Giving Compass' Take:

• The Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) offers free and open digital resources for educators that can increase accessibility for students and highlights other viewpoints. 

• How can donors help schools get access to resources that will help students through this period of remote learning? 

• Read these student perspectives on remote learning during COVID-19. 


As school districts around the country announce their plans for fall instruction, students' access to high-quality learning resources will be a significant factor in the decisions.

Whatever a school's learning environment is at the start of the new school year, a curriculum that is expensive, inflexible, or hard to navigate won't get used. Just ask a teacher about how they use their instructional tools in the time of COVID-19. You'll learn a lot about entrepreneurship.

Teachers' entrepreneurial ways long precede the coronavirus. As Newsela reported in October 2019, administrators in social studies said that teachers used their prescribed textbook half the time. In that same national survey, however, teachers revealed that they use the assigned textbook only one-fifth of the time.

The Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) supports secondary school teachers of civics and history with free, online resources and professional development learning opportunities. As a leading national provider of free educational materials for classroom instruction, BRI has partnered with OpenStax, at Rice University, to launch Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A History of the American Experiment.

As the first free, open resource published in alignment with the new College Board standards in Advanced Placement U.S. History, Life, Liberty promises to meet the learning needs not only of AP classrooms but for all high school, early college, and dual-enrolled students. Authored by some 100 historians from leading institutions, the resource has more than 500 components, including primary source documents, narratives, lesson plans, and point-counterpoints. Its unique, personalized approach to inquiry-based history instruction means that educators have a complete, easy-to-use Learning Management System for their students, including some 2,000 questions that help students retain their knowledge.

Read the full article about a free, open resource by David Bobb at Education Dive.