The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Why, hello everyone. This is Rich Portelance, and once again, we're doing the EdGate Powers Education Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about alignment accuracy, delivering precision at scale. And with me today is Jeremy Ashcraft. He works with EdGate and for EdGate. I'm going to let him introduce himself, but I'm excited about not only the topic, but our guest today. You know, Jeremy and I have known each other for a number of years, and we've worked together, and he has a really distinct and I think important point of view that's going to help inform our upcoming webinar. So, that's going to be happening in June. There is going to be a link below. Please sign up for the webinar if you're watching this podcast. It's going to be a great conversation. We have some excellent guests, including Jeremy. 

So, without further ado, Jeremy, could you give the audience a little intro? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. Thanks, Rich. 

Yeah, my name is Jeremy Ashcraft. I'm the director of technology for EdGate. I've been working with EdGate for almost over 25 years now. I'm kind of one of the “OGs” from the founding. But before that, you know, I worked in biotech a little bit. I worked in healthcare, IT, and sales incentives before I kind of landed at EdGate. 

Rich Portelance

That's fantastic. And I think that informs your perspective here, having been with EdGate for 25 years, which is really significant. You saw it when everything was completely hand-done to today, and you've been directing it for the last number of years. So, I'm excited to hear what you have to say and how that has evolved over time, including some of the new technologies.

Discussion

Rich Portelance

So, why don't we start? There's a huge amount of conversation right now around how AI-powered alignment tools can work. From your perspective, Jeremy, what's the market getting right, and where are the misunderstandings?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, one of the things they're getting right is that AI is a must-have these days. You know, if you're not trying to integrate AI into your processes, you're getting left behind by everybody else. Alignment is tedious and expensive, you know. 

And so, I think some of the things people are getting wrong is that they're just assuming that AI is the magic wand that solves everything. You can't just replace your existing process with AI. You know, you have to figure out how to augment the process and not replace it. 

Rich Portelance

So, that kind of leads into my second question, which is really around… You know, everybody knows AI can speed things up, but we're going to be talking on the webinar about precision. So, why is that distinction so important in your mind having done this for 25 years? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, I mean, speed's kind of meaningless if the precision's not there. You know, you lose that advantage if you're spending more time reviewing and correcting. And then something changes, so then you have to go back and redo everything, you know, you lose that speed advantage. So if you have that precision and that repeatability built in, that actually leads to being able to have a faster process overall.  

Rich Portelance

So, I would imagine, and I've seen some examples of this, that a lot of people coming into the edtech market, maybe they've been here for a couple of years, but they believe that they can do alignments with AI, and kind of go, “Alright, why do I need someone like EdGate? Because I can do it myself”. I want to understand why alignment is harder than people think. And from a technology standpoint, what makes standards alignment such a difficult problem to solve at scale? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

I think the big problem, and it's a problem we deal with too, is just the volume. And kind of to an equal extent, just the variation across the data sets. I mean, there are so many sets of standards even within a given organization. There are so many different documents, so many different, you know, benchmarks at all the different grade levels, and the format and the content just vary so widely, and everything's constantly changing. You know, just as, like, emerging technologies, emerging topics, you know, that they're teaching in the schools, they've got to create new standards for that. And so now, here are new standards and new topics where content may not exist. And it's just dealing with those kinds of, you know, scale issues that make it difficult. 

Rich Portelance

So, it sounds like, if I had to draw an analogy, that, you know, if you were doing target shooting, it's one thing to have one target and be precise, but it sounds like you have eight or 10 targets,  all moving simultaneously, you have to figure out when they converge, and then be able to hit a shot through all eight targets in order to make this happen. Is that kind of..? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. It's sort of like… Something I use is kind of like the spinning plates example, where, you know, you've constantly got a plate spinning, and I'm spending time over here dealing with this one while this one's wobbling, and then I got to keep switching streams all the time. It's just a challenge. 

Rich Portelance

Okay, so it's a challenge.  

