Instructional leadership: The efficacy of student performance with CSCOPE curriculum implementation

As of May 25, 2010, over 800 school districts across the state of Texas have adopted CSCOPE as their curriculum. The CSCOPE curriculum management system has become the defacto curriculum management system of choice for public schools in Texas. The purpose of this study was to evaluate, via latent growth modeling, the effects of CSCOPE curriculum implementation upon student academic performance in mathematics as measured by the Texas Assessments of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests. The population consisted of 4,847,844 public school students in Texas. A purposively selected sample (N=468) of Texas public school students were taught using the CSCOPE curriculum management system; the sample also included students taught using a non-CSCOPE curriculum during the study period. A priori assumption was made regarding a causal relationship between curriculum and instruction and the resulting student performance.
Existing research shows that when the written, taught, and tested curriculum are tightly aligned student performance increases. There is scarce research to substantiate the effects of CSCOPE on student performance. What effect does CSCOPE as a model for a guaranteed and viable curriculum have over time on student performance in mathematics as defined by measures included in the Academic Excellence Indicator System? Results reveal that CSCOPE had a .958 of a standard deviation effect on growth in student performance in mathematics during the three year period of interest in the study. CSCOPE has a positive effect on student performance over time.