$800,000 pilot program under fire...good

[csgray]

This was a scientifically valid study done for several years that involved some schools "piloting" the curriculum and others doing whatever they had already been doing in the past. Students were then surveyed to measure how much they had learned in each situation over the two years. This allowed the piloted materials to be evaluated for effectiveness and tweaked if necessary. This is a research based curriculum which means it is studied to make sure it works, instead of just being whatever the health teacher puts together. It is expensive to develop, implement, and test a curriculum; there was a large team of researchers involved in just tracking the results, plus it takes time to write up a scientifically accurate curriculum. The costs involved go far beyond creating "take home booklets." The steps were: develop initial curriculum, train trainers to train the teachers who piloted the program, fly the teachers to Oahu for trainings, including food and lodging as well as a stipend, develop surveys to measure what students had learned, send trained researchers to give the students surveys (both those who were taught the curriculum and those who were the control groups) and compile the data and then use the data to improve the curriculum if needed.

As you can imagine this is not a cheap process, there were probably at least 4 or 5 full time people working on this for several years, this investment will be pennies per student once it is amortized across years of using it with thousands of students, but the up front initial costs are what that $800,000 paid for.

I didn't teach the curriculum, but my health class was one of the control groups, so I know something about what went into making it all happen.

Carol

edited to fix a minor spelling mistake