Curriculum Issue Analysis

Maggie Gearns

TE 818

Several years ago I attended a session at an edcamp conference at Schoolcraft College

called “rocks and sucks”. The facilitator would provide a topic and the participants had to discuss

if the topic “rocks” or “sucks”. One of the issues that has stuck with me was a discussion on

standardization and standards based grading. Several teachers from a charter school that use

standards based grading passionately defended it as the best way to assess learning. Many

teachers felt it was something we should be working towards. I seemed to be in the minority

when I voiced concerns. Two years ago my school district put together a grading and reporting

committee to completely rethink grading practices at the middle school level. From the work of

this committee I saw firsthand how important and controversial grading practices can be. While

standardization and standards based grading can be effective at assessing student knowledge of

content, I believe that when we get caught up in teaching standards we lose sight of our real

focus: our students.

Standards-based grading is a system of instruction and assessment that is based on

student mastery of a particular set of skills or “standards”. Behavior and compliance with school

procedures are not to be included in a student’s grade. Late work is not deducted, formative

assessments are not included in the final grade and students are given multiple opportunities to

revise and retake assessments. Students are assessed on a learning scale, often 4-3-2-1, that

indicates specific criteria for determining mastery. While this is very effective in assessing

learning, the standards movement puts a laser focus on mastery of content as the sole
determinant of student success. When we become fixated on mastery of concepts we lose sight

of our students, and we can fail to provide a well rounded education that provides for physical,

social-emotional and moral well-being. There are many ways that students can be successful,

and failing to master the content does not mean that a student can not have a successful future.

Furthermore, the standards movement does nothing to address the issues and inequities that lead

to poor academic performance.

According to Sleeter and Stillman (2005), in the 1980s, the standards movement viewed

the main purpose of schooling as bolstering the US economy and its national sovereignty and

security. If our primary goal is to create productive workers, it makes sense that we would want

to ensure that all students are graduating with the knowledge and skills they need to hold a

successful job. In this way, creating a set of standards to teach all students makes sense.

However, Larabee (1997) discusses another purpose of public education: social mobility. Social

mobility is the idea that education is a private good, and that one's education serves to give them

a competitive advantage for career and social positions. It is this purpose of schooling that

allows students to follow their dreams and reach their individual goals. When curriculum

becomes standardized, decisions about what is taught, and therefore what is important, are made

at the state or national level. There is no focus on individual goals, and no value given to things

that are not part of the standards. In Do Schools Kill Creativity? Sir Ken Robinson talked about

Gillian Lynne, an English dancer and choreographer who struggled to pay attention in traditional

school but thrived when her mother enrolled her in a dance school. When we put all of our focus

on meeting standards, we lose sight of our students’ passions and talents. As Robinson said “The

consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the
thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized (Robinson, 2006).

Creativity, the arts, athletics, trades and many other things are left out of the school curriculum

because they are not considered valuable. This is unfair to all of our students, but especially

those who lack support for schooling and those who struggle academically but excel in other

areas. Standardization does nothing to further the purpose of social mobility or help students to

reach their individual goals.

As curriculum has become more standardized, some important lessons are left out,

becoming part of the “null curriculum”. Democratic equality, the idea that schools should

prepare students to be good citizens in a democratic society, is another purpose of schooling

discussed by Larabee (1997). We can not fulfill this purpose without teaching kids right from

wrong. Schools have an obligation to provide for moral education. Keddie (2014) quotes Mrs.

J, the assistant principal of the Clementine school, saying, “I don’t think a school that is an exam

factory would be successful...if we create amazing scientists, do they go on to use that

knowledge to construct bombs, or use that knowledge to construct things that make people’s

lives better?” (Keddie, 2014). A moral education teaches students to use their knowledge to

make positive contributions to society. In this way, meeting standards is not enough. We need to

ensure that our students are equipped to use their knowledge to better our world.

In addition to deciding what subjects should be taught in schools, the standards

movement has created a curriculum that is biased in favor of white European history, and doesn’t

give a complete picture of the struggles of many people of various cultures. Sleeter and

Stillman (2005), describe the social studies standards in California as “a story well told”. They

describe how the standards revolve around the history and perspectives of European and
European-American men. Topics like the Conquests of northern Mexico and indegenous peoples

are “marginalized and sanitized” (Sleeter and Stillman, 2005). By choosing parts of our history

that will be taught, we are keeping our students from truly understanding the history of our

country, and how events in our past have shaped many of the problems and conflicts that exist

today. We are also not truly representing the history and culture of our students of color, giving

the impression that their stories are less important than their peers of European decent.

The standards movement does nothing to address the underlying issues that prevent

students from being successful. We are often told that we should be working to narrow the

“achievement-gap” between our high and low performing students. Milner (2013) pointed to

many other gaps that lead education professionals to believe there is an achievement gap. Some

of these include the school-funding gap, the teacher quality gap, the healthcare gap, the nutrition

gap, the affordable housing gap and the wealth and income gap. Simply creating a list of

standards that all students should be required to master does nothing to close these gaps. If we

hope to improve the rate of success of our students and really ensure that we are preparing

productive citizens, we need to address the underlying issues that cause students to struggle.

There are many aspects of the hidden curriculum that are equally as important as

anything we put into the standards. My sixth grade students will likely not remember the parts of

a cell on the day they graduate from high school, at least not as we learned them in sixth grade.

However, I hope that they remember the skills they learned that helped them to become

scientists. Science process skills such as observing, measuring, classifying, analyzing and

communicating are important take-aways that can be assessed in the standards. However,

organization, empathy, compassion, the ability to work with others and meet deadlines are not
assessed by our explicit curriculum, but are equally important to the goals of social mobility and

democratic equality. Standards based grading and standardization of curriculum does not assess

these things. Traditional grading practices leave more flexibility for these concepts to be

included in education. For example, if my students are marked down each day an assignment is

late, their grade is partially reflective of their failure to meet the deadline. This is not considered

an appropriate practice in standards-based grading, but does emphasize the importance of

meeting deadlines.

As our curriculum becomes more standardized, we need to be careful that we are not

losing sight of our students. Certainly there are skills and concepts that we want students to

master, and standardization and standards based grading are not inherently bad. However, we

need to make sure that we are not becoming so focused on standards that we forget that we are

educating young people to become moral citizens. We are helping students to achieve their own

individual goals, and success can be defined differently for different individuals. Furthermore,

we need to ensure that our curriculum does not marginalize the stories of people of minority

cultures. While standardization can ensure that all students are being taught the same material, a

one-size-fits-all approach is not in the best interest of our students or our communities.

References:

Keddie, A. (2015) Prioritizing social and moral learning amid conservative curriculum trends:
spaces of possibility, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47:3, 355-373, DOI:
10.1080/00220272.2014.9414

Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational
Goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81.
Milner, H.M. (2013) Rethinking Achievement Gap Talk in Urban Education. Urban Education,
48(1), 3-8.

Robinson, K. (2009). Do schools kill creativity? [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/

Sleeter, C. and Stillman, J. (2005). Standardizing knowledge in a multicultural society.

Curriculum Inquiry, 35(1). p. 27-46.