When should children get on track for college and careers? Is third grade too late? How about kindergarten? Or pre-kindergarten? Or in the womb? It is never too soon, according to those with products you must buy now.
This teacher describes the latest sales pitch:
“The other day I received an email from Pearson promoting their PreK curriculum: OWL: Opening the World of Learning (2011). While the program may be good (I have not seen it to review it), the promotional materials on the website just set me off: “College and Career Readiness Starts in Pre-K”. That section heading infuriated me.
“I am so sick of hearing how we preschool teachers have to prepare kids for Common Core in kindergarten. All of my students need intensive support for their developmental delays in communication, motor, readiness, and/or behavior.
“I am more focused on assisting them in their play explorations, language and counting development. The LAST thing I need to be reminded of is that they are on the track to college and career readiness!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree 100%. It’s bizarre that US ED has become the salesman for technology products. If this is what comes out of US ED — preparing babies for work — how can we think anything they say has validity?
Sure sounds ridiculous saying they know 20 years in advance what the workforce will be unless (and likely) businesses are controlling child development.
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Can In Utero College and Career Readiness be far behind?
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If you’re a rich Manhattanite, it’s been here for a long time. Gotta get your Baby Einstein ready for pre-school by the time she’s three and you can’t start too early. As soon as you learn the good news, it’s time to start shelling out for those pregnancy headphones.
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Our 4 year grand-daughter loves to pretend she has different jobs. At various times, she practices being a dancer, singer, and fireperson. Creative play can include pretending to be different things.
Fortunately, it appears this pre-k teacher and/or has the ability to decie whether the materials offered are a product he/he/they want. So is this curriculum some thing the “must buy now”?
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My children were big into imaginative play. One of my neighbors told me they bought their house, so she could see what costume one of my sons would be wearing each day!
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“I am more focused on assisting them in their play explorations, language and counting development.”
Here our kindergarteners (full-day only, as half-day was eliminated many years ago) are already regrouping numbers into 10’s and units and being taught how to write topic sentences. They’re doing written work hours and hours a day, sitting in chairs and on carpets and back to chairs again – and then we wonder why they can’t hold it together. Every time I think about it, I cry. :’-( It’s nothing short of horrific.
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ugh, learning. why would schools do that?
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To see for yourself, check out http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZpNy. Remember, “College and Career Readiness Starts in Pre-K” – you don’t want to be left behind in this Race to the Top.
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Will the Pre-K kids have to take their OWL exams to get into Kindergarten?
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Do they realize they named the program OWL after lengthy, useless tests given to the students of Hogwarts that did not prepare the students for the real world (in the case of Harry Potter, it did not prepare the students to do real magic and give them real life skills)? hmmmm.
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As Dienne said it’s been around a long time in the upper-end preschools, & that means the young-children’s book market has been glutted for years with beautifully-illustrated, yawningly-boring ‘concept books’– no plot, just sharing info.
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A quick story on “Career Readiness”: This past summer, I took a job at my friend’s small business because my teaching salary does not pay the bills year round. This was a field that I had no prior experience in, and one that someone could certainly make a career out of. Having said that, I noticed right away that I needed the following skills in order to be “Career Ready” in this position:
1. Listening skills: There was a lot to learn in the first few days, I had to be an active listener in order to learn my routine and responsibilities.
2. Social skills: Verbal communication, kindness, and people skills were crucial to the job.
3. Organization: I had a variety of tasks to accomplish throughout my day, organizing my schedule was key to completing everything.
4. Teamwork: This goes without saying, I worked with a small group of 2-3 people. We bounced ideas off of each other daily, I learned a great deal from my co-workers.
5. Responsibility: I had to be at my job each day on time, and after a while I was given the keys to the business so that I could open or close when needed. I also handled some financial aspects of the business.
6. Initiative/ Creativity: Our team was given tasks in which there wasn’t always one correct answer. We were allowed time to think, explore, and use our creativity to problem solve.
7. Ability to make mistakes and learn from them: I made a ton of mistakes as I was learning on the job- luckily my friend was understanding!
Can anyone tell me how the Common Core standards or the current education reform movement addresses these imperative career readiness skills?
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Misterv: the obvious and the necessary are not even in the vocabulary of self-styled “education reformers.”
Thank you for keeping it real.
Not rheeal.
🙂
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The one percent are running to put their kiddies in play kindergartens. From Eureka Alert: Playing with blocks may help children’s spatial and math thinking
Excerpt: Playing with blocks may help preschoolers develop the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), according to a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Temple University. And for low-income preschoolers, who lag in spatial skills, such play may be especially important.
