1 of 32

April 19, 2024

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

The Case for High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIMs)

2 of 32

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

2 |

Introductions

Cory Epler, Ph.D.

Partner – Midwest Region

Caitlin Sharp

Partner – Midwest Region

3 of 32

A national nonprofit founded by teachers, TNTP works at every level of the U.S. public school system to help our partners achieve their goals for students.

Rigorous Academics	Talented People	Supportive Environments
Are students studying challenging, engaging and relevant content?	Are educators in the right roles with the right skills to help students thrive?	Are policies, systems and communities supporting great schools for all?

We focus on three areas to ensure teachers succeed and students thrive:

/ 3

4 of 32

TNTP’s 2018 report, The Opportunity Myth, examines the quality of students’

academic experiences in school—and its effect on their long-term success.

/ 4

Students have big dreams. Is school preparing them?

In September 2018, we published The Opportunity Myth – TNTP’s sixth national report.

We came to this national report like we have our others – through our work on the ground. Over the past couple of years, we have been helping clients make the transition to more rigorous state standards. While people are reporting that they are working hard to make the shifts, our reviews of more than 2,700 classrooms around the country, we have found that two in three classroom assignments are not rigorous enough to prepare students for college, and three in four teachers aren’t yet adapting the way they teach to meet high academic standards.

And so we began to wonder how students were experiencing this gap – and so we decided to ask them.

5 of 32

/ 5

6 of 32

/ 6

Communicating with parents the disconnect

We heard from students – and saw evidence – that they expect school will set them up to reach their goals if they do what we ask of them.

We saw that kids are consistently doing what we ask:

They are on task. When we surveyed them, students told us they were working on the task they should have been working on 88% of the time.
They also complete their assignments successfully. When we looked at all those samples of student work, we basically graded the sample, asking ourselves, “Did students successfully do what the assignment asked them to do?” (We said “yes” if students scored at least an 80% on assignments.) They successfully do what their assignments ask of them 71% of the time.
They are also getting good grades – being explicitly told that they are doing what we’ve asked.

Note: If asked, 62% of students got As and Bs in ELA and 54% got As and Bs in math. We’re including Cs on the slide because Learning Heroes, a national parent organization, has some research that indicates that parents generally believe that As, Bs, and Cs are all signals that their student is doing fine in school.

7 of 32

/ 7

The low expectations we uncovered also seem to contribute to a mismatch between the grades students receive and how prepared they are to demonstrate the skills they’d need to reach the goals they’ve set for themselves – which consistently include college.

Across every assessment that we looked at – state-level assessments, the ACT, the SAT, and the AP tests – students got signals through their grades that they were learning what they needed to but did not demonstrate that they were prepared for what came next via their performance on the assessments. For example – 80% of the students who got Bs – and for that matter, 50% of the students got As – in their AP classes did not pass the AP assessment and earn college credit, even though their grades had communicated to them that they were on track.

Note: 2016 and 2017 school years included. For grade 3-8 tests, “at grade-level” represents the performance level described by the state as “Meeting expectations”. Performance levels of “Approaching Expectations”, though considered proficient in some states are not considered meeting the demands of the assessment. In one district, some performance levels were imputed based on intended future performance levels and so thus differ from students’ actual performance designations. See previous slides for description of how course grades were calculated. ACT and SAT’s college readiness benchmarks are based on the empirical probability of having a 75% chance of earning a C or higher in the appropriate college course. These benchmarks can be found here and here. Only math and English/Evidence-based Reading scores included for ACT and SAT. AP results represent AP Calculus, AB, AP Statistics, AP English Language and AP English Literature. Passing is defined as a score of 3 or higher. Special education students and those 20 or older are not included. District C only has students in grades 6-8 in this analysis.

8 of 32

/ 8

9 of 32

/ 9

But for most students – most of the time – we simply don’t give them those chances.

We hypothesized – and found – that four key components influence the outcomes that students achieve in the school year:

Grade-level assignments, which are assignments that give students a chance to meet the demands of the standards.
Strong instruction, which is instruction that asks students to do the majority of the thinking about grade-level content.
Deep engagement, which involved students sharing that they found what they were working on in class interesting and enjoyable, and they were concentrating deeply on it.
Teachers with high expectations, which involved teachers who reported that they believed their individual students could meet the demands of rigorous standards and do grade-level work.

