The ground-breaking study evaluates the texts and curricula used at CSU schools of education statewide, including campuses in Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, and Sonoma. The CSU system trains the majority of teachers in California.
"The hard evidence clearly shows that traditional teacher-centered, knowledge-based instructional methods improve student achievement more than the progressive child-centered methods favored by California's schools of education," said author Lance Izumi, director of the Pacific Research Institute's Center for School Reform. "This is especially true for children of low socioeconomic status."
Facing the Classroom Challenge examines in detail how student-centered methodologies, such as constructivism, discovery learning, and cooperative learning, degrade spelling, calculation, and standards, essentially leaving students to "construct" knowledge on their own. Teachers are seen as merely facilitators. Excerpts from the required reading of CSU schools of education demonstrate the bias:
San Francisco State University math text: "There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators."
CSU Dominguez Hills multicultural text: "We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story," which includes "racism, sexism, and the greed for money and human labor that disguises itself as 'globalization.'"
By contrast, the study supports teacher-centered learning, in which teachers transmit knowledge and information to their students. This was the pattern of most American schools in the 19th century and part of the 20th, and still characterizes instruction at prestigious American private schools, Catholic schools, and European and Asian schools.
The study highlights Bennett-Kew Elementary School in Inglewood, California, a mainly minority, low-income school, recognized nationally for its performance on state achievement tests. The key reason for the school's success is its commitment to teacher-centered learning. Nancy Ichinaga, longtime principal of the school and recently appointed member of the California State Board of Education, is quoted in the study:
As long as the universities are full of these people who believe that the best way to teach is to get the kids to … learn by discovery and not by the teacher teaching them, you have a problem. And the thing is, with affluent people you get by, but the poor kids do not get by.
If student achievement is to improve, concludes Izumi, the state's institutes of teacher training must adopt proven, teacher-centered methods. He recommends using incentives to encourage reform, including public reporting of test scores by classroom, teacher sanctions, rewards based on test scores, and school-choice scholarships.
The study has drawn praise from J.E. Stone, one of the nation's leading experts on teaching methodology. "Concerned citizens and policymakers need to read this study and then visit the college bookstore that serves their local teacher training institution," said Stone. "They will be able to see for themselves why schools are continuing to fail at the educational mission."
