New curriculum demands new support

摘要

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).