Most kids, though, don’t get regular access to even one of these four resources. That is especially true for students of color, those from low-income backgrounds, ELL students, and students with IEPs.

10 of 32

/ 10

11 of 32

/ 11

This was especially true for students who are below grade level. Students who started the year behind grew significantly more when they had access to grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations.

This flies in the face of an implicit narrative we sometimes tell about students who are behind – which is that they can’t do grade level work.

It also challenges the notion that students who are behind need less challenging work in order to "meet them where they are"--since what we see here is that if students who are behind don't have access to grade-appropriate assignments, they never have the chance to catch up. Instead, teachers need stronger support and training to give students real access to challenging content, regardless of their starting point. That's incredibly difficult but vital, and it should not rest on teachers' shoulders alone.

�

Note: We calculated these numbers by building value-added models and then using the standard CREDO conversion to generate the months-of-learning statistics that you see here.

12 of 32

Education Recovery Scorecard shows that between 2019 and 2022, the average student missed out on a half of year’s typical learning in math, and a third of a year in reading. ��Between 2022 and 2023, students recovered approximately one third of their loss in math and one quarter of the loss in reading.

Source: Education Recovery Scorecard and https://www.the74million.org/article/scorecard-of-4000-schools-shows-rural-districts-fared-better-in-math-worse-in-reading-than-urban-suburban-peers/

/ 12

13 of 32

The impact of the Pandemic on Rural Schools is still being untangled, but the effect direction was opposite the overall findings.

Source: Education Recovery Scorecard and https://www.the74million.org/article/scorecard-of-4000-schools-shows-rural-districts-fared-better-in-math-worse-in-reading-than-urban-suburban-peers/

The Education Recovery Scorecard showed that rural school districts suffered the smallest academic setbacks in math, yet the largest losses in reading. Though there is no conclusive study on the links, hypotheses are emerging.

Rural students experienced less learning loss in math than peers in more populated areas.

“The length of school closures is a commonly cited factor in missed learning, especially in math. Schools play an especially large role in teaching students arithmetic, and sparsely populated areas were less likely to shutter their campuses during the pandemic. ”

The hypothesis for reading is both a reduced access to extra resources (like libraries and summer programming); families with parents that continued in-person work were less available to help, and potentially a more direct impact from the teacher shortage (teachers less developed in specialized skills of reading instruction).

Reading loss was more profound in rural communities than for students attending schools in towns, suburbs, and cities.

/ 13

14 of 32

/ 14

This was especially true for students who are below grade level. Students who started the year behind grew significantly more when they had access to grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations.

This flies in the face of an implicit narrative we sometimes tell about students who are behind – which is that they can’t do grade level work.

It also challenges the notion that students who are behind need less challenging work in order to "meet them where they are"--since what we see here is that if students who are behind don't have access to grade-appropriate assignments, they never have the chance to catch up. Instead, teachers need stronger support and training to give students real access to challenging content, regardless of their starting point. That's incredibly difficult but vital, and it should not rest on teachers' shoulders alone.

�

Note: We calculated these numbers by building value-added models and then using the standard CREDO conversion to generate the months-of-learning statistics that you see here.

15 of 32

/ 15

16 of 32

/ 16

17 of 32

In most classrooms, students spent far too much time on content that was not appropriate for their grade.

In a single school year, the average student spends about 530 hours of the approximately 720 hours in their core classes on assignments that are not grade appropriate.

/ 17

Unfortunately, we didn’t see all that many classrooms where students got ample access to the four resources—whether they started the year on grade-level, ahead of their peers, or needing an extra boost. Most students missed out on those opportunities, most of the time.

We’re going to walk through each of the four resources in turn – and we’ll start with grade-appropriate assignments. We estimate that kids spend about 580 hours (of the 720 hours that they have available) in their core classes on assignments that are not appropriate for the grade level.

