As always ASU+GSV in San Diego was buzzy and loud, air-conditioned to a state of uncomfortableness inside, but sunny and lovely outside. Education celebrities were circulating: Arne Duncan, Sal Khan, Colin Kaepernick, will.i.am and more. Old friends who have been in EdTech and traditional K-12 educational publishing for years could be found left and right. Newer companies with exciting new AI products were prolific.
U.S. Secretary of Education
Probably the highest profile event at ASU+GSV 2025 was the Tuesday morning interview featuring Linda McMahon, U.S. Secretary of Education. As evidence of its prominence, the building was secured with limited entrances/exits, secret service was in attendance, and a small group of protesters stood outside the conference venue. As is widely known, under the direction of the U.S. President, McMahon has been tasked with preparing to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. This executive order would require an act of Congress. As part of McMahon’s mission, she vowed to “return education to the states”, as declared during her February 2025 confirmation hearing and in her speech that can now be found on the U.S. Dept. of Ed. site.
What Does Return to the States Mean?
From our vantage point as the leading educational standards consulting company, EdGate has been pondering what this “return to the states” means for state curriculum standards/frameworks. Sure enough, the questions I received most often while at ASU+GSV were “What does this shift back to the states mean for learning standards?” and “Is Common Core dead?”
It’s widely known that every state already has its own standards (a.k.a. competencies). So in some ways, when our team is aligning K-12 education content to standards, we tend to think of the U.S. as fifty tiny countries. Although all states have adopted learning standards that basically teach the same concepts (adding fractions, verb tenses, photosynthesis, etc.) the emphasis put on individual concepts, the way individual standards are written and published, and at which grade level concepts are introduced differs from state to state. State standards often reflect the unique history, economy, and politics of each state. This is especially evident in subject areas like Social Studies and Career and Technical Education (CTE). For instance, some states emphasize healthcare or agriculture in their CTE standards, while others focus heavily on information technology—clearly aligning with the dominant industries and workforce demands within their regional economies.
A healthy share of companies that engage with EdGate come to us with their content already aligned to the Common Core standards. At that point, they have a good baseline to start with. After all, the Common Core State Standards were created in 2010 to establish consistent educational expectations across the fifty states, ensuring all students receive a comparable education in English language arts and mathematics. EdGate continuously links all of the state learning standards to a core taxonomy of concepts so we can take the existing Common Core alignments and map those Common Core alignments to the other 49 states. So is Common Core dead? No, but the states that have kept the Common Core verbatim are rare and after every state standard update cycle the standards become increasingly further removed from the original Common Core. Treating ELA and Math standards like social studies, where every state is bespoke, is closer to reality.
Helpful Resources
EdGate created a very useful and freely available state-by-state learning standards comparison visual on our website. Click on any state to see the differences between state standards and Common Core, NGSS, C3 and other widely used libraries. Check it out and see you next year at ASU+GSV!