The Garfield Stand and the Common Core: Will They Both Come to a School Near You?

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 The “Garfield Stand” may eventually come to a school near you following the roll out of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and related assessment implementation across the country.  What is the Garfield Stand?  It is what the teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School are doing---they are taking a stand on important issues related to student assessment.  You can read about it in the letter from teachers at Garfield High School and at additional links provided below.  Teachers at another school, Ballard High School, are not just in sympathy with their Garfield colleagues; they are taking the same stand.

This may be the start of our seeing the hundredth monkey phenomenon related to the CCSS and other education reform issues. Individual teachers may not be comfortable or may even be fearful of speaking out on these issues but when they realize other colleagues have similar views and concerns, collectively they may take a stand as we see at Garfield. 

Is the Garfield Stand a preview of what we may see across the country in the not to distant future as teachers have first hand classroom experience implementing top down education reform mandates?

I encourage you to read the letter from the Garfield teachers.  The Ballard teachers wrote a letter supporting their Garfield colleagues.  That letter is copied below.  In a few years how many of the statements below will have a ring of truth if MAP is replaced with SBAC or PARCC assessments?

 25 teachers at nearby Ballard High School signed a letter against continuing to use the MAP test, and in support of our Garfield colleagues

  Whereas          

·       The MAP test is a resource expensive and cash expensive program in a district with very finite financial resources,

·       The MAP test is not used in practice to inform student instruction,

·       The MAP test is not connected to our curricula,

·       The MAP test has been repurposed by district administration to form part of a teacher’s evaluation, which is contrary to the purposes it was designed for, as stated by its purveyor, making it part of junk science,

·       The MAP test has also been repurposed for student placement in courses and programs, for which it was not designed,

·       The MAP test was purchased under corrupt crony-ist circumstances (Our former superintendent, while employed by SPS sat on the corporation board of NWEA, the purveyor of the MAP test. This was undisclosed to her employer. The initial MAP test was purchased in a no-bid, non-competitive process)

·       The MAP test was and remains unwanted and unneeded and unsolicited by SPS professional classroom educators, those who work directly with students,

·       The MAP test is not taken seriously by students, (They don’t need the results for graduation, for applications, for course credit, or any other purpose, so they routinely blow it off.)

·       The MAP test’s reported testing errors are greater than students’ expected growth,

·       The technology administration of the MAP test has serious flaws district wide which waste students’ time,

therefore
                        We, the undersigned educators from Ballard High School do hereby support statements and actions of our colleagues at Garfield High School surrounding the MAP test. Specifically, the MAP test program throughout Seattle Public Schools ought to be shut down immediately. It has been and continues to be an embarrassing mistake. Continuing it even another day, let alone another month or year or decade, will not turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.

I salute the teachers at Garfield and Ballard for taking a stand.  I feel it is unfortunate teachers feel the need to take such a stand.  Should they, and other teachers across the country, be making more of the decisions that will directly effect their instructional practices and their students’ education or should those decisions continue to be made by remote educrats and others at district offices, state departments of education, business and corporate offices, wealthy foundations, and Washington, D.C.?

Seattle Ballard High School teachers have followed suit: No MAP test!

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/seattle-ballard-high-school-teachers-have-followed-suit-no-map-test/

The letter from the teachers at Garfield High School regarding the MAP test

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/the-letter-from-the-teachers-at-garfield-high-school-regarding-the-map-test/

Letter of support for Garfield High School teachers from Diane Ravitch

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/letter-of-support-for-garfield-high-school-teachers-from-diane-ravitch/

Garfield High School teachers say “NO!” to high stakes testing

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/garfield-high-school-teachers-say-no-to-high-stakes-testing/

Standardized test backlash: Some Seattle teachers just say 'no'

http://news.yahoo.com/standardized-test-backlash-seattle-teachers-just-no-230447459.html

Garfield High teachers won't give required test they call flawed

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020106684_notest11m.html?syndication=rss

Garfield High teachers refuse to give standardized test

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Garfield-High-teachers-refuse-to-give-MAP-test-186403421.html

Garfield High teachers refuse to administer District-mandated reading and math test

http://capitolhillseattle.com/2013/01/11/garfield-high-teachers-refuse-to-administer-district-mandated-map-test

Garfield High School teachers boycott MAP assessment test

http://www.king5.com/news/education/Garfield-High-School-teachers-boycott-MAP-test-186401601.html

This article was originally published January 12, 2013 on The Underground Parent at http://undergroundparent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-garfield-stand-and-common-core-will.html and is republished here with permission from the author.

