Pondiscio v Ryan on state-led curriculum reform

Putting the science of reading and other instructional reforms into action requires micromanagement from the state level. But what are the risks?

Happy Cinco de Mayo, education friends. Today we’ll celebrate with a spicy margarita of spirited debate about curriculum reform, served up by Robert Pondiscio and Terry Ryan, with a dash of Morgan Polikoff, Karen Vaites, and Andy Rotherham. Plus other hot takes (tamales?) from Arne Duncan, Matt Yglesias, Rick Hess, Michael Hartney, Holly Korbey, Tim Daly, Cara Candal, and Kerri Briggs.

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Getty Images / Nikolaeva Elena

Last week, I participated in a meeting with other policy wonks, debating (among other topics) whether all states should follow the lead of the Southern Surgers and embrace a top-down approach to curriculum reform. We’ve tackled kindred questions before here at SCHOOLED but the discussion remains front of mind, in part because of the Fordham Institute’s new study on the implementation of the science of reading. Robert Pondiscio does a nice job of summarizing its findings, which come from a national survey of K–3 teachers:

In many ways, the survey shows significant movement in the right direction: Most teachers now favor phonics over cueing. Many report having received recent training aligned to the science of reading. Widely respected programs like UFLI and CKLA are gaining traction. Teachers themselves often describe recent shifts toward phonics and explicit instruction as overdue and beneficial. This is no small thing. Frankly, it would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago. (Thanks, Emily Hanford!)

But the report also finds that only half of teachers describe their approach as fully structured and explicit. One in three still report using a “balanced” approach that includes discredited and deleterious methods such as leveled texts and “cueing.” And nearly one in five say they take an “eclectic” or “immersive” approach not necessarily including phonics.

Robert connects the Fordham report to the “Mississippi Marathon,” the topic of a recent AEI webinar he hosted:

One detail from the webinar has stayed with me: Mississippi officials would regularly review lists of which districts were sending teachers to literacy training, and if a district wasn’t participating, they picked up the phone and called the superintendent. That may sound mundane, but it’s not. It’s what seriousness and accountability looks like in practice: Someone notices an issue and follows up. Behavior changes and outcomes follow. Contrast this with the way that too often we think about reform: pass a bill, announce an initiative and funding, hold a press conference, and assume the field will absorb it (or worse, assume the capacity already exists to execute), as if a school is a smartphone receiving a software update.

This, it seems to me, is the heart of the matter. If states actually expect to change classroom practice and boost student learning, they need to exert much more control over curriculum and instruction.

That’s hardly news to some analysts, especially on the center-left, people such as Morgan Polikoff, who has been beating the drum for years about the ways that local control impedes instructional reform and improved student achievement. Back in 2020, Morgan wrote:

Policymakers should not throw out the goal of improving teaching at scale. Therefore, they would be wise to retain the standards and assessments that are now in place. But if these leaders are serious about that goal, they will probably have to be much more aggressive.

What kinds of policies do I have in mind? First, these leaders could take curriculum more seriously than they have in the past. States could require the public schools to choose from among just a small number of curricular options. Teacher-education programs could train teachers in using those specific curricula, and the state could follow up by giving them ongoing training on those curricula. Teachers could be strongly discouraged, or even prevented, from cobbling together curricula from random, unregulated websites like Pinterest (or at the very least, states and districts could curate these kinds of materials)…The Wild West days of every teacher and every school with their own curricula must come to an end.

Morgan still thinks states should be “much more aggressive.” California, for example, should learn from the new Fordham report and make districts choose from a small list of vetted curriculum and professional development providers if it wants to implement the science of reading effectively, he now argues.

Or consider Andy Rotherham’s take on the Fordham study (making the Mississippi vs. California contrast explicit):

Today, lots of states are doing “science of reading” but they may not be doing science of reading. It’s more than phonics. It can’t be challenge by choice for schools or teachers. It requires a comprehensive set of supports and a commitment to knowledge-rich curriculum and teaching. What Mississippi did and what California now says it’s doing in the name of science of reading are not the same thing.

But not everyone is convinced that state “leadership” (a.k.a., micromanagement) on curriculum is smart. Terry Ryan makes the OG reform argument for “tight-loose” instead, using the Cold War terminology of “trust but verify.” In the context of Idaho’s efforts to improve instruction in U.S. history and civics, he writes:

In 2015, the state required students to pass a civics exam to graduate from high school. Over time, this assessment has become more rigorous, evolving beyond a basic naturalization test to include key constitutional principles and foundational documents.

