EdTrends

Five Tips for Selling to the Growing Charter School Market

By MDR Marketing Team | 03/24/2023 | Comments Off on Five Tips for Selling to the Growing Charter School Market
Charter school students

A movement that started in the United States more than 30 years ago, public charter schools serve more than 3.7 million students in about 7,700 schools around the country. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, they saw an increase of nearly 240,000 students since the beginning of the pandemic—a 7 percent increase—while […]

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Creative Ideas for Helping Schools Face Year-End Spending Challenges

By MDR Marketing Team | 02/24/2023 | Comments Off on Creative Ideas for Helping Schools Face Year-End Spending Challenges
Classroom students raising hands

It may seem hard to believe but it is (once again) the time of year when schools are faced with the “use it or lose it” challenge when it comes to spending the remainder of their 2022-2023 school budgets. And while lack of sufficient ongoing funding remains a problem for many districts around the country, […]

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Helping Schools Maximize ESSER Spending

By MDR Marketing Team | 01/18/2023 | Comments Off on Helping Schools Maximize ESSER Spending
Stacks of coins

Mitigating learning loss. Declining enrollments. Ensuring student social and emotional health. Managing increased parental involvement. Providing a safe learning environment. These concerns are just the top of the laundry list of challenges that education leaders face in 2023. Plus, they face the looming September 2024 deadline to allocate Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund […]

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Want to Know ChatGPT’s Potential for Education? Ask It!

By Guest Contributor | 01/18/2023 | Comments Off on Want to Know ChatGPT’s Potential for Education? Ask It!
ChatGPT illustration

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe You’ve probably read the headlines about ChatGPT both in mainstream and education media. From the January 12, 2023, New York Times: “Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It.” or Education Week on January 4, 2023: “New York City Blocks ChatGPT at Schools. Should Other Districts Follow?” Launched in November […]

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Marketing to Specialty Schools

By MDR Marketing Team | 11/17/2022 | Comments Off on Marketing to Specialty Schools
young students at specialty school

Our country has nearly 50 million K-12 students enrolled in public schools. However, a lot has changed since the days of the traditional little red schoolhouse with desks all in a row, where kids studied reading, writing and arithmetic. Today a significant number of students are attending specialty K-12 schools, such as charters and magnets. […]

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Math Achievement Crisis Presents Opportunity to Transform Learning

By MDR Marketing Team | 11/17/2022 | Comments Off on Math Achievement Crisis Presents Opportunity to Transform Learning
young boy struggling with math problem

It’s no surprise that the disruption of COVID-19 school closings had an impact on student learning, but assessments are now showing that the learning loss may be graver than anyone anticipated. And recent results of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—dubbed the “Nation’s Report Card”—revealed that there has been no greater impact than […]

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Creating Paths to Success in Math for All Students

By Guest Contributor | 11/17/2022 | Comments Off on Creating Paths to Success in Math for All Students
happy students solving math problem

By Guest Contributor Dr. Angelica Gonzalez, Sr. Data Scientist at McGraw Hill  It’s no secret that STEM careers are in high demand, and will likely remain in high demand for some time. The road to a fruitful STEM-centric future is likely to include adversity — and for many learners, particularly underprivileged groups, the path to a rewarding career in […]

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Five Trends to Guide Your 2023 Marketing Planning

By MDR Marketing Team | 11/15/2022 | Comments Off on Five Trends to Guide Your 2023 Marketing Planning
2023 planning notebook

As the year comes to a close, you are likely deep in the middle of marketing and sales planning for 2023 – plotting out your themes and campaigns as well as the conferences and events where you will meet with educators. We’ve all learned over the past few years that everything can change in a minute, […]

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Tackling the National Teacher Shortage

By MDR Marketing Team | 10/28/2022 | Comments Off on Tackling the National Teacher Shortage
Overwhelmed Teacher

As the headlines are declaring, the U.S. is in the midst of a national teacher shortage. In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) latest survey results on public school experiences with COVID-19 shows that, 53 percent of all public schools felt understaffed entering the 2022-2023 school year, and 69 percent reported too few […]

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K-12 Edtech Dominates Education Market Activity: Q3 K-12 Market Highlights

By Guest Contributor | 09/23/2022 | Comments Off on K-12 Edtech Dominates Education Market Activity: Q3 K-12 Market Highlights
group of business people

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While the investment bank, Berkery Noyes, reported a slight drop in investment and acquisition activity in the K-12 market in the first half of 2022,* there was a lot happening in the third quarter of the year with numerous acquisitions, rounds of funding and personnel changes being reported. And the […]

