Over the past century, America has been on a quest to radically improve our nation’s schools. From big federal initiatives, including President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind in 2001, to more localized efforts like Education Savings Accounts and the growth of the charter school sector, there has been no shortage of attempts to figure out what works in our nation’s schools.
While each of these efforts has its bright spots, on the whole, the country has struggled to sustain improvement in student outcomes over the past few decades. The most recent national test scores reveal declining math scores, with 9-year-olds down seven points from 2020 to 2022 and 13-year-olds down nine points from 2020 to 2023. While the pandemic accelerated these declines, kids’ reading and math scores were stagnant long before.
The Power Of Research And Development
As the leader of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, I am always asking one question: “How can we figure out what works best to drive outcomes for America’s children?” Other industries grapple with this question and have long had a solution: research and development, or R&D.
Leaders in medicine, defense, technology, and agriculture recognize that maintaining competitiveness requires both implementing research-backed practices and continuously pursuing breakthrough innovations. They do this through multi-billion dollar investments in sustained R&D, which is often buoyed by serious federal investments to ensure America retains its place as a leader in the world.
Yet in education, a paltry 0.5% of the Department of Education’s budget goes toward education R&D. How can we expect our students to compete globally, including with China, when, as a nation, we do not invest in figuring out the best ways to teach kids? This includes the best ways to teach math, reading, and science, as well as newer fields like computer science, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and more.
What would sustained investment in education R&D look like, and what would it do for U.S. students and for our country? At the highest level, education R&D would focus on studying existing interventions and new innovations to improve or create tools and approaches that actually work for students. We do not have a big enough evidence base to really know what works, for whom, and under which conditions — and our research infrastructure cannot keep up with the rapid pace of technological developments; this is especially true with the growth of generative AI. This sounds basic, but surprisingly, our nation also lacks an efficient and effective way to get the latest research about what works in the classroom into the hands of teachers and school leaders.
What’s At Stake
In particular, there are two serious risks when we as a nation fail to implement evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning:
1. America Loses Its Competitive Edge. President Donald Trump campaigned — three times — on the theme of making America stronger on the world’s stage. He often talks about power, competitiveness, and reducing the country’s dependency on other nations. If he’s serious about that, then R&D should be at the top of his education agenda.
Lagging student achievement in STEM subjects poses a direct threat to America’s national security. The problem goes beyond K-12 schools. The country’s colleges and universities are falling short, too. Our higher education system is simply not producing enough scientists, researchers, developers, or mathematicians to fill our innovation pipeline. In 2020, more than 40% of all college graduates in China were in a STEM field. In India, that number was 30%. The U.S., meanwhile, saw only about 20% of its 2020 graduates earn a STEM degree. In terms of sheer numbers of STEM grads, the U.S. is getting crushed by rising powers like China and India.
Investing in education R&D can reverse these trends. By developing evidence-based instructional strategies and technologies, such as AI-powered learning platforms and new approaches to teaching foundational early math skills, R&D can give teachers the tools they need to prepare students for high-tech careers while also addressing gaps in STEM achievement.
Programs like the proposed National Center for Advanced Development in Education, modeled after DARPA, could fund informed-risk, high-reward projects that tackle problems that have perplexed educators for years, like chronic absenteeism. These types of investments would not only help safeguard America’s national security but also secure our economic future by ensuring a steady flow of skilled professionals for critical tech industries.
2. State And Local Leaders Are Left Guessing. By supporting researchers who study what works for students and under which circumstances, federal policymakers would give local and state educators the data they need to make better decisions on what programs would most benefit their students. This approach respects local autonomy and ensures evidence-based practices drive decision-making with minimal federal oversight.
This is what occurred in Mississippi when officials used insights from federally funded studies on the science of reading to develop targeted interventions and new reading strategies that catapulted the state to higher national rankings.
The federal government didn’t mandate that Mississippi implement the science of reading in its literacy approach. Instead, it supported the research that informed the state’s improvement plans, leading to significant gains in student outcomes across the state. It’s not hard to envision something similar occurring for remote learning, virtual tutoring, or math instruction. But we need the R&D first.
For Our Kids, For Our Country
Federal and state officials invest very little in education R&D. It’s time for a change — and we’re starting to see education leaders who are charting a new course, one of whom — Dr. Penny Schwinn — was just tapped to be the new United States Deputy Secretary of Education. A substandard education system stifles innovation and jeopardizes a country’s global competitiveness and national security. We must invest in education R&D; it’s not just an academic priority, it is essential to the future prosperity of our country.