Over the past few decades, that has generated a growing tension among parents and educators, who have begun questioning the .

But a new kind of funding scheme may turn that dynamic on its head: A finds that a different approach to buying classroom technology may not only be workable but, in many cases, produces results that traditional contracts don’t. Called outcomes based contracting, the model ties what companies get paid, at least in part, to whether students actually learn.

The findings, from the nonprofit groups and the , also come as school budgets are tightening after COVID relief funds dried up and district leaders find themselves under growing pressure to justify spending. 

The report examined a group of school districts piloting an outcomes based model. It finds that the arrangement offers a new way to determine whether tech is actually working for kids, since it dictates that a portion of vendors’ payments depends on meeting a set of agreed-upon student benchmarks. If students don’t reach them, vendors don’t collect the full contract amount. 

But the model also builds in a layer of shared accountability: Districts must commit to making sure students use the tools at the levels, or “dosage,” necessary to produce results.

Brittany Miller, the center’s executive director, said that forces everyone to take implementation seriously.

“What this model does is it tells everybody across the ecosystem: ‘Prioritize this,’” she said. “You have to get to this level of implementation integrity, which translates into dosage, in order to actually have a meaningful experience for a student.”

Kids ‘not getting the dosage they need’

Before looking at whether a tech product improves student outcomes, Miller said, there’s a more basic question that districts rarely ask: Are students using these tools at all?

The answer is often, “No.” 

The report found that more than 65% of purchased ed tech licenses typically go unused, with school districts paying full price for products that sit idle. But districts participating in the outcomes based pilot met dosage requirements for as many as 95% of students. Overall usage rates were typically 10 times higher than under traditional contracts.

“We talk a lot about dosage, and kids not getting the dosage that they need,” Miller said. “And that, to me, is a proxy for being a responsible consumer of tech: Are our kids actually using it in a way that will drive outcomes?”

Miller said part of what drives the usage shift is that both districts and vendors share a direct financial stake in students actually using the products. Under the model, if a student falls behind on usage, the district must find out why and get that student back on track. If they don’t, there’s a record of that and the district is on the hook for payments, even if the student’s achievement didn’t improve. 

It’s only fair in cases like these, she said. “The provider wasn’t able to prove that their product worked because kids didn’t actually use it.”

Beyond usage statistics, the report found that districts in the pilot reported greater instructional coherence. Technology was being used with more intention tied to specific learning goals rather than as a general add-on to existing lessons. And teachers were more deliberate about how they integrated tech into their instruction.

Miller, who formerly led large-scale tutoring implementation in Denver Public Schools, said she has sat in classrooms and watched students working with these products, typically supplemental literacy and math tools. She said many of them can make a difference, but only if used properly. 

“We’re talking about technology that has the ability to help students pronounce words correctly, support their fluency and break down words for them,” she said. “In mathematics, we’re talking about students using technology to really try different ways of solving problems and getting them exactly what they need in the moment.”

The report also found that tech companies benefited from the model in unexpected ways: Because outcomes based contracts require detailed, real-time data on how students are using a product, companies got access to information about their tools’ effectiveness that most standard contracts never generate.

Fewer tools, better results

Perhaps most counterintuitively, the report found, districts that rely on outcomes based contracting actually end up buying fewer tech products.

That’s because the process of building such a contract requires district leaders to clearly define what problem they’re trying to solve, what success looks like and whether a given product is actually the right tool for the job. That level of scrutiny, said Miller, produces a kind of natural audit.

“We’ve seen in a lot of districts as they’ve taken this on, the number of ed tech tools they’re purchasing just [goes] way down at the district level,” she said.

In one district, Miller said, officials found they’d purchased licenses for more than 1,000 tools. As they examined the list they said, “If there is not a clear reason and purpose that we’re using this in the classroom that’s actually driving student learning, then we’re not going to pay for that tool anymore.”

She added, “It just shifts the mindset of the system to really say, ‘Let’s look at what we’re purchasing more carefully, figure out what is and isn’t working, and start to cut down on the noise.”

The center, based at the , grew out of research conducted at Harvard University’s under economist Tom Kane, who in 2021 a small group of tutoring providers and school districts to examine whether outcomes based contracting — already used in healthcare and workforce development — could be adapted for K-12 education. 