Some people and some alignment systems get close. Why do they fail in real implementation? You know, where do you see those pitfalls happening?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, I think a lot of those issues stem from how they generally approach alignment in a single way. You know, they don't have any kind of those key processes defined that ensures that precision and the repeatability.  

That's, I think, the biggest thing, is that… I've done an alignment, but then, oh, this state just implemented new standards. Oh, now I've got to go do that alignment again, okay. 

And a lot of the more traditional kind of alignment process is just doing that one-to-one. I've got a piece of content, I browse the standards, I say, “Okay, this content aligns to that standard”. Is this correct? Yes. Is it efficient? No. 

Rich Portelance

So, if I've created a system that can, you know, go into a single state and do alignments, and I tie that down and it's working, why is it so difficult to then go and repeat that process across all 50 states? Where do things break down?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Well, I think a lot of it is, one, you need to have familiarity with all of the standards across all the different states, across all the different subject areas. Well, depending on what you're publishing. But just, I think, the overall volume of data, it becomes intimidating, I think, for some people. And it's hard to compensate for all the potential kinds of differing alignment requirements, you know, across different types of content that you have. You know, you're going to align a textbook differently than you align an assessment question. And each state is going to have different requirements around their standards, their assessments, and it's just, you know, you just have to have that domain expertise. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And from what I understand, not only is the content different, but you have to know how to line up those various content types, but in finding the standards, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some Excel documents, some PDFs, some Word docs, you know. So to standardize, understand where they are, how to find them, and then standardize that is also a master challenge, right? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. Exactly.  

Rich Portelance

So, let's talk about, you know, how AI kind of comes into play, because for years we were doing this without AI– or you were, I shouldn't say we were. I think it was 1996 or so when EdGate started, so it's coming into 30 years or so that EdGate has existed. You've been doing this for 25 years, and this process, as we talked about, was manual. But in that manual process, I guess before I say, “Talk about AI”, give people a preview of the some of the technology, or ways in which you do things, and the patented process that exists that underlies the work that is done today, because I know that's really significant, and still kind of plays a part into what EdGate does today, correct? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, absolutely. 

Starting out originally, we did alignment like everybody else did. You know, we took individual pieces of content, align them to individual standards. And, you know, one of our founders figured that there's got to be a better way to do this. This is too slow and we've got a lot of content. 

So, they developed the idea of having a concept index. So it's a taxonomy of curricular concepts that are, you know, addressed and taught within the standards. So we had to take the time to go through and do an analysis of all the various standard sets across, at the time, the 50 states, and extract out, okay, these are all the concepts that are taught, and identifying the subject areas, figuring out the categorization and the hierarchy within those concepts, and coming up with the right level of granularity, so that way, you get good precise matches between… You know, I've got something that teaches adding fractions. Well, I can now use a concept about adding fractions, and then I can use that to find all the standards that address adding fractions. 

And that's kind of been the core of our process. You know, for almost 25 years now. That's kind of what we call the “secret sauce” in our alignment process. And that taxonomy has kind of grown and been refined, you know, over the years. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So, it changes. As things change, whether adding, you know, information about technology or AI or other things, taxonomy is a growing, living entity. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. So, as I said, it's completely rooted in the standards. So, you know, as things exist in the standards, they also exist in our concept index. 

Rich Portelance

Nice. 

So, that concept index, now that we know the baseline as AI is kind of taking shape, and is generally improving alignment workflow today, where do you see AI having effect on the process as it exists? Where is it adding workflow improvement? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, one of the things AI is exceedingly good at is automation. So, you know, a lot of the process of alignment, I don't want to call it tedious, but, you know, you're able to automate a lot of these very manual tasks, and AI is really good at that. You give it an instruction, “Do this thing 10,000 times”, and it'll do that thing 10,000 times. Really good at that. You know, a lot of that automation does provide a lot of short-term cost savings. You know, so those are the things where it's really improving things for folks. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And it's… I'm sure that as you're utilizing it and testing it, it falls short in some places. Where do you see that it's not kind of “making the grade” and you still have to use some old-line processes, or other ways, in order to get our alignments correct? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, a lot of the problems we see are, you know, a lot of the models just lack that domain context. You know, most people use the general models, and they're good on the surface. But then, when you get into the details of doing that process over and over a thousand times, you discover that kind of repeatability is not there. 

