By , ESSER had made available $40 billion to $60 billion in new government funding to education contractors by 2023, with 40% spent on vendors and the rest on personnel and labor. The amount spent by states and districts to cover COVID contracts could be much higher. Anticipating the end of their ESSER funding, districts such as have moved contracting expenses once covered by federal relief funds onto their general budgets.

With the help of a contract database called , I have been tracking national and regional patterns in what districts paid vendors to do before, during and after the pandemic.

In my forthcoming book, Private Ends, Public Means: Contemporary Dynamics in Educational Privatization, I identify several lessons from this large-scale experiment in federally subsidized education contracts.

First, ESSER-funded vendors helped school districts meet unique conditions but sometimes overlooked equitable access. At one level, vendor contracts supported public schools under emergency conditions in their mission of equal educational opportunity. One example is food service contracts that provided free lunches for pick-up when school cafeterias were closed. Contracts also arguably helped with continuity of instruction, which is another core responsibility of states and districts. Seven out of 10 traditional school districts used ESSER funds to purchase software during the pandemic and 9 out of 10 bought hardware, according to a conducted by the Office of the Inspector General.

These purchases made sense, given the quick pivot to remote learning. However, the pressure to spend quickly and with limited oversight may have contributed to redundancies (too many devices) and issues (wifi hotspots that did not function in areas without broadband or were not strong enough to provide students with stable video and audio). When the next emergency hits schools, public money will presumably once again be up for grabs, particularly for those with the fastest hands. What mistakes were made in areas of educational equity? How can the private sector do better when the next emergency hits?

Second, with physical schools closed, large urban districts spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technology such as iPads, Chromebooks, laptops and software licenses to keep classes in session. Then, they used ESSER funds for repairs, upgrades and parts to keep the devices running. The spending spiked at the outset of the pandemic but still remained higher than pre-pandemic levels once schools reopened. Post-pandemic, vendors are looking for ways to get resource-strapped districts to buy more devices, simply to maintain profit margins. It’s up to districts to exercise good management by pressing pause and reassessing.

There are at least two ways to approach this. First, districts should reassess whether vendor contracts are based on evidence of impact. During the pandemic, companies with minimal track records increased sales at record pace. For example, one small, relatively unknown business specializing in chat-based tutoring saw its annual revenues explode from less than $100,000 before COVID to nearly $3 million by March 2022. This company signed contracts in nearly half the states and showed little sign of slowing once schools resumed in-person instruction. But the strong evidence base around specifies that services must be delivered in person, not remotely. The bar should never be lowered for public school students when it comes to equal access for quality instruction. 

Third, it’s time to commit to transparency and ensure that the public has the information about and input into vendor contracts — particularly those addressing learning loss post-pandemic. That may mean reining in the use of noncompetitive bidding that state and local procurement policies allow during emergencies. In cities such as , noncompetitive bidding may have helped questionable vendors get contracts without proper vetting.

It also means requiring potential bidders to provide evidence of impact for high-needs student populations. I have been analyzing school board meetings across disparate regions of the country and found limited opportunities for public comment even on million-dollar purchases. Materials required by state or local law to help the public and school board make informed decisions, such as descriptions of how a digital product or service works, often are missing from the public record. Contracts commit taxpayer resources and are pivotal in shaping the quality of government-funded services. All stakeholders in education have the right to adequate and accurate information in all stages of contracting, from the bid to the contract to the decision on whether to renew. These are principles of to which districts across the country have committed.  

Fourth, account for the hidden costs for families of maintaining or eliminating certain types of vendor contracts. In my conversations with purchasing officers, I keep hearing that connectivity  — which districts made significant investments in during COVID — is on the chopping block. Further, there are no plans to upgrade or replace older laptops and iPads that were loaned to students. It’s the lower-income kids whose families will bear these costs. As districts assess which contracts to renew and which to ditch, they must be guided by principles of equitable access to high-quality digital content. Low-income families may not be at the table when ed tech contracts are cut, but they shouldn’t be expected to absorb costs interpreted narrowly as district savings. 

