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Education technologies designed well have the potential to deliver positive outcomes for youth around the world. Too often, however, real-world implementation and measurement challenges hinder edtech’s ability to deliver. Impact financing for edtech companies is helping overcome these challenges by aligning incentives and promoting accountability.
The edtech industry is valued at a staggering $340 billion dollars. There are 500,000 apps on the app stores marketed as “educational.” However, a number of research studies show that many of these apps do not add extra learning value and could actually have a negative impact on children’s learning.
What can be done about it?
Edtech’s impact on children
An analysis of the most popular apps in the USA revealed that these so-called learning apps employ aggressive gamification, enticing children to chase letters or numbers without actually teaching them anything. Another study showed that most of the apps topping the download charts are not based on any learning principles whatsoever.
My own study with Dr. Lori Bruner demonstrated that the apps with the greatest potential to support learning are the ones with the least diversity in their design. These apps primarily depict characters as white boys.
The gap between best practices in inclusive and evidence-based education, and what educational apps actually deliver to children is substantial. This disconnect has drawn criticism from numerous policy reports, most notably the UNESCO GEM Report 2023, which advocates for a ban on smartphones in educational settings due to concerns over their limited contribution to meaningful learning outcomes.
On the other hand, tens of millions in philanthropic funding is being channelled into accelerating local edtech initiatives in the Global South, driven by the evidence belief that technology can help address the global learning crisis. For this, however, the technology needs to be designed with learning principles in mind, in collaboration with researchers.
With around 70% of children unable to read at a basic level or perform fundamental mathematics, organizations like the Gates Foundation are investing in edtech innovations—such as apps focused on foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
Similarly, edtech accelerator initiatives in Africa, backed by Mastercard Foundation, aim to foster locally-driven edtech solutions to improve educational outcomes in underserved regions.
These initiatives are driven by research that shows that when edtech tools are designed well — by following the principles of learning sciences and designed for impact rather than just scale — they can deliver positive outcomes.
One study with literacy and maths apps in Malawi showed increased learning for the children and also that they reduced gender disparities. Another study showed that struggling readers in Portugal benefitted from a targeted intervention with a computer-assisted support for literacy.
So, why aren’t all edtech companies achieving positive impact outcomes? This is a question I have been asking for many years. As Karl Olav Sørensen, the CEO of the Norwegian Association of Impact Investors, Nornab, said “Impact, you could say, is ingrained in Norwegians from our long social solidarity tradition to our history of environmental consciousness going back to the Brundtland Commission.”
The pursuit of sustainable development lies at the core of Norwegian initiatives and is equally central to our mission at the International Centre for EdTech Impact, which I lead. Located in Stavanger, the “oil capital” of Norway, our Centre is rooted in a long-standing tradition of sustainable approaches to environmental impact.
Yet, when it comes to educational impact, we are still in the infancy stages. In theory, however, educational impact could lead the charge in impact studies across various fields due to its numerous advantages.
Educational impact: the potential
The educational sector benefits from a wealth of existing research and methodologies that focus on measuring learning outcomes. Educational impact assessment is rooted in a rich tradition within academic research and the science of learning. Educational impact requires specific, tailored metrics developed by domain experts, a practice long established in academic research on learning outcomes.
Furthermore, given that psychometrically validated testing can be embedded directly into educational technologies, it enables the edtech companies to generate valuable data that can be used to calculate impact gains very precisely and in relation to specific user profiles and products.
In addition, standardized assessments—both national and international—provide scores that enable correlations in student progress across diverse districts, enabling direct analyses of the added value of a tool used in a given context.
Yet, despite these advantages, translating this potential into edtech tools has proven difficult. There are three main reasons for this.
Why edtech isn’t excelling in impact
The absence of unified standards and the proliferation of emerging frameworks, each tailored to a new edtech innovation, have hindered effective data pooling in the edtech impact field. While the diversity of approaches reflects great interest in educational impact, it also calls for a consolidation of measurement approaches.
Various research groups utilize different measures to assess the same outcomes, resulting in over 65 distinct frameworks for evaluating efficacy alone. Recently, the Jacobs Foundation launched the funded Levante project, which incentivizes researchers to adopt shared measures for documenting the impact of educational interventions, addressing this critical issue.
Another significant challenge in measuring educational impact is the collaborative nature of impact creation, which involves various actors—most notably teachers and professional educators—who directly shape how tools are utilized in the classroom. While there is widespread consensus on the importance of incorporating teachers’ perspectives into the development of educational tools, the question of how to engage them in impact evaluations often leads to friction in research methodologies.
For example, inclusive research and development practices prioritize teachers’ involvement in the design process, whereas randomized controlled trials, known as RCTs, often regard teachers merely as implementers, sidelining their valuable insights regarding implementation. Combining different methodologies based on their different merits for different evaluations, should be the priority for each impact project. However, funding restrictions and funders’ own agendas often lead to either a more bottom-up or top-down approach rather than their judicious combination.
The third challenge, often referred to as the “not in my backyard” problem, highlights a pervasive disconnect among key stakeholders in the edtech ecosystem. Although there is a broad consensus that action is needed to improve educational impact, there is a reluctance to take responsibility for driving change. The lack of incentives for collaboration between companies and academics exacerbates this issue.
Academics tend to prioritize publication metrics, focusing on their individual research agendas, while companies seek validation through research primarily to boost sales. This misalignment results in a neglect of the iterative explorations necessary for developing superior educational tools, stifling innovation and progress in the field.
How impact financing can bridge the gaps
Impact financing offers unique mechanisms to address these entrenched challenges.
First, impact investors who combine financing with technical assistance, can facilitate collaboration between academics and edtech companies, thus directly supporting the alignment between key metrics and streamlining the impact measurement processes. This approach enables the establishment of bespoke standards tailored to each edtech tool, while simultaneously incentivizing adherence to shared metrics for annual reporting.
As grantees and portfolio companies come together to assess their collective impact, a de facto standard emerges within this group of organizations. This collaboration not only simplifies the measurement process but also addresses the issue of disparate measures across different projects, fostering a more unified and effective approach.
Second, outcomes-based contracting is emerging in several U.S. school districts as a pivotal approach to fostering accountability among districts and edtech providers. This model involves establishing measurable expectations within contracts that edtech companies sign with districts, whereby at least 40 percent of the provider’s overall payment is contingent on meeting agreed-upon student outcomes. By shifting the focus from cost savings or teacher efficiency to tangible student results, this mechanism significantly enhances the emphasis on impact within educational solutions.
Third, by incentivizing both academics and companies to work together, impact investors create a unique environment for accountable impact collaboration that currently lacks national infrastructure in most countries. This collaborative structure enables stakeholders to tackle educational challenges head-on.
Natalia I. Kucirkova is the director of the International Centre for EdTech Impact.
