It’s official. American public schools are now the world’s largest purchaser of iPads. And we thought that award went to moms who just want to get the laundry done.
In 2016, it’s no longer possible to argue that the age of digital education has yet to arrive. Walk into any classroom across the country and you’ll see teachers and students engaging with and learning from digital content. In fiscal year 2015 alone, American public schools spent almost $11 billion investing in educational technology for K-12 students. According to the Center for Digital Education, per-student spending for K-12 is projected to increase 18% to $13,200 by 2022-23.
With all this money raining down on education technology, surely school leaders are in touch with the innovators creating the products, right?
Wrong.
There is a serious disconnect between the innovators building products to boost student outcomes and the school-district officials and school leaders with access to the purse strings.
Last week’s ASU GSV conference brought this reality home for me. Out in San Diego, I was captivated by the flurry of innovative ed-tech products on display — apps as far as the eye could see. Yet what resonated most were the conversations with entrepreneurs about how they’re rolling out their products in schools, how they’re partnering with schools to ensure that they’re aware of the niche that their product fills and how to use the product to best educate students.
“Ancient procurement and monetary policies” are what make it difficult to bring great ed-tech into the K-12 space, according to Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington, DC. Our children are in great need of equipment for the digital age, but decisions about their learning are still regulated by outdated, inflexible laws and people who were raised on the one-size-fits-all textbooks of years passed. Innovators need to be players in the game, instead of working at the sidelines tossing their products into the court and hoping someone catches them.
Right now, we have a supply problem in education technology. What we need is a demand problem. We need strong leaders in K-12 schools who will demand the highest quality ed-tech products and hold them accountable. If the needle on student achievement is going to move, then innovators and school leaders need to work together to make it happen.