Fostering Public Debate: B.B. sup’t okay with graduation requirement changes

Westmore News columnist Dick Hubert asked Blind Brook Schools Superintendent Dr. Colin Byrne to comment on the column I penned on the New York State Board of Regents’ proposed changes in graduation requirements, to be voted on at the Regents’ Nov. 4-5 board meeting. Dr. Byrne’s email is followed by my responses. I invite readers to weigh in via letters to the editor at [email protected] if they have opinions on the matter.

Dr. Byrne’s email

Thanks for sharing this [column]. I would respectfully disagree with Dr. Schaefer’s perspective that the proposed changes are potentially harmful to children’s learning.

The changes that are being proposed were formulated by a blue-ribbon commission that was composed of a wide variety of stakeholders, including educators and businesspeople. The changes recognize that the world that we live in has changed from when our educational system was first created. Maintaining the structure of the system that educated us does not make sense for children who are facing a very different workplace and world in the 21st century.

There seems to be a misunderstanding that the proposed changes will somehow reduce the amount of content that students will master. The idea is to move away from the past system of information memorization and focus on not just comprehension but also application of concepts. This will lead to a deeper understanding of topics and would reduce the reduction in recall that typically happens from year to year. Although students won’t be required to pass a Regents test to graduate, students will have to demonstrate their mastery of the material before being allowed to graduate. The specifics of what that will be is still being worked out. Also, these changes won’t jeopardize our students’ preparedness for college. I would argue that the changes will promote greater problem solving and creative thinking in addition to mastery of content which will serve students well in college and in life.

My response 

Contrary to Dr. Byrne’s assurance that the 70-member Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) that generated a new “Vision” of New York high school graduates was very diverse, a review of the Commission’s membership indicates otherwise. While Dr. Byrne’s claim echoes the description of the Commission by Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa as “an incredibly diverse group of expert practitioners and the public,” the BRC lacked genuine substantive diversity.

It included only three members of parent groups (one of them representing home schoolers) and four members of the business and industrial sector, along with eight classroom teachers. The BRC otherwise consisted mostly of education professors, current and past school administrators, and school board members. In other words, it was dominated by members of the education “establishment,” many of whom are adherents of the latest fads in pedagogical theory.

While Dr. Byrne justifies the altered scheme of education by maintaining that it’s necessary to adapt to changes that have taken place in the world, the world has been changing for millennia. What has not changed is human nature. The young will always need to be guided and educated by their well-prepared elders more than by their peers. In modern societies, characterized by complex international and domestic relations, and a high dependence on accumulated scientific and technological knowledge, the need for transmitting such knowledge is greater than ever. No less necessary, given the conveyance of so much misinformation by social media, is the need for students to acquire genuine knowledge of America’s political, cultural, and religious heritage.

I am quite surprised by Dr. Byrne’s representation as an advantage of the new “Vision” that it will entail less “information memorization” by students so that they will forget less—allegedly enabling them to go more deeply into particular topics. In other words, the less they are taught, the less they’ll have to forget, so they’ll somehow learn more as a result!

It is common among contemporary education theorists to disparage memorization, since it seems less enjoyable, and more difficult, than group discussions. But plenty of solid research, as well as people’s personal experience, demonstrates that acquiring knowledge is not boring for children.

Anyone who’s put a toddler on his lap to read a story knows that when he finishes, the first word from the child is likely to be “again.” Within a couple of days of reading the same story over and over, the child has it memorized so that if you skip a word, he tells you what you left out and makes you read it correctly. Children’s minds are like sponges; they are capable of eagerly absorbing and memorizing vast amounts of material, so long as it is well taught.

Third graders, for instance, will easily memorize the multiplication tables if you challenge them and make a competition out of it. If children acquire important factual knowledge when they are young (about science, math, and history; the rules of grammar and effective writing; foreign languages; even memorizing classic poetry), they will have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon for the rest of their lives. Of course, teachers need to do their best to make the process of learning enjoyable. But students cannot think “critically” without having such knowledge as a base. This is common sense, even if contemporary education theorists reject it.

According to prominent and accomplished educators such as E.D. Hirsch, founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, the introduction of which has helped make many schools successful, and Dr. David Steiner, former New York State Commissioner of Education (and now executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Education Policy), raising the level of student achievement depends on maintaining high standards and a content-rich curriculum.

