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Education Dive
Report: Popular online teaching materials 'poorly aligned' with academic standards
Naaz Modan
Dec. 10, 2019
Dive Brief:
A review released Tuesday of 300 most-downloaded supplemental
instructional materials from popular resource websites used by teachers
says while materials offered were generally free from errors, the
majority were "not worth using."
The report offered an evaluation of materials available on Share My
Lesson, ReadWriteThink and Teachers Pay Teachers, finding the
most-downloaded supplemental instructional materials on these websites
lack clarity and instructional guidance, are "poorly aligned" with
academic standards, and a majority offer no support for teaching
diverse learners including high- and low-performing students, English
language learners and students with disabilities.
The report, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, focused on
the quality of supplemental materials for high school English language
arts, an area the authors say teachers are "especially likely to
supplement their core curricular resources."
Dive Insight:
The online marketplace is a growing and increasingly popular resource
for teachers looking to fill holes in curricula. Studies conducted by
RAND in the past few years found nearly all teachers surveyed report
using online instructional materials, with 55% of ELA teachers saying
they use Teacher Pay Teachers for that purpose at least once a week.
The websites subject to the Fordham Institute review report high
numbers of users, with Teachers Pay Teachers saying 5 million teachers
used the site in the past year alone and 1 billion resources were
downloaded. Share My Lesson reports 1.5 million members with resources
downloaded more than 13 million times.
But authors of the review — conducted by experts on academic standards
and alignment, curriculum and assessments — call their findings
"sobering" and suggest "a major mismatch" between what experts suggest
teachers use in classrooms and what teachers are downloading for use.
With the added caveat that the results do not take into account
thousands of other resources available on the sites evaluated and
elsewhere online, the authors also claim teachers hungry for
instructional material are turning to sites "offering subpar versions."
The American Federation of Teachers, which created and runs Share My
Lesson, told Education Dive its resources are checked for spam,
inappropriate content and possible copyright violations. However, any
vetting is done primarily by the teachers using the site through a
crowdsourcing process.
"Resources that are more popular, downloaded, viewed and rated highly
rise to the top in the search," AFT said, while "resources that are not
as good quality, and there are some, remain at the bottom."
Outside of that, resources verified by the site as standards-aligned
are identified with a green checkmark, and users can narrow their
search to only those materials.
When asked how the site hopes to improve quality going forward, AFT
pointed to its 300-plus partner organizations that provide free
materials for Share My Lesson. "We are continually reaching out to our
partners and seeking new partners to provide more free resources for
teachers," the organization said.
In response to the report, Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) released a
statement saying the website is "confident that teachers know how to
select the resources their students need" and it relies on the
"expertise of teachers" in the form of educator reviews of its online
resources.
"This signal is critical in understanding the quality of the resources," TPT said.
The website also noted improving its ratings and reviews system is a
"major companywide priority" and it will launch a newer version next
month.
On the other hand, the assistant superintendent of content for the
Louisiana Board of Education, which provides its educators with online
state-led reviews of instructional materials, said "lessons should not
be evaluated in isolation" and reviews of curricula should be conducted
only by educators trained for specifically the task.
"They should know, for example, if they are vetting curricular
materials for usability, approach, content alignment, or all aspects,"
Jill Cowart said, adding, "When pulling isolated lessons, you are
losing sight of the coherence of a student’s learning experience."
ReadWriteThink did not respond to Education Dive's request for comment.
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