Early Learning: Four Roads to Academic Success
A Forum — September 6, 1996
Overview
This forum featured The Merrow Report, producers of a continuing PBS documentary series on American public education. The Merrow Report Producer Jim Spahr screened for participants the video Early Learning, which examines four models of education for children.
Early Learning supports 20 years of research which shows that the early stages of education set the tone and standard for their future learning. The four models each take a vastly different approach to the education of young people, indicating that the act of intervening early in the academic lives of all young people is nearly as important as the type of early intervention that is undertaken.
Through discussions with students, teachers, administrators and the founders of the four models, Early Learning provides a birds-eye view of the direct impact of classroom and education reform. Though lack of evidence does not allow for a determination of long-term results (all are one to two years old), the individuals interviewed in the video all state that these programs have made a noticeable difference in the academic achievement, test scores and attendance rates of students. The comparison of each model to the other also allowed for an analysis on which components of each are most effective.
The first model, "Roots and Wings," was developed by Dr. Robert Slavin, and is designed to ensure that all students keep pace with rigorous academic demands. Roots and Wings outlines a specific curriculum of what teachers will teach and how it will be taught, as well as specific achievement levels which students are expected to reach. Students are tested regularly to determine if they are meeting these goals, and if they are not, they receive individual support and tutoring to help them catch up with their classmates in preparation for the next levels of education.
The "School Development Program" was designed by Dr. James Comer to create learning environments which take advantage of a community's vast resources. Schools which follow this model involve parents, employers and local community-based organizations in all aspects of a student's education. In this way, learning takes on an entirely new focus, and extends beyond the "four walls" of the school building. In addition to making learning real-world driven, this also helps to create a support system for young people once they leave the school building at the end of the day.
Dr. E.D. Hirsch created the "Core Knowledge" approach with the belief that students reach higher levels of achievement when learning is centered around content-driven themes. In this model, all students in each grade examine a shared body of knowledge, with each being connected to a new theme or content area in the next grade. This allows for students to build knowledge in a structured, cumulative manner, rather than haphazardly, as they move through the education system.
Dr. Henry Levin's "Accelerated Schools Project" contends that all students have the ability to reach high ("accelerated") levels of achievement. According to Levin, all students should be viewed as "gifted" when they enter school and exposed to academic learning experiences that treat them as such. As a result, students will perform better and be more prepared for school and work than non-accelerated peers.
Discussion Period
The discussion period was mediated by Theresa Dozier, Special Advisor to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, and Kati Haycock of The Education Trust. Both discussed reasons for the lack of similar early learning models across the nation.
Dozier highlighted one of the video's closing comments, made by Lauren Resnick of the University of Pittsburgh, that Americans generally believe some people have more natural ability to learn than others. The models examined in Early Learning, however, show that while there is no one best way to learn, all students can reach the same high levels of achievement.
Haycock posed a more baseline response. The core ideas in these approaches, she stated, are very simple, yet such models are not common practice in the nation's schools. Other forum participants responded that these types of models attack the existing school structure and overall environment of learning. While this may be the most effective and promising approach to eradicating low levels of student achievement, the most common approach is to simply lower standards and promote the status quo in education. Early Learning suggests that parents, teachers and the public may want to reexamine how students learn.