Key Trends to Watch in the Education Market in 2025

Yearly training corporations navigate shifts in Ok-12 coverage and observe that form college district appetites and expectations for merchandise.

Training suppliers are additionally buffeted by exterior forces — political, technological, financial — arriving from outdoors the college panorama fully.

The editorial employees at EdWeek Market Temporary count on that 2025 will deliver vital adjustments that have an effect on distributors’ work. Listed here are a few of our group’s predictions for tendencies we count on to unfold within the training market over the following yr.

1. The Circumstances Are Proper for Profession-Technical Training to Develop

The following yr might deliver an enlargement of career-technical training and apprenticeship packages, in addition to work-based alternate options to varsity.

Profession-technical teaching programs, in any other case often called vocational training, deal with getting ready college students for the workforce by way of coursework on the Ok-12 or postsecondary stage. In some circumstances, these packages present college students with trade credentials, or direct experiences working with companies.

States have elevated curiosity on this space in recent times. To date in 2024, greater than 100 items of laws have been launched throughout the states centered on supporting career-technical training, in line with the Affiliation for Profession and Technical Training.

Profession-technical training has lengthy obtained bipartisan assist. As well as, Donald Trump’s new presidential administration might bolster CTE if president-elect Donald Trump’s final stint in workplace is any indicator of his priorities going ahead. In 2020, he advocated for a lot larger spending on state grants for CTE, in search of a $680 million enhance to those packages.

Expertise might additionally gas new curiosity in CTE packages. Some advocates of career-focused coaching say AI might assist faculties overcome longstanding challenges by growing pupil engagement and completion charges in packages, and by opening doorways for college students to discover industries by way of digital simulations and job placement automation.

“Given the huge number of functions you should utilize AI for, that should be one thing that may handle the wants, in addition to the static nature, of what’s occurring round sturdiness abilities or work-based studying experiences,” Michael Connet, the affiliate deputy govt director of outreach and associate improvement for ACTE, advised EdWeek Market Temporary.

—Alexandria Ng

2. Regardless of Political Pushback, Social-Emotional Studying Will Stay an Important Focus of College Districts

Years have handed since college students returned to in-person school rooms after the pandemic, however the complicated social and emotional wants that emerged throughout that period of utmost disruption are nonetheless exhibiting up in school rooms.

Over the previous few years, some Republican state and native policymakers have criticized social-emotional studying efforts, suggesting they had been related to classes on racial or gender matters that these policymakers have sought to limit.

However at school districts, curiosity in SEL stays strong, information present. A report revealed final yr by the Collaborative for Educational, Social, and Emotional Studying discovered that in the course of the 2023-24 college yr, 83 % of faculty principals reported that their faculties used a SEL curriculum, up from 76 % within the 2021–2022 college yr. Almost all states, the report mentioned, have some form of insurance policies supporting SEL in faculties.

Ok-12 suppliers ought to count on that educators will stay looking out for services or products that may assist them handle college students’ non-academic wants, together with in supplies or packages that aren’t solely centered on delivering SEL.

In a nationally consultant survey carried out by the EdWeek Analysis Heart within the fall, EdWeek Market Temporary requested greater than 430 academics to determine the key skilled challenges they’re dealing with, or count on to face.

Addressing their pupil’s social-emotional and psychological wellness was a high reply, with 42 % of educators pointing to that hurdle.

Particularly, college methods are centered on utilizing cash of their budgets to assist skilled improvement for academics and directors in order that they’re ready to ship efficient SEL.

In a survey carried out this yr for EdWeek Market Temporary survey information, when requested what SEL merchandise they plan to buy from an outdoor vendor, the most important portion of respondents, 52 %, mentioned PD for academics.

A major quantity additionally plan to dedicate what {dollars} they must buy stand-alone classes in SEL, 40 %. Skilled improvement for directors got here in third, at 37 %.

