RFP for new middle school ELA curriculum?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like the recommendation is to use CKLA (the free open source version, not the paid Amplify version like in elementary): https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DGEJWQ4F32DF/$file/MS%20ELA%20Curric%20Approval%20250508%20PPT.pdf

Any thoughts?

The board did not vote on this today. There were a lot of comments about lack of diversity among the evaluation participants. They'll try to bring it back to the board at one of the next two meetings.

This board is incompetent. If they don't act soon, they will have no curriculum at all. Or, they will get a curriculum in, but not have enough time to provide teachers with meaningful training.

While I do agree the board is inept and incompetent, they were right to be frustrated with the shoddy survey work and the lack of thorough evidence and material making the case for this curriculum. Chief Academic Officer Nikki Hazel showed up to a gun fight with a knife.

How the hell do we continue to be approving new curriculum purchases in May? Those decision need to be made in Feb/Mar at the latest so that the curriculum can be ordered, arrived, any training scheduled for late spring and summer. Plus give key resources all summer for review and necessary intervention/updates made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like the recommendation is to use CKLA (the free open source version, not the paid Amplify version like in elementary): https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DGEJWQ4F32DF/$file/MS%20ELA%20Curric%20Approval%20250508%20PPT.pdf

Any thoughts?

The board did not vote on this today. There were a lot of comments about lack of diversity among the evaluation participants. They'll try to bring it back to the board at one of the next two meetings.

This board is incompetent. If they don't act soon, they will have no curriculum at all. Or, they will get a curriculum in, but not have enough time to provide teachers with meaningful training.

While I do agree the board is inept and incompetent, they were right to be frustrated with the shoddy survey work and the lack of thorough evidence and material making the case for this curriculum. Chief Academic Officer Nikki Hazel showed up to a gun fight with a knife.

How the hell do we continue to be approving new curriculum purchases in May? Those decision need to be made in Feb/Mar at the latest so that the curriculum can be ordered, arrived, any training scheduled for late spring and summer. Plus give key resources all summer for review and necessary intervention/updates made.

You're right. That timeline you proposed is what MCPS should have done.

Taylor is responsible. Hold him accountable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like the recommendation is to use CKLA (the free open source version, not the paid Amplify version like in elementary): https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DGEJWQ4F32DF/$file/MS%20ELA%20Curric%20Approval%20250508%20PPT.pdf

Any thoughts?

The board did not vote on this today. There were a lot of comments about lack of diversity among the evaluation participants. They'll try to bring it back to the board at one of the next two meetings.

This board is incompetent. If they don't act soon, they will have no curriculum at all. Or, they will get a curriculum in, but not have enough time to provide teachers with meaningful training.

While I do agree the board is inept and incompetent, they were right to be frustrated with the shoddy survey work and the lack of thorough evidence and material making the case for this curriculum. Chief Academic Officer Nikki Hazel showed up to a gun fight with a knife.

How the hell do we continue to be approving new curriculum purchases in May? Those decision need to be made in Feb/Mar at the latest so that the curriculum can be ordered, arrived, any training scheduled for late spring and summer. Plus give key resources all summer for review and necessary intervention/updates made.

It wasn't a survey, it was hours long review of curriculum for a number of days. It wasn't like they sent a survey out and only 3 Latino staff responded and they said that is good enough. It is very difficult to get people to commit to the time needed to do procurement reviews, especially for dense topics like curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like the recommendation is to use CKLA (the free open source version, not the paid Amplify version like in elementary): https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DGEJWQ4F32DF/$file/MS%20ELA%20Curric%20Approval%20250508%20PPT.pdf

Any thoughts?

The board did not vote on this today. There were a lot of comments about lack of diversity among the evaluation participants. They'll try to bring it back to the board at one of the next two meetings.

This board is incompetent. If they don't act soon, they will have no curriculum at all. Or, they will get a curriculum in, but not have enough time to provide teachers with meaningful training.

While I do agree the board is inept and incompetent, they were right to be frustrated with the shoddy survey work and the lack of thorough evidence and material making the case for this curriculum. Chief Academic Officer Nikki Hazel showed up to a gun fight with a knife.

How the hell do we continue to be approving new curriculum purchases in May? Those decision need to be made in Feb/Mar at the latest so that the curriculum can be ordered, arrived, any training scheduled for late spring and summer. Plus give key resources all summer for review and necessary intervention/updates made.

It wasn't a survey, it was hours long review of curriculum for a number of days. It wasn't like they sent a survey out and only 3 Latino staff responded and they said that is good enough. It is very difficult to get people to commit to the time needed to do procurement reviews, especially for dense topics like curriculum.

