NASBE Highlights Seven Questions to Strengthen Instructional Materials

Alexandria, VA — Top performing countries on the Program for International Student Assessment share a common feature: Each has adopted a coherent, shared curriculum. By contrast, the United States often leaves classroom and lesson choices up to districts, schools, or even individual teachers, resulting in uneven quality in instructional materials.

In a new NASBE analysis, Dr. David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and former member of the Maryland State Board of Education, explains how a shared curriculum can hold the entire educational enterprise together. He suggests that state boards are well positioned to curate and support a selection of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) in math, English language arts, and science and strengthen teacher preparation to ensure that all students receive consistent, high-quality instruction.

Steiner outlines seven key questions for state leaders to ask when engaging in this work, from exploring evidence around effectiveness and weighing curriculum choices, to balancing local control around HQIM decisions and tracking and supporting effective implementation.

“State board members, equipped with the knowledge that high-quality curricula are important and that multiple states have done transformative work in this domain, can prompt critically important board discussions and press state chiefs to take appropriate action,” Steiner writes.

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