The Curriculum Insight Project: a response to the new generation of curriculum concerns
This week brought renewed conversation about EdReports reviews, care of Natalie Wexler’s latest column (a must-read!). We’re republishing Karen Vaites’s introduction of our work, which explores similar concerns – as well as our plan to provide a better window into elementary ELA curriculum.
If you’re free today, Karen and Kareem Weaver will present on the curriculum landscape and out plans at the free Aldine ISD Literacy Matters conference. Join this conversation at 1pm CST.
If you have listened closely, you’ve heard growing concern about trends in the K-12 curriculum landscape.
I’m not talking about the ways Balanced Literacy curricula downplay phonics and encourage word guessing. Those are legitimate issues, but hardly new.
In fact, the curriculum landscape has evolved a great deal in just a few years, and the animating concerns in the field have shifted.
Here’s what the most informed concerns sound like today, a half-decade into the Science of Reading era:
Phonics Patching is rampant.
The good news: districts got the memo about the need for systematic phonics and the issues with three-cueing, and most are working to improve foundational skills instruction. The bad news: schools are often improving only the phonics program, leaving other aspects of their curricula untouched.
We call this Phonics Patching. It’s an issue because every core curriculum that falls short on foundational skills also falls short in other ways, so by definition, Phonics Patches leave other problems to fester.
“Basal” reading curricula from big publishers are surging in market share, in spite of shortcomings.
The latest generation of ELA curricula from the major publishers is underwhelming, to say the least. These curricula, historically designed around a collection of reading passages and described as “basal” programs, have always been light on whole books and strong lessons. Today, publishers tend to dump everything but the kitchen sink into these curricula, in an effort to tick every “demand” box. The result is an easy-to-market program – but an overstuffed, mixed bag on quality.
Educators and literacy leaders have been sharing substantive concerns with these new(ish) programs and their alignment to reading research, but those issues haven’t reached the national radar. And basals benefit from good marketing, so they are gaining real traction. In fact, they are dominating some state adoptions.
EdReports is no longer a reliable guidepost for the highest-quality curriculum.
EdReports, the influential curriculum review organization, was once an excellent barometer of curriculum quality. Literacy leaders generally agreed with its reviews. But in recent years, EdReports reviews have sometimes missed the mark. Notably, EdReports has awarded positive “all-green” reviews to multiple flawed basal programs.
Yet EdReports gives a questionable, middling "yellow" review to the comprehensive ELA curriculum with by far the most studies showing it’s effective, Bookworms.
That’s right – EdReports gives a thumbs up to eleven K-2 ELA programs of widely-varying quality, but not to the curriculum driving the biggest gains in reading outcomes.
Why does this matter? Time and again in district adoptions and state lists, we have seen more flawed basal options on the table than high-quality options, and Bookworms gets regularly passed over, simply because of EdReports ratings. This is bad for kids and teachers, and it sends the wrong signal to publishers: gone is the incentive to improve their curricula based on what works best for students and teachers. Instead, publishers focus on the processes and criteria needed to earn a marketable rating from EdReports.
By this point, folks who’ve watched the space closely will be nodding.
To advance the conversation, we need to confront a primary obstacle: the curriculum landscape is incredibly opaque.Few people have access to curricular materials; districts must purchase samples to even evaluate programs. Also, curriculum is dense. You need to get into the weeds to really understand it. Does any district have the resources to get into the weeds on eleven different “all green” K-2 curricula, and separate the most instructionally nutritious from the least?
Because of this opacity, folks enter 2024 with a lot of questions. What is really under the hood in those new basal programs? Have Fountas & Pinnell and TCRWP really improved their programs, or are changes cosmetic? How can districts and states distinguish the many all-green curricula from each other? Are we doomed to disappointing state adoption lists?
For the last 12 months, I’ve been having these conversations with seemingly-everyone – educator friends, curriculum experts, professional development leaders, policy folks. We could all see the same issues.
“Someone needs to explain these issues to the field,” we kept saying to each other. At some point, it became clear that we were the someone we were hoping for, and the seeds of a project were sown.
Today, it’s a pleasure to introduce the Curriculum Insight Project, a collaborative effort to swiftly illuminate the K-12 curriculum landscape and advance the conversation about curriculum quality.
Teams of educators and literacy experts will publish reports to capture the issues with popular and emerging curricula. They will start with the programs that have become standard-bearers for Phonics Patching (TCRWP Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell) and the laments about basal programs (Into Reading, Savvas MyView, and Benchmark Advance).
To understand why these programs are sub-optimal, it helps to know what good looks like, as a point of comparison. We want to remind everyone that strong, comprehensive programs do exist, and there are now numerous good alternatives to the Usual Suspects. To help illustrate the point, the Curriculum Insight Project will publish one report on a high-quality program. We picked Bookworms, for two reasons: first, the EdReports review of Bookworms simply got it wrong, and should stand corrected. Also, Bookworms has more evidence that it works than any other ELA curriculum. That alone compels attention.
In the process of producing reports and explaining our thinking, we hope to bring new clarity and tangibility to the conversation about curriculum quality. Is a curriculum comprehensive? Does it include key evidence-based approaches (including foundational skills, but well beyond foundational skills)? Is the curriculum usable for teachers? Does it improve student outcomes? These questions are actually pretty straightforward. Weak programs flourish when we can’t give straight, digestible, accessible answers.
The authors will work swiftly, because adoption season is well underway. We feel the urgency of this moment. ESSER funding deadlines have many districts shopping for new programs. When districts select new curriculum, it tends to stick around for ~5 years, sometimes more. So when districts purchase sub-optimal programs, that isn’t a short-term issue.
You can follow the Curriculum Insight Project on Substack or on Twitter.
Please spread the word!
A Note of Gratitude
I’d like to thank everyone behind this effort. Right now, teams of educators and literacy leaders are doing the important work of producing curriculum reports. We won’t be able to thank everyone by name, as many educators will remain anonymous, to avoid professional repercussions. But make no mistake, the key enabling condition of this work is the strength of the high-quality curriculum community. Today, we have a cadre of educators who have seen and used the best materials in the space – and they are not content to let mediocre materials march into classrooms across the country. The Curriculum Insight Project is fueled by savvy educators with motivation to drive change. It will be an honor to share their insights.
You’ll hear from some of the educators soon, and also from a few key members of our team. Kareem Weaver of Fulcrum and Kata Solow of the Science of Reading Classroom initiative have front row seats to these issues, and the Curriculum Insight Project has been strengthened by their thought partnership. We are blessed to have a deep bench of world-class curriculum and professional learning leaders, starting with Kate Crist, one of the sharpest curriculum evaluation experts in the country. It will take a village to correct the misunderstandings in the curriculum landscape, but this effort starts with the best minds I know.
Hear from some of our team in this introductory webinar hosted by Virginia Quinn-Mooney of the Science of Reading-WISHLIC Facebook Group.