An online library of academic materials created in New York state to align with the Common Core State Standards has improbably found a vast, nationwide audience鈥攚hich doesn鈥檛 have to pay a cent for the content.
The resources, developed through a project called EngageNY and housed on a state-managed website, have been downloaded an estimated 20 million times by educators and others in states around the country, and even in foreign countries, according to estimates provided by New York officials.
The project is one of the most ambitious to date in K-12 to develop and disseminate 鈥渙pen educational resources,鈥� typically defined as materials created on licenses that permit their free sharing and repurposing.
While interest in those materials in states and districts has risen, some say the adoption of the common core has intensified demand for them among school officials dissatisfied with traditional commercial offerings and wary of absorbing hefty new instructional content costs.
In addition to EngageNY, a nascent multistate effort, the K-12 OER Collaborative, is seeking to deliver free, common-core-aligned open resources on a national scale.
The free availability of open resources through those two projects does not mean, however, that they鈥檝e dispensed with the commercial model entirely.
Each entity has its own built-in mechanisms that allow either for-profit or non-profit entities to make money through the open model. Supporters say those approaches create incentives for content developers to invest heavily in fashioning high-quality open material鈥攁nd create viable business models for sustaining those resources.
Critics, however, see those strategies as allowing commercial providers to reap unnecessary windfalls.
Backers of EngageNY say the growing interest in the resources is a sign of educators鈥� demand for reliable content aligned with the common core鈥攁nd other new standards adopted by states鈥攁nd their displeasure with many of the commercial options marketed to them.
鈥淭here is momentum around the production of these materials,鈥� said Kate Gerson, a former senior fellow at the Regents Research Fund, a nonprofit that supports the New York state education department and worked on EngageNY. 鈥淭eachers are scrappy. They鈥檒l find what they need.鈥�
Company Contributions
Open educational resources are generally described as resources released under a license that allows their free use, remix, and sharing by others. The most recognized source of those agreements is Creative Commons, a Mountain View, Calif.-based nonprofit, established in 2001, which says it has issued hundreds of millions of open licenses to date.
Because open resources are offered for free, efforts to develop and sustain open resources traditionally have relied on support from philanthropies, nonprofits, and universities to cover the costs. States have also shown an interest: 26 states are promoting open educational resources through policies, and 18 states have taken steps to share them with districts, according to a recent report by the Council of Chief State School Officers.
澳门跑狗论坛鈥檚 Sean Cavanagh offers a primer on 鈥渙pen educational resources鈥� and school districts鈥� experiments with them.
New York鈥檚 plan for EngageNY was funded through the state鈥檚 $700 million federal Race to the Top award in 2010. In 2011, the state put forward a request for proposals, asking content developers to bid to produce open resources for the online portal. That solicitation quickly stalled out: No vendors responded. State officials had included strong language in the RFP granting New York ownership of all the materials produced for EngageNY. Ken Wagner, New York鈥檚 senior deputy commissioner for education policy, said in an interview the state interpreted vendors鈥� indifference to the RFP to mean they saw the rules as too restrictive and that their state contracts would not allow them to recoup their costs.
In response, New York officials released a revised RFP that made it clear the copyright for creating the material belonged to the vendors, and allowed them鈥攊ndependent of the free content they were required to churn out for EngageNY鈥攖o commercialize their materials through other product offerings.
Vendors responded, and four were chosen to produce content for EngageNY: Expeditionary Learning, a New York City nonprofit; Great Minds, a nonprofit based in Washington; PCG Education, a Boston for-profit; and the Core Knowledge Foundation, a Charlottesville, Va. nonprofit. They were paid a combined $36.6 million by the state to develop curriculum modules.
Today, all four content providers are trying to capitalize on the commercial opportunity allowed by the project.
Core Knowledge, for instance, has a licensing agreement with Amplify, a New York City-based ed-tech company, to provide printed, collected versions of the otherwise free EngageNY materials, most likely to entire districts needing big quantities of them, at a cost. Expeditionary Learning charges for providing schools and districts with professional development and coaching on its EngageNY materials.
Multistate Effort Brings 鈥極pen鈥� Content to Broad Audience
鈥淭he economics of [the arrangement] was that contract with New York paid our direct costs,鈥� said Scott Hartl, the CEO of Expeditionary Learning, 鈥渂ut it did not provide the kind of ongoing margin or profit鈥� to allow his organization to develop and promote the use of those resources in classrooms as extensively as possible.
Great Minds, among its other offerings, is providing an enhanced version of its math content in HTML form designed to make it easily navigable, and enhanced through an online platform with embedded videos, teacher tools, and other features.
