Search Results

A recent article in U.S. News and World Report discusses a report  from the Center for American Progress. Analyzing state-adopted materials from 19 states, the authors found little relationship between the cost and quality of curriculum materials. Though the study looked only at print materials aligned to the Common Core State Standards, Learning List data for print and online products reveal the same about Texas materials.  The table below shows the price of three state-adopted , 100% aligned Economics materials that vary in price by up to $81/student over an 8 year subscription: This table of 100% aligned, state-adopted and non-state-adopted Algebra I products also shows significant price variance: The article further states, “schools often used misaligned textbooks, and studies have shown that there is a clear gap between what publishers say is aligned to state standards or effective and what truly fits those criteria.” This begs the question: how does one judge the “effectiveness” of a material  prospectively ? With so many intervening variables (e.g., the teacher’s skill, the teacher’s use of the material, the students’ abilities and learning styles, and, for online materials, the district’s infrastructure), it is difficult to predict with certainty whether a material is/will be effective. Alignment to state standards is one predictive measure of a product’s effectiveness. Another is other educators’ experiences with the product. For that reason, Learning List’s editorial reviews incorporate feedback from multiple educators who personally have used the products with students. The reviews also include a list of reference districts for subscribers to contact before purchasing a product. Finally, educators can share their experience by rating and reviewing the products featured on LearningList.com. Learning List’s alignment reports, editorial reviews and new spec sheets provide multi-faceted feedback to inform educators’ selection of products and help them use their products most effectively.

In contrast to previous, more authoritarian instructional models that focused on rote learning, Dewey held that students must be actively engaged with and invested in what they are learning and that curriculum must be connected to students’ lives. Dewey’s approach recognized the role of students’ personal experiences in shaping their learning and that students learn best when they are ready for new content.  This idea was expressed again in 1966 with Jerome Bruner’s concept of the spiral curriculum where concepts are revisited across the elementary and middle grades in order to address differences in students’ readiness to learn. Dewey believed that teachers should not act as instructional authorities.  Instead, they should serve as facilitators of student learning, observing, supporting, and attending to individual learning needs. Dewey also asserted that the curriculum should be relevant to students and their lives.  For example, in a 1916 argument in support of vocational education, Dewey wrote: This approach to curriculum and instruction continues to resonate in American education. Dewey’s work, along with that of Jean Piaget, is fundamental to the contemporary Constructivist movement. Beyond Constructivism, most contemporary American educators understand the importance of a relevant curriculum and student-centered instruction in engaging students with content and meeting diverse student learning needs.

Heinemann’s Comprehension Toolkit About Heinemann* Heinemann Publishing was established in the spring of 1978 on New Hampshire’s seacoast, as a U.S. subsidiary of Heinemann UK. It is a publisher of professional resources and a provider of educational services for teachers, kindergarten through college. *The content in this section is provided by or adapted from Heinemann. Subscribe to Learning List for access to full editorial reviews and alignment reports.

The Center for the Collaborative Classroom’s Making Meaning “ About Center for the Collaborative Classroom * The Center for the Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to providing continuous professional learning for teachers and curricula that support the academic, ethical, and social development of children. The organization brings to bear 51 years of collective experience from two leading educational nonprofit organizations: Developmental Studies Center (DSC) and Cornerstone Literacy, Inc. (CLI). We believe that how we teach matters as much as what we teach. Our professional development honors all teachers and empowers them to create the conditions for learning that will meet rigorous state standards and nurture the needs of the whole child. Our programs and carefully selected trade books help children appreciate the ideas and opinions of others, learn to agree and disagree respectfully, think critically about big ideas, and become responsible citizens of the world. *The content in this section is provided by or adapted from the Center for the Collaborative Classroom. Subscribe to Learning List for access to full editorial reviews and alignment reports.

