The answer to the question in your subhead is, not damn likely. The MTA will say something about white supremacy and Trump and the lemmings will get in line and nothing will happen. The most vulnerable kids will continue to fail and all the rich progressives will congratulate themselves on how brave they are and the sun will rise in the East.
Sorry to be such a downer, I admire your work and commitment to the kids. You gotta shoot to score so keep fighting the good fight!
Is there anyone you would recommend that is doing great public writing on math curricula? My district is in the process of selecting one, and the option preferred by district staff seems quite bad.
Not sure I understand the question. Why has resistance stayed so consistent? I don’t think it has. Take a look at my Southern Surge piece, and the data on teacher embrace of curriculum in Tennessee, where they have high-quality materials statewide.
Earlier in the piece you mentioned that retrenchment was strong against new curriculum (or teachers embracing curriculum). I’ll go back and find the quote. That’s what I was referencing.
It sounds like you're talking about teachers resisting new curriculum?
I can only speak for myself, but I'll bite. I've been in education for 25 years, and I've gone through several adoptions of new curriculum and, as a general rule, it's often a pain and usually just a new flavor of the same old garbage. This new program will change everything! Now it's 5 years later, and we're going to change everything again because we were wrong! Change this basal for that basal. This discovery-learning math program for a new discovery-learning math program. So we've learned to be cynical about it, and we've learned to expect that the new program won't have good results.
Now, I'll go into a very specific challenge that can come up with a curriculum that is, on most ways, quite good. My district adopted Amplify's Core Knowledge. Knowledge based. Good. Based on science of learning and reading. Good. A little book-lite, but better than basals. Overall, it's a major step to much better reading curriculum.
But... (for background, last year I taught 5th grade, and this year I teach 6th grade).
The 5th grade curriculum has two units that are Marxist (there are 9 total units). The first, focused on personal narratives, has 4 of the 5 texts that are all about how hard and emotional traumatizing it has been to grow up in White America if you're not white because all the structures are against you (CRT here). The seventh unit is about conflicts between American settlers and the native people during the 19th century. It's told via a Marxist postcolonialism framework.
My current 6th grade curriculum includes on a novel that has a scene that is disturbing and sexual (an older man clearly fantasizing about sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl).
So even in otherwise good curriculum, bad ideas and disturbing content can get laundered in.
The answer to the question in your subhead is, not damn likely. The MTA will say something about white supremacy and Trump and the lemmings will get in line and nothing will happen. The most vulnerable kids will continue to fail and all the rich progressives will congratulate themselves on how brave they are and the sun will rise in the East.
Sorry to be such a downer, I admire your work and commitment to the kids. You gotta shoot to score so keep fighting the good fight!
I added a new postscript with addl details about the union resistance, in case it's of interest...
I understand the hesitation. A similar bill failed last year, so I would be dubious, too.
But the unanimous support in the House shows how much has changed. Definitely read thus Globe coverage (open access link):
https://archive.ph/7cHeb
Do you know what the situation is like in the MA senate? Should I be writing my reps?
Is there anyone you would recommend that is doing great public writing on math curricula? My district is in the process of selecting one, and the option preferred by district staff seems quite bad.
Karen, why, in your opinion/research, has curriculum retrenchment stayed so consistent?
Not sure I understand the question. Why has resistance stayed so consistent? I don’t think it has. Take a look at my Southern Surge piece, and the data on teacher embrace of curriculum in Tennessee, where they have high-quality materials statewide.
Earlier in the piece you mentioned that retrenchment was strong against new curriculum (or teachers embracing curriculum). I’ll go back and find the quote. That’s what I was referencing.
It sounds like you're talking about teachers resisting new curriculum?
I can only speak for myself, but I'll bite. I've been in education for 25 years, and I've gone through several adoptions of new curriculum and, as a general rule, it's often a pain and usually just a new flavor of the same old garbage. This new program will change everything! Now it's 5 years later, and we're going to change everything again because we were wrong! Change this basal for that basal. This discovery-learning math program for a new discovery-learning math program. So we've learned to be cynical about it, and we've learned to expect that the new program won't have good results.
Now, I'll go into a very specific challenge that can come up with a curriculum that is, on most ways, quite good. My district adopted Amplify's Core Knowledge. Knowledge based. Good. Based on science of learning and reading. Good. A little book-lite, but better than basals. Overall, it's a major step to much better reading curriculum.
But... (for background, last year I taught 5th grade, and this year I teach 6th grade).
The 5th grade curriculum has two units that are Marxist (there are 9 total units). The first, focused on personal narratives, has 4 of the 5 texts that are all about how hard and emotional traumatizing it has been to grow up in White America if you're not white because all the structures are against you (CRT here). The seventh unit is about conflicts between American settlers and the native people during the 19th century. It's told via a Marxist postcolonialism framework.
My current 6th grade curriculum includes on a novel that has a scene that is disturbing and sexual (an older man clearly fantasizing about sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl).
So even in otherwise good curriculum, bad ideas and disturbing content can get laundered in.