5 Questions We are Asking as the K-12 School Year Begins

K-12 has entered a new school year defined by ever-tighter budgets, heated technology debates, and a potential tidal wave of school choice funding. Looking beyond the headlines, what is signal and what is noise? Drawing on our work with K-12 schools, foundations, family offices, companies, and other organizations, our team members share their reflections and highlight the issues we’ll be tracking in the coming months. To what extent do these observations align with the trends your organization is following?

1) Can Edtech Clear the Burden of Proof?

Mats Penberthy

A year ago, our team that works with investors published a take that GenAI for instructional use cases had reached the peak of inflated expectations. My wife and toddlers tell me quite often that I’m wrong about things, so I’ll take the small win of feeling like we were spot on with this one. After several years of conference halls filled with shiny edtech solutions all boldly claiming to have cracked the code on personalized learning, the industry has hit a wall, and the backlash has been swift. Across the country, parents and policy makers are loudly questioning whether, and how, edtech is improving educational outcomes for the next generation.

District leaders have listened, and they’re bringing renewed skepticism to instructional purchase decisions. A superintendent I spoke with recently said it best, or at least most bluntly: “Adopting new instructional technology is a non-starter right now. For the foreseeable future, sales teams aren’t welcome near my office.” That’s not a one-off. Districts are narrowing their tech stacks rather than expanding them, thanks to both AI fatigue and budget pressure, making new-logo growth (and even retention) a steep climb for K-12 edtech right now.

The savviest providers have adapted. Outcomes-based contracts, where payment is at least partially tied to results, have broken through some barriers by showing districts that providers are willing to put skin in the game. (Re)centering the teacher via product design, and bringing optionality with print and digital components, has garnered some momentum from classroom and school-level stakeholders. The pendulum will swing back eventually; it always does. But the providers who spend this downturn proving real outcomes and elevating the human element of education, rather than waiting it out, will be the ones still standing when it does.

2) Will the Screen Time Debate Get to the Point?

Dr. Shlomy Kattan

The cellphone ban spread fast. This year, it reached the devices schools hand out themselves. Sixteen states introduced bills to restrict classroom technology, and six have enacted them. Kansas tried to ban devices outright in elementary school; the bill died in committee, though the state board is now drafting its own rules. Los Angeles Unified did not wait. In June, it banned district-issued devices before second grade and capped screen time above that; this past week, it also placed a moratorium on the use of GenAI on district devices. Not to be outdone, New York City announced a one-year moratorium on the use of generative AI in all schools and grades while a task force studies governance options.

I chair the Organization for Social Media Safety, so I take the underlying worry seriously. (Of note, we recently passed groundbreaking legislation in California to ban addictive features for social media users under 16, sensible legislation that doesn’t take a hammer to everything that looks remotely like a nail.) But banning the device treats a third grader watching a YouTube algorithm and a third grader using an adaptive reading tool with a teacher guiding it as the same problem. They aren’t. It’s the classroom equivalent of banning books because some of them are bad.

The opposite mistake gets less attention, but it is just as common. Having Excel installed does not make you a statistician, and having an AI tutor installed does not transform a classroom. Khan Academy’s own chief learning officer said as much after Khanmigo’s first year: no revolution, despite sign-ups growing 731 percent. A new study following eighteen Tennessee middle schools backs her up. The study found real gains, but almost all came from the minority of students who used the tool consistently. Access was never the fix. Use is.

Both mistakes come from judging technology by whether it’s in the room instead of what it’s doing there. Even the U.S. Department of Education said as much in August: the real question isn’t whether a classroom uses technology, it’s whether that technology improves what students learn. A new WestEd study on outcomes-based contracts shows what that standard looks like in practice: one literacy program linked to a 28-point gain in second-grade reading proficiency, though results were more mixed for older students.

The answer to bad edtech was never no edtech. It’s better accountability for what works, as it is for anything in education.

3) Will We Update the K-12 Playbook to Meet the Moment? 

Adam Newman 

I had the pleasure of speaking this summer at Instructure’s Partner Summit. In the company of 150+ edtech executives, much of the conversation centered on complex technology issues: data privacy and ownership, cybersecurity, AI models and institutional governance, systems integration and data interoperability. After all, the forum existed to enable Instructure leaders to engage with their partners to explore how to better support a range of teaching and learning goals for K-12 and postsecondary educators and administrators. And yet, we were so focused on the technology issues, we missed the bigger picture and challenge facing our K-12 system.

