Education is hugely expensive (as is Healthcare) in the US. Each year something like three quarters of a Trillion, with a T, dollars are spent on primary and secondary education in the US. One way to think of that is as an immense pool of purchasing power, and if we made decisions to re-arrange our educational expenditures to support Ed Tech with a “priority push”, the educational landscape would presumably be dramatically different.
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States in 2015–16 amounted to $706 billion, or $13,847 per public school student enrolled in the fall (in constant 2017–18 dollars).
Total expenditures included $12,330 per student in current expenditures, which includes salaries, employee benefits, purchased services, tuition, and supplies. Total expenditures also included $1,155 per student in capital outlay (expenditures for property and for buildings and alterations completed by school district staff or contractors) and $362 for interest on school debt.
Apparently the above expenditures might not count the “mobile devices” that students have access to, and the ISP costs that they incur to use them. Some schools provide these for use in the classroom, most do not. But nearly all students have smart phones, or access to them. Those costs if added up…for total US Students of near 80 million…must be in the tens of billions, if not more. In a mobile communications world, mobile connectivity is comparable, in some ways, with the school buildings and transportation costs of traditional US education. That can also be seen as a pool of equity to further invest in education.
The point being we aren’t “stuck in the mud” with educational bureaucracies’ same old same old. Though the resistance to change is formidable, and has been ongoing for 60 plus years in the US, PSA believes that what has kept the status quo in place must account for change eventually, and we want to be part of that recognition of opportunity that is coming soon(er or later) to a school district near you.
From the above perspective, the amounts of capital available from the private sector is currently a drop in the bucket of total US educational expenses, but it’s also the leading edge of innovative tool creation. Perhaps with only a small percentage of total US education expenditures, say 1%, directed to add support to ed tech innovation, the pace of discovery would increase notably. (1% of total US expenditures is about $7.5 Billion, or more if one includes students own mobile tech costs.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/US-Edtech-Funding-Already-Nears-1-Billion-in-First-Half-of-2019-EdSurge-News.pdf”]