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The largest segment of the $7.76 billion ed-tech market, according to the industry group SIIA is “instructional support,” which accounts for up to 38 percent of the market — and that’s increased by 12 percent over the previous year.

Companies within the “instructional support” space earned $892 million, with assessment and testing products registering as the most profitable sector under that category. Some factors that might have influenced the rise in spending on assessment, according to SIIA officials, are the increased use of data and data analysis as well as online assessments, as schools move from print to digital in the move to meeting the Common Core State Standards.

These are numbers reported by the Software and Information Industry Association for the 2010-2011 year for the Pre-K-12 ed-tech market. Overall, the entire industry’s value increased by 3.5 percent from the previous year.

This is the SIIA’s second survey of companies selling non-hardware educational products and services. Of the 581 companies in the ed-tech space, 105 responded to the survey. SIIA and their research partner, Consulting Services for Education, extrapolated the results of the overall findings based on the direct responses they received.

It’s also worth noting that companies that create content services have almost as large a market share — 36 percent — as those working in instructional support. Within that category, English Language Arts and reading programs take up the most space and revenue, earning $400 million. The next largest group, math software, reported $160 million in profits. Science content revenue has gone up 10 percent.

Other noteworthy information:

• Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD programs are taking off, opening up opportunities for mobile learning programs.
• Open education resources are disrupting markets in ways that will clearly have a big impact, although it’s not clear yet how.
• According to the survey, public schools tend to move much more slowly at adapting technology than private schools.Data from digital services is going to become ever more important, especially as schools move toward adopting Common Core State Standards.

[NOTE: The current version of the article reflects the fact that the largest segment of the ed-tech market is instructional support, which accounts for up to 38 percent of the market -- and that's increased by 12 percent over the previous year.]

Erin Scott

By Karen Billings, Vice President of Education, SIIA

Despite having to contend with deep budget cuts, schools are able to maintain current levels of technology growth, a surprising find from a recent survey by the Software & Information Industry Association.

In its annual Vision K-20 Survey, which included 1,600 responders and comparisons over three years of data, SIIA found that education institutions are maintaining their level of investments in each of the five measures of progress: Enterprise Support, 21^st Century Tools, Anytime/Anywhere Access, Differentiated Learning, and Assessment Tools.

This year’s survey showed some surprising trends in the industry:

• Although participants say current technology use lags behind their ideal level, schools are continuing to implement technology despite budget cuts. Some likely reasons: they’re using existing technology; they’re turning to free or inexpensive digital content and resources; they’re redirecting funds from things like print materials for digital resources.
• Results showed an increase in technology integration that focuses on differentiated instruction, assessment tools, and information systems, suggesting these areas are priorities for schools. These include tools like learning management systems, online tutoring, online assessments, e-portfolios, and data-tracking systems.
• The survey items that are closest to ideal integration, including broadband and security systems, may suggest that school- and district- wide goals are more attainable than individual classroom goals, like new hardware. This supports the commonly held notion that district personnel have prioritized Internet access, student privacy, and security when making tech decisions.
• Overall, 24 percent of all participants report that their institutions are integrating technology at a high level.

Comparing the data and results from the survey’s 2009 inception to today, it’s evident that overall progress toward Vision K-20 goals continues to be very slow. While increases and decreases have been recorded for various benchmarks in both K-12 and post-secondary, the changes year to year have been relatively minor. SIIA analysis suggests that while schools have made progress, rapid technology innovations make it difficult for schools to achieve the highest levels of technology implementation. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

The areas that did see growth reflect an increased emphasis on assessments and accountability in schools. Survey respondents rated their current level of technology implementation on a scale of 1-4, with 1 being the lowest level of integration and 4 the highest. The four benchmarks that saw the most growth include:

• Courseware and/or learning management systems that are used to differentiate instruction (average 2.07 from 1.91). This confirms the recent interest and growth of adaptive curriculum tools that allow for personalized learning and instruction.
• Student information systems that track performance and institutional data for educational accountability and decision making (2.49, up from 2.35 in 2010).
• Institution leaders that use technology tools for planning, budgeting, and decision making (2.52 from 2.42).
• Technology-based assessments that measure a full range of 21st Century skills and knowledge (2.01 from 1.9).

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SIIA

The survey also showed, for the fourth year in a row, a marked difference between K-12 and post-secondary institutions in the adoption of technology. The average scores for the 2012 survey were 2.39 for the K-12 segment and 2.71 for post-secondary (on a scale of 1-4), meaning post-secondary institutions are integrating new technologies faster then K-12 institutions.