So, you know, I fed something into AI. I told it to align to the Common Core. I got something that looked good, right? But then if I go back and I do that process again, there's a very– there's a nonzero chance that's going to give me a different answer. And if it's giving me a different answer for one piece, how do I know that I'm getting the right answer every time I feed something, you know, into an AI chatbot? And so that's one of the things that we're trying to solve is, you know, not replacing the process with AI, but how do we improve the existing process using AI? 

Rich Portelance

Okay. So it can accelerate the process, but it can't guarantee quality. So, you know, you have to be discerning, right? Is there any other nuance to that that you think people would want to know?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, I think the other downside to this is that not a lot of people are, you know, kind of well-versed in… I don't want to say how to properly use AI, but most people think, “Oh, well, I just go to ChatGPT, I type something in, and it gives me something”. That's their, you know, that's their experience. It takes a lot of time to know and understand how to craft a prompt. How do I provide proper context for that prompt? How do I then review the response and then refine and revise? You know, just a lot of people just don't have that experience yet. So, a lot of people might get frustrated, or they'll just take the first thing that they get back and go, "Yeah, that's good enough”. 

Rich Portelance

Alright. So, that's a good point, Jeremy. You talk about being good enough. What is, you know, good enough, or what do people expect? Is it like an 80% alignment? Is it a 90%? What defines “good” in this space in your mind?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. Well, some of what's good as far as, like, what we internally define as our thresholds, a lot of that just comes with experience over time where, you know, we've done this long enough that we know that if I'm doing some sort of semantic comparison, you know, and– I'm making this number up– we get 85%, we'll consider that good because we trust the system. But when it comes to alignment, being 80% aligned isn't that… I mean, that's just not good enough. Clients are going to want as close to 100% as you can get. Especially states, or if you're doing RFPs, you know, they don't want materials that are only going to cover 80% of what they're teaching in the classroom, or 80% of what they're assessing at the end of the year. That's just not going to cut it. 

Rich Portelance

And is it true that having the concept index and some of the other proprietary processes that  EdGate has allows you to get closer to 100% than if you did this, you know, on your own or with ChatGPT or some other form? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Oh, sure. Absolutely. 

So, you know, we have the data, and we've tagged all of the standards with those concepts. So, even if you go in, you align your data, and you hit 80%, we can show you that, hey, you're only at 80%, but here are the gaps. Here's where you need to fill things in. You know, here's where you're… Whatever this content set is that you're trying to align to this entire set of standards, you're missing pieces here, here, and here. So you've got some content development to do, or you need to add more resources to it, you know, whatever this content set is. So that's a powerful tool unto itself, understanding the gaps and the alignment. Yeah.  

Rich Portelance

So, you know, kind of talking about the “how”, you said that AI is coming in and you're utilizing it in discrete ways, but a long time ago, at some point, you took that manual process and started to automate it with the ExACT tool, and I guess, first, can you tell people what ExACT is? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, ExACT is… I mean, it's not just an online platform where, you know, clients can get in and align content or access aligned content. We designed it to kind of make the process of aligning content to standards as painless and precise as the customer’s needs require. Some customers need very, very granular alignments because they're aligning assessment items, or another customer just wants to have good marketing messaging on their website, so they have very broad alignment, saying, "Look at all the standards that we cover". 

