We are proud to bring our voices to the pages of Education Week with our recent editorial, We Have a National Reading Crisis.

It published on March 7th. Two weeks later, it’s still flying around Twitter and it remains the most-emailed story on EdWeek, so we believe we aren’t alone in thinking that these messages are important.

We thought we’d take a moment to share one piece of inspiration for the piece. It was this tweet:

I am very disappointed in @MindShiftKQED promoting this article. There are so many issues with the lack of research in @npr putting out this story as mentioned by so many here. Plus, no one is going to be the Chief of Academics without understanding how children learn to read.

— Chad Hyatt (@PDin140orLESS) January 5, 2019

We think Chad speaks for many when he says, “no one is going to be the Chief of Academics without understanding how children learn to read.” Earlier in our careers, we might have thought the same thing. But as we write: “We each learned critical reading research only after entering district leadership.” This seemed important to say, in order to address perceptions like Chad’s.

Superintendents and district leaders need to know that this can happen. Also, we must bring empathy and support for the educators who realize that they, too, have “unfinished learning” around literacy.

In writing the piece, we took pains to include links to let readers learn more about the national conversation, as well as the research behind our “five essential insights supported by reading research.” Below, we added a few additional links within the body of the piece which may interest readers seeking to learn more.

We would also encourage educators to explore our curation of Resources for more information on everything in this piece – from key reading research to resources for selecting curriculum that aligns with the research.

We plan to keep writing – here on this blog and hopefully again in education publications. Our Suggestion Box is open if there is something you want to discuss or hear about.

Thank you to all who have read and shared our editorial. Let’s keep the national conversation going.

– Jared Myracle, Brian Kingsley, and Robin McClellan

We Have a National Reading Crisis

ByJared Myracle, Brian Kingsley, & Robin McClellan

If your district isn’t having an “uh oh” moment around reading instruction, it probably should be. Educators across the country are experiencing a collective awakening about literacy instruction, thanks to a recent tsunami of national media attention. Alarm bells are ringing—as they should be—because we’ve gotten some big things wrong: Research has documented what works to get kids to read, yet those evidence-based reading practices appear to be missing from most classrooms. 

Systemic failures have left educators overwhelmingly unaware of the research on how kids learn to read. Many teacher-preparation programs lack effective reading training, something educators rightly lament once they get to the classroom. On personal blogs and social media, teachers often write of learning essential reading research years into their careers, with powerful expressions of dismay and betrayal that they weren’t taught sooner. Others express anger. 

The lack of knowledge about the science of reading doesn’t just affect teachers. It’s perfectly possible to become a principal or even a district curriculum leader without first learning the key research. In fact, this was true for us. If not for those unplanned learning experiences, we’d probably still be ignorant about how kids learn to read.

We each learned critical reading research only after entering district leadership. Jared learned during school improvement work for a nonprofit, while between district leadership positions. When already a district leader, Brian learned from reading specialists when his district received grant-funded literacy support. Robin learned in her fourth year as a district leader, while doing research to prepare for a curriculum adoption.

Understanding the research has been crucial to our ability to lead districts to improved reading outcomes. Yet each of us could easily have missed out on that critical professional learning. If not for those unplanned learning experiences, we’d probably still be ignorant about how kids learn to read.

There’s no finishing school for chief academic officers, nor is there certification on literacy know-how for district and school leaders. Literacy experts have been recommending the same research-based approaches since the 2000 National Reading Panel report, yet there still aren’t systemic mechanisms for ensuring this information reaches the educators who set instructional directions and professional-development agendas. Why should we be surprised to find pervasive misunderstandings?

Here are five essential insights supported by reading research that educators should know—but all too often don’t: 

• Grouping students by reading level is poorly supported by research, yet pervasive. For example, 9 out of 10 U.S. 15-year-olds attend schools that use the practice. 
• Many teachers overspend instructional time on “skills and strategies” instruction, an emphasis that offers diminishing returns for student learning, according to a Learning First and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy reportthis year. 
• Students’ background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension. Curricula should help students build content knowledge in history and science, in order to empower reading success. 
• Daily, systematic phonics instruction in early gradesis recommended by the National Institute for Literacy, based on extensive evidence from the National Reading Panel. 
• Proven strategiesfor getting all kids—including English-language learners, students with IEPs, and struggling readers—working with grade-level texts must be employed to ensure equitable literacy work. 

Educator friends, if any of these statements make you scratch your head, you probably have some unfinished learning.

Educators urgently need a national movement for professional learning about reading. We should declare a No Shame Zone for this work—to make it safe for all educators to say, “I have unfinished learning around literacy.”

Superintendents should ask their literacy leaders if research insights are understood and implemented in their classrooms. They must be prepared to invest in the unfinished learning of their team, from teachers to cabinet. Surely some educators will defend misguided approaches; we all tend to believe we are doing the right thing, until research shows us otherwise. On this point, we speak from experience. We encourage superintendents to lean into the national conversation about literacy, in order to ask the right questions.

