While DHS principal Lauri McKain-Fernandez’s recent letter on the PTA messageboard enlightened me to the “controversy” unfolding at the school regarding a “leveling of the curriculum”, I felt like the party guest that enters a group conversation 2 minutes too late. Laughing at the punchline of a joke I don’t get, I look around nervously from face to face trying to figure out what generic observation to inject into the conversation.

Except in this case of redesigning the DHS curriculum, it sounds like I’m at least a couple YEARS late.

Well, I’m feeling a bit less self-conscious today after finding this note/letter/FYI on the CDS website. While principal McKain-Fernandez’s note was quite detailed…it assumed the reader knew things that I didn’t. THIS newest note, assumes I know nothing (or at best, very little) …and thus is a more useful introduction/summary of the “heterogeneous” initiative at DHS.

Backed up by lots of lots of studies, research, data and newspaper articles, this “FYI” lays it all out on the table regarding the elimination of a many-tiered curriculum at the school and its reasons. It strongly asserts that this “leveling” is occurring due to 1) a distinct and noticeable racial divide at the school, between those in non-honors (mostly black) and honors (mostly white) classes and 2) students not “performing to their potential”. It cites linked-to articles, which show that ALL students in classes with a more even distribution of performance levels do better overall. Why? Essentially because being labeled as “smart” or “average” makes you/students lazy.

Read the whole note. It’s pretty interesting; even to this 20-something with no kids.

I can see how some parents, like joedecatur in a previous post, feel like their kids have become guinea pigs amid all of these changes (and CDS hasn’t even gone charter yet!) But I guess that’s part of being a very “progressive” community. There’s change/”improvement” going on all the time, everywhere. (Evidenced by the fact that a blog devoted almost entirely to a small suburb of Atlanta almost always has something to write about)

If (and that’s a big “if”) the outcomes promised by this kind of change are viable, and no one is negatively affected, this seems like a no lose situation. We’ll just have to wait and see what the numbers say a year or two from now.

But what do I know? I’m just a DINK.

It’s official.  Last night, Decatur’s school board voted to make our city schools one of the first charter systems in the state.  It still needs to go before GA’s Board of Ed. in March or April for final approval.

Major changes?

1.  “Leadership teams” that would give parents and community members more of a say in program and finance decisions.

2.  “Incentive pay” for teachers

Click here to see the latest version of the petition that was approved last night.

Should be interesting to see how this potential change affects student performance in the coming years.  Stay tuned…

Speaking of Harry Potter…

An elementary school in Nottinghamshire, England has jumped from the bottom 25% of schools nationally to just outside the top 5% over the last three years deciding to let students pick a theme for the curriculum every year. Naturally they picked Harry Potter!

The Daily Mail has the details…

This term has seen the seven to 11 year olds learning subtraction with the help of a Potter-esque “spell”, writing their own plays based on the best-selling books and even keeping fit by pretending to get on and off imaginary broomsticks.

Year classes have been named Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, after the school houses at Hogwarts, the wizards’ school attended by Harry in the novels and hit movies.

The children wave wands as they join in the fun of learning and staff have got in the spirit of things by donning wigs and costumes.

Perhaps someone should suggest this at the next Decatur charter school meeting…

Hattip: The Leaky Cauldron

Click the continuation for a full list of the Harry Potter curriculum at the school. Read the rest of this entry »