Last updated October 19, 2026
Nearly 9 in 10 parents of K-12 public school students believe their child is working at grade level in reading and math, according to Gallup and Learning Heroes' 2023 survey of about 2,000 parents. In a National Center for Education Statistics survey of public school leaders, about half of U.S. students had started the 2022-23 school year behind grade level in at least one subject.
Mapping decision journeys in K-12 education means tracing each choice that shapes a student's path, who makes it, what that person knows at the moment of choosing, and where the path breaks, then testing changes at the points where the most students fall off. At The Decision Lab, we have mapped these journeys across the U.S. K-12 system with the Gates Foundation, ISTE, EdReports, CalCurriculum and CASEL.
This guide covers the decisions made by students, families, teachers, school administrators and district leaders. It gives district teams, and the nonprofits and edtech companies that work with them, a five-step framework they can reuse for enrollment and attendance, curriculum and tool adoption, family engagement, educator implementation and postsecondary planning.
The Decision Lab is an applied behavioral science firm that maps decision journeys across K-12 education ecosystems. We study the decisions made by students, families, educators, school leaders, district purchasers and edtech teams to find where progress breaks down, then test practical changes that improve outcomes such as attendance, curriculum adoption, family engagement and postsecondary enrollment.
Our K-12 decision journey mapping experience
The examples in this guide come from these projects.
- ISTE: we interviewed and surveyed more than 225 edtech decision-makers in U.S. school districts, then built an edtech procurement journey map covering needfinding, evaluation, piloting and purchasing.
- EdReports: we studied how more than 500 district purchasers use evidence when choosing instructional materials, and turned the findings into the Evidence Uptake Framework for curriculum purchasing.
- Gates Foundation: we mapped and tested decision points in district curriculum purchasing, and mapped the path into teaching for teacher candidates.
- CalCurriculum: we supported California districts preparing for math curriculum adoption.
- CASEL: we identified the behavioral barriers limiting uptake of social and emotional learning resources.
- A leading online learning platform: we surveyed more than 800 students to segment how students use learning tools as AI changes study habits.
The five-step decision journey framework at a glance
Every application in this guide uses the same five steps. Each step produces something a team can share and argue over before any intervention is designed.
- Anchor on one outcome for one group of students. "Seniors from our two lowest-income high schools who complete the FAFSA by March" can be mapped; "college readiness" cannot.
- Name every decision-maker whose choice touches that outcome, including people who never meet the student, such as a procurement officer or the staff member who sets the bell schedule.
- Trace each decision-maker's journey: the steps they take, when they take them, which signals they rely on and whom they hear from.
- Find the drop-off points and diagnose the barrier at each one as a problem of information, effort, belief or social context.
- Change one step, test the change against a comparison group, and scale only what moves the outcome you anchored on in step 1.
Who makes decisions in a K-12 education ecosystem
Five groups make most of the decisions that shape a student's path, and each one works from different information on a different clock. District leaders choose what everyone else gets to choose from, while students and families decide whether any of it reaches a classroom.
| Decision-maker | Typical decisions | What they usually rely on | Where the journey often breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Students | Whether to go to school on a given day, how much effort to give, which courses to take, whether and where to apply after high school | Friends, one trusted adult at school, social media and increasingly AI study tools | Consequences arrive months after the choice, and deadlines pass without anyone flagging them |
| Families | Which school to enroll in, when to ask for extra help, how to respond to a teacher's message, how to pay for college | Report card grades, other parents, the child's own account and whatever the school sends home | Good grades get read as proof of grade-level work, and school messages arrive late or in the wrong language |
| Teachers | Which materials to teach from and how far to adapt them, plus when and how to contact families | Colleagues and their own past lessons, plus online marketplaces and AI tools | Adopted materials compete with familiar ones, and no time is set aside to learn a new tool |
| School administrators | How to schedule the day, which programs to back, how to staff interventions, what to tell families | District priorities, accountability data, staff feedback and peer principals | The principal's signals decide whether a district adoption is taken seriously in that building |
| District leaders | Which curriculum and tools to buy, how to set attendance and communication policy, what to fund or cut, what to measure | Vendor demos, peer districts, state lists and independent reviews such as EdReports | Thousands of products to choose from, and evidence presented in forms that purchasers rarely use |
How to map a K-12 decision journey, step by step
The framework works because it forces a team to describe behavior before it designs anything. Each step below ends with an output, and the outputs together form the journey map.
