Summer is quiet for educators and short for the companies hoping to reach them. The solutions that meet educators’ needs make the fall shortlist.
June 16, 2026 • 0 comments

Win the Fall: Anticipate New Educator Needs 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, we’re unpacking the summer window where fall purchase decisions take shape. This summer, districts and states are rewriting AI requirements and vetting new tools. Inside, we look at how to use the next few weeks to set up both a strong onboarding and a clean answer to new technological rules.

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

Industry News

Innovation, Trends, & Tools
  • The Canvas breach is a vendor-risk wake-up call. With most K-12 apps sharing student data, schools are urged to weigh data governance and authentication and to store less sensitive data. Discover the implications here.
  • New York City weighs an AI pause. More than half of the city council asked for a two-year moratorium on generative AI in the nation’s largest school system, citing flawed guidance and gaps in student data protections. Read about it here.
  • Test scores may be the wrong yardstick for EdTech. Educators argue many tools are built for access, participation, and creativity, so efficacy is better judged against the problem each one is meant to solve. Read more.
Funding
  • Educators want a seat at the buying table. With school EdTech spending near $30 billion, one proposal is to start procurement from a teacher and student needs list, before any vendor enters the room. Read more.
  • Federal education funding is back on the table. Congress has opened budget talks for the 2027-28 school year, with lawmakers set to clash over proposed cuts that put several K-12 programs at risk. Learn more here.
  • Classroom tech is becoming an enrollment pitch. Students increasingly judge colleges by how modern the learning spaces feel, and IT leaders are now framing classroom upgrades as an enrollment and retention investment. Learn more here.

The Inside Scoop

LinkedIn is flooded with AI-generated long-form posts, and they are starting to blur together. A model can copy the format of a how-to post, but it cannot tell your story.

Lindsay Semevolos‘s advice is to lead with what only you can say. Rather than another list of tips, share what you actually did and how it helped you. A personal story told in your own voice is what cuts through the sea of AI and helps you stand out.

Featuring Lindsay Semevolos, Senior Project Manager and Video Content Strategist 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.

What to Build This Summer to Win the Fall

As of June 2026, districts now rely on thousands of EdTech tools, and the spending behind them keeps climbing. Schools in the United States spent roughly $30 billionon educational technology in 2024, and the market is expected to nearly double by 2033.

That growth has a flip side. K-12 leaders are now flooded with pitches, demos, and free trials, and breaking through that pile is harder than it has ever been.

Schools have responded by building gates around the products, pilots, reviews, and procurement checks that decide what gets in. Meanwhile, Educators are arguing that a tool should be judged by the problem it was built to solve rather than by test scores alone, and New York City schools are pressingfor stronger student data protections.

So, how can you make your product stand out? Think more about teachers. Increasingly, they shape what is worth signing. The solutions that win are the ones that offer the clearest data-backed answers to the specific problems that educators want to solve.

That is the work the summer is good for. Three things to develop before August:

  • A problem statement, naming the specific gap your tool closes in the educator’s own words.
  • An efficacy story tied to that problem, with the outcome you would measure, answering the question schools are learning to ask: whether the tool does what it claims.
  • A plain-language data and security answer, covering what you collect, where it lives, and how you protect it.

The brands that develop around these pillars are the ones teachers are most likely to support in the fall.

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.

Upcoming Conferences

PIP Announcements

Try Our Free EdTech Customer Success Health Check Quiz

If you run customer success for an EdTech company, this free 5-minute audit shows you where your team is winning renewals and where it is losing them.

It scores your team across six dimensions of educator customer success and flags where you are serving schools like a standard B2B account, which is often where renewals slip. Your takeaway is a scored snapshot including 2-3 high-leverage moves to make in the next 90 days.

These 18 questions are built on the same framework PIP uses when onboarding new EdTech clients.

Start the assessment here.

Heading to ISTELive 26?

ISTELive 26 and the ASCD Annual Conference land in Orlando June 28 to July 1, and the expo floor is where a lot of fall pilots get their start. If your team is mapping its FY27 stack, we’d love to compare notes on what’s actually moving buyers this year.

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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