Florida Accountability Concerns Increase

In spite of Florida Commissioner of Education Gerard Robinson whirl-wind talking tour of Florida on the heels of the FCAT fiasco, parents, community members, and taxpayers remain unconvinced of the validity of Florida's assessment initiative.

Ocala.com editorial page editor Brad Rogers commented on the FCAT Writing fiasco saying: "Too many people on the front lines — principals, teachers and parents — have far too many criticisms of FCAT for Robinson, Gov. Rick Scott and our lawmakers to continue playing the hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil game."

Rogers points out the public wants accountability, but not expensive, experimentation. After all, who exactly is footing the bill?

Call me a skeptic, but nothing is likely to change. First of all, most of Robinson’s comments about FCAT concerns have largely been in defense of the high-stakes test. Second, while Robinson and his masters in the governor’s mansion and the Legislature keep raising the bar — which, I believe, most Floridians agree is prudent — they are doing nothing to help local school districts meet the challenge. For example, when the Tallahassee crowd mandated all testing be done on computers, schools received no help to buy enough computers to get the job done, despite millions in new costs.

The more state level officials try to explain, the less confidence the public has that the testing has any value. Reusing a worn out largely indefensible narrative, Robinson repeats that high stakes testing has been good for Florida and without it we would be turning back the clock on the meteoric progress made. He warns that test scores will continue to be low as the state transitions to the national assessments based on the Common Core standards; but ignores basic questions on current implementation.

Currently, four Florida School Boards (Martin, St. Lucie, Palm Beach, and Broward) have voted a resolution that rejects the FCAT as the sole means for grading Florida schools saying it is an "and inadequate and unreliable measure of student learning," and rejects the over emphasis on standardized testing. Reports indicate that the Orange County School Board is going to review the resolution.

The Florida School Board Association will convene a meeting with representation by all 67-school boards and an emergency item has been placed on the agenda to discuss encouraging the State Board of Education "to revamp its testing and accountability methods, and add more variety to the way student progress is measured."

More reporting found here.

Anti-Common Core Resolution questions constitutionality, evidence, and costs

ALEC is a controversial organization that draws ire from public school advocates for its support of vouchers and charter schools. Recently, Jeb Bush, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Achieve, all supporters of common core initiatives, seemed to have "gained ground" with the organization. However, this month its educational task force considered a document signed by 350 prominent education policymakers, researchers, teachers and parents titled Closing the Door on Innovation, which opposes Common Core initiatives. The result was an approved resolution that could be as model legislation to be introduced in state legislatures. This effort was sponsored by the American Principles Project, The Goldwater Institute, and the Washington Policy Center.

The model legislation can be found in The Growing Tide Against National Standards is not difficult to read and understand. Here is one highlight:

WHEREAS, when no less than 22 states face budget shortfalls and Race to the Top funding for states is limited, $350 million for consortia to develop new assessments aligned with the CCSSI standards will not cover the entire cost of overhauling state accountability systems, which includes implementation of standards and testing and associated professional development and curriculum restructuring; and

According to Ed Week coverage, although the education task force approved the resolution, the ALEC board must take action.

But it's not final, or official ALEC policy, unless it is approved by the organization's board of directors. No word yet on when there might be a decision on that. If the board approves it, the package is the sort of thing that would would join other types of model legislation ALEC has crafted for states' use.

This resolution stands as irrefutable evidence of the widespread disagreement regarding common core initiatives, irrespective of ideology, and an event that should be followed.

Who pays? Who benefits?

Education Reform: Parents, community members, taxpayers, and experts excluded

In May 2011, Grumpy Educators reported that two experts involved in writing the Common Core standards refused to sign the final product. On October 29, Parents Across America published Stotsky's views on the development process. Stotsky says to her knowledge no parents were involved in the development process and the primary writers had no prior experience in writing standards.

