“I’m not a fan,” said Liane Voss, a longtime English teacher at Moanalua High School, which still hasn’t purchased the new high school language arts materials. “There’s no teacher freedom at all. It’s all about this lesson, this prompt, this reading passage.” ... (Here are some key points in this article that we think are worth noting)........ ...Hawaiis DOE has spent $26 million since 2013 on new Common Core materials ...the $26 million only covers the schools that have already opted to use them (how much more will this cost taxpayers?) ...some teachers worried about instructional flexibility and others nervous about the hasty implementation of a new learning model (and remember everyone, Hawaiis kids are supposed to test in the spring of 2015..do teachers really have enough time to do what they need to do?) ... they’re [i.e., Common Core materials] are only in English, meaning the state’s 20 Hawaiian immersion schools — which are also required to adopt Common Core — can’t use them. ...The digital format also raises questions about equity for students who don’t have access to a computer or the Internet at home. ...The materials all come with physical textbook components, but they’re catered to online learning. ...Just eight public schools actually provide every student with a digital device as part of a DOE pilot program that was originally intended to be implemented statewide. (hmmm....who are the 8 schools?) ...The district’s failure to convince the Legislature to fund the full-blown initiative means that most schools are still without the devices — even though they’re already implementing the materials largely meant to be taught on those devices. (but did the legislature have the money and if they didnt have it back then, how do we know that they will have it in the future?) ...At a recent Board of Education meeting, member Nancy Budd, who represents Kauai, said she worried about homeless students who don’t have digital access. ...Schools get to decide when they want to implement the materials, but they also have to rely largely on their own school-level funds to pay for them. ...A recent national survey of about 500 teachers from the Education Week Research Center suggests that most teachers are unhappy with the lack of alignment between their instructional materials and the Common Core. Nearly six in 10 teachers said their main curricular materials weren’t aligned to the new standards.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 16:58:30 +0000
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