Recently, I have met a number of district leaders who are committed to using high-quality curriculum, and who have recently selected the Wonders 2020 curriculum – without realizing some of the concerns in the field about the program (as well as other recently-revised basal readers). As such, it feels like a good time to revisit the learnings from our July webinar on Basal Bloat, which discussed the Student Achievement Partners recent review of Wonders.

Listening to Sue Pimentel, Meredith Liben, and Sonia Cabell, what struck me most was how much work teachers and leaders will need to do in order to adapt the materials for successful implementation. I also learned quite a lot about the design differences between basal textbooks in general and some of the newer high-quality instructional materials.   

The discussion centered on questions that curriculum leaders need to understand: How does “basal bloat” manifest? And what can we do if our district is using such a program? Also, what is the risk to knowledge-building that some of these programs pose? 

Let’s revisit.

What is Basal Bloat?

Our speakers suggested that basal bloat is the result of publishers’ efforts to be “all things to all people,” that is to cover every content standard with the widest possible range of topics to achieve maximum appeal. Basals that suffer from this kind of bloat also often lack intentionality when it comes to building background knowledge. Usually more thematic than topical, literacy activities are often unrelated across the days and weeks of the scope and sequence. There are so many things jam packed into the basal that the “bloat” can make it hard for teachers to know what to prioritize.

Meredith Liben put it this way: “It’s like a smorgasbord—one of those big truck stop buffets where there’s just so much. You can make bad choices right down the line because everything is there; it is really easy to get lost. The research-based work that we know moves students’ literacy forward is hard to find because there are layers of fat obscuring it.” 

Sue Pimentel added:  “It’s got so much, you can either choose the wrong stuff, or you can try to cover everything, but in doing so, just hover on the surface—which means you don’t go deep and also that students often don’t get enough practice. If you have everything there, but you can’t find it, or it doesn’t stick out, or isn’t a priority, then you’ve got another problem.”

How does Wonders fall short on knowledge-building? 

Sonia Cabell led the review of how Wonders does with knowledge-building and, in doing so, unpacked the issue with this program and other basals. Essentially, Wonders organizes itself around themes, for example, What Do We Learn from Animals or What Makes Us Special, tying weeks together into a unit even if the topical connection is pretty loose. The goal really isn’t to build content knowledge in a particular topic.

Wonders units are made to look like they’re building knowledge, but really what they’re offering are activities that attempt to activate prior knowledge, which is a problem if students don’t possess it.  Also, there’s often nothing sequential about the knowledge that’s being built.

By contrast, with content-rich ELA HQIM curricula, the knowledge approach is intentional and builds coherently across a module or unit. Students deeply study the content (e.g. arctic animals) and each successive reading in coherent text sets builds on that topic. The writing and the reading are designed to advance the knowledge building, and the word selection and the relationships among words are taught in ways that really tie the pieces together. Curricula that were intentionally built to build knowledge are generally more integrated than basals like Wonders. 

What should you do if you have Wonders in your district?

Multiple folks recommended a resource offered by Achieve the Core:  The Materials Adaptation Project (MAP) provides guidance for streamlining basal programs. Recommended adaptations elevate the best materials while supporting additional modifications for college- and career-ready instruction. Each grade level’s MAP contains an introductory overview, Week at a Glance (WAG) Planning Template, and specific Rules of Thumb for handling different instructional components of the basal. According to Achieve the Core, “Following the MAP guidance can help teachers who use basals maximize the positive and effective elements of the materials, while avoiding the pitfalls caused by the overwhelming amount of content in the bloated curriculum.”

Following are specific recommendations from Achieve the Core/ Student Achievement Partners

• Always support foundational skills.  ALWAYS.
• Elevate the best texts…they’re there!
• Let rereading of less complex texts happen outside of whole group instruction (in small groups or independently).
• Cut to the heart of the instructional purpose of the lessons (avoid extraneous activities or questions).
• Build knowledge and vocabulary where possible!
• Reduce the number of transitions your students have to make each day.  

Sue Pimentel also noted the importance of doing the work of real implementation. Focus on the training with teachers and provide time for teachers to get together and talk over how it is going. They need to understand what is being asked of them in the curriculum, they need to understand research behind the curriculum. They need to spend the first couple of years understanding what’s in the curriculum and what to prioritize and keep that up over the first few years. She suggested leveraging the collective experience of teachers to streamline and make the curriculum more coherent. Meredith Liben referred to this as “crowdsourcing” and suggested that it could turn an obstacle into opportunity.  