The Center for the Collaborative Classroom’s Being a Writer About Center for the Collaborative Classroom * The Center for the Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to providing continuous professional learning for teachers and curricula that support the academic, ethical, and social development of children. The organization brings to bear 51 years of collective experience from two leading educational nonprofit organizations: Developmental Studies Center (DSC) and Cornerstone Literacy, Inc. (CLI). We believe that how we teach matters as much as what we teach. Our professional development honors all teachers and empowers them to create the conditions for learning that will meet rigorous state standards and nurture the needs of the whole child. Our programs and carefully selected trade books help children appreciate the ideas and opinions of others, learn to agree and disagree respectfully, think critically about big ideas, and become responsible citizens of the world. *The content in this section is provided by or adapted from the Center for the Collaborative Classroom. Subscribe to Learning List for access to full editorial reviews and alignment reports.

For Immediate Release Contact: Cindy Ryan 512-852-2132 Learning List's New Spec Sheets and Explorer Tool Help Districts Transition Successfully to a Blended Learning Environment Austin TX, October 1, 2015 – Learning List launches new Spec Sheet reviews and Explorer tool at the TASA/TASB Convention in Austin, Texas. According to the Texas Education Agency , Texas school districts have already spent over $250 million this school year on new instructional materials. If history serves as a guide, many of those products will go unused because they will not live up to the publisher’s claims. The challenge of finding high quality instructional materials is exacerbated as districts increasingly transition to a blended learning environment with either 1:1 or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives. Now, not only must administrators find instructional materials that meet their students’ academic needs, but the materials must also work with multiple devices, browsers and operating systems. District staff seldom has the time and/or expertise to thoroughly review the academic attributes and technology requirements of instructional materials before the district decides which products to buy. Learning List’s new Spec Sheets and Explorer tool help districts meet that challenge. The Explorer tool helps educators navigate the vast (and expanding) universe of K-12 instructional materials to find products the meet their academic and technical specifications. The new Spec Sheet, Learning List’s two-page checklist of a product’s key academic attributes and technology requirements, will help curriculum and technology teams quickly narrow the list of available products they need to review themselves. For each material, the Spec Sheet includes several criteria within each of the following categories: “We have found that reviewing the technology specs of a product is just as critical as reviewing the academic side of materials. If your district’s technology is not compatible with the specs of the product, your teachers won’t be able to use it.  So regardless of how good a product is instructionally, if the square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole then you are just wasting money. Learning List’s new Spec Sheets are going to make shopping for instructional materials much less time consuming and will give districts of all sizes greater confidence in the products they select,” Matt Tyner, Textbook Manager for Dallas ISD and Executive Board Member of the Instructional Materials Coordinators’ Association of Texas (IMCAT). The Spec Sheets are consistently formatted to make it easy for educators to compare critical product features. These at-a-glance reviews complement Learning List’s more in-depth Alignment Reports and Editorial Reviews. Subscribers now get three independent, professional reviews to help inform their buying decisions. Learning List is an instructional materials review service for schools and districts. With subscribing districts in five states serving over a million students, Learning List has reviewed more than 1,000 preK-12 products in the four core subjects. Learning List reviews both textbooks and digital instructional materials upon subscribers’ requests. “Learning List is a service for schools and districts. Our subscribers asked us for help verifying and comparing products’ technology requirements. The Spec Sheet and Explorer tool are our latest response to districts’ need for high-quality, transparent information in the rapidly evolving K-12 instructional materials marketplace,” said Jackie Lain, Learning List’s President.   About Learning List –Learning List is the industry-leading instructional materials review service for schools and districts. Like Consumer Reports®, Learning List provides independent reviews of preK-12 instructional materials to help administrators choose and teachers use materials effectively. For further information about Learning List’s Spec Sheets and/or new Explorer tool, contact Cindy Ryan at Learning List 512-852-2132 or CindyR@LearningList.com.

