ANSWER:

In June 2010, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) entered into a contractual agreement with Pearson to secure financial resources, services, and professional expertise to accelerate the development and implementation of all components of our elementary school Curriculum 2.0 (C2.0). Pearson invested $1.25 million in development funds to support the project. The in-kind participation in the development of C2.0 facilitated the collaborative creation of the online professional learning component of C2.0 (short video clips, online courses, multimedia presentations) and the development of assessments.

The Pearson development monies funded two of the elementary integrated curriculum specialists on the Curriculum 2.0 development team, facilitated the implementation of C2.0 in MCPS by funding teacher substitutes for collaborative planning, curriculum study, and local school and core-team professional learning. The partnership also funded access to national consultants with expertise in the Common Core State Standards and the Thinking and Academic Success Skills.

A variety of products (professional learning and instructional resources) that support implementation of the MCPS C2.0 were developed, including the following:

• Digital instructional resources support implementation of MCPS curriculum for reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. The resources include assessments, animations, and other instructional documents for student use.
• Just in time content professional learning resources provide professional learning related to content knowledge for reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.
• Thinking and Academic Success Skills performance-based assessments provide ways for assessing students’ use of the thinking and academic success skills. Pearson created a variety of resources including rubrics, teacher checklists, and student self-assessments. These items are being made available for grades K - 5.