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Schools advised to narrow focus to crucial lessons
Ohanian Comment: We are in the wrong business. We offer for free what the state of Oregon paid $350,000 for. How many education experts have been saying this for how many years? And will the standardistos running schools and ordering the tests pay any attention? Since the report author himself has strong standardisto credentials, maybe they will.
by Betsy Hammond
Oregon should stop asking schools to teach a laundry list of facts and skills in every subject and instead encourage teachers to focus on crucial lessons with lasting value, a new study recommends.
WestEd, a nonprofit research center that specializes in state academic standards and tests, spent nine months examining Oregon's academic standards for every subject and grade plus every question on state tests. The state paid WestEd $350,000 to find weaknesses in its tests and standards and recommend fixes.
In its final report, released Wednesday, the think tank concluded Oregon should join a new national movement toward "less is more" in curriculum mandates. The state should direct schools, teachers and students toward the most important content for students to master, rather than requiring schools to cover the waterfront, the study recommends.
Oregon's current approach to teaching and testing, for instance, calls on fourth-grade teachers to instill 105 new reading and writing skills, including 47 covered on state tests. Those range from "determine the meaning of words from context and structural clues" to "correctly write possessive plural nouns." Nothing signals teachers which of the myriad skills it is most essential for students to learn well.
That approach is why U.S. schools have been criticized for a curriculum that is a mile wide but an inch deep, particularly compared to other nations' approach to teaching math and science, said Stanley Rabinowitz, lead author of the WestEd study.
It is easy for state curriculum committees to make a long list of what teachers should cover each year, Rabinowitz said. It takes a lot more thought and debate to decide what content is most important -- and Oregon should think carefully about which people get to help make that call, he said.
Oregonians, including teachers, employers, parents, college officials and principals, should be at the table, he said.
State education officials are poised to follow some of the advice: Proposed new math standards lay out three or four key skills students should master in-depth in each grade, rather than the two or three dozen skills the state now says math teachers must impart each year.
That proposed change was spurred by a national movement, embraced by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, to end the mile-wide, inch-deep approach to math instruction and settle on "focal points" for each grade, said Oregon math specialist Jon Wiens.
— Betsy Hammond
The Oregonian
2007-08-09
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