Reply to Please tell me this means MCPS is getting rid of Benchmark for next year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Someone should be held accountable for the costly mistake with Benchmark.

The working group of educators who reviewed the various options did not support Benchmark. So who made the decision to go against the recommendation?

Big, expensive mistake that negatively impacted students.

Where’s the accountability?[/quote]

It makes me wonder if someone got a kickback for selecting Benchmark because otherwise it makes no sense.  Has anyone investigated this?[/quote]

They essentially selected Benchmark because it had the most materials available in Spanish translation. They told this to the board at the time, explaining why they didn't choose a higher-rated curriculum.[/quote]

I recall this too.  Not really sure how they will navigate this because the ideal- a highly rated curriculum also available in Spanish, is a unicorn that doesn't exist.  And now they are rolling out even more dual-immersion programs (which overall I think is a good thing! they just seem to have put the cart before the horse).[/quote]

This seems so weird.  How hard is it to translate a different curriculum into Spanish?  [/quote]

Why does it need to be the same?  Somehow Spanish speaking countries teach kids to read with their own curriculums. Why don’t we get the best English reading curriculum for when we are teaching in English and the best Spanish reading curriculum for when we are teaching in Spanish?  Having a curriculum that’s equally bad in both languages doesn’t seem to be an advantage. [/quote]

Is MCPS considering this?  Would make sense.[/quote]

Wouldn't that be twice as expensive? Maybe just teach everyone in one language. I'm not into a tax hike to cover these extravagances. [/quote]

You can’t “teach everyone” in a language they don’t speak, Trumper.[/quote]

Not np.  It cannot be dismissed how much ESL has cost our students, and if you want to dismiss it, you are woefully uneducated.  Expecting a teacher to conduct a class/lesson in two languages is simply irresponsible of the system and causes nothing but teacher burnout.  The kindergarten teacher my DD had was in a class of 29 students by herself, no teacher's aide or anything.  Six of those students did not speak English and she had to teach them in Spanish.  It was a disaster in terms of keeping this teacher (who did leave the profession, and she was young) and in adequate instruction to the other students.  This is not a Trump thing (although I'm sure everything in your small brain points to Trump) this is a serious education problem and we need to find a better solution and quickly.  This has directly coincided with the downfall of MCPS.  [/quote]

At our school, in early ES, any kid at grade level gets warehoused. This is because they are so busy helping the ESL students that they simply don't have time. They figure mom and dad will pick up the slack with the non-remedial students which they do...[/quote]

NCLB, increased testing for autism/adhd/LDs etc., and a huge influx of poor hispanic people pretty much ruined MCPS. It is happening in Fairfax county too. They are about 5-10 years behind us. My own opinion is that we need to prioritize decreasing class sizes immediately. Kids at all levels can get more specialized attention, classroom management will be easier, teachers will hopefully stop leaving and recruiting will be easier. Maybe we can transition some of these central office folks to the classroom. How many of these folks are really doing work that really supports teachers in the classroom. I'd never purposely move to a state that has county level school districts again.[/quote]

You cannot decrease class size just by adding more people.  You can decrease Teacher to student ratio by that or increase the amount of support that teachers m/students have.  In order to decrease class size you need additional space, additional people, and additional funding to pay for the earlier mentioned.  Or you can try moving them around to schools with open space.  We really need people to be clear on this, because folks constantly throw this out as a potential solution without understanding what it actually entails.

Town districts don’t have a resolution to this problem, they are just generally smaller in population with concentrated wealth.[/quote]

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