Dive Brief:

• Curriculum and professional development platform LearnZillion announced Monday that it now has over 500,000 teachers using its online resources.
• The platform contains more than 10,000 Common Core-aligned resources for math and English language arts, from short videos to entire lesson plans, all created by the company's educator "Dream Team."
• While thousands of the platform's resources are free, premium content is also available.

Dive Insight:

Passing half a million users is a big deal for any startup, especially in the competitive professional development platform arena. On an interesting note, educators using LearnZillion aren't just using it to better align their curriculum with the goals of the Common Core State Standards. They're also using it to better educate parents about what exactly the Common Core is. The standards have received a mixed reaction nationwide, to say the least, especially when it comes to homework assignments that have received press in the last few years. Of course, homework in general has been no stranger to backlash lately, either.