Larry Cuban writes that efforts to standardize teaching invariably fail because teachers adapt whatever they are given to the students they teach.
The past half-century has seen record-breaking attempts by policymakers to influence how teachers teach. Record-breaking in the sense that again and again (add one more “again” if you wish) federal and state policymakers and aggressive philanthropists have pushed higher curriculum standards in math, science, social studies, and reading decade after decade. With federal legislation of No Child Left Behind (2002-2015) and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015-) teaching has been influenced, even homogenized (following scripts, test prep, etc.) in those schools threatened by closure or restructuring. Now with Common Core standards, the push to standardize math and language arts instruction in K-12 (e.g., close reading for first graders) repeats earlier efforts to reshape classroom lessons. If past efforts are any indicator, then these efforts to homogenize teaching lead paradoxically, to more, not less, variability in lessons. But this increased variation in teaching seldom alerts policymakers and donors in their offices and suites to reassess the policies they adopt.
The take-aways from this post are first, policies aimed at standardizing classroom practice increase variation in lessons, and, second, teachers are policymakers.
Policies aimed at standardizing classroom practice increase variation in lessons
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I remember when “teaching to the test “ was taboo and considered beneath the profession. Now? We are trained to (in the words of a math coach at our school) “teach with the end in mind”, i.e.: teaching to the test. It has also been called “backwards planning”. Which simply means begin your planning by looking at the test to see what the student must know to ace the test, certainly not to evaluate what they have really learned. I truly hope with the symphony of loud, experienced, wise and influential voices sounding, all of these absurd, counterproductive and highly stressful (for teacher and student) practices will be eradicated like smallpox.
As always, Diane, thank you for all you do.
You are welcome and thank you for pointing out that “teaching to the test” was once considered unethical but has now become the norm.
Shortly after NCLB appeared, we all received training in “Understanding by Design,” affectionately called UBD. This training was how we were supposed to deal with standards. The end should never be a bubble test, which in my view, is a blip on the radar screen. Preparing students to think and reason through rich content so they may move forward in life is far more important than any standardized test.http://www.ascd.org/research-a-topic/understanding-by-design-resources.aspx
So how did you feel about UBD? Frankly, as a special education teacher, even when I taught self contained classes, I was never quite sure what the end would be because my students were all in different places, not to mention that they were different from each other in how they learned. There was no one endpoint. I know the “experts” would say “Differentiate!”, but somewhere down the line I was supposed to grade them. Fortunately no one ever looked at my grades too closely because there was a huge, amorphous component attached to each individual child. In many cases, to compare them would have been ludicrous because I would always be comparing apples and oranges with a few pickles thrown in.
Let me add here that I am lightly biased. I once wrote Wiggins an email with a criticism about something he said. Rather than address my concerns, he dismissed me with some remark about he knew what he was doing and I obviously didn’t.
cx: slightly biased.
I was surprised and disappointed by his response. I don’t think I willingly read or implemented anything he said after that.
I had no problem with the idea of considering what we see as an end goal, and thinking backwards about the ways to get there. However, in teaching students sometimes do not learn in a neat linear path as assumed in UBD. There may be teachable moments that take students in a somewhat different directions. UBD does help to focus planning, but there should be some built in flexibility in the plan, particularly when working with diverse learners. Making standardized tests the end goal is a very short sighted, not particularly useful goal. Wiggins sounds like an arrogant guy.
One notable complication which came up while the teachers in our low-scoring inner city school were forced into training after training was that there was a repeated push for knowing the tests and doing “backwards planning”….but NO ONE was allowed a look at the state tests.
Catch 22!
Telling professional teachers how to teach is a big mistake! When the NCLB came into being, I was still a pretty new teacher. I fell for standardized teaching, and alienated many colleagues trying to get them to go for standardization with me. But when Race to the Top happened, I was more experienced and wiser. Since Common Core, I have resisted telling others how to teach or letting others, particularly private consultant groups, tell me how to teach. Looking back on the backwards planning, I realize that preparing my students to do well on my assessments worked much better than trying to prepare them for tests of standards, and I am sure my colleagues do better without my meddling. Telling teachers how to teach is a big mistake.
Wiggins concept of backward planning is suitable for training, not education. The best evidence for my judgment is the Common Core State Standards and the drop-dead criteria for evaluating curriculua for perfected alignments of curricula with those standards. Wiggins has influenced the development of many other standards, but with little recognition of possibilities for concurrent learning in more than one subject or fortuitous opportunities for learning untethered to any pre-determined structure.
Backward planning is a strategy for training, especially for military and industrial training. It is also a version of the PERT system developed for just-in-time-delivery of products and projects during WWII.
So long as high stakes testing exists, there will be teaching to them. I know of a public school which now must use a script for language arts. That did not come down from a central office to a principal to,a staff without the motivating effect of high stakes testing. Until we kill this hydra, there will be repeated idiocy in our education system.
