Tag: reform

Why Has Curriculum Reform Failed?

by Alan Jones

      For the last two decades, every President in the White House has offered up a school reform initiative. The continual call for school reform is based on the belief that the blame for the low achievement scores of students in this nation lies squarely in schools that are poorly run and poorly staffed. While it is an oversimplification to place the blame for poor student achievement on poor school management, the fact remains that over the last decade, the focus of school reform legislation has been on improving academic standards, enhancing teacher quality and support, and holding schools accountable for student performance.

      What has been missing from the school reform agenda is any talk of the role the school curriculum plays in student achievement. The assumption made by lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers is that the subject-centered curriculum designed around academic course offerings is the gold standard. Over time, schools have expanded their course offerings by introducing electives to enhance student engagement. These additions, however, are just that: additions. They are not intended to subtract subjects from the core curriculum, reorganize course offerings, or rewrite course offerings. The standardized college-bound curriculum authored by the Committee of 10 in 1892 still remains the gold standard.

      Although there have been a number of reports and research studies that have questioned the worth and teachability of the subject-centered college-bound curriculum, it still remains the mainstay of all schools in this nation. The question remains: Why is a curriculum designed in 1892 still in its original form in a nation and world where global economies are demanding habits of thought and occupational skills that no longer align well with the college-bound subject subject-centered curriculum? The following outlines the six major barriers to school curriculum reform:

      Conflicting Goals

      All school mission statements write goals that fall into the following four categories: civic, vocational, cultivating humanity, self self-development. Putting aside the conflicts each goal has with the other goals, the organization of these goals into a coherent approach to teaching and learning is an impossible undertaking. Schools have solved this dilemma by mandating that all students fill their schedules with the sequence of courses from the core curriculum—the 1892 academic college preparatory course offerings—and, if space in a student’s schedule is left open they are free to sprinkle in elective course offerings that nibble around the edges of civic responsibilities, developing personal interests, or examining the human condition.

      Credentialing

      At the turn of the century, a group of reform-minded Superintendents aimed to reform schools by applying principles of efficiency and scientific management. They transformed the personalization of the one-room schoolhouse into an institutional school system whose goal was to standardize course offerings, time allocated for each course offering, and the awarding of credits for completion of each course. For over a century have been more focused on sifting and sorting students within these bureaucratic mazes rather than enhancing learning.

      The 1892 Curriculum Works

      Middle- and upper-class parents feel that the college-bound academic curriculum works for their sons and daughters. Any dramatic changes to the 1892 college-bound curriculum would pose a threat to powerful groups of parents who sent their children to college.

      What real schooling looks like

      As a Superintendent commented to me after a proposed interdisciplinary program was opposed by various parent groups: “Well, Al, nice presentation, but you know, everyone has been to third grade.” He meant by this comment that all parents have experienced institutional schooling. And yes, when you gather at reunion parties, the institutional model of schooling—seven periods, subjects, credits, Friday’s test— is disparaged by most. But, all would agree that this is how a school should look, and this is how school should be conducted.

      What real teaching looks like

      Teachers, like their parent counterparts, sat for many hours in desks, lined up in rows, and with a teacher in front of the room transmitting large amounts of facts, methods, and distributing Friday’s test. Most teachers believe that students should be taught like they were taught. So they define curriculum by textbooks, disconnected categories of knowledge, and academic exercises—the ten end-of-the-chapter questions.

      Organizational Convenience

      It is convenient to have a curriculum that focuses on academic subjects, which are aligned with the university discipline. It is convenient to have a differentiated curriculum, which allows teachers to specialize. It is convenient to structure a high school around a core curriculum that simplifies curriculum planning and the documentation of student progress.

      No Cognitive Infrastructure

      All the barriers to school reform are formidable; they are not insurmountable. What has held these barriers in place for over a century is the lack of counter-narratives, vocabularies, and messengers. The narratives and vocabularies now in place revolve around institutional goals and practices—credentialing, standardization, accountability, compartmentalization—rather than creating learning environments that are lively, challenging, and intellectually engaging.

      Although a group of progressive educators at the turn of the century developed narratives and vocabularies that challenged institutional goals and values, the quest for organizational certainty in schooling all but erased these narratives and vocabularies from the educational landscape. The fatal blow, however, to the erasure of progressive vocabularies and narratives from the educational landscape was largely the fault of school administrators unschooled in the theories, ideas, vocabularies, and narratives developed over a century ago by the likes of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Francis Parker, and William Heard Kilpatrick.

      Even if a school administrator came across these narratives and vocabularies in their administrative training, the managerial tools taught in these courses, along with the institutional systems already in place in their schools, would offer school administrators little opportunity or incentive to pursue progressive approaches to teaching and learning. Without agents willing and able to articulate alternative models of schooling, students brought up in a Google information environment will remain stuck in a Gutenberg era curriculum.

