#curriculum reform

[tdwa-feed]

[tdsa-feed]

[tdwf-articles]

[richardtheteacher]

Richard James rogers, award-winning author and educator, breaks down the current global teacher shortage crisis and what schools and governments can do about it.

View On WordPress

[bewithus4u]

Where Does the US Rank in Math?

Introduction: The Global Math Race—Where Does America Stand? Picture this: A classroom in Singapore, where 15-year-olds solve complex algebra problems with ease. Meanwhile, halfway across the world, a U.S. high school student struggles with fractions. This scenario isn’t just a stereotype—it’s backed by decades of international data. The question on everyone’s mind: Where does the US rank in…

Where Does the US Rank in Math?

[yayaboozle]

You can’t close the ‘achievement gap’ by ignoring Eurocentrism in education

Last night protestors seized the a meeting of the Minneapolis board of education over the district’s contract with a Utah-based publisher of Reading Horizons, a reading curriculum that has become controversial after parents and teachers called some of its materials ‘offensive.”

At issue are depictions of native people, like ‘Lazy Lucy,’ that readers found racially backward. This comes a few months after that district was challenged by activists for using software that simulated the slavery experience.

With Reading Horizons the district has struggled to find a way to acknowledge concerns about the specific reading materials that caused alarm, without ending the contract with the publisher. They believe the curriculum itself is evidence-tested, and sound. The materials could be replaced with non-offensive ones, district leaders say.

But protestors see things differently. Do you really need to spend over $1 million with a culturally incompetent curriculum provider?

This dustup in Minneapolis isn’t a blip.

While school reform magnifies battles over governance, school models, teacher practice and evaluation, and other issues, there hasn’t been a lot of focus on curriculum reform. 

Yes, it recently made headlines when a mom in Texas busted McGraw-Hill for calling enslaved people “workers” in a history text book. Yes, we have the occasional article that examines some of the more ridiculous offenses in textbooks.

But these examples haven’t turned into a popular movement for change in curriculum production, adoption, and delivery. That’s interesting given the monumental importance of curriculum in the foundation of a school and learning.

Enter "The Hidden Value of Curriculum Reform,” a new report from the Center for American Progress. According to CAP’s research curriculum reform is a low-cost, high impact endeavor. 

Here are some of the report’s key findings include:

Higher-quality curriculum in elementary school math can come at a relatively low cost.The authors analyzed six pairs of curricula, where each pair included a lower-quality and higher-quality version. The authors looked at how much it would cost for a school to switch from a lower-quality product to a higher-quality one in elementary school math and found there’s not much of a cost. In fact, the data that the authors collected from 19 states indicate that publishers tend to charge all states roughly the same These findings mean that nearly all opportunities for boosting ROI are a matter of choosing the best product, not finding a better price.

More rigorous elementary school math curricula can deliver far more ROI than other reforms. In compiling this report, the authors compared the cost-effectiveness ratio for each of six pairs of elementary math curricula that had been subject to a rigorous evaluation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Reviewing these data in light of an influential study by economist Doug Harris, the authors determined that switching to a higher quality curriculum has a huge ROI relative to other educational policies—in large part because curricula cost so little. There are other factors at play, of course, and gains in math, for instance, can be easier to achieve relative to other subjects. But what’s clear is that the average cost-effectiveness ratio of switching curriculum was almost 40 times that of class-size reduction in a well-known randomized experiment.

When it comes to math curricula in the early grades, cost does not always equal quality.There is little relationship between the cost and quality of instructional products. Prices do not vary widely across products, with the most expensive product in the same government-sponsored study costing only $13 per student more than the least expensive product. If anything, the higher-quality products tend to cost less, and in some instances, the most expensive curriculum was among the least effective and the least expensive was among the most effective.

Policy decisions do not consider rigorous measures of curricula quality. State adoption decisions are often based on limited assessments of quality and weak proxies for alignment to state standards. Furthermore, politics often dominate the discussion over the adoption of textbooks and other instructional material, and issues such as the teaching of evolution are often center stage. There is also a clear gap between the reality of which curricula are effective or aligned to state standards and the curricula that publishers advertise as such.

