Chocolate chip cookies offer important lessons about HQIM
A time-honored family tradition is making chocolate chip cookies; not the premade dough you slap in a pan (although that works in a pinch), but the joy of baking from scratch.
There’s something almost reassuring about the process. Pull out the flour. Measure the sugar. Crack the eggs. Add the vanilla. Mix in the baking soda. Finally, it’s time for the ingredient everyone has been waiting for: chocolate chips. Yum!
There’s a recipe for a reason. Imagine that halfway through making the cookies, someone decides the recipe could use some improvement.
“What if we add ketchup?” Technically, we can, though the result may not be what we want.
Or what if our family decides vanilla extract is boring and peppermint extract sounds more interesting. We could make that substitution too. The result might even taste good.
But then we’re no longer making the chocolate chip cookies the recipe was designed for. We’re making something else.
That is the challenge with high-quality instructional materials, or HQIM. High-quality instructional materials are not simply collections of lessons. They represent carefully designed instructional systems.
Their sequencing matters. Their content matters. Their instructional routines matter—the relationship between one lesson and the next matters.
Districts select HQIM because research and evidence show those materials can improve student learning. And executive leaders of teaching and learning (chief academic officers, assistant superintendents of education services, or curriculum and instruction leaders) are making a big bet that these materials will be implemented in a way that preserves the design that is proven to produce results.
Change enough of the recipe, and that assumption disappears. A district may still say it’s using HQIM. A classroom may still have the materials sitting on the shelf. Teachers may still reference the curriculum in lesson plans.
But the instructional experience students receive may differ significantly from the one the district intended to implement. That distinction matters.
Fidelity is not the enemy of creativity
This conversation can become uncomfortable because fidelity sometimes sounds like a challenge to teacher professionalism.
Teachers are among the most creative professionals in any industry. We’ve watched teachers take something completely banal and turn it into an experience that makes students want to major in the subject someday.
That creativity is invaluable. The question is where we ask teachers to use it.
Teacher creativity should flourish in instruction. It should appear in the way teachers build relationships with students. It should shape how they explain difficult ideas. It should help them respond when students need another pathway into the learning.
That is pure professional artistry and the very reason most of us got into education in the first place. But rebuilding a carefully designed curriculum every Sunday night is something different.
We should not confuse professional autonomy with asking teachers to reinvent instructional materials that experts have already spent years developing. That’s not empowerment, and it can become an inefficient use of extraordinary talent.
Imagine hiring a gifted chef and then asking her to spend half her time rewriting recipes instead of cooking. The value of the chef is not demonstrated by changing every recipe. It’s demonstrated by knowing how to bring the recipe to life. The same principle applies to teaching.
Every ingredient has a purpose
There is another lesson hiding in the cookie bowl. What happens when we do not add a strange ingredient but simply leave one out?
Forget the baking soda and the cookies may come out flat. Forget the sugar and you end up with some version of bad-tasting biscuits. The missing ingredient may seem small, but its effect isn’t. Instructional systems work the same way.
A strong curriculum depends on expertise across the organization. Classroom teachers are clearly the most essential. Yet, so are the professionals who support literacy, or the people responsible for assessment, or those who provide professional learning.
Content specialists matter. That’s why central office teaching and learning teams are so important. Their role should not be reduced to distributing curriculum materials or organizing professional development days.
They’re the stewards of the instructional system. They help leaders understand whether implementation is working as designed.
They also identify where schools need support. They protect coherence when understandable pressures begin pulling the system in different directions.
A district cannot buy coherence. It has to create the organizational conditions that allow coherence to survive. This becomes particularly important when implementation becomes difficult.
A school may struggle with a particular unit. Teachers may report that students are having difficulty. Principals may hear concerns from families. The natural response is to change something.
What happens when the recipe is flat?
Instructional executives first need to understand the problem by asking: Is the curriculum really the issue? Or is an essential ingredient missing?
Perhaps teachers need stronger professional learning. Maybe scheduling decisions have reduced instructional time.
It is possible that intervention systems are not aligned with core instruction. The problem may be inconsistent implementation across classrooms.
Changing the curriculum before answering those questions is like changing the cookie recipe because the oven was set to the wrong temperature. The recipe was never the problem.
Resist the chocolate chips
Everyone wants to rush to the chocolate chips. It’s natural. Chocolate chips are exciting. Nobody gathers around the kitchen counter hoping to be the person who measures the flour.
For executives of teaching and learning, the focus is to keep all the ingredients and roles clear.
Instruction is exciting. We became educators because we care about learning.
Board members visit classrooms and become energized by what they see. Superintendents want to talk about teaching. Central office leaders want to contribute ideas. Principals want to respond to their teachers.
That enthusiasm is healthy. But enthusiasm does not erase organizational roles.
We cannot all be the chocolate chips. Someone has to be the flour. Someone has to make sure the oven works. Someone has to ensure we followed the recipe.
For executive instructional leaders, this may be one of the most important responsibilities of implementing HQIM. Your job is not to make every instructional decision. Your job is to create the conditions in which effective instructional decisions can happen consistently across an entire system. That requires role clarity.
Teachers bring the curriculum to life. Principals create the conditions for strong implementation inside schools. Content experts provide technical expertise.
Executive leaders protect coherence across the system. Superintendents ensure instructional priorities remain connected to strategy. Boards monitor outcomes through governance.
Monitoring HQIM without reinventing them
As districts enter another year of implementing HQIM, executive leaders should move beyond asking whether the curriculum has been adopted.
Adoption tells us what the district purchased. Implementation tells us what students experience. That difference should shape the questions you’re asking now:
- Are students consistently experiencing the instructional materials the district selected?
Where are teachers making adaptations? - Do those adaptations strengthen access to the intended learning or change the learning itself?
- Are schools receiving enough technical support to implement the materials well?
- Do principals know what strong implementation looks like when they enter classrooms?
- Are professional learning investments responding to actual implementation challenges?
- When student outcomes are weaker than expected, are leaders examining implementation before replacing the strategy?
- And perhaps most importantly, does everyone understand their role in protecting instructional coherence?
These are not questions about compliance. They’re questions about the discipline of instructional leadership.
Instructional leadership is about protecting the recipe
Executive instructional leaders occupy a difficult position. You’re responsible for outcomes that you cannot personally produce.
You cannot teach every lesson. You cannot observe every classroom. You cannot solve every instructional challenge. But you can build a system where the likelihood of excellent instruction increases.
Your job is about protecting teachers from unnecessary reinvention. To do that, you must ensure content experts have the authority to bring their expertise to the table.
It also means giving principals the tools to recognize strong implementation. It means helping superintendents understand where instructional problems are actually occurring and giving them the right information and evidence to help their boards understand if the district’s instructional strategy is working.
Most of all, it means resisting the temptation to change the recipe every time implementation becomes difficult.
HQIM cannot improve outcomes simply because a district bought them. The promise is realized when the materials reach students through a coherent instructional system.
The most consequential work may not be the most visible work. It’s building coherence. It’s protecting roles. And perhaps more importantly, monitoring implementation long enough to distinguish a flawed strategy from an incomplete one.
The best instructional leaders don’t need to be every ingredient. They make sure every ingredient is there. Then they give talented educators the conditions they need to turn a good recipe into something extraordinary.
The image above was created with AI.
