Lack of a Set Curriculum Hurts Teachers

Lack of curriculum is not a new problem, as evidenced by this AFT article from 2002. In Lost at Sea: Without a Curriculum, Navigating instruction Can Be Tough--Especially for New Teachers, the authors describe the challenges of make-it-up-as-you-go teaching.

Despite what some would have you believe, teachers want a set curriculum...as long as they are not constrained to it. So, being required to follow a script would be a no-go, but having a script to fall back on, use, improve, and modify is something that teachers desire:

We expected that new teachers in this context might feel constrained and frustrated by the rigidity of the curricula they encountered. Instead, we found that despite Massachusetts' detailed system of standards and accountability measures, most new teachers we interviewed received little or no guidance about what to teach or how to teach it. [...] Left to their own devices, they struggled day-to-day to prepare content and materials instead of developing a coherent plan to address long-term objectives. Rather than lamenting a lack of freedom or expressing a need to assert their autonomy, they longed for greater specification of their curriculum—both what to teach and how to teach it. [Emphasis added]

Has anything changed in the past 8 years?

I know that since 2002, some for-profit companies have developed bespoke curricula (daily lesson plans, scripts, the whole nine yards) at the behest of specific districts. Of course, these are not made public and they are not scrutinized by teachers at large, so their impact is limited.

What would an effective solution to the curriculum problem look like?

First off, lesson planning materials would have to be open-source. Any teacher should be allowed to access them and to modify them as they see fit. They must be able to give feedback on the lessons and post their modifications back into the curriculum bank. The curriculum should benefit from teacher expertise as well as guide it.

Second, one or more scope-and-sequence specs would have to be developed, and they would have to be aligned to existing science standards. With talk of national science standards, this may soon become a lot easier. While there might not be a single right sequence to teach the topics, there are surely one or more ways that work better than others.


If you are a teacher, what would you like to see in a curriculum?