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

Gina Faulk

Well, I'm going to go ahead and start making introductions, so welcome to everyone who has joined the call. There are a couple more panelists who are going to be joining us shortly. I'm Gina Faulk, and I am the general manager here at EdGate. So, I'll start making the introductions. 

So, first we have… I want to welcome Kelli Irwin from Learning.com. She resides in Texas, and we actually have worked for a long time together over the years. I worked together with Kelli when I worked at Learning.com, so I am so happy to have Kelli with us today on this call. She has spent her past 20 years… Or she spent 20 years as a classroom teacher, a technology lab teacher, a GT (Gifted & Talented) specialist, and a district-level instructional specialist. And currently, in her role as director of education for Learning.com, she incorporates her years of experience along with new trends and pedagogical understanding to design and create learning experiences and support resources to meet the varying needs of students and teachers. So thank you so much, Kelli, for taking the time to join us today. She's a longtime user of EdGate’s tools and services, so she is the person that we reach out to when we want to get feedback. She will tell us how it is, and what we should change, and we have taken her up on that, gladly. And so, she's played an integral role for us at EdGate, so I really appreciate you being on here. And the fact that you're in Texas really works out well for us, so, thank you. 

Michael Jackson, who has zebras behind him, but who is actually in Texas, not somewhere else, he and I have known each other for I think a year and a half, but he's also a proud Texan, and the managing principal at Texas Education Alliance. His focus is on helping education companies gain a strategic advantage in the Texas education marketplace by helping navigate regulatory and policy-based issues at the state and local levels. So, Michael, we really appreciate you. You've helped me out this past year, really getting a better understanding about Texas adoptions, the changes that I've seen in Texas, and figuring out how we convey that to our clients has been crucial to us, so thank you also for joining. 

Michael Jackson

Yeah, glad to be here. 

Gina Faulk

And then… I think we don't have Chad yet, but we do have our special guest, Eric. Eric serves as a lead education attorney for the Texas Education Alliance and brings over two decades of legal experience to the field. His expertise spans from litigation to the art of legislative drafting, and he currently employs his legal acumen to shape the public policy landscape. So, thank you, Eric, for joining in. I know you're going to be able to add a lot of color to this conversation that we're having today, having been deep in the trenches in Texas. So, we appreciate you being here. 

Eric Knustrom

Great. Thanks for having me. 

Discussion

Gina Faulk

So, I will just go ahead and get started. 

Kelli, it would be great if you could start out by telling us, since the focus is on… Initially, we started… We want to talk about crosswalking content, so that, say, you've created content, and it's just Common Core-aligned. Well, how do you crosswalk to other states? How do you make sure that it's going to actually benefit all states and align with all state standards? But then we realized that one of the main questions that people were asking us was they were asking about Texas. “How do I get my materials adopted to Texas? What are all the policy issues going on? The politics? So how do I do that?” So, I was hoping you could answer the question about how the landscape has changed in meeting the state-to-state alignment needs, and how Learning.com has adapted to those changes. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. 

Learning.com, as a company, is all over the nation; we are worldwide. So, when you look at standards that we have to meet, they're literally all over the board, right? But the nice thing about standards is that regardless of what state or country, we want students to learn similar things, right? The language of the standards might be slightly different, but the concepts that we need for career, for college readiness, for… You know, online safety, all of those things, the standards basically have a similar thread. And so, one of the things that's been really great about using EdGate is that although there are different standards, there's this thread. And so, EdGate allows us to kind of “follow the thread”, if you will, in using categories. 

So, the landscape changes drastically at times, right? New standards are adopted… Reviewed, even, before they're adopted by states, and so there's this constant process of knowing what standards are coming, knowing what's been adopted, knowing where they are in the process, and working with EdGate to help make sure that information is in the ExACT tool, so that we can run reports and look at where our content fits is a huge piece of the puzzle. And identifying gaps, and seeing where, if Texas has “this” standard, how can we align an item to “this” standard? And it filters out to all of the other entities of standards that we need. So, it's a constant, changing environment. 

Gina Faulk

Thank you. 

Yeah, and for those who don't know who are listening in on the Zoom, EdGate's core service and our tools are all about making sure that content aligns to standards, and we use humans for that. We have a staff of subject matter experts who review content and align that content to standards, and then load it up in our reporting tool so that our clients can run reports and see their gaps. But we also have some DIY tools, so our clients can actually go into our ExACT platform, tag the content themselves with the concept of the taxonomy, and then it does a global alignment to all the state or international standards. So, when Kelli's talking about ExACT, that's what she's referring to. 

Michael, let's turn to Texas. Can you give us a brief outline of some of the more significant changes that are on the horizon in Texas? 

Michael Jackson

Yeah, yeah. I'll give… Is it okay if I give a brief introduction of…?

Gina Faulk

Yes, definitely. We would love that. 

