A growing number of commercial and nonprofit efforts are emerging—albeit slowly—to try to close an information gap between vendors and school officials.

One of the biggest frustrations of administrators and educators is that they don’t have clear, objective tools for judging ed-tech vendors’ claims about their products—information that could help schools avoid huge, costly mistakes.

Companies, for their part, often struggle to figure out what K-12 officials actually want from digital tools—and they don’t see much demand for rigorous evidence. So they count on winning districts over through  word-of-mouth recommendations, networking, and other informal strategies.

Now, a series of resources have been put forward to try to close that divide.