Curriculum

Once More, With Feeling: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading

Sara Mead — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:21:00 -0400

Daniel Willingham, the UVA psychologist and Brittanica blogger, flags an interesting and important new study from Hong Kong that analyzed the relationship between 39 teacher characteristics and instructional practices and 4th grade students' reading scores on the PIRLS international reading assessment. Of the 39 teacher factors, Willingham notes, four were found to play a significant role in predicting fourth graders' reading scores:

the frequency with which the teacher used materials from other subjects in reading instruction.
using assessment to assign grades.
the frequency with which students took a quiz or test after reading.
using assessment to provide data for national or local monitoring.

These factors accounted for about 30 percent of the variation in children's reading performance, and by far the strongest predictor of the four was the extent to which teachers integrate readings from other content areas -- such as science, social studies, and the arts -- into their reading instruction. This fits with previous evidence showing that, once children learn the basic skills of how to decode, their ability to read well and to comprehend what they read depends in large part on the amount of content and general knowledge children have about the world, which enables them to connect what they read to existing knowledge and better undersand what they are reading.

Must See YouTube: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading (1/11/09)

The Critical Importance of Curriculum (6/8/09)

These findings are particularly important to keep in mind as federal policymakers ponder the shape of new literacy initiatives to replace the previous Reading First program, which Congress defunded in fiscal year 2009. Given the evidence both that reading proficiently by third grade is a very strong predictor of children's later school and life outcomes, and that far too many American youngsters fail to read proficiently by then, there is a real need for a continued federal role in supporting research-based early literacy initiatives in pre-K and the early grades. The Obama administration's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal included $300 million in funding for new Early Literacy Grants program that would replace Reading First. The information the administration has released about the proposal suggests that these grants would fund some of the same research-based early literacy strategies as Reading First funded, while also placing increased emphasis on improving children's reading comprehension.

The Hong Kong research reaffirms what previous research has shown -- the best way to improve students' reading comprehension is to ensure that they are exposed to a content-rich curriculum across the full range of academic subjects, including science, history, social studies and the arts. Unfortunately, some research suggests that many school districts have gone in the opposite direction, reducing time spent on content in an effort to increase reading and math scores. This evidence shows that approach is shortsighted. One way to solve the problem is by encouraging schools and teachers to better integrate content-rich readings from other subject areas -- especially non-fiction -- into their reading programs, replacing the sometimes vapid readings that many reading textbooks and existing commercial programs currently employ. Any new federal investment in reading needs to incorporate a strong emphasis on content, as well as decoding. The federal government could help promote this approach by disseminating information about the value of integrating content-rich reading into early literacy programs, and by creating a database or library of leveled, content-focused, "open source" reading materials that teachers could access for use in their classrooms.

The Critical Importance of Curriculum

Sara Mead — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:24:00 -0400

Last week Common Core, a national group that advocates for a rigorous, content-rich curriculum covering the full range of academic subjects for all children, published a report looking at curriculum and learning expectations for students in nine countries that outperform the United States on major international assessments. Their conclusion: These countries outperform us in part because they have higher expectations and expose students to a broader, more in-depth curriculum. Key quote from Common Core director Lynne Munson, "We believe that the content of a student’s education has a greater influence on his level of achievement than does delivery or accountability systems. So reform ideas like standards or tests don’t impress us unless they make content a priority. Thus far, the debate in this country over those measures has discounted the importance of content." Worth checking out.

E.D. Hirsch in New York Times on Teaching and Assessing Reading Skills (3/24/09)

Must See YouTube: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading (2/11/09)

A Call for Clarity In Early Elementary Standards (3/27/08)

While many of these countries have curricula and learning expectations for the early grades, Common Core sampled curriculum and guidelines starting in fourth or fifth grade -- leaving us with some questions: What, for example, have Hong Kong's fourth graders learned in the early grades that allows them to "Investigat[e] some simple patterns and phenomena related to light, sound, electricity, movement and energy" by fourth grade? Bringing Hong Kong or Finland-style curriculum and expectations to the later grades won't do much good if children's experiences in preschool and the early grades haven't exposed them to rich content knowledge that they can draw on to learn new ideas and concepts in the later elementary grades.

As research by both the American Federation of Teachers and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has shown, the early elementary school years are home to some of the weakest areas in existing state standards, and the early grades curriculum -- particularly for low-income students -- is too often a "content-free zone." What can we learn from other countries about improving children's access to high-quality, rich content -- in a full range of academic subjects, including music and the arts -- in the early grades?

