Open Educational Resources

30 Middle Schools to Pilot OER Math Curricula

• By Sri Ravipati
• 09/16/16

A California-based nonprofit is bringing its openly-licensed and standards-aligned mathematics curricula to 30 middle schools in five school districts this year. The curricula from Open Up Resources, developed in partnership with Illustrative Mathematics, aims to provide the schools with quality open educational resources (OER) at a better price than traditional publishers.

Open Up Resources launched earlier this week after raising $10 million in investments from its supporting philanthropic organizations. Prior to the launch it was called the K–12 OER Collaborative, an initiative founded by 13 states that wanted to create OER for K–12 mathematics and English language arts.

Middle schools were specifically selected to address a quality gap in the curriculum market. In a news release, Open Up Resources noted that “the majority of curricula for grades 6–8 were deemed to be unaligned to state standards, based on reviews by independent reviewer EdReports." As a result, the schools will be beta testing Open Up Resources' complete OER curricula, saving districts up to 80 percent overall (compared to the cost of adopting materials from traditional providers), and offering extensive support, including teacher training, customization services, low-cost printing and other resources to facilitate district-level adoption.

Later this year, it plans to debut OER that supports K–5 English language arts curriculum. Further information about the OER instructional materials and pilot program are available on the Open Up Resources site.