Much of Newton’s curriculum planning has been stuck in the late 1990s

The day after an important budget meeting, Newton Public Schools (NPS) offered a detailed presentation about what is at stake for the curriculum if the schools budget cannot be augmented or significantly reworked. 

The meeting was initiated by members of the School Committee who had requested a Brown Bag Lunch on the topic of curricular initiatives. Dr. Gina Flanagan, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning led most of the presentation with additional material from Dr. David Kloker, Director of English Language Arts and Literacy PK-12, and Liz Butler Everitt, Director of Science, Technology & Engineering PK-12. Also in attendance were Dr. Anna Nolin, Superintendent; Allison Levit, Director of English Language Learners Program; Ayesha Farag, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education; Alicia Piedalue, School Committee Chair; and School Committee members Arrianna Proia and Ben Schlesinger. 

Overview

Dr. Gina Flanagan framed her work on the NPS curricular review cycle with her thirty years of experience in five states, where every other district had a well-defined curriculum review process. She noted that the Newton teachers were doing an amazing job considering they were receiving scant support, resources, or oversight from the central office. She said that while the curricular review process was a bit shocking at first to many district employees because of its newness, she has seen a lot more comfort with it in the past year as people realize its value. 

Both Dr. Flanagan and Dr. Nolin framed the curricular work that the district has to do in terms of Massachusetts history. In the 1980s, teachers in every district made up all their own lessons. In 1993, the Department of Education wrote the original statewide standards. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, cities and towns were still working out how their curricula should respond to the state standards. Because of lack of investment in the process, time, and materials needed for curricular review and development, Newton has been stuck in a late-1990s curricular moment until the past couple of years, and possibly for the foreseeable future in several content areas and grade levels, depending on the investment the City is willing to make. 

Phases of Curriculum Review

Dr. Flanagan explained that in the ideal curriculum review, four distinct phases occur over a 4-5 year cycle:

1. Self-study (1 year): What is the district currently doing? What options are out there?
2. Design, Redesign, Pilot (1 year): Which materials are we going to pilot? How will we make adjustments to them? Which do we think will work the best for Newton?
3. Professional Development & Implementation (1 year): Teacher training in new materials and rollout across district
4. Monitor, Refine & Evaluate (2 years): How can we deepen our practice with the curriculum we are using? Is it working as well as we had planned? 

Dr. Flanagan was careful to note that each five-year cycle does not necessarily include the cost of purchasing a new curriculum every five years. If things are going well in years 4-5 in the Monitor, Refine & Evaluate phase, the next cycle is likely to make tweaks in response to new editions of curricula, rather than make a complete district redesign. However, Dr. Flanagan added that because NPS has not been engaging in these cycles in a committed way for the past 25 years, there “a bigger price tag right now,” because a more extensive process and new curricular materials are needed across multiple content areas. Dr. Nolin indicated that district leaders are working to stagger the curricular reviews as much as possible so that the biggest costs for each cycle will fall in different years. The plan, which has yet to be fully funded, would spread the costs of these investments over ten years. 

Dr. Flanagan explained the impact of not funding the full curriculum review and implementation process on staff buy-in for curricular changes: “If we can’t get to the point of funding this, we lose the trust of our educators.” She said that a perspective held by many teachers is that, “the District makes a lot of promises [about curriculum] and doesn’t keep them. We have a lot of initial conversations, but then it is never funded.” 

Even when districts purchase curricular materials from vendors, they never get implemented without any adjustments. Sometimes there are deficiencies, especially in the areas of Special Education accommodations and modifications, differentiation for ELLs, or adjustments are needed to respond to current events. These adjustments are part of Phases 2, 3, and 4. To this end, Dr. Flanagan said that Director of Professional Learning Matthew Coleman is working with teachers and principals to better understand the curricula NPS is using so that principals can give teachers more informed feedback throughout the process. 

English Language Arts

While it was not stated explicitly, it seemed like the English Language Arts (ELA) curricula had been split into two parts of two separate cycles. The first, for elementary school, seems like it is in Stage 4, where the EL curriculum is being implemented consistently across the district and teachers and district staff are working to refine and evaluate how it is being used. Dr. Kloker indicated that there is a lot of evidence that the rollout of the EL literacy curriculum has been working. He noted that 70% of NPS’s second graders have graduated from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” He added that one thing being piloted at the elementary level at the moment is the UFLI curriculum, to determine whether it should be used for Tier I classroom instruction. The discussion did not indicate whether it would be implemented in addition to or instead of the current curriculum, Fundations.

Dr. Kloker went on to describe what they are trying to do with the second cycle, for grades 6-12, that is kicking off the Phase I self-study this year. A central pillar in examining current practices around equity and alignment was the aim to “not lower standards, but build a ramp to the standards” for each student, he said. A specific tactic in this area is working with Special Education teachers to build accommodations rather than modifications to the curriculum. One area NPS is looking to bring back soon is writing assessments connected to positive accumulation of skills once there is agreement about common writing practices that are aligned across grades. 

One challenge Dr. Kloker described at the high school level is helping students who struggle to sustain attention across longer, denser, non-fiction texts, which is a critical barrier to advanced coursework in all subject areas. He cited numbers for “Informational Text Mastery” as 70% at the elementary school level, 51% at the middle school level, and 47% at the high school level. He said, “Students are asking for more grammar” instruction, which indicates the level of need. 

Science

Liz Everitt, Director of Science, Technology & Engineering for NPS, had begun a curricular review cycle in her department before Dr. Nolin came to Newton, and her work in this area has served as a model for the district’s other departments. 

The Self-Study that NPS did in 2021-22 indicated that only two of the 25 elementary school science units both taught and assessed students well in relation to the 2016 state science frameworks. Dr. Nolin commented that this was one reason that, while science-related activities were happening in each classroom, Newton’s 5th grade STE MCAS results were lower than expected, because the activities were not aligned with the state curricular frameworks.

Since then, NPS has been piloting the Amplify, Smithsonian, and OpenSciEd curricula at the middle school and OpenSciEd in elementary school. The OpenSciEd rollout for grades K-2 was funded with some of the free cash allocation last year, and that has significantly increased the district’s alignment with state standards.

However, the rollout for grades 3-5 that was planned for FY27 requires $324,000, which is imperiled by the City’s budget situation. Adopting an effective science curriculum also requires consumables costing $60,000 per year for elementary ($12/student) and $40,000 per year for middle school ($15/student). These amounts are part of the “Discretionary” section of the budget that is under significant pressure from rising uncontrollable costs such as Special Education Services and Transportation, as well as contracted wage and benefit increases, as shown on p. 27 or the Budget presentation detailed in last week’s article. This section and the number of staff are the two places the district can adjust the budget based on the allocation given by the Mayor, because they are not legally binding in the way that contractual or special education obligations are legally binding. 

Engineering 

Ms. Butler-Everitt is also responsible for overseeing Technology & Engineering for NPS, though it is taught as a subject separate from Science. In Newton it is not introduced until middle school, where it is offered to students one term each year, on four days out of each six-day cycle. In quarters when students do not have Technology & Engineering, they have Music, Health, or Art class instead. In a survey of parents, 70% said engineering was an area that NPS needed to increase for students. The middle schools have a manufacturing-heavy program, whereas parents would like to see the schools move towards including more coding and computer science. 

Ms. Butler Everitt acknowledged that in many other districts, elementary school robotics and associated hands-on problem solving are a gateway to academic learning as both a place to practice social-emotional skills and a motivator for children who are school-resistant. At the high school level, Allison Levit confirmed that it is one of the most accessible classes for Newcomer English Language Learner students.