High-quality curriculum is the foundation for student success. Last year, BetterLesson hosted an interactive webinar on Implementing a New High-Quality Curriculum, and we’re here to provide the key takeaways from that engaging conversation.
Implementing a new high-quality curriculum takes significant planning and consideration: What constitutes high-quality curriculum and how can districts efficiently research options? How can school leaders ensure teacher buy-in, and even more, how can they support teachers throughout the implementation of a new curriculum?
In this blog post, we will discuss the impacts of high-quality curriculum on student learning, share strategies for supporting teachers, and offer resources that districts can use as they engage in implementing new, high-quality curriculum.
Why is a High-Quality Curriculum Important?
High-quality curriculum fundamentally changes students’ experiences and outcomes in the classroom. This is proven through research that reveals the transformative impacts of high-quality curriculum:
- “Students who were taught using a high-quality math curriculum for four consecutive years (grades 7-10) outpaced comparison students by a margin of 23 percentile points—an effect that amounts to four additional years of learning.”
- “When students who started the year off behind grade level were given more grade-appropriate assignments, stronger instruction, deeper engagement, and higher expectations, the gap between these students and their higher achieving peers began to narrow substantially.”
- “Quality curriculum has a larger impact on student achievement than many common school improvement interventions and costs less.”
In other words, curriculum is one of the most powerful tools we can leverage to dramatically improve student learning outcomes.
While there isn’t a singular definition of high-quality curriculum (HQC), here are some defining characteristics:
- HQC is aligned with educational standards.
- HQC provides rigorous and culturally relevant texts, activities, and learning experiences.
- HQC takes a student-centered approach to learning experiences.
- HQC is thoughtfully scaffolded and designed to meet grade-level expectation for all students.
With all of these factors in mind, it’s unsurprising that many school leaders can feel overwhelmed by the process of finding high-quality curriculum. Luckily, resources exist to support districts in researching curriculum. EdReports, for instance, provides free reviews and ratings for curricula based on standards-alignment, rigor, and usability. Such tools can be helpful and timesaving as districts research new curriculum options.
How Can We Successfully Implement High-Quality Curriculum?
To successfully implement new, high-quality curriculum, teachers need ongoing professional support and learning opportunities. In fact, if a change in curriculum is not accompanied by a change in teacher practice that supports the new curriculum, research suggests that over half the impact of that curricular change is lost. With targeted professional learning opportunities, teachers can maximize the impact of a high-quality curriculum.
First, to illustrate the impact of professional learning opportunities on new curriculum implementation, let’s look at the results of a study that examined how teachers’ knowledge of School Improvement Plans (SIPs) affected their belief in SIPs. In the study, simply informing teachers about changes in teacher practices that would come out of a a SIP was enough to change teacher buy-in significantly. It stands to reason that more teachers would have developed even deeper beliefs in SIPs if they were merely informed but engaged and supported along the school improvement process.
(Doss, C. J., Akinniranye, G., & Tosh, K. (2020). School improvement plans: Is there room for improvement? RAND Corporation.)
Translating this information to implementing new curriculum, this study stresses the importance of not just communicating changes in curriculum to teachers, but collaborating with teachers throughout the process of research, selecting, and implementing a new curriculum. This level of engagement – which goes even beyond informing – could bring about significant changes in teacher buy-in, support, and fidelity of implementation.
Advice for District Leaders
As districts seek to align professional learning opportunities with the implementation of a new curriculum, it is important to tailor those professional supports to the real-time needs of teachers. According to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the most effective ways for instructional leaders to deploy meaningful, relevant, and impactful professional development for teachers include:
- Gather data to determine areas of instructional need for individual teachers and teachers as a whole before planning professional development.
- Provide differentiated professional development that is based on the readiness level of each teacher.
- Gather data after differentiated professional development sessions to determine the effectiveness of the program and to identify future needs.
Teachers have different instructional and pedagogical strengths and needs. Professional learning opportunities must take those strengths and needs into account in order to be responsive to teachers and their specific areas of support.
This responsive approach to professional learning (PL) is illustrated in Adult Learner-Centered PL. This approach to professional learning ensures that teachers aren’t passive consumers but rather active participants and partners in their professional support and learning. If teachers are expected not to simply regurgitate new materials from a new curriculum, but to shift and transform their pedagogical strategies in ways that align with the instructional shifts of the new curriculum, then they must be active participants in their own professional learning along the path toward implementation.
Additionally, instructional coaching is a high-leverage professional learning opportunity that can support teachers in successfully implementing new curriculum. With coaching, teachers receive the one-on-one support that is necessary in making changes to their own instructional strategies and teacher practice. Such changes require taking risks, which can feel scary and vulnerable. With the guidance of instructional coaches, teachers can feel more comfortable taking those risks, assessing their impacts, and making adjustments to their practices that will maximize their impact.
Additional Resources
BetterLesson has free and accessible resources that can support districts in shifting toward both high-quality, student-centered curriculum and adult learner-centered professional learning. These resources can act as a starting point in developing meaningful, relevant, and impactful learning opportunities for students and teachers alike.
High-Quality, Student-Centered Curriculum Resources
- Define Student-Centered Professional Learning
- Explore Student-Centered Professional Learning
- Build Student-Centered Professional Learning
- Looking at Student Work
- Planning for Successful Curriculum Implementation
- Launching a New Curriculum: Best Practices for Training Teachers and Implementing Change
Professional Learning Resources:
- Building a Professional Learning Community
- Common Planning Time
- Collaborative Professional Practices for Teachers: Lesson Study, Critical Friends, and Learning Walks
- Learning Walks: A Tool for Administrators to Take the Temperature of Learning
- Creating a Distributed Leadership Model: Meet Demands by Sharing the Load
- Try-Measure-Learn (TML): The Heart of Continuous Improvement
- A Guide to Implementing Instructional Coaching
