Embarc Success Story: Bringing Transparency, Equity, and Efficiency to Curricula

Located in the suburbs of north St. Louis County, Missouri, Pattonville School District includes 10 schools with over 6,000 students in grades K-12. Dr. Cara Hiripitiyage, now Director of Secondary Education, originally entered the district as an Assistant Principal in 2008. When she joined, Embarc — then known as BYOC — had already been implemented to develop a consistent and formalized curriculum across the district’s 10 campuses.

The Challenge

When Dr. Cara Hiripitiyage accepted a role in the Pattonville School District, Embarc was already in process, used by all teachers to create and share their curriculum details.

“I'm not sure how everything was organized before my time in the district,” explained Hiripitiyage.

“We were always committed to a strong curriculum, but information was recorded differently and most teachers relied on large binders for support.”

Time is always of the essence for teachers and staff in the school district, so having a location all can access helps curricula be easily accessible for all. It also ensures standardization and transparency, which supports both clarity and equity across classrooms and schools.

“It’s important for teachers to understand who their audience is when they’re writing,” she said. “It helps them determine how specific and how general the content should be. Sometimes the audience is multiple people, including parents. Sometimes the course is an AP-level and there needs to be clarity around that.”

The Solution

From the start, Hiripitiyage appreciated the transparency and support Embarc provided as a platform for ongoing curricula and systematic growth. Even in the last few years, the platform has optimized the way Hiripitiyage identifies curriculum weak points. It also reveals ways to standardize how course details are written and shared with others through the platform. Specifically, it highlights how this information is shared and who it’s going to.

“It’s user-friendly and easy to get into, even if teachers are unfamiliar,” she said. “This helps us be efficient and lets them sculpt out their courses and be thoughtful in the process.”

Since entering the district in 2008, Hiripitiyage also noted the continual updates and improvements that Embarc has undertaken to meet teacher, state, and national standard needs. When the system needed changes, she could specifically reach out to the Education Advanced team for more information and to request additional customer support. This direct line of communication and clarity was a game-changer.

“One of my earliest adoptions was with Family Consumer Science, which had some new national standards that I couldn’t find in the Embarc system,” shared Hiripitiyage.

“I called the team and they walked me through the request process. It was a quick turnaround and the standards were added into the system very quickly.”

Hiripitiyage shared a moment that made her realize that Embarc not only helped the district’s teachers form curricula, but also other schools within Missouri.

“Someone reached out from a school in southern Missouri with a question because they wanted to model their curriculum after one of ours,” said Hiripitiyage. “It caught me off guard — it hadn’t occurred to me that teachers in other districts would have an interest in our curriculum development. Embarc suggested they look at our structures, which helped them and helped us take a deeper look at our work.”

Embarc empowers fellow teachers, parents, and members of the community to have access to the curriculum. Beyond increasing trust in the process, it sets a standard for academics, instructional materials, and assessment techniques to improve the student experience.

The Results

Dr. Cara Hiripitiyage has been working within Pattonville School District for 14 years, and Embarc has been supporting teachers across the district from even before that time. She pointed out that the platform continually improves each school’s efficiency because teachers can keep their curriculum standardized year after year without needing to start from scratch. Similarly, those who worked with the platform years prior are able to jump back in and get reacclimated easily.

“I can get a teacher from never having seen the platform before to writing curriculum successfully and competently within about an hour and a half. It’s a great support system for all.”

As a centralized repository, Embarc also provides equity to all students and teachers, because there is equal access to courses and learning paths across the district. Pattonville School District is also able to publish the curriculum on the public website easily for increased transparency to parents and the community.

“We’re a medium-sized district, but imagine the equity impact on really large districts with a large number of schools and teachers,” said Hiripitiyage.

“We want to ensure that students get the same quality experience across the board and Embarc helps them have a clear vision of what each course should entail. It encourages the right standards so that the learning experience is equitable from teacher to teacher and school to school.”

The Product

Embarc (formerly BYOC) is a curriculum and instruction solution connecting learning objectives to a continuous cycle of development, delivery, assessment, and refinement across teachers, classrooms, and grade levels in K-12 school districts. Embarc's alignment with state and national standards allows districts to analyze curriculum and address issues raised in standards-based assessments. With Embarc, districts can house a customized, living curriculum in a format that guarantees ongoing, systematic growth and ensures a rigorous curriculum is being used with fidelity. Public transparency is easily integrated with district content. Embarc empowers educators to save time on curriculum management, enter a process of continuous improvement, and shift focus to their true passion—teaching.