Disadvantages of ELL Curriculum

Here is a list of perspectives on why having a standardized curriculum can be harmful.

• Ironically, the more standardized we make curriculum to improve students' achievement, the more we cut ourselves off from students' cultural, experiential, and personal resources on which learning should be built. (Sleeter, 124)
  

• It is the standardization of curriculum that has the most adverse effects on students and teachers because teachers and districts become preoccupied with the kind of low-level knowledge that can be measured. This book argues that “standardization is a consequence of standard setting when attempts to improve student learning become bureaucratized and curriculum is defined in detail in terms of what is measurable and is established at state or national levels” (p. 4). Sleeter argues that standardization does not permit students to make sense of their learning or to generate critical thought. 
  

• In America, concerns were raised that setting standards would lead to centralized education and would undermine innovation at the local level. Setting standards was seen as an attempt to centralize a decentralized educational system; defining standards would limit what pupils should learn and would not allow for pupil diversity and the specific needs of different populations (Fiske, 1998).
  

• The curriculum defines what pupils are expected to do at different levels of performance in four areas of language learning: social interaction, access to information, presentation and appreciation of literature,   culture and language. Teachers will now have autonomy to decide how they want to teach in order that their pupils achieve the standards. Teachers are therefore encouraged to become active participants in the development of curriculum materials that follow the principles stated in the curriculum, and that are appropriate for their specific learning populations. 
  

• In some cases, there have been objections by the public regarding the standards that have been defined. For example, the National Center for History in the Schools, at the University of California at Los Angeles, prepared standards for history in collaboration with scholars, teachers and organizations. The standards were not approved, as they were thought to be too politically biased (Ravitch, 1996).
  

• An additional caveat is that the standards should reflect a high level of achievement, while being realistic and relevant to the context in which they are being taught. In California, for example, the State Board of Education decided to innovate large-scale curriculum change. Instead of working with the regular course sequence of algebra, geometry, etc., they decided to integrate the content of these subjects in a new way. This proposed approach, however, had never been tried anywhere (Evers, 1997). To avoid this problem, the writers of the standards for the English curriculum scrutinized standards set up in different states and countries (Foreign Language Standards, 1998; National Standards in Foreign Language Education; Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 1996). These standards were then adapted accordingly for the Israeli pupil population.  
  

Issues with teaching-learning-assessment

• Standards require a change in both teaching and assessment. Standards and assessment are intertwined and need to be integral parts of the curriculum and the program of instruction. 
  

• In traditional curricula, content matter that pupils are expected to know is determined. It follows that the purpose of testing is to see if the pupils have learned the specific knowledge indicated in the curriculum. Recent approaches to how pupils learn have changed from the behavioral view of learning to that of cognitive learning theories, and the constructivist approach to knowledge acquisition (Birenbaum, 1996; Herman, et.al. 1992). Similarly, assessment is no longer seen as testing pupils on an accumulation of isolated facts and skills, but emphasizes the application and use of knowledge.