January 27, 2025 • 15 mins
WHY AREN'T KIDS LEARNING? I've got a guest that says the curriculum schools uses has a HUGE impact on student learning, as many curriculums aren't based at all on science and have been failing students. When they got rid of phonics instruction children stopped reading well, and that's just one example. Why do curriculums change and how can you insure your schools are using the best ones available? I've got Natalie Wexler on at 1pm to talk about it, and you really should read this article on it too.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you've listened to the program for any length of time,
(00:02):
you know we talk about education a lot on this program.
We spend an enormous amount of money, and in many
cases we are not getting good results. And my next guest,
Natalie Wexler, is an education writer and author of The
Knowledge Gap, The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System
and How to Fix It.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Natalie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Thanks van By, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, let's talk a little bit.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I saw you in an article on educationnext dot org
and the article is titled want Better Teaching, Get Better Curricula.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And I was just sharing with you off the air.
As a mom.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Involved in my daughter's school, especially when she was in
elementary and middle school, parents know sort of instinctively that
they've got to have a good curriculum, but they have
no idea how to judge whether a curriculum that their
kids are getting in their school system is good. So
your article caught my eye for that reason, and I
(01:03):
want to kind of start at the beginning. What is
the curriculum of a school? Explain what that is in
the first place. We'll start there.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Wow, Yeah, I mean that's kind of a slippery concept.
In their different definitions, but it basically refers to the
instructional materials that teachers are expected to use and ideally
training and how to use them.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So it's a combination of the content.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
And the questions that teachers might ask to guide students
to understanding that content.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Ideally, it's coherent.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Across grade levels, so that when kids get to fifth
grade they have acquired the knowledge assumed by the curriculum
at that point in prior years.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Like they should be reading at a certain level, performing
math at a certain level, things along those lines.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yes, basically, although those levels when you come to reading,
our not always accurate.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
There's really no such thing as a fixed grade level
because whether.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
You can understand a text depends a lot on the
topic and the individual reader's knowledge of that topic, and
that's not taken into account by those grade level measures.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, let me ask you a question about curriculums overall,
because as I in granted, I was a child, so
I didn't pay attention to such things. But it feels
like to me that we all kind of learned the
same things, and we learned it kind of in the
same way. Has there been an explosion in options for
a curriculum are there are just more choices than there
have been before. Am I wrong and misremembering?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Well? I think there've always been one thing that you
can one generalization you can make about the American education
system is that it's very difficult to generalize because it's
very local and there always have been variations in the
curricula that schools of using what kids have been learning.
I would see the big change, certainly since I was
a kid, is that at the elementary level, especially when
(03:01):
it comes to the big things that are dominating.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
The curriculum are math and reading.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
And that's always been true to a certain extent, but
because for the last twenty twenty five years we've put
such an emphasis on math and reading standardized tests, they
have come to dominate the elementary curriculum more than ever,
and so social studies science have kind of been marginalized
or you've been in some cases eliminated to make more
time for math, but especially reading, and a lot of
(03:28):
that time spent on reading is spent practicing skills like
finding the main idea of a text or making inferences
the kinds of things you see on reading tests. The
problem is, and the theory is it doesn't really matter
so much what kids are reading as long as they're
mastering the skills.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
But those skills, they don't exist in the abstract.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You can't apply a skill like making an inference unless
you have a certain amount of background knowledge about the
text you're reading about so that you can make sense
of it, at least at a superficial level. So what's
happening is kids are getting higher grade levels where there
is content in the curriculum. There's history, there's science, and
those curricula at you know, tenth grade or whatever assume
(04:08):
kids have already acquired a certain amount of knowledge about
the world, but in many cases they have not. That's
especially true for kids coming from less highly educated families,
who have less of an opportunity to pick up knowledge,
academic kinds of knowledge at home.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I had this conversation with an educator about ten years ago,
maybe even longer, and this particular person was big on
we're teaching kids how to think critically. But I said,
how can you think critically about something when you don't
have a basic set of knowledge from which you form
an opinion? And he didn't have an answer. Well, you
know what I thought, you're putting the car before the worlds.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Mandy, you have just put your finger on a big
basic problem in education. Just as with comprehension skills, critical
thinking skills cannot be taught in the abstract, and there's
lots of evidence to show that the more knowledge you
have about a topic, the better able you are to
think critically about it. And conversely, as you say, if
you don't know anything about a topic, you're not going
to be able to think critically about it, So you
cannot teach that in the abstract. It's not a skill
(05:08):
like riding a bike, doesn't matter what bike you're riding.
