Teachers and families of Montgomery County Public Schools feel they were lied to and pushed to swiftly accept a curriculum merely days before the beginning of the school year. If your child is in MCPS, you have no doubt heard of their new English and Language Arts curriculum (StudySync). I asked both of my children one in advanced learning and one below grade level how they felt about the new program. Both felt it was lacking in personal touch that many MCPS teachers previously provided. All teachers are now restricted to provide learning through Study Sync and cannot customize the curriculum to suit the needs of an individual child. Don't we have enough of that with the required SOLs? Many teachers and parents have attended school board meetings since the beginning of school in August to speak on behalf of ending the Study Sync program. If you wish to go back and view the public addresses you can do so on youtube.com under Montgomery County Public Schools in VA. You may also complete the survey at the end of this article.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” - Haruki Murakami
Dear MCPS School Board Members,
We are fortunate that our school division has an abundance of passionate, dedicated teachers, who inspire, challenge, and pour their lives into our community’s children every day. We write out of concerns specific to the rushed implementation of the new English and Language Arts curriculum, StudySync. Yet our concerns are broader than the selection of a textbook. We have witnessed the intelligence, training, experience, and professionalism of the division’s capable teachers undermined, questioned, and disrespected in public by MCPS administration.
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VA state law under 22.1-238 requires MCPS and all counties to adopt state-approved textbooks, or ones with the state regulations in mind. Adoption is the requirement; teaching “to fidelity” is in no law or policy provided at the state or local level. State law leaves to the local School Board how all other instructional and supplemental materials are to be selected. You have done exactly that with Policy 6-5.5, which empowers individual teachers to make instructional decisions to meet the needs of their students. Policy 6-5.5 states, “Teachers are encouraged to use a variety of instructional materials at the appropriate levels to introduce, reinforce, and assess learning in the classroom. The purpose of this policy is to promote a collaborative review of materials that, like textbooks, will be utilized on a broad basis across the school division. The purpose of this policy is not to restrict individual teachers in the selection of daily instructional materials” (emphasis added). The policy likewise delegates the responsibility for selecting supplemental materials to individual teachers and schools.
The Board’s policy affirms that these materials are not incidental but “constitute an integral part of the instructional program” (emphasis added). Only when they are being considered for adoption “on a division-wide basis,” states the policy, do they require review and approval by an evaluation committee. Teachers who use novels, nonfiction books, and other materials for daily classroom instruction are following current Board policy. To usurp teachers’ ability to make these instructional decisions, the administration is asserting that when novels are used by teachers they replace the textbook as “primary curriculum.” Nowhere in VDOE guidance or policy will you find support for this assertion, certainly not as a basis for curtailing or forbidding their classroom use as the administration has done to circumvent Policy 6-5.5.
Mounting frustration over the content and implementation of the new ELA curriculum is, in short, a crisis of the administration’s own making. The administration is advancing a dubious interpretation of the adoption law while subverting established Board policy. The aim seems clear: to restrict the autonomy of teachers and take away their ability to make decisions on the selection of materials that best meet the needs of their students. We have seen the erosion of confidence in and disrespect for MCPS teachers in the adoption and implementation not only of the new ELA curriculum for secondary students, but also of the elementary Benchmark curriculum before it.
In both cases, during the period in which the curriculum was being considered, the administration failed to fully disclose to teachers just how restricted their ability to deliver existing curriculum and instruction would be after adoption. Benchmark was implemented in fall of 2020, when teachers were returning to classrooms and many were having to figure out how to teach completely virtual, or unfortunately, hybrid to our young students. During the consideration of StudySync, teachers were assured they would have access to complete novels through StudySync. Not only is the usage of complete novels severely restricted, but ELA teachers have been ordered to teach both Benchmark and StudySync “to fidelity” and without deviation. As a result, teachers are restricted from using instructional and supplemental materials such as novels and nonfiction books, and they are reprimanded or punished if they veer from required fidelity.
Top-down mandates, “canned” curriculum, and retribution and threats against teachers who do not “fall in line” undermine teacher morale. The administration’s demands are also negatively affecting MCPS students, leaving them to believe that their teachers are little more than online content managers. A five-paragraph excerpt can never provide a student with the same rich content that a complete work can, and they know this. We all do. These dictates are similarly curtailing the ability of teachers of students in the gifted program from delivering differentiated instruction and curriculum, which is required, like the adoption of curriculum, under Virginia law. Teacher after teacher has attested to these issues, including a host of employees who bravely addressed the School Board. Bored and frustrated students are saying the same things.
We fear for the disaffection of our young students. We are equally concerned for the morale of our teachers and the ways in which their experience, autonomy, and dedication are being disrespected and undermined. The division’s high attrition rate, already a point of concern, will only worsen. We ask that the School Board act with all deliberate speed. Specifically, we ask that the School Board:
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- Support and enforce Policy 6-5.5 as it is currently written and long been interpreted.
- Affirm that while state law requires the adoption of a textbook, a Board-approved textbook is not to be the sole instructional material for classroom use.
- Affirm that novels or nonfiction books are not replacements of textbooks as primary curriculum but are to be understood as additional instructional or supplemental materials, and therefore teachers who teach with novels and nonfiction books may continue to do so under the conditions enumerated in Policy 6-5.5.
- Remind the administration of the division’s responsibility under Virginia law to deliver differentiated instruction and curriculum, and empower GRTs and other teachers of gifted students to make decisions on differentiation within the parameters of Policy 6-5.5 and other applicable Board policies, as well as the Local Plan for the Education of the Gifted.
- Investigate the adoption process for Benchmark and StudySync to ensure that the administration followed due diligence and the process was transparent and equitable and that it was free of manipulation, duplicity, and/or coercion of any sort.
- Consider at a later date updating Policy 6-5.5 to codify novels and nonfiction books as acceptable instructional or supplemental materials.
Thank you for your time and attention to our concerns. We hope you are encouraged to see so many parents, educators and community members rededicating themselves to the fundamental values embodied in MCPS’s mission.
Sincerely,
Concerned Citizens of Montgomery County
To: Chair Kass, Vice-Chair Franklin, Mr. Hudson, Ms. Partin, Ms. Bond, Ms. Graham, Mr. Cherbaka
Cc: Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Bragen, Dr. Meyer, Dr. Wickham, Mr. Pauli
Further Reading on Best Practices
The National Council of Teachers of English, “Guidelines for Selection of Materials in English Language Arts Programs” (April 30, 2014).
You may sign the open letter here. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgJJKyQQFq1CNvmdckO5riwBioNTo5V2SmpyT_hTh8ZDZiTg/viewform
