What Can Parents Expect To See in English Language Arts Classrooms After Common Core’s Standards Begin To Be Implemented? A Worst Case Scenario—But Probably Not Far from Reality

August 12, 2010

(Guest Post by Sandra Stotsky)

In June 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) offered the nation two sets of English language arts standards: one set called “college and career readiness anchor standards,” and the other, grade-level standards that build towards these anchor standards. With few exceptions, both sets of standards consist of content-empty and culture-free generic skills. Why are they so bereft of substantive content? In large part because they reflect a faulty diagnosis of why many American students are unprepared for authentic college-level work. The misdiagnosis comes from CCSSI’s reliance on the results of ACT surveys to guide the development of its standards.

Several years ago, ACT surveyed thousands of post-secondary instructors to find out what they saw as the chief problems in their freshman students. Not surprisingly, the chief complaint was that high school graduates cannot understand the college texts they are assigned to read. Without an explanation for its reasoning, ACT leaped to two conclusions: (1) college students are not expected to read enough complex texts when they are in high school; and (2) they are not given enough instruction in strategies or skills for reading complex texts in high school.

However, ACT’s survey did not (nor could it) show that most college students had not been assigned complex texts to read when they were in high school.  Nor did it (or could it) show that more instruction in comprehension strategies or skills when in high school would have helped them to read complex texts then or later, in college. With much greater justification, ACT might have conjectured that inappropriate teaching methods, an incoherent and undemanding high school literature and reading curriculum, poor study habits, and/or perhaps an unwillingness to put in much time reading or studying on a regular basis were contributing to high school graduates’ inability to read their college texts. But ACT did not consider any of these quite reasonable hypotheses.

Nor did CCSSI question the validity or logic of ACT’s two unwarranted conclusions. Instead, it went one step further: it concluded that English teachers should be chiefly responsible for assigning nonfiction or informational texts, regardless of subject area, and for teaching students how to read them. Yes, it admitted that teachers of other subjects had a responsibility to assign and teach students how to read texts in their disciplines.  But it still placed the major burden on English teachers: over 50% of what they assign should be nonfiction or informational texts.

The national sales pitch seems to be that the use of Common Core’s ELA standards will increase the number of high school graduates who can read the texts their college instructors assign. It is more likely that college instructors will find themselves compelled, for the sake of survival, to adopt texts at the middle and high school level of difficulty in order to ensure that the “college-ready” students our high schools will now be required to graduate (according to proposed US Department of Education regulations) can read what is assigned in college. So long as “college-ready” high school students must be placed in post-secondary credit-bearing freshman courses (another USDE requirement), their instructors (at least those who want to keep their jobs) will want to do whatever is necessary to enable these students to pass their college freshman courses.

Is it really the case that English teachers over-emphasize literary texts to the exclusion (or near-exclusion) of nonfiction? In fact, the National Council of Teachers of English’s own widely criticized “standards,” issued in the mid-1990s, revealed a strong de-emphasis on literary study even then. Many English teachers, often urged on by their own professional journals, began to downgrade literary study on their own several decades ago, assigning their students more non-literary reading, such as diaries, family chronicles, newspaper articles, biographies, and autobiographies, on the grounds that students needed more exposure to a greater diversity of nonfiction genres. Diversity in nonfiction genres is quite visible in major literature anthologies.

This trend—increasingly less time on imaginative literature in the high school English class—was confirmed by the surveys used in two reports completed in 2010: Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11: A National Survey and its Arkansas counterpart, Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11 in Arkansas.  These two research projects found that high school English teachers spend much less time on literary study in 2010 than they did 40 years ago, according to the last national study published by the National Council of Teachers of English on this question. By requiring English teachers to spend over 50% of their reading instructional time on informational reading, not literary reading, CCSSI’s ELA standards will drastically accelerate a decline that has been taking place for almost half a century.

Nor is it the case that English teachers do not give students instruction in reading nonfiction. In both Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11: A National Survey and its Arkansas counterpart, teachers report giving students instruction in reading nonfiction or informational texts and indicate that they draw on a range of approaches. The problem is that they mostly prefer the wrong kind of instruction. Teachers surveyed in both studies prefer non-analytical approaches (such as reader response or contextual approaches) to the study of literature and nonfiction.  Students may well be asked to think “critically” about the texts they are assigned, but their critical thinking is unlikely to be based on a careful analysis of what is in them.

