The Nebraska Instructional Materials Collaborative, or NIMC, provides guidance and resources for the selection and implementation of standards-aligned instructional materials highlights high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials and offers Nebraska-specific guidance documents to ensure materials meet the expectations of Nebraska’s Content Area Standards.  Through the NIMC, NDE and key partners are committed to providing statewide leadership that informs and supports the decisions made locally related to curriculum and instructional materials.

No. The Nebraska Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students are prepared for college, career, and civic life while also honoring the local decisions of each district. To fulfill this promise, our role is to provide the guidance, tools, resources, and support that districts need to provide every student with a high quality education. That includes making sure that every student has access to the best resources, and that every teacher has access to high-quality instructional materials and receives the professional learning needed to implement them effectively.

A curriculum is determined locally and reflects “how” teachers help students learn the content within content area standards. A curriculum outlines the intended outcomes, content, experiences, assessments, and resources for measuring student learning, and it also includes the scope and sequence of what is taught in grades K-12.

Instructional materials are the tools and resources that are used as part of a locally determined curriculum.

The NIMC includes definitions for content area standards, curriculum, instructional materials, assessment, and classroom instruction on the bottom of the homepage.

The Nebraska Instructional Materials Collaborative (NIMC) and Nebraska’s Open Education Resource (OER) Hub are two different, but related, initiatives. The NIMC provides guidance on commercially available instructional resources and signals the alignment of the materials to Nebraska’s content area standards. The NIMC also includes guidance documents and resources related to instructional materials adoption processes. Nebraska’s OER Hub houses open educational resources, aligned to Nebraska content area standards, that can be downloaded and utilized in a local classroom. The process to review OER items for quality and alignment are similar to the processes used to review instructional materials in the NIMC.

First, and most importantly, all students deserve access to key resources such as strong instruction, deep engagement, meaningful and affirming, grade-level work, and teachers who believe in them. We have a responsibility to ensure all students have equitable access to the education necessary to achieve their full potential. A key aspect of this is that all students receive effective, standards-aligned instruction. A TNTP 2025 report, The Opportunity Makers: How a Diverse Group of Public Schools Helps Students Catch Up–and How Far More Can, confirms what we know about “trajectory-changing” schools. Effective schools create a culture of belonging, provide consistent grade-level, coherent learning experiences, and build a coherent instructional program that aligns curriculum and instruction.

Additionally, when students receive instruction from instructional materials not aligned to state standards, the opportunity to learn decreases. For example, middle school students using high-quality instructional materials receive the equivalent of an additional eight months of learning versus students using low-quality materials. Furthermore, when high-quality materials were combined with teacher professional learning, students gained four months of learning over two years versus comparison groups (Taylor et al., 2015). This research supports the claim that quality instructional materials create additional opportunities for students to learn.

A significant portion of teachers lack access to standards-aligned, instructional materials, making it difficult to provide standard-based instruction.  This means that teachers are more likely to spend a great deal of time searching for or modifying instructional materials they find online. On average, teachers spend 12 hours per week creating or searching for instructional materials.  Additionally, a recent study showed that 73% of teachers report using materials found online more frequently than textbooks, and more than 93% of teachers report frequently using their own or locally developed materials. This is a problem because the constant hunt for materials can be exhausting and time consuming for teachers. In some instances, the materials are not strongly aligned to state standards, thus impacting the ability of teachers to facilitate standards-based instruction.

The NIMC draws upon the independent reviews of instructional materials for ELA and mathematics, as provided by EdReports (www.edreports.org). EdReports is an independent, nonprofit organization that reviews instructional materials to help educators seek, identify, and demand the highest-quality instructional materials. Educators complete the EdReports reviews and each report represents hundreds of hours of work by the reviewers. These reviews are organized by “gateways,” wherein each gateway considers standards alignment, fundamental design elements, and other attributes of high-quality curriculum. The EdReports reviews reflect reviews of instructional materials compared to the Common Core State Standards. Because of this, the NIMC includes resources to determine how EdReports reviews support alignment to Nebraska’s standards and instructional shifts.

Since the launch of EdReports in 2018, others have developed resources, such as the Knowledge Matters Campaign’s Review Tool, which evaluates the content richness of K-8 ELA materials. Additionally, the Nebraska MTSS statewide collaborative provides its Program Comparison Tool, which assists educators in comparing programs and evaluating “goodness of fit” for their schools or districts.

EdReports reviews full-year, comprehensive materials in K-12 math and ELA, and 6-8 science, including materials from for-profit, non-profit, and Open Education Resources.  If the instructional materials used by your district are not reviewed by EdReports, they are not considered by EdReports to be a comprehensive set of materials.

Additional review tools (e.g. the EQuIP rubric, the IMET tool, etc.) can be utilized to determine alignment and quality of materials not reviewed by EdReports.

The Nebraska State Board of Education approved college and career ready standards for English Language Arts (2021), mathematics (2022), and science (2024). These standards reflect what students in our state should know and be able to do. NSCAS Summative Assessments are built from the revised standards. This means that students should be learning from high-quality instructional materials aligned to these standards and that teachers receive the professional learning they need to help them effectively implement these materials.

It is important to determine if the instructional materials currently used are strongly aligned to revised state standards. Instructional materials selected prior to the revision of ELA, mathematics, and science standards may not reflect the instructional shifts included in revised standards.

2021 Key Instructional Shifts for ELA

2022 Key Instructional Shifts for Mathematics

2024 Key Instructional Shifts for Science

By using the NIMC, educators are able to determine the alignment and quality of instructional materials. The EdReports reviews prioritize alignment and quality of content first and foremost. The EdReports rubric reflects this commitment to standards-alignment and then considers other high-quality attributes of curriculum as recommended by educators. If materials do not meet expectations for alignment, they are not reviewed for usability. To be reviewed through all three gateways, the materials must demonstrate that they meet the criteria of alignment.

EdReports uses a color-coding system to signal the quality of reviewed materials:

Green:  Meets expectations for alignment (HQ-IM)

Yellow:  Partially meets expectations for alignment

Red:  Does not meet expectation for alignment

If you discover your instructional materials do not meet expectations for alignment, the EdReports reviews can provide additional information regarding the misalignment. In some instances, supplemental resources may be available for materials that are not strongly aligned. Student Achievement Partners has developed free resources that can be used to supplement some instructional materials.  If supplemental resources are not available, districts should consider selecting a higher-quality set of materials.  To offset the cost of purchasing new materials, many publishers have opted to produce instructional materials that are free and open. This includes instructional materials that meet the expectations for alignment and quality, as reviewed by EdReports.

The adoption of new, high-quality instructional materials will require some adjustment for teachers, as new materials always do. It is our hope that these materials and supporting professional development will help our teachers to better understand the content and pedagogy, and to shift their instructional practices to meet the demands of the revised standards so they are prepared to challenge their students. Many of the highest-rated materials include structures to support educators’ learning and curriculum implementation. Keep in mind that teachers won’t be learning in isolation. Teachers will be able to work together as they get comfortable with the new materials and develop lesson plans across grade and content teams.