The Role of Curriculum in Education Reform

by Matthew Levey

Despite a growing popular consensus that teacher quality is the most significant factor in academic achievement, as a parent and taxpayer the costs and practicality of this focus concern me. Chancellor Joel Klein focuses keenly on better teacher quality. I agree a strong teacher is crucial, especially for low-income students. But the value of our efforts to identify high-quality instructors and ease the removal of low-quality teachers is questionable.

For starters, the value-added measurements at the core of the relevant evaluation systems are nascent at best, as their developers readily admit. The Department of Education has calculated school report cards three different ways in the last three years; this is appropriate flexibility for a new concept, but not indicative of an established metric. Notwithstanding its motives, the teachers union raises a reasonable complaint that valued-added measurements are not ready for prime time. When reformers deny this, their credibility suffers as much as the union’s.

But still, let’s imagine we build the world’s best evaluation system. The Assembly rescinds the tenure provisions of the Taylor law, and the UFT cooperates.

Brave New World

Welcome to Education Utopia. The tool is applied, the data are crunched, and the teachers fall out along a normal distribution, shown at right (Wikipedia explains the math here). 

Starting modestly, we focus on 1,801 teachers two or more standard deviations below average: principals’ multi-factor evaluations are fair, and the 1,801 are removed. Now they have to be replaced with better, harder-to-find teachers, and we must also hire for the usual 20 percent annual attrition.

In year two evaluations improve and our rigor increases. Despite retraining the 10,736 teachers who fall between one and two standard deviations below the mean, only half improve: 5,400 more are terminated. Some overlap probably exists between low-quality and teachers who quit, so this 5,400 may not be completely incremental. And we still need to address attrition.

Now the biggest challenge: training those just “slightly” below average. These 27,000 are more capable of improvement. Only a third are jettisoned, about 9,000. Plus attrition. 

In a few years time, New York City is hiring tens of thousands of new (high-quality) teachers. Just like Los Angeles. And Chicago. And Washington, D.C. And every other major city in America, all of which are now on the very crowded teacher-quality bandwagon. 

The Case for Curriculum

Reform focused primarily on teacher quality raises logistical problems we’re not ready to solve. Knowledgable reformers know we cannot build and maintain an army of superteachers ready for 10- or 20-year careers in Red Hook, Mott Haven and Washington Heights. While teacher quality is important, can the city responsibly assume that it will be able to develop effective tools, win (or roll) over the unions and fix today’s Albany disaster?

Curriculum reform must play an equal role in our efforts. A recent Brookings Institution report noted curriculum’s strong impact on student outcomes. Importantly, in a system as large as ours, curriculum can be developed centrally and replicated at almost no marginal cost, earning a far greater return on investment than merit bonuses for every qualifying teacher or hiring 10,000 high-quality teachers. In short, teacher quality is a long, expensive, politically difficult fix. Curriculum is comparatively fast, cheap, and also effective. 

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