Despite variance in technology adoption, SIIA reports that the four areas schools have made the most progress in 2012 are exactly the same for both K-12 and post-secondary. This suggests that technology priorities for K-12 and post-secondary are strikingly similar. These four benchmarks‬ include:‬‬

• Security tools to protect student data and privacy.
• The availability of high-speed broadband access for robust communication, administrative, and instructional needs.
• High-speed broadband access for instructional uses, including collaborative learning, video-based communication, and other multimedia-rich interactions.
• An institution website/portal provides the education community with access to applications, resources, and collaboration tools.

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This year, for the first time in the survey, participants were asked to respond to each of the questions based on both their current level and their ideal level of technology integration. For each of the measures of progress, survey participants rated their ideal implementation of each measure much higher than the current level. Overall, 75 percent of K-12 respondents chose the “highest” level of technology use as their ideal level.

This survey is an annual online self-assessment for educational leaders in K-12 and post-secondary institutions, created to monitor institutional progress in attaining Vision K-20 goals. The Vision K-20 initiative was developed by SIIA education members and education thought leaders to represent educational outcomes enabled through technology and e-learning. There were over 1,600 responders to this year’s survey, with data collected from March to May 2012.  This year’s report includes three-year trend data, so it’s easy to see where institutions feel they have progressed, and where they feel stagnant. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Responders this year indicated they appreciate the survey because it helps them see where their focus needs to be for the future of their institutions. Even with limited equipment and a lack of a technology budget, they think it’s important to have a solid plan and informed priorities. That said, perhaps the true value of the survey is not in the resulting scores, but simply the planning support it gives to education institutions.

Read the full Vision K-20 survey here.

Flickr:Tsakshaug

By Sara Nolan

A few weeks ago, the Department of Education introduced its Digital Promise, an initiative to invest in “breakthrough technologies” aimed at transforming the way teachers teach and students learn. Though the message from the top about the importance of leveraging technology seems to be clear, it’s a different story on a local level.

A recent SIIA study indicates a decline in what had been steady progress toward schools and universities building technology and e-learning into their frameworks. Karen Billings, vice president for Education for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), links this change in part to the economic climate. She notes that it’s not just budget cuts, but also the emotional impact of those cuts — and of prolonged economic hardship in general — that’s affecting how schools buy and integrate technology.

“I liken it to the situation that many companies are finding themselves in,” she says. “Even if they find themselves with some money in the bank, they’re waiting longer before making any decisions about what to do with it. They are too nervous about the future.” Particularly when it comes to bringing in new technology, she says, schools are taking a longer time to evaluate the products and their potential impact and long-term viability because they think “they can’t afford to make the wrong decision.”

In this highly charged context, however, sometimes even the right decision can seem like the wrong one. “There is definitely a problem in communication of those programs,” Billings says. She’s referring to the flack that schools face when community concerns – and media headlines – focus on issues like budget cuts, layoffs, and overcrowding. “Computers in the classroom might be right for one school in a district while at the same time they’re needing to close another school because it’s under-performing or under-enrolled. But once it hits the papers, it’s ‘They’re closing schools and adding computers.’”

As the PTO co-president from tech-rich, budget-embattled Kyrene recently put it in the New York Times article, “You don’t go buy a new outfit when you don’t have enough dinner to eat.” This is recession psychology, and it has a powerful hold on the way we will fund technology in education going forward.

These aspects of recession psychology at work speak to the current state of our “animal spirits” – the human emotions and outlooks that drive economic action. In the book Animal Spirits:
How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, authors George Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller address “the sense of trust we have in each other, our sense of fairness in economic dealings, and our sense of the extent of corruption and bad faith.” What those animal spirits seem to need now — if they are to be boosted in this or any other area of the economy — are equal parts hope and hard facts.

In Billings’ analysis, this means that educational technology companies need to be prepared to speak to current and potential users in terms of long-term value for their investment – especially in terms of instructional and administrative efficiencies. “Some schools might choose to switch to a virtual field trip, for example” she says. “They save money on gas, buses. But that needs a lot of bandwidth, so that’s where the investment is.”

Take, for example, the cost of iPads. Last year, Presidio Middle School in San Francisco piloted an algebra class using the iPad, funded by the publisher of the algebra curriculum, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Pam Clisham, the principal, knows well that the devices are costly.

“They’re expensive, but so are textbooks,” she says. “If you had one iPad and all of your textbooks were on your iPad, it would be the same cost. Right now textbooks are running $50 or $60 dollars a piece, plus supplementary materials.” Once you add the cost of each textbook per student per year, the investment in the devices are more than justified.

But it’s more than just about buying the devices. It’s about the mindset around change. When it comes to deciding on priorities, former Governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance of Excellent Education, said recently: “By the time you get to a consensus, that technology has leapfrogged over you. What you have to do is to provide flexibility that allows systems to move. It’s recognizing that technology is like water, it finds its levels, it moves.”