She adds additional insights to the composition of the writing process:

What struck me when I first saw the CCSSI lists of committee members was that there were almost no high school teachers of math or English, or college-level instructors of either on these lists–and here was a project to develop college-readiness standards, supposedly. The exclusion of the two teaching groups most relevant to CCSSI’s explicit goal was my first tip-off that CCSSI had a different agenda.

Mainly testing people and a few employees of Achieve and America’s Choice were on these committees. The media never commented on such peculiar committee membership. After my complaints on the Validation Committee, one or two high school teachers were added. But Jim Milgram remained the only mathematician in this group, and I was the only one who understood ELA standards-writing.

Parents, community members, and taxpayers continue to be left out of education reform initiatives. At a presentation of the new statndards, New York city parents demonstrated their impatience with their exclusion from decision-making:

Resolution proposed to NCTE to oppose common core standards...

This resolution was submitted to the National Council of Teachers of English for their consideration.

Schools Matter: Resolution: NCTE will oppose common core standards...: Resolution on National Standards and Tests Submitted to National Council of Teachers of English, Committee on Resolutions...

ED WEEK: In Common Core, Little to Cheer About

Andrew C. Porter has been an education reform advocate, supporting common core standards and assessments; however, he has changed his mind and expressed his current assessment in a recent Education Week article.

"In short, I hoped that new national curriculum standards would be better than the state standards they replaced, and that new student assessments would be better, too."

"I wish I could say that our progress toward common-core standards has fulfilled my hopes. Instead, it seems to me that the common-core movement is turning into a lost opportunity."

Common Core Standards

Using a "recognized content analysis tool," Porter participated in an analysis of the common core standards comparing them to existing math and English language arts standards in over 20 states. The resulting findings were "unexpected and troubling."

"The common-core standards do not represent a meaningful improvement over existing state standards."

When comparing these standards to those countries who are described as beating U.S. students and international exams, he finds other countries focus more on basic skills and less on higher order thinking skills. He wonders if the standards fail to achieve the "right" balance.

Common Core Assessment

Porter finds equally troubling concerns with regard to the common core assessments:

"But what I know so far about the work of the two multistate consortia developing the assessments isn’t promising. It sounds as if the new assessments may ignore state-of-the-art research and technological advances, settling for tests that are much like the ones we already have. Meanwhile, innovative work on assessments that’s been going on in the states has ground to a halt while everyone waits to see what the consortia come up with."

Porter concludes the common core et al may end up "much ado about nothing." He is, however, one more in a mounting number of voices questioning the effort.

From a taxpayer's point-of-view - who pays, who benefits?

Cato Institute Podcast: Neil McCluskey speaks on waivers and national standards

Secretary Duncan to Hold #AskArne Twitter Town Hall

The Department of Education announced today that Secretary Arne Duncan will participate in the first-ever #AskArne Twitter Town Hall on August 24, 2011 at 1:30 p.m. EDT. Veteran education journalist John Merrow will moderate the town hall that will also be broadcast live on ED’s ustream channel.

Beginning today, Twitter users can submit questions to the Secretary using the hashtag #AskArne.

Read more here.

It's not going to be quite so easy to ask meaningful questions with Twitter character limitations, but I've got a few:
1) How much is the total cost down to the local level to implement the new generation of assessments?
2) Where is the money going to come from to fund this initiative?
3) Will sub-group comparisons still be required?
4) Why is it necessary to implement excessive standardized testing?
5) What recommendations do you have to confront the high turnover of teachers at charter schools?
6) What is the rationale for a database from birth to first year of college?
7) Given the rash of security breaches and hacking into secure sites, why should any parent or community have confidence FERPA Privacy protections will be maintained?
8) Why should parents be excluded from any access to their student's information?

Then, I might Twitter: "I am a NUT. No Unnecessary Testing."

What questions will you pose?

Jeb Bush Under the Microscope

In a June 23 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Governor Jeb Bush and Joel Klein made a case in favor of national standards. "The Case for Common Core Standards" reflects their views on the rationale and importance of national standards:
The success of today's students will determine our nation's destiny. America's economic strength and standing in the world economy are directly linked to our ability to equip students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the 21st-century economy.

