NYC’s Proposed Citywide Curriculum Is About Democracy, Not Just Academics
In a City Council hearing earlier this month, Schools Chancellor David Banks and his team doubled down on their commitment to leveraging curriculum as an essential lever for improving schools. Deputy Chancellor Carolyne Quintana stated that officials were “making sure that all of our schools are building in culturally responsive curricula, culturally responsive practices, and culturally responsive classroom libraries.”
City leadership has rightly preserved the progress made under the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio toward training teachers in what’s known as “culturally responsive and sustaining education” (CR-SE), a research-based framework that emphasizes honoring students’ varied cultures and familial and communal experiences as the foundation of equitable and effective teaching.
New York City has a chance to prove something to school districts across the country. We can prove that by systematically putting equity first, students excel. By honoring young people’s experiences, cultures, identities, and talents, they can graduate, yes, but they can also learn to civilly debate, organize, advocate, and vote.
Getting citywide curricula right is a vital first step, and it is of increasing significance.
As we speak, teachers around the country are at the center of a culture war for control of public education. At least 86 school districts in 26 states have banned more than 1,500 books in the last year. When experts recommended that schools increase critical media literacy in English language arts (ELA) classrooms, they were swiftly cursed by cultural conservatives. Florida banned math textbooks, allegedly over “woke” content. Elected officials have condemned critical race theory, as well as its acronymic cousin “culturally responsive teaching.”
Make no mistake: Cultural conservatives home in on what is taught in schools because of the disproportionate impact it has on society now, yes, but especially in the future. In education, what is taught in schools is never simply academic. Curriculum is ideological.
Mayor Eric Adams’s administration seems to know this. That is why they prioritized continuing the development of a citywide curricular framework, begun in the de Blasio years and guided by CR-SE research from New York University, Harvard, and Brown, called Mosaic.
Proponents say that a citywide curricular framework will help all schools ensure greater coherence and quality in teachers’ teaching and students’ learning across the five boroughs. It is a welcome alternative to the status quo, in which too many schools undertake costly curricular redesigns and purchases perennially. Opponents worry that such a curriculum will impede school leaders’ and teachers’ professional freedom to meet the needs of their students and families.
Both sides appear skeptical that the city can realize the Mosaic curricular framework well, and grow frustrated by what they view as its slow progress in realization and by a lack of transparency about what it will ultimately include.
Though I too would like more details about Mosaic, I am actually heartened by its pace.
The city’s unhasty progress on Mosaic suggests to me that they are well aware of the seriousness of the task before them. It is not an abstract intellectual exercise in academics. It is creating the foundation for an equitable school system and an urban democracy driven by the energy and diversity of its young people.
City school officials must do this well. And they know it.
Doing this well means genuinely listening to what students, families, educators and experts say is needed in schools. It means weighing competing priorities in the service of a North Star vision: To create equitable, high-quality schooling in our city.
Doing this well means accounting for students’ lived experiences, current standards and testing realities, existing research on supporting learners post-Covid, as well as CR-SE methods and resources. It means scouring the field for existing resources, and developing new materials for in-person and online learning.
Doing this well also means rolling out adult learning programs about Mosaic for 75,000 teachers and hundreds of thousands of families who can support their children’s learning at home. As someone who leads the popular education website InsideSchools, I can say that Mosaic will inform the resources we offer to thousands of families next year in our online community.
Putting equity first demands diligence and deliberation. Officials are not just writing a curriculum. They are designing the infrastructure for the future of democracy. That infrastructure must affirm who our children are. It must ensure all children participate in high-quality instruction in core subjects while experiencing the cultural and artistic richness our city offers. It must prepare our young people to serve in their communities, contribute to the economy, and lead in a future society.
As a former NYC classroom teacher, I experienced the angst of having to comply with City initiatives that were overeager and underthought. As a current public school parent, I have struggled with my own whiplash of faith in the Department of Education over the years.
But I remain patient with Mosaic, at least for a little longer.