Rethinking K–12 Education Procurement

RETHINKING K–12 EDUCATION PROCUREMENT Why Promising Programs, Practices, and Products Seem to Rarely Get Adopted, Implemented, or Used Edited by Frederick M. Hess AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE RETHINKING K–12 EDUCATION PROCUREMENT Why Promising Programs, Practices, and Products Seem to Rarely Get Adopted, Implemented, or Used Essays by Thomas Arnett • Lauren Dachille • David DeSchryver • Mike Goldstein Melissa Junge • Eric Kalenze • Julia Kaufman • Rebecca Kockler Sheara Krvaric • Joel Rose Edited by Frederick M. Hess AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE © 2021 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. All rights reserved. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization and does not take institutional posi- tions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the author(s). American Enterprise Institute 1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 www.aei.org Contents Foreword ...................................................................................................................1 Frederick M. Hess Why Aren’t Teachers Using the Resources Companies Sell to Their Districts? ....................................................................................................... 5 Thomas Arnett If Education Procurement Is Broken, Is Teacher Choice the Answer? .......................................................................................................... 20 Mike Goldstein What It Will Take to Improve Evidence-Informed Decision-Making in Schools............................................................................... 32 Eric Kalenze How Confusion over Federal Rules Can Get in the Way of Smart School Spending ...................................................................................... 50 Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric Helping Education Entrepreneurs and School Leaders Navigate the Procurement Maze ....................................................................................... 68 David DeSchryver Lessons from Louisiana’s Efforts to Create a New Marketplace for High-Quality K–12 Curricula and Professional Development .............. 81 Julia Kaufman and Rebecca Kockler Overcoming the Challenges Facing Innovative Learning Models in K–12 Education: Lessons from Teach to One ........................................... 97 Joel Rose Procurement Practices That Inhibit Innovation: A Case Study from the Edtech Startup Perspective ............................................................. 113 Lauren Dachille iii iv RETHINKING K–12 EDUCATION PROCUREMENT Conclusion........................................................................................................... 124 Frederick M. Hess About the Authors .............................................................................................. 126 Foreword –12 schooling is awash with new learning technologies, professional K development, reading programs, and any number of things that schools and school systems have to decide whether to buy. Some programs, practices, and products deliver on their promise. But more typically they’re ignored, misused, or abandoned shortly after adoption. For instance, while school districts annually spend more than $8 bil- lion on education technology, tech firms estimate that about two-thirds of all educational software licenses go unused each year.1 Meanwhile, as I’ve observed time and again over many years of working with teachers, edu- cators end up eschewing costly materials their districts purchase in favor of using home-brewed resources or free online materials. Even as district leaders routinely call for more funding, untold billions of K–12 dollars are wasted each year through problematic procurement processes. What explains the disconnect between what gets purchased and what ultimately gets adopted, implemented, and used? Why do districts spend money on the same ineffective programs year after year, despite poor results? How should districts evaluate whether a new learning model or instructional resource will live up to marketing claims? These are the questions the contributors tackle in the pages that follow. The goal is to provide an accessible exploration of these questions while offering practical guidance on what might be done. Along the way, the contributors draw from an array of experiences and backgrounds, offering insights from the classroom, schoolhouse, statehouse, and boardroom. The chapters broadly fall into three categories. Chapters 1–3 look at education procurement from inside schools and classrooms. Chapters 4 and 5 examine how policy and bureaucracy inhibit smart procurement practices. Chapters 6–8 delve into specific case studies to identify lessons learned from the practical work of improving education procurement. In Chapter 1, Thomas Arnett, a one-time middle school math teacher and now a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, 1 2 RETHINKING K–12 EDUCATION PROCUREMENT tackles the disconnect between districts’ purchases and teachers’ use of instructional resources through the lens of the “Jobs to Be Done” business theory. Arnett concludes that the reason purchased resources are often left to collect dust is that teachers decide the materials won’t help them accomplish essential classroom tasks—“jobs” that need to be done. In Chapter 2, Mike Goldstein, Match Education founder and Bridge International Academies chief academic officer, argues that one way to align resources with what teachers need is to give teachers themselves con- trol of the funds districts currently spend on them. Such a move, he con- tends, would help ensure that teachers receive products and services they actually want and need, significantly increasing the likelihood of effective implementation and maximizing return on investment. In Chapter 3, Eric Kalenze, director of researchEd US, looks at what it will take to improve evidence-informed decision-making in schools. He offers three suggestions: Construct (or upgrade) bridges between education researchers and practitioners, enhance school-improvement planning with various evidence-review processes, and create designated “learning engineers” to direct districts’ evidence-based improvement work. Of course, not all of procurement’s ills can be remedied at the school or district level. Bureaucracy and outdated policies at the state and federal levels often leave principals and district administrators feeling like their hands are tied with the programs and materials they’re allowed to purchase. In Chapter 4, veteran education attorneys Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric point out that, regarding resources purchased with federal funds, the rules designed to ensure that funds are used as intended have evolved into a maze of paperwork and confusing legalese. The result is that funds are not necessarily spent on the materials that administrators believe will help teachers and students the most, but on those that are considered legally “safe”; new, potentially more effective programs are often shunned by risk-averse administrators in favor of the familiar. In Chapter 5, Whiteboard Advisors’ David DeSchryver opines that one of the keys to overcoming the confusion often inherent in federal and state regulations is getting policymakers, vendors, and district administrators on the same page regarding the meaning and intent of statutes and guidance. Often, district administrators’ perceptions of what counts as a FREDERICK M. HESS 3 “permissible” use of funds are narrower than what’s actually allowed, due to overly conservative interpretations of key statutory terms or definitions. What does the practical work of overcoming education procurement challenges look like? In Chapter 6, Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, and Rebecca Kockler, a former assistant superintendent at the Louisiana Department of Education, look to Louisiana for a case study on how states can assist with the procurement of high-quality materials and training programs that are actually aligned with state standards (irrespective of marketing claims about “standard alignment”). Kaufman and Kockler argue that states can follow Louisiana’s lead by identifying, incentivizing the procurement of, and monitoring the quality of standard- aligned materials. In Chapter 7, New Classrooms Founder and CEO Joel Rose reflects on his experience working to find partner schools for New Classroom’s “Teach to One” learning model. Rose posits that K–12 innovation has a fundamental paradox: Meaningful improvements to student outcomes require learning models that challenge the basic constructs of how classrooms operate—yet, the more new education models do so, the harder they become for schools to adopt. Inflexible accountability policies, bureau- cratic inertia, and balky procurement processes make administrators reluctant to purchase programs that don’t map neatly onto century-old grade-based models of instruction. Finally, in Chapter 8, Lauren Dachille, founder and CEO of the education technology company Nimble, observes that “incentivizing innovation is not just about changing districts’ perspectives on products and companies” but also “about changing procurement processes in a way that allows district leadership to be more open to innovation while still adequately de-risking the process.” She suggests that districts should be open to working closely with vendors to create open-ended solutions and advises that administrators should dispense with the notion that

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