Dive Brief:

• 99 ed tech startups raised over a combined $500 million in the first quarter of 2014 — the most lucrative quarter for the industry in five years. For some perspective: In 2009, only 20 companies raised $64 million in the beginning of the year
• Three factors influence the increased success of K-12 tech: Common Core’s national standards make it easier for tech companies to develop and market one product nationwide; a generational shift in teaching has more young teachers in the classroom; and billionaire philanthropists and major tech companies — typically from Silicon Valley — funding these new projects.  
• K-12 technologies, one of the fastest growing sections of the industry, fall into two categories: Projects like AltSchool, which are working to revolutionize the entire classroom experience, and companies like Schoology, Edmodo and Desire2Learn, which work more as platforms for educators in already existing public and private schools

Dive Insight:

It’s exciting to see money being spent not on standardized tests, but rather technologies to improve the classroom and make our students 21st century learners.

As Don Burton, the managing director of the Techstars Kaplan Edtech Accelerator program, said, “It’s interesting because public education hasn’t changed that much in 150 to 200 years and there had been almost no technology going into it. It’s not only that there’s this huge behemoth sector of the economy that spends $1.2 trillion on educating kids, but that it’s old, it’s long in the tooth and it’s bound to get disrupted.”

With this in mind, one issue districts should look out for are ed tech companies that don’t necessarily bring anything new to the classroom; in short, companies that are essentially just moving textbooks to iPads because they know “tech is hot” right now.