Navigating the Competitive Landscape of Educational Publishing

Jeff Livingston, founder and CEO of EdSolutions, joined me to explore the rapidly evolving core curriculum market. The conversation traces how the once-static, “big three” publisher-dominated landscape has fractured because of shifting state adoption cycles, politics, digitalization, and the emergence of new competitors. Jeff explained how the dynamics have shifted from national dominance to regional markets, with digital tools enabling customization and lowering barriers for new entrants. The discussion also covered the impact of organizations like EdReports, new forms of patient capital, and the increasing importance of quality over pure scale or distribution.

Michael Horn

You are joining the show where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today, I am delighted. One of the folks that I've known for many years in the education space who I think is smarter about the curriculum market in all facets of that word than anyone I know is Jeff Livingston. He is the CEO and founder of EdSolutions. Jeff, you've had a long history in that curriculum world, and then now you keep tabs on it and give the market state for everyone and help them think about it. I'm just delighted you're here. It's good to see you, buddy.

Early 2000s Textbook Market Dynamics

Jeff Livingston

Thank you so much. Michael, you know that I am a longtime fan of yours and of this show. Delighted that I get to be on it with you to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is how much the curriculum market is changing. You and I first started talking about it. It's, you know, it's finally changing.

Michael Horn

It's finally changing. That's a good intro, right? Because, like, if we're going to actually help unleash student achievement potential and so forth, what they learn, the content they're receiving is important, it turns out. And as you and I know, like, I think when we first met, it was a GSV, if I'm recalling correctly, you were at McGraw Hill at the time, and I had published Disrupting Class from McGraw Hill, and you were like, this is still a static market, but we see these pathways. And yet the refrain I was always getting was, okay, yeah, there's a lot of noise in the supplemental space, et cetera, et cetera, but core curriculum, basal curriculum, right? Like, the Big Three doesn't change, will not change. And it's changing. But maybe give us, like, the history a little bit, like, who are the big three? Where are they now? Because that's changed a little bit as well.

Jeff Livingston

Let's not name when that was, when we first started having these conversations, but a while ago, say, early in the century, the big three, which, to be honest, Michael was four in those days. But we're fundamentally talking about Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I say there were four because Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt were separate companies at that point, but they dominated all of core curriculum market all over the country. Because what drove that market even more in those days was, was big, large cycle, state adoptions in Texas and Florida and California. So you had to get on the list. You had to make sure once you got on the list you had sort of the marketing and distribution might to compete and only the giant companies, publishers really did in that market. And you know, let's, let, let's talk about the sort of economics of that market, right? When there were four players, you built your program to get 25%. If you got your 25%, everybody got a bonus.

If you got 35%, everybody got a lake house. Right? That's the way this world was. Plus big states like Texas would tell you years in advance how much they were going to buy, what they were going to make their decisions on. You could plan to finance your product development like clockwork. There were big players. Every once in a while a small player might emerge and do a little something and then one of the big ones would buy it. That's the way it worked in those days. And that concentration was reflected in the marketplace.

What's also interesting in those days, Michael, is that there wasn't a lot of really good information about what was actually in the market. The education market was unusual in that way. So at any given point in the early 2000s, at least two, sometimes three different programs were credibly saved. We have the market leading math or, or ela.

Michael Horn

Well, and Jeff, quickly help us understand, like when they're making those claims are they sell like elementary, middle, high school, all of it combined. Like how are they cutting these things?

Skewed Statistics

Jeff Livingston

So you could, you cut it to make yourself look the best. And all the information was self-reported to organizations like the Association of Educational Publishers or AEP, the association of American Publishers Education Division. So you just sliced it the way you wanted to and you could simultaneously be telling the technical truth and you could be directly contradicting somebody else who was telling the technical truth. So you just knew that the big ones, the big companies dominated in one or another kind of. Now what's also important is that the market is such that if you were one of the big publishers and you stumbled and got significantly less than your 25%, suddenly there are three, right? You couldn't make the big investments and not get.

Michael Horn

And that's because of the way scale economics work. Large fixed costs of publishing books and guides.

Jeff Livingston

Guides and so forth, salesforces, all of that. If you made the bet and didn't get your share, you were in trouble. And if you got significantly less than your share, you were really in trouble. Hence there's a company called Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and not a company called Harcourt Houghton Mifflin. Right. It's just, you know, they stumbled and you just couldn't stumble in that world. But what's fascinating is that today it's really, really difficult.

Michael Horn

So let's fast forward into today. Like what? Maybe let's start with those, the three remaining and talk. Because obviously Pearson had a change there as well. Talk about what's changed among those three, and then let's talk about how the entrants have sort of maybe made those changes.