E.D. Hirsch in New York Times on Teaching and Assessing Reading Skills

Sara Mead — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:19:00 -0400

An important op-ed by E.D. Hirsch in Sunday's New York Times looks at how we measure reading achievement in our nation's schools. For all the conversation about using "better tests" to measure school performance and student learning, policymakers often overlook one important shortcoming of existing reading assessments: the content on them is totally disconnected from the vocabulary and content children actually learn in school. Hirsch writes:

The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.

Teachers can’t prepare for the content of the tests and so they substitute practice exams and countless hours of instruction in comprehension strategies like “finding the main idea.” Yet despite this intensive test preparation, reading scores have paradoxically stagnated or declined in the later grades.

This is because the schools have imagined that reading is merely a “skill” that can be transferred from one passage to another, and that reading scores can be raised by having young students endlessly practice strategies on trivial stories. Tragic amounts of time have been wasted that could have been devoted to enhancing knowledge and vocabulary, which would actually raise reading comprehension scores.

Hirsh argues that we could improve the quality of both reading assessment and reading instruction if we replaced the current model with reading assessments in which the passages students are asked to analyze focus on topics that are aligned with the curriculum that children actually study in literature, science, social studies, the arts, and other subject areas in each grade. Doing this would also require states to improve the quality of their state standards in these subject areas so that they provided more useful information to teachers about what students are expected to learn in each grade.

Although children don't typically take reading assessments until 3rd grade, these recommendations are still important for early educators, because ensuring that students learn to read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade is one of the central goals of quality early education programs, and Hirsch's recommendations would have implications for how teachers teach reading even in the preK and early elementary grades.

This also seems like a great occassion for reminding folks of Daniel Willingham's terrific video, "Teaching Content is Teaching Reading"

Thing One and Thing Two: Play and Reading on Dr. Seuss's Birthday

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:00:00 -0500

Each year, Dr. Seuss's birthday gives us a reason not only to celebrate reading, but to be wonderfully silly about it. Today, in schools around the country, teachers and young students are cooking up green eggs, making a goofy red-and-white hats, and tromping around in their pajamas for "bedtime" stories in honor of "Read Across America" Day.

And children are not only imbibing in literacy lunacy during school. Surely many are also reading ... on a train. Or in the rain. Or in a box, and with a fox. They are reading here and there. They are reading anywhere.

Dr. Seuss's genius makes us yearn for more moments of play in literacy instruction. Experts on reading have been writing about the connection between play and reading for years (often citing Dr. Seuss), but sometimes we can get so caught up in the demands of de-coding that we take the fun out of it.

"Using playful teaching and learning not only makes instruction more enjoyable but also makes reading and writing real, engaging, and authentic," wrote Patricia Scully and Hilary Roberts, an education professor at elementary school teacher, in research on playful literacy published in the Early Childhood Education Journal in 2004.

Many teachers do strive to put play and reading together. But everyone needs a little inspiration every so often, so take a minute to check out the advice given by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff in their book, Einstein Never Used Flashcards. And consider this very helpful paper, "From Play to Literacy: Implications for the Classroom," by Sara Wilford, a longtime early childhood researcher and author of the 1997 book What You Need to Know When Your Child is Learning to Read.

If you're a parent, indulge in some Dr. Seuss yourself. Just reading his lines makes me want to tell my young daughters: Oh! The books you will read! Today is your day. You're reading for fun! You're off and away! You have brains in your head. You have words in your mind. You can read under the covers. Your mother won't mind.

Curriculum and Quality in Pre-k Programs

Sara Mead — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:38:00 -0500

As states and the federal government seek to expand access to high-quality pre-k programs, developing a stronger understanding of the value and nature of quality pre-k curriculum is essential to the success of these efforts.Of all the elements of high-quality pre-kindergarten programs, quality curriculum may be the most difficult for policymakers, practitioners, and parents to come to terms with. It’s intuitively obvious that quality pre-k programs should have small class sizes and qualified teachers, for example. And, while there’s some debate about what exactly we should require of qualified pre-k teachers, the most common metrics, such as whether or not teachers have a bachelor’s degree or the appropriate teacher certification to work with young children, are based on objective credentials that are relatively easy to measure. What we mean by a quality curriculum, however, is a more challenging question.

