Today’s identity politics has another interesting feature: It teaches students to think in a way antithetical to what a liberal arts education should do. When I was at Yale in the 1980s, I was given so many tools for understanding the world. By the time I graduated, I could think about things as a Utilitarian or a Kantian, as a Freudian or a behaviorist, as a computer scientist or a humanist. I was given many lenses to apply to any one situation. But nowadays, students who major in departments that prioritize social justice over the disinterested pursuit of truth are given just one lens—power—and told to apply it to all situations. Everything is about power. Every situation is to be analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education. This is induction into a cult, a fundamentalist religion, a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety, and intellectual impotence.

—Jonathan Haidt

A good education doesn’t offer one lens through which to see ourselves and the world, rather it offers a great variety of lenses. Whatever reductive pressures are exerted onto a curriculum or onto the teaching of a subject, those of us who have an interest in what we term, broadly, ‘the liberal arts’, need to ensure we teach and design courses which offer up arguments rather than just presenting narrow answers or a ‘world view’. The pursuit of wisdom is never served by insisting one way of seeing the world has dominion over all others.

This is not to say that all things are relative. Far from it. It is only by engaging in debate, by testing out ideas and hypotheses, with the underlying belief that some things are better than other things, can we free up individuals to think for themselves and enable them to add to the great conversation in a way that opens and engages minds rather than closes and disengages them. A relativist can leave all others numb by saying ‘well, it’s my opinion,’ and refuse to engage any further. In other words: ‘truth is an individual construct—so leave me alone…’ Relativism is also antithetical to a liberal arts education.

An educational institution should not be a place which suggests it ‘knows’ the truth. The age old adage that the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know, should underpin the academy. This gives us great hope in that it has a vested interest in the importance of the voices of those who teach, the voices of those whom they teach about, and also the voices of those who are taught and those whose voices will follow. This social contract between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born insists on no group having more insight than any other but that by coming together we might find ourselves closer to wisdom than by keeping resolutely apart.

The academy should be notable by its variety of subjects from across the spectrum of knowing, and students at school and university should be educated through as many substantial and different lenses we can muster to enable a more thoughtful engagement between themselves and the world. The more perspectives that we can offer the more likely we are to educate successfully. These perspectives need to offer breadth and they also need to be experienced in depth in order to unveil their truths. This means some inevitable compromises are made, but young people should experience learning from as many broad lenses as we can muster.

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about a matter, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our “concept” of this matter, our “objectivity” be.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

If we narrow or reduce perspectives, we are more likely to falter in error than we are to glimpse the truth. Students need to access a full and varied curriculum from an early age and for as long as is possible in such a way so that their thinking and experiencing will not atrophy over time. Subjects should be taught with dialogue, argument, and debate at their heart, to ensure that perspectives can clash along nicely throughout the heart of the school’s offer. Pupils should also get a good grounding in philosophy, thought, ethics, and aesthetics.

In order to ensure an education that offers a good range of perspectives, there needs to be a range of subjects on offer. This means starting specialist subject teaching sometime during primary education, expanding the offer during middle school and ensuring pupils are able to access a good number of subjects by the time they reach high school. The arts and humanities, languages, social sciences, technology, and physical/health education options ought to be kept up as long as possible alongside English, math and sciences. It is essential to offer a good extracurricular program too, including traditional options like school productions, orchestras, galleries, sports teams, quiz and debating teams, etc. This means that alongside high school end-of-course exams, Advanced Placement, IB, etc., options are available to complete voluntary work and be recognized for involvement in extracurricular activities. A house system helps develop pupil leadership and widens participation in such team events beyond elite inter-school level competition.

For those who study or intend to study more vocational options, I would hope an academic/cultural stream of opportunities—both for study and extracurricular work—is also accessible. All work and no play/reading/writing/thinking about ‘the big questions’ makes Jack and Jill dull…

This is what an expansive curriculum can offer, not dullness, but vibrancy, and the opportunity for young people to flourish.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on the author’s blog, Trivium21c.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Ohio’s State Board of Education recently voted in favor of recommending that the legislature extend softer graduation requirements to the classes of 2019 and 2020. Such a move would be seriously misguided, since these expectations don’t require students to demonstrate academic mastery or readiness for college or career. Instead, the board suggests that students receive diplomas when they complete various non-academic options, including meeting attendance requirements or accruing a certain number of volunteer or internship hours.