During the pandemic, districts and states contracted with vendors to meet the unique needs of this emergency. Now that the public health crisis has passed and COVID funds are largely spent, it’s time for districts to reassess how vendor contracts support public schools in their core mission and to raise the bar for ensuring that purchased services and products directly address widening educational inequalities.

The results caused a stir among principals. By the end of April, nearly half the students did well enough on tests to skip a second year in lower-level math. 

“Some of the schools we targeted typically don’t see high performance,” said Jasmine Milner, the director of K-12 math in the district, which includes Jacksonville.

That’s what the district hoped when it entered into what is known as an outcomes-based contract with , which provides virtual, one-on-one sessions during the school day. The company stood to make more money for better results — as much as $750 per student more, over a base of $670, depending on the amount of progress. Proponents of the model, more common in the and industries, say it increases accountability for both providers and school districts.

“It ups the stakes for everybody to really pay attention to the data,” said Brittany Miller, who leads a 10-district at Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit focused on equity. 

With that far fewer students took advantage of online tutoring than districts expected, the outcomes-based model is one way to ensure districts use public funds wisely. “In education, we can pay for things a long time before we realize no children are participating in it,” Miller said.

Facing overwhelming declines in achievement as a result of remote learning and growing pressure to show a high return on federal relief funds, more districts are taking an interest in such transactions.

Because of relief funds, districts have “been able to make investments in public education like we’ve never been able to do before,” said Scott Muri, superintendent of the Ector County Independent School District in west Texas. “I could have done a small pilot, but even coming up with a million [dollars] to do the [tutoring] work would have been incredibly challenging.”

The Ector district spent $10 million in relief funds on three years of virtual tutoring, most of it going to contracts with two leading tutoring companies, FEV and Air Tutors.

But first, there was some matchmaking to do.

The district whittled down a list of 11 companies to five and set up what Lilia Nanez, the district’s associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction, called “speed dating” sessions with school principals.

FEV and Air Tutors “hit the mark because they had clear objectives for vetting and training,” Nanez said during a May conference on high-dosage tutoring at Stanford University. 

Like Duval, Ector was among the original four districts in the Southern Education Foundation’s project in 2022. The network has grown to 10 districts, but Miller said any district can use the organization’s , such as its template for contracts.

Since the 2021-22 school year, over 10,000 Ector students have received tutoring.

Itzel Espinoza credits the program with helping her graduate on time. Texas students must pass three of five end-of-course exams to earn a diploma, but she kept failing the Algebra I assessment. 

She struggled with graphing and knowing which variables to enter into her calculator. She failed four times before the district matched her with John Villamor, an Air tutor. He found that Itzel lacked some basic understanding of fractions and order of operations.

After meeting virtually twice a week, sometimes for more than an hour, the equations began to make sense. “He just knows how to explain it,” she said. By the fifth try, she said, the test was easy. “I knew I was going to pass.”

Providers say the financial incentive to boost student performance helps them prove their value to district leaders. 

Outcomes-based contracting is “a great way to get a footing into a district and make sure that the promises a provider tells in their pitch are actual deliverables,” said Hasan Ali, founder and CEO of Air Tutors.

In return, he said, districts have to “dedicate energy” to develop the contract, schedule tutoring sessions and follow up with students who don’t participate.

Not ‘the only way’

One drawback of such arrangements, however, is that they don’t allow much wiggle room if a provider needs to add students, sessions or any other specifics not nailed down in the contract. 

The model marks a significant shift from how districts have traditionally approached academic interventions, said tutoring experts. Officials who review bids from outside contractors don’t typically sit at the table with a district’s academic team. 

Some leaders might find it too daunting to get staff from different departments to work together and could give up on tutoring efforts completely, said Kathy Bendheim, managing director of the National Student Support Accelerator, which researches high-dosage tutoring and organized the Stanford conference. 

“What I don’t want is people to think [outcomes-based contracting is] the only way to do it,” she said.

On the flip side, a superintendent could say, “Let’s re-do all our contracts this way,” said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank. She’s currently researching three tutoring efforts, including one in a district using outcomes-based tutoring.

Overall, she thinks the increased attention to contracts with outside vendors is healthy. She called districts’ business deals the “least sexy and probably the most impactful way that this sausage gets made.”

