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Key Factors to Ensure a Successful Curriculum Review

Each year, schools and districts across the country embark on the curriculum review and adoption process. We spoke with professional learning consultant Linda Rhyne, who has over 15 years in education as well as numerous certifications and teaching awards, as well as leaders from the Independent Schools Collaborative to get their take on this process. 

The Independent Schools Collaborative is a network of independent schools who engage in professional learning and curriculum with Collaborative Classroom. 

What indicators let a school know that it’s time for a curriculum review and/or adoption process? 

When I’m working with schools and districts, I encourage them to think about six factors when determining if it’s time for curriculum review.

Time

How long has it been since you last conducted a review? Most schools conduct a review every 5–7 years. 

Contract

Do you have a contract with your current curriculum provider? If so, when will that contract be finished? If the renewal is coming in the next 1–2 years, it’s a good time to start considering reviews. 

Learning

Have you learned anything new that you should consider within your current curriculum and its implementation? Is there new learning in education that should be applied to your curriculum? Right now many teachers and leaders are engaging in learning related to the Science of Reading and/or equity best practices. This new learning is a lens through which to review current and new curricula. 

Revisions

Has your current curriculum released a new edition? If so, what are their revisions? Are they important enough to consider? Reach out to your current curriculum provider to find out more about the revision. Be sure to ask about any learning or research that informed the changes. 

Data

Does your student data show that they benefit from instruction through the curriculum? Curriculum decisions need to be a part of high level data conversations. Schools should ask themselves if the student data supports the curriculum decisions that you’ve made. This can be a very complex question to answer because you’ll need to know more about how the curriculum is being implemented to know how it is impacting student learning outcomes. 

Staff

Are teachers asking for a curriculum review? Listening carefully to staff will let you know if it might be time to revisit curriculum decisions. 

The Bolles School – Jacksonville, FL

Christy Lusk and Stacey Hendershot at The Bolles School, in the Jacksonville, FL area, know it is important that teachers are invested in the curriculum adoption process.

“When it was time to adopt a common curriculum for both campuses, we brought both lower schools together to form a lower school curriculum adoption committee. Each lower school had representation on the committee from every grade level along with their learning specialists. School data was shared with the team and the committee carefully considered which program would best meet the needs of their students.”  

It is important for districts to have a curriculum review when selecting new materials.

What are the key steps schools should take to ensure a successful adoption process? 

Several organizations provide guidance around the curriculum adoption process, but what I think is most important to remember, regardless of the process, is that context matters a lot. Each community is different and it’s critical not to lose context when following a process. What can help with this is engaging stakeholders throughout the process. Listening carefully to what stakeholders want and need in the curriculum can help leaders strategically plan the path forward. 

Curriculum Audit

The curriculum audit helps you establish a baseline to understand if you need to go through an adoption process. Using an evaluation tool (like IMET or The Reading League Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines) gives you a guide through which to look at the curricula you’re evaluating. In the curriculum audit process you’ll want to examine both the written curriculum (read reviews, conduct your own review) and the taught curriculum (observe classroom instruction, conduct focus groups, review student data). 

Curriculum Review

Use the same tool you used to review your current curriculum to review others you want to learn more about. This might include asking for formal presentations, piloting materials, gathering stakeholder feedback, etc. 

Make a Decision

Will you stick with your current curriculum or make a change? If you are making a change, be sure to gather feedback from stakeholders about what they loved about the previous curriculum. This will help you plan for any pain points moving forward. Be sure to also consider the budget implications for the change – what are the cost of materials? What planning do you need to do for professional learning? 

Wesleyan School – Peachtree Corners, GA

Madison Thomas, third grade teacher, shared about the process at Wesleyan School:

“We knew that it was important to have all school stakeholders participate in our adoption process. We thought carefully about who should be on this committee and how they would get input and feedback from the people they represented. This gave teachers a chance to have input on the decision making process.” 

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