The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved. Please note that Hillary's last name has since changed. However, the last name in this transcript reflects her name at the time of recording.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Good afternoon, this is Rich Portelance from EdGate and the EdGate Powers podcast. I have with me today a very exciting guest; someone, you know… You don't often get rockstars on your podcast, but today I feel like I have a rockstar: Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi) from Whiteboard Advisors. Hillary has a tremendous background in the educational space, working at the state level and the federal level. I'm going to let her introduce herself, but I do want to remind the audience that on December 17th will be the upcoming webinar, The State of Learning Standards–that's the topic, and that's part of what we're going to cover today. Hillary and I are going to talk and do an in-depth dive on the state of learning standards. So, we invite you to join, there will be a link below in the description for registering for the podcast, so if you– or for the webinar, so if you see this podcast and you listen to it, please register for the webinar. It's going to be super exciting; we have some great guests, including Hillary. But without further ado, Hillary, could you give the audience an introduction? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Yes, thanks, Rich. I’m excited to join today, and I do think the world of learning standards is an exciting one to talk about. So, much of my career over the last decade has had to do with learning standards. So, as you noted, I did work at the federal level, I worked on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions under Lamar Alexander, when we were writing and passing the Every Student Succeeds Act, which is still, of course, the federal law of K-12 education, the most recent reauthorization of ESEA (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act), which is coming in on nine years, actually. I can't quite believe it. 

And then after my time on the Hill, I served as deputy chief of staff at the Tennessee Department of Education, so I was in Tennessee for several years working on both our federal plan under ESSA and led a lot of our work around high-quality instructional materials (HQIM). Of course, Tennessee is a textbook adoption state, so we can talk a little bit about that, what that means for being similar or different to other states, and how they think about learning standards. 

And then currently, as noted, I am a vice president at Whiteboard Advisors, focused on K-12 research and strategy, so my portfolio includes a range of K-12 organizations. Whether that be nonprofits and startups, to private equity firms and foundations, as well, and a lot of that is focused on math and numeracy right now, so I am in the weeds on math standards in particular. So, I am based in Oakland, although Whiteboard Advisors is based in Washington, D.C. We've got team members spread across the country working on everything from early childhood through workforce, and strategy, comms, PR, and research. So, I’m excited to go deep today. Where should we begin? 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

All right, well, why don't we pull back and do the “30,000-foot view” for people, because I think it's important to look at what's happening in this landscape, you know? You know, everybody who watches this podcast is going to know about Common Core, they're going to know that the states are becoming more and more unique in their approach to things, but from your vantage point, because you have such a unique perspective, having been on the Hill, having been at the state level, and now in more the private sector, if you had to kind of take a look from that 30,000 foot view, what do you see today? And then how is that going to evolve over the next six months, year, or two years? 

Hillary Knudson

Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there's kind of a continuation of what has been in the works for the last 10 years, and will probably persist through the next 10 years, right? The best predictor of future performance is past performance, and what we saw with ESSA is a paradigm shift, right? So, if we do a little history lesson and we go back to where we were within the, you know, Race to the Top (RTTT) era, right, and when Common Core was garnering support, right, it's important to recognize that it was from the National Governors Association that we even got the idea from Common Core. So, let's set aside the politicization of Common Core and just say there was an effort at that time really focused on standards, and ensuring that all students were being held to a challenging academic standard. Once we got through the Race to the Top era, and we were in a position where we were going to reauthorize ESEA–that became the Every Student Succeeds Act–what federal law called for then, and is still true now, is that all states must set challenging academic standards, right? It's up to the states to set those standards, and we know that there are consistencies among and between states, and that it's also not just limited to math and literacy, right? Like, we talk about math and reading as core subjects, but those aren't the only subjects that have learning standards, and it's certainly not the only ones that students are spending their days thinking about. I think as we, you know, situate ourselves in, you know, December 2024 here, we also know we have an incoming administration, and what does that mean for the role of the feds? I think if we're going to, you know, keep the 30,000-foot view in a little bit of a crystal ball, it's still about what are states doing, what do states want to be doing, and how are they leading this work. 

