I've been reading a lot of comments from the press, from Mr. Hernandez, CAO, and others and it seems to me that the things we take issue with are not being clearly communicated. Therefore, I have outlined the issues as I see them as well as their impact on our children.

Let's look at each of the issues separately. There are four issuing categories: Departmentalization, Frameworks, Embedded Assessments, and Homework.

Departmentalization: Basically departmentalization is the separation of class subjects by teacher. Before the changes instituted by Mr. Hernandez, children had the advantage of having one teacher for the entire day in elementary and middle school. Now children in K -12 have to change classes for each subject. On the surface this does allow for teachers to become experts in their20discipline if they were not so constrained by Frameworks. (More on this later…) I am not sure I agree that a subject expertise would be useful at the Elementary school grades levels as the lessons taught are the basic foundations of the subjects that all teachers should know, and have been tested for in their Teacher's Certification Exams.

The major issue I see here, especially at the younger age, is that this diminishes from the child’s basic psychological need to establish a relationship with and bond with their teacher. That bond is critical to provide motivation to learn, excel, and please. There have been countless studies about this bond between teacher and student and the effect on the child's progress. As a matter of fact there are thousands of schools at all grade levels that have based their curriculum on this principal and kept children with the same teacher for several years rather than only one. This type of system is called looping, and it is used in Montessori programs, along with many other different learning programs. The schools that use this type of system are among the top schools in the nation.

I am not saying that we should be using looping, although I wouldn't object, however, what I am saying is that departmentalization at the Elementary School level destroys a critical opportunity that comes only from a teacher and student being able to bond. There is an article authored with noted psychologists which explains this concept well. I have included a link below.

Frameworks: Frameworks is what some might call the key to the entire change in curriculum here in Palm Beach County. I would call its motto, though of course this is only my opinion, “Anyone can teach!” For those of you with children this is in reference to the Disney movie Ratatouille. In the movie there is a famous Chef that says “Anyone can cook!” What we come to find in watching is though it is true anyone can follow a recipe in a book and cook, only those who love what they do and put their passion and heart into what they do instead of only following the recipe will become brilliant chefs! The Frameworks curriculum is that cookbook... except it doesn't allow for deviation from the recipe, so no one can become a truly wonderful teacher anymore.

I have seen the frameworks program, and the schedule for each grade that is expected to be followed and it leaves very little room to create your own lessons, or to enrich the children with other complimentary activities. Additionally, the frameworks plans for each subject were not developed in conjunction with each other so the teachers can no longer reinforce each other’s lessons as they used to in the older grade already departmentalized. For example, in the past, when insects were discussed in a science class, an English class might be asked to write an essay on the importance of insects and a math class could use insects as a fun way to illustrate mathematic principles. The way the Frameworks program was designed makes this impossible as there were no thematic units incorporated.

One of the bigger issues also found within the frameworks curriculum thus far, as reported by informed parents and teachers is that in many cases key subject areas are excluded, or not working in common sense order. For example, the math books we have been using in Palm Beac h County are from Harcourt. They are pretty much experts in the field of teaching children math and developing excellent math curriculum for students of varying grade levels. They have spent years along with working with consultants and math and child experts and have continuously revised and improved their books to work well in educating children on the subject matter. The Frameworks curriculum ignores this, and instead works on the subjects out of order, skipping all over the book, and additionally skips some chapters entirely. Some are saying there are critical skills needed for the SATs that are not being addressed at all within the Frameworks curriculum. The concern here is that perhaps the developers were too focused on what skills were needed for the FCAT exams and did not put enough research into college preparation for the SATs.

The other big problem I have seen with the Frameworks program is that it does not allow for IEP and 504 plans to be met, nor does it allow for correction or additional instruction when the subject has not been perfected. If a teacher is mandated to give a test at the end of each subject and move on to a new subject, where is the room for those who do not do well on the exam to be mentored or receive additional assistance? What happens if a large portion of the class has trouble and it is clear they need additional class time on the topic?

Gifted students are supposed to be given instruction at an accelerated pace, and they are supposed to be given individual attention and enrichment based on their learning skills and abilities. This is also true for less-abled students such as those with processing speed disabilities that need more time for a subject to be absorbed. Each child’s needs will be neglected if there is a “cookie-cutter” structure to the lesson plans and a set pace for which it is required to be taught.

Embedded Assessments: Embedded assessments are the subject matter tests you have been hearing so much about. These tests add an additional 5 weeks of testing to the school year, and are in addition to all of the other tests including SRIs, FCATS, writing, and many other exams already in place. Some schools are handling the exams during a “testing week” while others are giving one exam per subject a week in rotation to spread the exams out. Now I am not going to get into the larger debate of the merits of testing vs. the downfalls of testing in general because it is beyond the scope of this article and there are opponents and proponents with valid arguments on both sides of the issue. However, there are more specific issues at work here that need addressing.

The testing software and questions contained within were contracted out to a company called Core K12. (Internal Palm Beach County Educational writers from what we’ve been told provided some questions in the databank.) There are some issues about this company's history, experience and origin for which I have read but I cannot personally substantiate, so I will provide the links regarding this and you can review and make your own conclusions on that topic.

What I will address is the fact that to date we've seen no proof that this company worked in conjunction with the team developing the Frameworks Program so there have been some serious discrepancies between the exams and the curriculum covered during the time-frame for which the exam is to be administered. There hav e been several reported cases of exams containing questions for subjects not contained in that class at all. In a high school Biology class for example, there were questions in their assessment that pertained to chemistry in addition to the questions for biology. It seems the science exams are all-inclusive regardless of what subject the student is enrolled in.

Another issue with the exams is their Lexile or reading comprehension level. We have done some research and it seems that the exam questions are written in some cases 200+ Lexile points higher than the expected average lexile level for students in that grade level. This means the language contained in the questions are harder and of a higher level than the students taking the exams are expected to be able to understand. If the children can't understand the questions, they can't pass the exams.

Additionally, because of the vague and undefined nature of what is otherwise a highly regimented system, some teachers are counting the exam towards the grade points while other teachers have decided to use the exams as extra credit. This is supposed to be defined by the princi pals from what I have read, but that makes for a very unfair system particularly in the high school levels where students are striving to maintain good GPAs to get into college. For those schools where these flawed exams are counted as extra credit they are provided an imbalanced advantage, while those students having the exams incorporated into their GPAs have an unfortunate handicap.

In either case the testing is taking up the equivalent of 5 weeks additional time in class that might be otherwise better spent on teaching an enrichment particularly when the concern is those students who were not able to meet standards for the previous year and need some additional hands-on learning.

* In a side note, regardless of diability or learning requirements these exams are given to children at all learning levels and speeds with no means of modification. (I.E. - no time extentions for children guaranteed the same per their IEP.)

Homework: There are a lot of new policies and requirements for the homework levels incorporated in the new programs, but I want to research this issue more before I feel qualified to comment on it fully. From what I understand and have heard from parents in Lake Worth, and Boynton Beach, the children in the past were given a packet of homework on Fridays that they had to return before the fol lowing Friday. Now some schools are giving homework daily, and in the worst cases in excess of 1-2 hours of work a night. Parents have tried to go to the board on this issue and been refuted and even disrespectfully laughed at. More to come...

By: Eryka Lefrak – concerned parent of 4, and author/designer of parents4teachers.org

GO TEAM ORANGE!