The project eventually moved to the foundation, with Denver among the early participants. Miller was a district leader at the time and got involved in the work that Denver was piloting on tutoring. 

As of February, Miller’s center had worked with 87 education institutions ranging from school districts to state education agencies and tracked results for more than 63,000 students.

In addition, six states — California, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Indiana and Louisiana — have launched initiatives around the model. Together they represent more than 28% of total U.S. K-12 education spending, constituting a potentially fundamental shift in how schools spend money. That shift, Miller said, could have a huge impact on children’s achievement if educators are asking the right questions. 

“There’s a student at the end of the day that’s being served by this,” she said. “How are you really humanizing their lived experience in the classroom and making sure that they’re achieving the outcomes that we know they’re able to?”

It didn’t concern the so-called “Don’t Say Gay bill,” which had triggered nationwide controversy earlier that month over its restrictions on classroom instruction about gender and sexuality. And no mention was made of critical race theory, a frequent target of conservative ire. Instead, the outspoken Republican took the opportunity to confirm that his upcoming state budget would include $800 million to raise salaries for both novice and veteran teachers, a massive increase over the previous year.

“Over the last three years, we have worked hard to increase teacher pay. We have invested more than $2 billion in teacher pay, and with rising inflation, this could not come at a better time,” . “This will help Florida to recruit and retain great teachers.”

The proposal, which took effect July 1, seemed like a glitch in the political matrix of 2022. DeSantis — a red-state exemplar many believe will challenge Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination — has eagerly charged into countless education fights over the past few years, from COVID safety to trans athletes in girls’ sports. Given his for “woke indoctrination” in classrooms, many teachers have felt particularly under siege.

But he was also only one of several Republican politicians this year to either propose or enact record teacher pay raises. In Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Mississippi, governors are both fulminating against critical race theory and offering sizable new incentives to attract educators in a tight labor market. The explanation is partly economical: Following the injection of billions of dollars in federal pandemic relief, states are free to make financial commitments that would have seemed impossible only a few years earlier. 

But the combination of social conservatism with fiscal expansiveness may also be an artifact of the post-Trump GOP, said Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. A party that has largely discarded its “green eyeshade role” is now free to adopt a potent electoral posture, he argued. 

“The fact that Republican governors are generally aligned with two-thirds or more of the public against progressive dogma regarding race and gender gives more populist Republicans a potential twofer,” Hess said. “[The party] gets to support teachers while criticizing ideological extremism in school policies, teacher training, and such.”

Bradley Mariano, a professor of education policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, added that the bipartisan enthusiasm for boosting teacher pay could actually give Republicans a freer hand to pursue more disputed policies, such as expanding school choice or more tightly regulating speech in classrooms. 

“They have gained some political capital from providing teachers these historic raises, so it gives them a little cover to go after other items [of their agenda],” Marianno said. “And if they receive pushback, they say, ‘Hey, I just raised salaries to historic levels!'”

Push from voters

The politics behind the trend are unambiguous, if somewhat clashing: For the moment, large segments of the public in classrooms. Even more than that, however, they want to see teachers make more money.

The first point was made clear by a poll released in July. Not only did nearly 1,800 respondents in swing states say they trusted Republicans over Democrats on the issue of education; by huge margins, they also said they favored banning instruction of sexuality and gender identity through the third grade and prohibiting trans students from competing in girls’ athletics competitions — essentially the DeSantis education platform. Most striking of all was the fact that the research was commissioned not by a conservative source, but by the American Federation for Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers’ union.

A newer poll indicates that the public is even more supportive of higher teacher pay. According to the recently released Survey of Public Opinion on Education Policy, published annually by the journal Education Next, openness to educator raises has risen to a record high (from 61 percent in 2017 to 72 percent in 2022). After the upheaval and adversity inflicted by COVID, it is clear, the American public believes that teachers deserve somewhat larger paychecks.

Beth Lewis is the executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, a progressive activist group that advocates for higher school spending and against the expansive school choice agenda of the local Republican Party. In an interview, she dismissed Republican commitments to salary increases as “lip service” made necessary by political necessity.

