Education has changed a lot over the last 40 years, and it will be changing a lot more over the next three.
Thursday night, the Warsaw School Board approved five recommendations from the Curriculum Council, presented by Chief Academic Officer David Hoffert.
The recommendations included adopting the 2012-13 revised curriculum guides; incorporating the Indiana state-adopted Common Core Curriculum into the Warsaw district curriculum; approving the pilot standards-based report card as the WCS kindergarten report card; approving cursive writing as an enrichment activity inside of the Warsaw elementary curriculum; and continuing implementation of keyboarding at the elementary level.
Hoffert told the school board that the curriculum guides included the changes discussed at the November meeting.
Edgewood and Lakeview middle schools will have the exact same course offerings. Big changes for the middle schools were adding in a strings program and exploratory language programs. Changes at Warsaw Community High School and the Warsaw Area Career Center included adding Chinese II, algebra enrichment, dropping pre-algebra, adding Orchestra and Dance II, Medical Terminology, culinary arts, name changes to courses and more.
In 2010, Hoffert said, the state adopted the Common Core State Standards as the state standards. More information on the Common Core can be found online at corestandards.org
Peggy Overmyer, science literacy coach, said the Common Core Standards are grade specific. They are developmentally appropriate and have one-to-one correspondence with the College and Career Readiness Standards.
“They tell us what students need to be able to do when they get out of our school program and move on to college or a career,” Overmyer said.
The standards focus on key topics at each grade level, and there is coherent progressions across grade levels.
The College and Career Readiness Standards have broad expectations consistent across grades and content areas. They’re based on evidence about college and workforce training expectations “so our students are excellent problem solvers,” said Overmyer.
She said these standards are not intended to be new names for old ways of doing business, and are not just promises to the children but promises intended to be kept.
ISTEP will go away in 2014-15 and schools will administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers assessments.
The kindergarten assessment is completed, with the first- and second-grade formative assessment being developed, aligned to the PARCC system. There’s then the assessment for grades 3-8 and high school.
Hoffert said the changes could be a really scary thing for Warsaw teachers, but it’s not.
“We’re really ahead of the game and on our way,” Overmyer said.
Gina Coutois, Madison Elementary teacher, and Carla Milliman, Lincoln Elementary, talked about the standards-based kindergarten report card.
Coutois said they started on the process a few years ago when they mapped out the standards. When Warsaw approved full-day kindergarten for the 2011-12 school year, they started looking at the kindergarten report card.
Milliman said the old report card tested for things like students being able to tie their shoes, and she didn’t think she ever held a student back for not being able to tie their shoes.
Report cards now, she said, shows they are not only asking for students to know their letters and letter sounds, but also reading, writing and more.
No matter what elementary a student attends, every child is tested in the same way, she said.
Right now, kindergartners get paper report cards, but the next step is to go computer based.
“We’re doing the things that we know are right for the kids,” she said.
Surveys given to parents on the report cards showed parents were overly positive on them.
“The report card is a tool, but the teachers are the ones using that tool on a daily basis,” Hoffert said.
The next goal is to work on the first- and second-grade report cards after the holiday break.
In April 2011, the Indiana Department of Education stated that cursive writing is not part of the Common Core Standards and that it will not be included on the state curriculum maps. It did say it could be looked at as a local standards, but the DOE push is to drop it.
While Warsaw will keep handwriting as an enrichment activity, a keyboard program is being implemented at the elementary schools. State testing is going to being computer based, so elementary students need to know how to use a keyboard.
Deb Wiggins, board president, asked what kind of typing students will learn as there is keyboarding and then texting.
Elaine Bultemeier, technology department, said students will be instructed on touch typing for the keyboard.
“The kids are adaptive enough they adapt to the device they are using,” said Susan Armacost, teacher, about keyboarding.
As a father of three teens, board member Dan Metzger said, kids pick it up regardless of what device they are using.
