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[quote=Anonymous]Someone asked for specifics and facts. Here goes:

Old curriculum: Schools put quotas on kids who had to be accelerated to be college-ready. Schools over-accelerated and kids weren't ready to do math. Spiraling curriculum worked really well for accelerated kids but was confusing to the majority of the kids, who didn't develop number sense. HOWEVER, it did have actual assessments that told teachers (and parents) where a child was ready to learn next (scores were always on grade level and above grade level)

New curriculum: Slower, more depth, develop strong number sense and be able to explain how you get your answer before moving onto the next concept. Great for many kids. Boring for kids who already know the concept and need more. Teachers told to teach multiple levels in one classroom vs. the old switch model with each teacher teaching a specific level. More assessments, but nothing that actually shows where a child is to start. So, assessment might be on an understanding of even and odd numbers. But what if you have a child who mastered that a year or two ago? There's nothing that I've seen that actually shows exactly what a child is ready to learn next. Curriculum has what's called Drexel problems to challenge children. Implementation of Drexel's has been hit and miss depending on schools and teachers.

Problem with the curriculum isn't so much changing how they are teaching math, it's with the lack of data for teachers and parents along with an insistence that all children have to remain in a multi-level, same-grade classroom for math. It's ineffective and no one wins.

Oh, and add to that the fact that the county hasn't even written the curriculum for the guinea pig children, now in 3rd grade.[/quote]

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