Over three-quarters of K-12 districts have made at least one full-course curricula adoption decision over the past three years, with the need to meet changing standards driving most of these decisions, according to the results of a new survey from the Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG).

The project, funded by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, surveyed a national sample of over 500 decision makers in K-12 school districts to examine the process by which they made curriculum adoption decisions and the extent to which open educational resources (OER), freely available materials that can be copied, edited and shared, factor into those decisions. Key findings from the report include:

Most districts make an adoption decision for Mathematics (59 percent), followed by English Language Arts (44 percent), Science (29 percent), and History and Social Studies (19 percent).
The overwhelming reason districts cite as the reason to engage in an adoption decision is a need to select new material to meet changing standards.
Teachers have decision-making power in the adoption process for 94 percent of districts, followed by district-level administrators (75 percent), and principals (73 percent).
Dr. Jeff Seaman, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group, said, “A district curriculum adoption decision is a long and complicated process that involves many players and the consideration of multiple alternatives. The driving force is typically the perception that the existing materials no longer meet current standards.”

Dr. Seaman continued that “districts often have only a vague understanding of the term 'open educational resources' and of specifics of licensing, but they are well aware of open full-course curriculum products, even if they remain somewhat fuzzy on what makes them 'open'."

Keywords

Creative Commons licensing · curriculum decision makers · K-12 · OER adoption · OER research · understanding licensing · understanding OERs