Intro to Core Curriculums
Core curriculums should supply certain minimum learning steps for a solid educational foundation. The reason for having a core curriculum (as opposed to every classroom ‘doing its own thing’) used throughout a school segment (elementary, middle school, and high school) is to ensure that the building blocks we discussed follow a logical progression. If the school selects one core for first grade, then a different brand for second grade and so on, the student frequently stumbles because the curriculum jumps between methods, applications, process steps, or worse, does not pick up where the last one left off, creating caps in a child’s educational base. This becomes a nightmare at some point when this happens too often. Going back to fill in those gaps later is very difficult, frustrating, and confusing, because again, the student must jump around trying to fill in the missing building blocks. How many second graders can understand missing gaps and relate to where they should fit in? The material may be pushed at him, but will he grasp its meaning in its proper sequence? Studies reported in The Report of the National Education Foundation show that this is one of the most common reasons for lack of progress in the first three grades.