Editor,
A power point presentation, titled LBUSD/Thurston Common Core Math Transition, is posted on the LBUSD website. This was presented to the board by a Thurston teacher on July 9, 2013. Ms. Brown, Ms. Vickers and Mr. Landsiedel were on the board when the presentation was made.
The very last slide of the presentation is the proposed pathway for LBUSD. Note that the pathway clearly provides a path for high performing students to take algebra in the seventh grade and geometry in the eighth grade.
Ironically, this is exactly the pathway that parents have been and continue to ask for.
What changed? For one we have a new assistant superintendent who brought in a highly paid consultant with significantly lower expectations for our children. I keep hearing how deadly boring the Common Core curriculum is, in particular the slowing down of the learning process.
Last week, I asked my son how it was going with math. His response was that it was boring. Then he corrected himself and said that it was more than boring. He added that he and two of his friends were so bored yesterday that they decided to work ahead and completed the next four assignments. After completing them, they still had a few minutes left over during their math time.
These are the students the board is intent on holding back. These are the students whose love of learning is being killed.
It’s time the board of education look at what truly is going on in the classrooms with the district directive to hold back the high performing students. They still have time to correct the mistake they made by approving the flawed pathway in March and go back to the one presented to them in July 2013. It was the right pathway then, and it is the right pathway now.
David Flores, Laguna Beach
