English Language Arts & Literacy Products — Overview of Ratings

Through CURATE, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) convenes panels of Massachusetts teachers to review and rate evidence on the quality and alignment of comprehensive core curricular materials. CURATE panelists' findings are published here to support educators across the Commonwealth in making informed local decisions about curriculum. DESE does not engage in monetary exchanges with any publisher through CURATE.

CURATE teacher panelists review sample materials as well as other evidence, such as EdReports ratings, publisher responses, and survey data from Massachusetts teachers who are already using the curricular materials. CURATE reviews do not entail review of every lesson and text. Districts should engage in a robust evaluation and selection process to determine which of the available materials will well serve and strongly support their students and teachers. Adjustments and adaptations may be necessary during implementation to meet localized equity needs.

Defining Core Materials

CURATE panels only review comprehensive core materials that have been found by an independent, teacher-led gateway evaluator to be partially or fully aligned to college- and career-ready standards. Comprehensive core curricular materials, print or digital, are those that generally cover all the knowledge, skills, and practices outlined in the college- and career-ready standards for the content area. They are designed for use as the standalone primary instructional materials for core instruction through which all students access grade-level content standards during a year or semester of study, to support coherent sequence and progression of grade-appropriate knowledge, skills, and practices. This means that for ELA/Literacy grades K–5, comprehensive core materials would attend also to all components of foundational skills: print concepts, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency.

Foundational Skills

For ELA/Literacy in grades K–5, comprehensive core materials attend to all components of foundational skills: print concepts, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency.

• The majority of CURATE-reviewed K–5 ELA/Literacy materials are comprehensive core programs that include reading foundational skills.
• In the very rare instances that the comprehensive core program is without foundational skills, that core program will need to be supplemented with a high-quality foundational skills program, such as DESE's Appleseeds: Evidence-Based Foundational Skills for Massachusetts, to ensure students who are developing early literacy skills have access to and meaningfully engage with all the ELA/Literacy standards during the core literacy block, as outlined by Mass Literacy.

Considerations about compatibility, scope and sequence, and instructional hours to well implement both the comprehensive core and foundational skills supplemental materials—as intended—should be considered in local decision-making. The table below lists materials that have been CURATE-reviewed, including any materials submitted to CURATE but are ineligible for a panel review due to misalignment.

*Foundational Skills Update August 2021: The K–5 ELA/Literacy CURATE rubric has been updated to evaluate all components of foundational skills for reading instruction (See Criterion 2, Foundational Skills, under the Standards Alignment Domain). Reports published after August 2021 will contain an evaluation at the criterion level for this additional component. Previously issued reports, which evaluated foundational skills broadly, are designated below.

Contextualizing CURATE Reports

CURATE reports are intended to be a starting place and component of a district's robust, equity-centered process to investigate, select, and skillfully implement high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) for their localized context. Explore our (HQ)IMplement MA website to learn more about DESE's inclusive four-phase process, resources, and opportunities to support strong selection of high-quality instructional materials that is grounded in a shared vision, informed by localized equity priorities, and supported by diverse stakeholders.

Explore Resources

If you're researching an ELA/Literacy product you don't see listed here, try EdReports. It's possible that it has not yet been submitted to CURATE, or the product has been determined to not meet expectations for alignment to college- and career-ready standards.

Links: ELA/Literacy Rubric (K–5) , ELA/Literacy Rubric (6–12) , Full reports

Key

• Meets Expectations — Most or all evidence indicates high quality; little to none indicates low quality. Materials may not be perfect, but Massachusetts teachers and students would be well served and strongly supported by them.

• Partially Meets Expectations — Some evidence indicates high quality, while some indicates low quality. Teachers in Massachusetts would benefit from having these materials but need to supplement or adapt them substantively to serve their students well.

• Does Not Meet Expectations — Little to no evidence indicates high quality; most or all evidence indicates low quality. Materials would not substantively help Massachusetts teachers and students meet the state's expectations for teaching and learning.

• No Rating — Evidence is insufficient to generate rating.

Last Updated: April 4, 2024