ARTICLE

High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM): Promise, Challenges, and What Comes Next

Nov 06, 2025

In recent years, High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) have taken center stage in state- and district-level efforts to improve teaching and learning. HQIM are instructional resources that are rigorously aligned to academic standards, grounded in research, and designed to support strong, equitable instruction across diverse student populations.

Their goal is simple yet ambitious: to ensure all students have access to grade-level content that prepares them for college, career, and life.

What Are HQIM?

HQIM are full-course or comprehensive curricular programs that meet key criteria:

Alignment to college- and career-ready standards.
Evidence-based student outcomes.
Coherence and usability with well-structured scope and sequence.
Support for teachers, including built-in scaffolds, assessments, and implementation guidance.
Instructional design that considers the needs of all students, including multilingual learners and students with disabilities.

These materials are meant to replace or improve upon fragmented or outdated curriculum and are increasingly prioritized in state-level curriculum adoption processes.

Why HQIM Matter

Research has shown that using HQIM can significantly improve student outcomes. When implemented with fidelity, HQIM empower teachers to focus on delivering high-impact instruction rather than spending time sourcing or modifying materials. They provide a shared instructional vision, promote coherence across classrooms and grade levels, and ensure students are exposed to rigorous academic content.

State-Level Adoptions and Momentum

Many states are leading the way in promoting the adoption and effective implementation of HQIM. For example:

Texas has launched the Texas Home Learning (THL) initiative and is piloting the Bluebonnet adoption, which promotes vetted HQIM across core subjects.
Louisiana and Tennessee have developed HQIM rubrics and approved materials lists to support districts.
Colorado, Massachusetts, and California are also investing in high-quality materials through grants, curriculum review processes, and professional learning supports.

These movements signal a systemic shift toward ensuring access to high-impact instruction for all students.

The Implementation Challenge

Even with high-quality materials in hand, many districts struggle to implement HQIM in ways that actually improve classroom instruction. According to the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), successful implementation hinges on a supportive schoolwide infrastructure that connects curriculum to instruction through aligned systems and sustained professional learning.

Key pillars of effective implementation include:

Shared Vision and Leadership: School leaders must communicate a clear purpose for the curriculum and create structures that support collaborative, curriculum-driven instruction.
Content-Focused Professional Learning: Teachers need consistent opportunities to build expertise in the curriculum through job-embedded learning, planning, modeling, and reflection.
Coaching and Feedback: Instructional leaders and coaches must use walkthroughs and observation data to provide teachers with timely, actionable feedback aligned to HQIM.
Aligned Goals and Evaluation: Curriculum, instruction, teacher development, and evaluation systems should all reinforce the same instructional priorities and outcomes.

Without these foundational supports, the potential of HQIM may not translate into meaningful improvements in classroom practice or student learning.

A Major Barrier: Students Not Ready for Grade-Level Work

While HQIM raise the bar for instructional quality, a key challenge persists: many students are not ready to engage with grade-level content. As the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) highlights, significant learning gaps—especially in the continued wake of COVID-19—leave students struggling to access the rigorous demands of HQIM.

This disconnect can lead to frustration, disengagement, and widening achievement gaps. Teachers often find themselves needing to supplement or differentiate without the right tools to do so effectively.

Bridging the Gap with Curriculum-Aligned EdTech

To fully realize the promise of HQIM, schools need instructional support systems that help all students reach the bar set by grade-level materials—particularly those who are behind. The right edtech tools can make the difference.

A strong curriculum-aligned edtech system should:

Begin with high-quality assessments that pinpoint where each student is in their learning journey.
Offer clear, actionable data that informs instructional planning and tracks growth over time.
Provide individualized skill-building support that complements the grade-level curriculum and accelerates learning.
Be inclusive and adaptive, with built-in supports for multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and others who require scaffolding.
Support instructional coherence by aligning intervention efforts with core instruction, so students catch up without getting off track.

