Special Webinar: Paradigm Shift

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

Good morning or good afternoon, depending on which coast you are on. Welcome to the EdGate Powers Webinar. We have an exciting panel today and a great discussion in store. We're going to give it about two minutes for all the attendees to pile in, and then we'll get started. So, hang in there, get your questions ready, get your cup of coffee, and be prepared. It's going to be a great conversation.

While everyone's waiting, I am really pleased to announce that we will be doing our next webinar on March 19th, 2026. That's the preliminary date, so, mark your calendars. We're going to be talking about future-proofing curriculum through future-ready alignments, covering the importance of structured data, clean metadata, and automating alignments to keep pace with change. So, make sure you mark your calendar for March 19th, 2026, in the new year for the next EdGate Powers webinar. And we do have a record number of registrations for this webinar, thanks to our wonderful panelists. So, it should be a very engaging session.

We’re going to kick in now. So, today's topic is Paradigm Shifts: States Redefining Standards and the Skills Needed for the Future. I want to welcome everyone. My name is Richard Portelance. I am the moderator host for today, and I want to be the first to wish everybody a joyous holiday season. We're hoping that this webinar kicks off and gets you in a good mood. 

I'm here with some of these wonderful people. We have Lisa O’Masta. She is the CEO of Learning.com. We have Hillary Rinaldi, who is the Vice President from Whiteboard Advisor, and Keven Ellis from the Texas State Board of Education. And they are all experts in their respective fields. We also have Gina Faulk, the general manager here at EdGate. And they're all going to do a quick intro, and then I'm going to tell you about the purpose of today's webinar. So, why don't we start with Lisa, and then Hillary, then Keven, then Gina? Just do a quick intro so everybody knows your background? 

Lisa O’Masta

Great. Well, thank you so much for having me, Rich, and everyone. So, at Learning.com, we work with states and districts across the country to support students in what it means to build healthy and proficient relationships with technology. And so, that includes digital citizenship, AI literacy, and early career awareness, all grounded in that research standards alignment and classroom realities. 

So, my perspective today really comes from working across multiple states. And we're seeing that navigation of those changes, shifting standards, growing expectations around future-ready skills, and those very real constraints on time, funding, and teacher capacity. So, I'm honored to join the rest of this panel and look forward to the conversation. Thank you for having me. 

Hillary Rinaldi

Hi all. I'm Hillary Rinaldi, formerly Knudson, vice president at Whiteboard Advisors focused on K-12 research and strategy. I genuinely love being a policy wonk. Prior to Whiteboard, I was at the Tennessee Department of Education, and before that, I was on the Senate Education Committee, working on the Every Student Succeeds Act. 

So, when we talk about the shifts at the state level, it is what I was working on before and now in my current role. I get to advise nonprofits, foundations, and startups in the edtech space on what policy means in practice for them, and inform their work. This is certainly an enduring topic of what it means for students to be prepared for the future of their choosing and different paths. So, I'm really excited to talk more and get in the weeds today. And I think Rich's job will be to make sure I don't get too far into those weeds. 

Keven Ellis

I'm Keven Ellis from the Texas State Board of Education. I'm just wrapping up my ninth year on the board. Our governor appointed me chair of that board for a four-year term between 2019 and 2023. Before that, I spent five years on my local school board in my hometown of Lufkin, Texas. Being on the board, I also sit on our permanent school fund, which is a $60 billion fund that supports education in Texas. I am also the immediate past chair of the National Association of State Boards of Education. I have been a commissioner for four years with the Education Commissioner of the States. Moreover, I got to spend some time with Hillary in a math thinkers meeting where we worked with Whiteboard Advisers. 

Being part of NASBE (National Association of State Boards of Education), it's really interesting to see how states do very similar work but in many different ways. In Texas, we focus on our curriculum standards, which are fully developed by the State Board of Education. And then a lot of what we're going to talk about is the high-quality instruction material, which we develop in conjunction with TEA (the Texas Education Agency).

Gina Faulk

Hello, everyone, I'm Gina Faulk, the general manager here at EdGate. I've been in textbooks and edtech for the last 25-plus years, actually, working K12 but also with higher ed publishers, nonprofits, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), states, districts, a little bit of everybody. My focus has always been on business development and partnerships, but I've worked on a lot of state adoptions. The past couple of years, that's all I've been doing. 

I help EdGate work on adoptions, but also on supporting publishers who are chasing after state adoptions. We'll talk more during this webinar, but EdGate focuses on helping publishers, anyone who has content, align their content to standards. However, we also sometimes review standards alignments that companies or states have already done, or for states that are vetting publishers who have submitted materials for adoption. So, through all my work with RFPs (requests for proposals), I've really gotten to know standards more than I ever dreamed I would. So, we'll talk more throughout the whole webinar, but that's our focus, all standards related. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you, Gina. So, you can tell that we have a high-powered panel here. We're going to get into it in a second. If you have questions during the webinar, please put them in the question link at the bottom of your screen, and we'll get to them. If it's in line with the questions that are being posed, we might cover it in line, but most of the time we'll cover those at the back end of the session. So, stay tuned and stay with us through the full hour, and then we'll get to the questions later. We will be sharing the slides, content, and a copy link to this presentation for this webinar afterwards. So, expect it to come probably between the holidays or just after the first of the year. Everything gets jammed up this time of year, but we will be sending out a packet with the link to the webinar. So, stay tuned for that. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

So today, we're bringing together these terrific leaders from policy, state education, and edtech publishing to help you understand why states are redefining student readiness, what "Portrait of a Graduate" means in practice, how Texas is addressing graduate skill proficiency, how standards and accountability systems are shifting, and what durable skills and AI literacy look like in content and assessments. I'm highlighting the word “assessment” because that's very important, and Hillary will talk a little bit about that. We will also be discussing how publishers and states can prepare for the next five years and beyond. So, we're going to get into it. The questions are going to be fairly open-ended. I want to quiet myself and let these experts talk to you about these topics. 

