Common-Core Writers Craft Curriculum Criteria

By Catherine Gewertz

Ed Week

New guidelines on crafting curriculum materials for the common standards in English/language arts are reigniting debate about how to ensure a marketplace of good instructional materials for the new standards without crossing the line into telling teachers how to teach.

The focal point of the conversations is a set of “publishers’ criteria” issued recently by the two lead writers of the English/language arts section of the common standards, which have been adopted by all but five states.

Working under a contract with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an avid backer of the standards, David Coleman and Susan Pimentel wrote a pair of documents highlighting the key ideas of the standards and describing the qualities of instructional materials they consider a faithful reflection of them.

Vetted informally among publishers, researchers, state officials, teachers, and others, the documents are being circulated more widely now, and are eventually headed for posting online to guide not only publishers, but also anyone developing curriculum for the standards.

The criteria center on aspects of the standards that represent a significant shift. The heart of that shift is an intense focus on close examination of text as the source for study across disciplines. Students are expected to learn how to conquer increasingly complex readings, both literary and informational; infer meaning from what they read, and build arguments based on evidence from the text. The guidelines discourage work that does not demand deep understanding of the studied text.

“Eighty to 90 percent of the reading standards in each grade require text-dependent analysis; accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of text-dependent questions,” say the criteria for grades 3-12.

“Materials should be sparing in offering activities that are not text dependent,” say the criteria for grades K-2. “Whether written or spoken, responses based on students’ background knowledge and the experiences they bring to school are not sufficient.”

The impetus behind the criteria, Ms. Pimentel and Mr. Coleman said in a joint phone interview, was to respond to teachers’ requests for support by helping them focus on the cornerstones of the standards and understand how classroom work will have to change to reflect them.

“It’s almost a betrayal to support setting higher standards without some effort in that direction,” Mr. Coleman said.

“If we’re asking students to be able to look at text and draw evidence from it, it means they need to be given text, with good teacher support, but without a lot of excessive spoon-feeding up front,” Ms. Pimentel said.

Questions play a crucial role in helping students master what they’re reading, she said. She cited a question that might be posed by instructional materials or by a teacher: “In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln says the nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Why is equality an important value to promote?”

“It gets kids off and running, but we’ve totally left the text,” Ms. Pimentel said. “They don’t need the text to answer that question.”

Validating Materials

The two publishers’ criteria documents, totaling 24 pages, land in a swirl of discussion about how to create good curricula for the common-core standards, which emerged from an initiative led by the nation’s governors and state schools chiefs. One central tension in the discussion has been trying to address the need for instructional tools without dictating pedagogy; another has been the question of who should shape curriculum design.

Leading advocates of the standards have been trying to think through possible approaches to validating curricula as sound embodiments of the standards. They have discussed creating a panel of experts to review materials for alignment, or designing a validation process that educators and publishers could use.

But no moves have been made to do either, partly because other sectors’ models don’t translate well to education and partly because of sensitivity to issues of influence over curriculum, according to participants in those talks.

The Gates Foundation, for instance, has convened conversations that included representatives from other sectors, among them the environmental-protection and food industries, to talk about how their certification processes might inform parallel work in the curriculum world.

Jamie McKee, who helps lead common-standards work for the Seattle-based Gates Foundation, said that while the foundation “cares deeply about the quality of the [instructional] materials that come from the common core,” it hasn’t yet decided whether it favors a panel or process for validating such materials.

The foundation continues to listen to a range of views about “what comes next for the standards, and how to find the right balance” between helping the field produce a range of sound instructional materials and wading into judgments about products, she said.

Teacher Training

Some of those involved in the discussions about curriculum validation see the publishers’ criteria as a way to offset the need for any official certification process or body, by responding to educators’ requests for guidance and building the field’s grassroots knowledge about good curriculum.

“These new publishers’ guidelines are a way to have that conversation quickly and ...

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Coverage of “deeper learning” that will prepare students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world is supported in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, at www.hewlett.org.