According to the findings of EdReports’ 2021 State of the Instructional Materials Market, “Teachers want materials that are aligned to state standards, offer support for multilingual learners, and provide culturally relevant content and approaches, but few believe their materials meet these needs.”
Teachers recognize the value of providing a quality standards-aligned curriculum. Students are more engaged and better able to meet grade-appropriate benchmarks. Although EdReports found an uptrend in data demonstrating an increase in the availability of standards-aligned instructional materials, the sad reality is that the numbers show only 51% of ELA teachers and only 44% of Math teachers agree that these needed materials are made available to them. The unacceptable overall percentages as well as the small incremental percentage increases over the past four years can easily be improved if teachers are simply granted access to quality content.
Over the past four years, the report also notes “a strong demand for instructional materials that address a broader definition of quality in addition to alignment to college and career-ready standards.” Beyond meeting basic standards, the quality of a curriculum must also be gauged by its inclusion of content that reflects the modern diverse student population. Therefore, the curriculum needs to incorporate the interests and culture of a changing student demographic. Once students feel connected to what they are learning, they will surpass expectations.
To compensate for the lack of standards-aligned and culturally relevant curriculum, resourceful teachers surf the web looking for content to supplement the curriculum. A recent RAND analysis found that 96% of teachers use Google and nearly 75% of teachers use Pinterest to find lessons and materials. And EdReports reviewed research conducted by Fordham Institute and concluded that “many supplemental materials should ‘not be used’ or are ‘probably not worth using’ and likely do not adequately support students to meet the demands of the standards.” Most online materials haven’t been properly vetted or properly attributed.
So, what is a teacher to do?
Schools, districts, and state DOEs need to give teachers what they want: standards-aligned, high-quality, culturally relevant curriculum. However, this is not an easy task as the majority of high-quality, authentic texts are copyrighted. Ensuring copyright compliance becomes an additional task for teachers, and despite all that the public domain, OER, and the Creative Commons License have to offer without infringement, it’s not enough. The students require more; they deserve the opportunity to read texts under copyright.
RightFind Curriculum allows users to easily search for, discover, and incorporate high-quality, copyrighted content into curriculum and instruction while managing copyright compliance. RightFind Curriculum includes an advanced search and discovery tool, a curated collection of high-quality, standards-aligned content, consultative support with a CCC content expert, and print and digital rights to use 1M+ copyrighted English and Spanish language works from 90+ leading publishers, including books, magazines, newspapers, and websites. This solution helps provide greater access to high-quality, authentic content across schools and districts and for EdTech and curriculum developers.
To see more of the latest content we’ve gathered relevant to both the K-12 and higher education spaces, including featured articles, videos, and case studies, please visit the CCC Academic Community Center.