Anonymous wrote:10:17, the mandate is that the curriculum be revised. Not that it be completely replaced. The Common Core was unique in that it required a lot of "replacement", but in some subject areas like science and social studies, the content isn't different, it was just upgraded in places and has all been put online for teachers so that there is more of a professional learning community among teachers in the county, since again it's so large and before, teachers from different schools did not have a way to communicate, share resources, lesson ideas, etc easily.

10:17 again. PP, it is my understanding that teachers did have a place to "post" things that were working for them, but have stopped because they do not believe MCPS assurances that their work product won't be misappropriated into the package for sale. This, we need to work on.

10:17 again.

10:44 - your kids were going to be guinea pigs for Core Curriculum no matter what. The school system had to implement it. The good news is that if MCPS wants to sell it, they need to make it so good that others will buy it. That means it can be adapted, and from what I hear from my daughter's teacher, the teachers are able to comment. They had been sharing content that was working via an electronic bulletin board of some sort, but teachers have stopped doing this because they are afraid MCPS will include the content in the package for sale without compensating the teachers. That's the biggest issue I see with it being sold.

As for taxpayers bearing the expense, you would be bearing the expense anyway because there is no choice but to implement Common Core. I don't see why you can't understand that there was going to be a change no matter what.

As for Starr, he's picking where Weast left off. This stuff was well into play BEFORE Starr got here. It didn't start when Starr got here. It wouldn't be in full roll out to the schools if it just started with Starr. My guess is that the BOE picked Starr because they felt he would do a good job of continuing what Weast had started. Again, you should be asking the BOE.

As for differentiated education, I don't know. I have to believe it is still there in a different form. I only have a first grader, so I don't know what was there before. I am happy with what is happening at my school, who incorporated portions of 2.0 into the K curriculum last year. As the PP said before, a lot depends on how your principal views the world. Perhaps you should start by asking him/her instead of asking me.

I also need to point out that any school system that has 37% of kids testing as GT has standards that are set too low. I am not saying I agree with 2.0, but I am willing to see it play out.

10:17, the mandate is that the curriculum be revised. Not that it be completely replaced. The Common Core was unique in that it required a lot of "replacement", but in some subject areas like science and social studies, the content isn't different, it was just upgraded in places and has all been put online for teachers so that there is more of a professional learning community among teachers in the county, since again it's so large and before, teachers from different schools did not have a way to communicate, share resources, lesson ideas, etc easily.

I did not receive a letter from Starr. My child's school often does not send home vital information so I have nothing to back up the validity of 10:24's post.

If the quote is valid, my questions for Starr are as follows:

1) Why do MCPS children have to be the guinea pigs?

2) Why do the taxpayers of Montgomery County have to pay the price tag to come up with the curriculum if other jurisdictions just need to wait for us to spend the money to develop it, try it out on our kids, and fix what doesn't work when it isn't successful because they can buy the curriculum at a later date?

3) Finally, what happens if the curriculum 2.0 that Starr is pushing is so flawed that no one wants to buy it? The county eats the loss?

4) Meanwhile, what happens to our children who are no longer receiving a differentiated education that meets their needs?

Starr always has the out of getting another job in another state but our children ultimately will pay the price for the problems with Curriculum 2.0.

Anonymous wrote:10:17 is exactly right. A few things that many posters either do not know or do not understand:

-Maryland adopted the new Common Core State Standards for math, reading, and writing (so did 47 other states) which is responsible for the slowing down of math and changes to the content within math.
-The MCPS BOE requires that the elementary curriculum be revised every ten years. It was 2001 when the previous curriculum came out.
-Curriculum 2.0 is MCPS's way of marrying the new standards with a desire to prepare students for the 21st century by incorporating critical thinking explicitly into the curriculum.

The reality is that MCPS is huge, there are over 100 elementary schools, and in each school, the principal is king/queen. The way that the curriculum is implemented will vary, and that is not going to change unless MCPS uses a scripted curriculum which would literally tell teachers what to say. The "curriculum" is now the state standards. The teachers get to decide how to teach those standards to their group of students. A lot of it depends on the quality of the indvidual teacher.

