New Curriculum Demands New Support

IDEAS

New curriculum demands new support

By Stephanie Hirsh and Jonathan Ben-Isvy

October 2021

In 2017, Chicago Public Schools administrators were debriefing what they had observed while visiting several schools. They wondered why the focus of instruction was so vastly different not only from school to school but classroom to classroom in the same school. They grew concerned that some students had more access to high-quality learning opportunities than others. Soon, their discussion homed in on curriculum. Several administrators referred to a research report they had studied that examined the importance of grade-appropriate assignments to student success. The researchers found that “[w] hen students who started the year behind had greater access to grade-appropriate assignments, they closed the outcomes gap with their peers by more than seven months” (TNTP, 2018). Others referred to research studies linking the quality and

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About The Elements

The Elements: Transforming Teaching Through Curriculum-Based Professional Learning is a report from Carnegie Corporation of New York that explores how professional learning anchored in high-quality curriculum materials can improve teaching and learning for all.

Its aim is to guide teachers to experience instruction as their students will, change instructional practices, and lead to better student outcomes. Growing out of Carnegie’s grantmaking work, it details the following key elements of curriculum-based professional learning and essentials that underlie the processes of change:

Core design features: curriculum, transformative learning, and equity;
Functional design features: learning designs, beliefs, reflection and feedback, and change management;
Structural design features: collective participation, models, and time; and
The essentials: leadership, resources, and coherence.

For more information, visit www.carnegie.org/elements.

How "The Elements" supports teachers

“Our investment in Skyline demands that we provide our teachers with the support they need to successfully implement Skyline in their classrooms,” said Jonathan Ben-Isvy, manager of professional learning for Chicago Public Schools. “This means supporting and building content knowledge and instructional practices by rooting these in the Skyline materials they will use in their classrooms and with the very students they will be teaching in mind.

“The Elements has guided our vision for successful implementation of Skyline,” Ben-Isvy said. “Each decision is made with the intention of being as true to the framework as feasible within the complexity of a school system the size of Chicago.”

References

Short, J.B. & Hirsh, S.A. (2020). The elements: Transforming teaching through curriculum-based professional learning. Carnegie Corporation of New York. www.carnegie.org/publications/elements-transforming-teaching-through-curriculum-based-professional-learning/

TNTP. (2018). The opportunity myth: What students can show us about how school is letting them down — and how to fix it. Author. opportunitymyth.tntp.org/

Stephanie Hirsh

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Stephanie Hirsh retired in June 2019 after 31 years with Learning Forward, an international association of more than 13,000 educators committed to increasing student achievement through effective professional learning. Hirsh led the organization as its executive director for the last 13 years where she presented, published, and consulted on Learning Forward’s behalf across North America.