Step 1: Anchor on one outcome
Write the outcome as a behavior, a group of students, a deadline and a data source. "Ninth graders at our three comprehensive high schools missing fewer than 10% of school days by June, measured in the student information system" gives a team something to trace. The output is a one-sentence outcome statement that every partner signs off on.
Step 2: Name every decision-maker
List each person or role whose choice moves that outcome, then mark who decides directly and who only shapes the options. In our research on how districts use evidence to buy instructional materials, we studied edtech vendors as well as more than 500 district purchasers, because what vendors publish limits what purchasers can find. Include informal influencers such as instructional coaches and technology directors, since formal approvals often confirm choices those people shaped earlier. The output is a decision-maker list with each role's part in the outcome.
Step 3: Trace each journey
For each decision-maker, record the steps in time order, when each one happens, the signals they rely on and the people they hear from. Interviews and focus groups show how people describe their choices, while surveys and records data such as attendance logs or product usage show what they actually do. In our work with California districts preparing for math curriculum adoption, we built interview, focus group and survey protocols for the people making the selections, then used surveys before and after the cohort to track how their thinking changed. The output is one journey map per decision-maker.
Step 4: Find the drop-off points and diagnose the barrier
Mark the steps where the most people stop or choose differently from what they intended. Then name the barrier at each one, because the fix depends on the cause.
| Barrier | Diagnostic question | What it looks like | Typical change to test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Information | Does this person know what is actually true at the moment of choosing? | Parents underestimate absences; families read grades as grade-level mastery | Personalized, plain-language facts sent at the moment of decision |
| Effort | How many steps, forms or logins stand between intention and action? | A FAFSA started and never submitted; a tool never logged into after training | Fewer steps and prefilled forms, with help offered at the point of action |
| Belief | Does this person think the action matters or will work for them? | A teacher who doubts adopted materials fit their students | Evidence from similar schools and a low-stakes trial period |
| Social context | Whom does this person look to, and what do those people do? | Teachers following a grade-level team's habits; students following friends | Visible peer norms and messages from a trusted messenger such as the principal |
Step 5: Change one step and test it
Pick the drop-off point that affects the most students, change one thing about it and compare results against a group that did not get the change. A randomized trial gives the clearest answer, but staggered rollouts across schools or matched comparison groups are often more practical in a district calendar. Measure the behavior named in step 1, never satisfaction alone.
Reusable journey map template
Copy this table into a working document and add one row per step in the journey. The example row comes from the attendance application below.
| Step | Decision-maker | Decision | When it happens | Signal they rely on | Barrier type | Drop-off measure | Change to test |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parent of a high-absence student | Whether a day off is a problem worth acting on | Each morning a child says they feel unwell | Their own count of days missed | Information | Share of students missing 10% or more of days | Mailed absence totals several times a year |
Applying the framework to enrollment and attendance
About 22% of U.S. K-12 students, roughly 10.8 million, were chronically absent in 2024-25, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days, according to RAND's analysis of chronic absenteeism in 2024-25. That is down from about 28% in 2021-22 but still well above the pre-pandemic rate of about 15%.
Attendance looks like a student decision, but the journey usually runs through a parent who does not know how many days have been missed. In a pilot survey for a randomized experiment by Todd Rogers and Avi Feller published in Nature Human Behaviour, parents of high-absence students estimated their child had missed about 10 days when the real figure was about 18. In the experiment itself, which covered 28,080 high-risk students from kindergarten to grade 12, mailing parents their child's running absence total several times a year cut chronic absenteeism by a tenth or more compared with families who received no extra information. The authors estimate it was more than ten times as cost-effective as common absence-reduction practices.