Most policymakers who don’t primarily work with young children in their day to day lives don’t intuitively have a sense of what types of content and skills are appropriate for young children to learn. Parents may have a strong sense of what they feel is important for children to learn in pre-k, but parents’ views on this subject vary substantially and are often at odds with what research tells us. Similarly, practitioners have diverse views about what is and is not appropriate pre-k curriculum--a topic that’s often the subject of heated intra-field debate.

This confusion about and discomfort with the notion of quality pre-k curriculum is apparent when we look at how states and advocacy groups define quality pre-k programs. The National Institute for Early Education Research, whose 10 benchmarks for state pre-k quality standards have become the default measure of quality for state pre-k programs, requires only that states have early learning standards that are “comprehensive”--meaning they address children’s physical well-being and motor development, social/emotional development, approaches toward learning, language development, and cognition and general knowledge--but says nothing about what the content of those standards should be. At least 43 states have state early learning standards, but there is substantial variation in the quality and content of these standards and many are not adequate to serve as a guide for quality pre-k curriculum. Some state standards are simply too vague and generalized to provide practical guidance. Many state early learning standards are designed for the entire birth to five range, rather than specifically focusing on pre-k, and thus provide limited practical guidance about what children should learn in the pre-k year. Other state pre-k standards may go too far in “pushing down” developmentally inappropriate academic content from the early elementary grades.

Several states require state funded pre-k programs to demonstrate that they have appropriate curriculum or to implement one of several published pre-k curriculum options from a state-approved list. But these lists often have not been designed based on research evidence. And the existing research evidence on the effectiveness of different published pre-k curricula is not necessarily adequate to guide policymakers’ decisions in this area (although the base of evidence is growing).

Even the idea of quality pre-k curriculum is troublesome to some early educators, who believe that establishing a defined curriculum will undermine the child-centered nature of quality pre-k programs and lead to the implementation of developmentally inappropriate practice. Yet, when we think about the goals we have for pre-k--improving children’s early learning and preparing them for success in the early elementary years--it’s clear that high-quality curricula that ensure adequate opportunities for children to develop essential knowledge and skills must be one of the hallmarks of quality pre-k programs. Indeed, defined, appropriate curriculum may be the key feature differentiating quality, educational pre-k from quality child care programs.

This is why the Albert Shanker Institute’s recently published pre-k curriculum guide is such a potentially valuable tool for policymakers, practitioners, and parents. Preschool Curriculum: What’s In It for Children and Teachers begins with a broad overview of what quality pre-k curriculum is and why it’s important for quality pre-k programs. It then proceeds to define the elements of quality pre-k curriculum in four “privileged domains” of pre-academic content in which young children are especially primed to learn: oral language, literacy, mathematics, and science. In each of these four areas, the report identifies appropriate expectations for what pre-k students should be able to accomplish, describes instructional practices known to support preschool-aged children’s learning in that domain, and outlines key features of a high-quality curriculum in that domain. In addition, each domain features a section specifically on tailoring quality curriculum in that domain to address the needs of English language learners.While there is variation across domains in the features of quality curriculum, several important features are relatively constant across domains.

High-quality curricula integrate learning in a specific domain with activities across other domains and opportunities for in-depth study of topics of interest to children. (For example, a topical unit focused on dinosaurs could provide opportunities for developing children’s knowledge and skills all four domains).
Quality curriculum also has a clearly defined scope and sequence that provide teachers with information about what specific information should be covered and in what order new topics or skills should be addressed.
Teachers participate in ongoing assessment that enables them to monitor children’s progress over time and tailor instruction accordingly.
Curriculum is presented in a developmentally appropriate way, with many opportunities for children to learn through play and practice.

This guide is a valuable tool that is based solidly in a strong body of research on what pre-k children should know and be able to do and how they learn, but it’s written in a very accessible way that makes it easy for practitioners and lay readers--including policymakers and parents--to understand. The Shanker Institute has done an important service in producing this report.

As attention at the federal level is increasingly focused on expanding funding for early education, federal level policymakers should take a close look at this report. If we are to get sustained educational results from new early education investments, it is critical that federal policymakers take steps to ensure that states and programs receiving federal funding use quality early education curriculum. Yet defining such a requirement can be difficult. This report provides useful tools to start moving towards a strong definition of quality pre-k curriculum that can be integrated into federal early education funding streams.