An argument could certainly be made that the state should stick with the graduation requirements currently enshrined in law, which permit students to graduate if they have: achieved a passing cumulative score on seven end-of-course exams, achieved a “remediation-free” ACT or SAT score, or completed career and technical education requirements that include earning an industry recognized credential. After all, more than three-fourths of students in the class of 2018 are on track to graduate, even with these rigorous expectations in place.

However, if the General Assembly decides to make a change, they should consider other options aside from the proposal from the state board. One possibility is the model recently adopted by Indiana, beginning with its class of 2023. In order to graduate, Indiana students will need to 1) meet curricular requirements, 2) demonstrate employability skills, and 3) demonstrate their postsecondary readiness.

The curricular requirement is both simple and straightforward— students must take certain courses and earn a certain number of credits in order to graduate. This is similar to Ohio’s current coursework requirements. The employability and postsecondary readiness measures, on the other hand, allow for several different pathways that students may choose. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Employability skills

Students must demonstrate their employability skills by selecting and completing one of three pathways. The first is a project-based learning experience. Indiana’s State Board describes this pathway as a project “framed by a meaningful problem to solve or a question to answer.” Students can fulfill this requirement in a variety of ways, including a course capstone project, a research project, or the AP Capstone Assessment. The second is a service-learning experience, which includes participating in a “meaningful volunteer or civic engagement experience” or participating in a co-curricular or extracurricular activity or sport for at least one academic year. The final pathway is a work-based learning experience, and may include the completion of an internship or employment outside of school.

Postsecondary readiness  

This portion is aimed at ensuring students are ready for what comes after high school—and it recognizes that not all students will choose to go to college. Students can demonstrate their readiness by completing one of the following pathways: earning an honors diploma; meeting the college-ready benchmark scores on the ACT or SAT; earning a score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery that would qualify the student for placement into one of the branches of the US military; earning a state- and industry-recognized credential or certificate; completing a state-, federal-, or industry-recognized apprenticeship; earning a C average or higher in at least six high school credits in a career sequence; or earning a C average or higher in at least three  AP, IB, dual credit, Cambridge International, or CLEP courses. Indiana also permits districts to create local pathways for this requirement, so long as the pathway earns the approval of the state board.

Indiana’s model has its critics. Still, it is far superior to the plan recommended by the Ohio State Board in two key ways. First, Indiana’s pathways include nonacademic measures in addition to academic measures, not in place of them. The graduation alternatives proposed by the state board allow Ohio students to graduate without evidence that they are academically prepared for college or career. Indiana’s model, on the other hand, requires students to not only demonstrate skills important for the workplace but also success on a readiness measure that opens door to postsecondary opportunities (e.g. an apprenticeship).

Which brings us to the second reason: Indiana’s model addresses concerns about the one-size-fits-all nature of Ohio’s system. Critics of Ohio’s current graduation pathways have claimed that the system too heavily emphasizes tests and doesn’t allow students to demonstrate their learning in other ways. Adopting Indiana’s model would address these concerns without sacrificing the long-term prospects of graduating seniors by combining academic and non-academic requirements.

Ohio lawmakers may very well determine that maintaining the Buckeye State’s robust graduation requirements is the right course, a decision that we would applaud. But if they conclude that a change is warranted instead, the model adopted by Indiana is a better alternative to the academic-lite proposal being recommended by the state board.

      ACT I – Robots rising?
 

1. A surprisingly-thorough and even handed account of how we got here and what’s at stake as the latest court date for ECOT-related matters looms. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/11/18)
    
2. The recent switch to “robo-scoring” of the essay portion of Ohio’s ELA tests has not sat well with some school districts across the state who have noted scoring anomalies. The state’s effort to diagnose and address the issue is being hailed as “a responsible approach”. Yeah that’s high praise. I’m sure of it. What kind of effusiveness did you expect from testing and data nerds? (Columbus Dispatch, 2/10/18)
   
   

                                                                        INTERMISSION

   ACT II – Creativity and Nature ascendent?

