic and social disparities.

But two factors lie more firmly within schools’ control: curriculum and school culture. The two previous columns focused on current research and policy with respect to curriculum, with an emphasis on state leadership. I want to focus in this column on why curriculum should matter to private schools, particularly those with a religious framework.

Why should private school leaders take a fearless inventory of their curriculum, with a focus on the knowledge-building it offers and the quality with which it does so? For some leaders, learning that a knowledge-rich curriculum manifestly benefits students is a persuasive reason. They’re all in and want to know if their own school’s curriculum measures up. Others are not convinced, and to them, I offer at least three reasons why the exercise is worth undertaking.

First, they would be joining the most forward-looking and effective district and charter schools, many of which are surging ahead in achievement as a result. Progress is uneven, of course, but many state and district leaders are placing big bets on high-quality curriculum and instruction. Look at Duval County’s implementation of Eureka Math, Core Knowledge Language Arts, and Expeditionary Learning; Baltimore City Public Schools’ adoption of Wit & Wisdom; and Chicago Public Schools’ success with International Baccalaureate.

A knowledge-rich curriculum is a signature of high-performing charter networks, too, from Success Academy and Public Prep in New York, to Great Hearts, IDEA, and BASIS in the South and Southwest. These district and charter school systems offer potentially life-changing educational experiences to some of our nation’s least advantaged children. Even in states with generous private-school scholarship funding, do private schools want to fall behind, perhaps forever?

Second, parents really do care about academic content. It is true that first-generation families care first and foremost about school safety. But that is not the final word.

Patrick J. Wolf, distinguished professor of education policy and 21^st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, is the scholar of record on the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in Washington, D.C. – a voucher plan that helps a modest number of families send their children to private schools. His five-year study (here and here) found that what parents wanted for their children changed over time. Initially, they wanted a safe school that their children enjoyed. Over time, however, they came to want more: academic attainment, college preparedness and intellectual depth. Their vocabulary and focus changed. A better environment alone does not suffice.

That parents care about academics comes out in other studies, too, such as a 2018 national survey conducted by Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA). The organization found a link between parents’ perceptions that some Catholic schools did not provide sufficient intellectual heft, and low enrollment rates. And when Education Next’s 2019 nationally representative survey asked, “How much should schools focus on student academic performance versus student social and emotional wellbeing,” parents from all demographic backgrounds gave a resounding preference for academics – in some groups, by a ratio of 2:1.

Finally, and critically for religious schools, a robust worldview and a challenging curriculum need not stand in opposition. This is a point of contention in some religious circles. The debate comes down to whether knowledge that lies outside of a tradition’s sacred text(s) is viewed as part of the sacred order (and therefore good), or outside of it (and therefore damaging).

This is a complex issue. There is substantial variability between and especially within religious traditions. Most religious traditions celebrate the pursuit of the mind and view “reason” as a divine gift (for a small sample of a vast literature, see here, here, here, and here). This becomes a priority that influences these communities’ schools and accrediting bodies. Many religious schools, in other words, take a “high” view of intellectual formation and emphasize a rigorous liberal arts approach.

Other religious groups and their schools do not. As Mark Noll famously put it in 1994, “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind.” (He wrote not only as an eminent scholar but also as an Evangelical.) This skepticism can translate into a belief that non-Biblical, non-sacred texts are inherently wicked, or even to an overt rejection of academic success.

As a person of faith and a scholar of educational systems, it pains me to see religious “worldview” as an excuse for academically thin curricula and instruction. Our institute at Johns Hopkins reviews English, social studies, and soon science, materials for their depth and rigor. Among the explicitly religious curricula we have examined are some resources that we find poorly written and shockingly weak on academic content. What will be the consequences for children who graduate from institutions that choose these curricula?

Research suggests that many of them will be helpful contributors to society and law-abiding citizens. But what opportunities will have been foreclosed to them along the way? Which doors will have remained not only closed, but not even perceived? Religious school leaders, I would submit, have an obligation to provide not only spiritual formation but access to beauty, profundity, excellence – alongside the capacity to debate and critique artifacts that are deemed unworthy according to their particular tradition.

