Across funding, contracts, and AI, buyers have moved from asking what a tool can do to asking whether it works for their classroom. This issue is about meeting that question with evidence.
Across funding, contracts, and AI, buyers have moved from asking what a tool can do to asking whether it works for their classroom. This issue is about meeting that question with evidence.
July 15, 2026 • 0 comments

Show Your Work: How EdTech Earns Trust This Summer

Insights on Everything EdTech

Welcome to The EdTech Pulse,your ultimate guide to staying ahead of the curve with the latest trends and innovations in education technology, K-12, higher education, and workforce development. With each edition, we provide fresh industry news, insightful analysis, and valuable resources to empower you to make proactive, informed decisions.

This month, districts are reviewing contracts for learning tools with an eye toward renewing the ones that provide measurable value. The teams that answer with evidence are the ones earning trust this year. Inside, you’ll learn about results-based funding and other trends—and you’ll find a new section tracking the AI news that shapes the field of EdTech.

Never miss a beat—subscribe now and be at the forefront of the dynamic world of EdTech and beyond!

Industry News

Innovation, Trends, & Tools
  • A new Forbes piece pushes back on the idea that EdTech is the villain in education. Al Kingsley argues the real question is how to equip students for a digital future, a useful reframing for vendors talking to skeptical buyers. Read more.
  • The University of Illinois built an online platform that turns assessment into instant practice. PrairieLearn grades its own version of each problem for every student on the spot, a working example of tools that produce evidence of learning while students are still learning. Read more.
  • A National Academies report says data and computing skills should not be taught in isolation. It calls for weaving them across subjects like math and science from the early grades, which points to demand for curriculum that embeds these skills. Read more.

 

Funding
  • The White House is proposing sweeping changes to how federal education grants are awarded and canceled. With political appointees set to gain power to approve or cancel discretionary grants by October 1, vendors tied to grant-funded programs should expect longer holds and more cautious buyers. Read more.
  • Outcomes-based contracting is starting to tie vendor payment to student results. In the model, at least 40% of a provider’s payment rides on measurable outcomes like student growth, rewarding vendors who build for real classrooms and share responsibility for the results. Read more.
EdTech AI News
  • Google used ISTE 2026 to fold new AI tools into Classroom, Chromebooks, and Gemini. The launches include a Gemini Classroom app, adaptive Study notebooks, and free ACT and GRE practice tests, raising the bar for point-solution vendors to prove the specific job they do better. Read more.
  • Higher-ed technology leaders are being told to fix their data before they scale AI. CIOs describe cleaning up fragmented data and building governance guardrails first, so vendors that plug into clean data and respect those guardrails will have an easier path. Read more.

The Inside Scoop

Many EdTech teams know this problem well: they can name the outcome they want but not the research question that gets them there.

Nicole walks through how PIP Insights helps organizations ask the right questions for deep insights.

The PIP Insights Team built a market research guide with the questions we use to narrow in on exactly what to study. Download the guide here to pin down what your next study should solve for.

Featuring @Nicole Lang, Director of Market Insights and Growth at Partner in Publishing.

Office Hours

A recurring look at what we’re hearing from educators, EdTech leaders, and decision-makers, and how those conversations are shaping what comes next.

Market Research: The Price of Entry Into the Classroom for EdTech Products

The number of EdTech tools keeps growing, and so does the pressure to choose the right ones. Schools know students need real digital literacy to be ready for a modernizing world, and they are just as mindful of tools that could weaken critical thinking, make cheating easy, or pull attention away from core skills.

To earn their place in the classroom, new EdTech tools need to prove how they support learning, with validated proof points. EDUCAUSE research shows institutions ranking data modernization near the top of their priorities for efficiency and student success. Writing in District Administration, Coursemojo’s Dacia Toll describes the buying question shifting from what a tool can do to whether it is actually helping a district reach its goals for student learning. Since most EdTech goes underused, she notes, a product rarely succeeds on quality alone, because implementation and training matter just as much.

Every EdTech team believes in what it has built, but districts are thinking carefully about what will positively impact learning. Nowadays, proof and validated data points have become the price of entry for EdTech products. 

How to “show your work” this summer, before you pitch to a district or university: 

  1. Know your real usage numbers before a buyer does. Pull your actual usage by school and by teacher. Districts moving toward outcomes-based contracts will ask about this data, and a team that already knows its potential customers’ weak spots reads as a partner rather than a pitch.
  2. Tie your evidence to the buyer’s goal, not your feature list. Name the outcome the district actually cares about, whether that is reading growth or course completion, and show how your tool moves it.
  3. Treat implementation as part of the product. Most tools are built for ideal conditions that rarely exist in a real school. The onboarding, coaching, and PD you wrap around the product often determine adoption success as well as retention, so show buyers the support plan, not just the platform.

Stakeholders are asking harder questions, and that’s good for the teams with real answers. The companies that show their work this summer are the ones districts will trust to support the way their classrooms operate. 

Until next time, thanks for reading The EdTech Pulse.

For the Educators

Market Research: PIP offers paid opportunities for educators to participate in market research that will help transform educational tools. Opt-in here to learn more.

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PIP Announcements

New on the PIP Blog: The Strategy Behind AI Workflows at the Best EdTech Companies
Your team is creating more content than ever, and faster. The catch is that a lot of it may have started sounding like it could belong to any company in your space.
Your team is creating more content than ever, and faster. The catch is that a lot of it may have started sounding like it could belong to any company in your space.

So many marketing teams have felt the same shift this year. First drafts that used to take days now take hours, the blog stays active, and posts go out on time. The catch is that a lot of that content can start sounding like it could belong to any company in the space, because the AI writing your first drafts is the same AI writing everyone else’s.

In a new blog, Lisa March breaks down the three layers the best EdTech companies are building on top of their AI to keep their content recognizably theirs.

  • A point of view the tool cannot invent for you
  • A voice that sounds like your team rather than the software
  • A system that turns both into content week after week

It is a practical read for any EdTech marketing team that has adopted AI and wants it to compound into a real thought partner instead of a faster way to sound average.

Read the full blog on our website.

Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to subscribe to stay informed on the latest education insights and updates, helping you stay ahead in the increasingly competitive field of education technology.
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