K-12 Curriculum Development

According to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages.

W.E.B. DuBois provides us with a powerful reminder of the moral obligation of educators:

"Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental....The freedom to learn....has been bought by bitter sacrifice.  And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn, the right to have examined in our schools not only what we believe, but what we do not believe; not only what our leaders say, but what the leaders of other centuries have said.  We must insist upon this to give our children the fairness of a start which will equip them with such an array of facts and such an attitude toward truth that they can have a real chance to judge what the world is and what its greater minds have thought it might be." 

- W.E.B. DuBois, The Freedom to Learn (1949)
as cited in The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work (Darling-Hammond, 1997)

Conclusion:
All students should receive a guaranteed and viable curriculum (Marzano).  If the received curriculum varies from one class to the next, then it will be difficult for teachers at the next grade level to build on prior knowledge and understandings.  One of the goals of teaching is to ensure close alignment between the intended, taught, assessed, and received curricula.

Questions to Consider:

1.  Does your school have a guaranteed and viable curriculum?

2.  How is the intended curriculum different from the received
     curriculum?

3.  Do teachers implement the written curriculum/intended curriculum or do
     teachers create curriculum in isolation?

4.  Ask yourself, would I want my son or daughter to experience
    the watered-down curriculum and miss out on parts of the district's 
    intended curriculum?
 
What the best and wisest parent wants for his or her own child, that must the community want, for all of its children.

         John Dewey
         As cited by Gene Carter, Executive Director ASCD
         ASCD Education Update - December 2006, p. 2