Real education reform or status quo swirl?

That’s common sense, but common sense does not play a big part of status quo reform.

If the school systems was pursuing real reform, it would start with changing its curriculum standards.

In math, students are expected to learn 100 standards per year in most grades, which is an impossible amount to master and results in students being unprepared for a real (non-HSA) algebra course in eighth grade.

In history, the K-5 curriculum rarely mentions important historical figures or time periods, and lacks an organizing structure.

In contrast, high-quality curricula introduce rich historical content in chronological order throughout elementary school, so that students can understand cause and effect and build an organized knowledge base to help them tackle more in-depth study in middle school.

In science, the curriculum is process-heavy and content-light, and unlike Virginia’s does not mention concepts such as wavelength, frequency, compound, solution, and vertebrates (just to name a few) in grades K-5 to better prepare students for the middle years.

The English curriculum doesn’t specify a single author or literary work that students should learn about, and its art and music standards suffer from the same lack of specificity.

Real reform starts with improving curriculum standards, but doesn’t stop there.

Teacher quality must be improved, since teachers are disproportionately drawn from the bottom third of college graduates, and those with the lowest academic achievement are the most likely to remain in the profession.

Bureaucratic certification rules that have nothing to do with teaching ability discourage many talented candidates from becoming teachers.

Real reform would streamline certification so that candidates don’t have to slog through education courses of dubious value, and would differentiate salaries by subject area to attract enough people to teach hard-to-staff subjects.

Above all else, real reform would focus on giving parents choices through charter schools. None of us would find it acceptable if the government assigned us to shop at a single grocery stored based on our ZIP code, but that’s exactly what happens with government-run schools.

Your child’s school depends on where you live instead of your child’s needs and preferences.

School choice creates competition that forces the system to improve and provides parents with more options. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the kind of pressure that Frederick County Public Schools would rather not have, and why it focuses a lot of energy on status quo reforms instead of changes that would make a real difference.

Tom Neumark, Point of Rocks

The writer is the spokesman for FrederickEducationReform.com.