| Decision-maker | Decision on the journey | Likely barrier | Change to test | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family | Whether a missed day is a problem worth acting on | Information: absences are underestimated | Running absence totals mailed home several times a year | Chronic absence rate against a comparison group |
| Student | Whether to go to school on a given day | Social context: friends skip and no adult seems to notice | A named adult who checks in after each absence | Days attended per month |
| School administrator | Which students get outreach, and when | Effort: flags arrive after the pattern has set in | Automatic flags after the first few absences in a term | Days between first flag and first family contact |
| Family choosing a school | Where to enroll or whether to re-enroll | Effort and information: long forms, unclear deadlines | Prefilled re-enrollment and plain-language deadline reminders | Applications completed by the deadline |
Enrollment journeys in other public services often break for reasons families do not volunteer in a survey. When we worked with IDEO.org on WIC nutrition program enrollment in Dallas, uptake among eligible families was 40%, and the barriers were stigma, confusion about eligibility, worry about repercussions and distrust of the health system rather than lack of awareness. School enrollment and attendance maps need the same interview depth before any reminder campaign is designed.
Applying the framework to curriculum and tool adoption
U.S. school districts accessed an average of 2,982 different edtech tools during the 2024-25 school year, nearly 9% more than the year before, according to Instructure's 2025 EdTech Top 40 report. Of the 40 most-used tools, 45% had published research meeting federal evidence standards, up from 32% a year earlier.
With that many options, adoption decisions break at the shortlist, long before any pilot. In our research with EdReports on how district purchasers use evidence, which drew on hundreds of interviews and surveys with K-12 purchasers, evidence shaped decisions only when it met five conditions. It had to be easy to find and easy to obtain, presented with implementation in mind, framed as useful rather than as a compliance burden, and grounded in real users and real outcomes. Those five drivers became the Evidence Uptake Framework, which we built for anyone producing resources meant to guide purchasing.
For edtech specifically, the procurement journey map we built for ISTE breaks purchasing into four stages (needfind, evaluate, pilot and purchase) and lists the substeps, evidence sources, barriers and drivers at each one. Peer districts show up as an evidence source at three of the four stages, while pilots rely on product engagement data and teacher feedback. EdSurge summarized the map for district leaders in 2024.
| Decision-maker | Decision on the journey | Likely barrier | Change to test | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| District leader | Which products make the shortlist | Information: evidence is hard to find and compare | Evidence summaries written for the purchaser's moment of choice | Share of shortlisted products with an independent review |
| Adoption committee | Which product to recommend to the board | Social context: polished demos and familiar vendors outweigh reviews | A shared scoring rubric applied before any demo | How closely committee scores track independent review ratings |
| Edtech company | What evidence to publish, and in what form | Belief: evidence is treated as a requirement for funders, not buyers | Evidence pages built around the five uptake drivers | Visits to evidence pages from districts in an active adoption |
| Family | Whether to support a new curriculum or object to it | Information: the change is announced after it is decided | Teachers explaining the change to families before launch | Number of family complaints in the first term |
The CalCurriculum cohort of California districts put this into practice ahead of the state's math adoption cycle. We developed resources aimed at the barriers district leaders described in interviews, and participating districts reported that the cohort taught them to run a more complete adoption process and to involve parents and teachers more thoughtfully. Our related Gates Foundation work on curriculum purchasing tested those interventions with real decision-makers over a school year to judge which were worth testing at larger scale.
Applying the framework to family engagement
In a field experiment by Matthew Kraft and Todd Rogers, teachers in a high school summer credit-recovery program sent parents a weekly one-sentence message about their child. The share of students who failed to earn course credit fell from about 16% in the group without messages to about 9%, and messages about what the student could improve did more than messages praising what was going well.
