Can teachers write their own curriculum?

A few years ago, our then-assistant curriculum director, a terrific woman and an advocate for children whom I miss to this day, explained to the school board that our math curriculum was not Math Trailblazers.

I was in the audience at the time, and I was annoyed, because our curriculum most certainly was Math Trailblazers.

"People say our curriculum is Trailblazers," she said, "but it's not. We write our own curriculum."^*

At the time, I was somewhat regularly in touch with a parent who had worked as an editor for a textbook publisher. Apprised of the 'we write our own' exchange, she was aghast.

In the world of publishing, where curricula actually do get written and published, writing a curriculum is a massive undertaking that consumes months of effort and multiple bodies playing multiple roles.

Not here. In my district writing-our-own-curriculum meant giving teachers two-week stipends over the summer to meet with a Trailblazers specialist from Bedford (the only other district still using Trailblazers, everyone else having dumped it) and be briefed on tweaks.

Trailblazers finally disappeared last year, but the curriculum situation has not improved. It's probably worse; the old-time curriculum adoption process seems to have been scuttled in favor of unilateral decisions made by the central executives. And our current curriculum director's new Powerpoint, titled "Teaching for Understanding," includes the observation that "Conventional linear (text-book [sic] driven) scope and sequence is a major impediment to developing understanding."

Naturally the words "we write our own curriculum" make me crazy because, as an adjunct who actually does write her own curriculum, not to mention an author who writes her own books, I know exactly how time-consuming writing a curriculum is.

Writing a curriculum takes forever.

Here's Siegfried Engelmann on the subject of writing and time:

As part of the endorsement of whole language, the ["Report Card on Basal Readers"] concludes that teachers should throw out basal readers and teach without them, using literature. The baseless are seen as an evil that deprives reading specialists of their right to make instructional decisions.

There are several problems with this solution: The first is that teachers are typically slaves to instructional programs and follow them very closely (even when they tell other that they don't). The second is that there is no evidence to support the assertion that typical reading specialists are capable of designing instruction that is effective (and a lot of data to suggest that they aren't). The third and most serious problem is that a reading specialist who designed even one grade-level of a program that worked well with the full range of kids, wold have to work on it no less than 6 hours a day for a minimum of two years.

War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse by Siegfried Engelmann, p 24

Six hours a day, five days a week, for two years.

Sounds about right to me.

Full disclosure: I am writing part of a textbook.

It's taking forever.


^* Later on one of our school board members, whom I had lobbied heavily on the subject of Singapore Math, took to calling our curriculum "Irvington math."

Allison on kids and textbooks

More bad news on the Powerpoint curriculum

pop quiz, part 2

re: pop quiz

Try this forced-choice exercise: if a principal wants to improve the quality of
teaching and learning in his or her school, which three of these will have the greatest
impact?

• Observing and evaluating full lessons, preceded by a pre-conference with each teacher and followed by a detailed write-up and post-conference;
• Systematic walkthroughs of the entire school focusing on target areas (for example, the quality of student work on bulletin boards);
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;
• Quick “drive-by” visits to all classrooms every day to greet students and “manage by walking around”;
• Collecting and checking over teachers’ lesson plans every week;
• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.

What's a Principal to Do? When You Can’t Do It All, What Are the Highest-Leverage Activities?  by Kim Marshall
Education Week September 20, 2006

Ed, who teaches at the university level, instantly got the answers:

• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;

I missed 'unit planning,' which was the first answer Ed picked, and the most important one as far as he is concerned.

And what is unit planning?

Unit planning is curriculum, essentially. At least, of the choices above, "unit planning" is the closest to curriculum.

Marshall writes:

Unit planning – When teachers work together to plan multi-week curriculum units (e.g., the Civil War, the solar system, ratio and proportion), working backwards from state standards, “big ideas,” and unit assessments, the result is more thoughtful instruction, deeper student understanding, and, yes, better standardized-test scores. But this kind of curriculum design is rare; most teachers plan instruction forward, one day or week at a time, and write their unit tests and final exams just before students take them. Principals can counteract this natural tendency by providing the training, support, and time for teacher teams to plan units collaboratively, using peer review and robust design standards to constantly improve their work. 

