New NYC curricula plan will transform learning: Chancellor David Banks delivers to help get all kids reading

The chancellor of New York City Public Schools, David Banks, made a promise in January to end the city’s free-for-all approach to curricula selection, deliver more support to educators, and provide thousands of students with better instruction.

And yesterday, he kept that promise.

New York City announced a plan to ensure all students get the instruction necessary to learn to read. Over the next two years, all elementary schools will shift to one of three high quality reading curricula options: Expeditionary Learning, Into Reading, and Wit and Wisdom. In addition, the city will substantially invest in professional learning to build the capacity of teachers and leaders to implement these changes.

Elementary schools across the city and hundreds of thousands of students will receive higher quality, more culturally relevant, and more coherent instruction. This is a critically important change. For years, our two organizations and thousands of teachers, parents, and advocates have called for this pivot toward quality and coherence in the curriculum selection process, and we couldn’t be more excited about this innovative shift.

This major policy change will benefit educators. It’s no secret that many teachers spend their personal time and money creating instructional experiences from scratch, given the lack of high quality materials available to them at their schools. A survey by Educators for Excellence reported that only 38% of New York City educators believe their instructional materials are high quality and well aligned to learning standards.

Educators should have flexibility to adjust their curriculum when needed, but we only have a fighting chance to meet the varying needs of students when we have a more coherent approach to curricula that provides better instruction. Having consistency also allows schools to integrate culturally relevant texts, and it gives New York City purchasing power to push providers to improve the cultural relevance of curriculum.

Most importantly though, this change will benefit our students and address the city’s early literacy crisis. New York ranks near the bottom of the country in fourth-grade NAEP Reading scores. Less than half of all third graders scored proficient in ELA on the 2021-22 New York State Assessment, and only 35% of third graders from low-income backgrounds were proficient in ELA.

This announcement has the power to reverse these concerning trends in student learning. Research and other districts and states have demonstrated that student outcomes are significantly improved when high-quality instructional materials are aligned with professional learning experiences — a signature piece of this announcement. A report by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, for example, highlights that “when teachers participated in curriculum aligned professional learning, their student’s test scores improved by 9% of a standard deviation — about the same effect caused by replacing an average teacher with a top performer or reducing class size by 15%.”

Additionally, this announcement will benefit students because it recognizes the power of evidence-based instruction. As parents, and long-time advocates for improving reading instruction in high-needs communities, we are intimately familiar with the impact of learning materials that are rooted in the science of teaching. The New Teacher Project’s research in the Opportunity Myth demonstrated that, “in classrooms where students had greater access to grade-appropriate assignments, they gained nearly two months of additional learning compared to their peers.”

There is certainly still work that can be done, to ensure that this change works properly. City leadership must ensure the millions of dollars invested in professional development are spent in a way that’s thoughtful and leaves educators confident about the path forward. The city should also promote transparency by publishing the curriculum being used on each school’s website or in another centrally located place, so that parents, researchers, and support providers are in the know. Finally, assessments should be embedded in instruction. This will ensure teachers have accurate, on-time data regarding the standards, and leaders know where to direct additional professional learning, adaptive technologies, and other supports.

Our system can do this.

While there is a great deal of work that remains, yesterday’s announcement is undoubtedly a positive and long-awaited first step. If city leadership implements these curricula options effectively — incorporating high-quality professional learning and transparency on what schools are using — New York City will become the standard for all large school districts in the country to follow.

And the chancellor will have more-than-delivered on his January promise.

Divanne is the executive director of Educators for Excellence-New York, a teacher-led organization. Bryant is the executive director at The Education Trust-New York.