Jay Mathews joins the crowd of people making this argument: Those who try to close the gap do it by dumbing down the curriculum, and the high achievers  - or all kids - lose out. Better to try to help each child grow every year, and not worry about helping those who start out behind catch up. In short, achievement gap goals and high achievement gap goals are at odds.

This argument makes me crazy. It is founded on the premise that the only achievement that matters is reading and math test scores. We measure the kindergarten readiness gap in terms of math and (especially) reading. And it’s true that well-off kids often (but not always) come in with reading measures years ahead of low-income and just-not-ready kids.

But what if we lose the emphasis on early reading and math achievement, and instead emphasize knowledge, science, vocabulary, motor development, and literature. You’d simultaneously raise the level of the curriculum far beyond what it is today, and shrink the achievement gap by giving kids who don’t know how to read time to grow up or catch up.

That wouldn’t solve the whole gap problems. But early division of kids by reading and math skills  is a policy that increases the gap, because the rich get richer and the poor get phonics.

Hooray for Steven A. Farber, the director of BioEYES. The New York Times published a conversation with him about his organization. BioEYES brings zebra fish to inner-city schools to help kids study genetics. This sounds so cool - the kids study live zebra fish, which produce transparent embryos. The kids can actually watch the fish develop.

At the end of the piece, the reporter asks a good question - does this week-long project really make a difference? Farber answers it’s a start and that he hopes it will inspire kids to become scientists.

I hope so too. Schools can up the odds by embedding the zebra fish unit in a long stream of science and a long tradition of intellectual curiosity in the classroom. Unhappily, neither is common in most classrooms.

Here’s the BioEYES curriculum (4th grade unit)

http://www.jefferson.edu/bioeyes/pdf/BIOEYES-microguide.pdf

As eduwonk wisely points out, making everything a priority is the same as making nothing a priority.

So, after a new report showed less growth for high-achieving students than low-achieving students during the NCLB era, the calls for more “ability grouping” are ringing from the rafters. Grouping, so the thinking goes, will save our GT kids from the blandness of NCLB-era instruction.

As if that’s the only solution.

Everyone needs a straw man, and for those who like ability grouping, the straw man is “differentiation.” That means that teachers attempt to teach multiple levels in one classroom by giving them different things to do, again based on perceived ability. Teachers complain that differentiation is hard to do. Well, it sounds hard to me too - preparing multiple lessons every day, and then juggling small groups like a mad circus clown.

Back to eduwonk’s piece. Eduwonk says our choice is between groups of students - focus on the high achievers or the low?

Well, the problem with that line of thinking is that it betrays a theory of teaching and learning that says you can’t learn anything interesting until you complete years of dull skill work.

But evidence indicates that all students accomplish more in an enriched environment than in an impoverished one - whether we’re talking about school or home. So what if we gave up on the idea of accounting for each speck of learning in each student, and instead held schools accountable for the richness of learning environment they cultivate?

The idea is, kids can’t learn what isn’t offered. So instead of passing out basic skills like so many miserly crumbs (and then testing to make sure each child has consumed his or her crumb), why not offer banquets, and accept that different kids will consume different food at different times, but everyone will be well fed.

That means one big, content-packed, thought-provoking, hands-on lesson for teachers to teach at a time. One class full of kids contributing many different talents and skills. A teacher who has time to push, guide, and challenge each kid, because no one is bored.

There is a choice and you can’t have it both ways. But the choice isn’t between children who achieve differently. It’s between learning-as-crumb and learning-as-banquet.

Guess what - I was quoted in the Washington Post last week in an article on math acceleration in our county (I’m on page 2).

According to the article, a few schools in our county have achieved something pretty amazing - no upper grade students are taking grade-level math. All the 5th graders at Potomac Elementary are taking either 6th or 7th grade math.

Oh, the trials of life in upper-class suburbia. The kids are too smart! How did we get into this mess?

There’s no evidence that, at this level, the curriculum has been “dumbed down,” compared with earlier generations. And though teaching has certainly improved over the years, achievement nationwide has been essentially flat. Nope, it’s pretty clear that the religion of “high expectations” and corresponding test score mania is driving this.

So the question everyone asks is, “what’s wrong with that?” Isn’t it good to expect more of kids? Shouldn’t we push them as hard as possible, as high as possible, as fast as possible?