And states, you know, in recent history have certainly been the leaders in setting their learning standards and how they approach this work. The addition I would make is as we think about other subjects and how focused we are on those other subjects. So, things like financial literacy, African-American history, career and technical education (CTE), right? As we think about both CTE and work-based learning being two important areas that will continue to grow, both recently, and as we think about the incoming administration, that's another area that I think is ripe to continue. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So if we're going to be challenging academic standards to help to eliminate inequities within our educational system, how can we do that by having 50 different sets of academic standards? Like, you know… I'll stop there because that could be a really long question. 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

So, I think it's interesting when we– if we think about this from a student's perspective, right? Most students aren't aware of the standards for which they're learning necessarily, right? Like, you might have a cream-of-the-crop teacher who has a standard they're talking about that day, and the students know, and that's what they're focused on in their experience. And if they never move and never change schools, or never move out of state, then that progression holds, and you're not concerned. But, say you're a student that is, you know, military-connected, and you're jumping between states at different grades, and how do those things map to one another? I think that is challenging. It's also challenging for teachers, right, as they also move across state lines and have different standards in that way. At the same time, we do know–and EdGate does this super well–of knowing the consistencies that do exist across states, right? So if we take science, for example, we had the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a major effort to say this is where we should be going in science and in the future of the work, and a big part of that too is thinking about how students learn, right? Not just what they're learning. But not every state has adopted NGSS standards, but most states have either adopted NGSS or said, “We're going to take this into account, massage it into our own state perspective,” and they're, you know, fairly similar. So, I think there are consistencies, and it wouldn't– it's not so dramatically different that it's impossible. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. No, that makes sense. So, the EdGate taxonomy, which was kind of how the company got started back in the late 90s, is created based on concepts, so we call it the Concept Index. It really is, you know, everything boils back– when we do Al alignments, it's all based on concepts that are within those standards and within the content that is being published, so that it has that common thread to be able to go from state to state. 

And that's why the tool, ExACT, can align so quickly. With advanced technologies, it can say, “Hey, this concept is available here, and here, and here, and here.” And so, all of a sudden, you have some relationship between states, but, you know, I mean, honestly, we know it's not always boiling down to kids learning better. There are still inequities. You've been out there at the state level. I'm curious, from your perspective, how publishers and edtech providers can help to drive advancement so we reduce the inequities that exist in the system. And, you know, so where do they exist, and how can our clients and the people out there–the people we serve–help to fix the problem? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Right, because standards are really the first step, right? We have to set what the bar is and set those challenging academic standards, right, and what that gives us. And I think it's important to remember what standards are and are not, right? So the standards are saying in… let's talk about fourth-grade math, because it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Fourth-grade math, right? We all know the specific point in third-grade reading where if you're reading on grade level in third grade, you're more likely to be successful in a myriad of ways. We don't have the exact same touchstone in math yet. However, if we look at math standards in particular in fourth grade, that's when we're talking about fractions; that's when we're talking about complex ratios, multiplication, and long division for the first time. So it's all– what the standards tell us is that students in fourth grade need to be able to solve for some of these more complex, conceptual mathematical terms, that if they were not successful in building upon in second and third grade, it's going to be very challenging in fourth grade, right? That's what the standards say. What the standards do not say is, “How do we teach students this work? What materials do we use to teach students this work? And what other supports are provided to students to be able to meet those grade-level expectations?” Right? And so when we think of, like, again, situating as the student, you're aware of what– Right, okay, we're going to– we're in our math, in our fourth-grade math block today, we're talking about fractions, and so there are a lot of different ways to approach that. We need to think about both conceptual and procedural understanding, and so what the standards are not going to get into is the “how”, right? And that's where the instructional materials and the professional learning of teachers come into play, so that the student can meaningfully understand what it is that those expectations are.