You're right, and I wish Hazel had explained that to the complaining board members, who clearly had no clue.

[Anonymous]

Participating in the curriculum review is a ton of work. Maybe the BOE members should engage as well to understand and also to take a look at the materials from the different options themselves. I ended up taking about 40 hours to review all the materials and make recommendations.

I'm sure we will be stuck with Study Sync for next year, which is such a shame. It's a terrible curriculum, and CKLA is much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Participating in the curriculum review is a ton of work. Maybe the BOE members should engage as well to understand and also to take a look at the materials from the different options themselves. I ended up taking about 40 hours to review all the materials and make recommendations.

I'm sure we will be stuck with Study Sync for next year, which is such a shame. It's a terrible curriculum, and CKLA is much better.

But they're meeting again on the 22nd, and could still approve CKLA then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Participating in the curriculum review is a ton of work. Maybe the BOE members should engage as well to understand and also to take a look at the materials from the different options themselves. I ended up taking about 40 hours to review all the materials and make recommendations.

I'm sure we will be stuck with Study Sync for next year, which is such a shame. It's a terrible curriculum, and CKLA is much better.

But they're meeting again on the 22nd, and could still approve CKLA then.

They could, but I am not confident that this BOE is going to do what’s best for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, the staff were told they had four crummy free options to choose from, and they selected the least crummy option. The least the board could do is approve it given that there isn’t any money for a real curriculum. All these curriculums are just rough outlines with no actual resources, so there is a ton of work to do after the thing is approved.

Core Knowledge has a full, great curriculum and books you can purchase. What are you talking about?

For example, https://www.coreknowledge.org/store/?filter_grade=grade-10-grade-8&query_type_grade=or#store-content

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the staff were told they had four crummy free options to choose from, and they selected the least crummy option. The least the board could do is approve it given that there isn’t any money for a real curriculum. All these curriculums are just rough outlines with no actual resources, so there is a ton of work to do after the thing is approved.

All of hte so-called crummy free options they were looking at are substantially better than the expensive option we currently using, which is not aligned with standards. -Member of the review team.

Believe me, as an ELA teacher, I am no fan of study sink. However, the for free options we reviewed are still crummy. No materials are provided unless you pay for them, and the county isn’t paying for them. We are starting from scratch. This is especially frustrating since we had a decent curriculum before study sink which we paid a small fortune to be told wasn’t good enough. Since literacy is one of the most important things for our students, I don’t understand why we aren’t getting a high-quality curriculum like the William and Mary.

The slides that are posted have money for book purchases in the first year, and all of the manuals, worksheets, etc. are available for download. You cannot have actually reviewed the materials.

[Anonymous]

The BOE update that was sent today makes no mention of considering Study Sync, only CKLA:

Board Considers New ELA Curriculum for Grades 6–8

The Board received a presentation about the open-source Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum for Grades 6–8 English Language Arts, starting in the 2025–2026 school year. The Board had a robust discussion and they will continue the conversation at an upcoming meeting as the Board considers approval of this new curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the staff were told they had four crummy free options to choose from, and they selected the least crummy option. The least the board could do is approve it given that there isn’t any money for a real curriculum. All these curriculums are just rough outlines with no actual resources, so there is a ton of work to do after the thing is approved.

All of hte so-called crummy free options they were looking at are substantially better than the expensive option we currently using, which is not aligned with standards. -Member of the review team.

Believe me, as an ELA teacher, I am no fan of study sink. However, the for free options we reviewed are still crummy. No materials are provided unless you pay for them, and the county isn’t paying for them. We are starting from scratch. This is especially frustrating since we had a decent curriculum before study sink which we paid a small fortune to be told wasn’t good enough. Since literacy is one of the most important things for our students, I don’t understand why we aren’t getting a high-quality curriculum like the William and Mary.

The slides that are posted have money for book purchases in the first year, and all of the manuals, worksheets, etc. are available for download. You cannot have actually reviewed the materials.

Not just for download - MCPS is going to print everything out for teachers and students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The BOE update that was sent today makes no mention of considering Study Sync, only CKLA:

Board Considers New ELA Curriculum for Grades 6–8

The Board received a presentation about the open-source Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum for Grades 6–8 English Language Arts, starting in the 2025–2026 school year. The Board had a robust discussion and they will continue the conversation at an upcoming meeting as the Board considers approval of this new curriculum.

