School procurement is broken. Education journalists can help fix it.

Now more than ever, coverage of district spending decisions makes a real difference for kids and educators, says a former industry insider.

 

By Colette Coleman

It’s been several years since I stood awkwardly at a cocktail reception at an opulent Long Island hotel. With a stiff smile plastered on my face, I hoped that one of the two dozen district superintendents attending would stop by my table and take a look at the ed-tech app I was there to sell.

But when the event organizer, a seasoned K-12 salesperson, stopped by, he let me know that there was no need to tout the reading program.

“Your product doesn’t matter,” he professed. “Only relationships do.”

Over the years, I watched relationships drive districts to renew products that no teachers use, take chances on new offerings that end up not working, and put out requests for proposals (RFPs) that fit only one pre-selected product.

These practices keep students from getting the best learning tools, the ones that could actually help. They’re also disheartening to people like me; I left the field in the fall and became a full-time journalist.

In my new role, I notice a glaring hole in education coverage. There are very few stories examining how learning products are chosen.

That’s true even though recent events make it clear that this topic is ripe for investigation. Consider how long Lucy Calkins’ balanced literacy curriculum held sway in New York City schools, generally unquestioned by most news outlets.

Many journalists might not know the depth of districts’ procurement dysfunction, or they may feel ill-equipped to investigate it.

Covering district procurement is well worth the effort, as it can drive reform of how schools go about spending their precious purchasing budgets.

 

I watched relationships drive districts to renew products that no teachers use, take chances on new offerings that end up not working, and put out requests for proposals that fit only one pre-selected product.

 

Here are some examples of journalists who got procurement coverage right and suggestions on how to go about investigating it for your publication.

A PAY-FOR-PLAY SYSTEM

One entry point for examining procurement would be to look at the big picture. Where and how do K-12 buyers typically learn about new products? And what are their relationships like with the sellers?

A 2017 New York Times article by Natasha Singer and Danielle Ivory exposed the legal but questionable practices that companies use to sell to schools, such as “paying superintendents as consultants,” taking district officials to steak and sushi dinners, or paying for their attendance at conferences.

Though the article focuses on one district, Baltimore County Public Schools, it lays out the tactics, much like those of Big Pharma with doctors, that the education-sales industry employs widely.

The story quotes a Stanford University political science professor who says, “If benefits are flowing in both directions, with payments from schools to vendors and dinner and travel going to the school leaders, it’s a pay-for-play arrangement.”

That scene has probably intensified since the pandemic required students to be equipped with digital devices and pandemic recovery included an unprecedented influx of federal funding, $190 billion from ESSER.

Reporters also can expect a new wave of literacy-related products to be adopted, and just because they’re based on the science of reading rather than whole-language doesn’t mean all of them will be useful or adopted for the right reasons.

That could be a story on its own.

 

Just because they’re based on the science of reading doesn’t mean all of them will be useful or adopted for the right reasons.

 

For journalists who want to go deeper, I’d suggest attending K-12 sales conferences, like the Education Research and Development Institute (ERDI), a pricey conference I attended multiple times as a vendor and that’s mentioned in the Times article.

You may not get into the small sessions, but you may be able to find your way to the larger-group, informal, alcohol-lubricated events. And whether you’re attending or not, you should find vendor rep sources, ideally junior- and mid-level, who are more likely to give you the low-down than senior executives are.

Simple LinkedIn searches can identify education companies’ sales teams. Many are made up of former teachers who care about education, and although I suspect most would not want to be quoted with attribution in an article critical of their industry, their insight would still be meaningful.

In addition to ERDI, journalists could also look into similar (and very expensive) conferences, like the District Administration Leadership Institutes (DALI), which I recall commanding five to six figures for vendors’ attendance at a few sessions.

While I haven’t attended DALI, I would assume that vendors who “pay to play” there have a much better shot of getting districts to buy their products because they have bought superintendents’ — their potential buyers’ — undivided attention.

Reporters can benefit from attending more accessible and less sales-focused education conferences, too. A good example of great coverage resulting from such an event was last summer’s ProPublica story about vendors cashing in on districts’ efforts to address learning loss, which came from attending an ISTE conference in in Philadelphia.