Rich Portelance

Okay, so there's an opportunity for advancement to kind of get this right. I know that, you know, within our system, it is, you know, we have a lot of players and a lot of thoughts on how to go about doing it, but there's a lot of passion behind what we do, right? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Absolutely, passion, right? And when we talk about what makes for high-quality instructional material, right? And so, I think there is no–is not a singular definition necessarily, but we know the components of what makes up high-quality instructional materials, or HQIM, right? And so, it is about the evidence base for those materials; it's about also ensuring that teachers are trained on those materials. I think it's very hard to be successful in the classroom if your professional learning is agnostic to the curriculum that you're using, right? And so there's many curriculums that will meet the standards, right? So if it's a high-quality instructional material, we need standards alignment, right? No question, that's a necessity. But I think the instructional coherence, again, at the student level, if you're going from a math block, to an intervention block to after-school tutoring, you're using different instructional materials for all of those things, and you're doing, you know, grade-level content that you're not prepared for in the math block, and then intervention that's supposed to be helping you, but it's not actually connected, and then go to tutoring to try and make up for what you missed, that is not a coherent instructional experience, and I think part of that is about how we have so many choices, which isn't inherently a problem. I think the challenge comes from how much onus are we putting on the teacher to solve for that, versus on the state or the district to say, “Teachers, these are the instructional materials we're using; this is what you have been trained on. Of course, you know your students best, but being able to make those student-level, classroom-level decisions, that's the art of teaching”, right? And all the rest of it is part of the science of it.

Rich Portelance

So, from what I'm hearing, I'm wondering, are you a fan of project-based learning so there is coherence across all disciplines?

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Absolutely. I mean, I think there's so much opportunity, and I talk about this too a lot in terms of student engagement, right? We are still at unprecedented levels of chronic absenteeism, right? We have a third of students that are missing school at rates that we've never seen before. And those are rates that have not rebounded in a post-COVID world, so there's something else happening here around why students are choosing not to show up to school, right? And then for the students that do show up, it's, are they engaged? Are they actively learning? We can't expect that students can still be, you know, sitting in their rows of desks quietly listening to a teacher and call that “learning”; it's not. And so, I think how we engage students and allow them to be the owners of their learning, right, to say, “These are the standards across subjects that I'm focused on within this project,” creates a lot of exciting work–especially in the upper grades, right? I think we think of it in lower grades especially, because elementary schools are less likely to be departmentalized, and so, sometimes it feels like there's a, you know, a path of least resistance for elementary teachers to be able to be more cross-disciplinary. But in high school, like, I say it all the time of, like, “You should give students more credit. If you ask them, they have ideas, and we should leave some things up to them.” 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I agree. And I don't know if you've ever heard of this: the 119K Commission, which was done by the Dalio Philanthropies, part of– 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Okay. 

Rich Portelance

Barbara Dalio, Ray Dalio's wife, the billionaire from Bridgewater, she did this study here in Connecticut, and they found that there's 119,000 youth that are disengaged from our educational system, which equates to about 20% of the population– of the youth population in the state. And now, one of the wealthiest states and supposedly best-educated states, and here we have 119,000 youth that are disengaged, and what's– you know, what's the problem? And if you look at the demographics of that, of course it's in the highly populated, urban areas, mostly minority students, you know. And, you know, you can kind of probably spell the rest out. 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Right. Those that are so– that are already feeling disenfranchised for one way or another and then not showing up to school. I also think it's important to call out, like, it's because Connecticut has such strong data around their chronic absenteeism that they were even able to put out that report. So it's not that Connecticut as a state is facing, you know, more severe challenges than other states–it's actually because they have such a robust state data system that they can point to these numbers, where other states are, like, “Well, we're not sure.” And that's, I think, important to remember of, like, you know, if you're– We're approaching the holiday season. If you were saying, you know, you put on that “winter weight”, perhaps. Just because you don't step on the scale doesn't mean that the numbers didn't change. And I think it's similarly of, like, just because you don't track that data well doesn't mean that the numbers are good. So, I give Connecticut a lot of credit for being able to put out that kind of information, and kind of give it its kudos for being able to do so, even if the outcome is certainly challenging to address.

Rich Portelance 

Because you can't solve a problem if you don't acknowledge the problem, if you don't look at it, and, you know, one of the things that EdGate has done which I'm just really proud of them for having come up with is, you know, you don't always make money from the things that you produce, and because you just want to be a thought leader, or you have things that people can use. And recently– 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Contribute to the field!

Rich Portelance 

What's that? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

And to contribute to the field, right? Like, make all of us better, yes. 