Each of the speakers noted that there is a lot of information in this review. They recommended taking the report bit by bit and focusing on the components most relevant to you, your students, and the teachers in your building.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

We are a school district operating under an MOU with our State Department of Public Instruction due to low performance. What I noticed when I arrived three years ago is that a lot of our students were receiving instruction below grade level, so we were never catching up. So, in 2019 we looked at ELA curricula that would engage our students in reading at grade level, and would do so with a diversity of rigorous, multicultural  texts.  Having a curriculum that includes social-emotional learning and character development, and that recognizes many students have had to manage trauma, was also important. Finally, we wanted a curriculum that would help students build content knowledge and, obviously, that aligned to state standards and had the capacity to support mastery of them. These are the reasons we chose EL Education Language Arts and Eureka Math.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? How did leaders’ mindset change? 

The hardest thing for teachers was understanding how the curricula aligned with our state standards.Teachers were focusing on individual standards in isolation, which we know doesn’t work. So we needed to shift the conversation to outcomes, and we created a crosswalk that matches the learning targets in the curriculum to our Virginia Standards Of Learning (SOLs). We helped teachers translate the vocabulary of our standards to the vocabulary in the curriculum. Then we took each test item in the assessments for the EL Education Language Arts curriculum and matched it to the state standards that it addresses. This is all still a work in progress, but when teachers really understand that the curriculum is aiming at the same knowledge and skills as our standards, they feel more confident about implementing it.

The other important groundwork was helping teachers understand that  these are not plug and play curricula. We intentionally talk about implementing with integrity, not fidelity. We don’t want leaders coming in and saying, “You’re not on this lesson,” or “Why aren’t you doing this piece right now?” Instead, leaders need to figure out how to give teachers choice and freedom and also support them in deeply learning the curriculum so that they know when and how and when they can modify lessons appropriately.   

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

All of our principals and assistant principals attended the virtual summit with UnBound Ed this summer focusing on equity.  Now we have a small group participating in a cohort that is looking at antiracist education and the ways in which grade-level work and the high expectations we set can lift students up. The curricula we’ve selected invite students to take ownership of their learning, and that’s what we want. We want students to have a voice—no matter their race, color, or gender—to be advocates for what matters to them.  Also, conversation cues, especially for ELLs, are built into the ELA curriculum. Linguistic development is built in, speaking and listening time, and structures that encourage conversation between students. This is all a part of driving equity too. 

Your district is just three weeks into the new school year. What are you hoping for or focusing on now as you reorient to in-person instruction?
Last year we were using EL Education’s Flex Curriculum, which is designed for virtual instruction.  This year we are just three weeks into in-person instruction, so we are very much in reset mode.  One of the things I’d like to see is that every elementary and middle school engage their families, either virtually or in person, in better understanding what’s happening instructionally. Let’s introduce our families to each module before we teach it so that families understand the conversations students are having and can ask questions and get excited about the conversations they can have with their students at home. Deep conversations is what our ELA curriculum, in particular, is intended to evoke. Opening those doors at home as well as at school will help accelerate learning for all children.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

Jana Beth Francis: Even before implementing high-quality curricula, our district was in the top 25 districts in the state. So, our goal was to move the needle of proficiency up to even higher levels for all kids.  We realized this would be hard to see in quantitative data, at least at first. On a more qualitative side, what we wanted was to push children’s thinking and emphasize their independence and autonomy as learners. We wanted our kids to be engaged with truly complex text and learning how to learn more, not just reading what was already easy for them.

As a district, we set some priorities for our schools to choose instructional materials that were “all green” on EdReports, materials that would align standards and resources so that teachers would have the time to focus on the “how” of pedagogy without worrying about the everyday “what.” Of twelve elementary schools in the district, six chose Wit & Wisdom and six chose EL Education. While the two curricula are different, both of them support the instructional shifts of science-based reading, and both promote high-quality student work.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did leaders’ mindset change? 

Jana Beth Francis: Leaders’ mindsets are especially important.  The challenge of running a school during a pandemic has pushed all our leaders back into a manager role. Our job has been to keep reminding principals how they impact students as instructional leaders. I analogize it to using Google Maps. In the beginning of our implementation, we all knew where we were going and we had a pretty good plan for getting there. But along the way, these past two years, circumstances have presented obstacles, and we need to recenter. Doing so will require all of us to refocus on our core principles about how students learn to read and what defines quality literacy instruction. 

Shiryl McAdams: To hold that center, some schools in the district unpacked the framework of literacy instruction as the core of their beliefs. Kids have to have complex texts. They have to have quality vocabulary and explicit foundational reading instruction. Every time they implemented something new, they went back to that framework and their beliefs about good reading instruction. It’s a red thread you can follow to get where you want to go: a place where all students are growing into thinkers and problem solvers, not just automatons who can find the main idea.

