How Quincy Schools Decide What Curriculum to Use
A school board training pulled back the curtain on how the district reviews instructional materials — and why the next big test may be math.
Most parents never think about school curriculum until something feels wrong.
Maybe homework suddenly looks unfamiliar. Maybe test scores dip. Maybe a student hits a wall in math, and no one can quite explain why.
But a recent training for the Quincy School Board showed that the decisions shaping what students learn and how they learn it start years before any of those moments reach the classroom.
Behind every curriculum adoption is a long process of standards reviews, teacher committees, program trials, and board oversight that quietly determines what learning looks like across Quincy schools.
TL;DR: How curriculum adoption works in Quincy
The school board mainly votes on core instructional curriculum, not every classroom resource.
Core curriculum decisions can take years and involve teachers, committees, parents, and repeated board updates.
A full K-12 curriculum adoption can cost more than $1 million, especially since we have multilingual learning and the curriculum usually lasts several years.
District leaders said implementation and teacher training matter as much as the materials themselves.
Quincy is now closely reviewing math curriculum after Washington released new priority standards.
The district is also exploring how AI tools might support math instruction and intervention.
When most people hear that the school board is “adopting curriculum,” it sounds pretty simple.
Pick a program. Vote on it. Buy the books. Move on.
But a recent Quincy School Board training made it clear that is not how this works at all.
What district leaders laid out was a much longer, more layered process. A process that can stretch across multiple years, involve several committees, require repeated board updates, and carry long-term consequences for classrooms across the district.
For parents, that matters.
Because when Quincy chooses a core curriculum, it is not just deciding what workbook lands on a desk. It is making a multi-year commitment about what students will be taught, how teachers will teach it, how progress will be measured, and how much time and money the district will commit to making that program work.
And in a district still working to improve student outcomes; especially in math, that is not a small thing.
The board does not vote on everything
One of the most helpful parts of the training was the district’s explanation of what the school board actually approves and what stays at the classroom level.
District leaders said the board’s biggest role comes when Quincy is selecting core instructional curriculum. T\he main curriculum programs used across schools and grade levels in subjects like math, English language arts, science, and social studies.
Those are the big-ticket, long-term commitments.
Teachers, on the other hand, also use a wide range of other materials throughout the year; intervention tools, short-term supplemental lessons, credit-retrieval programs, supports for students with specific needs, and classroom materials tied to current events or a particular lesson.
Those do not all go back to the board for approval, and district leaders said that is intentional.
If every classroom support or short-term instructional tool had to go through the full board process, it would slow schools down and make it much harder for teachers to respond to students in real time.
So the board’s job is not to micromanage every tool used in a classroom. Its role is to oversee the larger; districtwide commitments, the programs that shape core learning over several years.
These are not quick decisions
Another big takeaway: by the time a curriculum recommendation gets to the school board, a lot of work has already happened behind the scenes. District staff said Quincy follows a structured process tied to guidance from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, or OSPI.
That process starts with the district identifying its goals, reviewing the state standards, and asking a basic question: is the current curriculum still doing the job?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
Sometimes the answer is that there are small gaps that can be fixed with adjustments. Sometimes the answer is that the gap is too big, and the district needs to begin the long process of reviewing new programs.
When that happens, the district forms a curriculum study team, usually made up of teachers and, when possible, parents. Replacing core instructional curriculum is a big process because it is a total replacement for the entire school district; all grades K-12. A key requirement for our district is that any new curriculum must include integrated support for multilingual learners from the outset. That group studies the options and eventually makes a recommendation.
After that, the recommendation goes to the Instructional Materials Committee, which reviews whether the adoption process was followed correctly and whether the recommendation should move forward.
Only after all of that does the school board vote.
District leaders stressed that board members are kept in the loop throughout the process. In other words, the vote at the end should not be the first time they are hearing about a program.
Curriculum is only part of the equation
One of the clearest messages from the training was that buying curriculum is not the same thing as improving student learning. The materials matter, district staff said. But how they are implemented matters just as much, maybe more.
Teachers still have to learn the program well. Schools have to build the right assessments. Teams have to monitor how students are doing. Instruction has to be adjusted when students are not getting it.
That is where the district’s PLCs, professional learning communities, come in. Those are the teacher collaboration teams that meet regularly to look at pacing, review student data, and talk through what is working and what is not.
