Students attending Montgomery County public middle schools next fall will encounter new English language arts lessons that explore more novels and involve paper and pencil exercises including vocabulary worksheets and creating graphic organizers about a book’s main characters.
The lessons are part of a new English language arts (ELA) curriculum purchased by the Montgomery County school board and set to be implemented by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) throughout this summer and fall. The new curriculum is expected to deliver lessons involving more novels that cover diverse topics and also includes guidance for students with differing support needs, according to MCPS staff.
Professional training in the new curriculum for MCPS central office staff and ELA teachers is expected to occur this summer and continue into the fall, when the new curriculum will be introduced in county middle schools, according to MCPS officials.
What’s in the new curriculum?
On May 22, the school board unanimously approved the purchase of the new curriculum, following an initial May 8 presentation by MCPS staff during which some board members raised concerns about a lack of diverse community feedback regarding the new lessons.
The curriculum, Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) 6-8, is expected to integrate literature with history and science and is based in the Science of Reading, according to MCPS staff.
The Science of Reading is research that has been conducted globally over the last five decades that informs how students develop reading and writing skills, according to the Reading League.
The purchase marks the second time MCPS has chosen CKLA as part of its ELA curricula. In March 2024, the school board approved purchasing the Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (Amplify CKLA) literacy curriculum for pre-kindergarten to fifth grade students for the 2025-2026 school year.
The new middle school curriculum includes texts on a variety of subjects including social studies and science, which is expected to help students engage with the work, according to MCPS Chief Academic Officer Niki Hazel.
According to the CKLA 6-8 website, many books are accompanied by worksheets that include different vocabulary words from the text, graphic organizers for main characters and worksheets that help students summarize chapters. The lessons incorporate a variety of vocabulary lists with definitions, pronunciations, and the inclusion of vocabulary words into other worksheets.
One such novel is Enrique Flores-Galbis’ 90 Miles to Havana, which focuses on the author’s experience leaving Cuba at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.
Hazel said the inclusion of the novels and other full-length texts differs from the current curriculum called StudySync, which largely includes excerpts from texts instead of entire books. StudySync, which the district began using in 2019, is a curriculum focused on “strong skills- and standards-based instruction,” according to its website.
Hazel said the new curriculum offers less work on digital platforms and more pencil and paper exercises for students. For teachers, the curriculum also embeds guidance for challenges and supports for students, such as pausing to create small groups for those who may need extra help, Hazel said.
The new curriculum would cost the district less than StudySync, according to a May 8 presentation to the school board. The first three years of CKLA 6-8 would cost about $1.6 million but that would drop to $50,000 every year after. StudySync cost almost $3.6 million for the first three years, about $232,000 in year four and roughly $954,000 annually after four years.
“So this really is a case where the educationally sound choice is also the financially responsible one,” Jaclynn Lightsey, supervisor of secondary ELA and literacy, told the school board during the May 8 meeting.
Implementation
According to the May 22 presentation, curriculum “pre-launch” will begin this spring with central services staff being introduced to the materials and participating in professional learning. Then, professional learning will begin in the summer for content specialists and teachers. Hazel said MCPS will also offer professional learning this summer for ELA teachers focused on Emergent Multilingual Learners. Professional learning will continue throughout the 2025-2026 school year to help coach and support teachers, Hazel said.
Required materials for all teachers will also be purchased, Hazel said, after board member Grace Rivera-Oven and board member Natalie Zimmerman raised concerns about special education teachers having the resources they need. This school year, several elementary special education teachers said they didn’t have access to resources they required for their students during the implementation of the CKLA curriculum in elementary school, Rivera-Oven and Zimmerman said.
“A good curriculum will only get you so far,” Hazel said. “The implementation is really what is most important, and that is where we really want to make sure that we focus our energy.”
Initial presentation, board concerns
MCPS wrote all of its curricula prior to 2018, Hazel said during an initial presentation on the ELA curriculum at the May 8 school board meeting. The district purchased the StudySync curriculum, which was implemented during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, after a 2018 audit conducted by Johns Hopkins recommended switching to an outside curriculum that focused on “grade-level standards,” Hazel said.
With the StudySync set to expire, MCPS explored the purchase of a new curriculum, Hazel said. A new curriculum could also contribute to improving students’ performance in ELA, according to the May 8 presentation.
State testing from spring 2024 has shown only a marginal increase in reading scores for MCPS students, with Black and Hispanic/Latino students continuing to score lower than their white and Asian classmates.
According to the May 8 presentation, a survey of ELA and English Language Development teachers found that only 15% would choose StudySync as the main curriculum moving forward. Hazel said at the May 22 meeting that teachers said the curriculum’s digital platform made it difficult to provide students with extra support when needed and the teaching materials were difficult to use.
After a five-month evaluation of different curricula, including detailed evaluations based on a Maryland State Department of Education rubric, CKLA 6-8, emerged as the best option, Lightsey said.
According to Lightsey, feedback for the middle school curricula was overwhelmingly positive, noting there was a good range of diverse texts, including poems and novels on a variety of topics; seamless progression from elementary school curricula; and additional resources for English Language Learners.
However, after the first presentation on May 8, the board didn’t vote to approve the curriculum. Members Rita Montoya and Brenda Wolff expressed frustration that there was a lack of feedback from the Latino and Black communities. According to the presentation, the district had 81 respondents to a survey, 59 of whom were white. Only 10 respondents were Black or African American, six were Asian and three were Hispanic or Latino. Three respondents didn’t disclose race.
“It isn’t an issue that we don’t want to be a part of it, and I say that because I’m a Latina parent and Latina professional who … works with people in the community who care very much about curriculum and schools,” Montoya said. “We are here and you need to find us. This is unacceptable.”
Rivera-Oven also expressed hesitation over the approval of the curriculum, noting that MCPS often acknowledges that it needs to do better, but continues to make similar mistakes.
“When you look at their [Latino students’] scores in reading and math, it is embarrassing and also very sad because we get one chance at educating these students,” Rivera-Oven said. “My concern is that now I have to take your word on it, based on an evaluation of 81 participants who lacked representation of the students that we’re supposed to be teaching.”
The vote was moved to the May 22 meeting in order for MCPS staff to collect additional feedback and answers to board members’ questions.
At the May 22 meeting, Hazel returned with additional feedback on the curriculum including focus groups with 12 Black participants, 17 Hispanic/Latino participants, 18 white participants and four Asian participants.
Hazel said the review process was hours long, with an extensive rubric, which made it so some “participants who were not able to complete the process and, in some cases, those were the voices that we really wanted to hear from.”
“We’re not where we want to be — I want to put that out there in terms of our levels of participation,” Hazel said. “But we know that in the future, we will continue to make sure that we have representation that looks very much like the district.”
