An increasing number of districts across America are rightly procuring so-called high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) for use in their schools. These English Language Arts and math materials meet grade-level state standards for skills and knowledge and are thus rated “green” (fully meets expectations) by EdReports. While these materials vary greatly in the quality of included texts or support of conceptual mathematical reasoning, these materials are unquestionably an improvement on the plethora of home-grown curricula. They are vastly preferable to teachers acting as instructional DJs, spending hours a week concocting idiosyncratic playlists of instructional materials. When teachers use HQIM effectively and continuously — as they did back in 2016 in Duval County, Florida, or recently in Caesar Rodney, Delaware — students show major learning gains.
But overall, results have been modest. In math, researchers have found no overall gains when districts adopted HQIM materials. Evidence of major outcomes in ELA are also lacking: Louisiana and Tennessee, which lead the nation in the adoption of HQIM, show mixed NAEP results. Why aren’t there stronger positive outcomes? Because most teachers simply don’t use the new materials for most instructional purposes. They might pull a quiz or a homework assignment from the curriculum, but when it comes to daily instruction, they water it down, mix it with stuff from the internet or skim over material by giving students few opportunities to grapple with the rigorous content.
Telling teachers to just do it — teach the darn curriculum — isn’t working. To address the situation, school districts are spending some $18,000 per teacher per year on professional learning, an increasing portion of which goes to curriculum-related instruction. The plausible idea is that if teachers are given adequate support to understand the new materials and present them effectively, resistance to using them will diminish.
There isn’t much strong research on the impact of this type of professional learning. One rigorous study shows a very modest effect, while a review that analyzed previous research found “small to moderate positive impacts.” This is because at the core of resistance is a mindset: Teachers don’t believe their students can manage the rigor of grade-level HQIM instruction — thus, the avoidance and watering down. The general response (especially from the publishers of these materials) has been frustration. Perhaps teachers don’t trust themselves to handle the material, or perhaps they don’t like the curriculum because they haven’t tried it (to paraphrase a British beer commercial from my youth) — or they just need more curriculum-integrated professional learning.
While there is surely some truth to these responses, I think they miss a key point — teachers are often behaving rationally. In 2022, 26% of eighth-graders performed at or above proficient on the NAEP in math, and 31% in ELA. While NAEP standards are more demanding than those in most states, what this means (conservatively) is that more than half of the students in an average American public school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge. In the inner cities and many rural communities, that proportion is much higher: In the economically troubled city of Baltimore, where I live, the proficiency rate for eighth graders on the math NAEP in 2022 was 8%.
If you were a teacher faced with 25 13-year-olds whose knowledge of math and ELA ranged from one to three years below grade level, would you readily teach materials that assumed grade-level competence?
School districts in Baltimore and across the country aren’t blind to this reality. For many years, they have tried to help underperforming students through remedial education that attempts to teach what wasn’t mastered in previous years. This effort has had various labels — for example, MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) or RTI (Response to Intervention). It usually involves grouping students into what is called Tier 2 or Tier 3 and then giving them various doses of remediation. There is no rigorous research that suggests this effort has succeeded at scale.
The members of FASA invite and encourage you to join! By working together, we can achieve our mission to support and empower administrators in providing a high-quality education to all students in Florida.