10:17 here. Thanks for the support. I did not know about the ten year revisions. Do you know how this is mandated? Can the BOE change this requirement? Or is it a curricular review with discretion to change the curriculum (if Common Core or NCLB had not come into play)? I undestand if you don't know the answers here, but it comes right back to the elected BOE being key to a lot of what goes on in the schools. Parents who don't like the direction need to start there.

And frankly, can one of the parents who thinks their kid isn't being challenged please answer this question for me: would you rather your kid come home with and "A" on a paper, maybe missing a few problems, or a "B" or "C" in a challenging concept?

It looks like Virginia hasn't adopted Common Core yet. You could move there since MCPS isn't going back to the old curriculum.

I honestly don't know. All I know is that the curriculum was going to change. The testing is going to change. My comment on Common Core is that money was going to be spent and we weren't going to be able to stay with the old curriculum as a whole. Whether pieces could have been kept, I couldn't tell you. If you want to know more, I googled it for you. Here's the main link.

http://www.corestandards.org/

10:17 is exactly right. A few things that many posters either do not know or do not understand:

-Maryland adopted the new Common Core State Standards for math, reading, and writing (so did 47 other states) which is responsible for the slowing down of math and changes to the content within math.
-The MCPS BOE requires that the elementary curriculum be revised every ten years. It was 2001 when the previous curriculum came out.
-Curriculum 2.0 is MCPS's way of marrying the new standards with a desire to prepare students for the 21st century by incorporating critical thinking explicitly into the curriculum.

The reality is that MCPS is huge, there are over 100 elementary schools, and in each school, the principal is king/queen. The way that the curriculum is implemented will vary, and that is not going to change unless MCPS uses a scripted curriculum which would literally tell teachers what to say. The "curriculum" is now the state standards. The teachers get to decide how to teach those standards to their group of students. A lot of it depends on the quality of the indvidual teacher.

Did any one on this thread read the letter that came home from Starr a few weeks ago about 2.0? The curriculum is being changed because the state signed on to the new Common Core Curriculum. The curriculum was going to change BY LAW whether you wanted it to or not. 2.0 is MCPS's attempt to (1) adapt it to the MCPS needs and (2) recoup the money spent to create it by packaging it and selling it to other school systems that need to do the same thing. Dozens of states will be under Common Core. If MCPS had to do a new curriculum, I think it is smart for them to try to sell it to recoup the costs.

So all of you who can accept change, talk to the BOE and the state of Maryland. For that matter, tell Congress that NCLB is not working.

Does the State or new Common Core Curriculum mandate the elimination of potential pathways of advancement for the majority of the County students?

How teachers come up with grades for elementary school students is a major problem in MCPS across all subject areas. Kids are in elementary school for probably the most important 6 years of their lives because those years build the blocks of learning that will carry them through all other higher levels of education.

Then, as a parent, stop and ask why doesn't MCPS use a system like Edline for elementary school much like they do in middle and high school? Edline allows parents to go online and check students grades however often they wish and you have a pretty good idea when a child may not be mastering a concept or a subject well before the report card comes home. There is an opportunity for the parent to intervene and provide extra support before the whole marking period has passed. The technology is already there and multiple school systems all over the country use similar technology to communicate a child's progress with parents for all grades, not just middle school and high school.

With vague measurement terms such as Curriculum 2.0 provides along with the lack of assignment grades that are reported to parents, I have questioned the validity of the grades on my child's report card. The report card doesn't always reflect problems that my child has. I have felt that some teachers (not all and definitely not the good ones) take advantage of the lack of information they have to give to parents and just pick a passing grade out of thin air so they do not have to address a child's areas of weakness. After all, how many parents are going to question a passing grade or spend money on outside testing and help if the teacher indicates she doesn't see a problem?