“They’re seeing the same polling I’m seeing — voters overwhelmingly want to support teachers and want higher teacher pay — so in order to get reelected, they need to say that they’re in favor of raising teacher pay,” she said.

Lewis co-founded SOS Arizona in 2018, a year when teachers in multiple states walked out of the classroom in protest of years of stagnant pay and school spending. The months-long “Red for Ed” campaign, punctuated by dramatic marches on state capitols by thousands of red-shirted teachers, was credited with fueling the Democrats’ success in midterm elections that fall and helping reverse a prolonged dip in school spending following the Great Recession. 

In Arizona, irate educators from Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. But the movement’s real victory came in changing the public conversation around teacher compensation. Ducey is term-limited from seeking re-election this year, but the Republican nominated to replace him is Kari Lake, a Trump-endorsed conservative who has proposed in classrooms to thwart subversive instruction. Even so, to offer “more money (and a better work environment) for teachers,” arguing that previous salary increases were squandered or misappropriated by local school districts. In recent weeks, that she might support to grant a permanent $10,000 raise to all Arizona teachers.

Akilah Alleyne, director of K-12 education policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said she welcomed calls for higher education spending, but noted that to provide teachers with a “livable wage” had found no GOP co-sponsors.

“Teachers absolutely deserve better pay, and it’s great to see more people speaking up about taking action at the structural level to support this fight,” Alleyne wrote in an email. “But it’s hard not to…perceive Republicans’ sudden flood of teacher-pay talking points as a manipulative, back-to-school political ploy to win votes.”

The salary hikes were defended on both political and substantive grounds by Michael Petrilli, president of the reform-oriented Thomas B. Fordham Institute. All governors like to “play Santa Claus” in times of fiscal plenty, Petrilli noted, and few would quibble with this round of generosity given 2022’s rapidly rising prices. 

“I can’t muster much of an argument against it at a time when we’ve had 9 percent inflation and teacher salaries struggle to keep up with the cost of living,” Petrilli said. “If you’re a governor — and especially if you’re up for reelection in November — and you’ve got the money, this is a no-brainer.”

‘The money eventually runs out’

Governors, whether Republican or Democratic, seem to feel more free to act on education policy than in previous periods. Marguerite Roza, an education finance researcher and director of Georgetown University’s , said that the mass teacher organizing of 2018 may have permanently shifted bargaining efforts from the local to the state level.

“The Red for Ed movement was curious in that, instead of striking or blaming their local districts, they put their shirts on, marched to the statehouse…and pressured their governors and legislatures for raises. Maybe that’s sort of the new relationship there: The governor of the state is supposed to do something about teacher pay.”

And after more than two years of crisis management, state leaders have unparalleled resources to carry out their campaign promises. With nearly directed explicitly toward state education budgets, most of which remains unspent, the funding exists to offer teachers a boost.

The temptation to raise pay, whether through one-time signing or retention bonuses or in permanent changes to starting salaries, is especially acute at a time when private-sector jobs are plentiful and districts are struggling to fill vacancies. Although teachers are generally considered more likely to jump ship between districts than cross state lines, the frenzied search for staff could lead states to attempt to outbid one another for scarce human capital.

But as abundant as federal funding has been, it is earmarked only through 2024. At that time, many of the Republicans who have green-lighted raises since the pandemic’s onset may need to reverse the salary movement — or even cut jobs entirely.

Roza argued that the main reason teacher salaries have remained flat for so long is that over improving pay for existing staff. That tendency has continued during the COVID era, contributing to the hiring scramble of the past few years. If states are to reach a long-term accommodation with teachers that results in higher pay or benefits, she said, one consequence might be an unwinding of those long-term trends.

“Over the last 50 years, school districts have added a lot of staff and not really done much for pay,” she said. “So if states get themselves in a pickle where they can’t afford these pay raises, what we might expect as a tradeoff would be fewer FTEs [full-time equivalents] and a reversal of that trend.”

UNLV’s Marianno partly agreed, arguing that the spike in pay across some states will trigger an inevitable reaction in job interest.

“I do think the raises will help attract more teachers into the profession until you see a correction there, and as the demand for teachers decreases, the price that school districts are willing to pay will also decrease. As often happens with school finance, the money eventually runs out.”