Core Knowledge Foundation: Alliance for Content-Based Materials and Pedagogy

Purpose

Academic problems in secondary and postsecondary education often have their roots in the early years of schooling. The University of Virginia's Core Knowledge Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1986, seeks to prevent some of these problems by demonstrating that academic preparedness depends upon establishing strong foundations of knowledge early. The foundation aims to give students from different regions and economic backgrounds a common curricular language, and thus prevent the creation of an educational underclass.

The Alliance for Content-Based Materials and Pedagogy was a collaboration among the Core Knowledge Foundation, Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas), Hawthorne Elementary School (also in San Antonio), and five other elementary schools. The alliance focused on implementing a content-rich curriculum, collaboratively creating lessons to support it, developing a cadre of teachers as trainers, and disseminating its materials and results nationally.

Innovative Features

The Core Knowledge Sequence, a 100-page curricular guide, puts into place the ideas of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. as published in his works, Cultural Literacy and The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, as well as his series of books on what grade school teachers should teach and what children should know. The sequence provides a model of a coherent, content-rich core curriculum for the early grades as a planned progression of specific knowledge in history, geography, mathematics, science, language arts, and fine arts. The sequence was designed by a diverse group of teachers, parents, scientists, and experts on America's multicultural traditions.

Core Knowledge builds new knowledge on what students already know. It is presented to children early, when they are most receptive to it, adapts to a mobile society where students frequently change schools, makes up for academic deficiencies in the early grades so as not to impair later learning, and has the same academic expectations of all children.

Students using the Core Knowledge curriculum typically study subjects such as: Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; the Industrial Revolution; limericks, haiku, and poetry; Rembrandt, Monet, and Michelangelo; Beethoven and Mozart; the Underground Railroad; the Trail of Tears; Brown vs. Board of Education; the Mexican Revolution; photosynthesis; medieval African empires; the Bill of Rights; ecosystems; women's suffrage; and the Harlem Renaissance. Specific learning outcomes accompany each section of the curriculum.

Evaluation

The evaluation of the Core Knowledge project was entrusted to researchers at Trinity University in conjunction with the Office of Research and Evaluation of the San Antonio Independent School District. The ambitious evaluation design included standardized achievement tests, attitude tests, site visits to model schools, collection of baseline performance data in model school sites, creation of school and student data profiles, content analyses of student portfolios, and measures of student attendance, suspension and discipline.

Pre- and posttest comparisons of achievement data for matched samples of students were used at model and control schools. As much as possible, the control schools were selected to be similar in size, teaching staff, physical plan, and composition of student body. Many of the standardized tests employed were already in place at each school and not specially targeted to the Core Knowledge program. This use of existing evaluative instruments enabled both analysis over time and comparison with similar schools within the same district.

Education Matters of Cambridge, Mass., was enlisted to conduct extended observations and interviews with parents, teachers, students, administrators and graduate interns.

Project Impact

Obviously, the real effects of such a curricular experiment are cumulative, as children build solid foundations of knowledge in a clear sequence, year by year. Nevertheless, 1995 evaluation data from at least five diverse model Core Knowledge schools in New York, Florida, Washington, Indiana and Texas illustrate how these schools appear to be raising the academic levels of all students, especially disadvantaged ones, and narrowing the gap between academic haves and have-nots.

Core Knowledge evaluation reports suggest dramatic gains in both quality and equity in these schools. For example, at Mohegan School, located in the innermost South Bronx and serving primarily Latino and African American students, the average improvement per pupil over a school year in the Total Language Arts Battery was more than twice the average improvement in the district. A comparable improvement in equity (i.e., children enabled to perform up to their potential) is implied by data showing that the lowest quartile of students made gains 30 percent greater than the gains made by the lowest quartile in the district as a whole. Aside from outperforming neighboring schools, Mohegan's disciplinary problems went down and attendance went up.

Similar improvement in quality and equity was demonstrated by a three-year longitudinal comparison of Three Oaks Elementary, in Fort Myers, Fla., with a control group in the same district. Although the control school began the study with higher scores, over a three-year period, Three Oaks overtook and surpassed the control school. As measured by the Total Battery of the California Test of Basic Skills, the mean at Three Oaks moved from 94 points below the national mean to a point above it. The standard deviation in students' scores narrowed from 65.77 to 33.64, indicating (as did other measures) that the lowest-performing students were being raised to the mean. Disadvantaged students made the greatest relative improvement. Pupil suspensions dropped to zero and teacher and student attendance increased simultaneously with higher scores on standardized reading tests.

