If you are a parent, please contact DCPS and your council members about this. I’m a teacher and our complaints are ignored by central office and admin. The curriculum issues extend into every subject.

It’s not like the previous curriculum was great either. In 8th grade at Deal last year they spent the year “reading” the four novels or plays out loud, with little substantive discussion or writing. They didn’t actually even read To Kill a Mockingbird — they listened to audio summaries of each chapter. And then they watched the movie Just Mercy, which my kid says was the most compelling thing they did all year. It inspired her to read the book Just Mercy on her own. My current 7th grader at Deal says CommonLit is extremely boring and repetitive. It’s basically like CAPE prep all year long. The teacher seems to hate it too.

Looks like this topic is getting national attention.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/high-school-english-teachers-assigning-books.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Anonymous wrote:Not only does DCPS not seek input, they decide to pilot this program in mid August in certain schools. At Deal, we were told to return the books on the school supply list as they wouldn’t be reading them in class.

Can one of the teachers write an opinion piece and send it to the 51st? I bet they could anonymize you if you fear retaliation, but there is a lot of interest in education now (especially after the other piece did so well).

Either for Amplify science or the ELA curriculum -- it would be wonderful to hear a teachers fleshed out critique.

Not only does DCPS not seek input, they decide to pilot this program in mid August in certain schools. At Deal, we were told to return the books on the school supply list as they wouldn’t be reading them in class.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested in knowing which other curricula DCPS considered. Did they even consider other options? Or did CommonLit, who is based here in DC and employs some former DCPS teachers (none of them are very experienced) get lobbied by them to just try it for one year.

Maybe we need to submit a FOIA request to find out.

I’m willing to bet they were lazy and just “stumbled” onto this option.

I think it's personal connections that drive these nonsensical decisions. Or worse.

So when DCPS chooses a curriculum, they don't involve community stakeholders and teachers? We are in MCPS and they do.

Not even a little bit. I can’t even get an email in response to all the errors I’ve found in the science curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested in knowing which other curricula DCPS considered. Did they even consider other options? Or did CommonLit, who is based here in DC and employs some former DCPS teachers (none of them are very experienced) get lobbied by them to just try it for one year.

Maybe we need to submit a FOIA request to find out.

I’m willing to bet they were lazy and just “stumbled” onto this option.

I think it's personal connections that drive these nonsensical decisions. Or worse.

So when DCPS chooses a curriculum, they don't involve community stakeholders and teachers? We are in MCPS and they do.

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested in knowing which other curricula DCPS considered. Did they even consider other options? Or did CommonLit, who is based here in DC and employs some former DCPS teachers (none of them are very experienced) get lobbied by them to just try it for one year.

Maybe we need to submit a FOIA request to find out.

I’m willing to bet they were lazy and just “stumbled” onto this option.

I think it's personal connections that drive these nonsensical decisions. Or worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I don't work for common lit or DCPS. I'm a parent but have done a lot of curriculum work.

And to follow up on this ... from my perspective DCPS (and other school districts) should be using an externally vetted curriculum that is all green on Ed Reports. There are other open-source curricula that fit the bill and have more novels; DCPS could have gone with one of those. For example, Guidebooks is highly regarded, uses full length texts each quarter as the base of its curriculum, and has a free version that DCPS could use. In 8th, for example, students read Freak the Mighty, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Call of the Wild, and Animal Farm, along with other shorter texts. This is actually the one I would have wanted them to pick. Nevertheless, Common Lit is very good and highly regarded by experts.

Ed Reports: https://edreports.org/reports/overview/learnzillion-guidebooks-2018

Guidebooks: https://louisianacurriculumhub.com

Excuse me if I fail to have faith in the education policy community. They are the ones who convinced everyone to do “whole language,” let out kids be taught math by computer app, tried to get rid of algebra in middle school, and the like. Some things are just intuitive ans common sense, including that more novels are better.

Please foia who chose this within dcps and who chose amplify science. They are both terrible. Studies show kids learn better on paper, and yet dc keeps going in the wrong direction.

I would be interested in knowing which other curricula DCPS considered. Did they even consider other options? Or did CommonLit, who is based here in DC and employs some former DCPS teachers (none of them are very experienced) get lobbied by them to just try it for one year.

Maybe we need to submit a FOIA request to find out.

I’m willing to bet they were lazy and just “stumbled” onto this option.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I don't work for common lit or DCPS. I'm a parent but have done a lot of curriculum work.

Did you see all these comments from teacher reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/ELATeachers/comments/1jlglt6/commonlit_360/

" it’s making me consider leaving the profession. The materials are mind-numbingly boring, and it’s turning my students into robots. Classes that used to be exuberant and engaged now have no personality. It’s read, answer a (often poorly worded) question, and repeat. I’m sure there are ways I could make it more engaging, and they can definitely pick up on the fact that I don’t like the curriculum, but I feel like it has sucked all the joy out of teaching. I used to have debates, read scholarly articles, do Socratic seminars, assign creative projects…and now there really isn’t room for any of that."

"Students have the attention span of sandfleas, and we're expected to completely overcome it, but aren't allowed to build reading stamina using long-form text. Everything has to be in short snippets. No novels where the kids are given the opportunity to gain empathy and understanding of other people by sharing in their stories. I hate this timeline. "

We left DCPS for middle school, but I would be very worried about this.

In the future I see a widening gap -- private school students (and in DC, certain charter students) are still reading novels and learning how to analyze texts, and public schools students are left to lower and lower and lower standards in reading/writing/learn science and history, etc.

Parents should absolutely mobilize. Jonathan Haidt's new mission is "get Ed Tech out of the classroom."

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I don't work for common lit or DCPS. I'm a parent but have done a lot of curriculum work.

And to follow up on this ... from my perspective DCPS (and other school districts) should be using an externally vetted curriculum that is all green on Ed Reports. There are other open-source curricula that fit the bill and have more novels; DCPS could have gone with one of those. For example, Guidebooks is highly regarded, uses full length texts each quarter as the base of its curriculum, and has a free version that DCPS could use. In 8th, for example, students read Freak the Mighty, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Call of the Wild, and Animal Farm, along with other shorter texts. This is actually the one I would have wanted them to pick. Nevertheless, Common Lit is very good and highly regarded by experts.

Ed Reports: https://edreports.org/reports/overview/learnzillion-guidebooks-2018

Guidebooks: https://louisianacurriculumhub.com

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.

I don't work for common lit or DCPS. I'm a parent but have done a lot of curriculum work.

Anonymous wrote: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.

But there are also full nonfiction books … biographies and memoirs and such.