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Is The Outcome of Public School a Generalized or a Specialized Education? The Answer is Yes.

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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.

We Are Known By What We Prioritize

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Not one.  As a school board member, I have not received one letter asking what can be done regarding depressed student proficiency scores displayed in the fall 2021 assessments.  Not one letter or phone call asking what actions our school will take to teach children the content and skills they missed while in remote education or reteach what children forgot while disconnected from instruction.  Not one person pointing at the increase of students whose assessment results fall into the significantly below proficient category this fall.

Beyond reading, ELA and math, not one communication regarding a child’s loss of learning in art, music, or foreign language.  Not a word about a child’s stagnant growth in business education, marketing, and computer science.  Learning in every school curriculum has been stymied by the pandemic, yet there is scant discussion regarding lost learning experiences.

Not one inquiry about how diminished proficiencies affect our junior and senior students’ preparation for post-secondary education, work, and military endeavors.  Without doubt, a graduate’s transcript and activity resume’ will be different in 2022 than a pre-pandemic resume’.

I grant that many children profited from their instruction in remote education.  They benefited from an optional return to in-person instruction in 2020-21 and a more complete return to in-person instruction in 2021-22.  We owe much to our teachers who labored through virtual and hybrid venues to teach their students.  Yet, every curriculum no matter how it was instructed remains behind its times in the winter of 2021.

Instead, letters, phone calls, texts and parent attendance at school board meetings demonstrating anger about masking protocols.  The demand for parental rights to choose whether a child will wear a mask overwhelms discussion of a child’s educational progress.  Am I dismayed?  No but yes. 

This observation informs us about the evolution of our culture and what we value.  We should not generalize any conclusions to the population of all parents but only to the sub-set of vocal parents.  We should not diminish our educator’s work on closing instructional and learning chasms but understand that this work is done because we, educators, know that it is the most important work before us.  It would be better if parents and school boards and teachers were all on the same page about how to repair student learning at this time of the pandemic, but we are not.

The issue of masks will resolve itself either when all school-age children have had access to the protection of vaccination or when school leaders acquiesce to the loudest voices in their community.  At that time, viral mitigation protocols will not be generalized across school districts, schools, and grade levels but will be responsive to breakouts as we ordinarily treat influenza and measles in schools.  These events will happen, and the response will be very local to those in contact with the outbreak.

The purpose of this writing is not to encourage parents to become enflamed about the status of their child’s educational progress, but to independently review what really matters and consider if their attention aligns with those matters.  For this writer, causing all children to learn with special regard for our most challenged learners is what matters.  Their challenges are not only intellectual but include all concerns that affect their total education and wellbeing.  Children today demonstrate varieties of gaps in their 4K-12 education, gaps we can close if we are able to give this teaching and learning our focused attention. We will be known by what we prioritize and how we meet our priorities.

Academic Standards – The Genome of Proficient Learning

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Academic standards are the genome of a 21st century PK-12 education.  Turn back the covers on any curriculum today and you will find “standards.”  They are the “who says this is the right stuff to teach” credentials of school curriculum.  As consumers, we look for credentialing,  like the Good Housekeeping Seal or Underwrites Laboratory Approval, that gives us reliance that school curriculum is not something cooked up during the summer by a local committee but is written by experts in the field of PK-12 education.

Although politics has kicked dirt on the Common Core Academic Standards, they remain the best of academic standards available to PK-12 educators.  In Wisconsin, the Common Core Standards were adopted as the official academic standards of the Department of Public Instruction in 2010 and are the basis for instruction, assessment and educational accountability.

A genome, even the sound of the word, is scientific.  It is the complete set of genes present in a cell or organism.  By applying genome to the organism of academic standards, academic standards are the complete set of academic characteristics of a graduate of our PK-12 educational system.

Like the genome encoded on a strand of DNA, the genome of academic standards seems just as mysterious.  But, it isn’t.  They are clearly written and complete, just in educationese.  Educational leaders need to take the time and make the effort to de-mystify the verbiage of academic standards into plain speak.  This explanation must include two components – why they are important and how they work.  What are academic standards and how does our school use PK-12 academic standards?  And, what does proficient performance of each standard mean?  The latter is essential, because proficiency or advanced performance indicates the grade level goal which are the code of the genome.

This is what the DPI says about standards.  It is a good beginning.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards tell us what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.  Wisconsin has standards for 24 separate subjects.

Why are academic standards important?

Standards provide goals for teaching and learning. Standards are clear statements about what students must know and be able to do.

What does an academic standard look like?

Seventh grade mathematics: solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

How do standards differ from curriculum?

While standards provide the goals for learning, curriculum is the day to day activity that helps a student meet those goals. Curriculum, which should be thought of as the student’s overall classroom experience, is affected by lesson plans, classroom assessments, textbooks, and more. In Wisconsin, curriculum is developed and approved by local school boards to meet their local needs.

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/standards

This explanation should be repeated to students and parents frequently, so that children and their moms and dads clearly understand that “standards-based” means “these are statements of what each child should know and be able to do and all of our assessments will focus on helping everyone understand how well children know and can perform these.”  And, because the standards build upon each successive grade level and course, students and parents need to know that Algebra and Geometry, for example, are introduced in elementary school arithmetic and are developed through middle school and applied and expanded in higher mathematics courses in high school.  Like the DNA genome, the genome of academic standards winds through the school organism across many years of student learning.

This explanation may sound or read like, “This year our first grade math students will begin to use mathematical operations and algebraic thinking.  Yes, Algebra in first grade.  These are the operations and algebraic thinking standards and a description of what your child will know and be able to do as a result of our first grade math instruction.