From an administrative perspective (school administration as well as Carver Center), they also turn a blind eye to identifying children's problems because if a child is identified, they then have the legal responsibility to address it. So isn't it cheaper to put your head in the sand like an ostrich, and ignore the problem and after all isn't a certain percentage of children expendable?

And what happens when there are gaps that are not immediately address in elementary school and that child finally reaches middle school? From our family's own personal experience, these children run into a brick wall or fall off a cliff in middle school. I have a daughter who supposedly could pull down straight A's in 5th grade then struggled to get C's in multiple subjects in 6th grade because she had major issues that were not flagged sooner. I had meetings at the elementary school when I suspected problems but was dismissed because she received passing grades. It turns out, my initial concerns were valid and the elementary school was very effective in pushing the problems to the middle school at the great expense of my child.

I am wholeheartedly fed up with the current BOE and the administrators who run MCPS. I do vote and I will be looking closely at supporting new candidates during the next election. The people who run MCPS have lost connection with what actually is happening in the classroom. If there needs to be budget cuts, start with eliminating 2.0 and laying off administrative positions at the Carver Center. By eliminating waste and redundancy, there would be funds to put money where it does the most good - hiring more teachers, aides, and special educators and providing them with a livable salary. It seems the teacher union should support such a move if they had the best interest of the teachers and our children at heart.

Did any one on this thread read the letter that came home from Starr a few weeks ago about 2.0? The curriculum is being changed because the state signed on to the new Common Core Curriculum. The curriculum was going to change BY LAW whether you wanted it to or not. 2.0 is MCPS's attempt to (1) adapt it to the MCPS needs and (2) recoup the money spent to create it by packaging it and selling it to other school systems that need to do the same thing. Dozens of states will be under Common Core. If MCPS had to do a new curriculum, I think it is smart for them to try to sell it to recoup the costs.

So all of you who can accept change, talk to the BOE and the state of Maryland. For that matter, tell Congress that NCLB is not working.

MCPS' mission is to improve the bottom third of the kids so they are working at "grade level." They have taken the position that there can only be one approach to this, so they leave out the kids who can and want to do more.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Question for the lazy two posters, why do you think MCPS is implementing the new curriculum. They don't gain any benefit from having angry parents or students who can't or won't take advanced math in high school. My understanding was that the new curriculum was developed because the students didn't understand the concepts behind the math they were doing. I can relate since when I was a child we learned multiplication, addition, etc. primarily through flash cards and memorization in 2nd and 3rd grade. We didn't learn the concepts behind those processes until 5th grade.[/quote]

To respond to post 19:00:

The reason MCPS is implementing the new curriculum with the timing of a new superintendent is obvious. It was someone's job at the Carver Center to develop the program and therefore the roll out of a "new" curriculum was needed to justify and budget the salary that person got paid (which is far more than the salary the general education teachers who work with our children get).

My children range from a high school to 2nd grade and I remember similar promises by MCPS of how great the Everyday Math program was to be when my oldest child was in elementary school. I also heard similar concerns from parents at PTA meetings on why the county was changing the math curriculum and the impact it was going to have on students.

How much did MCPS pay for all the textbooks and teaching materials for Every Day Math and the training required to teach it? And for what? To totally dismantle the program less than 10 years down the road? At least the teachers had a curriculum and text books to teach from when Every Day Math was brought on board. As a parent, I have always relied on my child's math text books to help them with homework to reinforce the methods of solving the problems the way the teacher taught at school. Thus far this year, I haven't seen a single math textbook for the Curriculum 2.0. My child (who again is in 2nd grade) is only bringing home worksheets she could have done in Kindergarten.

Math is still math and 2 + 2 will always equal 4. People get paid lots of money to come up with these new curriculums but new isn't always better. Besides the salary issue, there is also the cost of new textbooks, worksheets, and training to implement the new curriculum. In a time of tight budget constraints, the children in Montgomery County Public Schools would be better served with more teachers and smaller class sizes than a "new" curriculum. Anyone who has taught would tell you 1 teacher for 30-32 kids is too many. The smaller the class sizes the more effective the general education teacher can be in managing the many diverse needs of the children in the classroom. Additional aides and special educators would also be beneficial to aid instruction.

