A Bay View Analytics’ survey of 2,137 teachers, school-level administrators, and district administrator shows that they view the quality of curricula based on open educational resources (OER) as equal to offerings from commercial publishers. The research also shows a strong relationship between educators’ perceptions of the effectiveness of professional development on a curriculum and the quality of that curriculum.

Three commercial publishers (Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin) command the largest market shares for providing curricula materials, but together account for less than half of the adoptions.

The number of districts designing their own curriculum is almost as large as the amount selecting from one of the top three publishers.

OER adoptions are concentrated in Mathematics, where 14% of adoption decisions were OER (compared to 4% for English Language Arts, 2% for Science, and 1% for History and Social Studies).

School districts are well-versed in including student technology use as part of the learning process.

Keywords

curriculum · quality · OER · K-12