Some may characterize this national dialogue as reopening the “reading wars,” which pitted phonics against whole language. Frankly, we don’t see it. We don’t frequently hear educators in our districts vigorously defending whole language, as such. More often, they’re simply doing what they believe to work, without knowing better. Instead, we primarily face a battle against misunderstanding and lack of awareness.

For example, some express fears that phonics instruction comes at the expense of students engaging with rich texts, yet every good curriculum we know incorporates strong foundational skills anddaily work with high-quality texts. The National Reading Panel got it right: Literacy work is a both/and, not either/or.

The battle against misunderstanding can be won by pairing professional learning with improved curriculum. Quality curriculum that is tailor-built to the research makes good practice tangible and achievable for teachers. Professional development around implementation of such high-quality curriculum is where it all comes together: Teachers are given the whatto use, and professional learning explains the whyand the howof those materials.

Districts today have many choices among research-aligned, excellent curricula, which was not the case even two years ago. These new curriculum options may be the catalyst we need to improve reading instruction. In each of our districts, we have implemented one of the newly available curricula that earned the highest possible rating by EdReports, a curriculum review nonprofit. Districtwide reading improvement followed.

The gap between good and mediocre curricula is vast. And district teams need a collective understanding of how kids learn to read before selecting new materials. The advances we have personally seen from high-quality curricula have led us to call for a national professional-learning network around curricula to foster cross-district collaboration.

We dream of the potential for children if we embrace this moment of unfinished learning.

Jared Myracle is the chief academic officer at Jackson-Madison County public schools in Tennessee. Brian Kingsley is the chief academic officer at Charlotte-Mecklenburg public schools in North Carolina. Robin McClellan is the supervisor of curriculum and instruction for elementary schools in Sullivan County public schools in Blountville, Tenn.

There have been seismic shifts in the curriculum landscape in recent years, and increasingly, there’s buzz about this important, exciting development.

Sue Pimentel, lead author of the CCSS in ELA, described it as a “curriculum renaissance” in Education Week. We’ve seen this firsthand in our curriculum & instruction work.

In fact, three of us just wrote about this in Education Week, in a piece about the national reading crisis we perceive:

“Districts today have many choices among research-aligned, excellent curricula, which was not the case even two years ago. These new curriculum options may be the catalyst we need to improve reading instruction. In each of our districts, we have implemented one of the newly available curricula that earned the highest possible rating by EdReports, a curriculum review nonprofit. Districtwide reading improvement followed.”

We had hoped that the “curriculum renaissance” would be a theme at the ASCD conference… after all, it is the only national organization with “curriculum” in its name. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s the case. Flexible seating appears to be getting more session airtime than the curriculum renaissance. It feels like a missed opportunity, and we hope ASCD and other organizations start tuning into this trend.

So, we’re sharing options for how you can get to know the significant changes in the curriculum landscape – both at ASCD’s Empower conference, or from the comfort of your home or office.

From The Comfort of Home

You can:

Watch the recent webinar on the Curriculum Renaissance

Brian Kingsley dropped knowledge in a recent FutureReady webinar, “Selecting Materials in the Age of Curriculum Renaissance.”

Brian and fellow panelist Karen Vaites explained how the curriculum landscape has dramatically changed in recent years, outlining important considerations for school and district leaders.

Join Nebraska’s ELA curriculum webinars

The state of Nebraska is hosting webinars to introduce the highest-quality ELA curricula next week, from March 18-21! Anyone can join, and you can register here.

We understand that recordings will be available, and we’ll update this blog to share links to the recordings when they become available.

Check out our curated curriculum resources

We pulled together our favorite curriculum resources and research insights.

At ASCD Empower 2019

Many of the curricula that earn “all-green” reviews from EdReports and/or Tier 1 reviews from the state of Louisiana are at ASCD in the exhibit hall. Here’s where to find them:

ELA

EL Education K–5 Language Arts – all-green on EdReports in grades K–5 and rated Tier 1 by Louisiana Believes: Booth 1217

Core Knowledge Language Arts (aka Amplify CKLA) – all-green on EdReports in grades K–2 and rated Tier 1 by Louisiana Believes in grades K–5: Booth 1737

Amplify ELA – all-green on EdReports in grades 6–8: Booth 1737

Wit and Wisdom – rated Tier 1 by Louisiana Believes in grades K–8: Booth 1417

Math

Open Up Resources 6–8 Math – all-green on EdReports in grades 6–8 and rated Tier 1 by Louisiana Believes: Booth 1217

Eureka Math – all-green on EdReports in grades K–5 and rated Tier 1 by Louisiana Believes: Booth 1417

Ready Math – all-green on EdReports in grades K-8: Booth 1831

Bridges in Mathematics – all-green on EdReports in grades K–5: Booth 1811

Into Math Florida – all-green on EdReports in grades 6-8: Booth 1561

Science

Yes, friends, EdReports does science reviews now!

Amplify Science – all-green on EdReports in grades 6–8: Booth 1737

We may have missed a few; please Tweet at us at if we should add any!

Many of us have been sharing outcomes from our work with high-quality curriculum. We spy a trend: districts that have invested in high-quality curriculum in early elementary are seeing gains, especially in K–2. Our hunch is that much credit for these gains goes to the strong foundational skills instruction by our teachers, thanks to use of strong curriculum.

Certainly, a buzz has been building around the importance of phonics instruction, thanks to a “tsunami” of articles about the importance of phonics.

We periodically hear fears about phonics instruction that don’t reflect the realities in our classrooms. Katie McGhee, a first grade teacher in Sullivan County Schools, captured the fears and the realities beautifully in a blog, and we’re pleased to share her insights.

Guest Post by Katie McGhee:

Just the other day, my first graders knocked my socks off with a conversation.

Our district has implemented a curriculum with daily, systematic phonics work, as recommended by experts like Tim Shanahan. On one particular day, we were discussing words with r-controlled vowels. I wrote the word thorn on the board. The children segmented the word into its three sounds: /th/ /or/ /n/. They talked to one another about their noticings, and then I wrote the word north on the  board. This is when the beauty of student understanding and discussion bloomed! The room erupted with observations like:

“OH!!! North and thorn are similar because the initial and final sounds are the same, just swapped!”

“Yes! You just flipped the /n/ and /th/ sounds in the words!”

“Hey, they both have the same vowel sound!”

“I see five letters in each word, but they’ve just got three sounds.”

“Yeah, that’s because both words have two digraphs!”
“Oh you’re right! But just one is a consonant digraph!”

“Both words have one syllable too, because they both only have one vowel sound.”

This was a discussion among six year olds – young children eager and excited about phonics code! Our youngest learners built upon one another’s observations and pushed themselves to deep thinking simply by analyzing and comparing two words. Explicit, systematic phonics instruction works, my friends! And conversations like this happen every. day. as the students learn the code of our English language. But the literacy love doesn’t stop there.

Our daily read alouds are often interrupted by excited observations, as the students connect the phonics rules they’ve learned with words they hear spoken orally as I read. They are eager to share the words they find in their own independent reading that include code we’ve discussed. They give feedback to one another as they apply their code knowledge to their writing.

And there is nothing that will make your teacher heart swell more than a child rushing back from the library shouting, “Look at this book I can read! I know how to decode these words, and I can read this whole book BY MYSELF!”  Young children not only thrilled about phonics code but also eager to apply it themselves? Yes, please!

Sometimes phonics instruction is referred to as the enemy of building a love for reading… as if phonics instruction detracts from time students spend working with texts, or as if it turns kids off from reading. This is not the case at all. Daily, I get to watch students having too much fun cracking the code of the English language for anyone to think they have been turned off by the work.

Here’s a video glimpse of the kind of engagement this instruction and understanding brings each day:

Prior to the video, we had been discussing the fact that the number of vowel sounds in a word is indicative of the number of syllables in the word. This student is excitedly explaining to his classmates why the word south has only one syllable even though it has two vowels. He beautifully relays that while there are, in fact, two vowels in the word, the vowels comprise a digraph, meaning only one sound is produced. The video stops there, but the discussion didn’t! He and his classmates then started shouting out other one-syllable words with vowel digraphs. They excitedly strengthened their reading muscles while leading the learning themselves!

Phonics work builds independent, confident readers. Equipping students with tools to approach unknown words – and confidence that they can do so independently – is one of the greatest gifts we can give our young readers.

But foundational skills work is hardly the only aspect of effective reading instruction! In my classroom, students are also spending time listening to high-level read alouds, discussing the text(s) with their peers, formulating their own questions, AND being given time for independent reading and writing. This is why strong curriculum is so important: the students are getting a balanced diet of reading, writing, speaking, and listening – all while fueling their love for reading!

Providing explicit, systematic phonics instruction and fostering a love for reading are not two mutually-exclusive concepts. Instead, the two go hand-in-hand, providing students with the tools they need to be successful, confident readers! Give the students the building blocks they need and watch as they construct amazing towers.

Katie McGhee is a first grade teacher in Sullivan County Schools in Tennessee.

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A PostScript from Robin McClellan:

Katie’s story is a case study in how curriculum supports great teaching and learning:

• Our teachers have excellent instructional materials for systematic phonics work, based on a well-planned scope and sequence, thanks to our curriculum (Core Knowledge Language Arts, which is available from Amplify and also as a free Open Educational Resource).  
• That same curriculum helps us ensure the ‘balanced diet’ that Katie references: foundational skills as well as text-based work that strategically builds background knowledge, as well as writing. It helps our teachers confidently cover our bases, and it lets me know that this is happening across classrooms in eleven elementary schools.

