The Challenge:
In 2024, the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDOE) adopted a new High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) Rubric to guide its statewide math textbook adoption process. This marked the first time South Carolina would evaluate instructional materials using such a rigorous and standards-aligned framework. The SCDOE needed to ensure the consistency, reliability, and efficiency of its review process—while also managing a wide range of submissions from both open educational resources and proprietary publishers. Given the volume and complexity of the task, the department was seeking an innovative approach that could supplement traditional educator review teams without compromising quality or intellectual property.
What We Did:
TEG partnered with the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDOE) to launch a pilot of its AI-powered Evaluation Assistant (EVA)—a tool designed to modernize and scale the review of instructional materials. The collaboration focused on aligning with SCDOE’s newly adopted HQIM rubric for K–12 math textbook evaluations and resulted in several key outcomes:
- Configured EVA to evaluate K–12 math textbooks using SCDOE’s HQIM rubric, which included 32 evaluation criteria across three gateways.
- Participated in in-person reviewer training to align the AI model with the expectations and standards of SCDOE’s instructional materials experts.
- Selected and securely reviewed materials from five major publishers, including both open educational resources and proprietary content.
- Designed EVA’s architecture to protect intellectual property, ensuring materials were evaluated without being extracted or used for model training.
- Delivered a real-time dashboard showing top-line evaluation results alongside detailed, criterion-level feedback and specific page references.
- Enabled SCDOE to compare AI-driven evaluations with human review results, validating the tool’s accuracy, reliability, and potential to streamline future adoption cycles.
The Result:
The pilot program was a success. EVA demonstrated the ability to evaluate instructional materials accurately, insightfully, and in alignment with SCDOE’s goals—while offering a scalable, cost-efficient alternative to traditional review-only models. The process significantly streamlined the state’s approach to HQIM evaluation, and the dashboard interface empowered SCDOE teams to dig deeper into content alignment and quality.
Most importantly, the pilot confirmed that AI—when deployed thoughtfully and responsibly—can play a crucial role in future textbook adoptions, helping agencies ensure consistency, reduce costs, and maintain rigorous standards. By protecting publisher rights and providing transparent evaluation data, TEG’s EVA platform proved itself to be a transformative tool in instructional materials review.
As a result of the South Carolina pilot, TEG has refined a methodology that is now ready to scale—across subjects, grade levels, and state agencies seeking to modernize and strengthen their review processes.
“Partnering with the South Carolina Department of Education has been an exceptional opportunity to demonstrate what’s possible when academic leadership and AI innovation come together with intention. The success of the EVA pilot reflects not only the strength of the technology, but the care we took to ensure it aligned with South Carolina’s rigorous standards, protected publisher rights, and respected the expertise of educators. We’re proud to support SCDOE’s vision and to help shape the future of instructional materials review.”
— Hugh Norwood, CEO, Trinity Education Group