Jeff Livingston

First, let's talk about a change in that market structure. The adoption calendar was sacrosanct. You knew that everybody in Texas was buying math at the same time. You had a sense of how much money they were going to have to spend. It was sacrosanct. In recent years, Florida stopped a math adoption in the middle and started over. California should be in the second year of its math adoption, but it's barely started. That certainty is gone.

And because that certainty is gone, the certainty of financing these big investments is harder.

Michael Horn

What killed that certainty?

Jeff Livingston

The big states and some of the small states fail to understand where their power came from. It came from a combination of having everybody buy at the same time and the certainty. So if California was definitely going to buy in, you know, 2023, everybody could plan for that. When it definitely became kind of maybe then you couldn't plan anymore.

Michael Horn

Yeah. And was that because of politics?

Jeff Livingston

Politics. The politics. The changes in what is considered high quality curriculum, all of that changed such that even the big states are not as certain as they used to be. The process is not as geared towards people who have big lobbying forces, big sales forces and maximum balance sheets. It's not as geared towards them anymore such that now there are some people who. When you and I first started talking about this, nobody would have mentioned that. Now you have to mention. So I think in terms of math, because it's kind of a math cycle.

Texas is doing a math adoption. California is starting one. Florida is going to be doing intervention math here really soon. So I'm thinking in terms of math and. Let's do that. So the first time you and I had this conversation, long, long, long ago.

Michael Horn

My hair was a little darker back then. Yeah.

Jeff Livingston

Yeah. Nobody said Zearn. Nobody said Amplify. Nobody considered Curriculum Associates a major player in those days when I had hair and yours was darker. Right. It could be in those days, but now you can't really talk about the math market without talking about players like that.

Michael Horn

Yeah. So we got Zearn, Curriculum Associates, Amplify. I guess you'd have Great Minds in that list.

Evolving Regional Math Education Markets

Jeff Livingston

Probably Great Minds with Eureka Math, Illustrative Mathematics, lots of places that you just would not have, would have not entered this conversation 15 years ago that you can't have the conversation without now. And I think that's important to think about. Here's the other thing that's happened in this market, and this is, let's call this more a deep cut, Michael. It used to be a national market, now it's a regional market. So by that I mean that the leading math program in the west might barely make the list in the Midwest. And only the south really has the level of concentration that we used to see in those places. And that's because they have more of these state adoptions. And if you win big in a state adoption, you have a lot of market share for a long time.

But HMH Go Math, in addition to EdSolutions, I'm a proud founder of the Center for Education Market Dynamics. I don't run the Center for Education Market Dynamics, but I did help to get it going. And they have some of the best data right now. They did a really important study at the end of last year, 2024, which I think is the most up to date data on this, that said HMH's Go Math had the highest market share in the west last year. It was number two in the south, but number five in the west in the Midwest. Right. And was this that weird? You know, and what, what's happened is that regional dominance has replaced national dominance in this market. Right.

And where you are has a lot more to say today about what programs you have access to than it used to. Because what happened in the old days is you built a program for California or Texas or occasionally Florida, and then you modified it a little bit for everybody else and that was good enough. There's no. That is not how it works necessarily anymore.

Michael Horn

And is that because of the standards. I guess there's a couple things at play, but the standards have fragmented across these states. Politics makes something that's palatable one place not palatable another place. Digital changes the economics of this. What, what all the, all those things.

Jeff Livingston

But my gut tells me that that last one is most important.

Michael Horn

Okay, right, let's dive into it.

Jeff Livingston

So even way back when it made sense to do a South Carolina social studies book, right? Because South Carolina was an adoption state, you can aggregate enough, you could figure out how to make those economics work. An LA County Social Studies book today would be less expensive than a South Carolina Social Studies book was 15 years old, right? And around mathematics or around ELA, you can be a lot more specific as to what you were serving without having to get lots new printing presses and hire new people there. And this is even before anybody has figured out what generative AI is going to do.

Michael Horn

Right? And dramatically lower the cost of content creation.

Embracing Generative AI for Cost-Cutting

Jeff Livingston

It has to. Now I have, you know, I have been leaning into generative AI. I have been asking all the smartest content creators I know to show me how they're using AI to drive down cost for a couple of years. And I still haven't had anybody who I trust as a curriculum developer at scale show me exactly what they've done. But I'm starting to see it now. I've had, you know, people who work out of garages in Palo Alto show me what they have done. I'm like, okay, call me when you built a reading program, right? But there is no question to me that when I was publishing the kinds of things that we would outsource to India, some of those things can be outsourced to generative AI for even less than we outsourced them to India. And with more and more programs, more and more digital, I don't have to print new things if I do something specialized.

