Where Are Teachers Getting Their Common-Core Instructional Materials?

February 11, 2016

Findings from the Teaching Higher: Educators’ Perspectives on Common Core Implementation Report are used to examine instructional materials in the classroom in the following Education Week blog post.

A new study found that teachers are mainly relying on homegrown instructional materials, created either by themselves or their district colleagues, to meet the Common Core State Standards. But as many as a third of the 4th-8th grade teachers surveyed also said they've turned to free online platforms such as EngageNY and LearnZillion to implement the new benchmarks. 

The study, conducted by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, overall confirmed that the Common Core State Standards really are changing classroom instruction. As my colleague Ross Brenneman wrote, the report includes a series of interesting findings about what teachers are doing differently (they're putting more emphasis on nonfiction in ELA and conceptual understanding in math, for instance) and strategies that help improve instruction (collaboration is NOT the key, it turns out). Head to his post for more on the study in its entirety.

The researchers also dug into the specific kinds of instructional materials teachers were using. 

 

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