Open Educational Resources (OER) have transformed how we think about curriculum—high-quality, openly licensed materials are now available for nearly every subject and grade level. Yet despite billions invested in OER development and curation, adoption remains frustratingly slow in K-12 schools. The reason isn't content quality or teacher awareness. It's infrastructure.
The Iowa Wake-Up Call
Iowa's $17 million federal OER investment—the largest K-12 OER curriculum initiative ever—should have been a triumph. Instead, it became a cautionary tale. The state created Canvas courses featuring premium OER from Illustrative Mathematics, OpenSciEd, and Great Minds. Then, Iowa's Department of Education refused to share the materials despite their Creative Commons licenses, effectively locking publicly funded open resources inside Canvas's proprietary platform. Even Iowa's own digital learning experts were denied access.
This wasn't just poor execution—it revealed a fundamental flaw in how we're thinking about OER implementation. We've focused on creating and finding open content while ignoring the platforms that deliver, assess, and manage learning. The result? "OER-washing"—open content trapped in closed systems.
Why OER Commons Isn't Enough
Many assume OER Commons solves the platform problem, but it addresses a different challenge entirely. OER Commons excels as a discovery tool—think of it as a library catalog helping teachers find quality resources. But teachers don't just need to find materials; they need to deliver courses, administer assessments, track student progress, manage gradebooks, and integrate with their district's student information systems.
OER Commons provides none of these capabilities. There's no student login, no assignment submission, no grading tools, no analytics dashboards. When teachers find great resources on OER Commons, they still must download them and upload them to Canvas, Google Classroom, or Schoology—returning immediately to proprietary platforms. The discovery problem has been solved; the delivery problem remains.
The $450 Million Opportunity (and Threat)
Here's what makes this urgent: middle school math OER alone, if locked into proprietary platforms and sold nationally, represents approximately $450 million in market value. Venture capital has noticed. In recent years, for-profit companies have been positioning "open" content within closed platforms where they can charge for access, analytics, and integration features.
Districts think they're adopting free materials, but they're actually buying into expensive platform dependencies. The $XX per student they spend on LMS licenses quickly exceeds what they would have paid for traditional textbooks—except now they've lost the ability to easily share, adapt, or control their curriculum, which is the promise of OER.
The Multi-State Moodle Solution
What if states pooled resources to build shared, truly open infrastructure? A multi-state Moodle consortium could provide:
Shared hosting and technical infrastructure that no single state could afford alone
Common integrations with student information systems, built once and used everywhere
Standardized professional development and implementation support
Turnkey OER course packages that teachers can immediately use and adapt
Genuine community control—no vendor lock-in, no surprise price increases, no surveillance capitalism
The economics are compelling. Instead of thousands of districts each negotiating separate LMS contracts, states could share costs while maintaining local control. Member fees would run far below current commercial licensing costs, and savings could be redirected to teacher training and OER customization.
Why Hewlett Foundation Is Uniquely Positioned
The biggest barrier to a unified open-source strategy isn't technical—it's coordination. States don't spontaneously collaborate at this scale. They need a trusted convener with OER credibility and the resources to fund startup costs.
The Hewlett Foundation could be that convener. With long-standing relationships across state agencies, OER networks, and education organizations, Hewlett has the credibility to bring states together. An initial $5-8 million investment over three years could establish infrastructure serving five pilot states, creating a blueprint that dozens more could follow.
This wouldn't compete with OER Commons—it would complete it, creating the delivery layer that makes Hewlett's discovery investment fully valuable. Teachers could search OER Commons, then import materials directly into their district's Moodle instance for actual teaching, assessment, and learning management.
Global Impact
The implications extend far beyond U.S. borders. A proven, well-supported Moodle model would give countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America access to world-class learning infrastructure at a fraction of proprietary costs. Instead of each nation paying foreign vendors for platform access, they could run their own instances, customize for local contexts, and contribute improvements back to a shared commons.
Smaller language communities could finally create culturally responsive content without prohibitive platform costs. A Somali teacher in Minneapolis and a Somali teacher in Mogadishu could share materials seamlessly—exactly what OER was supposed to enable.
The Choice Ahead
Open Educational Resources stand at a crossroads. One path leads to vendor capture, where "open" content becomes raw material for proprietary profit. The other leads to genuine educational infrastructure as a public good—community controlled, globally accessible, and truly open.
The content is ready. The need is clear. What's missing is the infrastructure and the convener to make it real. With the right leadership, we could finally fulfill OER's promise: accessible, adaptable, equitable education at scale.
The question is whether we'll build the infrastructure OER needs—or watch it get captured by the platforms it was supposed to replace.
