Running Head: CURRICULUM HISTORY

A History of Curriculum Development at YES Prep Public Schools

Jamar Johnson University of St. Thomas

Research Professor: Dr. Liz Johnson November 30th, 2013

Curriculum History Abstract This paper examines the history of curriculum planning and development at YES Prep Public Schools in order to trace how the original intent of curriculum planning is evident in the district today. The author first examines YES Preps original curriculum development process, which consisted of individual schools and teachers creating curriculums for their individual classes. As time progressed YES Prep moved from this inefficient model into a centralized curriculum planning structure. For this to occur, the district created content leaders and content directors to ensure that the curriculum planning process involved teachers who were currently teaching the subject. The district also introduced Common Assessments to ensure that teachers

were faithfully implementing the curriculum. This has led to teachers feeling more satisfied with the curriculum at YES Prep.

Curriculum History Curriculum planning and development should not be seen as a process that occurs once and is never revisited after the curriculum has been created. The most effective curriculum developers understand that a curriculum can and should be changed after it has been finalized as more information and data is discovered which can have an impact on the curriculum. If a curriculum was created, implemented and never thoroughly inspected again, then there could be deficits that form in students due to a lack of diligence afforded to the curriculum process. At YES Prep Public Schools, the district has a firm commitment to not only creating excellent

curriculum for every subject when they include a new course, but to also include a yearly review of each set of curriculum. By implementing this policy the district strives to ensure that students are being presented with a challenging AP aligned curriculum that does not stagnate from year to year. Although this is the current status of curriculum development at YES Prep, this routine evaluation of the curriculum was not always a part of the curriculum development and planning process at the district level. When YES Prep started off as a charter school in the late 1990s, most of the curriculum decisions were left to the individual teachers to decide upon. There was no centralized curriculum that teachers could access to create lesson plans from nor were there any standardized testing in the district to measure the implementation of the curriculums that teachers were using in their individual classrooms. Because of this decentralized version of curriculum development there were often wildly varied results among campuses as the work was focused entirely on the first two steps of curriculum planning, the classroom and individual school, but it did not focus on the third step, that of the school district (Oliva, 2013 p.39). Essentially what would happen is a teacher would have success in their classroom and the district would then retroactively attempt to determine what that individual teacher did to be successful with their individual curriculum.

Curriculum History This led to a very inefficient system for the district, a system that was turned around with the implementation of course leaders and common assessments in the mid-2000s. As the district begun to look at data and talk with teachers about what they needed to be more successful, the district determined that the curriculum planning and development process needed to be much more centralized. However, the district did not want to eliminate active teachers voices from the curriculum planning process. This decision by the district was backed

up by research into curriculum development that has shown that when teachers are involved with the development process they are not only more likely to faithfully implement the curriculum, but that the curriculum is also much more effectively developed (Rink & Hall, 2008; Mooney & Mausbach, 2008). In addition to continuing to include the input of active teachers, the district also sought to include in each subjects curriculum a rigorous sets of tests that could be used to not only measure the success of students, but also helped judge how successful the implementation of the curriculum was at each campus; this set of tests eventually became known as the YES Prep Common Assessment. With those criteria in mind, the district began formulating a plan with Deans of Instruction and highly successful teachers from each of the campuses. The curriculum planning committee first decided upon creating two new positions, course leaders and content directors. The course leaders were designed to be active teachers at YES Prep who had a proven record of success and whose primary responsibility was to create the curriculum guide for their specific subject for the district. Content leaders were a role created for teachers with vast experience with multiple courses who would oversee the overall development of the courses for their respective subject (i.e. the science content leader would oversee all the science content leaders as they create their specific curriculums). With the creation of these roles, the district was able to begin

Curriculum History creating a centralized curriculum that they hoped would ensure more commonality between

schools which had the same subjects. In the first year of having the course leaders many teachers remarked to the district that they found planning and instruction to be more streamlined now that they had a curriculum to follow. Surprisingly, teachers did not feel restricted by the curriculum as it allowed for teachers to adapt the curriculum to fit the needs of their students. Although creating course leaders and content directors who ensured a streamlined curriculum was helpful for teachers, many members of the district staff noticed that individual campuses implementation of the curriculum was inconsistent, due in part to the teachers not having a common test to work towards. Therefore, the district implemented Common Assessments, which were AP-aligned tests for each subject that were given quarterly. These Common Assessments were designed to be challenging but were aligned entirely with the curriculum so that teachers had an end point in mind as they were using the curriculum in their classrooms. The inclusion of these assessments were critical in helping to guide teachers to correctly implement the curriculum faithfully and push their students to achieve to their ability levels. Currently the curriculum for each course is revised for any major changes during the weeks immediately following the end of the school year. This method allows for any changes to be made to the curriculum while content leaders are still aware of the changes that need to be made. In keeping with the original idea of curriculum planning at YES Prep, teachers within the course who arent course leaders are invited to also help with the planning process over the summer so that the curriculum is not created from just one teachers campus perspective. Throughout the year the teachers also convene for Content Days where they review the upcoming curriculum for any minor changes that may need to be made. In doing this, the district

Curriculum History ensures that the curriculum does not become stagnant and teachers continue to faithfully implement the created curriculum.

Curriculum History References Mooney, N. & Mausbach, A. (2008). Align the design. Alexandria, Virgina: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Oliva, P. F. & Gordon, William II. (2013). Developing the curriculum. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson. Rink, J. E. & Hall, T. J. (2008). Research on effective teaching in elementary school physical education. Elementary School Journal, 108(3), 207-218.