Meeting the diverse needs of students, families, and educators starts with listening. More districts are embracing community-centric curriculum to foster engagement and reflect the lived experiences of those they serve.

PCG’s approach to curriculum development is grounded in decades of research and designed to:

• Deliver evidence-based techniques for working with all learners, including emergent bilinguals and students with disabilities
• Provide equitable access to high-quality, standard-aligned materials
• Represent the voices and choices of local stakeholders
• Support oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension

The benefits of a community-centric curriculum are being realized in districts like Chicago Public Schools and Pinellas County Schools, where the development and implementation of custom curriculum has driven measurable gains.

Chicago Public Schools: Skyline K–12 Curriculum
In 2019, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) surveyed teachers and learned that over half reported not having adequate curricular resources, and over 85% wanted the district to provide unit plans, lesson plans, and resources. At the same time, the district identified several gaps in existing approved curricular materials and texts: lack of textual diversity, culturally responsive sustaining education (CR-SE) guidance and modeling, and alignment to the district’s literacy framework; and a disconnect between foundational reading programs and the core English Language Arts (ELA) programs.

CPS partnered with PCG to address gaps in existing materials and meet teacher demand for better resources. Together, we developed a fully custom PreK–12 ELA and foundational skills curriculum, Skyline, that:

• Embedded CR-SE practices and localized content
• Included 111 ELA units with full-year instruction, instruction including unit outlines lesson plans, common assessments, and teacher and student materials
• Was supported by a multi-pronged, three-year in-person, virtual, and self-paced professional learning effort

Impact:
Over 90% of CPS schools voluntarily adopted the curriculum. From 2019–2023, CPS led the nation in reading growth for Black and Latino students and was first in post-pandemic reading recovery for grades 3–8.

Read more about our work with Chicago Public Schools.

Pinellas County Schools: Hidden Voices Curriculum
In February 2020, Florida adopted the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) standards in ELA. These new standards provided an opportunity for Pinellas County Schools (PCS) to create a custom curriculum that featured localization and alignments between reading and writing. PCS was committed to providing a rigorous curriculum driven by high-quality and culturally diverse texts, with a focus on localized content for maximizing student engagement. The district partnered with PCG to produce new customized unit outlines, explicit, scripted lesson plans, common assessments, texts, and teacher and student materials. PCG created a knowledge-building set of instructional materials with scaffolds to improve accessibility and texts with activities that support engagement for all learners across the county.

The components of the custom curriculum included:

• Eight ELA units per grade, each with 160 lesson plans representing a full year of instruction, including differentiated small group lessons
• Explicit lesson plans following the instructional delivery model, including sample teacher think-alouds, exemplar student responses, English language learners (ELL) supports, students with disabilities (SWD) supports, and embedded teacher instructional best practices
• End-of-unit culminating activities, engaging students in a standards-based synthesis of the knowledge-building topic

Impact:
PCS earned an “A” grade from the Florida Department of Education in 2024—the first in district history. Grades 3–5 saw a 6% growth in achievement, outpacing the state average and placing PCS in the top 15% of Florida districts.

“The remediation classes in 6th grade have dropped. That’s life-changing work. That’s what this is about.”

— Michael Feeney, Pinellas County Schools

Read more about our work with Pinellas County Schools.

This year, investing in custom curriculum and professional learning is one of the most impactful steps you can take to improve educational outcomes and instructional equity.

To learn more about PCG’s work in education, click here.