Breaking Ranks Revisited

www.educationalimpact.com 800.859.2793 Creating Online Professional Development for Educators

1

Breaking Ranks Revisited

Transcript of Speakers

Module 1. Chapter 1: School Curriculum

Topic A. Expert – School Curriculum

Clip 1: A historical review of school curriculum

ROBERT MARZANO: Chapter 1 of Breaking Ranks deals with curriculum. Obviously,

this is not a new topic. We've been talking about curriculum ever since there's been a

formal educational system. And rather than just jump into the recommendations in

Chapter 1 for curriculum it would be useful to put this all in context.

Since we're coming to the end of the century here it would actually be useful to

look at what's happened over the last 100 years in terms of curriculum and then try to

relate to the eight recommendations in Chapter 1 of Breaking Ranks. So I'm going to

give you a little brief two minute history here of what's happened to curriculum over the

last 100 years.

Well, the century began with an emphasis on a one-size-fits-all curriculum if you

want to look at it that way. That all--all high schools basically offer pretty much the

same courses and those courses pretty much covered the same topics. And those courses

all had as their emphasis the production of a disciplined mind. The notion there was that

if high school could teach students or to have disciplined minds, give the skills and the

information necessary to have disciplined minds, then those students would be successful

in any endeavor they undertook in life, any profession they decided to go into.

So there was a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The courses were the same. The

course offerings were the same and the context that was taught in those courses was the

same. What also contributed to this one-size-fits-all curriculum was the establishment of


2

the Carnegie Unit in the early part of the 19th century. Now, as you already know, the

Carnegie Unit said that in order for a student to get a credit, if you will, for a course that

meant they had to spend a certain amount of time, you know, addressing the contents.

They had these two things operating and that was this focus on the disciplined

mind which meant a coverage of certain information and then the Carnegie Unit which

said how much time should be spent on that information. And, by the way, the topics that

were covered to create the disciplined mind included things like the classics. Students

had to read the classics, understand them, understand the history and time period in which

the classics were written. And the logic was also covered. And the notion was that if

students were understood and could use formal logic that they could take that sharpness

of thought into any walk of life, any situation they wanted to.

Mathematics was also stressed and writing in particularly rhetoric, formal

rhetoric, as it related to writing. So it was a very, you know, it was a very what we would

call right now traditional education. Well, now, that's the way the century began and

pretty much that's what high schools looked like up until about the mid-'60s.

And then things started to change for a couple of reasons. The country began to

realize that without a high school diploma students were severely limited in what they

could do. And up until that time, if a student didn't graduate from high school, they could

still be gamely employed in life. They could find jobs that gave them a good wage, and

they could take care of their families and have a, you know, a decent style of living.

But once--by the time the '60s hit, our society had changed. And if you talk to

historians, they'll say fancy things like we've changed from an industrialized society over

that period of time to an information society. And fundamentally, that makes a lot of

sense. That as--as what was considered important changed in America there were needs

for different types of skills. And by the time the '60s hit, high schools were starting to

realize this.


3

So there was a great emphasis on keeping kids in school because if they dropped

out they weren't going to get these necessary skills. And dropping out by the 1960s

already had very severe consequences in terms of how a person was going to live out

their life. Also, given the change from an industrial society to more of an information

society the skills that used to be addressed in high schools were adequate--were no longer

adequate. It was harder to predict now, you know, what students needed to know given

the wide variety of options they had in terms of the professions they could go into.

So again, the high schools--the high schools tried to address this problem. And

instead of the somewhat focused and maybe even narrow curriculum that created the

disciplined mind they began to offer different courses, you know, again, one, for one

reason to interest students, keep them in school but then also to make sure they hit a

variety of skills and abilities so that--that students, you know, going into diverse

occupations would have a chance of getting those skills and abilities as they went through

high school.

There was even a term that was used about high school in the '60s and maybe

you've heard that term. It's called a "Shopping Mall High School". And actually, this

was a criticism. It was somewhat of a derogatory term when it was first coined and the

notion was that going to high school was like going into a shopping mall because you can

actually pick and choose those things that you wanted to focus on. And the implication

was that in doing this there was no rigor in what students would experience.