 

Where and how do K-12 buyers typically learn about new products? And what are their relationships like with the sellers?

 

EXPOSING WRONGDOING

Sometimes the problem goes beyond a system in which money and access influence the curriculum and technology that goes into classrooms. Some school officials have engaged in outright corruption, ignoring conflicts of interest.

Singer and Ivory followed up their 2017 article with one in 2018 after the Baltimore County Schools former superintendent Shaun Dallas Dance, featured heavily in the initial article, was indicted on perjury charges involving his financial disclosure forms.

“Mr. Dance actively negotiated the terms of a $875,000 no-bid contract between his school district and Supes Academy, a school leadership training service, while he worked for Supes and a related company called Synesi, according to the indictment,” the story says. “Mr. Dance also made false statements on financial disclosure documents, the indictment said, to conceal about $90,000 in earnings from those companies.”

And this 2020 article from a local news organization in Tampa exposed the conflict in the Hillsborough superintendent’s awarding a $3.7 million contract to Achieve 3000, a company for whom his brother worked as an executive. He hadn’t disclosed this.

“I think there needs to be transparency and it’s not just on the superintendent’s responsibility, but it’s also on the board,” whistleblower Bianca Goolsby told Tampa’s WFLA.

DOES IT WORK?

Journalists should be paying attention to which companies are winning big contracts and deciphering why. Is the product research backed with proven efficacy — beyond a study that any company could buy? Look at review sites like EdReports and Common Sense Education to get objective quality assessments.

Ask teachers if they’re happy with the products. Being on the ground, they have insight that an official review site may not. Question if they and their students are using the products, and examine testing data to determine impact. As a former teacher, I would urge reporters to ask educators to provide lists of which products they have paid access to, which they use, and which have delivered results.

If programs are going unused or yielding no results, but nonetheless admins are buying and renewing them, dig into the motivation for the purchases. Is a district leader supporting a friend or family member, or reciprocating for expensive outings or paid consulting work? Financial statements should give you some information on that.

In July 2023, Kalyn Belsha at Chalkbeat did an outstanding job investigating a company that was winning tens of millions of dollars in K-12 contracts. Paper, the online tutoring company profiled, had tutors work with multiple kids at once while requiring them to respond to each student within 50 seconds. Further, tutors sometimes had assignments in subjects they were unqualified to teach. “Paper has told uncertain tutors to buy time by asking the student a question while they essentially Google their way through the session,” the article reported. Some district purchasers claimed they weren’t aware of Paper’s questionable policies until Chalkbeat shared them.

Deep reporting was the key to this article’s success.

“To report this story, Chalkbeat interviewed more than a dozen current and former Paper employees and reviewed hundreds of pages of company documents, including screenshots of internal conversations among employees,” Belsha wrote.

To stay in the loop on what districts are buying and looking to buy, sign up for updates on district RFPs. Larger districts often offer ways to register to get email updates when they put out new calls for proposals, and there are also companies that share new RFPs from across the country, which can be filtered to fit your areas of interest. For large contracts for especially consequential products, like early-elementary literacy curricula, I would read the RFP to see if it seems sincere in its search for the best out there, or if it is so specific that seems geared to one company, not the entire market.

Ask teachers if they’re happy with the products.  Question if they and their students are using the products.

 

GETTING RESULTS

If journalists increase their scrutiny of districts’ procurement processes and decisions, and school officials know reporters are paying attention, they’ll feel pressure to make better choices that put students first. That should save money for purchases that really matter, ease the burden on teachers, and improve student learning.

Just as the opioid crisis forced light onto the murky and problematic ways that doctors and Big Pharma interacted to fuel that calamity, the strong reactions to the longevity of the largely ineffective Teachers College Reading and Writing Project curriculum should invigorate deeper looks into why and how education leaders are selecting the tools needed to drive student and teacher success. Let’s not wait for another expansive curricular disappointment.

Colette Coleman is a former classroom teacher and ed tech executive now working as an independent journalist. She loves connecting with other education reporters via X @ColetteXColeman or at www.colettecoleman.me. You can read her previous piece for The Grade here.

Previously from The Grade

Messy times ahead for school spending
How to cover schools’ COVID recovery spending
Smart ways to cover the coming ‘year of ed finance’