Orange County Public Schools is the 9th largest school district in the nation and the 4th largest district in the State of Florida. The District counts with 191 schools. From that 191 schools we count with 125 elementary schools, 37 are middle schools, we count with 5 K-8, 20 high schools, and 4 exceptional. We count with approximately 207,253 students with diversity and multicultural students. The district has 109 schools which are Title 1 and the poverty average district-wide is near around 50%, and we also have 9-14 schools that are in the School of Transformation Office, which means they are performing low. The school district has a school transformation office (STO), this office represent and serve the schools that are in need of academic improvement. The Transformation Office, which means they are performing low, which makes this one of this office to improve their academic achievement. Students served in Title school are approximately 68,000 they have free breakfast and free lunch, most of the after-school program has scholarships for the student, they are limited and in this programs, they served the student with dinner. Most of these schools are located in a poverty community, broken families, homeless families, and no parental or family support.
Compare your local demographics to your state demographics, including recent election results, and note any major education issues that came up during the most recent election. Describe the top five social forces that you want to address through curriculum planning. Social force can be define as an element of society which has the capability of causing cultural change or influences people. Intercultural or cross-cultural communication is the interaction between people or groups that share a different diverse cultural backgrounds, this includes the verbal and nonverbal communication. It is important to understand, to respect and accept the differences. For Stella Ting Toomey, author of the Communicating Across Cultures book, intercultural communication is to recognize the identity of the others. The purpose to integrate this into the curriculum planning is to learn how to respect, appreciate, have tolerance and leave peacefully in our community, even with the rest of the world’s population from different cultures. The society of today’s world has divided into different opinions and beliefs when it comes to diversity and other culture or groups of people, unfortunately we can see a lot of division lately in the nation, looks like we are going back into times. As educator we want to share information and educate and build people and communities that can come together no matter our differences, culture, beliefs and we accept them and live peacefully to have a better world.
Political the decision making within the education system is a political process, Economy is another social force, during the U.S. recession of the early 1980s and pressures created by global competitiveness heightened the public’s economic concerns. Some influential leaders who view education as the key to a stronger economic future have promoted new accountability initiatives and provided incentives to stimulate improvements in schools. You can see the differences in wealthy neighborhoods schools and low income neighborhoods schools. Wealthy neighborhood schools have better and more equipment’s, materials and resources, this also includes all the extra-curricular activities and clubs. Mean while the low income schools are lacking from the same resources the wealthy schools enjoy, education should be equal to everyone no matter where they live. Technological Environment b. Explain why you think curriculum planning will help address these social forces. Describe three key issues for each social force. When it comes to curriculum planning there’s always the challenge of finding the right ideas, implement them, validating them, and incorporate them schoolwide (Baeder, 2016). The process of the curriculum planning will be determined of the subject to study, developing a course, or improving any program. Each and one of these components involves unique different processe. It is important to make clear that the heart of curriculum planning is to reform a school, with that said, the district goals and the standards need to be aligned and clear so this way teachers will know what they need to know and the skills that needs to be mastered.