3. Integrating arts into the entire curriculum in Mansfield City Schools is being hailed as the cure-all for every possible academic issue, including for the ill-defined “at-risk” students. With minimal evidence except for something about giraffes. That is what high praise sound like in the arts field. Personally, I’ll believe it helps with geometry as soon as Vertex: The Musical wins a Tony Award. (Mansfield News Journal, 2/7/18)
    
4. And finally today, I give you: The return of BEEF SCHOOOOOOOOL! (Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, 2/8/18)
    

FIN

As teacher evaluation systems evolve around the nation—decreasing the importance of student growth scores in favor of more reliance on classroom observations—how best to support principals in observing and giving feedback on teacher performance will gain importance. While research may play a part in determining best practices going forward, a recent report from the Institute of Education Sciences is more of a cautionary tale than an exemplar.

The study involved 339 New Mexico principals who were scheduled to observe their teachers for the first of multiple times in the early part of the 2015-2016 school year. According to the state’s evaluation framework, principals are required to score teachers on a 22-item rubric after each observation and to hold a feedback conference within ten days of each observation. This was the first year of full implementation of the state’s new evaluation system, which ultimately assigned ratings to every teacher in the state based on classroom observations, student growth data, surveys, and other factors. This study explored whether providing a detailed checklist to principals could improve the quality of the post-observation conferences.

To carry out the experiment, the researchers randomly assigned half of the principals to a control group, while those in the treatment group were given specific, step-by-step information—including a 24-item checklist and a testimonial video from a principal in another state attesting to the efficacy of the checklist. Teachers in the treatment group received the same documents and video as their principals, along with the knowledge that the checklist might be used in their feedback conferences. Adapted from a guide developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teachers, the checklist aimed to increase the quality and efficacy of feedback conferences, to positively influence teacher professional development, and to raise student achievement. An important effort if successful.

Unfortunately, the experimental design ran into problems. While 77 percent of principals in the treatment group reported viewing the checklist, only 58 percent said they actually used it with one or more teachers. Additionally, 29 percent of control group principals also reported that they had seen the checklist, and 10 percent of them reported using it with one or more teachers, despite an admonition to treatment group participants not to share the checklist. The low uptake rate, lack of consistent use, and blurring of the line between treatment and control groups limits our ability to draw clear conclusions about the effectiveness of these checklists. (This has been a challenge with other federal studies, too.)

Nevertheless, teachers in the treatment group reported that principals using the checklist were less dominant during the feedback conference. This is to be expected as the step-by-step checklist was geared toward principals giving teachers prompts for their response after each piece of feedback was presented. Principals, however, reported no significant impact of the checklist on any measure of conference quality. Both principals and teachers who used the checklist reported that it was useful but also reported concerns that it could lead to formulaic conferences. While teachers who received the checklist were more likely to report following their principals’ professional development recommendations than were teachers in the control group, there was no clear impact on teachers’ subsequent classroom observation rating scores during the school year. The researchers posited that the short timeline for the study meant that PD suggestions were not acted upon within the year. Teachers may use the feedback to improve their practice, but likely not until the summer, with effects potentially visible in the following school year. Finally, the feedback conference checklist had no clear impact on student achievement outcomes—as measured by state math and English language arts exams—or on school report card grades released after the close of the school year. Once again, the short timeline of the study design is to blame.

Productive conversations between teachers and principals about instructional effectiveness is definitely to be encouraged and will likely become more important in states whose evaluation frameworks prioritize observation-based evaluation. Can a step-by-step checklist help facilitate those conversations and improvements? It seems the jury is still out.

SOURCE: Kata Mihaly, et al, “Impact of a checklist on principal-teacher feedback conferences following classroom observations,” Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (January 2018).

Chris Yaluma’s and my recent Fordham report on gifted education in high-poverty schools shows that the U.S. still has a long ways to go before it closes the “gifted gap,” the disparity in participation in gifted programs among student groups. Even in the earliest grades, black and Hispanic students participate in these programs at much lower rates than their white and Asian peers. But what is the rationale for gifted education in the first place? For those of us who are concerned about persistent inequities in American society and in our schools, “gifted education,” which through its name (somewhat offensively) implies that God or nature has “gifted” a special few, requires a strong justification.

While I would welcome a name change, I believe strongly in gifted education for one main reason: Kids in the same grade are not all at the same level for each subject. This may be intuitive; every child is a snowflake! But the differences within each grade are greater than you might think.

