Project Description
Project Name:
EdTech Quality Collaborative
Leading edtech organizations—1EdTech, CAST, CoSN, Digital Promise, ISTE, and SETDA—have pledged to work together to reduce the burden on educators, schools, and school system leaders. By establishing a set of common quality indicators for edtech products and services and providing expert-backed validations that products have met these standards, this partnership promises to help identify high-quality edtech tools in a fraction of the time and cost demanded by current review processes.
Five EdTech Quality Indicators
Developed through extensive research and collaboration among K-12 leaders, policymakers, and industry experts, the EdTech Quality Collaborative created the Five EdTech Quality Indicators—Safe, Evidence-Based, Inclusive, Usable, and Interoperable—to guide decision-makers in evaluating and choosing digital learning tools
Edtech products must establish robust data privacy and security measures to protect student and educator data and safeguard against unauthorized access or data breaches. This includes adhering to industry standards and laws to create a secure learning environment and adopting principles of data minimization (only collecting necessary data), and data transparency (users understand which data are collected for what purpose).
Edtech product design, implementation, and claims of effectiveness need to be grounded in rigorous research and evidence-based practices as specified by the ESSA Tiers of Evidence. Providers should engage in research-driven design, empirical validation, demonstrated effectiveness, and alignment with established educational standards.
Edtech products must prioritize accessibility, inclusivity, and equitable design to ensure they are acceptable to learners from diverse backgrounds and with a broad range of learner variability. This includes ensuring edtech products are accessible for all learners, do not promote existing stereotypes, create new ones, or prevent students from acquiring accurate information because of biased algorithms.
Edtech products must be designed to be easily usable by educators and students to ensure a seamless digital experience. If the product is not easy to use, it creates an unnecessary barrier and educators and students will struggle to use the tool.
Edtech products must seamlessly connect to other technologies within a school’s digital ecosystem. This is accomplished by adhering to established interoperability standards that ensure secure exchange and allow for the beneficial aggregation of data to inform instruction and personalize learning.
Trusted Validators
To support this initiative, the coalition partners with expert organizations to evaluate tools against the Five EdTech Quality Indicators. These specialized groups review evidence submitted by edtech companies to verify that products meet rigorous standards. Because these certifications have historically been scattered across multiple platforms, the coalition is launching the EdTech Index—a comprehensive directory designed to centralize and showcase all credible product validations in one easy-to-navigate location.
As a primary validating partner, CAST supports EdTech Quality Indicator 3 (Inclusive) through the Accessibility Baseline and UDL Product Certification. Products that earn these credentials demonstrate a strong commitment to accessible, equitable design, with their verified status displayed directly within the EdTech Index.
Timeline
June 2024 forward
Partners
- International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
- Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)
- 1EdTech
- Digital Promise
- State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA)
- CAST
Project Leadership
Christine Fox, EdTech Quality Collaborative Project Lead and Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, CAST
Contact
For more information about this project, please contact Christine Fox.