Coherence of Curriculum and Instruction September 2025

September 2025

Public schools are innately complex systems. Students arrive in the building with a myriad of needs and skills and come from varied backgrounds and households. We try to be all things to everyone - that is our goal at least - but it is lofty, if not aspirational. Additionally, certain states, like Massachusetts, leave many things up to the local district to decide, including  curriculum, instruction, assessment and the general approach to teaching and supporting students. While we have state standards, there is a fair amount of autonomy left to local schools and districts. Furthermore, many teachers receive different types of training in their education preparation programs, only further adding to the varied inputs for a school and school district.

It’s the variety and diversity that makes our schools such vibrant places. Different perspectives and ways of thinking are powerful sources of life in our schools. The challenge for schools and districts is to embrace variety while ensuring there is a coherent system for teaching, learning and supporting students. The complexities of systems and people make this difficult - but not impossible. The work takes time. For Pentucket, we have been focusing on building out coherent systems for several years, even before we were using the phrase “coherent systems.” Without this approach, we simply have a collection of very hard working professionals who do very good things for kids, but often in isolation or in conflict with one another inadvertently. 

Coherence in the Pentucket Schools

Since 2018, Pentucket has been working towards implementing various systems around curriculum, instruction, behavior, evaluation and general management of the schools. The goal is not to create a district where everyone is doing the exact same thing on each day, but rather learning environments where routines and expectations are clear to all members of the school community. Meeting the needs of kids will always require differentiation, but having balance around these systems sets a baseline to work from, measure success and adjust as needed.

High School students performing a DNA Lab as part of their AP Biology Class

In the fall of 2024, TNPT published a paper called The Opportunity Makers. This paper studied the outcomes of over 28,000 schools from all levels and found that only 5% had achieved results where their students had exceeded expected growth. One might assume that the schools included in the 5% were very well resourced both in funding and in social capital. However there was no common demographic among them. The professionals at TNPT dug into what those schools were doing and began calling the schools Trajectory Changing Schools. They discovered that there were 3 things the trajectory changing schools were all doing:

• Belonging: Creating an emotional climate for learning that activates students’ ability to excel.  

• Consistency: Delivering consistently good teaching and grade-level content for all students.  

• Coherence: Building a unified instructional program and setting priorities that are clear to all.   

  
  

While the word coherence was being used to describe the instructional program and curriculum, the reality was, these schools had coherence around their systems which impacted all three of those things. There was piercing clarity on both the value of these three things and the expectations for how they would be carried out.

At Pentucket, we see many similarities with the focus on creating schools where everyone belongs, building educator understanding on good teaching to ensure all students have access to grade level content, and establishing consistent curriculum that is high-quality in all content areas. Upon reflection, the leadership team at Pentucket recognized that many of our systems were in place and well developed, but at times we struggled as a district and as schools to connect all of the systems so staff, families and even students knew what to expect and could leverage them for high impact learning. Simply put - the heavy lifting has been done, but we now need greater clarity of the coherence of our systems. 

Curriculum Coherence

The concept of offering a coherent curriculum may seem obvious, but the implementation of it in practice is often more elusive than one might imagine. Simply purchasing the same core text and asking staff to use it is far from ensuring a coherent learning experience for all students. 

The State of Tennessee invested in high-quality literacy curriculum in an effort to make sure all students are learning from similarly developed materials that meet expectations. Tennessee SCORE, published a paper in 2023 that collected data over multiple years focusing on the system level changes needed to implement high quality curriculum, but in a way that made it accessible and purposeful for all learners. Findings from this case study had implications for strategies related to instruction, scheduling,  staffing, funding, and future analysis. The analysis points schools and systems toward a support strategy for students that offers them more practice with the same high-quality materials from core instruction. This approach represents a large shift from the decade-long strategy in Tennessee and often across the country, to offer struggling students “something different” at the first point of weakness. The less intensive accommodation or “first step” was something simpler, but more coherent - offering additional time to succeed with the same materials. SCORE. (2023, September 26). Tnscore.

I observed a recent example of curriculum coherence that has taken multiple years to come to fruition. While sitting in on a US History II class with PRHS History Teacher Mark Dziedziak, the students were discussing some aspects of WWI and some of the challenges the soldiers faced. These sophomores all had district knowledge about WWI as they had read All is Quiet of the Western Front in their 8th grade English class. This background knowledge allowed them to immediately engage in discussions with each other, and to construct well thought out and anchored written responses to the prompts that Mr. Dziedziak posed.

Mr. Dziedzak engages students on the topic of World War I and life back at home in the US

While the book selection in 8th grade is part of the Wit and Wisdom curriculum and was not chosen to connect with history content three years later, the fact that all students engaged in their sophomore year US History class will have had a similar learning experience as 8th graders is a basic example of curriculum coherence at work. This is cross curricular and strengthens the argument that achieving coherence is as complex as the learning needs of students. It didn’t matter who their 8th grade English teacher was or who their US History teacher will be, this is a powerful learning connection where knowledge serves the higher level thinking and communication we expect of our students.