EdWeek Market Temporary’s editorial employees have heard that some college districts, partly in response to cultural assaults on SEL, have averted utilizing the time period, whereas nonetheless supporting its underlying ideas. (Some Ok-12 officers see it as essential to proceed utilizing the time period, to keep away from diluting what it’s supposed to perform.)

This continued deal with SEL is supported by analysis exhibiting that assembly college students’ social-emotional wants contributes to optimistic shifts at school local weather and college students’ curiosity in studying, in line with a latest assertion from Alexandra Skoog-Hoffman, senior director of analysis & studying for CASEL.

“Educators and leaders nationwide are prioritizing SEL as a vital a part of long-term educational restoration,” she mentioned. “And are undeterred by funding shifts or political divides.”

—Emma Kate Fittes

3. States’ Direct Affect Over the Ok-12 Market Will Enhance

State policymakers have at all times wielded monumental energy over the college market, not solely due to curriculum adoption cycles, but additionally as a result of such an enormous portion of Ok-12 budgets – usually at the very least 40 % – comes from state funding.

However over the following yr, state affect over the market is prone to develop past established norms.

Many states are already far alongside in implementing legal guidelines accredited over the previous few years that can have an effect on classroom coverage. As an illustration, over the previous decade, 37 states have accredited legal guidelines selling evidence-based studying instruction – in some circumstances described as “science of studying” measures. These actions intensified in 2023 and 2024.

Many state training companies are actually taking these legal guidelines and implementing particular insurance policies round them – in PD, curriculum, and different areas — which distributors producing educational sources must comply with.

The involvement of the state in curriculum in a single main market, Texas, goes far past standard-issue policy-setting and implementation.

The state’s training company has not solely created new financial incentives for districts to select from a state-approved listing of supplies; it’s creating its personal supplies to compete with publishers in some topics and grades.

There’s additionally hypothesis that states might achieve new leverage if the incoming presidential administration of Donald Trump converts main federal funding streams into block grants, limiting the U.S. Division of Training and federal lawmakers’ affect.

Over the previous few years, Republican-led states have additionally accredited divisive restrictions on classes on racism and gender. Choices about how aggressively to implement these legal guidelines will fall largely on state training companies.

An indication of faculty district officers elevated recognition of the significance of state-level policymaking got here by way of in a latest EdWeek Market Temporary survey. The survey, carried out this summer time, requested district and college leaders what sources of scores/suggestions might be extremely essential them, in evaluating merchandise.

State adoption lists soared in significance.

—Sean Cavanagh

4. Districts Will Be Compelled to Grapple With Growing College Closures

The variety of faculties shutting their doorways had dropped in recent times, however there are indicators that extra faculties will shut as many districts nationwide wrestle with tighter budgets and falling enrollments.

In keeping with the Nationwide Heart for Training Statistics’ most up-to-date information, in the course of the 2020-21 and 2021-22 college years, the nation noticed 865 and 755 faculties shut, respectively, down from the place the quantity usually hovered, round 1,100 a yr, because the Nice Recession.

In some circumstances, closures might have been averted due to extra assist offered to highschool districts in states similar to California, which continued to fund districts primarily based on their pre-pandemic enrollments.

Now, as some college methods lose that additional funding and federal stimulus funding goes away, huge funds gaps are rising – and districts could also be trying to to shut faculties.

Whereas private-school alternative choices have expanded and homeschooling has apparently elevated because the pandemic, one of the vital highly effective driving power for continued enrollment decline is broader, and has occurred extra shortly than districts anticipated.

Demographic tendencies present there are merely fewer kids within the U.S. inhabitants, total, and forecasts for the approaching years don’t indicated the pattern will dramatically change course quickly.

“The speed of decline was most likely regarded as addressable and manageable, after which the pandemic got here round, and out of the blue that charge actually accelerated,” David DeSchryver, the senior vp and co-director of analysis at Whiteboard Advisors, a communications, analysis, and consulting agency, advised Training Week, mentioned earlier this yr.

