Anonymous wrote:Any word on Math during the BOE meeting?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Everything bolded is conjecture. What we actually know: senior MCPS staff hit pension age and went to the private sector. Because their engagement in the RFP had been so deep, the procurement was delayed by a year.

There's never been anything brought forward suggesting Discovery was poised to win, let alone what their bid looked like at that point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Everything bolded is conjecture. What we actually know: senior MCPS staff hit pension age and went to the private sector. Because their engagement in the RFP had been so deep, the procurement was delayed by a year.

There's never been anything brought forward suggesting Discovery was poised to win, let alone what their bid looked like at that point.

But it's so much more fun to point fingers and toss accusations!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Everything bolded is conjecture. What we actually know: senior MCPS staff hit pension age and went to the private sector. Because their engagement in the RFP had been so deep, the procurement was delayed by a year.

There's never been anything brought forward suggesting Discovery was poised to win, let alone what their bid looked like at that point.

But it's so much more fun to point fingers and toss accusations!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Everything bolded is conjecture. What we actually know: senior MCPS staff hit pension age and went to the private sector. Because their engagement in the RFP had been so deep, the procurement was delayed by a year.

There's never been anything brought forward suggesting Discovery was poised to win, let alone what their bid looked like at that point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Everything bolded is conjecture. What we actually know: senior MCPS staff hit pension age and went to the private sector. Because their engagement in the RFP had been so deep, the procurement was delayed by a year.

There's never been anything brought forward suggesting Discovery was poised to win, let alone what their bid looked like at that point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

The MCPS staff who contracted with Discovery and oversaw delivery of Curriculum 2.0 turned around and got jobs at Discovery. There were some stories about how the RfP process was allegedly design to award Discovery. I don’t remember the whole story, but I think there was an attempt to solve source and a failed procurement that didn’t meet legal requirements so it had to be done over again. What was delivered was not even a complete curriculum but a hodgepodge of worksheets, generic instructions and corporate-speak concepts that students were supposed to learn.

I’m no expert, but from where I stand the situation resembled very closely an alleged fraud/kickback scheme. MCPS paid a ridiculous amount of money for a product that was substantially lower quality than just purchasing off the shelf text books, which is what they are doing now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Not familiar. Backstory/details?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear Discovery education could help with that...

I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t an investigation. Imagine short changing our kids for personal greed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"It also is important to note that the current acceleration option in 4th & 5th grade, Compacted 4/5 & Compacted 5/6, is built from a Eureka curriculum that is not designed for compaction, and the pandemic has made it difficult to spend the time to customize it. "

Why would a curriculum be chosen that was not designed for enrichment? That was one of the issues with 2.0 that our new curriculum was supposed to address. What has the curriculum office been doing during the pandemic? How many staff members are we paying? Not one of them could be assigned to figure out a way to accelerate Eureka? I call BS on that.

I'm a different poster than the very articulate one above, but my understanding is that they selected Eureka understanding that they needed to have a specialized version of Eureka developed to solve the 4/5, 5/6 issue, but in the meantime they were going to continue with 2.0. Then the pandemic hit, and they decided suddenly to shift everyone to Eureka. I don't know why.

I think that Eureka had enrichment options -- think breadth, more examples and maybe deeper understanding -- but wasn't designed for acceleration of the 4/5 & 5/6 type to move kids ahead a year, where 2.0 was more amenable (or had that designed in). That was a point of contention when they selected Eureka as the math curriculum going forward. They stuck with 2.0 for acceleration for a year because of that, but they did shift to Eureka this year, kind of just running through the entire year and a half of curriculum instead of having weeded it to reduce the load. That is something it's going to take them time to do, and it's why they might consider other options, such as developing a custom compacted curriculum.

I don't know the numbers as far as staffing goes or the specifics of the assignments; I do see a number of vacancies listed in the staff lists of associated offices, though. I'd have hoped for them to have gotten to this, too, but I'd guess that there was plenty of work in comparison to a normal year, and that this was one of many areas where resolution was postponed.

