The NYC DOE is;
...recommending a set of math and English curriculum options for grades K-8 and will spend the coming months supporting principals and teachers in becoming familiar with these new materials.Now break out the champagne. None of these options involves Teacher's College, Lucy Calkins, Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop. (Is it just me or am I the only one thinking of the celebrations on Coruscant at the end of Return of the Jedi?)
According to the NYC DOE;
For English Language Arts, the Department is recommending that schools select either NYSED’s Core Knowledge or Pearson’s ReadyGen for grades K-2, either of which could be used by a school as a stand-alone curriculum or paired with the Fundations phonics program. For grades 3-5, the DOE is recommending that schools either continue with ReadyGen or select NYSED’s Expeditionary Learning curriculum. Expeditionary Learning is also recommended for grades 6-8, along with Scholastic’s Codex. While varying in style and structure, these programs—like those the DOE is recommending in math—hew tightly to the Common Core’s instructional shifts: they include a balance of rigorous fiction and non-fiction texts, build students’ academic vocabulary and knowledge across content areas, and engage students in using evidence from texts to make oral and written arguments.
The Department of Education believes that the selected programs represent the highest-quality Common Core-aligned curriculum materials currently available. They include brand new curriculum materials and materials that are being updated to fully reflect the shifts required by the Common Core standards.
While we here at SBSB cynically assume that these curricula are probably crap, or at the very least, need to be proven, we applaud the fact that Lucy Calkins has probably seen her last case of abusing children in NYC. But we are encouraged by seeing the word PHONICS mentioned and look forward to the day that 8th graders in NYC will have decoding skills. No longer will TC be responsible for making the students of NYC "dumber than wood" as one qualified educators once shared with me.
What of all the students who are suffering through a year, not to mention their entire lives in the NYC public schools, in which they learn nothing due to the incompetency of Lucy Calkins? Who will give them back their lives? Who will give them back all those precious wasted years of not learning and being able to read and write?
Who will give back the careers of teachers forced to teach the horrible Balanced Literacy approach that was used as a sword against them rather than a blanket to protect them? How many sick, twisted principals got off knowing that they set up VETERAN teachers to fail by forcing a known and failed method of teaching our most troubled youths to read, write, and appreciate the written word?
A generation of NYC children will pay the price of a failed experiment. But Lucy Calkins and the $5 million she received last year from the DOE, as well as the close minded administrators that implemented her cult of learning, will not pay the price.
Lucy Calkins and her Balanced Literacy abused children. As teachers, as educators, we are mandated reporters. Is it not mandatory for us to notify the Child Protective Services in Albany or ACS in NYC?
We here at SBSB wish to take some credit towards the eradication of Lucy Calkins. It was here on this very blog that we feel assisted in exposing what Lucy Calkins is and isn't.
So long and be gone Lucy Calkins. Please, stay far away.