Somewhere out there, a school district is seven months into a new EdTech contract, their teachers can't find the login page, and the last email from the vendor was an auto-reply wishing them a great school year.
This happens more than anyone wants to admit.
Dylan Hoffman, our VP of Operations and Customer Success, has made it his personal mission to make sure it never happens on his watch. Since taking over customer success in fall 2023, he's helped push Subject's net retention to 140%+. For districts, that number matters: retention only clears 100% when existing partners are choosing to expand — more programs, students, use cases — because they saw our platform delivering. (Most vendors are quietly hoping you forget to cancel.)
Keep reading to see what district leaders should be requiring from every EdTech partner, starting from the very first meeting.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Don’t let your EdTech vendor off the hook
Reading Rainbow: Kids in charge + phone drama
From Our Desk: Customized reading and college recruiting
Watch of the Week: 7 lessons from one italian plumber
Don’t let your EdTech vendor off the hook
Dylan's team manages hundreds of accounts. A signed contract is their starting gun, not their finish line, and they run three specific checkpoints before the school year hits full speed.
Dylan treats every new (and renewed) partnership as the beginning of three “day one” conversations that determine whether a district stays, grows, or eventually becomes a cautionary tale at the next EdTech conference.
If you're signing contracts with EdTech vendors and want something more useful than hope, here's exactly what those three “day ones” checkpoints look like for district leaders:
Day One: The Kickoff
Before features, timelines, or anything else, Dylan's team asks the one question most vendors skip: What broke with the last platform?
The answer shapes everything. Curriculum that hadn't been updated since the Obama years? Teachers who stopped logging in by October and nobody caught it for months? A support contact who evaporated after the contract was countersigned? Some might brush these off as background details, but they become the vital accountability checklist for the year ahead.
If you're evaluating a new EdTech partner right now, pay close attention to how specific their opening questions are. Don’t fall for the "Tell us about your goals!" as due diligence. It's small talk with a slide deck.
Day Two: In-Person Training
"There's an exponential curve from a learning standpoint when we go on site versus setting up an infinite number of Zoom meetings," Dylan says. His team travels. They show up to the building, meet teachers in person, and run training face-to-face. Skeptical teachers (and there will be skeptical ones … this is their fourth platform in five years) aren't moved by someone enthusiastic on a laptop screen. They're moved when someone physically walks through the door.
Before you sign anything, ask whether in-person training is standard or optional. If it's optional, ask yourself what else is.
Day Three: Students Log In
The first day students actually log in is when most EdTech rollouts either prove themselves or start quietly falling apart. Roster didn't sync. Two teachers joined last minute. A student can't find the right course and thirty kids are watching.
Dylan's team commits to a ten-minute-or-less response on launch day — a specific person, not a queue, who already knows the district's setup, teachers and configuration. Before any new platform goes live in your buildings, get the specifics: who is that person, what's their direct contact, and what exactly happens if something breaks at 7:45am. A real answer looks like a name and a phone number. Heaven forbid you get directed to a help center URL.
Not working with us yet? Chat with our team. (We promise the first reply won’t be an auto-reply.)
NYC Wants to Pay Kids to Run Their Own Schools (Sort Of): New York City is proposing that middle and elementary school students join their school's leadership teams — and get paid $300 to do it. High schoolers have had a seat at the table since 2004, but a quarter of those schools still don't have any student reps assigned. Apparently it took 22 years to consider asking younger kids too. Better late than never, we guess.
The Mentor Effect: A new teacher's account of finding a mentor describes the shift from "surviving the mechanics of lesson planning and classroom management" to actually thriving in the profession. A good mentor answers the hard questions AND changes the entire trajectory. Teachers deserve the same "someone showed up and helped me" experience they try to give their students.
Teacher Teams Actually Work: Edutopia's latest on high-functioning teacher teams makes the case that real collaboration — the kind where teachers bring actual student work samples to review together and plan who needs to be retaught what — beats the typical "here's a professional development binder, good luck" model. Turns out when teachers have time to actually talk about their craft with each other, outcomes improve!
Parents See the Phone Problem. Now What?: Education Week reports that the conversation around student social media habits is moving away from a "just say no" stance toward helping parents figure out what to actually do with screens rather than just avoiding them. Which is useful, because "just say no" has a famously good track record with teenagers.
And that's a wrap on conference season! We talked with a lot of you and heard a lot of great stories from the hallways. Thanks for stopping by our booths. We'll be back with more from the road soon.
Your class might have five different reading levels in it right now. Maybe more. Here's how to configure reading levels in our platform across students, and stay tuned for more product highlights on our LinkedIn.
Baker Charters School summer programming event was a HIT! Recap here.
If you have a student dreaming about playing in college, or maybe a kid of your own, this one's for you. Our CEO Mike Vilardo sat down with Coach Ferber, who has spent years developing some of the best young baseball players in the country, to talk about what the college recruiting process actually looks like for student-athletes.
Our pick of the week: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Why We’re Obsessed: Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach, and Yoshi travel across the stars to stop Bowser Jr.'s plot to drain a cosmic guardian's power and destroy the universe. Basically, it's a movie about found family, the lengths people go to protect others, and the importance of showing up for the people who need you (which, honestly, tracks for a newsletter about education). Also it has Yoshi and is extremely fun.
Recommended lesson integration:
The physics of low gravity and orbital motion: Mario floating helplessly across an asteroid because he jumped too hard is your entire Newton's First Law unit, delivered by a man in red overalls. Students calculate how high they could theoretically jump on one of Bowser Jr.'s planets, then figure out why the answer is terrifying.
Writing villain origin stories that actually hold up: Bowser Jr. doesn't want chaos for its own sake. He wants to restore the family name. Students write a villain whose motivation genuinely makes emotional sense. No "I just want to watch the world burn," no evil monologue explaining the whole plan before finishing the job, and absolutely no motivation that is just "being mean." If the class can't argue the villain's side with a straight face, send it back.
The ethics of inherited guilt and responsibility: Does Bowser Jr. owe it to his father to finish what he started? Is loyalty to your family the same thing as loyalty to what's right? Students argue both sides in writing. This is essentially Succession Season 4 in animated form and your students have absolutely no idea they're doing philosophy right now. Keep that between you and the lesson plan.
Two leadership styles via Mario vs. Luigi: Mario charges into every situation with maximum confidence and absolutely zero plan, like a man who has never once stopped to read the room. Luigi spends 85% of the film in a moderate-to-severe anxiety spiral, then shows up exactly when it matters most with the one thing Mario didn't think of. Students map both styles, argue which one they'd actually want in their corner during a real crisis, and defend the answer in writing. At least three students will write a genuinely impassioned defense of Luigi and honestly? They might be onto something.
Thank you for joining us for another edition of On The Subject. We’ll see you again in a week, with more stories from the hallways.
The Subject Team
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