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

Shiryl McAdams: Our schools have used a hodgepodge of assessments in the past—MAPS, Fountas and Pinnell, Brigance—and state data collected during the pandemic isn’t yet conclusive. But what we’ve noticed is an uptick in the quality of student work. We analyze it as a team and we look for discrepancies in how the work is scaffolded or guided by the teacher and what kind of instruction supports students really doing their best work with deep understanding. 

What it comes down to is knowledge building.  Students have to think in complex and deep ways in order to have something to write about or present in their work. For some of our students that means specialists are also pushing in and using Geodes (decodable texts that align with the Wit & Wisdom curriculum) that make the text more accessible, but never takes them completely out of the content that the core/anchor text is building. This means students who are still building their foundational skills can stay at grade level and produce good work just like their peers.

Many of our schools have increased time for SPED teachers to plan collaboratively with general education teachers so that they can review assessments together and identify specific needs they can address through modifications. We look at the student work together and then unpack the next module or arc of lessons before we teach them. The result is that we see students communicating with confidence about their ideas, listening to others and building on other’s ideas. It’s really discourse at it’s finest, all the way through middle school. Students are able to write with evidence, are excited about compelling topics, really wanting to dive in, seeking additional texts on the topic or conducting independent research at the library. These are the outcomes we want for all of our students!

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? What would you do differently if you could do it over?

Jana Beth Francis: Our missteps had mostly to do with the unevenness of implementation in different schools. In the schools that had the strongest success, the faculty spent more than a year building a coherent set of beliefs about what good reading instruction looks like. Then they looked for a curriculum to match those beliefs. In contrast, when a principal just said, “Here’s what we’re going to do,” without building those beliefs first, the journey was not as smooth and teachers were inclined to grossly modify the curriculum in ways that changed the intent of the learning.

Can you share one exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?
Jana Beth Francis: Universal curriculum is all about providing a baseline of equity, so that a student’s success or failure is not dependent on an individual teacher. Every student deserves to be exposed to high-quality instructional materials taught with integrity. Because our leaders made sure that every teacher knew the pedagogical shifts they expected to see in the classroom and the kinds of texts students needed to be reading, we all agreed on the look fors. Keep your beliefs about good reading instruction at the center. Keep asking, “Is the text worthy of reading and complex? Is the vocabulary rich? Is needed time spent on foundations? Can you see these skills evident in student work?” If that’s the heart of every conversation with elementary principals and teachers, you’ll keep your forward momentum.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

This is my fourth year as assistant superintendent here in Pentucket. We are a smaller regional district, about 2500 students, just north of Boston. Before I arrived, the district curriculum was really driven by talented and motivated teachers and educators who were writing the curriculum and creating the learning experiences. That served some students well, but, especially because we are a regional district, we found that there were a lot of differences in the experiences students had not only from one building to the next but also from classroom to classroom. That’s the thing that prompted us to seek greater consistency in curriculum and instructional practice together.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? 

The mindset that shifted most had to do with how teachers analyze and use data. In the past, like in a lot of districts, we were using a leveled literacy assessment that gave students a letter, and that is how teachers decided whether students were at grade level or not. What we noticed is that while teachers said 80% of students were at grade level based on those assessments, our state MCAS scores showed only about 50% were proficient. That discrepancy showed that we had a flaw, so what we needed was more skills-based data that aligns with our curriculum, was a predictor of reading proficiency, gave us information on what skill to intervene with and that would help us determine if we are delivering the Tier 1 curriculum effectively. 

What we did then was expand our use of DIBELS beyond second grade and decide that we’re all going to look at data the same way and respond consistently whether to change our instruction at Tier 1 or intensify the instruction for particular students. Now that teachers are looking at data together and making those decisions consistently, they are seeing how the curriculum makes a difference for their students. We use the phrase, “assess to the point of breakdown, then instruct from there.”

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

The impetus for choosing the new curriculum was that we realized not all students were getting grade-level content. We didn’t do it all at once. We started with foundational skills for all students in grades K-2. And then we added Heggerty for phonemic awareness. In just half a year of using those lessons, we saw our phonemic segmentation scores in kindergarten go from about 70% at mid-year to 93% by the end of the year. That one difference made it clear that when you use a particular curriculum that is designed to do a specific thing and you use it correctly, it has a positive impact! If you use the right stuff at the right time, in the right way, all students make progress. Using a tiered approach rooted in strong Tier 1 curriculum and instruction and then intensifying it for those who need it, is how we move toward equity. 