Now, reforming curriculum won’t solve issues like the one faced in Minneapolis, where the problem was about the cultural competency of the curriculum, but that example does highlight a larger problem. How is curriculum adopted? What in the process to support both development of high-quality instructional materials, and materials that affirm the humanity of children who have been historically harmed by Eurocentrism in education?

Answering those questions might prevent another Minneapolis episode, and make a positive impact on the achievement gap.

[cmrubinworld]

The Global Search for Education

                           The Education Debate 2012 -- Howard Gardner

The Education Debate 2012 -- Howard Gardner

By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn

Has there ever been a more important time to debate the big picture questions of education? As nations around the world reform education to prepare their students for the 21st century workplace, are our students ready to compete? In five interviews with education luminaries, I've asked them to imagine they were Secretary of Education and to discuss how they would address the issues facing America.

Today, my imaginary Secretary of Education is Dr. Howard Gardner. Dr. Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, he received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. Dr. Gardner has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities. In 2005 and 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. His most recent book is Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter.

"Asking me to be Secretary of Education is a stretch, if not a counterfactual state of affairs, since my ideas and values are quite distant from those of my predecessors. Nonetheless, if, knowing of my views, a hypothetical President were to appoint me, here's how I would answer his or her questions."

What should the role of the federal government be in K-12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent?

The Federal Government plays a crucial role in ensuring civil rights and equitable distribution of funds to districts-in-need and to talented students. In the last few decades, it has become involved in issues of curriculum and assessment. While the motivation may have been praiseworthy, the results have been mixed. In many ways, the education that has been promoted is regressive; it presumes a population that was needed in the 19th or 20th century, rather than the graduates that we should want and need for the 21st century (versatile, critical and creative problem solvers, and responsible, decent, well-informed citizens). The curriculum has been increasingly narrowed to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects and the assessments to multiple choice, fact-centric instruments.

Every educator and every parent in America should read Pasi Sahlberg's book, Finnish Lessons. Finland has catapulted from a country with a mediocre educational system to perhaps the most admired system in the world. It has done so by ignoring the GERM (Global Educational Reform Movement) approach to educational reform (Sahlberg's sardonic term) favored by the U.S. and England.

Finnish education features: 1) a highly professionalized teacher cohort; 2) a very 'flat' system. Schools around the country look similar to one another and each classroom contains the range of students. Teachers are expected to deal with the range - little talk about 'special needs' or 'special education.' There is plenty of art, music, and crafts in the system, and the amount is being increased this year! Also, through ninth grade, there are few formal tests.

What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation, and assignment to low income schools?

The key to a high performing educational system -- whether it is in Finland, Singapore, or Canada -- is a highly professionalized teacher corps. Professionals know their subjects and how to teach them effectively. They are given status, autonomy, and a reasonable standard of living, on the assumption that they can make judicious decisions about complex, not easily solved dilemmas. (For more on the good professional, see goodworkproject.org). The bulk of federal discretionary funds should be used to shift our country from a K-12 teaching cohort that is not distinguished academically and has not had the opportunity to act in a professional manner to a cohort that is as well-informed as our best engineers and physicians and as thoughtful and fair minded as our best judges.

The most skilled teachers should work in the most challenging districts and should be compensated accordingly. We should be recruiting from the same ranks as Teach for America, but not for a two year immersion -- rather for decades-long dedication to a noble profession. Teacher training should take place over several years, largely on site, and not in brief 'boot camps'. There should be a career path from intern to teacher to master teacher and teacher-of-teachers. The issue is NOT price -- we spent trillions on wars, and give huge tax breaks to multi-millionaires, with hardly any second guessing.

What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low income schools?

Given the disagreements and different value systems across the American educational system, the experimentation involved in charter schools has probably been worthwhile. It has hardly been revolutionary in any sense, and certainly not in results. I have stated for twenty years that we cannot expect charter schools to be notably better than regular public schools because ultimately they draw on the same population of teachers and students and, except in a few cases, have available equivalent funding.

