An industry is competitive to the degree that customers have options in their choice of supplier in the good or service which that industry provides.

The charter schools are not competitive, ask any charter teacher if they can tell their corporate boss their curriculum stinks and they’re not gonna use it. They’d be fired on the spot.

No. I searched, and the first link was this.

I infer that Open Court is a seriously scripted curriculum. Your point, if I understand correctly, is that a school which says “Teach by this method” actually means it. Okay. If you don’t like it, teach somewhere else.

“What works?” is an empirical question which only an experiment (a competitive market) can determine. The best protection a good worker has is a competitive market in the service s/he provides.

Have you never heard of the “Open Court Police”?

I’d rathjer be an “at will” employee. That means that the screw-up across the hall is also an at will employee and I will have to endure his incompetence for only one year.

What happens if a first grade teacher uses phonics methods in a school district where Whole Language con artists have sold administrators on their curriculum? Who is watching? What happens if an eighth grade Math teacher sends the kids home with a “Conected Math” or “Discovery Math” textbook and uses sequential, incremental worksheets and direct instruction methods in class? Who is watching? Doesn’t success validate your choice of method? Seems to me you only have problems when your method fails.

If you live in a state with strong tenure laws that will allow you to teach what you know is right, and you have tenure, you can get away with it. In Texas we do not have tenure and are basically at will employees.

And your point would be that teacher should have a great deal of say so in curriculum?

I’d just adore to hear more detail about how that’d happen. Will school boards still be elected by the public or would it work out better for you if school boards were elected by teachers?

If they say “Teach garbage”, close the door and teach Math (or the phonetic alphabet, or principles of scientific reasoning, or History). Going back to my medical analogy, if the hospital administrator says to the cardiac surgeon “use these carpentry tools and wear boxing gloves”, the competent surgeon will smuggle the necessary tools into the operating theater and wear sterile latex gloves. Of course, in the real world, he would quit and blow the whistle. In the US education industry, that last option doesn’t work (corruption and incompetence go all the way to the top–Congress).

I don’t know how it was in Hawaii but everywhere else I’ve been teachers have little or no say so in curriculum.

In the problem you used many 4th graders are not capable (yet) of doing such a problem. Everyday Math introduces it but like it does with so many other topics, jumps away from it before many kids have a chance to achieve mastery. Later they are exposed to it again in a process called “spiraling”, which to me is little more than throwing the topic in at random intervals.

Everyday Math was chosen against the wishes of the Math teachers in the district.

Funny you should bring up Crabtree Rags, as I have actual relatives by that name. Insert your personal attacks here.