In Sullivan County Schools, we are giving healthy amounts of time to all of the essential pillars of early literacy. Anyone who fears that phonics instruction is somehow going to erode other reading essentials hasn’t been in a district using high-quality curriculum.

Robin McClellan serves as the Elementary Supervisor in Sullivan County Schools in Tennessee.

We’ve had fun following the #CurriculumMatters hashtag in the last month. We always love seeing the passion that educators have for their work with high-quality curriculum, from the teacher time savings to the glimpses of excellent student work.

But recently, all in the space of a few weeks, a series of outcome stories emerged that arguably tell the story of the “curriculum renaissance” as well as anything that we could share.

After seeing enthusiastic response to tweets about these stories, we’ve pulled them into a quick blog, for our friends beyond the Twitterverse. These outcomes stories cross eight different curricula and nine districts… a powerful testament to the effectiveness of high-quality curriculum.

Sullivan County’s Elementary ELA Gains

Sullivan County Schools (TN) announced “historic” gains in elementary reading, and the Bristol Herald Courier featured the news.

What was especially exciting: the district saw gains districtwide… in all eleven schools… and with both at-risk and high-performing students!

Sullivan County moved kids out of Tier II and III and into Tier I in every grade, with the strongest gains in early elementary:

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Jackson-Madison’s Elementary ELA Gains

Jackson-Madison County Schools (TN) also announced gains in elementary outcomes. They issued a press release focused on kindergarten outcomes:

These numbers are unreal… This is what happens when you combine effective teaching with solid curriculum. We have a lot of great little readers in @JMCSchools! Our new phonics curriculum (CKLA) is vital to building reading abilities. #TrustTheProcess https://t.co/vwYtI1RvIu pic.twitter.com/gSdzbIhY8f

— Jared Myracle (@JaredMyracle) January 25, 2019

Because the district has made a number of announcements about student gains in recent months, the Jackson Sun reported on the overall “significant impact” from new curriculum for math and ELA, grades K–12. Best of all, the gains were apparent in the very first year of implementation.

The highlights were really something else, and they were cheered in social media:

In @JMCSchools #CurriculumMatters because "students at one school shouldn’t be learning differently than students at other schools" says chief academic officer @JaredMyracle. See some of their impressive gains below and read more here: https://t.co/oCRrCAWL1W pic.twitter.com/l0LI7obI9C

— Courtney Bell (@CourtneyLearns) January 28, 2019

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Upper Point Coupee’s Elementary ELA Gains

Upper Point Coupee Elementary (LA) shared its early elementary gains with The Advocate. We loved reading this:

“School district personal development coach Molly Talbot said early data from halfway through the school year shows that the K-2 grades are almost to the reading level target set for the end of the year. One kindergarten class, for example, has moved from 21 percent reading proficiency in October to 73 percent proficiency in February.”

https://twitter.com/msfav12/status/1097167015335415808

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Additional Stories of ELA Gains

Brian Pick from DC Public Schools joined the conversation, talking about his district’s gains from implementing research-aligned curriculum:

Bravo @JMCSchools. @dcpublicschools saw similar gains in DIBELS & reading comprehension across subgroups when more schools transitioned to an explicit, systematic phonics program & knowledge-based units of study. Growth has continued since. #CurriculumMatters #TeachThe44Sounds pic.twitter.com/gK1zYfhcrS

— Brian J. Pick (@brianjpick) January 25, 2019

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It reminded us of the stories Brian Kingsley has shared about the outcomes in Wake County (NC) in the first year of new ELA curriculum:

What’s super exciting is that @wcpss, ALL subgroups in 3rd grade made the most progress (Beginning of Grade Assessment to EOG Assessment) last year (17-18) compared to the last three years. That’s after only one year of amazing teachers implementing @ELeducation w/integrity.👊🏻😎

— Brian G. Kingsley (@edukings) November 2, 2018

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It all mirrored other curriculum-fueled outcome stories that we heard this autumn, such as the gains in Juab School District (UT):

.@juabwasp1 just MADE MY #DPLIS by pulling up @juabsd’s state testing outcomes.

In their first year using the @ELeducation K–5 Language Arts curriculum, overall proficiency & growth in ELA were both up significantly!!! #WOOT 💪🏽🧡@openupresources #WeAreCrew #CurriculumMatters pic.twitter.com/OHnJachHf0

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) October 12, 2018

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On top of it all, this recent blog from Achieve The Core makes us excited about the very newest ELA curricula coming to K–12:

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Math Curriculum Was Also In the Mix

Brooke Powers shared the state testing outcomes at Beaumont Middle School (KY) from new math curriculum; nothing excites us more than seeing an achievement gap narrowed!