In 1994, students at Ridge View Elementary in Kennewick, Wash., showed that, on the state mandated tests, they improved their reading, language, math and science scores impressively above 1993 scores. Social studies was the only area in which students' performance remained unchanged.

At Highland Heights Elementary in rural Indiana, second through fifth graders, taking either the Indiana State Proficiency Test or the California Achievement Test, steadily improved their test scores since adoption of the Core Knowledge curriculum in 1992.

Figures 1 and 2 compare 1994-1995 reading performance in grades 3-5 at Hawthorne Elementary with other schools in the San Antonio, Texas, District. Hawthorne students in the third grade performed markedly below the district average, but by the fifth grade they significantly exceeded the district average on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Their successive grade-level increases showed stronger upward trends than those for other San Antonio elementary schools, confirming Hirsch's notion that Core Knowledge achievements build on themselves and that early deficiencies can be ameliorated over time.

The Washington Post reported in November of 1996 that test scores soared the preceding year in Calvert County, Md., after the introduction of Core Knowledge, moving the county from twelfth in the state to sixth. Calvert County is the first system in the nation to adopt Core Knowledge for the entire school district.

Results reported in 1997 from Core Knowledge schools in Colorado and Washington show students performing highly on state-mandated exams assessing abilities in independent analysis and expression. At High Peaks Focus School in Boulder, Colo., all fourth-graders tested above the proficiency standards in reading on the Colorado Student Assessment, and 78 percent scored above proficiency in writing. Their scores were the highest in the state for any public school that is not a magnet school for the gifted.

Ridge View Elementary School in Kennewick, Wash., achieved one of the highest percentages of students meeting the standard in all four areas on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning-mathematics, reading, writing and listening. The test evaluates subject matter knowledge, application of knowledge to real-world situations and analytical skills by having students read and apply information to a problem and then explain their reasoning process. Seventy percent of Ridge View students are either minorities, eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs, or speak a second language at home.

Project Continuation and Recognition

At last count 350 schools nationwide have adopted or are phasing in Core Knowledge programs. These schools are remarkably diverse, including urban schools in the South Bronx, rural schools in the Mississippi Delta, suburban schools in Florida and Washington, and Catholic schools, Jewish academies, and other private day schools. Core Knowledge has received widespread media attention. It has been the topic of feature stories on the major television networks, and its staff has been overwhelmed by requests for information.

The sixth National Core Knowledge Conference was held in Denver, Colo., in March 1997, featuring acclaimed children's authors, professional scholars, and visits by conference attendees to participating Core Knowledge schools.

The results of the Core Knowledge experiment show how powerful teaching and learning can be when critical content is aligned with skills instruction in the early grades. As a working model of a national curriculum, it projects a common vision for academic success by detailing explicit, year-by-year recommendations for specific content in a coherent sequence. This ladder of themes and ideas allows students to proceed grade by grade to increasingly advanced levels of understanding. It breaks through the low ceiling of expectations of which public schools are accused by providing all children with an equitable baseline of knowledge and equal access to it.

Available Information

Aside from the two books by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., mentioned earlier, one may order the Core Knowledge Sequence (revised 1995); A School's Guide to Core Knowledge: Ideas for Implementation; Books to Build On: A Grade-by-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers; Books 1-6 in the Core Knowledge Resource Series: What Your First [Second, etc.] Grader Needs to Know; and What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know and Lesson Plans (22 lessons for grades K-5 compiled at the Fourth National Core Knowledge Conference). Guidelines for seventh and eighth grades have been reviewed by teachers and field tested in schools and will be published soon.

To order any of the above, call 1-800-238-3233. To join the Core Knowledge Network, Core-Net, send an e-mail to: coreknow@coreknowledge.org. The Core Knowledge Foundation has a Web page at: http://coreknowledge.org/CK/. It contains, among other things, information articles, lesson plans, discussion lists, conference announcements and agendas, job postings, and curricular resources.

For a recent evaluation of the Core Knowledge experience at one of the model schools, see Gail Owen Schubnell, "Hawthorne Elementary School: The Evaluator's Perspective," Journal of Education for Students at Risk, Volume 1, Number 1, 1996, pp. 34-39. For an excerpt from E. D. Hirsch's recent book, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, see "Reality's Revenge: Research and Ideology," in the American Educator, fall 1996 issue.

For further information, contact:

John Holdren
Research and Publications
Core Knowledge Foundation
801 E. High St.
Charlottesville, VA 22902
Telephone: 804-977-7550 or 800-238-3233

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