However, Greg Forster, posting on Jay P. Greene's blog, that instead of making a case for national standards, Bush and Klein were actually making a case against them. In "Confusion of National Standards," Forster asks:

Bush and Klein argue that standards are being set nationally (in “common”) but pedagogy isn’t. Once again, let’s leave aside the reality that you can’t have national (common) standards while preserving freedom and diversity of pedagogy. Let’s pretend you can set national standards and then let a thousand flowers bloom on pedagogy. Why do it? Why is it valuable to set a single national (common) standard? The article’s title promises an answer to that question, but the article doesn’t deliver.

Read more here.
Equally interesting are the posted comments including this one:

"Joel Klein is the new education czar (CEO of the educational division) for News Corp, the parent company of WSJ. Those who have the media in their hands and foundation/government money behind them, plus other like-minded contacts in high places, exert an incredible amount of influence over education policy and funding. The WSJ op-ed by Bush & Klein made no case whatsoever to the rational person, as circular logic built on false premises is a conduit to deception."

For a fact-based review of the Common Core Standards initiative, go to the Truth in American Education here. This four-page document provides pertinent information so that non-educators can understand. Read it and decide for yourself.

Did Duncan Overstep?

In response to the stalled Congressional progress on reauthorizing NCLB and failure to meet the President's deadline to do so, Secretary of Education Duncan announced he will give waivers to States so they need not comply with NCLB legislative requirements. He will authorize the waivers under two conditions:
1) States agree to adopt Common Core standards
2) Link student performance to 50% of teacher evaluation

Richard Hess of the American Enterprise Institute writes that journalist Michele McNeil reported the condition this way:

"Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Mr. Duncan, said that unlike the Race to the Top, which allowed states to devise their own education improvement plans, the department would present states with a basket of strategies they would have to adopt in exchange for relief."

In his own analysis, Hess wondered about the decision-making process and consideration of "statutory or Congressional complexities" :

"I'm curious whether any of the lawyers at ED tried to explain to Duncan that he's not permitted to remake federal law on the fly, just because he and the President think it's a good idea, or whether they're cheerfully along for the ride."

The Common Core initiatives are becoming a "hot button" and Hess notes that Mitt Romney has joined some of the critics.

Missouri Education Watch commented this way:
State and national educational policymakers once again illustrate how out of touch they are with taxpayers, parents, teachers and administrators when it comes to crafting more onerous mandates. Instead of education reform, the plans from DESE and the Department of Education will add to the bureaucratic nightmare of public education, creating more harm than true reform. (more...)

I am not a lawyer, a Constitutional scholar, nor an expert on the mysteries of the Congressional process, but Duncan is getting a pounding from all across the political spectrum. As a member of the American public, I wonder if we can expect an explanation for removing the democratic process of State decision-making, the citizen's right to engage in the process, and how this overreach has anything to do with benefiting kids.

Updates on who likes the waivers and who doesn't, what the Congressional committee members think and what they are doing, can be found here.

Libertarian View: Bill Evers Rejects "Common" Initiatives

Bill Evers is on the list for Florida Commissioner of Education. However, given recent legislation, Race to the Top funding, and Florida's involvement in one of the national assessment consortium, his views may not give him enough points for serious consideration. Evers served under President Bush as Assistant Secretary of Education. He is now associated with the Hoover Institute at Stanford.

View a video of his views on common standards and common curriculum here:

Read the full transcript below:

TOP-Ed’s John Fensterwald interview with Bill Evers, May 2011

FENSTERWALD: I’m speaking today with Bill Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in education policy. From 2007 to 2009, Bill was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. He is what columnist Jay Mathews of the Washington Post—affectionately, I believe—calls “an inexhaustible trouble-maker.” The reason we have him here today is that he was a co-author and organizer of the so-called counter manifesto, “Closing the Door on Innovation: Why One National Curriculum Is Bad for America.” Bill, welcome!…

Bill, it’s a response to what? And take a couple minutes and explain exactly what is in this manifesto.

EVERS: It’s an extremely important topic because, for all of us that care about children, and children’s academic success, what teachers teach in the classroom, how they teach it, what instructional materials they use, what lesson plans they use, and how these are all put together, is the essence of what goes on in the classroom. Now, in the past, this has been a kind of thing that’s been decentralized in how it’s organized.

FENSTERWALD: Yes. And so what’s the point of this manifesto, Bill?

