October 7, 2025 | By the LEARN Network

District and school leaders regularly seek out, procure, and implement new tools and programs to improve teaching and learning and better support students. How those decisions are made, however, hasn’t always been widely understood.

To illuminate how K–12 school leaders across the United States make decisions about educational products — and how they use research and evidence in those decisions — our team has created a new LEARN Procurement Data Dashboard.

Built on findings from a LEARN Network survey of over 1,000 K–12 public school leaders through RAND’s 2023 American Educator Panels, this interactive tool offers unprecedented access to descriptive data on procurement motivations, decision-making processes, and the role of evidence.

Designed for product developers, researchers, policymakers, and other interest holders, the dashboard is built to help users navigate the complexities of how schools select and implement the tools that shape teaching and learning.

The procurement decision-making process affects the quality and appropriateness of the tools that teachers and students use every day. Yet the process can be opaque, varying widely across states, districts, and school types.

By surfacing data on the “how” and “why” of procurement, the dashboard aims to provide clearer, more accessible insights and support researchers and developers in scaling evidence-based products and programs to new districts, schools, and classrooms.

The findings also highlight persistent challenges, such as limited time for evidence review, lack of relevant research, and differences in access to resources. Data from the dashboard can guide the development of targeted supports that make it easier for school leaders to identify and implement effective products.

“We have so many district and school leaders who are interested in evidence, and so many developers who have made investments in proving the efficacy of their products,” said Benge Steele. “The data in this dashboard provide a foundation for bridging this gap and providing better instructional materials for our school leaders, teachers, and students.”

Inside the Dashboard

The LEARN Procurement Data Dashboard distills the survey’s nationally representative data into an accessible, interactive format. Users can explore aggregated, descriptive results across several key themes:

• Characteristics of Products: See what kinds of core curriculum, supplemental instructional materials, and professional development programs schools are procuring.
• Motivation to Procure: Identify the factors that prompt school leaders to seek new products, such as curriculum review cycles or reviews of student performance data.
• Procurement Process: Examine the methods schools use to acquire products, from formal requests for proposals to informal networks and cooperative purchasing.
• Who’s Involved: Discover which roles are central to identifying, evaluating, and selecting products.
• Changes Due to COVID-19: Track how procurement shifted during the pandemic and whether those changes have persisted.
• Use of Evidence: Explore the sources of evidence leaders rely on, the barriers they face, and the supports they find most valuable.
• Respondent Demographics: Understand the types of schools and leaders represented, including grade levels served, school size, locale, and socioeconomic indicators.

Use Cases

The dashboard’s flexible design supports different kinds of users:

• Product Developers can identify what motivates schools to consider new products, understand which evidence sources leaders value, and find out who is typically involved in procurement decisions.
• Education Support Organizations can uncover the barriers leaders face in using evidence, as well as the tools they find most useful.
• Researchers can explore how decision-making patterns vary by school characteristics and product types.

The Data Dashboard User Guide also includes quick-start examples to guide exploration, helping users jump directly to the most relevant data for their role.

Looking Ahead

The LEARN Network team views the Data Dashboard as more than a stand-alone resource. We hope it will serve as a foundation for ongoing research, conversation, and action, fostering stronger connections between research and practice and ensuring that educational products are selected and implemented in ways that maximize their impact.

About the Data

The dashboard is powered by responses from the American School Leader Panel, a scientifically drawn, probability-based sample managed by RAND. The survey was conducted in April–May 2023 and covered procurement experiences from the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years.

Respondents were randomly assigned to answer follow-up questions about one of three product types: core curriculum, supplemental instructional materials, or professional development programs. Survey items were developed by the LEARN Network research team at SRI, drawing from validated instruments and refined through expert review. Results are descriptive and do not establish causal relationships, but are weighted to provide nationally representative estimates.

Access the LEARN Procurement Data Dashboard, and get started by accessing our comprehensive User Guide. To read more about LEARN Network research, visit the Research Overview page.

Tags: Education technology Educators and systems leaders Research & Developers Research and evaluation