We're going to start with drivers of change. So, my first question is for Hillary Rinaldi. What forces are driving states to rethink what future-ready means? 

Hillary Rinaldi

So, a quick, easy yes-no question. I appreciate that, Rich. No. I think right now, no matter where your area of expertise lies or what your day job is, there are certain things that we are all feeling right now. 

Some of that is budget constraints, certainly if you're sitting in a district chief superintendent role, and trying to make more happen with fewer dollars. If you're sitting in a state house, you are trying to figure out what to do in the era of AI, how to regulate within states, how to interpret what the federal government is saying, and struggling with everything being more expensive right now. It doesn’t matter what you're purchasing or if you're supporting your whole staff. 

I think when we talk about being ready for the future, it's a reaction to whether we are ready for right now. And so, both the real-world context and also having students that appear further behind, right? Our NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results show that we're seeing a steady decline. We haven't rebounded from pre-pandemic levels. Both Keven and Lisa have heard me say this before, but the goal shouldn't be to just return to where we were pre-pandemic, either, right? I think when we talk about future-ready, it's both this need and desire for students to have a choice after high school that results in a high-wage, valuable job that's also vital to them, and being productive members of society. So, it's like, what is it that we're building here? 

The reason for that, and what you and I talked about on the podcast, like some of that comes from things beyond academics, right? Every student is going to end up in the workforce. That's the plan, and there are certain things that you need to be successful there. So, that's how we got into the conversation around durable skills, competencies, and how those come from portraits of a graduate. We can go in any direction from there. 

Rich Portelance

Well, let's get Keven to tell us a little bit about what factors are taking shape here in Texas. The State Board of Education's approach to readiness and standards. What's happening there, Keven? 

Keven Ellis

Yeah, there are lots to talk about with readiness and standards, but I think it's the same factors in Texas that we're dealing with that every other state is dealing with. We're all trying to squeeze every bit of improvement we have with the resources we're given. Of course, we're never happy with where we are right now. We always want to improve, specifically in math and literacy. We want more students entering kindergarten ready. We want more students to be reading at grade three. Also, we want students ready for advanced mathematics in high school and to be ready for a college career or the military at the end of their educational career. 

We do in Texas the requisite training grades three through eight in high school, but the academic readiness metrics I really watch are third-grade math and reading, and that they're getting off to a good start. We look at fifth-grade math as a gateway to advanced middle school math. You know, we're watching what they're doing in eighth-grade math and reading, and in our college and career and military readiness, that their CTE programs are strong, that we have college-ready students with dual credit, AP, IB, etc., in the military readiness. 

But you asked about what the State Board of Education's approach is, and I look at that as we're just a piece of the system that's responsible for five and a half million students here in Texas. You have the legislature as part of the system that's responsible for the Texas Education Code, and all the rules and laws that we work under. We have the commissioner and TEA (the Texas Education Agency), which does all the things that commissioners do. But below that, we have 1,200 school districts in Texas employing over 350,000 teachers. All of us are working together and turning all the levers we can to get this improvement. And there are lots of these. Some of these are specific to the State Board of Education, and the levers that I think of a lot are curriculum standards. What we call the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). You may hear me refer to that as TEKS. That's our curriculum standards, which are fully under the control of the State Board of Education. And now we also have authority over the high-quality instructional material. So, I look at the curriculum standards as a lever that's not the most critical lever when you think of the others, like HQIM (high-quality instruction material), like professional development, like high-impact tutoring, strengthening our ed programs, just to name a few. But the high-quality instruction material is a lever we didn't have before. So, we had our curriculum standards, and we had our high-quality instruction material. But prior to 2024, we didn't have any authority over the instructional material. Anytime we wanted to effectuate change, we had to change our curriculum standards, which is not always ideal for continuity of the system. 

So, I'm excited about the process that Texas is undergoing now, which started in 2024 with high-quality instructional material and marrying that with what we're doing with our standards. So those are a couple of the things that I think about when we talk about how we're getting our students academically ready. But also looking at how we do that within our standards. 

Rich Portelance

I mean, when you talk about millions of students and 350,000 teachers, it's a big undertaking to move that bar, but it sounds like you guys are doing a great job. 

Lisa, what new expectations are states and districts placing on content providers like Learning.com? 

Lisa O’Masta

When we talk about those new expectations, the three themes I keep hearing consistently across states have been around clarity, simplicity, and responsibility. And so, standards obviously are hugely important, Keven, as you talked about. 

When we think about that, like the first around clarity, for example. So, states and districts want providers to be explicit about how content supports graduate skills like problem solving, ethical technology use, and adaptability. "Portrait of a Graduate" kind of has raised that bar, and leaders now want to see how those skills are actually developing over time, not just kind of that they're labeled in a standard. 

