Archive for December, 2009

Bah Humbug

Monday, December 28th, 2009

On the day before Christmas Eve author and educator Marion Brady contributed what can be characterized as a confused and joyless blog to the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet.” Among his assertions:

- Stop expecting—and paying for–students older than 10 to attend class each day.
- Gather students in groups of 25 and teach them in homes instead of schools.
- Eliminate not just grade and age levels but school buses and athletic fields, too.

Most of all, Brady argued that we should blame the weaknesses of our public schools on the decision in 1893 to adopt a core curriculum in history, math, science, English, etc. because it “pulled [the young] out of apprenticeships and other real-world learning experiences, [and] put [them] in rooms insulated from the real world.” For those who think that all children deserve to possess knowledge beyond the most practical and applied of experiences, and that there is a world beyond their neighborhood and family, Brady’s ideas are no less than maddening.

CC board co-chair Diane Ravitch had these additional insights:

Marion Brady’s article is really misleading. On the one hand, the author says the schools have gone wrong since 1893, when they adopted the idea of a core curriculum for all, but on the other hand Brady wants to save the universal public schools (that have had a core curriculum since 1893).

If Brady doesn’t like the idea of a core curriculum (history, science, literature, the arts, civics, geography, mathematics, foreign languages for all), perhaps Brady might be willing to tell us which children should be excluded from the study of these subjects. Would it be Brady’s grandchildren? Certainly not mine! Would it be the children of the poor? Children of color? Since our schools prepare students to participate in and lead our democracy, I don’t see why any of them should be denied access to the study of science or history or civics or literature or the arts.

This is a very confused article, which is right to criticize the so-called “Race to the Top,” but which advocates an alternative that has never existed.

Lynne Munson and Diane Ravitch

Posted in Curriculum | 2 Comments »

Did Colorado Get The Message?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Colorado’s State Board of Education must get their news by covered wagon. That might explain why the Denver Post is reporting that the new state academic standards, adopted last Thursday, stress the ideas promoted by the discredited 21st century skills movement.

The reading standards, for example, stress all kinds of faddish nonsense — did you know that “invention” is a 21st century skill? — but omit historically or culturally significant texts. Fordham’s State of State Standards survey has criticized Colorado’s reading standards for this before. Instead of addressing that problem, Colorado’s new standards wax eloquent about how “21st century skills are the synthesis of the essential abilities students must apply in our rapidly changing world. Today’s students need a repertoire of knowledge and skills that are more diverse, complex, and integrated than any previous generation.”

While the standards concede that skills can’t be taught without content, they still separate 21st century skills into their own category in the standards documents, and they’re very specific about the skills that need to be taught (and how to measure whether they are being taught), but provide no guidance about what students should know. A shame.

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Standards | No Comments »

What a Difference a Day Makes

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Well, a couple of days.  On Tuesday we praised Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for acknowledging that the public school curriculum has narrowed and for pledging to do something about it during ESEA reauthorization next year.

Then an alert reader pointed us to Duncan’s November 9 speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Education and Workforce Summit. We’re cheered that Duncan counts “weak curriculum” as one area in urgent need of reform. But Duncan is totally off-base when he suggests that the spin pushed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills should inform discussions of workforce readiness. (And, as a side note, P21’s report was published in 2006 – not 2008, as Duncan says in the speech.)

What’s P21’s research showing that 21st century skills are important and that high school and college graduates don’t have them? They claim to have surveyed “over 400 employers across the United States” (page 9) who said so. But open the report and go to page 60 to read about the survey methodology. There’s little here. P21 does not explain how the survey was administered or what questions were asked or even what they mean by an “employer.” They do array information about the types of industries they heard from and how many respondents were from each industry, but they make no effort to show how their sample compares to the overall makeup of U.S. employers. And needless to say they make no attempt to weigh for any kind of over- or under-sampling. P21 doesn’t even explain why it was satisfied with a sample size of 431 “employers” when there are about 6 million such entities in the U.S. Even P21’s own authors advise that “[c]aution should be used in generalizing results to the entire U.S. population of employers.” (page 60) How, exactly, is this valid data?

Is it a cheap shot to ask?

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Curriculum | No Comments »

Stop the Presses

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Arne Duncan told guests at last weekend’s Kennedy Center Honors that the curriculum has narrowed and that his revisions to No Child Left Behind will work to remedy the situation. Duncan’s pledge comes shortly after a GAO report on student achievement concluded that curriculum narrowing has taken place.

From the AP story:

“At a dinner during last weekend’s Kennedy Center Honors, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said improving arts education will be a key element of his proposed changes in former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. He said parents, teachers and students all have noticed a ”narrowing of the curriculum.”

”I’m convinced when students are engaged in the arts, graduation rates go up, dropout rates go down,” Duncan said.”

Did someone sneak Arne a copy of the Center for Arts Education study that linked high school graduation and arts education?

James Elias

Posted in Arts, Curriculum | 1 Comment »

Non-Learners

Friday, December 4th, 2009

“All we’re trying to do is lay down a thoughtful set of design specs [for education].” –Ken Kay, Partnership for 21st Century Skills

In today’s edition of Education Week Stephen Sawchuk profiles P21. And he does so with the kind of hard-nosed journalistic skepticism that was absent from coverage of P21 for years. He discovers that this organization, which claims to be concerned with educating students, has a staff consisting entirely of public relations consultants. That its official address is that of a lobbying firm for tech giants. And that it was founded, it is now clear, as a means to give tech companies the intelligence they need to sell more of their products to schools.

As Kay indicates, the organization wants to create new “design specs” for our schools. But who would task a bunch of pr folks who are working for Cisco, Dell, Apple and the rest to do this? They haven’t the expertise to do so. And the perspective they bring to the task is the wrong one. Neither sales nor profit have ever been the province of American education—at least not until now.

Since February of this year, when Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr., NYU education historian Diane Ravitch, and UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham presented papers questioning the validity of P21’s program, the organization has been on the receiving end of a mountain of first-rate advice about how they can improve their program. P21’s response has been to dismiss and demean that advice. An organization that claims to be interested in teaching students reveals something about itself when it cannot demonstrate the ability to learn.

Lynne Munson

Posted in 21st Century Skills | 1 Comment »

“Unintended Negative Consequences”

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

A new GAO report on Student Achievement (located here) concludes that standards-based accountability “influence[s] instructional practices in both positive and negative ways” and counts curriculum narrowing among the “unintended negative consequences.”

From the report:

“[D]epending on the test used, research has shown that teachers may be influenced to use teaching approaches that reflect the skills and knowledge to be tested. …Other research has raised concerns that, to avoid potential consequences from low-scoring assessment results under NCLBA, teachers are narrowing the curriculum being taught—sometimes referred to as “teaching to the test”—either by spending more classroom time on tested subjects at the expense of other non-tested subjects, restricting the breadth of content covered to focus only on the content covered by the test, or focusing more time on test-taking strategies than on subject content.” (pp. 16-17)

The report relies on survey data collected by the Department of Education and the DoE’s Schools and Staffing Survey.  We’re not always fans of these GAO reports that are based on no new data and just massage preexisting research in pursuit of new conclusions.  GAO produced such a report on arts education this past February that was totally off the mark. But other looks at the Schools and Staffing Survey have come to the same conclusion that they did in Student Achievement.  This time we think GAO has it right.

Lynne Munson and James Elias

Posted in Curriculum | No Comments »