One recent study found a range of more than eleven grade levels in reading fluency and comprehension among fourth graders in a small group of diverse elementary schools. This is extraordinary variation, implying that a fourth grade teacher may have students reading at a kindergarten level and at a ninth grade level in the same classroom. Whatever the merits of “differentiating instruction,” a teacher cannot realistically teach sonnet analysis, spelling basics, and the wide spectrum of skills in between to the same set of students.

But it’s possible that this remarkable statistic is misleading. Perhaps one child prodigy could be what causes the range to be so vast.

To get a more practical sense of the proportion of students who are performing above or below their grade level, my colleague Nicholas Munyan-Penney and I dug up some school-level and district-level studies that included scores for the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment. (One study was of two schools, and the other of a district.) The MAP is a good source for this exercise because its scores are scaled in a way that is theoretically consistent across grade levels. In other words, a third grader and a ninth grader could both score a 225, indicating that they had similar levels of skill (in this example, near the score of the average American sixth grader). Since these studies reported the means and standard deviations for each grade, it is possible to estimate the proportion of students who score at a level closer to students in other grades in their school than those in their own grade.

The results confirm that there is substantial variation within students in the same school and grade, though few schools are likely to exhibit the kind of extreme variation implied by the study described above.

Still, more than 40 percent of fourth grade students in the two studies I analyzed are nearer to the average score of students in other grades than to the average of students in their own grade. This holds true for both reading and math. Some students (from about 3 percent to 10 percent, depending on the subject and sample) score two whole grade levels above or below, meaning at the sixth or second grades.

Figure: Many students score closer to the average of other grades than their own (estimates)

Sources: School 1: Kettler, Ryan J., and Stephen N. Elliott. "A brief broadband system for screening children at risk for academic difficulties and poor achievement test performance: Validity evidence and applications to practice." Journal of Applied School Psychology 26.4 (2010): 282-307; School 2: Capraro, Robert M., et al. "An examination of mathematics achievement and growth in a Midwestern urban school district: Implications for teachers and administrators." Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 2.2 (2009): 46-65.

The national MAP data suggest that the variation expands greatly in later grades. (For this I did not have school- or district-level data to examine.) By eighth grade, the national variation in grade level is at least 50 percent larger than in fourth grade. High schools have developed many types of differentiation, including honors programs, Advanced Placement courses, remedial education, and other ways of addressing students’ diverse needs. Yet according to our recent report, 32 percent of elementary and middle schools still lack any kind of gifted programming.

Providing differentiated programming for students is so critical because connecting the curriculum to students’ interests and providing the appropriate level of challenge are powerful stimulators of student motivation. As Usher and Kolber put it in their study on student motivation, teachers should identify “tasks that are challenging enough to maintain students’ interests but not so challenging as to undermine students’ feelings of competence.” As anyone who has tutored understands, achieving this balance with just one student is not easy, but teaching in a way that will stimulate the interest of a classroom of students when abilities vary wildly is nearly impossible. And if the students themselves are disengaged and unmotivated, we shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t learn much.

With the large range of abilities in a classroom suggested by the MAP data, teachers are in a bind. Focusing on the high-achievers will leave much of the class feeling lost and frustrated, while teaching to the level of the students who are under-performing will bore much of the class, potentially leading to disruptions by students who are restless from under-stimulation. The Goldilocks middle might be okay if the classroom is more homogenous than the ones in the schools I analyzed, but in the average classroom it may turn out to be the worst of both worlds: Struggling students are passed over, and the high-flyers are busy engineering new spit-wad delivery systems.

Stimulating students to build skills and broaden their minds through challenging schoolwork is the main lever the education system has for propelling students out of poverty. Differentiated programming, including gifted programs, is an important way to keep students at all levels challenged and motivated.

In recent years, as the pendulum of public opinion surrounding school discipline has swung from zero tolerance to restorative justice, policymakers, school leaders, advocates, opinion-shapers, and interest groups have struggled to solve inherently difficult problems: To what extent are such policies actually altering school practice? Are those alterations doing good or harm? And what are the pros and cons of limiting—or even banning—suspensions for certain forms of misconduct?

To address these questions, Fordham hosted a two-panel event on January 26 examining how to handle student misbehavior and the policies behind school discipline reform.

