The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is warning of risks that arise when schools rely too heavily on open educational resources.
In a statement released late last month, the organization spells out the need for a “coherent, well-articulated curriculum ... for guiding teacher collaboration, goal-setting, analysis of student thinking, and implementation.”
The statement highlights three major challenges in using the free materials: Teachers may not receive support for creating coherent learning progressions out of the open resources; the quality of resources will vary even more extremely from school to school, presenting an equity challenge; and open education resources won’t offer communities the chance to vet and consider different academic programs.