Why Curriculum Matters
Recently the Academy administration announced the incorporation of several new (to us) instructional programs. These resources like UFLI, JumpMath, and Phonics for Reading focus especially on teaching math and language arts skills at the K-8 levels, to ensure the strongest possible foundation for our students. We wanted to take a moment to share the value of clear, well-researched and tested knowledge building programs, and all that it will add to a student's education. Not only do such comprehensive curriculums safeguard against students ‘slipping through the cracks’, but it frees the teacher to focus not on lesson creation but on the students: on the instructional delivery. This aligns with our long-standing value that it is our teachers who are the most valuable part of the classroom.
The importance of curriculum, a clear and coherent plan for learning over time, is difficult to overstate. You can’t teach if you don’t have something to teach about (curricular knowledge), you don’t know how to teach (instructional methodology) until you know what has been taught (prior knowledge). In more simple terms, instruction is blind and aimless if the curriculum is broken, absent, or fragmented. Nuno Crato(1), leader of Portugal's successful educational reforms, says “Everything starts with the curriculum. This is the education founding document and without clear learning goals no education system can progress.” (2) A school exists to transmit critical content, information, knowledge, and skills to the next generation—content that would not be acquired as efficiently through natural discovery alone. The curriculum sits at the heart of the school, and if it is not centrally understood, accessible, and shared by all—as Crato emphasizes—don’t expect progress. If schools digress or stagnate, what becomes of society?
Many schools depend on teachers, implicitly or explicitly, to not only generate or self-select curriculum, but to also deliver the instruction. Between and after classes, and through the weekend, teachers nationwide scour Google for lesson plans, assessments, content, printable materials, and activities from sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest—resources that may or may not align with grade-level standards or build knowledge coherently.
According to a 2016 RAND teacher survey (3), nearly all teachers (97–99%) reported using self-developed or self-selected materials to some extent—these being the lesson plans, instructional content, activities, and assessments that a coherent adopted curriculum should provide. Weekly or more frequent use was reported by 83% of elementary and 87% of secondary teachers, highlighting the high frequency and near-universal prevalence of teachers acting as de facto curriculum designers.
More recent RAND surveys (4) confirm this pattern persists: nearly half of K–12 teachers use self-created curriculum materials in some capacity, about 25% primarily or exclusively rely on them (termed 'DIY' teachers), and nearly all teachers modify materials extensively—often mixing multiple sources ('cobblers' at 45%). Only about 20% follow a single provided curriculum with limited changes ('by-the-book').
There are a few glaring issues with this. Teachers are rarely trained to design curriculum, let alone trained to use the best evidence informed instructional practices (5). Curriculum design is work that takes extended knowledge of a specific domain in which critical content is identified, lessons are horizontally and vertically sequenced, instructional language is specific and controlled, cognitive load is accounted for, big ideas are constructively aligned from one grade level to the next, and etc. This is done best with teams of experts over the course of extended testing, research, and design. Even after a program is developed, pilot studies must be conducted with preliminary models of logic, feedback has to be collected and quantitative data has to be analyzed. Results have to be accountable to scientifically validated methods like random controlled trials and quasi-experimentation. Large sample sizes of thousands are needed to generate reliable effect sizes. Curriculum teams have to answer the question on whether or not the curriculum works. Robert Pondiscio, author of ‘How the other half learns’ says that making teachers responsible for curriculum design on top of classroom instruction, makes teaching next to impossible to do well (6).
Boards and committees, to no fault of their own, are often underprepared to review curriculum despite great intentions (7). The committees that are formed are not supplied with the available research that has been done to evaluate curriculum. In addition, they do not get enough time away from their classroom responsibilities, or are paid extra for their time to thoroughly inspect/investigate the program in review. The committees are more likely to have questions about engagement rather than factors like measured learning outcomes, methods of instruction, and amount of practice given to students to develop mastery in the subject matter.
