An Open letter to the #GoOpen Network

How can more state departments of education and school districts be encouraged to begin using OER curricula more than they are currently doing? Maybe this will happen without any controversies. Maybe there won’t be any politics involved. Maybe this will happen very organically and blissfully. Maybe all of the people whose current livelihoods in all of the state departments of education and school districts depend on the distribution and monitoring of proprietary curricula will just wake up one morning and say - “I think we should not keep doing what we’ve always done and that I’ve become recognized for leading. I want to do something completely new and innovative.” Maybe.

Maybe a state department of education other than Iowa’s will decide it wants to spend $17 million dollars to create openly licensed curricula that can be readily used on an LMS like Iowa has done. Maybe they’ll make that curricula for Math, Science, Social Studies, and ELA in grades 6-12  available to all other districts like an open license requires, which Iowa hasn’t done for some inexplicable reason. Maybe.

I don’t think any of the above is likely. Getting more state departments of education and school districts using OER more frequently and more effectively is going to require some conflict and some risk taking. Somebody might need to risk being wrong.

Update to Iowa Dept. of Ed. Squanders $17million on #OER

 Here are a few more details about my previous post. The previous post was the culmination of many email exchanges, phone calls, and Zoom meetings with Iowa Department of Education staff.  About a year ago, SABIER started planning PD courses for Iowa schools.  We would be focusing on showing teachers how to create equity in materials using middle school math OER courses as described here.  (Notice on that page that Iowa AEA Online has been an acknowledged partner of SABIER since October of 2021. We've done various exchanges since 2016.)  The content we would be using would be digital OER versions of Illustrative Mathematics for middle schools. In 2020, SABIER created OER LMS courses using GeoGebra's OER digital app version of Illustrative Mathematics embedded in open source OER Moodle courses.  That work is described here in a CC Medium post. (If you want more info on OER please see this from UNESCO.)

In March of 2022, I learned that the Iowa Department of Education had created revisions of the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum in Canvas courses.  I asked to talk to the person in charge of the IM course development for the Department because I didn't want to pursue Professional Development for Iowa teachers that didn't include work that the Iowa Department of Education had been doing. I was introduced to the head of math for the state of Iowa. She did a screen share and showed me a couple of pages of one of the courses they had created in Canvas. It seemed to be very thorough and appeared to be very well done. I said, "That's wonderful, please, send me a copy and I'll combine it with the work we did with GeoGebra and give teachers some great options." She said she couldn't give me access. She said that while showing me this screen - https://elearningcentral.iowa.gov/course-repository/ilc-8th-grade-math-full-year , the screen that very clearly displays the CC BY license, a license that permits free sharing of material.  I was confused as to why she thought she couldn't give me access.

It gets worse. The director of  Iowa AEA Online has not yet been given get access. Iowa AEA Online has been leading support for digital learning in Iowa schools for over fifteen years. They're really good at it, and have nine offices scattered around the state. I repeat; they haven't been given access yet to the digital OER courses created with $17 million dollars from the U.S. Department of Education. And, the IDE hasn't budgeted for professional development for the new digital curriculum being delivered via an LMS for the first time in most Iowa middle school math classrooms.

This initiative by the Iowa Department of Education is important for several reasons:

It's the largest amount of money spent by any government entity anywhere on K-12 OER curriculum, and it's the first major expenditure at any level by any government entity on full course OER delivered via an LMS. That's a big and important innovation. Iowa should be proud, although I don't think they actually understood what they were doing and what the ramifications were. I strongly suspect they were led down this path by Instructure, the purveyors of Canvas. As is, this initiative will be a huge boon for Instructure-Canvas. Even if  the courses were moved to a free open-source system it will still be a huge revenue source for Instructure because lots of K-12 districts would rather write checks than own their own content and processes.

There are at least four for-profit companies that have taken the OER Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, the OER OpenSciEd curriculum, the OER Great Minds curriculum and the others that are included in Iowa eLearning Central and put them into their proprietary LMS like platforms.  Two of those companies have been acquired by venture capital companies in the last two years. Venture capitalists have not historically been interested in K-12 instructional materials. The reason they're investing is because the course content for the middle school math content alone on Iowa eLearning Central if sold to all schools in the U.S. is equal to about $450,000,000.00 - half a $Billion. 

The Iowa Department of Education could become the leaders in implementing this curriculum nationwide. Teachers need to be better supported and they should be paid to learn new skills using digital curriculum and digital tools that are capable of making curriculum more equitable. Those $billions should be going to paying more teachers more money and enhancing their skills. Teachers can lead the needed equity efforts using OER curriculum and digital tools. That's why I founded SABIER six years ago. 

Here are some supporting documents:

My letter to the U.S. Department of Education Inspector General. Their response to me was to contact the program officer. I've been told that Lauren Golubski, lauren.golubski@ed.gov, is the program officer. They haven't returned my calls or emails.

Here's a response I received from the Iowa Department of Education's General Counsel, Thomas Mayes after about a dozen or so calls and email to various people at the IDE. 

And, here's my response to Mr. Mayes. 

The Iowa Dept. of Ed. Squanders $17million

    The Iowa Department of Education (IDE) has put the digital courses they created with $17 million from a federal grant into a locked digital desk drawer. The new digital courses are not supposed to be locked up according to the federal regulations governing the grant. But, only a few certain people have access to that digital desk drawer.  The new digital courses could be providing high-quality courses and units; supporting all teachers in creating content; expanding access to standards-aligned courses and units across all grade levels; using the course content both online or in the classroom; and enabling all teachers to adapt the content to meet local needs. 

   It’s a shame that the IDE is not in compliance with the federal regulations. The IDE and all of the people that worked on the grant should be recognized by educators all over the U.S. for the innovative work they’ve done. 

   Somebody at the IDE either made a mistake, or they're trying to pull a fast one. I suspect it’s the former.

   In recent communications with IDE officials, I was told that the IDE acknowledges its obligation to make these resources available but they don’t want to do it for reasons that demonstrate they didn’t read the fine print. Students and teachers could be using the new digital resources were it not for the mistakes of the IDE.

Open Education is a Problem for OER in K-12

 

Open Education, Open Learning, Open Practice, Open Teaching, and Open Praxis create barriers to more widespread use of OER in K-12. Opensource, Open access, Open Science, and Open GLAM are not as problematic because they have mostly agreed upon definitions.

 Those in Higher Ed and many in K-12 who are involved in Open Education, Open Learning, Open Practice, Open Teaching, or Open Praxis will likely see my assertion as heresy, a sacrilege, or ignorance, or that I have some hidden agenda. My agenda isn’t hidden; my agenda is the promotion of the use of OER, especially in elementary and secondary schools (K-12.)

    Promoting OER use for teaching and learning is my job.. In the past few months, I've been interviewing and exchanging emails with leaders of organizations that work with OER. I asked each of them to tell me what they saw as the primary barrier to increased use of OER in K-12. Interestingly, nobody limited their response to just one barrier. 

Here are their responses, some were duplicated: 

-Lack of funding to support OER development and oversight

-Lack of funding for marketing and promotion of OER

-Lack of administrative awareness and support, training, and the ability to engage with the

             curriculum developers.

-Lack of resources for K-6. compared to 7-12

-The curriculum/resource procurement process is too entrenched. Lots of district and state 

             administrative people are making a living by managing this process.

-The current practice of professional development is a barrier.

-So far the focus has been on Business instead of ecology.

-The Higher Ed model doesn’t work for K-12.

    I don’t disagree with any of the above, and I completely agree with the last one -  The Higher Ed model doesn’t work for K-12 even though that's been the predominate model attempted, so far. The Higher Ed model generally consists of free books, usually Pressbooks, transclusions, or links to websites, with ancillary materials commonly provided by 3rd party for-profit companies that charge per student fees. Pressbooks are not as attractive to K-12 teachers as they are to Higher Ed faculty. The use of OER in Higher Ed teaching and learning is also frequently labeled with a term like open learning, or open education, or open practice, open teaching, or open praxis, open something.

 

Labeling the act of using OER as Open Education, or Open something is a problem. I taught in an open school from 1996 - 2011. The school had been started in the early 70s as part of an effort to make improvements in education. If you want more details on that improvement effort they are available in this 'book.' In the 40+ years after its founding, no clear definition of what was meant by 'open school' or 'open education' was ever firmly established. The continued faltering attempts to do so contributed to the vitality of school community, but 'open school' was and still is an outlier of the larger Minneapolis Public School system. (The school has recently been converted from a K-8 Open School to a PreK-5 Arts Magnet. The building, some of the staff, and the fish mascot are still there.) The term 'open education' is not any more appealing than Open School to most K-12 teachers or administrators. The term implies that there's an actual thing called open education that is well defined and well understood. That is absolutely not the case, especially in K-12. 

    Is it a teaching philosophy, a type of pedagogy, a method, or a particular practice? Is it contrary or complimentary to: Teacher-centered methods, Learner-centered methods, Content-focused methods, Interactive/participative methods, The Socratic method, A Lecture method, The Reggio Emilia approach, or Montessori ?

    Does it include: Modeling, Addressing Mistakes, Providing Feedback, Cooperative Learning, Experiential Learning, a Student-Led Classroom, Class Discussion, or Inquiry-Guided Instruction.

    Is it: Direct Instruction (Low Tech), Flipped Classrooms (High Tech), Kinesthetic Learning (Low Tech), Differentiated Instruction (Low Tech), Inquiry-based Learning (High Tech), Inquiry-Guided Instruction (Low Tech), Expeditionary Learning (High Tech), Personalized Learning (High Tech), or Game-based Learning (High Tech) ?

    I could go on. My point is that when a K-12 teacher or administrator hears the words 'open education' they might understandably wonder how open education relates to, or includes, or is contrary to one or more of the above. Certainly, they will have been submersed in one or more previously, and they might not be so eager to take on some new twist. A science or math teacher might want to use material that enables them to modify the content to fit the particular needs of their students, but they might not be interested in first learning what is meant by 'open education.'

    The Higher Ed business model for OER won’t work in K-12 either, because charging per student fees for assessments, ancillary materials, and reporting is not sustainable in K-12, especially when the schools are already paying for learning management systems that could be used to provide those assessments, ancillary materials, and reporting. That model currently works in Higher Ed because of a long established practice of requiring students to pay for textbooks and other materials on a per student basis. Thankfully, we don't have that long established practice in K-12.

Another edu-theory/framework/model and more companies taking money out of public education are not what will get teachers and students using OER effectively. Teachers need to be able to do assessment and reporting on OER with the same LMS that all the other teachers in the district are using. OER will become relevant in K-12 when teachers are adequately supported to modify the content to fit the needs of their students, when they're using OER to create more equity,