The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously posited that whether or not one believes in God, it behooves us to behave as if he exists. What have you got to lose? If you’re right, you wind up heaven and spare yourself eternal punishment in hell. And if not, well, what did it cost you apart from a few earthly pleasures here and there? Pascal’s Wager basically suggests that your upside is infinite, while your downside is relatively small. So do the right thing.
We need a Pascal’s Wager of curriculum. Schools are going to teach something, so it behooves us to ensure that the textbooks, workbooks, and software we put in front of students are coherent and of high quality. As this report from the Center for American Progress shows, crappy curriculum costs every bit as much as the good stuff. The authors found “little relationship” between the cost and quality of instructional products. And switching to a more rigorous math curriculum, for example, can deliver far greater returns on investment than other reforms. “The average cost-effectiveness ratio of switching curriculum was almost forty times that of class-size reduction in a well known randomized experiment,” the report notes.
Every opportunity for schools getting more bang for their curricular buck is a function of choosing the right product, not finding a better price. But for these cost-neutral benefits to accrue, we have to start taking curriculum seriously as a reform lever—at least as seriously as teacher quality, chartering, and other pet reform ideas, none of which have the demonstrated upside of simply choosing curriculum wisely and implementing it well. In short, we have a lot more empirical evidence for curricular effects than Pascal had for God. “In education, it is rare for a reform to show strong outcomes and be relatively inexpensive,” the authors conclude. “Curriculum reform is both cost-effective and worthwhile and should become a more central part of the effort to improve the nation’s schools.” Amen.
For starters, better “product research” is needed, including more “randomized experiments that clearly show which curricula produce the largest achievement gains.” Boser, Chingos, and Straus are also correct to argue that “when hard evidence on curriculum quality is available, it should supersede the often vague impressions of stakeholder groups that frequently dominate the [adoption] process.” Finally, let me add a recommendation of my own: Education reformers need to get over their blithe indifference on this issue. Some leading-edge reform outfits like KIPP and Achievement First have been quietly coming around, and Common Core itself is predicated on smart curricular choices. But more is needed to usher in an age of enlightenment. Of course teacher quality matters. It will matter even more when teachers are using materials of proven quality.
What have we got to lose?
SOURCE: Ulrich Boser, Matthew Chingos, and Chelsea Straus, “The Hidden Value of Curriculum Reform: Do States and Districts Receive the Most Bang for Their Curriculum Buck?,” Center for American Progress (October 2015).
