From the Chicago Tribune

School lessons may be on ballot

Grayslake group petitions for vote on curriculum

By Sean D. Hamill
Tribune staff reporter

December 21, 2001

A group of Grayslake parents who want to change how their children learn in school filed petitions Thursday for a proposal on the March ballot asking voters to support a controversial curriculum.

National education experts say the advisory measure on curriculum is the first such referendum item they have heard of in the United States. If it succeeds, they said, other parents might try the same thing.

"I've never heard of it," said Katrina Kelley, the National School Board Association's director of the council of urban boards of education, which represents urban and suburban districts. "If it's successful, it certainly will pique interest across the country."

The group, Friends of District 46, wants voters to support the referendum proposal as a way to pressure school officials to adopt the Core Knowledge curriculum for all of the district's classes, from kindergarten through 8th grade.

"We're not telling teachers what to teach," said group president Sarah Surroz. "Core Knowledge was developed by 200 educators and scholars."

Core Knowledge, a decade-old program, is centered on a list of facts those educators and scholars decided every student should know. It's been lambasted by liberals for being too ethnocentric and lauded by conservatives for its focus on basics.

The curriculum has gained support from some school districts; 139 schools across the country, and three in Illinois, are considered official Core Knowledge schools. The American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, also supports it.

The Friends group traveled to Virginia last week and received the backing of Core Knowledge's founder, University of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch.

The group will not have the full support of District 46's teachers, however, who have decided to stay out of the debate.

"The position the union has taken is to remain neutral ... and not get involved in the parent-board end of it," said Lin Waggener, president of District 46's teachers union.

Waggener said the union has not taken a poll to determine how teachers feel about Core Knowledge, but she believes teacher sentiment about it runs the gamut from support to indifference to opposition.

The union is about to begin negotiations with the district on a new contract, and Waggener said that because the union is a member of the AFT, it probably wouldn't make sense to come out against the curriculum.

Both Hirsch and his Core Knowledge Foundation, which helps districts implement the program, have emphasized the need for teacher support for the curriculum to be successful. But Hirsch said in an interview that Core Knowledge doesn't need to have the teachers' support from the beginning.

"Teachers have to, at some point, buy into this, but I never said at what point," he said. "The main way teachers become convinced is to see Core Knowledge in action."

Surroz and her group formed after the district last year brought in a consultant, William Spady, whom many parents disliked because of his ties to Outcome Based Education, an approach to education that focuses more on how students learn than what they learn.

In comparison to Core Knowledge, which quickly won the support of conservatives, Outcome Based Education was favored by liberals and progressives. It became so maligned in the 1990s that now most schools are afraid to use the word "outcome" in their plans.

Many parents who opposed Spady have joined the Friends group, and shortly after Spady was let go, they asked the school board to consider the Core Knowledge curriculum. The board and the district administration said the parents should take their idea through its curriculum renewal process, which involves parents, teachers and administrators in reviewing new programs.

The parents said they have tried and been shot down, a charge the district rejects.

National organizations representing teachers, administrators and parent-teacher associations, as well as education experts, say they have never heard of a vote being taken anywhere in the United States like the one the Friends group has crafted.

"Referendums are typically done for tax levy or bond issues, not curriculum," said Barbara Knisely, spokeswoman for the American Association of School Administrators. "And typically if parents in a community aren't pleased with what a school board is doing, they vote them out."

Though the school board has also officially said it would be neutral in the debate, board President Nancy Arens said the district does not intend to be swayed by an advisory vote.

"The referendum, though very legal, is merely advisory and would by no means serve as a substitute for the school curriculum renewal process," Arens said.