Open Up Resources

Open Up Resources, a nonprofit organization, is on a mission to increase equity in education by making top-notch curricula freely accessible to districts. When Open Up Resources commenced in 2016, school district leaders and teachers faced a significant challenge in obtaining Common Core State Standards (CCSS)-aligned, comprehensive core English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics materials. Despite having had several years to do so, most textbooks in the market failed to meet these standards. EdReports, a consumer report agency for instructional materials, highlighted these gaps in the textbook market in 2017, revealing that the majority of textbooks were not aligned to the standards. Open Up Resources took the educational landscape by storm by debuting with a middle school Mathematics curriculum and an elementary ELA program, both of which were rated best-in-class in their respective categories on EdReports. This marked the first time comprehensive, core curricula that were fully accessible were also deemed high quality. Open Up Resources disrupted the market, proving that free and high quality were not mutually exclusive. Currently, with a complete K-12 core curricula offering, Open Up Resources enables school and district leaders and teachers to easily access and use these materials to enhance instructional quality. Additionally, Open Up Resources partners with curriculum authors and schools to bring the highest quality curriculum to market. Upon publication, these materials are openly licensed, meaning they are freely available to educators online, making them accessible to any teacher, in any classroom, in any district. Furthermore, Open Up Resources' materials are created with equity as a foundational design principle, ensuring research-based support for English language learners and students with varying abilities. To support implementation of their open curricula, Open Up Resources established a team of high-quality teacher leaders in residence, professional learning providers, and an openly accessible professional learning community. These community coaches, all of whom are current practitioners and master teachers of Open Up Resources' curricula for each grade level, nurture the community through virtual professional learning opportunities. They also play a key role in Open Up Resources' annual national conference, Hive, which is an opportunity for educators from across the country to convene for intensive professional learning to support their implementation of Open Up Resources' curricula. Open Up Resources' portfolio seeks to include the highest-quality, standards-based K-12 curricula, validated by respected third-party entities, with evidence of efficacy, effective support for multilingual learners, inclusive strategies for students with varying abilities, embedded culturally-relevant pedagogy, and professional learning that is inclusive and culturally considerate. Open Up Resources has built a business model that enables them to fund the necessary development and productization of new programs as well as maintenance of existing programs. With revenue-generating services that wrap around the openly accessible curriculum, such as low-cost print services, kitted trade books, and professional learning, the organization is financially self-sustaining. As of 2020, Open Up Resources is a self-sustaining organization with revenue from sales of implementation and print services supporting their operations. Over 3 million students have been served by the Open Up Resources curricula, and they are on track to serve an additional 1 million students by the end of 2023.