So everything is cheaper. So what that means now is that a not for profit company like Zearn can be competitive in every single way in the supplemental meth market with a McGraw Hill or an HMH in terms of putting product out there. Now, HMH and McGraw Hill still have an advantage in terms of distribution and salesforce, but not in building the program. It's not nearly what it used to be. And that means that people have more choices and they begin to make different choices.

Michael Horn

So I want to stay on this one now because that's interesting to me that obviously digital means more customization. One of the things that you said is that these players, I think they all started as in the supplemental market. They're starting to gain steam in the core curriculum market as well. There's some changes there. That means in terms of purchasing behavior, in terms of the importance, I suppose of salesforces and, and go to market and stuff like that. How has that side of it changed to let these folks in?

Jeff Livingston

What's interesting is if we had had this conversation three years ago, the overall nature of it would have been the same, but the intensity would have been different. Right, Because ESSER happened when suddenly there was all this money for lots of districts to try new things, especially digital things. That got a lot of things started that didn't happen before. EdReports has emerged in core curriculum like math and ELA as the clear signal of quality. I say all the time to my friends at EdReports, it used to be my job to persecute the Christians, as it were, that it was my job to make sure for a while that EdReports was not the standard. But you know, the fourth time a big city superintendent said to me, we're only buying EdReports Green, the battle was over. I was a convert, you know, called me Saul of Tarsus, you know, immediately I'm a comfort. And EdReports has raised the quality, set the standard.

But it's also made it clear since that other people can meet it too, right? And I think that. But the money in response to COVID allowed for more curricular experimentation, allowed for more small companies to last longer so then they could get to the point that they could compete with the big. There's also a new kind of capital in the market. I think it's important to talk about a really kind of patient capital that is impact oriented. You know, you and I both have friends at places like the Emerson Collective and like A Street, which are for-profit oriented in this kind of investment, but really dedicated to a set of impact principles as well and extremely patient.

Michael Horn

And that's an important piece. Right? They don't have 10-year funds that's much more evergreen will support you. Even Curriculum Associates before they went the PE route, the owner, right, Rob Waldron, famously had the 30-year contract.

Jeff Livingston:

Exactly, exactly. And that is a different thing because what used to happen is say 15 years ago, you and I wanted to start a big publisher. We might convince somebody to fund us such that we could compete one good time in one good market. But if we stumbled, we were done. Nobody ever heard of us again. Amplify can stumble in California and still live in Florida because they've got some of this patient capital there. And great minds can stumble and still live. Those are new things, right? You don't have to get it right completely the first time in order to be a real player.

Shift in Publishing Capital Dynamics

Jeff Livingston

If you've got the kind of patient capital that can keep you in the game, and that is something that's not, that wasn't there before. Plus one more thing. If we had had this conversation 15 years ago, all of the big publishers were independent, were independent companies, public companies. Today none of them is. They're all private equity owned. And so they have responsibilities to pay back the loans that were taken out to buy them, that restrict their area of movement too. So you've got upstarts with patient capital and traditional dominant players with less patient capital. And, the result is finally the dominance that used to be experienced by those big players is, is, I mean, nearly gone as dominance, but certainly under threat.

Michael Horn

Well, so maybe let's stay there for a moment, which is if you look at HMH, McGraw Hill, Pearson, I guess Sage. Right.

Jeff Livingston

Savvas.

Michael Horn

Yeah, Savvas.

Michael Horn

Wow, I just messed that up. We'll leave my mistake in. And so, you got those big three, right? Where like what are we talking about in terms of market share for those players? What do you, you know, forecast for their, for their prospects?

Jeff Livingston

So, you know, it's hard to answer that question because we're in the middle of a big math swing and anything I say today.

Michael Horn

could be totally different in a year. Yeah. Okay.

Jeff Livingston

I think the way to think about it is, remember I told you that it's more regional now than it used to be. It used to be a national kind of a thing. Only in the south in math, in core math, does any one program have 20% or more. Right, right. Only in the south is anybody even that big. So the field is much bigger that one in the south as I recall at this point is Envision Math. Houghton Mifflin's Envision Math is slightly above 20%. And the last things that I have seen from the center for Education Market Dynamics, nowhere else is it even that high.

The dominant market player is between 15 and 20 in every other region, whereas 15 years ago there were three above 20. One of them might have been above 30 in the world. So they just don't dominate the market anymore.