But this is an assumption that has taken deep root
in education that we can and should be teaching these
things in the abstract and knowledge, Well, kids can always
google that, but it's not always the case. I mean
googling something first of all, imposes a cognitive burden on
(05:30):
your mental processes. But also you might google something and
not be able to understand the answer you find, or
you might find information that's inaccurate and you might not
have the background knowledge to know that it's inaccurate or false.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So let's talk about what makes the quality curriculum, How
to make those decisions, and as a parent, maybe how
to have a better handle on whether or not a
curriculum that your school is considering, because I've seen these notices.
I've gotten these notices whenever a curriculum change is coming.
All they invite the parents to come in and have
a look at it and see and learn about it.
(06:03):
But I think too many people are like, I have
no idea how.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
To judge that. So how do you know that.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
A curriculum is good or better or not as good
or whatever that range is.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Well, I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Put math to one side because that's not my area
of expertise. But let's start with literacy. If your kid
is in an elementary school, or sometimes this is true
at middle school, I mean a lot of schools don't.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Actually have literacy curricula.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
They're just teaching the standards, and the standards don't specify
any content. So the first thing to look for is
does this curriculum actually have focus on content? Is it
the skill of the week and it doesn't. You know,
there's no specification really of what kids are actually reading
to practice the skill or is the content in the foreground,
And does the curriculum spend at least two or three
(06:52):
weeks going deeply into some content. It could be literature,
but it could also be a topic in history or science.
These are all connected, all part of literacy, and then
you know, it's really makes sense for there to be
some writing connected to the content of the curriculum. We
often have kids write about completely different topics than what
(07:13):
they're learning about, which is it's a shame because first
of all, kids can't write about topics they don't know
much about, and often we ask them to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And secondly, we have lots of evidence showing.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
That when you kids write about what they're learning in
a manageable way, they that really enhances their learning. So
that is a pretty simple and straightforward way to boost
the power of a curriculum.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Beyond that, I mean when we get.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
To social studies again, there should be some depth and
not like just trying to cover a zillion topics a.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Mile wide and an inch deep. So those are the
basics I would say.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Looking for maybe a higher level of specificity with instead
of saying we're going to learn about cultures of the world,
we're going to learn about Native American planes tribes or
do you want to see that kind of specificity.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yes, I mean there's some pressures to cover a lot
of stuff. Sometimes state standards put that pressure on schools,
but really they're not going to If you do things
at a superficial level, kids are not going to retain
the vocabulary the information. They need a meaningful context for that,
and you can't cover everything that a kid is going
(08:24):
to need to know in years to come.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
That shouldn't be the objective.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The objective is to give kids a critical, massive, general
academic knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to read
and understand texts on topics they don't already know about.
But the only way for them to acquire that general
knowledge in the first place is through knowledge of lots
of specific topics.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So one of the things you said in the article
that I shared today on the blog about how to
solve the problem, you are very clear to say you
can adopt the most magical curriculum in the world, but
if you don't, this is not an overnight solution, right, Well,
explain a little more of what has to go around
choosing a good curriculum. But what has to happen then
(09:04):
to really improve or impact student and achievement in a
positive way.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, Well, choosing a good curriculum is crucial.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
We have evidence that a good curriculum really can make
a big difference. A lot of that evidence comes from math,
but it's also true in other areas. And curricula are
very dense documents, you know, even educators find it difficult
to wade through them and evaluate them.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So guidance is important, and there is.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There's an organization that I wrote about in the article
called ed Reports that was set up to provide reliable guidance,
and it did that in its early years. But literacy experts,
and I talked to at least a dozen of them
who told me this, have said that in recent years
it's given high ratings to some curricula that don't deserve
them literacy curricula, and at least one curriculum that should
(09:51):
have gotten high ratings got low ratings.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
So I wouldn't recommend that.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
There's something called the Knowledge Matters Campaign which has rated curricula. Well,
it's identified maybe eight, maybe ten curricula now that do
a good job of building the kind of knowledge and
this is on the literacy side that will lead to.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Good reading comprehension.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
So I would definitely check out the Knowledge Matters campaign,
and then any curriculum, No curriculum is going to be perfect.
