I don’t object to a little downtime as the school year winds down—most parents probably feel the same. But I do mind that the slowdown seems to begin earlier and earlier in the year, stretching into a multi-week period in May when little meaningful academic work takes place. What’s more, students don’t always enjoy it either. Speaking from my own experience, my kids are not exactly clamoring for more assignments, but their disengagement is obvious.

This end-of-year drift is especially frustrating after months of being told how critical school attendance is. If every day in school matters, why is so much time wasted at the end of the year?

In the grand scheme of things, the May Malaise may seem like a minor annoyance. But it also informs a deeper question: What would schools look like without testing? While I don’t believe they would devolve into nonstop parties and movies, this period offers a glimpse into what the school system would look like with less focus on academics and less accountability. It suggests the motivation to improve student achievement isn’t as deeply embedded in the system as we might hope. And to me, it highlights the value of testing.

I know some people see standardized tests as the enemy of good teaching. They argue that tests constrain teachers, forcing them to “teach to the test” instead of inspiring creativity and deeper learning. But I see it differently. I believe testing is one of the most powerful tools we have to keep schools focused on what matters most: teaching core academic skills. I fear that if we stop testing, what little urgency we have for improving academic achievement will be lost.

Even if you think that tests are too distracting for teachers, or too stressful for students (some stress is good for them, I assure you!), just remember May Malaise. It could be worse.

The post “May Malaise” and the Value of Testing in Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How do you feel about book-banning? This question was recently posed at a meeting of about 50 educators. When the question went out to the audience, you could hear the groans rising. The questioner, a librarian, was considering putting a “Banned Books” display in the library. As you can imagine, the educators were all for this. Then something curious happened. In a matter of seconds, the very educators who had voiced strong opposition to the banning of books themselves became book-banners.

Hearing the response to her question, the librarian was heartened. She shared her thoughts on the display and mentioned an example—Skippyjon Jones. Released in 2003, Skippyjon Jones was an immediate hit. It featured a loveable Siamese cat who thought he was a Chihuahua. In 2004, the book won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award from The Association of Booksellers for Children. I began teaching first grade shortly after Skippyjon Jones was released. My students loved it. They would often repeat the refrain from the book, “Yip, yippee, yippito! My name is Skippy Skippito!”

Fast-forward to 2018 and the book was listed as the eighth-most-challenged book by the American Library Association. Finding the book’s portrayal of Hispanics and stereotypes of Latinos objectionable, many have sought to remove the book from public school classrooms.

When that librarian mentioned the book to her audience of educators, I don’t think she expected what happened. The mood turned. The groans of disapproval of “bans” turned to voices saying, “Well . . . that book is problematic.”

You have heard that everyone is a critic. What you may not realize is that everyone is also a censor. Every person believes objectionable or problematic materials should not be given to unsuspecting youth in our public school classrooms. We just define what is objectionable or problematic in different ways.

In recent years, conservatives have been labeled as “book banners” for attempting to keep books that display sexual acts or that teach children about gender ideology from the classroom. The use of the phrase “book banning” is effective rhetorically, but it is not really accurate. The individuals organizing at school board meetings or in state houses are hardly seeking to ban books. Rather, they are seeking to keep some books from being purchased by government organizations for consumption in public institutions. They are seeking to censor what is being presented to children.

This notion of censorship is not a right or left issue and it is not new. Americans have long fought over the content that would be taught and the books that would be presented to children. We’ve fought over these issues for many reasons. Chief among them are that some materials are simply not appropriate for children, and that education has the ability to shape a child’s mind.

Censoring is a rational human response to objectionable material. It is something we do for ourselves, and it is something we do for our own children on a daily basis. Censoring becomes an issue in the public sphere because of how we have chosen to organize our public education system. We compel parents to send their children to school and we condition their receipt of government funding upon them sending their children to public schools. We place parents in a winner-take-all system to determine whose values and whose books are presented in the classroom. As long as we continue to organize our school system in this way, “book banning” will continue to be an issue.

Of course, the system does not have to be organized this way. We could create a system of public education in which parents are empowered to send their children to the school of their choice. We could choose to create a system where parents in the same school district could choose to send their children to different schools based on the quality of education and the alignment of the curricula to each family’s values. Strangely, the very people opposed to “banning books” are often the very people who stand in the way of proposals for educational freedom.

Sections of “Banned Books” may make great library displays or they may help drive sales at bookstores, but the fact is censoring books is emblematic of our public education system. It is not a flaw of the system; it is the design. As the educators I witnessed demonstrated, we are all censors. The question is, are we ready to do something about it? Are we ready to change the system?

The post Banning Books? Everyone Is a Censor appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

[T]he new legislation, for example, would bar teaching “that individuals, by virtue of their race, ethnicity, color, or national origin, bear collective guilt and are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by others. . . .”