Are digital resources more effective than textbooks? They are certainly more trendy these days. Although Learning List has reviewed hundreds of instructional materials in both formats, it’s difficult for us to say that one format is better than another. Online adaptive products that individualize learning for each student have the potential to differentiate instruction and keep all students challenged, while textbooks are easier to use, particularly for students without Internet access at home. As more digital content providers are entering the K-12 marketplace, we are paying close attention to research and policy discussions about the effectiveness of online products. We thought our readers might be interested in a recent Bloomberg View that summarizes findings from a 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report. The report’s key finding is that “increased computer use in classrooms leads to lower test scores.”  The OECD compared test results from the 2009 and 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for groups of students who did and did not use digital resources for instruction. Results indicated that “the use of computers was negatively correlated with improvements in student performance” in both math and reading. That is, students who did not use digital resources performed better on the PISA tests, though there were some anomalies. In addition, students in Japan, China, South Korea and other Asian economies where fewer students use computers, also did better on computer-based assignments. These students were no less comfortable using technology than students in Australia and Northern Europe where computers are more prevalent in instruction. The reason? The report concludes: Gaps in the digital skills of both teachers and students, difficulties in locating high-quality digital learning resources from among a plethora of poor-quality ones, a lack of clarity on the learning goals and insufficient pedagogical preparation for blending technology meaningfully into lessons and curricula create a wedge between expectations and reality. If these challenges are not addressed as part of the technology plans of schools and education ministries, technology may do more harm than good to the teacher-student interactions that underpin deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking. Learning List’s Alignment Reports, Editorial Reviews and new Spec Sheets help educators overcome two of the challenges identified in the OECD report: finding high quality digital resources and blending digital resources into lessons and curricula effectively. The new Spec Sheets are Learning List’s two-page checklist of each product’s key academic and technology attributes. The Spec Sheets complement our more comprehensive Alignment Reports and Editorial Reviews to help educators quickly identify high-quality digital products that meet their students’ needs and can be implemented successfully using the district’s current technology. We hope that this at-a-glance review will help districts’ curriculum and technology teams quickly narrow the list of products to review themselves. Learning List’s Alignment Reports also help educators integrate digital instructional materials into their lesson plans/curricula for more effective instruction. These detailed reports identify multiple citations (i.e. page numbers, lesson names) that Learning List’s subject matter experts determined to be aligned to the content , context and cognitive demand of each standard. Only by assigning the parts of the material that are aligned to each standard can teachers have confidence that their students are learning the knowledge and skills the standards require. Stop by our booth (#1817) at the TASA/TASB Convention this weekend, and let us show you how our service and our new Spec Sheets can help your district choose and use instructional materials more effectively. If you won’t be at the conference, request a webinar at your convenience, and we’ll be glad to introduce you to our service.

Apex Learning’s Texas World History  is a year-long, online course in world history for Texas high school students. Resources support instruction in self-paced, remediation, and credit recovery programs. Instruction focuses on building students’ reading, writing, and historical thinking skills. Learning List has recently completed reviews of the materials for high school students. Texas World History is available in two versions: core and prescriptive. The core version supports instruction in core classes and the prescriptive version supports credit recovery programs. Both versions cover the same content, but the prescriptive version includes prescriptive pretests for each unit. In both versions , c ontent is presented chronologically and divided in two semesters made up of six instructional units. Each semester focuses on a discrete set of historical thinking skills (e.g., causation, chronology). Units begin with a short video overview in which engaging characters and teachers introduce new content with age-appropriate humor. Content is written at grade level and includes tools to help struggling readers. Writing activities are integrated throughout instruction. Online pages have worksheets with questions that help students take notes and prepare for quizzes and exams. Other materials include an interactive syllabus, study tips, glossary of key terms, printable readings, and research tips, such as avoiding plagiarism and citing sources. About Apex Learning* Founded in 1997, Apex Learning is the leading provider of blended and virtual learning solutions to the nation's schools. The company's standards-based digital curriculum — in math, science, English, social studies, world languages, and Advanced Placement® — is widely used for original credit, credit recovery, remediation, intervention, acceleration, and exam preparation. Schools across the country are successfully using Apex Learning digital curriculum to meet the needs of students, from building foundational skills to creating opportunities for advanced coursework. *The content provided here was provided by or adapted from Apex Learning.