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We also loved seeing amazing formative assessment indicators from Morgan Stipe:

Well, I’m going to call it a great day! #mtbos #iteachmath #openupmath #LearnwithIM pic.twitter.com/Z67puV8elk

— Morgan Stipe (@mrsstipemath) January 10, 2019

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We probably don’t talk enough about the formative indicators that regularly show us that curriculum is improving teaching and learning in our schools. The student work samples and stories from our teachers motivate us daily. Perhaps that’ll be our next blog!

For certain, we’re motivated by a lot more than assessment outcomes. But we won’t lie – these stories are pretty exciting, too, and they persuade us that we are on the right track as we make high-quality curriculum the cornerstone of our efforts to elevate teaching & learning.

In Daviess County Public Schools, we think about curriculum as the combination of your standards, your resources, and your pedagogy. I know that’s not everyone’s definition… some folks hear curriculum and think “content” while others still seem to confuse curriculum with standards. One of the major problems in public education is that we aren’t always clearly defining what we are talking about – and curriculum is truly a case in point.

I’d like to challenge us to redefine curriculum, as part of a national conversation. It’s time to put the “instruction” back in “curriculum & instruction.”

Let’s stop having separate conversations about what we teach and how we teach it, and respect the power of curriculum to connect and elevate teaching and learning – especially when we get implementation right.

Where do schools sometimes stumble today? Well, you can impair your curriculum & instruction efforts when you believe teachers can find their own resources: they’ll spend so much precious time digging up resources that pedagogy loses focus. Studies show that teachers spend 7 hours a week scouring the internet for materials. That’s basically a school day! When do they get to focus on pedagogy, and on individual students, and the cues from student work?

You can wreck a fantastic curriculum by using it the wrong way. For example, if you take rich lessons designed for students to deeply grapple with texts, and translate those lessons into worksheet packets, you’ll substitute skill and drill for students where discourse, writing, and thinking were intended. I’ve seen these mistakes made firsthand.

Getting curriculum selection right is only part of the battle; below, I’m sharing a piece that I wrote for NASSP magazine, because it captures my advice on curriculum evaluation. Yet I know that the most important parts of that piece, and this work, are the implementation details. I hope our PLN will focus there.

A conversation around curriculum seems especially timely, with growing national concerns about issues with research-aligned literacy practice, and with new potential offered by the truly quality materials that characterize the ‘curriculum renaissance.’

I hope that educators in my district and in districts across the country will join our PLN (or consider co-piloting this work!), so we can connect across districts about ways to make our teachers and students more successful.

– Jana Beth Francis

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Navigating Curriculum Selection to Maximize Improvement

Any time a school or district embarks on the selection and use of a new curriculum, leaders should take the opportunity to move the instructional excellence needle forward. In Daviess County Public Schools in Kentucky, we think about curriculum as the combination of your standards, your resources, and your pedagogy. In the past, our curriculum adoptions would focus heavily on the resources. For instance, in English language arts we would ask: Did teachers like the story selections? Did the curriculum provide both a digital and print option?

But while resources are critical, you must focus on standards and pedagogy to ensure you improve instructional excellence.

When you have a curriculum clearly linked to your educational standards, all students have an opportunity to reach academic success. Years ago, curriculum adoption teams in the district would check for standards alignment. However, there was no real protocol for doing that, and often the “flashy” resources won out. Today, with independent reviews available (check out www.edreports.org), educators have a way to verify whether a curriculum connects to college- and career-ready standards.

If a school or district allows teachers to make individual resource selections, there may not be a check on standards. Teachers often spend all their time looking for resources and activities. Any remaining time they have can be so limited that important conversations about pedagogy can get pushed to the side.

Without a universal curriculum across a school or district, leaders struggle to move the needle of instructional excellence forward. So, how do you go about selecting and using a new curriculum? If done correctly, each step of the selection process will serve as a driver of transformational change, resulting in improved student outcomes.

Do Your Homework

In order get buy-in from all stakeholders on a new curriculum, principals and system leaders need focused goals. In the spring of 2016, my district team started researching various English language arts curricula. We had two main goals when looking for a new curriculum, and we worked to make sure all members of the team could articulate the importance of these goals.

First, any curriculum selected had to have complex text—high readability along with challenging and engaging content—with equal weight given to nonfiction and fiction. Our professional learning the previous year had focused on key instructional shifts in English language arts—complex text, student work grounded in evidence from the text, and a build of knowledge.

School after school had followed up with our district literacy coach for more training on how to determine whether a text was complex. During our learning walks, where the school leadership team and district leadership team observe teaching and learning, principals would leave a classroom commenting on the complexity of the text. This focus on complexity in our professional learning was no longer just theoretical.

