The IMET is a tool for evaluating a comprehensive textbook or textbook series for alignment to the Shifts and major features of the CCSS.
While alignment to standards in literacy and mathematics is a critical and necessary feature of instructional materials, and the IMET is a useful tool for understanding this alignment, instructional materials can and should do more. Instructional materials play a role in disrupting racist systems that continue to devalue, ignore, and fail to recognize the inherent brilliance of Black students, students who are English learners, and others. Materials must attend to:
- Affirmation and development of students’ identities and empathy for others, for example through inclusion of a diverse set of authors and perspectives that creates mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors (Bishop, 2015) for students; and
- Development and application of critical thinking and consciousness, including opportunities for students to interrogate and analyze inequities (for example, criteria outlined in the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecards for STEAM and English Language Arts from the NYU Steinhardt Center); and
- Development of oral language proficiency via engagement with grade-level content (for example, the English Learner Success Forum Guidelines for ELA and Math) and instructional approaches anchored in rigorous, grade-level content with supportive access to complex text (for example, the Council of the Great City Schools Framework for Raising Expectations and Instructional Rigor for English Language Learners for ELA and Math);
- And other areas about which we are still learning.
Beyond considerations of instructional materials, disrupting systemic racism requires that educators create affirming, student-centered learning experiences. We are doing further learning and exploration in order to continue to support educators to:
- reflect on and interrogate the impact of biases on instructional practices and systems;
- purposefully learn about systemic forces of exclusion and design inclusive classroom communities where all students feel a sense of belonging and will thrive;
- be radically curious about their students and connect classroom learning to students’ interests, cultures, and lived experiences;
- create opportunities for student voice and choice;
- work in community with students, families, and colleagues;
- And other areas about which we are still learning.
Please keep an eye on this page as we share more tools and resources that reflect what we continue to learn from educators and ongoing research.
If you are a district leader identifying and selecting high-quality instructional materials or a teacher adapting existing instructional materials to create affirming, student-centered learning experiences, we want to hear from you. Please share your perspective.