Learning during the Pandemic: The Value of High-Quality Instructional Materials and Strong Family Partnerships

A new report from the Center for Public Research and Leadership shows that pandemic learning was most successful when educators, families, and students had access to high-quality instructional materials designed to support academic partnership between teachers and families

By Carnegie Corporation of New York August 13, 2021

Student Success

New research from the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University highlights the benefits of high-quality instructional materials in advancing student learning, even with disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite widely reported challenges associated with remote learning over the past year, educators, and families in nine districts and charter schools told researchers that students using high-quality instructional materials learned as much — and in some cases, more — during the pandemic than in a typical academic year.

The Corporation-funded report, Fundamental 4: Pandemic Learning Reveals the Value of High-Quality Instructional Materials in Cultivating Educators-Family-Student Partnerships, identified several key practices that enabled schools to pivot to effective virtual learning and outlined four lessons from those experiences that schools can use to strengthen academic achievement going forward. They are:

Expand the required dimensions of “high-quality” instructional materials to be tech-enabled, culturally responsive, and designed to engage and educate parents as partners in supporting students
Use high-quality instructional materials as a platform to coordinate effective partnerships around the four pillars critical to student success: academic content, students’ leadership in their own learning, teachers’ knowledge and skill, and family support
Sustain curriculum-based professional learning focused around all four of those pillars, with an emphasis on implementing high-quality instructional materials in ways that respond to student, family, and community needs
Create systems and structures for families, teachers, and students to collaboratively design, monitor, and improve upon learning experiences

“We learned through virtual schooling that educators’ use of high-quality, culturally responsive instructional materials that are enabled by technology and educative for families can be a game changer,” said Elizabeth Chu, executive director of CPRL. “Instead of families being ‘passive recipients’ of instruction, it’s time for a new model in education that brings families fully into the instructional process by using high-quality instructional materials to help foster close coordination and collaboration between students, families, and educators.”

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