In July, I (Nora) interviewed Emily Appel about rolling out the new elementary math curriculum and in August, Regan Kelly wrote a guest post about why teacher planning time matters. Both pieces left me wondering how MCPS could effectively plan, execute, and track the granular steps required to successfully implement a new curriculum.
I went straight to the source: Cara Jackson is Senior Fellow for Research and Evidence Use at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting (OBC) and a recently graduated MCPS parent. The Center for OBC helps ensure investments school districts make through external providers actually help students. The district doesn’t want to pay for an ineffective product, but the provider doesn’t want to be held accountable for poor results if it was the district who didn’t implement their product well. Clear, specific contracts laying out the steps are key to protecting everyone’s interests. But ensuring that everything is in place for successful implementation matters whether there’s an external provider with a contract, or the district is doing the work themselves without one.
Today Cara gets specific about the assumptions the new math curriculum’s success depends on, and asks what evidence would tell us whether those assumptions hold.
Cara, congratulations on your son’s graduation, and thanks for writing.
What matters besides planning time?
In a previous post, veteran educator and MCPS parent Regan Kelly noted that when teachers have a strong curriculum, they don’t have to invent lessons from scratch, and in turn, they can use the time saved to prepare to teach specific lessons well. In addition to strong curriculum, job-embedded collaborative preparation (weekly, timely, grounded in actual student work and the curriculum) matters: one study showed that receiving both curriculum and aligned support raises student test scores by about 9% of a standard deviation, roughly equivalent to swapping an average teacher for a top performer.
Regan also identified a specific policy problem in MCPS: a March 2025 amendment to the teachers’ union (MCEA) contract introduced a new “directed” planning time category. Total planning time hasn’t changed, but how much of it a principal can structure for collaborative, curriculum-focused work is limited. As she notes, that may create a challenge for the new elementary math curriculum. After MCPS rolled out a new literacy curriculum, the district’s own research office recommended strengthening targeted professional learning to address staff concerns.
My (Cara’s) goal in this post is to build out Regan’s theory of action about how strong curriculum and aligned support can improve student outcomes. Doing so helps 1) identify indicators to track to determine whether the curriculum change is achieving its intended outcomes, and 2) consider what tools MCPS has to achieve those outcomes.
What does the new curriculum aim to improve?
Implicitly, the introduction of a new curriculum suggests a need to support and strengthen teacher practice. MCPS’s own professional growth system (PGS) states that, “Of all the factors that are important to student achievement in productive schools—and there are many—the most important are what individual teachers believe, know, and can do.” In order to answer Regan’s question, “What are the three most important ways teacher practice in MCPS needs support?” I would start by asking MCPS about its historical data on teacher practice.
The teachers’ PGS handbook describes six standards for performance. Standard I is about commitment to students and their learning, while Standard II looks at whether teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. Drawing on the performance criteria for these standards, ask:
To what extent do teachers’ actions indicate that they believe all students can master a challenging curriculum with appropriate accommodations?
What is known about elementary teachers’ math content knowledge and ability to design effective instruction?
I start with these questions because improvement science requires collecting data that can clarify whether a solution is working as intended. MCPS needs baseline information on meaningful, malleable, and measurable teacher practices to answer the question, “Is this improving teacher practice?”
I’m also curious whether teacher practice as measured by MCPS’s PGS varies across teachers or schools.
Which schools or teachers currently excel in holding high expectations, subject matter knowledge, and designing effective instruction?
Do the schools and classrooms that excel in these areas achieve higher average growth in math?
What can be learned from existing excellence? What are these schools and classrooms doing that others might try?
What assumptions have to be met for a new curriculum to “work”?
The theory of action Regan poses is solid: if teachers receive professional learning that supports use of high-quality curriculum, that will improve the quality and consistency of teacher practice and student achievement.
This does make some assumptions, though.
The first assumption is that implementing high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) will improve student achievement. While curriculum reform enthusiasts argue that “research is increasingly clear that quality curriculum matters to student achievement,” the field doesn’t have a lot of evidence that speaks to the impact of HQIM on student achievement. For example, in the case of MCPS’s new elementary math curriculum: Desmos Math and Amplify Math do not have causal impact evidence. It’s really hard to evaluate the causal impact of many things people care about in education, a problem Nora wrote about in Brookings. As a result, the idea that these curriculum materials will lead to better student achievement is an untested assumption.
While evidence of causal impact on student achievement is lacking, Amplify Desmos Math does have a “green rating” from EdReports. EdReports reviews instructional materials for whether the curriculum: 1) focuses on grade-level content and aligns with standards; 2) develops conceptual understanding and procedural skill; and 3) includes teacher and student support. EdReports’ screening for teacher support suggests Amplify Desmos provide resources that can enable teachers to design instruction that allows students to master a curriculum that covers grade-level content.
Of course, handing teachers a curriculum doesn’t instantaneously improve instruction. The second assumption is that timely and collaborative professional development grounded in the curriculum will lead teachers to use HQIM regularly and make grade-level content accessible to all students.
A final assumption is that using HQIM regularly and making grade-level content accessible to all students represents an improvement in teacher practice that will lead to improved student achievement.
What actually needs to happen to improve student outcomes?
Here’s a more detailed theory of action, which implicitly assumes students currently do not have enough exposure to grade-level content and assignments, a problem TNTP illuminated in the Opportunity Myth. The questions in the first section of this post aim to shed light on the extent to which teachers in MCPS provide access to grade-level content and assignments—and how much room teachers have to grow.
In order to test this theory of action, MCPS needs meaningful, malleable, and measurable outcomes of teacher practice that are related to student achievement.
Is MCPS doomed until 2027?
As noted in Regan’s post, providing teachers with support in addition to prepared lessons increases math achievement. A meta-analysis of several studies suggested that introducing new curriculum absent professional development is unlikely to show positive effects on student outcomes. Given the restrictions on MCPS planning time in the current teachers’ contract, is MCPS doomed until this can be revised in 2027?
Not necessarily. Formal planning time is important, but it’s not the only learning opportunity for teachers that can answer Regan’s question about what MCPS is doing to support teacher practice. Administrators, mentors, and staff developers can provide “job-embedded” professional learning through instructional coaching, which has a positive impact on instructional quality and student achievement. MCPS’s existing mentoring program can strengthen teachers’ ability to make grade-level content accessible to all students. And teachers, especially less experienced teachers, can benefit from peer learning.
It is probably more difficult for teachers to provide grade-level content in classes or schools where a large percentage of students are below grade. Standard I of the PGS could potentially provide data on the extent to which this is a problem in MCPS, and whether it varies in ways that would highlight pockets of excellence or target resources to schools most in need of support.
MCPS can maximize the impact of professional development by using data to inform support provided. Modeling Standard IV, the district could continually assess staff progress in providing access to grade-level content and analyzing the results. MCPS could also adapt support by providing additional learning opportunities in settings where teaching to grade-level standards requires more scaffolding.
Exit ticket
Share your frequent, low-stakes feedback with me (Nora, and I’m glad to pass it along to Cara too), either by replying to this email or submitting anonymously. I always welcome your story ideas, questions, suggestions, and corrections. And if you enjoyed this post, I’d be grateful if you share it (social media, listserv, group chat, etc.).
