It’s not every day that celebrity culture and high-stakes testing collide with the law, but now that it has, people can’t seem to get enough!

Does adaptive learning software improve test scores? Does a 1:1 device initiative improve learning? Is screen time good for students? Questions like these are regulars in debates about edtech. But whether you’re an edtech advocate or a critic, if you’re asking questions like these, you’re missing the mark.

Earlier this month, education news outlets buzzed with a frustrating, yet unsurprising, headline: Most educational software licenses go unused in K-12 districts. The source of the headline is a recent report by Ryan Baker, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Learning Analytics. Baker analyzed data from BrightBytes, a K-12 data management company, on students’ technology usage across 48 districts. That data revealed that a median of 70% of districts’ software licenses never get used, and a median of 97.6% of licenses are never used intensively.

“Everything's been said, but everyone hasn't said it."

“It’s not about the technology.”

“Teachers are more important than tech.”

“You can’t just put students in front of computers.”

Eleven years ago, the book Disrupting Class predicted that in 2019 half of all high school courses would be online. It’s 2019, the disruption hasn’t happened, and I’m surprised that it’s taken a third of the year for me to see a reference to the failed prediction.

There’s been quite the media backlash against Summit Learning, with articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and smaller media outlets.

A large part of my job is working with school districts to build their capacity to support personalized and digital learning for all students. In discussing this transition with a parent group, one concerned mother brought up an intriguing question, “If the entire school is ‘going digital’, how much screen time is my child going to get every day? My pediatrician only recommends two hours a day.”

The inaugural Digital Learning Annual Conference (DLAC) took place on April 1-3, 2019, and one of the highlights of the event for me was the prominent and focused conversation around research and evidence. In fact, DLAC kicked off with a research community meeting, which attracted almost 50 attendees representing roles from across the digital learning sector. Teachers, administrators, policy makers, service providers, developers, and, of course, researchers attended the meeting to learn more about the existing evidence, as well as how to better connect research and practice.

In her keynote speech at Edgenuity’s 2019 Partner Summit, CEO Sari Factor remarked that other industries have seen dramatic changes in the day-to-day of how they do business based on their innovative uses of technology. Across the country, there are promising school models that are breaking down the traditional structures of our learning system and creating high-quality effective personalized learning programs to better meet student needs, but unfortunately, this shift remains the exception rather than the norm. The transformational promise of online, blended, and digital learning is far from realized in the vast majority of our classrooms, schools, and districts - and consequently, for our students as well. So what is holding us back from truly revolutionizing teaching and learning across our country?

We are excited to share that, as mentioned at the inaugural Digital Learning Annual Conference last week, we have published two new reports - the first of which is the new Keeping Pace report called Snapshot 2019. Snapshot 2019 presents research on policy and practice in K-12 digital learning.