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One of the teachers in my school district was told by our superintendent yesterday that it shouldn't matter who is in the classroom that it all came down to good curriculum.One of the commenters wrote:
I would ask him where he gets his research. Citation please! Much of the research supports the exact opposite of his claim.
Do you have the sense that this notion that "curriculum trumps all" is prevalent in your district?
I'm rummaging through the literature to find good studies to prove the opposite. Difficult, since most research on K-12 education is so bad.
9 comments:
My sense is that one of the few things that educational research tells us definitively is that the teacher makes a huge difference to student learning.
Certainly, where I am from, superintendents are left with very little power to look at staffing as much more that a "pegs in holes" kind of exercise.
I would guess that a comment like the one you report would be a way to make them feel better about the reality that they live.
Try to ignore your conflicting emotions and boil the question down to the case where you've got the "median" curriculum or "median" teacher. The issue isn't how fantastic a great teacher is, because they are rare anyway. The issue is how much an improvement in teaching vs curriculum matters.
so consider only two questions:
If you have a mediocre teacher and a good curriculum, do kids learn?
If you have a good teacher and mediocre curriculum, where the teacher DOES NOT DEVIATE from it, do kids learn?
do not consider that a good teacher will try to get around the mediocre curriculum. This is a cheat. this is not part of the thought experiment. if you allow this, you're implicitly admitting the supe was right.
I'd have to say in my personal experience, that a better curriculum makes mediocre teachers better by following it, while better teachers only fix a mediocre curriculum by deviating from it.
Of course skilled teachers make a difference. Education isn't like fast food. Unskilled teenagers can turn out consistent burgers by following corporate policy. If your curriculum can be delivered by unskilled teachers, it must not be worth having.
As I understand the research, teacher effectiveness consists of some clearly defined and observable variables (which ones are required does depend on the situation -- skillset for teaching Kindergarten different from that required for teaching junior high). Teachers who are very weak in most or all of these things will be ineffective regardless of the curriculum. This might be because the teacher is in the wrong situation -- has the skillset for a different level or subject -- but the person might also simply be unsuited for teaching, period. Good curricula will not help such a person. I've observed well-meaning individuals using extremely effective instructional materials or programs, and having no measurable success whatever. They lacked the skills.
On the other hand, people with some, but not outstanding, skills can be much more effective with well-planned, well-sequenced and organized instructional curriculum materials. They can concentrate on the interaction with students and observing and responding to students' needs instead of trying to be "creative" and come up with "differentiated" lesson plans for six grade levels in five different subject areas in the same classroom. Most teachers have no training in instructional product development and a limited understanding of sequencing and pacing issues or even of cognitive science generally. A good curriculum bypasses this. It does indeed make average or below average teachers better.
Now it may be possible for an outstanding teacher to get incredible results with a poor curriculum or with nothing at all -- but I doubt it. I'm not an outstanding teacher myself, I am somewhat above average. With superior materials and programs, I get outstanding results. But, when I was at a school that had nothing -- literally NOTHING -- no paper, pencils, textbooks, computers, nothing -- I couldn't get those results, even though I knew what and how to teach the students, and spent thousands of dollars buying materials. It took me five years to buy enough good curriculum materials to teach my students -- and by then I had had it, and changed schools. My students in the "bad" school may have enjoyed their time with me -- I did the best I could with what we had -- but they did not make measurable gains in learning.
Ideally, you need both good teachers AND good curricula. Neither can effectively stand alone.
Ideally, you need both good teachers AND good curricula. Neither can effectively stand alone.
No doubt. We shouldn't have to choose one over the other. I want children to have access to both. The problem is, when it comes to either how skilled teachers are and how effective curricula are parents don't have much of a choice.
Was the administor making a case to get mediocre math programs out of the schools?!?!? :D
If so, I would have to agree with her!
Once you have a solid curriculum THAT CONTAINS CONTENT, even a weak teacher might get something taught. Without it, even the best teacher may struggle to adequately prepare students for the next level.
If you dropped Singapore Math into an average school, I wouldn't expect great results unless the school enforced year-to-year mastery of the material. I can just imagine what would happen in our full-inclusion school. They would still allow kids to slide along in the hope that it will all come to them in a flash when they are developmentally ready. That's why our school uses Everyday Math. If it doesn't come to them at some point, then they will probably never be ready - their definition of LD.
EnVision Math tries to computerize the whole process of individual formative assessment and correction. Kids take computerized tests and the programs produce reports and plans that explain a process for correction. This sounds better than some other curricula, but I wasn't thrilled when I looked at the content of the curriculum.
In some sense, enVision Math, with it's daily differentiation and automated formative assessment, is based on the idea that the teacher is not as important. This concept has been going on for some time. Mastery of the basics, a clearly-defined or automated system for ensuring mastery of the basics could be a very good thing. If the goal is a fully-differentiated classroom, then an automated curriculum is the way to go.
A big goal should be to eliminate the math gaps that cause so many problems in later years. If you have a couple of really poor 3rd grade teachers, the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teachers, no matter how good they are, will be less effective.
I can imagine a computer-based Singapore Math system that allows kids to proceed at their own pace. This means that a student can't proceed until they have mastered certain skills. This is quite different than the usual process of giving kids grades and allowing them to proceed even if they have gaps.
Once mastery of the basics has been ensured, then good teachers have the time to be good teachers, and bad teachers have less impact. It's really not just curriculum versus teachers, it's the whole process.
I look at a lot of math textbooks, and I have yet to see one that has it all together on everything it should be teaching. All of them have omissions or rough spots, (and lots of them have the occasional statement that is actually false--aargh!). Unless you have a truely exceptional curriculum, it's not going to be enough to stand on its own. You need good teachers who know what they are doing, and will make the good stuff more effective, and throw out the garbage.
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