What changes are parents apt to see in English language arts classrooms as states implement Common Core’s ELA standards?

  1. Teachers assigning more informational reading—over 50% required by ELA standards alone—and less imaginative literature for children or secondary students.
  2. Teachers using lower quality texts because there are fewer high quality informational texts available at each grade level—and very few that are relevant to what is being taught in other subjects.
  3. Teachers giving more reading comprehension exercises to practice skills-based standards.
  4. Teachers giving shorter reading selections to accommodate the enormous amount of required summary writing in Common Core’s standards.
  5. Teachers doing less vocabulary study because Common Core’s 6-12 vocabulary standards are weak, misleading, or uninterpretable.
  6. Teachers giving inappropriate grammar lessons; they may be useful to English Language Learners but many make no sense for native English-speaking children.

Common Core’s ELA standards assume that if English teachers are compelled to assign a lot of informational texts, students will learn how to read them.  They won’t if these teachers don’t teach close, analytical reading.  Moreover, students may not find them as enjoyable to read as a good story, novel, or play and may want to read even less than they now do. Nor is it at all clear that if English teachers assign high school students a variety of informational texts with no necessary substantive connection to what is being taught in other subject areas, students will acquire the vocabulary and content knowledge they need for authentic college work.

6 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Arguing the Merits

August 11, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Last week I noted that Fordham had offered up the Gadfly as a platform for an argument, made by guest columnist Eugenia Kemble, that the next logical step after establishing national standards is a single national curriculum.

Well, my post has drawn a sharp response from Kemble. Of course, she disagrees with me on the substance (the merits of a national curriculum and the badness of teachers’ unions) but that goes without saying. More interestingly, she accuses me of not addressing her argument on the merits, but only being concerned with the significance of her piece having appeared in the Gadfly. The indictment has two counts. First, she accuses me of not offering an argument for my position that “common” standards adopted by the states are really “federal” standards (i.e. controlled by the federal government.) Second, she accuses me of practicing “guilt by association” by insinuating that if Checker publishes a union piece, he must embrace the entire union agenda.

To the second count I plead not guilty. I didn’t insinuate that Checker agrees with the unions about everything. I insinuated that his position in favor of national standards was having the effect – whether intended or not – of advancing the unions’ agenda in one respect. And that the appearance of Kemble’s piece in the Gadfly clearly demonstrates that those of us who have been saying this all along were right. And I stand by that insinuation.

But to the first count I plead guilty as sin. I did not address the merits of Kemble’s claim that it is possible – not just in some hypothetical cloudcoocooland but in the real world, right now, in the actual political climate as it stands now and under all the other conditions that currently prevail – to have “common” standards nationwide (thus “national” standards) that are not controlled by the federal government. On the merits of this claim I said nothing at all.

Here are some other claims whose merits I have never addressed:

  • The existence of the tooth fairy
  • The medical effectiveness of aromatherapy
  • The flatness of the earth (oh, wait)

Even Checker admits that national standards have been “entangled in a competition for federal money,” that it’s bad that “that same federal money [is] paying for development of new assessment systems to accompany the standards,” and that “it would have been lots better if President Obama had never hinted at harnessing national standards to future Title I funding.”

As Matt aptly put it: other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

But never mind. My real point was to highlight the fact that Checker has spent weeks calling us “paranoid” because we thought national standards would become the first step toward greater national control of schools, especially by unions; then offered up the Gadfly to a union blogger as a platform to argue that national standards should become the first step toward greater national control of schools.

3 Comments | instructional reform, teacher union | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Does Fordham Support a National Curriculum?

August 5, 2010

 

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

For weeks, Checker has been calling us “paranoid” for worrying that the national standards machine Fordham has helped create will be hijacked by the teacher unions.

