Federal EdTech Guidance: Vendor and Partner Takeaways
Kirsten Baesler, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, made clear in an August 2026 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) that technology certainly plays an important role in education. At the same time, vendors and partners need to increase transparency and shoulder accountability with schools regarding student success and outcomes.
Agencies use DCLs as official memos to provide guidance on how to adhere to existing laws and regulations. While it is not classified as official legislation, it does show how the department enforces and will enforce current laws. This specific DCL is more guidance (i.e., not strict directives), which gives autonomy to vendors and partners, schools and communities and states.
Throughout the document, the benefits of EdTech are emphasized: closing learning gaps, expanding access for rural students, better tutoring and assessments and preparing students for the economy of the future, among others.
However, concerns — from parents, policymakers, and educators — against educational screentime are acknowledged. The Department of Education's stance is that the issue is not a simple choice between technology and zero technology. The benefits are too great to just simply cut all of it. However, a careful, mindful approach is needed with work from both institutions and technology providers.
This DCL’s message aligns with broader Department of Education priorities. In July 2025, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a DCL of her own encouraging AI innovation in education while outlining guardrails for responsible use such as protecting student data, creating accessible systems and ensuring transparent processes. Both emphasize that technology has a vital role in education, but also that providers need to provide concrete evidence of exactly how students benefit.
Specifically for K-12, the Department of Education reframes evaluating effectiveness from just raw screen time to more outcome-based objectives:
- Strengthened instruction
- Expanded opportunity
- Improved student learning
This new guidance creates greater expectations for technology providers. They are encouraged to actively partner and collaborate with end users. To accomplish this, recommendations include:
- Utilizing teacher and parent input to build products that support high-quality instruction and student engagement
- Demonstrating success and effectiveness through independent evaluation, transparent reporting and randomized control trials
- Designing maximum instructional value with the minimum level of unneeded screentime
- Creating support for educators regarding implementation and professional learning
- Constantly improving products using parent feedback, student academic outcomes, and evidence from classroom implementation
Responsible product design alone is no longer enough. Each specific technology should show exactly how students benefit from it. Vendors and partners are encouraged to tie product success with student outcomes. The focus is shifted beyond input-based measures, such as screen time or the amount of technology deployed, towards transparent, evidence-based reporting.
The Department explicitly states that this shift is needed for providers to strengthen public confidence in EdTech and its ability to enrich students.
The DCL notes experimental contracting models active in several states that focus on shared accountability, continuous improvement, and collaboration between districts and vendors. The Department of Education also encourages states to monitor these and move from relying only on metrics involving product adoption or usage.
The focus from inputs to outcomes will ensure the benefits of educational innovation can continue to be reaped, while stabilizing the confidence of community and education stakeholders. By focusing on these measurable effects, vendors and partners may be better positioned to maintain trust with parents, educators, and communities that have become increasingly skeptical of educational technology. This helps justify continued and further investment from schools and states.
These relationships are vital given the Department of Education is not offering centralized directives; the DCL is guidance for K-12 institutions and states, rather than binding legislation. This creates individualized solutions that will vary throughout all fifty states and their school districts. Institutions at the state and local levels are ultimately responsible for how to best adhere to ED's objectives.
The new guidance ends with the Department of Education’s goal: improved student outcomes. To achieve this, vendors and partners should focus on measuring external effects of their products through collaboration with and input from parents, schools, and educators. Finding out exactly how students are benefiting from technology products and building upon this success is of paramount importance.
It is important to know what technologies can fit these outcome-focused requirements to know what states and schools will be procuring. Technology products specifically cited in this DCL (while not exhaustive and absolute) include digital assessment tools to monitor student progress and individualize instruction, assistive technologies such as text-to-speech and real-time captioning, and digital learning and tutoring that augments classroom teaching. All of these are products that can directly benefit students and are able to show concrete results.
Providers that can demonstrate results through collaboration, transparency, and continued improvement will be better positioned to earn trust and succeed in the evolving K-12 environment.
To get more TD SYNNEX Public Sector Market Insight content, please visit our Market Intelligence microsite.
About the Author: Austin Gardner is a Discovery Rep on the DLT Market Insights team. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and lives in Washington, D.C.
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