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A program called Open Court is being implemented in several Southern California school districts and threatens to spread elsewhere. Open Court is a reading program that amounts to little more than a script for both teacher and students. When forced to use Open Court, teachers lose the ability to adapt the curriculum to the neeeds of their individual students. Classroom participation occurs only when the script calls for it. All Open Court students receive the same flat, industrialized version of an education without any adjustments made to better fit their needs and to help them as individuals and as free thinkers. The rise of Open Court, which is currently only available for elementary schools, frightens me for two reasons. First, it attempts to solve the problem of educational inequality by teaching ALL students the exact same material, WORD FOR WORD. Instead of aiding students in low performing schools to rise to the occasion, Open Court is pulling down all students. Essentially, it is dumbing down elementary education. Second, using Open Court scripts in the classroom makes having qualified, well-educated teachers unneccessary. Anyone can read a script - even a robot. If Open Court becomes popular across the state (and then across the country) we could easily see a sharp drop in the number of credentialed teachers. The lowering of standards for teachers would in turn lead to a drop in teacher salaries, thus deterring other potential educators from entering the profession. In short, Open Court is destructive to students and teachers alike. Yes, we need to improve education in low-income areas, but lowering standards and reducing teachers to robots is not the answer.
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