I don’t know where you teach/live, but our whole district is scripted….ELA, math, science, Gov,( even art!). It has been this way since NCLB and then RTtT made it even worse. It is the reason that we have always rated very well in US New World Report. Common Core has made it so easy to teach to the test…..PARCC, SBAC, SAT, ACT. It’s not an education….it’s test prep from Sept-May and in June they sit around and do nothing.
I don’t see much support for his claim. No doubt homogenization is rarely attained, but I don’t see why he thinks standards-focused schools have more classroom-to-classroom variation than schools that don’t give a fig about standards. In a no-standards school Mrs. X might teach the Aztecs all year while Mrs. Y teaches the Aztecs, Incas and Mayas.
Teachers are policymakers! Yes, we are!
First, it’s important to note the Larry Cuba’s knowledge and experience and insights are incredibly valuable assets to public education.
Second, there’s not really anything wrong with the educational concept(s) behind backward design, if – in fact – the desired outcomes are not limited to discrete pieces of content, but are broader in scope.
A case in point is the Eight Year Study. In essence, the Eight Year Study was a plan to take a group of schools and free them from the traditional college-prep-type curriculum. In Eight Year Study schools, “the general life of the school and methods of teaching should conform to what is now known about the ways in which human beings learn and grow.” Educators and community members “realized that many changes in ways of teaching, as well as in organization and curriculum, were necessary if…school was to become the stimulating, meaningful experience it could be for each student.”
Those involved in the study — who were initially unsure of what their task was, had to alter their perceptions of their work. They came to realize that they were trying to”develop students who regard education as an enduring quest for meanings…They are conscious of the far-reaching consequences of their work.”
The follow-up evaluation of how graduates from the experimental schools did in college compared to graduates of traditional schools.
“found that the graduates from the participating schools in the study earned slightly higher grades; appeared more intellectually curious, objective in their thinking, and resourceful; received slightly more academic honors in each year; were more often judged to possess a high degree of intellectual curiosity and drive; were more often judged to be precise, systematic, and objective in their thinking; more often demonstrated a high degree of resourcefulness in meeting new situations; earned in each college year a higher percentage on on-academic honors; demonstrated a more active concern for what was going on in the world.”
This is what we should be doing lots more of, rather than STEM and Advanced Placement, and “college readiness.”
And speaking of college “readiness,” what happens when students actually arrive on campus? Do colleges promote democratic citizenship through voting. The Washington Monthly notes that “voting tends to be habitual—if you vote in this election, you’re far more likely to vote in the next one, and the ones after that—colleges and universities have an opportunity to boost democratic participation not only in 2020 but for years, or even decades, to come.”
In its recent college rankings, Washington Monthly states that,
“students have been among America’s least faithful voters. In 2014, only 20 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds cast ballots—a record low, and well below that year’s abysmal national turnout rate of 37 percent. The youth turnout rate in 2016 was 46 percent, higher than during the midterms, but still 15 percent less than the overall rate and 24 percent less than turnout among people over seventy…colleges have a responsibility to inspire students to be active citizens…the vast majority [of top performers] are public institutions, many of them lesser-known schools…some of America’s most famous schools, like the California Institute of Technology earned the lowest possible score (zero) on college voting metrics.”
The rankings are interesting:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/september-october-2019/americas-best-colleges-for-student-voting-2019/
Larry Cuban*
I can’t say that I could identify the UBD developed concepts in the study you mentioned.
“Second, there’s not really anything wrong with the educational concept(s) behind backward design, if – in fact – the desired outcomes are not limited to discrete pieces of content, but are broader in scope.”
That caveat is critical and should also include the importance of the questions to be answered and how they are framed.
I’m not endorsing UBD…But I AM saying that if democratic citizenship is the desired outcome of public schooling, then “designing” backward to what takes places in schools and classrooms makes good sense.
I, too, see the benefit in thinking about what you are aiming toward/for–outcomes– and how you want to achieve them. They are called goals. A major difference, I think, between being goal oriented and “UBDed”is in whether we feel the need to obsessively measure/assess the process from beginning to end. I am not really qualified to comment on UBD, so I am probably being unfair, but it strikes me to be like the task analysis we did years ago, just on a grander scale.
Oh yes, goals and objectives in teaching are important. Agreed, it is the obsessive testing along the way that harms the teaching and learning process. And it is OBSESSIVE. (But I think, fingers crossed, things are starting to change?)
The problem is also when the backwards planning is not really backwards planning but teaching to the test. The process is often more important- certainly as important- than the end result. So much learning and growth take place in the process.
“Nonstandard Deviation”
(versification of Yong Zhao – aka “The Zhao
of Education”)
Deviation from the norm’s
Anathema to school reforms
But variance is future’s seed
Not a thing that we should weed
I can’t believe this is happening. When I was a teacher I taught according to the needs and interests of my students, and that worked out very well. They worked hard and produced good learning. I was also supported by parents. Although I don’t know what my students accomplished as adults I am confident it wan’t failure.