Sticking To The Script

By Jodie Morse

Ringed by the run-down buildings of Chicago's South Side, Harold Washington Elementary is the picture of a frayed inner-city school. Eighty-five percent of the students live below the poverty level. And a security guard keeps students inside--and intruders out--once the morning bell rings. But enter El-Roy Estes' fourth-grade classroom and you'll see a model of order. As students wearing crisp blue-and-white uniforms file in, Estes studies a three-ring binder to find out what's on tap for this morning, Day 111 of the school year. He begins the class with grammar exercises and then discusses a short story. All the while, Estes consults his lesson plan, which prods him with very specific instructions, from what to put on the board ("Write 'Realistic Fiction' on the chalkboard") to assignments for the class ("Invite students to determine point of view of the story").

Estes takes his cues from Chicago's controversial "structured curriculum," a scripted day-by-day lesson plan given to the city's 27,400 teachers last fall by the board of education. Though the program is voluntary for now, administrators expect all teachers to draw on it. And they're pushing it on poorly performing teachers and the thousands of rookie teachers and substitutes who flow into the district each year, many of whom are asked to teach subjects for which they were not trained. "As a new teacher, I like it because it does all the brainstorming for you," says Estes. And proponents point to higher test scores in schools that adopt the scripted method. But critics charge that it saps teachers and students of creativity and spontaneity.

For decades teachers have enjoyed almost complete autonomy over how they get their lessons across. It's not uncommon that if two sixth-grade classes in the same school are doing a unit on, say, the American Revolution, one teacher might focus on Paul Revere's ride and another on the Declaration of Independence. But these days, states and districts are taking steps to keep all teachers on the same page. California, Texas, Virginia and Massachusetts have adopted specified curriculums in the past few years. In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers is pouring $2 million into writing a core curriculum for its members; the first installment hits classrooms this fall. More than 6,000 of America's 88,000 public schools have gone a step further, buying into one of a dozen or so prefab curriculums, known as whole-school reforms, that blueprint everything from textbooks to teacher training.

The appeal of the spell-it-out approach is growing because it seems to impact overall performance. Schools that have used these rigid curriculums have seen spikes in sagging test scores, especially among disadvantaged kids. Parents, anxious about the rising importance of standardized tests, like the guarantee that all students will be exposed to a uniform set of skills. And politicians have begun touting the idea on the campaign trail. Al Gore's education agenda cites the benefits of a "core curriculum"; George W. Bush recently spoke at a school that has one. "Teachers don't need creativity," says Diane Ravitch, an education official under President George Bush. "Teachers need to use methods that have proved successful."

One promising method is Success for All, a tightly scripted reading program that has spread to 1,551 elementary schools in 48 states. The brainchild of husband-and-wife researchers at Johns Hopkins University more than a decade ago, the program aims to get at-risk kids academically up to speed with 90 minutes of daily intensive reading. The founders specify that 80% of a school's teachers must vote to adopt the program by secret ballot. Once they do, Success for All micromanages everything down to telling teachers to write questions for the class on Post-it notes to themselves ("What do you think this word means?"). The specificity allows understaffed schools to use all faculty members, including art teachers and librarians, as teachers and to reduce class sizes.

The drill is exacting. At Anthony Bowen School in Washington, a dervish of a teacher named Nadine Broadus begins a reading lesson by tapping the classroom's "word wall" with a baton. "Clock. Hiccup. Clapping," chirps a staccato chorus of first-graders. Lest she get sidetracked, a kitchen timer cues her to move on after one minute. Broadus, a phys.-ed. teacher for 29 years, had no training in reading instruction prior to Success for All. "I had no background," she laughs. "And with this program, I had no choice." The rigor apparently pays off at test time. In a three-year University of Memphis study of local Success for All schools, scores surged past state averages. At Anthony Bowen School, administrators say the scores of more than 50% of the children have risen.

There's considerably more teaching freedom in a program called Core Knowledge. It was fashioned by University of Virginia English professor E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of the best seller Cultural Literacy, on the premise that there's a canon of facts that all schoolchildren should know. In lieu of precise lesson plans, teachers are told that third-graders, for example, should study the Punic Wars and sixth-graders selections from Shakespeare. "There's been a real diffuseness in curricula," says former Education Secretary William Bennett, whose new book The Educated Child lays out a grade-school curriculum based on Core Knowledge. "Kids are reading Batman rather than Henry James, and that's got to change."

At P.S. 137 in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of more than 1,000 Core Knowledge schools nationwide, it already has. Student imitations of Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock paintings decorate the hallways. And at neighboring P.S. 165, also a Core Knowledge school, a third-grade class has christened its pet rabbit Leonardo--after Da Vinci, not DiCaprio.

Scholarly studies of structured-curriculum programs, while encouraging, are by no means conclusive. Richard Venezky, a professor of education at the University of Delaware, who conducted a three-year study of Success for All schools in Baltimore, found that though the lessons were developmentally sound and students made some improvement, they still lagged 2.4 years behind the national average in reading, and 25% couldn't read at all. And the programs' high price tags, coupled with administrative turnover at many struggling schools, can make it difficult to sustain them. Core Knowledge can cost as much as $60,000 in the first year and $15,000 for follow-up training.

Some teachers, who resent any challenge to their autonomy, gripe that structured curriculums merely supply rote facts while stifling creativity among teachers and students alike. "The only teaching this does is to make kids cough up answers on command," says Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve. Adds Linda McNeil, a professor of education at Rice University: "They'll drive out the best teachers and give the weakest a place to hide."

Back in Chicago, Estes carried out Day 111 by the book--but with a few notable exceptions. While his binder called for a bland spelling drill, Estes had the class act out the words. "It does take the first steps for you," he says, "but I still use my creativity to make them want to learn." And, as any good teacher will tell you, there's no script for that.

--With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington and Julie Grace/Chicago

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington and Julie Grace/Chicago