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Giving Compass' Take:
• Morgan Polikoff suggests using curriculum materials as a lever for education reform and offers ways to overcome barriers to this approach.
• How can philanthropy help use this information to help schools and districts? What additional research is needed?
• Learn about the challenges of bringing philanthropy to education.
In a widely read Brookings reports, Whitehurst in 2009 and Chingos and Whitehurst in 2012 wrote about the impact of curriculum and its potentially transformative power as a lever for reform. Their arguments were straightforward.
First, citing recent experimental studies, they documented that curriculum materials can have large direct effects on student learning. Second, they noted that school and district leaders could not make textbook adoption decisions on the basis of textbook quality, because such evidence did not widely exist. Third, they claimed that there was little data of even a descriptive nature on textbook adoption patterns and practices, but that this would be relatively easy to collect. And finally, they argued that if the above issues were solved, textbooks could be an inexpensive (both politically and in dollars and cents) reform strategy.
The Chingos and Whitehurst report ended with specific recommendations, including the following: a) State education agencies should collect data from districts on the instructional materials in use in their schools; b) the NGA and CCSSO should put their weight behind the effort to improve the collection of information on instructional materials; and c) foundations could provide the start-up funding needed to collect data on instructional materials and support the research that would put those data to use.
But how good are the prospects for this as a serious reform effort? And what are the potential barriers? The purpose of this report is to take stock of where we are and to offer suggestions for this effort moving forward.
- I organize my discussion around what I view as the three main areas of challenge: The challenge of collecting and analyzing textbook adoption data to determine which books are most effective.
- The challenge of getting the most effective books in teachers’ hands (i.e., through school and district textbook adoptions).
- The challenge of getting teachers to use these books once they have them.
There is increasing momentum behind the idea that curriculum materials, including textbooks, represent a powerful lever for education reform. As funders are lining up and state leaders are increasing their policy attention on curriculum materials, this report discusses the very real challenges of this effort.