a new and better balance

Here's Lucy Calkins on the Core Knowledge-in-the-city plan:

Lucy Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and an architect of the city’s balanced literacy program, said that the 10 schools participating in the Core Knowledge pilot should try to also include other approaches in their curriculum. For example, she said, she hoped there would still be time “to teach revision strategies in a writing workshop or the skills of inference in a reading workshop — that you’re not only talking about the subject.”

Still, she said, “This could be calling us to a new and better balance.”

10 City Schools to Focus Reading Skills on Content

By ELISSA GOOTMAN

Published: August 26, 2008

New York Times

I'm sure she's right.

I'm sure that within a couple of years the Core Knowledge component of the Core Knowledge program will have been balanced into something more to the liking of Lucy Calkins, trainer of 10,000 teachers.

That's the way these things work, it seems.