How Can Districts Determine if an Edtech Product is High Quality?

Every district leader I collaborate with wants to know the same thing: Will this edtech product work for my students? Finding the answer, of course, is a labor intensive, time-consuming process.

At Digital Promise, we’ve built product certifications to alleviate the burden districts have historically shouldered on their own. We co-design certification requirements with district leaders, educators, learners, and subject matter experts to provide reliable signals about edtech quality and answer the questions you want to know about edtech products. Edtech vendors then submit applications where they lay out evidence to attempt to demonstrate that they meet the requirements, which our Digital Promise subject experts evaluate to award or deny the certification.

“Our Ed Tech JPA is always looking for ways to help districts get the best products possible, and certifications like Digital Promise’s Product Certifications help districts make a final decision between multiple vendors.” said Jeremy Davis, vice president of the Education Technology Joint Powers Authority (Ed Tech JPA).

We were thrilled to recently issue the 200th certification through our Product Certification Platform. This milestone has a huge implication: Districts can now expect to see Digital Promise-certified edtech products when considering a wider pool of options. With more than 200 certifications issued, districts can begin to integrate questions about certification status throughout their decision-making processes.

“Education leaders, educators, and learners know best what they need from edtech,” said Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO of Digital Promise. “At Digital Promise, we co-design product certification requirements together with those who use and purchase edtech to create clear, quality signals for decision makers and to amplify the field’s priorities to edtech developers. I am glad to see more than 200 certifications have been awarded to product developers through the certification process, and I am proud of our team for their work in this area.”

Partnerships: Leveraging Product Certifications for Decision Making

While there are a variety of ways districts can utilize product certification status to inform edtech decisions, two exciting partnerships exemplify the possibilities.

• The Edtech Joint Power Authority, representing more than 160 districts and 2.3 million learners across the state of California, incorporates a question about product certification status into their Request for Proposals (RFPs) to help inform contract and procurement decisions.
• The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office has partnered with Digital Promise to utilize product certifications as a baseline requirement for a vendor to receive any investment from the organization.

Districts have also begun to utilize product certification status to:

• Conduct initial screenings of vendor pitches;
• Determine which edtech products to recommend educators use; and
• Consider contract renewals.

Those leveraging this resource save staff time, have reliable evidence of product quality, and are able to point to a nonprofit source when presenting procurement recommendations to school boards.

Integrate Product Certifications into Your Decision-Making Process to Easily Identify High-Quality Edtech

Explore templates to streamline the integration of product certification status into your decision-making process and sign the Edtech Evidence & Integrity Pledge to let the edtech industry know this is a priority for procurement teams around the country.