New Study: NYC Curricula and the Common Core

NEW YORK, NY  — A new study by the Manhattan Institute  examines the math and English language arts curricula decisions being made in NYC in response to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation. The author’s findings are based on information derived from an online survey emailed to NYC’s 1,225 elementary and middle school principals, interviews with current and former NYC Department of Education officials, and numerous other curricula experts.

Authored by Charles Sahm, the Manhattan Institute study finds that “NYC’s carrot and stick approach to curricula— light on mandates and heavy on recommendations backed by incentives — has worked well and might be considered by other jurisdictions.”

Key findings of the report include:

• Information scarce on curricula choices. While NYC collects data on its schools’ curricula procurement choices, it remains largely in the dark on the extent to which such curricula are actually implemented/used in classrooms.
• DOE-recommended choices largely followed. If survey results are extrapolated for all NYC elementary and middle schools, roughly two-thirds have likely switched to NYC DOE-recommended ELA and math curricula. Further, low-performing schools appear more likely to have switched to recommended curricula than high-performing schools, due in part to strong financial incentives such as the ability to exchange their 2013-2014 annual funding from New York State Textbook Law for new math and ELA curricular.
• Principles largely satisfied with Common Core. If survey results are extrapolated for all NYC elementary and middle schools, the majority of NYC principles are likely satisfied with their curricula choices and believe that their teachers are faithfully implementing principles’ choices.

To encourage transparency regarding curricular choices, the study calls for NYC to include questions about teaching material choices in their preexisting data collection efforts and to make this information public on school websites for parents. It also suggests hiring an external analytical research firm to review the correlation between curricula and student achievement and solicit donations from education charities to finance information collection and empirical research on the relative effectiveness of various curricula.

Click here to read the full report.