While K-12 company and school leaders rightly stress that edtech solutions exist in service of educators and student-facing staff, this is only part of the story. Our districts, administrators, and educators are facing transformative, systemic changes. In addition to the “AI effect”, declining birthrates, accelerating school choice momentum, and the social media contagion will significantly reshape our K-12 public education system across the next decade. Except for two broadly adopted commitments to date (see Science of Reading and HQIM), we’re following the same K-12 operating manual: hope that local district leaders and their teams can rise above the incessant headwinds and execute flawlessly on behalf of students still lagging academically and grappling with considerable health, safety, and wellness issues.

As a community motivated by student success and growth, both sides, the districts and the companies and organizations partnering with them, need to engage earnestly in enabling the systemic changes this moment requires.

It is imperative we rethink current paradigms. Test new models of “analog” + “digital”. Focus on elevating practices, not products. Less on inputs, more on outcomes. Importantly, a shared commitment to invest in inspiring and enabling individuals’ capacity for change, not rely on the technology to do it to or for us.

4) Do Public Districts Start Benefiting from School Choice?

Christian Lehr 

I spent a good chunk of the summer reviewing Education Savings Accounts (“ESAs”) and related choice programs, talking with parents, state leaders, and industry executives to get a stronger read on where this movement is headed. The effect these programs are having on market share and parent spending power is real; EdChoice’s tracker tells this growth story well. Florida’s programs now reach more than 15% of K-12 families, moving more than $4B into families’ hands for discretionary use last academic year (AY2025-26). Since ESAs took off after the pandemic, the question for district-focused providers remains the same: how should we respond?

Building on our work across the past few years, what surprises me is how fast school choice is moving from the periphery to the mainstream. The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (“FSTC”), effective January 2027, will redirect billions in federal tax dollars towards K-12 choice, changing the playing field in two ways: it opens a pathway for Democratic-led states to fund choice, Colorado and New York among them, and it lets public districts and students participate in and benefit from choice funds.

Expanded choice funding and unprecedented access will accelerate shifts already underway in where and how students learn. Our Choose to Learn 2026 research, released earlier this year, found that public districts are already redesigning their pathways to be more flexible, but most still reach only a small share of students. What’s missing is the funding and playbook to scale these models and produce real gains – a gap the FSTC could close.

This academic year, I’ll be examining how schools and districts respond to the current wave of school choice. What will they need from their partners as FSTC funding starts flowing? Any organization serving K-12 districts and/or families should be asking itself the same questions.

5) Will Private Schools Expand the Pipeline – or Just Subsidize It?

Imani Majied

As someone who spent years in private school admissions, including leading multicultural recruitment, I have been excited about what school choice funding could mean for access. More than 30 states now offer vouchers or Education Savings Accounts, and the premise is compelling: remove financial barriers so families that may have once viewed private school as out of reach can reconsider it.

Where the dollars ultimately land is a more complicated story. Brookings found that participation in universal or near-universal programs often skews toward higher-income communities, particularly when income is not considered in eligibility. North Carolina is a notable example: when its program launched in 2014, more than half of recipients were Black students, and as NEA recently reported, that share is now closer to 17%, as higher-income families, many already enrolled in private school, became the majority of new users. Given the complicated history of school vouchers, that shift is worth paying attention to.

At the same time, these patterns are not inevitable. Programs designed to provide larger awards to lower-income families can broaden participation, provided that there are enough seats at nearby schools and that scholarship values are sufficient to offset tuition increases. Expanding access requires more than funding alone; it also depends on how schools manage capacity, set tuition, and engage families.

Enrollment is only the beginning of the story. A new wave of students is more than an admissions game; it changes the composition of students and what they need to succeed. From Promise to Practice 2026, a newly launched Tyton Partners’ initiative, found that relatively few schools fully integrate academic and student supports, even though those that do see stronger outcomes. As choice programs continue to expand, will private schools seize the broader recruitment opportunity and develop the systems of supports needed to help students thrive?

Making the Year Count

For years, K-12 providers could count on predictable market structures: a steady embrace of digital learning, stable enrollment, and dedicated funding. This certainty is gone.

With so much in flux, organizations need to balance focused execution with an ability to look out to the horizon in anticipation of structural sector shifts. How businesses respond to these shifts will separate the leaders from the laggards across the coming years.

We welcome your perspective on these questions. Reach out to tell us how you are thinking about the year ahead.

Contact Tyton Partners: anewman@tytonpartners.com |  tytonpartners.com