Comparison with Massachusetts

For purposes of comparison, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts adopted the content-rich approach starting in 1993, reinforcing it with statewide tests (the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), or MCAS) that are required for graduation, and has subsequently scored first in the nation for many years on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). For example, according to the state’s frameworks, its English Language Arts curriculum is designed to “expose students to a diversity of high-quality, authentic literature from multiple genres, cultures, and time periods.” The aim of teaching literature is said to be “not only to sharpen skills of comprehension and analysis, but also to instill in students a deep appreciation for art, beauty, and truth, while broadening their understanding of the human condition from differing points of view.” This kind of curriculum, which “focuses on the acquisition of knowledge,” is also intended to “help students develop empathy for others while learning about who they are as individuals, citizens of this nation, and members of a wider civilization and world.” 

Contrast the Commonwealth’s approach to learning with that contained in the BRC’s proposed “Vision” of a public-school graduate. That vision is explicitly based on a “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework” that was developed by a previous Blue-Ribbon Commission (Framework BRC) appointed by the Regents in 2015. That CRS, which was completed in 2018, was ostensibly designed to “create true equity in New York State’s public education.” Achieving “equity” in education, according to the CRS, means to “affirm racial, linguistic, and cultural identities; prepare students for rigor and independent learning; develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of social change.” The Vision also aims at promoting “cultural competence, social-emotional competence, innovative problem-solving, critical thinking, effective communication, and global citizenship.”

The CRS includes claims that it will entail “high expectations and rigorous instruction, “defined as student-led civic engagement, critical examination of power structures, project-based learning on social justice issues, and student leadership opportunities.”

Where and how will
rigorous instruction occur?

But where and how will “rigorous instruction” occur under the CRS?  If students are leading one another, what will the teachers be doing?  Just stressing the importance of students’ separate “identities” and the necessity of their promoting (unspecified) “social change”? Will there be no attempt to explain and stress the common culture that unites us as Americans rather than trying to pit one group of citizens against others?  The very notion of a “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education” implies the latter approach: “sustaining” what are thought to be distinct “cultures” based on students’ racial or ethnic backgrounds rather than promoting, as part of the learning process, a sense of common citizenship and humanity. Similarly, the notion of “global citizenship” is meaningless since there is no such thing as a single global polity of which anyone can be a citizen. Combined with the other stated goals like “social-emotional learning,” elevating “marginalized voices,” “critical examination of power structures,” and promoting “social change,” the BRC’s Vision amounts to little more than educational gobbledygook, combined with barely disguised political partisanship.

I note that Dr. Byrne does not allude to these aspects of the Vision that I criticized, nor to the abolition of the Regents examinations as a graduation requirement. Do Dr. Byrne and the Blind Brook Board of Education subscribe to the Regents’ radically transformed vision of public education, reducing “memorization” in favor of social-emotional learning and cultural “affirmation”?

Is this what parents want for their children? Perhaps it’s time to ask them, rather than the state’s ostensible education “experts.”

Massachusetts ballot measure

As a postscript, I must acknowledge that the perpetuation of Massachusetts’ superior approach to education is currently threatened by a Nov. 5 ballot measure, heavily financed by the state’s teachers’ union, that will abolish the MCAS requirement (and hence teacher accountability). This measure is opposed by the state’s governor, the president of the National Parents Union, The Boston Globe, multiple chambers of commerce, and other employer groups as shortchanging Massachusetts students, especially those coming from disadvantaged households. Should it nonetheless win at the ballot box, it will erode many of Massachusetts’ educational achievements, just as the watered-down Vision, if enacted, will do to public education in New York. But at least Massachusetts voters, unlike the citizens of New York, will have been given a direct voice in determining whether their state should adopt such a radical transformation in their children’s education.

Regardless of the Massachusetts outcome, however, New York urgently needs to move in the opposite direction from the Vision, fortifying rather than weakening the system of Regents exams. Preserving content-rich standards, rather than substituting vapid goals like “sustaining” diverse “cultures,” is the only way to hold teachers accountable for effectively inculcating important skills and knowledge, and thus preparing students for success in their vocations and as parents and citizens. One important means of bringing about such an improvement in the state’s educational system, as I have argued in a report for the Empire Center for Public Policy, is to alter the way that members of the Regents are selected, so that, like the Massachusetts Board of Education, they are appointed by the state’s governor, for two five-year terms, rather than being chosen by the Legislature for an indefinite number of terms. In this way, the governor herself can be made accountable for the state’s educational outcomes.

Roberta Rubel Schaefer, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy and was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1996-2007.