EngageNY鈥檚 materials have fared well under scrutiny from a number of outside entities judging the resources鈥� common-core alignment. For instance, a review of a math curriculum developed by Great Minds for EngageNY, called Eureka Math, was deemed to be aligned at all grades evaluated by the nonprofit reviewer EdReports.org.
Going forward, New York officials face questions about how they will continue to manage the online resources. The state鈥檚 original contracts with vendors for EngageNY will expire later this month, said Mr. Wagner, of the state department of education.
While the agency will continue to support EngageNY and help users of the site, Mr. Wagner said the state is considering options for how it will manage the materials, which include having the state handle those duties; collaborating with other public entities in New York, such as school districts or state Boards of Cooperative Educational Services; or forging partnerships with other states.
Quality Questions
Skeptics have long questioned the quality of open-educational resources, as well as how they could be sustained without a source of revenue to allow the materials to be improved over time.
But Ms. Gerson, of the Regents Research Fund, argued that New York鈥檚 approach builds an incentive for content developers to put a lot of care into producing materials that stand up to scrutiny."You have to solve the who-pays-for-it question, if you鈥檙e going to develop good material,鈥� she said.
Absent viable business models, developers of open-educational resources become dependent on foundations and other sources鈥攁nd susceptible to charges that they鈥檙e being influenced by those entities, argued Lynne Munson, the president of Great Minds.
鈥淲e鈥檇 rather have teachers and others exerting that influence,鈥� she added, based on their choice of materials.
Carol Burris, the principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in New York, doesn鈥檛 buy that argument. Ms. Burris, a frequent critic of the common-core standards and what she sees as corporate profiteering from public education, said there was no reason commercial vendors needed a route to make money from EngageNY, beyond the millions of dollars the state had paid them.
鈥淎ll the development work was funded by taxpayers,鈥� she said. 鈥渁nd now it鈥檚 becoming products.鈥�
Ms. Burris also said EngageNY鈥檚 content reflects flaws she and others see in the common core standards. In her view, the standards place an overemphasis on informational texts, and encourage reading of literature in 鈥渟nippets and pieces,鈥� rather than in a more holistic and rewarding way.
A Teacher鈥檚 Perspective
The open resources planned by the K-12 OER Collaborative, meanwhile, allow for commercialization in an even broader form. Once the open resources are developed, other users鈥攚hether for-profit or nonprofit鈥攚ill be able to take that material and use it however they want, including for the development of entirely new, different products.
There鈥檚 a persistent 鈥渟chism鈥� in the open-education community between those who want to keep commercial influences out entirely, and those who want the fewest restrictions possible, said Cable T. Green, the director of global learning for Creative Commons, which consulted on the collaborative project.
The latter option鈥攆avored by the collaborative鈥攊s based on the idea that the ultimate goal is to create more 鈥渄ownstream options鈥� and innovations flowing out of open resources, Mr. Green said, so that you can 鈥渕aximize the cool stuff people can do,鈥� no matter who鈥檚 doing it.
Open resources have long been viewed warily by some commercial publishers and content producers, who see the materials as inferior and stale.
Yet publishers鈥� views have evolved somewhat, as they鈥檝e found ways to weave open resources into their business models, said Jay Diskey, the executive director of the Washington-based Association of American Publishers鈥� pre-K-12 division.
鈥淭here鈥檚 been an uptick in open educational resource development that leaves the door open to commercial involvement,鈥� Mr. Diskey said.
The AAP is not opposed to open resources, Mr. Diskey said, but it does not favor allowing public agencies to bankroll them鈥攁s was the case with EngageNY.
鈥淕overnments should not compete with their citizens"鈥攚hether for-profit, nonprofit, or other content producers, he said. 鈥淲e believe in a market鈥� without such interference.
Regardless of EngageNY鈥檚 origins, Janet H. Blenheim, the K-5 math coach and curriculum leader for the Upper Dublin, Pa., school district, says she can testify to its value.
Her district reviewed numerous commercial programs in trying to find materials that reflected the common core, but found them offering the 鈥渟ame-old, same-old,鈥� she recalled.
The 4,000-student district began using EngageNY last year. Teachers struggled initially to understand the math content and terminology, but now Ms. Blenheim says she credits the resources with building a deeper understanding of math among teachers and students.
She also regularly trades ideas with other EngageNY users around the country, including a Wisconsin district that recently asked for her input on the math content.
鈥淚t鈥檚 exciting because we鈥檙e having conversations, not just across our schools,鈥� she said, 鈥渂ut across counties, and across states.鈥�
