K-12 Curriculum Development

Time for a Tune-Up: Comprehensive Curriculum Evaluation
By Lisa H. Meyers
Principal Leadership - September 2005

"How important is a high-quality curriculum?  A school without a quality curriculum is like a car without an engine - neither goes anywhere.  One responsibility of a school administrator is to ensure that quality curriculum is designed, adopted, and implemented."
                                                                                                    - Lisa Meyers

Prior to this afternoon, I had not read this article.  This informative article provides educators with several key considerations for K-12 curriculum development, curriculum alignment, curriculum evaluation and renewal.  I highly recommend this article! 

For additional information related to curriculum evaluation and a curriculum audit, visit these K-12 Curriculum Development topics:

Curriculum Management Audit

Curriculum Clutter

Curriculum Development

Share your thoughts on
Time for a Tune-Up: Comprehensive Curriculum Evaluation

Are curriculum documents accessible in your school system?  Do teachers know where curriculum documents are stored?  Can the curriculum be revised electronically or are the district's curriculum documents still stored in three-ring binders?



Location, Location, Location is frequently used by realtors to describe property that may be valuable to potential buyers.  Educators need to use this same phrase when they describe the location that K-12 curriculum is archived.  Some school districts use Microsoft Office products.  Popular vendor products which store curriculum documents include Curriculum Mapper, Curriki, Rubicon, TechPaths, and Understanding by Design.  This short list does not include all products available to educators, nor does it include an endorsement of any particular product. 

Our school district utilizes Drupal.  Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.  If your school district is seeking location, location, location, but you are operating on a small budget, Drupal offers the opportunity for 24 hour access to your district's curriculum, the opportunity for ongoing communication within a school and across schools, and the chance for group editors to make timely revisions to the district's curriculum maps.

Questions For Educators:

1.  Do teachers and principals have access to the district's K-12 curriculum?

2.  Can the K-12 curriculum be modified using Web 2.0 tools or the Internet?

3.  Does the online tool which stores our district's K-12 curriculum allow for
     comments and reflection on the written, taught and assessed curriculum?

4.  Do teachers have access to multiple curriculum documents?
     (i.e., vertical alignment and interdisciplinary curriculum)

5.  Is the current tool teacher-friendly?

6.  Is the location a prime location or does the school district need to revisit the
     location of the district's curriculum documents? 

Curriculum development requires educators ask the following questions:

1.   What content is worth knowing?
2.   What concepts are worth understanding?  (Erickson, 2002)
3.   What skills are worth knowing?
4.   What should be left out of the curriculum or moved to a different part of the
      curriculum?
5.   Should the curriculum teach for Introduction, Review, Mastery or Deep
      Understanding at this grade level?  Where does the curriculum address this
      content, skill, or concept before or after this grade level or course?
6.   Will this standard or the curriculum provide students with knowledge and
      skills that will be of value beyond a single test date (Reeves*)?
7.   Will this standard or curriculum provide students with essential knowledge
      and skills that are necessary for success in the next grade or the next level of
      instruction (Reeves*)?
8.   What educational purposes should this course/the school seek to attain?
      (Tyler, 1949)
9.   What do we want students to uncover (Coverage vs. Uncoverage)?
      (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005)
10. Is the curriculum aligned with the criteria for 21st Century standards?
      See 21st Century Standards  

What criteria do educators in your school district or state use when developing K-12 curriculum?  

Do you agree or disagree with the criteria listed above?

A great article for K-12 Curriculum Developers was written by George Nelson (2001).  Nelson's article titled Choosing Content That's Worth Knowing provides educators and other stakeholders with essential questions for curriculum development.  To view the article online, visit  http://tiny.cc/VlwsR


K-12 Curriculum Development was developed as a site for educators to share ideas, discuss recent books about curriculum, share tools for supporting the work of teachers and administrators, and foster an online professional
learning community.   

References:

* Excerpted from Ainsworth, L. (2003). Power Standards, pp. 10-14, Englewood,
          CO: Advanced Learning Press.

Erickson, H. L. (2002). Concept-based curriculum and instruction: Teaching beyond
          the facts (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

According to Phi Delta Kappa, "The Curriculum Management Audit is a third-party examination of the curriculum design and delivery system of a school or school district. Both curriculum policy and the system in which curriculum functions are analyzed by the audit team. The report provides specific recommendations to improve those functions."

According to Wiggins and McTighe (2007), "The job is not to hope that optimal learning will occur, based on our curriculum and initial teaching.  The job is to ensure that learning occurs, and when it doesn't, to intervene in altering the syllabus and instruction decisively, quickly, and often" (p. 55).

Examples of Curriculum Management Audits:

Anchorage School District (Alaska)

Clover Park School District (Washington)  

San Bernardino City Unified School District (California)

Wake County Public School System (North Carolina)

Frequently Asked Questions About the WCPSS Curriculum Audit

If your school district has completed a Curriculum Management Audit, please share your thoughts. 

How did it help you improve your work as an educator? 

What were the benefits of the Curriculum Management Audit? 

Did you conduct the audit through Phi Delta Kappa or did you develop a different evaluation instrument for your school district's curriculum audit? 

If curriculum alignment is the goal in most school systems, then why do districts fail to conduct a Curriculum Management Audit? 

School districts must confront the brutal facts of their current reality in order to improve (Collins, 2001).

References:

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap and others
         don't.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2007). Schooling by design: Mission, action, and
        achievement. Alexandria, VA: Assocition for Supervision and Curriculum
        Development.

If you have ever worked with a team of teachers to develop curriculum maps, align the school district's curriculum, or evaluate curriculum, you understand that curriculum development is a political act.  Fenwick English (2000) wrote, "Knowledge is never neutral.  The selection of knowledge is fundamentally a political act of deciding who benefits from selecting what in the school's curriculum and who is excluded or diminished" (p. 30).

This past week, the Common Core State Standards Initiative was under fire from critics.  The controversy involved the committee members and ties they may have  which could influence 'what' is added to the Common Core State Standards.  Critics feel like the relationships between people who are designing education policy and their various roles in government and business should be made transparent to the public. 

Two Questions Should Be Asked When Evaluating Standards and Curriculum Documents.

1.  Whose politics are represented in this curriculum?

2.  Whose values are represented in this curriculum?

"Curriculum is always a means to somebody's end.....No selection of curriculum content can be considered politically neutral" (2000, p. 53).  If you are asked to review curriculum or develop curriculum, then you should be careful to avoid bias.  What is good for your own child may not be good for every child.  Politics are unavoidable when it comes to curriculum development, but educators can improve the curriculum development process by seeking multiple perspectives.  For additional information on Curriculum Decisions visit http://tiny.cc/TTS0P

View Full Story
http://tiny.cc/g5E6W
Conflict of Interest Arises as Concern in Standards Push
By Mary Ann Zehr
November 2, 2009

References:
English, F.W. (2000). Deciding what to teach and test: Developing, aligning, and
         auditing the curriculum. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.