And the nice thing about ExACT is that it's not just a kind of “do-it-yourself” platform; it's also a reporting platform, it's an authoring platform. And then, you know, we have a number of other kinds of deliverables that allow you to not just put data into the system, but also consume it. And you can be involved in this alignment process as much or as little as you want to. If you don't want to, you know, handle, or bother, or touch alignment at all, that's fine. We have consulting services who can do that all that for you, and then give you access to the reports and the data. If you want to do everything yourself, great. You can log in to ExACT, upload your data, do the alignments, run your own reports, and off you go. Or, if you want to automate the entire process, we have a lot of differing integration points to where, you know, you can integrate it into whatever your content management system is. You know, you can create data there, you can push metadata into our system through an API, have the system auto-align it using our AutoAlign system, and then you can immediately pull those alignments straight back into your system. So, you've got a lot of options. 

Rich Portelance

So, you talked about ExACT as a DIY tool, so that's customer-facing. Is it also something that's used internally to help EdGate do alignments?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, actually, everything that we offer in ExACT is just a customer-facing version of our own internal processes we use. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

You know, so, everything you're using in ExACT is kind of battle tested and has been in the field for a long time. So, you're doing things the way that we do them. 

Rich Portelance

Now, EdGate still has alignment specialists, people who are there making sure that the information is correct, and so there's some kind of manual process along with ExACT. is that correct? And how do you define that touch point? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

We have a team of subject matter experts who cover all of the subject areas that we support. You know, all of them have been educators for a number of years. So, they all have classroom experience or administrative experience within schools. And they're very knowledgeable, especially with our concept index. That's one of the things that makes them so great, is they're so familiar with our internal taxonomy. They can look at a piece of content, and they instantly know what concepts should apply to that. And so, we have our internal tool sets that are similar to ExACT, or similar to what customers see in ExACT, where they can go in and do that tagging. And we do that on behalf of the customer. Then we do the review, and then all the alignments are available. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

And quite often, I've seen in the marketing and some of the conversations that EdGate talks about alignment as infrastructure. What does that actually mean from a systems perspective? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. So, you know, alignment's kind of no longer just a means to sell content into a school district, right? It's a critical piece of the entire ecosystem now. It's sort of the hidden plumbing that connects resources across curricula and grade levels and assessments.  So, you know, if, you know, you're a student in fourth grade, and you have to move in the middle of the year to a different city… You know, if I'm taking math at my new school, that I'm going to be learning the same things, even if I'm using, you know, a different curriculum, different textbooks… What I'm going to learn is the same. 

And so, just having that support for students across that, and having support for teachers in being able to have a fully scoped out curriculum upfront, where they're not spending their professional development days going in and aligning their lesson plans, that's already done. They can focus their time on, you know, learning how to be better teachers and not doing the tedium of alignment like they used to have to. So, it's just a full– like I said, it's more like a utility now, where it just sits in the background and just connects all the dots across the entire educational ecosystem. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

So, let's talk about how ExACT enables organizations to correlate content once and then scale alignment across multiple states. You know, you talked a little bit about it earlier, but I want to get a little bit more specific, because I think that's an important point here, and as you were talking about with the teachers, and you know, we have this alignment as an infrastructure idea.  How do we take it, correlate once, and then scale that? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, you know, if I'm a publisher and I want to align my content, there are a couple of different ways you can approach that. If you want to do it from the conceptual side, you can use our concept index, and you can find the specific concepts for whatever this resource is teaching. You know, identifying site words or reading from left to right, those are discrete concepts. And if you know and understand that, and that's defined for your content, you can find that within our concept index and associate that with that piece of content.  

Another approach you can take is… If you already have a standard in mind, it's like, I know what this resource is about. I want this resource to align to this specific standard because I know it should. We can… And if you don't have an idea of what exists in our concept index, you can then look at the concepts that are associated with the standard, and you can go, “Oh yeah, this book addresses that standard”, and then we can copy that concept onto that piece of content. And the nice thing with this is that once that concept is attached to that piece of content, it now automatically associates with every other standard in the system that addresses that same concept. So you've instantly aligned not just to the one standard you were targeting, but any other potential standards within that state that address that concept, and standards across all the 50 states, national organizations, foreign countries, you know, whatever. You've now created an alignment to all of those, all at once.  

