Susan Frey/EdSource Today

Students at Westlake Middle School in Oakland work on calibration ratios in their Common Core math form.

Susan Frey/EdSource Today

Students at Westlake Heart School in Oakland work on calibration ratios in their Common Cadre math class.

During the five years since California adopted the Mutual Cadre Country Standards for mathematics and English language language arts, the search for high-quality textbooks and curriculum materials has been a sticking point, in some cases a major i, in effectively and chop-chop implementing the new standards.

That's according to leaders in several school districts where EdSource is tracking Common Coreimplementation. School districts are making progress in finding and selecting the right materials, simply the complicated effort is still underway in these districts and many others across the land.

"Training and timing of available resources has been the most difficult aspect of this rollout," said Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson whenthe state released scores from the Smarter Balanced tests, which were based on the Mutual Cadre standards and administered terminal spring. After going through a months-long process of piloting new materials with 350 teachers, Hanson said, "we're only now using advisable math materials."

Hanson is not solitary. In four of half-dozen districts being tracked past EdSource (Fresno, Elk Grove, Garden Grove and San Jose Unified) as they implement the Mutual Cadre, district leaders said that finding appropriate instructional materials has been a significant obstacle to pedagogy classes aligned with the new standards.

"The biggest claiming has been the lack of textbooks and materials," said Gabriela Mafi, superintendent of Garden Grove Unified in Orange County.

The root of the trouble, argued Phil Daro, a principal author of the Common Core math standards, is that "districts tried to switch to the Common Core before at that place were any books aligned with them."

That, however, was non the fault of districts. The state adopted the Mutual Cadre in 2010, only the Land Board of Educational activity only canonical a recommended list of K-8 math textbooks and materials in Jan 2022 – and only did so two weeks ago for K-8 materials in English language linguistic communication arts. During that five-year period, students tooknew Smarter Balanced tests aligned with the standards.

Textbook publishers were slow to come up up with materials that were fully aligned to the Common Cadre standards. In many cases, materials that were purportedly aligned with them were just hastily updated versions of older materials.

"In some situations I think publishers take taken a sticker and put it on the sometime set of standards and called it a Common Core book," said Superintendent Chris Hoffman of Elk Grove Unified near Sacramento, in an interview with EdSource  concluding spring.

By at present, nevertheless, major textbook publishers have had fourth dimension to develop materials that are more directly aligned to the Common Cadre standards. That is reflected in the fact that about of the materials on the state's recommended lists for both English language and math were produced by publishing giants like Pearson, Houghton Mifflin and McGraw-Hill.

Adding to the complication of the  textbook adoption process, California is ceding more authority to districts to pick their own materials, equally are several other states.  According to the American Association of Publishers, California is one of only 19 "adoption states" that "adopts" textbooks and instructional materials. Simply while Land Board of Didactics still reviews and recommends materials for math and English in kindergarten through eighth grade, information technology doesn't require districts to buy or use them.

Every bit a outcome of the passage of AB 1246 in 2012, districts can choose their own materials for those grades, as long as they are aligned with the country's academic content standards and involve teachers in the review process. Some other "adoption states" are moving in a like direction, representing what an EdWeek report characterized as "a sea change in K-12 policy."

At the high school level, California districts are complimentary to adopt whatever curriculum materials they chose, as has ever been the case. This is because the country constitution requires the State Board of Educationto prefer instructional materials for grades Thou-eight, but not for high school.

The challenges in finding appropriate textbooks and other instructional materials has affected districts' abilities to implement the Common Core, according to some pedagogy leaders.

Garden Grove'south Mafi said her district chose notto innovatethe Common Cadre ahead of what she described equally "the state requirement" to implement thestandards concluding year,in office because it didn't have materials it needed to do so sooner. Mafi said the district too wanted more fourth dimension to set teachers "and provide extensive professional development."

The district "piloted" math textbooks from a list of materials recommended by the country for kindergarten through 8th form from September 2022 through Jan 2015. The pilot consisted of teachers trying out the materials, then reviewing information as to their effectiveness, before recommending them to the district'due south elected lath of trustees for formal adoption.

Officials in other districts worried that the famine of adequate materials afflicted classroom instruction – and added to the anxiety levels of teachers asked to take on however some other major reform. "Our biggest concern is that when teachers are frustrated and don't have tools they need, they're less constructive," said Jackie Zeller, San Jose Unified's director of secondary curriculum, instruction and EL services in an interview earlier this year.

In many districts, teachers take been integrally involved in trying out new materials, adapting existing ones or creating their own, instead of waiting for the state to lead the way. They piloted textbooks and online resources, pored over existing materials to effigy out which units were aligned to the new standards and collaborated with each other to hash out the best options to see their students' needs.

This represents a alter from what ofttimes occurred under No Child Left Behind and other top-downwardly reforms in which districts typically selected textbooks from state-adopted lists. These included materials similar McGraw Colina's Open Courtroom Reading series, which laid out highly structured lesson plans, and which were very unpopular amid many teachers who sought more than inventiveness in their classrooms.

In Visalia Unified, the Common Corematerials review procedure included setting up a large commission with teacher representatives from every school in the district. "This took many months and much discussion almost the standards, the quality of the materials, and how to approach teaching,"  Superintendent Craig Wheaton said.  The materials his Central Valley commune adopted, he said, "are designed to support teachers every bit they develop lessons. They are not meant to be all that they use."

Discontent with curriculum materials emerged as a top issue among thousands of educators who attended the July 31 "Meliorate Together" teachers summit held at 33 locations throughout the state. Kitty Dixon, senior vice president at the Santa Cruz-based New Teacher Center and one of the summit organizers, said many teachers who attended were frustrated past the lack of appropriate materials on the market – and consequently by the time and endeavour they spent pulling their ain materials from the Internet.

