One Montgomery County educator said using the district’s new reading curriculum makes them feel like Charlie Brown’s teacher, the unseen cartoon character who speaks in gibberish.

A different teacher praised the way these lesson plans are helping the district’s littlest learners puzzle out letter sounds and blend syllables.

Montgomery County Public Schools have spent about $20 million over the past two years on a new curriculum they hope will build strong readers.

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, used in pre-K through fifth grade, is touted as research backed, rigorous and engaging. It’s become a popular choice for school districts across the nation.

But in MCPS, hundreds of elementary teachers don’t love it. Their struggles speak to a disconnect in public education: the gap that can emerge between what experts say works best and what educators experience in the messy reality of a classroom.

A district evaluation of Amplify’s first year — the 2024-25 school year — revealed many educators think the lessons are too fast-paced and inaccessible for children with disabilities, as well as those learning English and reading below grade level. They also balked at the number of assessments baked into the curriculum.

“The pacing is fast, and there’s not much flexibility to slow down or revisit skills or concepts that students haven’t mastered,” a teacher wrote in the district’s survey. “I often find myself having to choose between moving forward or pausing to meet students’ actual learning needs.”

Others were harsher. One educator called parts of the curriculum a “hot mess express.”

MCPS officials say the first year with a new curriculum is often marked by growing pains, especially in a large district.

“It is that long game that we’re preparing for,” said Stephanie Brant, the director of curriculum implementation. “And each year we continue to provide the support that schools need to be more successful in implementation the following year.”

To ease the transition, teams of learning specialists are visiting classrooms districtwide to offer help. They’re modeling lessons and co-teaching, along with brainstorming strategies to assist specific kids.

District officials also hold biweekly meetings with Amplify staff.

The company’s executive vice president of literacy, Melissa Ulan, said Amplify is committed to partnering to meet the district’s needs and ensuring it manages any hard changes together.

At a recent school board session, as members discussed the evaluation report, Karla Silvestre said it was vital to take a critical look at the curriculum early.

“We don’t want to wait until Year 3 or 5 to say, ‘No, there’s these huge problems that we should have addressed,’” she said. “It’s an important step in taking some corrective actions so that we can hopefully make this work effectively for all of our students.”

What teachers say

The roughly 1,000 general education teachers who responded to the MCPS survey were deeply divided. Nearly half said they were dissatisfied with the Amplify curriculum.

The other half, who liked the lessons, praised them for exposing children to research-backed literacy strategies, as well as the interesting scientific and historical content woven into readings.

A veteran teacher said she feels she’s finally working with a curriculum that she knows is helping kids learn. “THIS IS GREAT!” she wrote.

“Rigor, complex text, rich vocabulary, high expectations for all students,” another said. “We are building so much background knowledge and students who are engaged are learning so much.”

Reading specialists — who work across campuses to boost literacy skills — were most enthusiastic about the lessons. Roughly 87% of them said they were satisfied.

“We have heard nothing but great things,” a reading specialist wrote in the survey.

On the other end were special education teachers. Just 13% of these educators said the curriculum met the needs of students with disabilities.

One called it a nightmare to use because they felt the lessons anticipated all children coming in with the same background knowledge and skills.

“The assessments are absolutely ridiculous. Asking a student with a disability who has processing needs to complete a 15 page assessment. How overwhelming, stressful,” another special education teacher wrote. “I am actually embarrassed that more consideration wasn’t taken.”

Susan Neuman, a former U.S. assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, isn’t surprised by teachers’ comments. Change can be hard, she said, but it is worth it to embrace strong reading lessons.

“There’s basic fear about moving from one curriculum to another. Sometimes you’ve had years of practice on another curriculum that was very, very different,” said Neuman, now a literacy education professor at New York University.

“What we’re finding is that, once teachers get over that kind of hump, they begin to see that this curriculum really engages kids in rich discussions.”

Is it working?

It’s too soon to definitively say whether the lessons are paying off in student scores, but MCPS leaders said they’ll be looking for growth in the next round of standardized test data.

Elyse Eisenberg sees signs of success in her second grade classroom. When she reads to her students, it’s often a high-level text that covers a range of topics. They just finished a unit on the Civil War, in which her 7-year-old students learned an advanced vocabulary word: seceded.

“The kids really like it and it’s engaging, and the parents are often commenting on what they’re learning,” Eisenberg said.

Amplify was still a big adjustment. The beginning of the year felt overwhelming because of lessons’ density, she said. It was hard to get through all the material if kids asked a lot of questions or didn’t immediately understand the correct answer.

And that’s at Wyngate Elementary, a high-performing campus in Bethesda where few kids come from low-income families or are learning English as a second language.

“People with a lot of high-needs students have drastically different experiences than me,” Eisenberg said.

Parents, too, have a wide range of opinions. Some have problems with the subject matter featured in readings or find the lesson plans robotic. Others are glad the curriculum champions phonics and incorporates cool topics into the readings.

To MCPS mom Diana Avram, the curriculum has been a win.

Her third grade daughter’s reading has improved, and she’s also learning important new information on subjects such as ancient Rome and the human body.

“She’s excited to read, whereas before, she never wanted to,” Avram said.

Why Amplify?

For years, MCPS failed to sufficiently challenge its children in reading lessons.

A 2018 Johns Hopkins audit of elementary and middle school lessons found about half of reviewed texts were below grade level.

The auditors recommended district officials shift from writing their own curriculum to purchase “evidenced-based researched and reviewed instructional materials.”

The district took action in 2024. After an intensive selection process, the school board picked Amplify for a three-year contract, with options to renew.

During each of the first two years, the district expected to pay about $10 million for the curriculum and lesson materials, along with training for teachers. The cost falls to roughly $6.7 million for the third year.

District officials hoped the teaching materials would help them tackle academic gaps between student groups. Black and Hispanic students — and those living in poverty, learning English and receiving special education services — struggled with reading when compared to their peers.

Some educators say the Amplify curriculum is causing problems for the same children the district sought to help.

“I cannot stress enough how large the disconnect is between the profile of the learners and the curriculum,” a special education teacher wrote. “We need something more to support these students!!!”

Kelly Carvajal Hageman, who supervises MCPS elementary literacy work, expects to see multilingual learners and children with disabilities make big gains over time.

“We’re asking students to access grade-level text — that’s challenging. And that’s challenging not only for the students but also for the teachers,” she said. “That’s where the growth is. When you do hard things, you grow.”

Making adjustments

Montgomery County isn’t alone in reimagining literacy education.

Maryland as a whole is embracing what’s known as the science of reading, a phonics-forward method of teaching students to decode written language.

State leaders want to end a decades-long controversy over how to create strong readers. They mourn the days when some educators thought kids should learn to memorize whole words or use context clues in a sentence to guess the meaning of new vocabulary.

It’s vital to get this right. If a child can’t read well by third grade, research shows, they’re far less likely to graduate high school. Maryland leaders are focused on ways to avoid this outcome.

Curriculum review tool EdReports — which is closely aligned with Maryland’s standards — determined Amplify meets expectations for high-quality lessons.

To Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein, there are ways to ease teachers’ stress, especially related to lesson pacing and the number of assessments.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to adjust,” he said.

Neuman said district leaders must give educators flexibility to adapt the curriculum to the needs of their students. MCPS officials must also prioritize more support for teachers.

“The other thing they’ll need,” she said, “is patience.”