All curricula are going to require teachers to get some training,
hands on training and how best to deliver that particular
curriculum to their particular students.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And often there's a lot.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Of money in this country spent on educator's professional development,
but again a lot of it is in the abstract,
like how do we teach critical thinking?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
In the abstract, what we need is curriculum.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It was professional development grounded in the specifics of whatever
curriculum teachers are using.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
This is all very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It is a little bit overwhelming, especially if you are
in a situation where your school maybe isn't performing at
a very high level. What is the reality of getting
a curriculum changed? I mean this seems because, like I said,
I've gotten the notices. Hey you can come Look, this
is the math curriculum we're adopting. And I like to
think I'm a pretty smart person, but I was like,
(11:09):
I have no idea, I don't even know where to start.
So hey, how can parents sort of become more involved
in this?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Well, it's very complicated, and the way curricula are selected
that varies from locality against locality. I mean, we have
a very localized education system in this country. Often there
will be a committee of teachers who select a curriculum
and then it'll be sort of.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Approved by the school board. But that's pretty much a
rubber stamp.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
In some states, especially with math and literacy curricula, the
state puts out a list of approved curricula that districts
can choose from, although they can often get waivers to use.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
A different curriculum.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
So there's going to be a lot of different stuff
going on in different districts in most states, right And
I think for for parents, you know, I certainly as
a parent myself, my kids are adults now, but I
pretty much trusted the school and the teachers to select
the right curriculum.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And I'm not casting any aspersions.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
On teachers or educators at all, but the teachers don't
always get In fact, they usually don't get good training
in how to evaluate a curriculum, so they may not
be in the best position to determine what's a really
good curriculum on what isn't.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Are there resources connected to the Knowledge Matters campaign that
are available where you could actually reach out.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
And ask questions. Is that available through that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
You could there's a contact form, I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
But there's a lot of resources on the Knowledge Matters
campaign website, including a lot of specifics about these curricula
that they have identified as being effective knowledge building curricula,
and a lot of information about schools in different places
around the country that are.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Using each of those curricula.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
They've gone around to visit schools, they've made videos, they've
interviewed teachers, they've interviewed parents and students, So there's a
wealth of information there.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Natalie, how much does it matter who your student population is?
And I asked this because there's been a perception for
a very long time, and I dealt this with this
a lot. When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, there was
a pervasive feel among leadership that because children were coming
from a poor background, that somehow meant they could not learn.
(13:29):
Therefore expectations were lowered.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So how much do you need.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To consider the student population that you're dealing with when
looking for a high quality, high goal curriculum.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You maybe want to make sure you're not going to
firm guessing.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, I think that's a common assumption that you know,
if kids are coming from and it really has to
do with level of parental education, if they're not in
a position to absorb a lot of information about the
world at home, well we have to go slower.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
That's not really true. In fact, the kids who.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Benefit the most from a knowledge building curriculum are the
ones who would otherwise be deprived of access to that
kind of knowledge. A knowledge building curriculum works for any
any demographic group, but the ones who will benefit the most,
and we have data to support this, are those coming
from lower income families, and they're often hungry for this information.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
They're fascinated by it.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
And what I'm talking about is not like giving kids
medicine that's good for them, but tastes terrible. Kids love
to learn about the world. They're incredibly curious, and they're sponges.
And that goes for all kids. So we've been wasting
this golden opportunity to help level the playing field by
giving all kids at a young age access to information
(14:44):
about the world.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
It seems crazy to me that we would be having
a conversation about needing to teach children more stuff in school.
But because you know, I grew up in the age
where at least once a week at Catholic school, I
had to go home and get the appropriate Encyclopedia Britannica
and write my paper about something in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
(15:07):
And just the thought that we've somehow stripped knowledge out
of schools is crazy to me. But Natalie, a great
column that you share I shared on my blog today
and great information. And I'll add a link to the
Knowledge Matters campaign website because I just pulled that up
as well. So thank you so much for trying to
break down this incredibly important but also incredibly difficult topic.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Well thanks Nanda, and I just want to note that
I serve on the board of a.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Parent organization for the Knowledge Matters campaign, just in the
interest of full disclosure.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That is perfectly fine.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Natalie Wexler, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Thank you, Mandy. It was a pleasure.
