Some quick thoughts about Ed Reports prompted by Natalie Wexler’s article in Forbes

I recently read an article about Ed Reports that discusses inconsistencies in what an all-green rating for literacy curriculum might mean. If you don’t know about Ed Reports and the role its ratings play on how curriculum is adopted and then taught in your kid’s schools, you may want to read this article as a way to get in on the conversation. As someone who works in education, and is on a board of an organization that does have to worry about what Ed Reports says (Open Up Resources), while I myself do not work directly with Ed Reports, I found this discussion interesting and not entirely unlike conversations I’ve had with folks about mathematics curriculum, and who decides what’s good and worth implementing. While Wexler’s focus is on literacy materials, you can bet that similar discussions of the mathematics curriculum and their ratings happen between teachers, researchers, and curriculum developers, and nor would their critiques be much different. I encourage educational leaders, curriculum developers, distributors, and parents too to read this article to understand a little bit about the only curricular-fidelity game in town, and both its importance and its blind spots. What does an all green rating from EdReports really mean for your own students? What alternative forms of curriculum vetting might we imagine? And what is the role of independent research on understanding curricular integrity? Many good questions came up for me.