This is a reprise of that blog when Jennifer and I were talking about pacing guides:
I think that pacing guides, in general, prevent any real instructional freedom and any cogent alignment with the research of Dr. Krashen. I experienced this in Jefferson County before I came to DPS. Now that the new state standards have been adopted, this oppositional pull is going to be played out over the next years in countless districts. At the state level (at least in CO, CA, OR and the other states that have now fully aligned with ACTFL), wording of new standards will have to align with the categories of novice low through intermediate mid (ACTFL), but the people who make decisions about foreign language curriculum at the district and building levels will likely balk at that and stay aligned with the pacing guide approach, especially with current budgetary limitations. The kids who drop out of language study will be the kids who are labeled incapable of going through to the higher levels of study, even though we know perfectly well that they can succeed just fine in the right setting, as proven by the fact that many of them are already fluent in two languages. Rarely will one find a district coordinator like Diana Noonan who will fearlessly align a district like ours in Denver Public Schools with the state and national standards simply because she knows that it is the right thing to do. I asked Diana about the monumental refusal by districts to align with national standards and ACTFL. My question was about who is going to hold the set-in-stone districts accountable to the new national changes. She said, and I think that she was referring to our own district but it applies accross the nation, that it is up to the principals. If a principal is aware that the foreign language teachers in his or her building are not aligning with the new state standards, they can either investigate it and demand that change occur, or just turn away. Many will turn away, because the lack of involvement of principals in foreign language curriculum in general terms nationally is well-known – they just let the department do things that result in nine of ten kids dropping out after the second (required) year and shrug their shoulders. Thankfully, that is not the case at East. But student attrition will only worsen as the new rules governing language requirements locally take hold.The problem at the building level is compounded by the failure of the foreign language people at the district level – thankfully not in DPS – to axe the use of such anti-ACTFL curricular instruments as pacing guides, a failure based in ignorance that language acquisition is different from any other kind of learning. VanPatten, for example, suggests that the brain treats language differently from normal human cognition and therefore should not be studied cognitively, which is how it is typically taught. The pacing guides used in Maryland, that are used in Jefferson County here in CO, and elsewhere around the nation are not best for teaching languages – they are seriously flawed curricular models, but who is saying that, who is talking about that? We cannot let go sight of what we believe is right and best for our kids.