Curriculum Alignment

You have to read deep into the Scope of Work document from Education First, but you will eventually find it, on page 9:

In this strategic curriculum mapping process, the goal will be to produce materials that will be utilized district‐wide.

I am all in favor of students across the district having equal access to high school courses that will make them college-ready.
I am all in favor of curriculum alignment - teaching the same body of knowledge and skills that a student should learn during a given course so it is the same from school to school.
I am all in favor of developing a truly standards‐based, learning‐focused, student‐centered classroom.
None of this, however, requires schools and teachers to all use the same materials. In fact, just the opposite.


If you read the RFP, you will see that it says that the District wants to:

revise SPS high school course offerings in all core content areas to align to essential skills and knowledge for college readiness

The focus here is on the skills and knowledge, not on the specific content. This is what we should be doing, aligning skills and knowledge, not content and materials.
The RFP also calls for "professional development for teachers and administrators in evaluating syllabi and lesson plans for rigorous college-oriented content" and "professional development for core content teachers in evaluating student assignments, student work and assessments for sophistication and college- readiness." If the teachers and administrators have those skills they can apply them to a diversity of materials. There is no need to standardize materials.

Nowhere in the RFP does it say that the District wants to align materials. So why is it in the proposal that staff recommends the Board accept?

Moreover, while the Scope of Work describes how they will coach teachers in differentiating instruction for students working below grade level, there is nothing about differentiating instruction for students working beyond grade level.

Think of the decision by Roosevelt High School to put all 10th grade students into a year-long version of the one semester course AP Human Geography and take away the option for 10th grade students to take AP European History. This is exactly that idea written large. They will bring up the bottom alright, but they somehow believe that in order to do it they need to chop off the top when no such move is required. All Roosevelt had to do was give students the choice of AP Human Geography or AP European History. They didn't have to take the more rigorous option off the table.