The recent SXSW EDU conference was a whole mood. In a gathering known for buzz-worthy innovation talks and hope-filled networking, the atmosphere was heavy with multiplying concerns about the current state of U.S. K-12 education and the surrounding industry and policy systems.
Education researchers and ed tech companies are collectively navigating the deep waters of funding cuts, tenuous contracts, revoked data access, and policy shake-ups. The list could – and will – go on and on.
What is broken could fill volumes. What’s needed are strategies to move forward.
Among those of us working toward better educational outcomes, better learning environments, and policies that uplift the many (and not the few), there is one path forward: cementing partnerships between academics and ed tech.
Such partnerships are certainly not new but they are underutilized. We, the authors, represent one example. We’re one part ed tech (Eedi) and one part research lab (Learning Collider), conducting randomized controlled trials of Eedi’s mathematics platform in U.S. schools in partnership with the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI).
Our partnership is an outgrowth of previous successes building research into the digital tools that are increasingly essential in supporting students and educators in their learning environments. This isn’t conjecture; there are tangible opportunities to embed evidence into ed tech – evidence derived from rigorous experimentation that explores what works, for whom, and by how much within the contexts of diverse learners, limited resources, and noisy decision-makers.
What’s In It For Ed Tech?
On the ed tech side, it’s building evidence-based products that solve problems for educators and students. The hybrid tutoring platform developed by Eedi has already demonstrated positive impacts in the U.K. An independently evaluated randomized controlled trial with 2,800 students measured Eedi’s effect as 0.15 standard deviations (Cohen’s) on mathematics achievement while being more cost-effective than alternatives. These gains represent meaningful academic progress – approximately 50 percent of the annual mathematics growth expected for students.
These findings – and the rigor through which they were measured – lead Eedi to be more productive, more competitive, and more impactful in the market.
The hybrid tutoring platform developed by Eedi has already demonstrated positive impacts in the U.K. An independently evaluated randomized controlled trial with 2,800 students measured Eedi’s effect as 0.15 standard deviations (Cohen’s) on mathematics achievement while being more cost-effective than alternatives.
What’s In It For Researchers?
On the academic side, researchers clamor for opportunities to apply the skills they’ve spent years honing in real-world, real-time contexts replete with microdata. Sometimes, studies using distinctive datasets generated by ed tech platforms can lead to academic papers. Sometimes those papers get accepted by peer-reviewed publications. Sometimes they inform policy. Sometimes these outputs boost researchers’ job prospects, tenure opportunities, earnings, and reputation.
Separate from these “sometimes” that can take years to materialize, collaborative research with ed tech can result in immediate and sustainable impact by way of product development, investments, and implementation.
Exploiting the incentive structures across industry and academia is crucial right now. To ensure the tools equipping our classrooms and educators are best-in-class and responsive to diverse student needs, more alignment between the ed tech industry and academic research is needed.
Exploiting the incentive structures across industry and academia is crucial right now. To ensure the tools equipping our classrooms and educators are best-in-class and responsive to diverse student needs, more alignment between the ed tech industry and academic research is needed.
Standing Up Ed Tech-Research Partnerships
Ed tech-research partnerships don’t exist in a silo. Philanthropic support and school participation provide the nuts and bolts. Both are challenging to access – but they could be more streamlined and transparent.
Funders are crucial to the R&D ecosystem, delivering capital at multiple points in research partnerships. Philanthropic investments help attract and retain talent, procure cutting-edge computational and scientific tools, purchase data, scale up what works, and transfer knowledge about both successes and failures and everything in between.
Ed tech-research partnerships in the U.S. need more volume and scale of funding as federal grants are being canceled. Narrowing this gap requires foundations to step up their annual commitments and reach beyond the 5 percent giving floor. We also encourage funders to place bets where there are opportunities to scale and where access to real-time micro-data isn’t uncertain. Neither impact nor micro-data seems plausible at the federal level; assessing funding proposals should shift to how and where ed tech-research partnerships can experiment, iterate, and scale up as quickly as possible.
Funders are crucial to the R&D ecosystem, delivering capital at multiple points in research partnerships. Philanthropic investments help attract and retain talent, procure cutting-edge computational and scientific tools, purchase data, scale up what works, and transfer knowledge about both successes and failures and everything in between.
Generating Insights with Schools
The word “experiment” causes a lot of uneasiness. In working with 35+ U.K. and U.S. schools, Eedi found that when experiments are framed as evidence-gathering partnerships, schools queue up to participate. Why? Because they gain valuable insights that are otherwise unattainable.
For example, one high school educator using Eedi shared that the product helps her get real-time feedback on her teaching, both at the class- and student-levels.
“The fact you can see instantly what’s happening with your pupils as well, you can see if there are kids who are still not getting concepts,” said Suzanne Walsh, Head of Numeracy at All Hallows Catholic High School. “But the amount that aren’t getting it is so much lower than normal, because of the independent learning side of Eedi. Now it’s like, I see three pupils who aren’t getting a concept, as opposed to a group of 10. At that point, you’ve already won! So it does really reduce your workload in that sense too.”
Ed tech-research partnerships in the U.S. need more volume and scale of funding as federal grants are being canceled. Narrowing this gap requires foundations to step up their annual commitments and reach beyond the 5 percent giving floor.
Further benefits include:
- Assessments like Eedi’s deliver meaningful and real-time progress markers for teachers and students and evidence-building throughout the research period.
- Randomization at the classroom level (not at the student level) feels more natural to schools partnering with Eedi, and thus easier to implement, while still contributing to causal evidence instead of relying on weaker, correlative evidence.
- Participating in research helps school leaders make critical decisions, e.g. what technologies are worth precious instructional time and budgets?
- Participating schools have a direct line to their ed tech vendors, leading to responsive systems integrations, product interfaces, data functionality, and more.
- When schools see themselves as collaborators rather than subjects, participation improves and everyone benefits from the resulting evidence.
Today’s challenges don’t have to define the quality and impact of ed tech. The chord that SXSW EDU always strikes, even in 2025, is that we can always do better for educators and students. Many in the industry are ready to step up, build products that work, prove they work, and continuously iterate to best serve our diverse 50 million K-12 students. Let’s make sure schools and students are set up for success with the most impactful, rigorously tested ed tech available.
If you’re a middle school interested in exploring evidence-based mathematics solutions at no cost, consider joining our pilot! Get in touch with Eedi to learn more: hello@eedi.com.