Well, that criticism of high school became very popular, you know, about that

time and there were books written and people started not for the first time but certainly,

you know, with a great deal of emphasis they started to look at just how effective is our

schooling system and particularly how effective are our high schools in terms of giving

students the necessary skills and abilities. Now, this--this inward look at how our schools

were doing coincided with a decrease in student achievement on high profile tests such as


4

the SATs. And people began to look at the, you know, documented decline in SAT

scores and then they said, Why is this happening? And one place they looked was at the

curriculum of the high school.

Clip 2: Curriculum change in the 21st century

ROBERT MARZANO: That's where it stands right now. Now, across the country high

schools are now attempting to implement those standards documents. And what that

looks like is they're starting to shift their curriculums to include all of the content that are

in those state and sometimes even national documents. So there's a huge movement to

change the curriculum of public high schools going on right now as the function of the

standards movement.

Now, let me stop right there in terms of the history over the last hundred years.

That's where we are. Curriculum is being impacted dramatically by this national and

state level movement to ensure that students will cover certain content. And ideally, you

know, we now are getting back this one-size-fits-all curriculum. That the emphasis is not

on the disciplined mind like it used to be. The emphasis is on subject matter expertise

across, you know, eight or nine areas that pretty much everybody agree are important for

a good life and important for, you know, gaining employment in the world of work out

there.

That's history. Let me shift the emphasis to research and theory. There are at

least three major areas of research over the last 100 years that hopefully will impact the

curriculum changes in the next century and also tell us something about the history, too.

And let me briefly go over those. Number 1, there's a fair amount of research indicating

that trying to cover too much content might be detrimental to student learning. Let me

explain that a little bit.

It makes intuitive sense that you can either go in depth in content or, you know,


5

have a lot of coverage. And to do both is very, very difficult given a limited amount of

time that we actually have students in school. As a matter of fact, if you look at straight

research on learning or cognitive psychology you could build a case that to learn a new

skill, let 's say, like the ability to solve certain types of problems or the ability to read

certain types of graphs and charts or the ability to even do like basic computation in basic

mathematics, those are all process or skill oriented, let's say.

So you can make a case that to learn a new skill students need to practice a lot.

As a matter of fact, some numbers I like to throw around are that you should be

practicing--if the skill is truly new, you should be practicing it up to about 30 times.

Once you get to that point and the student has had enough time to work out the process

and hopefully has gotten enough feedback that the new skill or new strategy is something

that he or she can actually start to use somewhat automatically. They don't have to think

about it. It actually starts to become a skill.

And you can make a case that in terms of teaching new information, for example,

you know, knowledge about a new concept, let's say, knowledge about the cell and

different parts of the cell and how it functions, you know, what situations--in what

situations does it act one way verses another way. And that's information based. That to

truly cover a topic like that in depth, students should have the opportunity to go over it as

much as six times in different ways where they hear it and then they're allowed to

translate what they heard to their own language, their own terminology. They're allowed

to, you know, draw graphs and charts about it. Anyway, up to six times. Now, that's a

lot, thirty practices of a new skill, you know, six iterations of hearing and playing with

new information.

Now, the question is, does the current movement at the end of the century on

standards, the current emphasis on standards, does it fall nicely in with this

recommendation for research that we shouldn't be trying to cover too much rather we


6

should be going into depth on the important issues. Well, the answer here is bad news.

In fact, that what we're trying to do in the standards currently really goes against this first

research principle of going into depth as opposed to trying to cover.

Let me just throw some numbers at you here. The place where I work, The

Midcontinent Regional Educational Laboratory in Aurora, Colorado, over the last seven

years has been really involved in the standards movement from the perspective of looking

at what works about it, what doesn't work about it, how to change it to make it work

better. And we've been engaged in a lot of what you might call descriptive research.

One of the things we did was to look at all of the national and the majority of the

state level documents--standards documents that I have mentioned previously. And all

told, we looked at about 116 different documents across 14 different subjects areas. And

we looked at what--what standards do they identify and within each standard what is the

specific knowledge and skill that they identify. And we found some interesting results.

One thing we found was that there was 250 standards across all of those

documents. Again, this is in 14 subject areas. And those 250 standards included about

3,000 plus smaller pieces of information. Some people can refer to those smaller pieces

as benchmarks. For example, the standard might be the students will understand and be

able to apply aspects of probability within mathematics and then benchmarks would

identify what should they know at the primary level, upper elementary, you know, middle

school, and then high school.