The second really is that kind of simplicity piece, which is with teacher capacity, as you guys talked about, being stretched so thin. Districts are prioritizing solutions that are really easy to implement, clear scope and sequence, ready-to-use lessons, and professional learning that's built in rather than this thing that they have to add on to their day. And across states, we're really seeing this strong interest in platforms that integrate things like digital citizenship, AI literacy, rights, and career awareness, as opposed to treating them as a separate thing that happens in the back of the room. 

And then the last focus on responsibility. I really think about this as almost the most important with AI, and that states expect a level of transparency, an age-appropriate design, and alignment with guidance and their policies. And since they're still kind of, as we talked about in many different places, states, and districts, they are still trying to figure out what their guidance is, and still trying to figure out what those policies are that are helping them. And that innovation is welcome, but only when it's grounded in that trust in that research. So, really kind of thinking about beyond just the standards, how do we make things consumable for where we are today, and meeting our educators where they are in this process? 

Rich Portelance

Well, those are really important drivers of change for education. Gina, are you seeing this all come together? Because EdGate sits right in-between what Lisa's doing at Learning.com and other providers are coming up with, and what Keven's expecting at the state level. Are you seeing some of these drivers come forward from your perspective? 

Gina Faulk

Somewhat. We did some searches this week to see while prepping for this webinar about skills being added or separated, and we're not seeing that really. But the other thing that I will comment on is that the states are slow to catch up, too. 

Shifts are happening all the time, and so I think that for things to change on the state end takes a long time. Sometimes a year or two. Some of the skills-related topics, those we do see in the process standards, so they've always been there as part of the process standards, like communication, collaboration, and being a good digital citizen. But we're not seeing, you know, something that's huge and right in our face that's so different. We'll get more into that, but not yet. 

Hillary Rinaldi

So, I think I'll make another point, Rich. I think it's the connection between what Lisa and Gina are saying too. That it's not that academics is taking a backseat to skills; it's that they are interconnected, right? I spend a lot of time with math teachers right now in my work on the National Math Improvement Project. A math teacher is going to be the first to tell you whether or not you know that creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration are happening in their class. And Keven knows that that's part of the process standards that also exist. 

So, I think there's also, you know, whether it's the terminology that we're using or which state you're talking about, but really at the classroom level, these are things that are happening every day. The challenge when you get beyond the practitioner level is how are we ensuring that students also know that those are the skills that they're building? How do we support teachers in being able to articulate that those are the skills being built and in connecting the dots so that, to Lisa's point, it's not something else that we're asking teachers to do either?

Lisa O’Masta

Well, if I could just add to that really quickly, Hillary, when students learn the skills, they understand why they need to why they need those skills and they connect those skills to careers. I mean even as early as kindergarten, first, second, third grade, there's no reason why they can't understand. “When I learn this, it helps me with this, this, this, and this”, right? And so, making those connections really early in the process. 

Rich Portelance

So, if you're looking at this interweaving of skills with the standards, and you have to look at the end goal, if we're talking about "Portrait of a Graduate", you know there's this progression. Are you seeing that today's academic and CT standards are being redefined to meet that end goal, Hillary, or what are you seeing? 

Hillary Rinaldi

Yeah, we've got a lot of questions built in there. So, I think through a landscape view of when we talk about a "Portrait of a Graduate", or a profile of a learner, or really a competency framework. So, like, what Texas does, or Colorado, that has its graduate competencies. If we use that category, most states have something in place. I think it's like, 38 states that have something articulated at the state level. Now there are many districts in those states and outside of those states that have also articulated their own "Portrait of a Graduate". The intention being that it's saying when you graduate from our high school, when you progress through K-12 in this system, these are the things that you are left able to do and hold those competencies. It's also a nod to learning happening beyond the confines of a classroom, right? We're not just limited by, or we shouldn't be limited by, seat time or not. And things like work-based learning and CTE concentrators are able to do more within the school day, or get credit for those experiences. 

Now, where those shifts can happen at the state, and where we're seeing, I think, is in the place of innovation, right? So, if we look at states like Kentucky, which had a pretty lengthy process to articulate their profile of a learner through United We Learn, and that was a full strategic planning process that also really cultivated community support and development alongside that. They also developed their local labs of learning that tested different types of accountability metrics that they would want in place. So, I think it's both, yes, there's big state action happening. Indiana is another example of changing graduation rates and creating direct admissions processes, but it's also what's happening at the local level to make those things meaningful. And to Lisa's point, connect the dots of, if I'm learning this in my classroom, does it have currency beyond the classroom and in my community, too? 

Rich Portelance

No, that's a really good point. And you know, when I spoke to Keven, we were touching on some of that currency, and how Texas is preparing students for what their future looks like. So that leads us into you know, the next question, Keven. How does Texas balance innovation with stability in its system, and what are you seeing as the need for these students in terms of preparing for graduation? 

Keven Ellis

Yeah, that's always the needle we're trying to thread there. And I want to touch on something that Gina talked about with how long things take to implement change. And I'll bring up an example of our curriculum standards, our TEKS, that we've begun the revision of social studies, which is going to take us a good chunk of 2026 to get that done. After that, we have to allow a year for the textbook publishers to write new material for our curriculum standards. That's 2027, and then it will need to go through our instructional material and review process in 2028. And so, curriculum standard changes that we begin here at the end of 2025 probably won't be implemented in the classrooms until 2029. 

