Politics in Developing Standards

If you ever feel frustration at how you perceive the Iowa Core was developed, it is good to consider a state like Texas, and then reconsider. After making news in appointing a creationist to head the state's educational board, the state continues to look for outside influences for its schools.

Recently, they asked 6 individuals for their thoughts on the state's history curriculum, which they will use to revise the standards in the coming year. Out of those 6 are David Barton, a founder of WallBuilders, a "group that promotes America's Christian heritage", and Reverend Peter Marshall, a pastor who "preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgment on the nation's sexual immorality".

Some of their suggestions, from the Wall Street Journal:

• Multi-culturalism and diversity awareness should be pared back. According to Barton, "Reaching for examples of achievement by different racial and ethnic groups is divisive and distorts history."

• Delete Anne Hutchinson from a list of colonial leaders. According to Marshall, "Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen. She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble."

• Include the study of America's Religious Revival Movement. Or as they state, "Evangelist Billy Graham should be included on a list of transformational leaders of the 20th century and students in fifth and eight grades should study the colonial-era religious revival known as the Great Awakening as a force in shaping a national identity."

• Replace Thurgood Marshall with Harriet Tubman or Sam Houston. Marshall described Thurgood Marshall as a weak example of someone who has influenced the course of history. He suggested Tubman or Houston as better examples.

• Delete César Chávez from a list of figures who modeled active participation in the democratic process. "He's hardly the kind of role model that ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation," Rev. Marshall wrote.

and my personal favorite...

• Replace references to America's "democratic" values with "republican" values. As Barton explains: "We don't pledge allegiance to the flag and the democracy for which it stands."

The process was not without political balance, as university history professors "representing the liberal to moderate view" also expressed some suggestions as well, which can be argued, show as much political influence in the shaping of curriculum as the conservative viewpoints.

That Barton and Marshall, as well as the others expressed their viewpoints with obvious political slants is not that troubling. What is troubling is the state's desire to have those slants have such a large influence over their curriculum. Given that Texas has a very large textbook market, if the proposed changes find their way into textbooks, they will have an influence over other state's curriculum as well, including Iowa.

California Initiates Digital-Textbook Drive

Governor Schwarzenegger has asked his state director of education to create digital textbooks for math and science, available by fall. If successful, the California digital textbook could open up millions of dollars statewide that districts would have otherwise spent on paper textbooks, money that can be spent on extra teachers, training, and equipment.

More importantly, digital textbooks are an impetus for a digital classroom, with every student having a computer. That digital information can not only be accessed easier than a book with digital search capabilities, but it can stay current, allow for several approaches in teaching without creating more clutter, and best of all, gives students content they can more easily use in their own work.

While the official website doesn't allude to any, there is some pushback from more than just textbook companies. Some teachers are skeptical of the rigor that these materials might have, as well as the cohesiveness and the ability to address their state standards. Such skepticism is to be expected, as traditional textbooks are a comfort for some teachers. Unfortunately, any criticism distributed here can equally apply to textbook companies. Perhaps the chief concern for California is how will they get students the computerized access, which are necessary for the textbooks to work?

Developing a digital textbook alternative is exactly where Iowa should be looking. It would be excellent to accompany rolling out the Iowa Core--a digital textbook that articulates how it addresses the Core's critical concepts. Moreover, it would be more than lipservice to how serious the state is about adopting "21st century education". And, it could be an economic savior to many districts feeling the crunch... that is, if they have the computers for it.

Two satirical videos on textbooks

Two of my favorite satires on those who are hesitant to move away from textbooks and towards digital curriculum, as though students will forget how to read when that happens. The second video is from the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

Wesley Fryer on eliminating textbooks, the digital curriculum

Thought I'd share the ideas of Wesley Fryer, perhaps my favorite edublogger, in his latest post, as it ties in with our discussion of eliminating textbooks and the digital curriculum:

How I yearn for leadership in the state of Oklahoma which will help usher in the learning revolution. We don’t need to keep buying $75 textbooks for K-12 students in all the mandated content areas. That madness should stop now. We need Netbooks for EVERY student and teacher, in EVERY grade, starting in third grade. Yes, I love Macs dearly, but what leader of a 1:1 laptop learning initiative can financially justify a $1000 investment for hardware for each learner compared to a $250 Netbook? You can’t. The digital curriculum, networking infrastructure, and professional development which can be provided for learners with the money saved by purchasing Netbooks instead of full-blown $1000 laptops is staggering.

