Articles Tagged with k12

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Operations Department Sign CAEducation publishers have taken a lot of fire in the last few years – many believe that we are too big, too powerful, and that things would be better if teachers just wrote their own materials or used free stuff.

So why do we continue to exist? Are publishers a necessary evil soon to be eliminated by a tsunami of free OER content, or is there an ongoing beneficial role in public education that publishers can fill?

This post is one publisher’s take on what justifies our place in education. This isn’t intended as a direct refutation of critiques of publishers, any industry as large as ours (over $10 billion) has plenty of opportunities to improve what we do. Rather, I focus on some of the lesser appreciated positive contributions we make. It also isn’t a takedown of OER materials, which have earned a permanent place at the table.

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Gas Shut Off SignWe’ve all heard the voices of DOOM about the looming budget cuts from the sequester. I call BS, at least as it affects K12 education.

Laziness often drives how we talk about education funding. Because it is easy to track federal spending we focus our energy there. But this willfully ignores the plain fact that 90% of funding for education comes from state and local government, the Feds only account for 10%.

Do the math. A 10% sequester driven cut in Federal spending means a 1% cut to total education spending.

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Diversion EndsI’ve been on a bit of a blogcation since June. It has been a crazy summer both personally and professionally* and something had to give.

I’m back.

The K12 market has been in full meltdown since last November. Schools are struggling with state finances post stimulus, the Feds are not helping with threats of sequestration, and tablets are sucking up what little oxygen remains in the room. To top it off the uncertainty around the election is putting a pause on decisions.

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r67ye5tertgrgtreBooks, iPads, and the Kindle are changing the fundamental structure of the publishing industry. From a strategic perspective they are having the largest impact on the development and pricing of products. In other words it is affecting the “what” deeply. The “how” has not changed all that much, regardless of whether you are selling print and/or technology.

There are four fundamental strategies for a growing a company in the K12 sector because even in the best of times K12 is (mostly) a zero sum game. In 2008 I wrote a post about this competitive dynamic:

In normal times education budgets grow at 2%-5% a year. Most start-ups or new products need to grow at a huge multiple of that – 30% to 300% or even more. Mathematically in order for you to grow someone else is must lose out.

We are most definitely not living in “normal times” these days. Any growth strategy in today’s market is fighting gravity as school budgets are expected to fall next year after the stimulus has expired.

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Education spending patterns have been abnormal for several years. Publishing used to follow very predictable patterns – no more.

Between the Great Recession and ARRA Stimulus funds we have been living in an era of seesaw budgets for three years. Since education spending lags the general economy by up to 3 years this will continue until at least 2014.

I can remember entire decades where budget flows were so steady that you could predict the entire year within +/- 10% after the first three months. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 the first half of each year told you very little about the second half.

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Education publishers and Learning Management Systems have a long and somewhat checkered history. Open source publishing, XML, and content digitization are changing the LMS landscape rapidly. In today’s guest post Louise Dube outlines the issues facing companies creating instructional materials.

By Louise Dube

What to do? Educator Buying Trends, a recently survey by MDR reveals that Moodle has the largest installed base of Learning Management systems (LMS) in K-12. Equally interesting is that Moodle’s strongest presence is in large districts. These districts have the IT infrastructure to support the development and customization of an open source platform.

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1135507_paletteHow is the marketing mix for companies that sell to K12 schools evolving? At a time when we are experiencing an explosion in the number and type of marketing programs we are also seeing rebalanced budgets and a consolidation among the large support organizations. The economic downturn has only accelerated these trends – it isn’t responsible for them.

The Paradigm is Shifting – Slowly

To begin with – maturing internet search and peer to peer social media networks are changing some of the underlying assumptions of what marketing does. Put simply, it is far more important to be found today when someone is searching than it is to interrupt them when they are not. A customer who has typed in relevant search terms and come upon your site or who reaches out to their network to help them solve a problem and been referred to you is the highest quality lead you can possess. They are actively seeking a solution that may include your products.

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0808_ecpEducation Channel Partner published a story I wrote about partnerships for companies that serve the education market. Whether you are a textbook publisher, an education technology developer, a fellow management consultant, or a reseller/dealer I hope you will find some useful ideas in the article. Think of it as Business Development 101 for education.

Too many partnerships fail because the partners didn’t work through all the questions they needed to address individually and mutually. This article attempts to lay out a process for evaluating partnerships and a partnership taxonomy to help determine what kinds of partnerships are right for your company. It draws on my experiences at Apple, Chancery, Pearson, and Harcourt.

From the blurb:

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By Randy Wilhelm, CEO Thinkronize – Guest Blogger

Did George Washington’s dog play multiplication math games with Abraham Lincoln’s animals during the Civil War?

I would guess the answer is a resounding no. However, a new Index reveals the most popular keywords that K-12 students are searching for on the Internet. It includes these terms in the top 15. netTrekker d.i.’s quarterly “Top 15 In-School Search Index” for spring 2008 will be announced on Wednesday, with Games coming in at #1, Dogs at #2 and George Washington, at #5.

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It is easy for a sales force to fall into a comfort zone. Data-driven decision making techniques can help insure that Reps are reaching beyond their current contacts.

In many companies there is a great deal of data about the market. The challenge is to drive this into your field organization so that the Reps and their Managers are probing for untapped market potential on a regular basis.

There are some simple and quick ways to start using data in selling to schools and school districts. This post outlines some ideas for how to encourage your sales force to adopt a more data driven approach.

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