Here's the Gadfly piece Peter mentioned in his ?Coin of the Realm? post, in full:
Last Wednesday, Michelle Rhee was awarded the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Urban Innovator Award. In her acceptance speech, the former Washington D.C. Chancellor discussed her new high-profile initiative, Students First, and its goal of raising $1 billion to advocate for ?real change,? which she defined as putting students' needs ?before those of special interests or wasteful bureaucracies.?
Reflecting on her attempt to turn around Washington's schools, Rhee said she ultimately learned that she was playing the wrong game. ?I would spend my time, as many education reformers across the country do, talking to politicians and trying to appeal to their sense of what is good and right for children and meanwhile you've got the interest groups like the teachers unions funding their campaigns. So at the end of the day, who are you going to go with? The nice little lady over here who says you can do good for kids? Or the people who are going to get you re-elected?? Rhee asked rhetorically.
After the Manhattan Institute event, I had the opportunity to talk briefly with Rhee about my reform game?curriculum, teaching, and learning. I wondered out loud whether it made sense to reach conclusions about the effectiveness of individual teachers who are poorly trained and have no say over their curriculum or, more often than not, no curriculum at all. I urged her to keep curriculum in mind.
?The last thing we're going to do,? she replied with a chuckle, ?is get wrapped up in curriculum battles.?
A stunning reply if you think about it. This poster child for bare-knuckle reform, who moments earlier was urging her listeners to ?embrace conflict,? has no stomach for a debate about what kids should learn in school. Is it so difficult or controversial to say that all kindergarteners must learn shapes, colors, and how to count to twenty? Confronting the teachers unions on pay and tenure is worth a fight, yet it is too heavy a lift to say what 3rd graders should know about American history, geography, or science?or whether they need to know anything at all.
Michelle Rhee isn't the only one too sheepish to talk curriculum. She is simply the most vocal and visible representative of a theory of change that sees structures, and increasingly political power, as the coin of the realm. I have no illusions: ?Teacher effectiveness? and charter schools and merit pay may be sexy, but curriculum is not. It doesn't get you on Oprah or the cover of Newsweek. We are unlikely, now or ever, to see a bold initiative to raise $1 billion to advocate for a coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum for every child in the early grades, even though?for high-mobility, low-income children in particular?it would surely be among the most impactful reforms we could offer.
What I cannot accept, however, is that to focus on instruction?on curriculum and teaching?is to play the ?wrong game.? To accept this argument is to believe that the educational outcome of Jose or Malik in the South Bronx or Detroit is more deeply affected by who wins a primary for a House race somewhere in California than what they learn in school all day. It is to believe that electing the ?right people? matters more than what teachers teach and what children learn.
?For three decades, education has been driven by special interests,? Rhee concluded in her Manhattan Institute speech. That's one diagnosis. Another one belongs to E.D. Hirsch, who points out in The Making of Americans that our schools have gone six decades without a curriculum.?Earlier this year, at an Aspen Institute panel discussion, AFT head Randi Weingarten hit the nail on the head when asked why ed reformers aren't concerned about curriculum. ?This stuff is really important,? she replied. ?And it's really boring.?
Playing kingmaker, by contrast, is the best, most glamorous game there is. But it's an expensive, time-consuming, long-term play. It does nothing to effect change today, and risks writing off yet another generation of children to mediocrity and underperformance. It represents the fierce urgency of eventually.
Michelle Rhee and others have the perfect right to commit their careers and their dollars to ed reform advocacy groups with whatever mission, playing whichever games. But people must understand that this is not the last word in ?What's Best for Kids.? The rhetoric is a bit of a sham, frankly, since a big part of what we know works best for children is a coherent curriculum. So call curriculum reform what you like, but don't call it the wrong game.
?Robert Pondiscio
A former 5th grade teacher, Robert Pondiscio writes about education at the Core Knowledge Blog.
This piece originally appeared in this week's Education Gadfly. Love what you see? Sign up to receive the Gadfly in your inbox.