The second goal was to find a curriculum that built student knowledge. Unlike text complexity, the notion of building student knowledge was harder for some educators to grasp. For years, the focus on reading was simply building comprehension skills. The idea that students should be building knowledge while mastering the complex task of reading wasn’t emphasized.

In Daviess County, two curricula surfaced as potentials based on our goals—EL Education’s language arts curriculum (https://curriculum.eleducation.org) and Wit & Wisdom, developed by Great Minds (https://greatminds.org/english). Both curricula scored high on EdReports.org in the area of text complexity as well as building student knowledge.

Creating a Transparent Adoption Cycle

Daviess County Public Schools has a tradition of piloting innovations. With this round of curriculum adoption, we encouraged one or two teachers to field-test a unit during October and November. The district purchased or pulled together enough copies of the primary texts for both of our leading curricula so the pilot teachers would have the resources needed. I saw this as a no-lose option because in the end I was just putting multiple copies of high-quality books in our schools.

The district literacy coach and the building instructional coach increased their level of support. Collaborative planning was key. The curricula used protocols that were new to some teachers. Collaborative planning provided an opportunity to understand how lessons fit together. The district provided teacher release time to allow for deep dives into the curriculum, with a focus on student work. The district literacy coach and building instructional coach modeled or team-taught lessons with the pilot teachers. Having more than one adult in the room during lessons provided insight during review of the new curriculum.

During the pilot, the district also provided release time for all language arts teachers in the building to visit the pilot classrooms and hear from the pilot teachers. These meetings were led by the district literacy coach. As a school or system leader, it is sometimes best to let your teacher leaders spearhead this type of conversation. We needed a high level of honesty, and we got it. One language arts teacher expressed concern about actually getting support for implementing the program. Another teacher was honest about the challenges she felt some students would have reading the text. With the leader trusting the coach, teachers opened up.

After the pilot of both programs, the whole team met with the principal and system leaders to discuss which one was the best match. For Daviess County, we selected Wit & Wisdom.

But the piloting didn’t stop with the selection. The principals and system leaders had all language arts teachers teach one unit in April and May. Everyone got to “try on” the new curriculum before fully implementing it the following year.

Planning for Good Implementation

To continue to drive transformational change, curriculum adoption doesn’t stop with the selection of a new curriculum. We want our students to be cognitively engaged, willing and able to take on the learning tasks before them. Our curriculum choice provides for that cognitive engagement when it is implemented well. To help principals lead good implementation, I help them focus on the critical things they will be looking for when visiting classrooms and the essential things they want to hear teachers discuss about the new curriculum.

To do this, I first sit down with my district team and review our goals. What should our language arts classrooms look and sound like when the new curriculum is implemented? We read through the resources and determine the big takeaways. Having had the pilots really pays off at this stage because we have all spent time in the classrooms with principals, and we truly understand the curriculum and how it connects to our district goals.

Next, I focus on professional learning. The goal of the district teaching and learning team is to help teachers learn together in order to solve problems. Often, this means connecting one school with another so the professional conversations between teachers are more powerful. Sometimes it involves looking at innovations in scheduling to create more time for teacher collaboration.

Course Corrections

In the end, the focus on the “why” helps to drive transformational change. When something doesn’t go well, we go back to the why behind the need for a new curriculum, and we focus on student learning before making any changes. The intentional focus on professional conversations throughout the adoption process pays off. As a team, we are then able to discuss possible changes without losing sight of our goal of improved student outcomes. The transparency throughout the adoption process serves us well as we discuss problems that arise and potential solutions. In a sense, we all have the same background knowledge when we have to make a course correction.

Jana Beth Francis is the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for Daviess County Public Schools in Owensboro, KY.

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The piece above was originally published in Principal Leadership, the journal of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

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Curriculum Notes

If you’d like to speak with me about the specific curricula used in my district, they are:

K–5 ELA: We have an even split in the elementary schools between  Wit & Wisdom and EL Education K–5 Language Arts in grades K–5 (both are all-green on EdReports and Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes)

Middle School ELA:  We just started using Wit & Wisdom this school year (all-green on EdReports, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes).  

High School ELA: I’m welcome to any ideas on curricula at the high school.  We are focusing on the “why” curriculum is so important.

K–12 Math: We’re using Eureka Math in grades K–5 (all green on EdReports in grades K–5, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes in K–12) and piloting Open Up Resources 6–8 Math (all-green on EdReports, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes).  The high schools are piloting new resources and looking to start making a transition to new curricula course by course.

In recent years, as I have sought to deeply understand our new standards and put them into practice, I’ve had my eyes opened widely to some serious issues and misunderstandings with the reading instruction in our schools – both in the districts where I served as an educator and in the 15+ districts where I worked as an instructional support provider during my time at D2D, the nonprofit that became Instruction Partners.

