A new case study from Columbia University’s Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) spotlights New York City’s District 14, a Teaching Matters partner district. It looks at what it took to close long-standing gaps for the district’s highest-need students.
Before adopting a shared curriculum, instructional quality in District 14 varied school by school, and the students most affected were consistently the same ones: students with disabilities and multilingual learners. Closing that gap meant building one coherent system across all 26 schools, not just picking a new curriculum.
District 14 partnered with Teaching Matters, alongside curriculum partner HMH, to build that system, aligning coaching, data, and professional learning around the students who needed it most.
The Results
- Reading proficiency among all students in grades 3–8 rose 9 percentage points from 2022–23 to 2024–25, including 16 percentage points among students with disabilities, the largest gain of any subgroup (Source: NYCPS, 2024–25)
- District 14 ranked among the top 10 districts citywide for literacy performance and was one of the fastest-growing districts in New York City for proficiency in grades 3–8
- PS 34 Oliver H. Perry Elementary jumped from 60% to 91% proficiency; PS 18 Edward Bush Elementary rose 21 points in two years and exited its state CSI designation
What Made It Work
District 14’s turnaround was built on a shared framework the district calls REACH: Resource, Equip, Assess + Adjust, Cohere, Hardwire, which aligned every level of the system, from principal observations to teacher team meetings, around the same instructional priorities. Teaching Matters coaches worked inside that framework at the classroom level, strengthening implementation of the teacher-led station, a small-group model that became central to District 14’s station-teaching approach, and helping schools get it off the ground where it hadn’t yet taken hold. That model is now standard practice across all 26 of the district’s schools. For teachers, that support showed up as specific, actionable feedback they could put to use immediately:
With our coaching partner, Teaching Matters, you get that specific: hey, you could change this one thing in your classroom. That’s where they’ve been really valuable.
-Daly Cunningham, 5th Grade Teacher, District 14
Inside The Case Study
The case study explores:
- The instructional inconsistency District 14 faced before adopting a shared curriculum
- How the district built and hardwired the REACH framework across 26 schools
- Teaching Matters’ role in bringing the station-teaching model into practice districtwide
- How District 14 built a data culture centered on its highest-need students
- The literacy gains that followed, including outsized growth for students with disabilities
- What’s next as District 14 moves from foundational implementation to enrichment and acceleration