Anonymous wrote:I’m confused after reading that article. My 8th grade DCPS middle school kid just read A Raisin in the Sun and has to read a book every month and write a book report on it. There are also electives where they are reading Lord of the Flies and getting lots of writing homework.

The new curriculum is in pilot and not rolled out to all schools yet.

Anonymous wrote:PP sounds like they work for CommonLit or DCPS. Most parents are complaining because CommonLit removes ALL books from the curriculum. One novel per quarter seems doable and yet DCPS gave the green light to this program without any tweaks.

Because they are lazy. They don’t want to customize. They rolled this pilot out with a few weeks notice to parents in August. They rolled it out so quickly that they didn’t have time to institute any customizations. This is being piloted to the detriment of students for one whole school year.

+1. How are kids supposed to learn to write if they don’t do sustained reading? At a minimum they need to be reading one book a quarter and doing a book report. I also just find it sad that they are throwing in the towel on introducing kids to great literature.

There is a huge push for more nonfiction practice everywhere. We're in FCPS and my kid probably won't read a novel at all this year unless it's in a book club.

I’m confused after reading that article. My 8th grade DCPS middle school kid just read A Raisin in the Sun and has to read a book every month and write a book report on it. There are also electives where they are reading Lord of the Flies and getting lots of writing homework.

PP sounds like they work for CommonLit or DCPS. Most parents are complaining because CommonLit removes ALL books from the curriculum. One novel per quarter seems doable and yet DCPS gave the green light to this program without any tweaks.

Because they are lazy. They don’t want to customize. They rolled this pilot out with a few weeks notice to parents in August. They rolled it out so quickly that they didn’t have time to institute any customizations. This is being piloted to the detriment of students for one whole school year.

Although Common Lit only has 1 novel per year, it is definitely considered high-quality instructional material that has all green on Ed Report:https://www.edreports.org/reports/overview/commonlit-360-6-8-2023

It's not just what students read, it's the tasks that are built around those readings, and those tasks are much stronger in Common Lit than in DC's home grown curriculum. DCPS could certainly add novel studies on top of Common Lit, or encourage teachers to add literature circles for kids. But as a base curriculum, what Common Lit offers is much stronger than the home-grown curriculum.

I have three kids in dcps. In the “good schools” too. I have seen lower standards each year. Honestly, it started with the pandemic with schools closed for more than a year. It’s just been dumbing down and more dumbing down every year.

This latest change with the CommonLit pilot is just the last straw. So sick of these short-sighted and lazy decisions that affect education of so many kids in the district.

Why is it difficult to take the best parts of the CommonLit curriculum and package it with novel studies and writing and create a more well rounded ELA curriculum? We have a bunch of people in dcps central whose job is to ensure education standards are being met who apparently can’t do this and instead farm it out to a so called “non-profit” like CommonLit.

The founder and CEO of CommonLit barely has any teaching experience and makes almost $400k from this venture.

Sick to my stomach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone see this? https://51st.news/opinion-dcps-middle-schoolers-should-be-reading-novels/

Saw this being circulated on X and came here to see if people were talking about it.

Is there some kind of organized effort by parents to take on this new ELA curriculum, as well as the awful science curriculum being taught in elementary schools? I want to joint the movement if it exists and if it doesn't, I want to start it. I'm sick of my tax dollars being used by Central Office to make DCPS curriculum demonstrably worse, especially when I've honestly been reasonably happy with it thus far.

Anyone know? I know DCUM isn't the place to organize but I want to get plugged in with any parents group that is doing this.

I'm really glad the article was written. It's already gotten more than a million views on Twitter, so people are paying attention.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone see this? https://51st.news/opinion-dcps-middle-schoolers-should-be-reading-novels/

Saw this being circulated on X and came here to see if people were talking about it.

Is there some kind of organized effort by parents to take on this new ELA curriculum, as well as the awful science curriculum being taught in elementary schools? I want to joint the movement if it exists and if it doesn't, I want to start it. I'm sick of my tax dollars being used by Central Office to make DCPS curriculum demonstrably worse, especially when I've honestly been reasonably happy with it thus far.

Anyone know? I know DCUM isn't the place to organize but I want to get plugged in with any parents group that is doing this.

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone see this? https://51st.news/opinion-dcps-middle-schoolers-should-be-reading-novels/

Saw this being circulated on X and came here to see if people were talking about it.

A lot of good English teachers retired or switched districts over the last few years rather than teach what downtown’s requiring.

Did anyone see this? https://51st.news/opinion-dcps-middle-schoolers-should-be-reading-novels/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I complained to someone in DCPS central office about this, and it was a disappointing conversation. The person I spoke to said the curriculum was chosen to lighten the planning lift for teachers and so that more students could relate to the content. They also said there would be more focus on writing, rather than reading, and they confirmed that there was no consultation of parents during the decision-making process.

More students could “relate” to the content actually means dumbing it down for those who struggle with reading a novel. So rather than push kids to do more, it a race to the bottom.

THIS x 1000. Exactly, race to the bottom.

Just when you think the bottom could not get lower………..

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I complained to someone in DCPS central office about this, and it was a disappointing conversation. The person I spoke to said the curriculum was chosen to lighten the planning lift for teachers and so that more students could relate to the content. They also said there would be more focus on writing, rather than reading, and they confirmed that there was no consultation of parents during the decision-making process.

They wouldn't need to "lighten the planning lift" for teachers if they kept class numbers to a manageable size and dealt with behavior problems effectively.

Meanwhile, what the heck does it mean to say "so that more students could relate to the content"? Students are shorter these days so they need shorter content?

A big reason for studying well-written novels is to learn how alike people are on the inside, how alike human relationships are, and how alike the human experience is across time, contexts, and cultures.

The “relate to the characters” bit is just the soft bigotry of low expectations. Not even racism. Just the expectation that the kids are too dumb to get Tom Sawyer (just an example, replace with any character in the American canon)

Anonymous wrote:I complained to someone in DCPS central office about this, and it was a disappointing conversation. The person I spoke to said the curriculum was chosen to lighten the planning lift for teachers and so that more students could relate to the content. They also said there would be more focus on writing, rather than reading, and they confirmed that there was no consultation of parents during the decision-making process.

More students could “relate” to the content actually means dumbing it down for those who struggle with reading a novel. So rather than push kids to do more, it a race to the bottom.