“The Blunt Realities of Popular Reform Trends”

by Alan Jones

      In researching for my most current book, I noted some reform trends that school districts adopted to address a school-wide problem. In past books on school reform, I came across the same reform trends, but, as these books went on to explain, these reform trends were at best quick fixes, not solutions. At worse, the problem deepened. Although the themes of my books are on reform failures, I thought I would devote this blog to the top trends in school reform efforts and why they are doomed to fail.

A Program, A Guru Will Save Us

      If your district is making heroic efforts to solve a school-wide problem, there is more wrong with the school’s organization than what is perceived to be the problem. A well-run organization has embedded systems that work in perfect harmony to achieve the values, goals, and practices of the organization. When heroic efforts are called for, some systems are not functioning properly or the systems in place are not aligning with the values, goals, and practices of the school or district. Bringing in a Guru or adopting a program does not go to the source of the problem. It will worsen the problem by adding additional systems to faulty systems or adding values, goals, and practices that confuse or marginalize already established goals, values, and practices.

Raise the Bar

      In the last decade, the go-to governmental intervention has been a form of “raising the bar.” Although school administrators, their boards, and state regulatory agencies would nod in agreement with this mandate, behind the closed doors of school offices, raising the bar dictates is interpreted as a threat: “Raise the bar or we will hurt you.” In the words of W. Edwards Deming: “Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.” And, as Deming predicted, inducing fear in school offices, has led to dishonest data and impaired performance.

Leave No Child Behind

      A spinoff of raising the bar was a Presidential commitment to leaving no child behind. While on the face of it, who could disagree with leaving any child’s behind? The implementation of this seemingly worthwhile goal, however, was merely a variant of “raise the bar or we will hurt you.” Under this law schools were mandated to meet annual yearly progress targets (AYI) or receive a continuum of negative consequences from a needs improvement label to being taken over by state authorities.

      Putting aside the questionable practice of measuring a school’s performance based on standardized testing programs, blaming schools for leaving children behind ignores the village where these children reside. No one institution in this village can be blamed for decades of societal neglect and outright discrimination that have denied children in these neighborhoods access to not only well-resourced schools, but adequate health care, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, and safe streets. Sanctioning schools for poor academic performance is just an exercise in blaming the victim.

Standardize Performance

      Next to raising the bar, the other popular governmental intervention is standardizing performance and all the instructional tools associated with instructional performance. Although aspects of this reform movement have fallen out of favor, all fifty states now have adopted curriculum standards. Forty-one states have adopted the Common Core state standards initiative. Along with standardizing the content of the curriculum, many states have adopted some form of standards for teaching. The deep-seated problem with the standards movement is the act of teaching, in the real world of classrooms, is a highly idiosyncratic art that defies efforts to standardize or improve. The same could be about standardizing curriculum which is in direct opposition to school mission statements that proclaim their instructional programs develop the diverse talents, interests, and abilities of their student bodies.

Privatization

      The newest trend on the school reform agenda is all forms of privatization, from charter schools to voucher systems. The thinking behind this movement is a combination of private sector managerial techniques, along with providing parents a seat at a zero-sum game where winners attend the best schools, and the losers are “left behind” in poorly performing schools. Putting aside the morality of setting up a system where the roll of the lottery dice determines the quality of schooling a child will receive, the privatization movement ignores two blunt realities: First, over the last decade at least, the performance of the private sector in this nation has been far from stellar. Second, the underlying assumption in this movement is that privatized schools have adopted innovative approaches to teaching and learning. They have not adopted innovative approaches to teaching. What their performance has benefitted from is a sorting system that picks and chooses what children will be left behind and what children will comply with a pedagogical regime that would fall far short of what contemporary research on effective teaching methodologies prescribes.

The Knight Riding in on a White Horse

      When all of the above reform trends fail, school districts look for a Knight on a White Horse to rescue their instructional programs. The Knight is a Superintendent or Principal who has built a reputation for turning districts or schools around. The Knight on the White Horse solution has been popularized in several movies—Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, The Pirates of Silicon Valley, The Social Network—where charismatic school leaders or private sector CEOs, literally raise test scores, restore school discipline, and make billions on innovative ideas and organizational structures.          

      Although the Knight on a White Horse is a popular narrative in entertainment venues, it suffers from the three blunt realities of institutional schooling: First, by their very nature, they are a rare breed, even rarer in the public sector whose compensation packages fall far below what Knights are paid in the private sector. Secondly, the incentive and organization tools Knights employ in the private sector are either unavailable in the public sector—incentive pay structures—or are in opposition to teacher mindsets valuing affiliation with colleagues and students over the competitive mindsets of their private sector counterparts. Lastly, the disruptive skills of the Knight on a White Horse travel poorly in institutional environments that value certainty over novelty. To put it another way, the disruption of institutions and the effective operations of institutional systems involve two entirely different leadership skill sets. I will not go into the particulars of each leadership skill set, but, suffice it to say, that after Knight rides out on his White Horse it takes a great deal of patience, attention to detail, and coaching skills to put the stable back in order.