PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE - EMAIL YOUR SUPERINTENDENT TODAY Good morning Superintendent, I recently learned about the Future Ready District Pledge at tech.ed.gov/pledge/ . Can you tell me if you have signed this pledge or plan to do so? I have concerns about our district committing to use digital curriculum selected by the U.S. Department of Education on a daily basis. The pledge specifically says Future Ready districts will “use carefully selected high quality digital content that is aligned to college and career ready standards as an essential part of daily teaching and learning.” There are a lot of promises in that sentence. Who would determine what content is “high quality”? It sounds like that would be at the discretion of the U.S. Department of Education, not our district or our state. Pledging to use “college and career ready standards” would bind our district directly to the Common Core State Standards indefinitely. Please take a look here for confirmation that they are one and the same: corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/ . Our district chose to default to our state’s standards. If our state changed standards, I assume our district would follow suit. By signing this document, our district is signing an agreement directly with the U.S. Department of Education to use a set of standards, which is an unprecedented move. If we do something like this, it is the equivalent of committing to differ from our state’s chosen standards. Is our district ready to do that? If so, perhaps our district should be evaluating that option now. I have not even addressed the costs of complying with the commitment to provide all students with high quality devices or ensure Wi-Fi access in every classroom. A financial analysis should be conducted to determine if this is feasible. Furthermore, have adequate studies been done that show digital learning is as effective as text and in person instruction? I ask that you make careful evaluation of these commitments and present your findings along with my concerns above to our school board. If you have already signed the document, I urge you to bring this to the attention of our school board for analysis and to determine if it is possible to reverse our district’s pledge. The implications of signing the Future Ready District Pledge will impact our school district and our students for many years to come. Thank you,
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:08:42 +0000
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