Common Core

Bear with me as I walk down memory lane and take a moment to get to my point.

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

Even in the midst of budget cuts, education leaders are investing billions of dollars in technology. School leaders, education reformers, and the business world, in particular, herald digital devises that “let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets” as education’s next savior.

But the technological emphasis is largely untested and, when available, data shows moderate if any student achievement gains. Fordham’s Peter Meyer offers insight:

“[I]t would seem … as happened to the charter school movement, which spent lots of time and energy debating the chartering process and defending it in the face of frequent lackluster performance numbers, the technological classroom is late to an appreciation of the essential elements of education; mainly, the importance of knowledge.  What should our kids know?  David Cohen of the University of Michigan told a gathering of education journalists last May (see my Digital Divide post) that all the technology in the world won’t help if you don’t get the curriculum right.  (And speaking of charters, I once asked KIPP co-founder David Levin how important curriculum was to KIPP’s success. ‘Very,’ he said.)”

Read more, here.

If education is sharing information, how do we help our students filter through today’s endless supply?  What happens to content as technology makes it more open and accessible to educators?  Yesterday, Common Core’s Lynne Munson participated in a New America Foundation panel of leaders working to bring technology into classrooms in innovative ways.  You can watch a video of the discussion here.

Now, just as standardized computer protocols increasingly allow a more open exchange of information, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have created a tremendous opportunity for states to share technological tools for teaching.  In the (39 and counting) CCSS states, teachers can now share lessons, knowing their instruction is meeting their state’s standards.

Our CCSS-aligned maps were developed in response to the possibilities generated by the new standards.  The maps embrace open sharing of information: they are accessible online and will (before year’s end) allow teachers to share lesson ideas and suggest adaptations.  But, importantly, they are full of quality content.

We applaud the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning.  But we do so with caution.  After all, we believe “Twenty-first century technology should be seen as an opportunity to acquire more knowledge, not an excuse to know less.”

Stephanie Porowski