Rich Portelance

So, now I'm understanding why structured taxonomy and standards data really help us to achieve precision at scale, right? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yes. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. 

So, Jeremy, thank you for sharing– you know, talking a little bit about how we achieve precision at scale. I want to jump into talking a little bit about precision and validation. What are the biggest risks organizations face when alignment isn't precise? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Sure. 

So, I think for, like, you know, publishers or edtech companies, the most obvious is, like, if you don't have good alignments, you're not going to win contracts. So that's, you know, just a loss of sales and dollars right there. And you're also damaging your reputation, you know, because you're going in for these for these contracts and these RFPs, and if you're consistently not putting out high-quality data, you know, the next RFP, the next proposal, companies aren't going to take you seriously because your reputation is like, “Oh, their alignments are terrible. Well, they're not a serious candidate. We're not even going to take the time to even review what they've sent us”. 

Rich Portelance

That's a good point, actually. I didn't think about that previously, but being a reputational risk, that's significant. Could that span across various states? So, you kind of… You mess up in one state, you know, that could perpetuate itself. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, I mean, I would think so. 

I mean, you have to think, you know, the higher-ups and the decision-makers in the states, they talk to each other, and it's like, “Oh, hey, we just put out an RFP”, "Yeah, so-and-so submitted a proposal”. “Oh, them. Yeah, they sent us one. It was awful”. You know? So yeah, I mean, word of mouth is huge. I mean, that's one of the reasons why EdGate is where it is today. Especially in the early days, it was just word of mouth. 

I mean, that's literally what started our correlation business, is we were doing alignments internally for our own products. We then included some alignments from some of our clients, and someone else had asked them. They said, “Hey! Who did your alignments? That stuff looks great”. “Oh, well, EdGate did it”. “Oh, well, do you think they could do alignments for us?” “Sure, I'll ask them”. That's literally how our alignment business grew. So, yeah, I mean, reputational damage is a huge risk, and then even on the institutional side, not having good alignments, you're setting up potential for lower assessment performance by your students. And that leads to accountability questions. And then there's budgetary concerns where, you know, taxpayers are like, “Hey, what are you guys spending our money on? You bought this fancy new curriculum and the kids' test scores dropped. Why is that?” So, you know, I mean, there's a lot of risk in having bad alignments.  

Rich Portelance

And are you finding that districts and states are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to evaluating alignment quality? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. 

A lot of states are now requiring third-party review. So, you know, they're not going to adopt your curriculum unless an independent third party comes in and says, "Yes, your alignments are good, and these make sense." They're just not trusting a vendor's word anymore. And then even their own internal curriculum teams, you know, they do that review. They go, "Yes, this is good quality stuff." Or it's like, "No, we shouldn't buy this. These alignments are terrible,” or “They've got a lot of holes in their curriculum where, you know, hey, we're assessing these two standards this year and they don't have any resources that cover it, so we shouldn't buy their products”.  

Rich Portelance

Yeah. 

And how important is human validation in the workflow today, you know, when you're talking about that? And I guess the follow-up is, is EdGate doing these third-party reviews as well? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, actually, one of the services we offer is doing third-party reviews for, you know, some of our clients. Well, not our clients, but technically their clients because they're doing the third-party review for them. But others, you know, require third-party review, and we're one of the vendors that our reputation's good enough, they say, “You need to get a third-party review, and you can talk to whoever, and EdGate, they can validate your alignments”.  

Well, yeah, I mean, having a set of human eyes is critical. Especially given the volume of data that gets processed now. You know, even with the best systems, not everything's going to be perfect. And you've got to figure out how to surface those critical interventions when they're appropriate. And have someone who has the experience and expertise to be able to identify the issues and figure out how to remediate them.  

Rich Portelance

So, that's where those subject matters come into play for EdGate is okay. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Absolutely.

