Education Week - January 22, 2014 - 9

Ý
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION > Tracking business trends and emerging models in K-12
www.edweek.org/ii
K-12 Publishing, Ed-Tech Markets
Experiencing Rising Revenues
Sales increases highlighted in two recent reports
By Michele Molnar
& Sean Cavanagh
The K-12 publishing and ed-tech
industries are experiencing a jump
in sales as an improving economy,
schools' greater reliance on digital
resources, and new materials for
the Common Core State Standards
translate into revenue boosts for
many K-12 businesses, according to
a pair of recent industry reports.
One indicator of robust sales comes
from an Association of American
Publishers' analysis, which found
that actual, not estimated, sales of
print and digital instructional materials
in schools grew 7 percent from
January through October 2013, compared
with the same period in the
previous year.
Overall, the market for K-12 instructional
resources is $9 billion,
according to Jay Diskey, the executive
director of the pre-K-12 learning
group for the association. His organization
tracks monthly sales of K-12
educational publishers. It recorded a
25 percent spike in sales in September,
followed by a 9 percent increase
in October, over the previous year for
the same months, Mr. Diskey said.
The organization has been collecting
the information since the 1970s.
"We haven't been in the 7 percent
[growth] territory since 2005," Mr.
Diskey said during a webinar arranged
by the Copyright Clearance
Center, a Danvers, Mass.-based organization
which describes itself as a
global-rights broker for the licensing
of content. "It's been eight years of
pretty much a drought."
Indeed, recent years have seen
hardly a droplet of sales advancement.
In 2010, shortly after the official
end of the nation's recession,
sales of instructional materials
crept up about 1 percent. But they
plunged 12 percent in 2011, and
fell 15 percent in 2012, according
to the association.
'The Bigger Story'
In the meantime, educational soft-
ware and digital content sold into
the pre-K-12 market accounted for
$7.97 billion in company revenues in
2011-12, a 2.7 percent increase from
the year before, according to results
of a survey released in January by
the education division of the Washington-based
Software & Information
Industry Association, or SIIA.
Even with statistics based on district
spending from two years ago,
when school budgets were still reflecting
the challenges wrought by
the recession as property taxes had
yet to rebound, growth was recorded
by the SIIA report.
"The bigger story is that the economy
has turned around. There will
be more money available. In some
states, it will be the second year in
a row that funding will be available,"
said Michael P. Griffith, a school
finance analyst for the Education
Commission of the States, a Denverbased
organization that advises
state policymakers.
Instructional Support Boom
The SIIA study found that the high-
est ed-tech growth area was instructional
support, recording a 30 percent
increase generated mostly by
the revenues reported in the testing
and assessment category. This area
is likely to be a driver of growth for
the foreseeable future, experts said.
"We could see another boom in
tech spending, as schools are moving
tests to electronic [test administration]
and away from paper
exams," said Mr. Griffith. Two types
of testing are fueling this shift: the
move to assessments based on the
common-core standards, and the
introduction of new assessments in
the classroom to give teachers realtime
feedback about their students'
progress.
On a recent visit to Illinois, for instance,
Mr. Griffith heard concerns
about where the funding would come
from to keep up with demand for
computer-based testing, particularly
in poor districts. Illinois is one of the
states that has chosen to be part of
the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers,
one of two consortia developing common-core
tests. Field tests will be
administered online in spring 2014;
operational tests will be conducted
in spring 2015.
"We might see states decide to
make line items in their upcoming
budgets to cover the [technology]
costs for local districts," said
Mr. Griffith, noting that it's difficult
to keep tabs on states' technology
spending because states usually don't
receive detailed reports about how
districts invest in that area.
Even in the state of Virginia, which
did not adopt the common core and
has been conducting online testing
since 2000, there's been a flood of interest
from the ed-tech industry. The
catalyst is the Virginia e-Learning
Backpack Initiative, launched in
2013, in which every 9th grade student
attending a public school that
is not fully accredited in fiscal year
2014 will receive a tablet computer,
digital content, and computer applications.
Eligible schools receive $400
per 9th grade student to purchase
a tablet computer, with additional
funding for content creation tools
for teachers, according to Tammy M.
McGraw, the director of digital innovations
and outreach for the state
department of education.
When the initiative was announced,
Ms. McGraw was inun-
dated with requests from companies
asking to present at the event
in Virginia last summer, where
school leaders could learn about the
technology and software available
to them. Ultimately, her department
decided to offer information from
manufacturers of the three operating
systems, then directed digital
content providers to contact Apple,
Google, or Microsoft if they wanted
to be part of the program.
"It was the only fair way we could
figure out to do this," she said.
Gaining Traction
While digital content providers are
scrambling to serve students in Virginia
and elsewhere, they are gaining
traction, with nearly a 20 percent
increase in content revenue, according
to the SIIA's "2013 U.S. Education
Technology Market: PreK-12" report.
"Those curriculum materials are
the focus of a lot of the evolution in
schools," explained Karen Billings,
the vice president of the association's
education division. Providing
materials aligned with the common
core provides a significant amount of
the momentum in producing digital
content, as well as moving instructional
materials from print to digital
delivery.
In the subject area breakdown of
content, revenue increases registered
in every area except reading/
English language arts, which did not
grow-but remained at the highest
level of revenues among all subject
areas. Science and social studies
grew more, year over year, than
math. A category called "other" increased
primarily from revenues in
digital resources for special education,
which grew almost 80 percent,
and online courses, which increased
200 percent.
Brian Lewis, the CEO of the In-
ternational Society for Technology
in Education, a Washington-based
association for educators and education
leaders dedicated to innovative
and effective uses of technology in
pre-K-12 and teacher education, said
that the fast evolution of technology
and its adoption in the K-12 marketplace
is "both the blessing and the
curse of what everyone's trying to
accomplish for their kids."
He offered a cautionary note to
schools investing in such change:
"Make sure the timeline and funding
provide for the planning and
professional development that will
increase the odds of successful
implementation."
Coverage of the education industry and
K-12 innovation is supported in part by
a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the content of this
coverage.
EDUCATION WEEK | January 22, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 9
WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING
A recent report by the Software & Information Industry
Association shows significant increases in school purchases of
digital content and technology-based instructional support, but
a decrease in the platform and administration category.
SOURCE: Software & Information Industry Association
42%
CONTENT
41%
Ý
20% increase
since 2010-11
INSTRUCTIONAL
SUPPORT
17%
32% decrease
since 2010-11
PLATFORMS AND
ADMINISTRATION
Ý
36% increase
since 2010-11
Better
Principals.
Better
with SAMs .
TM
Proven to increase
time spent to
improve teaching
and learning
The SAM processgives
principals the time to do
evaluation right with frequent
coaching to improve teaching.
SAM principals are "shadowed"
to determine their use of time.
They use TimeTrack™ to
increase time with teachers and
First Responders™ so they are
not the first person called for every
management issue. The SAM Daily
Meeting is a reflective practice and planning session
to maximize positive impact.
www.SamsConnect.com
502-509-9774
NSIP provides ongoing SAM coaching, implementation
and professional development support for over 700
schools in 17 states.
Denver, Charlotte, Boston and Tampa, have made the
SAM process the center of their support for principals.
You can too.
Better Principals.
Better with SAMs™.
42+17+41
http://www.edweek.org/ii http://www.SamsConnect.com http://www.SamsConnect.com http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - January 22, 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 22, 2014
