Posted on 12/04/2005 2:00:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
After a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring, the Baltimore school system decided to overhaul the way it teaches reading and writing in middle schools.
Putting convention aside, officials spent at least $2 million on Studio Course, a curriculum that uses teen magazines, places grammar on the back burner and lets kids write about whatever they want.
... The program has a track record in only one other city, Denver, where middle schools have seen reading and writing scores stagnate.
"I can't imagine Baltimore would be so ignorant to think it's research-based," said Kay Landon, a sixth-grade teacher in Denver. "They can look at our test scores. Our test scores have not gone up. The kids are getting shortchanged."
The implementation of the curriculum in Baltimore has been marked by some teachers starting the school year with no training, schools struggling to buy the necessary materials, and lesson plans being scrapped and rewritten, a review by The Sun has found.
School system officials, who say Studio is based on the latest reading theory, dismiss criticism that they implemented the curriculum too quickly.
"When the boat is sinking, you don't follow the manual," said Frank DeStefano, the system's deputy chief academic officer. "You fix it."
Studio is being used in all 21 of Baltimore's traditional middle schools, where more than 60 percent of pupils last school year failed the state reading test, plus two alternative schools and one kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
Among the magazines the schools are using to engage children: CosmoGIRL!, which has a feature this month called "Five Hot New Kisses," with explicit tips on making out, and Teen People, whose November issue includes the articles "Hot Boy Next Door" and "Flirt Better!" One lesson defines a noun as "stuff" and a verb as "what stuff does."
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
When the ship is sinking, how about going back to a manual that works, not cutting more holes in the hull?
Further down in a this revealing article:
***....Margaret Bobb, a teacher at Denver's Horace Mann Middle School, recalled an early teacher training session: "They talked about the magazine unit, 'Here's how you do it.' We went, 'OK, what's next?' They said, 'We're not going to tell you that. He's still writing it.' At which point, our jaws just dropped. ... We were the guinea pigs. We continue to be the guinea pigs." ...***
leik omg lolrotflmfaobbq!!!!!!!111!!!one!!!eleven!!1!1!1!111shiftplusone!!!
What in H#&& us wrong with these people. Children in one room shcool houses without plumbing and electric got a better education than this. Sears and Roebucks in the outhouse would be better.
***....Peggy Jackson-Jobe, the administrator who oversees middle schools and spent a year planning middle school reforms, said school system officials decided to use Studio last winter but did not bring the matter before the school board until they needed start-up money....***
She spent a year planning and ends up with this. It would appear they have no faith in the ability of instructors or students.
I searched for more on Peggy Jackson-Jobe and found this. 1992 ["Helping Homeless People: Unique Challenges and Solutions" eds. Clemmie Solomon & Peggy Jackson-Jobe is a guide for educators, counselors, social workers and related human development professionals, published by the Amer. Assn. for Counselling (sic) and Development. $22.25. 800/347-6647. [6364]
***....Lora Phillips-Reed, another Lemmel teacher, said her pupils "feel that the class period is not long enough. They love my class. Because of this curriculum, I've become one of their favorite teachers."
Then on Nov. 8, Charlie Dugger, a teacher at Benjamin Franklin Junior High, came before the board and criticized the curriculum for its failure to grade children on grammar, punctuation and capitalization.
"We're cheating our children," he said. "Why is this being done? It's insulting to ... say, well, you know these children can't capitalize in the city and they don't know how to spell. You know why they don't know? Because we don't teach them." ...***
***....Later that night, school system administrators gave a presentation to the board about their progress in Studio.
Board member Kalman R. "Buzzy" Hettleman asked how they were evaluating the program and how they researched their decision to use it.
Jackson-Jobe said the school system was working with the Studio consultants to develop an evaluation method. Chinnia, the chief academic officer, said the major evaluation will come on the state's standardized tests.
Hettleman repeated his other question: "What is the research base?"
"We went to Denver," Jackson-Jobe replied. "Denver implemented Studio Course, and I think they're in their fourth year of implementation. They have a population similar to ours."
Chinnia added that "another major factor" was that Studio is in line with the school system's theory about how children learn. What she failed to mention was that the theory comes from the Institute for Learning, whose employees wrote the Studio curriculum.
***
Education has gotten away from them and they're just flailing around.
Think the real problem here for the Libs; is that the ship is not sinking fast enough. Hence. . .change.
I guess the Libs, believe as well, that American schoolchildren have 'different brains' than their European or Asian, peers. . .
This moron should not be teaching language skills or reading in the first place...
two articles on the board this morning from baltimore, and they definately go together
this one ties right in to this
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1533228/posts
Isn't Baltimore where they've been stealing lamposts and selling them for scrap?
Funny thing. The pages in mine keep disappearing.
Yes. They certainly are!
That's the place.
Spot on observation!
ping...
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