Michael Jackson

Okay, that'd be good. And also, sorry. I'm also trying to figure out how to get chat into this, so that's why I'm looking at my phone. 

Gina Faulk

No, no problem. 

Michael Jackson

I’m not texting friends! 

Yeah, absolutely. Texas Education Alliance, you know the work that we do here in Texas is… It really stems from some of the things that Dr. Erwin alluded to, is that the Texas Market is really like his own country. A lot of times, you know, companies come to us and say, “We don't understand Texas or the Texas Market. How do we do this?” And, you know, that's why this firm was started. Not just market intelligence about how to go to market in the state of Texas, but a lot of the timelines of how to foundationally get prepared to come into Texas. And what we find a lot of times is that a company will come into Texas, and they'll say, “Well, we just want to go district to district and, you know, start selling”. And there are a lot of the foundations that we're talking about today that really need to happen on the front end to really drive that success moving forward. 

So, there are some parallel efforts, you know, you want some exposure in Texas, but you really need to do this groundwork to get prepared for some of the key upcomings on… Sorry, I'm looking at the chat. Some of the key priorities that are coming down the pipe, as you may or may not know, whoever's on the call, you know, Texas meets every other year, and does the budget for two years. So, the next session begins in January, so right now, a lot of things are ramping up, so there's a lot of activity and movement of what's coming down the pipe for the following years. And, Eric, I'm going to kind of… I'm going to kind of let you answer part two of that question about some of the things that you see coming down the pike in Texas, and some of the new… Actually, you know, coming up this next year with adoptions, and so on and so forth.

Eric Knustrom

Absolutely. 

I think, as with any legislation that gets… Or any major legislation that gets passed in the state of Texas, we're going to see what is commonly referred to as a “cleanup bill” for House Bill 1605, and the related legislation that was passed last session. Because we have a part-time legislature that meets only five months out of every two years, it is very understandable that sometimes, there are unintended consequences, and even, you know, the best laid plans sometimes don't play out the way that they're supposed to. And so there's already talk of a bill that would do that coming forward. I think that there's been a lot that has been learned through the first process of IMRA (Instructional Materials Review and Approval) submissions and reviews. You know, in this coming November, we will learn whether or not the first OER (Open Educational Resources) submissions to run through a similar process will be adopted by the State Board of Education, and you know, as recently as their last meeting, the State Board of Education was being presented by TEA (Texas Education Alliance) staff with proposals for how the IMRA process should work relating to schedules for review, and how the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) updates should trigger a proclamation. And so, aside from November 5th, answering a lot of questions for folks, the November State Board of Education meeting here in Texas will help clarify the picture quite a bit. 

And I think there will definitely be a need to watch how the general election turns out in November. A record number of incumbents are not returning in Texas this coming session. Some of those people were folks who had opposed other measures for public schools, specifically education savings accounts, and if the folks who come in and take their places don't have similar views, it could shift how they align on everything, from public school funding to some of the changes that led to the new instruction material adoption process. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. Thank you so much, and we're going to get more information from you about IMRA and the Texas Suitability Rubrics momentarily. 

But first, I wanted to just, kind of as a precursor to my next question, Sharla, if you could show us… We put together a slide that just kind of blew me away, so it's slide 13 if you're able to show that. So, we actually took a U.S. map and compared all of the state standards, and we used natural language processing to do this. So we can compare standards in two different ways: we can compare the standards using our concepts and our taxonomy, but we can also compare the standards using our AI or natural language processing. So, you'll see here that Texas truly is very different. When we compare the ELA (English Language Arts) in Texas, the TEKS ELA to Common Core, we only found a 2.2% match, and that we use the… It had to be a 0.85 match semantically. And then math was 17%, so it was sort of like, “Here's a visual, it's very different”. So if you're trying to use your Common Core in Texas, it ain't going to work, so it's just not going to do the trick. And then, we can do this for anyone, so if anyone comes in, like our clients, and says, “How is Kansas different than… Kansas originally adopted Common Core. Where are they now? How different are they? Can I use some of my existing Common Core in Texas?” You probably can, but they've veered enough away from it. You'll see Washington, where I'm, it's very purple, and that's because we're still very Common Core. 

So, moving into that next question, Kelli, as companies look to gain traction in Texas, can you talk a little bit about the ExACT reporting feature you use to meet the requirements of Texas and other states? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure, yeah, that's a great question, actually, Gina. So, Learning.com has been adopted in the state of Texas, and I'll just use technology applications since that was the most recent process that we went through as a company. We have been adopted since the very first adoption of the TEKS at 100%, which is great and exciting, but when you have new standards come out as we did in 2022, the first thing that we as a company did was go to our current content and say, “How do we match up? Are we in a good space? Do we align the way we want to align? Are we still pedagogically doing what Texas is looking for?” And so, that's really where we started the process. And you can do it manually, absolutely. It is a very tedious process, so it was really nice to be able to work with EdGate and say, “Hey, we have this new set of standards that we know are coming down the pipe for us. How can we evaluate and see where we have gaps?” So, it was great to go in and use the ExACT reporting tool to see exactly what aligns and where we have gaps. And it helped us in this decision process that we went through to determine which content we might want to keep and which content we needed to make fresh based on these new standards, and so, whether it's Texas or any other state, we know standards are regularly updated. 

