
Zack Cronin
July 10, 2025
One thing about the 2025-2026 school year is very clear… The way schools approach curriculum implementation is evolving very quickly.
Instructional leaders don’t just manage resources anymore. They’re building ecosystems where curriculum, instruction, assessment, and data work together seamlessly. This is driven by both the prevalence of technology in K-12 schools and AI slowly becoming part of the everyday classroom.
Demands for teacher support at an all-time high, school and district leaders need to make smart, strategic choices now to set teachers and students up for long-term success.
At Kiddom, we’ve seen a set of clear trends has emerge. These aren’t fads or surface-level ideas, they’re shifts in how effective schools are planning, implementing, and supporting instruction. If you’re responsible for curriculum success in your district, these are the areas you should prioritize now.
District leaders have long known the value of alignment between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. But in practice, coherence has often taken a backseat to convenience or short-term fixes. Or, not to mention, teachers coming up with their own fixes.
But that’s changing. Schools are realizing that fragmented systems and disconnected resources aren’t just frustrating - they limit student growth.
For 2025–26, coherence isn’t a buzzword; it’s an operational priority. High-performing districts are streamlining their instructional technology, ensuring every lesson, assignment, and assessment connects back to clear, prioritized learning goals. They’re adopting high-quality instructional materials like Illustrative Mathematics, OpenSciEd, and EL Education - but more importantly, they’re putting those materials on a platform like Kiddom, where curriculum, assessments, and data reporting live in one place.
This kind of coherence removes the guesswork for teachers. When lesson delivery, student tasks, and assessment checkpoints are all built into the same workflow, teachers spend less time navigating systems and more time supporting students. It also gives district leaders real-time visibility into what’s happening in classrooms, making it possible to adjust support strategies on the fly. If your district hasn’t enabled instructional coherence yet, this is the year to get serious about it.
Even just a year ago, AI in education felt like the wild west. Today, it’s becoming a practical, everyday tool for teachers. Schools are moving quickly to adopt AI-powered resources that help educators work smarter, not harder. And for good reason. Teachers remain under pressure to meet high expectations with limited time, and AI tools are helping them reclaim hours each week.
Tools like Kiddom AI’s practice generator, auto-feedback, and lesson clipper are already making an impact in classrooms. Teachers use AI to generate differentiated practice sets based on their curriculum materials. They rely on auto-feedback tools to provide students with instant, actionable input on their work. And they adapt lessons for substitute plans or accelerated groups in minutes, not hours.
The key for 2025–26 will be integrating AI into existing curriculum workflows. Districts that treat AI as a bolt-on tool risk adding complexity. The ones seeing real success are embedding AI tools directly into their HQIM platforms and providing targeted professional learning to help teachers use them effectively. If your teachers don’t yet have access to AI tools, now’s the time to prioritize those investments and to make sure they’re connected to the curriculum resources you’ve already adopted.
It’s no secret that new, high-quality curriculum materials require new teaching practices. Even for experienced teachers, a rigorous HQIM can be daunting to squeeze into constrained timelines.
What’s changing is how districts are supporting that instructional shift. The era of one-size-fits-all professional development days is over. Schools are doubling down on focused, curriculum-specific, job-embedded professional learning, and it’s paying off.
In districts where math teachers receive regular, targeted coaching tied directly to the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, student outcomes are climbing.
Science teachers working within professional learning communities built around OpenSciEd units are reporting higher student engagement and better mastery of core concepts.
Schools adopting EL Education’s ELA curriculum are leveraging digital planning templates for backward design and strategic unit unpacking workshops that help teachers internalize the curriculum before they step into the classroom. You can even read about how a New York City District partnered with EL for Professional Learning to drive student success here.
For 2025–26, professional learning can’t be an afterthought. Districts should build year-long support structures aligned to their core curriculum’s instructional routines and pacing guides.
Implementation guides like IM’s 2025–26 planning roadmap give leaders a clear structure for rolling out curriculum adoption in manageable, strategic phases. Pairing that with data-driven insights from Kiddom’s reporting tools allows instructional coaches to tailor support to actual classroom needs, ensuring teachers aren’t just trained… they’re confident and prepared.
If there’s one thing schools have in abundance, it’s data. Every digital curriculum, assessment platform, and LMS generates reports, dashboards, and performance summaries. But having data isn’t the same as using it well. Too many schools collect information without a clear plan for translating it into actionable instructional moves.
Heading into 2025–26, the districts making the biggest gains aren’t the ones with the most data. They’re the ones turning information into insight… and insight into action. That starts by centralizing curriculum and assessment data within a platform like Kiddom, where teachers and leaders can see real-time, standards-aligned reports connected directly to the curriculum students are working through.
However, the real value comes from using those reports to drive instructional decisions. Teachers who adjust pacing based on formative assessment trends see better student outcomes. Instructional leaders who identify gaps in concept mastery during a unit (not weeks after) can provide timely, targeted support. Successful districts are pairing data review protocols with curriculum pacing guides, ensuring insights lead to action while content is still fresh and students can benefit from immediate adjustments.
The 2025–26 school year will reward districts that get intentional about instructional coherence, AI-supported efficiency, professional learning tied to curriculum, and actionable, real-time data use. The good news is, you don’t have to build these systems from scratch. High-quality instructional materials paired with a comprehensive, digital-first platform like Kiddom, offer proven frameworks and tools to help you plan smarter, teach better, and support educators every step of the way.
This is the year to plan with purpose, simplify where it counts, and give your teachers the tools and support they deserve.