Back to School 2026: How Edmentum Is Moving K-12 Students From Passenger to Explorer

4 percent and 50 percent. Edmentum’s webinar, What's New for Back-to-School: Edmentum's Road to Readiness Innovations, opened with those numbers, because according to authors of The Disengaged Teen:

• About 4% of students are in explorer mode. They’re highly engaged and able to see relevance in what they’re learning. They feel in control of their future. 
• About 50% of students are in passenger mode, doing what’s expected to keep moving, but not really seeing a compelling reason to engage more deeply.

That sets the stage for an extraordinary list of updates that Edmentum is rolling out for the 2026-27 school year, all with the goal of helping schools move more students from passenger to explorer. Here’s what was shared.

Reimagining the Path to Graduation

Roadtrip Nation Career Stories Are Coming to Edmentum Courseware

It’s one thing to read a book about astronomy. It’s quite another to see NASA engineer Diana Trujillo Pomerantz answer questions about her work with the Mars Curiosity Rover. 

For more than 20 years, Roadtrip Nation has captured student-led interviews with professionals about their work and experiences. Selected videos will now appear within core coursework, giving students a chance to see how their learning connects to their postsecondary pursuits.

Updated Core Content and More Mastery Test Questions in Courseware

More than 100 courses in Courseware are refreshed with national content updates, including new and revised interactive tools, hands-on practice assignments, literature studies, expanded writing and vocabulary instruction, and updated discussion and research prompts. Grounded in research-backed learning design, these updates will help students engage more deeply with the content as they build toward mastery. 

Edmentum is also developing additional question sets for retakes, added later this fall. Students will encounter more variety when they try an assessment again, and schools gain another layer of protection against repeated test items.

New Academic Integrity Settings Are Built Right Into Courseware

Courseware now brings key academic integrity settings into one place. Districts can set pretest-exemption thresholds, manage mastery and progression requirements, lock assessments by default, and update IP restrictions directly.

Edmentum is also adding enhanced assessment security for end-of-semester exams this fall. It blocks actions such as copying, pasting, and right-clicking while allowing students to continue testing without any additional software requirements. 

A Redesigned Courseware Grading Workflow Reduces Extra Steps

The Courseware grading experience is further streamlined. Teachers will be able to review a student’s submission, view the rubric, enter a score, and leave feedback on the same screen. That eliminates the need to move between multiple windows while grading each assignment.

The updated experience will be available for the 2026-27 school year, with future phases planned to include native plagiarism detection and AI-assisted scoring.

Courseware Elementary Is Already Available for K-5 Students

Edmentum’s Courseware catalog now extends into the elementary grades, with the new K–5 experience built on the same platform used for grades 6–12 and Exact Path. Courseware Elementary includes animation, video, and interactive activities for younger learners, along with tools for managing pacing and mastery.

Districts can use the courses to create more flexible options for elementary students, including those who are homebound, hospitalized, traveling, or part of military families.

EdOnCall Adds Live Help Directly In-Platform

Students working independently still need a way to get unstuck. EdOnCall will give virtual students in grades 6–12 a way to request live support from within their courses, connecting them with a virtual content-area expert without navigating to another system. Sessions can include audio, video, screen sharing, and whiteboarding, as well as night and weekend support.

Virtual Classroom Updates Add Translation, Captions, and Direct Chat

Multilingual learners can now select a language and view translated captions in real time, making it easier to participate in synchronous instruction and tutoring, all while building English proficiency.

Students who are shy and don’t want to draw attention to themselves are also covered. A new direct-chat feature lets them reach out 1:1 rather than posting a question to the entire class, so they can discreetly receive individualized support.

Additional updates improve batch section creation, SAML SSO, and student accessibility.

Expanding College & Career Readiness

MajorClarity Supports Student-Led College and Career Planning

This school year marks the first full year with MajorClarity as part of the Edmentum family. Students start with an interest assessment that shows their fit across more than 65 career pathways, then focus their exploration through career test drives. 

Students who complete test drives are 189% more likely to build a career-aligned plan of study as they see where their coursework can take them. Students can also explore local wages and employer demand and apply for work-based learning opportunities in the platform. 

Counselors and administrators gain a clearer view of student interests and pathway engagement, while the new automated rostering feature keeps student, staff, and course data current without ongoing manual work.

Edmentum Is Adding Even More CTE Content and Pathways

Edmentum offers more than 180 semesters of content across 57 career pathways. For 2026–27, the catalog is growing by 17 semesters and four completed pathways in areas like healthcare, human and social services, marketing and sales, and teaching and training. 

In Baltimore City Public Schools, a study of nearly 7,000 students found that about a third of CTE pathway completers used Courseware for part of the coursework they needed, helping the district extend access beyond the traditional schedule.

Accelerating Student Achievement

Exact Path Proficiency Is Adding 15,000 Standards-Aligned Lessons

Teachers using Exact Path Proficiency can review formative assessment results, identify each student’s proficiency level, including those who need additional  support, and assign targeted instruction for grades 3-12 across all cores subjects, without leaving the Exact Path platform., They can deliver the exact level of support each student needs, whether it’s additional practice, a short review or a full reteach, and mark assignments as either optional or required.

Exact Path Lesson Translations Are Expanding Across K–12

Tier 2 research found that multilingual learners using Exact Path have met or exceeded the growth of their peers. With Exact Path lesson translations supporting as many as 75 languages for grades K-12, more students can use embedded tools like text-to-speech, dictionaries, and highlighters as they work with grade-level content.

A New Exact Path Report Will Help Families Understand Student Progress

Exact Path Insights is adding a report that will help families and caregivers understand each student’s current and past performance, as well as their progress on grade-level expectations. Educators can use this report during parent-teacher conferences and other conversations to bring more clarity to assessment results and potential intervention needs.

Exact Path Medal Reporting Is Expanding

Students using Exact Path are familiar with earning a silver medal for scores of 70-79% on a topic and gold for 80% or higher. With medal information now part of Exact Path Proficiency comparison reports, district and school leaders can review those results and track progress across schools, grade levels, classrooms, and individual students. This brings more value to the reporting that educators are already using to track proficiency and helps identify where additional support may be needed.

ACT, SAT, and CLT Readiness Content Is Coming to Exact Path

Content aligned to the ACT, SAT and Classic Learning Test (CLT) combines targeted practice with instruction, so schools can support college and career test readiness all year long from within the same platform they use for standards-based learning. This will help educators build student confidence and test familiarity as part of their ongoing instruction.

We’re excited to be bringing these innovation updates to schools for the 2026-27 school year. To learn more about our back-to-school announcements and see some product demonstrations, watch the recording here.