Are We Really Waiting for Superman?
by Lisa Hansel
Having spent the last week thinking a lot about teacher preparation, I’d like to share a few more thoughts on teaching, teacher preparation, and student achievement. In the last two posts, we’ve seen that far too many teacher preparation programs eschew preparationand that, instead, there’s an emphasis on social-justice activism, which often results in academic programs that try to build character while ignoring the social-justice lessons embedded in many great works of literature.
So the typical new teacher is minimally prepared, yet feels responsible for ameliorating the ills of society. On top of that, few administrators, leaders, or reformers offer any meaningful support.
We really are waiting for Superman (and using the dedicated, non-superhero teachers as scapegoats).
Most who care about education seem to agree that, while many of our schools are doing great things, many are not. Yet we skirt around the one lever for improvement that has shown the greatest potential: curriculum.
In a policy paper last year, two Brookings scholars, Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, argued that we ought to be paying far more attention to curriculum:
Students learn principally through interactions with people (teachers and peers) and instructional materials (textbooks, workbooks, instructional software, web-based content, homework, projects, quizzes, and tests). But education policymakers focus primarily on factors removed from those interactions, such as academic standards, teacher evaluation systems,
