Aspiration to Ecosystem: The Growth of Digital Promise’s Product Certifications

Since Digital Promise was founded over a decade ago, our team members have repeatedly heard the same question from district leaders, educators, and families: How do we know that the technology we use in our schools is right for our learners? Unfortunately, no magic wand guarantees a product positively impacts learners. However, market research helped us understand why we, as an independent nonprofit, are in a prime position to help education decision-makers by vetting products and promoting transparency in the marketplace.

The idea was simple. Work with subject experts, school administrators, educators, and learners to create certifications that reflect what districts care about most when weighing their many options. Expert assessors at Digital Promise would then review evidence-filled applications submitted by edtech companies and award Open Badges to qualified products.

We launched our first product certification, Research-Based Design, in February 2020, with 13 products that spanned content areas—from math to reading to data literacy—and organizational size—from fresh, motivated startups to established edtech giants. In the four years since then, we’ve launched seven new certifications and awarded more than 200 Open Badges. The Research-Based Design cohort has grown from 13 earners to now 103 certified edtech tools.

Over the years, we’ve partnered with three nonprofit organizations—CAST, the Edtech Equity Project, and InnovateEDU—to either co-develop new certifications or award Open Badges through the Product Certification Platform ecosystem.

Some of our current certifications include:

• Learner Variability: Recognizing tools that support learners of all backgrounds, abilities, and skills
• Prioritizing Racial Equity in AI Design: Signaling edtech with AI that was built using models that consider racially diverse learners.
• Practitioner-Informed Design: Our newest certification, awarded to products that use partnerships with educators to continually improve product design

Practically speaking, how can districts use product certifications for easier and more informed decision-making?

Last fall, we launched a guide to help districts integrate certification status into existing procurement practices. District personnel can:

• Ask about certification status when fielding pitches from vendors: District and school staff are inundated with requests for demos, pitches, and walkthroughs, and requiring products to first be certified helps narrow your options while ensuring that high-quality products are filtered through.
• Require products to be certified in requests for proposals (RFPs) and requests for applications (RFAs): This helps create a standard for vendors and aids in systematizing the RFP and RFA review system. For example, the Ed Tech Joint Powers Authority includes a question about Digital Promise certifications in their RFPs.
• Use certification status when considering renewals: As ESSER funding winds down, districts will be slimming their edtech portfolios and can use certification status to strategically compare products with overlapping uses.

Where will we go from here?

The product certification team continues to learn from educators, learners, and district leaders about their priorities through a variety of projects that examine the role of edtech in the modern classroom. Topics from AI to equity, to social and emotional learning drive our work as we seek to raise the bar for digital learning and make it easier for students to leverage the right tools for their success.

As Digital Promise creates more certifications and the pool of certified products becomes wider, districts will gain even more opportunities to determine the edtech that best fits their values and their learners’ needs.

Learn more about Digital Promise product certifications, and explore applications.