The COVID-19 pandemic has injected significant and likely lasting uncertainty into K-12 and higher education across the globe. Classroom shut-downs, campus closures, the implementation of online, hybrid, pod and home schooling, abortive restarts, furloughing of staff, and near constant shifts in schedules and resource distribution have made for a dizzying 2020 school year. Beyond the many educators, students, and parents who have lost their lives to COVID-19, students have missed millions of hours of classroom learning time which will likely lead to educational delays. Perhaps the only area of growth in education over the last year is the rapid expansion of the education technology industry. If they were not fully ubiquitous before, Zoom, Google Classroom and other edtech essentials are now structurally fundamental to schooling and learning under the threat of coronavirus.
More than two years ago I gave an assessment of where the education media industry was headed. Education media (or edmedia) is now part of the edtech apparatus and includes publishers of both physical and digital education material. Unfortunately some of my troubling predictions were not far off. The juggernaut of education publishing, Pearson, has commenced its long foretold resurgence with new testing contracts in Texas, a medical certification program at Hawaii Pacific University, and a new CEO coming from legacy media company Disney. Pearson says it’s focusing on direct consumer sales, but adding a former UK diplomat to its executive team shows that the company still considers public money their bread and butter.
As Pearson rebuilds after a rocky transition into the digital space, Amazon continues to expand into all facets of education technology while pushing a philanthropic angle. A 2019 Forbes op-ed linked Amazon’s education initiatives to the chuckle inducing notion of “inclusive capitalism”. With their continued growth into teacher-to-teacher curriculum sales and on-demand publishing, Amazon is destined to operate a stand-alone edtech or edmedia firm outside the Amazon.com umbrella; an entity that will operate decidedly outside of public control or quaint ideas of inclusiveness. My money is on Amazon buying up a firm based outside the US (such as tutoring firm VIPKid from China) and pivoting operations to support education infrastructure in developing countries — with little public input.
Bevacqua 