From Vendors to Partners: Shared Accountability for Real Outcomes

What happens when districts stop buying products and start building outcome-driven partnerships? A new contracting model offers a glimpse of a different future, one where funding follows impact, accountability is shared, and student learning sits at the center of every decision.Instead of transactional, à la carte purchasing, these models tie a meaningful portion of funding to student outcomes and make districts and providers jointly responsible for results, implementation, and continuous improvement. This shift changes not just how contracts are written, but how partners work together, aligning incentives, clarifying roles, and enabling innovation at scale.In this session, leaders unpack what becomes possible when accountability is shared. Panelists examine how outcome-aligned partnerships drive stronger implementation fidelity, ensure students receive the right dosage of support, and deliver higher levels of student engagement than traditional procurement approaches. They also explore how these models support fiscal transparency, focus resources on students with the greatest needs, and allow systems to course-correct in real time. The conversation probes whether moving from an à la carte mindset to fully integrated, outcome-aligned partnerships is essential to sustaining measurable change in K–12, and what it takes to make these models work at scale.