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Every year, thousands of district teams sit down to evaluate the same products. They pull up the same privacy policies, read the same vendor one-pagers, and ask the same questions to the same sales reps. Across the country, educators are duplicating work that has already been done, sometimes by the district one town over.
This isn't a knock on due diligence. Evaluating EdTech thoughtfully is genuinely important work. But when a district in Ohio spends three weeks vetting a reading app for data privacy, and a district in North Carolina spends three weeks vetting the same app for the same reason, something has gone wrong. Not with their process, but with the infrastructure supporting it.
That's the problem the EdTech Index was built to solve. Outside of being free to use, the most immediate benefit is time. Rather than spending weeks researching each product individually, you can see at a glance which tools have already been vetted for quality, safety, and effectiveness. For district teams managing formal procurement, that head start adds up fast.
A Shared Starting Point
One of the questions our team kept returning to was: how do we make the work of edtech evaluation less redundant and more useful for the people actually doing it? Educators and district leaders aren't short on frameworks or guidance. What they're short on is time, and a reliable place to start.
The EdTech Index aggregates vetting already completed by organizations that specialize in it, including the ISTE Seal, Digital Promise, 1EdTech, Project Unicorn, and more. Rather than requiring every district to independently surface and interpret this work, the platform brings it together in one place, mapped to a common set of quality indicators: Safe, Evidence-Based, Inclusive, Usable, and Interoperable.
Safe: Protects student and educator data privacy and security.
Evidence-Based: Has a research foundation and demonstrated learning impact.
Inclusive: Designed for all learners, including those with divergent needs.
Usable: Intuitive experience for both students and educators.
Interoperable: Integrates with existing school or district systems.
The goal isn't to make the decision for you. It's to make sure your evaluation starts where everyone else left off, not from zero.
What This Looks Like in Practice
The five quality indicators aren't meant to be exhaustive. They're meant to highlight the most important considerations: the elements that, if you get them right, give a product a real chance of working in your context. For example, a product that is safe but not usable won't get adopted. A product that is usable but not evidence-based won't produce outcomes. The indicators are designed to work together, giving evaluators a complete picture rather than a narrow slice.
Over 2,000 products are currently listed on the EdTech Index, with third-party validations visible directly on each product profile. Whether you're a classroom teacher looking for tools that fit your subject area, or a district team managing a formal procurement process, the EdTech Index is built for both. You can:
- Search by grade level, subject area, or product type.
- Filter by which quality indicators have been earned.
- Access detailed information on pricing, implementation requirements, and integration capabilities.
Our goal is to save every district 1,000 hours of review time while actually increasing their overall satisfaction with their choices. That’s 1,000 hours that can be invested right back into directly helping youth learn, grow, and thrive.
The Work Still Ahead
Aggregating existing validation data is a starting point, not an endpoint. We are on the constant hunt for additional data points that will help educators make high quality decisions.
One area we're actively working on involves creating pathways for educators themselves to contribute structured, verified reviews, building a layer of peer knowledge on top of the institutional vetting that already exists. The research is clear that educators trust their peers. The question is how to capture that trust in a way that's rigorous enough to be useful and accessible enough that people actually use it. We are working hard to find the sweet spot that will unlock this powerful additional context.
The EdTech Index doesn't replace the need to evaluate the fit of a particular solution for your specific context. Every district's needs are different, and no platform can make that judgment for you. But it gives every team a head start, and right now most teams aren't getting one.
If you're evaluating EdTech right now, the Index is ready to use today. Start at edtechindex.org.
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