SLED Adoption Index

The benchmark for institutional technology adoption.

Compare your company to the market. Like the NASDAQ — for institutional technology.

Composite Index

67.5

as of 2026-Q1

↓ 33% from peak

2020202220242026

The 2020–2022 peak reflects $616B in federal stimulus deployed across all three SLED verticals. The decline measures what happens when it stops.

7,000+ vendors tracked • 40,086 entities indexed • 240B relationships analyzed

What is SLED?

State & Local Government + Education

The $200B+ institutional technology market serving school districts, state agencies, local governments, and universities. 40,086 institutional entities indexed. Adoption signal on 7,000+ technology vendors.

The 2020–2024 cycle reflects the largest federal investment in institutional technology in U.S. history. All three SLED verticals received unprecedented one-time funding. The index peaked in early 2022 as stimulus-funded deployments reached maximum saturation.

$190B

ESSER I/II/III

K-12 schools and districts

$76B

HEERF I/II/III

Colleges and universities

$350B

SLFRF

State and local government agencies

The question isn’t “why did the index decline?” — it’s “which vendors retained customers when the free money stopped?”

Index by Vertical

Three markets. One index. Each with distinct dynamics.

K-12 Education

69.8

138 vendors. Largest vertical. Website consolidation accelerating.

Government

48.4

41 vendors. Steepest decline. Legacy platforms aging out.

Higher Education

72.0

73 vendors. Most resilient. Longer procurement cycles.

The Signal Leads the Financials

Validated against 10 public and private companies. 7 show statistically significant correlation (p < 0.05) between our signal and reported revenue or customer growth. Signal leads by 1–4 quarters.

Correlations range from r=0.56 (decline detection) to r=0.93 (growth prediction). Validated across growth, stable, and declining companies — including one that continued signaling through 18 months of zero public filings.

Institutions churn slowly. Revenue holds via price increases while the customer base quietly erodes. We measure the erosion directly.

7/10

companies validated

r=0.56–0.93

correlation range

+1–4Q

signal leads revenue

67% of PE-backed vendors are declining

22 of 25 PE-backed SLED vendors projected to exit by 2028.

6 are growing. What separates them?

Why This Is Hard

Building institutional adoption intelligence requires solving problems that general-purpose tools cannot.

Entity Resolution

One district. 200 schools. 47 domains. One budget.

Mapping fragmented institutional web presence to authoritative budget entities across three markets.

Terarow Scale

240 billion relationships. 49 crawls. 9 years.

Processing web-scale data with temporal depth that cannot be replicated from a standing start.

Structural Web Changes

The web is consolidating. We account for it.

Separating real vendor decline from institutional site consolidation. Most providers cannot.

Vendor Acquisition Resolution

SchoolDude becomes Dude Solutions becomes Brightly becomes Siemens.

Tracking continuous signal through the M&A blender.

What You Learn When You Go Deeper

Where Does Your Company Stand?

Name your competitors. We'll show you where you stand — and where they're headed.

For SLED vendors, PE firms, and credit investors.

We’ll include their signal in your briefing.

We’ll respond within 24 hours with your personalized signal snapshot.