Beyond the Surface: Leveraging High-Quality Instructional Materials for Robust Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Inspired by the increased national attention on literacy, more districts are implementing high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) to support students’ reading comprehension. In implementing comprehension HQIM, a critical distinction is whether instruction facilitates the development of students’ surface-level or robust comprehension. This brief examines the extent to which teachers in districts using comprehension HQIM implemented them in ways that supported students’ robust comprehension. Findings are based on a study of four districts receiving support through the Schusterman Family Philanthropies’ School System Partnerships to improve their students’ literacy outcomes. These districts were at the national vanguard of HQIM implementation: Each had adopted highly rated knowledge-rich comprehension curriculum, including Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), Wit & Wisdom, and EL Education, for several years before our study, giving us a unique opportunity to examine mature implementation of these commonly used curricula. Findings show that these districts have all reached a level of implementation that features near-universal focus on comprehension with quality texts and active student participation across hundreds of classrooms. However, most lessons—two thirds—resulted in teachers and students doing work that only facilitated surface-level understanding of texts. In this brief, we explain how we discovered this problem hiding in plain sight and identify high-leverage comprehension practices that could help districts, schools, and teachers maximize the potential of comprehension HQIM and consistently deliver high-quality instruction to every student.