I hear Discovery education could help with that...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"It also is important to note that the current acceleration option in 4th & 5th grade, Compacted 4/5 & Compacted 5/6, is built from a Eureka curriculum that is not designed for compaction, and the pandemic has made it difficult to spend the time to customize it. "

Why would a curriculum be chosen that was not designed for enrichment? That was one of the issues with 2.0 that our new curriculum was supposed to address. What has the curriculum office been doing during the pandemic? How many staff members are we paying? Not one of them could be assigned to figure out a way to accelerate Eureka? I call BS on that.

I'm a different poster than the very articulate one above, but my understanding is that they selected Eureka understanding that they needed to have a specialized version of Eureka developed to solve the 4/5, 5/6 issue, but in the meantime they were going to continue with 2.0. Then the pandemic hit, and they decided suddenly to shift everyone to Eureka. I don't know why.

I think that Eureka had enrichment options -- think breadth, more examples and maybe deeper understanding -- but wasn't designed for acceleration of the 4/5 & 5/6 type to move kids ahead a year, where 2.0 was more amenable (or had that designed in). That was a point of contention when they selected Eureka as the math curriculum going forward. They stuck with 2.0 for acceleration for a year because of that, but they did shift to Eureka this year, kind of just running through the entire year and a half of curriculum instead of having weeded it to reduce the load. That is something it's going to take them time to do, and it's why they might consider other options, such as developing a custom compacted curriculum.

I don't know the numbers as far as staffing goes or the specifics of the assignments; I do see a number of vacancies listed in the staff lists of associated offices, though. I'd have hoped for them to have gotten to this, too, but I'd guess that there was plenty of work in comparison to a normal year, and that this was one of many areas where resolution was postponed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"It also is important to note that the current acceleration option in 4th & 5th grade, Compacted 4/5 & Compacted 5/6, is built from a Eureka curriculum that is not designed for compaction, and the pandemic has made it difficult to spend the time to customize it. "

Why would a curriculum be chosen that was not designed for enrichment? That was one of the issues with 2.0 that our new curriculum was supposed to address. What has the curriculum office been doing during the pandemic? How many staff members are we paying? Not one of them could be assigned to figure out a way to accelerate Eureka? I call BS on that.

I'm a different poster than the very articulate one above, but my understanding is that they selected Eureka understanding that they needed to have a specialized version of Eureka developed to solve the 4/5, 5/6 issue, but in the meantime they were going to continue with 2.0. Then the pandemic hit, and they decided suddenly to shift everyone to Eureka. I don't know why.

I think that Eureka had enrichment options -- think breadth, more examples and maybe deeper understanding -- but wasn't designed for acceleration of the 4/5 & 5/6 type to move kids ahead a year, where 2.0 was more amenable (or had that designed in). That was a point of contention when they selected Eureka as the math curriculum going forward. They stuck with 2.0 for acceleration for a year because of that, but they did shift to Eureka this year, kind of just running through the entire year and a half of curriculum instead of having weeded it to reduce the load. That is something it's going to take them time to do, and it's why they might consider other options, such as developing a custom compacted curriculum.

I don't know the numbers as far as staffing goes or the specifics of the assignments; I do see a number of vacancies listed in the staff lists of associated offices, though. I'd have hoped for them to have gotten to this, too, but I'd guess that there was plenty of work in comparison to a normal year, and that this was one of many areas where resolution was postponed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"It also is important to note that the current acceleration option in 4th & 5th grade, Compacted 4/5 & Compacted 5/6, is built from a Eureka curriculum that is not designed for compaction, and the pandemic has made it difficult to spend the time to customize it. "

Why would a curriculum be chosen that was not designed for enrichment? That was one of the issues with 2.0 that our new curriculum was supposed to address. What has the curriculum office been doing during the pandemic? How many staff members are we paying? Not one of them could be assigned to figure out a way to accelerate Eureka? I call BS on that.

I'm a different poster than the very articulate one above, but my understanding is that they selected Eureka understanding that they needed to have a specialized version of Eureka developed to solve the 4/5, 5/6 issue, but in the meantime they were going to continue with 2.0. Then the pandemic hit, and they decided suddenly to shift everyone to Eureka. I don't know why.