District leaders described those conversations as essential. The goal is not for teachers to simply open the teacher manual, turn the page, and deliver the script. The curriculum is a tool. The standards are the goal.
That is also why a new program does not automatically lead to better scores right away.
In fact, staff said districts often see what they called an implementation dip in the first year of a new curriculum, simply because teachers are still learning how to use it well. Real gains often come later, once the program is understood and instruction is adjusted around it.
Why math keeps rising to the top
While the training covered the district’s broader curriculum process, the conversation kept circling back to one subject: math. And honestly, that is probably where most parents’ ears would perk up too.
District staff said Washington released new math standards in December, including newly identified priority standards; in other words, the skills the state is now saying matter most.
That means districts like Quincy have to go back and ask whether their current math programs really line up with those standards and expectations. Quincy has already started doing that work.
Staff said they are studying whether the current curriculum actually teaches the new priority standards and whether students are mastering the prerequisite skills they need before moving into the next level.
That issue matters in math because gaps do not usually stay small.
District leaders explained that a student who misses a key reading benchmark may still improve over time as language develops, especially in a district with many multilingual learners. But math tends to stack on itself much more directly.
If a student does not really understand fractions in elementary school, it becomes much harder later to handle ratios, proportions, equations, and higher-level math.
That was one of the biggest themes in the room: math problems at the high school level often did not start in high school.
They started years earlier.
Quincy is zeroing in on the missing building blocks
District staff said they are now focusing closely on what they call priority prerequisites; the foundational math skills students need before they can succeed with the next set of standards.
That work is already underway.
The district has started analyzing those gaps with high school, middle school, and upper elementary teams, with more work planned in the coming months. The goal is to identify where students are getting off track and intervene earlier, before the gap snowballs into something harder to recover from.
That may sound technical, but the idea is pretty simple.
If students are missing the building blocks, it does not matter how strong the next lesson is. They are still being asked to build on a shaky foundation.
And once that happens for several years in a row, teachers at the next level are left trying to teach grade-level content while also filling old gaps at the same time.
That is a tough ask in any classroom.
The answer may not be the same in every school level
One of the more interesting parts of the discussion was that Quincy may not end up making the same math decision across every grade band.
According to staff, the early read at the high school level is that the current program may only have small gaps. The bigger issue may be whether students are arriving prepared for grade-level work in the first place.
At the middle school and elementary levels, the reactions have been more mixed. Some educators appear to believe the current materials are not enough.
That means Quincy may not land on a one-size-fits-all answer.
District staff said next school year will likely be the key decision-making period. By fall, the district expects to have a clearer sense of whether the current system can be adjusted to meet the new standards or whether a new adoption process needs to begin.
The state requires districts to fully implement the new standards by the 2027–28 school year, so the clock is already ticking.
AI is now part of the conversation too
This was not just a discussion about textbooks and pacing guides. District leaders also talked about how AI may factor into future instructional support, especially in math.
Through the district’s Elevate grant work, Quincy is already looking at several math-focused AI tools alongside the curriculum study process. Staff said that alignment is intentional.
Math is one of the district’s biggest academic challenges, and it is also one of the areas where a good support tool could, in theory, help teachers identify gaps, provide targeted feedback, and support students who are working at different levels.
But district staff were also careful to make one point clear: AI is not being treated as a replacement for teachers.
The way they described it, the hope is that it could become a support tool — something that helps teachers work more effectively, not something that takes their place.
That distinction matters, especially in a community where parents want help for struggling students but do not want classrooms handed over to screens.
The public usually only sees the flashpoints
In a town like Quincy, people notice when students are struggling.
They notice it in test scores, in homework frustration at the kitchen table, and in the hard questions families start asking about what is and is not working in school.
What this training made clear is that those answers usually do not come down to one board vote or one curriculum purchase.
They come from the slower work underneath it all; the standards the district chooses to focus on, the tools teachers are given, the support students get when they fall behind, and whether the system catches gaps early enough to do something about them.
That work is already underway.
Now the real question is whether Quincy families will start to see the payoff where it matters most: in classrooms, at home, and in whether more students are truly ready for what comes next.
And with math now squarely in the spotlight, that may be the place the community looks first.