Rich Portelance 

So, they put out on their website–and I can actually put a link in the description below–there are some maps that they produced that, now when you click on the maps, they tell you the comparison to Common Core for each state. So we can say, you know, Wyoming uses 20% of the Common Core, or, you know, and it kind of goes through. So it's data that really helps people to start to understand, you know, kind of where they are in time and space. If I have some– if I'm a textbook publisher and I do want to dig into adoptions, I can have a baseline check, right, for where my content might be. If I know it meets Common Core, I know I'm, you know, 60% of the way and say, “Okay, now we can figure out what the gaps are and kind of move in the right direction.” So, you know, when we talk about textbook adoption, and again, you have the expertise at the state level, what are you looking at, and what do you think is the main driver of necessity within that space? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Yeah, right, so I think it’s important to acknowledge that everybody, every state sets their academic standards, and that those standards are refreshed, right? Whether that's a five-, six-, eight-, or 10-year cycle, they are doing a standards revision. We know sometimes those standards revisions are much more significant than they are in other years. I think most recently, I think social studies has seen the most dramatic shifts, or at least the most noise around changes to standards. And then you have… I think math standards, where depending on if you are approaching a math standards revision, or have just come off of one, there have been some more significant shifts as well. And so, every state is thinking about that and doing it on whatever their cycle is. I would say in most states, it's like a six-to-eight-year cycle. 

And then you have about 18 states that have a formal textbook adoption process. We still call it textbooks even if most kids are not using textbooks anymore, right? That there's– most things are instructional materials that are digital, as well as printables, as well as consumables, all of that. But we'll still use the shorthand of textbook adoption. So, those states… I think the anticipated trend, we don't necessarily think that more states will take on a formal adoption process, but we also don't think that states that have this process will move away from it. So it's more likely that there's going to be consistency in those 17 to 18 states that we see. The only asterisk to that is that of the 45 states that pass science of reading laws, there might have been some specific language within that legislation around adoption of materials related to early grades’ reading in particular. So, you have– so that number becomes a bit bigger and a bit fuzzier. 

I think the other interesting part, though, if you take the states that have formal textbook adoption processes of the remaining states–the majority of states–there's also district efforts to say, “This isn't going to be the Wild West anymore for schools to choose whatever they want, right? That we're going to create– we're going to adopt at the district level, and this is what you choose from.” It might be that there are still options, right, for schools to choose from, or it's that this is it–this is our math book for elementary, middle, and high school, and this is what we're doing. 

And I think that shift is notable, and a trend line to watch, of especially in the largest district. So I work with some of the largest school districts in the country on their math implementation of instructional materials, and their support for teachers and leaders in the pedagogy surrounding math. That effort is partially because each of these districts are taking on their own textbook adoption process, right? For the first time ever, you have, you know, New York, LA (Los Angeles), and Chicago public schools saying, “These are the high-quality instructional materials that we will use, and schools need to get on board”, right? And that's a very different approach than of every district in New York being able to do, you know, whatever they wish. 

So, I think it's kind of the like, how tight are we holding the reins, because if we are going to meet the demands of the standards that we set, then the instructional materials need to match that. And for the instructional materials to match that and be effective, right, I think– you know, David Steiner has done a lot of work in this space out of Johns Hopkins University, and saying, you know, the instructional materials are only as good as the teacher and doing the instruction as well.” And so, if that teacher doesn't have the necessary professional development to go alongside it, like, what are we really accomplishing here? So, I think the– In light of budgets being challenging in the upcoming year with the expiration of ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) dollars, that doesn't change that districts will still need to invest heavily in their educator capacity. And so, how do we do that? And how does the role of publishers and providers be able to support that too? 

Rich Portelance 

Okay. So, do you see that trend that's being set by the Chicagos, New Yorks, and LAs starting to infiltrate some of the, you know, smaller communities? Do you think that that's going to be– you said it's something to watch. Do you believe it'll continue to happen in States and in places that maybe even more disadvantaged youth are populous? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

I guess I both… I think so, and I hope so. So, part of it is, when you have these huge systems, right, how much do you centralize that purchasing power or control? When you're talking about the average school district that only has a few thousand kids, you inherently have a more centralized approach, because there's just not that many to go from. So, I would say there's– it's more likely that that system was already in place to a certain extent. It's more than, I think, a shift for teachers to say that they're doing something collectively, versus what they're doing within their own classroom. 

