The changing ecology of the curriculum marketplace in the era of the Common Core State Standards

Abstract

This manuscript explores how the changing policy context of common standards may have influenced the provision of curriculum materials in the United States. Many educational reforms do little to change the nature of classroom instruction, and prior research has argued that this constancy is, at least in part, due to the common use of instructional materials from a small set of large publishing companies (Rowan in J Educ Change 3(3–4):283–314, 2002). However, common standards have been in place in many states since 2010, creating the potential for states to create and share curricular materials with each other, as well as for new organizations to enter the curriculum marketplace. Instructional materials provide a direct link to the instructional core, and recent research demonstrates that individual teachers, schools, and districts are increasingly selecting instructional materials from a variety of online sources, including databases of open educational resources and open-access, yearlong curricula. These materials are created, curated, and/or disseminated by state education agencies, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and education employees. In this essay, we describe this new context and provide several cases of the shifting landscape of supply and demand related to curriculum materials. Various configurations of organizations are taking innovative approaches to providing curriculum materials in the context of the Common Core State Standards, as well as to influencing the materials school systems adopt. Finally, we discuss the implications of this backdrop for curriculum policy and practice.