This document summarizes the arguments of E.D. Hirsch Jr. and Deborah Meier regarding standards-based education. Hirsch advocates for establishing clear educational standards to promote cultural literacy. Meier is critical of standards-based reform and advocates for an alternative model focused on local control, small schools, and strong student-teacher relationships.

1. Hirsch/Meier
A&HW 5532
SPRING, 2010

2. E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
 Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to
Know, published in 1987, instant best-seller
 Includes 63-page list of 5,000 “Essential names,
phrases, dates, and concepts”
 Hirsch now publishes extensive set of books, What
Every First Grader Needs to Know, etc.; very
popular with home-schoolers
 Has become key figure in rationales for “standard-
based education”

3. Basic Arguments
 Basic goal of his program is to break the cycle of
poverty and illiteracy
 Participation and success in larger society requires
knowledge of shared culture, i.e., “cultural literacy”
 “Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue for
disadvantaged children.” (p. xiii)
 “Only highly literate societies can prosper
economically.” (p. 1)
 Cites numerous indeces of a decline in cultural
literacy: falling test scores, television, complaints
from business leaders.

4. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 “More and more of our young people don‟t know
things we used to assume they knew.” (p. 5)
 Gives example of students who do not know what the
Alamo was, when the Civil War took place, or what
the Brown v. Board of Ed ruling was about. (pp. 6-8)
 Example of time when his father wrote business
letters that alluded to Shakespeare, but could not do
so in today‟s world: “The fact that middle-level
executives no longer share literate background
knowledge is a chief cause of their inability to
communicate effectively.” (pp. 9-10)

5. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Quotes sociologist Orlando Patterson, who wrote that
“To assume that this wider culture is static is an error.
It‟s not a WASP culture; it doesn‟t belong to any group.”
(p. 11)
 “The civic importance of cultural literacy lies in the fact
that true enfranchisement depends upon knowledge,
knowledge upon literacy, and literacy upon cultural
literacy.” (p. 12)
 Multicultural education: “However laudable it is, it
should not be the primary focus of national education. It
should not be allowed to supplant or interfere with our
schools‟ responsibility to ensure our children‟s mastery of
American literate culture.” (p. 18)

6. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 American schools have been dominated by the
content-neutral ideas of Rousseau and Dewey….” (p.
19)
 Argues that television is not to blame. “The schools
themselves must be held partly responsible for
excessive television watching, because they have not
firmly insisted that students complete significant
amounts of homework, an obvious way to increase
time spent on reading and writing.” (p. 20)

7. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 “Providing our children with traditional information
by no means indoctrinates them in a conservative
point of view.” (p. 24)
 “The flux in mainstream culture is obvious to all. But
stability, not change, is the chief characteristic of
cultural literacy.” (p. 29)
 “Our current distaste for memorization is more pious
than realistic.” (p. 30)
 “The more computers we have, the more we need
shared fairy tales, Greek myths, historical images,
and so on.” (p. 31)

8. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 “We will be able to achieve a just and prosperous
society only when our schools ensure that everyone
commands enough shared background knowledge to
be able to communicate effectively with everyone
else.” (p. 32)

9. Deborah Meier
 Founded New York City‟s Central Park East School
in 1974 – small, progressive “alternative” high school
based on Deweyan ideals.
 Founded other schools that became part of the
Coalition of Essential Schools, which was founded on
these basic principles:

10. Meier (cont‟d.)
 Learning to use one's mind well
 Less is More, depth over coverage
 Goals apply to all students
 Personalization
 Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
 Demonstration of mastery
 A tone of decency and trust
 Commitment to the entire school
 Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
 Democracy and equity (this principle was added later, in the
mid-nineties)

11. Basic Arguments
 Explains rapid increase in recent years in numbers of
students expelled from public schools in Chicago and
elimination of alternative programs: “The stories of
Chicago and Lynnfield capture a dark side of the
„standards-based reform‟ movement in American
education: the politically popular movement to devise
national or state-mandated standards for what all kids
should know, and high-stakes tests and sanctions to
make sure they all know it. The stories show how the
appeal to standards can mask and make way for other
agendas: punishing kids, privatizing public education,
giving up on equity.” (p. 4)

12. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Standardization “will not help to develop young
minds, contribute to a robust democratic life, or aid
the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens…. It
undermines the capacity of schools to instruct by
example in the qualities of mind that schools in a
democracy should be fostering in kids –
responsibility for one‟s own ideas, tolerance for the
ideas of others, and a capacity to negotiate
differences.” (pp. 4-5)

13. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Identifies basic features of standards-based
education: an official framework; classroom
curricula, which includes commercial textbooks and
scripted programs, that convey agreed-upon
knowledge; a set of assessment tools (i.e., tests)
designed to measure whether children have achieved
the goals set out in the framework; a scheme of
rewards and punishments aimed at
districts, schools, and mainly individual students
(pp. 5-6)

14. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
Standards-Based Alternative View
 Goals: Should and can  Goals: In a democracy
be a single definition of there are multiple,
what constitutes an legitimate definitions
educated high school of “well educated”.
graduate; all schools Different viewpoints
should follow the same represent a healthy
definition tension that is an
essential part of
democracy.

15. Standards-Based Alternative View
 Authority: Definition  Authority: Experts
of a “good education” should be subservient
should be left to to citizens. Students
experts, including need to see that the
educators, political adults who teach them
officials, leaders from have been empowered
industry and the major to make decisions for
academic disciplines. them.

16. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
Standards-Based Alternative View
 Assessment: If we have  Assessment: Standardized
tests are too simple and
all agreed on a simple-minded for high-
standard, it will be easy stakes assessment.
to devise a tool to Decisions regarding kids
should always be based on
measure how well the “multiple sources of
standard is being met. evidence that seem
This allows for clear appropriate and credible to
comparisons among those most concerned.”
There is a clear need for
students, schools, “second opinions.”
districts, and states.

17. Standards-Based Alternative View
 Enforcement:  Enforcement:
Sanctions must be Sanctions should
removed from the remain in the hands of
local, self-interested people who know the
parties (teachers, particulars of each
parents, local school child and each
boards) situation.

18. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
Standards-Based Alternative View
 Equity: Clear  Equity: A fairer
standards, applied distribution of
equally to all students, resources is the best
is the best route to means of attaining
educational equity. educational equity.

19. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
Standards-Based Alternative View
 Effective Learning:  Effective
Learning:Improved
Clear-cut expectations, learning is best achieved
accompanied by by improving teaching
automatic rewards and and learning
relationships of both
punishments will teachers and learners.
produce the greatest Learning depends on the
effort, which will lead engagement of learners
on their own behalf; this
to effective learning. is largely a function of
their relationship with
the school.

20. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Meier suggests an “alternative model,” based on the
following:
 Increased local decision-making and decrease in school-related
bureaucracy
 Schools should never be theaters based on the imposition of
externally-imposed standards.
 Must be small schools, in which students and teachers can have
closer, more meaningful relationships
 Parental involvement
 High standards – but determined by the local community, not an
external authority, standards “that give schooling purpose and
coherence.”

21. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Alternative model (continued):
 Standards and assessments constantly revised and re-examined
 Based on her experience, if you do all this students will eventually
“buy in” to the system
 Kids have a strong need for the kind of community and
relationships this sort of school can provide
 Wants to see “small self-governing schools of choice, operating
with considerable flexibility and freedom.” (p. 24)

22. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 The “dystopia of the ant colony, the smoothly
functioning (and quietly humming) factory where
everything goes according to plan” vs. “a messy,
often rambunctious, community, with its multiple
demands and complicated trade-offs.” (p. 29)
 “A vibrant and nurturing community, with clear and
regular guideposts – its own set of understanding, its
people with a commitment to one another that feels
something rather like love and affection – can
sustain such rapid change without losing its
humanity.” (p. 30)

23. Basic Arguments (cont‟d.)
 Rejects economic argument; argues that political
participation is much more important than economic
achievement; cites low voter turnout as symptom of
a real crisis in American culture and education.
 The standards-based movement will ultimately
widen the gap between rich and poor, haves and
have-nots. Her model may not create equity, but it
will not make the situation worse.