Harford County Board of Education tables decision to expand middle school writing curriculum
Apr. 27—The Harford County Board of Education tabled a decision on whether to expand the Units of Study middle school writing curriculum until a later date at its meeting Monday night.
The school system first adopted the Lucy Calkins Units of Study program in 2017. It is primarily being used in kindergarten through fifth grade.
In the 2019-20 school year, Bel Air and Edgewood Middle schools were the only middle schools to adopt the Units of Study in Writing program for sixth grade. The following school year, North Harford Middle School adopted the program for sixth grade and Edgewood Middle expanded the program to seventh grade.
During the 2021-22 school year, the program was expanded to include seventh grade at Bel Air Middle and eighth grade at Edgewood Middle, and was adopted in seventh grade at Magnolia Middle School. This school year, the Units of Study in Writing expanded to all middle schools in sixth-grade language arts, and to Magnolia Middle School in eighth grade, and to seventh grade at Patterson Mill Middle School.
"This was to ensure the alignment of curriculum in kindergarten through sixth grade to enhance our students' writing capacity," said Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Heather Kutcher. "We do have a reading curriculum in the middle school grades that is not Units of Study. It is from HMH [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt], which is an anthology program that does not include a comprehensive writing curriculum within it. So we knew we wanted to add, enhance, and have some consistency in our writing curriculum for our students, especially in those middle grades."
Kutcher continued: "It has great benefits for our students. Qualitative and quantitative data have suggested that this is enhancing students' writing skills. So, based on what we found in the past few years with this, we would like to expand that writing curriculum to the remaining five middle schools that do not yet have it in their seventh-grade classrooms."
Harford County Public Schools collected data about the program by administering an assessment called the On Demand Assessment, an open-ended prompt used by teachers to score students based on standards that align with the curriculum's scoring guide.
The students were assessed before and after being taught the personal narrative curriculum; the unit on writing a personal narrative is part of most middle school writing curricula. Students fared significantly better after learning the curriculum than they did on the pre-assessments.
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"This is indicative that we are making gains and that the curriculum is working," said Amory Steltzer, assistant supervisor of reading and language arts.
However, a majority of school board members voted to table the expansion of the writing curriculum at Aberdeen, Fallston, Havre de Grace, Southampton and Swan Creek Middle schools until the cost of the expansion and additional information are provided.
"I would request that the information, the data, and the rubric that is used to make these assessments be provided," said Board member Diane Alvarez. "I would like to make the motion to table the decision until everything is provided."
Board member Carol Bruce seconded the motion, stating that the cost should have been included in the presentation.
"The action that is being requested here does not include the dollar amount," said Bruce. "That's my concern."
Seven of 10 board members voted to table the decision to expand the program. The three who voted against the motion were board President Carol Mueller, Vice President Wade Sewell, and board member Roy Phillips.
The next Board of Education meeting is scheduled for May 8 at 6:30 p.m.
