Teach Effectively!

Sol Stern, who writes regularly about schooling as a contributing editor of City Journal and has long championed school choice alternatives such as vouchers, appears nearly ready to embrace the idea that the problems with education in the US (and perhaps elsewhere, too) have more to do with curricula and teaching than with incentives for schools to produce good outcomes for students. Mr. Stern has not abandoned his advocacy for choice, but he’s more clearly supporting reform of instruction.

That “incentivist” outlook remains dominant within school reform circles. But a challenge from what one could call “instructionists”–those who believe that curriculum change and good teaching are essential to improving schools–is growing, as a unique public debate sponsored by the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education revealed. Founded in 1999, the Koret Task Force represents a national all-star team of education reform scholars. Permanent fellows include not only Hoxby and Peterson but also Chubb, Moe, education historian Diane Ravitch, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation president Chester Finn, Stanford University economics prof Eric Hanushek, and the guru of “cultural literacy,” E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (recently retired). Almost from the start, the Koret scholars divided into incentivist and instructionist camps. “We have had eight years and we haven’t been able to agree,” says Hoxby. But in early 2007, members did agree to hold a debate at the group’s home, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University: “Resolved: True School Reform Demands More Attention to Curriculum and Instruction than to Markets and Choice.” Hirsch and Ravitch argued the affirmative, Hoxby and Peterson the negative.

After recounting some of the debate and discussing changes in New York City schools, Mr. Stern, refers to what he calls the “Massachusetts miracle” and attributes it to the efforts of a few (John Silber, Sandra Stotsky, and Abigail Thernstrom) who “pushed the state’s board of education to mandate a rigorous curriculum for all grades, created demanding tests linked to the curriculum standards, and insisted that all high school graduates pass a comprehensive exit exam.”

This is getting warmer. Now, if we could only get evidence-based pedagogy into the mix…sigh.

Link to Mr. Stren’s column.

Update 30 Jan 08: Read Catherine Johnson’s take on this topic.