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School districts are increasingly weighing whether it’s worth it to continue implementing a large array of technology — particularly amid growing budget constraints and pushback against screentime in classrooms. An innovative approach some districts are using to evaluate return on investment from ed tech tools is outcomes-based contracting, where payments made to ed tech companies are in part contingent on student achievement goals being met. 

A report released March 16 by Digital Promise and the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting examined how the business strategy impacted a group of districts that experimented with it in recent years.

State education policies tied up in courts

• The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 12 partially upheld a preliminary injunction against the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a bipartisan state law enacted in 2022 that aims to protect children’s data, privacy and well-being when using online platforms. In NetChoice v. Bonta, the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s preliminary injunction that barred the state law from requiring online providers to assess the harmful risks their products may have on children before offering those services to the public. 
• Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board on March 11 — the second time in three years — alleging the board abandoned a clear legal duty in its rejection of an application for a Jewish public virtual charter school. A previous bid by the state board to approve a Catholic public virtual charter school faltered last year in the U.S. Supreme Court. 
• Six Arkansas districts will not have to comply with a state law requiring all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments following a district court judge’s ruling that “nothing could possibly justify” the requirement. In a strongly worded ruling on March 16, the judge said “the only reason to display a sacred, religious text in every classroom is to proselytize to children. The State has said the quiet part out loud.”
• A federal district judge on March 17 ordered Texas officials to make sure Islamic schools have access to apply for participation in the new state school choice program. The decision comes after two lawsuits filed by Muslim families and Islamic schools this month claimed state leaders intentionally sidelined Islamic school applications when rolling out the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, one of the nation’s largest state school choice initiatives. 

K-12 in Congress

• A group of House Republicans are seeking to overturn Plyler v. Doe, a 44-year-old landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ensures all children have access to a public education regardless of their immigration status. The push to overturn the 1982 decision — which ensured that undocumented students had a right under the 14th Amendment to receive a public education and has since been the backbone of many other legal decisions — arose during a March 18 hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. 
• A bipartisan bill that encourages science of reading approaches in federal literacy grant programs — and discredits the three-cueing model of teaching reading — won unanimous approval from the House Education and Workforce Committee on March 17. The Science of Reading Act, H.R. 7890, specifies that state applications for comprehensive K-12 literacy state development grants should describe how the state’s literacy instruction plan aligns with the science of reading approach.