5 Key FAQs About EdReports’ Curriculum Reviews

At EdReports, we’re proud of the work we’ve done with thousands of educators and leaders to democratize the instructional materials adoption process over the past decade. Before that, districts relied on what publishers said about their own products or on word of mouth.

Nearly 1,800 school districts have used our free and independent reviews to help them better understand and select the curricula that best serve their students and teachers. Even though EdReports has had remarkable impact, we know that instructional materials reviews can be a bit wonky and prompt some questions. To that end, we’re sharing answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about EdReports. 

Q: Are EdReports reviews reliable?

Yes! Every EdReports review is:

• Educator-led: Our reviews are by educator, for educator. Expert educator reviewers are selected through a rigorous process, receive extensive training and support, and dedicate over 100 hours of their time per series report to analyzing every page of instructional materials.
• Independent: We do not charge fees or accept free materials or any other type of contributions from publishers. In addition, we ensure that our board members and reviewers have no conflicts of interest, such as relationships with publishers or previous experience using the materials.
• Rigorous: Our reports provide reliable, evidence-rich, and comprehensive information about a program’s alignment to college and career-ready standards, learning research, and other indicators of quality. 
• Transparent: We make our review criteria and process publicly available in order to help educators and school systems better evaluate instructional materials. 

Q: Why do EdReports reviews focus on how materials are designed rather than on their effectiveness? 

We believe that high-quality instructional materials are extremely important but are not a silver bullet. Materials must be implemented with integrity in order to benefit students, and there are myriad factors beyond the scope of a curriculum that impact both its implementation and impact. This makes it extremely difficult to prove the effectiveness of any single program across multiple contexts—because there are so many factors that influence teaching and learning. There also remains a lack of robust, independent evidence, as many publishers sponsor or conduct their own studies.

Given this context, EdReports reviews focus on how materials are designed rather than the various ways they might be used in practice. EdReports has always reviewed materials for multiple aspects of quality, including but never limited to standards alignment, in all content areas. These aspects include how well materials structure evidence-based teaching and learning grounded in research, alignment to college and career-ready standards, and supports for all students including multilingual learners. 

Q: How have EdReports’ review tools evolved?

EdReports is committed to continuous learning and innovation to meet the evolving needs of the education community. We examine our review tools and review process on an ongoing basis, updating them as needed to ensure our reports provide maximum value to the field. We recently released our “version 2.0” review tools, building on the strong foundation of previous iterations with new innovations and improvements informed by feedback from the field. Key updates to the review tools include:

• Significant enhancements to ELA criteria to ensure stronger alignment with the science of reading and structured literacy practices.
• New, multilingual learner (MLL)-specific review criteria for each content area to enable broader and deeper evaluation for MLL supports.
• Deepened emphasis on the Standards for Mathematical Practice in math criteria and phenomena-driven three-dimensional instruction in science criteria.
• Streamlining of criteria and gateway structures across all content areas to increase consistency, clarity, and efficiency, and to facilitate a more nimble review process. 

Q: How should educators use reports based on earlier versions of EdReports’ review tools? 

While EdReports’ tools have changed, the rigor and transparency of our educator-led reviews have not. EdReports provides clear guidance on how to interpret and use reports from earlier tool versions. That includes labeling that provides additional context on the purpose of reports, review tool versions, and recommendations for integrating reports into a broader instructional strategy.

Reviews conducted with earlier tools contain valuable insights but may not fully address the most recent educational priorities and research. For example, our current ELA tools are more tightly aligned to the science of reading, integrate knowledge building throughout comprehension criteria, and place enhanced emphasis on sentence-level writing and connections between reading and writing. You can learn more about how our tools have evolved in each subject area in the Review Tools section of our website. 

Our tool revisions do not affect existing, published reports. EdReports does not update completed reports retroactively as a result of revising our review tools. We’re always willing to consider re-reviewing materials if they have been substantively updated, but that decision is prompted by changes to the materials, not to our review tools.

Q: What is the most effective way for states and districts to use EdReports reviews?

EdReports reviews are designed to be one input in a comprehensive, teacher-led adoption process. Some examples of effective use of our reports include the following:

• The Rhode Island Department of Education makes it clear that it isn’t as simple as just adopting a green-rated curriculum from the state list—districts should “create local teams of leaders and educators to go through a comprehensive selection and adoption process that begins with looking at student data and developing an instructional vision.” 

• The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has developed a Model Curriculum Framework to help districts select quality materials holistically, alongside planning for professional learning communities, balanced assessments, and evidence-based instructional practices. KDE also encourages districts “to conduct thorough local reviews to ensure that selected materials align with their specific needs and the local instructional vision.”