Washington Monthly | New Solutions—Not Just New Winners—In the Curriculum Marketplace

"When New York first adopted its new academic standards, the state used federal funding to pay for the development of new Common Core-aligned ELA and mathematics curricula. The state made these resources available on its new website, EngageNY. But they weren’t just made available for New Yorkers—the state released the materials with an open content license, which allowed states, districts, and educators across the country to use them for free. Just as important, the open license allowed users to modify and personalize the materials, adapting them to meet the specific needs of their students.

Though there are many OER available online, EngageNY was the first example of a full PreK-12 open curriculum. OER can constitute a wide range of educational materials, from individual worksheets and homework assignments, to teacher lesson plans, unit plans, and even full texts. They include open textbooks made available by organizations like CK-12 and OpenStax; supplementary resources that are searchable on platforms like OER Commons; as well as the OER being developed by over one hundred districts, and more than a dozen states, across the country for their students. It is a lot of work, however, to seek out individual resources and organize them into a coherent curriculum. New York did the heavy lifting, providing comprehensive sets of open educational resources in ELA and mathematics for every grade level.

These resources also addressed a need that the market was not meeting—the three major textbook companies had made few changes to their materials, despite the important shifts for instruction laid out in the Common Core. States, districts, and teachers were desperate for high-quality materials aligned to the new standards, and EngageNY met that need. According to a 2015 survey by RAND Corporation, 34 percent of elementary ELA teachers and 44 percent of elementary math teachers reported using the EngageNY curricula. Districts across the country that I have spoken with and visited in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Washington, and more have turned to EngageNY’s ELA and math resources. And states such as Louisiana have used these resources as a starting point, working with teachers in the state to adapt them to meet the needs of their districts.

But it wasn’t just that they were the only Common Core-aligned materials available—EngageNY is also high quality. A review of the EngageNY math curriculum by the nonprofit EdReports.org found that the resources were well-aligned with the Common Core—unlike the vast majority of proprietary materials that were reviewed. Further, a report by the Fordham Institute found that the EngageNY ELA curriculum is also strongly aligned with the Common Core (as well as uncommonly engaging). As nine district leaders across multiple states wrote in the Hechinger Report just this week, 'Everyone wins if the market produces more high-quality materials, and open educational resources are helping to raise the instructional materials bar.' EngageNY demonstrates that quality is not necessarily tied to price."