Barnard School Adopts ‘Core Knowledge’ System

Barnard School Adopts ‘Core Knowledge’ System By Sandy Vondrasek

Shrinking enrollments, rising per-pupil costs, declining state aid, and consolidation pressures from the Department of Education.

What’s a small school to do?

If it’s Barnard Central School, what you don’t do is "roll over" and give up.

What you do do, says BCS Principal Anne Koop, is come up with an innovative plan that will turn what is already "a gem" of a school into a magnet that will attract tuition students.

Instead of knuckling under, and cutting back or closing down, Barnard Central School is stepping up. This fall, it will become the first school in the state to adopt the highly-regarded "Core Knowledge" curriculum. The curriculum, used at hundreds of schools nationwide, puts more emphasis on learning facts than on acquiring how-to skills.

Barnard will also add a public pre-kindergarten program—a rarity in Vermont.

Koop, a veteran educator and a long-time fan of the Core Knowledge curriculum, is hopeful that the changes will bring a turnaround in student numbers. Barnard Central School, which had a peak enrollment 112 kids in the early 1990s, now has 47 students, K-6.

"If you cut you programs, you send the message, ‘We’re dying,’" Koop said. "We know we’re alive and well."

"We cannot roll over and play dead," Koop declared. "We are going to be the roaring tiger; we’re going to be the lead dog."

According to Koop, Barnard is a "family-centered" school, with a dedicated staff and strong community support, high academic standards, a history of impressive test scores, and creative arts programming.

Koop believes that the addition of both the "Core Knowledge" curriculum, found more commonly at private and charter schools, and the half-day pre-K program will take BCS to a new level.

"It will be like a private school education, but at an equal-access, public school price," she said.

No Tax Impact

Acoording to Koop, the school’s special educator as well as its principal, Barnard Central School will be able to make the changes "at no cost to the town, with no increase to the budget."

There will be some costs for new equipment—such as a water table for the preschool—but the school hopes to rely on fundraising for those items.

Koop said the changes have the enthusiastic support of the school’s teachers, school board members, and Windsor Central Supervisory Union Supt. Meg Gallagher. The plan got a positive reception at a community meeting in early February, attended by about 50, she added.

Last year, the Barnard board, worried about declining enrollments, asked Koop and Supt. Gallagher to research options for the school—"from worst case to best"—and report back with a recommendation, according to Board Chair Dan Leavitt.

The administrators came back with the "roaring tiger" proposal, and the board backed it unanimously, Leavitt said.

Making the plan financially and logistically viable is the fact that long-time K-1 teacher Bonnie Lewis will be retiring at the end of this year. The school won’t be replacing Lewis, and will reconfigure the classrooms, all to combination classes.

There will be a preschool-kindergarten classroom, and one each for grades 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. Kids will encounter the core curriculum in two-year "loops," Koop said.

Koop, who has worked BSC as a special educator since 1990, and became the school’s teaching principal four years ago, is not a new convert to E.D. Hirsch’s "Core Knowledge" curriculum.

In fact, she gave a presentation on the program to the Barnard board back in 1997.

Teaching Knowledge

The pre-K-6 curriculum is based on the premise that kids benefit from learning a sequence of knowledge in a broad range of areas—world history, geography, science, fine arts, music—as well as reading and math skills.

The "Core Knowledge" program, carefully sequenced grade-by grade, "is meant to comprise about half of a school’s curriculum," and allows teachers a lot of flexibility in how they approach the material, according to the website, www.coreknowledge .org.

Hirsch, author of several books on education, maintains that student test scores in reading nationally have stagnated precisely because schools have discarded traditional content areas to focus on reading skills and drills, such as "finding the main idea."

The most important component of reading comprehension, Hirsch argues, is "knowing something of the topic you’re reading about."

According to Koop, the curriculum is appropriate for all students, including the youngest, who "learn through play." Music, nursery school rhymes, and poetry are used extensively: "Kids will be going to be back to some of the classics."

There is also a strand on developing youngsters’ fine and gross motor skills, she noted.

The program, Koop maintains, will also work for special education students.

Koop is also enthused about adding a public preschool, with a "very specific" program of social, developmental, and "kindergarten readiness" skills, as well as the content material from the Core Knowledge curriculum.

All Barnard kids will have access to the preschool program. If any slots in the class are open, Barnard will accept youngsters from other towns, on a tuition basis.

It will take a number of years to become a certified Core Knowledge school. Barnard will start as a "friend" of the program. The curriculum will be formally in place for the preschool-K class this year, with the program expanded as these kids move on. However, the entire staff is excited about the changes, and teachers are preparing to add "Core Knowledge" components to their classrooms, Koop said.

Might Draw Students

Koop noted that private schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire—including Crossroads Academy in Lyme—have adopted Hirsch’s curriculum. A number of parents in Barnard and surrounding towns, she added, drive their children to Crossroads daily.

Koop hopes the changes at Barnard’s public school will have these parents looking at a good option, closer to home.

In the future, school officials will start "marketing" the new Barnard school in an attempt to attract more students, and the school’s name may change as well. A new name—perhaps Barnard Academy—could be an effective signal of changes being made, Koop said.

Board Chair Leavitt noted that a name change, for now, will remain on hold, until the board has an opportunity to collect input from the community.

Koop, who noted that the Core Knowledge program has been "close to my heart for years," has only one question for herself: "Why didn’t I think of this before?"