Cave Creek Unified: Innovative Ideas for Consideration

The Core Knowledge Sequence is a fine framework for learning but unless the district overhauls it curriculum, than the school will be a 'knowledge' school in name only. Parents are not going to be bamboozled (OK, some will) with a CK label above the door. Heck even Ventana offers CK and you don't see parents beating down that door.


PVUSD has stepped up the learning by making three of its schools (Wildfire, Grayhawk, and Pinnacle Peak) Official CK schools. Is the goal here to make the CCUSD CK school an Official CK School? If so some serious changes will be needed. CK is not a full curriculum but a sequence and framework that defines content to be learned at each grade level.


We have already shown that the Core Knowledge folks frown on Everyday Math...Day 3: Core Knowledge frowns on Everyday Math. Without a change to the math textbooks, any CK school in the district would not likely be able to receive an Official designation and would defeat the point of calling the school 'CK'. The district's reading and literature program would need to be replaced with one that emphasizes content, not quantity like it currently does now. The FOSS science would work well with CK. CK does an excellent job with social studies and it would be fantastic to replace the currently incoherent and inconsistent history and geography at the elementary level in CCUSD. So there is much work (and cost) to do if the district really wants to open a true CK school.


On the surface, it appears to us that since this is the path of least resistance, this is the way the district will end up going if it does anything "Innovative". It will have a CK school it can market to unsuspecting parents, but it likely will not put any real effort into making the CK school superior academically because that wouldn't be fair. The problem is that most parents not really leaving for CK itself, they are leaving for achievement. Look at Desert Sun, it has CK and it has the lowest enrollment in the district. Heck, even district parents aren't moving to DSES because they understand that the achievement is not any different. Schools like Foothills Academy, Freedom Academy North, and Scottsdale Prep are taking our students without offering CK. Parents want achievement and excellence, not the status quo.

Questions for the board members to ask the administration about a K-8 Core Knowledge School:

1. Will the curriculum of the CK school be completely overhauled to meet the requirements of the CK sequence and at what cost?
2. Will the district make this school an Official CK school?
3. If CK is such an outstanding program worthy of implementing, why not implement it at all of our schools? Shouldn’t a CK type program be the baseline in our district, and not the bar.


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