2018/10/04

A question we’re asked more often than any other is: how do you create your reviews of instructional materials? 

Our reports are the result of hundreds of hours of work on the part of dedicated educator reviewers. These 300+ teachers, instructional coaches, directors of curriculum and instruction, and assistant superintendents hail from 46 states across the country and have thousands of years of collective experience in education.

And so we thought who better to answer that question than the very educators who develop our rubrics and conduct our reviews? Watch and share educator reviewers' discussion about how they work together to collect evidence about K-12 math and ELA programs to create a report that is then free, publicly available on our website, and out there to inform the field.

Transcript

Eric 0:00
By educators for educators is what ad reports does. First of all we recruit, select and train some of the most accomplished educators who are the ultimate users and consumers of these instructional materials.

Amy 0:16
We have a tool that looks for certain indicators. Before we even began the process, we practiced using these indicators on sample materials.

Sam 0:25
We're fortunate that we have an awesome calibration process that allows us to have these conversations weekly, across teams to ensure that we're making sense of these materials together.

Eric 0:34
We spend hundreds of hours going through these materials to look deeply across all of the pages. All of the lessons.

Peter 0:42
We actually ask our kids to do this, make your argument with evidence. And that's exactly what our records has done. We've collected a lot of evidence on why curriculum might be effective for students or why it might not.

Tammy 0:53
We're going to meet together as a team and discuss what each of us found. So you're not looking at a product produced by one person you're looking at a team

Peter 1:00
know that there have been people who spent many, many hours gathering evidence so that you understand what they talked about.

Eric 1:06
Ultimately, the evidence they collect is then free publicly available on our website and out there to inform the field.

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