What lessons did you learn from missteps along the way that would be helpful to other district leaders? What would you do differently if you could do it over?

I think anyone doing this work must realize that it takes time. We all want immediate results to “prove” it works and to build the trust of others, but sometimes these adjustments take time. What we realized is you can’t do it all at once, but you must balance the adult learning capacity with a sense of urgency because that’s what the kids deserve. I have frequently relied on what Brene Brown says about change: People do not fear change, they fear irrelevance. I think we need to remember that when working with adults who have only ever known things in a certain way. If you are challenging that, some may fear their knowledge will become irrelevant, so we need to lean into that and help them.

We also grew to realize that no one thing will fix the whole. It is a system that really makes the change. Curriculum and professional learning for instruction and implementation are important but they are only effective when you have a data system, schedules, and administrative functions that make the best use of these initiatives.

What is one especially exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?

What’s really made a difference for us is that our emphasis is not on “fidelity,” which often leads teachers and students to just reluctantly comply.  Instead, we focus on “skillful implementation.” You can have a great high-quality curriculum, but if teachers don’t understand the purpose of it, the why of it, and how to use it as it is designed, then it won’t work. By emphasizing skillful implementation, we’re valuing teachers’ understanding, we’re valuing teachers’ judgment in the moment to see when they need to twist, turn, pivot, zig, or zag, and how they can use data to make adjustments. 

You don’t just hand people a teacher’s guide and say “here’s your high-quality curriculum.” You need to help teachers understand how to use it, and that requires ongoing professional learning and data analysis. We don’t rely solely on the curriculum publishers for that. We have to build some in-house expertise and also connect the curriculum implementation to what the research says about best practices. 
In our district, this broader view pushed us to become more purposeful in using the systems and structures related to data, personnel, curriculum, and resources. Using the correct assessment tool and creating a structure for using that data and targeting instruction actually meant changing our building schedule to allow for collaborative data meetings and to allow us to move personnel to have really intensified instruction for students grouped around specific needs.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

For some years, our district has been working on building teachers’ ability to use high-impact instructional strategies, but often we were using them with instructional materials that were below grade level. The gaps between student groups continued to widen even as we got better at using the strategies! Then in 2018 we went to the Standards Institute, where we realized that we needed a scope and sequence that was the same across the district so that we could ensure all students were getting high-quality instruction at grade level every day. The other big driver we identified was the need for a phonics approach that went beyond the Orton Gillingham interventions we were using. We needed all of our kids to get phonics, and to get vocabulary, and to have access to materials that were culturally relevant and knowledge building. We were looking for the whole package, and we found it in EL Education Language Arts.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? How did leaders’ mindset change?

The first nine weeks were really difficult. It took time for us to understand where the instructional strategies we’d learned lived in the curriculum and why the lessons were so detailed. The real shift came with student writing, because teachers saw that student work products were so much better than they had ever been. They realized that the slow and meticulous building of knowledge and skills in the lessons had enabled students to make connections to their own lives and to want to advocate for their own communities, and then to be able to write it down. 

At first some teachers said “this is too hard. The text is too hard for my students to read. The task is too hard.” Or they pushed back on reading aloud to fifth graders. But when they carefully followed the detailed lessons, teachers discovered that students, even students who were pulled out of ELA previously, were able to discuss with amazing insight the people and the experiences and the issues they were reading about. They were able to make connections to their own challenges and hardships. They were rereading the text to find information and using evidence in their discussion. When we started to hear these stories, we invited some of the teachers to share their experiences in a video that we could share with others. That’s when teachers’ mindsets really changed to embracing the idea that all kids can do the work and that they themselves could do the hard work of learning the curriculum so their kids could succeed.

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

This curriculum has really leveled the playing field. Students who normally would have been pulled out of the classroom for different instruction are able to participate in grade-level work because the supports for them are built right into the curriculum. We don’t have all the data yet, but we can see that we didn’t lose as much ground during the pandemic as other districts in Iowa, even the suburbs which outscore us all the time. The other data point we’ve noted is that students are participating more, putting their heads down on the desk less. That’s a real win, and we know that an engaging curriculum will pay off down the line in performance as well, because students like what they are reading and learning.

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? What would you do differently if you could do it over?

If we did it over again, we would make sure that all of our teachers got the advanced PD with EL so that they would have really solid professional learning around the curriculum and experience unpacking the lessons prior to them ever digging into the materials. We would also ensure that we had a couple more touch points with teachers in that first semester. As it is, we just sort of jumped in with implementation and we had to backpedal some and fill in gaps to reach all of our teachers. So what we learned is that you’ll be much more successful if you give teachers the time and learning up-front before you expect them to use new materials in the classroom.

