Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

Abstract

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.