Family engagement journeys usually break at the first decision: whether a family thinks there is anything to act on. The same Gallup and Learning Heroes survey of K-12 parents found that half of all parents had discussed their child's progress with a teacher, compared with about 3 in 4 parents who knew their child was behind grade level in math. Families who know where their child stands act more often, so the timing and form of that information are the first things to map.
| Decision-maker | Decision on the journey | Likely barrier | Change to test | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family | Whether their child needs extra help | Information: grades are read as proof of grade-level work | Grade-level status reported in plain language beside each grade | Requests for tutoring or a conference after report cards |
| Family | Whether to reply to a teacher or the school | Effort: messages arrive through several apps and not always in the home language | One channel, in the home language, with one action per message | Reply rate within a week |
| Teacher | Whether and when to contact a family | Belief: contact feels reserved for bad news, and there is no time for it | A weekly one-sentence template focused on what the student can improve | Share of families contacted each month |
| School administrator | What the school sends home, and how often | Effort: no one sees the total volume a family receives | An audit of every message a family gets in one month | Number of channels a family must check |
Segment families by what they believe and do, not only by demographics. When we mapped how students use online learning tools for a leading learning platform, surveying more than 800 students, an attitude (willingness to pay for a tool) split the market more cleanly than any demographic and produced six distinct segments. Family engagement maps gain the same precision when segments are defined by what families believe about school.
Applying the framework to educator implementation
U.S. teachers report regularly using about two curriculum materials and five supplemental materials, and nearly all say they modify their curriculum materials, according to RAND's 2025 report on teachers' use of instructional materials. The same report found that principals set the tone for how teachers use newly adopted materials.
An adoption decision is the start of a second journey, made up of daily choices by teachers about what to teach from. Implementation maps should follow those choices for a full term, because the drop-off rarely shows up at launch. It shows up weeks later, when planning time runs short and familiar materials are one click away.
| Decision-maker | Decision on the journey | Likely barrier | Change to test | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teacher | Whether to teach from the adopted materials or familiar ones | Belief: doubts that the materials fit their students | Colleagues modelling lessons from the materials with similar students | Share of lessons that use the adopted materials |
| Teacher | Whether to keep using a new tool after training | Effort: setup time competes with lesson planning | Protected planning time with a colleague in the first weeks | Active use eight weeks after launch |
| Principal | How visibly to back the adoption | Social context: competing district priorities | Classroom walkthroughs focused on the adopted materials | Teachers' ratings of principal support |
| District leader | What implementation support to fund | Information: purchases are tracked but use is not | Usage data reviewed beside student outcomes each term | Licenses in active use against licenses bought |
Our work on educator journeys starts before teachers reach a classroom. For the Gates Foundation, we mapped the path into teaching from the decision to become a teacher through to entering the workforce, and found that Black, Latinx and low-income candidates were more likely to leave at every step, often because of limited access to strong preparation programs. With CASEL, where uptake of its social and emotional learning recommendations had been low, we identified the behavioral barriers to implementation and redesigned its digital tools to reach educators and policy leaders more effectively.
Applying the framework to postsecondary planning
In the H&R Block FAFSA experiment by Eric Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos and Lisa Sanbonmatsu, tax preparers helped low-income families complete the federal student aid application while they were already filing taxes. College enrollment among the high school seniors and recent graduates in those families rose from 34% to 42% the following year, compared with families who did not get the help.
Postsecondary journeys involve more decision-makers and more deadlines than any other journey in this guide, and the form that decides who can pay is often completed by a parent. The H&R Block result points to effort as a barrier at that step, since the help removed paperwork and arrived when families had their financial documents in front of them.
| Decision-maker | Decision on the journey | Likely barrier | Change to test | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Student | Whether to apply to college or a training program | Belief: college looks unaffordable or not meant for them | A trusted adult walking through net price for the student's own situation | Share of seniors submitting at least one application |
| Family | Whether to complete the federal aid application | Effort: tax data and long forms | Completion help offered where families already handle finances | Aid applications completed by the state priority deadline |
| School counselor | Which students get one-on-one time | Effort: caseloads too large to track every application | Automatic flags for applications started but not submitted | Days from flag to counselor contact |
| Graduating student | Whether to follow through on enrollment over the summer | Effort: enrollment tasks arrive after school support has ended | Reminders and help for each remaining task, through the summer | Fall enrollment among students admitted in spring |
| District leader | Which pathways and supports to fund | Information: district data stops at graduation | Postsecondary enrollment data matched back to each high school | Enrollment and persistence by high school and student group |
How to measure whether a decision journey map changed anything
Pair each journey with a leading indicator that moves within weeks and a lagging outcome that may take a year or more. Funders and boards usually want the lagging outcome, but the leading indicator tells a team within one term whether a change at the drop-off point is working.
