For the very few people
actually interested in K-12 education in the United States, the equivalent of
the Carville classic is the following:
It’s curriculum and teachers, stupid.
In speaking to college
students, particularly memorably to those in a class at Carleton College, I
remind them of the need to stay focused on these two main facets of an
excellent education. I remind them of
the many distractions imposed on discussion of issues pertinent to K-12 education,
so that the need to look past the distractions is vital to achieve focus on
what is truly important in the effort to overhaul locally centralized K-12 systems
for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
Consider this very partial list
of programs and verbal formulations that are much in the K-12 ether these
days:
Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA), North Star Accountability System, and World’s Best Workforce; Social and Emotional Learning, Multi-Tiered System
of Support, Benchmark Reading Curriculum, Equity, and literacy (for delivery
within the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive District Design); accountability, transparency, community
engagement, cultural relevancy, cultural competency, racial integration; personalized learning, learning styles,
online learning.
Some of these terms are
irrelevant to the impartation of an excellent education. Some of them have merit but have been repeated
so often as to become cognition-dulling shibboleths. Others are absolutely harmful.
Perpend:
The federal Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) and its Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)
associated program, the North Star Accountability System (MDE, 2018) will have
no programmatic impact on the delivery
of an excellent education; they are
important only inasmuch as they are linked to funding streams for which
required legalistic responses are necessary.
This is true also of the World’s Best Workforce law passed by the
Minnesota Legislature: mere legalistic
nomenclature and verbal fodder for the conversational ether.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL),
Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Benchmark curriculum, and literacy are
the prime four items of focus to be implemented in the Minneapolis Public
Schools Comprehensive District Design for a well-rounded education promised for
full delivery by 2022:
Social and Emotional Learning involves
teacher attention to student emotional states and well-being; student sensitivity to the dignity of other
students; and focus for everyone on the
key constituent SEL elements of self-awareness, self-management, effective
decision-making, social awareness, and the formation of good human
relationships. Multi-Tiered System of
Support involves diagnosing of each student’s academic needs with proper response
from teachers, principals, social workers, and health professionals. The Benchmark reading curriculum is the designated
reading program for the achievement of grade-level MPS student literacy. Equity means going beyond the offering of a
program of equal quality to all students, toward doing everything necessary to
ensure that all students actually benefit from the offering.
Think a bit and you’ll come to your
own realization as to the issues involved with and the meaning of the terms accountability,
transparency, community engagement, cultural relevancy, cultural competency, and
racial integration.
The terms personalized
learning, learning styles, and online learning are seductive appellations that
actually impede the pursuit of commonly delivered knowledge and skill sets by
knowledgeable teachers leading class discussions that abet development of linear
reasoning, reading proficiency, and critical analysis upon a commonly shared
information base by students of all demographic descriptors.
But by now you have, against my
exhortation, most likely been distracted.
So now remember:
All of this verbiage only has
value inasmuch as it conveys the importance of curriculum and teachers.
It’s curriculum, stupid. It’s teachers, stupid. It’s curriculum and teachers, stupid.
An excellent education is a
matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
curriculum in the liberal, vocational, and technological arts in logical grade
by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors. An excellent teacher is a professional of
broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge
to students of all demographic descriptors.
That’s it.
That’s all that matters:
curriculum and teachers.
Excellent education consists of
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and teachers capable of
delivering such a curriculum. Anything
from the vast verbal warehouse that fills today’s conversational ether is mere
rhetorical persiflage if not put to the service of curriculum and teachers.
So skim over those vast verbal
distractions rendered in the first paragraphs above, then bring your eyes into
full focus on the two elements that undergird an excellent education:
curriculum;
teachers.
Tell yourself emphatically and
often:
It’s curriculum and teachers,
stupid.
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