The Achievement Gap is real and important. Our schools must address this issue in a positive and assertive fashion that allows for the educational growth of all students. Eugene School District 4j, where I taught for 33 years, seems to support the adopting of a one-size-fits-all reading and writing curriculum. Under this program. language arts teachers in the district would be required to use strictly limited teaching techniques and materials in order to teach skills to the wide-array of students they have in their classrooms. Supposedly, this curriculum approach will insure that all students receive the same instruction and materials; the premise is that this would close the achievement gap.

Yet studies have shown– and classroom educators know– that students learn and achieve at their own individual rates. Some students learn mainly through verbal approaches; some through visual, and others through hands-on, tactile experiences. Students’ learning and attitudes towards education also are profoundly affected by their ethnic-cultural heritage, geographical location, and socio-economic status. Given this understanding of the individualistic nature of the learning process, It seems illogical and counterproductive to expect much success from an approach that is so narrow and so inconsiderate of the students’ cultural and individual needs for learning success.

Just as we know about individual learning differences, we also recognize diverse teaching styles as valuable and even necessary parts of a child’s education. Personal interactions between teacher and student make effective learning possible. This can’t so easily be done by locking a teacher into a program and a teacher’s guide that may not fit that teacher’s unique personality. Neither students nor teachers are interchangeable parts! The learning process can’t be put into a blender and come out smooth and uniform!

The idea of standardized lock-step curriculum has been tried many times. Experienced classroom teachers know that this type of uniform curriculum takes away much of the creativity and personal excitement that have been proven to be of the essence for effective instruction and learning. Granted that it is “comforting” for many teachers to have a prescribed curriculum. Probably it is most helpful for inexperienced teachers to have a basic curriculum to fall back on while they discover and develop their instructional style. But many teachers feel it inhibits their ability to deliver high quality education.

For many years Roosevelt Middle School in Eugene has had some of the best test scores in the state (if that is an indicator of success, which is another question altogether!) Students from all over the city have been willing to to be placed on waiting lists in order to gain entrance to Roosevelt. The school has had NO required textbooks (other than in math) during this time. It has, instead, opted to use staff and student choice of classes and materials to guide the program. Learning and teaching styles match themselves to the best advantage of student and teacher through this flexible system of choice.

So, what should be done? First we must agree that inequality of educational achievement is important, and that it extends from the community into the classroom, not vice versa. Schools should have common goals for what students should achieve, not common curricula. Standards of achievement should be high. Expectations of achievement should be high. Curricula should be designed to meet the needs of students and the styles of teachers. The ability of teachers to transfer from one school to another to match their philosophies and interests should be facilitated.

Finally, the most important idea is this: we need to accept the idea that we want our children to succeed, to learn to the best of each one’s ability - and to enjoy learning as a lifetime experience.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.