The first panel, moderated by Fordham senior vice president for research Amber Northern, featured Matthew Steinberg and Abigail Gray, the respective authors of “The Academic and Behavioral Consequences of Discipline Policy Reform” and “Discipline in Context: Suspension, Climate, and PBIS in the School District of Philadelphia.”

That discussion was followed by a lively debate between Cami Anderson, former superintendent in Newark and founder of the Discipline Revolution Project; Kristen Harper, director for policy development at Child Trends; Laura Jimenez, director of standards and accountability at the Center for American Progress; and Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Alia Wong, education editor and writer at The Atlantic, moderated.

Northern opened the first panel with an overview of both Steinberg’s and Gray’s studies. Both papers examined the implications of a change in policy in the School District of Philadelphia in 2013, which instituted a ban on out-of-school suspensions for low-level “conduct” offenses and reduced the length of those suspensions for more serious infractions. Steinberg analyzed the academic and behavioral consequences of the policy reforms; whereas Gray studied principal and teacher perceptions in the wake of policy changes and how implementation of other discipline strategies (such as “Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports”) was going.

One of the key findings of the Steinberg study was that both the number of more serious incidents and the truancy rates increased after the policy change. Steinberg stressed that, “If we want to change patterns in schools, targeting suspensions and eliminating them as a reform cannot stand alone as a policy response.” One of Gray’s key findings was that principals and teachers do not agree on the use of out-of-school suspensions in the schools: Principals appear mostly on board with the policy, but teachers do not. Gray agreed with Steinberg that school supports and resources are essential considerations when rolling out new policies and argued that we now have strong evidence that suspensions cause long-term negative consequences. However, Steinberg disputed that claim, maintaining that the evidence was not as rigorous as some claim.

The debate followed with that frame in mind. Wong asked the participants, “If you were to go to schools that are struggling to get discipline reform right, what would you look for to troubleshoot and come up with a solution?” Anderson listed key components to successful discipline-reform efforts: smart classroom management; a culture of high expectations; high levels of student and teacher support; and comprehensive, proactive response systems and guidelines. Harper similarly suggested that policymakers must carefully consider the collective opinions of parents, teachers, and students if they’re to successfully develop and implement discipline reforms. She cited Fairfax County, Virginia, as an example of a district that has done this well.

Wong then steered the debate toward policy concerns by asking, “How do we move past deep disagreements on policy to find common ground?” Harper said that “the history of school discipline reform has been an inclusive one and the effort has always been about advancing equity and supporting students and teachers.” But Petrilli argued that discipline reforms, though well-intentioned, may lead to unintended consequences when schools don’t receive the additional support and resources needed to implement said reforms. He also warned that top-down mandates can appear to some, including educators, to focus on a small subset of students: “We have got to make sure that the kids who are not misbehaving are as much in our minds as the kids who are.”

Anderson then pointed to extensive racial disparities in suspension rates in America’s schools and said that care has to be taken to avoid criminalizing young people. Jimenez agreed, arguing that federal data collection on disciplinary actions is necessary because racial bias is rarely identifiable in individual complaints submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Despite all of their differences, all panelists agreed that the responsibility ultimately falls on adults to make school a place where both teachers and students can feel safe and respected.

Make no mistake: It was one of Fordham’s liveliest debates in recent memory. If you didn’t get the chance to see it, tune in here!

1. It has been said (mostly by me, probably) that there are only three seasons in Ohio – budget season, campaign season, and summer vacation. I invite all five of my loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers (yes, it’s been a successful couple of months) to guess which one we’re in right now. The only clues I’m going to give you are the comments and accusations regarding the Youngstown Academic Distress Commission included in this piece. You have 30 seconds. (Youngstown Vindicator, 2/9/18)
    
2. Speaking of districts operating under the aegis of Academic Distress Commissions, it turns out that Lorain CEO David Hardy wasn’t kidding when he suggested earlier this week that his academic turnaround plan could mean big changes at the Colossus of Lorain (a.k.a. the schmancy, not-as-new-as-it-once-was-but-still-shiny-enough, high school). To wit: the phase-in of a set of smaller, themed “academies” within the single building. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 2/8/18) You’d think that the development of academic pathways focusing on STEM, performing arts, early college access, and the like would be cause for celebration. But alas both the Morning Journal and the Chronicle report the biggest attention-getter in Hardy’s proposal was the possibility that “those kids” would be allowed back into the Colossus. Everyone who has followed Lorain’s “Knucklehead Chronicles” via the Bites will know what I’m talking about. “New Beginnings”? Sounds more like a perpetual cycle of “Unhappy Endings” to me. (Elyria Chronicle, 2/8/18)
    
