All students should graduate from high school ready for college, careers, and citizenship.
Washington, D.C. – October 28, 2014 – For implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to be successful, all educators need access to high quality and aligned instructional materials. Achieve launched the Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products (EQuIP) initiative to build the capacity of educators to evaluate and improve the quality of instructional materials for use in their classrooms and schools. EQuIP builds on a collaborative effort of education leaders from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island that Achieve facilitated, which resulted in a set of criterion-based rubrics designed for educators to use in evaluating the quality and alignment of lessons and units.
In June 2013, Achieve launched the EQuIP Peer Review Panel, a group of expert reviewers who have been trained to apply the EQuIP Rubrics and quality review process to lessons and units that have been submitted by states, districts, partners and educators. To date, this group has included 55 educators who collectively represent 875 years of classroom experience. The EQuIP Peer Review Panel has reviewed and provided constructive, criterion-based feedback on close to 200 lessons or units. Achieve announced today that 50 lessons and units rated Exampe or Example if Improved are now publicly available to educators nation-wide. The Exemplar rating indicates that a lesson or unit is well-aligned with the Common Core and ready for immediate use in classrooms; lessons or units rated Example if Improved are aligned and require some improvement in one or more dimensions of the rubric. These materials reflect all grade bands (K-5, 6-8, 9-12) in both mathematics and English language arts/literacy.
Educators are invited to submit lessons and units for review through the EQuIP website.
Susan Whelte, former Director of Literacy and Humanities at the Massachusetts Department of Education, found the EQuIP process to be a helpful and highly useful guide in her state’s efforts to create and refine model instructional units.
“Massachusetts is pleased that Achieve's EQuIP project has selected six of our Model Curriculum Units as examples to be shared with educators throughout the world,” she says. “Massachusetts' adoption of the Common Core State Standards in 2010 provided the impetus for engaging teachers in using the standards in coherent and intelligent ways. Aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment to standards takes skill and attention to detail: it's not always easy at first, but it surely helped to have the EQuIP rubric as a guide. It is thrilling now to see the units in action in classrooms throughout the Commonwealth and to see the educators from our original design teams leading similar curriculum writing work in their districts.”
Educators have also found the peer review panel’s suggestions for improvement to be highly valuable. Angela Orr, K-12 Social Studies Coordinator for Washoe County School District in Nevada, incorporated feedback from the EQuIP peer review process as part of continual curricular improvement.
“When we received detailed and specific feedback from the EQuIP panel of reviewers, we were able to continue our learning and revisit some of our earlier work,” she says. “The process reminded me to include important information in core-aligned lessons and has facilitated my work as professional developer.”
“The EQuIP process is designed to elevate the expertise of educators and to foster a culture of continuous improvement grounded in high-quality feedback. We are honored to work with such a highly-skilled panel of educators to highlight examples of work. We are thrilled to reach this milestone, but the work is far from over. Achieve is striving to raise awareness of these open source example materials and encourages others to make them available or include them in repositories or other platforms. We hope to double the number of exemplars while also building the capacity of educators to integrate this process and the criteria embedded within the rubrics into their everyday work,” says Alissa Peltzman, Vice President of State Policy and Implementation Support at Achieve.
To learn more about EQuIP or download example lessons and units, please visit www.achieve.org/EQuIP.
