History is not Math

Not to "rehash" Andy's already extensive coverage of the "narrowing the curriculum" hysteria, but Mike Petrilli's bite at the apple in the latest Education Gadfly recommended a predictable--but I think dead wrong--response to the issue that I need to rant a bit about.

Petrilli--like a lot of folks in the edworld--argues that history, science, and other subjects are getting pushed out of the curriculum because NCLB holds school accountable for math and reading only, and not for other subjects (although the law doesn't preclude states from including other subjects in AYP). Petrilli's response, then, is to say the feds should require states to test students in science (which they're already must do in three grade levels come 2007, as Petrilli notes) and history, AND incorporate the results of those tests in determining whether or not schools are making adequate yearly progress under the law.

I think this is a terrible idea, for three reasons.

The first is a technical issue: There's a trade-off, in designing accountability systems, between complexity and transparency--the more stuff (different subjects, different grades, disaggregated subgroups, etc.) you try to incorporate into coercive accountability system, the more unwieldy they become, and the harder for folks who don't crunch policy for a living to understand. (Jay Mathews, for example, already claims that AYP is too confusing--I don't agree with him, but I do think adding many more variables would make the system too confusing). Adding two additional subjects to the AYP determination would make the system much more complex, and harder to explain or defend to parents and the public. I don't think that's a good idea. (Apologies to Kevin, from whom I'm cribbing a bit here, although less eloquently than him.)

Second, while I generally hate this type of argument, I AM concerned about a slippery slope here. I think that art and music are just as important for children to be well-educated as science or history--should we add standards and testing and make those subjects part of AYP, too?

My third concern is more fundamental. I think subjects like history and science are fundamentally different from reading and math. Although there are still some folks--primarily in ed schools--who haven't bought into it yet, there's actually a pretty clear, well-defined research consensus about how children learn to read, and what educators need to do when for kids to become proficient readers. There's not the same level of research and consensus in math as in reading, but there is a body of research here, and math, like reading, is an area in which kids need to learn specific skills in a particular sequence in order to become proficient and move to the next level. In both reading and math, we can study what and how kids need to learn in order to become proficient because--calculator debates aside--there's some general agreement about what, ultimately, kids need to know. Everyone agrees that kids need to learn how to read, and there's not a lot of debate about what that means. And, while we might disagree about how far kids need to develop their mathematical knowledge and skills, we can generally agree on what algebra is and what computation is.

That's not true in history or science. What children need to learn in these fields is fundamentally a values issue. Should kids study the history of the state in which they live, or the history and cultures of Africa? Even if we can all agree that kids need to know something about U.S. history, what should the focus be, and whose history should they learn? Why the heck do kids have to learn what a stamen and pistil are (does anyone reading even remember learning this in middle school)? Is there really any reason they need to know the names of the planets in the solar system? These aren't questions that research can answer. And, even if we could all agree on what kids should know in history or science* how would anyone justify one sequence for when kids need to know which ideas over a different order?

Because these questions are values issues, without a clear cut "right" answer, the process of standards-setting in these fields has been incredibly politically charged, culture-war issues, in the states that have undertaken it. (See, for instance, Kansas and evolution, or the debate over Virginia's history SOLs when they were initiated.) I think such debates are really a distraction from real educational questions. Since these questions are less clear cut, I think the standards for them are best set by local communities (loosely defined), combined with parental choice.

This doesn't mean that I don't think history and science are important--I do. But I don't think the nature of these subjects is well-suited to state standards accountability systems. And I think that's ok. There's this tremendous temptation to hang everything on the single accountability system, to act as if that's the only way of indicating to schools what's important or getting them to do it.

I think shows a tremendous lack of imagination. Schools and people who work in them are driven by tons of different competing incentives, not just the state accountability system, and there are lots of ways to get them to do things that we want them to do without tying it to the accountabilty system. There is, of course, the time-tested federal approach--that dominated federal policy before NCLB--of giving schools money, in the form of federal grants, for doing something we want them to do. Programs like the Teaching American History grant program, which was part of Petrilli's portfolio at the Department of Ed, take that approach. (In general, I'm not a fan of these types of small programs, a topic for another day, but this is one alternative.) One could also use an accreditation model: For example, a variety of scientific organizations (NSF, AAAS, professional associations in the various fields, etc.) could establish criteria for identifying schools that are doing a good job teaching science, and schools could seek these accreditations. States could even require that schools receive one of a variety of possible accreditations. These are just a few ideas.

*I think we might ultimately be able to reach some minimal consensus on scientific concepts--such as the scientific method, human biology, and some basic principles of physics--that kids need to know to function in an increasingly science-driven culture.