Today, there lands in my inbox the new Gadfly from Fordham, featuring a guest editorial by Eugenia Kemble of the Shanker Institute. Kemble’s argument, in a nutshell: Now that we have national standards, the next thing we need is a national curriculum. That way we don’t just ensure that all schools set outcome targets and measurements in the one best way that’s right for everyone regardless of their individual needs; all schools will do everything in the one best way that’s right for everyone regardless of their individual needs. And we’ll have a benevolent dictator who will make sure that everyone will do everything in the one best way, and who will never abuse that power.

I paraphrase.

On Kemble’s list of the heroic, wonderful people she admires who have been pushing not just for national standards but a national curriclum are Bill Schmidt and Randi Weingarten at the AFT; teacher union shill Diane Ravitch; and . . . Checker Finn.

Inquiring minds want to know:

  1. Does the Fordham Foundation support a national curriculum?
  2. Given that Fordham is offering up the Gadfly as a platform from which Kemble can advocate using national standards as the first step toward broader federal control of schools, does the Fordham Foundation still consider it “paranoid” to be worried that national standards will be used as a first step toward broader federal control of schools?

I’ll hold my breath and wait for Checker to give us a clear, unambiguous answer.

5 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

The Ascent of America’s Choice and the Continuing Descent of America’s High Schools

August 5, 2010

(Guest Post by Sandra Stotsky)

With an additional $30,000,000 to come to Marc Tucker’s NCEE from the USED’s “competition” for assessment consortia grants, his hare-brained scheme for enticing high school sophomores or juniors deemed “college-ready” by the results of the Cambridge University-adapted “Board” exams that he plans to pilot in 10 states (including Massachusetts now) comes closer to reality.  The problems are not only with this scheme (and the exams NCEE will use to determine “college-readiness”) but also with the coursework NCEE’s America’s Choice is busy preparing to sell to our high schools to prepare students for these “Board” exams.  (Try to find some good examples of the reading and math items and figure out their academic level.)

First, some background.  NCEE’s scheme was originally financed by a $1,500,000 pilot grant from the Gates Foundation.  It will now benefit from a sweetheart deal of $30,000,000–all taxpayers’ money. Having Gates pay for both NCEE’s start-up and the development of Common Core standards certainly helped America’s Choice to put its key people on Common Core’s ELA and mathematics standards development and draft-writing committees to ensure that they came up with the readiness standards Gates had paid for and wanted NCEE to use. NCEE has a completely free hand to “align” its “Board” exams exactly how it pleases with Common Core’s “college-readiness” level and to set passing scores exactly where it wants, since the passing score must be consistent across piloting states.

The first problem is that the exams NCEE will give are to be aligned to the academic level of Common Core’s mysterious “college-readiness” standards.  Their academic level was apparently perceived as such a minor aspect of “rigor” by Fordham’s latest report that it was never mentioned in its evaluation design, rating system, or grades. Even though that academic level (where it was, what it was mathematically or in terms of cultural literacy, and where the research evidence and international benchmarks were to support it) was at the heart of the debate over Common Core’s standards ab initio.

The second problem is that the coursework that NCEE’s America’s Choice is to develop to prepare students for its “Board” exams is not at all clear, although its partner to profit from the development of the coursework now is <http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-center-on-education-and-the-economy-to-receive-endowment-99859049.html>.  NCEE coincidentally announced a partnership with Pearson publishers just after California’s Board of Education on August 2, and Massachusetts’ Board of Education on July 21, voted to dump their superior standards for Common Core’s inferior standards.

The California and Massachusetts votes were clearly helped along by Fordham’s report, as will be the votes in many other states.  Although Fordham trumpeted that “nearly a dozen states have ELA or math standards in the same league as Common Core,” the implicit message was not that these states should keep their own standards but the opposite. Since the “A” that Fordham had awarded California in math was not that much better than the “A-” it has awarded Common Core in math, and since the “B+” that Fordham had awarded Massachusetts in math was actually below the “A-”it had given Common Core in math, why shouldn’t both states fall in line and adopt Common Core’s math standards, especially if other reports like Achieve’s or WestEd’s made the case that Common Core’s standards were of about equal quality if not better than what these states already had.  Similarly, since the “A-” that Fordham had awarded Massachusetts’s ELA standards was  “too close to call” in relation to the “B+” that Fordham had awarded Common Core’s ELA standards, there was clearly no reason for Massachusetts to hold out for its own ELA standards, either.  Even though, with forked tongue, Fordham also suggested that these states might want to keep their own good standards, it was clear to state board members, newspaper editorial writers, and reporters that these two states did not have much to lose, according to Fordham’s grades.  Beautifully orchestrated!