The study is published in the journal Child Development.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/sfri-pwb091713.php
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Thanks, Harold for sharing this article.
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I wrote about OWL when the OP first posted this comment:
“I have experience with this curriculum and, although it has some strong points, it’s far from being my favorite PreK curriculum. (After implementing it for some time, we chose to supplement it with other curricula.)…
OWL is scripted…”
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BTW, OWL is often attractive to PreK programs because It includes integrated thematic units. However, I could find nothing in the Pearson literature indicating that OWL is scripted, so discovering that after getting on board with it could be a rude awakening for skilled, veteran teachers, as it was for a number of educators with whom I worked.
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Why is corporate curriculum “attractive” to any pre-k program or certified/degreed teacher? It’s designed for low knowledge paraprofessionals like TFA. After thinking about your comment, it seems that there are too many degreed teachers falling for the sales pitches – one degreed teacher falling for Pearson’s sales pitch is too many.
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I don’t recommend buying OWL, which is why I said it’s not my favorite curriculum and warned about it being scripted. The 2005 edition of OWL is geared towards less qualified PreK teachers who work in child care centers.
Where I worked, it was administrators who chose OWL, not the certified teachers. I thought OWL had shamefully replaced much better curricula for preschoolers, such as the Project Approach and Reggio Emilia.
That said, there are some very useful OWL components for developing language and literacy. They were created by one of the authors, David Dickinson, and he has written about them in scholarly journals, so teachers could implement those strategies without having to buy the curriculum –and I do train teachers in this.
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Pearson’s Opening the World of Learning (OWL) mass-produced curriculum kits were listed on the 2011 Pre-kindergarten Systems spreadsheet promoted by the Texas State Board of Education. As a result, most Texas taxpayers unknowingly paid $3,612.47 for each OWL kit with “teaching guides” developed by the authors and Pearson’s insiders. These kits were then foisted on pre-k teachers across the state in many large, medium and small school districts.
With corporate control, teachers get what they don’t need and don’t want pushed into their classrooms. Why would a degreed teacher need a corporation like Pearson designing lessons and lesson calendars with matching scripts of what to say? Pre-k teachers know what they need for their children without third parties like Pearson selling over-priced snake-oil. OWL is mainly about the purple OWL puppet – a scary character for some children. Furthermore, OWL is certainly not about best practices in early childhood education. OWL is about corporate sales using misleading information related to Pearson’s inside “research” and related marketing brochures.
I’m curious to know how many of the OWL kits are collecting dust in classrooms across America or on shelves in school book rooms. Parents and teachers deserve an independent audit – not related to Pearson’s marketing package or Pearson’s paid entrepreneurial author “researchers.”
See Texas Proclamation 2011 pricing at the link below:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147486677
Pearson is now marketing the complete OWL kit for $1,434.47: (In 2011, each kit was $3,612.47 in Texas)
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZuF2&PMDBSUBCATEGORYID=&PMDBSITEID=2781&PMDBSUBSOLUTIONID=&PMDBSOLUTIONID=6724&PMDBSUBJECTAREAID=&PMDBCATEGORYID=3289&PMDbProgramID=64281
OWL Brochure
Click to access ReaBro114430OwlRevision_LR-v1%5B1%5D.pdf
OWL Authors
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZpNy&PMDBSUBCATEGORYID=&PMDBSITEID=2781&PMDBSUBSOLUTIONID=&PMDBSOLUTIONID=6724&PMDBSUBJECTAREAID=&PMDBCATEGORYID=3289&PMDbProgramID=73001&elementType=asset&elementID=Authors
For transparency purposes, how much are the pre-k entrepreneurs (authors), David Dickinson, Juanita Copley, Elena Izquierdo, Judith Lederman, Judith Schickedanz, and Lee Wright receiving in royalties for sales from Pearson?
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LLC – hasn’t Texas had a “short list” of materials for a number of years from which districts may select or in some cases are required to purchase?
Isn’t part of the problem that for many years, Texas teachers have had little if any decision making power over materials purchased?
Having worked with educators and publishers for many years (like more than 40), my understanding is that many publishers created materials for Texas because there were statewide adoptions. This left other places that put more decision – making power in local schools and teachers in a challenging situation. People (like me, who taught social studies) were reviewing textbooks that in many cases were produced mostly for Texas.
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Joe:
Please read my response to Just Cares.
Corporate lobbyists control most of the state wide decision making in Texas. They have the ear of the dysfunctional State Board the political insiders at the Texas Education Agency. However, one ray of hope occurred in the summer of 2011 during the special session. The legislature granted school districts the authority to purchase instructional materials that are not included on the “state list” as long as the resources are proven to align with the TEKS.