In a country that was truly serious about educational reform, one would aim for excellently trained teachers in the full range of public schools, and there would be no need for charters or vouchers. The needed experimentation can be done within the public system as happens, for example, in Singapore.

                   Howard Gardner

What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?

Though it is politically incorrect to say so, I think the U.S. has spent much too much time and energy documenting the achievement gap. Any social scientist, indeed any reasonable observer, could have told us twenty years ago that there would be large achievement gaps across racial and socio-economic groups. And any person with common sense could indicate the kinds of steps that were likely to lead to the reducing of the achievement gap.

In the U.S., we have a figure/ground problem. The dominant figure has become test scores and international comparisons -- everything is focused on this 'league table' mentality. As a person who believes in the United States as it once was, the 'figure' should be the kind of society that we want to have and the kind of human beings that we want to nurture. All education, including testing and ranking, should be organized around the attainment of that vision. I believe that if we succeeded in having schools that were as good as our country can be, the test scores and rankings would take care of themselves. Remember, too, that the U.S. remained predominant, despite earlier threats from the Soviet Union and Japan; this was not about our test scores, it was about the health of our society.

What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?

Our educational system ought to reflect the highest values of our society. I believe that education in the arts should be as central in the lives of young people as education in science or mathematics. Moreover, and this may ensure my marginality in current discourse, I believe that education in the arts needs no justification in terms of 'transfer' to other subjects or to its generation of wealth; it is a 'good' in itself. Indeed, societies are ultimately remembered for their art and culture, and that is as it should be.

Since I've devoted almost twenty years to the promotion of ethical thinking in young people, I don't have to reiterate the importance of ethics in the educational system. There is nothing wrong with courses in ethics. But ultimately, the most powerful 'treatment' is the way that adults behave, at home, at school, and in the workplace; and the kinds of signals given by our society to those who behave ethically and those -- often working on Wall Street -- who do not. If ethics is 'in the air' and 'on the street', young people will notice; and if ethical behavior is honored in the breach, rather than in the observance, that will, alas, be noted as well.

When I describe my studies of 'good work,' to strangers, their eyes often glaze over. Hearing about 'bad work' is so much more tantalizing. But I gain attention when I point out that all over the world, people admire our legal system, our judicial system, our journalism, our institutions of higher education. And yet, I can testify first hand, that we are doing our best, as a society, to undermine those institutions. What a tragedy! That is because, over the last four decades, ethics has taken a back seat to the accumulation of wealth, by any means possible. The best political system is NOT untrammeled capitalism; it is the subtle blending of democracy, capitalism, and socialism -- as observed in Scandinavia and in Northern Italy.

What would be your position on how to make college affordable for more qualified low income students?

Again, I risk being politically incorrect. I am great believer in the liberal arts, as conveyed in our best residential colleges, and I believe that Yale (and Swarthmore and Williams) are worth what they charge -- and of course, they actually cost more than they charge. It would be tragic if these schools were to abandon their educational mission, again at the very time that the rest of the world (e.g. ,Singapore, the Emirates) are trying to emulate them.

But, alas, an education like this is only available to families that are affluent, or to the lucky few who benefit from need-blind admissions; the inequity of human, social and financial capital is fanning the distance between the haves (the upper 1 percent) and everyone else.

I have several suggestions:

We need to determine what can be accomplished well 'online' and transmit as much of education as we can in ways that are inexpensive and widely accessible.

We need to redirect as much of governmental and charitable discretionary funds to provide opportunities for the talented who lack the money for a higher education.

We should provide forgivable loans to those who go into public service careers.

We need to experiment with blended learning, such that students can have residential experiences while living at home, so that they don't need to move across country into expensive housing.

We need to improve our primary and secondary education so that we don't need the remedial courses required for millions of students in our community colleges and other non-selective institutions.

At some point in their lives, all individuals who would like a broader liberal arts education ought to have the opportunity, but there is absolutely no need to provide this to all 18 years olds. Many of them are much better off in the workplace -- both for them and for our workplaces.

             Howard Gardner and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Andy Hargreaves (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today. 

The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, "The Global Search for Education" and "How Will We Read?" She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld