Most EdTech companies treat press releases like product announcements. They list features, mention the funding round, and send it to a generic distribution list. Then they wonder why journalists ignore them.
The problem isn’t the press release format. It’s that most EdTech founders write for investors and miss the audience that matters: teachers, parents, and the reporters who cover education. A reporter at EdSurge receives 200+ pitches per week. The ones that get opened lead with classroom impact, not Series A valuations.
In 2025, EdSurge’s editor noted that fewer than 10% of EdTech press releases they received included a quote from an actual educator. The rest quoted CEOs talking about market opportunity. That single detail explains why most EdTech press releases fail. This guide fixes that.
The Three-Audience Problem
When you write an EdTech press release, you’re writing through journalists to their readers. In education, those readers include teachers evaluating tools for their classroom, parents assessing their child’s school, and administrators budgeting for the next fiscal year.
Teachers don’t care about your AI model’s precision rate. They care whether the tool saves them grading time so they can spend those hours actually knowing their students. Parents don’t care about your adaptive learning algorithm. They care whether it helps their kid pass algebra. Administrators care about cost per student, implementation time, and whether adoption requires teacher training they can’t afford.
Journalists know this. A reporter at The74 or EdTech Magazine can spot an edtech press release written for VCs in the first sentence. The language shifts to investor-speak, the metrics focus on scale rather than outcomes, and the quote comes from your CEO talking about “transforming the future of learning.”
An edtech press release that works inverts this order. You lead with the teacher or student benefit, ground it in specific numbers that educators recognize, and get your quote from someone who teaches or leads a school.
Lead With the Benefit, Not the Feature
This is where most EdTech companies go wrong. Here’s the typical opening:
“XYZ Learning launches AI-powered adaptive platform designed to personalize student outcomes at scale.”
Now here’s what actually matters to a journalist’s audience:
“Teachers at Lincoln High School report spending 3 fewer hours per week on grading since adopting XYZ Learning, freeing them to provide direct written feedback to each student.”
Both sentences describe the same product. The second starts with what a human experiences, not what the technology does. That’s the difference between an edtech press release that gets read and one that gets deleted.
Your opening paragraph should answer one question: What changes for teachers, students, or parents? Make the change specific. Not “improves test scores” but “increased math assignment completion by 18% across 340 students.” Not “saves time” but “reduced administrative work by 2 hours per week for a department of 24 teachers.”
This isn’t exaggeration. It’s translation. Your product has real capabilities. Your job is converting those capabilities into the terms educators use when deciding whether a tool is worth their limited time and budget.
Pick One Data Point and Own It
EdTech press releases often pack three or four statistics into the opening paragraph. Test score improvements, time savings, engagement metrics, cost reduction. This creates noise. Journalists skim past dense stat blocks. Teachers reading the article don’t know which number actually matters.
Pick one data point. Make it concrete. Make it defensible.
“87% of students showed improvement in pre-algebra competency after 8 weeks” is stronger than “significant learning gains.” “Teachers saved an average of 156 minutes per week on grading” is stronger than “considerable time savings.” “Per-student tool costs dropped from $12 to $4 annually” is stronger than “cost-effective pricing model.”
The data point should answer the question that educators ask first: Will this work for my students? Not whether the technology is sophisticated, but whether the impact is real, specific, and reproducible.
If you don’t have this data yet, you’re not ready for a press release. You’re ready for a product announcement on your blog. Press releases earn coverage by proving impact, not by describing features.
Get a Real Quote From an Educator
This matters more than most EdTech founders realize.
Here’s what fails: “This platform represents a significant step forward in personalized learning, and we’re excited to partner with schools to unlock their potential,” said Jane Smith, CEO.
Teachers stop reading. They assume the quote was written by your marketing team and inserted into the CEO’s mouth. They’re correct.
Here’s what works: “I stopped spending my evenings grading worksheets and started actually knowing which concepts my students struggle with. That changed how I teach,” said Maria Rodriguez, 7th-grade math teacher at Lincoln High School.
This quote came from a real teacher using your product. It’s specific. It describes an actual change in her daily practice. A journalist reads it and thinks, “That’s the story.” A parent reads it and thinks, “Maybe my kid’s school should know about this tool.”
If you don’t have quotes like this, you don’t have an edtech press release ready. Go back and get your product into classrooms first. Get teachers using it for at least one semester. Collect genuine feedback. Then write the release.
Your CEO gets a quote too, but it comes later in the release and focuses on mission, not impact. The educator quote carries the emotional weight. The CEO quote provides the business context.
Time Your Release to the School Calendar
EdTech press releases have natural windows. Miss them and journalists may not cover your announcement until the news cycle aligns with school operations.
August and September are back-to-school season. Teachers are planning curricula, administrators are buying tools, and education reporters are covering the transition from summer break. If your product helps with student onboarding, classroom management, or curriculum delivery, this is your window. EdSurge typically runs 40% more EdTech coverage in September than any other month.
January opens the spring semester. Schools have remaining budget to spend before fiscal year end. Second semester brings new class compositions and adjusted curricula. Teachers are open to changing tools that didn’t work well in the fall. This is when curriculum-focused and assessment tools get the most reporter attention.
March through May is summer program season. Schools are planning summer enrichment, remediation, and bridge programs. If your tool works for compressed sessions or small-group instruction, pitch during this window.
Avoid June and July unless you have a major funding announcement. Education reporters shift to higher education coverage, summer assignments, and back-to-school preview pieces. Your product launch press release will compete with fewer stories but also reach fewer engaged readers.
Target Reporters Who Cover Education
Many EdTech companies send press releases to generic tech reporters or local beat reporters who cover school board meetings. Both approaches waste your pitch.
Build a targeted media list across three tiers.
National education outlets should be your primary targets. EdSurge, The74, EdTech Magazine, Education Dive, and K-12 Dive all have reporters whose beat is education technology. These journalists understand the ecosystem, know the competitive landscape, and reach administrators and teachers nationally. Build a list of 10-15 reporters at these outlets and read their last five stories before pitching.
Education-focused tech reporters form your second tier. TechCrunch covers education as a vertical. The Information covers EdTech deals. Forbes has an education section. These reporters reach founders and investors but also attract school decision-makers. When TechCrunch covers an EdTech product, superintendent inboxes light up with parent emails asking about it.
Local education reporters create the most actionable coverage. If you have a school district actively using your product, the local reporter covering that district can tell a ground-level story about adoption. Local coverage often leads to regional and national pickup because larger outlets monitor local education news for trend stories.
Build your list of 30-50 reporters across these tiers. Read what each person has published in the last three months. If a reporter just wrote about adaptive learning, they’re the right person for your adaptive learning product release. If they’ve been covering school funding, pitch your cost-savings angle to them specifically.
Structure That Gets Coverage
Your edtech press release should follow a structure that answers journalist questions in the order they ask them.
Open with the benefit and the school using your product. “Teachers at Lincoln High School are spending 2 hours less per week on grading since adopting XYZ Learning’s assessment platform.” This tells the journalist: here’s the story, here’s the proof, here’s a school I can call for comment.
Expand the benefit with your data point. Include context: how many teachers, which grade levels, what subject, how long they’ve used the product. “The school’s 24 algebra teachers have used the platform for one semester. During that period, assignment completion rates increased 18% and teacher-reported grading time dropped from 9 hours to 7 hours per week.”
Insert your educator quote. The strongest quote describes a personal experience, not a product endorsement.
Provide brief product context. One paragraph explaining what the product does and how it works. Keep this to 3-4 sentences. Journalists can find feature details on your website.
Explain why now. What’s the news hook? A new feature launch, a district expansion, a research milestone, a partnership with a school system. “The platform now supports three new state math standards” or “The company expanded into special education classrooms for the first time.”
Close with your CEO quote (one sentence about mission), then your boilerplate. The whole thing should be 400-600 words.
Common Mistakes That Kill EdTech Coverage
Leading with your company’s vision instead of a teacher’s experience is the most common failure. Journalists need a human story, not a corporate narrative.
Including three statistics when one would hit harder dilutes your impact. Reporters extract one number for their headline. Make it easy for them by choosing the strongest one yourself.
Quoting your CEO on learning outcomes instead of an educator destroys credibility. CEOs should speak to business direction. Educators should speak to classroom impact.
Using vague language like “transforms learning” without a specific example gives journalists nothing to work with. Replace every abstract claim with a concrete detail.
Sending the same edtech press release to 500 reporters without personalization signals that you don’t read their work. Customize the first two sentences of your pitch email for each reporter based on their recent coverage.
The companies that get consistent EdTech coverage treat press releases as journalism aids, not marketing collateral. They give reporters everything needed to write a story: a human angle, a specific data point, an accessible source, and a clear news hook. Do that, and your next edtech press release won’t end up in the delete folder. It’ll end up in print.