The legislation also includes a number of parental rights, including being able to access curricula, the names of guest speakers at the school, and information about collection and transmission of student data.

It sets up the “Missouri Education Transparency and Accountability Portal” allowing the public to access “every school district’s curriculum, textbooks, source materials, and syllabi.”

The package also requires the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to create a class for schools to teach about patriotism.

The vote wasn’t close at 21 in favor and 12 against, with two self-described conservatives strangely voting against the bill. Both explained the basis for their votes during the floor debate for SB 4, and to put it lightly, neither senator made a compelling case for opposition.

I’ll explore the bill more in-depth later, but I’ll say here that gripes about statutory language intended to ensure districts don’t get sued for publishing copyrighted material and penalize schools for noncompliance are unfounded and ill-considered. The senators should get better outside counsel than what they received here.

Chances are good that SB 4 will be tweaked and possibly improved by the House, which will take the bill up in the weeks ahead. Chances are also good that some schools and school districts will try to work around or undermine the intent of the law after it’s been implemented, necessitating follow-up legislation to close any loopholes that emerge. But even if SB 4 were passed as is, it’d still be one of the strongest parents’ rights bills in the country. Whenever it does pass this session, it will be a good day for taxpayers and parents.

The post Parents’ Bill of Rights Legislation Clears Senate appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The kinds of education transparency that the legislature will grapple with are likely threefold.

• Transparency in spending: Previous Show-Me Checkbook projects have mainly looked at how local governments spend money, but districts and schools also should be transparent and accountable for how they spend taxpayer money. Especially in an environment where teacher pay is a hot topic, seeing exactly where tax money is going today will be illuminating about where tax money should be going tomorrow. My colleague, our director of education Susan Pendergrass, will have much more on this soon.
• Transparency in curriculum: It is no secret that we sent thousands of Sunshine Law requests to schools and districts around the state over the last couple years asking what they’re teaching kids and telling teachers about a host of hot-button education topics, the responses to which (when there have been responses) have been mostly incomplete. At this point, I believe the state needs to mandate transparency of these institutions. Taxpayers can debate whether it’s appropriate to teach critical race theory in the classroom or to instruct teachers that Christians oppress all other religions, but that debate can only happen if taxpayers are aware of the content.
• Transparency in performance: When true school choice is widely available in the state, parents will have some decisions to make about where to send their kids. How good each educational option is will play a major role in those decisions. Unfortunately, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has done an abysmal job ensuring parents have tools to easily distinguish between failing and succeeding schools and districts. The law must change to make that information more widely available and to ensure failure is administratively corrected, not administratively protected. Susan’s MoSchoolRankings.org is a valuable bridge of information as we wait for the state to take action.

These reform ideas are showing up individually in a lot of pieces of education legislation, but the legislation they’re most often appearing in are “parents’ bill of rights” proposals. We’ve talked about those kinds of laws in the past, and whether legislators pass all these reforms at once with a parents’ bill of rights or separately, these reforms would be a significant advance in parent-empowering policy. Parents need school choice, and better still, they need informed school choice.

The post A Reminder: Missouri Still Needs Transparency in Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Overall, the responses we’ve received so far in 2022 look generally like what we saw in 2021. Most schools either have not responded to our request for information or have denied teaching CRT. Some schools have opted to try and charge the Institute hundreds of thousands of dollars to get access to school curriculum, and many more wanted to charge smaller fees. What has been rare, however, is schools openly providing documents that include CRT-type material. Last year, the most prominent example of this was the Kansas City Public School District.

But another notable example from last year was the Hazelwood School District. Hazelwood was one district that provided CRT-related materials when the Institute sent requests last year, and at that time its curriculum included excerpts of the 1619 project being taught to fourth graders and materials provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center about “Teaching for Tolerance.” When Hazelwood responded to this year’s request, the district sent basically the same documents it did last year, though this time without any fourth-grade curriculum, indicating that content was removed from the curricula.

Our director of government accountability, Patrick Ishmael, has been critical of CRT concepts. But it’s important to remember that regardless of the content of the instruction, the public has a right to see it and districts have an obligation to provide it.

Hazelwood should be commended for its honesty and forthrightness in response to our inquiries, both last year and this year. Through two iterations of the project, it is the only district that to date has twice released the pertinent curriculum without any fees, delays, or complaints.

The point here is that if school districts are going to spend taxpayer money to educate students regarding a subject, including CRT, they should make the information available to parents. Ideally, all districts would be transparent with curriculum and would post it on their website or send it to parents before the start of a school year. After all, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if government transparency can improve curricula, our schools and our kids will be better off for it.

The post At Least Hazelwood’s Honest appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The bill . . . aims to “to empower parents to enforce” rights laid out in the bill, like knowing what curriculum is being taught and allowing parents to visit schools to check on their children. . . .

