My school district, like most in Texas, uses CSCOPE for its curriculum. All schools are aligned in terms of what is taught, and when. A student can transfer from one classroom to another and still be learning the same material, often at the exact same time. Lots of guesswork is removed from deciding which material in a given subject is important. Students can expect to be graded on coursework and exams similar to those of their peers, increasing the level of fairness throughout CSCOPE districts.
I’m not here to argue about whether or not CSCOPE and its attempt to ensure curricula uniformity is desirable – the debate over “big brother” and “cookie cutter” education will be timeless. Instead, a current struggle for many teachers in CSCOPE districts in Texas is that of trying to reconcile covering content with ensuring student comprehension.
In layman’s terms, we teachers are trying to balance the challenge of covering all the stuff with the challenge of making any of it stick.
CSCOPE suggests that we finish a given unit in a certain amount of time, especially in order to be synchronized with our counterparts. I am, for example, one of a handful of World History teachers at my high school and there are multiple high schools in town. A student transferring to my classroom should expect to arrive within a curriculum week or so of his previous class, right? A sophomore coming to my class from the school across town shouldn’t pick up with the Korean War if the class he left had only just finished World War I. He or she would, tragically, miss all of the Second World War…and, aside from all its educational goodness, likely do poorly on that part of the final exam.
But this tragic eventuality might still occur because teachers have trouble figuring out how intensely to cover certain material. I choose to err on the CSCOPE side of things and stick closely to its curriculum calendar, while other teachers prefer to spend more time focusing on knowledge retention. I spend three weeks on the Classical Empires because the CSCOPE calendar suggests it while the lady across the hall spends almost five weeks on that same unit, hoping to make the material stick in her students’ minds.
I will cover all the knowledge they need, but some won’t stick. She will make sure the stuff she teaches sticks, but material will be incomplete. Which is preferable? Students are walking away with knowledge gaps under either option, and teachers are worried because they are expected to prevent such a thing from happening: We are expected to cover all the material and make it all stick.
We can do one or the other, but both may not be possible. A possible solution: Teach from present time backwards in social studies classes, focusing on knowledge retention, and see how far back a teacher can make it in 36 weeks.
Think about that, ponder it, and explore.