EdGate Powers Podcast #15 - with Ashli Denton
Keeping educational content aligned across the K-12 market requires organizations to manage an enormous amount of changing information. With states continually revising academic and Career and Technical Education (CTE) standards, publishers and edtech providers must monitor updates, maintain alignment documentation, and respond quickly to new requirements across courses, pathways, and markets. As the volume of standards work continues to grow while alignment teams remain lean, the challenge is finding ways to increase efficiency without sacrificing the accuracy, context, and human judgment that high-quality alignment requires.
In this episode of the EdGate Powers Podcast, Rich Portelance speaks with Ashli Denton, Catalog Operations Manager at Edmentum, about the challenges of managing standards alignment at scale and how technology can help organizations keep pace with constantly changing requirements. The discussion explores how Edmentum monitors standards across all 50 states, manages the growing complexity of CTE pathways, and uses tools such as state trackers, alignment platforms, and AI to increase efficiency while maintaining quality.
Denton explains why CTE alignment presents unique challenges, including the number of pathways and standards involved and the need for supplemental experiences such as internships, apprenticeships, and capstone courses. She also discusses the limitations of AI-generated alignments, why human review remains essential, and how predictive and certified alignment reports can help organizations balance speed with precision. Throughout the conversation, Denton emphasizes that technology can help teams scale their work and accomplish more with fewer resources, but that meaningful alignment still depends on human expertise, transparency, context, and careful review.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How educational organizations monitor and manage changing standards across all 50 states.
- Why CTE standards create unique challenges for publishers and edtech providers.
- How state trackers can help organizations monitor standards updates at the pathway and cluster level.
- Where AI can improve efficiency in standards alignment and alignment documentation.
- Why AI-generated alignments still require human review and expert judgment.
- The difference between predictive and certified alignment reports and how each can support different business needs.
- Why transparency around alignment gaps provides valuable information for educators and decision makers.
- How organizations can use technology, vendors, and contractors to scale standards alignment while maintaining quality.
Why This Conversation Matters
Educational publishers and edtech providers are under increasing pressure to deliver alignment documentation for more courses, more states, and more specialized subject areas while standards continue to change. CTE adds another layer of complexity, with states updating different pathways and clusters on different timelines and many programs requiring learning experiences that extend beyond an online course. For organizations with limited alignment teams, simply adding more people is not always a practical solution.
Organizations that combine technology-driven efficiencies with human expertise will be better positioned to scale alignment without allowing speed to undermine quality. AI can help identify potential alignments, improve content search, automate portions of documentation, and increase the volume of work teams can handle, but human reviewers remain essential for evaluating nuances, identifying incorrect matches, interpreting standards, and providing the context that automated systems cannot reliably supply.
Join Rich and Ashli as they explore how educational organizations can scale standards alignment in an increasingly complex K-12 marketplace by combining emerging technology with human expertise, thoughtful processes, and the safeguards needed to maintain accurate and trustworthy alignment.
Learn how edtech companies are using technology and artificial intelligence to navigate increasingly complex standards alignments.
Ashli Denton is the Catalog Operations Manager at Edmentum, where she leads a team dedicated to optimizing standards alignment and curriculum services across diverse academic and CTE content areas. With 20 years’ experience in managing alignment systems, Ashli is passionate about driving process improvements, ensuring data accuracy, and fostering collaboration between educators and technology partners. Her work has helped streamline alignment workflows and enhance the accessibility of high-quality curriculum resources for schools and districts nationwide.
Rich is passionate about eEdTech and helping people discover pathways to successful careers. He leverages his many years of business experience in strategy, product development, brand creation and sales & marketing as a frequent industry speaker and sought after consultant.
Beginning his career in digital marketing and web development, Rich was recruited into the private, independent school market to help usher in digital technologies and social media. During this time, Richard served as a student advisor and was nominated to serve on the CAIS (Connecticut Association of Independent Schools) Technology Commission. In 2012, Rich joined York & Chapel, a brand and digital transformation agency where he began working with secondary and higher ed clients, developing strategies for student engagement and pathway creation. In 2014, Richard founded CareerPath, a SaaS engagement platform. Over the past ten years, Rich has given back to the industry as an advisor to numerous EdTech startups, and generally has had a blast doing what he loves to do — help others succeed.
Questions Answered
During the podcast, we tackle critical questions that many school leaders are asking as districts determine whether new edtech products are appropriate, secure, interoperable, and worth implementing.
- How can technology improve career and technical education (CTE) curriculum management?
- How can edtech companies manage constantly changing CTE standards?
- What features would the ideal AI-powered curriculum alignment tool include?
- How can AI improve standards amangement and curriculum alignment?
- How do curriculum alignment teams work with sales and product teams effectively?
- How can education companies scale curriculum alignment with smaller teams?
- How are edtech companies using AI to improve curriculum alignment?
- How can smaller edtech companies compete using AI and human expertise?