NORWALK, Conn. – Norwalk school officials are disputing what they call a “widespread misperception” regarding the choice of a key curriculum for Norwalk school children.
A preliminary selection has been made for a new English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum for the kids in grades six to 12, Board of Education members say. A new ELA curriculum for school children through grade five will probably be ready this fall, although that process is lagging, Chairman Mike Lyons said. But an email chain sent Monday to NancyOnNorwalk revealed that the process involved isn’t pretty.
At the beginning of the chain is an email sent by BOE Chairman Mike Lyons to interim Superintendent Tony Daddona.
“Tony, given the unfortunate political machinations that have arisen in response to a simple request that the Core Knowledge {CK} Foundation present its program to the review committee, at this point I think the presentation would appear to be a waste of time,” Lyons wrote on May 24.
He went on to say that he thought the CK presentation should be canceled due to actions of a committee made up of teachers and administrators.
“Had the review committee’s concerns been brought through proper channels to the Curriculum Committee instead of through ‘forum shopping’ to Board members not even on the Committee, this could have been avoided,” he wrote. “But the choice of some staff members to politicize the issue has poisoned the atmosphere around it, which is most unfortunate.”
The email chain continues, with BOE member Sue Haynie pushing Daddona to arrange site visits at schools using the CK curriculum and the Pearson Reading Street curriculum.
“We must get ELA K-5 right and we must do it with a deep respect for the teachers who will implement it and the students, their parents, and the secondary-level teachers who will be the beneficiaries,” Haynie said in one email.
Daddona said in an email it was a shame that she had missed the CK presentation. Haynie replied that she had been kept in the dark and thought the meeting had been canceled, as Lyons said it should be.
“I missed the presentation because I thought it was canceled as per the email string attached; you did not respond to the email, or did not respond to everyone, so I was unaware.”
Her other emails show that she continued to have a lack of response from Daddona.
Asked about it Monday, Haynie said that a site visit had not been arranged.
Lyons, chairman of the Curriculum Committee, declined to say what he meant by the comments about “political machinations” and “forum shopping” but explained the curriculum controversy by forwarding a lengthy June 6-7 email exchange he had with Cranbury Elementary School first-grade teacher Jen Cobbs, who wrote to urge him to listen to the teachers regarding the curriculum and to do it quickly. She said she suspected that the decision was being delayed until summer so it could be made without teachers around.
Lyons said that wasn’t true.
“You have been misinformed about what actually happened; this misperception is widespread among our teachers, so I assume it is being communicated deliberately,” he wrote. “…We HAVE to get this right — nothing is more important to children’s success than early reading. I am inclined to take more time, study things more, and get it right, than get it done fast. By state law the Curriculum Committee and the Board are charged with setting our curriculum, and we are entitled and obligated to do our own independent review of curricular materials submitted to us. While we of course should give great weight to the recommendations of the review committee, we are NOT rubber stamps of that committee, any more than we should be rubber stamps of the superintendent on budgets or other matters.”
The email exchange is attached below, as is the email chain sent to NancyOnNorwalk.
Both Lyons and BOE member Mike Barbis say the curriculum decisions have been delayed by the superintendent search and they need to finalize a budget by June 30. Recent meetings of the Curriculum Committee have been canceled in favor of the superintendent search, both men said.
The new K-5 ELA curriculum was planned for 2014-2015, but money became available through the Board of Education’s 2013-2014 capital budget request because of the transition to Common Core State Standards, Barbis said.
He said he doesn’t understand what is going on.
“There has been this huge attack out of nowhere against one of the proposals,” he said in an email. “… The environment has definitely been poisoned. I would love to know who is behind this and what they think they are going to accomplish.”
The teacher asked in her email why the curriculum for grades six through 12 had been approved by the committee but not sent to the full board. Barbis made reference to that as he continued his comments about the “calculated attack.”
“The Curriculum Committee has heard the proposals for 6-12 ELA and we approved one (Pearson),” he wrote. “We have not been presented a recommendation yet on K-5. So why we are getting these attacks from a range of people, accusing us of already making up our minds, accusing us of over-ruling the Review Committee when we haven’t even heard any proposals beats me!”
The controversy is a source of discussion on Norwalk Speaks, an education blog. One writer speaks of a curriculum “program being pushed at the 11th hour” and goes on to describe topics as “developmentally inappropriate” and the quality of the student materials as “poor.”
BOE member Steven Colarossi writes of the need to keep the review process “free from untoward political agendas” and mentions one member pushing to see a school using the curricula the member favors.
Haynie did not respond to a late Monday email asking for comment about that.
Lyons said he didn’t know who was responsible for the “widespread misperceptions.”
“Clearly many teachers have been told the ‘myth,’ and have concluded that the Board members are the bad guys,” he wrote in an email. “Why that is being directed at CK, I don’t know. If Board members were pushing CK and it was a fringe proposal, I could understand that — but this is a program endorsed by both the New York City and State of New York BoEs.”
Also attached below are two documents supporting the Core Knowledge curriculum, provided by Lyons.
BOE emails sent to NancyOnNorwalk on June 10
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