So 3,000 plus benchmarks, 250 some standards. Now, just that number itself,

you know, is a little shocking. That seems like a lot of content. So we ask the question,

Can you cover that in depth? And to answer that we just did some simple arithmetic with

what we know about public schools. One thing we looked at is, well, how much time is

actually available in public schools right now? Well, if you have an average six and a

half hour day and 180 day school year if you added all that up, you know, for K through


7

12 or 13 years worth of school what you'd find is around 13,000 hours are actually

available for schooling.

That's really not an accurate representation of the time available in school. If you

take away passing periods between classes, lunch, recess, extracurricular activities, so on

and so forth what you'd find is that you really have about 9,000 hours in schools K

through 12 devoted to instruction. Now, the question is, do those 250 standards and the

3,000 plus benchmarks fit into 9,000 hours.

Well, to answer that we did a little study where we sampled benchmarks and

asked teachers how long it would take to teach them. And what we came up with is on

the average you can say that it took about five hours to adequately cover a benchmark in

depth. I shouldn't say adequately cover a benchmark in depth. Now, when you did some

simple math here's what you found. That it would take about 16,000 hours of instruction

to cover, you know, those 3,000 plus benchmarks. Well, I gave you the numbers already.

We only have 9,000 hours available for instruction. Obviously, 16,000 hours of content

doesn't fit into 9,000 hours of instruction that are available.

Just to kind of use a ridiculous extrapolation if we were to try to teach those

16,000 hours worth of benchmarks within the current system we'd have to change school

from K through 12 to about K through 23. Nobody's suggesting that, but the point is this.

That right now the standards movement is going against this research mandate, if you

will, that it's better to go in depth, you know, in the important content whatever that is

than to try to cover too much content.

As a matter of fact, maybe some of you are familiar, maybe all of you are familiar

with a study that has been prominent in the last two years. The TIMSS, The Third

International Math and Science Survey, where the basic findings--now that the study has

been criticized by some--but the basic findings were that by the time our students reach

high school their ability in math and science does not match up well to students in other


8

countries. As a matter of fact, you know, we're pretty much down at the bottom of the

barrel.

Now, again that study has certain flaws in it. And there are assumptions that

some people don't agree with. If you look at one of the major findings in that study and

apply it to our current system what you find is that it does relate to this notion of

coverage verses depth. And one of those major findings was that those countries that do

much better then us try to cover far fewer topics than we try to cover.

I forget the numbers but if you look at how much--how many topics Japan, let's

say, and Germany try to cover in math and science as opposed to us, we cover, you know,

more topics by a factor of two or three or even four depending on the country that you

look like. So there's a research finding here that says depth is better than coverage and

yet what we're doing at the end of the century vis-a-vis our standards movement is

actually, you know, emphasizing coverage verses depth.

Clip 3: The research that drives curriculum change

ROBERT MARZANO: The second research finding that relates to curriculum in the next

century and gives us a new perspective on the history of curriculum in this country over

the last 100 years is research indicating that teaching students cognitive skills, meta-

cognitive skills, and self-system skills. And I'll explain those in a bit. But teaching those

skills is as important, if not more important, than teaching students content per se.

Now, let me explain where that comes from. The place where I work, The

Midcontinent Regional Educational Laboratory, it's our job to take research and try to

translate it into useful practice for teachers at all levels actually. We just finished a study

that's actually it's called a meta-analytic or meta-analysis in which we looked at some

4,000 studies about what works in a classroom. And meta-analysis is just a fancy

techniques for looking at a bunch of studies and translating all of their findings into the


9

same metric, the same scale, if you will. And that scale boils down to did students learn

or not learn. And it's stated in percentile point gain.

So you can using this technique you can look at ten studies, let's say, on

questioning techniques and make a statement that, Gee, across these 10 studies what we

find is that students gain X percentile points when this technique is used with them or

they stay the same or they lose X percentile points in achievement. Now, to do that study

we had to develop a model of how the mind works. And we used actually a straight

forward model within cognitive psychology.

