I know, I know – you can’t tell your Blooms without a scorecard.

cheers,

peter m.

The phenomenon I describe going on in my neighborhood is not an isolated example. You can go on to the CK website and see lists of CK schools. When you do, what you will find are a great many magnet and charter schools.

I therefore am honestly perplexed by all of this- choice is helping implementing the instructionist agenda in addition to other benefits. It isn’t any mystery to me why philanthropists in NYC have backed charter schools.

If someone presents these philanthropists with a higher impact strategy with a realistic chance of scaling, I have every reason to believe that they would support that as well.

If no one presents them with such a plan…

I found the old Sol Stern essay to be reasonable if not pragmatic. In the same way I found Hirsch’s comments to be on point, they just think the greater leverage is in the curriculum, but they need choice also…

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” — Archimedes

Not so sure that I would call it a breaking of the truce as Jay Greene did, but clearly both can and need to work to help each other. As you suggest it might be best to think of the structural and pedagogical/curriculum as separate. Bringing up Alan Bloom was so 1987…

Part of the issue is the “mindshare” that these reform efforts occupy. The thing that has been left out is curriculum, which might just be the most cost effective tool in saving the Titanic of our public education system. Adding further to this is the vast movement to teach each child in their unique learning style as if such is now fact and building learning communities for teachers that do not have the time to use and further drives activity based lesson planning as opposed to outcome based planning.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2009/10/14-curriculum-whitehurst

One does not have to be for or against choice to see the goodness of these writings. I am for choice, but I understand the strengths and weaknesses. The two biggest weaknesses being cost (philanthropic money beyond normal charter funding needed for their “intensity of intervention”) and scale (related to funding, locations and human capital) Too many disadvantaged kids are getting left behind.

With education reformers holding large sway with their philanthropic dollars one should argue for a portfolio approach and yes a truce, some money for TFA, the best charters, say KIPP (YES, Uncommon, AF, Green Dot, Aspire…) and Rocketship for its innovation and model, money for advocacy (student centered) and for research….

That said we should not leave it all to incentives; the instructionists also have points. What is wrong with helping Hirsch’s idea of a strong coherent sequential knowledge based curriculum and the work being done by people and places like Doug Lemov, UVA-Curry/CASTL and Relay School (related to PD and building better teachers) also attracting the funding they need to help potentially on a huge scale, more importantly in a cost effective manner. Call this the HOW and WHAT part of Ed reform…

Many of the no excuses charter schools would probably be even stronger with such curriculum….

I think the instrucionists would be happy with a few major districts adapting stronger more rigorous knowledge based curriculum, giving them the time to play out and then letting; parents, local school boards, administrators and mayors decide…. Philanthropic seed funding would sure help such along with a proper delivery system/platform. Building knowledge and vocabulary takes time, it compounds and it is most critical in the PK-5 grade levels in our most disadvantaged communities. The great thing about something like this “big idea” is IT CAN BE DONE and cost effectively… heck it even lines up well with the CCSS…. for what that may be worth…

It’s not that I don’t understand the difference between different types of reform. What confuses me is why Hirsch and those like him fail to understand how these different types of reform reinforce each other.

For instance, middle schools in my neighborhood using world class curriculum will have increased from zero in in 2011 to three in 2013. Choice mechanisms played a large role in this- certainly producing two of the three schools and probably changing helping to change the curriculum for the better at the third.

If Hirsch were clear-headed, it seems that he would celebrate choice mechanisms as advancing high quality curriculum.

I know you mean well, but I suggest you read Hirsch — you might even be able to spell his name. And if you did read him (Cultural Literacy or The Schools We Need) — he is one of the most clear-headed writers in the business — you surely wouldn’t be so confused about what he means by “structural reforms” and why he might say they are not enough. They aren’t. Just because choice is the best mechanism (i.e. structural) for organizing our public schools does not mean that every charter school will succeed — any more than a free market guarantees that your corner grocery store won’t have rotten vegetables. Choice is a market mechanism that should be compared to (in an apples-to-apples comparison) the monopoly system that now predominates in public school organization. (It is the latter system that is incapable, many of us would/could argue, of getting our kids the best curriculum.) You don’t compare choice (a structural mechanism) to curriculum (content taught and learned in schools) any more than you would compare socialism to Singapore math. Even die-hard free-marketers should understand the difference between a structural reform and a pedagogical one. Neither Sol Stern nor E.D. Hirsch are saying that choice is inherently bad; they are only arguing that it doesn’t (magically) produce good schools. What true choice proponents would/should argue is that choice provides the best mechanism for getting us the best curriculum. cheers, –peter meyer

I don’t know what Stern’s deal is, perhaps he just wants to see what life’s like on the other side, but Hirsch is pretty clearly an authoritarian, at least insofar as education policy is concerned.

His, and all education authoritarian’s, underlying problem is that their kingdom is built on a foundation of sand.

It’s still a representative form of government in the United States, all complaints to the contrary not withstanding, which means while we can loan out our power we can take it back. The choice movement is a reclaiming of that power now that it’s become unignorably clear that those who were entrusted with the power have misused it.

As pundits with some input to the process effort expended on arguing about curriculum reform is effort largely wasted. It’s like worrying about a knocked-over vase when the house is on fire.

If Core Knowledge really is the educational holy grail then those with an urgent interest in seeing kids get the best education – parents – will see to it that Core Knowledge is selected to educate their child.

Provided they have the option. Choice provides that option.