The Hamilton Project Releases Two Papers Furthering Tech & Economics in K-12 Education

The Hamilton Project launched today two new papers, “Harnessing Technology to Improve K-12 Education,” and “A Dozen Economic Facts about K-12 Education,” at an education forum in Washington D.C. to help further public investment in K-12 education for economic growth and effectiveness.
According to the Hamilton Project, the papers cover the following:

“Harnessing Technology to Improve K-12 Education”: Technological progress has consistently driven remarkable advances in the U.S. economy, yet K-12 education sees little technological change compared to other sectors, even as U.S. K-12 students increasingly lag behind students in other nations. This proposal considers how we can take a signature American strength— innovation—and apply it to K-12 education. Education technologies hold promise for personalized learning and for building basic skills, but a fundamental obstacle remains: the effectiveness of learning technologies is rarely known. Not surprisingly, when no one knows what works, schools are unlikely to buy, and innovators are unlikely to create. Building on the Common Core State Standards and increasing access to broadband internet, this paper proposes the establishment of a new third-party ratings organization to overcome this challenge. The proposed EDU STAR system would conduct rapid, low-cost evaluations of technologies and report the results to the public, speeding the development of a dynamic market for education technologies.
“A Dozen Economic Facts about Education”: These economic facts about education help illustrate the state of educational attainment in the United States and the growing importance of education in determining people’s well-being. On many dimensions—lifetime earnings, incarceration rates, and life expectancy, to name a few—Americans who do not graduate from high school or college are increasingly falling behind those with a college degree. This paper explores both the condition of education in the United States and the economic evidence on several promising K-12 interventions that could improve the lives of Americans.

For more, visit www.hamiltonproject.org.