EdTech is a diverse field that includes everything from three-person Math practice startups to 10,000-person data management companies. That’s great for your job prospects, but too many options can be paralyzing (looking at you, Cheesecake Factory menu). This is especially relevant because the same job can look totally different depending on the company you work for.
So let’s break down the EdTech industry by product type. Although there are many ways to skin this cat (peel this apple?), I’ll break down four broad kinds of EdTech products, along with examples of each one and links to career pages with current job openings!
Note that I’ve shamelessly borrowed from EdSurge’s product index to divide companies into sensible categories. If you haven’t visited EdSurge before, bookmark their site now! They run job fairs across the country, publish amazing resources for current and former teachers, and maintain an up-to-date jobs board. I actually found my first post-teaching job on EdSurge 🙂
K-12 Curriculum & Assessment
I see this as the “obvious” category; in fact, it was the only type of EdTech I really knew about when I was teaching, and even then I didn’t appreciate the breadth of options under this umbrella.
These EdTech products are content-focused; they help students learn and practice new concepts and help teachers evaluate student mastery of those concepts. Companies in this sector are much more than just digital lesson plans and assessments, though. Over the past decade, funding has dramatically shifted away from “core curriculum” resources toward supplemental practice products that incorporate diagnostics and adapt to students’ needs.
Many of these tools specialize in a subject and age range: for instance, Lexia Learning’s flagship product builds early literacy skills for elementary school students, Newsela provides standards-aligned nonfiction texts at all reading levels, and Mystery Science offers open-and-go science lessons.
Other companies aim for an all-in-one solution; take my own awesome company, Renaissance Learning, which has K-12 offerings in multiple subjects and provides an integrated assessment, practice, and instructional solution for districts.
- Job Openings at Lexia
- Job Openings at Newsela
- Job Openings at Mystery Science
- Job Openings at Renaissance
Teacher Needs
Somewhere along the line, the tech world realized that teachers are basically CEOs of their classrooms and that keeping the grading/parent-calling/lesson-copying ship afloat without any assistance is nearly impossible. Many products try to streamline that nebulous world of “teacher tasks.” While some of these companies offer instructional resources, their products focus on how teachers teach rather than the content itself and usually don’t have Curriculum departments.
For example, Learning Management Systems help teachers manage assignments, engage parents, and deliver lessons digitally. Not surprisingly, this field exploded during Covid-19 to facilitate distance learning; you might already use some of these tools on a daily basis! For example, Canvas’s centralized learning hub allows teachers to integrate content from other EdTech platforms to deliver remote instruction, and Seesaw’s “digital portfolios” give teachers robust assignment creation tools to facilitate direct teacher-student communication.
Several EdTech startups focus on optimizing classroom management rather than instruction. For example, ClassDojo “helps teachers build a positive classroom culture by encouraging students and communicating with parents.” Its digital reward systems and messaging features are used in millions of schools worldwide!
Remind focuses more narrowly on communication, allowing teachers to send translated messages to students and parents without using their actual cell phone numbers.
Data & Operations
When you think about cool companies to work for, you might not immediately think about the software you use to track attendance. Don’t sleep on the operations space, though! Many EdTech companies are literally powering schools by managing student data and uniting other tech tools under a single platform.
For example, you may have used tools like Powerschool to enter grades or look up student details; its flagship product is a Student Information System (SIS for short) that allows districts to aggregate data about “instruction, learning, grading, attendance, assessment, analytics, state reporting, special education, student registration, talent, finance and HR.”
Other companies create Identity Providers, or roster management services that integrate with a district’s SIS to ensure their other EdTech apps play nicely with each other. Clever is a big player in this category, streamlining implementation of new solutions by allowing educators and students to access all of their products with a single click and maintain a single roster that populates everywhere.
Finally, data visualization companies like Panorama Education build comprehensive dashboards to help administrators identify trouble spots, observe academic and behavioral trends, and ensure their schools are delivering equitable outcomes for students.
Post-Secondary
Learning doesn’t stop when students graduate from High School, and EdTech products certainly don’t, either. A ton of the companies in this sector create digital courses for a specific audience (e.g. community college students or IT professionals), but others build vast libraries that offer up-skilling opportunities to casual adult learners.
For example, Coursera is a “global online learning platform that offers anyone, anywhere, access to online courses and degrees from leading universities and companies.” Udemy allows anyone to create and upload a class, offering over 130,000 user-made courses in everything from graphic design to the art of negotiation. Masterclass shares the same mission of supporting lifelong learning, and the classes that come with its subscription are generally taught by famous people.
…and everything else!
Admittedly, there are tons of EdTech companies that don’t fit into any of these categories. From SAT prep to social emotional learning to vaguely educational game applications, the EdTech world is truly your oyster.
Of course, product type is not the only factor that influences your happiness at a company. In addition to highly individual factors like the location/commute and your relationships with your manager and team, company size can greatly impact your experience. Do you want to work for an early-stage EdTech start-up, a large and well-established Education company, or something in between?
Check out this helpful article from Harvard Business Review that breaks down the pros and cons of startups vs. big company life in any industry.