If you've listened to the program for any length of time,
(00:02):
you know we talk about education a lot on this program.
We spend an enormous amount of money, and in many
cases we are not getting good results. And my next guest,
Natalie Wexler, is an education writer and author of The
Knowledge Gap, The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System
and How to Fix It.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Natalie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Thanks van By, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, let's talk a little bit.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I saw you in an article on educationnext dot org
and the article is titled want Better Teaching, Get Better Curricula.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And I was just sharing with you off the air.
As a mom.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Involved in my daughter's school, especially when she was in
elementary and middle school, parents know sort of instinctively that
they've got to have a good curriculum, but they have
no idea how to judge whether a curriculum that their
kids are getting in their school system is good. So
your article caught my eye for that reason, and I
(01:03):
want to kind of start at the beginning. What is
the curriculum of a school? Explain what that is in
the first place. We'll start there.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Wow, Yeah, I mean that's kind of a slippery concept.
In their different definitions, but it basically refers to the
instructional materials that teachers are expected to use and ideally
training and how to use them.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So it's a combination of the content.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
And the questions that teachers might ask to guide students
to understanding that content.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Ideally, it's coherent.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Across grade levels, so that when kids get to fifth
grade they have acquired the knowledge assumed by the curriculum
at that point in prior years.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Like they should be reading at a certain level, performing
math at a certain level, things along those lines.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yes, basically, although those levels when you come to reading,
our not always accurate.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
There's really no such thing as a fixed grade level
because whether.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
You can understand a text depends a lot on the
topic and the individual reader's knowledge of that topic, and
that's not taken into account by those grade level measures.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, let me ask you a question about curriculums overall,
because as I in granted, I was a child, so
I didn't pay attention to such things. But it feels
like to me that we all kind of learned the
same things, and we learned it kind of in the
same way. Has there been an explosion in options for
a curriculum are there are just more choices than there
have been before. Am I wrong and misremembering?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Well? I think there've always been one thing that you
can one generalization you can make about the American education
system is that it's very difficult to generalize because it's
very local and there always have been variations in the
curricula that schools of using what kids have been learning.
I would see the big change, certainly since I was
a kid, is that at the elementary level, especially when
(03:01):
it comes to the big things that are dominating.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
The curriculum are math and reading.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
And that's always been true to a certain extent, but
because for the last twenty twenty five years we've put
such an emphasis on math and reading standardized tests, they
have come to dominate the elementary curriculum more than ever,
and so social studies science have kind of been marginalized
or you've been in some cases eliminated to make more
time for math, but especially reading, and a lot of
(03:28):
that time spent on reading is spent practicing skills like
finding the main idea of a text or making inferences
the kinds of things you see on reading tests. The
problem is, and the theory is it doesn't really matter
so much what kids are reading as long as they're
mastering the skills.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
But those skills, they don't exist in the abstract.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You can't apply a skill like making an inference unless
you have a certain amount of background knowledge about the
text you're reading about so that you can make sense
of it, at least at a superficial level. So what's
happening is kids are getting higher grade levels where there
is content in the curriculum. There's history, there's science, and
those curricula at you know, tenth grade or whatever assume
(04:08):
kids have already acquired a certain amount of knowledge about
the world, but in many cases they have not. That's
especially true for kids coming from less highly educated families,
who have less of an opportunity to pick up knowledge,
academic kinds of knowledge at home.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I had this conversation with an educator about ten years ago,
maybe even longer, and this particular person was big on
we're teaching kids how to think critically. But I said,
how can you think critically about something when you don't
have a basic set of knowledge from which you form
an opinion? And he didn't have an answer. Well, you
know what I thought, you're putting the car before the worlds.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Mandy, you have just put your finger on a big
basic problem in education. Just as with comprehension skills, critical
thinking skills cannot be taught in the abstract, and there's
lots of evidence to show that the more knowledge you
have about a topic, the better able you are to
think critically about it. And conversely, as you say, if
you don't know anything about a topic, you're not going
to be able to think critically about it, So you
cannot teach that in the abstract. It's not a skill
(05:08):
like riding a bike, doesn't matter what bike you're riding.