Not all curriculums are equal in design and quality. A poorly designed curriculum that stands on plausibility alone can do serious harm to student learning. One can look at the tragedy of whole language learning designed by Lucy Calkins, whose popular but incorrect reading instruction filled curriculums nationwide via major publishers. Many cite these flawed curriculums as primarily responsible for reading declines across the nation (8). Though the curriculums were not backed by sound research nor did it have evidence of being effective, it was continually promoted in the colleges of education without evaluation. Follow the work of education advocate Brett Tingly, or the recent developments in reading outcomes in Mississippi to learn more about what seems to be a closing chapter on the reading wars and reading curriculum.
Though not widely known in the US, the work of E.D. Hirsch Jr, on returning curriculum to knowledge building was a driving feature of the positive results on student learning in the UK. Knowledge building means that content is broken down and arranged into well organized chunks in which students can acquire, practice, and generalize with mastery. That all learning is built on prior learning, meaning that it is the responsibility of the curriculum to have secured what will become a pre-requisite in the future. When curriculum aligns with the learning sciences, we see improvements in equity, creativity, and generalized intelligence. Nations that have risen to the top of the PISA tables share a commonality with regard to curricular design. They are centralized, knowledge building, instructionally explicit, prioritize depth over breadth, and are mastery based.
The improvements in curricular programming have been birthed out of this growing awareness. At the Academy, we will be utilizing programs that have been carefully designed, backed by strong research, tested and seen to have evidence of efficacy, consider learning sciences and the building nature of knowledge, and are supported with strong implementation resources. This has guided the recent selections like UFLI, JumpMath, Arts and Letters, Acadience, Spring Math, and Phonics for Reading. I have linked overviews and evidence for each of these programs on our website. The burden of curriculum for us will not be creation, it will be appropriation, adaptation through collaborative data informed progress monitoring, continuous implementation support, professional training, and assessment.
When schools adopt high-quality instructional programs or curricula that are shared and understood by all teachers, students gain from consistent language, logical sequencing and cumulative knowledge-building, ample deliberate practice, and teachers' greater attention to each student's learning progress. Though curriculum is not the panacea, it is a foundational and unifying component that schools need in their endless pursuit of deeper, more effective student learning.
(1) Nuno Crato is a Research Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at ISEG, University of Lisbon, and served as Portugal's Minister of Education and Science from 2011 to 2015. During his tenure, he led evidence-based reforms—including a strengthened, knowledge-focused curriculum, increased mandatory schooling (from 9 to 12 years), rigorous teacher training, regular student assessments, and reduced dropout rates (from ~25% to 13.7%)—that contributed to Portugal achieving its strongest-ever results on international assessments like PISA (exceeding the OECD average for the first time in reading, mathematics, and science) and TIMSS.
(2) Crato, N. (2021) Improving a Country’s Education: PISA 2018 Results in 10 Countries. Springer Nature.
(3) Opfer, V. Darleen, et al. Implementation of K–12 State Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts and Literacy: Findings from the American Teacher Panel. RAND Corporation, 2016. Research Report RR-1529-1. RAND Corporation, www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1529-1.html. Accessed [your access date, e.g., 25 Feb. 2026].
(4) Doan, Sy, et al. Teachers’ Use of Instructional Materials from 2019–2024: Trends from the American Instructional Resources Survey. RAND Corporation, 2025. Research Report RR-A134-30. RAND Corporation, www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA134-30.html. Accessed [your access date, e.g., 25 Feb. 2026].
(5) Surma, T., Vanhees, C., Wils, M., Nijlunsing, J., Crato, N., Hattie, J., Muijs, D., Rata, E., Wiliam, D., & Kirschner, P. A. (2025). Developing a curriculum for deep thinking: The knowledge revival. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1
(6) https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/failing-design-how-we-make-teaching-too-hard-mere-mortals
(7) Marcy Stein, Carol Stuen, Douglass Carnine, Roger M. Long (2001) Textbook Evaluation and Adoption, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 17:1, 5-23, DOI: 10.1080/105735601455710
(8) National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf
