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If you follow the arguments laid forth by a guy like E.D. Hirsch, Petrilli's standard actually makes a lot of sense. It's the basic content knowledge gained in the home and in the community that middle class students can tap into in order to make something out of these "kinds of enrichment". When we assume that this content is being received somewhere else and it isn't, as is the case in many poor and/or urban communities, we end up teaching nothing.

I'm not sure if that's right, but I think that this post either ignores or brushes away that argument. We have materially different populations and though we may want to treat the those at-risk kids the same way we treat the suburban middle class, equal treatment may be the road to inequality.

For whatever reason, I think it's important that we don't start believing that any one way of teaching works for all kids in all scenarios. To get everyone on the same field playing their best, we probably need totally different routines. It's the same standard, but we may need different methods and different metrics to properly assess different people.

What's critical is that we get it right for all populations.

Thanks for your note, J Becker. I don't intend to brush away that argument. It may be that I bit off more than I could chew in this post and was therefore less clear than I should have been. 

I've always found Hirsch's arguments about content knowledge very compelling. But I don't there's much evidence that the kinds of strategies that drive up test scores in middle school math and reading necessarily build the kinds of content knowledge so important to the Core Knowledge sequence. The fact that poor students in charters have no leg up in reading suggests in fact that they face many of the same disadvantages their peers in regular public schools do. They can learn decoding quite well, but when it comes time to interpret more complex texts that assume background knowledge, the deficits grow clearer.

My post attempts to support Petrilli's central question: Should we be satisfied with a system that gives lower-income students much more focus on tested skills while wealthier kids get much more? It may be necessary to do that to build that critical foundation of basic skills in our most vulnerable children, but I don't think we should abandon a richer vision of education for all children down the road. This is a very tough question.

"Should we be satisfied with a system that gives lower-income students much more focus on tested skills while wealthier kids get much more?"

Of course not, but we do, and it has nothing to do with charters. For the most part, middle class kids go to schools that do well on NCLB tests, so they can afford the luxury of enrichment. It's the schools attended by poor kids that are under most pressure to raise test scores. The Obama administration's "Blueprint" codifies this abomination by explicitly taking pressure off schools with scores in the upper 95% or so. The bottom 5% or so are ghetto or poor rural area schools, of course.

The justification for this (to the extent that there is any) is that students need to at least master basic skills before moving onto exotica. That may be true, but let's not deceive ourselves into thinking that this will close achievement gaps.

It's probably the higher performing ghetto kids -- who would do well with enriched offerings, but get stuck in a test prep factory -- who suffer the most.

If you think of students first, it isn't a problem. I think a large comprehensive school can provide appropriate curriculum for the needs of both populations.

Charter school advocates are trying to keep themselves relevant, but there is no reason to leave charters in a central position when we discuss reform. There is nothing structural a charter brings to the table that addresses the problem. On the contrary.

Strangely, Fordham doesn't count Singapore Math standards as high quality compared to the Common Core (MA gets a B+, how disappointing.) when I look at their current front page. Are they on crack? At least they aren't ideologues. ;-)

I’m not completely sure of the traditional public schools suffer from a double standard but I do think we certainly need to listen more carefully what Petrilli said. I also believe that some of it actually makes sense. Hopefully some of these questions will be answered.