Oh by the way, Wes' post starts with looking at the difference between Canada's media's perception of education and the U.S's. Worth a read for us in Iowa.

Textbook free in chemistry

An article from Geoff Ruth in Edutopia. Ruth gives an excellent overview of the thinking involved by an educator making the textbook-free plunge. And he does so in a field--chemistry--that skeptics would be less likely to scoff at (not as easy of a plunge as if he were a literature teacher).

The paragraph that hits closest to home:

Teaching without a textbook means more prep time, especially in the first few years. It means amassing and adapting curriculum from a wide variety of sources, including journals, lab books, Web sites, packaged curricula, and other teachers. It means mapping this collection to the standards of your school and state. In addition, it means proactively engaging and persuading the administration, the teaching staff, and the parents that ditching the textbook is in the students' best interests. But it's worth this effort. My students are more engaged, they understand more and act out less, and they develop a deeper comprehension of the subject matter.

Richard Baraniuk on a textbook-free classroom

Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk, founder of Connexions, an open-source curriculum center, talks at TED in 2006 about the process of building it.

Baraniuk visits the concept of "on-demand" publishing, where publishing a book without the middle man of the publisher saves the end-consumer (he has an example of an engineering textbook that costs $22, whereas a published version of it would cost over $122). So in other words, a teacher could generate their own content (or take some from Connexions or another open-source repository) and find their own publisher, and in the process, save money.

He also discussed the obvious concern that comes up in a Wikipedia-world -- that of reliability. Connexion has built in certain oversights that ensure quality. Easy for him to claim, not as easy to verify, but the fact it is a conscious issue for him is reassuring.

Call for Action: Ditching Textbooks

We can't go 1:1, computers are expensive.

So are textbooks; you prioritize.

Where is your focus on learning? Is it in a canonized content or is it outside of that, in collaboration and engagement of ideas? Is learning timeless or does it change often? Is curriculum driven by the materials, or the other way around?

I don't want to set up a false dichotomy; it isn't computers or textbooks. But in an era where finances are slim, we need to second-guess the afore-perceived "must" of having textbooks.

Nope, I'm wrong. We need to second-guess it, even when finances aren't slim.

BAD PEDAGOGY
Our over-reliance on textbooks and bought curriculum sequences is not pedagogically sound. For starters, textbooks are needlessly thick, a grab-all of every initiative and topic out there. Second, they are linear, meaning you have a start and an end and checkpoints on the way. Learning in the 21st century is not linear... it is hyperlinked. It is multi-tasking. It is working on many objectives at once, not one at a time.

Third, poor teachers (and some not-so-poor ones) take the textbook as the lesson plan master, unable to work around it, differentiate within it, adjust instruction for learning moments that pop up. What comes after unit 2? Unit 3, of course! And I must be done with the last unit at the end of the course! The textbook becomes a crutch for a teacher, who should be using their training and talents to synthesize together a system of resources.

Fourth, they are static. They do not change, (until you purchase the next ones). Say what you want about Wikipedia, but it stays up to date. And fifth, textbooks are not authentic; outside of school people do not use textbooks, with maybe the exception of the "For Dummies" series (and I haven't seen too many districts use that as their curriculum). They are to find their own resources, which might include newspapers or online files or print books, and from those, synthesize answers to problems. Their learning is not laid out for them.

Don't get me wrong, if textbooks were used just as a resource (as the internet is), they would have excellent value, as many of the best written-ones have excellent rich content. When they are used as curriculum, though, there are a host of problems as you can see.

