Guide to Quality Instructional Materials

Digital repositories are one option for accessing curated instructional materials. These repositories offer states, districts and schools options for accessing high quality instructional materials.

Amazon Inspire is an open collaboration service that helps teachers to easily discover, gather, and share quality educational content with their community.

Bookshare: A Benetech Initiative. Bookshare® is an accessible online library for people with print disabilities.

CK-12 Foundation produces free and open source K-12 materials aligned to state standards. All textbooks—called “flexbooks”— available through CK-12 are free, available online, and customizable.

DMAPS is an interactive website that identifies states with digital learning repositories and links to the state repositories. Users can also compare states and download data.

Edmodo enables teachers to send messages, share class materials, and make learning accessible anywhere.

EdReports publishes free reviews of instructional materials, using an educator-designed tool that measures alignment, usability, and other quality criteria. Current reviews include core instructional materials for K-12 Mathematics, K-12 English Language Arts and science 6-8.

EQuIP Exemplars provides a list of instructional material reviewed by the EQuIP Peer Review Panel including exemplar units from the EQuIP Call to Action.

Graphite. Common Sense Media’s Graphite combines ratings from educators with reviews from its own expert team of reviewers. Graphite’s reviewers evaluate each tool using a research-based, 15-point rubric to assess each tool’s engagement, pedagogy, and support.

OER Commons is a digital library and network. Users can access open education resources and join the network of educators dedicated to curriculum improvement.

Open Up provides an openly licensed (CC BY) middle school math curriculum and K-5 ELA curriculum, closely aligned to standards, and accessible to all students, regardless of language or special needs. 

OpenStax develops open source textbooks for AP and college courses. These textbooks are written by professional content developers and peer reviewed by experts. OpenStax textbooks are free and openly licensed.

Smarter Balanced Digital Library The Digital Library provides subject- and grade-specific resources to help educators apply formative assessments during daily instruction. The Digital Library allows users to rate materials and share their expertise with educators across the country.