State Policy Recommendations for Providing Educators Access to College- and Career-Ready Open Educational Resources

Tuesday, March 17, 2015Printer-friendly version

After working with a group of states on issues related to Open Educational Resources (OER) for more than two years through the OER Institute, Achieve has developed the following recommendations for states to help share key strategies from states that have begun using OER as part of the college- and career-ready implementation plans to continue advancement of OER across states. These recommendations also aim to provide helpful information and guidance for states that are interested but have not yet begun an organized effort to use OER in college- and career-ready standards implementation.

These OER policy recommendations are centered on two main tenets, which provide a basis and framework for additional recommendations:

  • States and districts should use OER as part of their strategies to support the implementation of college- and career-ready standards. Furthermore, when public funds are used, the instructional materials created should be openly licensed.
  • States and districts should ensure that all instructional materials being used, including OER, are high quality and aligned to college- and career-ready standards.

The additional recommendations below support the integrity of implementing high-quality OER aligned to college- and career-ready standards:

  • States should develop strategies for using OER to support college- and career-ready standards implementation. These strategies should include goals and relevant timelines as well as an individual or team of individuals to lead these efforts. 
  • States and districts should use specific criteria and review processes to measure alignment to the college- and career-ready standards to ensure that OER being used meet the level of quality needed to support teaching to those standards.
  • States and districts should use OER to leverage common standards as an opportunity for collaboration in the development, refinement and continuous improvement of OER instructional materials.
  • States and districts should include OER in professional learning activities. This professional learning can increase knowledge and awareness of OER and their benefits and bolster the reputation of OER among educators, administrators and other stakeholders as materials that can be of high quality.