3. Speaking of things that sound like unhappy endings, Insight School of Ohio—a statewide online charter school based in Columbus—was non-renewed by its sponsor for academic reasons and must either find a new sponsor or close down at the end of the school year. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/8/18)
    
4. For a dose of good news today: here is a profile of United Schools Network founder and CEO Andy Boy. Extra bonus: finding a new Columbus news outlet that I had never heard of before. But I’m still not going to a meadery, no matter how hip you guys make it sound. (CityPulse Columbus, 2/8/18)
    
5. Finally today, who says no one wants to take on lunch duty? One Ohio insurance company seems to be everywhere doing just that. First up, Stewart Elementary School in Columbus. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/8/18) Simultaneously, insurance company staffers are doing the same at Harris-Jackson Elementary School in Akron as well. Awesome. Whenever you get all the trays cleaned up, can we talk about your company’s core business for a sec? I have questions. (Akron Beacon Journal, 2/8/18)

Did you hear the one about a curriculum with fifty years of research that actually demonstrates its effectiveness? There’s a new meta-analysis in the peer-reviewed journal the Review of Educational Research that looks at over five hundred articles, dissertations, and research studies and documents a half-century of “strong positive results” for a curriculum regardless of school, setting, grade, student poverty status, race, and ethnicity, and across subjects and grades.

Ready for the punchline? That curriculum is called “Direct Instruction.”

Hey, wait. Where’s everybody going? I’m telling you, Direct Instruction is the Rodney Dangerfield of education. It gets no respect.

I know what you’re thinking. “Direct Instruction? DISTAR, Corrective Reading and Reading Mastery? Basal programs? Scripted curriculum? That stuff’s been around since the Earth cooled. It’s not just old school, it’s the oldest school. Who cares about ‘DI’ when there’s so much cool, cutting edge, and disruptive stuff going on education? This is the age of ed tech, personalized learning, and competency-based progressions. The future is here and it’s OER, social media integration, virtual reality, and makerspaces. Direct instruction!? You gotta be kidding me. See you at SXSW EDU!”

Hold on and look again. The central assumption of DI is that every child can learn and any teacher can succeed with an effective curriculum and solid instructional delivery techniques. When a student does not learn, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with the student, DI disciples insist. It means something is wrong with the instruction. “Thus, the theory underlying DI lies in opposition to developmental approaches, constructivism, and theories of learning styles,” write Jean Stockard and Timothy W. Wood of the University of Oregon, lead authors of the new meta-analysis, “which assume that students’ ability to learn depends on their developmental stage, their ability to construct or derive understandings, or their own unique approach to learning,”

Ah…there’s your trouble, DI devotees.

Wait. There’s more. Direct Instruction is mastery-based and systematic. “If you fail to bring students to mastery in lessons 1-60, they’re going to be in trouble on lesson 70,” says education professor Marcy Stein of the University of Washington Tacoma. That precision and pacing—the instructional design work—is what hardcore fans love and even fetishize about DI. But those enthusiasts are outliers in education, for Direct Instruction, however effective, goes against the grain of generations of teachers trained and flattered into the certain belief that they alone know what’s best for their students. The curriculum will never be written—holds the conventional wisdom—that can override a teacher’s judgment about what every child needs. Fifty years of research? As another comedian, Richard Pryor, might have asked, “Who you gonna believe? Me? Or your lying meta-analysis?”

For a significant subset of teachers (actually a very large subset), the mere thought of a set curriculum imposes an intolerable burden on their autonomy and creativity. Yes, DI lessons are scripted, specifying “the exact wording and the examples the teacher is to present for each exercise in the program, which ensures that the program will communicate one and only one possible interpretation of the skill being taught,” according to the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI), an advocacy organization based in Oregon. This, as much as anything, probably explains how DI can be both highly effective and the perpetual wallflower at the curriculum dance hall.