It remains to be seen how close the new coursework that NCEE proposes to develop is to the “intervention” programs America’s Choice imposes on high schools (Ramp Up Literacy and Ramp Up Mathematics) as part of the package when a state agency has forced “underperforming” school districts (according to NCLB’s criteria) to contract with AC as a “turnaround” partner, a model we now know has no research evidence showing its effectiveness

We mention America’s Choice’s programs for high school remediation for several reasons—but mainly as a caveat emptor to piloting states.  First, there is no body of research evidence supporting the effectiveness of its programs at the high school level (and there has been research). http://.www.cpre.org or http://www.cpre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=102

Second, the pedagogy used in its intervention programs (with texts judged at the grade 5 or 6 level by teachers using these programs) is imposed on every single English class in a high school (except AP courses, which are mostly safeguarded by teachers’ syllabi, all earlier approved by the College Board). Because so many negative comments were made by high school English teachers in Arkansas under the yoke of America’s Choice to three researchers at the University of Arkansas as part of their research on literary study in the state’s high schools in 2009, their report, completed in March 2010 and posted on the University of Arkansas’ website, provides a brief summary of the research on AC and the teachers’ comments. See pages 38-42 here.  Perhaps the coursework NCEE is planning to develop with Pearson will not be like the intervention programs America’s Choice has used in states across the country to little effect.  But with such a track record, it is amazing that AC has been given such a free pass by the USED.

Further References

Consortium for Policy Research in Education.  (2009). A study of instructional improvement. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

DeForge, J. (2010). Holyoke touts school gains. The Republican. Tuesday, January 19.

Slavin, R., Cheung, A., Groff, C. & Lake, C. (2008). Effective reading programs for middle and high schools: A best-evidence synthesis. Reading Research Quarterly, July-September 43 (3), 290-322.

13 Comments | instructional reform, school accountability | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Checker Says RELAX!

July 29, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Checker Finn wrote a response to the eight or so of us incurable skeptics of  Common Core Standards.  I will address a few points. Checker wrote:

Yes, it would have been better if the voluntary move by states to develop and consider adopting common standards hadn’t been entangled in a competition for federal money. Yes, it would be better if more of that same federal money weren’t paying for development of new assessment systems to accompany the standards. Yes, it would have been lots better if President Obama had never hinted at harnessing national standards to future Title I funding. Yes, the long-term governance of the standards and tests remains to be worked out.

But good grief, folks, do you really want to preserve the meager academic expectations, crummy tests, and weak-kneed accountability arrangements that currently drive—or fail to drive—K-12 education across most of this broad land? Are you so risk averse and change resistant as to see no merit in trying to do this differently in the future?

So other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln? The final point about long-term governance alone is more than enough to reject Common Core.  Checker quickly moves the discussion straight into a straw-man argument. Do I want to preserve a status quo of meager standards?  No thank you. Good standards and tests are a vital part of a comprehensive reform package. 

No one who supports Common Core can seem to muster anything better than a “yeah, we’ll figure that out later” on long-term governance. Let’s just say that I’d happily bet my left big toe that Common Core has already reserved a final resting place in the failed education fad graveyard.  This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. Tick tock.

Checker goes on to very odd paragraph:

Third, much as I wish otherwise, conservatives’ preferred alternative ed ucation-reform strategies haven’t gained the traction or scale that advocates (myself included) hoped for, nor have they delivered reliably better academic results. Yes, the principle has largely been accepted that kids need not necessarily attend the district school in their neighborhood. Yet you can count the voucher programs on your fingers. And charter-school enrollments, while respectably up, don’t amount to more than 3 percent of all kids. The parent marketplace isn’t causing bad schools to close. (Only Catholic schools, many of them fine, seem to be closing.) One can keep beating this drum—and you’ll find more and more people snapping their fingers in time with the beat—but, mostly for political reasons that aren’t going away, it hasn’t produced a lot of marching.

