Pittsburgh Outsources Curriculum

Joanne Jacobs:

Pittsburgh has hired a private company to write a coherent curriculum for city schools, reports the Post-Gazette.

Because course content is uneven and out of sync with state standards, the Pittsburgh Public School district is paying New York-based Kaplan K12 Learning Services $8.4 million to write standardized curricula for grades six through 12.

. . . Teachers in other districts have complained that Kaplan's detailed curriculum turned them into automatons and deprived them of time to cover material in adequate detail or help students with individual needs.

. . . Pittsburgh school officials cite an urgent need to bring coherence and rigor to what's taught and tested in the district's classrooms.

Interesting. Perhaps an RFP looking for different ideas might be useful. Public and private organizations could respond. One only has to look at the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" to see the power of a community vs a top down approach. Leadership, particularly that which embraces the community is critical - as Lucy Mathiak recently pointed out:

Later, she added: "I think one of the fundamental questions facing our district is whether we treat parents as resources or problems. Any parent who is concerned about safety, discipline or academic issues needs to feel confident that their concerns are going to be heard. We have to court the parents. The future of our schools depends on their confidence that we are working as partners with them."

Here's a parent's perspective on curriculum and school climate. Another. A vast majority of the UW Math Department's perspective (35 of the 37 signed this letter). Marc Eisen offers still another perspective.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 21, 2006 1:42 PM
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