Although in the long run, this approach will bring all the curriculums together, at the present moment the school is caught between the expeditionary learning curriculum and the curriculum mandates given by the local district and federal government. Thus, a curriculum audit will only reveal the obvious: that there are competing and contradictory curriculums occurring at the school. Unfortunately, at least at this point, a curriculum audit will not do any good as state and federal mandates are controlling.
In general, I agree with the assumptions presented by F.W. English. In today's standardized test-driven school environment, the testing curriculum is driving the written and taught curriculum. Although this results in a form of alignment, it is not the alignment that English has in mind. English does not argue that school's should bring their curriculums into one single curriculum (such as testing), but align the three curriculums so that they work together at achieving the school's educational goals.
This being said, clearly my current work setting does...
With the exception of the
social studies and science departments, which have recently undergone an alignment process, the other fields of study lack the all five of the audit standards. Instead, there are many instances of one
teacher using a written curriculum, another teacher
teaching another curriculum, and a third teacher creating their own individual curriculum, including testing, all in the same
grade level.
Bibliography
English, F.W. (2000): Deciding What to Teach and Test: Designing, Aligning and Auditing the Curriculum. (Millennium Ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA.: Corwin Press, Inc.
Linn, Robert L. And David M. Miller. (2004): Measurement and Assessment in Teaching. New York: Prentice Hall.
Popham, James W. (2003): Test Better, Teach Better: The Instructional Role of Assessment. Baltimore: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