The model goes something like this. That--there's four parts to it. There's

content. There's knowledge, let's say, that people have and that's in their long-term

memory and it's inactive unless it's acted upon. And, let's say, for example, I know some

content about statistics. Well, right now that's inactive. That's sitting there in my long-

term memory. To operate on that or utilize that knowledge in a long-term memory I've

got to use one of three systems of thinking. I got to use what I'll call the cognitive system

of thinking. And that would include things like obviously retrieving the information but

analyzing it, comparing it with other things, making inductions about it, generalizations

about it, using that information to make deductions about tests that I'm involved in right

now, solving a particular type of problem with that information. So that's the cognitive

system or cognitive thinking.

Then there's meta-cognitive thinking. And that's where--or the meta-cognitive

system. And within that system, I do things like I set a goal. I stratagize how I am going

to get to that goal. I actually, you know, try to accomplish that goal and monitor how

well it's doing, changing strategies if I have to because something might not be working

out well. So that's the meta-cognitive system or meta-cognitive thinking.

And in the third area that I mentioned was self-system thinking. And self-system

thinking deals with my attitudes about what I'm doing and also it deals with my


10

emotional response to what I'm doing. And it's within the self-system part of thinking

that motivation occurs or doesn't occur. See, if I think something is important and I feel

like I can actually do it that's going to generate positive emotions and that will translate

into pretty high motivation to do it. And if, however, if I think that somethings not

important or I think I can't do it or I have negative emotions about it that's going to

probably generate negative--very little motivation to do it.

Now, when we did this meta-analysis of these 4,000 some studies what we did is

look at each--for each study we looked at--does the strategy in this study, the

instructional strategy, does it tap into the cognitive system or the meta-cognitive system

or the self-system and what is the effect on students' knowledge, that fourth component.

Well, here's what we found. That in general, across those three systems that if

you use these strategies amazingly you can get huge gains in student achievement. As a

matter of fact, the generalization from our study is that using the strategies that cut across

these three systems you can get achievement gains up to 23 percentile points. Actually,

not up to but averaging 23 percentile points. In other words, that on the average using

these strategies a student of the 50th percentile will go from the 50th percentile in a

subject matter to the 73rd percentile if these strategies are used.

What we also found is that out of the three areas remember they were self-system

thinking, meta-cognitive thinking, and the cognitive thinking that the one that actually

produced the biggest impact on student achievement was thinking that dealt with the self-

system. What that means is making students aware of how important they consider

something. And if they don't consider something important are there strategies to help

them see the importance of it or making them aware of whether they can believe--of

whether they believe they can do something or not and if they don't believe they can do it

well giving them strategies to overcome that. And then also being aware of kind of their

emotional response of something. And if that's negative to let them know that's a setup


11

for not doing well and to give them strategies for overcoming that.

That area of self-system thinking actually in general produces the highest effects

on achievement of all three of the systems. Now, I hope you can see the connections

here. That of this model which said there's knowledge, that's in long-term memory. And

then there's cognitive type thinking. There's meta-cognitive type thinking. There's self-

system type thinking. You know, well, the knowledge that, you know, that we're

focusing on that's really the standards movement. The standards movement really

focuses on what's the knowledge in math and science and history, etc., etc., that students

should know.

A good question is what about those other three areas? Do they represent

appropriate focuses for instruction? Now, let me state that differently. Is it just content

that we're going for? Are we also in high school going for increasing students' ability to

think, that's cognitive system, plan and strategize, that's meta-cognitive system, and then

also know themselves better and how their self-system thinking interacts with their

ability to do things.

Well, again, the research is very clear. That if you--if you--if you focus not just

on knowledge but also on cognition, meta-cognition and self-system thinking that will

not only enhance their knowledge--students' knowledge but it will also give them tools

that they can use in any arena that they want to use it in, any walk of life, any endeavor

that human beings engage in.

Now, the question is, are we doing that in the current emphasis on the standards?

And the answer again is no from my perspective; and that is, if you look at the curriculum

that's implied by the national and state standards and even if I looked at high school

textbooks or the curriculum in high schools what you'd find is emphasis is heavy on

knowledge, more and more knowledge, but very, very light on teaching kids how to think

better at the cognitive level, the meta-cognitive level and also to understand and engage


12

in better self-system thinking . So the second research area--strong implications for, you

know, what we're doing now in curriculum and what we tend to do over the next 100

years.

