Scaling Curriculum Based Professional Learning Project
Scaling Curriculum Based Professional Learning project aims to increase the availability and access to high quality instructional materials with aligned professional learning within our districts and schools to improve outcomes for students. To address this aim, we are investing in the development of partnerships between creators and providers of high quality content, materials and aligned professional learning.
Our primary goals include:
Develop partnerships to innovate and scale high quality products and services to leverage and meet local context specific assets and needs.
Increase adoption of high quality instructional materials and curriculum based professional learning services
particularly within the focus states of New York, California, Texas, and Florida, through the establishment of effective and sustainable partnerships.
Sustain engagements between partners to continue offering joint products/services beyond the life of the project.
Generate actionable insights and recommendations for the field.
Improve math learning outcomes for students experiencing poverty, Black, Latino/a, and/or multilingual students.
Our Why
Despite the availability of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) and professional learning (PL) services, local and state education agencies face significant barriers in accessing and scaling these resources effectively.
Key challenges include:
Resource Constraints
Scaling professional learning services requires substantial human resources and expertise, which are often limited and costly.
01
Incentives
Organizations often focus on adoption and early successes, thus limiting motivation to invest in resource intensive professional learning services.
02
Quality Indicators
There is a lack of clear indicators to guide the selection of professional learning providers and often over reliance on peer recommendation.
03
Procurement Processes
School districts’ procurement processes often favor incumbent providers and their complexity challenges the securing of the needed professional learning services in addition to the high quality instructional materials.
04
How
Partners are engaging in discussions to learn about each other’s services and determine a shared value proposition for a mutually beneficial partnership. Publishers and professional learning providers may decide to participate in one of three potential business configurations reflecting increasing levels of cohesiveness and understanding of each other’s products and capabilities.
The partnerships are operationalized within business agreements around revenue sharing, licensing, data sharing and intellectual property (IP) management and a formal business strategy for the partnership (i.e., a Go to Market plan) is developed.
Type 1
Lead Generation
The publishers and professional learning providers share leads with each other for potential new customers (i.e., school districts). With those shared leads each entity may try to independently market and sell to that district. This partnership requires some understanding of each other’s offerings.
Type 2
Cross-Marketing/Selling
The partners identify that they possess complementary products and services, have an understanding of what each offers, have mutual trust to represent those offerings accurately, and agree to promote each other’s offerings. In this type of partnership, the marketing and sales teams within both entities work together to design a plan to market and sell complementary services. However, there is no single point of access for education entities to purchase these complementary services in one bundle.
Type 3
Co-Marketing/Selling Co-Branded Bundled Offerings
The partners collaboratively develop and co-brand a new bundle of HQIM products and PL services as a single point of access for education entities, where each entity of the partnership can market/sell bundles. This represents the ideal type of relationship hypothesized to yield the greatest market impact, while also bolstering local professional learning.
Research & Learning
To accomplish the goal of generating actionable insights for the field, the project seeks to gather and analyze information through multiple methods and from multiple sources. An exploratory study design is being used to yield descriptive findings and illustrative case studies to address the following overarching Learning Questions.
- 01What factors and processes facilitate the development of partnerships between publishers and PL providers?
- 02What factors and processes facilitate the health of the partnerships?
- 03How do publisher-PL provider partnerships contribute to increased reach of HQIM-based PL?
- 04What drives purchasing decisions in the professional learning market?
- 05What are educators’ experiences with and perceptions of co-branded bundled offerings?
- 06How do feedback loops function within co-branded bundled offering partnerships to drive improvement?
When
Scaling Curriculum Based Professional Learning project is approximately a four year project (11/1/24 - 8/30/28). The project consists of multiple partnership development phases followed by pilot testing phases. Within each pilot testing phase, information is being collected to understand the health of partnerships, impact on reach of high quality instruction materials and aligned professional learning, and educators’ experiences with the procurement and delivery of co-branded bundled offerings (type 3 partnerships only). The pilot will include up to 12 illustrative case studies of districts across cohorts 1-5 that experience bundled offerings.
Overarching Learning Questions
A. What factors and processes facilitate the development of partnerships between publishers and PL providers?
B. What factors and processes facilitate the health of the partnerships?
C. How do publisher-PL provider partnerships contribute to increased reach of HQIM-based PL?
D. How does the bundled offering impact the local procurement process and decision making for purchasing?
E. What are educators’ experiences with and perceptions of bundled offerings (product + service)?
F. How do feedback loops function within Co-Marketing/Selling partnership (i.e., bundled offering)?
Overarching Learning Questions
A. What factors and processes facilitate the development of partnerships between publishers and PL providers?
Jan 2025 - Jun 2028
B. What factors and processes facilitate the health of the partnerships?
Jan 2025 - Jun 2028
C. How do publisher-PL provider partnerships contribute to increased reach of HQIM-based PL?
Aug 2025 - Jun 2028
D. How does the bundled offering impact the local procurement process and decision making for purchasing?
Jan 2026 - Jun 2028
Start to assess from partner experience: Jan 2026
District Cohort 3 (some*): Aug 2026
District Cohort 4: Jan 2027
District Cohort 5: Jul 2027
District Cohort 6: Jan 2028
E. What are educators’ experiences with and perceptions of bundled offerings (product + service)?
Aug 2025 - Jun 2028
District Cohort 1: Aug 2025
District Cohort 2: Jan 2026
District Cohort 3: Jul 2026
District Cohort 4: Jan 2027
F. How do feedback loops function within Co-Marketing/Selling partnership (i.e., bundled offering)?
Aug 2025 - Jun 2028
District Cohort 1: Aug 2025
District Cohort 2: Jan 2026
District Cohort 3: Jul 2026
District Cohort 4: Jan 2027
Pilot Year 1: Jun 2025 - Jul 2026
Phase 1A: Jan - May 2025
Phase 1B: Jun - Aug 2025
Phase 2: Jan - May 2026
Pilot Year 2: Jul 2026 - Jun 2027
Phase 3: Jan - May 2027
Pilot Year 3: Jul 2027 - Jun 2028
Pilot Wrap Up: Jul - Oct 2028
Coming soon!
Publications & Resources
Our project aims to generate actionable insights and relevant resources for partners, state and local education agencies, policy-makers, funders, and the broader field. Resources include toolkits, presentations, briefs, and data stories.