Oi vey- again with the magic bullet straw man. Let’s get this straight once and for all: within real world political constraints parental choice programs are not a panacea to the ills of public education. Neither is anything else.  Let’s all pull up our big boy pants and have everyone admit there are no magic bullets in K-12. 

It is not the case however that a reform needs to either be a cure-all, or we don’t do it at all. By that logic, Massachusetts should abolish all student testing because there are still illiterate children in Boston. Florida may as well abolish their reforms too- after all, 27% of 4th graders still score Below Basic in reading!

Parental choice programs have been demonstrated to have positive academic effects on participants, and positive impacts on district schools.  So far as I know, no one else has come up with another decentralized system of accountability that allows parents to hold schools directly accountable. Please let me know when someone does- and sign me up. Until then, it is worth bearing in mind that no system of schooling will ever be as effective as it could be in the absence of parental choice. Top down command and control efforts have their limits. Comprehensive approaches are the way to go- and the one state that has tried it succeeded in vastly improving student learning.

Checker is frustrated with the trench warfare pace of the battle for parental choice. So am I, but let’s not lose sight of what has been accomplished. Nationwide, 25 percent of students attend schools other than their zoned district school. Figure at least that many parents have exercised “check-book choice” by paying a premium for housing in neighborhoods with desirable district schools. I’d guess it is more than that, but it would be just that, a guess. Half down, half to go. Don’t give up yet, Checker. 

In any case, none of this discussion about choice this has anything to do with whether states should adopt Common Core. Back on task, Checker writes:

So yes, I’ve partly changed my mind about national standards and tests. I’m mindful of the risks and unknowns that lie ahead. I’m not totally satisfied with the Common Core. (Our raters gave it honors grades but not straight As). It troubles me that we’re so narrowly focused on just two subjects within the school curriculum. I’ve no idea what “cut scores” will be established for the forthcoming tests nor whether colleges and employers will take them seriously. I’m alarmed that one of the new assessment consortia doesn’t seem serious about accountability. I’m wary of what Congress will do to the Common Core when it finally gets around to reauthorizing NCLB. I’m nervous about the administration’s political backbone as electoral stakes rise. I’m skeptical about the stick-to-it-iveness of states that pledge their troth to Common Core but are rejected at the Race to the Top altar. (This may get clear fast. On Tuesday, a dozen states that had already adopted the new standards—more than one third of all adopters—were omitted from Secretary Duncan’s list of RTT finalists.)

Right, now we are getting somewhere. Checker forgot to mention that no one has any assurance whatsoever about the maintenance of the standards and tests, if they are any good to start with,  which is in doubt.

But what’s the point of just fretting and biting my nails and issuing cries of alarum? The education status quo sucks, to put it bluntly. Conserving it is no fit work for conservatives. In most of the country, they—we—should demand something better.

I certainly can’t speak for all Common Core skeptics, but “conserving the status-quo” is not my cup of K-12 tea. I completely agree that the status-quo sucks out loud. That doesn’t mean I should support something as poorly thought out as Common Core.

My state (Arizona) received pretty good grades for standards from Fordham, but it is painfully obvious that nothing about the status-quo of testing has been driving improvement. Our state has 44% of 4th graders who can’t read according to NAEP, and 4% of schools labeled underperforming by the Arizona Department of Education.

Arizona’s system, in short, devolved into a cruel joke on kids.

So what did we do?  Rather than dreaming about some implausible federal “solution” we fought back. We talked to our policymakers. Our governor called for Arizona to adopt the Florida method for grading schools based upon a combination of overall scores and student learning gains. Our legislature adopted the law with a bipartisan majority.  There will be attempts to water this down. The fight goes on.

If Arizona adopts the Common Core standards, and they turn out to be unteachable mush, how do I seek redress? I know who to talk to here in Arizona.  I get to vote for these people. Why should I want academic standards for my children drawn up by some faceless body of alleged grandees?  Churchill’s had it right when he said that democracy is the worst form of government ever devised, except for all the other ones.