When selecting materials, one important criterion educators should consider is the instructional model on which the material is based. Resources should mirror and support the model the district uses or else instruction may become disjointed. Over the next few months, Learning List’s blog will discuss the instructional models most frequently implemented in the products we review. Our discussion will seek to highlight the key attributes of each model and clarify where a particular model may or may not be an appropriate structure for content. Learning List has reviewed more than 1,000 instructional materials in the four core content areas and Technology Applications. In the process of our reviews, we have become familiar with products that incorporate a variety of instructional models. We’ve reviewed products that organize instruction using well-known models, such as 5E, Universal Design, and Understanding by Design (UbD), as well as lesser known models targeted to particular subject areas and specific learning needs. Generally speaking, each model presents a recognizable structure that seeks to order content in a way that supports engagement and helps students make sense of what they are learning. Models compress the learning cycle into a predictable set of routines that may be effectively implemented in classroom schedules at the elementary, middle, and/or high school levels. Each model provides an underlying framework for instruction that provides consistency and coherence within and across grade levels, structuring learning experiences in ways that enable teachers to plan effective lessons and allow students to purposefully explore content.

Mastery Education Measuring Up to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills: Mathematics is a supplemental print resource to help students in grades 3-8 (i.e., Levels C-H) prepare for STAAR testing in math. Content is organized in short lessons that address specific TEKS. Instruction provides ample opportunities for students to practice and apply problem-solving strategies. Learning List  recently these materials for grades 3-8. Content is organized in chapters that address key concepts in the TEKS for each grade level (e.g., rational numbers, place value, measurement). Each chapter is made up of short lessons that address specific TEKS. Lessons are presented in five parts: (1) Understand the TEKS, (2) Guided Instruction, (3) Critical Thinking, (4) STAAR Practice, and (5) STAAR Assessment. Content is scaffolded, building from simple to more complex concepts, and includes frequent opportunities for students to write about mathematics. Student worktexts contain a letter to parents in English and Spanish. The letter explains the importance of the TEKS and the STAAR test, describes the program, and suggests ways that parents can support mathematics education at home (e.g., involve students in mixing recipes). About Mastery Education* Mastery Education®, formerly Peoples Education, is a creator of print and online educational materials for the K-12 school market, best known for the flagship brand Measuring Up®. The company focuses on supplemental instructional and practice materials that are standards-based and customized for specific markets. Founded in 1991, Mastery Education has a long history of accurate and astute content creation, working closely with educational partners and analyzing mandated standards and assessment criteria in order to create the most useful and relevant teacher support tools. *The content in this section is provided by or adapted from Mastery Education.

The College Board’s SpringBoard Mathematics Courses 1-3 Algebra 1 Geometry Algebra 2 Precalculus Learning List has verified the alignment of courses to Texas, Common Core and Florida standards. The College Board is a mission-driven not-for-profit organization that connects students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the College Board was created to expand access to higher education. Today, the membership association is made up of over 6,000 of the world’s leading educational institutions and is dedicated to promoting excellence and equity in education. Each year, the College Board helps more than seven million students prepare for a successful transition to college through programs and services in college readiness and college success — including the SAT and the Advanced Placement Program. The organization also serves the education community through research and advocacy on behalf of students, educators and schools. *The content in this section is provided by or adapted from College Board.

When asked:  “Do you support or oppose the federal government continuing to require that all students be tested in math and reading each year in grades 3-8 and once in high school?” respondents answered as follows: Members of the public :  67% supported vs. 21% opposed continuing the federal requirements for annual testing (contained in the federal  No Child Left Behind Act) In answer to the question, “Do you support or oppose letting parents decide whether to have their children take state math and reading tests?” The responses were as follows: