Pre-K–12 Digital Market Rises in Value to $8.38B
The growth in educational software and digital content for PreK–12 schools has grown in the past year from $7.9 billion to $8.38 billion, according to a new report released Tuesday.
The valuation is based on data collected from 144 service providers and publishers nationwide for the "2014 U.S. Education Technology Industry Market: PreK-12 Report," from the Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).
Testing and assessment, valued at $2.5 billion, was the largest single category in the report. It’s no surprise, either. Common Core State Standards have been widely adopted in the past year, requiring schools to upgrade their assessment capabilities and hardware to support these systems.
More surprising is the dramatic 320 percent increase in revenue for online courses since last year’s report. But rather than a huge shift occurring in the marketplace, the jump is attributed to “several significant companies reporting revenues for the first time,” leading to an inequitable comparison to last year’s results.
“The rapid growth of the testing and assessment market will slow, but remain an important area of investment in school districts and states. Digital assessments and interest in personalized learning contribute to this growing market,” said CS4Ed president John Richards, Ph.D., the principal author of the report, in an SIIA blog post. “There was a substantial investment in infrastructure. We attribute this to increased hardware in schools from district investment, BYOD and preparation for digital common core assessments.”
The executive summary of the report can be downloaded at SIIA's website.
