FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ranit Schmelzer, 202.538.1065, [email protected]
Washington, D.C. (September 26, 2016) – Nicole Allen, Director of Open Education for SPARC, issued the following statement commending Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Senator Michael Bennett (D-CO) for including support for open educational resources (OER) in Section 3 of the Innovation for Tomorrow’s Workforce Act of 2016 (S. 3344).
“SPARC commends Senator Hatch and Senator Bennet for promoting innovation in career and technical education programs through open educational resources. High quality career and technical education is key to preparing a strong and modern workforce, and the cost of acquiring high quality instructional materials and tools can be a significant barrier, particularly for those in our nation’s most economically distressed communities.
“A growing body of evidence shows that using open educational resources in place of purchasing traditional resources can yield the same or better student outcomes, while substantially reducing costs. Section 3 of Hatch-Bennett bill would empower state and district leaders to invest in flexible open educational resources, so that the instructional materials supporting CTE programs are more affordable, sustainable and locally-relevant. We strongly encourage Congress to adopt the open educational resources language in this proposal as part of the next Perkins CTE Act reauthorization.”
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SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries though the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. Learn more at sparcopen.org.