Ask your questions about Common Core and other changes to the Department of Defense Education Activity as leaders hold a worldwide "Google Hangout On Air" at 6:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday, Oct. 20.
That's 12:30 p.m. Central Europe Time and 7:30 p.m. Japan Standard Time.
Officials are asking for questions to be submitted in advance to dodeacomms@gmail.com.
DoDEA Director Thomas Brady and Principal Deputy Director Linda Curtis will answer as many questions as possible in the forum, part of their effort to reach out to military families and to DoDEA school personnel to discuss these initiatives.
They're shrinking the administrative structure so staff can focus more directly on the needs of children at the school level, with plans to reduce the number of districts to eight from the current 14 over the next four years.
They're also making a transition to what DoDEA calls College and Career Ready standards, which are based in large part on the Common Core State Standards, adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia. The Common Core initiative, led by the states, sets grade-by-grade learning expectations for students in grades pre-K through 12.
After DoDEA teachers implement standards this school year for math in pre-K through 5th grade, next year they will do the same with standards for math and literacy for English, history, science and technical subjects for 6th through 12th grades. In school year 2017-18, they'll put in place literacy standards for pre-K through 5th grades.
The system provides teachers with standards for what a child needs to know, Brady said in an interview this summer.
But it "doesn't direct the teacher on how to teach," he said. "It's not a rote implementation. The magic is still in the classroom."
Teachers still will be able to teach in a variety of ways to ensure students understand the concepts presented, he said.
About 75,000 students attend 171 DoDEA schools worldwide.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