Standard:  Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Standard:  Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
  2. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Standard:  Add and subtract within 20.

Performance:

  1. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
  2. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Standard:  Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Performance:

  1. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
  2. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = � – 3, 6 + 6 = �.

This standard is just one of many in first grade mathematics instruction.  As your child tells you ‘This is what we learned in math today,’ please keep these standards in mind.  When your child enters second grade, the next instructional year will add to and expand these first grade standards.”

As an extension, good practice would also help children and parents to connect standards to periodic classroom tests and assessments.  Just adding a standards statement to the top of the test page indicates the alignment of preceding instruction and the assessment to a particular academic standard.

The reason for this time and effort points directly to the accountability that school leaders and teachers have for causing all children to learn and proficiently perform grade level academic standards.  Each first grade child who successfully knows and can perform the operations and algebraic thinking standard given in this example will be ready for instruction in second grade operations and algebraic thinking.

And, here is the rub.  Every child who does not successfully know and can not perform the elementary and/or middle school grade level math standards at the appropriate grade level proficiency level begins a parade of successive years of incomplete learning in math.  It is no wonder that high school Algebra is “the wall” for so many students, the course where the annual standards of algebraic thinking in elementary and middle school coalesce into a single math course.  Children who have successfully learned and performed their elementary and middle school math standards are ready and prepared for high school Algebra.  Children who did not are severely challenged in Algebra and all subsequent math courses.

The mutual responsibility that school leaders, teachers and parents have for student learning can be made easier when annual academic standards are explained, distributed across the year of their instruction, and clearly aligned with grade level instruction and assessments.  When we know what we are supposed to do, the doing is made easier.

The genome of academic standards is a road map that is designed not only for instruction, but to aid school leaders and parents to assure that each child successfully learns what they are to know and be able to do each school year.  It is our road map and needs to be closely followed.

Promotional Proficiency – An Educational Promise Unkept

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“I promise…” are words added, often unconsciously, to statements we make to others. Other add-ons include, “… believe me”, “…to be honest with you”, and “… you have my word.” We speak these words and we hear others speak them, but what do they really mean? Do we really make a promise when we say “…I promise” with an expectation of being held to that promise? Does saying “believe me” make a person more believable? If one says “honestly”, does that word make what follows more honest than all else the person usually says?

I am told that these are just colloquialisms, figures of speech, and attention-getters when I respond with “I shall hold you to that promise.” Call me old-fashioned, but grandmother taught us that “a promise is a debt unpaid” and grandfather told us “a man’s word is his bond.” These words matter, because promises that are unfulfilled and statements of honesty that turn out to be lies are and should be held against the speaker. If you say it, you should be committed to living up to your word with hard and clear evidence of effort. People can understand that time and unseen occurrences may prevent complete fulfillment, but they should not forgive meaningless statements of a promise, or a request to be believed, or proclamations of honesty when there is no intention of living up to these words.

That said, I apply this truth-telling to the work of a school board. The American Dream is founded largely on the success of a child’s education. Over-simply stated, learning to read becomes reading to learn and reading complex and complicated information grows knowledge, and skills and problem-solving abilities and these lead to a high school graduate’s readiness for success in college and career. Apply the same scenario to arithmetic and mathematics and you have the backbone of a school curriculum – reading and mathematics. Success in school, children are told, promises preparation and readiness for success in adulthood. This is a traditional school promises and school boards are the keepers of that promise.

What then are we willing to do to pay the debt of this universal promise we make to students and parents, to paraphrase grandmother?

When a child is promoted to first grade and each subsequent grade level, the child is prepared and ready for instruction at that next grade level and when a student graduates from high school the graduate is prepared and ready for post-secondary education.

This is our fundamental promise. It is the premise and foundation for the ladder of PK-12 education. We march cohorts of children through their school years in an enactment of this promise. Take this promise away – tell children and parents that there is no assurance that first grade is necessary for entrance into second grade and middle school is not a preparation for high school – and school becomes the K-Mart of education with blue light specials in every school corridor. The cashier will check you out.

Are we fulfilling our promise? Are all children prepared and ready for their promotion? Not so much. The Wisconsin DPI released its 2018 School Report Cards in late November and a perusal of state data and randomly selected school districts indicates these two facts –

A percentage of children but far from all are proficient, achievement at the advanced of proficient levels, in reading and mathematics. That percentage is higher or lower depending upon school district, and too often, the socio-economic characteristics of the district are a determinant in that percentage.

The percentage of children statewide who are proficient in reading and math is static if not trending slightly downward – approximately 40% of all children are proficient in reading and less than 40% are proficient in math.

In our local schools,

68.9% of elementary children were proficient in reading; 68.2% in math.

48.9% of middle school children were proficient in reading; 39.4% in math.

48.8% of high school children were proficient in reading; 29.2% in math.

We acknowledge that a quality education is comprised of many more variables than proficiency in reading and mathematics. Our local school touts the breadth of its programming in academics, activities, arts and athletics and the high percentage of student participation in the latter three. However, we made no promises other than “access to opportunity” in activities, arts and athletics. We did make promises regarding academics. Promotion means preparation and readiness for what comes next.

Interestingly, the State of Wisconsin proclaims that our local middle school and high school meet our state’s educational expectations and the elementary school significantly exceeds state expectations. Perhaps the State of Wisconsin is no longer a party to the promise of readiness and preparation or takes the promise as lightly given.

Locally, we have our work before us. What are we willing to do fulfill our promise and keep our word? Time will tell, but for secondary students, time is running out.