Submitting Organziation or Developer | Content Area | Grade | Name of Lesson or Unit Title | Rating |
Student Achievement Partners | ELA | 3 | The Fisherman and His Wife | Example |
Odell Education, developed in partnership with New York State Department of Education | ELA | 6 | The Wolf You Feed | Example |
Expeditionary Learning | ELA | 7 | Development of the Adolescent Brain | Example |
New York State Department of Education, developed by Expeditionary Learning | ELA | 8 | Finding Home: Refugees | Example |
Expeditionary Learning | ELA | 8 | Varying Perspectives on World War II | Example |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | ELA | 7 | Analyzing an Author’s Style – Macaulay’s Unique Way of Explaining a Complex Process | Example |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | ELA | 9 | The Art of Persuasion and the Craft of Argument | Example if Improved |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | ELA | 2 | Informational Text: Reading for Inquiry and Writing a Report | Example |
CPALMS | ELA | 6 | Freedom - Comparative Reading and Writing: Parts 1, 2 and 3 | Example if Improved |
Tennessee Department of Education | ELA | 8 | Sherlock Holmes: Reading Like a Detective | Example |
Chicago Public Schools | ELA | 1 | Julius Baby of the World | Example |
Fresno Unified School District | ELA | 11-12 | Macbeth | Example |
Maryland State Department of Education | ELA | 11 | Faces of War | Example |
WriteSteps | ELA | 3 | Opinion Writing | Example if Improved |
Fresno Unified School District | ELA | 4 | Wildfires | Example |
Reach Associates | ELA | 5 | Mother to Son | Example |
Odell Education, developed in partnership with New York State Department of Education | ELA | 6 | Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address | Example |
New York State Department of Education, developed by Expeditionary Learning | ELA | 7 | Module 1 - A Long Walk to Water | Example |
Lyn Cannaday with Student Achievement Partners | ELA | 6 | Great Fire | Example if Improved |
Odell Education, developed in partnership with New York State Department of Education | ELA | 7 | Building Evidence Based Arguments: Doping | Example |
Albuquerque Teachers Federation | ELA | 8 | The Story of an Hour | Example |
Odell Education, developed in partnership with New York State Department of Education | ELA | 9-10 | Researching to Deepen Understanding | Example |
Washoe County School District | ELA | 12 | Griswold v. Connecticut | Example |
Christina Suarez with by Student Achievement Partners | ELA | 11-12 | "The Gospel of Wealth" Close Reading | Example |
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education | ELA | 9-12 | Nutrition and Human Rights | Example |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | ELA | 9 | Satire: The Nose | Example |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | ELA | 11 | Nostalgia | Example |
Core Knowledge | ELA | K | Seasons and Weather | Example if Improved |
Illinois State Board of Education | Math | 8 | Unit 4 - Functions | Example |
Illinois State Board of Education | Math | 6 | Rates, Ratios and Proportions | Exemplar if Improved |
Common Core, Inc. in partnership with New York State Department of Education | Math | Algebra I | Describing Variability | Example |
American Museum of Natural History | ELA | 10 | Earth Systems Evolution | Example |
New York State Department of Education, developed by Common Core, Inc. | Math | 2 | Sums and Differences to 20 | Example |
CPALMS | Math | 4 | Two-Digit Array Multiplication | Exemplar |
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education | Math | 6 | Rates, Ratios, and Percents | Example |
Maryland State Department of Education | Math | 6 | Writing and Evaluating Exponential Expressions | Exemplar |
Maryland State Department of Education | Math | 6 | Defining and Writing Ratios | Exemplar if Improved |
Maryland State Department of Education | Math | 6 | Unit Rate | Exemplar if Improved |
New York State Department of Education, developed by Common Core, Inc. | Math | 7 | Unit Rate and the Constant of Proportionality | Exemplar |
Maryland State Department of Education | Math | 7 | Factor, Expand and Combine Like Terms | Example if Improved |
Common Core, Inc. in partnership with New York State Department of Education | Math | 8 | Module 1 - Integer Exponents and Scientific Notation | Example if Improved |
Maryland State Department of Education | Math | Algebra I | Exponential Relationships | Example if Improved |
New York State Department of Education, developed by Common Core, Inc. | Math | Algebra I | Transformations of Functions | Example |
Cleveland Metropolitan School District | Math | 1 | Adding a Two-Digit Number and a One-Digit Number Using Ten Frames | Example if Improved |
Mathematics Vision Project | Math | Integrated Secodnary Mathematics I | Linear and Exponential Functinons | Example if Improved |
Mathematics Vision Project | Math | Integrated Secondary Mathematics I | Congruence, Constructions and Proof | Example |
Mathematics Vision Project | Math | Integrated Secondary Mathematics II | Geometric Figures | Example if Improved |
Common Core, Inc. in partnership with New York State Department of Education | Math | K | Composing and Decomposing Shapes | Example |
Clark County School District with Student Achievement Partners | Math | 1 | Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival | Example if Improved |
Washoe County School District | ELA | 12 | Federalist 10 Close Reading | Example |
About Achieve
Achieve is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability. For more information about the work of Achieve, visit www.achieve.org.
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