“Show Me The Money” is one of the big issues in Ed Tech moving forward. Public Educational monies in the US are a staggeringly huge pool of funds, but it’s encumbered by byzantine bureaucratic red tape and existing commitments to fund ongoing educational programs and “plant”. It’s there, but it’s not available, in large part, unless perhaps through charter school funding, Federal programs, or a coalition of forward thinking school districts whose budgets allow some flexibility in spending. 

One local example, LCPS spent over $100M on the new Centennial HS, which is an impressive campus. They also spent huge amounts on a retrofit for Las Cruces HS. What portion of those funds, might have instead been used to invest in cloud tool instruction accessible by mobile devices? And would such an investment have been a better use of the sizable funds expended for “plant”?

In lieu of public education funding, private education funding is willing to invest in Ed Tech invention and development of alternate tools for learning. Given the status quo in much of the country, private equity might”get there” before public educational equity does. Stan Rounds the former LCPS superintendent once said, and I’m paraphrasing:  “I’m not going to let LCPS be out-competed by new entities coming into our market”. 

LAUSD of Los Angeles CA has just undergone a change in the powers that be for the BOD…where a very well funded coalition of “charter school” advocates has the votes to institute broad and deep support for alternative approaches within a public school entity. Remains to be seen what that will look like,  but perhaps it will involve some contracts with such as below.

[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Fueled-by-Big-Rounds-US-Edtech-Funding-Surges-to-887M-in-First-Half-of-2017-EdSurge-News.pdf”]