Reply to MCPS gutting humanities MS magnets and replacing with CKLA? (Are CESes next?)

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Reply to "MCPS gutting humanities MS magnets and replacing with CKLA? (Are CESes next?)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds like the head of AEI, Kristie Clark, has told parents that they are planning to get rid of the current rigorous/advanced humanities curriculum at the middle school magnets and just switch to CKLA (with "enrichment") starting next year (apparently in part because not all of the magnet kids are passing their MCAPs and they think it's because of the current curriculum?)

And then this is just speculation, but reading the tea leaves, I would assume they will roll this approach out to CESes next. And maybe to regular middle schools in place of HiGH too (I think they would have to revise HiGH anyway to meet the new state standards, so I suspect they will just drop it for on-level SS and instead do "enriched" English through CKLA.)

1) Why are they so obsessed with using the on-level CKLA for kids who need enrichment?  It seems like a big downgrade at the ES level-- I have heard complaints that kids who loved ELC in 4th have been very disappointed with CKLA in 5th even when cohorted.  Is this the typical perception and if so is there a way to come together to communicate that kids, parents, and teachers think that using CKLA in place of a truly enriched curriculum is a bad approach that they should roll back in ES rather than expand to MS?
2). Who is this Kristie Clark person? What is her background?  Did she actually study gifted education (I don't see any indication of that) and if so how can she think this is a good plan for gifted kids?  Or if she doesn't have a background in gifted education, why is she in charge of the Accelerated and Enriched Instruction office and able to make these decisions?  
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Reading the 1st post: why does AEI assume kids not passing MCAP is due to the curriculum? They should be reassessing their student selection process (ahem the use of lottery, local norms).[/quote]

It sounds like Kristie Clark thinks that English works the same way as math, where moving from on-level in ES to above-grade-level in MS would mean that you're skipping skills that were supposed to be taught in the grades in-between. But  actually each grade level of English (past the early learning-to-read years) covers all the standards of the year before but in a more advanced way.  So she's trying to make them lower the curriculum to make sure they are covering 6-8 grade standards on time, not realizing that the higher-level curriculum already covers all of that plus more.

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