Benchmark is awful - what can be done

[Anonymous]

What school doesn't have a library?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What school doesn't have a library?

That's outrageous! We shouldn't have to use the library to get decent books!

[Anonymous]

MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

Why is it corruption? MCPS is not the only district in the US using Benchmark. Changing curriculum is not a simple process.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It sounds like Benchmark is a mess in the lower grades. How about for grades 4 & 5? How much better is the newer Benchmark Advance 2022 better for upper grades?

It's just as bad. It repeats the same topics year after year, so kids are bored. Plus readings are all at or below grade level, so anyone who is above grade level is extra bored and unchallenged.

Same main topic or same content? Because those are two very different things. The first could be very helpful and provide both foundation, depth and appropriate spiraling. The second would be very boring. I also thought with the new 2022 version there was going to be more novel study?

The units all cover the same topics and just have different readings. So for example, every year they will do a unit on westward expansion.

I could be okay with this because this is a very broad topic are there are some lots of topics under Westward expansion that could be covered. Especially if we consider Westward expansion most expansion beyond the 13 Colonies.


Settling of the MidWest
Settling of the West
Trail of Tears
Settlement building

My daughter keeps saying that she has read all this before. I checked and it is technically different texts, but it's all making the same points, so I understand why she is bored. The bigger problems are the structural ones--not following the science of reading, not offering above grade-level texts--but it would be nice to have content that actually engages the students.

This. The not-well-done spiral curriculum is a problem too, but secondary.

For examples of Benchmark's upper grade materials, 5th graders read a chapter from Call of the Wild and a chapter from Tom Sawyer. The nonfiction materials are generated by Benchmark and are very dull. At our school the students and teachers found the unit on corn so awful that they now skip it.

Do kids ever read entire books, or is it just these chapters?

Teachers can assign online books on Benchmark to a reading group. But whole-group time and most reading-group time at our school is using the base Benchmark materials, which is just excerpts. If your school has purchased enrichment materials or offers ELC, then kids in the enriched reading group can get non-Benchmark offerings added in. However, this is optional and some schools only offer Benchmark. Ours has some enrichment but does not offer ELC, so the offerings outside of Benchmark are pretty sparse and only offered to kids who qualify for enrichment.

So does that mean that the only kids regularly reading entire books are the ones who qualify for enrichment? This is just astonishing to me. I remember reading full books regularly starting in 3rd grade at my public school in the NYC suburbs in the 90s. My daughter is going into K and I’m just very disturbed by all of this.

Well I think they all get assigned Benchmark books online. But in terms of physical books, whether anyone gets anything is up to the individual school—there is no requirement that even kids in the enriched reading group get anything extra.

I don’t even mean physical vs online, though I do think reading comprehension is much better with physical materials. I am really asking whether the books the kids get assigned are full books, or are just excerpts.

Benchmark has an online library of books. But they aren’t particularly long. I think the books are written for Benchmark.

Wow. I guess the days of kids reading books by actual authors (Bridge to Terabithia, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Hatchet, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Call of the Wild, etc.) are gone. That’s really sad.

Pssst. Kids can read books on their own. Pass it on!

Pssst. Kids really benefit from reading and discussing actual books as a class with a teacher. It helps them learn critical thinking skills and literary analysis techniques that they would not get from reading the books on their own. Pass it on!

Pssst! There are these adults called parents who can read and discuss books with their kids. You should try it!

It’s called doing BOTH. Obviously parents can and should read and discuss books with their kids, but that doesn’t mean teachers don’t need to be doing the same thing.

[Anonymous]

It’s incredible to me that arguing that kids should be reading and discussing decent books in school is a controversial statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

Why is it corruption? MCPS is not the only district in the US using Benchmark. Changing curriculum is not a simple process.

DP. The choice made NO sense at all and was against the recommendations from the advisory committee (or whatever it was called). It's possible it was flat out incompetence, or MCPS staff being swayed by something shiny, but it also would not surprise me at all if there was more to it than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s incredible to me that arguing that kids should be reading and discussing decent books in school is a controversial statement.

It's probably the same posters who said "school is not childcare." Apparently school is not for literature either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

Why is it corruption? MCPS is not the only district in the US using Benchmark. Changing curriculum is not a simple process.

DP. The choice made NO sense at all and was against the recommendations from the advisory committee (or whatever it was called). It's possible it was flat out incompetence, or MCPS staff being swayed by something shiny, but it also would not surprise me at all if there was more to it than that.

What did the Advisory committee recommend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

I agree that Benchmark is probably awful (I'm a PP who posted about my 6th grade students complaining about it) BUT, I was there at the pitch day (for elementary and middle school) and the Benchmark presenter was a little old lady. It was the least 'polished' presentation compared to the other giant companies who presented. So in *this* case I don't think corruption. I didn't like StudySync that day at the presentation, and now after being forced to 'teach' with it for a few years, I loathe it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

I agree that Benchmark is probably awful (I'm a PP who posted about my 6th grade students complaining about it) BUT, I was there at the pitch day (for elementary and middle school) and the Benchmark presenter was a little old lady. It was the least 'polished' presentation compared to the other giant companies who presented. So in *this* case I don't think corruption. I didn't like StudySync that day at the presentation, and now after being forced to 'teach' with it for a few years, I loathe it.

Thanks for chiming in- why do you think MCPS picked it then? It seems like every ES teacher I’ve talked to about it doesn’t understand the selection of benchmark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

I agree that Benchmark is probably awful (I'm a PP who posted about my 6th grade students complaining about it) BUT, I was there at the pitch day (for elementary and middle school) and the Benchmark presenter was a little old lady. It was the least 'polished' presentation compared to the other giant companies who presented. So in *this* case I don't think corruption. I didn't like StudySync that day at the presentation, and now after being forced to 'teach' with it for a few years, I loathe it.

Thanks for chiming in- why do you think MCPS picked it then? It seems like every ES teacher I’ve talked to about it doesn’t understand the selection of benchmark.

Here is the presentation Niki Hazel gave to the BOE when they recommended Benchmark:

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B9FENM50A5A2/$file/Apprv%20Curr%20Inst%20Mat%20Pre-K-5%20Elem%20Lit%20190212%20PPT.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s incredible to me that arguing that kids should be reading and discussing decent books in school is a controversial statement.

It's probably the same posters who said "school is not childcare." Apparently school is not for literature either.

Don't know about that but why do you think Benchmark doesn't include great books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

I agree that Benchmark is probably awful (I'm a PP who posted about my 6th grade students complaining about it) BUT, I was there at the pitch day (for elementary and middle school) and the Benchmark presenter was a little old lady. It was the least 'polished' presentation compared to the other giant companies who presented. So in *this* case I don't think corruption. I didn't like StudySync that day at the presentation, and now after being forced to 'teach' with it for a few years, I loathe it.

Thanks for chiming in- why do you think MCPS picked it then? It seems like every ES teacher I’ve talked to about it doesn’t understand the selection of benchmark.

Here is the presentation Niki Hazel gave to the BOE when they recommended Benchmark:

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B9FENM50A5A2/$file/Apprv%20Curr%20Inst%20Mat%20Pre-K-5%20Elem%20Lit%20190212%20PPT.pdf

Sounds great! Sign me up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS doing its MCPS thing. Listen it has been bad for YEARS in curriculum decision-making. Hubris made them think they could write their own curricula with Pearson: Benchmark sounds like flat out corruption. How many former MCPS employees are on Benchmark’s pitch team? THIS is why MCPS needs an Inspector General. Got tired of all the tutoring needed to support basic blocking and tackling - left a w district during the pandemic. Other places aren’t as dumb!

I agree that Benchmark is probably awful (I'm a PP who posted about my 6th grade students complaining about it) BUT, I was there at the pitch day (for elementary and middle school) and the Benchmark presenter was a little old lady. It was the least 'polished' presentation compared to the other giant companies who presented. So in *this* case I don't think corruption. I didn't like StudySync that day at the presentation, and now after being forced to 'teach' with it for a few years, I loathe it.

Thanks for chiming in- why do you think MCPS picked it then? It seems like every ES teacher I’ve talked to about it doesn’t understand the selection of benchmark.

Here is the presentation Niki Hazel gave to the BOE when they recommended Benchmark:

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B9FENM50A5A2/$file/Apprv%20Curr%20Inst%20Mat%20Pre-K-5%20Elem%20Lit%20190212%20PPT.pdf

I’m curious about the “enthusiastic” references the presentation refers to.