Most religious schools in other countries do this as a matter of course. In the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, most provinces of Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Sweden and France (to name a few), governments fund non-state schools generously and hold them accountable for academic results. These pluralistic systems separate schools’ ethos, which vary profoundly, from academic content, which should not. The most significant scholar of educational pluralism, Boston University Wheelock College of Education professor emeritus Charles Glenn, describes how school systems around the world thread the ethos and content needle here.

Of course, curricula are not morally neutral; all information is learned and interpreted through specific lenses, whether explicit or tacit. Some plural systems (the Netherlands is the most obvious example) fund curricular materials that are worldview specific and that also convey content deemed necessary for an educated citizenry.

Unlike many of our democratic peers, the United States will never have a common curriculum at the national or even at the state level. This does not mean, however, that religious schools should de-value intellectual knowledge-building, explicitly or implicitly. There are reasons (including religious reasons) to take knowledge seriously.

Read Ashley Berner’s previous posts in this series here and here.

April 28, 2020 1 comment

Ashley Berner Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Course Choice Customization Education Equity Education Research Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Why curriculum matters for state leaders

Ashley Berner April 21, 2020

Ashley Berner

Editor’s note: This commentary from Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is the second of a four-part series that examines the importance of high-quality materials for state leaders, schools, and parents.

The case for a knowledge-rich curriculum is strong. How can state policymakers make its use the norm? What is even possible in states with firm traditions of local control and extensive choice programs, both of which contribute to variability in content and instruction?

Two (very different) states are role models: Massachusetts and Louisiana.

In 1993, Massachusetts passed a law that required strong curricular frameworks for K-12; established new, rigorous assessments; changed teacher certification to reflect deeper mastery of subject-matter; and specified that professional development focus on subject-matter expertise (see here, here, and here). Over the next two decades, the state became one of the highest-performing educational systems in the world.

More recently, under John White’s leadership, Louisiana made high-quality materials a signature priority (see here, here, and here). In the last few years, membership organizations Council of Chief State School Officers and Chiefs for Change have elevated this work and carried it to other states and districts. See, particularly, Chiefs for Change’s policy memo and the Center for American Progress’s report, on the process.

There are at least four concrete actions that innovative state leaders could take (or have already taken), from least to most extensive, to drive change.

Make the case based on evidence.

Two kinds of evidence matter here: evidence from research, and evidence from your state. The research on the benefits of choosing a knowledge-rich curriculum and empowering teachers to deliver it is robust, but making good on that research pushes against the grain and requires an explicit, and consistent, focus. It means translating the research into the currency of your context, whether that means adequate support for English Language Learners, fiscal responsibility and cost-effectiveness, teacher leadership initiatives, or strong culturally-relevant materials, and then creating a common conversation across stakeholders.

Research on your state can take several forms but is a variation on the theme, “Do you know what your teachers are using?” To answer this question, leaders can support system-wide surveys on teachers’ materials use (as one state we worked with undertook in 2019); offer targeted funds for districts to use for such purposes (as Massachusetts did – see here); and/or develop recommended lists of strong curriculum (see Tennessee as well as Louisiana).

A good survey, such as one based on the RAND Corporation’s national panel, will tell you not only what teachers are using, but why, and for what purposes. District- and state-level findings provide actionable data that let leaders identify exemplars as well as the most pressing needs.

Change procurement.

Most of us yawn when we hear “procurement.” But the protocols by which materials and professional development are selected make a huge difference. Once it had identified high-quality materials with the help of teacher experts, for instance, Louisiana made it easier for districts to purchase them.

State and district regulations on textbook selection vary, of course, but every state can create a policy environment that promotes better choices. As Chiefs for Change wrote last year, “States should provide the knowledge and expertise necessary to help districts and schools select high-quality options without sacrificing the flexibility and autonomy needed to cater to the uniquely local needs of their communities.”

