What I'd like to now understand is about 'equity of curriculum and academic achievement'. I would like to see what holistic teaching strategies are being taught across the district. It hurts me when I see programs/curriculum being deemed to be successful in schools of high poverty that are based on drills/regurgitating information, rather than those that teach best practices and for our children to be problem-solvers. This wouldn't fly in a higher income populated school.
Short-term success and increase in test scores can be gleaned from these types of programs (like one I'm still learning about which I heard teaches words in isolation--which was showcased in the presentation today as a 'success-factor' in the mentioned low-income Title 1 school); but TRUE long-term success for our kids cannot.
Literacy Squared, for example, would be a program of best practices in that it teaches words in context vs. just drilling words in isolation. We need to be careful as a district to allow for these programs to take over in extreme ways and be the 'silver bullet' of what can help our Title 1 schools be 'successful'.
