Few states track and publish curriculum used in each district, and this needs to change ASAP
Memo to state leaders: you need to provide a window into curriculum selections, to empower researchers educators, and parents alike.
We’re in our Curriculum Awakening Era. A podcast about literacy curriculum has gone viral. Columbia University Teachers College has canceled Lucy Calkins over the shortcomings of her work, and parents are suing Heinemann, the publisher of widely-used Balanced Literacy curricula, over its ‘defective’ programs.
Meanwhile, the states showing statewide gains in reading outcomes have made curriculum improvement a cornerstone of their work.
You would think that states would be hustling to understand the curriculum used in each district, and to publish that information openly. You would be wrong.
In recent years, just six states have published a map of the curriculum used in local districts:
Rhode Island has the best curriculum map, because it features annual updates (starting in 2019-20, through today), and the data spans all districts, at least in recent years. Both ELA and Math are covered. Take a bow, Little Rhody.
Colorado offers a helpful Literacy Curriculum Transparency Dashboard. Its interface shows a statewide breakdown as well as district-level data, by year since 2021-22.
Massachusetts published a curriculum map in 2022, and the data was updated in 2024, though no historical record is available online. It covers ELA, Math, and other subject areas. Some district info is blank.
Ohio published a statewide survey of literacy curriculum, showing district selections for the 2022-23 school year. The state achieved an admirable 99% response rate.
Nebraska published a curriculum map that gave access to multi-year curriculum data for most districts, spanning ELA, Math, and Science. I know the tool once worked, but, today the website isn’t functioning. (womp, womp)
By December, we may have another one. Minnesota’s Read Act calls for the commissioner of education to submit a report to legislators summarizing ELA curriculum use by district. Assuming this information is published openly and on-time, we’ll have another state on the list.
Unfortunately, some states are going backwards. In 2021, Wisconsin published a curriculum map for ELA and Math, based on information reported by ~80% of districts. It was useful, but the state let the website domain expire, and the data went MIA. (womp, womp) Wisconsin has a politicized education climate, including an elected state superintendent, and locals think politics are involved; the data was collected by the previous state superintendent, and the current administration seems to disown the work. Parent advocates retained the 2021 info, and you can find it here.
These curriculum maps are incredibly useful. In Massachusetts, they spawned a powerful investigation by the Boston Globe, which reported that “nearly half of all Massachusetts public school districts last year used a reading curriculum in their elementary schools that the state considers low quality.” Another article captured a notable wrinkle: “Massachusetts’s wealthiest school districts are also, strangely, the most likely to stick with a reading curriculum the state frowns on.”
Ohio’s list was also illuminating. I wrote about it, as did the Fordham Institute.
In our Curriculum Awakening Era, inquiring minds want this info. In fact, I’m writing this post partly to create a collection of these state maps, because I’m constantly asked for this information. I’ll continue to maintain this list.
Given the interest in curriculum usage, we have to ask…
Why have only six states published this data for ELA, and only four for math?
Why are the curriculum maps frequently incomplete, suggesting that districts aren’t obliged to report such basic information?
Why do we usually get point-in-time maps that are quickly out-of-date in a swiftly-changing landscape?
Why are some these websites broken?
What We Need
Simply put, we need annually-updated curriculum data sets for every state.
I would like to see curriculum transparency for all districts, for each grade, with the ability to track changes over time for research purposes, and the ability to understand the key supplements and assessments used in districts, in addition to core program selections.
State Departments of Education should collect this information annually, and make reporting mandatory. States require other forms of mandatory reporting; why should the materials at the heart of classrooms be exempt?
Ultimately, I’d like to see a national rollup of this information, published annually. Imagine a world in which researchers could do multi-year analyses to spot trends in performance based on curriculum use. Only a multi-year, multi-state data set would enable that kind of insight.
The Curriculum Awakening Era has spawned a growing chorus of demands – including my own – for districts to use curriculum that is proven to work. Yet this reasonable position bumps up against a hard reality: we have very few studies on the effectiveness of specific programs. Such studies are costly to produce, typically taking years to publish, so it will not be easy to get more studies quickly. We need to give the research community additional windows into curriculum effectiveness.