This is a model worth building on: the state sets clear expectations and measures outcomes, but leaves the methods to educators. If we believe in limited government, local control, and accountability, we should apply those same principles to civics and history education policy.

The role of the state is not to dictate every lesson taught in every classroom. It is to set high standards, ensure transparency, and hold schools accountable for results. When schools meet those expectations, they should be trusted with the freedom to do their work….

Mandating curriculum from Boise—however well-intentioned—moves us in the opposite direction, toward centralized control and away from the local innovation that has long defined Idaho education.

We can achieve strong civics education without sacrificing local control. We can promote patriotism without prescribing pedagogy. And we can hold schools accountable without tying their hands.

Terry is speaking for a lot of reformers when pushing back against “mandates,” “centralized control,” and “tying [schools’] hands.”

Partly this is ideological, but it’s also based on a common-sense, real-world concern:

What if states get it wrong?

What if, in their zeal to improve teaching and learning, they prescribe curricula and teaching methods that don’t work? After all, until very recently, the field was all gaga over “balanced literacy.” Had states taken an “aggressive” approach a few decades ago, some might have pushed bad practices onto unsuspecting schools and districts.

Nor is this concern entirely in the past. Karen Vaites, for one, has been sounding the alarm about states’ list of approved reading programs, which unfortunately include some bad ones while leaving out some of the best. Reviewing Fordham’s new report, she notes that UFLI is lauded as an effective, popular program—but one that has “faced many challenges getting onto state lists.” In addition:

Benchmark Advance, which is called out by Fordham for its “unscientific methods,” is on numerous state lists, including Colorado, Virginia, and Ohio.

It reminds me of Emily Hanford’s podcast episode on Steubenville, Ohio, which has gotten great results for decades with Success for All—only to see SFA excluded from the Buckeye State’s list of approved programs. (Ohio’s excellent state supe, Steve Dackin, quickly fixed the oversight.)

So that’s the rub. If states are going to push, prod, or outright command districts to adopt certain curricula, hire certain vendors, and adopt certain approaches, they’d better be right. And though we know a lot about “the science of reading,” we know a lot less than we might want to admit about which particular programs and people are good at getting those practices adopted effectively in real-world classrooms. And if that’s true for early literacy, it’s doubly so for math, civics, and everything else.

And that’s the debate. Should all states follow the lead of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi and exert greater control over teaching and learning? Or stick with their traditional role of setting standards, assessing student learning, and (let’s hope) holding schools and districts accountable, leaving the rest to local control?

Where do you stand? Let me know by responding to this newsletter, leaving a comment, or emailing me at SCHOOLED@fordhaminstitute.org.

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On top of his thoughts about the science of reading, Andy Rotherham also has some sober musings about negative polarization and ed reform. (In short: they don’t go well together!)

For a long time education reform was, if not always bipartisan, certainly cross-partisan. The “secret Congress” wasn’t a secret. It was Congress. And it often did things on education….

Now, as Bipartisan Policy Center CEO Margaret Spellings tirelessly points out, all the major federal education statutes are far past their expiration dates. Everyone is freaked out about the dismantling of IES but too few were concerned that the law authorizing the agency hasn’t been reauthorized in two decades….

Why?

Negative polarization.

Meaning:

If one party champions something, however obvious, much of the other party opposes it because of how politics are practiced today in a closely divided electorate where most politicians, in both parties, are more worried about primaries than general elections.

For example:

It’s why in Virginia when Glenn Youngkin (R) ran what was essentially the Education Trust playbook on school accountability, Democrats who otherwise couldn’t stop talking about their “equity” commitments fought it hammer and tongs. And for his part Youngkin’s team eschewed that branding for their own political reasons.

Please read Andy’s whole post. Reducing this negative polarization, at least within the education reform movement, is what we’re working to do here at SCHOOLED.

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Sometimes I hope that Arne Duncan will help reduce negative polarization, and he’s certainly willing to push the Democratic Party to be more open to centrist and center-right reform ideas. In an interview with Kevin Mahnken he says, for example, that blue states should opt into President Trump’s Education Freedom Tax Credit to open a new funding stream for public school students:

Pre-pandemic, we had tens of millions of kids who were way too far behind. Coming out of the pandemic, it’s gotten even more catastrophic. You saw last year’s NAEP results, which were devastating, but I just don’t see the sense of urgency out there. I don’t see people pulling their hair out and asking, ‘What more can we do to help kids catch up?’ If I have a chance to help the kids who are farthest behind, and to do it now, it’s a moral obligation: Let’s help these kids who are so incredibly far behind before we lose them.

