Correspondent of the Day

Core Knowledge Schools Do Education Right
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Recognizing a good thing when I see it, I commend the staffs of J.B. Fisher and Overby Sheppard Elementary schools for adopting the Core Knowledge program for their students. As Core Knowledge schools, they commit to teaching all students the background knowledge upon which reading comprehension, inference, and problem-solving rely. This takes more courage and resolution than one might suspect.

Core Knowledge schools decline to blame poor results on hard-working teachers, who are doing their best with the ideas and curriculum they are given. Instead, they recognize that comprehension and problem-solving require lots of background knowledge received from a teacher. Notions to the contrary, endemic in the education establishment, are demonstrably bankrupt notions. When a curriculum suffers from a paucity of substantive content, kids learn and thrive less. By introducing Core Knowledge, these Richmond schools are choosing a better path for their skilled and dedicated teachers.

Core Knowledge schools also decline to blame immigrant families and poor children for the inefficacy of some schools. They know that race and wealth need not correlate with academic success. When schools systematically teach lots of basic, common, background facts, the poorest children and immigrants gain the most, for theirs are the homes that are least able to supplement an anemic curriculum. Because of this truth, J.B. Fisher and Overby Sheppard will successfully close the race and wealth learning gaps, just like other Core Knowledge schools before them. That is change we all can support.

Tim S. Fite.
Richmond.