But this is an assumption that has taken deep root
in education that we can and should be teaching these
things in the abstract and knowledge, Well, kids can always
google that, but it's not always the case. I mean
googling something first of all, imposes a cognitive burden on
(05:30):
your mental processes. But also you might google something and
not be able to understand the answer you find, or
you might find information that's inaccurate and you might not
have the background knowledge to know that it's inaccurate or false.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So let's talk about what makes the quality curriculum, How
to make those decisions, and as a parent, maybe how
to have a better handle on whether or not a
curriculum that your school is considering, because I've seen these notices.
I've gotten these notices whenever a curriculum change is coming.
All they invite the parents to come in and have
a look at it and see and learn about it.
(06:03):
But I think too many people are like, I have
no idea how.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
To judge that. So how do you know that.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
A curriculum is good or better or not as good
or whatever that range is.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Well, I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Put math to one side because that's not my area
of expertise. But let's start with literacy. If your kid
is in an elementary school, or sometimes this is true
at middle school, I mean a lot of schools don't.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Actually have literacy curricula.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
They're just teaching the standards, and the standards don't specify
any content. So the first thing to look for is
does this curriculum actually have focus on content? Is it
the skill of the week and it doesn't. You know,
there's no specification really of what kids are actually reading
to practice the skill or is the content in the foreground,
And does the curriculum spend at least two or three
(06:52):
weeks going deeply into some content. It could be literature,
but it could also be a topic in history or science.
These are all connected, all part of literacy, and then
you know, it's really makes sense for there to be
some writing connected to the content of the curriculum. We
often have kids write about completely different topics than what
(07:13):
they're learning about, which is it's a shame because first
of all, kids can't write about topics they don't know
much about, and often we ask them to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And secondly, we have lots of evidence showing.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
That when you kids write about what they're learning in
a manageable way, they that really enhances their learning. So
that is a pretty simple and straightforward way to boost
the power of a curriculum.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Beyond that, I mean when we get.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
To social studies again, there should be some depth and
not like just trying to cover a zillion topics a.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Mile wide and an inch deep. So those are the
basics I would say.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Looking for maybe a higher level of specificity with instead
of saying we're going to learn about cultures of the world,
we're going to learn about Native American planes tribes or
do you want to see that kind of specificity.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yes, I mean there's some pressures to cover a lot
of stuff. Sometimes state standards put that pressure on schools,
but really they're not going to If you do things
at a superficial level, kids are not going to retain
the vocabulary the information. They need a meaningful context for that,
and you can't cover everything that a kid is going
(08:24):
to need to know in years to come.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
That shouldn't be the objective.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The objective is to give kids a critical, massive, general
academic knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to read
and understand texts on topics they don't already know about.
But the only way for them to acquire that general
knowledge in the first place is through knowledge of lots
of specific topics.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So one of the things you said in the article
that I shared today on the blog about how to
solve the problem, you are very clear to say you
can adopt the most magical curriculum in the world, but
if you don't, this is not an overnight solution, right, Well,
explain a little more of what has to go around
choosing a good curriculum. But what has to happen then
(09:04):
to really improve or impact student and achievement in a
positive way.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, Well, choosing a good curriculum is crucial.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
We have evidence that a good curriculum really can make
a big difference. A lot of that evidence comes from math,
but it's also true in other areas. And curricula are
very dense documents, you know, even educators find it difficult
to wade through them and evaluate them.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So guidance is important, and there is.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There's an organization that I wrote about in the article
called ed Reports that was set up to provide reliable guidance,
and it did that in its early years. But literacy experts,
and I talked to at least a dozen of them
who told me this, have said that in recent years
it's given high ratings to some curricula that don't deserve
them literacy curricula, and at least one curriculum that should
(09:51):
have gotten high ratings got low ratings.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
So I wouldn't recommend that.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
There's something called the Knowledge Matters Campaign which has rated curricula. Well,
it's identified maybe eight, maybe ten curricula now that do
a good job of building the kind of knowledge and
this is on the literacy side that will lead to.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Good reading comprehension.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
So I would definitely check out the Knowledge Matters campaign,
and then any curriculum, No curriculum is going to be perfect.