This plays out even in terms of the ideal Request for Proposals (RFP). For guidance about RFPs that incentivize, and those that discourage, high-quality applicants, see here. States could curate model RFPs for district use.

Change teacher preparation.

A third mechanism to promote high-quality curricula is to embed what my colleague David Steiner calls “Curriculum Literacy,” or “the capacity to decide whether a given set of instructional materials is strong or weak,” into teacher prep programs. There are many barriers to doing so, not least that schools of education moved decidedly away from specific content knowledge and towards developmental psychology, more than a hundred years ago.

There thus remains a strong bias in the field against requiring specific knowledge. Nevertheless, preparing teacher candidates to discern the wheat from the chaff would directly benefit the children they end up teaching. For detailed guidance on what it would look like to move the needle, see here.

Design curriculum-specific assessments.

The highest-octane change that state leaders could make would be this: Integrate high-stakes assessments with particular curriculum content that students need to master. This is how summative assessments actually operate in many other countries, with content-specific exit exams in all major subjects, at the end of each grade or grade band. Such an arrangement places meaningful responsibility on students for their own learning (a good thing) and provides clear signals to teachers and parents alike about what instruction should look like.

For a glimpse at how Alberta, Canada, does it, see here. Alberta funds all different kinds of schools, from Catholic, Jewish, and secular, to Inuit and even home schooling, but holds them together through the content knowledge that all students learn and through assessments that ensure that they master it.

An analog in our country would work the other way around, from the curriculum materials that schools actually are using, to tests that reflect that content. One could imagine states having not one but rather several state assessments, each of which draw on high-quality materials being used in the field. Think of a state like Florida, where numerous districts, charter networks, and private schools have begun to use Eureka Math, Agile Minds, or Bridges (in Math) and Wit & Wisdom, Core Language Knowledge Arts, or Guidebooks (in English Language Arts). What if the state allowed schools to choose for-stakes tests that were derived from these curricula, as opposed to only offering one curriculum-agnostic, skills-based state assessment or, for tax-credit-supported private schools, nationally-normed but curriculum-agnostic ones?

A state-approved menu of curriculum-linked assessments would round out the virtuous circle of rich content for students, teachers, and parents. Students would know what was expected of them. Teachers could lean into classroom content without “test-prep breaks” of disaggregated skills. State tests would make more sense to parents, who could draw a straight line from the books their kids are reading. (Some high-quality materials even have parent resources for every unit.)

Even formative assessments could join in, with curriculum-specific tests that guide teachers more precisely, and quickly, instead of providing data that have nothing to do with the daily work of teaching and learning.

Lest one think that this is just pie-in-the-sky, it’s actually happening: Louisiana’s pilot assessment project, for which this institute serves as a partner to the work. This initiative, currently focused on middle school students in districts that opted in, assesses students on the most commonly used English Language Arts curriculum in the state (Guidebooks). The pilot tests the usual ELA skills, of course, but also asks students to think deeply about specific sources they’ve read in class, integrate new but related content thoughtfully, and synthesize ideas that arose across the year in an end-of-grade essay. One of the testing panels also draws on the state’s social studies content, thereby reducing overall testing time.

The Louisiana initiative reinforces the knowledge-build that we know works for teachers and kids, and it could be scaled up elsewhere. Any takers?

Read Ashley Berner’s previous post in this series here.

April 21, 2020 1 comment

Ashley Berner Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Course Choice Customization Education Equity Education Research Featured Parental Choice Private Schools

Why curriculum matters: research and policy

Ashley Berner April 14, 2020

Ashley Berner

Editor’s note: This commentary from Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is the first of a four-part series that examines the importance of high-quality materials for state leaders, schools, and parents.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that high-performing school systems around the world require students to master serious academic content (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Studies in our country show the same. The famous “Catholic School Effect” – the phenomenon in which American Catholic high schools in the late 20^th century effectively closed the achievement gap between wealthy and low-income students – occurred in large part because they used an intellectually robust curriculum (see here and here).

Or, when Chicago Public Schools put the academically rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in 13 of its extremely low-performing high schools in 1997, students who went through all four years were 40 percent more likely to attend college than their peers.

