Building a New Foundation with High-Quality Instructional Materials

An Assessment Audit Uncovers a Deeper Challenge

In early 2021, TNTP worked with Passaic Public Schools, a district in northern New Jersey, about 10 miles from New York City, to conduct an assessment audit. District stakeholders worried they were over-testing and that exams were either too easy or difficult. In addition, district leadership wanted to determine whether assessment materials aligned with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.  

The findings uncovered a more foundational issue—the curriculum itself, particularly the instructional materials such as textbooks and worksheets. In many cases, students were being taught from materials that were below grade level or lacking complexity.  Since educators weren’t working from high-level texts, classroom instruction was not rigorous enough.  

High-quality instructional materials are fundamental for student achievement, one of the four criteria TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth deems essential to a successful educational experience.  

Swift, Thorough Action to Reimagine the Curriculum

Passaic leadership immediately extended its partnership with TNTP to conduct a complete curricular audit and classroom-level diagnostic, released in the fall of 2021. The findings showed that only 45% of the students’ assignments were grade appropriate. The lack of high-quality materials was also impacting the other three pillars of high-quality instruction: a mere 23% of lessons were rooted in strong instruction, in which students were asked to do intellectually heavy lifting. Only 50% of students were deeply engaged in the content, while only 37% of students had teachers with high expectations for them. Yet, the review also uncovered a promising fact: when students were given the chance to engage in standards-aligned grade-appropriate assignments, they rose to the occasion, and the percentage of students able to meet the target standards doubled.  

Instructional staff understood that access to high-quality instructional materials is, at its heart, an equity issue. The Opportunity Myth shows that classrooms that serve predominantly students from higher-income backgrounds spent twice as much time on grade-appropriate assignments than did classrooms with students from low-income backgrounds, and this seemed to be playing out in Passaic, where 86% of the district’s 15,000 students qualified for free or reduced lunch. Educators were determined to interrupt the opportunity gap.

A Materials Review That Centers Equity for Multilingual Learners

Harnessing TNTP’s Curriculum Implementation Framework, Passaic leaders began by convening a task force to design a vision for standout ELA and math education that would guide the selection of new instructional materials. Then, content specialists began reviewing materials for ELA for grades K through 8 and math for grades 3 through 12.   

Central to Passaic’s efforts was an unwavering commitment to finding vendors that offered the same curriculum in both English and Spanish, since 93% of Passaic’s families identify as Latinx. Leaders also wanted to ensure continuity across schools, since students often move between schools within the district. 

Finding dual-language materials proved more challenging than expected. Content-area specialists and bilingual supervisors examined numerous options, discovering that because of inequities in the markets, materials that were offered in both English and Spanish often didn’t meet the standards that define high-quality instructional materials; conversely, high quality materials often were only offered in English. 

Yet Passaic leaders weren’t willing to compromise on the materials’ quality, nor on offering them in both Spanish and English. Leaders also felt it was critical from an equity standpoint that all students in a grade learn same curriculum, so purchasing high quality materials in English and different ones in Spanish also was not an option.  

Next, Passaic worked with TNTP to assemble a diverse group of stakeholders to conduct an in-depth review of the few materials that met the criteria. They assessed whether the materials were rich in content and driven by learning science, and examined whether the texts were aligned with college- and career-ready standards. They also looked closely at whether they were culturally responsive and equity centered. The task force also reviewed performance reports on the materials that other organizations had conducted and invited publishers to give presentations.  

TNTP worked with Passaic to establish criteria on which to assess the materials and determine which options best meet their needs. The group held discussions and ultimately used the criteria to vote, selecting Amplify CKLA and Amplify Caminos as the ELA and SLA vendor, and Carnegie Learning and Illustrative Math for the math curricula.   

Once these key decisions were made, with support from TNTP, the district immediately began creating their strategic implementation plan. From setting clear goals for implementation in alignment with their new content visions, to creating yearlong professional learning plans for key stakeholders including school leaders, coaches, and teachers, to aligning the district’s teacher development strategy to its new instructional priorities, to implementing a progress monitoring approach, each layer of the plan was strategic and intended to build the investment and skills for instructional staff at all levels that would be required to achieve their desired results.

High Quality Materials and Students Meeting Challenges 

Passaic began implementing the new curriculum in the 2022-2023 school year, and early figures showed immense promise. The percentage of in-class lessons using grade-level content jumped from just 47% in October 2021 to 90% in November 2022, while the percentage of assignments with grade-level content increased from 45% to 79%. The new curriculum strongly impacted the in-class teaching, with the percentage of lessons with strong instruction jumping from 19% in October 2021 to 50% in November 2022. More than 80% of teachers feel that the instructional materials benefit their students, and more than half feel students are more engaged with the new curriculum than with the old one.  

In addition, leaders were encouraged by the fact that students mastered grade-level standards as soon as they had the chance. In October 2021, students were meeting grade-level standards in only 30% of their work; by April 2023, that figure had climbed to 74%. Bilingual classrooms demonstrated comparable growth to non-bilingual classrooms, with grade-appropriate assignments increasing from 17% to 50% and lessons with strong instruction increasing from 17% to 50%.   

Passaic extended its partnership with TNTP to continue rolling out the curriculum and to monitor progress. The district is also partnering with TNTP to refine its vision for bilingual instruction and ensure that teachers are fully leveraging the new materials in support of this vision. Passaic also applied this process to select new materials for its high schools during the 2022-2023 school year, and is now implementing HMH – Into Literature high-quality instructional materials at the high school level.  

School leaders praised the breadth of experience TNTP brought to the project, having guided other districts through selecting high quality instructional materials. “Partner with TNTP—that would truthfully and honestly be my first advice [to districts embarking on a similar project]. It’s so helpful to have a thought partner who has done this work in other places,” said Lisa Rowbotham, Passaic’s Director of Elementary and Secondary Education. “You might have colleagues in other districts you can call, but they can’t give you that level of support to say, ‘We’ve worked across the United States, and this is what we’ve experienced.’ It gives you a completely different understanding of this work.”