Improving schools’ curricula improves learning
Gathered in front of a large group of educators last month, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said it best. “We can’t just have a free-for-all.” The free-for-all that the chancellor referred to, during a panel discussion with educators, is New York City’s current process for curricula selection. The city’s current process is an inconsistent, school-by-school approach, that forces many educators to spend their own time and money creating curricula from scratch. Rather than providing schools and teachers with the proper tools to teach effectively, they’re instead told to figure it out, and do as they please.
This isn’t a new problem. As a former sixth-grade teacher at P.S. 86 in the Bronx, and as the current Co-CEO of Educators for Excellence, I emphatically agree with the chancellor — the free-for-all needs to end. The current curricula selection process fails tens of thousands of students, and it fails thousands of educators. Curricula is too important to leave up to individual schools, especially with the growing recognition that high quality instructional materials coupled with aligned professional learning will lead to significantly improved student learning.
Consider this: just 38% of New York City educators report that curricula are high quality and well aligned to learning standards. Only 22% of educators report their curricula are accessible, appropriate, and engaging for all learners. Furthermore, just 33% of educators say they have received training that enables them to implement their curricula effectively.
The majority of city educators say their curriculum is low-quality, lacks cultural relevance, and is not connected to their own training. It seems obvious that the district should have an opinion on what curriculum is being used in schools and narrow the set of options to ones we know are high quality, so every school isn’t bombarded by sales pitches that they don’t have the capacity to sort through. Somehow this system has been in place since I started teaching 15 years ago. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.
The good news is that this broken system might be changing. Recently a group of educators from my organization presented the chancellor with a road map to improve the quality and consistency of curriculum. The plan is simple — the district should work with a broad cross section of teachers, principals, curriculum experts, and community members to create a narrow list of high quality, culturally relevant options for all grades and subjects. Local district superintendents should then further narrow the choices so that they can align teacher professional learning to the content being used in schools. And finally, the district or schools should publish what curriculum is being used so that we can further study which materials are best supporting students.
There are some obvious caveats and considerations to this, and there should be some flexibility given to educators and schools, including waiver requests to use different options, modifications for individual student groups, and more. No singular curriculum will be perfect.
Curriculum can, however, be vetted to ensure schools and educators have a strong starting point. When educators made these recommendations to the chancellor, he said, “I think that the entire system, and it’s a large and amazing system, needs more clarity, more direction, and we absolutely need to narrow those choices in terms of what we’re doing.”
The chancellor’s commitment to narrowing curricula options and providing schools with better resources is a positive step, but the process needs to begin immediately. Post-pandemic learning loss will only compound without immediate action.
Scores from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) confirmed that pandemic learning loss still persists. In New York City, only 18% of the fourth graders were proficient in math, compared with 24% in 2019, marking a 20-year low.
Furthermore, New York’s public schools have significant one-time federal resources that need to be used by the 2024-2025 school year. Improving the quality, consistency, and cultural relevance of curriculum is a perfect investment of recovery dollars given the significant research base demonstrating the benefits for student learning. It is also a one time transition cost, and as a result, won’t create ongoing expenses for the budget.
If we seek to improve student outcomes and reverse the harmful ways in which COVID-19 impacted students, there is no better investment than curricula.
The chancellor’s verbal commitment is a significant step to ensuring all schools receive the resources that they need. But thousands of students, schools, and educators need more than a commitment. They need immediate action, and an end to the “freefor-all,” that is a barrier to student success.