Can you share one exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?

We really strive to empower our building leaders to make instructional decisions appropriate for their setting. We’ve been very intentional about supporting them with the full suite of PD, including academic vocabulary and foundational skills, that the teachers get and also differentiating our support so that when leaders take the learning back to their teachers they can do so in a way that fits into their unique implementation needs either in PLCs or school-directed days. Also, our coordinators in math and literacy have monthly touch points with leaders and support them with solving questions that come up, for example, “What would a tier two response in their curriculum look like?”

Finally, we do regular walkthroughs with leaders as partners, not as evaluators. ​​The principals and the district leaders look at the implementation indicators from the walkthroughs and the student outcome data side-by-side, and that really helps us to analyze what we can do better and what’s really working. Building leaders feel like they are growing right alongside their teachers and we’re all motivated by supporting the students to succeed.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt a new literacy curriculum? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

First we knew it was time. We had been with our then existing  reading program, throughout its many iterations, for over 20 years. Bute looked at the data and saw that, while overall our kids had done really well, our subpopulations—our special education and our African-American populations—weren’t faring as well. 

I was an elementary school principal and before that I had been a reading specialist and a second and third grade teacher. I knew the research, which shows that kids who can read on grade level by third grade will likely be successful and that those who don’t will struggle throughout their school career. We also wanted our kids to read books by authors that represent them, Black and brown authors of books where the main characters looked like our students. I knew this would be an important part of changing the culture of reading in our schools. ARC Core has a strong focus on that culture, and I knew that if our teachers had the best tools in their hands they could teach all kids to love reading. 

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? How did leaders’ mindset change? 

ARC Core is more of a framework than a script. It affords teachers some creativity to make choices about texts and lessons. For example, in third grade we use the weather research lab during our ELA block. To engage the students, teachers on the team dressed in weather themed outfits accessorized with rain boots and other gear. They invited local “weather” celebrities into their classrooms to help with the research and even zoomed in with a parent who was stationed in Antarctica. Their creativity inspired students to take on the role of scientists and investigate the evidence about weather.

The big shift for teachers is instruction. Teachers had to give up some authority and put it back on kids to do the thinking work. They had to invest time in teaching students how to learn and talk about their learning. Also, at the same time as we implemented ARC Core, we also implemented standards-based grading pre-K-5, which is a much better fit for the curriculum than the way we were doing things. It was a lot of change, but it meant that teachers could really see the growth from this new way of teaching. Both changes—teaching the curriculum and standards-based grading—were supported by ongoing and job-embedded professional development from American Reading Company. They were real partners in our learning, providing individualized and differentiated support. Last year one of the vice presidents of ARC zoomed into a fifth-grade classroom once a week and gave feedback to the teacher so that she could be sure the curriculum was really serving her students in the best way possible.

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

It’s hard to measure results quantitatively because we didn’t get standardized test data from 2020. I was actually looking forward to those results because I know that we’ve done a lot of work and I think the data would show that we’ve begun to close the gaps! Formatively and anecdotally, we see that kids made at least a year’s growth in reading, even in our sub populations. If I had to attribute that to what teachers are doing differently, I would say it’s because they have really created a strong culture of reading in their classrooms, a place where students love to read and to learn. I witnessed a kindergarten class that was having a full-blown debate on whether a slug is an amphibian or not, a truly evidence-based conversation based on their reading. When students take ownership of their learning like that, they are engaged and they want to succeed.

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? What would you do differently if you could do it over? 

After a successful implementation at the elementary level, we expanded our implementation into middle school. Unfortunately we did that during the pandemic year, in 2020-21, when our middle schools were using a hybrid model—two days in-person, three days virtual. On top of that, we don’t use standards-based grading in the middle school, so there’s a disconnect between the way the assessments work in the curriculum and what teachers have to do to report a grade. In hindsight, I would have waited a year until kids were in person/in classrooms every day. That would at least have taken away one big learning piece for teachers so that they could just focus on new instructional routines and content. 

Can you share one exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?

One thing we’ve done is get the building administrators involved directly with the students, taking on the role of teacher themselves so that principals know who their kids are and who’s struggling. 

When we look at reader engagement, we’re asking three questions: 1) How well is this student reading (which you see through conferencing)? 2) How much is this student reading? And 3) Is this student growing? If a student isn’t reading enough to make growth, a principal or vice principal can pull them for 15 minutes to get in those extra minutes of practice. Those few minutes of conversation about books can turn the corner for a resistant reader and really get them excited about reading. 