So, it's a good example of just how long progress takes. But I think to your question about balancing innovation and stability, it's a huge challenge. Now, in my role, I'm a little bit different from some of you who do this for a career for a living, but I'm an elected official. Some of my colleagues from across the country have been appointed. When you join the system as an elected official, you want to make improvements. And how do you make improvements? You make improvements by changing things. And we all agree with a continuous improvement model. But the challenge is making those targeted changes, but giving those changes time to result in improvements to the system. 

I want to give a couple of examples of what I mean by that. With our state assessment system, what we call our STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) test, we have cut scores that are between the different differentiators with that. The legislature said they wanted those to be consistent for five years to allow stability in the system, so districts could make the changes they need to do at a local level, and see those results in a consistent accountability system. But then, after five years, when it came time to change those cut scores and to look for the progress that the state expected from our districts, it led to a huge change instead of five small incremental changes. And then you had districts that basically had the exact same score, but were dropping a letter grade because the standards stayed the same for five years, and then made a big jump after. 

The same works for industry-based certifications (IBCs). Those have to come and go based on whether they remain high value or in high demand. Some may add or drop the list. But, districts have budgeted and planned for teaching those certifications.  So, what the state has said is that “we want those now only modified every five years, consistent with the accountability changes, so that they marry up”. I mentioned a little bit about the TEKS changes that can take four, sometimes five years from the time we start till we get into a classroom. But even just some amendments that we make to our curriculum standards result in changes to the 5.5 million students that I mentioned earlier, the professional development for the 350,000 teachers that I talked about earlier. It creates new instruction material requirements for publishers, and then, in our accountability system, new assessment questions. 

Another area that I look at the stability for is a program that's relatively new to the state, the Teacher Incentive Allotment. It's a way that we're paying our best teachers to stay in the classroom and give them a chance here in Texas to make a six-figure income without having to go into the administration route to stay in a classroom where we want them closer to our students. And that's shown a lot of promise, but that program is dependent on a stable funding system. 

So, Texas has made great progress in changing these funding formulas by making these changes specific to the formula, not just a grant system. But I think to answer, you know, to summarize to answer your question, we have to listen to concerns from the field, when target improvements need to be made, what those strategic changes are, provide some consistent time for those improvements to take place, and then also importantly, as we all know, provide those consistent financial supports. 

Rich Portelance

So, Hillary, you know, we just heard from Keven that there's this time gap and, you know, you have to be a little bit of a prognosticator to understand where things are going to be in five years. That's a challenging component to building these standards and making them relevant. Where are states experiencing the most friction as they evolve their standards? Are you seeing other things? 

Hillary Rinaldi

Yeah. So, I think that the structural elements that kind of stay in place are those standards review cycles, right? Every state has its own process and pretty comparable timelines of about eight years or so. Alongside that, you have over a dozen states that have formal curriculum review processes, like Keven was talking about in Texas. There are another dozen states that do that as well. That doesn't mean that things aren't also moving at the district level simultaneously. 

So, if we take, like, California, for example, the math framework took a long time to get out, was delayed, well over a year. I work closely with Los Angeles Unified, and they had moved forward with adopting their own HQIM outside of that process. So, I think even if the state's role is to kind of maintain those guardrails and support their districts, it also means that districts do still have some flexibility to move things forward. 

I think where districts are more at the mercy of action at the states is also related to graduation requirements, right? And so I mentioned Indiana, the changes to their diploma requirements, and trying to create more pathways for students while also ensuring that you're maintaining rigor. And so that kind of friction between “we want students to have more opportunities, more personalized learning experiences, more experiences outside of the classroom”, there's still only so many hours in the day. So, what is going to shift to be able to accommodate those things? That friction between maintaining rigor and creating opportunity and choice is a definite challenge for both states and for districts, right? 

I think my concern is always that we are putting the onus on the student to know at the ripe age of 13 what they're going to do with their life, to be able to choose what pathways are the right fit? So, I think I would love for Lisa to jump in and share more about, like, how do we think about whether a student is learning that applies to any pathway that they choose, and being prepared to take on those different opportunities? It's reasonable to expect that a high school kid might change their mind, because we also know most college kids do too. 

Rich Portelance

Lisa, you want to take that on? 

Lisa O’Masta

Yeah, I mean, the common theme between both Keven and Hillary is that moving faster isn't necessarily the answer. It's building smarter. But I also think there's a recognition, and I think to your point, Hillary, that there are the jobs of tomorrow, we don't even know what they are yet, right? And so, there's this concept of those durable skills and we think about it like the language, whether you know whatever we call it. 

"Portrait of a Graduate" has kind of created that common ground to kind of create those common languages, and it's around the durable competencies, the critical thinking, all of those components, those are consistent. And I would venture to argue that they're probably not going to change, even though the jobs themselves will, and so from our experience, we're thinking about it from like a modular flow. Whether it's us or publishers of any kind, what does that look like, how can we make sure that we're building those skills and introducing ideas? 

Hillary, you talked about a career, you know, going into CTE in high school. What we're seeing is that a lot of the schools and districts that have really invested at the CTE level in the high school, those students who are halfway through are kind of losing interest, like “is this really what I wanted to do?” I mean, we're adults, and we probably ask ourselves those questions, like partially, throughout our careers. 

So, I would argue that introducing earlier, we're seeing a lot more introduction in middle school around not necessarily CTE, but hey, when you learn this skill, these are the types of jobs that this skill can connect to. These are the types of careers that people do today. Here are, you know, when you think about, like I mean, AI, right? Like, here's something that shows how AI is being used in healthcare, in business, in you know, hundreds of different careers. Isn't that interesting? And so, you're not necessarily putting them on a path yet, but you're just giving them little tastes and helping them to see that so that they're not being forced into a pathway too soon before they really know what they want to do. 

Rich Portelance

So, as we go forward, we're seeing the world of CTE becoming more relevant in some regards. It's always been relevant, but it's interwoven with what we're doing academically. 

There's actually a question here from one of our attendees, Gina. I just want to throw it out to you. In terms of correlating the world of academic and learner standards to the world of what job seekers are looking for in CTE standards, you know, what are you seeing? And I know you've done some work with ExACT on, bringing all that into the system. Can you talk about the correlation of those things, and what is the expected outcome to meet some of the challenges that Lisa, Hillary, and Keven were just talking about? 

Gina Faulk

Yeah, CTE has been particularly hard, and it filled up, I think you mentioned earlier, Rich, it filled up half of our database, which is full of CTE standards because they're so vast. They don't get the attention that we'd all like them to have because the four core subjects get the most attention, with CTE probably being last on the list. But we probably have over, you know, three or four million CTE standards in our database. We can align those, or we can provide those CTE standards to companies that need access to those. We have a library of CTE standards across all of the various pathways and clusters, not only for the states, but we're beginning to look at actually adding CTE for international regions as well. 

We can load those up into our database, and they can be aligned to via ExACT, or our clients can actually hire EdGate to help them do that. So, either way, it is hard to know what the states will be doing at any given moment because there's not a lot of notice given about, oh, you know, suddenly we'll look and see, wow, the state just loaded up all brand new CTE standards. So sometimes there's a little lag because of the fact that they're changing all the time with no apparent heads up on the fact that they'll be doing that. 

So, but yeah, we definitely do that work and it can be done either via our subject matter experts, or the standards could be loaded into our tools so that they can be aligned to. Oftentimes it might be a direct alignment, too, so that you would be looking at it in a nicely organized fashion, so that you can look at the standards and directly align your content to those standards.

Keven Ellis

Hey Rich, can I kind of jump in a little bit there and just talk about CTE, because I think as an elected official, that's always a challenge to, you know, we work in our little bubble, but the decisions we make are affecting so many different people, and CTE is an example of that. 

Texas probably 10 years ago tackled all our CTE standards at one time, and I don't even know how many courses we have. It’s hundreds. And literally, I wasn't on the board then, but my colleagues told me that they had three-ring binders of the curriculum standards that were literally from the floor up to almost chest level when they did all the different courses. It was just a beast. And so, what we're doing now instead of trying to do that again in 10 years is doing bite-sized chunks. So, we're continually doing CTE. We have all our core subjects and our enrichment subjects, kind of like what Hillary was talking about, an eight- or nine-year schedule, but CTE is constant. So, we're taking the ones, and you know math and science is a relatively static research field, but still the standards change with those, but you can imagine how much the need for CTE is to change when the industry is changing so fast. So, what we're trying to do is almost like a continual process of CTE revision, so we're keeping up with those important ones that the field is changing, and hopefully that'll be helpful for the field. 

Lisa O’Masta

Well, and if I could just add, you know, Keven, we work across most of the states in the country, but I would say Texas is doing a fantastic job. We work very closely with Texas, and your state is really leading the way as it relates to thinking about how some of those kinds of durable competencies meet those CTE requirements. I've been so impressed with so many of the districts that I'm working with in Texas, where they're like, "Hey, Learning.com, how can you know you specifically help us bring the integration of these digital skills into the CTE?” Your state's doing it faster than I've seen a lot of other states do it. So, kudos to what Texas is doing for sure. 

Keven Ellis

Always nice to hear because my complaint inbox usually ends up bigger than the compliment inbox. 

Lisa O’Masta

I hear you on that one. 

Rich Portelance

So, Keven, kind of continuing that thought, you know, you're adding competences and character traits to your TEKS to evolve these expectations. Is that something, you know, similar to what you're doing on the CTE side, this continual development? Can you talk a little bit about those character traits and other components that are, you know, helping to create what a future-ready student looks like? 

Keven Ellis

Yeah, that's actually a little bit of a different process, and I'll go back a little bit to give you the timeline. In 2019, the legislature required that the State Board of Education integrate character traits into its teaching curriculum standards. And some examples of that were, I didn't memorize this, I am reading from a list right now, courage, trustworthiness, integrity, respect, courtesy, responsibility, fairness, caring, good citizenship, gratitude, those types of things that are now required to be part of the TEKS. 

Legislature came back in 2021 and added personal skills to the character traits. Things like self-management, interpersonal skills, responsible decision-making. So, the way that's working, again, different from what we're doing with CTE on almost like an evergreen cycle. Beginning in the 2021 school year, each of those things that I just listed, each of the individual character traits must be taught at least once in a grade band. The grade bands are K through 2, 3 through 5, 6 through 8, and 9 through 12. So, somewhere in each of those four grade bands, you have to teach all of those character traits. They can be taught as a standalone course, or they can be integrated. When you look at the Texas curriculum standards or TEKS, we have chapters. We have a chapter for science. We have a chapter for math. We have a chapter for social studies and on and on. What we did with this was we went back and forth. We did not integrate them into, say, social studies or into English language arts. We made them their own separate chapter. And I think that's something important that publishers should pay attention to because you're not going to find those character traits in the social studies TEKS or in the ELAR (English Language Arts and Reading) TEKS. They're a separate chapter, but districts are required to integrate those somewhere in their curriculum that they teach. 

