Kit Focused

Science kits scored on what is actually in the box.

Kits are evaluated on the same instrument as curricula, with one difference: what a kit is determines what it is scored on. That determination is made by reading the contents, not the packaging.

How a kit gets scored. Stage 1 classifies the kit by its contents. Stage 2 scores scientific practices for every kit. Stage 3 runs the full curriculum pipeline where there is instructional content to score. A kit is never penalized for lacking instruction it never claimed to offer, and never given a pass on instruction it does claim. Read the kit method →
Experiment Kit

Materials and a procedure

Supplies materials, a procedure, and an expected result. Instruction is not the product. Scored on the seven-practice rubric, which is where an experiment kit can honestly earn green.

Primary reported score: practices.

Lesson Kit

Activity inside instruction that grounds mechanism

The kit explains what the student is looking at in terms of the entities doing the work. That instructional content runs the full pipeline, so a Lesson Kit carries a Foundation Score too.

Primary reported scores: practices and Foundation.

Lesson Kit is a status a kit earns by measurement, not a label a product can claim. Where a kit is marketed as curriculum, or as a complete science program, it is scored as curriculum on the full pipeline, and its entry page quotes the marketing language that put it on that track. Publishers can work out in advance how their product will be scored by reading their own catalog copy.

No kits scored yet

Kit evaluations are in progress. Entries will appear here as they complete, in the same format as curriculum entries: on-page scores and quoted passages, a curated evidence file to download, and the full dataset available on request.

If there is a kit you want run through this, send it. We score what we are asked to score, and we post what we find either way.

Request a kit review

Stated limitation. Practice 3, planning and carrying out investigations, structurally disadvantages kits. A fixed set of materials with a fixed procedure is what makes a kit a kit. A low practice-3 result on a kit describes the format, not a defect in that kit. The practice 6 and 7 results, constructing explanations and arguing from evidence, are the informative ones, and they are where the What-Why Gap shows up in a box of materials.

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Request a Review

Have a curriculum, kit, or program you'd like us to review? Drop us a note, tell us what you want to see, we'll test it and post the results.