Unfortunately for Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the CCSD School Board, they just approved spending $186,000 for a "new" curriculum (entitled Creative Curriculum) for its prekindergarten classes. These classes are aimed at students who are most at risk to be unprepared for kindergarten. See Pre-kindergarten Programs Focusing on Literacy in Sunday's P&C.According to the district's new early childhood education director, Lerah Lee, former principal of St. James-Santee Elementary School, "It marks the first time in years that all pre-kindergarten classes will have the same, standardized curriculum. Teachers are being trained to use it, and that should enable them to better address students' problems."
I say "unfortunately" because not quite a month previous to McGinley's remarks praising the curriculum, the well-respected federal What Works Clearinghouse issued a report on it that was unfavorable. According to the WWC report, "The Creative Curriculum® was found to have no discernible effects on oral language, print knowledge, phonological processing, or math." This "new" curriculum CCSD just bought into has been around for eight years, in case you were wondering.
Intervention at an early age is extremely important so that identified children will be successful in reading in the early grades. Making sure that all students at the end of the third grade could read was the original impetus behind No Child Left Behind, whatever its flaws. But making teachers use a mandated curriculum that has failed to prove its worth in any study so far cannot be the answer.
See http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/early_ed/cc/index.asp for the full report.
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You hit the nail on the head.
It reminds me of Dr. Goodloe implementing her so-called "coherent curriculum" and driving teachers crazy with ridiculous paperwork. It doesn't exist. So here we are...
In the August 23rd edition of the P&C, following the revelations that so many Charleston County public school students were entering high school functionally illiterate, Nancy McGinley attempted to reassure the public with "proof" that things have changed. In her own editorial published in the Sunday paper the outspoken superintendent said, "Our academic office [has] refined our instructional approach ...so that students are never promoted with skill deficits."
In this Sunday morning's edition of the Post and Courier a parent who attended the community meeting in North Charleston last night was reported to have said CCSD's approach to meeting academic standards hasn't changed at all. The reported recounted the parent’s complaint this way.
“One of the few parents who showed Saturday did not have a question about the North Charleston High brawl. Instead, she asked why her 11-year-old son got an 87 in reading and an 89 in science even though a test at the Medical University of South Carolina proved he couldn't read. She said she asked the same question with those at her son's school, "and you know what they told me? It's not what he can't do. It's what he can do."
The more Nancy McGinley says things are changing at CCSD, the more they remain the same. The superintendent and MOST of her highly paid and under worked professional support staff are dismissive of most parents, arrogant toward others and condescending when confronted with issues, to say the least. If anyone of them believes it’s proper to tell a parent of a minority or low income student (accurately described or not) that it’s OK to downplay what her son “can’t do” and to just pat him on his head for “what he can do”. And then those CCSD’s officials will just walk away from both the parent and the issue.
I’m sorry to say it, but Dr. McGinley’s word is no good anymore.
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