What people complain about in Hmh

Capabilities people described needing that Hmh does not give them, taken from the highest-scoring problems first. These are individual accounts written in each person’s own terms, so two entries may describe the same underlying gap in different words.

• A lesson planning tool that auto-generates differentiated materials for kindergarten
• A resource library that is searchable by skill level and need, not just topic
• An activity generator that produces quick, engaging tasks for early finishers
• A centralized, searchable index of all HMH curriculum materials with consistent naming
• Automated generation of printable worksheet packets for a lesson
• Auto-conversion of worksheets into digital interactive formats
• A comprehensive phonics intervention program that assesses and addresses gaps for older struggling readers
• Affordable, evidence-based materials suitable for whole-class and small-group intervention in low-income schools
• Software that suggests additional readings aligned to lesson objectives
• Tool to reorganize curriculum units based on student needs rather than calendar

The manual processes people built around the gap. A long workaround list is the strongest evidence a problem is real: someone is already paying for it in time. Where several people described the same workaround, it is marked.

• Spends hours preparing materials for activities and centers manually
• Uses social media for ideas but finds them overwhelming and not tailored
• Overpreps everything due to mixed cutting abilities and low frustration tolerance
• Clicks through HMH unit and lesson menus with filters to find specific items
• Prints practice work daily from HMH website
• Transforms HMH worksheets into online practice work manually
• Pulling students during specials
• Asking families to stay after school
• Using leftover F&P materials
• Considering UFLI because it is cheap
• Brings in and assigns extended texts from the modules to stretch lessons
• Manually sifts through encyclopedia's worth of modules to find relevant content

The problems themselves

Highest opportunity score first.

• Teachers are frustrated with HMH curriculum because texts are too long, the system is disconnected and disjointed, and the pacing guide expects reading coverage in unrealistic time, leading to poor student reading outcomes and instructional constraints.

  4High
  Education·Curriculum Management·Adaptive Literacy Suite

• A kindergarten teacher with 3 years experience in 3rd grade is overwhelmed by the time spent preparing materials and lesson plans for multiple subjects, compounded by the low independence of kindergarten students and an inflexible curriculum that is not developmentally appropriate for her class, which includes many students with special needs.

  4High
  Education·Teaching Materials & Planning·KinderPrep Pro

• A teacher finds the HMH curriculum platform disorganized and time-consuming to navigate, requiring excessive clicks and filtering to assemble lesson materials, compared to the more user-friendly CKLA curriculum.

  4High
  Education·Curriculum Management·Curriculum Navigator Pro

• A 4th/5th grade teacher at a low-income school has 24 of 30 students reading far below grade level and no provided reading intervention, needing an affordable, phonics-focused program to implement herself.

  4High
  Education·Instructional Tools & Technology·PhonicsPath

• A 4th grade teacher finds the HMH curriculum module bloated and poorly designed, requiring significant effort to supplement it so students are not bored and the material is engaging.

  3Medium
  Education·Curriculum Management·Curriculum Craft