Representatives from the Colorado Department of Education said the Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 does not need state permission before scrapping curriculum.
The Journal reached out to CDE after Superintendent Risha VanderWey’s recommendation that the district talk to state education officials before removing the Wit and Wisdom curriculum from elementary instruction after a vote was placed on the Oct. 19 work session and board meeting agenda.
VanderWey recommended talking to CDE before the board made an official decision, stating that the district might need prior permission because the school is on a Continuous Improvement Plan. She also recommended having replacement curriculum arranged before removing current curriculum.
Board member Tammy Hooten requested to add the vote on the curriculum’s removal to the agenda.
She said Wit and Wisdom wasn’t meeting standards and that surveys completed by kindergarten through fifth grade teachers reflected a majority desire to do away with the lessons.
The board agreed to revisit the topic after VanderWey talked to CDE. Wit and Wisdom is on the board’s upcoming Tuesday work session agenda. At board work sessions, no official decisions are made.
In a conversation with Lindsey Jaeckel and Andy Swanson from the CDE Office of Strategic Transformation, it was discussed that a district may choose to implement any curriculum that is “scientific or evidence-based.”
Curriculum decisions are in the hands of local districts, although CDE will make recommendations for “best practices” and continue to review its Advisory List of Instructional Programming, they said. If Montezuma-Cortez curriculum is changed, the state would review the change and expect to see it reflected on the district’s improvement plan.
Standards are stricter for kindergarten through third grade curriculum, they said.
CDE recognizes Wit and Wisdom as supplemental instruction, defined as “instruction that goes beyond that provided by the comprehensive core program because the core program does not provide enough instruction or practice in a key area to meet the needs of the students in a particular classroom or school.”
It is used in conjunction with other core curriculum. It’s not uncommon for school districts to implement parts of multiple different curricula, Jaeckel said.
Currently, schools across the state are on a two-year accountability pause, and academics – like CMAS scores – will not be evaluated.
Jaeckel said that changing a curriculum midyear can pose challenges, but school board discussion at the meeting appeared to shift to an aim for instituting new curriculum by the beginning of next year, instead.
The Wit and Wisdom curriculum went through a 12- to 18-month adoption process in Montezuma-Cortez, Swanson said.
As far as Jaeckel and Swanson know, the Wit and Wisdom curriculum hasn’t garnered a complaint from other districts in the state, they said.
Communications Director for Great Minds — the publisher of Wit and Wisdom – Chad Colby, reached out to The Journal and said in an email: “Wit & Wisdom is grounded in well-known, mainstream, age-appropriate, award-winning children’s books, written by respected authors, and published by leading companies such as Doubleday, Scholastic and National Geographic. Unlike many content-anemic approaches that teach basic reading skills but don’t build knowledge, our materials help motivate all students to achieve high academic standards and meet their full potential.”