To which I say, “Sure - if you want a nation of neurotic kids with poor self-image who hate math and don’t know anything about anything else.”

According to many parents I talk with, we are making some kids crazy, expecting very grown up things of them in the name of pumping up their achievement. As the article noted, the only way we have of teaching more, faster, is to dump young kids into curriculum written for older kids - older kids who’ve had time to learn to read better, develop greater general knowledge, and gain developmental maturity necessary to understand abstractions and handle higher homework loads. Lack of age-appropriateness makes a lot of kids see math class as unpleasant and math itself as difficult.

Suppose it’s true that we’ve improved math curriculum and teaching so much that most kids are bored spending an hour a day on grade-level curriculum. Then there are at least two responses. Response #1 is what we’re doing - spend an hour or more each day on more and more advanced curriculum.

BUT that’s not the only possible response. What if we did this:

Cut back on math instruction to a half-hour, or an hour 3 x per week, and go at a pace that will get kids to algebra by 8th grade. HERESY???? Well, isn’t everyone complaining about narrowing curriculum? What if we spent that extra time on real world math applications with additional curriculum content - building scale-size log cabins to learn about history, taking and analyzing data in science - you get the idea.

Wouldn’t school be a lot more, well, educational? Wouldn’t the kids love school more?

Wouldn’t kids, when they finally get to algebra-geometry-calculus, feel old enough to get down to real abstraction with gusto instead of fear?

We have to get over the idea that “high expectations” only applies to math - the more abstract the better. We should have high expectations that our kids have broad and deep general knowledge and the know-how to put that knowledge to work.

Will Okun’s March 27 piece describes Hoops High, a hugely popular program in which Chicago students produce a weekly TV show covering high school sporting events. At the heart of the piece is this quote from the program’s teacher, Jeff McCarter:

“School does not have to be fun, but it should be interesting,” opines McCarter. “All these students have potential; we just have to figure out how to spark their interest. I think there is a great need for us to show these young people that we respect and believe they are capable of achievement. We should encourage them to express themselves and listen to what they say.”

The piece drew a range of comments that pretty much reflect the range of public opinion about high-tech or creative electives in inner city schools.

Some respondents agree with Okun, that programs like Hoops High are essential for getting kids to come to school at all. Research backs up that such classes do boost attendance. School has to be meaningful in the here-and-now, they argue, because inner city kids don’t have much access to visions of interesting futures.

But other respondents said that if kids produce a sportscast but can’t read or write, the experience hasn’t prepared them for a successful future. These kids, they suggest, need to buckle down and learn the real stuff that will prepare them for college and economic success.

Missing from the analysis is the accountability movement’s life-sucking impact on the regular curriculum. It used to be that good teachers freely mixed creative projects and real-world applications with the standard curriculum. As in, “While we’re learning about Vietnam, go interview one of your relatives, and we’ll make a web site of local heroes.” These projects built traditional knowledge and skills in the context of immediately-meaningful experiences.

But more and more, anything with a remote chance of engaging students is crowded out of the standard curriculum in the name of covering more material. That means that if school is fun at all, it’s only fun during electives, which are criticized for not building traditional skills.

School should be interesting - but not just during electives. We should be looking to electives to teach us how to do better with the regular curriculum, and not count on them to do all the heavy lifting of engaging students.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the always eloquent John Holt:

“It is a serious mistake to say that, in order to learn, children must first be able to ‘delay gratification,’ i.e., must be willing to learn useless and meaningless things on the faint chance that later they may be able to make use of some of them. It is their desire and determination to do real things, not in the future but right now, that gives children the curiosity, energy, determination, and patience to learn all they learn.”

I was recently referred to Paul Lockhart’s lovely essay, “A Mathematician’s Lament.” According to Lockhart, it would be impossible to craft a math curriculum that is more likely to beat the love of math out of kids than our current math education system. He begins by imagining that music education were conducted the same way.

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.

As a mathematician, he sees mathematics as an art - the creation of representation, pattern, and beauty. He wants a curriculum in which our students approach math with the same joy they approach other arts (let’s let alone for a minute that he unintentionally idealizes art and music education).