Obviously this transparency would help educators, too. Often, educators post desperately in Facebook groups to find info on programs. What if they could find a district in the region and visit, instead? In Tennessee, a state with recent gains in ELA proficiency, the Dept of Education really worked to network district leaders so pioneering adopters of great curricula became models. This cross-pollenation could happen organically if we had the right databases.
A word of caution: A district’s curriculum selection is not an assured predictor of the quality of instruction in its classrooms. Many districts fail to create the conditions for successful implementation, because they under-invest in professional learning while changing curriculum. Often, schools fail to give teachers time to digest the new materials, which is best done collaboratively (yet collaborative teacher time is always at a premium). Schools can forget to train principals on the goals of the new materials, yielding mixed signals for teachers. Successful curriculum implementation is an art and a science, and schools don’t always get it right. Then, of course, there is the age-old reality that teachers can close their doors and push the curriculum aside, clinging to old methods of teaching (one more reason the professional development is critical, to help teachers understand the benefits and design principles of the new materials).
None the less, a district’s curriculum selection is a “tell.” If a district selects a knowledge-building curriculum designed around rich, whole books, that tells us something about its goals. When districts continue to cling to Balanced Litracy curricula, long after the flaws in those programs have drawn national attention, that says a lot. If a district selects a bloated curriculum from a major publisher, it shows that the district isn’t particularly savvy about its options, or that the district is happy to leave teachers choosing their own adventure in classrooms. And when a district has no curriculum, or its schools cobble together a bunch of things, that speaks volumes.
Advocates, parents, and researchers deserve transparency on these choices, with urgency.
Close, But No Cigar
You can find states where curriculum data is available, but not easily, publicly accessible. This is better than nothing, but doesn’t meet the standard for transparency that I’m going for.
In Virginia, the DOE aggregates all district literacy plans on its website. You can read each district plan to figure out which curricula are used/planned. This is good, in its own way, but it doesn’t meet the easy-access standard. A Virginia staffer could create a curriculum map in a day, in Google Sheets, and link it from this page. I’d love to see that.
I have also heard from educators in North Carolina and Utah that their state does collect curriculum usage data, and district leaders and/or regional education agencies have access to lists. I’m thrilled that the info has been gathered, but again, if journalists and researchers and parents and I can’t find it, we’re falling short of the transparency we need.
Please keep telling me if this data is out there in your state, I’ll continue to update this post, so researchers and journalists and parents have leads. Yet we should all continue to call for more public dashboards.
Extra Credit to the Alternate Sources
The state lists aren’t our only source of insight on curriculum usage in US schools.
The California Reading Coalition published an enlightening report a few years ago, detailing ELA curriculum in California districts in 2020-22.
Wisconsin advocates at Forward Literacy created an eye-opening state curriculum map, showing that Teachers College Reading Workshop Units of Study remains the second-most used ELA program statewide.
Advocates in Illinois started a state curriculum map, though to date, they only have data for a small share of districts.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement created a database with 2021-22 ELA data for most Minnesota districts. The website suggests that the data may be collected for the 2023-24 school year, but this update does not appear to have been published.
Journalist Christopher Peak has reported on national shifts in curriculum purchasing, suggesting a shift away from Balanced Literacy curricula.
The Center for Education Market Dynamics has been building out a database, although it seems further ahead on math than ELA.
Please comment on this post with any worthy additions, and I’ll gladly update the sources as the landscape evolves.
Sometimes the meme says it best, and this is one of those times:
Karen (if I may use the familiar), this post emphasizes a terrifically important point. Educators need to know what actually is happening in classrooms, but I wager that they rarely do. First, they may "believe" that instruction is systematic and explicit, but what evidence leads them to that belief? They may explain that the curriculum being used is systematic and explicit, but is it? There are a heckuva a lot of details that go into delivering effective instruction, the "program" being a very important one (and correspondence with the instructional plan—fidelity—being another). People may say they're using a "direct instruction" curriculum, but are they and, if they are, are they implementing it faithfully?
This kind of resource would be also be invaluable to teachers as well! I was talking to a teacher yesterday, who only wants to apply to districts using Wit and Wisdom, and didn't know where to begin.