Why Don't We Publish a Syllabus for Every Course K-12?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that every school should publish a clear syllabus for every course so families know what their children will learn.
Key Takeaways
- Transparency builds trust - Families have a right to know what's being taught in every class
- Syllabi create accountability - When the plan is public, teachers and schools are accountable for following it
- This should be standard practice - Colleges publish syllabi for every course; K-12 schools should do the same
Transcript
It inspires a huge amount of confidence in parents when schools say, here's what your kid is going to learn in every class this year.
Here are all the books your kid is going to read grade by grade in our school.
I saw a post over on X today from a parent who toured a charter school that said, these are all of the books your kid is going to read in the course of their experience here.
And it's just so clarifying and so reassuring.
to know this is the guaranteed and viable curriculum.
And I was thinking about how college professors have often posted their course syllabus on the internet since the early days of the internet, not for any coordination reason or research purpose, but just because that was the easiest way to get it out to people and make it clear to other professors, hey, here's what we cover in our course.
And This has enabled a kind of alignment and accountability that we don't really have in K-12.
So thinking about those examples, it seems crazy to me that it's just kind of a secret what you're supposed to learn in every grade and every class.
there is a scope and sequence that's public, sometimes it's published, but often it's not published because it doesn't exist.
It's just up to the individual teacher.
And I think from a duplicated effort and from a coordination and alignment and accountability standpoint, that's crazy that we have not started doing this as a profession.
So let me know what you think of this idea.
I think we should publish exactly what you were supposed to learn, what books you were supposed to read, what standards you were supposed to meet, that part is kind of built into the standards uh what projects you're supposed to complete like what are you going to do as a student in this class or grade level i think we could make that public i think we could teach a lot more we could learn a lot more i think like honestly the biggest reason we don't do that is because it would be embarrassing to see how much more some people teach than other people, how much farther some districts are taking their kids than other districts or other schools or even other classrooms within the same school.
But I think if we want to take learning seriously, if we want to build that trust with parents, this is something we ought to seriously consider.
Let me know what you think.