If the Board won't approve the new curriculum, then they will either a) have no curriculum for next year or b) have to extend Study Sync for another year and have MCPS try again next year. They are not going to do better than CKLA, which is a curriculum aligned with standards and is a natural extension of the curriculum that the BOE approved for ES a year ago and is now in place. The BOE seems to think that it is easy to recruit community members to spend dozens of hours reviewing detailed curricula and analyzing them against rubriks. It is not. I am no defender of central office, but I think in this case they came out with the best curriculum and did the best they could to recruit people to participate in the process - it's just really hard to do, given what a time commitment it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The BOE update that was sent today makes no mention of considering Study Sync, only CKLA:

Board Considers New ELA Curriculum for Grades 6–8

The Board received a presentation about the open-source Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) curriculum for Grades 6–8 English Language Arts, starting in the 2025–2026 school year. The Board had a robust discussion and they will continue the conversation at an upcoming meeting as the Board considers approval of this new curriculum.

If the Board won't approve the new curriculum, then they will either a) have no curriculum for next year or b) have to extend Study Sync for another year and have MCPS try again next year. They are not going to do better than CKLA, which is a curriculum aligned with standards and is a natural extension of the curriculum that the BOE approved for ES a year ago and is now in place. The BOE seems to think that it is easy to recruit community members to spend dozens of hours reviewing detailed curricula and analyzing them against rubriks. It is not. I am no defender of central office, but I think in this case they came out with the best curriculum and did the best they could to recruit people to participate in the process - it's just really hard to do, given what a time commitment it is.

That's fine. But it doesn't change the fact that the people who overwhelmingly evaluated the efficacy and cultural relevance of the curriculum are white. And that's a problem, given that white students are not the ones who are the further behind when it comes to literacy.

Why doesn't MCPS pay people to do curriculum evaluations? The reality is that the people who are in the position to give their time away for free are white people, who most often have the wealth and comfort to do so.

Furthermore, the board was pissed because they trusted MCPS staff with moving forward with CKLA for elementary level, only to receive an influx of testimony from ELD and SpEd teachers who said the curriculum was useless for them. So the board is understandably skeptical to take MCPS's word that the curriculum is in fact appropriate this time without much more proof and assurances that if they approve the curriculum, they won't be hit with a wave of complaints from teachers like they did the last time.

This is on MCPS staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the staff were told they had four crummy free options to choose from, and they selected the least crummy option. The least the board could do is approve it given that there isn’t any money for a real curriculum. All these curriculums are just rough outlines with no actual resources, so there is a ton of work to do after the thing is approved.

All of hte so-called crummy free options they were looking at are substantially better than the expensive option we currently using, which is not aligned with standards. -Member of the review team.

Believe me, as an ELA teacher, I am no fan of study sink. However, the for free options we reviewed are still crummy. No materials are provided unless you pay for them, and the county isn’t paying for them. We are starting from scratch. This is especially frustrating since we had a decent curriculum before study sink which we paid a small fortune to be told wasn’t good enough. Since literacy is one of the most important things for our students, I don’t understand why we aren’t getting a high-quality curriculum like the William and Mary.

The slides that are posted have money for book purchases in the first year, and all of the manuals, worksheets, etc. are available for download. You cannot have actually reviewed the materials.

Not just for download - MCPS is going to print everything out for teachers and students.

Yes, I know. Because I read the slides, but I was responding to the idea that this wasn’t a real curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the staff were told they had four crummy free options to choose from, and they selected the least crummy option. The least the board could do is approve it given that there isn’t any money for a real curriculum. All these curriculums are just rough outlines with no actual resources, so there is a ton of work to do after the thing is approved.

All of hte so-called crummy free options they were looking at are substantially better than the expensive option we currently using, which is not aligned with standards. -Member of the review team.

Believe me, as an ELA teacher, I am no fan of study sink. However, the for free options we reviewed are still crummy. No materials are provided unless you pay for them, and the county isn’t paying for them. We are starting from scratch. This is especially frustrating since we had a decent curriculum before study sink which we paid a small fortune to be told wasn’t good enough. Since literacy is one of the most important things for our students, I don’t understand why we aren’t getting a high-quality curriculum like the William and Mary.

The slides that are posted have money for book purchases in the first year, and all of the manuals, worksheets, etc. are available for download. You cannot have actually reviewed the materials.

Not just for download - MCPS is going to print everything out for teachers and students.

Why? Just purchase the trade books. Give the teachers a digital license to the teacher guide. Give the students digital license to the activity guide. Then let teachers determine what activities need to be printed. Things like vocabulary don’t need to be printed. Again we already have quotes.