While the Shanker Institute's report focuses on pre-k curriculum, many of the key quality features it identifies are also applicable across the early elementary grades. Specific content and learning expectations change as children progress academically, but integrated learning, scope and sequence, ongoing assessment, and opportunities for learning through play and practice are just as important for second graders as they are for pre-kindergarteners. Moreover, strong pre-k curriculum is the crucial foundation for implementing an aligned Pre-k through 3rd grade early learning curriculum. Given the weakness of state standards in the K-3 grades, as well as of many early elementary curriculum, it would be incredibly valuable for the Shanker Institute, or some similar organization, to build on this report to create a curriculum guide for these privileged domains across the PK-3 spectrum. For now, though, we’re incredibly pleased just to have this report as a valuable resource.

Must See YouTube: Teaching Content is Teaching Reading

Sara Mead — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:44:00 -0500

UVA cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham is at it again, with a new YouTube video about the connection between content knowledge and reading comprehension. You never knew cognitive science could be so much fun!

Willingham's core message: While decoding skills and vocabulary are essential for students to read proficiently, reading comprehension requires something more. To truly comprehend what they read, students need a strong base of content knowledge that allows them to connect concepts on the page with existing knowledge to understand what the text is telling them. The implication for policy and practice? If we really want children to read proficiently, we need to not only teach them to read, but also equip them with content knowledge in a wide range of subjects.

This point is particularly relevant to the ongoing debate over NCLB and curricular narrowing: Elementary schools currently spend the lion's share of their limited class time on "teaching reading"--particularly decoding and reading strategies--but relatively little time on content areas such as social studies and science. And some schools have responded to increased accountability pressures by spending more time on reading and language arts, at the expense of time spent on other subjects. But the research Willingham cites suggests that this approach may be counterproductive, because in order to become good readers children need to acquire content knowledge in a wide range of fields.

It's also directly relevant to the ongoing debate about the Reading First program. As we've noted previously, the Reading First evaluation used a test of reading comprehension to measure the program's impact on students' reading skills. Yet a test of reading comprehension is hardly the best measure of Reading First's impacts, since Reading First is intended to build children's decoding, vocabulary, and other reading skills--not their content knowledge. What the Reading First evaluation shows is not necessarily a failure of Reading First--it also reflects a failure of our schools to equip children with the content knowledge they need to comprehend new texts.

One solution to this problem: Integrate literacy into other subjects, such as science and arts, rather than teaching it in isolation. Also, ensure that the text children read during time devoted to language arts are content-rich texts that expand their knowledge, including both nonfiction works and high-quality children's literature. As Congress approaches NCLB reauthorization, and also considers the fate of Reading First funding, they should keep the importance of content knowledge in mind and look for ways to improve both the law's accountability provisions and Reading First to increase the emphasis on content knowledge in the early grades.

Primary Education Shake-up in England

Christina Satkowski — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:41:00 -0500

Americans aren't the only ones expecting national-level policy changes in early childhood education. In England, schools are preparing for what could be the biggest shake-up in primary education in decades, according to news reports. In early December, Sir Jim Rose, an advisor to English Schools Secretary Ed Balls, issued an interim report on the state of English primary education. His recommendation: Shift away from teaching about discrete subjects and introduce more opportunities for children to play and develop cognitive and motor skills.

The final recommendations of the Rose Review, as his report is called, are not expected until later this year and, if accepted by the government, they won't be in place until 2011. But, the new ideas have already caused a stir in England. Not only do they represent a major shift away from the National Curriculum of 1988, a set of concepts that are supposed to guide the instruction of all English students beginning in preschool. These changes come with a concerted emphasis on early education and early education alignment. On that last point, especially, U.S. policymakers should take note.

Many of the recommendations in the Rose Review focus on children aged 5 and 6 -- the two years known in England as Key Stage 1. The report recommends scrapping the current curriculum that specifies 12 subjects for mastery, such as history, geography, music and art, and replacing it with six more broadly drawn "areas of learning," including "human, social and environmental understanding" and "understanding the arts and design." This change would mean that Key Stage 1 would look less like the Key Stage 2 curriculum, which is for ages seven to 11, and align it instead with the curriculum for the public preschool program, called the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The preschool curriculum features more play-based learning and is also built around six areas of learning and development, which are similar to the six "areas of learning" proposed by the Rose Review.

What is driving these changes is growing evidence (found in this report from the U.K.'s National Foundation for Educational Research and elsewhere) that a child's transition from preschool to the first year of formal schooling can be abrupt, unsettling and foreign to young children who are suddenly expected to sit still for longer periods of time and offered less time for play. The Rose Review says schools can ease this transition by extending play-based learning into the upper grades.