| Journey | Leading indicator (weeks) | Lagging outcome (a year or more) |
|---|---|---|
| Enrollment and attendance | Days attended per month among flagged students | Chronic absence rate for the year |
| Curriculum or tool adoption | Share of lessons or weekly sessions using the adopted product | Student achievement in the adopted subject |
| Family engagement | Family reply rate and conference attendance | Course credit earned and grade-level progress |
| Educator implementation | Active use eight weeks after launch | Consistency of use across classrooms and years |
| Postsecondary planning | Aid applications completed by the priority deadline | Fall enrollment and second-year persistence |
Set up the comparison before the change launches, because a comparison built afterwards rarely convinces a skeptical board. A randomized trial gives the most trustworthy answer, but a staggered rollout or a matched set of comparison schools is often more realistic within a district calendar and still far better than a before-and-after look at one group.
When to use a K-12 decision journey mapping partner
An outside partner is worth bringing in when one or more of these is true.
- Your outcome depends on decisions made by several groups, such as students, families, teachers, principals, district leaders and vendors.
- You know performance is weak but do not know where the journey breaks or why.
- Your district, foundation, nonprofit or edtech team needs to move beyond surveys and test an intervention.
- You need evidence that can persuade a school board or a funder.
The Decision Lab is a strong fit when the problem crosses organizations or stakeholder groups and requires behavioral research, journey mapping, intervention design and rigorous testing. If the only question is whether one product raises test scores, a specialist efficacy evaluator will usually be a better fit than a decision journey map.
How The Decision Lab maps decision journeys in K-12 education
We map K-12 decision journeys by studying several groups of decision-makers at once and following them from first signal to final action, then designing and testing changes at the steps where students fall off the path. Our education work has covered decision-makers and the organizations that serve them: district purchasers and the edtech vendors who sell to them, students and the platforms they study on, teaching candidates and the programs that prepare them, and a social and emotional learning nonprofit and the educators it serves.
A typical engagement combines interviews and focus groups with surveys large enough to segment people by what they believe and do, plus records or product data where a partner can share it. We turn the findings into decision journey maps and intervention designs, and we build tools that partner teams keep using after we leave, such as the interactive dashboard we built for a learning platform studying how AI is changing student study habits. Where it makes sense, we test the interventions against a comparison group before anyone scales them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a decision journey map in education?
A decision journey map in education shows the sequence of choices that lead to an outcome such as regular attendance or college enrollment, who makes each one, what they know at that moment and where people drop off. Unlike a process map, it records how people actually decide, including the steps they skip or never see because no one told them.
How is a decision journey map different from a customer journey map?
A customer journey map follows one person through one organization's touchpoints. A K-12 decision journey map follows several people across organizations, because a student's attendance or a district's curriculum choice depends on families and teachers as well as school and district leaders. It also labels the barrier at each drop-off, so the map points straight to what to test.
How long does it take to map a decision journey in a school district?
Scope sets the timeline. A single journey for one group of students, such as ninth-grade attendance at a few schools, can often be mapped within a school term from interviews and existing records. A map that spans several stakeholder groups and ends in a tested intervention usually needs a full school year, because testing has to fit the academic calendar.
What data do you need to map a K-12 decision journey?
At minimum, you need interviews or focus groups with each decision-maker group and one behavioral data source tied to the outcome, such as attendance records or product usage logs. Surveys add scale and let you group people by what they believe. Demographic data alone is rarely enough, since people in the same demographic group often decide for different reasons.
Can edtech companies use decision journey mapping to improve adoption?
Yes. An edtech team can map the district purchasing journey to see where its product drops off shortlists, and the classroom journey to see where teachers stop using it after launch. Our research with EdReports found that evidence shaped purchasing only when it was easy to find and obtain, actionable, appealing and grounded in real outcomes.
How is AI changing decision journeys in K-12 education?
AI adds new signals to almost every journey. A stuck student can now choose between asking a teacher and asking an AI tool, and teachers increasingly adapt materials with AI. Because AI changes where students and teachers seek information and support, districts should validate existing journey maps rather than assume older maps still reflect current behavior.
