资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

It goes without saying that educators have been under tremendous pressure during the COVID-19 crisis. While there has been a good deal of attention on issues related to technology access and student engagement during the pandemic, there has been somewhat less attention paid to supporting teachers to teach a high-quality, standards-aligned curriculum during these times.

Even during the best of times, supporting teachers through coherent instructional systems—state and district policies around curriculum, assessment, and professional learning that provide teachers clear and consistent messages supporting standards implementation—has been a challenge. Students need access to a high-quality, coherent curriculum—both during the COVID-19 pandemic and when they return to in-person classrooms after the crisis has passed.

The three of us sought to characterize the presence of coherence in teachers' schools and districts prior to the pandemic. Our study, published in November, offers a sort of baseline for how districts and states were supporting standards implementation during the fourth decade of the standards movement. Unfortunately, our work shows that a large majority of teachers do not teach in a coherent instructional system. However, our work also offers evidence-based recommendations for states and districts seeking to improve standards implementation through building more system coherence.…

The remainder of this commentary is available at edweek.org.

Morgan Polikoff is an associate professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. He studies the design, implementation, and effects of curriculum, standards, and accountability policies. Elaine Wang is a policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. She examines policies and practices that influence K–12 instructional and school leadership quality. Julia Kaufman is a senior policy researcher and codirector of the American Educator Panels at RAND. Her work focuses on understanding how state and local education policies and programs support teaching and learning.

A version of this commentary originally appeared on Education Week on March 2, 2021.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.