Direct Instruction advocates are “not naïve enough to think that to be successful all teachers need to do is read the DI script,” Stein insists. It’s not “teacher-proof” as many critics state. Proper implementation, especially for struggling students, involves not only delivering the curriculum well but constantly monitoring students and responding to their confusion in a timely and effective manner. “Teachers often report that teaching this scripted program is much more difficult than teaching one that is less prescribed,” Stein says. There’s often confusion between “small d” direct instruction—shorthand for any teacher-driven, explicit instruction—and the various curriculum products associated with the work of Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann across subjects, but most famously in reading. The meta-study focuses on Engelmann “big D” Direct Instruction across reading, math, spelling, language, and other academic subjects.

Direct Instruction began at the University of Illinois in the mid-1960s as a preschool program for children from deeply impoverished homes. Those who swear by it frequently invoke the results of Project Follow Through, the largest and most expensive educational research study ever mounted by the federal government, which compared the outcomes of over twenty different educational interventions in high-poverty communities over a multiyear period. “External evaluators gathered and analyzed outcome data using a variety of comparison groups and analysis techniques,” Stockard and Wood note. “The final results indicated that DI was the only intervention that had significantly positive impacts on all of the outcome measures.” Their new meta-analysis brings the DI story up to the present, but the meta-narrative hasn’t changed.

Hey, can you hear me? Is this thing on?!

Rote or scripted, sequenced or not, loved or hated, shouldn’t half a century and hundreds of studies be enough to earn DI a little respect if education is so evidence-based? “We give lip service to evidence,” explains Doug Carnine, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and a NIFDI board member. “We say ‘evidence-based’ because we have to fit with the new cultural norm, but it’s not a core value. It's tradition and ideology that prevails in education.”

Happily, there’s a burgeoning appreciation for the role of curriculum in improving teacher effectiveness and students outcomes, and increased sophistication around curriculum adoptions. But Carnine’s point is sound. There’s a long road ahead before education at large is a truly evidence-based field.

Stockard and Wood and their co-authors conclude that “The findings of this meta-analysis reinforce the conclusions of earlier meta-analyses and reviews of the literature regarding DI. Yet, despite the very large body of research supporting its effectiveness, DI has not been widely embraced or implemented.”

True that. Everybody hates Direct Instruction. All it does is work.

And that’s no joke. 

Eight years after their adoption by the vast majority of states, public misconceptions about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) still abound. Even our president seems confused about what exactly the standards are, how they were adopted, and what the federal government can and can’t do to abolish or impose them on states. Given their pervasiveness, is it possible to correct common public misconceptions about Common Core? And to what extent might changing public support for education policies ultimately aid in their implementation?

A new study released via Brookings’ Evidence Speaks series last month explores these issues by employing the fairly simple intervention strategy of a “refutation text,” which comes in various lengths and types and is “written for the purpose of changing widely held misconceptions.” The study sought to answer three key questions: First, what impact does a refutation text have on respondents’ correct conceptions and misconceptions regarding the CCSS? Second, to what extent does it reduce the relationship of political views with correct conceptions and misconceptions? And third, are effects only immediate, or do they persist over a week?

Using a sample of six hundred respondents garnered via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, researchers Stephen Aguilar, Morgan Polikoff, and Gale Sinatra, all of USC’s Rossier School of Education, surveyed respondents about their overall support for the CCSS, their sources of information on the standards, and common CCSS misconceptions, such as whether the CCSS were developed by the Obama administration and whether Common Core prevents states from adding content to the standards. They then provided half of respondents with a brief refutation text correcting common misconceptions before asking them the same series of questions again. The other half of respondents, comprising the study’s “control group,” were provided excerpts from a 2015 Education Week article overviewing the CCSS (a “placebo”) in place of the refutation text.

The study’s results promisingly suggest that treatment (i.e., receiving the refutation text) “significantly reduced misconceptions and increased correct conceptions” when compared to the study’s randomly assigned control group, though both groups saw improvements. Exposure to the refutation text also improved respondents’ overall attitudes towards the CCSS and appeared to annul the relationship between political views and CCSS misconceptions. When researchers re-surveyed the same participants one week later, they found effects on participants’ conceptions and misconceptions largely persisted over that time.