His position on the EFTC is gutsy and laudable. He’s providing space for bipartisan cooperation. But then he goes on the attack:

The fact that we’ve conceded that education leadership to Republicans, who are selling crap and pitting people against each other—that’s just untenable to me.

What Republicans are doing is “insidious,” he says.

They’re pushing hate and divisiveness, like attacking trans athletes. This is not neutral territory. They are pitting people against each other because it’s a winning strategy for them to divide and conquer. They’re attacking the most vulnerable by gutting the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, which fights for the kids who are the most abused and traumatized.

And then he goes after Secretary McMahon for accidentally reading “AI” on a notecard as “A1.”

Think about someone leading the Education Department who is so divorced from what’s going on in the world that they literally don’t know what AI is. It was in her notes, and she literally didn’t know.

You might disagree, but it sure feels to me like Arne is protecting his left flank by punching right. That’s not going to return us to an age of bipartisan ed reform.

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Rick Hess, meanwhile, punches left, right, up, down, every which way in this yowl about what tech types and others are saying high schools need to teach in the age of AI—almost always deriding the quest for “mere knowledge.” Rick demurs:

A good education is never just about acquiring a vaporous set of skills. It always comes back to informing judgment and cultivating discernment. It just happens that the costs of failing to do this are exponentially higher in a no-guardrails world. This means that students need to have workable responses to questions like: What is the tension between majority rule and minority rights? How does the machinery of representation work in American government? Why should judges accept or reject textualism? How should we assess the costs and benefits of government regulation? How do we understand the nature of evil?

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Let’s switch gears and talk teacher policy. Michael Hartney tosses up a fun analogy on robo-umpires and teacher evaluations. Among his five points, let’s focus on this one:

Measurement only matters if it carries consequences. In baseball, it does. Umpires are graded using performance data and those evaluations directly affect playoff game assignments (bonuses). In other words, measurement is not symbolic, it is tied directly to outcomes. In education, that link is often missing. Many districts still rely on last-in, first-out rules that remove newer teachers first, regardless of their classroom effectiveness. Here again baseball offers a clear illustration of why that misses the mark. When analysts compared retiring veteran umpires with the younger group replacing them, the younger cohort was significantly more accurate.

To which I’d say: Yes and no. Yes, 15 years ago, when teacher evaluation was all the rage, we should have used the results of those evaluations to dramatically boost the pay of the best teachers, as the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) is doing today. That’s akin to the “bonus” of working the playoffs. And I love the idea of ensuring that the “younger cohort” is stronger than the one it is replacing—by tracking their performance, providing feedback, coaching them to get better, and so forth.

But as for killing LIFO and removing bad teachers from the classroom, while I would love to see it happen, the fact that only one district in the whole country—DC Public Schools—ever figured out how to do it and sustain it probably tells us something.

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Speaking of merit pay, Matt Yglesias makes a compelling argument for it.

Lots of people in the Democratic Party camp are spinning their wheels furiously in a quest for big exciting new ideas, often embracing proposals that make almost no sense on the merits. It turns out, though, that there is incredibly large political upside to just saying “Hey, we should get schools to give raises only to their best teachers so we’re making sure they don’t leave the profession.”

Yes! And Matt takes his readers on a helpful tour of the various studies showing that merit pay can work. But he somehow fails to take them to Texas and its TIA, the largest (and perhaps most effective) merit pay program in American history, one that is bending the curve on teacher retention.

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As always, I struggle with whether to include posts here that are about instruction versus policy. But I can’t help but reprint this quote from Bill McCallum, from Holly Korbey’s recent take on “productive struggle”:

Common Core is very clear: know your addition facts by the end of grade two, know your multiplication facts by the end of grade three, then later on, you have to be fluent with the standard algorithm for addition, fluent with the standard algorithm for multiplication. It’s as unambiguous as it can be.

He mentioned the importance of putting math facts into long-term memory to make working new problems easier.

Some people have interpreted problem-based instruction as if the students should figure out everything on their own. That’s not what I believe. It’s not what the standards say. It’s not in the IM curriculum, and it’s not good teaching.

Y’all listening? This means that the “science of math” has been embedded in most states’ standards since 2010, hiding in plain sight. Teach the kiddos their math facts!

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Finally, Tim Daly argues: It’s probably been centuries since education technology improved the classroom.