Rich Portelance

Okay.

And I guess to top it off, why do you think that purely automated systems struggle with granular standards requirements? Can't they kind of get better over time? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

I mean, I think they can, but there's always going to be outliers. And because understanding context and meaning is hard. And I always say that nothing's going to replace real-world experience. You know, knowing that the context of these two standards, even though the wording is the same, the context in which they're being used is different. You know, it's like if you talk about “The students will record data”. Okay. Well, one's in the context of doing a physics experiment, the other one is in the context of doing a chemistry experiment. Two totally different things. You know, the same basic skill, but the applications are different. So then, the type of materials you would need to reinforce those would be different. And just being able to know that and understand, kind of, this is the domain I'm working in. So therefore, you know, my alignments need to be targeted within that domain. And it's just, and you know, the big thing is just identifying a lot of those outliers, and there are emerging topics and technologies. And so, just having that experience with these and being able to identify, “Hey, this is new. We've never seen this before”. You know, and having someone who has that experience to be able to say, like, “Oh yeah, I understand that. I know what the system's trying to do. Here's a correction for it. And things are changing all the time, so that's kind of the part of the problem, like, with the repeatability. With a purely automated system, it's, you know, it's not necessarily going to give you the same result each time just because the data source it's analyzing is different from the last one. You know, you ask it to analyze.  

Rich Portelance

So, there's a lot of nuance to your answer, which I think is really important, because that nuance makes all the difference right when you talk about results. 

How does ExACT help edtech and publishing companies reduce, duplicate, or rework within that process?

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. 

So, ExACT does that by offering that kind of proven “one and done " approach. You know, you go in, you do an alignment, and that alignment's done. You don't have to go realign this thing if you don't want to. 

And the other nice thing is that you've already aligned that piece of content to standards that don't exist yet. So, a state adopts a new set of science standards. By going in and using our concept index, as soon as those new standards get imported into our system and tagged, they instantly align. You don't have to go align to that new set. You've already done it. So you don't have to go back in and realign your content because there's a new set of standards. I mean, that's the beauty and the strength of this process. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And I'm assuming within that process, EdGate is identifying new standards, re-tagging or re-updating that system, and making sure that those new standards are put in place so that when it comes time to have content realigned, it's automated. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

You know, we're constantly monitoring and updating standards, identifying when new standards are adopted, making them available in our system, even throughout the draft process. If a state makes them available, we try to acquire them, import them into the system, and tag preview your alignments to a set of standards that are still in draft, that are still being worked on. Then once the state formally adopts them, you know, you can market that within that state as, like, “Hey, we already align to your new standards, we're implementation-ready”. So that the day that Texas says, “Okay, we're using these this year, that first day of school”, your content already aligns to what's being taught in the classroom that year. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

You know, there's no catch-up. This is a very proactive system. 

Rich Portelance

Okay.  

So, let's talk about scaling content using the ExACT platform, because I think people would be interested in that. You know, you start off with one, but you quickly want to scale across your organization to many states. Can you give people– elucidate that process for people so they understand how it's done? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. So, the great thing about ExACT is that you're not just aligning one piece of content at a time if you don't want to. We do have processes in place where the system can do the alignment for you. So, you can upload, you know, a spreadsheet that just has a list of URLs from your website. We can take those URLs, we can fetch the metadata off of your site, populate the metadata in our system, use that metadata to do an analysis of the content, suggest concepts that should be tagged to it, and do the alignments for you. And this all happens in the background. So, you could upload a spreadsheet with a thousand resources in it, and you can come back an hour later and all of your alignments are done.  And then you just have to come in and just review.  

Rich Portelance

That's pretty significant. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

And once, you know, I'm sure ExACT is used out there in enough instances where people are seeing organizational gains. What are you seeing for clients of ExACT where they're seeing, you know, real benefit because I think that's important for people to understand.  