An amendment added to the bill [] would prohibit teachers or students from being forced to adopt ideas in violation of sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, such as concepts that individuals are inherently superior or inferior based on their race, ethnicity, color or national origin or “bear collective guilt” for the actions their ancestors may have committed in the past. . . .

Other provisions included in the bill require that public school employees’ salaries be included in the state’s accountability portal, allow for lawsuits if school boards fail to follow requirements that allow for public comment and directs the state education department to develop a database for schools to post their curriculum and professional development materials every six months.

The bill also requires that districts post their curricula on their websites, one of many ideas that overlaps with the Show-Me Institute’s Parents’ Bill of Rights published last year. If this bill is passed, it will go straight into law. This is in contrast to House Joint Resolution (HJR) 110, which would first go to voters, but would also have the benefit of entering the Missouri Constitution.

It’s been a slow process, but it is good to see some of the legislative logjam in Jefferson City that’s bedeviled lawmaking for over three months finally making its way down the river. I look forward to testifying on this legislation in the Senate and hope these reforms complete the legislative process and become law. Onward.

The post Parents’ Bill of Rights Law Passes the House appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

develop standards-aligned units that engage their students in The 1619 Project, and other journalism and historical sources, to strengthen connections to existing curricula, practice media literacy skills, and build empathy. At least two educators from each team will then implement units with at least two classes, evaluate student outcomes, and share their projects publicly through Pulitzer Center’s lesson library and virtual professional development programs. [Emphasis mine]

I talked about this on Gary Nolan’s program last Thursday. I wrote about it two weeks ago. There’s no ambiguity about what CPS is being paid to do and has agreed to do. So I don’t know what exactly to make of this story from the Columbia Daily Tribune published this past Sunday, which suggests the district has represented to parents that The 1619 Project won’t be in classrooms.

Because it will be.

Elements of The 1619 Project will be used by teachers in two elective courses for high school seniors in Columbia as part of the Pulitzer Center’s The 1619 Project Education Network, an official with the center said Friday.

The Columbia Board of Education recently approved an agreement with the Pulitzer Center for two teachers to participate in the network, but in statements since the approval, Columbia Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark distanced the district from the agreement, asserting it won’t result in aspects of The 1619 Project being taught.

“We do not have CRT (Critical Race Theory) or 1619 curriculum or lessons in Columbia Public Schools,” Baumstark said Tuesday, while acknowledging that a small group of teachers were looking at the primary source materials for The 1619 Project. [Emphasis mine]

Since I don’t live in Columbia, I wasn’t initially aware of the district’s representations. The only reason I became aware of the story is because a supporter called and recommended the article to me. Suffice it to say, I’m perplexed by the district’s assertion, which may be most charitably described as a word and tense game. Columbia taxpayers and parents deserve transparency and good-faith disclosure about existing or future curriculum plans from the public officials whose salaries they fund.

The post Wait, the Columbia Public School District Said What about Teaching the 1619 Project? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The 1619 Project is a central aspect of what is known as Critical Race Theory, which has been a controversial topic.

Under the program, teams of educators will receive grants of $5,000 each “to support exploration of key questions of racial justice and other pressing issues,” the agenda item reads.

District educators must manage the writing and sharing of at least one of the standards-aligned unit plans that connect students to resources from The 1619 Project as part of unit objectives. Unit plans should explore questions including under-reported stories and why they are important; the role of journalism in evaluating history; and examining contemporary under-reported issues with connections to the past.

Those following the Show-Me Curricula Project may have noticed that this was in the hopper, in light of the grant application we received from the district that it had filed with the Pulitzer Center. The memorandum of understanding, however, provides further definition to what is expected for the money. From the memorandum, which is also filed in our public database:

Network teams will develop standards-aligned units that engage their students in The 1619 Project, and other journalism and historical sources, to strengthen connections to existing curricula, practice media literacy skills, and build empathy. At least two educators from each team will then implement units with at least two classes, evaluate student outcomes, and share their projects publicly through Pulitzer Center’s lesson library and virtual professional development programs. Program details and deliverables are further outlined below. (Emphasis mine)

Keep in mind that the grant requires “at least two educators” and “at least two classes” to teach the 1619 Project. This is only the minimum required under the grant. It does not touch on what other teachers might bring into the classroom on their own. In any case, the board’s adoption of the 1619 Project appears to give a green light to bringing those resources and related resources into the classroom.

The post Columbia Public School District Bringing the 1619 Project to Classrooms appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Most schools that have replied so far have told us that they do not have documents that are responsive to our request, meaning they claim they have not incorporated CRT into their curricula and have not talked publicly about it. I trust those representations are true. Readers can follow what we’re receiving from schools and districts, as we receive them, by clicking here. We appreciate the promptness of the responses of districts that have already gotten back to us.