We also know that customers want to know that the content they use aligns to their standards, and will help them meet the requirements of their state, so using this report and being able to go in and see what aligns, how it aligns, where it aligns and where maybe there are gaps, was a great way for us to kind of evaluate where we stand for the adoption, but also ongoing. 

Gina Faulk

Great, okay. 

And I just quickly flipped on the type of report that we run within our ExACT reporting to, or you would load up your content, and you would actually see line-by-line each standard you have content that meets that particular standard. It's going to very clearly say for this example, which is Florida language arts, “Nope. You don't have any content that meets that standard. So your team needs to get to work and write content that meets that standard”, so that's very easy to understand. 

And you talked about the standards too, we're always working on adding standards. So, Sharla, if you can flip to slide six. We, every month, release a list of… And, actually, it's so tiny. Sorry, can you make it a little bigger? But we load these up every month and show you exactly which standards that we've updated, and you'll notice if you squint really hard that we've been working on a lot of international standards. So you'll see Singapore and Ireland, but, you know, also Texas, so Texas social studies must have had an update. It's hard for even me to keep track, much less if you're a publisher, and this is not your sole job. It’s really hard to keep up with these standards, so that's why companies use our services, to make sure that they're in the know about what's happening state-by-state, and keep their alignments up to date for each state. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

And Gina, I would add to that. You're right, it is very hard, and there is no one usually dedicated to watching weekly what's going on with all the state standards. But one of the things that I appreciate is that not only can I log in and see what's available, but you all send out that email regularly that's like, “Hi, here's the new standards that we've uploaded”, and it just kind of helps in the process of staying on top of things. 

Gina Faulk

Great. Perfect. Thank you so much.

So, let's see. Eric, we have a question for you about the Texas Suitability Rubrics. We would love-

Chad Cantella

Gina, by the way, I finally figured out how to get on! This is Chad. 

Gina Faulk

Okay, so, whoever wants to take this question about the Texas Suitability Rubrics, or both of you, could you give us an overview of what they are and how they're shaping the education content landscape? It's new to us too, and I've had to take some deep dives in there, but if you could give us an overview, we would love that. 

Eric Knustrom

Yeah. I think I can maybe give an intro, and then let Chad talk a little bit. So, the IMRA process, as opposed to the… What I would refer to as the proclamation process or the previous process has really upped the game for publishers, whereas the previous standards were, you know, 50% of the TEKS covered, and you essentially gained admissions to the list. 

With the passing of House Bill 1605, the legislature imposed not only a qualitative standard, which is the rubric that's developed by TEA, but also a Suitability Rubric, which is dictated far more by the elected members of the State Board of Education. And if I were to articulate, I would guess, say, the import or the reason behind the need for a Suitability Rubric, I think it was a feeling among elected officials that there were a growing number of outside influences, from politics, to culture, to, you know, technology that was presenting information that sometimes made it into classrooms through instructional materials, or through teachers bringing in additional materials that really did not align directly to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, and sometimes they were counterproductive to the educational process. And the results of them attempting to find a system that would allow them to create standards to focus the instructional materials on simply teaching the subject matter led to the development of the Suitability Rubric. 

Now, the first component of that is beginning out with a prohibition against the Common Core; however, feel about that, it's been a very polarizing and political issue, and Texas definitely comes down on the side of not wanting to adhere to the Common Core. But as was just discussed, there are many parallels, if not analogous ways to draw those connections between standards in an instructional material that meet the Common Core, but also meet Texas's standards. The remainder of the Suitability Rubric really addresses what most people in politics would call “red meat issues”; perceptions related to social welfare issues, questions of patriotism, and things that could be considered subversive to the existing government or the United States. And the intent, as stated, you know, when the legislation was passed, and the recent State Board of Education meetings were simply to try and absolve teachers from the responsibility to weigh into those difficult topics, and allow them to stay focused on teaching essential skills and knowledge that's necessary without all of the distractions. 

Chad Cantella

I'll just add quickly to that. In short order, this is a very Texas process here. And it is, you know, it is political. It stems from elected representatives hearing from constituencies. And so, the one thing I'll add to that is that it is working out to be somewhat subjective, so understanding where your curriculum or, you know, or other offerings sit within that before you submit is big. There have been a number of folks who do not understand that have, you know, have every other box

checked, and have not done well with the Suitability Rubric. So, it really much helps to get out in front of that. 