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. So, a lot of that is, you know, obviously there's the sales component where, you know, you make– your content is now… I don't know if “saleable” is a word. But your content, you know, is instantly “saleable” into a school district. You have that data available that allows you to go win those contracts. And you also have the data available to not just show, “Hey, my stuff aligns to your standards”, but why it aligns to your standards. You know, and ExACT also provides you with this comprehensive gap analysis. So, it can assist you in your content development. Even before you try to do that, win that RFP, you can go in and look and go, “Hey, where are our gaps?” You know, so you get an easy guide onto “Hey, this is where we need to create more content, these are the areas we need to focus on”. 

And the other nice thing with ExACT is that you have multiple avenues of integration and automation. So no matter what your use case is or what your needs are, we can help accommodate that. If you want to be as hands-off as possible, but you want to get your alignments in front of your customers as quickly as possible, well then, okay, fine. We can host an interface for you where your clients can come in, find all of your alignments, and get access to your content. You know, so we're, you know, we have a lot of different ways that organizations can find advantages in using our systems. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it. And significant organizational gains, I would imagine there's cost reductions, and that can be significant as well in that whole continuum you just explained, which is, you know, obviously, if you're running a business, you want to optimize that business for growth. And if you sell quicker, you talked about that, getting to market quicker, because you're instantly selling content, and then your process is smoother. So you get into new markets faster with less friction. That's pretty significant. 

How does infrastructure-driven alignment improve speed without sacrificing the accuracy, which is, you know, something that you talked about early on? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah, so, the best way it kind of improves speed is that, you know, we're using a defined, proven, repeatable process. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

And, you know, having the confidence to know that the precision's always going to be there. Then you can kind of, you know, crank the dial up to 11 when it comes to your automation, and have the confidence that, you know, if I put a thousand things into the system, when I get a thousand things back, I'm not going to have to spend a lot of time doing the review because I have the confidence that this is a good alignment. 

Rich Portelance

As standards become more detailed and state-specific, and we've seen that happen. I think it's fair to say, you know, because of past trends, they are more specific and detailed. So, I'm assuming that that process is going to continue over the next few years. How do you see alignments evolving to meet the need of more specificity and more detail for each of the states? Like, what do you see happening with the alignments to meet that need? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. So, I think alignments are probably going to become a lot more context-specific, where we're going to see differing types of align– so, it's not just my content aligns to this thing; it's that my content aligns to this thing in a specific way in a specific context. I think we're going to see a lot more, you know, a lot more additional metadata on top of just an alignment. U you know we're going to see a lot more, you know… What's the word I'm looking for? Sorry, I'm drawing a blank here. A lot more like alignment relevancy. You know, this alignment, this is very relevant. This aligns, but it's maybe not as important. I think overall, we're going to see a much larger use of AI in the process, but you know, I think we're going to see AI integrated everywhere. 

And I think there's going to be a lot more, I think, what I'm calling proactive alignment, where you're able to get access to, you know, frameworks faster and sooner, and we're able to do the alignments quicker. And so, you know, you're able to build curricula and be anticipatory to what a state's going to need. I think we're going to ultimately see better cost efficiencies in the process, too, just as we improve things and we're able to pass those savings kind of onto our customers. 

And I think we're going to have, you know, some people don't like the term generative AI, but I do think we're going to have a little bit more on-demand content development built into the process, where when you see those gaps, you can instantly create a resource to help address that. You know, as part of the workflow, where you don't have to then kind of say, “Okay, stop the presses. We've got to go back and rework this whole module”. It's well, “Just create me a quiz that covers that standard”, and you can do that instantly. 

And I think one of the big things we're going to see with alignment is that I think we're going to see a lot more crossover into other segments. You know, like career readiness, CTE (career and technical education), how do we transition these K-12 curriculum classroom concepts? How do these translate into the real world? And I think we're going to see a lot more alignment around, you know, standards and content, not just how they align to each other, but how they align to real-world skill sets. 