Clip 4: Seamless integration between curriculum, instruction & assessment

ROBERT MARZANO: The third research area, research finding that informs our

discussion of curriculum is the finding that curriculum instruction and assessment should

as much as possible be integrated. A common term that's used is that they should be

seamless. That in the sense going on at once or part of this holistic act that happens in the

classroom. Now, let me, you know, explain, that a little more in depth. And

particularly, let me focus on assessment, current practice verses what's recommended

from the research.

Let's look at current practice. Right now assessment usually takes place outside

of curriculum instruction. In the classroom what happens is that teachers give tests.

Outside of the classroom tests are given. Students have to pass the ACTs. They have to

pass the SATs. They have to do well on the ACTs or SATs to get into college. They

have to pass a state test in some places to get a certain type of diploma. And we have

great confidence in that as a country. But if you look at the research on assessment what

you find is that placing too much confidence on a test score is very dangerous. And I'm

going to apologize here for getting theoretical for a minute.

The theory of assessment goes something like this. That every score that you

receive whether it's on a teacher-made test or the SATs, the ACTs, or a state mandated

test that scores is comprised of two parts. There's what they call the true score. Now,

that's the score that you actually deserved. And then there's error, E-R-R-O-R. That's

also attached to that. Well, let me illustrate.

What that means is that if I'm in your class and you give a test and I get a score of


13

85, let's say, that there's two parts to that, my true score and the error score. And the error

score can either work for me or against me. In other words, that 85 it could be that I had

5 points of error working against me. I already should have received a 90, not an 85.

Well, how can there be 5 points of error working against me? Well, it could have been a

time test. I didn't get to the last five items or I misread some of your items or I was tired

or, you know, I got distracted and misread an item. That's error working against me.

It could be that I should have received an 80 that was my true score. I had 5

points of error working for me. Well, how can that happen? Well, I got lucky, I guess, or

even things like cheating would come into that. So there's also error in every assessment

no matter how good it is. Now, what's amazing to people, educators and non-educators,

is when they start realizing how much error there is in some fine tests. Now, an example

I usually give is the SATs, which, by the way, is a fine test. This is no condemnation of

the SATs, but if you look at the technical manuals on the SATs or better yet, look at the

information that FairTest puts out. That's an organization run by Monty Neill, I believe,

in Cambridge. They have a web site and a great newsletter they put out. They give you

this technical information. If my numbers are correct, I believe, that the--that the error

associated with the SATs is 33 points. Let me explain that.

In measurement they really have a fancy term called the standard error of

measurement. That's what that 33 points is. And here's how you use it. You take the

score the student receives the--the observe score and you form a confidence interval

around the observed score. And that standard error of measurement in this case 33--let's

make it 30 points for ease of calculation. If you want to form what's called the 95 percent

confidence interval or a band in which you're 95 percent sure of the true score of the

student is--is to be found then you add and subtract two standard errors.

So, if my son or daughter comes home with the SAT observed score of on the

verbal and quantitative combined of, let's say, 1,000 and I want to form that 95 percent


14

confidence band or confidence interval I add and subtract two standard errors or, in this

case, I add and subtract, you know, 60 points. Well, 1,000 minus 60 is 940. 1,000 plus

60 is 1,060. So my 95 percent confidence interval for that student on the SATs would be

I'm 95 percent sure that their true score is anywhere between a 940 and 1060.

Now, if you look up the percentile differences between a 940 and 1060 you see

just how important this notion of standard error is. That if we start making decisions

about students on single assessments even if they're good ones like a lot of states have

and SATs--it's a fine test--but still by definition tests always have error built into them.

And to make decisions about individual students based on a single test or even a set of

tests is very, very dangerous. Now, how does that relate to the current movement? Well,

in fact, within the standards movement a lot of states are either right now or thinking

about very quickly making high stake decisions about student graduation based on a

single test score or even set of scores. That doesn't make any sense at all.

Now, those are three research findings or areas of research that actually kind of

help us see from a different perspective the last hundred years in curriculum and also

form the basis for us looking at the eight recommendations in Chapter 1 of Breaking

Ranks. Now, let's take a minute and do that.