In 2005, Esquire ran an article about Donald Rumsfeld called “An Old Man in a Hurry.”  As the United States continued to wallow in a full-blown Iraqi insurgency for which it had failed to prepare, the title of this piece became increasingly ironic. The title derived from an old English expression “Beware of an old man in a hurry.”

Checker isn’t old in my book, but is a highly respected veteran of the school reform movement. He’s earned the stars on his shoulder, and my admiration. He has an insightful intelligence and a knack for quickly getting to the heart of things. He may have forgotten more about K-12 policy than I’ll ever know. 

Passion however can lead to impatience, impatience can lead to recklessness, and recklessness leads to suffering. David Petraeus ought not to have been forced to write the United States Army Counterinsurgency Manual on the field in Iraq in 2006. ( Hundreds of thousands of people in the military, but no one had time to write one before. Hmmm.) Likewise, Donald Rumsfeld ought not to have invaded Iraq without an occupation plan. 

“Relax, don’t worry, be happy, we’ll figure out that stuff later” is an opening verse to a song that often ends in disaster. Rushing to adopt academic standards without so much as a reassuring fairy-tale of how they will be maintained over time is reckless.

Conservatism isn’t exclusively about preserving the status-quo. It also involves caution and a healthy respect for the law of unintended consequences.  Rummy forgot this and it seems to come and go with Checker, sometimes within the span of a single essay. Checker circa 1997 seemed to have it figured out, Checker circa 2010 seems to have thrown caution to the wind.

12 Comments | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Forget “Who’s Fickle?” Who’s Paranoid?

July 26, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Earlier this year, Checker Finn went through a brief period where he was tying himself in knots, sounding a whole lot like he was both for national standards and against them. Mike Petrilli chose that moment to take potshots at Arne Duncan for being “Fickle on Federalism.” I had a little fun asking “Who’s Fickle?”

Since then, Checker has finally decided where he stands (at least for now). He’s accused those of us who ask embarrassing questions about whether national standards will be hijacked by the blog blob of “paranoia.”

[Update: Hijacked by the “blob,” of course. This was totally not a Freudian slip. The blog doesn’t hijack anything – as far as you know. Nothing to see here, folks…]

Well, the game just changed. Neal McCluskey has dug up a 1997 Weekly Standard article in which Checker makes the same arguments against national standards we are now making. None of the relevant facts on the ground has changed. So today I get to ask, “Who’s Paranoid?”

2 Comments | instructional reform, school accountability | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

The Blob v. Reform SRN Podcast

July 8, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

My first-ever pod-type casting module is now available through the Inter-Net system of tubes via School Reform News. From the NEA $10 billion coke-and-hooker-slush-fund grab to the inevitable subversion of national standards by the blob, it’s a joyful romp through the lighter side of soul-crushing tyranny.

2 Comments | instructional reform, politics, teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Education and Citizenship on the Left and Right

June 29, 2010

 

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I’m bowled over by the new Claremont Review – Bill McClay’s cover story on the underlying cultural and educational sources of the nation’s current crisis is a real show-stopper. In the shorter items, Charles Murray has a great piece on the ups and downs of Ayn Rand, and my dissertation advisor Steven Smith has a fantastic (not that I’m biased) overview of the issues surrounding Heidegger’s Nazism.

In the education hopper, there’s Terry Moe’s Moore’s [oops!] review of E.D. Hirsch’s new book The Making of Americans. I haven’t seen the book yet; Moe Moore writes that Hirsch, always a man of the Left, makes the lefty case for curriculum reform centered on cultural literacy. To wit, schools paternalistically imposing upon children a homogeneous American culture strongly rooted in a matrix of moral values is the best way to help the poor rise, which is what lefties want.

Moe Moore also casually inserts that in this book Hirsch renews his flat-footed argument against school choice – that empowering parents with choice won’t improve schools because what schools need is better currucula. We’ve been around this merry-go-round with Hirsch before; his argument is like saying that empowering computer users to choose what computers they buy has no impact on the quality of computers; what makes computers better is that the computer companies invest in making them better. Of course, the reason computer companies work so hard to make their computers better, faster and cheaper every year is because they have to serve their customers in a highly competative market.

