MITS News

Arlington, VA – The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) is pleased to announce its receipt of a $75,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to help states revise their instructional materials policy frameworks to better accommodate Open Education Resources. Open Education Resources are digital instructional materials freely available for use, customization, and redistribution.

“This grant provides an excellent opportunity for NASBE to target a specific need identified by states as they work to improve the quality of education for all students,” said NASBE Executive Director Brenda Welburn. “Twenty-first century teaching and learning requires 21st century materials.”

Each year, states and districts spend approximately $8 billion for textbooks, supplementary instructional materials, and related periodicals. There exists increasing dissatisfaction with the cost, quality, timeliness, accessibility, effectiveness, and engagement of textbooks and instructional materials available for use in schools. In fact, the K-12 instructional materials marketplace is one of the few content industries left that have not undergone significant transformation due to the rise in use of the Internet.

In contrast to the traditional textbook-driven instructional materials approach, increasing the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) could offer numerous advantages to the K-12 system. OER are free, high-quality, digital resources that allow for timely revisions and corrections, customization of content to different student populations, and perpetual reuse by educators and students.

Despite the advantages of OER and other electronic materials, states have been unable to overcome the traditional ways states and districts adopt textbooks and the ways teachers use them. The project will convene state board of education members with other state education policymakers to develop a common understanding of the opportunity for state education leadership in K-12 instructional materials selection and use and make recommendations to reframe and rethink the instructional materials adoption processes in their states and districts.

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The National Association of State Boards of Education represents America’s state and territorial boards of education. NASBE exists to strengthen State Boards as the preeminent educational policymaking bodies for citizens and students. For more, visit www.nasbe.org.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. For more, visit www.hewlett.org.

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This news item is reproduced from the NASBE website (http://nasbe.org/index.php/press-release-archive/759-hewlettrelease#tb).