Learn from NYC:

Give Needy Kids 'Core Knowledge'

 

Disadvantaged kids are plenty smart. It's just they don't have a knowledge base -vocabulary, memorized facts, encounters with the arts, experiences with hands-on experiments and activities, and skills with figures.

 

Those are things that middle- and upper-income families give their kids as a natural result of having a higher standard of living, with books in the home, time for weekend learning excursions, richer vocabulary in discussions, and so forth.

 

All of those things are crucial to help children combine and recombine ideas and turn them into concepts, theories and understandings. It doesn't take a slugload of extra money to bring a disadvantaged student up to speed academically. It just takes good curriculum.

 

Talk about a cost-effective solution to the achievement gap!

 

Without giving needy kids a knowledge base, it's as if we're putting Thoroughbreds out there for the Kentucky Derby without feeding them any grain or hay. With the "weak-tea" and Politically Incorrect curriculum we're now using, especially in inner-city grade schools, we're literally denying poor kids a decent knowledge base to give them a level playing field as they move on into high school and college.

 

The Cadillac of school curricula that build a student's knowledge base is the Core Knowledge series from E.D. Hirsch. He is the expert on "cultural literacy" and the "knowledge deficit" who has gained fame fighting American "incomprehensibility" due to bad school curriculum over the last 20 or 30 years.

 

Core Knowledge is in around 800 U.S. schools, with hundreds more that have implemented at least part of the program. Its enriched, content-based approach to literacy, heavy in phonics and vocabulary development, is just a tremendous, quality system of learning.

 

Nebraska has only one full-fledged Core Knowledge program, Cather Elementary in the Millard Public Schools. (The Wisner-Pilger consolidated school uses the materials but is not fully certified.)

 

But maybe there'll be more as word spreads about this good curriculum's high level of effectiveness, especially with low-income students.

 

 New York City Schools are piloting Core Knowledge in 10 of their high-needs schools this year, from kindergarten to second grade. New York schools already are using at least some Core Knowledge materials in about 100 other elementary and middle schools. It's very popular stuff.

 

The NYC Core Knowledge Early Literacy Project will bring the good Core Knowledge curriculum to 10 low-income schools in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island with $2.4 million in private funding. I'm assuming it's so much more money than my plan because they are going to be in 10 big schools and at least 20 or 30 classrooms, while my idea was just for one classroom.

 

The funding will include a thorough evaluation over time, to make sure that an educational foundation from Core Knowledge is better than a start with the "balanced literacy" curricula and teaching methods that most schools, including most schools in Omaha, are using with so-so or even lousy results.

 

Meanwhile, New York City is one of nine school districts across the country piloting the early literacy program for K-2, with private funding. It's very exciting, and I know it's going to work, and work well!

 

I hope and pray that the powers that be in Omaha take notice, and adopt this good teaching style and curricula for inner-city Omaha schools, too. I firmly believe quality curriculum is the answer to making our schools the best they can be, solving most of the woes of inner-city education, and doing it WITHOUT bankrupting the poor beleaguered taxpayer.

 

For more background, here's the text of my Show and Tell for Parents article on Core Knowledge.