Notably, the Hazelwood School District sent four documents responsive to our request for CRT-related materials: three curricula and one public statement. Some of the CRT materials are incorporated by reference; there are instructions in the curricula to review and discuss content in a linked website but the content is not necessarily fully articulated in the curricula. Some examples of what I found:

Content from the New York Times’ 1619 Project dealing with early European explorers is prescribed for fourth-graders, and ninth-graders are told that the 1776 Commission, established by former President Donald Trump, was an exercise in “identity politics”—a charge it did not also level against the 1619 Project.

The curricula for fourth-graders and eighth-graders also direct teachers, by a link, to materials provided free of charge by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and marketed variously as “Teaching Tolerance” and “Learning for Justice.” Readers will find substantial CRT content at this SPLC website.

To be sure, it is difficult to know the full extent to which CRT concepts will be taught in Hazelwood schools; curricula doesn’t always translate directly to the classroom. But it is fair to believe that these materials represent the baseline of the school’s CRT instruction.

Our Sunshine Law request also returned a Hazelwood School Board public statement. Per the statement, the district is engaged in ongoing, unspecified racist practices—a remarkable admission, given taxpayers are being forced to subsidize the district through their taxes. In a long list of action items, Hazelwood’s school board says it will:

[e]mpower the superintendent and charge her with boldly addressing and correcting institutionalized racist practices that have survived because of a “wall of silence and denial,” against our students and in our schools much like that in police departments. The Board will hold itself and all staff, accountable for the same. [Emphasis mine]

I did not know about Hazelwood’s “institutionalized racist practices,” and therefore I did not request documents relating to it. It may be the subject of a follow-up Sunshine Law request.

I encourage the public and parents especially to read for themselves the materials that are being provided, and to do their own due diligence with their own schools as classes return later this year. Transparency is a fundamental part of good governance. Likewise, transparency is the bare minimum that districts and schools should be offering taxpayers when it comes to problematic curricula.

The post First Results of Our Request for Critical Race Theory Curricula appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This occurs largely because California and Texas require school districts to purchase textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education. The Education Commission of the States reports that 20 states have similar policies.

What Goldstein’s article makes clear is that values are transmitted via the texts we assign children to read. In California, the texts are more open to portraying individuals with various sexual orientations. In Texas, they discuss legal and illegal immigration. Far from being value-neutral, the text schools assign children and the lessons teachers teach can be laden with values.

In this case, we can see the values when we compare one state to another. Missouri, however, does not have a state textbook adoption process. As such, schools can choose the books they think best align with state standards. Many are ditching textbooks altogether in favor of teacher curated reading materials and online resources. My 8^th– and 9^th-grader, for example, do not bring any textbooks home. Everything is online.

In this system, how can parents figure out what values are embedded in the curriculum that is being taught to their children? We can’t.

This is why we need school choice. With a robust system of school choice, which includes traditional public schools, magnet schools, public charter schools, and private schools, we can stop the charade. We can stop pretending that there is such a thing as the value-neutral school. We can be more upfront about what we want for our children and what our school community believes.

The post Stop the Charade: Public Schools Are Not Value Neutral appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While it’s true that over half of all charter schools are in urban districts, in the 2015–16 school year there were nearly 1,800 suburban charter schools and over 1,200 in small towns and rural communities.

It turns out that curriculum really matters to middle-income parents, and many gravitate to charter schools because they offer educational models that aren’t available in traditional public schools. Some of these models are more rigorous, some are more open and creative, and some offer unique programs. There are hundreds of examples of outstanding suburban and rural charter schools, but I’ll offer just a few to ponder.

Take the BASIS charter schools: In the 2017 US News rankings of the top 10 public high schools, nine were charter schools and five of these were BASIS charter schools. BASIS currently operates 20 charter schools in Arizona, Texas, and Washington, DC. Most of them are suburban, and they serve populations that reflect their communities. Like all charter schools, BASIS schools don’t have admissions tests—students are admitted by lottery. But once they’re in, it’s not easy. In this preschool through grade 12 program, students take biology, chemistry, and physics before they start high school and all high school students are expected to pass at least 6 AP exams. The key to success in BASIS schools is having highly professional teachers who are subject matter experts. Teachers are given considerable autonomy in their classrooms, but all of them, even kindergarten math teachers, must have a college degree in the subject they teach.

Or, what about the NYOS (Not Your Ordinary School) charter school in Austin, Texas? This school was founded twenty years ago and offers smaller class sizes, year-round school and “looping” (in which a student stays with the same teachers for several years). NYOS serves 950 students in grades K through 12, but they have 3,000 more students on a waiting list for a spot.

But many small towns are taking advantage of charter schools also. Graysville, Indiana opened Rural Community Academy in 2004 when their local school was slated to close. Since then, the school has grown to 150 students and some credit it with reinvigorating the community, saving the post office, and bringing several new businesses to the area.

