A Car Without Wheels
At Flypaper, Kathleen Porter-Magee responds to my post on common curriculum. She largely concedes my point that being prescriptive on what kids should learn is neither a resource issue or a call to pick winners and losers among publishers. But I’m still confused as to why she objects to curricular content guidelines. Porter-Magee places her faith in standards and accountability. But as we have discussed ad nauseum, standards are not particularly helpful in planning what to teach. And the reading test has yet to be created that isn’t biased by its passage selection. Thus the only fair and equitable way to meet standards and create fair assessments is with comprehensive curriculum guidance that teachers can use to guide lessons and test makers can use to create assessments.
A reliance on standards and accountability in the absence of clear curricular content guidelines is always going to be a bit of a fool’s errand. If you insist that students should be able to effectively compare and contrast informational texts you need to specify content to some degree, since cognitive processes are largely domain specific. It’s relatively easy to find the main idea when reading about familiar topics, but hard when the subject matter is new or unfamiliar. If you’ve been following news accounts of Japan’s efforts to prevent a nuclear meltdown, for example, you’ve probably found it easier to do so as the days go on and you become more comfortable with terms like “millisieverts” and your background knowledge increased. That’s not a coincidence. Reading test passages on unfamiliar subjects are inherently unfair to those who lack background knowledge, which aids comprehension dramatically. Refusing to describe a common body of knowledge that all children are expected to have leaves this problem unaddressed.
In short, standards without content is a car without wheels. The standards to which you build such a car do not matter. You ain’t goin’ anywhere. The skills demanded by the standards cannot be taught in the abstract, except at the most superficial level, which is why the authors of the Common Core State Standards explicitly called for a coherent curriculum.
“In the end, most people agree that schools need strong, content-rich curriculum,” Porter-Magee writes bizarrely. If this were true, I’d be unemployed. And really, really happy. The dominant approach to ELA instruction in U.S. elementary schools is the skills-and-strategy approach, which assumes that reading comprehension is an all-purpose, transferable skill that can be applied to any piece of text with equal proficiency. It’s not, which makes another of Kathleen’s assertions equally baffling – and troubling:
“I wholeheartedly agree that a content-rich curriculum is essential. But I sincerely believe that if states get the standards and accountability pieces right, then schools will have no choice but to follow a content rich curriculum.”
It is more accurate to say that you can’t get standards and accountability right without following a content-rich curriculum. What am I missing? We have language arts standards that refuse to say what should be taught and learned, followed by tests to ensure it has been taught and learned. This can only be described as Kafkaesque. Unless everyone taking a reading test has the same general store of background knowledge, the test will discriminate against those who don’t have it. Thus the biggest losers, as always, will be those students—and their teachers—who are flying blind. More advantaged students, who typically come to school with deeper, richer language skills and background knowledge will continue to outperform low-income and minority students.
Faith in standards and accountability alone as levers of change implies a faith that disembodied skills can be taught and measured in the absence of a coherent curriculum. I see no reason to believe this can be done. I see mountains of evidence to suggest it cannot.
I’ve said it before. If you’re placing your faith for improving outcomes on standards, accountability, or teacher quality a core curriculum is your ally, not your enemy. Without it your shiny car will remain on the blocks and in the driveway.
Happy motoring.
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