'Curriculum' Definition Raises Red Flags

By Catherine Gewertz

Ed Week

Calls for shared curriculum for the common standards have triggered renewed debates about who decides what students learn, and even about varied meanings of the word “curriculum,” adding layers of complexity to the job of translating the broad learning goals into classroom teaching.

The most recent calls for common curriculum came from the American Federation of Teachers and the Albert Shanker Institute, a think tank named after the late AFT leader. Many others are working on pieces of that puzzle—an array of instructional resources for states, districts, and teachers. But the calls for “shared” or “common” curricula have sparked particularly heated conversations.

Scholars, bloggers, and activists are exchanging fire about whether shared curriculum means lessons dictated from afar. They’re worrying that the public could lose a voice in shaping what children learn, and asking whether the federal government is overstepping by funding curriculum development.

The common standards, devised by states and content experts under the guidance of governors and state education chiefs, have been adopted by all but seven states.

Some of the debate about common curriculum for the standards is driven, observers say, by the multiple meanings of the word “curriculum.”

To some, that term can mean a scripted, day-to-day lesson plan, while to others, it’s a lean set of big ideas that can be tackled in many ways. In some states, a textbook becomes the de facto curriculum. In others, academic standards and broad outlines called frameworks, with or without model lesson plans and other guidance for teachers, are rolled together and referred to as “state curriculum.” Some school districts purchase off-the-shelf programs they refer to as curricula, and others craft their own.

The multiple meanings of curriculum animate discussions about how to teach the standards. And some observers worry that lack of clarity about the meaning of terms like “curriculum,” “frameworks,” and “curriculum guidelines” risks muddying a public dialogue about an important issue.

“Curriculum is not always easy to define. But it’s crucial that we have clear understandings of what we mean by terms like this,” said J. Wesley Null, an associate professor of curriculum and the foundations of education at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “Otherwise, we have curriculum being implemented that doesn’t do what states or districts hope it will do.”

Local Control

As controversial as standards can be, curriculum can make people even more nervous because it gets one step closer to the classroom and to defining content, some experts say.

“That’s where dicey decisions need to get made. And curriculum, done really well, is going to involve some pedagogical decisions,” said Kathleen Porter-Magee, a former curriculum director for a charter school network who now oversees the standards program for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank.

In calling for “a core curriculum,” the Shanker Institute’s manifesto, issued March 7, drew criticism from some who saw its proposal as a threat to local control over what is taught. The 200 signatories—leaders in education, business, and government—advocated crafting one or more voluntary, broad outlines of the key knowledge and skills students need, not dictating daily lesson plans or specifying how teachers should teach.

Such distinctions are meaningless, said Neal P. McCluskey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington. It’s impossible to make a plausible argument that decisions about even “big ideas” in curriculum won’t prescribe what happens in classrooms, he said.

“The whole point of having national standards is to drive curriculum,” Mr. McCluskey said. “When they start talking about curriculum, they’re putting meat on the bones of the standards. That gets closer and closer to the students.”

Additionally, Mr. McCluskey argued, the common assessments being developed with federal funds by two consortia of states will shape the curriculum. “It’s a tricky semantic debate we’re having, but those tests will have to test something,” he said. “When they test specific readings, we will see that we now have a national curriculum.” ("Tough Work Begins for Race to Top Assessment Winners," September 14, 2010.)

Macro vs. Micro

Some of the heat in the curriculum debate stems from questions about the degree of granularity at issue. Whether “curriculum” means a high-level outline or whether it means the content of a six-week science lesson affects the conversation. And those meanings aren’t ....

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Coverage of “deeper learning” that will prepare students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world is supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, at www.hewlett.org.