Embarc Success Story: Improving Organization and Transparency

For one Wisconsin school system, a curriculum mapping and management platform is helping district leaders modernize operations, increase transparency, and improve new teacher onboarding.

The Hudson School District, located in Hudson, Wisconsin, serves 5,500 students in grades preK-12 across eight schools. David Grambow has held a variety of roles in his 27-year career at Hudson and has been Chief Academic Officer and Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning for the past seven years. “We are fortunate to have a vibrant, growing community that is very engaged and involved with our schools, and our district is high achieving academically,” he says.

Looking for opportunities to improve

Despite being high-achieving, Grambow says there were areas in need of improvement. “When I started in my position seven years ago, we recognized a need to improve the way we warehouse and publish our curricular resources,” he says. “In years past, all our curriculum was stored in hundreds of 3-ring binders, and we were way behind the times. Then we used office productivity software for documents and spreadsheets, but that isn’t designed for school curriculum, and not too different from binders of paper. It was very disorganized,” he says.

“We were also growing enrollment quickly and hiring many new teachers but finding we weren’t onboarding them well. We needed a more modern way to organize our curriculum. That’s where Embarc came in.”

Curriculum mapping and management solution

Embarc from Education Advanced (formerly known as BYOC) is a curriculum mapping and management platform that can host and organize a district’s curriculum and make it publicly available to view through an online portal. The solution connects learning objectives to a continuous cycle of development, delivery, assessment, and refinement across teachers, classrooms and grade levels.

“We conducted a full implementation of Embarc about three years ago to house our entire curriculum,” Grambow says. “For the first time, everyone in the district could see the complete curriculum all in one place in an organized, accessible platform that was easy to navigate. That was a game changer. But even beyond that, once we started using the platform, we began to see other benefits.”  

Benefits of increased transparency

Grambow says the transparency Embarc creates has made a difference both internally and externally. “The online portal allows parents and community members to see and understand everything that is being taught in our schools,” he says.

“To us, curriculum transparency starts internally. We need to ensure that teachers, instructional coaches, principals, and district leaders all understand what our curriculum is and what the expectations are. And then external transparency is about being open and honest with our community about what we teach. That helps parents and families to support those curricular goals at home and builds parent engagement, advocacy, and trust.”

Improving engagement

Grambow says the district has been seeing a variety of benefits from the use of Embarc. “In our annual parent engagement survey, our ratings for transparency and trust have been very strong, and our parents report that they understand and support what we’re doing. Our veteran teachers tell us that they understand the curriculum better than ever, and this level of clarity and organization helps our new teachers by providing a feeling of professionalism right from the start,” he says.

“We already were a high achieving district, but we are seeing academic achievement improving across the board and Embarc is a significant contributor to that.”  

Expanding into the future

Grambow says he is looking forward to more fully implementing the platform. “For the past couple years, we have focused on taking our existing curriculum and moving it into the system. The next step is to create and write our curriculum in Embarc from the start. It will feel much more natural, and we’ll be able to take full advantage of the tools and reporting available in the platform,” he says.

“We’re just scratching the surface; we know there is more potential, and we are excited about capitalizing on it.”

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.