Making Academic Standards More Accessible
Why standards matter Academic standards are the shared language that connects curriculum, instruction, and assessment. When educators can easily access and apply them: Lesson planning becomes more intentional. You design instruction around clear learning goals rather than guessing what to cover. Assessment aligns with instruction. Quizzes, rubrics, and assignments reflect what students are actually expected to demonstrate. AI-powered tools become more relevant. AI-generated content is grounded in real curriculum expectations, not generic suggestions. Collaboration improves. Teachers across grade levels and departments can speak the same language about what students should know and do. How Microsoft Education uses standards Standards are woven into the experiences educators use every day. In the Teach module and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can align lesson plans to specific standards by location, subject, and grade band, use the "Align to Standards" tool to refine lesson instructions, and generate quizzes and rubrics grounded in standards. In Assignments in Teams for Education and Microsoft 365 LTI, educators can tag assignments with curriculum expectations, build standards-aligned rubrics, and create a clear thread from instruction to assessment. Across AI-powered workflows, standards can serve as grounding data that helps make generated lesson plans, quizzes, and rubrics more relevant to real curriculum expectations. This reflects Microsoft’s broader approach to AI in education: using AI to support educators with useful, contextual assistance while helping institutions maintain alignment with their instructional goals, policies, and professional judgment. Educators can select standards by location, subject, and language. Expanding coverage through partnership with EdGate Making standards useful in digital tools globally requires more than a large catalog. It requires structured, machine-readable data, ongoing maintenance, and a partner with deep expertise in education standards. EdGate has spent years building and maintaining one of the largest catalogs of digitized standards in education technology. Microsoft partnered with EdGate to help make that infrastructure more accessible inside the workflows educators and institutions already use. Through this partnership, Microsoft has significantly expanded the set of standards EdGate offers, especially internationally. Together, we have grown coverage to include: All 50 U.S. states, including Common Core, NGSS, and state-specific frameworks 70+ countries, with international standards covering core subjects, vocational education, and qualification frameworks Hundreds of supplemental frameworks, from career and technical education to world languages and the arts We continue to expand coverage with new international standards rolling out regularly. EdGate offers access to over 5 million standard statements, aggregating and normalizing global standards for consistent delivery across platforms. Their capabilities include a comprehensive standards catalog, standards authoring tools used by ministries of education, API-based access for platform integration, and certified CASE 1.1 compliance. Microsoft and EdGate are partnering to make a select set of standards freely available to education institutions, lowering barriers for educators and developers who want to explore standards-aligned workflows without a commercial commitment. To expand the impact even further, EdGate is piloting a project in 1EdTech's CASE Global Ecosystem initiative, to demonstrate how interoperable, machine-readable frameworks can improve the discoverability, alignment, and portability of learning and credentialing data across platforms, institutions and borders. The CASE format: Why it matters CASE stands for Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange, an open standard from 1EdTech that defines how learning outcomes and standards are represented in a machine-readable, interoperable format. Why does CASE matter? Machine-readability: Platforms, AI tools, and learning management systems can read, search, and apply standards programmatically. Interoperability: Standards move between systems. An assignment tagged with a standard in Microsoft Teams can be understood by an LMS, a reporting tool, or a curriculum mapping platform without manual re-entry. Cross-region equivalence: CASE enables comparing and mapping standards across countries and frameworks. EdGate is a certified CASE 1.1 provider, meaning the standards they deliver to Microsoft (and to the broader ecosystem) follow this open, interoperable format. The expanded catalog we have built together benefits not just Microsoft's products, but the entire ecosystem of education technology that relies on structured standards data. A shared commitment to open standards Microsoft is proud to be a Contributing Member of 1EdTech, the organization that stewards CASE and other critical interoperability standards for education technology, including LTI, OneRoster, and Open Badges. By collaborating with fellow 1EdTech members like EdGate, we ensure that investments in standards infrastructure benefit educators everywhere, regardless of which platforms or tools they use. When standards are open, structured, and interoperable, everyone wins: educators spend less time on manual alignment, developers can build smarter tools, and students benefit from instruction that is intentionally connected to what they are expected to learn. What this means for educators Within Microsoft Education, you do not need to think about CASE or data formats to benefit from this work. What you will see is: More standards available in the Teach module and Assignments, covering more countries, subjects, and grade bands AI-powered experiences that are better grounded in your actual curriculum Less manual work translating curriculum documents into classroom materials We are committed to continuing this investment: expanding coverage, improving the experience, and working with partners like EdGate and the 1EdTech community to make standards-aligned teaching easier for educators everywhere. Helpful links Getting started with Teach Modify content: Align to Standards Microsoft Teams for Education Microsoft 365 LTI International standards currently available through EdGate Request additional standards in Microsoft Education About 1EdTech About CASE (Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange) Have questions or feedback about standards in Microsoft Education? Drop a comment below or submit a request through our Standards Feedback form.