The Rose Review makes another interesting suggestion regarding the early education continuum. It suggests that writers of England's national curriculum consider the primary grades in two-year phases, clustering 5 and 6 year olds, 7 and 8 year olds, and 9 and 10 year olds. While it is hard to say how this would look in practice, the intention is to promote a smooth, progressive inter-grade curriculum. It is an initiative similar to preK-3 alignment efforts and "early education academies," which have been shown to improve elementary student achievement in the U.S.

Another recommendation in the report: Better communication between preschool and Key Stage 1 classrooms. English preschool students receive assessments of their academic and social skills (called "Profile" assessments), but these are passed on to Key Stage 1 teachers only half the time, and few teachers find them useful. Rose's fix? Find ways to increase usage of the profiles, encourage more contact among preschool and Stage 1 teachers, and have preschoolers visit Stage 1 classrooms to minimize apprehension about the transition.

The preschool-to-kindergarten transition is a big issue in the U.S., too. In 1998, the National Education Goals Panel prodded educators to smooth the transition to help achieve its goal of having all children kindergarten-ready. Some states and school districts have developed their own transition programs. They include calling parents ahead of the first day of school, holding open houses and distributing flyers. Yet these efforts are often too little, too late. Many are hampered because children come to kindergarten from a diverse array of preschools and registration continues late into the summer. Teachers often do not know who their students are until a few days before classes start, if then.

Alignment should apply to foreign language learning too, according to the report. English students should start learning foreign languages earlier, it says, beginning as early as age 7 instead of 11, as is current practice. Examples of elementary-school instruction for languages like Spanish and Mandarin can be found around the U.S., and some of these classes are even offered in preschools. Yet often these lessons occur infrequently, like once a week, or they last just one year. Young children can absorb foreign language skills like sponges, but they can lose them just as quickly if these skills are not reinforced throughout their academic career. While schools should be allowed to choose which and how many languages they teach, the report suggests that children study a single language over four years so that "there is a very clear expectation that children will make significant progress in their ability to communicate in the language."

Officials from both sides of the political aisle in England have qualms about Rose's recommendations, according to media reports. Conservatives worry that re-aligning parts of the curriculum with preschool years could erode standards, and Liberals want teachers to have more freedom to set their own priorities, though the report does appear to give them control over how they teach. Could a similar debate be kindled here in the United States as we find new approaches to linking preschool to elementary education? Until we know how proposed reforms will look, it's hard to say, but "building up" from the early years is a strong step in the right direction.

Want Algebra by 8th? Start With Proficiency in Foundational Skills by 4th

Sara Mead — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:26:00 -0400

A new report from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution finds that 120,00 students nationally are enrolled in algebra as eighth graders even though they have math skills comparable to those of the average second grader. That may not sound like a lot of students, but it's nearly 8 percent of all American eighth graders enrolled in algebra courses, and to the extent that these underprepared students are spread across algebra courses with students who are better prepared, their presence may have a negative impact on the quality of algebra instruction offered to a much larger population of students.

Report author Tom Loveless suggests that this finding calls into question the recent policy push, particularly in some high-poverty urban school districts, to enroll increasing numbers of eighth graders (in some cases, all eighth graders) in algebra. But it also highlights the need to get much more serious about improving the quality of math instruction provided to students in the elementary grades. Students arrive in eighth grade doing math at a second grade level only when their elementary schools have seriously failed in teaching them basic math knowledge and skills.

The National Math Panel recommends that children achieve proficiency in whole number operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by fourth grade. Mastering these skills by the end of fourth grade is an essential prerequisite for students to be able to understand algebra by eighth grade. The substantial number of ill-prepared students in eighth grade algebra classes is a case study in the need for alignment that ensures the standards, curricula, and teaching strategies (as well as teacher trainign and professional development) we use in the early grades are designed to build seemlessly towards the accomplishment of goals we have for children to master in later years. In other words, if we want kids to master algebra by eighth, we need to focus at least as much energy on getting them proficient in whole number operations by fourth. That's a lot harder than simply mandating algebra for all eighth graders, but in the long term the results will be much better.

Photo by flickr user SoulCookie used under a Creative Commons license.

What Works in Pre-k Curriculum?

Sara Mead — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:29:00 -0400

Last month the Institute of Education Sciences released a major new study that evaluates the impact of 14 common pre-kindergarten curricula on pre-k students’ learning and pre-k classroom quality. Results suggest that some pre-k curricula are more effective than others in improving children’s literacy and math skills.

