School districts see the value in cursive instruction

By now, most parents and educators in states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) know that cursive instruction is not considered to be essential learning. As a result, it falls on individual school districts to decide whether or not they will continue to teach this form of writing.

For example, officials at the Lee County Schools in North Carolina have decided to continue providing students with cursive instruction, The Sanford Herald reported. In a time when it feels like people send more text messages than handwritten letters, many believe that cursive is no longer a valuable skill. Lee County educators beg to differ.

"It's a skill, maybe an art, but I think it's something children need exposure to," Carol Chappell, Lee County's director of K-5 instruction, told the news source. "You need to be able to read it because it will still be around, and it's hard to read it if you never learned it."

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, officials within the Ouachita Parish School System understand how important cursive instruction is, but also realize that they have a limited amount of time each day to teach students what they consider to be essential lessons, The Associated Press reported. Currently, Davis and other district officials are focused on providing keyboarding instruction, as students need to know their way around a computer keyboard in today's world.