Finally, I am quite concerned about the lack of information on how much progress my child has made this year under Curriculum 2.0. For math, the report card no longer indicates if she is above grade level, on grade level, or below grade level. Isn't this the bottom line of what most parents want to know? Instead, the measurements are as follows:

Advanced - indicates that your child is currently working at the Advanced level in Grade 2; consistently demonstrating complete understanding of all Grade 2 mathematics content instructed during this marking period based on student work, teacher observations, and formative assessments.

(My child took 2nd grade math last year in 1st grade. Is there any data being collected that she has made any additional progress this year if she is only being taught 2nd grade concepts? Also, what is the definition of what's considered "complete" understanding? 100% on all work. If a child is getting 100% on everything, the curriculum is not challenging the child.)

Proficient - indicates that your child is currently working at the Proficient level in Grade 2; demonstrating understanding of most Grade 2 mathematics content instructed during this marking period based on student work, teacher observations, and formative assessments.

(What is considered "most"? 99.9% - 51%? Seems very subjective when the subject is math and grades, performance, and progress should be measurable)

Basic - indicates that your child is currently working at the Basic level in Grade 2; demonstrating minimal understanding of Grade 2 mathematics content instructed during this marking period based on student work, teacher observations, and formative assessments.

(What is considered "minimal"? Again, this is a very vague term. Does a child need to get less than 50% of the concepts to be flagged as minimal? Also, what support is to be added for children which such designation so they can do better? Are they ready to move on or should the information be repeated since the child is missing concepts? How is the general education teacher supposed to meet this child's needs and the needs of the advanced student at the same time?)





[/quote]
Absolutely agree about the subjectiveness of the grades. In fact, some teachers exploit this subjectiveness to punish the students whom they don't like or whose parents they don't like.

+1

Elementary school math has not changed in over 100 years.

There is no new information. MCPS simply knows how to screw up something that's well established for over a century. Curriculum 2.0 and elimination of any mechanism to advance is more royally screwing around with math education.

Fed up with MCPS, I taught all my children the basic math I learned 50 years ago for 20 min after dinner ( I am not a math teacher). They never opened any of the MCPS texts and were forbidden to use a calculator. All 4 children were at least > 3 grade levels above "MCPS average" by 5th grade. This opened up many other academic doors for the deep study of economics, statistics, physics and engineering. The kids could choose from the full menu of courses in high school and college; without fear and worry of course preparation and difficulty, because they had an early and solid foundation and preparation in mathematics.

Why then is everyone so surprised by our lack of competitiveness in the global market?

Since MCPS has removed avenues for the vast majority of County children to advance in mathematics all families with children must supplement their child's math education outside of the MCPS classroom (if their children are capable and willing). Better yet, engage any willing and able grandparents to teach the kids basic primary and secondary school math they way they learned over 50 years ago. Even this will be much better than the courrent fare doled out in MCPS classrooms -- curriculum 2.0.

Anonymous wrote:

And to anyone who feels the BOE "crammed this down our throats", then you need to (1) vote against the current board members and (2) perhaps lobby the board differently or run for the board yourself.

This sounds like it was a response to my earlier post. I agree wholeheartedly. It's a little complex because non-parents do vote for the BOE, but in general we allow this BOE to continue as is. No one get's mad at the Union-Apple Ballot slate to vote for someone else. Even worse, we get low voter turnout like the last primary, so I can't really buy that I am the lone nut against a popular political organization like the union. My initial post was in response to someone who said that MCPS would never do something that parents wouldn't like. The fact is that the parents were never involved in 2.0. MCPS is not an open, transparent organization. My experience with MCPS is that they manage parents, they don't work with parents. There are some teachers and principals that do good work on an individual level, but the organization is not parent-friendly.