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Product Certifications

Our Product Certifications drive the edtech industry to deliver equitable learning opportunities for each learner—especially those who are most often under-resourced—to thrive.

Audiences

EdTech Developers, Educators, Learners, Policymakers, Researchers, School and System Leaders

Topics

Evidence-Based EdTech, The Whole Learner

Learning Environments

Adult and Workforce Learning, Early Childhood Learning, K-12

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Explore More From This Program

What Are Product Certifications?

Product Certifications give educators and administrators trustworthy information about edtech. Education leaders consistently struggle to trust product claims and compare edtech quality without consistent indicators. Vendor claims are easy to find, but unbiased, third-party verifications are not. Product Certifications remove that burden from education leaders’ shoulders, streamlining the decision-making process.

Digital Promise strives to build a uniform, consistent, and transparent system for recognizing the product qualities and features that education leaders, educators, and learners care about most.

Our Values and Motivations

  • Empowering Critical Consumers: Selecting the right edtech is crucial, but timely, trustworthy information is hard to find. We work with districts to develop Product Certifications and resources that help education leaders narrow their options.
  • Co-Design: Our Product Certifications are co-designed with district leaders, practitioners, learners, and edtech experts, ensuring authentic need shapes the work. Research that includes diverse communities—particularly students of color, students impacted by poverty, and their teachers—leads to better edtech.
  • Transparency: When student learning is at stake, edtech tools should share their research and evidence, along with how they collect and use data. Vendors should be partners to districts, not black boxes.
  • Continuous Improvement: Product Certification criteria reflect education leaders’ priorities. Applicants who don’t meet criteria receive confidential feedback to help them better align with the field’s needs.
  • Objective Assessment: Applications are evaluated against a rigorous rubric—co-designed with education leaders, practitioners, and learners—based solely on submitted evidence. No outside knowledge of the product factors into the decision.
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Credentialing

How Product Certifications Work

Product Certifications expire after two years. To retain certification status, earners must reapply. Certification requirements are updated every two years, and applicants may reuse materials if applicable.

Select

Visit the Product Certification platform and select a certification to learn about its criteria.

Collect

Collect the required evidence demonstrating the product has met the criteria.

Submit

Make an account and submit the application. Applicants will receive results within four weeks of submission. If the product does not earn the certification, applicants will receive confidential feedback and are welcome to reapply.

Share

Share the product’s certification status. Download a shareable digital Open Badge or share directly via social media.

Explore Our Certifications

Our Product Certifications

Evidence-Based Edtech: ESSA Tier 3

This certification demonstrates that, in addition to having tools and features designed to center learning sciences research, a product has evidence in the form of a well-designed quantitative study showing positive benefits for learners.

Research-Based Design: ESSA Tier 4

This certification demonstrates that, in addition to having tools and features that have been designed to center learning sciences research, the product team has conducted a qualitative study that shows positive experiences with the product.

Learner Variability

This certification demonstrates an understanding of the wide variability among learners. Without designing for the full diversity of learners, we risk creating inequitable solutions that serve some learners and not others, widening opportunity gaps.

Practitioner-Informed Design

This certification recognizes products that take practitioner input seriously by building relationships with them, involving them in design activities, and sharing the impact with them.

Responsibly Designed AI

This certification demonstrates that the edtech developers designed the AI in the product to reduce algorithmic bias, provide transparency about data collection and security, include labeling of generative AI content, and equip educators with agency while engaging with AI outputs.

Product Badges

Centering Students’ Diverse Lived Experiences

Earning the Centering Students’ Diverse Lived Experiences badge demonstrates that community college students’ priorities are centered throughout the product’s design and user experience.

Commitment to Continuous Improvement

Earning the Commitment to Continuous Improvement badge demonstrates that community college students have played a role in driving iterative development of the product. Student users can share feedback to drive iterative improvements.

Faculty Agency and Connection

Earning the Faculty Agency and Connection badge demonstrates that faculty and administrators can support student learning through features that address their needs to share content and communicate with students. Additionally, product development has incorporated feedback and testing from faculty.

Partner-Issued Certifications

Digital Promise partners with other nonprofit organizations to develop, award, and/or host certifications based on their areas of expertise. Hosted certifications can be found on our Product Certification platform, and applicants undergo the same submission and assessment process as all Digital Promise certifications. The nonprofit partner issues the awarded certification.

Universal Design for Learning by CAST

Developed with CAST, this two-part certification recognizes products that align with both an accessibility baseline and the nine Universal Design for Learning Guidelines.

Prioritizing Racial Equity in AI Design by the Edtech Equity Project

Developed with the Edtech Equity Project, this certification recognizes products that proactively identify and minimize racial bias in the product’s algorithms and design.

Put Certifications to Work

We’ve built ready-to-use templates—shaped by real district leaders—to help you incorporate Product Certifications directly into your evaluation process.

Use Certification Status to Cut Through Vendor Pitches

Vendor pitches are a major bottleneck in edtech decision-making. Meeting with every vendor who reaches out would be more than a full-time job—but district leaders also worry about missing great products in the noise. The fix: Require vendors to prove product quality before you give them your time. Our questionnaire template does the filtering for you.

Get the Template

Add Certification Questions to Your RFPs and RFAs

Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and Requests for Applications (RFAs) are a powerful tool for evaluating edtech. Ask about certification status in your specifications and requirements—and get quality evidence without burdening your team with evaluating it. We’ve created sample questions you can drop straight into your next RFP or RFA.

Get the Sample Questions

Reduce Redundant Edtech Investments

Many districts are working to cut overlap and redundancy across their edtech tools. A collaboratively designed checklist makes it easy to compare similar products and build buy-in across your team. Our goal: Give you reliable, transparent information about edtech quality by defining your district’s priorities and evaluating vendor evidence against them.

Get the Checklist

Start EdTech Discussions with Quality and Context

Empower your practitioners and school leaders to advocate for tools they believe in—while making sure every choice is grounded in real need and quality design. Use this template to have vendors submit the information your team needs to confirm technical and legal feasibility before moving forward.

Get the Template