With three grown daughters, it always seemed to me that having a Core
Curriculum based on a national consensus would have made the results of
national tests in reading and math of the NAEP a lot more relevant across
the 50 states in evaluating teacher training, student outcomes etc. There
seems to have always been the talk about different resources, different
funding, etc. but setting up a national Core Curriculum would perhaps then
enable the federal government to direct the funds to area that are most in
need of specific things such as teacher development, textbooks, computers,
literacy specialists etc.

At the same time in raising our youngest daughter who has a moderate ID
disability, I always wondered why under IDEA there had not been a push with
NCLB to define a "basic core" curriculum in clear terms for reading,
writing and math that any child for whom the pacing and depth of the
regular education curriculum was not appropriate could be following. If
this had been the case, then research studies may well have been able to
define which specific programs and interventions worked best for different
kinds of disabilities and again requested funding. This might include SRA,
Edmark, Wilson, Ortho-Gilliam (sp) and others in math and language arts I
am not familiar with. For those with mild disabilities having the right
instructional supports in place may well enable a child to attain a regular
high school diploma, if on a somewhat different timetable.

Having so often been just "teacher choice" on what and how was taught or
strong teachers but little funds for curriculum development or appropriate
materials, one can see why parents of students in special education opted
for the inclusion model. But whether under NCLB or a Core Curriculum
model, I still wonder how many students well below their grade level peers
cognitively are just being passed along without the focus needed to gain
basic core skills that just might prepare them for a job or to live on
one's own. I think way back when with NCLB, the best opportunity for
improving curriculum on a national basis for all students was lost in
letting 50 states define their own standards and in not even stating a
progression of the most basic skills every student should acquire to the
best of one's ability.

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