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4 Reasons to Try Augmented Reality in Your Classroom

By Guest Contributor | 09/23/2022 | Comments Off on 4 Reasons to Try Augmented Reality in Your Classroom
students using augmented reality in classroom

By Guest Contributor Patrick Merchant, Senior Digital Strategist, McGraw Hill School Much like voice recognition technology and even artificial intelligence, Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly making its way into PreK-12 classrooms. With the potential to make way for learning experiences that we couldn’t have even dreamed of a decade ago, the implications of this new […]

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Public School Enrollment Declines for the First Time in a Decade

By MDR Marketing Team | 09/23/2022 | Comments Off on Public School Enrollment Declines for the First Time in a Decade
happy students running down hallway

Each year MDR examines data on public school enrollment and offers a snapshot of the state of the country’s schools. This year’s results show interesting changes, likely resulting from the unanticipated events of the past few years. U.S. public school enrollment remained relatively stable over the past decade with 91 percent of all school age […]

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New School District Job Titles: Facilities Management & School Safety

By MDR Marketing Team | 08/18/2022 | Comments Off on New School District Job Titles: Facilities Management & School Safety
group of school personnel

Our database of school personnel recently grew with the addition of 35 new job titles and 11 title changes at the district level, reflecting the current educational landscape. In last month’s blog post, we introduced new titles in the “Health & Wellness” category, representing an increased focus in schools on those important two areas. As […]

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New School District Job Titles: Health & Wellness

By MDR Marketing Team | 07/21/2022 | Comments Off on New School District Job Titles: Health & Wellness
District Personnel

Things change. And over the past few years it seems like things have been changing at an accelerated pace, especially in education. At MDR, we knew this likely had an impact on the organizational structure of school districts and new positions may have been added to reflect emerging needs. To ensure that you can target […]

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Personnel Moves, Investments, and Acquisitions

By Guest Contributor | 06/16/2022 | Comments Off on Personnel Moves, Investments, and Acquisitions
Handshake

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Q2 K-12 Market Highlights In the second quarter of 2022, the K-12 education market saw a lot of personnel moves, with people joining the industry, being promoted to new roles and moving to new positions at other education companies. As schools and the market continue to adjust to the changes […]

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Tips for Supporting Summer Learning Programs

By MDR Marketing Team | 04/21/2022 | Comments Off on Tips for Supporting Summer Learning Programs
Backpacks in summer field

As schools continue to work to mitigate the learning loss resulting from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are offering summer learning programs that combine academics and enrichment. And because of the billions of dollars in ARP ESSER funds that have been distributed to states and districts, they have the resources to invest in […]

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Five Key Education Marketing Trends for 2022

By Guest Contributor | 04/21/2022 | Comments Off on Five Key Education Marketing Trends for 2022
Marketing Team

By Guest Contributor Saul Hafenbredl What are the major trends in business-to-education marketing that companies need to be aware of to stay one step ahead in a rapidly changing business environment? CB&A’s annual Education Marketing Trends Report provides key insights that help companies succeed in selling to schools—and during a recent Expert Series webinar, the […]

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An Interesting Beginning to 2022: K-12 Market Highlights

By Guest Contributor | 03/21/2022 | Comments Off on An Interesting Beginning to 2022: K-12 Market Highlights
Business people smiling over good news

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe The education market seems to have quieted down a little bit in the beginning of 2022, but there are still lots of mergers and acquisitions, funding rounds closed and big personnel changes to report, including two of the industry’s biggest companies entertaining (or not?) takeover bids. Here are the highlights: […]

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Tips for Helping Schools Spend Year End “Use It or Lose It” Funds

By MDR Marketing Team | 02/17/2022 | Comments Off on Tips for Helping Schools Spend Year End “Use It or Lose It” Funds
Spending Decisions

It may only be February, but the end of the 2021-2022 school year is as little as three or four months away. And with the end of the school year comes the scramble by districts, schools, and even individual teachers to spend down their budgets. Whether this “use it or lose it” scenario includes millions […]

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How has the Pandemic Impacted Schools’ Purchasing Priorities?

