Officials from big-city school systems offer blunt criticisms of a slow, cumbersome, and often anxiety-choked procurement process for buying educational technology. Their views appear in a new report that argues that those obstacles can stymie innovation.
In a paper released last week, researchers from the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education say that both vendors and school officials trying to shepherd purchases along typically have to navigate a deep sea of competing rules and district offices with different interests and responsibilities. The tangled process tends to exclude new and smaller ed-tech companies, and potentially curtail new ideas, write authors Tricia Maas and Robin Lake.