Clip 5: A review of the “Breaking Ranks” recommendations in Chapter 1

ROBERT MARZANO: The eight recommendations of Chapter 1 of Breaking Ranks are

the following. I'll read them briefly. Number 1, each high school community will

identify a set of essential learnings above all, in literature and language, mathematics,

social studies, and science, and the arts in which students must demonstrate achievement

in order to graduate. Number 2, the high school will integrate its curriculum to the

extent possible and emphasize depth over breadth of coverage. Number 3, teachers will

design work for students that is of high enough quality to engage them, cause them to


15

persist, and, when successfully completed, result in their satisfaction and their acquisition

of learnings, skills, and abilities valued by society.

Number 4, the content of the curriculum, where practical, will connect itself to

real-life applications of knowledge and skills to help students link their education to the

future. Number 5, assessment of student learning will align itself with the curriculum so

that students' progress is measured by what is taught. Number 6, students will have a

Personal Plan for Progress to ensure that the high school takes individual needs into

consideration and to allow students, within reasonable parameters, to design their own

methods for learning in an effort to meet high standards.

Number 7, the high school will promote co-curricular activities as integral to an

education providing opportunities for all students that support and extend academic

learning. And finally, Number 8, a high school will reach out to the elementary and

middle level schools from which it draws students to help those schools understand what

kind of foundation students need for success in high school and to respond to the needs of

the lower schools for policies at the high school that reinforce earlier education.

Clip 6: Marzano’s commentary on the “Breaking Ranks” recommendations

ROBERT MARZANO: Now, of these--of these recommendations, these eight

recommendations from my perspective three are based on very, very sound research, four

are based on promising ideas, and one is based at least partially on an unproven albeit

intriguing concept. I'm going to be somewhat complimentary and somewhat critical of

the eight recommendations found in Chapter 1. And I'm going to use the history of

education, of curriculum over the last 100 years and the three research points that I

briefly summarized to support my contentions here.

First of all, which recommendations of the eight are based on what I would call

sound research? Well, for sure recommendations one, five, and eight make an awful lot


16

of sense based on what I've said previously. Just to review those, Number 1 stated that

the high school community will identify a set of essential learnings. I'm doing this

somewhat out of order. Number 8 said that high school will reach out to the elementary

and middle school to identify, you know, what these learnings are. And Number 5 says

that assessment of student learning will align itself with curriculum so that students'

process is measured by what is taught.

Let me do one and eight together. Basically, they in my translation at least they

say that high schools should identify, you know, the essential learnings that all students

should be exposed to and that they should not do that in isolation. They should look back

to the middle school teachers, upper elementary, and primary school teachers to do that in

concert with them. Now, for me what this relates to is the notion of, you know, covering

things in depth as opposed to--to try to cover things at surface level and try to take too

much on. And this is a nice prescription for that if carried out appropriately.

And what it would look like to me is that again high school teachers would get

together with teachers of the lower grade levels and identify what is truly, truly essential.

Now, that's a tough one because implied in that is identifying what's not essential. And

that means that certain topics will have to be cut. And that bothers teachers quite a bit

when they realize that they can't do everything. That they're going to have to sacrifice

coverage for depth and that means getting rid of a few pet topics maybe. And it can't be

done idiosyncratically. In other words, if I'm teaching Algebra one and another teacher is

teaching Algebra one that there has to be some common agreement as to what's essential

and what's not. And that--that commonly isn't done in public schools right now.

So implementing Recommendations 1 and 8 that's right on. It makes an awful lot

of sense. Let's get down to what's essential and let's make that consistent, you know, K

through 12. But to actually do it means cooperating in a way we've never done before.

Now, let me address one point that, you know, I mentioned scares quite a few educators


17

and that is you can't cover it all. Well, there's a way out of that apparent dilemma, you

know. The dilemma is we want to cover everything, but we can't.

Well, the gentleman, E.D. Hirsch, who wrote a book called Cultural Literacy--

although I disagree with many of his recommendations he made one point that was

actually, you know, brilliant I thought. And that is it would be useful to think of a two

part curriculum. And he used fancy terms. He talked about the intensive curriculum

verses the extensive curriculum . By that he meant the intensive curriculum is that

knowledge and skill that we go in depth.

