Craig Simmons, an assistant principal in Atlanta, discusses the setup and role of curriculum vetting teams in schools. When well-structured, he says, such committees can be effective in maintaining curricular alignment and quality at a time when many teachers download supplementary materials from the internet. They can also save teachers' time and…

Curriculum storyboards frame learning in clear, compelling ways for students and caregivers. By presenting curricula narratively, students can better grasp connections among concepts and picture learning as a process. Authors and education consultants Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda share how educators can use storyboarding as a tool to…

Creating a coherent, high-quality curriculum--one that all teachers in a school or department use--can narrow gaps and raise overall achievement. Mike Schmoker makes the case for the primacy of curriculum and describes a process teacher teams can use to create a common, high-quality curriculum.

Most district, school, and classroom leaders know commercial publishers don't comprehensively meet educators' curricular needs--particularly when it comes to culturally relevant learning materials. Curriculum expert Evan Gutierrez proposes an alternative: an expert-mediated design process where teacher teams create curricula, aided by a mediator…

Questions that challenge the curriculum can put educators on the defensive. Lauren Porosoff discusses helpful ways that educators can be proactive about creating productive and meaningful conversations with parents and community members about curriculum choices and the reasons behind them.

Author and education nonprofit leader Lynne Munson recounts how she helped steer an ambitious curriculum development initiative that worked directly in concert with teachers. More than a decade later, district leaders have learned much more about how coherent, classroom-tested, and teacher-supported curricula can transform student learning. With…

English language arts teacher Erin Nerlino describes how educators can align their instructional materials with the topics and issues that most interest students today. Nerlino offers six tenets to revise curricula in ways that help capture learners' attention and fuel engagement--all of which emphasize purposeful teaching materials that encourage…

College- and career-readiness skills can easily get lost if you don't have a clear school-wide plan for teaching them. While curriculum in schools is primarily meant to ready students for college and career skills, ensuring those skills actually transfer is another story. Andrew Miller lays out a system for teaching and assessing key…

School leaders could see all their students ascend to new heights of academic achievement and find their jobs de-stressed and joyful--if they focused on only the one or two most urgently needed instructional initiatives. Schmoker makes the "case for less" and notes that if school leaders applied strict criteria to select the initiative…

To engage all learners, schools must offer career-pathway courses that combine academics and deeper learning. Gene Bottoms, until recently head of the Southern Regional Education Board, describes a transformation he believes must happen in US high schools--adopting curriculums that include intellectual rigor in career and technical education (CTE)…

A teacher describes how a team of educators from two elementary schools in Massachusetts used the Next Generation Science Standards to create a social history curriculum focused on depth--and story--instead of isolated facts.

The so-called "good-teacher doctrine" has long perpetuated the idea that good teachers don't use pre-packaged curriculum materials. Rather, they create their own lessons intended for the students sitting in front of them. In this article, Janine T. Remillard challenges this assumption and contends that good teachers can--and…

Meng Li Lusardi, a Chinese teacher at an independent school in New York, recently set out to provide her students with more personalized learning and assessment. In this article, Lusardi documents how she revamped a project with personalization in mind, which resulted in content-rich exploration and greater student engagement. The author's…

What's the difference between accommodations and modifications, and why does the distinction matter? In this article, professor Lee Ann Jung explains that accommodations "provide access to the general curriculum but do not fundamentally alter the learning goal or grade level standard." For instance, if the purpose of an assessment is to…

When state leaders and national partners in the development of the Next Generation Science Standards met to consider implementation strategies, states and school districts wanted to know which materials were aligned to the new standards. The answer from the developers was short but not sweet: You won't find much now, and it's going to…