Gina Faulk

And I took a little snippet, it always helps me to see it right in front of my face, so, Sharla, can you flip to slide 17? I just wanted to quickly show what these rubrics are, and also point out that there… Not only are there… There's a panel of educators that is reviewing the content and flagging the content for any non-compliance, but also public feedback, too. So, on the right-hand side… And we're going to send out links to all of these rubrics, but yes, you're right, the very first line item was the “Prohibition on Common Core”, and you can go through and see who got flagged. It's just right out in the open. And list the scores and everything else, but also the public feedback too, you can see that as well. So, within… You have to imagine too, when you go into the Texas site, you can see the common… The first one, the Common Core, is pretty straightforward, but if you go in and look at protecting children in “Protecting Children's Innocence”, you're going to find a lot of bullet points underneath that, you know, what were the things that the publisher did not meet under that category. 

And let's go to the next slide, which is… I think I gave even more details. Just a closer look… Oh, slide 18. So, yeah, again, I think the “Prohibition on Common Core”, it's just one box, titled 1.1. Did you meet the TEKS standards? And then the other example is 7.1, and I think that was all. The other ones had a lot of the alphabet underneath each of those boxes, but the CIPA (Compliance with the Children’s Internet Protection Act), which I know Learning.com, you guys are very up on CIPA and have met all those requirements, because it's a requirement in Texas, that was pretty straightforward as well. One thing I noticed, too, that was interesting was that the feedback from the Texas panel was about 400 pages long on the materials they reviewed, where the public feedback… Granted, I think it was a bigger font, but it was over 700 pages long of public feedback, so I was trying to imagine what that's like for the Texas Review Committee sorting through all that feedback that they received so… And Eric and everyone from the Texas Education Alliance, you might be able to comment more on that, just the process that they're using to do this, how that's been going. 

Chad Cantella

You mean the process on the Suitability Rubrics? 

Gina Faulk

Yeah, yeah, the, yeah, how that's… Because it's very new this year. 

Chad Cantella

Yeah, I'll start, I mean… As mentioned, this really adds more authority to the State Board of Education. And so, you know, those are submitted, and like I said, it is somewhat subjective, so when folks have been dinged, you know, they're given a reason, and sometimes the reason stems from the fact that there was just a misunderstanding of what words meant, you know, and what was intended. 

So, that's how it is, you know, gone this far from the end result, but in terms of the process… Eric, are there any details you'd add to that? 

Eric Knustrom

I think it's important to note that, much like the previous panels of educators that were impaneled to do reviews of materials and the folks that are doing the quality reviews through IMRA, there are reviewers who are impaneled to conduct the review for the suitability standards. Notably, their instructions are that there's no need for consensus. And I know that in the past, when instructional materials were adopted, if there was a question, if there was concern whether a specific portion of a material addressed a specific TEKS, it often turned into a deliberation among the reviewers in the room, and they were able to reach a consensus and then move forward with that. 

The directions for the suitability is if there is a concern by any single one, they flag it, and then that is resolved, you know, there's no need to discuss consensus. Anybody who finds an issue or thinks that there's a matter of suitability under the rubric flags it, and then it goes up the process, eventually to the SBOE (State Board of Education), and they are the arbiters of whether or not it actually is… Well, how the scoring should work under the rubric for that evaluation. 

Gina Faulk

Thank you.

Eric Knustrom

So that’s kind of detailed but… 

Gina Faulk

No, no, I appreciate that. That's helpful, yeah. 

Michael Jackson

Gina, real, real, quick, we talked earlier about more of that foundational approach, but, you know, that's kind of the work that we do, is guiding through that process because what you find is, if not, then you're playing a lot of triage, right? So, you know, get, like Chad said, getting in front of that and understanding what this looks like before you get to that point, that’s extremely, extremely important. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

And Gina, I'll jump in and add that from a publisher perspective, you know, we see the rubrics, we know what is expected, right? When you're going in and you're designing your content. And when you are there in person, in Austin, Texas, and the Instructional Materials Review Committee, the teachers, the district, administrators, and whoever's been selected are in the process of reviewing, it's a waiting game for publishers, you know? And there are times, even with Learning.com, I remember having a standard that came back and one of the reviewers said it didn't meet, while a couple of the others on the team felt it did. And so it was… TEA allows for the opportunity for you to have this conversation amongst yourselves as publishers, and determine if you would like to provide information to explain why it meets. Or create something new, or adjust, or whatever? And so it's a… I'm gonna say a “collaborative-at-a-distance” process that does allow publishers, you know, the opportunity to try to demonstrate where they meet and how they meet as you're going through the process, before it goes kind of up the chain. Though that is still a big piece of the process. 

Gina Faulk

Right.

