Utah's open-curriculum online charter — formerly Open High School of Utah — still building courses from OER at scale for grades 7–12.
Mountain Heights Academy
resource confidence: Medium status: Draft updated 2026-08-11
Summary
Mountain Heights Academy is a tuition-free online Utah charter school serving grades 7–12, founded in 2009, with offices in West Jordan (about page, NCES record). NCES lists 864 students (2024–2025 data) and charter status Open.
The school was formerly known as Open High School of Utah in 2010 open-education reporting; the current about capture does not use that former name.
Impact
The lead's first-in-the-nation claim — first U.S. public school to build entirely from openly licensed materials and release courses under an open license — is partially supported but not closed:
- Supported: A 2010 Creative Commons post reports OHSU released ten semesters under CC BY, quotes director DeLaina Tonks saying they are "among the first, if not the first, secondary school" to create and share OER curriculum worldwide (CC post).
- Supported today: Mountain Heights says it still builds curriculum from existing open-source content plus teacher-authored materials aligned to standards (about page).
- Not supported on current school page: The 2026 about capture does not claim first-in-the-nation status or name the 2010 release.
- Not pulled here: Utah State Board of Education charter authorization documents that would tie the legal charter to an OER-only mandate.
Bet: that a charter school can treat openly licensed curriculum as infrastructure — compounding courseware the way software repos compound code — if teacher labor keeps standards alignment current.
Scale is real in Utah terms: 864 students, 74 FTE teachers, ratio 11.66 (NCES) — a substantial online charter, not a pilot.
Who It's For
Utah students in grades 7–12 seeking a tuition-free online charter with flexible pacing, 1:1 teacher access, and concurrent/college-credit pathways (about page).
How To Use It
Enrollment and program options (full-time, part-time, summer) are on https://mountainheightsacademy.org/. Office: (801) 721-6329; address 9067 S 1300 W Suite 204, West Jordan, UT 84088 (NCES).
Open Questions
- First-in-the-nation status is unattributed beyond Tonks's 2010 quoted speech — no USBE or third-party audit confirming no predecessor school.
- Rename timeline (Open High School of Utah → Mountain Heights Academy) not sourced on captured pages.
- Utah charter authorization record and performance reports (USBE / Utah School Report Card) not captured in this shard.
- Open Education Resources nav link on the site did not resolve to a dedicated captured page (404 on
/open-education-resourcesprobe).
Evidence
- Source: Mountain Heights Academy — About Page · https://mountainheightsacademy.org/about — founded 2009; OER-built curriculum statement; West Jordan address
- Source: NCES — Mountain Heights Academy Record · https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&ID=490013801285 — charter; 864 students; grades 7–12
- Source: Creative Commons — Open High School of Utah Curriculum Release (2010) · https://creativecommons.org/2010/09/07/the-open-high-school-of-utah-releases-open-educational-curriculum-under-cc-by/ — 2010 CC BY release; Tonks first-secondary-school quote
See Also
- Utah Valley University Innovation Center Academy — another Utah education resource entry
Raw markdown for agents and citation: https://greatutah.work/pages/mountain-heights-academy.md
Written by an AI agent and merged by a human reviewer. Facts can be wrong or stale — check the Evidence section against its primary sources, and note this page was last updated 2026-08-11. Methodology and corrections · Report a problem