My most striking insights came from spending time in classrooms. I used the Instructional Practice Guide (IPG), a superb resource from Achieve the Core that lets you gauge your instructional alignment to the new standards. I’d walk into a classroom and use the tool to compare the instruction I was seeing to the standards targeted by the teacher. In most classrooms, my heart would sink, because the text being taught was grade levels below the students. Or the instruction was geared to an earlier grade’s standard.

As an administrator, it’s easy to become defensive the first time you see this issue. ‘What do you mean my teachers aren’t teaching their grade’s standards?” But after seeing the same thing in many classrooms, that initial defensive reaction succumbs to a harsh reality: teachers haven’t been given the right tools and training to help them raise their day-to-day instruction to the level of our new standards.

Using the IPG in classrooms is a deeply impactful, tangible professional learning experience for school and district leaders. It illuminates the instructional realities so clearly. For me, it generated insights that pushed me to deepen my understanding of literacy and math practice. I started digging deeper into the research.

Recht and Leslie’s ‘baseball study’ was a huge eye-opener, helping me realize that background knowledge is absolutely critical to reading comprehension, then Why Knowledge Matters by E.D. Hirsch cemented that truth as gospel. More learning came from David Liben’s Why a Structured Phonics Program is Effective, as well as a slew of research on the shortcomings of leveled reading.  

In 2017, I took my current position as the Chief Academic Officer in the Jackson-Madison County School System, the district I attended from kindergarten through 12th grade. When I began, I made sure that my entire team did classroom walkthroughs with the IPG in hand, after getting familiar with the research. As I had seen in other districts, most of the instruction we observed was simply not aligned. It left our team downright anxious about implementing a solution: within days of those walkthroughs, and sometimes within hours, the principals and district leaders asked for help in closing our gaps. Our path to new curriculum immediately followed.

I’ve seen it time and again: once you know better, you feel an urgency to do better.

It’s odd to think that a 5th grade math class isn’t teaching 5th grade math, or that a 7th grade English/Language Arts lesson more closely aligns with 5th grade English/Language Arts, but a growing body of research – and my experience across 20 districts – suggest that this is a distinct possibility in a school near you. That likelihood is dramatically higher if your district isn’t implementing aligned curricula at all grade levels. I believe many district leaders are making an important mistaken assumption: that teachers have what they need to align their instruction to the standards.

This mistaken assumption is unfair to teachers. First of all, the newfound focus, coherence, and rigor of the standards shouldn’t rest totally on the shoulders of our teachers. It’s a big lift, and teachers deserve tools and support. School and district leaders bear the responsibility of ensuring the presence of strong curriculum. Secondly, we’re measuring teachers against these new expectations, but too often, we aren’t giving them the tools to get there. It’s not fair to them or their students.

Curriculum is the solution I look to, because it’s the best way to align school and district teams around instructional goals quickly. In my district, we talk a lot about ensuring we have the right “what” and an effective “how,” meaning that we need a strong curriculum and we must teach it effectively. One without the other won’t get you very far. But one of the easiest and most cost-effective boxes a district leader can check is that of ensuring high-quality materials are in every classroom in the district.

That solves the issue of “what” is being taught. Curriculum must then be paired with tailored PD focused on  HOW it is intended to be used. That said, really great curriculum itself is often educative, and embeds professional learning within the materials, so teachers are having new ‘aha’ moments as they teach. Instructional routines and protocols for each lesson and activity offer invaluable cues for important practices, such as fostering rich discourse around texts in ELA, conducting math talks, etc. Lesson planning becomes more about internalizing the content and activities outlined in the curriculum and how to best teach those to the students in a specific class and less about creation of materials. Teachers shouldn’t be expected to write the music, conduct the symphony, and play the instruments all at the same time.

Loads of research says that curriculum is a powerful agent to improve outcomes. I have lived that research in Jackson-Madison County Schools: last year was our first year implementing new curriculum in K–12 ELA and math, and we were one of the fastest-improving districts on the TVAAS index, Tennessee’s value-added assessment system. We credit our curriculum work as playing a significant role in those gains.

I don’t see enough districts appreciating the potential of curriculum. Perhaps that’s because a few years ago, there weren’t many curricula aligned to the new standards. Fortunately, that has changed – education leaders describe a “curriculum renaissance.” I’ve seen that firsthand: all four curricula that we adopted in Jackson-Madison County became available in the last few years. If you haven’t looked at curriculum lately, I’m betting that what you find will surprise you.

Right now, I particularly sense growing anxiety about reading instruction. Between Emily Hanford’s Hard Words, Sue Pimentel’s excellent spotlight on instructional issues, and the rest of the news coverage, we’re having a national “Uh Oh” moment of reckoning about a major problem: our teacher preparation programs haven’t given educators a baseline knowledge of research on how kids learn to read. Essential practices are missing from classrooms, and misunderstandings abound.

