Sales of Curriculum 2.0

[Anonymous]

About 5 years ago, then-Superintendent Jerry Weast touted the MCPS deal with Pearson as a way to add revenues to the school system coffers through royalty payments from sales of Curriculum 2.0. Since then, has the MCPS/Pearson partnership sold 2.0 to anyone? If so, how much did MCPS get in royalties and if not, why not? Could it be that the curriculum just sucks?

[Anonymous]

Are you a teacher? Someone posted that same question on the MCEA discussion forum this week. Or just coincidence? I'd also like to know the answer to this question.

[Anonymous]

Not a teacher, but that's interesting.

[Anonymous]

So is that why they've been re-writing all the math courses from scratch and reinventing the wheel? This year Algebra II and IM are being rolled out and it appears written while in progress. It's one thing to tweak the content but when every scrap of paper is fresh off the presses there are mistakes everywhere. No text books except online flex books which can't get much use.

[Anonymous]

Its hard to sell a lemon. 2.0 isn't even a fully complete lemon, major parts are constantly being "re-written" which means that the curriculum office didn't get it done in the first place so teachers had to scramble on their own.

Weast's idea wasn't bad but MCPS really screwed up the execution. As far as fuck-ups go, this one is definitely an ES.

Other school districts, like Howard and other in MD have done far better in implementing Common Core. Starr should have delayed the roll -out and he never held the curriculum office staff responsible because he didn't like managing. The hole was just dug deeper and deeper for three years with the same unqualified staff flailing about. He did spend a lot on PR. The strategy was just not to admit how it is. Now, MCPS is just on auto pilot. The whole situation is so unfair to teachers and students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its hard to sell a lemon. 2.0 isn't even a fully complete lemon, major parts are constantly being "re-written" which means that the curriculum office didn't get it done in the first place so teachers had to scramble on their own.

Weast's idea wasn't bad but MCPS really screwed up the execution. As far as fuck-ups go, this one is definitely an ES.

Other school districts, like Howard and other in MD have done far better in implementing Common Core. Starr should have delayed the roll -out and he never held the curriculum office staff responsible because he didn't like managing. The hole was just dug deeper and deeper for three years with the same unqualified staff flailing about. He did spend a lot on PR. The strategy was just not to admit how it is. Now, MCPS is just on auto pilot. The whole situation is so unfair to teachers and students.

That makes sense, I see now it was K-5 that was the deal with Pearson. It sounds like it was a one time payment not an ongoing royalty situation. Not the OP, I hadn't heard of this deal before. I'd imagine companies aren't looking to extend the purchase anyway given the current market for textbooks. It might be interesting to know if they've had any success getting the K-5 material adopted elsewhere.

The teachers have clearly been under a lot of pressure and seem very stressed. I've been more aware of it at the middle school math level. My daughter has been in the roll-out year for three courses so far and now my son is in sixth catching the roll-out of, IM, the one course she managed to out pace. The materials and content organization have been atrocious. My daughter received nothing but As the whole way through MS but is taking physics this year and it's now very clear how little she's actually learned. I've never known where the blame should be placed. I did realize the roll-out has been botched but I didn't know it had gone better elsewhere. The PR has been completely cynical--all the grade level brochures filled with nothing but jargon and back to school nights where parents are parked in front of promotional videos instead of having time to hear from teachers. It's very sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its hard to sell a lemon. 2.0 isn't even a fully complete lemon, major parts are constantly being "re-written" which means that the curriculum office didn't get it done in the first place so teachers had to scramble on their own.

Weast's idea wasn't bad but MCPS really screwed up the execution. As far as fuck-ups go, this one is definitely an ES.

Other school districts, like Howard and other in MD have done far better in implementing Common Core. Starr should have delayed the roll -out and he never held the curriculum office staff responsible because he didn't like managing. The hole was just dug deeper and deeper for three years with the same unqualified staff flailing about. He did spend a lot on PR. The strategy was just not to admit how it is. Now, MCPS is just on auto pilot. The whole situation is so unfair to teachers and students.

LOL that made me laugh, though I agree completely. Completely screwed up.

[Anonymous]

Looks like they tried to sell Pearson Forward http://www.pearsoned.com/news/pearson-previews-new-k-5-integrated-instructional-system-at-fetc-2013/ in 2013 but it never went anywhere?

Pasco county Florida tried it in three elementary schools and then it is never heard from again. http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/three-pasco-schools-test-curriculum-tied-to-common-core/2136851

Wonder what the results were? Hmmm.... could it be that it was awful?

