Plenty of out-of-state teachers use SED's EngageNY website |
On Board Online • May 29, 2017
By Gayle Simidian
Research Analyst
The State Education Department's EngageNY website was designed for teachers in New York State, but it's a big hit nationally, according to the Rand Corporation.
Teachers striving to produce lessons connected to specific standards in math and English language arts find the site invaluable, the think tank said in a new report, Use of Open Educational Resources in an Era of Common Standards: A Case Study on the Use of EngageNY.
Rand wanted to find out how and to what degree free online educational resources are useful to educators. To accomplish this, Rand studied who frequents the EngageNY website and which of the site's resources are most popular.
Three sources of data informed the research:
- Google data from Jan. 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016.
- A 2015 American Teacher Panel national survey soliciting information from 1,168 public K-12 ELA and math educators about their use of resources for curriculum development.
- Interviews with teachers from New York State and California.
Most teachers chose to use EngageNY resources because the materials are aligned with their state standards. This was particularly true for educators in Common Core states, who "were 65 percent more likely" to use the website.
Users in New York State accounted for most of the ELA page views (65 percent) and ELA downloads (65 percent) as well as math views and downloads (51 percent each).
The researchers found high numbers of math page views in New York, Arizona, Illinois and California, while New York, Arizona and Nevada had the highest number of downloads of various materials and documents.
Teachers in states that don't use Common Core standards, such as Oklahoma, also used the site, but there were fewer page views and downloads.
Another finding of the study is that high school ELA and math curricular resources generated less interest than primary grade curricula. For example, EngageNY's precalculus and freshman ELA resources didn't have many downloads (11,214 for precalculus; 27,732 for ELA). There are fewer state assessments for those courses in many states, according to the report.
Other findings include:
- Three-quarters of teachers who use EngageNY modify the lessons, especially to accommodate for 40-minute classroom schedules.
- Educators looked at the primary grade math resources on SED's website but used the ELA curricula in more depth, including full lesson agendas.
- Three-quarters of math educators favor EngageNY resources over other curricular resources because students can "explain and justify their work 'to a great extent' compared with fewer than half of mathematics teachers using other materials."
EngageNY's free availability of curricular resources for public use was not a major factor in the website's usage. In other words, the users of the site generally were education professionals, not the general public.
The wide appeal of the EngageNY website is evidence of the value of open resource networks that are aligned with state standards, according to Rand. The next step would be to "grow networks of expert users who can support each other through online and in-person professional learning communities."
EngageNY will need to be updated because state math and ELA standards are being revised. But there is a question of where the State Education Department (SED) will get the money to do that.
"EngageNY was funded with Race to the Top resources that are no longer available," said SED spokesman Jonathan Burman. "The department is exploring potential partnerships and funding avenues that will enable us to update these modules."
To read the report, go to goo.gl/GQugQd .