So, if a publisher adds those as part of their curriculum, I think it's a bonus for districts and it makes it a little easier for them to figure out where and what grade they're going to teach those character traits. 

Rich Portelance

Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. I want to shift the conversation a little bit towards assessments and future skills. Lisa, what innovations do we need to measure digital and AI related skills? Big topic. 

Lisa O’Masta

Yeah. You know, especially whether it's digital skills, AI-related skills, it really requires a different mindset, right? So, if you think about it in terms of first, we need to focus on the application. So, it's not just does a student understand a specific technology like do I know how to use a tool; it's what they can actually do with it, how do they evaluate, for example, how do they evaluate AI output, is it accurate, is it not accurate, is it biased, is it not biased? And how do they start to think about that? Can they explain their reasoning in terms of understanding that, and being able to demonstrate that? And then can they be safe about it and use it ethically in terms of their decision-making and processing? 

So, when I think about it from an assessment perspective, I think about it, you know, can a classroom teacher, you know, can she observe different changes? Like, are there different things that she's seeing in that process? What can they do differently with it? If you think about what are those early indicators, we always look at, you know, is there a physical change in behavior? 

So, one of the examples I like to talk about is I was talking with a student, a seventh grader once, and I was asking her, you know, what tell me, you know, after using some of these digital skills that Learning.com teaches, what can you talk about differently? You know, she's like, “well, I don't really use social media”. And I'd like to laugh because I asked her, I was like, "well, how many followers do you have?" And she's like, "I have 672." And so, for somebody who doesn't use technology, she can tell you the exact number. But when I asked her, I said, "So, what have you done differently?" and her answer was “well I guess now before I post online, I pause for a minute and I think to myself ‘what would I do if my mom saw this?’” And I think that is such a critical moment and a life changing moment, and so how do you assess that? It really comes down to kind of everyday learning, you know, what do those assessments look like? How do we track and how do we monitor different types of behavior in those? Whether it's AI or any other types of digital tools, and being able to be able to measure that activity, which I think again going back to it's a different mindset to assessment than what we've had in the past. 

Hillary Rinaldi

Yeah. I think of it almost as like what we call invisible assessments almost, right? So, what teachers are able to use in their day-to-day, it's not another summative assessment. It's not even necessarily a formative assessment. It's the way that just evolves naturally within really well-taught classrooms, right? Teachers need the support and the pedagogical practices to be able to do that well. And so, with tools like the ones Lisa is talking about, you're able to do that. But I think it's also that if we treat teachers as the professionals that they are, and allow them to tell us how they know these things about their students, I think we're also better poised to be able to do these things. It's not necessarily another test in the way that any of us have experienced tests in schools either. 

Rich Portelance

And what do you think those measures are? 

Hillary Rinaldi

Well, Rich, if I could answer that... I think there's a lot of opportunity in just how far we've come from a psychometric standpoint, and I don't pretend to know enough to really speak to that eloquently. But, I think from coming from you know state assessments or summative assessments, you have more states that are thinking about things like, through-year assessments, right? And how do we have multiple checkpoints to acknowledge that students are making gains. But it also speaks to competency, right? At what point is a student competent to meet the standards of that coursework to be able to say that they can, you know, move on when ready, right? This is part of what happens in accelerated math classes like Keven was talking about in middle school acceleration for math. I think the skills for the future pilot that is underway with five or six states, in partnership with ETS (Educational Testing Service) and the Carnegie Foundation is trying to determine just that. To figure out how those states want to pursue assessing those skills and those competencies that they want to see in their students. 

So, I think there's work underway, but no one I don't think anybody really knows the answer quite yet. But, I think Lisa makes a great point to say that it is a change that is part of the paradigm shift. It is a change in mindset of what do we even mean by assessment? 

Lisa O’Masta

Well, and if I could just add, you've used the word competence a lot, which is what's the definition of competence, right? Is the competence now that I know what 4 plus 3 is or is the competence that I understand how you know that when I see the answer for 4 plus 3, that I know it's correct? Is the answer that I know that 4 plus 3 is correct and that it's, you know, not misrepresented in some form or fashion. And so I think competency now expands to more than the answer to 4 plus 3 equals 7 right, and what does that need to look like and how do we measure and evaluate that. 

Keven Ellis

I think it's a great conversation to have about how we're looking at traditional versus non-traditional metrics and how we're ensuring that our students are where they need to be. From a personal viewpoint, I looked at it differently when I was on a local school board with 7,000 students versus a state board with over 5 million students. So, it's a completely different viewpoint, but you know, in Texas, we're looking beyond the traditional achievement. We're looking at the growth metric that I think a lot of other states are doing. We have redesigned our STAAR test, as Hillary was mentioning, a three-year design that's going to have a beginning of the year, middle of the year, in addition to the end of the year that's also adaptive. But we look at things like in our accountability system, the college and career and military readiness and all those different types of things. AP and IB dual credit, level one and level two search, military enlistment, all those types of things. Closing the gaps are just other ways that we look at it. But, 

