Final Thoughts
I do not know if the states would allow all control to be handed over to the national level. After getting new students from Arizona and Arkansas a week before TAKS I could see the benefits of having nation-wide expectations. This would also make it beneficial for companies to create software since it could be used by everyone and not limited to certain states. The concepts presented by Romano are realistic. The support needed to implement the ideas may be hard to come by especially knowing the history of previous efforts failing.
There is a new resource available for Texas classroom teachers. It is called Curriculum Developer and it is available through most of the regional educational service centers. The lessons available at this time are for the core subjects of English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. This is to help align the scope and sequence for the state as well as equip teacher with lessons that cover the current TEKS. The lessons were developed by teachers and have problems that need to be worked out. This would give teachers lessons to use to get them started. We are not required at this time to follow the Curriculum Developer but I do use it to get ideas. Parts of the program are being required to be followed in other schools. From what I have seen there is not much integration of technology included in the lessons. This would be a great opportunity to make technology available to all teachers. The difficult task of finding lessons and relating them to current classroom practices would be eased with the Developer. Once the lessons were quality checked and proven to work then they could be required to be implemented. The cost of all the regions going in together should be significantly less than what a single district would face. Teachers were compensated for creating the units included in the Developer. The teachers who have taken the initiative to explore and integrate technology would see a reward in their hard work by contributing to these lessons.