A focus on attendance

In education, the practice is still relatively new, but many providers are following it with interest. 

Kate Bauer-Jones leads Future Forward, which provides in-school tutoring for struggling readers in seven states. But many of the districts using the program are in rural areas, and she doubts they have educators with the time and expertise to manage and analyze the data in the way such contracts require. 

“There are superintendents who are also running the transportation department,” she said.

Districts using the approach spend a lot of time up front discussing the outcomes they want, which students they’ll target and what assessments to use to measure progress.

Providers also want to know how their bottom line would be affected if students don’t show up.

Jessica Sliwerski, co-founder and CEO of Ignite! Reading, which provides in-school virtual tutoring, said her team works hard to recruit and train tutors and has literacy specialists who meet monthly with district leaders.

“What we cannot control is student attendance,” she said. “The attendance issues post-COVID in economically depressed areas are worse than they were prior to the pandemic. This is a significant and real pain point for schools.” 

While data from 2021-22 is not yet available, rates of doubled in several states during the 2020-21 school year. And research on pandemic recovery shows that even when students go to school, they in optional before or afterschool tutoring because of their parents’ schedules or lack of transportation.

To address those concerns, some districts — including the Denver Public Schools, Colorado Springs District 11 and the Uplift charter network in Texas — have included clauses in their contracts stating that if a student’s attendance in tutoring falls below 70%, the district still has to pay the provider the highest rate. 

Knowing when students are more likely to participate — and what incentives they’ll respond to — is part of making the arrangement work. Muri said he learned not to schedule tutoring for older students before the school day because they weren’t likely to get up any earlier for it. And some schools in Duval County purchased snow-cone and popcorn machines as an added bonus for students.

But Sliwerski said before she’d consider such a contract, she’d want to know how districts are communicating with families about the importance of coming to school every day.

The data from schools offering Ignite! Reading shows that 75% student attendance at tutoring sessions is necessary for “incredible results,” she said. “Accountability doesn’t scare me; I love accountability as long as it’s a two-way street.”

The district originally offered a two-year contract with raises of 3% each year, but the agreement is for four years, with across-the-board raises of 2%, 3%, 0% and 3.5%. There are additional bonuses and salary schedule restructuring that, according to the union, brings the total raises to 14.5% over the four-year life of the contract.

This is quite a bit less than other areas of the country are seeing. United Teachers Los Angeles, for example, is demanding 20% over two years, and L.A. teachers already make more than those in Hawaii.

This has led to some grumbling from the rank-and-file on the Hawaii union’s Facebook page. “Teacher’s Unions across the nation were able to get their members 10%+ raises and yearly raises after, and HSTA comes to us with a 3.625% raise?! It’s laughable at best,” .

Teachers unions and school districts often have different interpretations of how much money is available for salary increases and other spending. In this case, the union appears to accept the state’s forecast of reduced future revenues.

“We had asked for significantly larger raises but understand that the state has less money to pay for numerous key priorities in addition to addressing teacher compensation, such as creating affordable housing, bringing down the state’s high cost of living and preserving our natural resources,” .

Even more unusual was the union’s willingness to not only before the ratification vote, but also provide its for each provision the new deal contains.

This is commendable. Sharing full information before any ratification votes might not affect the content of collective bargaining agreements, but the public deserves to know as soon as possible what is being agreed to in its name.

The overall tone of the union’s communications with members about the contract is defensive, and we can expect some significant pushback from teachers about the size of the raises. Whether this sporadic muttering coalesces into a rejection of the contract when the ratification vote is held April 26 remains to be seen.

Members tend to give their unions the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tentative agreements and accept raises already in hand over the uncertainty of returning to the bargaining table. But Hawaii teachers have gone on strike twice in the past and come close on other occasions. When they do walk out, they don’t kid around: The 1973 strike lasted for 18 days, and the 2001 strike ended after 21 days.

Upsurges in teachers union militancy grab headlines and lead to speculation about it spreading elsewhere. Perhaps Hawaii can stand as an example of cordial negotiations leading to a reasonable and transparent settlement that everyone, including the public, can live with. We’ll know for sure after next week’s vote.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.