The politics and misconceptions surrounding Common Core took many advocates by surprise following their creation in 2010, and it’s unfortunate and downright shocking that many of these misconceptions continue today. Although much more research needs to be done on the use of refutation texts in the education realm—such as whether effects persist for longer than a week and whether results can be replicated with non-self-selecting survey respondents—this study encouragingly suggests that they may be one tool with which to address common public misconceptions about education policies and reforms. It’s also worth noting that this study’s effects likely would have been even larger if the control group had instead received no information, rather than excerpts from an online article on the topic.

SOURCE: Stephen J. Aguilar, Morgan S. Polikoff, Gale M. Sinatra, “When public opinion on policy is driven by misconceptions, refute them,” Brookings (January 2018).

In recent years there’s been a big push in many states for universal pre-K programs, which make access to preschool education available to all families. And that push appears to be working: 1.5 million three- and four-year-olds were served nationally as of 2015–16 at a cost of $7.4 billion. This study from Urban Institute’s Erica Greenberg presents results from the first nationally representative poll of one thousand American adults on their preferences for universal pre-K (i.e., publicly funded pre-k for all kids) versus targeted pre-k (publicly funded pre-k for poor kids). It uses data from a larger 2013 survey developed through the Laboratory for the Study of American Values at Stanford University.

What’s interesting is the survey uses a novel approach to test potential reasons that the American public may or may not support particular forms of preschool, and this merits some discussion. All respondents are first told that these programs are free for families who use them. Then the analyst tests the effect of “financial self-interest” on support for pre-K by randomly assigning respondents to one of two scenarios: in the first, the cost of the program is incurred on the respondent; and in the second, it is paid through external sources. Specifically:

[Option 1] Most experts agree that if the government is going to pay for preschool, taxes may have to be increased on households like yours.

[Option 2] Most experts agree that the government can pay for preschool without increasing taxes on households like yours.

All respondents are then provided descriptions of both targeted and universal programs and asked, “Do you support or oppose the government funding programs like these?” Instead of preferring one or the other, respondents can show strong, weak, or equal support or opposition for one or both programs. Finally, the survey tests whether support is “racialized,” meaning whether respondents associate targeted programs with a particular racial or ethnic group. All receive a prompt describing a targeted program and are then shown one of two random pictures depicting the program: one of a white teacher with two white students, and the other of the same teacher with two black students. They are then asked if they would support or oppose the program.

The study finds that, on average, there is moderate support for targeted and universal pre-K, with no distinguishable preference for either. Roughly one-third equally support or oppose both forms. And a plurality of 36 percent has no preference, meaning they are more likely to favor than oppose both approaches, with the remainder landing squarely in the ambivalent category (i.e., they neither support nor oppose).

Across the sample, the possibility of higher taxes has no statistically distinguishable effects on support for targeted programs, meaning Americans feel equally favorable toward public investments in low-income preschoolers, whether or not they may have to pay more taxes to fund them. But the threat of higher taxes substantially decreases support for universal preschool by nearly a quarter of a standard deviation. And a small number of subgroups appear consistent in their level of support for both targeted and universal preschool regardless of the possibility of higher taxes—including black and low-income respondents and parents of school-age children, among others.

Respondents who respond positively to an “egalitarianism scale,” which measures beliefs about income equality (e.g., “If wealth were more equal in this country, we would have many fewer problems”), also tend to support preschool in general, especially the targeted kind.

Finally, there is no significant difference in overall support for targeted preschool relative to the race of children attending or by any particular subgroup of respondents (disaggregated by race, income, level of education, etc). Yet some subgroup differences did surface: Specifically, self-identified Democrats, liberals, and egalitarians favor targeted approaches, while Republicans, conservatives, and inegalitarians favor the universal approach. 

That last finding clearly upends common dogma—and deserves its own research study. But the fact that the threat of higher taxes decreases support for universal pre-K should come as no surprise. In the end, although both kinds of preschool enjoy similar support, the tide changes when taxpayers are asked to consider tapping their own wallets to provide services to all children, regardless of circumstance. That’s something that policymakers looking to advance universal pre-K should keep in mind. 

SOURCE: Erica H. Greenberg, “Public Preferences for Targeted and Universal Preschool," AERA Open (January-March 2018).