Rural charters aren’t always opened to save a school, though. The Upper Carmen Public Charter School in Idaho was founded in 2005 “to complement the existing public school system by providing an alternative learning environment to enable more students from Lemhi County to be successful.” This school serves no more than 90 students and emphasizes personalized learning that allows students to progress at their own pace, rather than be grouped by age. Upper Carmen Charter School has consistently ranked among the top ten percent of schools in Idaho.

Asking if there are any good charter schools outside of major cities is like asking if there are any good restaurants outside of major cities. Of course there are. Teachers, parents, and community leaders with great ideas for educating kids are everywhere. Charter schools aren’t a perfect fit for every student, but they’re a great fit for the students they serve.

The post Charter Schools 101: Why Would We Need Charters in Suburban, Rural, or “Good” Districts? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While it is useful to examine what is happening in Normandy, it can distract us from problems in all Missouri schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 35 percent of Missouri fourth graders are reading on grade level. Roughly a third of our college students take remediation courses. Missouri public schools are having an incredibly tough time carrying out their primary directive—educate students. Yet, some look at our schools and want them to do more.

It seems every interest group, lobbyist, and legislator with a particular hobby horse wants to require schools to include their issue in their curriculum. Currently, legislators are calling for more bullying prevention programs and for an increased emphasis on civics education. Add those issues to sex education, gun control or gun awareness, criticisms of evolution, global warming, and a host of other topics that have been touted in recent years, and it’s easy to see that schools are being inundated by agendas.

While each of the issues mentioned could have value for Missouri’s K-12 students (that is really a subjective opinion), mandating new requirements for Missouri public schools is likely to cause mission creep, distract from efforts to teach students to read and do math, and cause controversy. Public schools already struggle to educate Missouri’s children. Diverting resources to new mandates would exacerbate the fundamental issue that our schools face.

Like lawmakers, parents have their own mandates and demands for the schools. Whether at the state or local level, however, we are never going to agree on all of the things that schools should do. The solution is not more mandates, the solution is more choice.

Instead of dictating what schools should do, lawmakers should focus their attention on giving parents more educational options. Allow parents to choose the school that most closely aligns with their values and their sense of mission, whether the school is private, public charter, or traditional public. We cannot make sure that every school caters to every family’s needs and preferences, but we can make sure every family has the ability to choose the school that comes closest.

Simply layering mandates on top of one another will not solve any of our educational problems, and it will not improve the educational system. A system built around school choice, however, has a better chance at both. It will allow individuals to choose the school that meets their needs, without forcing their will on others. Choice also will help create a system of continual improvement, which leads to increased efficiency.

We cannot mandate our way to a system that meets everyone’s needs. The more we try, the further we erode a local school’s ability to adapt, innovate, and meet the individual needs of the students it serves. It’s time to stop asking schools to do more and more. It’s time to start allowing parents to choose.

The post Public Schools Need Fewer Mandates, Parents Need More Choices appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In previous posts on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), I’ve written about the consequences of federal overreach, which, in itself, is a strong argument against the nationally imposed standards. Unfortunately, this argument is unconvincing for teachers, who have been led to believe these standards will give them more instructional flexibility and ultimately will help students make academic gains.

The following two quotes about CCSS reflect these widely held beliefs.

They are not a curriculum; it’s up to school districts to choose curricula that comply with the standards.
—Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern

Not exactly. Though it’s true that Common Core is just a set of standards, curriculum is informed by assessment. If the assessment is Common Core, the curriculum is Common Core. School districts buy curriculum sets (textbooks, workbooks, reading materials, etc.) that reflect the standards and prepare students for assessments. This ultimately gives teachers less instructional flexibility.

The promise of these high standards for all students is extraordinary.
—Former NEA President Dennis Van Roekel

If only. As a teacher, I would have loved to set the same high bar for ALL of my students. But the truth is, not every student has the same readiness for learning. Last year, one of my 13-year-old students scored a 30 on the ACT. Would I set the same high bar for this student and a student who had just tested at a fourth-grade reading level? No, I would differentiate instruction, meaning I would assign a project with varying degrees of difficulty and interest-based learning.

The problem is not “setting the bar high enough,” it’s the challenge of scaffolding instruction to fill in the gaps where there is missed learning. Sure, setting a high bar for every child sounds great, but without instructional flexibility, how will teachers make decisions that best suit the needs of their students?

They won’t. Even if setting a high bar for all students did increase academic achievement, there is still some debate about whether the Common Core even does that. If Missouri really wants to see students make academic gains, we should trust teachers to do their job well, and reward the ones that do.

The post Common Core Doesn’t Put the CCSS in Success appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Alonzo West wrote a piece last weekend in the St. Joseph News-Press about how repealing Common Core would affect students in Missouri. The conclusion? It wouldn’t really hurt them; in fact, it would have almost no impact.

West spoke with Brian Shindorf, St. Joseph School District’s director of elementary education, who gave keen insight into potential side effects of repealing Common Core.

