Ms. Vaites, thanks for posting this idea. I've had your post sitting in a window in my browser for days, hoping to drop a comment. Sorry to be slow.

I like the idea of creating an objective set of records about the curricula being used in contemporary instructional efforts. Such a data base could be quite valuable. Having a clearly focused snapshot of what curricula are used by whom for what learners (age, SES, disability, etc.) would help mightily in understanding outcomes for our students.

Some thoughts (some of which have been addressed in other comments and in your original post):

(1) This would be a daunting project! Unless one can convince a very well-endowed organization to do spend the $millions it would require, government funding would be needed (despite the drawbacks some commenters noted...and, IES may not be functioning well enough right now or in the near future...sigh). Just the data-base hosting and programming would be expensive!

(2) Determining what data to collect and how to collect them presents some challenges! Sure, it’d be great to be able to say what commercial curricula are being implemented by schools. Which schools where are using, say, F & P, Success for All, Units of Study, Wilson Foundations, Journeys, etc. How do we know which? Do we ask the local education agencies’ Asst. Superintendents or Curriculum Coordinators? Do we ask individual schools’ principals? Do we send a survey to classroom teachers? I imagine that many LEAs (or other respondents) will want to report that they don’t actually depend on any one identified curriculum. “We use the best of all of them.” (Might need a way to probe for more detail when curricula are “eclectic?”)

(3) I wonder if it might be necessary to depend on something other than simply asking, “Which of these ‘methods’ do you use?” Maybe the data collection system needs to have some detailed codes for adoption (e.g., use as “core,” “supplement,” “background,” etc.). Could it be necessary to have trained observers visit classrooms and record what curricula were in use for what proportion of time? Maybe that would help get less ambiguous data about curricula use? Of course, collecting additional data presents an additional (and substantial) layer of research complexity (including costs).

(4) Efforts to accomplish somewhat similar tasks might be instructive. The late Jane Stallings (Stanford, as I recall) used a lot of different methods to describe implementation in the historic Follow Through project. (Indeed, the idea of knowing what was going on in classrooms of that era was an important underlying factor in the early observational work of Barak Rosenshine, too.)

Sarah Schwartz reported some survey data about popularity of curricula a few years ago. Here’s a link:

edweek.org/teaching-lea…. Might that report be of use in developing a data base?

I wonder if the SubStack comments form is going to accept a comment of this length....I hope the observations are helpful.