Missing the Mark: Why Scripted Curriculum Isn’t Hitting What Matters

When we aim for compliance, we miss connection, growth, and true instructional expertise.

As a former principal and Level 5 teacher who implemented High-Quality Instructional Materials with a flexible model — a model known as implementing with integrity — I have seen what happens when we treat teachers as designers, not just people who read scripts.

A palpable effect of leaving behind a script and letting teachers be instructional designers is the presence of a good morale, which research has shown has a positive relationship with student achievement scores, including those on end-of-course exams (MERC, 2019; Young, 2018; Arens et al., 2021; OECD, 2013; Brooks, 2016).

Savoir can help schools improve implementing curriculum with integrity, saving the fidelity to doing what's best for students and teachers.

The Problems with Strict Adherence to Paced Scripted Curriculum

I will first of all before getting into any of this voice my appreciation and gratitude for curriculum. My early days of spending hours and hours piecemealing together free materials and writing my own tasks and assessments (based on experience I collected from work with TDOE (Tennessee Department of Education) and copy-copy-copy-JAMMED COPIER-ink all over my clothes-copy... were mostly effective, but oh so inefficient. Teachers need a curated curriculum developed intentionally by experts who understand what goes into a comprehensive set of materials. Moreover, teachers deserve that.

However. The best way I can sum up what I will say here is a line from an administrator in my past who inspired my curriculum research.

That administrator said, "The materials are your floor. They are not your ceiling."

Scripted curriculum leaves you in the floor. Scripted curriculum is sold based on the ideas of equity and access in instruction. The idea that a first-year teacher can walk in and on day 1 have a plan and feel confident and ready to go.

Let's think about that, though. Is it equitable to assume that every student in every classroom will understand the script — the one way the teacher is allowed to teach — and no matter where the lesson lands on a day, the pacing guide mandates that the next lesson comes the next day regardless of mastery? Is that access to high-quality instruction, or is it access to consumable materials that the district is mandated to buy?

Lots of studies funded by different folks with connections to different industries have been published that show the effectiveness of practicing fidelity to a scripted pacing guide of a scripted curriculum.

I am going to go back to a voice well-known in education: John Hattie.

Let's look logically and be critical thinkers here while tying in his research.

What Does Foundational Research Say?

Graphic representing Hattie's instructional strategies from least effective to most effective

We know from looking at this chart for our whole professional lives that Collective Teacher Efficacy has the most significant impact on student learning.

Curriculum that is scripted and rigidly paced is diametrically opposed to the idea of teacher efficacy. Teacher efficacy occurs when teachers feel a sense of agency and feel they are seen as highly-skilled professionals, not when they are given words to read and told to move on at a certain time regardless of what they know is best for students.

We owe fidelity to doing what's best for students.

Practicing instructional moves that go against that - as shown by research - is not fidelity.

What Teachers Need

Teachers need — teachers deserve — a world where they aren't swimming in the wasteland of sites where they are trying to buy high-quality resources for students where there are needles of excellent materials, but they are in massive haystacks. The odds aren't in their favor.

They need and deserve a curriculum that is reviewed by national TEACHER experts and state-level TEACHER experts to use as their floor. A set of materials that save them from the copy machine and save their money.

And they need and deserve to be "trained" (don't love that word) on proper implementation of the curriculum and how they can take it and personalize it for their school and for their classrooms. Shown the different types of activities. The different options for remediation and extension. The opportunities for teachers to choose tasks based on interest with the understanding that the teacher is knowledgeable and professional enough to know what they are expected to cover and how to do it.

And just like you don't keep all kids from recess if one does something that violates classroom norms, you do not make all teachers use scripted curriculum with fidelity if one teacher doesn't know what to do.

You as leaders support that teacher just as the teacher would support the child who made a negative choice.

This affects schools and professional development in a profound way, but if you want to keep your teachers, you need to talk to them about this topic and then listen to them.

How this Affects Higher Ed, Specifically Teacher Prep

Gone are the days where we teach pre-service teachers how to design an entire semester with whatever they want to teach.

We have a responsibility to teach this issue to our pre-service teachers and teach them how to work within the existing system to do what's best for students.

We need to teach them Hattie's strategies and how to use them in conjunction with the texts that are provided in the book. The math concept that is taught in chapter 5. We need to make sure that the selection of the mentor teacher is a teacher who does this strongly to both meet expectations set forth by the district in using the HQIM while at the same time do what's best for students.

We need to teach them to navigate the world they're entering. It's different than it was even five years ago.

We can work within the system to do what's best for students, and it's exciting to show pre-service teachers how to use their education on pedagogy and their imagination and their content knowledge and their passions and combine them into a dynamic learning experience for students.

Those elements are not present in scripted curriculum.

Call to Action: Design what matters. Deliver what works.

Join us in the studio for a partner in this work. We are passionate about high-quality instructional materials. Every teacher needs and deserves materials that are recent, reviewed by educators, and have a variety of supports for all students.

We can support your work in building teacher efficacy through HQIM.

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