Edmentum’s Commitment to State-Specific Courses

Everyone in education knows that each state’s approach to education is unique. Even Common Core or NGSS states have individualized assessments, instruction, and even graduation requirements. With so many different ways of educating students, how is a state supposed to find the right curriculum to drive student achievement? Edmentum is here to help with a robust catalog of state-specific courses!

What exactly is an Edmentum state-specific course? It is just what it sounds like! A state-specific course means that we have created a course based on one specific set of standards for one state. The Edmentum Curriculum team creates state-specific courses using our standard course- development process of research, design, creation (writing, editing, and production), and publishing. Let’s take a closer look at what this means for a state-specific course.

State Course Creation

The research and design phases for a state-specific course tend to run simultaneously because we can focus specifically on one set of standards. Depending on the state-produced documents available, we utilize instructional frameworks, syllabi, and supplementary design documents in addition to state standards. We deeply research the course from a state level to determine the best way we can instruct students on concepts or topics within a specific course.

Based on that research, as well as input from educators (detailed in the following paragraph), we craft a design for the course structure and create the course with those standards and instructional documents in mind. We focus on specific vocabulary, performance tasks, and skills that students are expected to learn throughout the state-specific requirements for the course. We also keep in mind the important elements of instructional design and engagement to ensure that our Edmentum courses can help students gain the credits they need.

Educator Input

Our biggest focus on a state-specific course is our end user: the educator. We seek input from educators in each state in every process throughout the course – from research to classroom use. For example, when we started researching our Business English course for Louisiana, we immediately reached out to educators to understand the purpose and intent of the course and to learn how educators focus on teaching the skills to students, and we even collected information about the average student taking this course. As the coursework progressed, we shared with educators the course structure, individual lessons, and various activities and ideas we had as we worked through the course. Educators provided specific, constructive feedback that allowed us to create a course to best fit their needs as educators. We are now eager to get feedback from educators and students as they begin to use all of our newly designed courses this coming school year!

Thanks to educator feedback and a team of dedicated former educators and curriculum experts at Edmentum, we can ensure that each state-specific course is designed with the student and educator in mind.

Now that is #EducatorFirst! Want to know more about Edmentum’s course offerings in your state? Check out our full course catalog for more details!