Reply to When will MCPS adopt an evidence-based early reading curriculum?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "When will MCPS adopt an evidence-based early reading curriculum?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Any teachers or experts out there have a recommended alternative to benchmark?[/quote]

When they were choosing curricula, there were 5 or so that they were considering for ES ELA. Only one of them was recommended by the nonprofit Wd Reports. People assumed they would go with that. But nope, they went with one that was not recommended. [/quote]

Does anyone have this list of what was recommended?  [/quote]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Any teachers or experts out there have a recommended alternative to benchmark?[/quote]

Does anyone have this list of what was recommended?  [/quote]

I was trying to find the thread where this was discussed a few years ago and couldn't. However, there was a cross-post from the that thread to another thread, which included the following - they were only looking at one curriculum that was recommended by Ed Reports, and that was Ready Gen--and still the person posting said it was "only slightly better than mediocre." It sounds like there are better curricula out there, but MCPS wasn't considering them last time around. I think parents/teachers would want to find a stronger curriculum, perhaps by examining options in Ed Reports.

Anyway, here is from that thread (which can be found here: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/775359.page)

"Here is an email posted to a parent list serve. The parent is a public school curriculum professional. Based on her feedback, 4 of 5 programs are terrible for literacy but all are good for math.

"Here is my recommendation on what to do about the curriculum selection.

"I have about 100 opinions and have done a ton of research on these (and already know a bunch of them from my day job). Not sure how interested/involved you want to be but figured I'd share my two cents. For middle school it isn't quite as horrible. But 2/3 of the elementary choices are bad and one is mediocre, so if you are inclined to say/do anything, I'd suggest you click on the links for feedback put negative responses on the rating scale (literally three clicks).

"Also, for the record, the math choices are all strong, so we have that going for us!

"So, if you have five minutes, here's what I would do (before Dec. 9!). Click to provide feedback on 'Wonders' and put in negative ratings (the open ended responses are optional, but you could add, if you want, "Ed Reports does not rate Wonders all green." I'd also likely put in mediocre (middle rating) feedback on Benchmark, and higher feedback on ReadyGen (that's our best bet and it is only slightly above mediocre, honestly). Here is the page for feedback links for each program: 
MCPS Curriculum Review – Vendor Presentations webpage.

"To put this in perspective, I think the program called 'Wonders' they have listed here is on par with what I see in some of the lowest performing, weakest districts in the country; in fact, we'd be better in terms of curriculum sending our kids to Baltimore City Schools. Seriously their materials for reading and literacy are better and more rigorous. Some of these are actually programs I actively superintendents against using. Wonders is so low level and boring that I would seriously consider private school.

"One of my main sources was an independent review consortium called Ed Reports (actually called out in the RFP from MoCo for curriculum). Both Wonders and Benchmark are not rated 'all green' on their ratings. Just in case you wanted one of my back up sources! You can click here if you are so inclined."
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics