Curriculum reform is a particularly difficult area but we recognize that helping schools make wise curricular choices can lead to catalytic impact. Instruction Partners is a non-profit that partners with schools to strengthen daily instruction. We brought Instruction Partners to New York City by supporting a partnership with a public charter high school to provide instructional coaching to new and existing math and ELA teachers with a goal of strengthening their content delivery.
Instruction Partners helps school and system teams understand the answers to two questions: 1) Are we teaching the right content? and 2) Are students learning it? They then work with the team to develop a game plan, leveraging curriculum improvements and teacher and leader professional development and coaching. As a result of this hands-on coaching approach, in just the first year of this NYC-based partnership, Instruction Partners was able to improve student scores by at least 30% between mock Regents exams administered in December 2022 and April 2023; specifically:
1. In English, the percentage of students scoring proficient rose from 27% to 57%.
2. In Algebra I, the percentage of students scoring proficient rose from 14% to 61%.
3. In Geometry, the percentage of students scoring proficient rose from 8% to 69%.
4. In Algebra II, the percentage of students scoring proficient rose from 0% to 63%.