SELFISH?
Some anti-textbook people will raise the rhetoric to say teachers are centering on themselves instead of students when using textbooks. For example, the standard answer from many teachers is that the textbook makes their job easier (actually, the word they'd use is "manageable"). Admittedly, I've never used a textbook in my teaching, although I should say as an English teacher, I had some advantages. Perhaps it would have been easier to use it. But, I had a selfish reason for not using it... it made me feel like I was more valuable as a teacher when I was synthesizing the material. I felt like, if I was hit by a meteor and wasn't able to finish out the term, that the class would actually miss me instructionally. Yes, selfish, but then again, we want to think of ourselves as professionals.

DANIELS AND ZEMELMAN
Would you like more? Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman have many more reasons:
• Textbooks often do not match up with the curriculum (or in our case, the Iowa Core)
• They are hard to read (they are reference, not fiction or non-fiction)
• They are badly designed
• They are authoritarian, giving the illusion that there is only one correct way of looking at things
• They are not written for students; they are written for curriculum directors

Throw in the costs and the amount of paper wasted, and plunking curriculum dollars into technology, a tool to a vast source of free content begins to make a lot of sense.

WHERE TO START?
Here is a look at movements to make more free content, which although improving, still has a long way to go. And this is an excellent place to start to find out how to teach in a textbook-free environment.

Call For Action: Narrowing the Curriculum

I believe the buzz phrase is "a mile wide and an inch deep."

Having coordinated curriculum, I've been guilty of parroting that phrase as well. Much like every other curriculum director Robert Marzano groupie, I have lamented how much time we spend covering so much in such little depth. Marzano listed the narrowing of the curriculum as the top factor a school can do to improve achievement, with the key being the world "viable", as in making sure you actually have enough time to teach effectively what you say you will. And of course, every time the TIMSS comes out, we have the pleasure of hearing about our wide, shallow curriculum as well.

So, when the Iowa Core Curriculum quotes that phrase, we shouldn't get too nonplussed. Much like the statement "rigor" and "higher standards", the phrase is not revolutionary. Rather, how to achieve it is.

The basics of the argument are that, as educators, we have felt the need to cover every possible topic in a curriculum, not leaving things out. In so doing, we cover things way too quickly, and therefore ruin retention.

As no surprise, I fully agree with the Iowa Core's calling to narrow (and thereby deepen) the curriculum. But, I'd like to add some caveats of how this is to be done.

1. Identify the most important skills - This is what the Iowa Core is attempting to do, and as far as I can tell, are doing successfully. Even the research shows that teaching less math topics doesn't necessarily improve scores... Singapore teaches more than the U.S. They just happen to emphasize equations, which has the biggest impact.

2. Multi-Task - Maybe the biggest problem is that we follow Madeline Hunter too closely; introduce one skill at a time, then instruct, guided practice, individual practice, etc. Authentically, that's not the way we work. When we think, we use multiple skills together. Introducing and working on multiple skills/concepts at a time suddenly eliminates a lot of repetition.

3. Be OK with skipping concepts - There is a fear amongst teachers (at least there was for me) that "if I don't teach them this, they'll never get it in life". Hogwash. The fact is, people glean the information they need outside of school all the time (in fact, many have to relearn the concepts they supposedly learned in K-12). Perhaps more important is helping students be resourceful enough to develop the concepts on their own when asked to.

4. Compact - If you are a teacher and don't know this term, that is telling. Research shows American teachers woefully underuse compacting. The end result is a lot of time wasted re-teaching concepts the students already know. We need to arm teachers with diagnostic tools to help them find what they can eliminate.

5. Eliminate the thick textbooks - Textbooks have adopted throwing everything into it to meet every state's standards. That's not a problem. Teachers who can't teach without the textbook...? There's the problem. If I hear one more "Gosh, I'm so far behind, I've only got my classes on chapter 8" one more time...

The Iowa Core will require districts to do a thorough alignment of their curriculum, which should help define their scopes and sequences. But I think pushing some specific caveats such as the five above will go further to make a difference.