Perspective

If we only aspired to build bridges over small rivers and streams, we would have no Golden Gate Bridge, which affects the lives of tens of thousands of people every day. To improve education, we need far more national investment on the level of an educational Golden Gate Bridge. As a country that relies heavily on innovation, the U.S. seems strangely averse to educational innovation that could have a national impact. This aversion is undermining our future.

The United States acts as though there is something special about U.S. education that guarantees that it will continue producing plenty of creative, well-trained graduates regardless of educational policies. But the advantage that the U.S. has is thin and perilous. Indeed, the only advantage is in education at the elite undergraduate and graduate level, and that is at risk because funding is not keeping up with costs. U.S. pre-college education, particularly in the areas that prepare students for high-tech careers, is in crisis. U.S. student performance in math, science, and technology is only average in international comparisons.* U.S. education appears to have some advantage in terms of stimulating creativity and risk-taking, but other countries are closing those gaps as well. Unless the U.S. invests intelligently in education, it could permanently lose the economic advan-tages that it currently enjoys.

The U.S. does fund pre-college education by as much as $460 billion annually, or $9,350 per child, and the federal share of this is about $35 billion, or about $700 per child, mostly to subsidize schools or disseminate best practices. However, very little of this goes toward the development of innovative materials that might actually improve student learning nationwide. Current statistics show that the development of tested educational innovations receives as little as $2 per child or less than 0.03% of the total spent on education. There is probably no other sector of the U.S. economy that invests such a small percentage of its effort to innovation or applied research. In contrast, the pharmaceutical industry invests 23% of its income in innovation, a relative investment that is 700 times larger than education spends.

We must apply to education the same rigorous approach used in science research. There are two kinds of research, academic and applied. The goal of academic re-search in education is to develop new insights about learning. This is an important endeavor, but not one that is required to improve U.S. education; we already know enough to make huge gains in teaching and learning. Applied research, on the other hand, is needed to determine whether a particular innovation leads to increased learning for certain kinds of students in various school environments. Applied research is often overlooked and underfunded, but it is an essential part of educational innovation.

Investing in innovations that have proven value has a huge payoff because the resulting materials can be used in any classroom. It is, for instance, well within our capacity to increase student learning by providing free online, innovative, classroom-ready materials for every K-12 subject and grade for a total cost of roughly $11 per child, or 0.12% of one year’s expenditure. These are tiny amounts, yet the impact would be dramatic and lasting. Of course, this investment alone will not improve education; coordinated teacher professional development and support for technology would be required, but even if these cost several times as much as the research and development costs, the totals are trivial compared to the total cost of education.

If you survey all the kinds of innovation that might have the greatest impact on education, technology plays a central enabling role. New modeling environments can provide simpler ways for students to understand difficult concepts. Probeware greatly improves lab experiences. Online courses make high quality professional development courses available anywhere, anytime. Handheld computers put inexpensive, portable computers in students’ hands. Online curriculum materials can be economically distributed and easily modified. Assessment embedded in online materials can give teachers an analysis of student learning with unprecedented detail and currency. Networking supports all kinds of collaborations that can invigorate learning. Online resources provide detailed information on every possible topic.

I am deeply concerned with the lack of support for educational technology and the lagging recognition of its educational value. The Concord Consortium specializes in technology-based innovation and we are proud of the advances we have made, some of which are described in this newsletter. But these successes only hint at the potential. There are many exciting possibilities that are not being pursued.

We could have extensive, proven computer-based curricula. These could take advantage of research-grade models like our Molecular Workbench. The materials could be easily modified to fit the needs of teachers at different grades in different contexts. Detailed assessments could be gleaned from student use of the materials, giving teachers and researchers detailed data about student learning and material effectiveness. Some versions could be more open-ended and others more guided. Accessibility by students could be assured through run-time modifications that are made automatically or by a teacher. Some of the software could run on inexpensive handheld computers that can exchange data with a classroom server. And it can all be made freely available through open source systems.

The result would be a huge increase in learning at all levels and disciplines. Because the materials were free, they would be a force for equity, even in the face of the digital divide. Providing the extensive teacher professional development needed to exploit the advantages of computer-based materials would be a larger challenge. There is already large-scale funding for disseminating innovations, largely through professional development; this would have to be expanded and focused more on the integration of technology.

The idea that education could be improved through free computer-based materials sounds fantastic, but only in the context of the current inadequate support of educational technology. It is easily within grasp.

Educational innovation is currently like an amateur sport; every teacher and school is urged to innovate, to figure out how to integrate technology, and to assemble a curriculum. It is important to foster this kind of spirit, because it enriches a classroom. But large-scale innovation that can be disseminated nationwide requires professional teams of educators, developers, technologists, researchers, and designers. Instead of exclusively relying on federally funded block grants to states and schools, a larger fraction of funds should be retained at the federal level to create innovations that will improve every school. Just as we rely on professionals to build bridges, we need to use professionals to create educational innovations that could fully exploit the value of technology to improve education.

Robert Tinker (bob@concord.org) is president of The Concord Consortium.