Why?

The rigorous four-year program enabled students to develop a “strong academic identity.” And interviews with the program’s graduates indicate that they acquired the academic background and skills to perform with confidence once they entered college.

A knowledge-rich curriculum isn’t just about learning facts. It is about engagement with meaningful information about the world and the questions that human life inevitably raises: geography, history, forms of government, war; foreign languages; how human beings wrestle through perennial questions of meaning and purpose and the good life; how they translate these questions into artistic form; what happens when biological ecosystems interact; how viruses mutate and how we create cures; and so on.

Note that we are not talking about mere skills. We’re talking about an intentional, subject-specific, knowledge build of the kind that leaders as different as Diane Ravitch and E.D. Hirsch have championed (repeatedly, in Hirsch’s case), that Dan Willingham’s empirical work validates, and that characterizes what all students in some countries and elite prep school students in ours, are routinely taught.

Schools and school systems that impart such knowledge make headway against socioeconomic learning gaps, because they give low-income students the background knowledge that better-resourced peers acquire in their homes. Moving to a higher-quality curriculum is also cost-effective; schools have to purchase or design curricula, so they might as well expend resources on strong as opposed to weak materials.

A content-rich curriculum also helps equip young citizens with information about liberal democracy – how it functions, why it matters, and how the American story looks from different perspectives (see here and here). Natalie Wexler’s beautifully-drawn recent book, “The Knowledge Gap,” sums up the growing body of research and provides clear examples of what knowledge-building can look like in actual classrooms.

The good news is that educational leaders in the United States are increasingly aware of the powerful effects of a strong curriculum and of what it takes to sustain its impact. For example, under John White’s leadership and with a team of teachers, the state of Louisiana began to promote the effective use of high-quality materials (see here and here).

Prominent organizations such as Chiefs for Change and the CCSSO are supporting the shift to high-quality curricula among their members (see here and here). EdReports has become a gatekeeper for curricular quality, and organizations such as Student Achievement Partners, TNTP, and Achievement Network are on the front lines to support the move to more challenging materials.

And school systems are taking them up on the offer: the list of charter networks, districts, and (some!) private schools that emphasize high-quality curriculum is growing by the day. To name a few, take a look at IDEA Public Charter Schools, Great Hearts Academies, and Success Academy Charter Schools; Baltimore City Public Schools, Cumberland County Schools (NC), and Duval County Public Schools; the Partnership Schools (New York City); and the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education.

If things are moving in the right direction, why devote more time to the subject?

Because many schools simply haven’t caught up. National studies of America’s classrooms find that most of them under-challenge students, particularly underprivileged students. The RAND Corporation’s national survey on instruction found that the vast majority of teachers cobble together their own lessons from a variety of sources, including from Pinterest, Google, and TeachersPayTeachers.

When our Institute reviews ELA and Social Studies curricula through our Knowledge Map process, we see high- and low-quality sources juxtaposed, and little effort to draw primary and secondary sources together into a coherent whole. A systematic approach to building mastery of any given topic – something my own children experienced in Oxford, England, at a Catholic school that followed the UK’s national curriculum – is, sadly, quite rare.

This is not just a malady of “public schools” or progressive education; many private schools have lost the plot along with their district cousins. I worry that some private schools all too readily accept public funds without a commensurate commitment to the in-depth knowledge-building that enables social mobility and democratic citizenship. I fear that commissioners of education leave tools on the table that could support quality across all schools, whether district, charter, or private.

And while parents clearly want more educational options, they also wish the available options were better academically.

The “curriculum effect” has implications for state leaders, schools, and parents. What can policymakers do to elevate educational excellence in a heterogeneous culture? How can private schools – particularly faith-based schools that rest upon religious worldviews – thread the needle between distinctiveness and common cause? What specific questions should parents ask schools about their instructional materials?

In coming weeks, this column will contrast the curricular status quo with a vision of what is possible for the next generation of American students. Please stay tuned.

April 14, 2020 1 comment