Michigan Merit Curriculum Update (with added editorial comments)

by N. Kathleen Kosobud, for LDA of Michigan

The purple prose you see here is an addition to this blog post, to show the convoluted process that learning can take.  Sometimes when you think you have learned something new you are merely questioning the rightness of something you previously believed.  I admit to being fallible, gullible, and vulnerable to having my beliefs shaken.  I didn't go in search of a rebuttal or, in an act of revenge, attempt to prove that I was right and "they" were wrong but somewhere, we seem to have meandered into the territory of what Stephen Colbert used to refer to as "truthiness".  "Truthiness" is having an outward appearance of being correct, with an underlying shaky foundation.  I believe that I was taken in by the "truthiness" of the following:

This month's meeting of the Michigan Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) included a presentation on the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC). I learned some new things about how things really work in the world of education.

1. The Michigan Department of Education can only flesh out policy.  It cannot force districts to do anything that is not a matter of law. Because Personal Curriculum options are written into policy as an option (in other words, a school district may offer...) there is nothing to make a district offer a Personal Curriculum as an option.

Now, I believed that I had been corrected; I had been misinformed that districts must offer a Personal Curriculum, and this presentation corrected that bit of misinformation.  And so, to soften the blow to readers, I wrote the following to show that there were many ways to achieve the end of making the Michigan Merit Curriculum more "user-friendly" for students with learning disabilities:

2.  The Personal Curriculum option was envisioned as one of a number of ways to help students with IEPs achieve the needed credits for a diploma.  Other options include: academic content embedded in career and tech education classes, academic courses offered in alternative formats (online courses, self-paced courses offered with online and face-to-face components, courses featuring multiple representations of the content, etc.).

3.  The Personal Curriculum was seen as one component of a range of options.  For students with IEPs, it was seen as a way of documenting modifications to the requirements for attaining a diploma, in recognition of the impact of an individual student's disability on learning in a particular area of academic content.

...and in recognition that not everyone's Educational Development Plan (EDP) would list "theoretical physicist" as their career goal--requiring a high level of achievement in math, science and technology.  The EDP might list "house painter" as a career goal, which might not require as rigorous a curriculum in math or science, even though it might be a good idea to have some solid knowledge of business management, financial planning, cost bidding, materials estimation, and small business tax laws.

4.  Once a diploma is granted or a planned program is achieved, a student still is exited from high school.  Therefore, it may be to a student's advantage to take a longer time in high school to achieve the un-personalized curriculum, in order to take advantage of career-readiness opportunities.

... and here I was thinking of the "late bloomer" who might not have the foggiest idea of what she wanted to be in life, but by taking her time to complete all the requirements of the MMC, would have more options as she entered college.

So, if you ask for a Personal Curriculum for your child, and the school district says they don't offer a Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs, that may be true.  (At least in the opinion of some MDE consultants...but read on).  However, it might be worth your while to encourage the district to consider a Personal Curriculum for your child, if there is data on the impact of your child's disability on academic learning. This data could support needed modifications to an area of the curriculum in order for your child to succeed. ...especially, if your child's career goals may make other areas of learning more important than the standard MMC.

However, if your district says "No", you may also ask the district to explain what they are doing to support the graduation of all students.  If there are alternative courses to help students master content, these should be available to your child, as well.  School districts are still expected to show that they are improving graduation rates, and face a variety of consequences for failing to maintain or increase those rates.  In addition, the State uses the test scores that virtually all high school students in Michigan take to evaluate school effectiveness.  Schools with a record of low scores are likely to be changing what they teach and how they teach it to increase those test scores. Finally, if other district students have been offered the Personal Curriculum as an option, you may be able to appeal ...or legally question... the refusal of a district to consider a Personal Curriculum on the basis of equal opportunity.

This is not a static conversation.  As the state gains experience with a highly prescriptive, outcomes-based curriculum, there may be more and more unintended consequences to be seen.  And, there may be improvements in the preparation of all students to meet the challenges of a rigorous high school curriculum.

Again, this is not a static conversation.  I re-read the box on page 2 of the Parents Guide to the Personal Curriculum: Focus on Students with an IEP:  "Districts MUST offer the PC option and respond to all PC requests but are NOT required to approve all PC requests." I'm pretty sure that MUST still means "is required to".  So, I learned something from "learning something new"--and that is to make sure that you have your information straight when you make a presentation.  I'll be sending a note to all people listed below, to make sure that "MUST" means what I think it means...and not "may".  It's not that I have anything invested in proving someone wrong, but in making sure that I don't misinform families when I make statements about the Personal Curriculum as an option.

In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming better informed about the Michigan Merit Curriculum, the Personal Curriculum option for students with IEPs, and the implications of achieving or not achieving a diploma, here are some additional resources for you to use:

• Personal Curriculum Network (where personal curriculum liaisons share information). To gain access to the Personal Curriculum Network, use this link
• ACTpoint Michigan (a site most districts use to identify key curriculum objectives for a Personal Curriculum)

• General Personal Curriculum questions:

Gregg Dionne
Alternative Education Consultant,
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

Mary Head
Department Analyst
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

• Students with IEP Questions
  

  Sheryl Diamond
  Policy Consultant
  MDE Special Education
  Phone: 517.335.0442

• Algebra II Questions
  

Dan LaDue
Secondary Mathematics Consultant
MDE, Curriculum and Instruction
Phone: 517.241.6895

For further information, please refer to earlier posts on this same blog.  And I hope to keep learning something new that will help families to make good decisions in concert with their children's needs.