By Guest Contributor | 02/17/2022 | Comments Off on How has the Pandemic Impacted Schools’ Purchasing Priorities?
Office staff working at computers

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe When in college preparing for their careers, most of today’s school leaders likely didn’t think that they would need to know about planning for in-classroom learning during a pandemic or purchasing high quality air filtration systems. In addition to having to become armchair epidemiologists, they have also faced new challenges […]

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How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds, Part 4

By MDR Marketing Team | 01/20/2022 | Comments Off on How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds, Part 4
Planning Meeting

The U.S. Department of Education has approved the final state and territory plans for using their American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to support the safe and sustained return to in-person learning for U.S. K-12 students. Other states and territories had their ARP ESSER plans approved in 2021. All 52 […]

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Navigating the Disrupted 2022 School Calendar

By Guest Contributor | 01/20/2022 | Comments Off on Navigating the Disrupted 2022 School Calendar
Teachers walking down hallway

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe In the words of the poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  Headlines from the first few weeks of 2022 show that nothing could be truer of the return to school following the holidays. Thousands of K-12 schools have experienced a disruption to […]

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Three Ways COVID-19 Disrupted the K-12 School Buying Cycle

By MDR Marketing Team | 10/13/2021 | Comments Off on Three Ways COVID-19 Disrupted the K-12 School Buying Cycle
school supplies on desk

Every November, Merriam-Webster picks the “word of the year.” For 2020, it was “pandemic.” (Go figure!) While it is still a bit early for the 2021 word to be announced, it might well be “disruption.”  And among the things that have been most disrupted over the past year or more is the way that we […]

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A Learning Scientist’s Advice for Back to School: Let Them Play

By Guest Contributor | 09/16/2021 | Comments Off on A Learning Scientist’s Advice for Back to School: Let Them Play
Girls reading on tablet

 By Guest Contributor Dylan Arena, VP, Learning Science, McGraw Hill School Group I’ve been fascinated by both learning and playing for my whole life, but it wasn’t until graduate school that I fully appreciated how related they are. Now I love to remind people that play is the most powerful adaptation for learning in the […]

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The Role of EdTech Providers in a Post-Pandemic K-12 Landscape

By Guest Contributor | 08/19/2021 | Comments Off on The Role of EdTech Providers in a Post-Pandemic K-12 Landscape
students at board

By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, McGraw Hill School Group We’re in a transitional moment in K-12 education. As an institution, education has always had an incremental relationship with change. But within that relatively static institution, individuals – teachers, students, principals – have been making their own changes at the scale of their classrooms, schools, and learning communities.   […]

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Get Your Board on Board

By Guest Contributor | 08/19/2021 | Comments Off on Get Your Board on Board
School Board Meeting

By Guest Contributor Erin Werra, Skyward Behind just about every public school district is an elected school board. Here are a few considerations to cultivate harmony. It takes a village to run a public school district. Harmony is the goal, but in turbulent times like these, tension arises quickly. As communities navigate changes and challenges, defining […]

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Still Facing a Digital Divide? The FCC Can Help.

By MDR Marketing Team | 07/21/2021 | Comments Off on Still Facing a Digital Divide? The FCC Can Help.
close up of student hands doing school work

Educators couldn’t miss the headlines about the additional $122 billion allocated for ESSER in the American Rescue Plan (ARP), signed into law in March. But there was another boon for education in the ARP that you may not have heard about: the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF). Administered through the Universal Service Administrative Company of the FCC, […]

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Four Ways to Help Schools Keep Parents Engaged in Education

By Guest Contributor | 07/21/2021 | Comments Off on Four Ways to Help Schools Keep Parents Engaged in Education
Parent helping child with school work

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Parents have always been involved in school and their children’s education. They’ve gone to PTA/PTO meetings, participated in parent-teacher conferences, volunteered in the classroom and, of course, helped with homework. But 2020 and the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic took that involvement to a whole new level. […]

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Five Ways COVID-19 May Have Changed Schools for the Better

By MDR Marketing Team | 06/22/2021 | Comments Off on Five Ways COVID-19 May Have Changed Schools for the Better
5 Teachers giving thumbs up to positive changes in schools

As teachers exhale and hopefully get some well-deserved R&R, we thought it was time to reflect on some of the changes coming out of the COVID-19 experience. Sometimes out of chaos comes positive change, here are five ways we think schools will have changed for the better: Remote learning may be here to stay. Not […]

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Planning to Support Teachers for Back-to-School 2021-2022

By MDR Marketing Team | 05/21/2021 | Comments Off on Planning to Support Teachers for Back-to-School 2021-2022
teacher relaxing in classroom

 As of April 2021, the CDC reported nearly 80 percent of teachers, school staff, and childcare workers have received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine*, recently the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as 12 and experts are predicting even younger children will be eligible to be vaccinated by the end […]

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