We also make sure that the reading specialist is working with that child, so we can triangulate between principal, specialist, and teacher, each taking a part and supporting the other. Our students can’t miss the commitment adults in their school have to their reading success and it has made a world of difference in the love they have found for reading.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt new curricula? How did you hope the curriculum you chose would help you address it?

If you look back to 2015, our students across subgroups were performing among the worst in the state—single digit proficiency in some grade levels in mathematics and literacy proficiency well below state averages. 

To address it, starting in about 2016, we focused on just achieving consistency in structures and routines, which by themselves brought our scores up considerably. Still, at that time, teachers were building out their own curriculum with lessons from various resources, which is really challenging. It’s hard to write the music and sing the songs! Not everyone is Paul McCartney, and it isn’t really fair to ask of teachers that they be both composer and performer. Their results were varied and inconsistent.

So we started talking about high-quality curriculum in both literacy and math that would allow everyone, new teachers and veteran teachers, to walk in and have a firm ground to stand on, one that is based on the winning combination of knowledge building, clear structures, and effective routines. We’re very happy with the results. Our average growth across grade levels in Math and ELA from 2015 – 2019 was 18%!

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? How did leaders’ mindset change? 

Let’s talk about that in terms of math. Between 2015 and 2018, we did about 3000 instructional walkthroughs across the district. What we wanted to see was students engaging in productive struggle and teachers using a problem-based instructional approach. But what we saw was that 80-85% of the time, students were just doing repetitive, algorithm-based practice problems, which resulted in less rigor and low student engagement. 

So we presented that data to teachers alongside the Illustrative Math curriculum. What teachers immediately recognized is how, by the time students would have to solve a real-world math problem, they would have had the conceptual understanding and the math vocabulary and many opportunities to explore those ideas and apply them to a variety of problems. Right away after starting with Illustrative Math, the middle school started seeing dramatic success. We went from 20% proficiency in eighth grade in 2015 to 58%, outscoring the entire state, in 2019. 

In elementary school, the shift in mindset was a little different. Our teachers love their students so much and want badly to see them succeed. This, coupled with the challenging task of supporting struggling subgroups of students, often led to over-scaffolding. They were committed to piloting the curriculum because they saw how it worked in middle school, but they also had to really trust the process and wait for results. 

The same has been true for elementary school teachers with regard to literacy. Bookworms sets up a really fierce pace, building up foundational phonics skills, grappling with authentic texts, and demonstrating comprehension through evidence-based thinking. It was very hard at first, but teachers started seeing students’ language decoding skills develop earlier and earlier. Before long we were able to drop our big intervention programs for non-readers in first and second grade and just have a few small-group pull outs for high-dosage tutoring. Our teachers were convinced by results and feel proud to have been part of the pilot that led to those results.

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

The biggest equity move you can make is implementing high-quality instructional materials, which give every single student the opportunity to build knowledge. The most impactful factor in implementing a new curriculum is how much your leadership leans into it and how much they’re willing to learn the curriculum themselves, including the structures, routines, and content of daily instruction in both math and ELA. They have to go into the classrooms alongside the coaches and see it for themselves. What they saw in our classrooms is that kids have a hunger to just know stuff about the world. Even at the lunch table, kids would talk about what they learned in a Bookworms text, like, ‘Hey, did you know human fingernails keep growing even when you’re dead?’  That’s a compelling topic for a seven-year-old! 

The other thing that is driving equity in our community is the content of the texts themselves and the discussions kids are having around them. This was a challenge at first because our rural district is not without its racial struggles and talking about those issues initially made some teachers uncomfortable. For example, in fourth grade the Bookworms curriculum includes the book Steal Away Home by Lois Ruby, a story about a girl who finds a skeleton in the wall of her home, which used to be a station on the Underground Railroad during the time of slavery. Because the book raises difficult racial justice questions for nine year olds, a lot of districts chose to replace it. But we didn’t do that. We chose to stay where it’s a little uncomfortable and we brought in the University of Delaware as partners to help us learn how to talk about those issues with our kids. We believe that content like this that really reflects our entire community will help us achieve equity over time because it’s content that engages and empowers all students. 

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? What would you do differently if you could do it over?

I know that every year kids don’t have access to high-quality materials affects their long-term outcomes. That makes me want to implement our curricula as quickly as possible, even in a pandemic year. So, if I could do something differently, when people are upset because it’s not what they are used to, I would try to figure out what is valuable in their feedback and how we can make the experience better for them. Opening lines of communication and really listening is key. Especially with our veteran teachers who have been doing a good job for a long time, I would have created a regular feedback committee involving those teachers so that the things they maybe said only to their coach would have come all the way up to me. We did this a bit better in our Illustrative Math Alpha/Beta pilot in the elementary schools and the great feedback from our teachers really informed the final version of that curriculum, which is something we’re pretty proud about.  