And that's the essential stuff. And we don't just cover that once, you know, if it's

information we do it four, five, six times. If it's skill we let students practice that a

number of times. I use the number 30 times. That's the intensive curriculum. Then

there's the extensive curriculum that content that we want them to know just a little bit

about. Now, that makes an awful lot of sense to me. Now, that if a school district--we're

trying to implement one and eight here, Recommendations 1 and 8, that what they would

be doing is identifying the two part curriculum.

What is truly important. And those numbers would be small. We have to be lean

and mean there. And we'd actually set schooling up to guarantee that students had

adequate exposure and practice relative to that--those essential learnings. Then there

would be everything else that we want them to know just a little bit about. And if we

can't get to it all, that's fine. That seems like a practical way of implementing

Recommendations 1 and 8 in the context of what we know from research about trying to

cover too much. Recommendation 5 again based on sound theory is an assessment of

students will align itself with the curriculum since student progress is measured by what

is taught.

Now, for me that's--that's supported by the research, the third research point I

mentioned which states that assessment if--if it's just a one shot thing is very dangerous


18

because of this notion of error that's inherent in all measurement. So Recommendation 5

to me translated into classroom practice looks like this. That we actually set classroom

assessment up and classroom grading in such a way that it directly relates to what

students learn. Now, you know, you say, well, we do that right now. Well, not according

to research.

What you find if, you know, look at the research on grading practices and

classroom assessment is that individual teachers have idiosyncratic ways of assessing and

more so idiosyncratic ways of grading. That--I might teach Algebra one and you might

teach Algebra one. And you count things that I don't. You count cooperation. I don't. I

count effort. You don't. You count timeliness of assignments, and I don't and so on and

so forth. So Recommendation 5 makes sense but it implies a massive change in the way

we do business in high schools, a massive change in the way we assess students in the

classroom and then also how we put that together to form grades based on sound theory,

sound research.

That states if we just put all our eggs in the basket and call them outside tests, you

know, we're going to be in trouble because of the error that's in there. The funny thing

about this thing called error at the theoretical level the more times you assess a student,

give him or her feedback, the more chance there is for error to cancel itself out. What

that implies is that the classroom teacher is the perfect person to be doing the assessment.

But the way we've graded in the past has been so idiosyncratic that nobody trusts our

grading practices. So Number 5 makes an awful lot of sense.

So there are at least three of the recommendations in Chapter 8 that from my

perspective are based on very sound research.

Now, let's go to the recommendations that are based on what I would call

promising ideas. Four of the eight recommendations in Chapter 1 are based on what I

would call promising ideas. Those recommendations specifically are Recommendations


19

3, 4, 6, and 7. Let me review those briefly. Recommendation 3 states that teachers will

design work for students that is of high enough quality to engage them, cause them to

persist, and, when successfully completed result in their satisfaction. Recommendation 4

is the content of the curriculum, where practical, will connect itself to real-life application

of knowledge. Recommendation 6 is that each student will have a Personal Plan for

Progress. And Recommendation 7 is the high school will promote cocurricular activities

as integral to an education providing opportunities for all students that support and

extend academic learning.

Now, all of those have at least one common theme from my perspective and that

is they deal very strongly with the research finding I mentioned previously that teaching

students cognitive, meta-cognitive, and self-system skills might be as useful if not more

useful than teaching them content. If you look at those three from that perspective what

you see is that all to one extent or another engage students in, you know, self-system

thinking and help them understand that thinking better. They engage them in meta-

cognitive thinking in that they have to set plans, you know, identify their own projects,

you know, work those out. And cognitive skills in that they, you know, they're complex

tasks that they have to engage in.

Here's why I call this a promising idea as opposed to a strong research finding.

Right now if you look at the research it strongly suggests that teaching those three areas

will pay off. However, those three areas or our awareness of those three areas really only

happen the latter part of the century. You know, really in the last two decades, you

know, the '80s and the '90s, did we start realizing the importance of those three systems

of thought and their impact on learning. And actually, we really don't know how all

those systems work, how they interrelate or even the component parts.

So that's what stops me from saying that, you know, they represent a strong

research finding. They're a very, very promising idea, a very promising research finding.


20

So for my money I'd say Recommendations 3, 4, 6, and 7 are strong. That high schools

should, you know, move ahead on those without, you know, a second thought. Although

as they do so, do so in an experimental mode, you know, try these out in looking directly

at, you know, what works and doesn't work about their efforts. And also really looking at

how does this show up in terms of student learning? Realizing that learning is not just

acquiring content but learning is also developing their skills in the cognitive, meta-

cognitive, and self-system areas.

