Word: curriculum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Each of the divisions has a two-year curriculum devoted to the two core subjects, humanities and math-science, keeping the students with the same pair of teachers two years in a row. In the Senior Institute, students assemble portfolios demonstrating mastery in 14 subjects (seven majors and seven minors). Those portfolios are judged by a graduation committee on the basis of how well they satisfy the five "habits of mind" that form the basis for the curriculum: evidence, perspective, connections, supposition and relevance. It sounds New Agey, but students understand. As Lohattis Hayden, a 12th-grader interested in sociology...
Equally enticing was the Edison curriculum, which brings together several top programs in reading, writing and math as well as in music, art and ethics. Although some components are uncommon--teaching a foreign language to kindergartners, for instance--few are unique. Many schools already use the highly acclaimed approach to math developed by the University of Chicago and the Success for All reading program put together at Johns Hopkins University. What is unusual is that Edison has brought some of the very best approaches to bear in one place. Because an Edison school day is nearly two hours longer...
...called the Edison Project, Vaughn took a wager that only two other school districts in the country were prepared to risk at the time: he recommended that his board sign a contract permitting Edison to hire its own principal and teachers, manage its own budget and teach its own curriculum. In exchange the district would pay Edison about $3,600 a child, roughly the same amount it spends on its other 48,000 students. If Edison educated the children for less money, it could pocket the difference as profit. In return, Edison guaranteed improvement on standardized tests. If the district...
...watchword in working-class Rio Rancho (pop. 50,000) when, nearly three years ago, faced with a dropout rate of 28%, the town set out to build a model high school. A committee of 300 citizens, ranging from students to business leaders, split into groups to delve into curriculum, architecture, teaching methods, scheduling, technology, dress and behavior codes. They plumbed research from educational institutes and visited 30 innovative campuses from California to Maine. The common theme: students are bored in "shopping-mall high schools," where they take a smorgasbord of courses with no focus...
...money and technology alone do not guarantee academic excellence. Inspired by Breaking Ranks, the 1996 high-school-reform manifesto published by the Carnegie Institute and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Rio Rancho school demands a tougher core curriculum, requiring four years each of math, science, social sciences and English, with 29 credits needed for graduation--seven more than the state norm. Before this year Rio Rancho's students attended other area high schools, says principal Katy Harvey, "and it was horrifying to look at transcripts full of credits like ceramics and basketball theory. They...