Eric Knustrom

If I might, Kelli, that actually reminds me of an analogous situation in my previous life as a practicing attorney. It doesn't happen very often, but everybody who has watched any legal dramas like Law and Order has probably seen an example of it, albeit dramatized. Juries have the opportunity when they can't resolve an issue on a question to send a question out to the council and the parties through the judge. The difficult part in this process is that, oftentimes the question doesn't really help you understand which way they're leaning one way or the other, and it allows you to provide additional information. It’s just complicated to figure out what information is going to help them resolve the question that they're having, because they don't give you a preamble. We can't decide if this is an attempt to, you know, impune the found… You know, Stephen F. Austin's character, “did you mean this?” They simply said, you know, “Do you have any more supporting materials on this section about Stephen F. Austin?” And you need to provide more. 

And it would occur to me that much like in a highly… In high-stakes civil trials, what my colleagues who actually practice law now do is they often have mock trials. They impanel juries, and they go through these kinds of questions, and for better or worse, that might be a situation that instructional materials might want to consider is providing the Suitability Rubric to some folks that they think they can get a variety of opinion from just to see what questions they might come up with, because being prepared for any of those scenarios is probably going to be much better than being presented with an opportunity to provide additional information clear up when you don't know what different questions people could be asking, or why. 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Yeah, that's a really great analogy, and it, you know, Learning.com as I said, has been going through the adoption process for TA-TEKS (Technology Applications - Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) ever… You know, ever since the beginning. And though the process has changed over time, we have the experience of knowing from the past the types of questions that come up. So that's a really interesting callout, Eric, because I think that would help publishers. It does make a difference, you know, if you have commonly asked questions or things that you might need to address as you're going through the process.

Gina Faulk

So, Kelli, riffing off the manpower, so you've been working hard at this for, you know, over 10 years, so let's talk about the manpower needed to meet the changing needs. So in the past, companies would have a person or people dedicated to just doing alignments, but tell me about the process that your company uses to deploy today at Learning.com, and how it has affected your output?

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. You know, we don't have a dedicated person; we don't need a dedicated person to do our alignments anymore. Having the ExACT tool and partnering with EdGate in this process allows us to have multiple people on a team who focus on content overall, right? And so, the whole team has been trained in how to use EdGate to do the standards alignment, whether it's a direct alignment or an alignment through categories, on how to pull reports. So, instead of it being that request comes in, for example, let's say one of our Texas districts says, “Hey, we need an alignment report that shows all of the content for the alignment to the new TA-TEKS. Okay, instead of it taking weeks upon weeks for a person to go through and manually do this, it quickly gets into a queue, we run the report, we do some human, you know, touch base to make sure that there isn't something that we've missed along the way, or that needs to be kind of fine-tuned a little bit. 

So it's a much faster process than having to do it manually. So running a report takes, I don't know, a minute maybe, depending upon how much content you have in there. And that's far faster than, you know, a couple of weeks. And it's easy to just pass it out to different people on the instructional design team to be able to pull those reports. So it's been a phenomenal change over the past, you know, 10, 20 years, that Learning.com has been dealing with standards alignments to content. 

Gina Faulk

Perfect. Okay. 

And in addition to, again, doing the actual alignment and providing publishers with the tools

to do the alignment, the other thing that we do a lot is that we do third-party reviews, so rubric reviews. So, just like we're talking about the Suitability Rubric, we currently work for a few different states where we're reviewing publishers’ content against provided rubrics. So, again, super tiny, but just trying to give you an example of where EdGate would receive the publisher’s completed alignment. 

So the publisher says, “Yes, we believe this content aligns to these standards, and then we either agree or disagree”, just as if we were a Texas review committee, or the public in Texas. We're saying, as our, you know, with 20 years of expertise behind us, and teachers in the classroom who work for us, that it's kind of like you get a preview of what might happen when you actually submit this content. We are reviewing it, saying, “No, we disagree with this one. This lab does not meet the standard”, and then that gives you the opportunity to go back and fix it before you submit. So kind of, Michael, back to what you're talking about, be ready, so we're also helping publishers get ready to make those changes before you go ahead and submit, because once you submit, this is one of the things we talked about too, sometimes Michael, you can talk about this, but you might not want to submit until you're fully ready. So, yeah, if your team wants to comment on that, and Sharla, we can stop sharing this one.

Michael Jackson

Yeah, absolutely. Chad's had some recent experience with that, but I have a question about what you're showing real quick, Gina. So, when we're talking about Suitability Rubrics, and I apologize, I haven't looked at that alignment before in that document, how granular does that get? Does it mean, like, when you're looking… I'm just thinking about suitability and things like that. 

Gina Faulk

Oh, the suitability, the other slide that was shown. It gets quite granular. As I said, there are some categories that are pretty easy to understand. Do you meet Common Core or not? Or do you meet the TEKS or not? Where the others… There are many bullet points below that, and it's similar to looking at a set of standards. It's not to the extent of meeting standards, but those Suitability Rubrics do go pretty deep. 

Michael Jackson

I'm just curious about– I don't want to go into a rabbit hole with this– but I was curious about how EdGate can address… When I saw the red flag there, it kind of interested me.

Gina Faulk

Oh, yeah, I mean, we would do the same thing. This is for TEKS standards, but we would do the same thing. If we were reviewing against a rubric, then we would do the same type of thing.