What I'm hoping we can see, and better support, are rural students. I think when I was in Tennessee, I visited over a thousand classrooms and made my way to almost every county in Tennessee. You know, right, we have county systems in the state, and a lot of students that live in rural areas and in more remote areas in the South, and that's not, you know, that's true to the region. And I think having access to things of like, both coming out of COVID when everything was remote, and we ramped up, you know, access to so many things digitally and virtually, how do we maintain some of that and how do we ensure students are getting the best education experience afforded to them, and not just based on, you know, where they live? So, things like, you know, Tennessee and Virginia have launched AP for All efforts, where every student in the state has access to Advanced Placement courses through a virtual learning opportunity. We have a ton of states that have expanded their dual enrollment and dual credit work where there's partnerships between the local community college and that school district. So I think there's also… We talk a lot about the support for urban students and under-resourced settings in high-populated areas, but I think we also cannot forget under-resourced settings in low population areas. 

Rich Portelance 

Yeah. Okay. I want to switch the conversation slightly, because I probably could go down a few rabbit holes here, you know, talking about teacher inequities and some other things that you touched on, but I think it's also important to look at, you know, if we're going to accomplish what we see out there that needs to be accomplished, and we have 50 states acting with independence from the federal government to a great extent, you know, how do we leverage technology in order to be able to speed the rate of change and keep up with these changes? Because not only are the states acting and performing things in unique ways, but the standards continue to change because life changes. You know, we have a lot of new things coming about, so the rate of standard updates is pretty frequent. You know, CTE standards are just like, people are throwing them out there like popcorn kernels; it’s crazy. And if we're going to align things, you know, advanced technologies have to have their place, so I just wanted to get your perspective on that, and maybe have a little conversation of, you know, solving some of these things with that in mind? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Yeah, because I think it's both, like, the process, right, and then the outcomes. I think one of the things that you and I talked about previously is the role of AI, as well, right? And so, when we think about, like, there are so many parts of this, right, of when I talk about AI and education, it's both how are teachers using AI within their day-to-day, but also how are teachers teaching about AI, right? And so, when we think of learning standards, we don't necessarily think about standards for AI, but that's actually something that we do need to consider, right? And the efforts of TeachAI that launched, you know, last year. And at this point, we have, you know, 22 states that have some type of AI guidance in place, right, of how they either, you know, have established a task force to think about the implications for AI and education, if they're equipping schools with guidance on responsible use of AI, right? And so that's a whole body of work that didn't exist like a blink of an eye ago, right? And here we are, where we know students are using AI, and I'm not one who thinks that students just use AI to cheat the system. I think if students are smart enough to be able to utilize ChatGPT in a way that gets them a better grade, then they fully earned that grade, right? I think it's on us as educators to say, “How do we challenge students in a way that they're deriving meaning from the work that they're doing, and aren't just plugging something into, you know, Claude, or ChatGPT, or whatever AI du jour. I think the… But that does create a great opportunity again for the engagement piece, as we talked about at the beginning, but then also for the processes. So I think, you know, even how… If teachers can use AI to reduce the burden of, you know, of the day-to-day work, right–whether that's how they grade, right, being able to use AI to grade so that you can give more thoughtful feedback and spend the time on the parts of teaching and the feedback process that benefits students, versus the, you know, like the “plus one, minus one”. But– And how you approach lesson plans, like, all of those things I think there's a real opportunity there, and I think similarly, when we have expertise in the field, then you can train your AI to be able to do some of the work, so I think– And that's some of what you're doing at EdGate, so I'll leave it to you to share a little bit about that, and then I can jump back in–I want to talk about CTE, as well.