Pre-kindergarten experts generally agree that high-quality pre-k programs must have a clearly articulated curriculum that guides instruction and spells out expectations for what children will learn over the course of the year. They also tend to agree that good pre-k curriculum should be comprehensive—developing children’s literacy, language, early math, and social and emotional skills. And, as we’ve previously argued, good pre-k curriculum should be aligned with the curriculum that will be used in kindergarten and early elementary grades.

But beyond that, there’s relatively little consensus on what a good pre-k curriculum should look like. In fact, pre-k curriculum is the subject of heated ideological debates between those who favor different pedagogical approaches. There’s also relatively little systematic research on the effectiveness of different types of curricula currently being implemented in pre-k classrooms around the country. And the evaluations that have been conducted are often not well-publicized or accessible for policymakers and the public. That’s left policymakers adrift: We know that quality pre-k programs should use quality curricula, but if we don’t have solid research on the effectiveness of different curricula, how can we ensure that the curricula publicly-funded pre-k programs implement are effective?

The federally-funded Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative seeks to address that problem, by evaluating the effectiveness of 14 common pre-k curricula. The study focuses on three questions:

What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool students’ early reading skills, phonological awareness, language development, early mathematical knowledge, and behavior?
What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on these outcomes for students at the end of kindergarten?
What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool classroom quality, teachers-child interaction, and instructional practices?

Twelve research teams from universities across the country implemented the 14 curricula in randomly selected samples of local pre-k classrooms; measured child outcomes at the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten, for both children in treatment classrooms and a control group; and observed the quality of classrooms in both treatment classrooms and the control group.

Researchers found evidence that four programs had positive impacts on child outcomes, compared to a control group, either at the end of preschool or at the end of kindergarten:

DLM Early Childhood Express Supplemented with Open Court Reading Pre-K had positive effects on reading, phonological awareness, and language at both the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten.
Pre-K Mathematics supplemented with DLM Early Childhood Express Math software had positive effects on math at the end of pre-k.
Curiosity Corner, developed by the Success for All Foundation, had positive effects on reading at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).
Early Literacy Learning Model had positive effects on language at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).

Most curricula included in the study did not improve children’s outcomes relative those of control group children, however. More of the selected curricula had positive impacts on pre-k classroom quality and teachers’ interactions with children: eight of the 14 curricula studied had positive results, relative to a control group, on these indicators.

There are some clear limitations to these findings.

First, just because researchers found no positive impacts for most of the curricula studied, that doesn’t mean they are ineffective. Children in the control groups were enrolled in the same types of pre-k programs as those in the treatment groups, and the classrooms they attended used some type of curriculum, most often (though not always) one developed by their teachers. What we can conclude from this research is that most of the curricula studied were no more effective in improving pre-kindergarteners’ learning than the various curricula that the pre-k programs would otherwise have used.

Similarly, we cannot necessarily conclude, based on this data, that the few curricula that had significant student learning impacts, relative to controls, are more effective than other curricula in the study, which did not. That’s because the curricula used in control classrooms varied across the experiments, and some control classrooms had stronger curricula than others. Variation in control classrooms is one major challenge in implementing very large, multi-site studies like this one, and the study design in this instance contributed to this program.

Finally, this study does not look at the cost-effectiveness of different curriculum models. It tells us nothing about the cost to implement each curriculum, or how it compares to the costs of teacher- and school-designed curricula, or other popular curriculum models.

Then what does this study show? First, this study’s findings show that curriculum does matter, and that some curricula can produce better learning outcomes for children than others. Specifically, it suggests that four curricula that did have significant positive student learning impacts are more effective than the, typically teacher generated, curricula most pre-k programs were using. That may not sound like much, but it’s a pretty significant finding for studies of educational curriculum, which often find no benefits relative to what schools would be doing otherwise. Policymakers should take this into account when considering curriculum requirements for pre-k programs. We clearly need further research in this area to produce more useful guidance for policymakers and practitioners going forward, however.

The Department of Education must also do a better job communicating research findings about different pre-k curricula. This study has so far received very little public or press attention, despite its importance. The Department’s What Works Clearinghouse has also reviewed evaluations of almost 20 different early education interventions or curricula, but those evaluations are also not well-publicized among early educators. As research confirms the common sense finding that curriculum models in pre-k are important, the federal government must do a much better job of supporting quality research on the effectiveness of different models and making the results accessible to policymakers, practitioners, and parents.