We made 43,984 calls into US schools and districts for one US textbook company over six weeks. Where a real decision-owner was named, roughly three times out of four it was the district curriculum office — not the school. We mapped who buys, when the window opens, and which gate the money moves through. That map — named buyers, verified by conversation, kept alive by continuous calling — is available to two vendors per state.
Book 20 minutes — we’ll walk your statesEvery claim on this page comes from one six-week calling study into the US K-12 textbook market (7 July – 19 August 2026). Where a number is thin, we say so. We publish our calling research openly — see the 98,518-dial study for how we treat data.
Vendors call principals because directories are full of principals. The market told us, about 600 separate times, that this is the wrong door. In public districts, the decision is owned by the district curriculum office — Curriculum & Instruction, Teaching & Learning — in roughly 75% of the cases where a real owner was named. Purchasing departments only cut the purchase orders. As one buyer put it: “I don’t pick the books, I more or less react to what they pick.”
The most useful sentence in our entire transcript corpus came from a principal: “You’re wasting your time talking to any of the principals — talk to ed services.”
| Segment | Who owns the decision | What a phone call can do |
|---|---|---|
| Public elementary | District curriculum / C&I office | Route you to the district |
| Public high school | Department chairs order in-building | Reach the chair directly |
| Public district | Curriculum / Teaching & Learning directors | Reach the real buyer |
| Private / charter / religious | Head of school, business manager, bookkeeper | Close-range: they genuinely buy |
Private, charter and religious schools are the only segment where the person who answers the phone is routinely the person who spends the money. For public districts, hard gates sit between a call and a sale: state adoption lists, vendor registration portals, purchasing co-ops (BuyBoard, Omnia, 1GPA, Mohave) and state depositories. For that segment, being on the contract is the sale — which is why our map tags each buyer with the gate their money moves through.
This calendar is public knowledge, and we give it away freely — any vendor can read it here. What cannot be looked up anywhere is which specific buyer told us to call back in February, whose adoption cycle turns next year, and whose budget is already spent. That per-account timing layer only exists because someone asked, on the phone, and wrote the answer down.
Our study ran July–August — deliberately the wrong season — and watched weekly lead flow die with the calendar: 30 in week one, 3 by week six. Districts said it themselves, 140 times: “already ordered, we’re all set.” Outreach that starts in July arrives after the money is spent. Vendors who own Q1 access do not have this problem.
Not a database export. A live intelligence asset, in two parts:
What a hand-off means here, precisely: a curriculum or C&I contact who confirmed active purchasing interest within the current buying window, passed to your team while the conversation is fresh. Not a name on a spreadsheet.
And we are precise about what the whole product is: verified access, not closed deals. We find your buyers, prove they answer, and tell you when they are in-window. Your team sells to them. If a vendor wants meetings promised, we are the wrong firm.
Every engagement states its deliverable up front, in the contract: a fixed count of verified, named budget-owners with a stated buying position across your states. No vague “access to our network” language — a number, in writing. Dialing is what we do: see the 98,518-dial study.
We physically call the districts in your states. Past two clients per state — and never two in the same category — coverage quality collapses, so we cap it. First come. On the call we tell you plainly whether your states are open; coverage depth varies by state, and we will show you your states’ real numbers rather than pretend Wyoming is Texas.
Check state availability — book 20 minutesA direct call with Scott Goodman. No slide deck, no obligation — you will leave knowing whether your states are open and what the map holds for them. If your states are taken, we say so and offer the waitlist.
| Static education database | The Alba Buying Map | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Compiled records, refreshed on a schedule | Live phone conversations, refreshed by dialing |
| Tells you | Who held a title when compiled | Who answered this month, and what they said |
| Decision owner | Inferred from title | Named by the district itself, ~600 routing statements |
| Timing | Generic fiscal calendars | Per-account window tags from the buyer’s own mouth |
| Exclusivity | Sold to everyone in your category | Two clients per state |
| Decay | Your problem | Continuously re-verified under retainer |
A directory lists; we dialed. Both have their place, and serious vendors often run both. But when the question is “who do I actually call this quarter, and will they pick up?”, behavioural proof beats a compiled record.
The district curriculum office (C&I / Teaching & Learning) in roughly 75% of the cases where our calls surfaced a named owner. Purchasing cuts the POs; curriculum makes the call. Private, charter and religious schools are the exception — the head of school or business manager genuinely buys. Full breakdown: who buys textbooks in school districts.
Decide February–May, order April–June, budgets refresh July 1, delivery July–August. August is peak for replacement and out-of-print copies of adopted titles. Detail: the K-12 purchasing calendar.
Mostly no. Principals took 61% of our conversations and converted at 1.4%; buyer titles converted at 4.2%. Principals are where textbook outreach goes to die.
No — and we would talk you out of buying it that way. Roughly half the contact records in this market’s directories were already dead when we dialed them. A static list is a depreciating asset; the retainer exists because only continuous calling keeps the map true.
Availability moves, so we do not publish it. Book the call and we will tell you directly — and if your states are taken, we will say so and put you on the waitlist rather than sell you a diluted version.
August is peak season for replacement and hard-to-find copies of adopted titles — a motion the map serves today. For adoptions, access is bought in the autumn or shopped for in March, which is too late. Twenty minutes tells you whether your states are open and exactly what the map holds for them.
Book the 20-minute call