Of course, I'm not keen on this model, necessarily: I (think I) prefer the Direct Instruction model, or the textbook model, where the curriculum is designed by disciplinary specialists, writers, and editors who work full-time designing the curriculum.

How is it we have full-time teachers designing and writing curriculum???'

Nevertheless, if we are going to have full-time classroom teachers writing curriculum, then focusing on unit planning as opposed to lesson planning strikes me as a very good idea.

Richard DuFour's innovation (the Professional Learning Community) is typically described as a shift from thinking about teaching (inputs) to thinking about learning (outputs).

But when you get closer to what he actually did, I think you have to argue that he also shifted focus from 'lessons' and 'lesson plans' to curriculum.

pop quiz

re: ruining Lemov

Try this forced-choice exercise: if a principal wants to improve the quality of
teaching and learning in his or her school, which three of these will have the greatest
impact?

• Observing and evaluating full lessons, preceded by a pre-conference with each teacher and followed by a detailed write-up and post-conference;
• Systematic walkthroughs of the entire school focusing on target areas (for example, the quality of student work on bulletin boards);
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;
• Quick “drive-by” visits to all classrooms every day to greet students and “manage by walking around”;
• Collecting and checking over teachers’ lesson plans every week;
• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.

What's a Principal to Do? When You Can’t Do It All, What Are the Highest-Leverage Activities?  by Kim Marshall
Education Week September 20, 2006

Andrew Gelman wants to know what to cut from h.s. math

Deadwood in the math curriculum

He doesn't seem to know about any of the changes to K-8 math in the past 20 years, and the blogger he quotes, Mark Palko, explicitly rejects the math wars as a "clever narrative" that does not explain high school math curricula.

It's tough fighting a math war nobody knows about.

In any event, some of you should probably weigh in on which topics to include in a sound high school math curriculum.

Molly on back to the future

re: Diane Ravitch writing in today's Times--

If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved.

Waiting for a School Miracle
By DIANE RAVITCH
Published: May 31, 2011

Molly writes:

My children meet all those lovely criteria, but somehow our educational problems remain. My child's good health and nutrition didn't help her when her algebra class spent an entire week singing karaoke followed up by 12 minutes graphing the results. Her stable family with a steady income was of no use when her English class spent 4 weeks studying poetry but never read a single poem that wasn't written by one of her 8th grade classmates. My child's good fortune doesn't do a damn thing to protect her from a crappy curriculum indifferently taught.

back to the future with Diane Ravitch

Robert Pondiscio on curriculum vs value-added

When I think of the curriculum and teaching methods I was required to use in my classroom, the idea that my effectiveness might be dependent upon them makes me want to lie down with a damp wash cloth on my forehead. Manipulatives and discovery instead of basic arithmetic? Endlessly revising ”small moments” and teaching the writing process to 10-year olds instead of basic grammar? No time for even basic science, social studies because of district demands for ever larger math and literacy blocks? If it fails, it’s on me? Seriously?

Erin Johnson left a comment:

Robert, Why do you think that the LA Teachers Union (or the national unions) have not highlighted the issue of curricula?

I have recently been in contact with a LA teacher who was rated “more effective” in math by the LA Times. She states that her good rating was probably due to the fact that she “subversively” uses Saxon math instead of her district adopted program. Do ed reformers expect that teachers will subvert the curricula adoption process?

And here is Robert again:

I’m not sure curriculum reform is on anyone’s radar screen in a big way, including the unions. I used to regularly subvert…er…adapt my math curriculum to assure automaticity on basic functions. 5th graders counting on their fingers or multiplying with arrays is an offense to my sensibilities. I had less flexibility on ELA since there was lots of joint planning and execution involved. I’d go as far as saying my school’s ELA program (“It’s not a curriculum, Mr. Pondiscio, it’s a philosophy,” I can still hear the staff developer reminding me) is what turned me into a curriculum advocate.

Curriculum effects and value-added

the nativity gap, part 2

from Erin Johnson:

The 2007 TIMSS does break out the US results by race. In 4th grade the US Asian subgroup performs only slightly less than the top Asian countries but by 8th grade the US Asian subgroup performs significantly lower.

