At Parker, teachers have some degree of freedom to teach what they see fit as long as content fits into the general purposes and goals of the class they are teaching. Although this freedom can lead to a valuable diversified education among students, oftentimes classes teaching the same topic taught by different teachers can bring a hugely varied workload or focus. This degree of freedom is important to fulfilling our mission as a progressive institution, but there needs to be consistency throughout the classes to ensure that each student has the same foundation and a comparable workload in their high school experience.
The value of opportunities to have different teachers at Parker who develop curricula they truly believe in is not lost on us. Also, we understand how lucky we are to be learning from teachers rather than a textbook or AP curriculum. Yet, there should still be some level of standardization and fairness across sections of classes with the same name but different teachers. This doesn’t mean all classes must be the same in content, but we see some places where somewhat random class sorting can stick students with unreasonably different focuses and workloads.
In 10th grade Modern World History, each class covers one topic. One section may study terrorism or the Cold War, while another may study imperialism or revolutions. Because students get no choice as to which topic in history they will study for that year, an opportunity for students to dive into their personal passions and interests in history is lost and each student enters junior year with a different foundation and understanding of modern ‘world’ history.
Additionally, there are certain subtopics that lend themselves more to the future study of history at Parker. For example, in the US History curriculum, enlightenment is a concept that is discussed with its relationship to European settlers in the Americas. In the 10th grade Revolutions class, enlightenment is studied in depth at the beginning of the year. However, in the Terrorism course it is not discussed. In this respect, the students who previously were in Revolutions are more prepared for US History than those who were in Terrorism.
In the science department, there are three Advanced Physics courses taught by two different teachers. In one class, there is (on average) thirty minutes of note-taking homework per night according to students, while in the second class, there is more than double that. This disproportionality of workload alone is unfair to the students who will be receiving the same credit on a transcript.
In the English department in 10th grade, everyone is required to read “the Odyssey,” but each teacher assigns varied lengths. There were different versions of “the Odyssey” taught. Some sections had to read the whole epic poem, others had to read short sections, and some read two books at maximum. Some classes took more than a month to finish. Others only spent a couple of weeks on it. Even though each English class will vary in the books taught, there should be an expectation of at least comparable workload and pace in each class.
Also, these different classes can produce very different grading. This discrepancy is not only how high students grades are but also what they are based on. At the end of the day, colleges can’t judge a transcript based on the standards of specific teachers.
This is not an editorial against rigor. As you will hear from most Parker students, they feel grateful for teachers who put them out of their comfort zone and the teachers with reputations of intense rigor are often those with the best reputations. Everyone should have those positive experiences. Also, not all classes with overwhelming workloads are really rigorous, but rather just time consuming. All teachers should be assigning rigorous work that significantly adds to their learning. This editorial is not suggesting that classes be dumbed or slowed down, but rather all classes should coordinate for a little regression to the mean, and we suggest that apply to the same classes taught by different teachers.
A lot of this suggested standardization relates to homework. The whole Upper School needs to have a reckoning with itself to ensure a livable homework load and not too much lopsidedness. Sometimes teachers avoid giving homework because they see another teacher overworking their students. Those merciful teachers should not have to compromise their curriculum to save the wellbeing of their students from unreasonable teachers.
These examples and arguments aim to illustrate the imbalance between classes and how the situation at Parker strays far away from the original positive intention that teachers should have freedom in their courses. While there undoubtedly should be uniqueness of classes and their teachers, there needs to be a general uniformity and equality with equally weighted and titled classes. Parker doesn’t need to make their classes easier. Teachers need to work at the department level to make sure that their classes have a comparable workload, pace, and general curriculum.