Finally, what are the recommendations of the eight in Chapter 1 that are based on

what I've called unproven concepts. Perhaps that's too strong a word. Well, if you've

kept track of the numbers there's only one left and that's Recommendation No. 2. And to

review that it says, the high school will integrate its curriculum to the extent possible and

emphasize depth over breadth of coverage. And actually, part of that recommendation is

supported by sound research. And that's the second part where it says that the high

schools will emphasize depth over breadth. And I already mentioned that in the first set

of recommendations that I say were based on sound research.

So that part of Recommendation 2 makes a lot of sense. We've already gone over

that. Go in depth as opposed to cover things and maybe this two part curriculum might

help to allow us to cover certain things, you know, not throw too much out of the

curriculum that's already there. But the part that deals with integration that is based on

what I would call an unproven concept. Now, that doesn't mean that it's a poor concept.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It's just that it's not proven. And that's the part

that deals with integration.

Now, let me explain that. And actually when I mention this to educators I've

received quite negative reactions in the past because people hea r me as saying that

integration doesn't work. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is we don't know

whether it works or not and we don't know how it works and exactly what it impacts in


21

terms of student learning. So all I'm saying here is that we should hold off on this and go

cautiously and actually experiment with it. I know of no research indicating that when

you integrate content, when you break down the traditional subject matter boundaries that

that enhances student learning.

Now, I could build a logical case for that but to date it hasn't been proven. And

actually, what I've seen across the country is that people jumping into this without

thinking it through and actually, I would say, doing some harm in terms of student

learning. If you're going to integrate there has to be logic to the integration. So it doesn't

make sense from my perspective just to sit back and without a great deal of thought

throwing outcomes together, you know, two outcomes from science, one from language

art, one from arts, one from physical sciences--excuse me--physical education and putting

them together and say let's create an integrated unit or let's create an integrated

performance task that includes all of these things.

It has to be very, very well thought out. There are certain subject areas that seem

to naturally go together better than others. Obviously, mathematics and science go

together. Technology obviously could be thrown into that. The arts, you know, thrown

into math and science, you know, maybe that doesn't go together well. Or if it does

would not--you'd have to really think what parts of art, what parts of science, what parts

of mathematics.

What I'm reacting to here again is what I've seen across the country is not well

thought out integrated units or integrated performance tasks. As a matter of fact, there is

some evidence that when you try to do that you actually do harm to student learning.

They come out of a unit or they come out of a task and they really haven't learned

anything very well and, as a matter of fact, even have some misconceptions about the

parts of the unit or the project from different subject areas that they were supposedly

learning as a result of this integrated effort.


22

So, Recommendation No. 2 part is based on very sound research, and that's depth

verses coverage. The other part called integration--definitely let's explore that. But let's

go slowly. Let's think it through. And let's not assume that if we just put things together

in an integrated fashion that turns up as better learning. There's no evidence that I can

see that that's automatically the case.

So let me summarize. The last hundred years have been an interesting one for this

area of curriculum particularly as it relates to the high school. We've come to a place

where there's a heavy emphasis on let's make sure we got a good curriculum. And that

gets translated into make sure, you know, we have a body of knowledge that students are

exposed to and master by the time they get out of high school. As I hope I've

demonstrated their aspect from research and theory, you know, can help guide those

efforts. And in fact, you know, we should take these into consideration as we make

changes in curriculum over the next century.

I actually commend, you know, those authors in Chapter 1 in Breaking Ranks.

Those eight recommendations are very, very powerful recommendations. Actually, you

know, in summary, seven out of eight I have no problem with at all. It's like let's do it.

Let's move ahead on this. And there's only one that I say let's--let's move with extreme

caution. And that caution doesn't mean that it isn't powerful or that it won't work. It's

just that we don't know enough about it right now. So all in all, you know, in Chapter 1

of Breaking Ranks still holds up well. Those recommendations are sound and those

recommendations are one that I have a lot of confidence saying to high school teachers,

high school faculty, Yes, let's start seeing what this actually looks like in the classroom.

Breaking Ranks Revisited

Documents

Transcript of Breaking Ranks Revisited