An increasing number of districts across America are rightly purchasing so-called high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) for use in their schools. These English language arts and math materials meet state standards for grade-level skills and knowledge and are therefore rated “green” (fully meets expectations) by EdReports. Although these materials vary widely in the quality of the texts included or the support of conceptual mathematical reasoning, these materials are undoubtedly an improvement over the plethora of homegrown curricula. They are definitely preferable to teachers who act as instructional DJs, who spend hours a week putting together quirky playlists of instructional material. When teachers use HQIM effectively and continuously – as they did in 2016 in Duval County, Florida, or recently in Caesar Rodney, Delaware – students show major learning gains.
But overall, the results were modest. In math, researchers found no overall gains when districts adopted HQIM materials. Evidence of significant ELA results is also lacking: Louisiana and Tennessee, which lead the nation in HQIM adoption, show mixed NAEP results. Why aren’t there stronger positive results? Because most teachers simply don’t use the new materials for most instructional purposes. They might take a quiz or a homework assignment from the curriculum, but when it comes to the daily instruction, they water it down, mix it in with stuff from the internet, or skim through the material, leaving students with few opportunities to grapple with the rigorous content .
Telling teachers to just do it – teach the damn curriculum – doesn’t work. To address this situation, school districts are spending approximately $18,000 per teacher per year on professional education, with an increasing share of that going to curriculum-related education. The plausible idea is that if teachers are given sufficient support to understand the new materials and present them effectively, resistance to their use will decrease.
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There isn’t a lot of solid research on the impact of this type of professional learning. One rigorous study shows a very modest effect, while a review analyzing previous research found: “small to moderate positive effects.” This is because at the heart of resistance is a mindset: teachers not believing that their students can handle the rigor of grade-level HQIM teaching – and thus avoiding and toning it down. The general reaction (especially from the publishers of this material) was frustration. Maybe teachers don’t trust themselves to handle the material, or maybe 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 certainly some truth to these responses, I think they miss an important point: teachers often behave rationally. In 2022, 26% of eighth graders performed at or above proficient on the NAEP in math, and 31% in ELA. Although the NAEP standards are more demanding than those in most states, this means (conservatively) that more than half of the students in an average American public school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge. In inner cities and many rural communities, that share is much higher: In the economically troubled city of Baltimore, where I live, the proficiency rate for eighth-graders on the 2022 math NAEP was 8%.
If you were a teacher dealing with 25 13-year-olds whose knowledge of math and ELA ranged from one to three years below grade level, would you easily teach materials that assume they are proficient at grade level? the grade?
School districts in Baltimore and across the country are not blind to this reality. For years they have tried to help underperforming students through remedial education that attempts to teach what had not been mastered in previous years. This effort has had various labels, for example MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) or RTI (Response to Intervention). Typically this involves grouping students into what is called Level 2 or Level 3 and giving varying doses of remediation. There is no rigorous research to suggest that this effort has succeeded on a large scale.
Rethinking the definition of high-quality mathematics instructional materials
More recently, this approach has been applied to using HQIM in the classroom (also called Tier 1 instruction). The seemingly reasonable idea is that weaker students should be given extra time, usually by taking them out of arts or even social studies classes, to master the material.
Here’s a quick sketch of how the approach works – in theory. Students complete diagnostic assessments a week or two before the start of a new HQIM unit. In mathematics, these students test mastery of the required skills that will enable effective learning in the upcoming unit. In ELA, the assessment tests key vocabulary and background knowledge. Without this knowledge, the upcoming text(s) will be inaccessible. The results are then passed on to the Level 2 teacher, who focuses on preparing students with ‘just-in-time knowledge’ – what students need to know to successfully understand their upcoming Level 1 HQIM unit.
But in practice, these efforts do not yield sufficient results. And this is not simply due to the challenges of organizing student groups and instructional differentiation; it’s because there simply aren’t effective assessments to do the job. A state test taken the previous year is largely useless (and most teachers don’t know how their students performed). Nationally standardized tests such as i-Ready and MAP are not designed for teachers to translate results into curriculum content. An earlier assessment at the end of the unit (if the teacher has already provided one) could work if the new skills and knowledge in each new curriculum build directly on what students had successfully learned in the previous unit. However, ELA units often introduce completely new topics, and math curricula are full of skills that are not used in subsequent units and grades. The Level 2 teacher tries to guess what to teach – and too often uses material that isn’t even from the same curriculum as the Level 1 instructor.
In short, there is too little connection between what students learn in Level 2 education and what they need to know to be ready for Level 1 HQIM material. Teachers and schools are rightly doing their best in adverse circumstances: in Houston, students are tested during their Level 1 lessons and then given appropriate Level 2 teaching for the second part of the 90 minutes, an approach that requires extremely tight planning and many hours preparation required. analyzing each unit to design the tests and instructions. Excellently run districts and schools (regular and charter) create time for such analysis. But in most districts, Level 1 instructors are given some attention to curriculum content and then told to differentiate their teaching on the fly, improving grade-level content while teaching at the same time.
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What teachers and students need is urgent action from the curriculum publishers (and AI-based providers like Coursemojo and Brisk Teaching). They should provide brief, focused pre-unit assessment that is integrated with the most commonly used curriculum. These short quizzes indicate what material Tier 2 instructors should emphasize. The bottom line: If Level 2 classrooms in the United States focused on teaching what students most need to know to access their upcoming Level 1 curriculum unit, Level 1 teachers would rightly feel more confident that their students can manage level 1-HQIM. Instead of watering down that material, they were able to teach it, fulfilling the significant promise of the new high-quality curriculum.
This won’t be a panacea. There’s no way to ensure that a child who is two years behind will be ready for next week’s classes — a problem that goes back to the nation’s pre-K universe, with its uneven access and lack of quality control. But it is possible to give that child a chance. Currently, Level 2 teachers are flying blind and wasting hundreds of teaching hours because they cannot provide their students with any opportunity to benefit from HQIM. And Level 1 instructors? Many will continue to water down these materials because they know how few students are willing to learn rigorous, grade-level content.
