Education Week - September 13, 2017 - 10

Some H.S. Texts Get 'Scarlet Letter' in Consumer Review
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

tricts are demanding better materials aligned to upgraded expectations for students.
But perhaps most of all, qualitycontrol reviews of curricula are easier, now that many states' standards
have converged.
"I don't know that EdReports.org
or something like it could have been
as easily created absent common
standards. If they had to do reviews
50 times over, it would have been a
totally different undertaking," noted
Michael Cohen, the president of
Achieve, a nonprofit that works with
states to make student learning more
rigorous.

Grade

Building
Knowledge
(Gateway 2)

Overall
Alignment
Rating

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

Collections

11
12
9

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

Holt McDougal Literature

11
12

PEARSON

Curriculum Gateways

Pearson Literature

The grades 9-12 literature reviews
are by far the most extensive that
EdReports.org has put out in its
three-year existence. Some of the
literature anthologies that were reviewed spanned nearly 3,000 pages.
Those that fell short tended to falter
when it came to putting in a comprehensive structure to support writing,
the development of research skills,
and students' ability to read complex
material independently.
"We know that teaching students
how to look at different kinds of information, to synthesize information,
and to understand what it means and
actually be able to defend an opinion
or talk about what they're studying
is critical to post-K-12 work," said
Lisa Potts, EdReport.org's director of
English/language arts reviews. "And
it's something that is tremendously
difficult to put into a program."
As with its prior text evaluations,
the nonprofit used a series of gate-

Text Quality
and Alignment
(Gateway 1)

9
10
11
12

KEY:
meets criteria for alignment to common core
partially meets criteria
does not meet criteria

Market Variability
ways to review each literature series
against sets of standards. Each of the
series was examined by a team of five
teachers.
Each curriculum had to pass a
hurdle for text quality and complexity, which deal with the selection of interesting, well-crafted
texts worth analyzing, and then
how well the textbook helped build
students' knowledge via vocabulary,
activities, and coherent theming.
Textbooks needed to score a "meets
expectations" on both gateways
to be deemed aligned to the common core; those that reached that
goal also received a separate score
for the ease and usability of their
teacher-related supports.
Some major groups, notably the

RATING LITERATURE TEXTS
Results of EdReports.org's textbook reviews
can vary within the same publishing house
and even within the same textbook series.
SOURCE: EdReports.org

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10 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 13, 2017 | www.edweek.org

National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics, have pushed back on
EdReports.org's earlier reviews, questioning the concept of the gateways,
among other things.
But Jocelyn Chadwick, the president of the National Council of Teachers of English, praised the diversity
of the texts EdReports.org reviewed
this time around. She also noted the
potential for EdReports.org's tools to
help disrupt chummy relationships
between district textbook buyers and
the large publishers who court them.
"Textbook committee members
could be potentially predisposed to
express support for that publisher,
thereby seeing advantages and attributes in the text that may not be
present at all," she said. "Having this
kind of tool, however, actually removes the potential for such a predilection to occur-a good thing in such
a critical process."

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In all, EdReports.org reviewers
gave Pearson's MyPerspective, Odell
Education's Developing Core Literacy
Proficiencies, and the College Board's
SpringBoard good marks across the
board. But the other three series
struggled. (See chart.)
Notably, the reviews show the
diversity of results within the commercial publishing houses: Pearson's
MyPerspective was deemed aligned,
while its other one, Pearson Literature, was missing some components.
And specific series can also have individual strengths and weaknesses.
HMH's Collections did well at choosing great selections for students to
read with a range of text complexity, but failed to scaffold activities to
build students' knowledge coherently.
EdReports.org allowed publishers
to submit feedback and comments
on their review, but neither Pearson nor Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
did, nor did they return requests for
comment.
NCTE's Chadwick said teachers
and local leaders could apply the
nonprofit's review criteria on their
own to other literature collections-
but should have the flexibility to
tailor it, too. "As I read through, I
am also thinking about additions,
modifications, of micro-indicators,"
she said.
With its latest release, the nonprofit has now completed a review of
curricula in all K-12 grades in English/language arts and math. It will
release updates on a rolling basis as
new curricula come out and as publishers revise the old ones. It also
plans to use a similar process to review science texts.
EdReports.org is funded primarily by philanthropies, including the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
which was a major financial backer
of the common core's development.
(The Gates Foundation also supports
some coverage of the assessment
and implementation of college- and
career-ready standards in Education
Week and edweek.org.)
Visit the CURRICULUM MATTERS
blog, which tracks news and trends
on this issue. www.edweek.org/blogs

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Education Week - September 13, 2017

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