Overwhelmed and Overburdened: How Transparency Legislation Has Impacted Public Education

The growth of legislation surrounding curriculum transparency, public schools across the country are dreading the day when they must undertake the impossible task of going digital. Identifying the main concerns of educators is the first step in creating an empowering and seamless transition to transparent curriculum. Here are some of the concerns that educators have when reviewing these new policies.

Educators Fear Overexertion

When first hearing of legislation about public school curriculum, educators often dread the idea of adding more responsibilities to teachers who already carry out multiple tasks. The general process of transparency includes posting materials and their content on a digital platform for every topic that will be covered during the school year.

Obviously, the very thought of posting every single “book, article, handout, and video” online is intimidating. This method would be tedious, painstaking, and extremely time-consuming, especially if teachers are expected to do this work. Debra Pace, a superintendent in Osceola County, Florida, fears that “these new requirements would be a burden for already overworked teachers” who are “so overwhelmed” by current responsibilities. On top of that, Pace believes that implementing this legislation would “just send [teachers] over the edge” and result in massive amounts of resignations.

This concern is a valid one. No educator wants to overexert their teachers and risk their health as this will only affect the amount of retention and quality of a school’s education. To prevent adding this responsibility to the teachers, schools need digital software that can post the instructional content, once it has been completed, directly from the planned curriculum.

Curricular Disconnections

The biggest obstacle of curriculum transparency is rooted in a curriculum’s cohesiveness. While the school may decide the required content and standards that must be achieved in each subject or grade level, teachers often find themselves supplying materials that bolster their learning approach. For example, a fifth-grade science teacher may choose to use the 6th edition textbook with an included computer program while their colleague prefers to simply use the 5th edition textbook and supplement with online science videos. Each teacher has a unique teaching style reflected in the optional materials they use.

Because curriculum varies so greatly from classroom to classroom, educators are struggling to keep a cohesive system in both grade level and subject. Forbes refers to education researcher, Morgan Polikoff, to point out the major impacts of an incohesive curriculum. Some state education officials are finding themselves disconnected from which “materials are being used in school districts” and principals are becoming “unclear about what [materials] teachers are using in the classroom down the hall.” In some cases, “teachers themselves may not know what materials they’ll be using in class until the night before” since they have so much flexibility when instructing students. Unfortunately, this flexibility results in teachers spending “an average of about 12 hours a week,” based on one study conducted by EdNET Insight. This time is spent creating instructional materials for students or searching for inspiration online using Google to plan curriculum and Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers.

Publishing a school’s curriculum online can be nearly impossible when teaching materials in grade level and subject are so diverse. By using a digital curriculum management platform that merges the various materials used in schools, educators will take on transparency with ease.

Technological Deficits in Schools

Adjusting and editing curriculum can be extremely complex. The problem can grow when schools have technological deficiencies that can make the school year stop in its tracks. Limited funding of the IT (Information Technology) department risks the school’s curriculum with an unstable network, ancient computer programs, and destructive viruses.

The Kirbyville R-VI school district is a victim of one such risk. Located in southwest Missouri, this school district serves students from kindergarten to 8th grade. Curriculum management for these elementary and intermediate schools had always been completed on a local server through tedious documentation and organization. However, years of devoted work to planning were gone in an instant when a “virus destroyed nearly all their files.”

The school then had to recreate their curriculum from scratch in less time than before. To avoid another virus, Kirbyville R-VI moved their curriculum to “Google files saved in a cloud.” Unfortunately, this meant that every piece of information “had to be accessed one file at a time.” It did not take long for staff to become frustrated with this setup. As time went on, it was realized that curriculum consistency was breaking down with “staff movement and turnover.”

Kirbyville R-VI school district needed a reliable digital platform that could supply direct access to information and increase consistency of core instructional materials. This is not a unique situation. EDUCAUSE mentions that the digital era has declared data as the new currency. Meaning that schools need a “definitive source” for curriculum data that is sustainable and secure. Without these characteristics, educators will not have a reliable platform to adapt with curriculum transparency.

Eliminating Concerns

The concerns that educators have surrounding the legislation of curriculum transparency are valid. However, this legislation should not be an obstacle to quality instruction. Instead, educators can view it as an opportunity to name and resolve the issues that can hinder the transparency process. With the use of Embarc, educators will find these concerns of transparency solvable. Embarc, powered by Education Advanced, is a digital curriculum management platform that connects “learning objectives to a continuous cycle of development, delivery, assessment, and refinement” through collaboration in the instructional environment. This contemporary technology supplies an “alignment with state and national standards” and a straightforward display of content that allows educators to “analyze curriculum and address issues raised in standards-based assessments.” The program’s organizational tools enhance the sought-after “coordinated educational experience” while

being a “transparent curriculum that guarantees ongoing and systematic growth” With the constantly changing environment of school, educators can “easily make incremental changes at any time” and publish curriculum “through an online public portal,” promoting the relationship between teacher and parent.