Tri-State Collaboration Leverages Interoperability Standards to Improve Teaching and Learning
One thing I know about educators is that they do this work because they care about their students’ futures. They want all kids to succeed, even those who aren’t in their classrooms, and if they can help in any way, they want to.
I see proof of that desire to help in the tri-state collaboration among three of 1EdTech’s Department of Education Contributing Members in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
The three states are working to leverage 1EdTech interoperability standards, specifically Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE)®, to create inter-state course equivalencies and share educational resources that align with the various state standards across state lines. They shared the collaboration in a presentation at the 2024 Learning Impact Conference.
“We’re all doing the same thing—educating students,” said Keith Osburn, Georgia Department of Education Deputy Superintendent for Technology Services and Chief Information Officer. We also share a common vision for the things we’re doing in our states, and we can help one another. Standardization facilitates those conversations.”
“A state’s identity is tied to its academic standards,” added Dan Ralyea, Director of the Office of Research and Data Analysis at the South Carolina Department of Education. “We are talking about sharing technical standards while still keeping the integrity of the academic standards.”
“We are aligned in a unified mission to serve teachers and students across our states,” said Vanessa Wrenn, Chief Information Officer for North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction. “We want our teachers to teach how they want to but keep it tied to state standards. Adopting CASE helps us tie the technical work and digital resources back to those academic standards.”
CASE is a technical specification that establishes a standard way to exchange information about academic standards, competencies, and learning outcomes across platforms and applications. The standards can be read by machines and people, which makes it easier for teachers and district staff to search for learning resources and design lessons.
The states see CASE and their collaboration as a way to provide a larger pool of resources and ideas to support teachers who are still adjusting to the increase in digital learning.
“We can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions,” said Osburn. “The pandemic caused a massive shift, and teachers who were used to their habits were pushed into an unfamiliar environment. Teachers had to figure out how to use technology, which came at the cost of instructional time. Now, we need to have a conversation about how technology impacted teaching and learning and make sure it has value.”
“We have people who love their PDFs,” said Wrenn. “Our biggest challenge is technology fatigue, but we know we have to have technology to be successful. We need interoperability standards and machine-readable academic standards to track those student outcomes and communicate the efficacy of what we’re doing.”
Jeff McCoy, Associate Superintendent of Academics for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina, offered a district perspective on the states’ efforts. “The state offers us a lot of resources, and our district is large enough to build our own curriculum. We’re always willing to share it, but that isn’t easy if it’s not in a sharable format. If that is done for us, through the standards, sharing is easier, and other districts can see how the curriculum ties in with academic standards.”
“Teachers should have the autonomy to do what they want to do, but many new teachers and alternative certification teachers don’t have the expertise to do it,” added McCoy. “Now we can give them that autonomy back with a high-quality curriculum that they can see is tied to academic standards and is ready for them to take and use. We can also see what teachers are doing with the curriculum we provide and see if they are making changes that may get better results. Ultimately, it helps all of our students.”
That ability to see how teachers use resources to improve results is key to the tri-state collaboration.
“We changed our mentality and stopped calling ourselves technologists and started saying we are educators with technology backgrounds,” said Osburn. “The biggest impact on the students is the teacher, so we need to help the teachers do what they do best. We’ve been successful inside the state, and now we want to be successful across states.”
“It levels the playing field in our state,” said Wrenn. “We have a very diverse state and diverse districts. Making sure we have a platform that provides high-quality and aligned resources is a win because there are a lot of digital resources out there, and it can be hard to choose the best ones. Having resources vetted by both North Carolina and our partner states that we can recommend and that have shown good results means that students are being served no matter where they are. To me, that’s real equity that we are able to provide.”
The three states hope to serve as a model for others to replicate so that they can also benefit from shared resources.
K-12 leaders will gather again at 1EdTech’s Fall Member Meeting, November 12-14, 2024, in North Charleston, South Carolina. The next Learning Impact Conference is scheduled for June 2-5, 2025.
About the Author
Monica Watts
Monica Watts serves as 1EdTech's Senior Director of Learning Innovation, providing a voice for K-12 institutions and bringing together technology providers to achieve digital equity and interoperability at scale. Before starting at 1EdTech, Monica had several education roles, including teaching Spanish in High School in Florida and conducting Information Literacy courses as an Academic Librarian in the Engineering and Textiles Library at NCSU. After earning her Masters in Library and Information Science, Monica went to work for the North Carolina State University Library in their Fellows Program. Monica then went to work as VP of Sales for an EdTech supplier. Monica is passionate about helping school districts integrate technology successfully. She graduated from Florida State University and received a Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida.