“So the impact for us would be having to go back and revise our curriculum to not be aligned to the Common Core, but instead be aligned to whatever standards the state outlined for us. It would be a lot of work for us, absolutely,” Mr. Shindorf said.

The change would not impact children at all, he said. It would be a matter of realigning the standards to the appropriate grade level and students.

“It wouldn’t harm the kids,” he said. “The biggest impact would be the process the curriculum department and the teachers would have to go through to go back to the realignment of the standards.”

I believe Shindorf is correct – repealing Common Core won’t hurt students. It’s not like we would return to the Stone Age. Of course, one has to wonder: did starting Common Core in the first place hurt students?

The post Common Core Repeal – Think Of The Children appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Having the ability to customize their child’s curriculum is one of the main reasons parents choose to homeschool. Some worry that the new standards may infringe on their ability to do so.

The creators of the SAT and ACT are already working on aligning their tests to Common Core. Public schools are changing their curriculum to align with the new standards and tests. There is concern that homeschoolers will struggle on the redesigned state and national standardized tests unless they also align their curriculum. This defeats the purpose of homeschooling – to have greater flexibility and autonomy.

The more state standardized tests and college entrance exams align to the Common Core, the more textbook companies will align their curriculum to the Common Core. Over time, this could leave homeschooling parents with fewer and fewer alternatives from which to choose. It is difficult to know what the exact impact will be; what is certain is that the issue is not going away anytime soon. Parents, whether homeschooling or not, should continue to question Common Core and to educate themselves about the standards and their potential effects.

The post What Does Common Core Mean For Homeschoolers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McShane notes that Curves is a very scripted and regimented workout program, while Weight Watchers simply provides guidelines for users.

Many supporters of the Common Core say the standards are just that, standards. They don’t tell teachers how to teach, they simply set the end goal. If that’s true, then the Common Core is like Weight Watchers.

However, there is a lot of evidence that the Common Core State Standards are being implemented in a manner that provides little flexibility to local schools and individual teachers. McShane writes:

First, both consortia developing tests for the Common Core standards are developing … tests designed to be given throughout the year to make sure that students are on pace to reach the level of competence that the standards require. While making sure that students are on the right path is a perfectly reasonable and laudable goal, it has the unintended consequence of standardizing the order in which particular material is taught. It makes the standards begin to look more like a curriculum…

and

Second, there do appear to be certain pedagogical undertones to the standards. Tom Loveless wrote a fantastic post over at the Brookings Institution’s blog aptly titled “The Banality of Deeper Learning.” In it, he highlights language that has been used to support the Common Core (and many other educational projects) including “project-based” “inquiry and discovery” “higher-level thinking.” These tend to be code-words for an approach to education that de-emphasizes the learning of discrete facts and standard algorithms…

This is a very important issue. Many supporters of the Common Core have said, “These are just standards. They don’t tell teachers how to teach.” I’m just not sure I believe that. From what I’ve seen, it certainly looks like the Common Core is more like Curves.

The post Common Core Is More Like Curves Than Weight Watchers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Deeper Learning is the current term for an old idea.  The notion is that schools spend too much time focused on the acquisition of knowledge, especially knowing facts.  In the past century, several alternatives have arisen to dethrone the prominent role of knowledge in schools: project-based learning, inquiry and discovery learning, higher-level thinking, critical thinking, outcome based education, and 21st Century Skills.  Now it is deeper learning.

Loveless provides two examples of “deeper learning.” His first is a summary of my personal story of struggle with the discovery learning approach that my kids’ former school uses to teach math. The second example comes from the international assessment known as PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment. Loveless contends that the tests may not actually assess the type of deep learning that we aspire to.

Loveless cautions readers to be “skeptical when encountering deeper learning in the future.”

In many of the conversations I have had with supporters of the new Common Core State Standards, people say that these standards will lead to “deeper understanding.” In some cases, the new standards have led school districts to adopt curriculum and teaching practices, much like the ones I describe in my account, which are supposed to lead to “deep understanding.”

Loveless’ post ends with this admonishment: “In the days ahead, you will be hearing a lot about deeper learning. Please be on guard. This virtuous sounding term means much more than its two words imply.” I could not agree with him more.

In Missouri and other states around the country, the Common Core Standards are being implemented. Be on guard if your child’s school begins talking about deep understanding, and find out what they mean by that term.

The post Common Core And ‘Deep Understanding’ appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

James V. Shuls (JVS): Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. Tell me a little about Lafayette Preparatory Academy. What makes this school unique or innovative?

Susan Marino (SM): Well, we get this question a lot. ‘What is your innovation?’ For us, our innovation is not that we are radically different, but that we are looking to do what is most effective. We’ll have a heavy focus on math, literacy, and science and we will have an extended day. So it’s not that we are doing anything incredibly innovative, rather it’s almost like we’re going back to the basics. What will make us different is our constant pursuit of effectiveness, not trying to do something fancy, or new, or untried, just focusing on the things that we are trying to get done.