“Now what was one thing that could possibly be addressed over time has a stage of urgency to it that must be addressed now, and we count on that pattern to develop.”

Within the Sweetwater Union Excessive College District, which serves greater than 34,000 college students in grades 7-12, the structural deficit is about to hit between $35 million to $45 million, out of a common fund funds of about $480 million, within the subsequent two years if the district doesn’t take any motion.

Superintendent Moisés Aguirre advised EdWeek Market Temporary this fall that the district, situated south of San Diego on the Mexico-U.S. border, has not but needed to shut a faculty, he mentioned, partly due to the enhance from federal stimulus funding. Now that ESSER cash has expired, with all allocations required to be made by this previous September, district leaders are contemplating consolidating packages.

“At our excessive level, we had about 40,000 college students, and proper now we’re only a smidge over 34,000,” he mentioned. That loss, he mentioned, is the equal to the enrollment of two of its excessive faculties.

Training corporations available in the market want to concentrate on the budgetary and group pressures that districts which can be weighing closing faculties are below. These closures aren’t prone to have a direct connection to vendor merchandise, however they might form the general angle towards spending on new merchandise within the college system.

—Michelle Caffrey

5. After a Comparatively Quiet Interval, Count on the Ok-12 Tradition Wars to Resurface

With a brand new administration getting ready to take workplace – one which has used robust rhetoric about Ok-12 training on the marketing campaign path – college districts across the nation are bracing themselves for politics to as soon as once more attain the schoolhouse door.

Debates about how faculties might cowl classes on race and gender within the classroom appeared to have quieted a bit during the last yr, following a wave of intense exercise by states in the course of the previous years.

However distributors ought to put together to as soon as once more assist their district shoppers navigate shortly evolving considerations because the winners of native college board elections start their new phrases and President Donald Trump returns to the White Home.

Trump and Republican elected officers have railed in opposition to range, fairness, and inclusion insurance policies in training. And Trump can also be anticipated to overturn a few of President Joe Biden’s rules that shield in opposition to sexual orientation and gender id discrimination.

It stays unclear as to how Trump’s agenda would take impact in coverage. The federal authorities, for example, is forbidden by legislation from dictating Ok-12 curriculum, and so anti-DEI measures would presumably must be directed at different space of coverage.

Unbiased of any coverage adjustments on the federal stage, there are indicators that districts are cautious of getting dragged into political/cultural fights of their communities.

Requested in a survey by the EdWeek Analysis Heart this yr what phrases in advertising and marketing supplies make them uneasy about how their native communities and different stakeholders, would react, “DEI,” “culturally responsive instructing,” and “social justice” ranked on the high of the listing.

—Emma Kate Fittes

6. Calls for for Requirements for AI Merchandise in Faculties Will Develop

A significant buying cooperative, the Training Expertise Joint Powers Authority, representing greater than 2 million college students throughout California, not too long ago included language in its request for proposals requiring distributors to make sure the safety of information and different necessities related to AI.

It’s only one instance of how college districts and advocacy teams are together with extra particular expectations for ed-tech corporations to satisfy AI requirements in areas that embody information privateness, the accuracy of knowledge, and transparency – whether or not of their conferences with distributors or of their formal solicitation for merchandise.

Some organizations have come out with their very own set of tips and finest practices in an try to standardize the analysis of AI for Ok-12. These teams embody 1EdTech, the Consortium for College Networking, and the EdSafe AI Alliance.. Even with these efforts, there’s nonetheless a collective push for extra common readability across the nascent know-how.

Federal officers have additionally sought to set expectations for ed-tech suppliers on AI. The U.S. Division of Training launched nonregulatory steering on AI this summer time. As well as, the Federal Commerce Fee has warned ed-tech suppliers throughout the board to be attentive in following legal guidelines round information privateness and ethics, as they develop AI merchandise.

