Fear and anxiety over curricular change

Here in Georgia in educational circles, you often hear, “Thank God for Alabama and Mississippi!”  Because without them, we’d be 50th among the 50 states in educational standards.

Over the last few years, there has been a significant effort to improve standards and create a new, more rigorous curriculum.  It has parents up in arms!  “There’s no proof that this will work!”  No, there never can be .  Replicating another state’s program might work in the next context, but might not.  “My straight-A student is now getting C’s!” Now there’s the underlying issue.  When you make wholesale change, students have to adapt and teachers have to learn.  That kind of change is leading to exactly that kind of fear and anxiety in Georgia.

We’re not in exactly the same space with respect to Computing.  In most places, we’re not replacing anything.  However, replacing CS1 curriculum, among teachers (faculty) who have no incentive to change — that may be even harder.

Under the state’s new math curriculum, lower scores plus a quicker pace of instruction equal greater anxiety for both students and their teachers.

“In my classes, I have 60 kids and only 17 are passing. You know how stressful that is on me?” said Donna Aker, a veteran math teacher at South Gwinnett High School.

It’s a problem common to many metro Atlanta schools. Nearly one in five ninth-graders in metro Atlanta last year got an F in Math I — the first year of the state’s new math curriculum in high school.

via New curriculum: Math anxiety for students, teachers  | ajc.com.