Volume 58

This is one of my favorite times of year. The weather starts to cool down (in California at least!) and we all just kind of get back into a rhythm with back to school in full effect. There's almost this air of productivity you can actually feel. For me, it's also a time of excitement and hope as I find myself thinking about what this school year has in store for all of us.

And yes…hold onto your hats, we're heading into another uncertain year. Budgets are tight, funding is unstable, AI keeps reshaping the ground under us, and the stakes feel higher than they have in a long time. I'll be the first to say it weighs on me some days. I don't want to bemoan the challenges, because we always have them in education, but some of them are at a level we've never faced before.

Working across so many brands, we get to see this from every angle. And right now, we're watching districts do a lot of budget scenario planning. This year, how many educators use your product won't guarantee a renewal the way it used to. It has to correlate to learning outcomes in some way, shape, or form. If you don’t have any proof of efficacy, it gets harder to have those renewal conversations, and even harder to get in front of district and school leaders looking for solutions that help them hit their goals.

That's why I've devoted an entire section of this issue to the Department of Education's Dear Colleague letter. Not because I think it's some brilliant piece of guidance. Plenty of people would call it a puff piece riding the growing screen-time conversation that leaves us with more questions than answers. But the debate it kicked off, and the range of smart takes people have shared since, felt too valuable not to surface.

So…without a whole lot of guidance, a lot of uncertainty, and higher stakes than ever, what do you do as a marketer? The same motion we've always needed to do. We go in laser focused on our goal. We craft a plan we feel excited about, one that aligns with goals we believe we can achieve, and flexible enough to adjust as the data comes in. We get the data, we optimize, and we keep going.

Keep being relevant to your audience. Keep being valuable to your audience. And keep finding new, creative ways to earn their attention, because what worked last year won't be enough this year (heck, what worked three months ago might not either). That's the work.

With grattitude,

Elana

Reach Out to Get Your Content Repurposing Playbook

We get it. Winning as an education marketer today means more content in less time. But how do you pull that off with limited resources and still keep the quality high?

Reach out to us and we'll send you our free Content Repurposing Playbook. It provides the exact word counts, lengths, and best practices we use to turn one piece of content into five, built from our proven content framework.

Resources Powered by LCG

EdTech Good News

If you've missed the old Twitter, you're not alone. A startup called Operation Bluebird has launched early access to Twitter.now, reviving the Twitter name, bird logo, and familiar features like replies and reposts for people who want that town square feeling back. The company was co-founded by former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates. It's still early days, with a small batch of paid early-access users so far, but we're curious enough to check out the platform ourselves. We'll keep you posted.

Marketing & Education Must Reads

Marketing

Content Marketing Institute on AI Search Visibility: As AI increasingly handles buyer research before prospects ever reach your site, visibility now outweighs time on page, so structure content with clear headings, original data, and accessible multimedia so AI tools can cite it directly.
Matt Navarra on LinkedIn's New Live Event Feature: LinkedIn now automatically turns live event recordings into short form clips and chapters, a solid reason to treat every livestream as an ongoing content engine instead of a one time broadcast.
Content Marketing Institute on AI Prompts: Marketers speaking at Content Marketing World shared their most effective AI prompts, and the common thread is building in context, guardrails, and back and forth conversation to get sharper results than a single question ever could.
Metricool on AI in Social Media: Metricool's 2026 report found that three in four social media professionals use AI in their daily work, though only 12 percent operate under a formal AI policy at their company.
The Marketing Millennials on Landing Pages: Daniel Murray digs into why so many landing pages fail to convert, a super important read given how much campaign traffic funnels through them.

Education

Edutopia on Unplugged Learning: One school's tech-free day experiment showed teachers rethinking lesson design around learning goals instead of available tools, with hands-on projects driving deep engagement.
Education Week on School Funding: With federal, state, and local funding sources all in flux, next year's budget planning looks especially uncertain for many districts, with districts like Tucson already preparing multiple contingency budgets.
EdTech Digest on the Screen Time Debate: The 2026 Savvas Educator Index found that 82% of teachers favor limiting classroom screen time, yet 92% distinguish between passive and instructional use, pointing to purpose as the real factor over raw minutes.
The Hill on Early Childhood Investment: Governors across the political spectrum are prioritizing early childhood education funding ahead of this year's elections, a rare area of bipartisan momentum on childcare access and pre-k expansion.
The 74 on Teacher Staffing Trends: New interactive data across 9,500 districts shows most schools still serve fewer students per teacher than they did eight years ago, even as recent federal jobs numbers hint the post-pandemic staffing boom may be ending.
Tech & Learning on Screen Time and Access: Before restricting devices, schools should weigh what students stand to lose, from audiobooks to translation tools to accessibility features, since time on screen alone says little about the quality of the learning happening.

