Not looking at the obvious

I was reading entries on the famous blog by Joanne Jacobs recently when I came across a post about content on which I’ve previously commented. I felt my super-skeptical hackles rise. Here’s Ms. Jacobs’ lead

Without school choice, high standards and good instruction aren’t enough to improve education for disadvantaged students, argues Lisa Snell in Reason. She’s responding to Sol Stern’s City Journal article, Choice Is Not Enough, which has stirred up a lively debate.

Ms. Jacobs accurately represents Lisa Snell’s argument. It’s a lengthy one and there’s a link to it later. But, it made me realize that I’ve not actually stated my view on these sorts of issues. In some senses, Ms. Snell’s argument is sensible. However, standards only provide the measuring stick; they establish the goals in that folks have agreed to those standards are important. Effective instuctional practices are only valuable if they effectively teach what we want. We could design really effective procedures to teach basketweaving underwater, but who places that high on the list of educational goals?

But, Mr. Stern has the right fundamental path: Teach what we want effectively. Don Hirsch proposed a way—community discussion—to identify what we want for goals, but he has been shouted at as if he proposed the actual goals.

In my view, the problem is relatively simple:

1. Establish educational goals through a reasonble process of collegial discussion among the stakeholders and state those goals operationally;
2. Identify instructional processes (i.e., curricula, teaching methods, etc.) that will achieve those goals more efficiently than alternative processes;
3. Employ those processes that pass (2);
4. Monitor students’ outcomes;
5. Modify the processes to fine tune them or discard them when more effective general processes emerge;
6. Monitor the progress of students at the left end of the achievement distribution and provide extra-intensive, evidence-based instruction for them;
7. Repeat repeatedly.

Those who dote on teacher empowerment, choice, vouchers, inclusion, standards, home-schooling, multi-sensory methods, etc. [please add to the list], have focused too narrowly. As important as those topics are, we will only chase our tails if we follow them to the exclusion of the bigger picture.

Link to (a) Ms. Jacobs, Mr. Stern’s, and Ms. Snell’s posts.