Disconnected

The more time I spend in higher education, the more I realize how disconnected K-12 schools are from research and best practices. It is problematic when a school can spend thousands of dollars to adopt commercial curriculum that does not address the needs of a majority of the children that will be using it. Higher education encourages individualization.
No one would argue that we want high standards for all students. Schools should be supporting children in meeting those high standards. Schools that use many commercial curriculums need to be prepared to supplement, differentiate and individualize the curriculum. Curriculums have many shortcomings. Many of the popular curriculums were field tested mainly on children that do not represent the demographics seen in our classrooms today. Why does this matter? Well ask yourself, does something that works well for pigs always mean that when we use it for humans it will be successful? In many cases the results from something tested on a pig cannot be generalized to most. The same is true for many curriculums.
What is the answer? We need more research in various settings with varied demographics. We need more research specifically on Latino, African American, Armenian, and Chinese-American students and their families.
What I find odd is when you challenge a school teacher or principal about the curriculum they respond with "It is a challenging curriculum." What they do not say is that some of the expectations are not developmentally appropriate, instruction is not varied or differentiated and when kids don't respond well to the poor curriculum choice, then the child is viewed as having a deficit. I see this as an "instructional and curriculum deficit."
The children that aren't responding to poorly researched and inappropriately implemented curriculum are pulled for Student Study Teams, Response to Intervention and even referred for special education.
Something is very wrong with this picture.
Parents should challenge schools to provide text books, strategies, methods for re-teaching, differentiated instruction and other resources for some of these curriculums.

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