4th grade US Asians: 582
4th grade Singapore: 593

8th grade US Asians: 549
8th grade Singapore: 599

Highlights from TIMSS (pdf file)

Note that the math scores of Singapore stay the same from 4th to 8th grade, but the US Asian subpopulation (as well as the entire student population) declines.

If math performance was purely an IQ phenom, we would expect that those 4th and 8th grade levels would be comparable, but this is not the case.

Also, there is evidence from Whitehurst that math curricula does matter. So it is not inconceivable that differences between math in Asia vs the US might account for performance differences.

Anecdotally, having used Singapore math it is easy for me to see why Asian math programs would be significantly better at enabling kids to learn math.

the nativity gap

from Bostonian:

Where is the evidence, adjusting for race, that American math curricula are worse than those used in Asia?

William Schmidt, director of the U.S. national Research Center for the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, is the person to read on this subject:

The Role of Curriculum
A Coherent Curriculum: The Case of Mathematics (pdf file)

and see:
The Sequence of Mathematics Topics in Top-Achieving Countries (pdf file)


nativity gap

This Stiefel, Schwartz, and Conger study, while not an analysis of curriculum, supports Schmidt's argument:

Do Immigrants Differ from Migrants? Disentangling the Impact of Mobility on High School Completion and Performance
Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Dylan Conger

from the New York Sun's story:

Foreign-born newcomers to New York City's public schools are performing better than native-born newcomers, a New York University study shows.

The working paper by NYU education researchers titled "Do Immigrants Differ From Migrants?" has also deflated any notions that immigrant students tend to do worse in American schools the older they are when they arrive. On the contrary, the findings demonstrated that immigrant students actually do better if they begin their American education in high school rather than in elementary or middle school.

[snip]

Ms. Schwartz, speaking at an NYU symposium last week, said she and her colleagues had hypothesized that immigrant students "who come late are the ones who are really disadvantaged," guessing that their lack of language skills, the stress of moving to a new country, and institutional differences between the schools they came from and the New York schools might hurt their graduation rate and performance on tests.

Instead, they found that the foreign born "just do remarkably better," Ms. Schwartz said.

Foreign-Born Students New to N.Y. Outshine Native Born
by Sarah Garland
New York Sun
February 11, 2008 Edition

Here is Andrew Wolf's take:

Immigrant children outperform some native-born children in New York schools, my colleague Sarah Garland reported the other day. Indeed, it seems the longer newly-arrived children attend our schools, the worse they do. These conclusions come from a new study, "Do Immigrants Differ From Migrants?"

"The foreign born are whizzing by the native born at every level," one of the researchers, Amy Ellen Schwartz, said.

[snip]

If one drives past the Bronx High School of Science any given school day morning, one will encounter a seemingly endless caravan of yellow school buses. Most of these buses come from Queens, the borough known for its immigrant population. Sixty percent of those recently offered a spot at Bronx Science as a result of their test scores come from Queens, as are 40% of the new freshmen at Stuyvesant. It [sic] it turns out that a good number of these commuter students are recent immigrants, why do the city's specialized high schools seem to have such a disproportionate number of newly arrived students?

Whizzing By
BY ANDREW WOLF
March 3, 2008

I miss the Sun.

Schmidt on the elite kids

This system of ours has failed the elite kids, too. This is a little known fact because it wasn’t emphasized very much, but in the early TIMSS study there was a high school specialist exam for those kids that were the AP physics kids and those that were the AP calculus kids. Those kids were last among their counterparts in the rest of the world. That is, if you took the elite track in the French system that was leading to math and science, these [American] kids were at the bottom. So we’re failing those kids just as much as we’re failing the kids on the other spectrum.

William Schmidt, Michigan State University
U.S. TIMSS National Research Coordinator
Baltimore Curriculum Project/Leading Minds

Diane Ravitch on coherent curriculum in MN

from Flypaper:

I would point out that Minnesota showed dramatic gains on TIMMS not because of “new, more rigorous standards,” but because of that state’s decision to implement a coherent grade-by-grade curriculum in mathematics. William Schmidt took the lead in developing that curriculum (pdf file) and deserves to bask in glory for what he has done for the children of Minnesota. That is the most important lesson of 2007 TIMSS for the United States.

I'd love to hear more about this.