[Anonymous]

As a whole, I don't mind the curriculum but there is a definite LACK of resources available for teachers. For instance, in the old curriculum most elementary schools had math text books and their workbook resources. In the new Curriculum, when you log onto the website to do your planning there is a blurb describing the lesson, ONE worksheet (that I usually use for my small group instruction) and MAYBE a link to a Pearson video clip that does a short demonstration of the math strategy. There's usually one video clip a week (sometimes two).. So as a grade-level team, we have to create seatwork, centers, homework, and assessments from scratch. Under the old curriculum we might have had to create centers but homework could have been from the Harcourt workbook that we copied, assessments were made by the county (with data tracked and monitored by central office). I know this sounds like a negative post...but honestly, under 2.0 my kids have a much stronger number sense than before. However, the roll-out and relative lack of supporting materials makes it more work for the classroom teacher who is trying to plan for math, reading groups, writer's workshop, science/SS on a daily basis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a whole, I don't mind the curriculum but there is a definite LACK of resources available for teachers. For instance, in the old curriculum most elementary schools had math text books and their workbook resources. In the new Curriculum, when you log onto the website to do your planning there is a blurb describing the lesson, ONE worksheet (that I usually use for my small group instruction) and MAYBE a link to a Pearson video clip that does a short demonstration of the math strategy. There's usually one video clip a week (sometimes two).. So as a grade-level team, we have to create seatwork, centers, homework, and assessments from scratch. Under the old curriculum we might have had to create centers but homework could have been from the Harcourt workbook that we copied, assessments were made by the county (with data tracked and monitored by central office). I know this sounds like a negative post...but honestly, under 2.0 my kids have a much stronger number sense than before. However, the roll-out and relative lack of supporting materials makes it more work for the classroom teacher who is trying to plan for math, reading groups, writer's workshop, science/SS on a daily basis.

The amount of teaching material that is being developed on a school by school basis is creating unequal teaching standards throughout the county. Some schools out pace others on the county tests simply because some school teams do a better job developing materials to teach the new curriculum. Data that reflects unequal achievements are the final exam scores published in the Washington Post. On an individual level, I had two children taking the same math course at different MCPS schools. The units were taught in different orders, one used an old text book while the other said the old text book was crap, and one reverted to old worksheets developed under previous curriculum while the other had worksheets that stated the learning objectives being taught. The student who received the old curriculum materials performed well on assessments developed at the school level but was ill equipped for the county tests. Some of the concepts that were on the county tests were never taught in class or practiced as homework.

[Anonymous]

OP here. There was a one time payment to MCPS from Pearson. That money was used to pay a few "curriculum development" staffers to craft the so-called curriculum in conjunction with Pearson staff. That initial payment was reduced, BTW, as development was underway. However, there also was a royalty payment component to the deal. Pearson would get the majority of the profit from sales, but MCPS would get a slice, too.

The comments posted so far mirror my experience. I like that there is more emphasis on a deeper understanding of math concepts, though I know many parents with students in the primary grades think the new curriculum is not moving the students quickly enough. The kids need more than rote learning. For example, knowing basic multiplication facts IS an important skill, but understanding place value and the relationship among ones, tens, and hundreds is also important as students move to higher levels.

My biggest beef with Curriculum 2.0 is that it is not really a curriculum at all. As others have noted, there are far too few resources provided, so teachers have to fill in the gaps. In ES we teach all the subjects (art, music, and PE excepted) so we have to plan lessons in Science, Social Studies, Math, and Reading. Since we are supposed to prepare for at least four reading groups, based on the students' reading levels, that's 20 weekly lessons--just for Reading. Math means 20 more. Science and Social Studies sometimes require a little less planning, because there are whole-group lessons and experiments, but even assuming just five plans for each subject, that brings the total number of lessons to be planned each week to 60. And...we get less planning time than our middle school and high school colleagues. A curriculum that doesn't meet the needs of teachers won't meet the needs of the students, no matter how hard the teachers work to fill in the gaps.

It seems to me, if Curriculum 2.0 was a superior product, schools and school districts would be lining up to buy it. The fact that, as far as I can tell, there have been virtually no sales speaks volumes about the quality of the product.

[Anonymous]

^ So you are a teacher in MCPS, yes? How do other teachers feel, and is this addressed through the Teacher's Union?

[Anonymous]

So teachers are not supposed to plan lessons anymore? Wow..things have changed from when I went to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So teachers are not supposed to plan lessons anymore? Wow..things have changed from when I went to school.

I can see how some might take this as teachers sounding lazy but there's a difference between planning lessons and generating all the materials in line with a new curriculum. I saw this in fifth grade last year. My child's teacher was writing a lot of work sheets and quizzes. While I applaud the creativity and dedication, there were errors everywhere. Mostly grammatical, missing articles, phrasing that wasn't precise enough for math. This is why textbooks and workbooks exist, the materials are edited and properly worded. Also the diagrams that went with the problems were poor. Clip art is not a math diagram.

The materials at the middle school and high school level are even worse. Some simple things like problems that refer to f(x) accompanied by graphs of F(x). But enough errors piled on that some problems are truly unreadable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So teachers are not supposed to plan lessons anymore? Wow..things have changed from when I went to school.

Of course teachers are supposed to plan lessons. But things certainly have changed. When you went to school -- assuming you are an adult -- you and your teachers probably had text books and other resources that matched the curriculum being taught. That is no longer the case. This poses two problems. One, teachers have to fill in the gaping holes in Curriculum 2.0. Two, the materials gathered will differ from school to school and perhaps from teacher to teacher within a school. Certainly, teachers should have some flexibility so that they can reach all of the kids in their classroom. But this so-called curriculum lacks so much it's as if every teacher in the county is creating their own. Creating an entire curriculum and gathering the resources needed to implement it is considerably different from simple lesson planning.