Schools Optimistic about Ed-Tech Budgets

School leaders are more optimistic about their ed-tech budgets than they have been in five years, market research firm MDR says.

Forty-one percent of K-12 districts expect to spend more money on hardware during the 2014-15 school year than they did the previous year. That’s up from 25 percent of districts that expected an increase in hardware spending in 2013-14.

Twenty-six percent of districts say they’ll spend more on software this year, up from 12 percent last year. Forty-three percent say they’ll spend more on teacher professional development, up from 24 percent last year.

IT support is the real winner, with the percentage of districts increasing their spending this year tripling over last year (36 percent vs. 12 percent, respectively).

Overall, nearly 90 percent of districts said their spending on all four of these ed-tech categories would increase or stay the same this year compared to last year.

Forty-four percent of districts say one-to-one computing has been “substantially implemented” in their high schools; 36 percent say this of their middle schools, and 20 percent say this of their elementary schools.

Flipped and blended learning appear to be on the rise as well. Sixty-three percent of districts say at least some of the high school classrooms have implemented flipped learning, while 60 percent report some usage of blended learning.

You can find more information from MDR’s 2014 “State of the K-12 Market” report here.

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