Hey Soy Boy, Deep State, China Paid, Antifa Libz...

[Dill]

(02-24-2021, 02:30 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Our county curriculum is developed by the individual departments at central office with the help of teachers recruited to write it during the summer. It's based on state standards and assessments developed by the state dept of education by a mix of political appointees and bureaucrats with influence from the state legislature and governor, as well as testing companies who design the assessments. 

I would say that, outside of the state standards (which are mostly based on what people far from the classroom think are relevant, with little corporate or union influence), the teachers most involved with their departments at the county level have the most control over the curriculum itself, with little influence from administrators at the school level. Like most things, the public can review it and complain the board prior to it being adopted, though that's not likely to change anything drastically. 

We're slow to enact major changes that relate to career prep because the emphasis is still college, college, college. There's a set of metrics from the state used to determine if students are "college and career ready" that include things like taking AP courses, scoring a certain level on the SATs, and other things associated with college. Taking work study isn't included, but that's far more relevant for being "career ready", so we get dinged if a student who takes career research classes but not the SAT. Testing matters far too much.

This is where Biden criticism comes in. His DOE pushing for all students to take assessments this year is asinine. Beyond the fact that assessments are far less valuable than we treat them and handcuff teachers, requiring it as many people are going hybrid eats up a ton of time and poses so many problems. 

There are some classes aligned to the local community college, primarily math. Two of our college algebra classes use a midterm and final create with the community college. Passing them with a B or higher gives you credit for two math classes there. You can also take classes at the community college while enrolled in high school. Unless we're referring to AP classes, there isn't an aim is to model higher education standards of curricula because that's a completely different format for education. As my advisor told me my first year, "professor lecture and teachers teach". We're task with ensuring that every student's diverse needs and learning styles are meet and are held accountable for failures. 

I'm teaching Sociology, Psychology, and Law and Citizen this year in addition to Government reg and honors. With 5 preps, I've changed my attitude towards the electives, especially since we're using a weird schedule with online learning. I'm pushing for them to be more of open discussion classes. We'll go through daily topics with notes, but there's a lot of breaks and discussion points added in so that we can go off on tangents if that's where the students take us. The assessments are a journal students keep that requires them to reflect on a weekly topic and how it applies to their life, with the endgame being a student create portfolio as the final where they reflect on how specific journal entries demonstrate their mastery of curriculum standards. We also mix in group activities. I want them to experience college level topics with college level dialogue without bogging them down with tests and busy work since many are taking honors or AP classes.

That is a WONDERFUL synopsis--informative, compact and professional.  I see my questions answered, along with some I didn't ask.

I understand your complaint about Biden. I remember my son was in HS when No Child Left Behind came out, which I believe instituted the idea of nationwide testing, linking test performance to federal funding. People who had never been in a classroom were among those deciding, for example, what English and math requirements should be. Teacher "accountability" was a sore point there too. Before long teachers were complaining how the focus on tests detracted from learning. But they "accountable" if student learning dropped.

I understood the motivation--the dropping performance of U.S. students. But I disagreed with the assessment of causes.  

Anyway, I have been interested in university curricula for years, but the Trump era has shifted my interest back to public schools. I have long suspected that Trump's success was in part a failure of the education system (along with other causes, like demographic shifts and income inequality).  So many in public discussion seem not to know the difference between authoritarian and democratic ideals. Many conflate rule of law with law and order. And of course there has been a shift away from grounded arguments and towards "truthiness" as a criterion of political judgment, so the kind of responsible public discourse needed for successful governance is disappearing. These are the kinds of things that probably cannot be taught without dialogue (I'm a big fan of Plato). But I meet so many people--including the occasional educator--who thinks all teaching is top-down transfer of specific content, best accomplished by repetitive exercises and testing.

But I don't want to be one of those who "knows better than the teachers" what ought to be taught and how. I have no idea what "5 preps" would be like, and for classes of students with widely different ability.