The K-12 Education Revolution Will Come at the Central School District Level (So Disregard the Ideas of Ted Kolderie)

For those of you truly interested in K-12 education, understand that we need revolution (not reform), that this transformation will occur at the level of the central school district, and that you should reject all of the major points made by Ted Kolderie in his “The Big Idea? Lots of Little Ones” (Star Tribune , Opinion Exchange, Sunday, August 10, 2014).


Kolderie first of all asserts that the chief question when seeking change should always be, “How?” The real problem, though, is that we never ask, “What?”


So let me answer that question:


What is an excellent education?


An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum in grade-by-grade sequence to all students throughout the K-12 years.


And what is an excellent teacher?


An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge, possessing the pedagogical ability to impart rich liberal arts content to all students.


Kolderie’s main point is that meaningful change toward reaching the goal of educational excellence must come with innovations outside centralized systems. This is nonsense. The best educational systems of the world are located in East and Southeast Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) and the social democracies of Europe (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France). All of these nations centralize education at the national level and implement a standard curriculum in all schools of the nation.


This is the correct approach, ensuring a common knowledge base for all students, regardless of demographic descriptors. It is consistent with Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the creation of an informed electorate, and with the ideas of Horace Mann concerning education for all as delivered through “common schools.”


In the United States, though, we labor under the pretense of local control. Professors who train teachers in university departments, colleges, and schools of education throughout the nation impart a harmful “constructivist” creed that takes student experiences, and current student and teacher interests, as the driving forces for curriculum. This seems appealing until one realizes that such a creed devalues knowledge as common cultural inheritance to which all students should have access.


The pretense of local control extends to school boards, which tend to rubber-stamp superintendent initiatives until some offending behavior moves board members to action, or until (typically after a three to five year tenure) the superintendent abandons the district with a careerist move to another position. Sometimes there are board members who are so bought and sold by teachers unions that they do obstruct superintendent initiatives.


Either way, the same sort of attitudes and political struggles tend to occur for school boards throughout the United States. Meanwhile, teachers and administrators are almost all trained according to the same “constructivist” ideology, so that the approach to K-12 education tends to be the same from central school district to central school district. Local control is chimeric.


We can dispense with Kolderie’s other misguided notions, as follows:


1) With regard to Kolderie’s unfavorable view of whole class instruction, we should remember that the whole class approach dominates in East Asia and is generously used in the European social democracies. It is very efficient, very conducive to teacher story-telling and to discussions, and it in no way precludes technological and individualized approaches.


2) As to age grading, ensuring that all students at grade level are reaching an absolute standard is critical; maintaining conventional grade level designations in no way prevents teachers from making more advanced material available to students who have attained grade level performance.


3) Kolderie implies that reliance on standardized tests is too one dimensional. But standardized tests are the fairest, most objective measures of student performance, and they prepare students for a format that will also pertain to ACT and SAT exams used to assess college readiness. Teachers may always use such adjunct assessment instruments as portfolios, demonstrations, and presentations for their own classroom purposes.


4) Kolderie also objects to what he calls the “boss/ worker model of school.” But central school district personnel and building principals have the responsibility for devising and implementing programs designed to reach certain standards. Teachers have the obligation to ensure that students reach standards. School systems work best when administrators and teachers perform their very demanding jobs with a keen sense of their particular roles.


We can hereby dispense with Ted Kolderie’s main argument and his supplementary assertions. Then we should insist, in Minneapolis, that Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson follow through on her very promising Focused Instruction (curriculum content and consistent delivery) and High Priority Schools (efforts to raise achievement levels for lowest performing students) initiatives--- and give her full support as she does so.


In doing this, we will be fomenting revolution at the central school district level, which in the United States is where such a transformation will have to occur.


Gary Marvin Davison is teacher and administrator for the New Salem Educational Initiative. He is the author of eight published books and the editor of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.