Patient Capital's Role in EdTech Disruption

Michael Horn

One of the questions I'm curious about is all the ones with patient capital that you named. I think maybe one exception, but I think most of them started in the supplemental market, built up a good book of business on top, and then they had the revenue plus patient capital, could invest some in creating a full core curriculum. Is that the story? Is this a disruption story in terms of like we met the EdReports bar and now we're lower cost with digital, like what's the value prop and what's the story?

Jeff Livingston

So I don't see people necessarily competing on cost yet so much as competing on quality. What the Amplify’s and the Great Minds of the world say is our math program is better than the big publishers programs. And here's why. And here's what EdReports said about ours. You can read what EdReports said about theirs. And here's what EdReports didn't say that we also think is important. And obviously the big publishers can make that argument too. But now everybody can really gain access to that.

Now eventually somebody's going to do it on price, too. But that's not what I'm seeing in the market yet. It's not price. It is who's got the best math and for who. Right? So someone is going to say, we are better for Spanish dominant immigrants in California than these other guys. Here's why. And if they beat that architect successfully, they're gonna win.

Michael Horn

Right? I know there's a lot of criticism building of EdReports of. It talks about the alignment, but maybe not the research or. Or that sort of segmentation that you just did there.

Jeff Livingston

EdReports is a revolution that has been good for this market, there's no question. But the claims they make are very, very carefully calibrated. Right. This is what we're measuring for. You can read the long form, you can see it. Out in the real world. People in the market assume that it says more than it does. Right.

I have had conversations with big city superintendents when I say things to them like, so how do you know that your core reading or math program are culturally relevant enough for your students and teachers? Oh, EdReports Green. And I'm thinking, I promise you nothing.

Michael Horn

That ain't saying what you think it said.

Jeff Livingston

That's not what they said. They're not making that claim. So the market is evolving in that way, and other measures of quality will emerge. EdReports is kind of table stakes. It's about stakes standards. It's about the quality of the underlying curriculum. And it has done a great many things. It's also begun to layer on some ELA supports and some other things, too.

But it has established the foundation that there are definitions of quality that can be defended, that can be measured, that can be put out in the world. And I think that is a great thing. That has been a leveling function for this market. Right. All before when I was at McGraw Hill, I could say, We're McGraw Hill. We've been doing this for 150 years. We know how to do this. Trust us and only us. Now people are saying, don't just trust them.

You can trust us, too. Look at what EdReports said.

Michael Horn [

And there's a third party in the market that helps it.

Jeff Livingston

That's right. That does help a lot.

Michael Horn

All right, so let me ask you this question as we start to wrap up here. I could go on for a while picking your brain, because I'm learning a lot.

Jeff Livingston

You know I could go on talking, so.

Michael Horn

I know, I know you can. But let me ask this question. As you play it forward, as you look at the market right now, what do you think the makeup of it might be? I mean, I get it, it's dangerous, but let's talk more generalities. Five, ten years, something like that, maybe. Like, are certain players going to drop out of this market?

Jeff Livingston

What I think, I think that there are too many big core curriculum providers in the world for this market to sustain long term. Not all of them are going to survive the next five years. What is revolutionary is that I think some of the ones that might go away might be some of the big publishers. The combination of the big publishers having impatient capital in the form of private equity and so many of the upstarts having patient capital means that you don't automatically say that a newer arrival like Amplify isn't going to survive, but an older company like McGraw Hill is. There's no reason to say those things. This is going to be a good old fashioned capitalist slugfest and we'll see who emerges. But I gotta say this. If you're one of the traditional ones and you don't emerge as top two in California or Texas or Florida, I think it's hard to see you're surviving as a big player now.

It is, it's really big stakes and the capital is impatient. Right? They're not gonna, they're not gonna give you more money to do that. They have a limited view of when you need to start working. And so I think this is an exciting time for the market there. Now I don't know who's going to stumble, but I think somebody's gonna stumble. And I think this is going to be a fascinating time for the market. Now I will say this too. When I was at McGraw Hill, there was a joke going around.

Future of Publishing and Education

Jeff Livingston

How do you announce that you are going to retire soon? You let somebody call you a publisher in public. So I hear my friends at the traditional of publishers, content creators, learning companies, whatever the euphemism of the moment is saying, Jeff, we're not in that business anymore either. That's not what we do either. HMH of today is not HMH of 15 years ago. McGraw Hill of today is not McGraw Hill of 15 years ago. And Savvas of today isn't even called what Pearson was called 15 years ago. So the old model is gone, new models are emerging. What label is going to be on the dominant models? That is what I think is going to change that more and more digital, more and more specialized, more and more coherent, more and more focused on more and more individual students and student populations needs.