So, say it was the CIPA or E-Rate, and the team was looking at it, we would say, “You know, you might want to look at this. It's using language, this is not appropriate, or it's not meeting the accessibility requirements”, so we would red-flag it just like Texas would do. 

Michael Jackson

Okay. 

Gina Faulk

Yeah. So– 

Chad Cantella

You wanted to… Was the question to add a little bit more about preparing for before you submit? 

Gina Faulk

Mhm.

Chad Cantella

Yeah, just quickly, I think we've said it several times, but, you know, getting in front of it, and what I mean by that is, you know, the analogy that Eric laid out with a mock trial? I think too that having somebody, you know, who can look closely through the same lens as, say, the SBOE might, because those things are often nuanced, right? And, you know, without getting into too much detail, we've worked with folks that needed some, you know, didn't score well, and it was based on a misunderstanding of an intent or a word, because you have to remember that TEA is, like every other agency is, underemployed and overworked. And same with the SBOE, they're volunteers, right? They don't even have an office or a phone. And so, the volume that they have to go through requires them to go quickly, and so, you know, one thing can trigger a series of decisions. 

So, I think that you should go through it and have someone be able to look at it through that type of lens. 

Gina Faulk

Agreed. Okay. And then… Let's see… Eric or Chad, we touched a little bit on House Bill 1605, and we– I might have had the number wrong. Is it 1614? Did we have the number correct? 

Chad Cantella

Yeah. We think we got it right– 

Eric Knustrom

House Bill 1416. 

Gina Faulk

1416. Okay. 

Chad Cantella

I'll take a little bit– So, House Bill 1605, I love how you phrased that question, you know, it's an important number. It's one you probably hear in all kinds of discussions around curriculum, etc. Essentially, that was the very large bill that was worked on in conjunction with the agency, with the legislature, etc. It is the bill that brought about these wholesale changes we're discussing with the adoption process. It's, you know, it stands for the Instructional Material Review Adoption, I believe that's– yeah. And it basically makes some big changes, right, that we've covered. One is, you know, there's no set date right for proclamations, it's a rolling process. And, you know, it has a couple of reasons, major ones for doing that. One is, you know, simply to help streamline the process and bring the adoption system into the 22nd century. And then second, it allows for the SBOE to address curriculum needs as they're needed, right, on the fly. 

And, you know, it does give more authority in that manner to the State Board to decide when, right? We're gonna hear this next year, or we're not going to hear it for 10 years, and so, that's, you know, the major parts of House Bill 1605. It also created, you know, the OER (Open Educational Resources) portion of the new process, whereas TEA is partnering with folks to create in-house curriculum that is then given out as OER to school districts. 

Gina Faulk

And that's in process right now, is that OER is being built, those vendors have been chosen to build that OER. 

Chad Cantella

Somehow. I would say that–

Eric Knustrom

It's a big yeah. 

Gina Faulk

Go ahead. 

Chad Cantella

Yeah. The first round has been decided, and, you know, the rest of it is… We don't know yet. They're still working on it. 

Gina Faulk

Okay, TBD. Okay, um–

Eric Knustrom

It will be a rolling process just like IMRA, and the priority for materials, much like the IMRA schedule, will be dictated by the SBOE on the advice of TEA. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. And now the other house bill, House Bill 1416, can you tell us a little bit about that one? 

Eric Knustrom

If you want, Chad, I can talk a little bit about it. 

Chad Cantella

Please do. 

Eric Knustrom

So, if folks remember there was a House Bill 4545 in the previous session, and it did several things, but the main thing it did was require individual tutoring for students who did not perform well on the pre-test for the end-of-course assessments, the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) exam. And House Bill 1416 was an attempt to, again, clean up that legislation. There, you know, to put it politely, there was a great idea and concept between the idea of identifying those students that might need help, and preparation before they take the end-of-course exam. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't any funding attached or associated with it. That was partially a reality of the legislative session that we were in, and the budget situation we were in coming out of COVID. I think part of what House Bill 1416 sought to do was to give better directions to school districts on how to facilitate this, and avenues for funding that, given that Texas had a budget surplus last session, were not available when House Bill 4545 passed. But I think the bigger takeaway for instructional material providers is that the state, our current commissioner, the SBOE, and the legislature are all very much interested in not just adopting the quality materials, but making sure that they're delivering an entire package to the teachers or giving them all the tools that they need in their tool belt. And while a textbook on Algebra 2, or a pre-K system for a kindergarten, or a pre-K class might be the first step in that. These accelerated tutoring and additional materials are where instructional material providers can talk about the additional things that their publications do that may not be captured in the TEKS review process. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. 

Chad Cantella

And just to add one more thing to that, House Bill 4545 had some mandatory qualities to it that, you know, by default, were putting folks in non-compliance. And so, those, you know, one of the other reasons to bring that clean-up bill is to correct that as well. 

