According to The Learning Counsel, “The top takeaways for 2021 are that the market’s really fractured. It’s moving into a lot more alternatives, with far less traditional school models. Both administrators and teachers are interested in that delivery model shift. And they’re most interested in Hybrid High Flex model. If you’re not familiar with that, you need to download our most recent special report.
“So, the market actually grew less than we expected in 2021, given that the three big stimulus bills were flooding the market, but at least 60 percent of the districts have yet to spend their full portions. A lot of that money hasn’t even moved out of the federal level into the districts. So, purchase intention for digital curriculum remains very high. 63 percent of respondents are planning more purchase of digital curriculum. Hardware purchasing was up a bit, and it is expected to remain stably much higher than it was pre pandemic.
“Workflow and elements of time and space logistics remain mostly manual. It’s a major pain point for schools and districts. Teacher-centric lesson planning is also a massive hidden time cost. And I’m gonna get into that as we go through all the data, because a lot of administrators don’t understand what they’re doing, having every single teacher make everything themselves for lesson planning, that it’s kind of silly. It’s also part of the reason why so many schools and districts are claiming that they’ll be buying more professional grade digital curriculum.
“There are also a lot of new types and new ways of offering PD that are needed based on responses, especially from the teachers. So the pressures that people cited on the administrator side were time and space management. That’s a huge problem them for them because they’ve moved to AB weeks and AB days, a change in their block schedules. Some students want to remain at home part of the time and states have put new rules in. Maybe you can’t have hybrid learning anymore. You’re supposed to be all fully in-person with an alternate online school. So, it’s a messy landscape for leaders. And then on the teacher side, student absences continue to be a big problem. And time management is a big problem for them.
“There were slow gains in ‘21 for traditional public schools due to offering more online paths, attached within that institution and by their charters. Private schools actually lost some students. Homeschooling was up by another 0.6 percent, but it’s slowing in rate of growth to under 10 percent, it was over 20 percent. The estimate of pure traditional schooling without at least offering some hybrid simultaneous flexibility, which means attending classes via web conferencing is less than 50 percent of the market now. So, the back to normal mantra is, is sort of dead in the water. 37 percent, or about 21 million students today are opt-outers of purely traditional public schooling. They’re in public online, charters, private schools, home schools with another small percentage, those remote learners who rarely attend physically, but they attend via web conferencing.
“And in some places, the school district is allowed to count that as seat time for the school. So, this is a significant thing. It’s probably one of the most significant trends that we see in what’s actually happening to the market as it fractures apart.”
More important takeaways from the briefing
2021 Spend:
- K12 EdTech Spend 2021 – $36.7 B, up by $1.8 B, does not include paper resources. Spend is on tech hardware of any kind, major software framework systems, digital curriculum, networks.
- Hardware and major software category grew by $600 M.
- Digital Curriculum grew by $1.8 B, with 63 percent of schools and districts indicating they will spend more in 2022.
- Consumers are still outspending all schools at $28.5 B and a 15 percent CAGR into 2022 on digital learning of all kinds directly. K12 total spend in comparison was $14.9 B in 2021 but has a faster growth rate going into 2022 at 10 percent CAGR.
Of the three stimulus acts in 2020-21 in play:
- CARES Act 1, $13.5 B for K12, by November 2021 was only about 70% spent.
- CARES Act 2, $54 B for K12, by November 2021 was only about 25% spent.
- ARPA, $125 B for K12 and virtually unrestricted as to categories of spend, by November 2021 was only about 10% allocated down to districts.
For reference, the normal allocation at the Federal level to K12 is 8.3% of all monies in K12, the rest being State and Local budgets. The July 2020-June 2021 regular federal allocation was $72.8 B, with the $213 B of the three Stimulus funds on top of that.
Los Angeles Unified, as one example, was receiving $4.6 B in added funds, or over $11,000 per student.
Other Survey Data:
37 percent of K12 students (21 million of the estimated 56 million students of K12 age) are “opt-outers” now and in public online only, charters, private schools or homeschooling, with another small percentage the remote learners who rarely attend physically in a hybrid environment.
Top Pressures Cited:
- 46 percent of Administrators – Time and Space Management
- 30 percent of Teachers – Student Absences
- 41 percent of administrators cite their institution is digital traditional now. 24 percent cite it is blended/flipped traditional. When asked which of the eight models Learning Counsel research discussed in the recent Learning Leadership vs. Systemic Inequities Special Report, respondents cited two models as tied at 24 percent of interest: blended/flipped traditional and hybrid hyflex.
Highest tech areas for plans to purchase more:
- 31 percent cite audio enhancement
- 27 percent cite robotics
- 25 percent cite student coding apps
- 24 percent cite interactive whiteboards
- 21 percent cite core courseware
- 17 percent cite supplemental courseware
- 17 percent cite CTE (career and tech ed) software
Highest tech areas in consideration for use:
- 36 percent cite eSports
- 31 percent cite social-emotional systems
- 30 percent cite dynamic digital inventory systems (a means of crowdsourcing what software and resources are in use enterprise-wide)
- 27 percent cite drones
- 25 percent cite virtual reality
- 24 percent cite motion tracking video cameras
- 21 percent cite learning object repositories (LORs)
Only 21 percent of administrators cite having planning and scheduling logistics as connected-personalize systems that are non-manual for master calendars with personal views based on identity/privileges.
Only 11 percent of administrators cite centralized planning of all digital resources and lessons arranged into study courses. The majority issue pacing guides only with 39 percent not even doing that but allowing all teachers to do all lesson planning and choosing of digital resources.
66.7 percent of teachers have up to 500 digital content resources that are not associated to school or district central files. 16.2 percent have up to 1,000 and 13.1 percent have more than 1,000. A median of only 6.5 percent of teachers have 50 percent or more of their lessons built out for the subjects they teach.
24 percent of teachers cite spending over 30 hours a week, 27 percent cite spending 15-30 hours a week and 26 percent cite over 6 and up to 15 hours a week on finding digital lesson materials time, building digital content and lesson sequences time and digital traffic time (the back-and-forth of assignments, systems monitoring, checking email, checking notifications, all things not directly instructing students live.)
74 percent of teachers say they feel overwhelmed or burnt out.
2022 Projections
Learning Counsel remains conservative due to the slow distribution of funds from the federal level to the individual K12 districts and schools, with a projected increase in EdTech spend of $1.1B in 2022. Continued increases are expected in 2023 and 2024.