Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless

McPherson Middle School in Kansas had been burned before by education technology, but in 2022 school leaders were ready to try again. They selected a digital programme called IXL from a statewide recommendation list. It promised instruction tailored to each student’s level, igniting quick gains. The school used it to assign most in-class independent maths work. “We thought it was going to be really magical,” says Inge Esping, the principal.

It wasn’t. It “didn’t really move the needle”, Ms Esping says. Students found the programme repetitive, rigid and boring—and distraction proved irresistible once they were on their school-issued laptops. The school tried blocking YouTube and Spotify, then student-to-student email. But children found workarounds and teachers resented their new surveillance duties. In 2025, as parents had long implored, students turned in their laptops, to be brought out only rarely. Pencil and paper now rule; IXL is used sparingly, for quick extra practice of maths skills already covered by teachers. An IXL spokesman says the school’s experience “is not consistent with what we’ve seen across Kansas and the US” and that its programmes outperformed those of peers.

According to researchers, McPherson’s experience is a microcosm of the perils of ed tech. Fifty years after Apple began marketing computers to schools, classrooms are awash with technology. Some 90% of high-school students and 84% of primary-school pupils have school-issued devices; four-fifths of kindergarteners are given them. Concerns about fractured attention and data security are mounting.

Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it. A 2024 meta-analysis of 119 studies of early-literacy tech interventions, led by Rebecca Silverman of Stanford University, found the studies described programmes that delivered at best only marginal gains on standardised tests. The majority had little effect, no effect or harmful ones. Jared Horvath, a neuroscientist and author of a book called “The Digital Delusion”, has reviewed meta-analyses covering tens of thousands of studies. His verdict: “In nearly every context, ed tech doesn’t come close to the minimum threshold for meaningful learning impact.”

The prevalence of tech in schools owes less to rigorous evidence than aggressive marketing. Teachers are now flooded with daily offers for free tech. In 2024 American schools spent $30bn on education technology. Globally, it is a $165bn industry. Technology does save money on textbooks and streamline lesson planning. But licensing and training costs add up, and many teachers feel burdened rather than liberated by all the admin and dashboards.

Long-term trends raise the possibility that the rise of in-class devices is responsible for an alarming decline in performance in reading and other subjects. Scores on 21 nationwide benchmark tests rose from 1994 until peaking in 2012-15, when screen use started to soar; they then began to sink(see chart 1). In major assessments for maths, science and reading from 2011 to 2019, greater in-school computer use for learning correlates with lower scores. In contrast, students in classes with rare or no computer use at all typically score highest (see chart 2).

Distraction is one likely culprit. Another is that some tools emphasise gamification at the expense of education, meaning that children focus more on winning points than mastering concepts. But there are more insidious issues, such as the ways digital tools weaken human connection and empathy in the classroom.

Evidence shows that apps can support learning through drills in two areas: for certain learning disabilities and in adaptive tutoring in narrow domains where there are clear right and wrong answers, such as spelling and arithmetic. But although students may improve through repetition “within the game”, they struggle to transfer knowledge to other contexts such as standardised tests.

Common sense argues for differentiating between age cohorts when it comes to tech. “Particularly for younger children, what’s most important is that they are interacting with other humans,” says Jeffrey Greene of the University of North Carolina. For older ages, Ms Esping and Rodney Trice, a North Carolina district superintendent, advocate “limited, intentional” use. “The pendulum has swung toward devices determining the assignment rather than the other way around,” Mr Trice says.

Back in 2013, Bill Gates remarked that it would take a decade to know whether education technology really worked. More than ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the answer is increasingly clear. Notes Emily Cherkin, an advocate and fed-up parent: “Imagine if all that money had gone into teachers instead.” ■