Gina Faulk

I see, okay, thank you. 

Michael, I'm hoping you can give us a little bit of information about the IMRA cycle for 2025, with the math cycle coming up. So, would you be able to… You or your team members shed a little light on that one? 

Michael Jackson

Yeah. We collectively can. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know how you line that up, and Eric, you might be the best person to answer that question, but supplemental math coming down the pike, we had talked about that recently. I think Gina, in the last week or two… And I guess it's kind of like a timeline of what's coming forward with TEA and so on and so forth. So maybe one of the Erics, we have two Erics on the call… 

Gina Faulk

Yeah, I know, that's what it looks like. And I put together a quick slide with… It does have some dates on it, so if we want to show that one, Sharla, it’s number 16. Yeah, it's just, and we'll again send out all these links afterward, but it looks like, and I caught it right on the right day, it was just posted two days ago, I think, but it just said, so it's supplemental math will be reviewed in 2025, and the rubrics it looks like they are still awaiting approval. So, for all of our math clients out there, you can take a look at the draft right now. It's just that will give you a head start at least. 

But is there anything, any color you want to add to this upcoming supplemental math adoption? 

Eric Knustrom

You know, I think, you know, one of the important things to note is this is one of the few things that the State Board of Education took action on at their last meeting, and that's why it was posted two days ago. It was in the presentation that was made by Todd Davis and Monica Martinez, stressed as “This is the must have, we do need your decision on this, because to have the materials in place for the beginning of the school year next fall. We are pressing our luck just with the time available, and it was a part of the larger schedule that they were presenting on other topics that, again, they said, “Let's take under consideration and discuss and perhaps refine and adopt at the November meeting”, but I think it's important because, at least for the next year or two, my assumption is that much of the schedule or the plan that will come from the SBOE regarding whether it's a supplemental adoption for an enrichment material, or it's a core area of TEKS that are being updated, will come in a similar fashion. I don't expect for them to sit down in the next month and a half or 12 months, and develop a schedule for the next 10 years, simply because that is, you know, trying to eat the elephant in one bite. 

And I think while they are thinking long term, they're coming up with some rough projections, and still retaining the ability to make changes on the fly if they need to, and I think that aligns with the entire intent of House Bill 1605 and creating the IMRA process that wasn't tied to a set statutory schedule of review for the TEKS. The challenge in that is it does not change the fact that the process of reviewing TEKS, issuing a proclamation, getting submissions for publishers, having it reviewed, it's still a two-year process. And so, it's really a difficult job that they're doing over there, and I think it'll get easier as they get the system a little more broken in, but for now, I would expect to see small spurts of announcements about what materials will be considered and adopted next. And if you know there are folks that are under adoptions that occurred six years ago,, and they're supposed to– or on the old schedule, they would come up in two years and you're worried, I think it's important to pay attention, you know, work with folks like us to try and keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on, because, one, you can't influence that, and two, things can change in an instant at one board meeting because that's the way the the system is designed now. And you don't want to wake up one day and not have an eligible contract in the EMAT (Educational Materials) system for districts to purchase your product. 

Gina Faulk

Right. Well, yeah, we just had that happen with a client who was going after a Florida adoption, and they thought that the due date was in January, and suddenly it's November. So, you know, how do you keep track of those things? That's where you guys come in, watching that and being, you know, you've got your finger on the pulse of it more than anyone. 

Chad Cantella

Yeah. One nuance that we probably won't have time to get into, because it's a bit vague, you can submit, because it's a rolling process, at any time. And there's some more detail to be learned about that, but, hypothetically, if you were to miss, you can still submit; it would just be reviewed when they get to it. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. And have publishers had luck with that? Do you know? 

Chad Cantella

Now, it's so new, we haven't gotten there yet. 

Gina Faulk

Okay, okay. 

Well, let's turn back to Kelli. Can you tell us more… I showed those CIPA requirements, and I think they're also known as the… I think they were labeled in our system as the E-Rate requirements, but– 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Right, yeah. 

Gina Faulk

Yeah. Can you tell us how Learning.com has been able to report that you meet those requirements? And what was the process you used to make sure that your content was aligned to those CIPA requirements that I quickly showed on the Suitability Rubrics? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure, sure. 

So, CIPA is a very small piece of the puzzle for districts needing to meet E-Rate for funding, and so one of the things that we struggled with initially was that there's a list of things for E-Rate, and while our content may help districts meet, there are a lot of things that are required for the district to do themselves, right?

