New curriculum selection process delayed— new RFP must be issues now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's all good and well, but in the meantime, parents need to weigh in on the curriculum choice.

The BOE needs to hear in no uncertain terms that anything short of a proven high-quality curriculum is unacceptable.

Also, almost no parent believes a curriculum that involves lots of TV shows or Apps is helpful especially for young children. I'm so sick of hearing all my kid did is watch TV and play games all day while their teacher went AWOL.

I have to laugh at our Bethesda ES tour a few months ago how one third of the classrooms were watching videos, gearing up to do so or already in progress. Maybe there was substitute teachers or something. who knows.. .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have a problem with Mr smith. He inherited a mess and is doing the right things. Bad people are leaving, that’s good.

+1

+2
But superintendents tend not to stay long and he is on the older side...

that's a lot of speculation. plus irrelevant to how well he is cleaning house, leveraging the audit to redo curriculum, improving enriched curricula in ES and MS homeschools. None of this was on the table under Starr, just Achievement Gap and bottom half of student talks.
It seems like he took his first 12 months to assess the situation and had to keep the ball rolling on Starr's stuff (FOCUS study about URMS in HGCs) but saw the constant poor feedback from parents and teachers on C2.0. Always need a third party opinion on that big of a change, as leverage.

but the slow rollout plus now a 12 month additional delay is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's all good and well, but in the meantime, parents need to weigh in on the curriculum choice.

The BOE needs to hear in no uncertain terms that anything short of a proven high-quality curriculum is unacceptable.

Also, almost no parent believes a curriculum that involves lots of TV shows or Apps is helpful especially for young children. I'm so sick of hearing all my kid did is watch TV and play games all day while their teacher went AWOL.

What is the best way to weigh in? -Parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all good and well, but in the meantime, parents need to weigh in on the curriculum choice.

The BOE needs to hear in no uncertain terms that anything short of a proven high-quality curriculum is unacceptable.

Also, almost no parent believes a curriculum that involves lots of TV shows or Apps is helpful especially for young children. I'm so sick of hearing all my kid did is watch TV and play games all day while their teacher went AWOL.

What is the best way to weigh in? -Parent

There was a survey by mcps, but I think it closed a few days ago. I know we had a thread on it where people said what they put on the survey, and a lot of people (including me) talked about technology use.

[Anonymous]

Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This article explains a different way of managing superintendents, including this:

http://www.citymayors.com/education/usa_schoolboards.html

So you want the county executive to appoint the superintendent of schools? Why would that be a good thing?

[Anonymous]

Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

Yes, this is it in a nutshell. Unbelievable.

Discovery also dumped Discovery Education. I doubt it will survive for long and the idiots will weasel their way back into MCPS somehow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

Yes C2.0 masterminds Marty Creel in 2015 and now Erick Lang in 2018.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

Yes C2.0 masterminds Marty Creel in 2015 and now Erick Lang in 2018.

So when MCPS buys this from their old pals at Discovery, we can expect our kids to be taught by watching retreads of old shows from Discovery TV with a little C2.0 thrown in...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

Yep, that seems to be the story.

[Anonymous]

that's a lot of speculation. plus irrelevant to how well he is cleaning house, leveraging the audit to redo curriculum, improving enriched curricula in ES and MS homeschools. None of this was on the table under Starr, just Achievement Gap and bottom half of student talks.
It seems like he took his first 12 months to assess the situation and had to keep the ball rolling on Starr's stuff (FOCUS study about URMS in HGCs) but saw the constant poor feedback from parents and teachers on C2.0. Always need a third party opinion on that big of a change, as leverage.

but the slow rollout plus now a 12 month additional delay is absurd.

Agree that Smith is better than Starr but Starr was pretty bottom of the barrel. Starr would have been trying to hide the audit, trying to ignore the audit and doing anything to avoid admitting what a huge screw up. At least Smith didn't let the central office idiots circle the wagons to protect themselves. He needs to clean the entire house, its a cesspool. I'm guessing he realizes how bad it is now after the Lang/Discovery fiasco and the awful letter from his chief academic officer about it.

Smith needs to reverse back to before Starr's time. Bring back a focus on achievement for ALL kids. Embrace parents that care about education and want to help their kids by making the materials accessible and providing clear rubrics that have high expectations. Stop ignoring the high performing schools. Stop hiding the low performing students and start increasing the interventions that help them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight. The people who made the failed curriculum 2.0 went to work for Discovery Education where they developed Curriculum 3.0 and are now trying to sell this back to MCPS?

Yes C2.0 masterminds Marty Creel in 2015 and now Erick Lang in 2018.

So when MCPS buys this from their old pals at Discovery, we can expect our kids to be taught by watching retreads of old shows from Discovery TV with a little C2.0 thrown in...

I doubt this will be the case. I don't know any behind-the-scenes deals between Discovery (Creel) and MCPS future retirees (Lang and Fliakas). But I'm fairly certain that their desire to retire stemmed from differing philosophies.

So leaving for Discovery to work with someone who spearheaded 2.0 doesn't mean they can easily sell their product back to to mcps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

that's a lot of speculation. plus irrelevant to how well he is cleaning house, leveraging the audit to redo curriculum, improving enriched curricula in ES and MS homeschools. None of this was on the table under Starr, just Achievement Gap and bottom half of student talks.
It seems like he took his first 12 months to assess the situation and had to keep the ball rolling on Starr's stuff (FOCUS study about URMS in HGCs) but saw the constant poor feedback from parents and teachers on C2.0. Always need a third party opinion on that big of a change, as leverage.

but the slow rollout plus now a 12 month additional delay is absurd.

Agree that Smith is better than Starr but Starr was pretty bottom of the barrel. Starr would have been trying to hide the audit, trying to ignore the audit and doing anything to avoid admitting what a huge screw up. At least Smith didn't let the central office idiots circle the wagons to protect themselves. He needs to clean the entire house, its a cesspool. I'm guessing he realizes how bad it is now after the Lang/Discovery fiasco and the awful letter from his chief academic officer about it.

Smith needs to reverse back to before Starr's time. Bring back a focus on achievement for ALL kids. Embrace parents that care about education and want to help their kids by making the materials accessible and providing clear rubrics that have high expectations. Stop ignoring the high performing schools. Stop hiding the low performing students and start increasing the interventions that help them.

So, you're yearning for the good old days of Jerry Weast?

[Anonymous]

How much has central office bloated since Weast?