Getting Better: Vive La France!

Not long ago, in late October, the National Assessment Governing Board released the results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Generally speaking, the results were met with disappointment among those in the education sector, with the exception of a few laudable bright spots: D.C. and Mississippi. Approximately one month later, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) announced the results of their 2018 study, which evoked a similar word as the NAEP results: disappointing. American students, as compared to American students of yesteryear and present-day students around the world, have stagnated. I’m not one to advocate educational dooms-day scenarios, and understand that both the NAEP and PISA are contentious assessments (i.e. China’s suspiciously high 2018 PISA scores), but I think we can all agree that progress on rigorous national and international assessments of academic achievement is desirable.

Often, there is a predictable cycle to the release of these “acronym assessments.” We discover that American students, again, haven’t improved very much, we read the same series of editorials from both informed and uninformed authors that posit the reason for the academic recession, and then wag the proverbial finger at schools, families, teachers, politicians, communities, and/or principals. We then jump to various conclusions about what we need to do in order to right the ship, and interestingly, proposals often include the word “more”: more money, more technology, more resources, more differentiation, more support staff, more personalized learning. Yet, “more” does not always equate to better. Often, it simply increases confusion, frustration, and inefficiency, especially at the school level. Bounding to the next shiny thing is endemic in the field of education, and disciplined thought and action (the antidote to the epidemic) is in short supply. What if, this time, we supplanted the immediacy of “more” with a thoughtful examination of what has worked around the world historically?

Across the Atlantic, France provides a shining example of what works...and what doesn’t. In 2016, E.D. Hirsch Jr. published the seminal work Why Knowledge Matters, which argues that a knowledge-based education is the only way to ensure educational advancement and equity. He asserted that the prevailing educational philosophy in the U.S. today is painfully misguided, especially in the area of reading, to the detriment of students, especially those living in low-income areas. In my opinion, the most poignant part of Hirsch’s thesis is his analysis of France’s academic results in the decades following the country’s regrettable decision to abandon its knowledge-based, standardized national curriculum in the name of progressive reform. The graph below illustrates the precipitous decline in academic achievement after 1987 when curriculum reform took effect. Most notably, we notice not only an absolute decline in achievement with the new “skills curriculum” in France, but a tremendous relative decline in achievement as well. Unsurprisingly, the students who fared the worst under the reforms were the children of laborers and the unemployed, whose achievement fell off a cliff. The children of executives and intellectuals experienced a decline in achievement, but their years of museum visits, stops at the library, and other educational experiences that gifted them a trove of background knowledge and vocabulary provided them with a parachute to soften the impact of progressive reform. When reviewing the visual for the first time, it is hard not to have a visceral reaction at the unmitigated disaster that was the curriculum reform effort in late 1980s France.

So what happened in France? After implementing a tightly structured, knowledge-based national curriculum for decades, leading to one of the strongest educational systems in the world (as determined by international assessments) and some of the smallest gaps in the world between children from wealthy families and those from impoverished families, they abandoned their system when progressive reformists, inspired by the ideas of John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, pushed back in the 1980s. As demonstrated above, this had an almost immediate impact on both academic achievement in the country and achievement gaps between the rich and the poor. We may be committing a similar educational sin in the U.S. by focusing on building skills rather than building knowledge. The achievement gap is a knowledge and vocabulary gap.

Proponents of progressive education argue that education should be focused on the individual, the student, and his or her own experiences. Experiential learning is promoted, and education “naturally” takes root through an innate curiosity and desire to explore within children. Much like a plant, children will grow and blossom without significant intervention from adults if they are left alone in their environment. Teachers should serve as the “guide on the side” as opposed to the “sage on stage.” As adults, we should allow children to explore their interests and choose what they want to learn. However, this type of thinking excludes an important fact: children are born unlearned, and without the intervention of parents and teachers, will likely stay that way if left to their own devices. In addition, children of lower socioeconomic status often have implicit limits on satiating their curiosity due to a dearth of opportunity in their immediate environment.

We can all agree that curiosity is a desirable quality in children. However, child-centered pedagogy is akin to an educational misdemeanor (maybe felony?) for a number of reasons: 1) it’s unlikely that children are going to be “curious” about the Civil War or their multiplication tables (and countless other vital concepts that they need to know as literate Americans, global citizens, etc.), 2) young children simply lack the requisite life experience to develop more than a superficial curiosity of what is beyond their immediate grasp (in other words, you don’t know what you don’t know…), 3) focusing on individual interests robs children, especially of low-income background, of the vital cultural capital they need to succeed in broader society (i.e. “core knowledge”), and 4) the absence of a common curriculum all but guarantees an inconsistent, incoherent educational experience for a community’s children. In addition, many students, especially those from poorer backgrounds, move frequently, constantly shuttling between schools. They often learn the same concepts over and over again, and struggle to establish continuity in their education due to the constant transitions.

We don’t let our children choose how they’re going to behave (hopefully!) - we teach them - so why in the world wouldn’t we be intentional about what they learn in school? We often draw a false dichotomy between culturally responsive and knowledge-based curricula. We can do both, pretty easily in fact, due to the increasing availability of high-quality instructional materials. Surely our society would benefit from our children looking a bit less in the mirror and a bit more out the window. This is especially germane to low-income schools where one can often find teachers engaging in a form of latent paternalism by limiting children’s experience to what is “culturally relevant.” In wealthier, mostly white, schools, one never sees such limitations of the curriculum. Everything is on the table. Why shouldn’t it be that way for all students? Eschewing progressive education for a knowledge-based pedagogy that gives every child, of every background, a broad swath of background knowledge is the foundation on which we can start to build a more equitable education system.

A knowledge-based curriculum isn’t the finish line; rather, it’s the first 100 meters of the marathon of making education more equitable in the United States. PISA and NAEP scores wouldn’t immediately increase solely because of knowledge-based curriculum; it’s just not that simple. Education is incredibly complex. Furthermore, implementing a national curriculum in the U.S. is a non-starter, essentially just a laughable pipe dream. Can you imagine the U.S. adopting a national curriculum in the current political climate, or any climate for that matter? Me neither. The Common Core, just a list of standards, died a slow death of a thousand misinformed tweets. However, that doesn’t mean that schools and districts can’t take up the endeavor, using resources like Edreports.org to select a rigorous, aligned, knowledge-centric curriculum that allows all students access to the background knowledge and vocabulary that will allow them to be the successful students, engaged Americans, and productive citizens that we know they can be.

Ben Pacht is the Director of Improvement of the School Performance Institute in Columbus, Ohio. The School Performance Institute is the learning and improvement arm of the United Schools Network. Send feedback to bpacht@unitedschoolsnetwork.org.