Articles Tagged with spending

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Foot on nailsLast December I penned (keyed?) a relatively optimistic piece about education spending, with the conclusion that the textbook adoption market was in a crash but supplemental materials were in a short-term stall. I had it right on the first point and wrong on the second – we have seen a full blown market crash across the board this year. There are still sound reasons for long term optimism, but the near term remains grim.

After the election I decided to read Nate Silver’s book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t”. I was hoping to find insights on why I’d gotten it wrong, and so far I’ve not been disappointed.

Early on he outlines the distinction between risk and uncertainty in a way that is highly relevant to how we understand where we are in education publishing.

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Education spending patterns have been abnormal for several years. Publishing used to follow very predictable patterns – no more.

Between the Great Recession and ARRA Stimulus funds we have been living in an era of seesaw budgets for three years. Since education spending lags the general economy by up to 3 years this will continue until at least 2014.

I can remember entire decades where budget flows were so steady that you could predict the entire year within +/- 10% after the first three months. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 the first half of each year told you very little about the second half.

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card2160Special Education appears to be the first K12 market segment seeing the education stimulus dollars flow in volume.

At PCI Education we saw our numbers start to move up towards the end of May. By August we were roaring on all cylinders. As a private company we don’t report out our details, but July was up over prior year and orders booked in August were more than double what we saw in 2008. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Cambium is in the same boat.

What is particularly stunning for us is that according to the reports on the USDOE’s site by the end of August only about 15% of wave 1 of the IDEA ARRA funds had been committed. This handy report shows all the stimulus buckets for education and how much each state has already spent – bookmark it if you don’t have it.

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Can a new product enter the education market and generate organic growth in the market? Not really. This is one of the core issues new entrants have to wrap their heads around as they think about how to sell and market to schools. Education is (mostly) a zero sum game.

Today we tackle issue #3 in our series on selling and marketing to educators.

Part 1 – Obey the Calendar

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1071542_8_ball_3The global economic meltdown is going to affect education budgets. States and School Districts will react to a drop in tax receipts and a credit freeze. This entry is an attempt to map out some of the possibilities for how the slowdown will play out in schools.

First – some good news. No matter what happens in the economy kids still show up in school needing an education. The market is not recession proof but it is also a core service of civilization. Unless we end up in some Mad Max dystopia there will be a market.

Second – any market will have losers and winners. There are several market trends that will be accelerated by a budget crunch and companies that are poised to take advantage of them will do just fine. If your strategy isn’t focused clearly on core funded needs you will struggle (strategic focus is a service I provide).

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Globe w $$How will the economic downturn affect education budgets? How are executives at publishing houses and education technology firms planning for the recession?

Education Week noted a couple of weeks ago:

“…states across the country are confronting deteriorating budget conditions that have tied the hands of legislators and governors hoping to spare K-12 education…Altogether, the 2009 budget gaps—the difference between what states are expected to collect in revenue and what they’re expected to spend on services—will exceed $26 billion, the NCSL says.”

I recently conducted an informal poll of 30 Education Industry executives on this topic. They expect that the impact will be far more immediate than past downturns but generally they expect it be moderate.

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