JVS: So, when you say “back to the basics,” what does that mean exactly? Walk me through a standard day at your school.

SM: When I say, “back to the basics,” I don’t want to people to envision this old school house where students are sitting at their desks quietly and accepting knowledge as it is given out. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is focusing on the core content areas, strongly. School will go from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and that is a long day for a kindergartner, but I know it is doable. We will have at least 2 ½ hours dedicated to literacy. We’ll have an hour every day for science and an hour for math. We will have large blocks of time for each of the focus areas.

Again, back to the basics does not mean sitting at desks. When you walk into my school, there will be some noise. It will be very structured and everything will have a plan, but our students will be moving around and actively engaging with what they are learning.

JVS: Do you already have curriculum lined up for the school?

SM: No, I don’t have everything picked out, and here’s why. I have researched so many different curriculums and I find so many great ideas in each of them that are very effective and have been tried in other schools. But because we are a small school and we are committed to being responsive to our students and allowing our teachers to really build around the needs of the students, I don’t want us to get trapped into a model that someone else has designed for another school. So we are going to take the bits and pieces that work from other programs and mold them to fit our school. This will be developed by our teachers for our students. But of course, we will be looking at curriculums, which will help us lay a foundation which we can build upon.

JVS: You know, I have heard another school leader say that he didn’t know how he could really hold a teacher accountable if he picked out their curriculum and told them exactly how they were supposed to teach. Because when the results came in, if they were not what was expected and he had dictated how everything should be done, then part of the blame was his and not just the teachers. It sounds like you’re saying something similar. You want to really bring the teachers into this planning process and let them be flexible to students’ needs and be innovators in their classroom. Is that about right?

SM: Yes, so our innovation is not that we have something all new that we will be using, but our innovation is on that day-to-day basis when we are able to be responsive to our students’ needs. For example, my two kindergarten teachers will have the same standards which they must meet, so their students will understand the same concepts at the end of the year, but they don’t have to do it the same way, because they won’t have the same classrooms and they won’t have the same styles.

One of the best lessons I learned my first year teaching was when an administrator came to observe me teaching. During my lesson, I was just not connecting with the kids. I noticed my administrator over in the corner just laughing. So I went over and asked, “Are you laughing at me?” And she said, “Why are you trying to be like me?” I had walked in and tried to be her, but I was completely different from her. So when I tried to be something I wasn’t, I seemed like a complete phony. It didn’t suit my style and it didn’t suit the kids. I want my teachers to say, “this is who I am as a teacher and this is how I’m most effective,” instead of giving them something and trying to make them fit into something that is unnatural for them and unnatural for their students, and ultimately will be ineffective. JVS: You were a teacher and you worked in the public schools, right?

SM: I worked with an alternative program and in the public schools, so I have been in both.

JVS: So what made you want to take this on? It sounds like your job was pretty stable and now you are taking on a big challenge. What made you go this route?

SM: It was a tough choice between safety and pursuing something I really believe in so deeply. I am a believer that without a little bit of risk, great things can’t happen and somebody has to take that risk. This was a tough question in our house. Was that risk best to fall on us? In the end, we decided it was. I was in a safe situation, it was very comfortable, I was on the right path, but I didn’t live in the community where I was working. My daughter is 4 and will be 5 next year. We don’t want her to have a sub-standard education and we didn’t really feel like we could pay the tuition for her to go to a private school. So, we have our own personal motivation, for our family, for our friends’ families, for our neighborhood.

When I met the original group who had the idea for Lafayette Prep I knew it was just right. I actually met them through happenstance, but right away I knew they had the right mission in mind and their beliefs really matched mine; the focus on a rigorous education, the focus on community, the focus on keeping it small. A lot of charter schools have a bigger plan in mind than we do. We are intentionally small. We want to keep it small, so we can really cultivate that community. We want to always be responsive to our communities’ needs. I liked that about this idea; that we would be so focused on the needs of our community. What I mean by our community is Downtown, Downtown West, Soulard, LaSalle Park, King Louis, Peabody, and Lafayette Square. All of these areas are close together, but very disconnected as neighborhoods. We want to draw these neighborhoods together.

JVS: It sounds like this was really a grassroots idea.

SM: That’s right. The first three individuals who got on board with this idea live in Lafayette Square. Like all of us who live in the city, when we go to the park and our kids start playing, the adults start talking. The conversation always goes to, “where does yours go to school?” Because we are all looking for that magic ticket, that is a great free public school that is near us, that suits our family’s values and our hopes for our kids. As they had that conversation, they didn’t have an answer because our community lacks a free, high-quality option. So they started thinking about opening a charter school and gathering people who had a similar vision to make this happen. People just started coming on board and it built into what we have today.

