Curriculum Review Resources (Math Focus)
Quick Tips from the Idaho Regional Math Specialists:
No product will solve all your problems -- positive results follow sustained investments in educator efficacy far more than product choices.
Publishers want you to buy their products. Be skeptical of marketing bells and whistles. Don’t just look at the stickers! Determine what is important to you and make your own conclusions.
Every curriculum has pros/cons -- cherry-picking resources across grades and courses can be effective as long as instruction is rooted in the standards!
Is the curriculum led by integrated, rich problem-solving with quality tasks, or is it primarily show and tell? Research supports building "procedural fluency on a foundation of conceptual understanding."
Narrow selections to a few programs (ie, through using the Curriculum Adoption Process Framework, or IMET/GIMET tools), and pilot before adopting.
Adoption requires PD and support to succeed -- consider adoption resources and training sustainability as part of the review process.
Parents and community members will need training and clearly outlined evaluation parameters to participate successfully. Group consensus should be determined by a tool agreed upon in advance (such as a rubric). See the Curriculum Adoption Process Framework below for more information.
Principals to Actions p70-78 on curriculum (link to excerpt) - A must-read chapter that synthesizes quality research-based principles and considerations for defining and adopting a quality curriculum, including a table showing productive and unproductive beliefs. Purchase Principals to Actions here. This book is a foundational outline of effective math education centered on high-leverage math practice standards.
Quality instructional materials will integrate practices in the Idaho Mathematics Instructional Framework and the Standards for Mathematical Practice outlined by grade level in the Idaho State Content Standards for Mathematics.
The Curriculum Adoption Process Framework includes well-considered details on the adoption process and a free workbook for curriculum adoption teams to use, in particular, the 1.3 workbook (link to overview page) gives an excellent overview of how to effectively solicit stakeholder input, develop the rubric, identify the options you will review, and train the Review Committee on the rubric and process
The Idaho state curriculum page --> Recommended Curricular Materials --> Mathematics --> adoption guides provide notes for various curricula, including a K-12 general resource and K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 specific resources.
The Idaho state curriculum evaluation rubric (linked here) is pretty lengthy for a district adoption, but the rubric outlines important things to consider.
SETDA has a list of quality tools for curriculum evaluation
The Materials alignment toolkit provides K-8 and HS evaluation tools,
Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool (IMET) - The IMET is a tool for evaluating a comprehensive textbook or textbook series for alignment to the Shifts and major features of the CCSS
Grade-Level Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool-Quality Review (GIMET-QR) grades K-8: designed as a framework for evaluating the quality of instructional materials and choosing materials that are best suited to provide a coherent learning experience for students.
https://www.edreports.org/reports - Gives objective reviews of many of the popular curriculums, though curriculum publishers know the criterion in advance, and some of them "game" the system.