All curricula are going to require teachers to get some training,
hands on training and how best to deliver that particular
curriculum to their particular students.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And often there's a lot.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Of money in this country spent on educator's professional development,
but again a lot of it is in the abstract,
like how do we teach critical thinking?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
In the abstract, what we need is curriculum.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It was professional development grounded in the specifics of whatever
curriculum teachers are using.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
This is all very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It is a little bit overwhelming, especially if you are
in a situation where your school maybe isn't performing at
a very high level. What is the reality of getting
a curriculum changed? I mean this seems because, like I said,
I've gotten the notices. Hey you can come Look, this
is the math curriculum we're adopting. And I like to
think I'm a pretty smart person, but I was like,
(11:09):
I have no idea, I don't even know where to start.
So hey, how can parents sort of become more involved
in this?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Well, it's very complicated, and the way curricula are selected
that varies from locality against locality. I mean, we have
a very localized education system in this country. Often there
will be a committee of teachers who select a curriculum
and then it'll be sort of.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Approved by the school board. But that's pretty much a
rubber stamp.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
In some states, especially with math and literacy curricula, the
state puts out a list of approved curricula that districts
can choose from, although they can often get waivers to use.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
A different curriculum.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
So there's going to be a lot of different stuff
going on in different districts in most states, right And
I think for for parents, you know, I certainly as
a parent myself, my kids are adults now, but I
pretty much trusted the school and the teachers to select
the right curriculum.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And I'm not casting any aspersions.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
On teachers or educators at all, but the teachers don't
always get In fact, they usually don't get good training
in how to evaluate a curriculum, so they may not
be in the best position to determine what's a really
good curriculum on what isn't.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Are there resources connected to the Knowledge Matters campaign that
are available where you could actually reach out.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
And ask questions. Is that available through that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
You could there's a contact form, I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
But there's a lot of resources on the Knowledge Matters
campaign website, including a lot of specifics about these curricula
that they have identified as being effective knowledge building curricula,
and a lot of information about schools in different places
around the country that are.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Using each of those curricula.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
They've gone around to visit schools, they've made videos, they've
interviewed teachers, they've interviewed parents and students, So there's a
wealth of information there.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Natalie, how much does it matter who your student population is?
And I asked this because there's been a perception for
a very long time, and I dealt this with this
a lot. When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, there was
a pervasive feel among leadership that because children were coming
from a poor background, that somehow meant they could not learn.
(13:29):
Therefore expectations were lowered.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So how much do you need.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
To consider the student population that you're dealing with when
looking for a high quality, high goal curriculum.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You maybe want to make sure you're not going to
firm guessing.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Well, I think that's a common assumption that you know,
if kids are coming from and it really has to
do with level of parental education, if they're not in
a position to absorb a lot of information about the
world at home, well we have to go slower.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
That's not really true. In fact, the kids who.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Benefit the most from a knowledge building curriculum are the
ones who would otherwise be deprived of access to that
kind of knowledge. A knowledge building curriculum works for any
any demographic group, but the ones who will benefit the most,
and we have data to support this, are those coming
from lower income families, and they're often hungry for this information.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
They're fascinated by it.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
And what I'm talking about is not like giving kids
medicine that's good for them, but tastes terrible. Kids love
to learn about the world. They're incredibly curious, and they're sponges.
And that goes for all kids. So we've been wasting
this golden opportunity to help level the playing field by
giving all kids at a young age access to information
(14:44):
about the world.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
It seems crazy to me that we would be having
a conversation about needing to teach children more stuff in school.
But because you know, I grew up in the age
where at least once a week at Catholic school, I
had to go home and get the appropriate Encyclopedia Britannica
and write my paper about something in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
(15:07):
And just the thought that we've somehow stripped knowledge out
of schools is crazy to me. But Natalie, a great
column that you share I shared on my blog today
and great information. And I'll add a link to the
Knowledge Matters campaign website because I just pulled that up
as well. So thank you so much for trying to
break down this incredibly important but also incredibly difficult topic.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Well thanks Nanda, and I just want to note that
I serve on the board of a.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Parent organization for the Knowledge Matters campaign, just in the
interest of full disclosure.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That is perfectly fine.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Natalie Wexler, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Thank you, Mandy. It was a pleasure.
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