Oceanside prepares a new curriculum

At a Board of Education meeting on Oct. 18, Bob Fenter, Oceanside’s assistant superintendent for curriculum, outlined some of the changes that are coming to the district’s curriculum in the next few years.

The new curriculum, called the Common Core State Standards, is a byproduct of President Obama’s Race to the Top — a program that enticed states to enact educational reforms by promising funds to the states that made the most successful changes.

“This is a major departure from the way education has been done over the years,” Fenter said to the small group of residents at the meeting.

The CCSS curriculum is different from the current curriculum in most states in one major way, emphasizing depth over breadth. “That’s the whole concept: Build it early and dig deep down,” Fenter said after the meeting. “Don’t dig a mile wide and an inch deep, dig an inch wide and a mile deep.”

Forty-four states have adopted the Common Core standards as their new curriculum, and two more have done so unofficially. Fenter said it is the closest thing the U.S. has ever had to national education standards.

The CCSS is part of a three-fold change in education spurred by the Race to the Top. In addition to the new curriculum standards, there will be new assessments developed to test students, and teachers will be evaluated on how well students do on those tests. They will form a triangle called the Regents Reform Agenda.

While everyone in the Oceanside School District is in favor of the curriculum changes, the other changes are causing some contention. “The state is trying to push [the assessments] very quickly, and it’s making life very difficult in a variety of ways,” said Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown. “And in terms of teacher evaluations, we’re in favor of teacher evaluations. But they’re doing it in such a way that’s making life complicated. So we’re in favor of assessments and we’re in favor of teacher evaluations, but not necessarily the way the state is doing it.”

The curriculum changes, however, are popular. “All of this is a backwards plan for career and college readiness,” Fenter said. “What they tried to do is find the skills that kids need to have at the college level — writing, reading, math, research, technology — and now plan backwards and say, ‘What do they have to do at each grade level to be successful and achieve that level of expectation?’”

Fenter explained that the changes should roll out over the next few years, and that the curriculum should be completely revamped in about three years. It will start with new math and ELA requirements in grades three through eight next year, so children in kindergarten and first and second grades will never know the old standards. Oceanside has already switched those grades over to the CCSS curriculum.

“Last year there were six major topics that kindergartners had to know in the area of math,” said Fenter. “This year there are three topics that they have to study in depth.” Fenter used numeracy — the ability to reason and understand numbers — as an example of the changes. Students will be spending more time learning about numbers and doing basic math. So, for example, instead of leaving kindergarten being able to add and subtract numbers up to 15, Fenter said, students will be able to do it up to 25.

The tradeoff, however, is that patterns are now being taught in first grade rather than kindergarten.

Both Fenter and Brown said that the changes in Oceanside’s curriculum should not be too severe. The enVision math program the district implemented this year in the elementary school was designed around the CCSS, so few changes would need to be made to it.

“This is exciting,” said Fenter. “This is good for kids. This is raising the standards and expecting kids to know more about fewer topics, and that’s really when we learn something. That’s really when you own something.”