Marci Gould, who teaches 4th grade at Buena Vista Elementary in Walnut Creek, said at the time her commune had not all the same adopted Common Cadre-aligned instructional materials. "My biggest business organisation is non having a set curriculum or text as a basis," she said. "I spend a lot of personal time developing my own curriculum based off the Common Core standards."

There are both pros and cons to these home-grown efforts. "Some of it is vivid, some of it is goofy," Daro said. But he said on the plus side these materials "will go better over time" and the process has had the benefit of deeply immersing more teachers both in mathematics and the Common Cadre standards to guide their instruction.

Equally districts sorted through materials that publishers claimed were aligned with the Common Core, some delayed adopting new materials andcontinued to employ sometime textbooks.

"We've had to exercise some span work trying to use the existing texts with the new standards," Elk Grove's Hoffman said. "Nosotros fabricated changes in mathematics this past year and did an English linguistic communication arts adoption at the uncomplicated level, then we're nonetheless actually early in this process of trying to put all these resource in place."

Opposite to some other district leaders, Santa Ana Unified Superintendent Rick Miller said he was not overly concerned about the claiming of finding curriculum materials. In Miller'southward opinion, more important than the materials is the quality of pedagogy going on in the classroom. "I retrieve the principal instructional tool in the classroom is the instructor," he said.

That view was similar to the stance expressed past Aspire's master academic officer, Elise Darwish. "I'g pretty doubter about materials," she said. "I actually call back information technology's and then much more about the teacher, the instruction and the assessments. I don't desire to say I don't care nigh materials, but I think you tin can upgrade instruction, no affair what your materials."

Ed Winchester, Santa Ana'due south executive managing director of secondary curriculum and teaching, said the district initially decided in 2022 to refrain from adopting new mathematics materials. After spending a couple of months looking over what the market had to offer, he said, the district reviewers decided that those published materials were more often than not "hastily adapted from…electric current programs." "Nosotros just decided we were going to write a lot of our ain curriculum and find materials that matched our needs," he said.

Santa Ana concluded upwards supplementing existing textbooks with four new, gratuitous online resource, which offer a range of back up including downloadable M-12 lesson plans in mathematics and English language language arts. These are: EngageNY, developed by New York's Department of Education; materials from the Georgia Department of Teaching; and resources from the Silicon Valley Math Initiative and the Irvine Math Projection.

This bound, Santa Ana will airplane pilot Houghton Mifflin's "Go Math" at vii simple schools. At the same time, the commune will continue to use open source and other digital materials.

For many districts, the state's adoption of recommended lists for both the math and English linguistic communication arts materials came also late to exist useful – and leftdistrict staff members doing a lot of the heavy lifting themselves.

Hanson said Fresno Unified spent well-nigh $7.5 million on its K-eight math materials adoption and trained teachers last summer to implement the new instruction in 2015-sixteen.

Adam Ebrahim, a literacy consultant with the Fresno Canton Function of Education, praised the mode Fresno Unified found or created instructional materials. Teachers were allowed time to collaborate and search for resources that responded to their students' needs, he said.

"If we want to actually ramp up our classrooms, we take to empower teachers to design their ain curriculum," he said. "I empathise the grumbling, but if teachers aren't getting the time they demand to do that, they should have it up in bargaining sessions."

In theory at to the lowest degree, the process going forward for adopting math and English language arts textbooks should be easier, since the country has now adopted curriculum frameworks in both subjects, along with recommended lists of instructional materials. (The California Department of Didactics defines frameworks equally "blueprints for implementing the content standards.")

Eureka Common Core math textbook for 8th grade

EdSource Photo

Common Core math textbook for eighth grade

But that does non mean the process for finding the right materials, and its upshot, is fully resolved. Concerns virtually the capability especially of math materials have been raised, among others,  by William Schmidt, who runs Michigan Land University's Center for the Study of Curriculum, and Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor at the Academy of Southern California'south Rossier School of Education. EdReports, a national nonprofit system, has also issued a fierce critique of textbooks claiming to be Common Core-aligned, although the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has strongly disputed its conclusions.

School districts are at various stages in trying out and implementing curriculum materials – some drawn from the state lists and some not.

In San Jose Unified, for example, teachers developed their ain One thousand-five English linguistic communication arts and math units with the support of WestEd, said Jason Willis, the district'south assistant superintendent of customs engagement and accountability. The commune is using two on-line programs to supplement the Chiliad-5 English language language arts instruction and is supplementing its math instruction with materials created past TERC, a not-for-profit educational development organization.

The district'due south middle schools piloted online English language arts instructional materials terminal year that were implemented this fall for intervention, long-term English learners and special needs students, Willis said. Middle school math teachers accept been trying out College Lath's "Springboard" math curriculum which is on the country'due south recommended list, and are  going to recommend to the school board that it be adopted for use going frontwards.  At the high school level Algebra one, geometry and Algebra two classes take began using the "Springboard" curriculum likewise.

What bear on this patchwork of curriculum materials will have on student performance and educational activity is as nevertheless unknown. But Country Board of Pedagogy member Patricia Rucker, a sometime instructor who is a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association, said she believes progress has been made. The state, she says, now has  high-quality math and English language curriculum "frameworks," also as recommended materials to become with them.

At the state lath's virtually recent coming together in Sacramento  this month, she acknowledged that getting to this betoken has taken longer to achieve than many teachers anticipated and that students were assessed on the Mutual Core standards before the curriculum was fully implemented. "We did a lot of that piece of work out of gild," she said. "And nosotros didn't really have fourth dimension to really appreciate the work that had to be done at each stage."

Katherine Ellison contributed reporting for this story.

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