Rich Portelance

I think that's an important point. I had done a panel on durable skills and what students will need to be prepared for the work of the future, which is somewhat unknown, right? And so, how do you build standards that are adoptable and… Part of the theory is that baking in those durable skills is going to be critical. So, you know, I think there's going to be a different view on what a standard is, or more detail, perhaps, like as you just pointed out, to incorporate those durable skills to ensure that students aren't just learning about academic elements, but learning how to creative problem solve, or have executive functioning, or interpersonal communication skills, because that's what they're going to need in order to adapt to whatever the future is, right? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. Yeah. 

Rich Portelance

So, capabilities within organizations. If I'm a publisher or an edtech provider today, what do you believe that I would need today and going forward into the future in order to stay competitive? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Well, obviously, we're talking about alignment, so any resources you're trying to sell into the market, you have to be able to show alignment to a state standard, or some competency framework or, you know, some course catalog. You know, whatever you're trying to sell into, you're going to have to show how your content is relevant to what that organization is doing. I think that's the main thing. And so a lot of the capabilities that we provide, you know, yes, we help you do alignments, but we also help you see those gaps, show you where you are missing things. 

And then I think moving forward, you know, one of the things that we want to try to help our customers with is providing them not just alignment capabilities, but to be able to expose more market intelligence. Here's the trends in standards, you know, within this state. Here's what's been in the news. You know, here's where we think, you know, things are headed in terms of how states do assessment. Being able to make that information more available to our customers so they can better adapt into the market. And then also provide them with ways to be able to show the data. So, it's not just, here's how my content aligns to your standards, but here's the type of impact that it's going to make with the students. 

These are the types of changes you're going to see, these are the types of improvements you're going to see, and these are the reasons why we think, you know, our content is going to help your students achieve and have better visibility into student performance. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

So, just a reminder to everybody, Jeremy is going to be joining us for our upcoming webinar, From Alignment to Accuracy: Delivering Precision at Scale. We're excited, and we appreciate Jeremy, you giving us all this wonderful information today. I have one final question, and then we'll close it out. And go to the link below, click, and please register for the webinar. It's upcoming here in June, just a couple of short weeks away. 

And so, final question, Jeremy, what does precision at scale ultimately enable that one-off alignment projects never can?  

Jeremy Ashcraft

I think the most important thing is it just enables market readiness. You're ready to sell your product, you're ready for that adoption, you're ready for that RFP. So, you know, you don't have to spend the time preparing for it; you've already done the work. You can immediately go there. 

And I think the other thing is that it enables instant adaptability. So it's not just that I'm ready for Texas; I'm ready for Florida, I'm ready for California, I'm ready for England, I'm ready for, you know, New South Wales in Australia. Or being able to kind of adapt your curriculum in ways that, depending on where to sell into, you know, the needs for New York are very different than the needs in Texas. You know, especially with some of the politicization of education. You have to be very careful in how you present your content. And, you know, I don't want to say alignment's not political, but alignment's a very… You know, you're trying to show a very objective reasoning as to why your content is applicable to that standard. And being able to have all of those capabilities across all of those different markets and all those different segments, you're not going to get that by opening up ChatGPT and saying, “Align my quiz to the Common Core standards”. You're going to have to go back and do that every single time. 

Rich Portelance

Well, if I had to kind of summarize that to one word, Jeremy, after listening to you, I would say  “confidence”. That's a word that came to my mind immediately. Like, instill confidence. Does that feel right to you? 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It's just, you know, you're having the confidence in not just the services that we may have provided you, but your confidence in the market. That you can walk into that meeting room and know that we're going to satisfy all your requirements. There's not going to be any question around the efficacy of our curriculum based on your standards. 

Rich Portelance

Well, Jeremy Ashcraft, thank you very much for joining us today. We really appreciate your insights, and we'll look forward to seeing you on the upcoming webinar in a few weeks. 

Jeremy Ashcraft

Okay. Thanks,  Rich. Talk to you then. 

Rich Portelance

All right. Take care.