General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An odd and controversial book that our daughter has to read for 11th grade English... [View all]ancianita
(36,225 posts)I'm not referring to "core curriculum" readings approved at state levels. I said, " At every state level in the country, teachers may not be told HOW to teach content, but they can legally be told WHAT to teach, along with the appropriate developmental scope and sequence they're told to..."
How that usually works at the state and district levels is through curriculum content changes made by the public's professional representatives, not by a lone parent. At the school level, that means that state core readings aren't changeable. Teacher-assigned non-core texts are. Every district and school has the means to change non-core readings, and that change starts with the very good advice I gave to madinmaryland. Remember, this is presumably happening in Maryland, not my state of Illinois or your state of California.
You need to reread my post. I'm saying that madinmaryland has a legal right to request an accommodation,not run roughshod over her child's English curriculum, or any other child's readings in that classroom.
You may be a lawyer (or were, I don't know how you can be a teacher and lawyer at the same time, but I suppose it's possible), but you don't necessarily know school law. If you took school law as part of your certification process, I'd be surprised; or if you studied school law in law school, you might have forgotten a few details about school curricula, if it was even part of that study. Nevertheless, I don't know you, but I'm pretty well acquainted with school law and curriculum development across states. You'd have to put forward something more credible to me than a law degree or even eleven years of secondary teaching, now, seeing as how you misread what I wrote.
Parents, under state curricula (NCTE guidelines don't dictate legal rights, but do give a range of advice for teacher and parent readings decisionmaking) still have the right in English classes, to examine the list of readings in advance of their classroom use, and expect the teacher to honor their request to have an equally appropriate reading for THEIR own child if they have fair reasons to reject an assigned reading on a case by case basis. Schools' principals usually communicate some procedure for this.
This goes on all over the country. If it doesn't in California, perhaps you've either not been aware or you really do live in another country. If teachers in California don't have some professional input beyond the approved CA core reading lists, then they are indeed professionally limited.
I wouldn't put down another professional's advice about how to handle what's clearly a bad reading choice by a teacher before I reread the poster in question, though. Not cool. Kinda rude.