What is changing
RCSD is transitioning its preschool curriculum from HighScope to Teaching Strategies, LLC. Per the adopted board resolution, the agreement covers a comprehensive, research-based curriculum including assessments, materials, and professional development — delivered as one package, not as separately branded products.
In practice this means The Creative Curriculum® as the classroom curriculum, GOLD® as the observation-based assessment, and vendor-provided professional development for teachers.
Teaching Strategies also publishes a dedicated Children With Disabilities solution line, which is directly relevant to the special education classrooms Starr TeachForward supports.
The Creative Curriculum® — a whole-child, developmentally appropriate framework for early childhood classrooms.
GOLD® — observation-based assessment used to document what children know and can do across developmental domains.
Vendor-provided professional development for teachers, included in the same agreement as the curriculum and assessment.
Why it matters for early childhood special ed
Whole-child, developmentally appropriate practice is the language of early childhood education — and it maps naturally onto the individualized planning, scaffolding, and progress monitoring that special educators already do every day.
Observation-based assessment, in particular, is a strong fit for students who do not demonstrate learning well through traditional testing formats — including nonverbal students, AAC users, and students with significant sensory or behavioral needs. Documenting learning in the natural flow of the classroom protects student dignity and surfaces growth that would otherwise be missed.
Your AI curriculum navigator
Atlas is the Starr TeachForward AI team member grounded in this framework. Atlas helps translate whole-child, developmentally appropriate practice into lesson plans, small-group activities, IEP-aligned scaffolds, and observation prompts a teacher can realistically capture for GOLD-style documentation.
Atlas does not invent district-specific pacing, scope-and-sequence claims, or implementation details that have not been confirmed.
Open Atlas in the Team directory →Mapped to NYS learning standards
Per Teaching Strategies' public materials, the vendor maintains state-specific standards alignment resources — including one for New York — that map The Creative Curriculum® and GOLD® directly to NYS learning standards. The intent is to save teachers from hand-crosswalking every lesson plan and observation to state standards themselves.
This is vendor-published information. How RCSD operationalizes the NY alignment resources at the classroom level has not been confirmed here.
What the solution line actually includes
Teaching Strategies publishes a dedicated Children With Disabilities solution line. According to the vendor's own public materials, it includes:
- Color-coded Teaching Sequences outlining skill progressions from birth through 3rd grade, to support differentiated instruction across a mixed-level classroom.
- Daily resources designed for children with language, speech, physical, or developmental delays to demonstrate what they know and can do.
- A searchable resource library filterable by the specific skill a child needs support with.
- Automatic linking between a child's GOLD® assessment data and suggested instructional resources for that child.
- Framing around least restrictive environment and trauma-sensitive, relationship-focused classrooms.
This is vendor-published information about what the product offers, not a confirmed account of RCSD's implementation.
What early childhood special ed teachers have said
Karey has not yet had hands-on classroom access to this curriculum, so the honest picture right now is that experienced early childhood special education teachers have reported different things.
One special-education-experienced teacher, in an account published by Teaching Strategies, described the objectives' developmental progressions as letting her stop writing separate, hand-adapted lesson plans for children working at very different developmental levels in the same room — the progression itself differentiated the plan for her.
An independent early childhood special education teacher-blogger who has used the curriculum in her own classroom had a more mixed take: the weekly and daily plans needed real adaptation for a behavior-focused classroom, and she felt AAC and core vocabulary support was thin even though general language opportunities were solid.
Both perspectives are presented as reported, without endorsement. This page will be updated as Karey gains firsthand experience.
RCSD adoption details
The following details are drawn directly from RCSD Board Resolution No. 2026-27:6, approved at the July 30, 2026 Business Meeting.
Teaching Strategies, LLC (contracting entity: UTJ Holdco, Inc.)
A comprehensive, research-based curriculum including assessments, materials, and professional development for the RCSD preschool program.
July 31, 2026 through June 30, 2027, renewable at the Superintendent's discretion for up to four additional one-year terms.
Universal Pre-K Grant. Not to exceed $650,000 for the initial term; up to $350,000 per year for renewal terms.
Kindergarten readiness — in the district's own words
"Every scholar enters kindergarten ready to thrive academically, socially, linguistically, and emotionally."
That is the official goal language from the adopting resolution, and it is the frame Atlas uses when helping teachers plan across the four readiness domains.
Connected to RCSD 2026-2031 Goal 2
This preschool adoption is tied to the district's 2026-2031 Goal 2: increasing the percentage of students proficient in 3rd grade NYS ELA from 22% to 49% by June 2031. Strong early childhood foundations — language, literacy, and social-emotional learning in pre-K — feed directly into that downstream literacy outcome.
The Creative Curriculum® and GOLD® are registered trademarks of Teaching Strategies, LLC. Starr TeachForward is not affiliated with or endorsed by Teaching Strategies.