I agree with Streifer’s main point and, by and large, with his argument. His selesai conclusion, however, is that the state legislature needs to mandate such coordination. And while this may be so, there’s no attention given in the article to the complicated details of how this would look in practice. I’d also add that some existing state mandates interfere with the very goal of coordination, at least in perception.
First of all, who would be responsible at the university level for this coordination? At the high school level, this could be handled by a curriculum director (not that all schools have those, but at least there’s widespread precedent for such a position). But who would be responsible at the college level? I don’t think Streifer is suggesting that schools of education be responsible for this. For one thing, schools of education already have a great deal of communication with high schools in the form of clinical placements and student teachers, though this does not typically include curriculum development. Another thing is that specific departments—English, Math, Biology, etc—should be the ones in communication with high schools in order to develop discipline-specific curricula.
But right now, such positions don’t exist within university departments. At UConn, the closest we probably come is the Early College Experience program, but even then we’re talking about a specific course or two being offered in the high schools, not wholesale curriculum alignment. And even then it can be hard to find someone at the university to be the ECE coordinator. Regular faculty are disinclined to serve in this capacity because the time commitment takes away from their own scholarship and teaching. And faculty like me, who perform lots of service, professional development, and outreach, are in short supply. I can think of one Biology professor who, like me, was a high school teacher for a long time, and who does work with the ECE program. But would faculty like us be able to take on the load of working not just with a few schools offering one course, but the load of working with all Connecticut high schools on full scale curriculum revision and alignment? Of course not. It would require a tremendous investment in personnel at the university level, as well as a certain realignment of the culture of the university to make such positions integral to the academic lives of departments.
Other obstacles, as I said before, exist as a result of other state mandates, such as CAPT. For instance, a community college colleague and I went to a local public high school a couple years back and did a full day workshop on ‘college-level’ writing where we discussed expectations at our respective institutions. We talked about the academic essay, the importance of student inquiry, of drafting and revision, of avoiding formulaic approaches such as the five paragraph essay, and such. On the whole, the group of teachers was very receptive, but a core group of about four veteran teachers in the department felt strongly that such emphases would undermine their necessary efforts to prepare students for CAPT, as well as to prepare them for the writing required on other standardized forms of assessment, such as the SAT and AP tests. At one point, our discussion bordered on getting heated, and I had to walk away after telling one particularly vocal teacher that we were showing him what the expectations were at our colleges. I didn’t necessarily think that preparing students for these expectations was incompatible with or detrimental to preparation for CAPT, SAT, or AP tests, but if he felt so, then he simply had a choice to make.
I’ve run into similar if less vocal and hostile responses at other schools, too. And in the work I have done with the ECE jadwal doing site visits to schools, the tensions between ECE and AP emphases are particularly strong, and though that is one not truly caused by the State, it is one reinforced by many superintendents, principals and boards of education. The pressure to offer AP courses, as well as the temptation to chase after the money dangled by Project Opening Doors, lures many administrators away from the more sound, truly college-preparatory work done by the ECE program. If we were to mandate something even more comprehensive, could we break administrators and classroom teachers from their infatuation with multiple choice questions and timed, short-answer essays? And would this jeopardize the state’s plans for assessing teachers if there were no canned assessments to use as data?
I’ll state clearly that CAPT and AP don’t have to be incompatible with academic or college-level work, and that it is not only possible but worthwhile to have greater coordination between high schools and colleges, but any mandate to do so is going to need a great deal of creative planning and, sorry to say this, financial commitment. And then, after all, the biggest obstacle might be the attitudes of teachers and professors and the entrenched cultures of high schools and colleges.
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