Official Site of The State of New Jersey

As our society changes, our curricula should be regularly assessed and at times adjusted, to better ensure it is:

• Aligned to current standards,   
• Accessible for diverse learners,   
• Culturally relevant and relatable,  
• High quality, and  
• Easy for educators to use.

If not already in practice, curriculum leaders and administrators should consider conducting annual reviews of curriculum. These reviews could include feedback from stakeholders around items such as accessibility, cultural relevance, and ease of use. Utilizing review platforms such as EdReports can support the assessment process to ensure quality and alignment with standards.

As defined in the New Jersey Department of Education’s (NJDOE), Learning Acceleration Guide (PDF), learning acceleration is an ongoing instructional process by which educators engage in formative practices to improve students' access to and mastery of grade-level standards. These practices may often include necessary interventions which are critical to supporting our students. By dedicating time to learning acceleration each day, students gain a protected learning opportunity reserved for meeting their needs. This time can be used to employ New Jersey Tiered Systems of Support (NJTSS), tutoring, enrichment, and/or just-in-time instruction based on their individual needs, all without sacrificing exposure or opportunities elsewhere.

Teachers can create time for learning acceleration to support students’ equal access to grade-level content to ensure students receive the additional supports they need. Teachers can then focus on providing grade-level content during core instruction time. For more information see Maximizing Schedules to Support Learning Acceleration (PDF).

High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) are vetted and proven to promote learning. Increasing the quality of materials used in classrooms will help ensure students are engaged in grade-level learning. If teachers do not have access to HQIM, they will search for them online. Research suggests teachers spend seven to twelve hours per week searching for and creating instructional resources, drawing from various sources, many of which are unvetted. When this happens the materials selected or created are more likely to be of lower quality than what the district or state deems grade appropriate.

Ensuring teachers have access to instructional materials that are high quality can cut the risk of a reliance on unvetted or ineffective materials to engage students. Also, high-quality materials do not necessarily cost more and are an allowable investment of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding.  Lastly, it is essential that both educators and administrators receive continuous professional development around adopted materials reviewed by EdReports. The Center for Public Research and Leadership at Columbia University offers “Staying the Course,” a look into strong HQIM implementation. The following points have been abstracted and can be useful when thinking through the implementation process:

• Partner with educators, families, and students throughout adoption and early implementation. 
• Invest early in HQIM manipulatives (and other supplies) to ease preparatory burdens on educators. 
• Partner with other districts implementing the same HQIM to model effective practices and share costs. 
• Set schedules that provide sufficient instructional time, teacher preparation time, and professional learning time. 
• Attend teacher-facing professional learning and spend non-evaluative time in classrooms.
• Create structures that allow teachers to learn about HQIM-based instruction from one another.

Culturally responsive assessments are those which recognize there are social and cultural assumptions embedded in assessments that can be exclusionary, preventing some students from meeting the sought-after expectation or demonstrating comprehension. Further, culturally responsive education (CRE) is thoughtful to:

• validate students’ experiences and values,
• disrupt power dynamics that privilege dominant groups, and
• empower students.

With proficiency of standards being a driving force, it is crucial to understand that any misalignment of assessments to the ways of knowing (WOKs) of students, or how they know what they claim to know, can result in poor data that can be consequential for our most vulnerable students.

Whenever possible, try to ensure that assessments are inclusive and account for various WOKs to increase the efficacy of the assessment. When designing and administering assessments, consider reflecting on the following:

• In what ways does the assessment reference culture?
• How does the assessment allow students to draw from their cultural fluencies?
• How does the assessment support students in bridging their social/cultural identities with their academic identities?

When assessments are not designed to better align culturally with the student population, it becomes even more important to reflect. Reflecting assists in understanding the ways data may be skewed or not applicable to the student body. The appropriate accommodations, future adaptations, or discontinuation of said assessments can be informed by this reflection.