One of the things that districts have to do is make sure that their students, “their minors,” is the actual language in the CIPA requirements, are receiving instruction on specific topics, right? And so, it's cyberbullying, and then I'm just going to overarchingly use the term digital citizenship, it goes into more than just that. But what we've been able to do is look at our content, ingest all of our content into EdGate, and easily go in and hand-select which of those items our content aligns to. So, the reason I say it that way is because instead of going in and doing a category

alignment, and it shows E-Rate in general because the district has to do some things, it's where we’re able to now go into the the EdGate system, ExACT, and direct a line to those two particular CIPA callouts, so that we can run a report and give it to our customers and say, “Hey, here are the exact items that you can use to assign out to your students to make sure you are you are hitting that one small piece of the E-Rate puzzle”, and it takes a big load off of the districts to know that they can use the content that we're providing and be assured that their report that they submit into E-Rate, that the school board signs off on, that, you know all of these people are held accountable for, they can make sure that they are hitting what they need to hit. And really, the tool has helped us tremendously with that. And even when we've pulled in other third-party content into Learning.com that we deliver out to our customers, we're able to align that content as well. 

Gina Faulk

Perfect. Okay, thank you. 

We're running short on time, but I did want to ask about the efficacy studies, because Texas Education Alliance, you pointed that out to me that it's been really important to do your homework, with one of those important pieces of homework being the efficacy studies. So, could you tell us a little bit about why that's so important to do before you even try to start selling in Texas? And without those efficacy studies, is that a showstopper? 

Michael Jackson

Yeah, I mean, we don't have a lot of time to go into that, but I can just address it really quickly. You know, it's one of the things is efficacy studies, you know, everyone has some really good studies in other states. You know, it’s also what you are doing now to prepare for efficacy studies and studies in the state of Texas, as well. And that's examined, so that's something that you really need to be aware of, especially when you're looking at rubrics, and so on, and so forth. I can't really dig into each house bill list and things like that, but it's something to be aware of. We've had clients before that did not– they had some really good studies in other states, but it did not apply to Texas, so it's something to be aware of. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. 

Closing Thoughts

Gina Faulk

So, I guess let's just do a quick round the… Round the screen, not the table, but when you're pursuing sales in Texas, you need to check a lot of boxes, we know that. So, if you were to name the top three boxes to check, what would you– what would those be? And we've talked a lot about that, but I guess just to recap… I mean, for EdGate, definitely the way we see it, it's like, you've got to be TEKS aligned, of course, that's number one. Don't try to use your other states, don't try to submit science content that's aligned to NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) standards, that's just not going to fly. And doing those reviews against the various rubrics. So, on the EdGate side, that would be number one on our list, but Kelli, for you, what would be the top boxes to check? 

Dr. Kelli Erwin

Sure. For me, I would say the top boxes are understanding where your gaps are, and where your strengths are, for that matter. So that really ties into the standards of alignment, making sure that the reports that you're providing in the process have a level of accuracy that aligns to whatever the rubrics happen to be, you know, that are provided. Whether it's an RFP, or it's a state-level adoption, or, you know, any of the processes that you might go through. And I would say those are probably the biggest things to help you as a publisher make sure you're checking the boxes to meet all of the requirements. Again, whether it's RFP adoption or even just having to meet with a customer.

Gina Faulk

Right, right, okay. 

And the Texas Education Alliance? 

Michael Jackson

I mean, for me, you know, for me, I'd say be prepared, you know, you're a Boy Scout. Or Scout, be prepared. You know, I think that's very important, and getting back to this, do the groundwork in the beginning. I just find more and more companies that they just see Texas as such a great Market, but, you know, you have to be invested in it. You know, so if you want to come to market, do all the ground work. 

Gina Faulk

I think you said a cowboy hat might help you? 

Michael Jackson

Cowboy hat? Yes. And boots, definitely. None of that's gonna hurt. 

…Well, it depends on where you are, but… 

Gina Faulk

Right, that's true. 

And anything else from Eric or Chad? 

Chad Cantella

I think we've covered– I would just say, don't take assumptions about both rubrics. You know, and if you are coming to market, not going through an adoption to where you can be purchased through the system. The obvious point is to make sure you're aligned with BuyBoard somewhere where folks can buy you, so that that confidence is there. 

Gina Faulk

Okay. 

Eric Knustrom

And my last– my only piece of last advice would be the same I give to my 11-year-old son, every weekend is… Every minute you spend preparing for your next week at school this weekend is going to save you an hour of video game time when next week gets here. And so, every single box check that you can double and triple check prior to the submission process will lead to not only, you know, more likely than not, the “no need to provide clarification or to correct any errors”, but to a peace of mind that you've submitted an “A” paper, and you're going to get back the A grade that you deserve. 

Gina Faulk

Great. Thank you so much to everyone who… All the attendees who have joined us today and to our panel, I appreciate you taking the time to prepare and think about how our clients can crosswalk their content to Texas, get to know Texas, and the various rules that have changed, and what they should do in order to prep for 2025. I really appreciate it, and we'll be following up afterward with some more helpful information. 

We put together some documents that we hope everyone will be able to use to prepare for the upcoming adoption cycle, so thank you again, and we appreciate you attending today. 

Michael Jackson

Thank you. 

Gina Faulk

Thank you!