Push back on mass produced corporate products by educating yourself with the facts. These kits deskill teachers and are harmful for child development. Contact your state legislators with examples. Develop local professional development and make purchasing decisions at the local level.
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LLC – I’m opposed to statewide purchase lists and a strong fan of decisions about curriculum materials made by teachers in schools. Fortunately that’s the situation for many Minnesota public schools.
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Do you know whether they purchased the 2011 edition or the 2005 edition –which could be more expensive with Professional Development components? Where I worked, the 2005 edition with PD was purchased. http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZv5y&PMDbSiteId=2781&PMDbSolutionId=6724&PMDbSubSolutionId=&PMDbCategoryId=34201&PMDbSubCategoryId=34301&PMDbSubjectAreaId=&PMDbProgramId=74961
There was actually nothing in that curriculum about owls. That’s just an acronym for Opening the World of Learning.
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LLC1923 I don’t know if the owl is integral to the 2011 edition or if it’s just new branding. Do you know?
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Play is the OWL for Kindergarteners.Period,
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Just Cares:
In my view, if you care, you will push back on the corporate scripts in a box and train local teachers to understand pedagogy, methods and instructional practices. Why buy low quality mass produced curriculum kits through Pearson and outsource through Pearson’s professional development program? Why are third parties involved at all? How about purchasing high quality resources for students without Pearson controlling the decisions?
Isn’t it more important to develop capacity and professional development in your own district without outsourcing? Based on my experiences, there’s not one “author” of a corporate kit who I would trust and that includes consultants on the payroll of education corporations.
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LLC, I responded to you in the thread above. Sorry it’s in the wrong place.
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Will someone tell me how anyone younger than a senior in high school is supposed to be “college and career ready”? When did we decide that it takes less than 12 years for all kids?
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What they decided is that students must begin to work on college and career readiness as soon as kids start school. In my state, that means 3 and 4 year olds, since we have universal preschool for those ages.
It’s just more silliness determined by non-educators who know nothing about children, development and learning.
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Sorry…mine was not a serious question. It was my NY Sarcasm….I am well aware and pose the only question I can think of that apparently has been ignored.
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In my daughter’s Kindergarten class here in Palm Beach County, Florida, she just had her first test–in Kindergarten!!! Each student was separated by a cardboard wall of blinders around them and they were given a five page test on numbers one through five. They had to write the number, the word for the number and draw how many dots represented the number. At a local union meeting, I asked a Kindergarten teacher from another school if she did that in her classroom–surround each student by blinders. She nodded in affirmation. We’re told “They have to be prepared to be tested in first grade.” I remember when I went to Kindergarten in the sixties. Kindergaraten was a half a day. We played with blocks, wooden choo choo trains, had snack and naptime. The teacher tried to teach us how to tell time, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I never went to preschool. About midway through first grade, my learning clicked and I took off and I haven’t stopped learning ever since. What’s the rush? Why can’t the kids have a chance to be kids? We’re told they have to be prepared for 21st century jobs, for a global workforce? You mean, the global workforce that ships American jobs over seas for dirt cheap wages? You mean the global workforce that hides their money overseas in various tax shelter schemes to avoid paying taxes to help the American people (or people in any country!). You mean the global workforce that exploits people rather than serves them? You mean the global workforce, led by bankers, that created a casino economy, wrecked the entire global economy and received a bailout at public expense while people who purchased homes were left with underwater mortgages? Is that the global workforce we’re preparing our kids for? No thanks. I want my daughter to develop a kind heart, to think of others and to make the world a better place for all, not to be a pawn for profit-making schemes of education testing vultures.
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This was just posted by the Ohio Education Association: http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2013/09/child-psychologist-common-core-early-elementary-standards-inappropriate/
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Here is a great link to the Common Core rubric. It has links for each grade level, k-12, in Language Arts and in Math. Click on each to see the developmental sequence being used. See the grade level appropriateness for each of these. Some seem simple, but others are way off target for beginning readers. I cannot imagine how overwhelming it must be for a student who has never been read to at home to have these expectations set before him/her.
http://standardstoolkit.k12.hi.us/common-core/
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http://www.corestandards.org/
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Students should be doing pre-literacy in pre-K and K. We are crippling our students by insisting that they must be reading and writing by age 5, when the majority of students are no physiologically read for these tasks. They need to play, rhyme, listen–LISTEN–to stories, draw, tell–TELL, not write–stories, not get ready for college.
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In my experience, almost every program has good and bad components. Teachers have, traditionally, used the components that worked well with their teaching styles and the students’ learning styles. Prescribing one-size-fits-all for teaching and learning is counter-productive to the process. Why? We are human beings, not robots.
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