Can Educational Technology Close the 90/10 Achievement Gap?
Over the last half-century, there has been a recorded gap in educational achievement between students from families at the top and bottom of the income scale. With Amy Klement, Partner at Omidyar Network, moderator of the edtech plenary session at the Innovation for Shared Prosperity Conference, Peter Bergman, an assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and venture capitalist Tory Patterson discussed the opportunities and challenges in using technologies to inclusively improve U.S. student learning outcomes.
The 90/10 achievement gap, so called because it compares students in the 90th and 10th percentiles of family wealth, equals roughly a four-year difference in learning (Reardon, 2011). Bergman suggested educational technologies can help reverse this trend, noting that edtech can enable personalized instruction and learning materials, and it can be used at scale with minimal marginal cost.
However, numerous research findings have made academics question edtech’s promise. In a paper reviewing the efficacy of a variety of technology-related educational products and services, the researchers found evidence that many of these offerings do not work (Escueta, Quan, Nickow, & Oreopoulos, 2017). For example, access to a computer and the internet at home has no general impact on increased learning in the U.S. (Goolsbee & Guryan, 2006; Fairlie & Robinson, 2013).
One challenge facing the application of technology for educational benefit is to use the right measures for evaluation and development. It is easier, cheaper, and more realistic to measure immediate student behaviors and short-term test scores, and it is possible to obtain larger sample sizes for short-term evaluations as a result. However, to ensure positive effects on student capabilities, the long-term effects of products and services must also be measured. Bergman and Patterson agreed that what is needed to advance the edtech field is to get the measurements right, and that more work is needed to understand the relationship between short- and long-term measures.
Despite these challenges, Patterson, the co-founder and managing partner at edtech-focused firm Owl Ventures, is betting on the growth of companies that apply technology to education. In particular, he pointed to a number of recent patterns indicating that the education landscape is ripe for improvement through technologies now.
- Broadband access in U.S. schools is reaching 100%.
- More than 60% of American pre-K programs have a 1:1 student-to-device ratio.
- Many students, educators, parents, and employers grew up with digital technology and can now be considered “digital natives.”
Patterson sees an opportunity for investors in edtech companies as well as an opportunity for their investments to make an impact for good. Some of his investments already making an impact across various income levels include:
- Accelerate Learning, which offers STEMscopes , high-quality, research-based STEM curriculum resources to U.S. students in pre-K–12, at about a fourth of the cost of similar products. The company does this by primarily using digital materials.
- Raise.me, a platform where high school students build achievement profiles that match them to applicable college scholarships. It enables students who lack other college preparation resources to access scholarships they otherwise may have missed.
Bergman shared evidence that specific tech applications can significantly increase student learning. For example, a study using a randomized field experiment showed that ASSISTments, a computer-assisted learning program, had a positive effect on students’ mathematics achievement, with the lowest-performing students benefiting the most (Roschelle, Feng, Murphy, & Mason, 2016). An added advantage: ASSISTments provides both students and teachers with timely feedback.
Bergman also noted the growing body of supportive research on using text messages to nudge parents. Text-message nudges improve the flow of communication between schools and parents and more fully engage parents in their children’s learning. Text-nudges to parents with children in pre-K and kindergarten have been shown to significantly increase the engagement of parents in their children’s reading (York & Loeb, 2014; Doss, Fahle, Loeb, & York, 2019). Patterson’s Owl Ventures has, in fact, invested in a company bringing message reminders to parents at scale. Remind provides an “essential communication infrastructure in U.S. K–12 schools allowing teachers, students, and parents to send and receive text and voice messages” (Remind.com).
For more on Bergman and Patterson’s discussion, watch the full coverage of the edtech plenary session at the Innovation for Shared Prosperity Conference below.
— —
Learn more about the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Follow us @GSBsiLab.
Learn more about Peter Bergman.
Learn more about Tory Patterson.
Citations
Doss, C., Fahle, E. M., Loeb, S., & York, B. N. (2019). More Than Just a Nudge Supporting Kindergarten Parents with Differentiated and Personalized Text Messages. Journal of Human Resources, 54(3), 567–603.
Escueta, M., Quan, V., Nickow, A. J., & Oreopoulos, P. (2017). Education technology: An evidence-based review (No. w23744). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fairlie, R. W., & Robinson, J. (2013). Experimental evidence on the effects of home computers on academic achievement among schoolchildren. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5(3), 211–40.
Goolsbee, A., & Guryan, J. (2006). The impact of Internet subsidies in public schools. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88(2), 336–347.
Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. Whither opportunity, 1(1), 91–116.
Roschelle, J., Feng, M., Murphy, R. F., & Mason, C. A. (2016). Online mathematics homework increases student achievement. AERA Open, 2(4), 2332858416673968.
York, B. N., & Loeb, S. (2014). One step at a time: The effects of an early literacy text messaging program for parents of preschoolers (No. w20659). National Bureau of Economic Research.