[Bonus] EdTech Marketer Kate Busby on the "Impact-Growth Paradox": A widely shared LinkedIn post from our friend Kate argues that EdTech's growth metrics often reward engagement and low-cost acquisition over real learner outcomes.

Dear Colleague Takes

If you haven’t seen it yet, the Department of Education released a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) last week that created ripple effects in our industry. These are 5 must reads/listens about it:

Tommy Messinger: Unpacks the DOE's five vendor questions, starting with why sales pitches should lead with the problem solved, ahead of the demo.
Bart Epstein: Calls the guidance "toothless", pointing to zero reporting requirements and zero federal funding for efficacy research.
Eric Tucker: Moves the conversation past screen time entirely, framing the real test as whether a tool advances outcomes for the specific student using it.
EdSurge Podcast: Digital Promise's Jean-Claude Brizard and outcomes-contracting expert Brittany Miller both welcome the letter, but split on whether it goes far enough. (podcast)
The Boyz of Edtech: An emergency episode digging into evidence-based procurement, RCTs, and outcomes-based contracting in light of the letter. (podcast)

Shout out to CAST, who are among some of the EdTech organizations that aligned their resources to the questions posed in the letter. [Good human alert] CAST is a client of ours.

AI in Edu

EdTech Digest on AI Stewardship: Julia Fallon makes the case for shifting AI leadership conversations from adoption to stewardship, asking what problem is being solved, what evidence is being collected, and whether outcomes are genuinely improving learning rather than simply counting logins and licenses.
The 74 on Data Centers Near Schools: New Brown University research finds nearly 1,900 U.S. public schools within a mile of a data center, with early findings linking that proximity to lower math scores.
Edutopia on Building Student Agency with AI: Teacher Toby Fischer shares five classroom activities that use AI tools to help students name their strengths, set goals, and build the confidence to chase them.
John Spencer on Writing That Stands Out: In an Instagram carousel, educator John Spencer shares tips for writing that stands out in an age of AI slop, starting with keeping text short and giving readers context.
EdSurge on Protecting Student Cognition: Teacher Melinda Medina argues for teaching students "cognitive citizenship" alongside digital citizenship, so they learn to interrogate AI output instead of just accepting it.

While not specific to education, Bill Gates just released a 4,000+ word letter all about AI and it is worth a read. It's freaking us out a little.

And over the weekend, a “swarm” of AI agents went rogue. Like scary rogue.

In Good Company

This is our chance to brag on the clients and partners who make up our community. Here's what they've been up to lately:

TCI: A middle school social studies teacher at Arcadia Unified shared how TCI balances screen time with her teaching style, pairing offline textbook and hands-on work with online activities when they make sense.
Canyon GBS: Ranked 126 on the 2026 Inc. 5000, landing among the fastest-growing software companies in the country after 2,364% revenue growth over the past three years.
NSSI: Rolled out a new guide to help schools and districts track down funding they might be missing.
CAST: Their UDL Guidelines 3.0 graphic organizer just landed in 24 languages, from Arabic to Welsh, most of them translated by volunteers who wanted to bring UDL into their own communities.
TFA: Teach For America's corps applications are open, with the first deadline September 11. If you know a college student weighing what's next, this two-year paid teaching role comes with a coach and a network of 72,000+ alumni.
Playworks: Hosted a popular webinar on group facilitation for afterschool teams, helping staff build the skills for stronger, more confident programming.
Cerebrate: Released a free guide that gives special education teams 40 ready-to-use executive function IEP goal stems, built to make writing measurable goals faster.
TAVA Learning: We helped TAVA sharpen its messaging and positioning, so now it's crystal clear what the product does and who it's for. They're running a limited pilot this term, and if you're in higher ed, they're one to watch.

Actionable Guidance for EdMarketers (Powered by The WirED Marketer)

Pro Tip: send your emails early in the AM. The K-12 leader is generally an early riser. EdWeek Research Center data confirms that marketers have the best shot of engagement early in the day and the week.

When we asked district and school leaders what types of messaging is most likely to get their attention, here’s what rose to the top:

Gets right to the point/is very brief (48%)
State pricing up front (46%)
Emphasize alignment with district and state standards (39%)
Offer a free trial (37%)
Emphasize a low/affordable price point (30%)

Want insights like this in your inbox every month? Subscribe to The WirED Marketer for more of what's shaping K-12 marketing decisions.

Meta Settlement happened, what does it actually mean to help protect children? Erin Mote from InnovateEdu, calls out its balls and strikes for education.

NASA just launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and this thing is amazing! It's cruising a million miles out into space and will beam back 1.4 terabytes of data every single day, more than any NASA mission ever. Plus, it’s named after one inspiring woman, who was NASA’s first chief astronomer and first female executive. Get the latest updates.

You will be greatly missed, Dolly. Learn all about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and everything she did for education. ❤️