enjoyed reading your recent discussion with Alex Baron, “How Much Autonomy Should Teachers Have Over Instructional Materials?” In particular, I was struck by your skepticism about whether “high-quality instructional materials” are always high quality. I have a lot of sympathy for your observation that: “A lot of these determinations seem to depend heavily on whether materials check certain boxes or are assembled by curriculum designers who know the tricks of the trade. That’s not necessarily a recipe for rich, rigorous instruction.”
Those who have read my book Out on Good Behaviorknow that in my 8th grade algebra classes, I used Mary P. Dolciani’s 1965 Modern Algebra: Structure and Method in place of the official textbook the school was using for a few reasons: I didn’t care for the topic sequence of the required textbook. There was a dearth of word problems and a notable lack of instruction on how to solve them. Finally, the exercises did not scaffold problems very well. Algebra wasn’t the only class where I was dissatisfied with the school’s preferred textbook. For my nonalgebra classes, I used the approved text, but I supplemented it with materials from other books.
Having spoken with other teachers, I know I am not alone in using external materials. Many teachers decide to use materials of their own liking based on their experience or knowledge of the research on how students learn. I look at such decisions as a form of civil disobedience. Teachers who are doing good work shouldn’t have to pivot to the latest “shiny new thing.”
However, there is a larger issue. Many of the math textbooks that are considered to be “high-quality instructional materials” adhere to the math standards of a particular state. In most cases, such standards are either the Common Core math standards verbatim or a slightly morphed version of the same. The problem is that in either case, as Tom Loveless has described it, embedded within the Common Core-derived standards are the “dog whistles” to reform math. By reform math, I mean educational progressives’ pedagogical ideas that emphasize “conceptual understanding” at the expense of procedural fluency.
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