Shea was the last Cookie cutter staduim, so why not lose the cookie cutter curriculum

Among all the readings we have done, a lot of them have had to do with diversifying the curriculum, because everyone learns differently; why do cook cutter curricula still exist?

Embrace diversity, use alternative methods, every child is different… these are the things that I hear in my education classes each day. If I am being trained not to teach from to book and to use multiple methods to teach literacy, then why are my counterparts in the class room still using cookie cutter curriculums? The standardization of our schools is great for the sake of quantifying and rating schools against each other. However, that does not mean that schools and teachers need to teach in the same mechanical way.
Cookie-cutter curriculums exist is almost every level and context area of our curriculum, even though it isn’t the most effective teaching methods. Often the result of a standardized cookie cutter curriculum is the mass production and manufacturing of grades. When so much pressure is put on producing grades, there is little left for creativity and helping students that may need differentiated instruction. So in turn the student most hurt by standardized curriculums are the ones that most need the help, ELL for example. These teaching methods also forget to consider students of different races and social backgrounds.
Although many of us can agree that the current system isn’t the best, finding something better isn’t easy. Clearly the system has shown that it works (on paper), and how do you turn a standardized system into something that isn’t but that can still be held accountable and quantified? Perhaps this is why the rules of the game haven’t changed, we know that they aren’t great but aren’t quite sure as to how to go about changing it. Well like MLB, instead of throwing the whole book out how about we start with just small changes. MLB now has homerun review to help them make better calls, let us in the education business make a great call and reviews to create homeruns for our students.