Providing students and teachers with access to stronger curricular materials can be a powerful way to narrow opportunity gaps and accelerate student learning at scale. Yet Massachusetts school and district leaders say they often lack the time and information necessary to make well-informed decisions about curriculum. As a result, teachers are left scrambling to find good materials or develop them from scratch.
The CURATE project is DESE's response to this opportunity and need. Our goal is to make it easier for schools and districts to lay a foundation of great curricular materials in every classroom, so that teachers can focus on making those materials work for the students they know best.
Curricular materials can make a real difference. Providing teachers with access to higher-quality, better-aligned curricular materials can prompt improvement in student outcomes:
Comparable to over half a year of additional learning
About 1.5 times the difference between an average teacher and one at the 75th percentile
Greater than the difference between a new teacher and one with three years of experience
Strong materials support excellence with equity. Educational opportunity gaps in the United States involve inequitable access to rigorous schoolwork, high expectations, and effective instruction. Great curricular materials not only provide high-quality classroom texts and tasks; they can also help teachers better align both their expectations and their instruction with rigorous state standards. And though all teachers benefit from access to better materials, less effective teachers—who are likelier to be teaching students from low-income families —benefit the most.
Upgrading curricular materials is cost-effective. For example, it has on average 40 times the impact-per-dollar on student achievement of another popular educational improvement strategy: reducing class sizes. This is in part because high-quality curricular materials do not tend to cost more than low-quality ones: in fact, many of the best materials now available are free . One Florida county reportedly saved more than $10 million over three years—even after accounting for printing costs—by switching to high-quality open educational resources.
Last Updated: March 20, 2019
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