🛝 The Gap Between What Schools Buy and What Students Need

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

This week's reality check: California's 937 districts are about to trigger the largest literacy procurement event in years, and more than 440 still use curricula from 2018 or earlier. PowerSchool just paid $17.25 million because nobody checked what third-party trackers were inside Naviance. And a GAO report confirms what teachers already know: collaboration works better than workshops, but districts keep buying workshops anyway.

Data Gem

A nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey found 53% of district recruiters now use AI tools in teacher hiring. But only 2% of job-seeking teachers said they applied to a district they believed uses AI. In a separate survey, 30% of international candidates withdrew because the process felt "too impersonal."

California Is About to Trigger the Biggest Literacy Purchasing Event in Years

The majority of California's 937 school districts are still using ELA curricula from the state's 2015 approved list.

More than 440 districts are using products from 2018 or earlier. Products that, according to a new report from the Center for Education Market Dynamics, "may not align with research-based evidence, and don't have the supports present in products today."

One of the five most prevalent elementary ELA programs in the state is still Lucy Calkins' Units of Study.

That's the balanced literacy program that New York spent $10 million trying to move away from.

California's 2025 science-of-reading legislation requires districts to use products aligned with state standards. 

A follow-up ELA adoption process is scheduled for 2026, and the report predicts "enormous market change."

The state serves approximately 5.8 million K-12 students. At the middle school level, McGraw Hill's StudySync alone reaches 51% of all students.

Large districts are expected to lead the wave. 

After the 2015 adoption, the districts that moved to newer products averaged roughly 10,500 students, well above the state average. The same pattern is expected this time.

The last adoption cycle saw a market with fewer providers. This time, the field has diversified and fragmented. New entrants have a window that didn't exist a decade ago.

For education innovators, this is as close to a direct market opportunity signal as we'll get. California's adoption wave is a purchasing trigger for science-of-reading-aligned ELA curriculum, supplemental phonics and decoding programs, and professional development platforms that support implementation. 

The $200 million the state allocated for PD to support the transition means the money isn't just flowing to the curriculum. It's flowing to the training, coaching, and fidelity monitoring that determine whether the new materials actually get used correctly. Every state that follows California's path will need the same stack.

PowerSchool Just Paid $17.25 Million Because Nobody Checked What Was Inside Naviance

Naviance is a college, career, and life-readiness platform used by districts nationwide. Students log in to explore careers, build college lists, and track applications.

What students didn't know: embedded third-party tracking software was intercepting their communications without consent.

A class action lawsuit filed in 2023 alleged that Hobsons (which developed Naviance) and PowerSchool (which acquired it) had "aided and conspired with Heap and other third parties to unlawfully intercept" students' confidential and sensitive communications.

The settlement: $17.25 million.

PowerSchool identified more than 10 million individuals who could be eligible. Current and former students who logged into Naviance at least once between August 2021 and January 2026 qualify.

The companies denied wrongdoing.

Doug Levin, co-founder and national director of the K12 Security Information Exchange, said the case is part of a broader pattern. 

In December, the FTC reached a settlement with Illuminate Education after a breach exposed personal data on more than 10 million students. 

A separate class action against PowerSchool over an alleged December 2024 breach involving 50 million teachers and students is moving forward in federal court.

"There's a huge appetite at every level of government to do more in this space," Levin said.

Levin also noted that districts are beginning to walk back technology investments altogether. "Maybe our youngest students don't need devices. Or maybe we're not going to rely on all of these different online content providers."

For education innovators, the Naviance settlement changes the procurement conversation. Districts will increasingly demand privacy audits, vendor-risk scoring, and consent management systems before signing contracts. Products with embedded third-party tracking, even for analytics purposes, face growing legal and reputational risk. 

The opportunity is in privacy-by-design alternatives: student-data governance platforms, vendor due-diligence tools, and breach-response playbooks designed specifically for the K-12 market. Companies that can demonstrate clean data practices gain a competitive moat that features alone can't provide.

A GAO Report Says Collaboration Is the Best Teacher PD

Districts spent approximately $1.8 billion in Title II-A funds on teacher professional development in 2023-24. 

States spent roughly $101 million more.

A new Government Accountability Office report analyzing five meta-analyses found that teacher collaboration is the PD approach most associated with improved student test scores.

More than two-thirds of teachers agree. They say collaborative learning with peers is the most useful form of professional development.

Here's the gap: districts are still more likely to use one-shot training workshops than the intensive, sustained, collaborative models that federal Title II requirements actually call for.

One teacher interviewed by the GAO explained why collaboration works: "It allowed me to immediately apply what I learned, receive feedback, and adapt practices to fit my students' needs."

The U.S. Department of Education responded in February with a guidance letter encouraging districts to use their share of $2.2 billion in Title II grants specifically for team-teaching and collaborative staffing models.

Richard "Lennon" Audrain, head of innovation for ASU's Next Education Workforce project, described the difference: "Teachers are thinking about the kids they all share and what they need, as opposed to, 'Oh, I went to this English conference and here's some strategies I learned,' absent of the context of the actual learners in your room."

Jacqueline Nowicki, the GAO's director of education issues, was candid about the research limitations: "It's just incredibly difficult to tease apart which of these things is driving the effect. It's frustrating that after all this time there still isn't any direct research that cracks that nut."

For education innovators, the data points to a specific product shift. The $1.8 billion annual PD market is being actively redirected from workshops to collaboration, backed by both a GAO report and federal spending guidance. 

Structured teacher collaboration platforms, co-teaching scheduling tools, collaborative lesson planning software, and PD management systems that track whether training translates into classroom practice are the product categories this evidence supports. 

The federal guidance encouraging stipends for lead teachers, collaborative planning blocks, and team-based evaluation also creates demand for compensation management and staffing optimization tools.

⚡️More Quick Hits

This week in education:

• CTE credentials show 9% short-term earnings boost but are negatively linked to college attendance — A study of nearly 1.7 million Texas students found high school CTE credentials provide an immediate income boost that diminishes over time, while 40% of schools struggle to find employer partners and 66% say students lack awareness of CTE options

• North Carolina Supreme Court kills $5.6 billion education funding mandate in 4-3 ruling — The 30-year-old Leandro case was dismissed with prejudice, eliminating a remedial plan that would have directed $5.6 billion to 1.5 million public school students over eight years

• LAUSD data reveals students spend 31-128 minutes per day on screens during class — Parents report children streaming YouTube, Minecraft, and Spotify on district-issued Chromebooks during instructional time, while at least 16 states have introduced legislation to reevaluate screen time or vet edtech tools

• Indianapolis creates first unified governance for traditional and charter schools — The mayor-appointed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation will collect property taxes and manage operations for both IPS and charter schools amid a $40 million district deficit, with roughly 40% of students in IPS boundaries attending charters

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