Schools
Department of Education Decision Expected to Have Minimal Impact on Winchester
Superintendent McAlduff expects the district may need to slightly alter the math and ELA curriculum.
With the Massachusetts Board of Education deciding to replace the current state academic standards with the national guidelines, it is unclear as to how that will impact the Winchester School District.
According to Superintendent William McAlduff Jr., it's too early to predict how these new standards would effect Winchester, but he does believe that whatever changes take place will be minimal.
"I haven't had a lot of time to look through the core curriculum," McAlduff said. "I'm sure there will be a few changes we'll need to make for the (English Language Arts) and Math classes."
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According to McAlduff, the national standard will focus slightly more on computational skills in math than Winchester does, which the school district will then just have to add into their curriculum. As far as the English classes are concerned, McAlduff said that there's more of a focus on non-fiction writing. But the rest of the curriculum is in line with the Winchester school district.
"There's not going to be a dramatic impact in our curriculum," McAlduff said. "We're going to have to take a closer look before anything's definite. But in terms of our everyday instruction, there's going to be little impact. Winchester kids do very well on the state tests and I don't see that changing."
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McAlduff did not want to get into the political reasons for why the state decided to make the switch, but he did admit that it is a good decision for the Massachusetts educational system.
"I believe the decision was made in part because of the 'Race to the Top' initiative," McAlduff said. "There's a lot of money at stake, and the state can definitely benefit from that. Massachusetts chose to help the kids in the state.
"Winchester will see very little if any of that money because we're a high-performing district, but there are areas in the state not performing well and this money can definitely help them."
The state is supposed to comply with the new regulations by the 2012-2013 school year.
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