Rich Portelance 

Okay. Oh, no, thank you, yeah. So, I appreciate that. EdGate uses things like machine learning and AI, you know, different advanced technologies to… within the ExACT system, which is what people know as the alignment system, but really it's a standards platform, so we ingest standards, we have an alignment tool that is able to align CTE standards or learning standards to content very rapidly, and once we have– you know, I talked earlier about the taxonomy, that's that patented taxonomy behind it using concepts, we can rapidly say once we have a concept that's attached to multiple standards, we can do an alignment– a quick alignment to every single state. So if you align to one state, we can show you the degrees it aligns to every other state, and then do a gap analysis against it, and this is all using technology, so you can have a report that says, you know, “Here's my content, here's my textbook, and here's where my gaps are for each particular state.” So if you want to become adopted, you're going to need to, you know, have the alignments done; you're probably going to need third-party validation against that–most states are doing that now–so, you know, EdGate's working on both sides of that coin. But it's like, as you said, it's not something that can be avoided, and the idea of hand correlations or hand alignments is why we still have subject matter experts (SMEs) on our team–and who aren't going anywhere because they're so valuable. You know, they don't want to sit there and do hand alignments anymore. I mean, they want to proof things, they want to– 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Right. It’s work smarter, not harder, right? Like, we put in the work so that we can work smarter, and it doesn't need to be as painstaking, right? And I think that's true for so many things, and it's true in a way that we can't anticipate, right? If you and I were having this conversation six or eight years ago, that would be baffling to consider that we could do this as quickly and as robustly and without one-to-one. I think that is similar to how we think about what is the goal of a student's K-12 education, right? And so, it's not just to get them to high school graduation, right? And I think that too is another paradigm shift of– it's very rare that I talk to a high school principal and they're like, “Yep, well, once we hit high school graduation, they're good; they're on their own,” right? That principal cares about where every student is going the next day, right? Are they– did they already earn their associate's? Do they already have a welding certificate? Are they going directly into a four-year institution? The role of K-12 is to prepare students for the opportunities that come next, and what we talked about in Tennessee is having choice in those opportunities, right? And I think, you know, we talk about college and career–regardless of what post-secondary institution you're going to, everyone's going to end up in a career, right? And so, how do we support that in high school? And I think it's both the project-based learning that we talked about, but another way to do that is through things like CTE and work-based learning. 

And I think as, you know, as predictions go, we're about to start the, you know, State of the State addresses in a few months here, we've got a few new governors too, and I would bet high dollars that most all of them are going to say something about CTE or work-based learning, that the role of education is also to support workforce development and support students in figuring out where to go next. And honestly, I don't think any of us can say we know what the majority of students’ jobs will look like by the time they get to that place of career. So how are we ensuring that, you know, learning standards are adjusting in a way that are nimble enough to meet the demands of CTE? What we– We've had advanced manufacturing in CTE for a lot of decades. What that looked like when, you know, when my dad was a manufacturing engineer is wildly different from what that looks like now. So I think it's also the, like, the look to the future to say, “We're preparing students for more than just being able to read, write, and go on to college and career.” Like, we have to be doing more than that, and it gets back to that engagement piece too, and not, you know, losing them just to social media and their cell phones.

Rich Portelance 

I'll plug EdGate again because they're the only group in the world that has a career-finding tool based on learning and CTE standards, so, you know, helping people to progress through, you know, how do I understand my skills again that, where the gap is, I can use education standards and CTE standards as a baseline to find a career. And as you were just talking about that, we're actually– there's a project starting up with a group out of the University of Chicago called Data Science 4 Everyone, and their whole mission is to bring data science into the classroom, because you have to teach students about the advanced technologies, how to think– data science is really a thinking process more than anything, so how do we… how do we incorporate that into the curriculum? 

So, they're looking at K through 12 and saying, you know, “Here are modules, here are things that you can teach students,” and eventually, I guarantee those will become standards so that you can teach against it and align to it over time. But that's, you know, that's a sign that progress is not going to stop, and the better we teach kids to think about these technologies and how to leverage them, the better off we're going to be. 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Absolutely, and I'm glad you brought up data science, too. I think there's, you know, the… Yeah, I would be remiss in speaking from California of like, right, how the the math wars unfolded here and data science being a part of that, of like, I think what we all should be able to agree on is that data science, learning about data, and how and what and how to use data is important, regardless of what you're studying or what you're going to do next. I think the challenge within the math community is: does that become a de facto tracking mechanism for students after we've tried to make so much– make up so much ground to not track students going into high school? But at the same time, it doesn't change that that is a competency that's needed, right? So, I think similar to, you know, the way financial literacy standards have taken off, right, we have at least a dozen states–I have to look up now how many past, you know, even last year too, that that is an additional requirement. You also have, you know, a dozen states that now require computer science to be offered in every high school. So I think there are analogous views of other subjects that data science can potentially follow. I think the challenge will always be how much more are we asking of teachers in the same amount of time that they have, right? How many more things can you add without taking anything away? You only have so many minutes in a day. Of course, that gives a plug for competency-based learning, which I'm always happy to do, of like, how do we do more things and not within the confines of seat time, but that's a big– that is also part of the equation, I guess, to leave it with a pun. 

