When will DC area privates dump Lucy Calkins curricula ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Orton-Gillingham follows the Science of Reading (phonics) and not Calkins

Highly recommend listening to the Sold a Story podcast before anyone goes to back to school night!

As the commenter notes on the first page mentioned, so many of the veiled Calkins teaching methods are noted on these private school website. It may not explicitly say her name anymore but the practice is still there.

Beauvoir, GDS, Maret, Sidwell, NPS - they all are still pushing the outdated (and not based on science) methods

Oh there you have it. Just as I suspected, ALL of these schools are the same and any extra “prestige” attached to any of them more than others is completely made up and meaningless.

Uh huh. Because small class sizes, excellent arts and music programs, etc are worthless.

[Anonymous]

Graphic novels are where it’s at for reading and development!

Builds reading stamina and comprehension.
Has a wide variety of tone and writing styles.
Expansive multisyllabic vocabs utilized
Lots of words per page so high quality.
Different genres, settings and topics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Orton-Gillingham follows the Science of Reading (phonics) and not Calkins

Highly recommend listening to the Sold a Story podcast before anyone goes to back to school night!

As the commenter notes on the first page mentioned, so many of the veiled Calkins teaching methods are noted on these private school website. It may not explicitly say her name anymore but the practice is still there.

Beauvoir, GDS, Maret, Sidwell, NPS - they all are still pushing the outdated (and not based on science) methods

Oh there you have it. Just as I suspected, ALL of these schools are the same and any extra “prestige” attached to any of them more than others is completely made up and meaningless.

Only compare lower schools to lower schools.
Doesn’t mean anything about grades 7-12, and especially 9-12.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes Beauvoir has not phased it out publicly and her name was featured prominently as of late last school year. But they’re not the only one - all DC privates still are holding on. None have officially changed!

Wow suckers.

[Anonymous]

It's not just DC. Our west coast independent school is still all-in on Lucy Calkins. We were lucky and had one of the kids who was going to learn to read despite the curriculum, rather than because of it (as a teacher friend explained it).

For the school, Lucy Calkins is a lot easier for teachers. Teaching them to actually *teach* reading and writing is a lot harder. I'm honestly not sure a lot of the administrators would actually know how to coach their staff in this, sadly. And a majority of the kids in private schools are probably among those who are going to learn to read no matter what you do (and the minority for whom this isn't the case have parents who will hire tutors).

[Anonymous]

Trying to change a private school's reading curriculum is like trying to move a mountain. These schools say they want to hear from parents and collaborate but they don't. They certainly don't want to hear "what they should be doing." Let me know how it goes and if your school actually changes their reading program based on parents complaining about it. These schools know science of reading and OG is the right way to teach reading but they don't want to invest in a new curriculum and god forbid training their teachers in the latest and greatest methods to teach children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Beauvoir does not use that curriculum, thank goodness.

They use to use it and promoted it even when the data showed it was very flawed.

[Anonymous]

If you haven’t yet, listen to the podcast “Sold A Story,” about Calkins and this whole ill-conceived theory of reading instruction. It is unbelievable. It is shocking to me that any reputable school still uses that approach.

[Anonymous]

There are local private lower schools who have not used Lucy Calkins in years, but the race for status continues to win out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are local private lower schools who have not used Lucy Calkins in years, but the race for status continues to win out.

Which ones?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid's school officially dumped it this year. I'm glad they finally moved to something else but I'd be happier if they had spent more than a week before school started learning how to use it. Back to school night was an endless parade of people (admins, teachers, board members) all saying versions of "we are learning this curriculum alongside your children..." which didn't fill me with confidence.

Are our kids classmates?? I could have written the same thing. BTSN was really underwhelming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just DC. Our west coast independent school is still all-in on Lucy Calkins. We were lucky and had one of the kids who was going to learn to read despite the curriculum, rather than because of it (as a teacher friend explained it).

For the school, Lucy Calkins is a lot easier for teachers. Teaching them to actually *teach* reading and writing is a lot harder. I'm honestly not sure a lot of the administrators would actually know how to coach their staff in this, sadly. And a majority of the kids in private schools are probably among those who are going to learn to read no matter what you do (and the minority for whom this isn't the case have parents who will hire tutors).

Equity in action!

The Lucy Calvin’s BS fake curriculum is a Trojan Equity Horse! Those Richie rich kids don’t really need to know how to read or spell correctly. The Chromebook word processor is just a few grades away! That’s the ticket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you haven’t yet, listen to the podcast “Sold A Story,” about Calkins and this whole ill-conceived theory of reading instruction. It is unbelievable. It is shocking to me that any reputable school still uses that approach.

I actually cried in my car listening to this. My DD who is in college now was one of the kids this program did not work for and she felt she was “stupid” and “slow” for not learning to read with this method but her second and third grade teachers at Sheridan kept pushing and pushing the method. Just stare at the pictures and you will figure out the words eventually. I can’t even imagine how many kids have suffered the way my daughter did. It’s terrible and the level of denial about it is insane.

[Anonymous]

Potomac LS uses a Calkins/Orton-Gillingham hybrid.

[Anonymous]

https://gothamist.com/news/columbia-university-dissolves-program-behind-literacy-curriculum-used-in-nyc-public-schools