An old question arises constantly and though we try to make firm, theory- and research-based responses, the issue still haunts the work of public educators. Are we to familiarize children with a broad veneer of background knowledge and skills so they can say “I know something about that?” Or are we to educate children with a depth of knowledge and understanding of specific concepts and skills they can apply in their life and work with a degree of excellence?

Put in educational outcomes language, is it our goal given what we know about the future real-world needs of our children that

1. all students read every chapter in their grade-level texts, solve every math problem, dabble in the arts, and achieve a basic score on an end-of-year test, or
2. all students do close reading and deeper analysis of information in selected chapters of selected texts, are highly proficient in essential math processes, create a quality performance or object in the arts, and achieve a proficient score or better on an end-of-year test?

Today, teachers in America do not have a clear answer to this question. National leaders are more interested in power struggles with higher education, deconstructing the Department of Education, and rewriting the American story in their own image. State leaders know that education is a reserved power in the Constitution delegated to the states, yet they mire in petty partisan issues and pass the authority to educate to local school boards. Our representatives like to legislate but they avoid accountability for outcomes. Local boards of education try their hardest with ever decreasing funding to provide the schools demanded by local constituents. Public education in the United States is our nation’s longest standing institution; however, its compass direction today is decided in thousands of classrooms by individual teachers. Our educational mission is adrift.

What do we know?

We know the nature of educational design is theoretical, opinionated, and tenuous.

Put a dozen educators in a room, ask their opinion of “shall we make our children into generalists or specialists,” and expect a split decision. There are strong cases for either. Then, when the air clears, most educators settle into a T- or inverted triangular-shaped design for public education. All children should have a broad academic base of general education and the opportunity to delve deeply into subjects of their personal interest. At least, in principle.

Then, we put children in the classroom and teaching gets real. Children have their own agenda on what they want and need to learn. Some children want to generalize, and others want to specialize. And we educators, who are supposed to educate each child to their fullest potential, decide to generalize all children when they are young and provide specialization for children who want it when they are older. Of course, some children specialize early, and others prefer to stay generalists through graduation. Public education is a messy proposition, so we settle for a Hippocratic-like solution of “do no harm to any student” and avoid the blame game. Today, without any other imperatives, we provide a generalist education for all and hope that graduates will specialize after high school.

For the generalists –

E.D. Hirsch taught us the importance of knowing a little about a lot. He wrote in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) that background knowledge provides us with content ideas to read and think about. Second, reading and thinking about facts creates a student’s encyclopedic knowledge. Further, when we all share a level of mutual understanding of communal information, we are bound together as a nation (or state). He said the role of public education is to “enculturate” children with their national story and thereby strengthen a continuity of our American society. In the end, cultural literacy prepares us to play the game of Jeopardy and win.

David Epstein, Range – Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized Word (2019), also favors a generalized background. He believes that students who specialize have more difficulty connecting disparate ideas and adapting new learning to what they already know. Specializing creates a commitment to what has been learned and a resistance to changing that knowledge base. Conversely, children with a generalized knowledge are not burdened in learning unfamiliar information and adapt it into their overall knowledge base more efficiently.

And, in school most children hear from their school counselor the importance of experiencing as much academics, arts, activities, and athletics as possible to find their true interests and aptitudes. America has a tradition of providing a liberal education in high school plus early collegiate years. Specialization for many is relegated to the junior and senior years of college, and post-graduate years of education.

For many classroom teachers, generalization only makes sense. A school curriculum responds to the loudest voices speaking to the school board. And school board members are lay leaders with little to no professional training in education. Their sole interests are in doing what is best for children, satisfying their constituents, and staying within a finite budget. Hence, school curriculum expands and never contracts. An addition to a grade level or course curriculum is not accompanied with more school days, hence every other thing in the syllabus is diminished to make room for what is new.

For the specialists –

But WAIT! In every other decade since the 1960s politicians in the United States have concluded that children in America are falling behind the academic achievements of their international peers. Political leaders believe that educational outcomes are a matter of national security. In the 60s the Elementary and Secondary Education Act funneled federal funding into math, science, and foreign language so that the United States could respond to Sputnik and be first to the moon. The Nation at Risk report (1983) gave official warning that children in America were being undereducated. Reforms abounded. In the early 2000s No Child Behind Left Behind legislation generated the Common Core Standards in reading and mathematics. NCLB mandated that all children must pass tests of their abilities to read and write and resolve math problems. Large scale, high stakes assessments were administered in all public schools and disaggregated achievement scores were published. Penalties were prescribed for underperforming schools and teachers. With heavy hands, our nation pushed specialized learning in reading, language arts, and higher-level mathematics to the detriment of all other academics, as well as arts and athletics.

With no surprise, universal and high stakes testing did not significantly increase our students’ achievement on international assessments, like PISA. And any improvements were substantively lost during the pandemic.

Government was not alone in its attempts to strengthen educational outcomes. Higher education groups beefed up teacher preparation with more intellectual rigor and exacting pedagogical training. The Holmes Group of college deans and chief academic officers proposed teacher training that resembled medical and legal professionals – the license is awarded at the master’s degree level after intensive pedagogical examination. Admission to the undergraduate college of education was more restrictive to create a more select and elite class of teacher candidates. Some aspects of the Holmes proposals were adopted by higher education accrediting agencies, but most have been nullified by the current shortage of public-school teacher candidates. Our current reality is that teacher licensing requirements are being liberalized to place a licensed adult in every classroom.