I’m open to the possibility that the most consequential education technology isn’t AI or iPads. These fellas are awfully late to the party. It was the early 1800s that witnessed the true heyday of tech, when essential tools for teaching and learning became affordable and accessible for the first time. What if that was the peak? And the rest has been window dressing?

He’s got four technologies in mind:

1. Wood pulp paper

2. Blackboards

3. Slates

4. Mass-produced texts

Those are hard to beat!

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“It’s often said that there are no silver bullet solutions in education, and after 34 years working in classrooms and schools, that certainly rings true. But I can also point to one clear starting point for our high-school students’ academic rise: the adoption and tireless implementation of knowledge-building reading and social studies curricula in all of our elementary and middle schools five years ago.” —Christie Olsen, The 74

In a disturbing but must-read Wall Street Journal report, Shalini Ramachandran looks at how schools’ overreliance on Google, particularly YouTube, “has created a gateway for students to get sucked into an infinite scroll of videos on school-issued devices,” including algorithmically served, highly inappropriate content that has no connection to learning. —The Wall Street Journal

After spending time inside Eagle Ridge Academy, a classical charter school outside Minneapolis, James Traub wonders if the model can bring moral clarity to a nation struggling with anger and distrust—a theme he explores in his latest book. “Classical schools are traditional, but they are not intrinsically conservative,” he writes. “The classical schoolteachers I’ve spoken to describe their own concerns as ‘prepolitical,’ arising not from current affairs but from the pursuit of enduring principles—truth, beauty and goodness.” —The New York Times

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Kerri Briggs chimes in to contribute to our debate about whether states should take over districts instead of schools:

I had the privilege of serving as Superintendent Miles’s chief of staff for his first 18 months at Houston ISD. Yes to all that Anne Wicks said last week…plus a few other ideas.

1. It is worth naming the guts and moral clarity of the TEA Commissioner (Mike Morath) to take the step. It was several years in the making (interrupted by COVID). It is no small matter for the state chief to intervene in the state’s largest district. His team has been supportive of HISD team along the way. [If you’ve heard the Commissioner speak about why takeovers should happen – it is truly inspiring.]

2. Superintendent Miles is a unique leader. Every single decision is made with kids-first mentality. Every one. No matter what.

3. Every part of the system has been transformed. He didn’t simply work on strategic staffing, or teacher evaluations, or HQIM, or longer school days as “the intervention.” He did all of the fixes—all at once, in the first year, with 85 schools. And, for the most part, with the budget he had available—there was no extra money. Also, he didn’t wait for the next school year to make adjustments—adjustments happened the next day. The “speed of Miles” is real.

4. Superintendent Miles had been thinking about his system (“New Education System”) for several years and had been implementing it (in part) through Third Future Schools prior to taking the lead in Houston. So he had some lead time to think about this work.

5. The appointed Board also had real strength to take the heat…they have stood by Superintendent Miles and his team throughout the process. As often happens to political leaders—they took personal hits for it. I would guess that every single one of them lost friends in the process and had a few sleepless nights. But they have stood their ground and supported the vision.

It was a unique experience to have a front row seat while helping execute his vision. I hope the folks implementing his model in other Texas cities (and maybe a few other places) have the same success.

Cara Candal, meanwhile, responds to my swipe at ExcelinEd from a few weeks ago, when I wrote:

Jeb’s own ed reform organization doesn’t want to “eat the broccoli” when it comes to demanding test-based accountability for private school choice programs. That gives me indigestion.

Cara says:

I wanted to send you the accountability section of our model policy. Hopefully it eases the indigestion. Broccoli shouldn’t cause indigestion. We really do like broccoli. It’s delicious and it makes us stronger.

I know some of your readers will argue against allowing an NRT/CRT option in the model policy. But there’s enough evidence from places like DC and Louisiana to show that requiring the state test pushes the strongest private schools out of these programs. If we care about expanding options, we should care about offering good ones—and that’s why the model policy is structured this way.

Cara points out that ExcelinEd’s model policy includes reporting requirements for math and language arts scores on state or nationally norm-referenced achievement tests; participation rates by school; and disaggregated student data by grade level, gender, race, income level, and length of time participating in the ESA program. Plus quite a bit more—you can find the full policy here: ExcelinEd ESA Model Policy.

And just to be clear: nothing here changes our stance on accountability for district schools. When families are assigned to a school and may have no alternative, government has a heightened responsibility to set standards, assess whether schools are helping students meet them, and support improvement when they aren’t. That’s why CRTs remain essential in the district context.

Thanks for letting me lay it out. It’s important stuff.

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See ya Friday, folks.

Mike

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