There is a big honkin’ misconception about math reform - both “New Math” and more recent reforms - that they are watered down versions of real math. What people generally don’t understand is that reform math was at its birth an attempt by practicing mathematicians to expose kids to the joy and beauty of mathematics in all its purity - the joy they felt every day, and felt kids never saw. Then, went the reasoning, kids would see themselves as mathematicians and buy into the effort it takes to get really good at math. They would understand what they were doing, and be more mathematically competent in the real world and in math class.

Well, it turns out to be a tall order - change a culture’s definition of a subject, give teachers who aren’t mathematicians the grounding to coach “real” math, and give students the tools to perform it. And it appears we’re on the verge of giving up, at least for now. That’s tragic.

Because the idea is so good and so important. As my friend Jennifer Knudsen once said, learning math without understanding is like traveling while wearing blinders, along a road through a complicated landscape . You’re OK as long as you stay on the road, but take one step off and you’re totally lost. You’re much better off if you learn the patterns and logic of the terrain. Then you can go anywhere and never be lost.

So goes it with learning math. Learn by rote, and you’re stuck on a narrow road. Mathematicians, and lots of educators, think we can do better for our kids.

Oh, NPR, you’re supposed to be deeper than this. In a story on a recently released math curriculum report, reporter Claudio Sanchez launches right in on everyone’s favorite mathematical whipping boy, “fuzzy math.”

The “fuzzy” math lessons that kids come home with drive parents crazy and confuse even teachers. So, two years ago, alarmed by all of the fuzziness and U.S. students’ lackluster performance on international math tests, the Bush administration asked a panel of experts to bring more coherence and depth to the math curriculum.

“Fuzzy Math” is like “politically correct.” It’s an insult people hurl when they don’t want to think hard. The fact is, bad math curriculum comes in all flavors. Traditional single-answer approaches can teach without understanding, and the problem/project based approaches people call “fuzzy” can teach without content.

But the idea behind what people call fuzzy is simple and sound: If kids are never asked to do anything more than solve the next arithmetic problem in the book, how will they know what do do when they hit an honest-to-goodness problem in the real world? The real world doesn’t present neat little one-step problems with the word “MULTIPLY” in bold type. The real world asks you to measure your room and figure out how much paint to buy. Clearly, there’s more than one method for doing that, and kids should be taught, and allowed to practice, pulling together different math techniques to solve a complicated problem. That IS a creative process, but that doesn’t make it less rigorous.

So, if we’re all going to agree that some degree of automaticity and ease with standard arithmetical procedures is a good thing, let’s also agree that kids who can’t deal with fuzziness don’t really have command of their math. And if educators or parents don’t like the way we’re currently teaching ill-structured problem solving, well, let’s come up with something better instead of just giving up.

Because there’s more to math instruction than preparation for algebra. There’s also preparation for life.

What a surprise - only 4% of New York City elementary schools are complying with state art education requirements, according to the New York Times.

The mayor notes that 98% of the schools have “some” arts instruction.

The fact is, there are only so many hours in the school day. And devoting most of them to reading and math doesn’t leave much time for other things. If science and social studies are cut, what hope is there for art?

Yet even pounding away at reading like that, reading achievement is essentially flat, according to national assessments. Indeed, there is evidence that cutting out science, social studies, and other subjects which build broad and deep background knowledge is exactly the wrong strategy for improving reading comprehension, as E.D. Hirsch writes here.

And cutting arts education is also exactly the wrong way to prepare kids to operate in the 21st century. Visual expression has never been more ubiquitous, and visual literacy impacts our ability to make good decisions.

The research is pretty solid on this point: understanding letter-sound relationships is key to learning to read for most kids. My objections to phonics-based curriculums are about the way they continue teaching phonics much longer than the research says is useful, and to the way over-emphasis on phonics crowds out every reason a kid would want to read - great literature, inspiring and fascinating content, and lovely use of language.

So, I think this article about synthetic phonics is pretty exciting.

The names of the letters are eschewed because of the confusion it causes among struggling readers, so only the sounds of the letters are taught.

Students learn their first six sounds in the first six days, which are the most commonly used sounds in English: s, a, t, i, p and n. By their second week of school, they can read words such as sat, at, in, pant, tin.

With more complex sounds, where two letters form one sound, the class might spend a couple of days to ensure the students have properly learnt it.

All sounds are learnt by the middle of term two, whereas under analytic phonics it takes three years to get through all the sound-letter combinations.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Entirely successful, according to early research results. And lots of room left in the day for story time.