Learning Objectives

• Identify sources for high-quality instructional materials, including those labeled open access and Open Educational Resources.
• Compare rubrics and rating tools used to identify high-quality digital instructional materials.

Rubrics for High-Quality Instructional Materials

In the What are High-Quality Instructional Materials? lesson, you learned about the characteristics of high-quality instructional materials. The word cloud below is a collection of these characteristics from a variety of resources.

Tools such as rubrics help establish whether instructional materials meet the criteria and indicators that make them high-quality. In this lesson, take a closer look at three rubrics used to evaluate materials: 

• EdReports' English Language Arts rubric and evidence guide
• Ohio Department of Education's Ohio Quality Review Rubric for Lessons/Units: K-12 English Language Arts
•  Instructional Materials Rubric

While each rubric is different and is intended for diverse materials, there are many similarities between them as well. 

EdReports

Its transparent, reliable reports give schools and districts a good look at the overall effectiveness of educational content. Adoption committees searching for the best curricula for their students can view the reports free of charge. EdReports reviews both premium content and Open Educational Resources (OER) and uses rubrics designed by education professionals.

Below is an example focusing on English language arts. You also can review mathematics, science, or social studies rubrics and evidence guides from EdReports and rubrics from the Ohio Department of Education. 

ELA High School Rubric and Evidence Guide

The review criteria for the rubric is: 

• text quality and complexity, and alignments to standards with tasks grounded in evidence
• building knowledge with texts, vocabular, and tasks
• instructional supports and usability

The criteria identifies the indicators for high-quality instructional materials, primarily full curricula. It also supports a process that reflects how important standards alignment is to the quality of instructional materials. 

View and read the rubric and evidence guide and answer the following questions.

The Evidence Guide complements the rubric with its review criteria. It provides details for the indicators, including scoring criteria, purpose, guidance for collecting evidence, and guiding questions and prompts.

View and read the guide below and answer the following questions.

1. How do the gateways help support delivery of high-quality instructional materials?
2. What indicators for criteria 1.1 and 1.2 are most interesting or important? What in your experience with teaching makes these stand out?
3. How do the evidence guides help your understanding of the criteria and indicators? 

Ohio Department of Education

The Ohio Department of Education believes that “each child should have access to relevant and challenging academic experiences and the educational resources necessary." To ensure equity and empower schools and districts to choose and implement high-quality instructional materials, the Department has developed ELA, science, and math rubrics based on the Equip Rubric. As a local control state, the Department encourages schools and districts to use rubrics such as these when making decisions about the materials their students will use to learn and grow.

Ohio Quality Review Rubric for Lessons/Units: K-12 English Language Arts

 This rubric has four criteria areas for reviewing lessons and units:

• alignment to the depth of Ohio's Learning Standards
• key shifts in Ohio's Learning Standards
• instructional supports
• assessment

View the rubric and answer the following questions. 

1. How does the rubric ensure that the reviewed materials will be high-quality?
2. What indicators from the rubric do you use most when choosing instructional materials? What makes these indicators important?

Instructional Materials Rubric

Developed with partners from the Ohio Department of Education, INFOhio's Instructional Materials Rubric provides educators with an evaluation tool that can be applied to most instructional materials. This rubric will be used by INFOhio reviewers to identify high-quality instructional materials freely available online, often referred to as open access or Open Education Resources. 

Extend Your Learning

Use the Venn diagram organizer at the end of the following Excercise Files to compare and contrast the three rubrics from this lesson. Share your results with a colleague.