I think one of the other unique things that Texas is doing is a local accountability system. And this is a process where districts can apply for a local accountability plan that meets the needs of their local community. There was conversation earlier about portraits of a graduate and Texas really doesn't have that at a state level, but there are districts that are doing that. Frisco ISD (Independent School District), which is in the DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) metroplex, has done something like that. And interestingly enough, they have merged that with this local accountability system. The community has said this is what we want for our skills, and what we want our high school graduates to look like. For Frisco, that's things like a certain percentage of students taking specific coursework about making sure that they have differentiated learning experience and a positive culture and environment when they're at school. They've merged that what I would look at as like a "Portrait of a Graduate" in with their local accountability system plan, and I think that's a pretty unique and innovative approach that some districts are

Rich Portelance

All right. So, a lot is going on over in Texas. I want to circle back to Lisa. During your podcast interview, you spoke about durable skills, stating that publishers like Learning.com have the responsibility to lead with innovation and integrity by providing curriculum and resources that are research-based, standards-aligned, and easy to implement. Thereby reducing complexity and schools for schools and teachers. 

First, how is Learning.com delivering on that responsibility? And second, can you really see a path to reduce complexity for schools and teachers? 

Lisa O’Masta

Yeah, great question. So, I guess a couple of pieces that I think if I could just say responsibility and complexity are where providers like Learning.com and others really can make or break trust, right? And so if you think about that from that perspective, you know, one of the things we focus on at Learning.com is how do we help states and districts take complex expectations into really clear learning pathways? Like, what does it actually look like to take the ideas and the vision that they have and help them bring that to life? I think that's kind of with our work across different states and districts across the country, you know, what does it look like across different grade bands? What does it look like in terms of involving the school's tools in that process? Helping them in terms of identifying what are the problems that they're trying to solve and what are the different tools. I don't think tools by themselves are going to help. It's really around that relationship you're creating with the organizations that you're working with. It's about thinking about them as your partner and then articulating and helping. Companies like Learning.com help them diffuse the complexity of those ideas. 

And again, we'll just go back to AI and AI policy because that's kind of that hard piece that so many schools and districts are working on right now. How do we take that vision and give them kind of some clarity? We just launched a new tool that is solely available for states and districts to help them with their thinking. It's an AI policy tool just to help them think through, freely available, just kind of be their thought partner. And so, how are organizations like Learning.com providing resources that can help break down some of that complexity to help partner with districts and schools to create those pathways that get them to the outcomes they're looking for? 

Hillary Rinaldi

I think that's true. Not like AI is the, you know, maybe the hottest topic and the toughest one to grapple with because we don't know, right? Every day it's new. Even if we were having this conversation a year ago, it would look very different than what it is like now. But I think for the core subjects, there is still movement and momentum there for states to rethink. Like there was a great paper that SAP (Student Achievement Partners) put out about the durable skills that are baked into math class that we don't necessarily talk about it that way. Or math teachers might not even think about it that way, but there is opportunity to ensure those things are braided, right? And as we think of more subjects being connected in that way and the potential for an interdisciplinary approach, that can help them free up time, so to speak, in a given day to go do things, like a work-based learning opportunity or that way. So, as we want to ensure that students are thought of as holistic individuals, what their school day looks like can also have that opportunity. It's very difficult to operationalize, but it is possible. And some of that is thinking about the pieces that have been highly regimented previously or up until now. 

Rich Portelance

And do you feel that, Hillary? Do you feel like we can see a path towards de-complexing? I want to go specifically towards teachers right now. Their workload and their job in bringing in these skills and doing this work. 

Hillary Rinaldi

I think there are definitely ways that we can make the administrative burden of teachers easier through things like tools and tech that exist right now. What we cannot do is replace the teacher-student relationship. So, what I'm excited to see is how tools can come alongside teachers to allow them to, like… it's not just make their job easier, but also make them better at the parts of the job that only teachers can do. So, for example, if you're sitting in a class of 27 students and we know that more of them are maybe behind grade level than you would hope, right? Or than in years past. What does it mean to differentiate for those students? There are a lot of tools that I think are much smarter now to be able to ensure that students still have access to high-quality instructional materials, but also are able to meet them where they're at, so they can make progress within their coursework, too. 

Lisa O’Masta

I would add to that integrating as much as possible right so whether you're integrating in terms of like making sure that these things aren't separate and that they can integrate it really helps to help the students and the teachers gain time, and it creates more consistency and clarity across the board when the systems start to integrate at the same time. 

Rich Portelance

So, we have some good questions coming in. I want to remind everybody that on March 19th, please mark your calendars for the next EdGate Powers Webinar. So, you know, we're crossing over into 2026. These topics will continue to evolve, and we'll continue to bring forward wonderful panelists like today's. I do have a final prompt, and then I want to answer some of the questions that have come in, which are great questions. So, please stick around. 

I want each panelist to consider the following. What single shift do you believe will define K12 education in the next five years? Take your time. Raise your hand if you want to start. I think Hillary's ready to go. 

Hillary Rinaldi

Is it that? No. I just knew you'd pick on me, so I was glad that I knew about this question. The rest I usually just can go. But yes, I will give my fellow panelists time to come up with their answers. I am most excited by and see the most potential for rethinking a student's high school experience. For most students in most places, it looks exactly the same as it has if you're moving between classes for a set number of minutes. And that's just honestly unfair to students and preparing them for how the world works today. 

