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“Students are more tired and less engaged during reading time...It is not made for students with disabilities in its' structure and format.”
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"It takes so much time out of my day that I routinely over plan and often don’t get to one or more of the other subjects that I believe are important for kindergarten. Our social skills and social emotional skills building has suffered. And we are behind in most subjects."
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"This is doing so much harm - more harm than we will really understand for a while... I wish our administration would've given us the freedom to pick and choose parts of the modules that could've been used alongside our curriculum, instead of scraping something that was already working."
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"The implementation of this program is so wrong on so many levels for young readers. Aside from the texts not being engaging and the material not being beneficial, appropriate, or engaging for children, asking them to sit for 90 minutes is absolutely criminal. Our students (both those with and without IEPs) are unable to sit for long periods of time as we, as early childhood educators, know this and would absolutely NEVER keep them on the rug for more than 15 minutes before this program was rolled out."
NYCDOE Student
I am an 8th-grade student and this writing module is absolutely insane. The books are horrendous and the way the curriculum teaches is worse than ever before. No wonder so many students are falling behind.
NYCDOE Parent
This curriculum has left my child frustrated and bored. My child used to love going to school, but this new reading program has taken away the joy she used to feel in the classroom, reading and sharing ideas with her classmates. The assessments are so much a part of the program that it feels like taking a state test all year long. This is no way to instill a love of reading and learning in our children.
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"I'm a literacy educator, scholar, and researcher. These curricula are narrow and not responsive to students. They line the pockets of publishers and strip professional agency and knowledge from teachers who know their students best. They cost the DOE a tremendous amount of money ... They are written and championed as "neutral" without acknowledging the fact that curricula/curricular decisions are political and are tools that maintain one particular voice/priority without honoring the multiple literacies of students and communities.”
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"There are limited resources for students with disabilities and for students who are not proficient readers. In fifth grade teaching in a self contained setting, I am re-writing mosts texts including excerpts from novels as well as outsourcing visual cues and videos to help my students understand... the workbook page are also not numbered (difficult for students to find pages that struggle with executive functioning). The workbooks do not account for students with disabilitities who might need lines or larger areas to write their thoughts making them inequitable. "
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"Our kids are purposely coming to school late so they can miss some of our Wit and Wisdom work. All of our lessons are met with a groan. Parents are complaining that their kids have never been so bored in school. This is, of course, affecting the morale amongst teachers. We want to enjoy teaching and see engagement amongst our kids."
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"Students are bored, disengaged, and expressing sadness and anger about what they are learning. They expressed that learning used to be fun and they enjoy reading and writing, but this is not interesting and they do not feel like they are learning anything. Students are stabbing holes in their workbooks and drawing their dissatisfaction in words and pictures all over their workbooks."
