Open Court was an abomination

They paid LAUSD teachers to go to training for five days during their vacation.
Teachers could also go during the school year for three days and receive their regular pay while the district paid substitutes.
They paid Open Court instructors to fly into Los Angeles and stay at nice hotels.
They rented large halls in the hotels for instruction rooms and halls where they provided lunch for all of the teachers.
Each elementary school had a Literacy Coach who really was the Open Court Police.
They ran around the school visiting classrooms, finding fault, and reporting the teachers to the principal.
Initially 60% on an Open Court test was considered passing.
Open Court measured reading speed, even though there are students that read excellently but slowly.
Any elementary teacher can tell you that it is comprehension, not speed that is important in Reading.

Open Court taught fluency, not comprehension or creative writing.
Open Court was scripted and the teacher in third grade had to read, “I am confused,” even though teachers have always been the ultimate authority on information for students.
Open Court covered adjectives and adverbs on the same page.
For conversation, Open Court had the students punctuate sentences with dialogue in a workbook—before OC, I had my students write their own sentences with dialogue.
Each school year, every school had to buy consumable workbooks and photocopy countless thousands of pages instead of using lined paper and pencils as students did for centuries.
To this veteran teacher, Open Court belongs with the LAUSD legacy of waste: MiSIS, iPads, Breakfast in the Classroom, Food Services, and schools built on fields with oil or chemicals that must be continually decontaminated.

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