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Summary
Public records request for the K-8 ELA and Social Studies curriculum. Information learned:
Middle School grade 6-8 reading list is significantly below grade level.
Students in grades 6-8 Social Studies spend all of September studying “identity” from the perspective of CRT and Queer Theory.
Students in grades 6-8 English spend all of September studying whether you should pronounce people’s names correctly.
The Middle School curriculum relies heavily on picture books to teach about identity, names, and social justice.
The English 6-8 curriculum is focused on Social Justice.
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Response
The K-8 English language Arts curriculum, Social Studies curriculum, and reading lists.
K-5 curriculum. SElementary2021.zip
6-8 curriculum. SMS2021.zip
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Public Records Request
Saturday, May 1, 2021
Re: Massachusetts Public Records Request
Dear [SUPERINTENDENT]
This is a request under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (M. G. L. Chapter 66, Section 10). The Public Records Law requires you to provide me with a written response within 10 business days. If you cannot comply with my request, you are statutorily required to provide an explanation in writing.
The Sharon School Administration has made several presentations at recent School Committee meetings showing that nearly half of Sharon elementary and middle school students are behind grade level in ELA and math. Sharon has historically been a high performing district. This raises concerns about changes in the curriculum itself.
I am requesting the following information for the 2020-2021 academic year and the 2000-2001 academic year (or the earliest year these records exist electronically). If the Middle School had different level classes in English and/or Social Studies in 2000-2001, please provide information about all levels.
The pacing documents for grades K-8 for ELA and Social Studies.
Syllabus or lesson plans for each unit/topic for grades K-8 for ELA and Social Studies as filed by one teacher for that grade or provided to teachers by the curriculum coordinator. (Teacher name may be omitted). I want to know what literature children were assigned to read or were read aloud to them. Literature includes books, short stories, book excerpts, and poetry.
Summer reading list for the Middle School grades 6-8 (summer 2000 and summer 2020).
Reading club selection list given to Middle School students in grades 6-8. If students did not get a choice in 2000, then just the books they were assigned.
The full book list used by Middle School teachers to select which books to put onto the reading club selection list.
Name of reading level assessment tool used in K-2 to determine what level books children may read.
Name of ELA program(s) purchased by the elementary school (e.g. Fundations and Lucy Calkin) for grades K-5.
Blank report cards for K-8
I am open amending this request if it would make it less burdensome to comply.
Sincerely,
[REDACTED]
Notable information
7th grade ELA
The first unit of 7th grade focuses on Names and Identity. The Reading column lists “Your Name is a Song”, “Have you mispronounced someone’s name? Here’s what to do next”, “My name is…and it is not…”, “Names/Nombres” are about the importance of people’s names. Your Soup is an intersectional CRT identity chart.
Your Soup
Your Soup is a CRT perspective on identity. It characterizes everyone by race, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities etc. Personality, character, or values are completely omitted from the list. People are classified as intersectional group members not individuals.
Students are prompted to do “recipe writing” which is a cute phrase for making an identity chart.
It is taught as part of Unit 1 in 7th grade ELA. You can see the Your Soup website.
CRT or Civics?
The 8th grade Civics curriculum (mandatory for all 8th graders) begins with the statement “to ground the development of authentic and informed civic action, the course begins with an identity unit.”
According to the curriculum, the only “authentic and informed” civic action is based on your identity.
Your identity is basically the CRT definition of raceme ethnicity, culture, religion, education, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. Students learn to see other people first and foremost as members of some group.
The stated objective of the unit is to teach students to evaluate WHAT people say based on WHO says it.
Privilege Beads
This is one of the 6th grade ELA activities in Unit 4. Students collect beads for every “privileged” category to which they belong. They also create identity notebooks and learn social justice vocabulary.
Middle School ELA below grade level
Sharon Middle School uses 90+ titles for its curriculum. Each unit, students are allowed to choose a book from a small list of 5 or so books. Students are then grouped into “book clubs” to discuss their selected book. This allows “differential instruction” of students at different reading ability in the same classroom. We received this list of titles as part of the response to the request. Almost all the books are at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level.
Lexile is a standard measure of text complexity used by educators. It measures the complexity of vocabulary and sentence structure. There is a lot of research that if students are not able to read text written at grade level, they will fail at all other higher level reading comprehension tasks. Not being able to read grade level text is directly tied to low scores in ACT and later failure in college. Each grade has a recommended band of Lexile levels, and these bands overlap. A book can therefore be recommended for early 6th grade, but also fall in the 5th grade band, and the advanced 4th grade band. The majority of books read by students should fall in their grade’s Lexile band, with exceptions made for exceptionally strong or weak readers (differential instruction) as well as books of exceptional quality.
We placed all the books in the Middle School reading list into a spreadsheet, and used Lexile.com and Amazon.com to obtain the Lexile level. We then computed the min and max grade appropriate for the book. The overwhelming part of the curriculum fell in the 3rd and 4th grade reading level. Most Sharon students would graduate Middle School without reading a single Middle School level book. These are mostly recent Young Adult best-sellers, with half the books written after 2010, and 90% written after the year 2000.
List of Titles Used in Middle School
Common Core Appendix A on Importance of Reading Level: “Surprisingly, what chiefly distinguished the performance of those students who had earned the benchmark score or better from those who had not was not their relative ability in making inferences while reading or answering questions related to particular cognitive processes, such as determining main ideas or determining the meaning of words and phrases in context. Instead, the clearest differentiator was students’ ability to answer questions associated with complex texts.”
6th Grade
There are only 5 books on the 6th grade reading list that are at grade level. Students read a chapter in-class from one of these books (Hatchett). The other four may or may not be offered during book-clubs, and even if they are, most students will end up reading one of the much easier books.
7th Grade
The 7th graders will never be assigned a book even close to grade level. There are no books at the 6th or 7th grade reading level, and only one at a 5th grade reading level. All students will spend most of their time reading books at a 3rd-4th grade level.
8th Grade
There are three books at a 7th-10th grade reading level. The two advanced books are non-fiction. All students will spend the majority of their time reading books at a 3rd-4th grade level.
Picture Books
The Middle School curriculum lists a lot of picture books for each unit. These books are used to teach moral lessons about identity and social justice. During the first month of school, I counted 5 picture books being read in-class, and not a single grade-level reading assignment (textbook, novel, short story, etc). Starting in mid-October, picture books are also used to teach note-taking and story structure. However, looking at the ELA curriculum for grades 6-8, it is clear that the main function of the picture books is to teach identity and social justice.