EVERS: Some people, particularly organized by a spinoff of the American Federation of Teachers called the Albert Shanker Institute, called for a national curriculum – in other words, a curriculum organized and sponsored by the federal government. And, to some extent, the Obama administration has been already doing this. It’s put millions of dollars into curriculum development aligned around a national framework.

FENSTERWALD: So this is all related to the Common Core standards, which 40-some states have adopted. So…what’s the goal here, Bill? Is it to stop Common Core? Is it to stop the—have Congress defund the—assessments for Common Core? What’s ultimately your objective here?

EVERS: I would say it’s mostly to turn around the testing and the curriculum-development piece of this. The original idea with these Common Core national standards was that the states and the state superintendents were going to put together some model standards that people could adopt and, hopefully, would gather a lot of support. But the federal government used its financial leverage essentially to compel the states to sign up.

FENSTERWALD: Let’s backtrack a little bit, and the point of, the objective of, Common Core really was that No Child Left Behind, which…you supported in the Bush administration, sort of led to a race to the bottom in which many states lowered their standards and definitions of proficiency in order to avoid federal sanctions. So the goal of Common Core, I think, was to get states together, to work together, not at cross purposes, and create a more cohesive set of standards for students competing in the international economy, and to have assessments that were to sort of test deeper learning or critical thinking. What’s wrong with that, Bill?

EVERS: The No Child Left Behind was like an audit. The federal government was pouring money, millions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, into supporting K-12 education, and it looked like it wasn’t having much effect, if at all; and so, by examining student success, student performance, we could tell. But, for some people, it was something more than that. It was a road to a national school system, and President Bush, when he ran for office, said, “I’m not really doing this. I want not to be the head of a national school board.” But there were some people who want the U. S. Department of Education, to be the head of a national school system, as it is in European countries.

FENSTERWALD: Checker Finn, who was a signer of the Shanker Institute manifesto, in response to your writings, said the counter-manifesto is, quote, “Full of half-truths, mischaracterizations, and straw men.” And he says, So let’s be clear: The assessments linked to Common Core will be mandatory for those districts in states that choose to use them, but the use of Common Core curricular materials will be voluntary. We don’t see any evidence to indicate to the contrary. So, Bill, are you being paranoid here?

EVERS: I don’t think so. I’m actually looking at how tests actually operate, and I worked with them in the State of California. So, as the Shanker manifesto, and our counter-manifesto both say, really, curriculum comes before testing. So if you’re going to have national tests, you can’t just go from your academic standards, which are just a list of topics, to the tests. You have to have some idea of what curricular material there is, how things are taught, what kinds of lesson plans are involved. So once the national government decided it was going to promote national tests, it almost perforce had to set up…what we call in California “curricular frameworks,” and it had to get even into detail of lesson plans, and that’s what it’s doing. And so it’s Checker, who is being naïve, and not knowledgeable about how tests actually operate, who thinks, “Oh, this is just going to be purely advisory, and not going to dictate to all the textbooks and all the teachers in America who are in these states, a central plan of how the classroom is going to operate.

FENSTERWALD: Right. But…two [consortiums] of states are creating the assessments. Those are states-driven, and not federal government.

EVERS: The federal government is paying for it.

FENSTERWALD: Right.…It is funding it, but, in fact – You’re saying it’s dictating.

EVERS: …I’m saying it’s even illegal for the federal government to be doing this. The U.S. Department of Education Organization Act of 1979 says no supervising, no directing, no planning, no endorsing of curricula by the U. S. Department of Education. That is exactly what they’re doing here.

FENSTERWALD: Right. But, you know, I read the Shanker Institute manifesto, and I saw no mention of the phrase “national curriculum” in it at all. In fact, it talks about developing sets of curriculum guides, and states could collaborate with one another. It encourages a process. So where do you—why do you—characterize it as a national curriculum?

EVERS: I think they had public-relations-firm advice here. It’s very funny. They reprinted an old article by Albert Shanker himself where he talked about this. He is deceased now.…And, in it, where he said “national curriculum,” they took out the word “national,” and put in, in brackets, the word “common.” So they know what they are talking about. They’re just pretending to the rest of us to see if we can – we’re foolishly, naively, fooled.

