Embarc Success Story: Meeting New Standards and Legal Requirements Head-on

The Challenge

Coordinating five school districts’ curricula before Embarc was a logistical challenge that took an inordinate amount of time and juggling from lead teachers and curriculum writers. Mount explained that the main platform they used to share curricular documents used to be Google Drive.

“Trying to share all of the Google Docs can be difficult,” says Mount. “Each district has its own Google domain and granting access to everyone while also making the documents standardized and readable was a lot like herding cats.”

Beyond the logistical constraints of connecting five different school districts to form a cohesive curriculum that prepares students for success, New Jersey has implemented new standards and legal requirements that can be hard to track.

“One of my biggest concerns was addressing all the new standards in the right ways,” says Mount. “And we were doing everything by hand with just a handful of us.”

Gateway Regional’s small team was struggling to manage the frequent curriculum changes and legal requirements that New Jersey was incorporating while also standardizing documents for multiple separate districts.

“We needed to find something that was easier to format and looked cohesive,” Mount says. “It also had to show that we were hitting each requirement for New Jersey’s educational system. The previous system was a lot of work with a lot of hope and prayer that we weren’t missing anything.”

The Solution

Recently, Gateway Regional began using Embarc to streamline the curriculum creation process.

“Embarc gives us a way to align the curriculum to new standards,” says Mount. “While also updating and revising as we go.”

With an easy-to-use management platform like Embarc, Mount stressed the time-saving benefits of the standardized system.

“Our time should be spent improving instruction and making things better for our teachers and students. By using an efficient document preparation system, we’re better able to focus on the actual education.”

Funding for a new system was another concern for the districts involved since they were smaller and needed to choose a solution that hit the mark right away.

“We’re all little districts and finding the money is a challenge,” explains Mount. “We want something that is up and running super smoothly — and Embarc has been that cost-effective solution. Their team is very responsive and they answer every little question we have within a couple of hours. They’re always there for us and working with us to give us a custom solution at our price point.”

In practice, Embarc helps ensure New Jersey’s health and education standards are met with student-friendly learning targets.

“I can run the curriculum and see what I may have missed and need to fix,” shares Mount. “Then I just put in those changes and I can feel confident that we’re meeting the needs of our community and satisfying state legal requirements.”

The Results

The impact of these Embarc changes has transformed the previously manual workload that had overwhelmed Gateway Regional’s lead teachers and curriculum writers.

“It saves an incredible amount of time," says Mount. "We’re now creating much more clean and robust curricular documents that are better aligned with necessary standards. We can actually focus on the students and instruction rather than the paperwork and managerial aspects of our jobs.”

As a centralized management system, Embarc also ensures that all of the curricula, which are public-facing documents, are formatted and written professionally — even if they’re written and shared by five separate districts.

“The time-saving and increased professionalism is just unmatched,” says Mount.

With five separate districts, the benefits of the standards mapping and calendar tools included in Embarc have been an optimal solution for collaboration and scheduling.

“The standards mapping capability is the most important part of a guaranteed viable curriculum for us," says Mount. "And now we can pull and share a standards report to ensure we’re hitting our requirements. Meanwhile, the calendar ensures each school district can have its own pacing calendar based on individual needs, while also being shareable.”

For day-to-day work, Mount highlights the Embarc team’s dedication to finding unique solutions for each curricular challenge and any concerns that have been flagged by Gateway Regional.

“I’m most impressed with the level of commitment from the Embarc team. We’ve gone to them and asked for this, this, and that, to which they always respond quickly. When we have ideas, they’re enthusiastic and say, ‘Yeah! We’ll share that with development.’ It’s fantastic.”

The Product

Embarc 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.