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I'm curious, you say your child has been through this curriculum. Are you saying your child was in a school using the Pearson curriculum or that your child's sc

by ktsmith 13y ago

I'm curious, you say your child has been through this curriculum. Are you saying your child was in a school using the Pearson curriculum or that your child's school used a curriculum based on common core?

mturmon 13y ago
Common core curriculum (in CA, not NY, but they seem to be similar), but not Pearson tests. Her tests and homework were reasonable. I do have a problem with the attention her district pays to testing, but not really with the curriculum per se. The testing does give teachers less latitude with what subjects they teach, and when they teach it. They have to cover certain concepts by the time the test is taken, which in her schools is March or April. This means they have to re-order the curriculum to cover the subjects to-be-tested in time for the test.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  > Common core curriculum (in CA, not NY, but they seem to be similar), but not Pearson tests. Yeah, the whole point is that if both states are implementing common core they should be the same. If you look at the NY Common Core standard it's a word for word match with what is posted on achievethecore.org and commoncore.org. Where the differences lie is in the curriculums that each state, and even each school district within a state, choose to buy and then how the schools implement it. I'm seeing some schools being extremely strict and enforcing scripted curriculum on teachers such as that provided by Success for All and other schools allowing teachers leeway to teach how they feel is best for their class each year so long as it's consistent across the grade level (all teachers teaching the same concepts at the same times). > I do have a problem with the attention her district pays to testing, but not really with the curriculum per se. Has California, or specifically your school district, implemented performance based pay or bonuses? That's in a trial run here and there have already been complaints about increases in test focus at the schools in the trial. A big part of the performance evaluation is based on test scores. edit: I should note that there's the common core standards and then common core curriculums. The curriculums should be compliant with the standards but aren't the same thing. So NY and CA should both be adhering to the same standard while they are free to use different curriculum (and almost certainly do from district to district).
  - mturmon 13y ago
    Performance-based pay has been proposed and heartily resisted by teachers in LAUSD (Los Angeles). This article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/lausd-teacher-evaluation-utla_n_2517684.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/lausd-teacher-evalu...) says the union (UTLA) voted in January to allow performance-based evaluation, but I don't think this is linked to pay yet. Indeed, the superintendent of LAUSD is at this moment threatening to resign (http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/25/local/la-me-1026-deasy-20131026 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/25/local/la-me-1026-dea...) because he and the school board (which is dominated by UTLA) are fighting about this linkage. The thing I just learned is that LAUSD has been forced to (eventually) link evaluations to pay due to something called the Stull Act. And it looks like that is a state-wide ruling that will eventually force all CA districts to do this. It's quite a situation. The outgoing mayor had made reform (a loaded word) of LAUSD a priority, but his candidates failed to dominate the school board. The charters and testing have the union grumpy. There were layoffs after the recession and several idealistic and highly-motivated LAUSD teachers I know were forced out under the union's last-in, first-out policy. They are now at charters and private schools. * I'm actually pretty doubtful about the precision of these test scores; I think they are noisier than most administrators seem to. And once you link pay to the scores, things are going to go downhill fast.

by ktsmith 13y ago

mturmon 13y ago

Common core curriculum (in CA, not NY, but they seem to be similar), but not Pearson tests. Her tests and homework were reasonable. I do have a problem with the attention her district pays to testing, but not really with the curriculum per se. The testing does give teachers less latitude with what subjects they teach, and when they teach it. They have to cover certain concepts by the time the test is taken, which in her schools is March or April. This means they have to re-order the curriculum to cover the subjects to-be-tested in time for the test.

ktsmith 13y ago
> Common core curriculum (in CA, not NY, but they seem to be similar), but not Pearson tests. Yeah, the whole point is that if both states are implementing common core they should be the same. If you look at the NY Common Core standard it's a word for word match with what is posted on achievethecore.org and commoncore.org. Where the differences lie is in the curriculums that each state, and even each school district within a state, choose to buy and then how the schools implement it. I'm seeing some schools being extremely strict and enforcing scripted curriculum on teachers such as that provided by Success for All and other schools allowing teachers leeway to teach how they feel is best for their class each year so long as it's consistent across the grade level (all teachers teaching the same concepts at the same times). > I do have a problem with the attention her district pays to testing, but not really with the curriculum per se. Has California, or specifically your school district, implemented performance based pay or bonuses? That's in a trial run here and there have already been complaints about increases in test focus at the schools in the trial. A big part of the performance evaluation is based on test scores. edit: I should note that there's the common core standards and then common core curriculums. The curriculums should be compliant with the standards but aren't the same thing. So NY and CA should both be adhering to the same standard while they are free to use different curriculum (and almost certainly do from district to district).
- mturmon 13y ago
  Performance-based pay has been proposed and heartily resisted by teachers in LAUSD (Los Angeles). This article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/lausd-teacher-evaluation-utla_n_2517684.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/lausd-teacher-evalu...) says the union (UTLA) voted in January to allow performance-based evaluation, but I don't think this is linked to pay yet. Indeed, the superintendent of LAUSD is at this moment threatening to resign (http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/25/local/la-me-1026-deasy-20131026 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/25/local/la-me-1026-dea...) because he and the school board (which is dominated by UTLA) are fighting about this linkage. The thing I just learned is that LAUSD has been forced to (eventually) link evaluations to pay due to something called the Stull Act. And it looks like that is a state-wide ruling that will eventually force all CA districts to do this. It's quite a situation. The outgoing mayor had made reform (a loaded word) of LAUSD a priority, but his candidates failed to dominate the school board. The charters and testing have the union grumpy. There were layoffs after the recession and several idealistic and highly-motivated LAUSD teachers I know were forced out under the union's last-in, first-out policy. They are now at charters and private schools. * I'm actually pretty doubtful about the precision of these test scores; I think they are noisier than most administrators seem to. And once you link pay to the scores, things are going to go downhill fast.