One thing we’ve heard repeatedly during the discussions of “Investigations” is that it doesn’t make sense to focus on a curriculum change, that what matters instead is professional development for current teachers, or the training of future teachers, or using better assessments, etc. Can changing a curriculum make a difference?
Yes, according to Grover Whitehurst, who is the former head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Whitehurst’s paper provides support for the idea that curriculum decisions made by districts and school boards can produce meaningful effects in schools, when those decisions are made on the basis of solid research.
Further, in many cases [curriculum effects] are a free good. That is, there are minimal differences between the costs of purchase and implementation of more vs. less effective curricula. In contrast, the other policy levers reviewed here range from very to extremely expensive and often carry with them significant political challenges, e.g., union opposition to merit pay for teachers. This is not to say that curriculum reforms should be pursued instead of efforts to create more choice and competition through charters, or to reconstitute the teacher workforce towards higher levels of effectiveness, or to establish high quality, intensive, and targeted preschool programs, all of which have evidence of effectiveness. It is to say that leaving curriculum reform off the table or giving it a very small place makes no sense. Let’s do what works for the kids, and let’s give particular attention to efficient and practical ways of doing so.
He also describes the results of the scrupulously done Mathematica Study that was sponsored by IES and much discussed here in SCASD:
Students were pretested in the fall and post-tested in the spring of first grade on a standardized assessment of mathematics. Two of the curricula were clear winners. The spring math achievement scores of Math Expressions and Saxon Math students were 0.30 standard deviations higher than for students experiencing Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, and 0.24 standard deviations higher than for students experiencing Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics. This means that a student’s percentile rank would be 9 to 12 points higher at the end of a school year if the school used Math Expressions or Saxon, instead of the less effective curricula.