I think that is what's going to dominate and it's an exciting time for me because I think the curriculum is getting better for the kids. We're getting better options and the game is being played for the right stakes. Who is going to do better for the kids? Not who has the biggest marketing budget, who has the biggest salesforce, who has the best lobbyist.

Michael Horn

Well, so that's promising. I want to actually ask you one more question because you went there. Something that I am seeing and I'm curious if you are, is of course there's a big and you would know more than me. So let me say that there's a big move to the high quality instructional materials content, making sure that there's coherence across the curriculum. Right. So what you're doing in social studies reinforces English Right.

Like more of this stuff. All well to the good. I'm a big fan of it and it seems like part of that HQIM, if you will, high quality instructional material market. There's a little bit of this push against the personalization that is possible in the sense of we're all going to be lockstep scripts for teachers. We're all doing this and I see it in some classrooms that have adopted digital curriculum. And I'm curious, like your take on that. Do you see that? Is that. Is that just a part of this? It's not the whole thing.

We're going to blow past this because. Because I'm really worried about it. I'll say that, like I, I feel like you got some whole class people who, I get it like it. We weren't really personalizing before. People weren't changing instructional models, gave it a bad name and the quality wasn't that great. But if you get the quality better and coherence to your point, like, you know, Jeff, if I can adapt for your background knowledge and you know where you're coming from and to get the point across, I'd be an idiot not to do that based on the learning sciences.

Jeff Livingston

Michael, I understand the fear, but the combination of the technologies and the higher quality means that a whole lot of things are going to be tried and we're going to know what works. Now, this podcast is not about how we're going to know what works, but.

Michael Horn

A big question at the moment. Yeah. As we're recording it, we have no.

Jeff Livingston

Idea who used to track what works.

Michael Horn

As we're recording it. We have no idea.

Adapting Education for Diverse Students

Jeff Livingston

Yeah, right. But a lot of things are going to be tried. Some teachers are going to try to individualize for 28 kids. Some teachers are going to try to, as much as possible, keep the whole class together and moving, and we're going to see what works. I'm excited about it, and I'm excited about it in large part because students who look like me were rarely the ones who were considered the norm and had things tailored to. And now students who look like me or students who speak the language that is spoken in my home at least half the time have a shot at being the focus in some places, and we'll see if that works better. I think it will work better.

Michael Horn

Well, that. That's exciting. Right? Because the economics have changed where you can make money targeting. Targeting. Wrong word. But marketing to, like, creating products for.

Jeff Livingston

That's exactly right. Here's though, here's the other side of that, and this is kind of a little bit going into the AI portion and we can have that conversation another time. There are engineers who, in education technology, are building for themselves and their kids, and they liked learning but hated school and found their teachers an impediment. And some of those engineers are trying to engineer out the humans who kept them away from their experience. They were weird when they were in school, and they're still weird. Most people are not trying to engineer out the humans in their education. So we're going to do too much.

Michael Horn

and then that'll be a thing also.

Jeff Livingston

Yeah, right. We're going to do too much of that and pull back. I don't need every problem set in algebra 1 to know that I grew up Black and Baptist in South Carolina. I do not need that every single time. In fact, I need to be a part of a community that I feel a part of and I feel seen in. But I want to know what other kids are learning too, and I want to do that. It'll take us a moment to get to that point because people are really focused on just giving Jeff what he wants all the time, every day, just that, and then everything will be great. I don't think that's.

That's true. That's the other social construct, you know, better than anybody else. People want that, and the programs will reflect it, the choices districts make will reflect it. And ultimately what works best for kids will reflect it too. So I am glad that we have disrupted the old system that was much more monolithic, that 1,000 flowers are blooming and that we're not. We don't know that the roses are going to win this race. I think those are good things because this uniquely American mixture of competition and pedagogy in the education space, you know, you go anywhere else in the world and there's a national curriculum, there's not much competition. I actually like this unique American competition and what it can do.

Emerging Math Education Innovations

Jeff Livingston

And we're going to see over the next few years, especially in math, we're going to see it do its thing and we're going to have very different conversations. We're going to say, did you see Jeff and Bubba's Algebra 1 program come out of nowhere and take 10% in Florida? What are they doing? And that is going to be a beautiful thing for the market as the market is finally in a place to absorb it and help kids. As long as we don't burn the house down in the meantime, I think we're going to be very happy about the choices that are emerging.

Michael Horn

That's why you are the man. Jeff Livingston, founder, CEO of ED Solutions, thank you so much for joining us and shedding light on a market that is at last changing in a dynamic way. Really appreciate and all you tuning in. We'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

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