“Requirements are simply starting to enter into the dialog,” mentioned Pete Simply, a former longtime college district tech administrator, and previous board chair of the Consortium for College Networking, a corporation representing Ok-12 know-how officers. The place they exist, he added in an interview with EdWeek Market Temporary, “they’re very generalized.”

“We’re seeing the Wild West evolve into one thing that’s just a little extra civilized, and that’s going to be a profit for college students and employees as we transfer ahead.”

—Alexandria Ng

7. College Districts Will Push to Increase AI Literacy for College students — and Academics

As college districts have expanded their early experiments in AI, consideration has now shifted decisively in lots of districts past considered one of educators’ largest preliminary considerations — stopping plagiarism and pupil dishonest — to on selling AI literacy amongst college students, in addition to amongst academics.

The deal with literacy is partly a mirrored image of educators’ acknowledgement that AI’s use amongst college students, and in society, will develop whether or not academics prefer it or not. Which implies faculties have to develop into extra discerning shoppers of the know-how.

Alex Kotran, CEO and co-founder of the AI Training Undertaking, which goals to determine equitable experiences in AI literacy, mentioned now could be the time to maneuver past getting fixated on the implementation of a particular software, and to determine a deeper understanding of those applied sciences in college students and academics. College students must be prepared for a future the place AI is built-in into college, residence, and work.

“Assume that the know-how strikes sooner than your skill to implement it,” Kotran advised EdWeek Market Temporary in a latest story. “The most important determinant of whether or not any individual has had a pathway to prosperity might be tied to whether or not they got the chance to construct AI readiness, whether or not their college had been considering proactively about that.”

Many Ok-12 officers additionally see a have to make academics extra refined shoppers of AI.

That was one of many messages that got here throughout in a survey carried out final yr for EdWeek Market Temporary, through which 218 district leaders, 271 college leaders, and 453 academics had been requested what sort of options they’d prefer to see in AI merchandise with the intention to really feel comfy utilizing these instruments.

Skilled improvement for academics ranked highest on the listing, adopted intently by options that promote vital considering amongst college students.

—Alexandria Ng

8. The Sector Will Carefully Watch the Implications of a Lawsuit Centered on Studying Merchandise

A brand new lawsuit filed by mother and father in Massachusetts targets a bunch of studying packages, claiming their authors and publishers deceptively marketed them as merchandise by overstating their analysis base and de-emphasizing abilities important to younger learners.

The lawsuit takes intention at studying packages developed by Lucy Calkins, the Columbia College Academics Faculty professor and creator of the Models of Examine for Educating Studying; and the authors whose work kinds the idea of Fountas and Pinnell Literacy, as EdWeek’s Sarah Schwartz studies.

The lawsuit argues that these packages weren’t primarily based in evidence-based practices, which present that “systematic and specific phonemic consciousness and phonics instruction” is the best type of studying instruction.

As a substitute, the mother and father allege that the authors, and publishers of these merchandise, Heinemann and HMH, falsely claimed the packages met a excessive analysis normal regardless of counting on unproven strategies.

The lawsuit — which is important making a consumer-protection argument — might or might not have advantage. However the lawyer for the Massachusetts mother and father left open the potential of submitting comparable lawsuits in different states.

Some training coverage specialists and researchers have questioned the core arguments behind the authorized motion, noting that definitions of what qualifies as rigorous “analysis” in training – and what sort of analysis is of sensible worth to varsities — can range vastly. Others have questioned whether or not it might result in different, divisive challenges to academics’ observe.

However the consequence will certainly carry implications for suppliers of educational sources throughout the Ok-12 market.

Training corporations make investments closely in advertising and marketing their merchandise to varsities, in an effort to interrupt by way of to district decision-makers. A lot of them are additionally desirous to tout numerous types of proof supporting their supplies. They are going to need to know if a brand new authorized normal emerges for the way they’ll go about that.

—Sean Cavanagh