Moe Moore doesn’t draw the connection between Hirsch’s lefty argument for cultural literacy and his harebrained opposition to school choice, but the connection is there. It’s equally visible in Little Ramona, who – like Hirsch – has been wrongly considered a “conservative” for many years solely because she opposes multiculturalism and supports . . . well, the lefty argument for curriculum reform based on cultural literacy.

This matters because everybody’s all topsy-turvy about what is “progressive” or “conservative” in education, and it will take some effort to get our thinking straight.

Moe Moore picks up Hirsch’s statement that the movement for “progressive curricula,” i.e. the whole Dewey-inspired attack on traditional academic curricula, is really not a movement for a progressive curriculum but a movement against having any sort of “curriculum” properly so called. The point is not to change what’s in the curriculum but to have no substantive curriculum at all when it comes to inculcating a national character or a shared national culture. This is true, and it’s relevant to the question of why lefties who love cultural literacy hate school choice.

 

Since the late 1960s, the “progressive curriculm” (that is, the “anti-curricular”) movement has dominated the political left by making common cause with the teachers’ unions, who were not congenitally anti-curricular but whose interests were served by promoting the anti-curricular cause. As Moe Moore insightfully points out, the anti-curricular movement is really also an anti-teaching movement; it is therefore a perfect fit for the union agenda of more pay for less work. Thus, anyone who is “pro-curricular” is pigeonholed as being on the political right.

But that is a temporary phenomenon brought about by a unique confluence of political circumstances. In its historical orgins and in the logic of the position, the drive to use schools as engines of cultural homogeneity is a phenomenon of the authoritarian political left.

This goes all the way back to the roots of the system. It’s widely known that one of the major reasons America adopted the government monopoly school system in the first place was hysteria over the cultural foreignness of Catholics. However, there’s another tidbit worth knowing. As Charles Glenn documents in The Myth of the Common School, one of Horace Mann’s motivations for pushing the “common” school system was his vitriolic contempt for evangelical Protestant Christianity. The hicks in the rural Massachusetts countryside with their backward and barbaric adherence to traditional Calvinist theology – which had survived down through the centuries from the Puritan settlers – was repugnant to civilized and enlightened Boston-Brahmin Unitarians like himself.

Someone had to do something to rescue these culturally deprived children from their unenlightened parents! That’s why Mann’s schools had such a heavy emphasis on teaching the Bible – teaching it in a very particular way. Part of the school system’s purpose was cultural genocide against evangelicals, to use the power of the state to indoctrinate their children with unitarianism. And it worked beautifully; how many traditional Calvinists are left in Massachusetts?

[Update: It has been brought to my attention that the Presbyterian Church in America, a traditional Calvinist denomination, has lately been experiencing dramatic growth in New England. So perhaps I should have said “It worked beautifully; after a century of Mann’s schools, how many traditional Calvinists were left in Massachusetts?”]

What we have to get clear is that both the anti-Catholic and anti-evangelical hysteria – then as now – were on the political left.

The great crusade in the early 20th century to use the government monopoly school system to forcibly “assimilate” immigrants with “Americanism” was likewise a movement on the political left. On this subject, please do yourself the biggest favor you’ll do yourself all year and read (if you haven’t already) Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Fanatical patriotism was, until the convulsions of the 1960s, the special hallmark of the left, not the right.

The issues got scrambled after the 1960s by two factors. First and most important was the rise of an aggressive cultural ideology (what we now call “multiculturalism”) seeking to use the government school monopoly to impose its amoral and anti-American value system on the nation’s children. This movement was not only born on the left, but, as noted above, it formed a fruitful partnership with the unions who were also on the left. So naturally, the backlash formed on the right, and the identification of being “anti-multiculturalist” applied to conservatives. However, this was never really the same kind of animal as the left-wing authoritarian drive to use government schools to enlighten the benighted and make them into good Americans. Conservative anti-multiculturalism is negative and defensive in character; it’s not seeking to use government to impose a culture, but to stop the multiculturalists from doing so.

