A Commitment to Equity Drives Curriculum Implementation Success

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) adopted Curriculum Associates’ Ready Math curriculum, including the i-Ready assessment system, in 2018 and began implementing the new instructional materials during the 2019–20 school year. Within the first year, the pandemic interrupted the implementation of these high-quality instructional materials (HQIM).

CORE Learning and UnboundEd began a three-year partnership with MPUSD in July 2021 to provide comprehensive curriculum implementation services at the middle school level. Since then, CORE has supported MPUSD with system-wide project management to help build and implement coherent instructional systems, including professional learning strategy and planning, communications, and evaluation planning.

MPUSD serves 9,200 students between kindergarten and twelfth grade across 21 schools; of those, 27 percent are multilingual learners (MLLs), and 66 percent are economically marginalized. Over three years, CORE has delivered services to all four of the district’s middle schools and two additional schools serving students from kindergarten to eighth grade.

CORE has supported MPUSD leaders in creating the conditions needed for a successful materials implementation process and used problems of practice to monitor implementation and track progress toward goals. During the third and final year, CORE continues to focus on building the capacity to sustain change at all levels and scale to additional grade levels and subject areas.

A third-party evaluation found that CORE’s services helped increase knowledge of effective implementation at the district level and enabled school leadership teams to build implementation capacity (Effective Implementation Cohort Grant Years 1 and 2 Initial Report). Rebekah Corbishley, Teacher and Academic Coach, indicated that CORE has prepared MPUSD’s classrooms and professional learning communities (PLCs) to succeed even when encountering the district’s high teacher turnover rates.

As a result of this partnership, Cresta McIntosh, Associate Superintendent of Educational Services, reported that every single teacher in every middle school classroom in the district uses the curriculum with integrity.