Rich Portelance 

It really is, and, you know, so, if we kind of remind everybody about the webinar coming up on the 17th of December, and Hillary will be there; we're going to be talking about these topics and the State of Learning Standards, and this is a great preview for what's to come. We will have some representation from the publishing world; we'll have Kathleen Ideguchi from the EdGate team on as well. She can talk about some of the technologies that EdGate is deploying and working on. But let's go back to that topic: the state of learning standards. And so, you know, we've covered quite a bit of ground here, Hillary. I'm wondering, from your perspective, if, you know– how do you sharpen the point on this? You know, if you were the arbiter in the world of education, how do you sharpen the pencil? What change do you make that's going to affect the change that you want to see? 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Well, and it's tough to be the arbiter of education in the U.S. because we do have such a highly federated system, right? It's not just 50 states–it's also 15,000 school districts that all have their own ability to make those decisions, and I think many decisions do make the most sense to be as close to the learner as possible. At the same time, we have to hold the line on rigor. So, I think if there's one top line, it's that we… as we engage in this… in the world of the future, right, of we can't anticipate what these students' jobs will be, we need to be confident that the standards that we're setting for them are rigorous and meaningful, right? That it's not just… you know, you've got to be able to jump this high, but that there's a purpose to that. And I think being able to… that students are both hungry to know that purpose alongside teachers, and I think it does create opportunity for more cross-pollination between subjects in a way that can engage students, that does lend itself to competency-based learning and project-based learning, where you're not just sitting in your desk in your math block, and then the bell rings, and you go and sit in your desk in your science block. Like, how do those things work together? That's a… To achieve that is a monumental shift, though, right? It's easy to sit here and say that, “Oh, we should just be able to do these things.” I think there are pockets where– pockets of success in high schools that have truly transformed the learning experience of students. But again, you need the foundation, and that foundation is set by learning standards, and then layered on top of it, you have your instructional materials, and then the teacher capacity to be able to teach those with fidelity in a way that is engaging students. And then at the top, you have students that are engaged and learning and in a way that's meaningful, so I think that's the dream, but we've got a long way to go. 

Rich Portelance 

Well, if, you know, I think the starting point is expressing the dream, right? And the more people that hear this and they, you know, agree, hopefully we can start to affect change over time because we all know that it comes in small increments. It's, you know, it would be nice to say we could roll up and just make that change happen, but it doesn't work that way. But we each do our part, and I tell you, just having you here today, I feel like I've been, you know, gaining a lot of knowledge, and you get me excited about the work that we do here in education, because change does happen when you have good people and good conversations. I want to give you the opportunity to wrap up in any way you want to. I do want to encourage our audience to sign up for the Whiteboard Advisors newsletter, because I know I get it every week, I think it's one of the most informative pieces out there, and if you're in education, you should be, you know, looking at what Whiteboard Advisors puts out there, so we're happy to put your link in the description, Hillary. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance 

Anything you want to share as we wrap up?

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Yes. Definitely subscribe; what we're reading goes out Monday through Thursday, and Whiteboard Notes goes out on Fridays, and it is a wealth of information. You'll see me as a contributor to those things, and we also post them on LinkedIn too. I think the look ahead is still one of optimism, right? I think regardless of the shake-up federally, what this means for states is the status quo. Much of education, like we've noted, is led by states and will continue to be led by states. I think it's the state education agency's (SEA) role to both incentivize districts for the work that needs to happen and is exciting, but you have to have both a carrot and a stick, right, and different states take different approaches to that. But if we set what– if we can set meaningful expectations and make sure those are meaningful to students, I think we'll be well on our way to ensuring that this future generation is well equipped for whatever the world brings us.

Rich Portelance 

Well, Hillary, thank you for joining the EdGate podcast, we– 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Thanks for having me, Rich! 

Rich Portelance 

–are just pleased about today's conversation. We look forward to having you on the webinar in a couple of weeks, and until then, have yourself a great day! 

Hillary Knudson (Rinaldi)

Great. Thanks so much. You too.