What not to do?

First, to paraphrase Rita Mae Brown (Sudden Death, 1983), “Continuously doing the same things expecting different results is a definition of idiocy.” The trending data on educational achievement looks like the same old, same old data or slightly worse. What we are doing is not achieving international competitiveness, a positive return of educational investments, or satisfying our students still in the public education pipeline.

Public education suffers annual student attrition. More students transfer to private or home schooling each year. They find secondary education in our public schools to be too unfocused. Parental choice allows parents, guardians, and 18-year-old students to choose private, parochial, cooperative, or home schooling. However, instead of changing public school programs to retain or reclaim students, we complain and make few substantive changes to K-12 education.

Second, we really know what to do but lack the courage to do it. Anyone who takes a public stand to change long standing tradition gets bloodied. Every living American is a product of traditional K-12 education, either as a graduate or as a transfer to another educational format. Love it or leave it, what we have is what we know.

Third, public educators have been made thin-skinned. In the last decade, it is increasingly common for parents to make loud and frequent complaints to their school board. The say “My child’s teacher is a task master and is too hard on kids.” Or “My child’s teacher is too easy, and kids get by without learning.” A parent may not like the teacher’s choice of books for children to read or the music literature they are to perform. A parent may think the teacher’s grading scale is too strong and her child deserves a higher, unearned grade. And parents have learned that school boards do not want to hear such complaints repeatedly. The result is most teachers acquiesce and their teaching and curriculum moves toward the middle ground of complacency.

What to do.

• Mean what we say. Most school mission statements include the word “excellence” but do not define the term. School boards must decide the degree and rate of learning achievements that are excellent in their schools and set those as non-negotiable standards. Further, make these definitions public and then live up to them.

Our schools know what excellence looks like, but we do not want to belittle any child whose performances are not excellent. The result is we praise our champions and award-winners and wait for the next time we have a champion or award-winner. We need to treat all children as award winners in the making and teach them to be winners. Praise not just the award winners but also praise the “climbers” who are approaching excellence. Mediocracy or average is not an acceptable standard.

• Stop acceptable failure. Too many schools adopt the 80% Rule – 80% of the children will achieve a score of 80% or better in 80% of the curriculum 80% of the time. This rule accepts that 20% of the children will not meet your standard for 20% of the curriculum 20% of the time. Use and mean the words “All students” instead of 80%. If not, how do you start a lesson when accepting that 1 in 5 students will not learn the lesson successfully? We can do better.

A principle of outcome-based education should become our rule. “Given enough time and resources, we can teach every child to succeed in their learning.” We really do have the time and resources if we believe that principle is true. If we do not believe the principle, what are we doing in education?

• Accept the T model of generalized/specialized education and ensure that all students are proficient in all the foundational curricula. “Knowing about” or a “basic understanding” is not an acceptable level of predecessor knowledge upon which children can later specialize.

For example, no student advances to Algebra 1 without fluency in basic operations, order of operations, number sense, number properties, exponents, variables, equalities, expressions and equations, ratios and proportions, and knowledge of a coordinate plane. Why do we push children into courses we know they are not prepared to pass? Stop doing that.

Create a similar advancement requirement in ELA, science, and the social studies. All predecessor knowledge will be at Bloom’s Applying and Analyzing levels educational goals not at Remembering and Understanding. Recalling and explaining background information will not get children to excellence. Working with background knowledge in new situations and finding connections between ideas will get them there.

The concept of a Maker Lab is not just for technical education; it also applies to academic learning. Create multiple vertical legs in the T model. We currently have adequate AP and IB courses for students who want to learn more deeply in academic subjects. Our advanced academics begin in middle school and culminate with an AP or IB test. Create advanced learning sequences in each category of career education. Teach a multi-year deep, performance-based learning in each of the following curricular areas”

• Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources
• Business and Information Technology,
• Family and Consumer Sciences
• Health Science
• Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship
• Technology and Engineering

The Big Duh!

We need a new educational model if we want to achieve different results. The answer to whether we should cause all children to achieve a general or a specialized education is “yes” to A and B in the second paragraph above. However, instead of talking about a T-model, we need to execute a T-model.

During the ages of pre-K and into middle school, all children must achieve memory, understanding, application, and analysis skills in reading, ELA, math, science, and social studies, art, music, world language, and technical education. We will teach each child until each child achieves mastery of these four levels of learning goals. This is where “no child can be left behind” really applies.

In middle school through grade 12, all children must achieve given standards in their chosen field of academic and/or career education advanced learning sequences. Children may enroll in more than one field. Attainment standards in advanced learning will be the earning of articulated college or technical college credit while in high school and/or employment as an apprentice or trainee in a Career and Technical Education field of study.

High school graduation will be a clear linkage to post-high school education and/career.

Excellence in American education must mean more than daycare and universal literacy. A proactive construction of T-modeled generalized and specialized educations based on mastery of background knowledge and deeper learning in specialized subjects will redefine and re-establish our nation’s educational excellence.