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A recent article from eSchoolNews highlights partnerships between schools and education publishers to create customized curriculum—one that caters to specific populations by using targeted materials rather than generic plans and texts—to make students’ educational experience more relevant.

The premise: the collaborating schools and districts work with a publisher (both Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are active participants) to develop affordable, customized curriculum for any subject that also fit state core and Common Core requirements. The electronic content can be delivered via the web, CD, PowerPoint, or other electronic files, and much of it is also available in print. In addition to readings it includes lesson plans, discussion questions, activities, syllabi, and assessment tools. According to a school or district’s preference, Pearson can modify an existing curriculum to meet local needs, or they can develop curriculum from the ground up with the help of administrators and teachers.

This is a promising idea for schools. Customizing readings and curriculum to a school’s specific students provides potential for more engagement and interest, and gets away from the one-size-fits-all standardized textbooks and workbooks that I remember loathing. And while creating such curriculum is time-consuming and would be expensive for schools and districts to do on their own, by partnering with a publisher the initiatives are feasible.

The article provides several examples of this partnership effort. One is the Sweetwater Union High School District of Southern California, where Pearson has helped to create a program for achieving literature goals for the 7^th through 12^th grades. The content can include literature, newspapers, short stories, workplace documents, math texts, and various other sources that are relevant to the lives of students in the district. The article notes that the curriculum “was built around six writing skills, defined by the district, and associated with college-ready standards.”

Another district—School District 11 in Colorado Springs—wanted to focus on helping students prepare for the math sections of college admissions tests, and so they worked with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to create a curriculum that targeted the skills and knowledge important for these tests. A company representative who worked with the district explained that “[t]eachers everywhere are teaching Algebra II, but then they have to stop and pull from other areas—a teacher down the hall, the internet—to teach students the review stuff. Now, they don’t have to go searching for the review information.” evidence that these initiatives benefit not only students, but teachers as well.

Public-private partnerships can be hugely advantageous when implemented well in schools, and I applaud the efforts the article highlights to use this sort of partnership to make curriculum better for students.