Friday, April 9, 2004

University professors latest to weigh in on Cox’s changes to state curriculum

The Georgia Department of Education has received thousands of comments and suggestions on how to improve the first draft of the new Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) since posting it online Jan. 12.

Members of the public, including many Georgia educators, have had the opportunity to use electronic feedback forms to submit their thoughts on the GPS draft, according to a spokesman in State Supt. Kathy Cox’s office.

The department has received both laudatory and critical feedback, which was fully expected from the onset, said Kirk Englehardt.

Keeping true to the principles of inclusion and openness, the GDOE requested that the draft curriculum be closely scrutinized by university professors throughout the state of Georgia. Partnering with the University System of Georgia, the proposed standards were shared with academic committees consisting of faculty members in each of the respective disciplines from each of Georgia’s 34 public universities.

Cox welcomes the input.

“They have a unique perspective on curriculum issues and their valuable feedback will help us revise the current draft so that in the end we will have a world class curriculum that will serve the needs of all Georgia teachers and students,” she said.

The reports praise the proposed biology curriculum for reinstating evolution and related concepts, and considers the business and economics curriculum “a good effort which will prepare students to perform better in college courses in macroeconomics and microeconomics.”

The professors liked the proposed chemistry standards and in English they welcomed “the plan’s ambitious goals, the high subject specific expectations and the emphasis on reading and writing across the disciplinary spectrum.”

Mathematics was applauded for its intent to replace a wide and shallow curriculum with one that actively engages students in the development of mathematic understanding and emphasizes National Council for Teachers of Mathematics process skills, according to Englehardt.

Physics and astronomy were said to be “more appropriately directed toward the core areas of physics.” In political science the professors said, “If Georgia students were exposed to and able to absorb the structure and process of American government” to the extent proposed, “they would be well educated.”

“We asked the university professors to look at the Georgia Performance Standards with a critical eye,” Cox said. “We wanted real suggestions on how to bring the curriculum up to ‘World-Class’ standards, and that’s exactly the kind of valuable feedback we received.”

The professors raised concern in each of the four major content areas including concerns about curriculum implementation and roll-out, teacher and student preparation, curriculum alignment throughout the grades, fact corrections and omitted topics, clarity and correctness of standards, closer adherence to national standards, and the ability to clearly measure student performance. The professors also cautioned that there were “numerous instances where concepts and tasks are introduced without the appropriate prerequisite skills explicitly detailed,” which will need to be addressed as standards are revised, Cox said.

Some of the feedback suggested “expectations are too lofty in some cases — and skills are not emphasized in sufficient depth in others.”

The college professor feedback, along with thousands of comments received through the Web, will next be reviewed by teacher teams made up of K-12 teachers and university professors, who will then make appropriate revisions.

On April 13, the State Board of Education is expected to discuss recent revisions and vote to permit GDOE to post the changes on the department website for further public comment. The Board will again discuss and vote to repost additional changes at its May meeting.

GDOE has also partnered with the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education to contract with Phi Delta Kappa to conduct an independent audit of the draft Georgia Performance Standards. PDK conducted the original audit of our state’s current curriculum, calling it a “mile wide and an inch deep” and claiming that it would take nearly 23 years for a student to cover all of the required material.

The audit is expected to take place during the month of April, Englehardt said.