Foundations, Feds, and interest groups have a plan that will
create more room for private companies to influence what schools buy. And in an effort to facilitate such relationships,
the Education Industry Association (EIA) has announced a new initiative aimed
at helping education companies sell more to public schools by changing the
rules on how sales get approved. EIA, in fact, has been awarded a
special grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under an initiative
created by the Feds to spur digital innovation in schools. The problem (as defined in the announcement):
Why should it
take 6 months, 10 months or even longer to complete deals with school
districts? How can a start-up lacking [a] national sales force and without an
established rep gain traction with school buyers? How can companies
access educators and hope to have them fall in love with your solution, and
convert these pilots and freemium deals into revenue?
Put differently, the
established public policy process for getting buy-in from district staff and
teachers before large purchases (for which principals can’t just write a check)
is, according to the EIA, too cumbersome. It is, as we have heard so many times
in reference to public policy and its perceived failures, overly bureaucratic.
To date, EIA’s marketing
campaign to influence the procurement process has been slow but steadily
building, most recently through its announcement of an alliance with the American
Association of School Administrators (AASA), which represents over 13,000
school district superintendents. In this
scheme, EIA offers school districts a list of approved members (business seal
of approval) in exchange for more open access to districts by those vendors.
Vendors, in turn, secure district contacts whereby district administrators purportedly
get providers with a demonstrated record of effectiveness.
In May 2013, the Education
Industry Association wrote to its members,
EIA will
recommend high quality suppliers of school services and products, who are in
good standing with EIA, for the AASA School Solutions Center, the go-to
resource used by district buyers when they seek vendors. This is the first-time
the SSC will promote instructional services, ed-tech solutions and academic
products. Accepted companies may promote this AASA connection to local district
decision-makers and AASA will make door-opener introductions on your behalf. In
addition, vendors receive booth space at the annual conference and are
highlighted in AASA publications to their membership.
There is a lot more going on here than chummy relationships
to reduce red tape. There is a long history of schools purchasing textbooks,
test scanners, and grade books. But we
are at a very different juncture– a kind of watershed moment in which the private
industry is focused on transforming the agenda and policy adoption process at
the local level.
It is a brilliant strategy really. If you can find a niche
as a broker between vendors and schools, much else opens up in the way of
recommending the purchase of particular products and transforming contracts
from one-time purchases to expensive leases that require upgrades. This post
here is part of a longer chapter through which, as Gary Anderson, Stephen
Ball, and Christopher Lubienski, among others have
written, the very nature of public policy is transformed. Accordingly, privatization is not limited to
goods and services, rather, it includes policymaking itself. The private sector’s involvement with point-of-sale processes brings it
one step further into decision-making around the use of public funds– beyond
influence on agenda setting and policy adoption and deep into policy
formulation and evaluation.
The stakes are high everywhere but particularly in big
central cities. Providers gravitate to cities like New York and Los Angeles because
cities with more students mean more revenue. For example, many companies selling technology
charge by user fees. That is, the more
students or teachers in a district, the higher the revenue – even if the unit
price is low. Charter schools get money
based on Average Daily Attendance (ADA) or seat time. If we follow this thread
further, we can see why organizations like EIA would want more influence over
the rules for contracting in public education. Streamlining public policy
around the procurement process opens up markets, and not just for the start-ups
referenced in the EIA announcement.
Streamlining could eventually involve making big sales as
customers click “BUY” rather than having to go through multiple presentations
to district leaders in an effort to maintain transparency. But, making the
decision about whether every child in a school district should have a tablet
over a music program or smaller class sizes is very different from making the
decision to purchase staples and pencils. The interest of education foundations
– like the Gates Foundation – and the Federal government in the EIA initiative
is telling. It suggests a broader agenda at play in reimagining the local in
local governance. The marketing letter from the EIA announcing the partnership
uses the language of a “freeium offer.” But
public policy is meant to be deliberative and transparent. It shouldn’t be for
sale.
