Policy Change Suggestion

A policy that has been an issue in Aiken County Schools in South Carolina is the use of grade-level
pacing guides. While well intentioned, those guides hinder any flexibility the teachers need to properly
educate the students in the classroom. These guides force the teachers to move on to higher material
regardless of the level of mastery the students have of the material.
The district enforces this policy and punishes teachers who are not on the schedule set by the pacing
guide. This presents problems, as the district is one of the lowest scoring areas of the states. All of the
43 schools in the district are Title 1 except one, and studies show that low-income students score lower
in academia (Sprenger, 2018). This is creating students in upper grades who do not have a grasp on
basic concepts lower than the grade level they are currently on.
Unfortunately, there is little one teacher can do, as this is a district wide policy that has been fought for
years. Upper administration refuses to budge or even address the issue publicly. One thing individual
teachers can do to combat this policy in the classroom is to offer extra tutoring or specialized extra
material. This extra material could be passed out as worksheets or done as warm-ups at the start of class
or during the occasional down time. This would be a way around the issue that would not garner
attention. The teacher would be able to catch the lower scoring students some behind without going off
the pacing guide too far.

References

Sprenger, M. (2018). What does the research say about vocabulary? Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/113040/chapters/What-Does-the-Research-Say-About-
Vocabulary%C2%A2.aspx
TE21, Inc, (2018). South Carolina pacing guides. Retrieved
from https://www.te21.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=217537