Can you share one exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?

I have come to realize that when you’re doing whole group professional development, with teachers sitting in an auditorium while the kids are at home, , it’s really more like a cheerleading event than a learning one.    We try to be a constant support to teachers, feeding them a steady diet of feedback through really job-embedded, personalized (curriculum-specific), professional learning. Our professional learning partners, our internal coaches, our instructional leaders participate in weekly PLCs organized by grade level or content area. They regularly go into classrooms to coach teachers or meet with teachers one-on-one. When we do a walkthrough, we give teachers immediate (digital) feedback so that they know we’re here following and supporting them every step of the way. That way teachers feel like they’re growing as much as their students. That’s the secret to true continuous improvement.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt new curricula? How did you hope the curricula you chose would help you address it?

The data showed that our students were last across the state in both reading and math. They weren’t learning, despite the fact that we’d invested a lot of time and money in curricula that were supposed to be Common Core aligned but were not. We invested a lot of time for our teachers and school leaders to really, deeply understand the standards, which revealed that our curricula were not going to meet the needs of either our students or our teachers. That’s when we partnered with Dr. Walpole and her team at the University of Delaware. They helped us unpack the standards and learn about the science of learning and the science of reading, which led us to adopt the curricula we have today.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? How did teachers’ mindset change? How did leaders’ mindset change? 

When we began our curriculum journey, there were some educators who didn’t believe that our students could achieve the rigor of the standards. Some teachers wanted to make things easier for students. We had to work on shifting their mindsets about what students can do, and also what teachers can do, like fit all of the rigorous pieces of this curriculum into the school year and the school day. When teachers saw how the standards are cyclical, how students could develop knowledge over time with a repetition of skills and routines, then they started to believe. This was true in both reading and math.

In the first year, before we had a lot of data, the quick wins from our short-cycle common assessments really helped us realize that our efforts were working. That really motivated teachers. After the first year when we showed a lot of growth on our state assessments and people from other districts were noticing and wanting to come see what we were doing, that really motivated our leaders too. Once leaders and teachers were all on the same page pulling together, leaders were even stepping into the classroom to teach lessons. Then student results really skyrocketed.

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

We have a very high percentage of English Learners in our district, as high as 25% in some of our schools. When we first started, some teachers were asking “How can I teach these kids who don’t even speak English?”  They basically said, “You need to fix them first, and then bring them to me to teach.”

We worked really hard to help teachers realize that these students are multilingual, and it’s an asset. Then we made another big change, shifting from a pull-out model to a push-in and co-teaching model. For the first time EL teachers joined our professional development, learning right alongside regular classroom teachers.The result was that they all got better at using the curriculum and engaging all kids. In 2014-15 we were on a Title III improvement Plan for our English Learners. But now in some grade levels we’re number one in the state for English Learner performance. 

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? What would you do differently if you could do it over?

We definitely made some missteps during our journey. Thankfully each provided us with an opportunity to learn about the standards, the materials, and ourselves.  Most recently, we committed to middle school Bookworms Reading and Writing.  As expected, the curricular titles Dr. Walpole and her team selected were culturally relevant and thought provoking. However, the teachers were somewhat uneasy because the content was racially sensitive and brought forward topics they were not yet prepared to discuss. When teachers expressed their concerns, we made adjustments to the books and lessons rather than proactively helping teachers figure out how to deliver the lessons as written. What we would do differently today, and will do as we move forward, is provide dedicated training on how to facilitate classroom conversations about race and culture. Furthermore, we will ensure we have access to models and opportunities, with coaching support, for all teachers to lead discussions around sensitive topics in a way that lifts up all voices, builds relationships across races, and encourages everyone to recognize and stand up to race-related injustices.

Can you share one exemplary aspect of your implementation that might be a model for other districts to follow?

One thing we do is use a consultancy model with our external experts at the University of Delaware. For example, despite the differentiated instruction in our foundational reading block, we had some second grade students who just kept cycling through the same set of skills without making progress. Through a consultation with one of the professors at the University of Delaware, one principal came up with the strategy of “double dosing.” Instead of moving that group of second-graders into a Tier 3 intervention, we decided to try a double dose of Tier 2. We accelerated their learning and moved them faster through the skills and up to more challenging work. As a result of that experiment, which totally worked, Bookworms is developing more support for special education and English Learners called Bookworms Intensive (BWI). This partnership with Delaware is special because we are learning together. Anytime they say, “We’ve been rethinking this lesson or this routine in light of this research and would you have a group of teachers who can try this new thing,” we always say, “Yes, we’ll pilot that!” As a result we are constantly learning and growing, deepening our knowledge and refining our practice.

