Sharing Information on Instructional Materials Across School Districts

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Despite increasing accountability requirements, Mid-Atlantic Region state education agencies have little information about what instructional materials districts are adopting. This report, What English Language Arts, Math, and Science Instructional Materials have Districts in the Mid-Atlantic Region States Adopted?, describes results of a project to share information on core texts, supplemental materials, and benchmark assessments adopted by Mid-Atlantic Region districts for specific grade levels in English language arts, math, and science. The report also includes an online, searchable database.

From March to September 2009, data were collected from 997 (90 percent) of the 1,113 eligible school districts in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The report provides descriptive information about core texts and recommends refinements to the data collection approach. Item response rates were too low to incorporate data on supplemental materials and benchmark assessments.

Among the findings:

• Few districts reported having adopted district-developed core text materials (0–2 percent in each grade and content area) or no core text materials (0–3 percent).

• More districts (1–14 percent) reported having adopted more than one core text.

• Depending on the grade and content area, 34 to 64 percent of reporting districts adopted a single commercially developed core text.

• The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) had issued reports on studies of 15 of the instructional materials identified by school districts that had met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations. Ten showed positive effects or potentially positive effects of the curriculum. McGraw Hill’s Everyday Mathematics was the only one of these to be widely adopted.