Note: We rated the quality of assignments by looking at whether kids had a chance to engage in content that met the demands of college- and career-ready standards, important content-specific practices like writing from sources or citing evidence in ELA or making sense of problems in math, and whether or not the assignment was relevant because it allowed students a chance to see how the content they were learning fit into the real world or built their knowledge of the world in a meaningful way.

Each subject specific tool rated:

Content: Does this assignment align with the grade-level standards?

Practice: Does this assignment provide meaningful practice opportunities for the grade level and content area?

Relevance: Does this assignment give students an authentic opportunity to connect academic standards to real-world issues and/or contexts?

Note: Figure assumes a single core content area class is 180 hours in the school year, which represents a 1 hour class over 180 days (see http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/research/time-school-how-does-us-compare). Hours spent on grade-appropriate assignments estimated by calculating, for each day in each class, the proportion of primary assignments that were rated as being high-quality, then averaging across days Assignments that lasted multiple days were given increased weight. Grade appropriate defined as a score of 4 (on scale of 0-6) or higher on our assignment rubric. Only classrooms with at least 5 assignment-by-day combinations are included.

18 of 32

Teachers report spending 7 HOURS PER WEEK developing or selecting instructional materials and reported CREATING OR FINDING 57% OF THEIR ASSIGNMENTS, but those assignments tend to be LOWER QUALITY than those taken from any district or state provided curriculum.

/ 18

One reason for the wide variation between students' experiences, even within the same district, may be the significant amount of time teachers spend creating their own assignments. Teachers told us they create or select more than half of their own instructional materials (57%), spending an average of 7 hours per week doing so—but teacher-selected or created assignments are less likely to be standards-aligned than materials identified by districts or states.

Note: 7 hours is the median number of hours teachers reported developing or selecting materials in a typical week. Only math, ELA, Science, and Social Studies teachers included, N = 249. 250 hours per year based on 36 week school year. “On grade-level”, “Provide opportunities to practice”, and “Does it connect to the real world” represent a score of 3 (out of 3) on our content, practice, and relevance domains respectively. Each assignment weighted equally regardless of how many days used in class. N = 2613 for teacher selected assignments and 1993 for district/state provided assignments.

19 of 32

Grade-Appropriate ELA Assignment: This assignment gave 3^rd grade students a Sufficient Opportunity to engage with grade-level literacy work. Students read three grade-appropriate myths. This assignment required students to use what they learned from the text in a grade-appropriate way. �

/ 19

20 of 32

Non Grade-Appropriate ELA Assignment: This assignment gave 2^nd grade students No Opportunity to engage with grade-level literacy work.

Students read a text from the Benchmark curriculum, The Great Girls’ Contest, and completed a worksheet sourced from outside the curriculum, from a popularly used website called Markers and Minions.

The task did not give students the opportunity to engage with the depth of the grade-level standard and did not provide meaningful practice opportunities with the content.

/ 20

21 of 32

/ 21

As we’ve shared, we didn’t often see students engaged in content that was aligned with grade-level standards, but we didn’t hypothesize that content was the only thing that mattered – we also thought how students were engaged in that content mattered, so we also used observations to gather information about instruction.

We consistently saw in our full-length observations (we stayed bell to bell!) that students rarely experienced rigorous instructional practices or had a chance to do the deep thinking in the lesson, even in cases where content was on grade level. Of the 899 observations we conducted in core classes, only 295 offered students the chance to engagement in grade-level content. And only 74 of those asked students to do the thinking about that grade-level content.

To rate instruction, we looked at the culture of learning in a classroom, the quality of content students were experiencing, the quality of a teacher’s instructional practices, and whether students had the chance to do the deep thinking of the lesson.

In observations, we rated:

Culture of Learning: Are all students engaged in the work of the lesson from start to finish?

Content: Does the content of this lesson reflect the Common Core instructional shifts and standards?

Instructional Practices: Did the teacher employ instructional practices that reflect the Common Core instructional shifts?

Student Ownership: Did students do the thinking and exhibit key content-specific practices during this lesson?

22 of 32

Pulse Check –

What’s sitting with you based on the information from the Opportunity Myth?

