1/ Knowledge Matters

First, let’s get one thing straight. The standards movement has heavily influenced the past twenty or thirty years in education. We certainly agree with the standards movement's aims, and at least in math, they have done some good. However, they have been a disaster in reading/ELA and writ large. The function of standards combined with standardized testing (again, not a bad thing on its own) has been to push nearly all curricula and teaching towards a skills-based approach rather than a knowledge-building approach. Our aim as a system should be to build knowledge and skills, not just skills. Moving away from this simple truth has been perhaps the single largest reason for why progress in education seems to have stagnated despite our best reform efforts. The solutions are old and simple in concept- but quite hard to pull off.

2/ Take Action

Learning is deeper and more durable when it is effortful. Easy reading and re-reading of material leads to fluency with the content, but not long-term retention and transfer. School leaders need to move away from instructional regimes that focus solely on lecturing or having students passively consume information. Instead, should embrace active learning strategies that require students to wrestle with challenges.

This could take the form of frequent retrieval practice through low-stakes quizzing (think flash cards), attempting to solve problems before being taught solutions, or engaging in back-and-forth dialogues and debates. The book's authors highlight the value of spreading out practice over time rather than concentrating it into a short period - a concept known as spacing or spaced practice. Curriculums and lesson plans should introduce key concepts through spaced repetition, circling back to solidify understanding rather than rushing through material.

Schools should be helping students make connections across contexts through interleaving. Rather than practicing one skill set or concept in isolation before moving on, teachers should constantly intermix multiple types of problems, requiring students to analyze and discriminate between situations to select the appropriate strategy. This variability in practice leads to deeper, more flexible learning that can transfer across domains. School leaders should critically examine their teaching methods and look for opportunities to make learning more effortful, spaced, and interleaved.

To bring each of these to life in your school you will need to ensure that content is prioritized over skills, that knowledge building is the end game, that students are given the necessary tools and habits to build knowledge (teach students to create flashcards and quiz themselves as a primary form of studying), and that your curricula, units, and lessons are cohesive, purposefully spiral content, and that assessments measure, and thus prioritize knowledge. See. Simple.

Work with thriveEd

We are accepting clients for the 24-25 SY. If you want to work with us, email [email protected] to schedule an initial call.

• Leadership Coaching (Superintendent/ C&I Dept/ School Leadership)

• Strategic Planning

• Curriculum Implementation

• Curriculum Adoption

• Dashboards

• Continuous Improvement (identifying leading and lagging indicators for Key Performance Indicators)