In recent years, many have beaten the drum about the findings that rigorous curriculum can improve student outcomes—with gains that sometimes outpace those of other popular education reforms.

But much to the frustration of education researchers, philanthropists and others on the rigorous curriculum train, school districts sometimes don’t purchase and teachers sometimes don’t use curriculum that lines up with their view of what the evidence suggests.

Most recently that’s manifested itself out of people like me expressing frustration at how many teachers had to create materials themselves on the fly to serve their students in the wake of COVID and how comparably fewer were able to access the quality online resources that have been built over the years, according to a national survey by the Clayton Christensen Institute.