About TNTP

22 |

23 of 32

The Fundamentals of School Improvement

In Kansas, school improvement is characterized by school systems implementing the Fundamentals through the selection of Lead Indicators associated with Structures that reinforce instructional coherence.

The Fundamentals (Structured Literacy, Standards-Alignment, Balanced Assessment, Quality Instruction) are interconnected and associated with actions and strategies that each school system must execute exceedingly well to maximize opportunities and reduce limitations for each students.

�A lead indicator is high-quality instructional materials (HQIMs).

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

24 of 32

What role do instructional materials play in school improvement?

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

24 |

25 of 32

Instruction Aligned with State Standards

Alone, strong state standards will not improve classroom instruction. Additional supports are necessary.

In some cases, instructional materials—the textbooks and other materials that drive lesson content—may not be aligned or reflect the instructional shifts of state standards. This impacts instruction.

As a result, many states have focused on improving use of standards-aligned, high-quality instructional materials as a strategy to improve classroom instruction.

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

RAND Corporation (2016). Creating a Coherent System to Support Instruction Aligned with State Standards: Promising Practices of the Louisiana Department of Education.

Rand Corporation (2021). The Rise of Standards-Aligned Instructional Materials for U.S. K–12 Mathematics and English Language Arts Instruction: Findings from the 2021 American Instructional Resources Survey.

26 of 32

High-quality instructional materials (HQIMs) are an important component to standards-aligned instruction.

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting


A significant portion of teachers may lack access to standards-aligned, high-quality instructional materials, making it difficult to provide standards-based instruction.	States that have adopted college and career readiness standards identified a gap in deep understanding and instructional practice aligned with these standards.
Teachers lack access to professional learning that could fill this gap and help build their knowledge about aligned instructional practices.	Currently, instructional materials vary dramatically in level of standards alignment and quality.

RAND Corporation Report (2016). Implementation of K-12 State Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts and Literacy

27 of 32

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

Why Focus on Instructional Materials?

Teachers are heading online to supplement or piece together curriculum.

97% Google

85% Pinterest

79% Teachers Pay Teachers

EdNet Research, State of the Market 2016

How might this impact instruction?

28 of 32

Why Focus on Instructional Materials?

Making HQIMs central to school improvement efforts allow teachers to focus instruction versus curriculum design.

HQIMs create a starting point for instructional improvement.

“If materials are an afterthought in our efforts to improve student outcomes, and we do not give sufficient professional development to properly implement those materials, we’ve made a hard job nearly impossible…”

“Spending hours on creating units and lessons from scratch is burdensome, may result in lessons of lower rigor and quality, and is almost certainly a less valuable use of teacher time than studying student work, giving feedback, developing subject matter expertise, and building relationships with students and their families.”

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

The 74 (2024). 40 Years After ‘A Nation At Risk,’ Could Curriculum Reform Finally Move the Needle on Academic Improvement?

29 of 32

How can we ensure teachers have the resources and support they need so that all Kansas students experience quality, standards-aligned instruction?

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

29 |

30 of 32

Instructional Materials Data Collection

Districts will identify the instructional materials used for Tier 1 (or Core) Instruction, and the year those materials were adopted, for K-12 English Language Arts, K-12 mathematics, and K-8 science.

Additionally, districts are asked to identify the primary screener used to identify a student for being at risk for reading difficulties and to identify the instructional materials used in Pre-K.

This information will help the KSDE identify the information, resources, and tools districts need to select and implement high-quality instructional materials as a strategy to improve classroom instruction.

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

30 |

31 of 32

Instructional Materials Data Collection – Cont.

Per legislative request, this data collection will be used to create a report on the status of three-cueing in curriculum and instructional materials.

Three-cueing is an approach to foundational skills instruction that emphasizes that skilled reading involves the use of three different instructional cues readers use to identify words.

If you have questions about three-cueing, please see Dr. Laurie Curtis.

The data collection window closes Friday, April 26th.

A FAQ about this data collection is located on the Division of Learning Services webpage. TNTP staff will be available over lunch if you have questions about your district’s submission.

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

31 |

32 of 32

Thank you!

caitlin.sharp@tntp.org

cory.epler@tntp.org

Kansas Curriculum Leader Meeting

32 |