FENSTERWALD: Right. I think you and they agree that the tests – You need curriculum before you do the tests.

EVERS: They both say that.

FENSTERWALD: Nonetheless –

EVERS: Both…manifestos say that.

FENSTERWALD: Right. Nonetheless, in the past, even a couple of months, and …still, the tests are a couple years away, there’s been a tremendous interest in developing curriculum frameworks.

EVERS: (talking at the same time) But anybody can do this.…The Silicon Valley Education Foundation could develop curricula if they wanted.

FENSTERWALD: Right, right.

EVERS: And the original idea that some people saw is that these national standards, which are troubling to me, but it’s possible they could have been more innocuous. For example, Minnesota decided, “We’re not going to accept the math standards, because we have all our kids in algebra in the eighth grade, and the national standards have algebra in the ninth grade. So that would be losing a grade’s worth of great progress, and our similarity to the high-performing countries.” So they rejected the math standards.

FENSTERWALD: So, ultimately, would you like to see states withdraw from the states’ consortiums and get out of the assessment business?

EVERS: I think that the national standards and the national tests are a bad idea, and they should be walked back. Yes. (Fensterwald note: After the interview, Bill said that he meant to say “national tests and national curriculum” since the Common Core standards already exist and will not be repealed, though Evers believes they are flawed.)
FENSTERWALD: Bill, it’s a pleasure to have you here. We’ll see what happens in the next year, and see if this generates what you want, in terms of response. I’m John Fensterwald from Top Ed, and thanks for watching.

Truth in American Education Launches

Figuring out the whole story on education reform is difficult and very confusing. The media is doing a very poor job keeping the public informed. Finally, the void is being filled. Truth in American Education (TAE) launches today as a one-stop location where all the pieces and parts of education reform policies are available for non-educators to understand.

TAE is made up of highly knowledgeable citizens from across the United States, whose common unity is a deep concern over the impact of current policies on students, parent rights, local control, and privacy.

No parent, community member, or taxpayer should have to spend the hours I did to understand the scope and impact of education reform.

I endorse it as a highly useful location for information and it is, as far as I know, the only one of its kind. Grumpy Educators is a TAE Network Participant.

Read the information and form your own opinion.

Check it out at: www.truthinamericaneducation.org

Where Real Reform Must Start

Common Core Standards Spur the Marketplace

According to press reports, the Bill Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation are partnering to create "complete, online curricula" for English/Language Arts and mathematics, based on the recently completed Common Core Standards. The effort is to offer school districts across the county a smooth transition to implementing the standards. Six states have not adopted the standards, the New Hampshire legislature will vote soon to reverse their decision to adopt them, and a similar proposal was presented to the Massachusetts legislature. School boards, organizations, experts, and parents have concerns about the Common Core Standards and their implications. One group expresses these shared concerns in a document called "What Parents, Taxpayers, and School Boards Should Know."

The Gates/Pearson partnership will offer 24 courses using "technological advances such as social networking, animation, and gaming to better engage and motivate students." Four courses will be available for free through the Gates Foundation. The rapid development process will release the math courseware for secondary students, and English/language arts for elementary students in the 2013-2014 school year, with "accompanying tools" to follow in 2014-2015.

Teachers will be part of the development process as well as experts from abroad.

"Officials from the two foundations also said they are working with a range of experts not only in the United States, but also from such countries as Japan, Singapore, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia in building the new curricula."

The article does not specify the precise type of input that will be provided by the international community.

Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, a former director of the U.S. Department of Education research arm, expresses concern over the initiative this way:

“The question will be, and it’s a reasonable one to ask: Who profits from this? People will have to profit from it; you can’t deliver education products into the marketplace for free. But it will be interesting to follow the money and see who manages to monetize the nation’s investment in common-core standards and assessments.

Nevertheless, Mr. Whitehurst said, it’s good to see someone tackle a curriculum spanning so many grades, so one grade can build effectively upon another. And done well, the work could serve as a valuable lever in the industry to prompt more curriculum development, he said.
Still, Mr. Whitehurst said, it will be a daunting task to complete the curriculum systems in three years."

What do you think?

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/27/30pearson.h30.html?tkn=WNPFBe2J3HKGwyQI5rTI4uAlCURTf%2FytzB26&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2