Education Week - April 23, 2014 - S26

S26
EDUCATION WEEK
n
APRIL 23, 2014
Common Core > www.edweek.org/go/core-in-action
Two Districts, Two Tacks on Curriculum
To meet common core, one opts for publisher, other writes own materials
Florida group scoured the market and chose a suite
of materials from a major publisher. Their colleagues
across the country, dissatisfied with that same marketplace's
offerings-and limited by their thin pocketbook-wrote
their own curriculum.
T
BY CATHERINE GEWERTZ
That tale of two
districts reflects a
dilemma of the common-core
era: How
do schools find or
craft good curricula
that truly reflect the
new standards when
they have limited time
and funds and when the
market is overflowing with materials claiming they're
"fully aligned" with the new standards?
Districts are wrestling with those decisions as the
instructional-materials market, worth $7 billion to
$8 billion annually, is poised to pick up steam.
States and districts have been putting off buying
textbooks and other materials in the last five years
because of the recession and uncertainty about
the transition to the common core and to digital
resources, according to Jay Diskey, the executive
director of the PreK-12 Learning Group at the As-
hree thousand miles apart,
district leaders in Orlando,
Fla., and Long Beach, Calif.,
faced the same problem:
They needed to revamp their
instructional materials to reflect
the Common Core State
Standards.
They solved that problem
in very different ways. The
sociation of American Publishers, based in Washington.
That market was up 4.3 percent in 2013, he
said, after two years of declines.
EVALUATING OPTIONS
The Orange County district, which serves 187,000
students in the Orlando area, began its search for new
materials in mathematics and English/language arts
about a year ago. Working from Florida's list of approved
materials, the district undertook a laborious
process of review before deciding on a lineup largely
from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Go Math! for K-8,
and two series of HMH texts for high school; Journeys
for K-5 English/language arts and the Collections
series for high school. It chose the College Board's
Springboard curriculum for middle school.
The move came with a hefty price tag: $14 million
for the K-5 materials, which teachers are trying for the
first time this school year, and $10 million for middle
and high school materials, which are scheduled to
debut in 2014-15.
Before inviting the state's approved publishers in to
make presentations, Orange County school officials
drew up a list of criteria that new materials would
have to meet, said Jesus F. Jara, the district's deputy
superintendent. The list was long. Vendors would be
rated on the strengths of their products' digital components,
interventions for struggling students, and
professional development. The products would have to
offer enough support to guide new teachers, yet provide
enough flexibility to allow veteran educators to customize
them as they wished, said Scott Fritz, the district's
chief academic officer.
But at the top of that list was how well the new materials
would capture the spirit and letter of the common
standards, which Florida adopted in July 2010.
Reviewers would have to see all the central shifts of the
new standards reflected. Reading passages would have
to include a heavier dose of nonfiction and stepped-up
text complexity. Teacher guides would have to pose
"text-dependent" questions, which drive students back
into their reading for answers, rather than let them
simply share their personal feelings about it. And reviewers
would want to see writing across the curriculum,
as well as rich performance tasks.
"They had to offer the components the common core
offers," said Shana Rafalski, the district's director of
elementary curriculum and instruction.
"Our rubric [of requirements] was very tight, and
numbers don't lie," added Mr. Fritz. "We knew where
some [vendors] were weak."
MEANING OF 'ALIGNED'
Teams of district teachers spent several days
alongside the central-office review team, poring over
vendors' materials and listening to their presentations.
In the end, "there was no one perfect product,"
said Ms. Rafalski.
Choosing among the top three vendors was a "close
call," said Mr. Fritz, but Houghton Mifflin's products
stood out for being a stronger reflection of the common
core and for having a better digital component and better
interventions for students with weak skills, he said.
Maggie H. DeMont, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's senior
vice president of product management and stratPAGE
S28 >
A collection of student essays is
displayed on the wall of Ms. Yepez's
classroom.
Maria Yepez works with her 4th grade class at Muir Academy in Long Beach, Calif., on exercises pegged
to the common core that teach students critical reading and thinking skills.
David Walter Banks for Education Week

http://www.edweek.org/go/core-in-action

Education Week - April 23, 2014

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