he RAND American Educator Panels (AEP) consist of the American Teacher Panel (ATP) and the American School Leader Panel (ASLP). These panels are nationally representative samples of K-12 public school educators. The ATP includes more than 25,000 teachers, and the ASLP includes more than 7,500 school principals. Both groups respond to numerous online survey requests each year. The AEP began in 2014 and expanded significantly during the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years (Robbins and Grant, 2020).Since 2014, the RAND Corporation has recruited AEP members using probabilistic sampling methods. The AEP samples are designed to be of sufficient size to facilitate national analyses as well as analyses of prevalent subgroups at the national level (e.g., elementary school teachers, high school mathematics teachers, teachers in urban schools). Similarly, the panels are designed to permit analyses of the following geographic areas: Alabama,
As Deborah Ball and David Cohen wrote in 1996, "The design and spread of curriculum materials is one of the oldest strategies for attempting to influence classroom instruction." Unlike other educational reforms, which may depend on the talent and skills of the educators who lead them, a curriculum-textbooks or online materials composed of organized and scaffolded objectives, lesson plans, activities, and assessments constituting an entire course of studyis already written and static, seemingly ready to be scaled across whole states and school districts.
KEY FINDINGS■ Most teachers do not use a single curriculum as it is written. Instead, they reported using multiple curricula, making substantial modifications, or creating their own curriculum materials.■ Most teachers agreed that their observations and evaluations take into account their use of curricula. However, fewer teachers reported receiving coaching or professional development workshops focused on curriculum use.■ How teachers used their curriculum was connected to whether they reported receiving evaluative feedback on curriculum use or more frequent curriculum-focused professional learning (PL).■ Teachers in eight states focused on curriculum reforms were more likely to report use of standards-aligned curricula andin some cases-more evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ Teachers in high-poverty schools reported more-frequent use of standards-aligned curricula for English language arts (ELA), digital materials, and supplementary materials. They were also more likely to report evaluative feedback and PL focused on curricula.■ The extent of teachers' curriculum-focused evaluative feedback and PL were connected with the number of standards-aligned practices in which teachers reported all their students engaging. However, whether teachers reported using a standards-aligned curriculum regularly-in itself-was not related to teachers' reports of their students' standards-aligned practices.
A lthough researchers and practitioners have acknowledged that school leaders (i.e., principals) play an important role in supporting teachers' use of instructional materials, very little research has explored what that role is in any detail. Research also has not provided insights about what school leaders must consider and prioritize when supporting teach-
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