Reply to What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?

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Reply to "What's wrong with 2.0? Can someone break it down for me?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Agreed.  Throwing kids in one class doesn't really address the problem that some kids are ahead of others.   Differences will always exist, nothing will change this.  The achievement gap will never be closed honestly.

When you think about it, the real strategy behind putting all the kids in one class is to slow down the highly able kids.  That seems immoral to me.

An honest approach would be to challenge every child and give children who are behind opportunities to catch up by giving them resources and opportunities to catch up.

My main problems with 2.0 are not necessarily around content.  Instead, I have a problem with roll-out.
1)   Heterogeneous grouping is not a productive way to challenge every child
2)   There is a cohort of third graders that gets the new curriculum every year.  Changes this big should be piloted and tested, not just rolled out blind every year.  The pain should be distributed across different cohorts, not born by one group of kids.
3)   Assessments are not helpful to parents at all.   I want information about how my child does against his/her peers and MCPS does everything it can to hide that information.  I don't want this for bragging rights.  Instead, I want to understand if and where my child needs help.  I have a child that I suspected was behind in reading, but I didn't realize how far behind until we got private testing.  Dropping the Terra Nova test was a mistake.
4) Pearson -  This curriculum is made by a private company for their profits.    I expect we will eventually get testing from this company that shows how well C2.0 works.   Pearson will also control how much parents can see of the testing because it will be copyrighted.  There are too many conflicts of interest that bother me about the Pearson relationship.   They may not be aligned with MCPS interests.

By the way, there is a law called COMAR that requires MCPS to provide education opportunities for gifted children that need it.  I think MCPS is violating this law, at least in sprit.  MCPS says as much when you listen to them.[/quote]

Just a small point --  " Pearson will also control how much parents can see of the testing because it will be copyrighted." -- under FERPA parents have a right to see all testing administered to their child.  Copyright can not be used as an excuse to fail to provide access to educational records.  You may not be able to get a copy to take home, but you will have to be permitted to access these and review both the answer sheets and the test questions. You might have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before viewing.
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