A coherent curriculum is one that aligns vertically across grade levels, but also provides room for deeper learning for all students in all classrooms. Placing Text at the Center, by Sue Pimentel and Meredith Liben, discusses the importance of students engaging in school development literacy programs that have them reading a volume of conceptually related texts. The Wit and Wisdom literacy program we use in grades K-8 is built on this concept, where students are reading multiple texts on a similar concept or topic. The texts vary in type and format with students reading a core text and paired selections. This ensures students can build their vocabulary and thinking across multiple texts. The students are speaking and listening to one another discuss aspects of the texts and they are writing in response to the texts. 

Our teachers also work to ensure our students have access to varied texts that relate to the topic. Often this means our libraries are organizing sets of books on topics that grade levels are reading about or it means our teachers have reorganized their classroom libraries from the antiquated “leveled library” bins and stacks on conceptually related material.

Our School Libraries coordinate with the classrooms to provide students with a volume of texts on the topics covered in ELA texts

Instructional Coherence 

Beyond the content organization, which has clear logic to ensure that it is aligned, there is also a great deal of focus on instructional coherence. Using consistent routines for how we teach vocabulary or how we expect students to take notes are examples of instructional coherence. It removes a burden on students to remember how one teacher may want things done versus how another teacher may want things done. It also allows us to leverage what are known best practices and work to ensure our teachers use them, regardless of content area or grade level. 

MA DESE has created some helpful tools, including this Quick Reference Guide that describes three types of curricular coherence that support student learning: vertical coherence, aligned tiers of instruction, and cross-subject coherence.

Consistent instructional routines and practices are used across grade levels and content areas

Building on instructional routines and using similar language makes each new school year a little easier to start. Our students are very used to the same writing strategies and organizers. While what the 1st graders use is not precisely the same as the 6th graders, it builds from shared language and structure. The same can be said for vocabulary where our students are well versed in the Frayer model, or concept maps. As grades advance, those models are similar, but add in additional features.  

Systems Level Coherence

There are two types of coherence when it comes to schools - internal and external. In this Cambridge University Press article titled “Is curriculum coherence a fundamental characteristic of high-performing education systems?”, the authors explore the work types of coherence in the education system and use research from across the globe. Their findings revealed schools with higher levels of coherence of both internal and external coherence, had considerably strong student outcomes. But of course to have that level of coherence, those education systems were highly centralized. Our internal systems are referring to the alignment with content and among the vertical grade levels. This is achieved through implementation of core curriculum and with developed coaching and support to implement it effectively. External coherence is in reference to all of the other aspects of a school that are working together in pursuit of strong student outcomes. Schools are not simply a curriculum - and systems like schedules, professional development, communication, family/community involvement, assessments and resources are all critical for high functioning schools. 

Pentucket used time over the summer to revisit the process of creating coherence among external systems that can be done more effectively. The visual below reflects the model the district is using that starts with the ILT, or Instructional Leadership Team, working to outline the goals. This was part of the work done with the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s summer leadership institute. Pentucket had a team of 12 educators that included central office administrators, building leadership, and teachers. 

High Impact Schools

The approach we will now bring to our discussions will be from the student lens. We have used a very comprehensive approach to implementing a Multi-Tiered Support System (MTSS). It serves as an overall approach to how we structure curriculum, instruction, accommodations and specialized instruction. What types of experiences are we creating for our students, especially those who are in need of additional assistance? Are we creating Coherent Learning experiences for kids - or Incoherent Learning experiences for kids? Are we applying that question from the point of Belonging, Consistency, and Coherence?

This work is not limited to academics. When staff have a clear picture of the possibilities and expectations on how to support students when they are struggling socially or emotionally, a coherent and coordinated approach results in better outcomes for students. This starts with basic structures like school wide behavioral expectations that are also reflected in classroom expectations. A positive behavior intervention system proactively teaches students about core expectations -how to respect one another, communicate with one another and how to help one another. These are at the foundation of an MTSS and when each staff member understands their role within the system, we have been able to work together to improve outcomes for students.

We look to address coherence across systems as well, working alongside the special education department. For students with disabilities, or those experiencing various challenges, making sure instruction, curriculum and supports are aligned can be one of the most powerful things we can do. This takes planning, communication and clarity on what the vision is for students. 

As a district, we are not perfect.  We continue to strive to be more coherent over all systems and we know and understand the value of coherence can be the key to  a high impact learning experience for all our students.

Dr. Brent Conway

Assistant Superintendent

Pentucket Regional School District

@drconwaypentucket