With that growing awareness and anxiety, it’s an opportune moment to build a national Professional Learning Network (PLN) of curriculum & instruction leaders addressing these issues. Let’s connect around curriculum – the best toolkit we have for improved instruction in our classrooms – and around the professional learning that is needed to shift practices. In Tennessee, where the TN Lift network (organized by TN Score) has provided an invaluable PLN for my work. I am excited by the potential of national collaboration.

If you are feeling urgency to improve your literacy and math work – I hope you’ll join a community of like-minded educators in the Curriculum Matters PLN. Whether you join because you are trying to understand the critical research… or because you are grappling with understanding the new curriculum options… or because you’re implementing a new high-quality curriculum, and want a PLN to aid your success… you’ll find a growing community working through the same problems of practice.

As school and district leaders, we face a lot of complex issues. But we shouldn’t overthink this one. Identifying and procuring aligned curricula is a fairly simple process, if you know of review sites like EdReports.

Implementing effectively? That’s a whole separate issue. People like the notion of having something “better” but they generally don’t like the word “different.” Let’s tackle these change management challenges together as a community of practitioners.

Most of all, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of this work. The outcomes we’re seeing with excellent curriculum in my district, and the outcomes I hear from my peers in other districts, deserve a national conversation.

In Jackson-Madison County, we are in the early stages of this process and are encouraged by the growth we see in students every day. Jump in with us and let’s learn together.

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Curriculum Notes

If you’d like to speak with me about the specific curricula used in my district, they are:

• K–2 ELA: Core Knowledge Language Arts (all-green on EdReports, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes)
• 3–5 ELA: EL Education Language Arts (all-green on EdReports, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes)
• 6-12 ELA: LearnZillion Louisiana Guidebooks (Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes in grades 6–8)
• K–12 Math: Eureka Math (all green on EdReports in grades K–5, Tier 1 on Louisiana Believes in K–12)

We believe in the power of the Professional Learning Network (PLN), as we shared in our inaugural post, Its Time for a Curriculum PLN.

Hopefully you’ve checked out our Resources page, where we have shared some of our favorite resources for understanding, selecting, and implementing curriculum.

If you do, you’ll probably notice two things:

1. It’s the start of an amazing collection, not the Be All and End All of collections.
2. We keep asking for your help and suggestions.
3. In fact, we debuted a Suggestion Box, to make it easy.
   

That’s right, PLN. We deeply want your help!

Please suggest:

• Resources we should know about
• Areas where you are struggling around curriculum
• Blog posts you’d like to see us write
• Blog posts you’d like to write for Curriculum Matters – we welcome additional voices!
• Curriculum leaders we should be connecting with (did we mention we are looking for co-pilots?)
• Any other ideas related to curriculum work
  

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom and ideas. We are inspired by our own potential for learning and growth from this community.

The Curriculum Matters Squad

Recently, literacy leader Sue Pimentel spoke of a “curriculum renaissance” in Education Week. We’ve had a front row seat to that renaissance: each of us has led the selection and implementation of excellent new curricula that have become available in recent years.

Here is what we have learned:

• There are far better options for ELA and math curricula available today than just a few years ago. The renaissance is real.

• Improving the curriculum in our districts yielded numerous positive outcomes. We want to share our stories, and our teachers’ and students’ stories.

• Very few districts are aware of the new curriculum options. This really surprises us – and it presents a need and an opportunity to raise awareness.

This work is important, but it isn’t easy. Rich curriculum is substantial, and you need to invest time to get your head around the options. Excellent curriculum tees up practice shifts for teachers – which is never easy, and requires good PD. The beauty of great curriculum is the way it can align schoolwide instruction to research – which starts with understanding the research. We have each climbed a learning curve in all of these areas, and we hope our experiences can help others accelerate this learning journey.

So, we want to leverage the power of the PLN. Districts exploring new curricula need to be able to connect with districts already using those materials. Schools that are implementing curricula need a support network and access to helpful resources even more. Inspired by the national online communities that have sprung up for individual curricula, we believe a PLN around curriculum, instruction, and curriculum-aligned PD can bring an important resource to the C&I community.

We’ve used different curricula, but there are common themes in our work across districts. Our materials align to the same research, the same foundational principles, and similar state standards. They promote similar practice shifts. In our local communities, we have found ourselves collaborating with peers around this work in 1:1 or small group conversations. Now, we’re excited to see how the insights of a broader PLN can push our work forward.

We hope you will join our PLN and consider sharing the work with high-quality curriculum in your schools.

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Share in this work

Join the Curriculum Matters community:

– Join our Facebook Group

– Follow us and check out #CurriculumMatters on Twitter

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Help lead this work

We need co-pilots! If you’d like to help lead this work, we hope you’ll reach out about joining us.

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Thanks for checking this out, and we hope to connect soon.

Yours in dedication to the best possible instruction for our kids,

Brian Kingsley, Robin McClellan, and Jared Myracle
Founding Squad, Curriculum Matters