Introduction

Across the United States, students are encountering curriculum and instructional materials that look very different than those of 20 or 30 years ago. Increasingly, students have access to their own laptops and devices in the classroom, and districts and schools have leveraged these new tools to adopt a broad range of digital textbooks and online content, alongside an abundance of print books and materials.

And it is not just the format of content that is changing. In navigating this digital shift, most states have adopted more rigorous academic standards. These new college- and career-ready standards in English language arts, mathematics, and science have required teachers to make significant changes in how they teach these subjects. Teachers have needed to update curriculum to reinforce these instructional shifts.

In many places, this confluence of technological and instructional change has presented an exciting opportunity to implement engaging new curricula that leverage web-based platforms, online resources, and new digital tools and software. Districts are supporting deeper student engagement and learning through innovative applications of digital tools and more interactive resources.

Except where they cannot.

Next to images of teachers and students using brand-new resources and technologies to support deeper learning, it is jarring to see the outdated books and materials still in wide use in many classrooms. It is not just that these materials may be decades old; the problem is that these resources clearly are not of high quality and do not support the new, rigorous academic standards states have adopted. As education dollars continue to be scarce in the wake of the Great Recession, these materials cannot help teachers support students in reaching their academic goals.

It is in this context that many state leaders have taken a renewed interest in helping districts navigate the changing curriculum landscape. How can states help districts evaluate the quality of all these new curricula? What kind of training will district leaders and teachers need to implement these resources in the classroom? And how can states ensure districts have equitable access to high-quality curricula, especially facing the reality of limited state and local budgets?

A promising new trend is providing an answer to many of these questions. For more than a decade, open educational resources, or OER, have been providing an alternative to the traditional model of instructional materials. The broad copyright permissions granted through openly-licensed resources allow users to freely download, change, combine with other resources, and share in ways that are not possible with proprietary resources.

To better understand how states are using OER to meet curriculum and instructional materials needs, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and New America analyzed thousands of pages of state policies, legislation, and curriculum documents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Based upon this nationwide scan, we homed in on 14 states undertaking innovative work leveraging OER and conducted in-depth interviews with education leaders from those states. (See Appendix A for more on our research methodology, and Appendix B for a full list of interviews conducted.) Our research and conversations with state leaders uncovered a wide range of ways that states are using OER to improve teaching and learning and revealed a variety of collaborations that facilitate sharing this work.

We found that while there is wide variation in approaches, states are deeply integrating OER. Strategies range from including OER in existing curriculum reviews to developing and curating new openly-licensed resources. States are working to better link curriculum with instruction through professional development and connecting all of these openly-licensed resources online using state websites and content repositories. Some are promoting open licensing by funding specific OER projects and have enacted legislation that defines, promotes, or prioritizes open content. Across all states, we found evidence that frequent collaboration, communities of practice, and regular communication have helped to spread and build upon this work.

While very few states require districts to adopt specific curricula, state leaders play an important role in providing guidance on which curricula are well aligned to academic standards. Regardless of how involved a state is in district curriculum adoption, each one should ensure that all of its districts—no matter their size or capacity—have the accurate and up-to-date information they need in order to make knowledgeable curriculum decisions. Further, states have a role in ensuring that districts provide equitable access to high-quality curriculum for all students.

This paper delves deeply into the specific work states are undertaking around openly-licensed curricular resources, how states are supporting OER implementation, and what lessons can be learned. The report also spotlights examples of new approaches for promoting and sustaining open, relevant, and high-quality instructional materials. It concludes with five key takeaways for state leaders to consider as they improve the quality and affordability of the materials teachers are using every day.

Corrected at 1:00pm on June 11, 2018: This report has been changed to correct the number of states that are sharing curriculum materials online and the number of states partnering with a third-party platform to provide a content repository. While several districts in Connecticut are partnering with Amazon Inspire, Connecticut’s state education agency has not formally partnered with any specific third-party platform and is not, in any official state capacity, sharing materials online. Therefore, 31 states, not 32, are sharing materials online, and 13 states, not 14, are partnering with third-party platforms.