This kind of system doesn’t replace HQIM, it makes them work better by ensuring every student is equipped to engage meaningfully with the material.

Maximizing Learner Success When Using HQIM with Edmentum

Edmentum is dedicated to maximizing learner success by complementing and enhancing Tier 1 core high-quality instructional materials (HQIM). While HQIM provide a vital foundation for effective instruction, evidence shows their impact is strongest when combined with targeted, evidence-based supplemental supports—and that’s where Edmentum’s solutions play a critical role.

Our research-backed tools work seamlessly alongside HQIM to close skill gaps and accelerate student growth. For example, Exact Path delivers adaptive diagnostics and personalized learning paths tailored to individual student needs in math, reading, and language arts. A quasi-experimental study conducted in South Carolina found that schools using Exact Path alongside HQIM achieved significant gains on the SC Ready assessments in both ELA and Mathematics. Moreover, schools where students completed over 100 Exact Path skills saw higher percentages of students meeting or exceeding expectations compared to schools not using Exact Path.

In addition, Standards Mastery equips educators with curriculum-aligned formative assessments and flexible test prep resources, offering real-time insight into students’ progress and proficiency. This enables teachers to make timely, data-driven decisions and provide targeted instruction that reinforces HQIM.

A Unified Platform Built for Intervention

Maximizing success also means giving teachers the tools and structure they need to act with confidence. Edmentum offers a unified platform designed to streamline intervention and support differentiated instruction—especially critical when implementing HQIM. Instead of juggling disconnected programs or scouring the internet for supplemental resources, educators can rely on a single, research-based system built to work.

This uniform approach simplifies instructional planning, eliminates guesswork, and ensures consistency across classrooms and schools. Teachers gain access to a trusted set of strategies, data insights, and student-ready content—all in one place—making intervention not only more effective, but also more efficient.

We also help schools reduce assessment time and accelerate access to instruction. Exact Path’s adaptive diagnostics—and seamless integrations with tools like NWEA MAP and Renaissance Star—deliver precise skill data faster and immediately place students on personalized learning paths so students spend more time actively learning, not testing.

By combining actionable data, targeted supports, and easy-to-implement tools, Edmentum empowers educators to meet every learner where they are and move them forward—beyond the limitations of “teaching to the middle.” And with real-time progress updates, families remain engaged in their child’s learning, equipped with meaningful insight to support growth toward grade-level goals.

Moving Forward to Academic and Instructional Excellence

HQIM represent a major step forward in the pursuit of academic success for all students and instructional excellence. But materials alone are not enough. Students must be equipped with the skills and supports they need to engage meaningfully with rigorous content.

Together, Edmentum and HQIM form a powerful partnership, bridging the gap between where students are and where rigorous curriculum expects them to be and ensuring every learner has the support they need to succeed.

Read about schools combining HQIM and Exact Path to drive outstanding results:

How York School District 1 (SC) Combines HQIM and Exact Path to Serve Every Student: “We are very intentional with the tools that we use,” says Elissa Cox, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching & Learning. “We stay laser focused on what will help students grow, and we’ve seen incredible results.” The district has invested heavily in HQIM and uses Exact Path to personalize for students and close learning gaps. In fact, they chose to adopt Exact Path districtwide after a pilot demonstrated outsized growth gains compared to the district's previous tool. “Change is hard, but we showed our teachers side-by-side results and the impact was undeniable,” she says.
How Furman Middle School Combines High-Quality Teaching with Targeted Intervention: “Our kids are really on fire for learning,” says Principal J. Tanner Curry. As a school leader, he focuses on balancing teacher-led instruction at the core, strong Tier 1 curriculum as a resource, and Exact Path as the connective tissue that helps every student access the learning. Summarizing the school's approach, he says "It’s just back to the basics of good old-fashioned, high-quality teaching and learning."

References:

https://www.nasbe.org/the-unrealized-promise-of-high-quality-instructional-materials/

https://www.niet.org/research-and-policy/show/policy/high-quality-curriculum-implementation