This blog series shares the curriculum implementation journeys of districts across the country, through interviews with each of our squad members.

In your district, what problem or data prompted you to adopt new literacy curricula? How did you hope the curricula you chose would help you address it?

Our District Performance Scores had not grown in five years before we started on this journey. We needed to address that along with the vast array of curricula being used across the district. We only looked at tier one curricula. CKLA made sense for us in the early grades because our teachers had already been using the Skills Strand and it was familiar. What we added was the Listening and Learning Strand, which is the knowledge piece. For 3-8, we chose Guidebooks because it’s a Louisiana, Tier 1 product. We believe in the way it was built, and we also believe in the way it’s continuing to evolve and grow in order to better support and prepare students to meet grade level expectations.

What shifts in mindset were necessary for a successful implementation? 

Initially, it may have felt to some of our teachers that we were taking away autonomy. The shift for them was in realizing that what might seem like a scripted curriculum is really a resource, and you have to have the best resource in front of students. The “scripted” model can be a great support and access point for new teachers.

Secondly, we have come to realize that teachers are yearning for more support in content and pedagogy to be effective with the curriculum. We focus hard on deconstructing the standards and learning content, planning quality assessments to meet them, building teachers’ pedagogical moves, and building teachers’ knowledge base so that they can build students’ knowledge base. Content drives curriculum, and they work together.

Finally, our district has seen great change in leadership and materials over the last few decades. We have really underscored shared leadership: We invested in our leaders learning right alongside our teacher leaders, getting everyone on board with content, pedagogy, and curriculum that actually impacts student achievement and the structures to support schools. In SY 18-19, we had 78 teachers wanting to become teacher leaders, and now we have over 500! 

How is this curriculum work driving greater equity in your district? What are teachers, leaders, and students doing differently to achieve a better outcome?

We have a highly diverse student population—38% Hispanic, 31% African American, and 25% White. Even in the wake of COVID, we are seeing proficiency gains in our ELL and SPED populations. I think the reason is the increased level of engagement inspired by the curricula we’re using. Our kids enjoy working with these texts, even though they’re challenging. Even our students with disabilities can access them, receive appropriate support that still retains rigor, and communicate about the topic. Recently, I visited a class where the teacher does Flashlight Fridays with tents set up in her classroom and students have their own flashlights. They just find a place and read from novels they love.They don’t check out and they are able to grow and get results.The entire class is still rooted in Tier 1, with activities and centers to support growth for all students.

What missteps did you make along the way that others can learn from? 

The initial implementation was really hard because it was just an overload. We weren’t prepared for such a learning curve. We could have been better in letting teachers know it was okay to struggle and that, with time, they would grow and ultimately achieve life-altering instruction. We didn’t yet have the capacity at the district level to support 300+ teachers! But now, through our shared leadership model, we’ve built an army of leaders who are systematically building expertise in content and curriculum, and the skills to coach and support the work. It’s a powerful force that can build shared efficacy and has helped to implement our curricula with fidelity and integrity, not just compliance.

What is one exemplary aspect of your implementation that other districts would be wise to follow?

Adaptability. Adaptability. Adaptability. Our teacher leaders embody what it means to be a change agent. They have mastered the curriculum and implemented it successfully in their classrooms. The secret to our shared leadership and a 95%+ retention in teacher leader roles is that we have so many levels and types of leaders all working toward the same goal. We have about 170 Teacher Leader Fellows (TLF) who go through coaching cycles, monitor, evaluate, adjust, and consistently support teachers through the implementation process. Then we have Content Leader Fellows (CLF) who lead PD for the district and for new teachers, differentiating for varying levels of content and curriculum knowledge. They are also part of the school’s instructional leadership team. In addition we have ELL coaches in a majority of our schools and also mentor teachers with more defined responsibilities. Finally, we have master teachers who are not full-time classroom teachers but are in classrooms 80% of the day engaged in field testing, coaching, modeling, co-teaching, and analyzing data but are not full-time classroom teachers. They also plan cluster meetings, centered around content and curriculum using student work to drive decision-making. So, we’ve built a pipeline that takes you from mentoring instruction to mentoring content and to coaching and to data analysis. What we’ve seen is that people who invest in the options available to them are now becoming our assistant principals and principals. That’s something I’m really proud of!