The Delta Issue #89

States, Don’t Ban Ed Tech. Do This Instead.

Hi y’all, Jessica here.

As Education Week pointed out in their latest special report, we’ve ended up between two extremes in the edtech conversation: ban technology altogether, or embrace every tool under the sun.

On one side, we’ve seen a massive proliferation of edtech tools. The average teacher in America today uses over 40 educational products and services over the course of a school year, and children ages 8-18 spend an average of 7 ½ hours a day looking at a screen. On the other side, states are starting to react with some pretty draconian measures. Tennessee lawmakers moved to sharply limit technology in elementary classrooms. Other states are restricting AI or pushing for paper-based instruction. And major influencers like Jonathan Haidt have called for all screens out of K-5 classrooms by September.

The education world has a habit of crowning silver bullets, then writing them off as disasters when they don’t solve everything overnight. On edtech, the swing has been swift: from “buy it all” to “ban it all.”

There’s two reasons for this. First, as a colleague recently said to me, “education is bad at nuance.” Unfortunately, most of our work isn’t black or white; it lives in the grey. Second, we skip implementation. Throw 50 products at a teacher with no plan, and of course people swing to the other extreme. Tools will never be the savior of a crisis. Implementation is.

More and more smart people are naming that the answer on edtech is a both/and. What we’re not hearing as much is how you actually get there.

State education agencies are uniquely positioned to step up and lead on edtech. They can define what strong classroom experiences should look like, shape the marketplace around that vision, and create incentives that reward vendors for improving student learning, not just chasing the next shiny feature.

Here are three ways SEAs can start:

1. Get districts clear on the problem they want to solve

The biggest mistake we’ve made in edtech is assuming it can solve everything, without ever naming what “everything” is. There’s no single tool that fixes “low achievement.” But there are tools that can help kids learn letter-sound correspondence, build fact fluency in early math, and better differentiate support for special education students or multilingual learners while maintaining grade-level rigor. The work starts with naming the specific instructional problem, not shopping for a platform.

States can help districts get clear on that. Before opening a product catalog, align on the experience you’re trying to create: What does an excellent classroom look like? Where are we falling short of that? Technology should come after those questions are answered, and only as a way to solve those problems better, faster, or at scale.

It’s the same shift we’ve asked the field to make in literacy: start with the problem, be explicit about what “good” looks like, then select tools that support that vision.

States have more purchasing power than they realize. When they only select tools that support a clear instructional vision, the market follows.

2. Curate the marketplace

The education field has been here before. Prior to developing standards for high-quality instructional materials, the curriculum marketplace was the Wild West. But when state leaders set expectations for HQIM, curriculum developers responded in kind.

Right now, we’re still in the “pre-EdReports” phase of edtech, where districts are navigating an overwhelming edtech marketplace with limited signal on quality. Good vendors want states to lead, but without clear priorities, they have no way of knowing what to build for.

In 2017, the Council of Chief State School Officers ‘s High-Quality Instructional Materials and Professional Development (IMPD) Network brought together 15+ states to define what quality looks like in instructional materials. Member states, including Louisiana and Texas, then set out to curate a short list of options districts could trust. The same approach can (and should) be applied to edtech.

States should:

Organize lists around specific problems, not products. Broad categories like “AI tools” don’t help districts make good choices. Anchor lists in concrete instructional goals such as early literacy, middle school math, and high school writing. From there, ask: Where does technology meet an instructional need that strong core teaching alone cannot? On an early literacy list, that might mean giving each student practice on the specific phonics skills they haven’t mastered yet, filling a gap the core program doesn’t reach (like foundational decoding), or scaffolding grade-level texts so students with disabilities can engage with the same rigorous content as their peers. Content area helps states and districts start the list, and instructional purpose determines what stays on the list.
Create rigorous rubrics for vetting. Before a tool makes the list, it should easily answer: What is the evidence that this tool improves student learning? How many minutes per week of student use are needed to see results, and can we realistically fit that into the school day? How does it align to our pre-existing curriculum? How does it reduce teacher burden or add to it? Can it work across systems? There should be results, not just promises, to back that up.
Invest in implementation so teachers can use good instructional materials and good tools together. Teachers shouldn’t be handed new tools and wished good luck. They should be equipped to use them properly, with structured onboarding, ongoing coaching, and time to practice before being expected to perform. The most commonly missed piece is helping teachers integrate tools with core instructional materials. A teacher may receive solid training on an adaptive reading program and separate training on a formative assessment platform, but rarely is anyone showing how those pieces fit into the same 90-minute block.

When states take this approach, three things happen.

Districts have a clearer starting point: choosing from a vetted set rather than navigating the full marketplace.
The market responds: vendors build toward the criteria states set, investing in evidence and aligning more closely to classroom needs because that’s what gets adopted.
The vendors that earn their way onto that list become capacity multipliers, extending a state’s reach into classrooms without requiring the state to build everything itself.

3. Hold vendors AND districts accountable for outcomes

SEAs should drive contracts that put both vendors and districts on the hook for outcomes. For as long as I can remember, districts have structured their contracts with private companies without any contingencies. If a company can get in the door, they get paid.

But a company that secures a contract with a district gets hundreds or thousands of students to use its product—and it should promise something in return. A recent report found that more than 65% of purchased edtech licenses typically go unused. And even when tools are actively used, there’s no money-back guarantee tied to whether they actually move the needle on student outcomes. Districts pay full price either way, for shelfware they never touch, or for products that fail to deliver results.

States have the ability and the responsibility to change this. Outcomes-based contracting (OBC) is one model worth learning more about, as a way to reshape the relationship between government and vendors so both sides are on the hook for what happens after the contract is signed.

Six states — California, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Indiana, and Louisiana — have already launched initiatives around this model, and the early results are promising. Districts using outcomes-based contracts met usage requirements for up to 95% of students, with overall usage rates ten times higher than under traditional contracts.

Holding a vendor responsible for reading growth or math gains is just one element of driving student learning. Districts have to play their part, too. The point is to build contracts that share accountability honestly: vendor on the hook for usage and quality, district on the hook for implementation, and both showing up to make it work.

Shape what great instruction looks like in your state. Then help identify where edtech fits in the story.

The decisions about which tools shape students’ daily learning are being made now, with or without state direction. With tighter budgets and reduced federal funding, every misaligned dollar carries greater consequences. This moment demands deliberate leadership. When states define what strong teaching and learning should look like, hold vendors to that standard, and direct districts toward tools that deliver, the market reorients around what matters: more coherent instruction for students, fewer fragmented tools for teachers, and a clearer connection between state priorities and what students experience every day.