Key Takeaways
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The U.S. Department of Education is encouraging states and districts to evaluate education technology based on its instructional value and demonstrated student outcomes.
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Interoperability standards create the connections needed to explore whether, how, and under what conditions a tool contributes to learning.
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Standards such as LTI, OneRoster, CASE, and Caliper Analytics can connect tools to learning goals, implementation information, and student outcomes, providing education leaders with stronger evidence to guide procurement, renewal, and continuous improvement.
Schools invest significant time and resources in education technology. Each investment also creates an opportunity to learn more about how technology can best support educators and students.
The question is no longer simply whether a tool has been purchased, launched, or frequently used. The more meaningful question is: How is it helping students learn?
That question is at the center of recent guidance from the U.S. Department of Education. The Department is encouraging states, districts, and education technology providers to keep student outcomes at the center of their decisions and evaluate tools based on evidence of educational value. That means looking beyond product demonstrations and usage counts to understand why a tool works, for whom it works, and under what conditions.
There is not yet one shared approach for answering those questions, giving the education community an important opportunity to build one. Interoperability can help create the conditions for meaningful evaluation by enabling systems to exchange consistent, usable information.
Connect Tools to Their Intended Purpose
Before districts can evaluate whether a tool is effective, they need to be clear about what it is intended to accomplish.
The Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange® (CASE®) standard gives academic standards and competencies consistent, machine-readable identifiers. This allows curriculum, content, assessment, and instructional tools to reference the same learning goals. Instead of relying on broad labels or manually maintained crosswalks, educators and leaders can more clearly see whether a digital resource is connected to the knowledge or skill students are expected to develop.
Alignment is not the same as effectiveness. But it establishes an essential starting point: a clear connection between the technology being used and the educational goal it is expected to support.
Understand What Makes Implementation Successful
The Department’s guidance recognizes that the value of a tool depends not only on its design, but also on how and where it is implemented. Training, instructional practice, student needs, access, and patterns of use can all influence results.
Interoperability standards can make those implementation conditions more visible:
- Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)® allows tools to connect with learning platforms in a consistent and secure way, making them easier for educators and students to access and use.
- OneRoster® supports the exchange of roster, course, and enrollment information so students can receive timely access to the tools and resources they need.
- Caliper Analytics® provides a common way for digital tools to report learning activity, helping institutions turn usage information into actionable insights.
Together, these standards can help institutions look beyond whether students logged in and develop a better understanding of how a tool was incorporated into teaching and learning.
Build a Shared Approach to Better Results
The national conversation is moving toward a more meaningful measure of education technology: the value it delivers for students. This creates an opportunity for schools, providers, researchers, and other stakeholders to build a more consistent approach to evaluation, one that combines clearly defined learning goals with independent research, stakeholder input, implementation information, and student outcomes.
1EdTech is exploring how interoperability standards can strengthen edtech evaluation. An upcoming Call for Participation will invite members to help determine how Caliper Analytics can deliver the consistent, meaningful data schools need to understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions. We will also host a November webinar for K-12 members to
explore how to move beyond measuring minutes, clicks, and logins toward understanding the purpose and context of digital learning activity.
Interoperability provides the connective foundation. By linking tools with learning goals, implementation information, and student outcomes, open standards can help districts strengthen implementation, make more informed investment decisions, and work with providers to continuously increase the value technology delivers.
Together is the new standard.
About the Author
Monica Watts leads K-12 ecosystem development at 1EdTech Consortium, where she works with school districts, state agencies, and edtech providers to advance open standards, strengthen member engagement, and build the trusted, interoperable digital ecosystems that improve outcomes for learners. She brings more than two decades of experience spanning classroom instruction, academic librarianship, educational technology, and business leadership. Monica is the founder of WIDEN (Women in Data in EdTech Network) a structured leadership and mentoring community dedicated to connecting and elevating women across the education technology ecosystem. 1edtech.org/program/widen
Outside of work, Monica lives on the North Carolina coast, where she can usually be found boating, fishing, diving, enjoying the natural beauty of the region.
