A market analysis done by Onvia Inc. seems to be pointing at Common Core to be one of the  biggest cash cows ever in terms of Education contracts and technology.  Onvia serves a variety of industries, but the Education industry’s page was eye-opening. The estimated cost in the report is likely already out of date. The document also addresses technology as being one of the most expensive pieces of Common Core. Mr. Gates will be pleased to hear that after he dumped around $3 billion into pushing Common Core from his Gates Foundation.

This market analysis is a White paper on spending related to Common Core. Onvia quotes the Fordham Institute quite a lot throughout the paper – 17 times.  The paper also makes reference to an Onvia database where a query on Common Core returned over 4,000 matches in project documents.

The White paper also has a list of the ‘most active’ states for ‘Common Core Opportunities’ in 2013-2013. Those states with 10 or more contract items are CA, NY, NJ, FL, OH, OK, PA, CT, AZ, IL, and MD. Those with between 5 and 9 Common Core related opportunities were WA, MS, NC, ME, MA, IA, TN, DC, NM and GA.

The Onvia White paper is about 18 pages long and is downloadable from their website. I went ahead and downloaded it and wow, the money-making and government contract possibilities are pretty deep.

The page it is located on offers this summary:

In this white paper, Onvia presents the leading trends in Common Core educational
contracting in state and local government and reveals the major types of contracts, who is winning them as well as who is buying. Our market analysis team provides insights for educational and IT vendors looking to better understand market opportunities in government and win more business from agency decision-makers.

Highlights from the paper:

• While adopted by 45 states, Common Core implementation has been uneven, with 11 states making at least 10 contracting awards in the last two years, and 20 states either having no awards or only one.
• School districts will be the majority of buyers for Common Core contracts, with the state education departments taking a supporting role and contracting for a limited number of high-level projects.
• While majority of awards are under $100,000 many reach into the millions; leading educational publishers dominate the larger awards while local or regional vendors often win the smaller awards.
• Key areas of spending on Common Core include curriculum development, educational materials, teacher training and technology upgrades for standardized testing.
• Use of technology will help determine how Common Core gets implemented and its final cost; examples include moving to electronic course materials, rather than traditional/expensive textbooks, and adopting online teacher development solutions to replace expensive in-person training.
• Not all schools are ready for online testing; additional IT opportunities include providing more computing devices to allow for larger groups being tested at one time and upgrading school bandwidth to support the increased user load for mass online testing.