This testimony was made by an elementary school teacher to the Seattle School Board regarding Integrated Math, as implemented in Seattle Schools
Curriculum Trends
The following two opposing quotes exemplifies the debate in curriculum today. Is school about the teaching of information or is it about creating the model “child of the future?”
“What the revolution has been in curriculum is that we no longer are teaching facts to children…” — Shirley McCune, then Senior Director, Mid-continent Educational Laboratory, speaking at the Governors’s conference in 1989. This quote was transcribed from the conference video. McCune was the Federal Liason, learning and teaching for Washington State until 2008, and played a key role in WASL and curriculum development.
“When will ‘progressive’ educators admit that you can’t learn history, geography, science, etc. in an atmosphere where children are expected to ‘construct’ their own knowledge in little groups and teachers are forbidden to engage in ‘direct instruction’?” –Andrew Wolf, Editor and Publisher, The Riverdale Review, Bronx Press Newsgroup
This testimony was made by an elementary school teacher before the Seattle School Board, regarding the failure of the TERC Math Curriculum, also known as Investigations. It is a constructivist, “discovery” math curriculum.
An article from the Education Reporter, a Newspaper of education rights.
It is costly, intrusive, threatens our freedoms and is funded by several levels of the government. This was written before 2001. Now,about a decade later, the programs’ names have been changed, and online education and data collection is so ubiquitous that we are becoming desensitized (or resigned) to this intrusion.
December 10, 1996. Report by Diana Fessler, originally prepared for the Ohio State Board of Education, but also later presented to the Washington State Legislature because School-To-Work affects Washington and every other state as well.
From the testimony made by Lynne Cheney before the House Appropriations Sub-committee on Labor, Health, and Human Services and Education, February 3, 1998.
Speech given at a conference entitled “What Goals 2000 Means to the States,” February 12, 1997
Through the “Career Paths” or “School-to-Work”, the government becomes the gate-keeper which controls marketplace winners and losers. The Federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act was passed in 1994.
Abstinence-only sex education was banned in Washington in 2007. See the FLASH curriculum which meets the requirements of the 2007 law. Does it pass muster for your family?
Read the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s analysis of the way reading is being taught. October 1, 2000