Second, as Goldberg documents, the authoritarianism of 20th century progressivism began to migrate over and infect the right; hence we get absurd specatcles such as a “conservative” president saying such things as “when people are hurting, government has to move.” And, similarly, some conservatives try to use the power of the state to impose right-wing cultural values. But this is really the result of conservatives having drunk from the polluted cultural water of left-wing authoritarianism.

Now let me be perfectly clear. Anxiety about whether young people are picking up 1) moral values and 2) cultural identity as Americans is of course widespread on both sides of the political isle. Believe me, I’m as worried as anyone about whether the nation is successfully passing on its civilization to its children, and whether today’s immigrants will assimilate and self-identify as Americans – not only for the sake of the nation, but for their own sake, since the chief victims of amoralism and multiculturalism are the people who believe in them.

The difference is not in being worried about this problem, but in how we want to solve it. Using the brute power of a government monopoly school system to paternalistically impose a homogenous culture has never been a conservative idea. Go back and look at the great conservative debates over this in the 1990s; whether you’re talking about William Bennett, James Q. Wilson or Charles Murray, you just never find conservative thought leaders talking that way. It’s the lefties like E.D. Hirsch and Little Ramona who dream that their cultural anxieties can be salved with the soothing balm of state power.

And really, it should be obvious why. If you’re the kind of person who thinks the brute force of state power can change culture, well then, you’re probably also a political lefty. If you’re the kind of person who thinks our culture will get along just fine if the state will just stop tinkering with it through social engineering, then you’re probably also a political righty.

It all comes down to how you concieve of the relationship between the government and the nation – which is to say, between power and culture. As Reagan famously asked, are we a nation that has a state, or a state that has a nation? To put the same question another way, does culture drive politics or does politics drive culture? Or, to put it even more bluntly, is the use of power shaped by the conscience of the nation, or do we use power to shape the conscience of the nation?

The conservative approach to schools and American culture is to use school choice to smash state power, thus depriving the multiculturalists of their only serious weapon. Get the state out of the way and let Americans worry about how to pass on American civilization to the next generation.

Oh, and here’s one other way you can tell that this is the conservative approach: the evidence shows it works.

[HT Ben Boychuk for pointing out I misread “Terry Moore” as “Terry Moe” – and apologies to both Terrys!]

38 Comments | civic values, instructional reform, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

“NOW a Warning?”

June 24, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In Death Becomes Her, a powerful sorceress offers Meryl Streep a potion that will make her immortal and eternally young. There’s this long, tense scene where she hesitates over whether to drink it. Does she want to live forever? Is she tampering with powers she doesn’t understand? Then she drinks it and there’s a special-effects sequence. Then the sorceress dramatically intones, “And now, a warning.”

Streep’s eyes bug out. “NOW a warning?”

That’s the only thing I could think of when I saw this, the latest chapter in the Fordham Institute’s ever-twisting pretzel of attitudes about national standards.

For as long as they can get away with it, they ignore the question of whether national standards will, once they’re created, inevitably be captured by the blob, and remade in the blob’s image. What little they do say is empty of substance and easily shot down by the application of a little logic.

Then as soon as it’s clear the federal government steamroller has succeeded in ensuring that all states will be dragooned into adopting its “voluntary” standards, Fordham comes out with this big solemn think-piece about how we need to consider the important question of how we can ensure the standards aren’t captured by the blob.

Hey, guys – what if we can’t ensure that?

I guess it’s too late to ask that question now.

3 Comments | instructional reform, school accountability | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Burke and Ladner Sing the real “Empire State of Mind” Duet on NRO

June 9, 2010

Now you’re in New York FLOR-I-DA!  Our minority children outscore your WHOLE STATE! There’s nothing we can’t do! 

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke and I hit National Review Online on Florida’s K-12 success in raising minority academic achievement.

In California, Meg Whitman won the Republican nomination for governor in overwhelming fashion on Tuesday. As you can see on her campaign site, Whitman wants to bring Florida reforms to California, which desperately needs them. California is a gigantic state that scores like an urban school district on NAEP. Without large improvements in California, it is unlikely that we will see the United States even begin to close the academic gap with European and Asian nations.

3 Comments | competitive effects, instructional reform, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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