I got really lucky, because I met them all this past January in one of those playground conversations. I fell in love with the idea. They live in Lafayette Square, I live in Soulard, others in the group live in Downtown West and Downtown. We are working to get others from the area involved, so we can build this homegrown school; built by us, for us, responding to us, accountable to each other.

JVS: What grades do you plan to serve when you open the doors in the fall?

SM: The first year we will have kindergarten and first grade. We will have a year over year plan, where we add a grade annually.

JVS: And the goal is to eventually add all the way up to 12th grade?

SM: Yes, our initial charter is K-5. In 2018, we plan to expand to sixth-eighth and in 2021, we plan to expand to a high school. We really have a backwards design mentality. We are starting with the end goal in mind, thinking, “What do I want my daughter to be able to do when she graduates?” And then building back from there to think about what our students need to know when they leave kindergarten and first grade.

JVS: If someone is interested in the school, they live in your area and want to know more, or possibly enroll their kid, what do they do?

SM: First off, I’m really accessible. They can reach me at Susan.marino@lafayetteprep.org or they can call me on the phone directly. On our website, at www.lafayetteprep.org you can go to the enrollment tab and fill out the registration form. That will go directly to my email. Once I receive that, I’ll contact them to schedule a family tour. Once they’ve toured the building then I’ll give them the application materials and we’ll schedule a home visit.

JVS: Great. Susan, thank you so much for your time.

The post A Homegrown Charter School: Lafayette Preparatory Academy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Across the country, there is widespread disagreement among educators, politicians, and the general public about what constitutes a good curriculum. Even within districts, conflicting interest groups fight heated battles over curricular changes.

On April 26, a group of students took over a board meeting of the Tuscon Unified School District, protesting a proposal that would change the district’s Mexican American Studies program from a social studies credit to an elective. Student supporters of the program chained themselves to the board’s dais and could not be removed by security. Under a national curriculum, disputes such as this would have to be resolved at the federal level. Congress would determine what students should learn. Allowing Congress to serve as the custodian of truth in the teaching of history, social studies, and other subjects is asking for trouble.

In fact, our current system is already too centralized, with state legislators and boards of education committing new crimes against veracity every time curriculum design comes up for debate. Last spring, conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education pushed through a new social studies curriculum. Among other changes, the new curriculum required a greater emphasis on the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” and excised the insufficiently religious Thomas Jefferson from a list of thinkers who inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, replacing him with overtly Christian figures such as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas. The left plays this game just as much as the right. California’s guidelines forbid textbooks to “cast adverse reflection on any gender, race, ethnicity, religion or cultural group.” That sounds well-meaning, but it has led to a whitewashed version of history for fear of offending any interest group.

We should return decisions about educational content to the local level. That would not make these arguments disappear, but it would give parents the greatest opportunity to find a curriculum that suits their educational preferences.

Furthermore, localized curricula would give teachers more flexibility in meeting students’ individual educational needs. When I pursued teacher certification, I encountered repeatedly in my coursework the idea that every student learns in different ways. Good teachers must vary the information they present and how they present it in order to appeal to the different aptitudes and interests of their students. A national curriculum may not completely strip teachers of the ability to tailor lessons for the particularities of their students, but every new mandate from on high removes a little more autonomy from the educators who know their students best.

Many American schools are in desperate need of reform, but more federal micromanagement is not the solution. We need more autonomy for schools to innovate and serve the individual needs and interests of their students, and greater choice for parents to hold those schools accountable. A national curriculum would take us in the opposite direction — toward heavily politicized subject matter and no alternatives for students whose needs are left out. Reforming education in this country is not one large problem — it’s millions of small ones, and a national curriculum would only make them harder to address.

John Payne is a research assistant with the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy. He is a former high school social studies teacher, and an original signatory to “Closing the Door on Innovation,” a manifesto opposing a national education curriculum.

The post Don’t Nationalize Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once they are a single department, the management styles of the old departments will influence each other. No doubt the influence will flow in both directions, but ultimately either higher education will end up looking more like elementary and secondary education, even if only on the margin, or vice versa. I hope it will be the latter, because higher education gives far more autonomy to individual schools, instructors, and ultimately students, which I believe is one of the reasons that — for all its problems — the American higher education system remains highly touted.

That said, I fear DESE’s influence will win out. It is the far larger department, with a 2010 appropriation of more than $5.4 billion compared to Higher Education’s $1.3 billion. This will probably mean far more micromanagement of college curricula and a greater emphasis on pedagogy compared to content. That’s simply how DESE officials think; they create a statewide standard to make classes nice and formulaic. If this plan is implemented, I fully expect that within a decade there will be state-mandated standards for common courses (e.g., western civilization, macroeconomics, chemistry, etc.) similar to the Class Level Expectations (CLEs) in high school classes. Missouri will have a “seamless” education system, as one legislator describes it, but at the expense of the independence of our public universities.

The post On Education Consolidation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.