To be able to actualize a truly transformed high school experience, there are a lot of pieces of the puzzle that need to be figured out, supported, and funded, right? I think there's innovation happening across the country that has potential to be replicated, but that also takes changes. It could take changes in policy. I think in a lot of places those policies are there, but they're not necessarily incentivized for districts and schools to take advantage of. So, I think that's something I'm hopeful for because it should be fun, right? It should be that you know you enjoy the work that you are doing in high school that prepares you for the future, and being able to have things like interdisciplinary courses and be out doing learning from other practitioners of having those kinds of robust internship experiences. 

Students are, I think, more prepared for that than we typically give them credit for. So, bringing them into those conversations to really make that happen. There's a very exciting report coming out about the future of high school in about a month. So, I'll follow up when that's ready, but I've been working with the XQ Institute on that. So, we're excited to release that. So, high school is my answer, Rich. 

Rich Portelance

Thank you, and we'll be happy to share that report when it comes out as well. So, you know, if you get it over to us, we'll post it out to this group. Keven, what are you thinking? 

Keven Ellis

Yeah, you know, I think to answer your question directly, the 800 lb gorilla in the room is artificial intelligence and what it's going to do there. And that's a whole other podcast for a whole other day, but I'll actually take your question and flip it a little bit. I've used this kind of quote before that there's no silver bullet in education because we're not hunting werewolves, and that's why there's no one single thing. 

So, I think one of the things as an elected official I try to do is make sure that we are continually keeping our heads on a swivel. If we focus on one area for too long, whether that's our curriculum standards, which we know that the State Board of Education did for a long time, mainly because that was the only authority we had. We weren't paying attention to the quality of our instructional material. I think my answer is almost the opposite of how many different things we have to keep our eye on the ball when we're talking about instructional material. We're talking about TEKS, we're talking about our teacher ed prep programs, when we're talking about professional development, just career pathways. I think really the answer is what I try to focus on are all those things, and how do we make sure that we're not letting something slip past us in this important time. 

Rich Portelance

And I want to ask Gina because you see it from a different perspective, what shift are you seeing? 

Gina Faulk

Well I'm going to take it from the standards perspective of course but I think that, one, the durable skills like critical thinking, communication, creativity, all of that. And it kind of goes back to P21, too, the partnership for 21st century skills. Those skills are always going to be important, those durability skills. Because with AI, like Keven was saying, they're going to need those skills, wherever and whatever the kids decide to do. 

But secondly, I think CTE because of AI, we need to fill those other positions that are going to be stable, like vocational skills. So, I would love to see the CTE standards really take off and be attended to, and CTE programs expanding. Just in my own personal experience, in my life, that's what my kids are focused on right now, those types of jobs that are going to be around forever, no matter what. So, I think that's where I would focus on, or think that that's going to hopefully get more attention in the next five years. 

Rich Portelance

And Lisa O’Masta, what are you thinking over there? 

Lisa O’Masta

I appreciate being last in this one. So, you know, I was listening to all of your answers, and I think there's almost a bridge there. When I think about it, it's an important shift from content coverage to knowledge building, right? And I think that kind of bridges across all the things. 

Now, obviously, you know, Hillary, you talked about high school. We're very much focused on K-8. And so I believe that content coverage shift to knowledge building needs to start way sooner. Because I actually get concerned when we wait until high school. There's so much focus at the high school level that we haven't prepared students for the understanding of the depth they need to have that reflection. And so I'm starting to see signals from schools and states around that making sure that students have the skills and the knowledge for this unpredictable future is really important, and that requires keeping things human-centered, right? Really being thoughtful about how we use whether it's the technology or the standards of any of those things, and then building those strong partnerships, because I think there are systems that get those things right. 

Because AI, and Keven you said this, AI is going to be a huge push in these futures, but AI is only as good as we teach students to understand what it is and what it isn't. And not just students; it’s students, educators, and administrators of what it is and what it isn't, and how it can be used, because I can imagine you know in 5, 10, 15 years from now, students aren't going to need to understand like a formula or physics in the same way that they do today. They're going to need to understand why it matters. They're going to need to be able to think. They're going to need to be able to think critically. And I think Gina, that's kind of what you were talking about, like, but they're really going to need to understand how they apply the knowledge, which is different from let me tell you a formula or let me tell you a specific area. And I think that's going to need to be a fundamental shift that we have. And that starts with humanity and the ability to think and apply knowledge differently. 

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Thank you, Lisa. Now, I want to, you know, typically I do a little wrap, but I don't think I can articulate it quite as well as our panelists. 

I want to come back to Hillary because she asked a question at the very beginning about the paradigm shift and about what we want all of you as attendees to take away to be able to understand this paradigm shift in education, and what does it mean in five years? So, Hillary, were we able to answer the question, and is there anything you would like to add? 

Hillary Rinaldi

I think we answered some really good questions and gave some food for thought. It's always hard to be on the spot to predict the future. Hopefully the next time we have this conversation, we'll feel further along in supporting students, what they actually want to do next, and being prepared for very dynamic work experiences, because no one's staying anywhere for their lifetime, let alone only, you know, this idea of you go to college and then go into a job and then you're there forever. I think that's part of the paradigm shift of being prepared for the unknowable. 

Rich Portelance

Oh, well, thank you for our wonderful panelists today. Again, happy holidays to everyone who attended. Thanks for sticking around for the full hour. We hope you got a lot out of it. We'll be visiting you again soon. Mark your calendars for March 19th. We'll be coming back with another great webinar. Have a wonderful, wonderful holiday and a good day. Bye-bye. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you