Strategies That Almost Certainly Generate Better Results For Far Less Cost

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, author of The Digital Delusion, has today posted an article on Substack called, "i-Ready Finally Has Real Research...And It Changes Nothing". In the post he looks at some recent research that's come out about an online education platform. i-Ready from what I can see from their website is an EdTech US online platform providing schools with various solutions to help learners in areas such as literacy, mathematics and science. It's an interesting article in which Dr Horvath explains how even with a more rigorous study of the platform and on the its impact on learning, outcomes are still low.

But what really caught my eye was this particular paragraph in the post.

The authors themselves note a number of other interventions (such as small-group instruction and after-school programs) that almost certainly generate better results for far less cost.

So, it looks like research was being carried out, focusing on the outcomes of this EdTech solution while at the same time there was other non-digital learner interventions going on. Therefore it would be very difficult to separate out if any learner improvement was due to a learners use of i-Ready or due to other reasons. Here's what I wrote on Substack in response to this.

"The take away from Jared’s article for me is that quote (see above). Absolutely. I often refer to the work of EEF here in the UK, who help schools to compare the impact of various teaching and learning strategies to the learner outcomes and cost. I always remember them saying that the use of digital technologies as a strategy is high cost with low to medium learner outcomes (medium outcomes in a very specific subject area). Yet we know that other non-digital strategies such as peer tutoring or meta cognition and self regulation are low cost and have high learner impact. Therefore we know what works and what doesn’t, but governments and schools continue to get caught up in the most recent digital technology hype cycle, spending a fortune on the ‘shiny new thing’ and after a couple of years seeing exactly the same poor learner outcomes. It is such a criminal waste of public money and a waste on valuable teaching time which could be spent on approaches we know actually benefit learners."

Coincidently, and related to the above, yesterday I read a document which was carried out and published in June 2026 by the Department of Education (England). Titled, "Assessment of the education technology market in England: Research report", the report is basically an assessment of the current Education Technology market in England. There are certainly some very interesting statements contained about the state of the EdTech industry in England, especially with regards to the difficulties in EdTech companies being able to demonstrate improvement in learner outcomes. Here are a couple of interesting examples.

Page 46 - "....many EdTech solution types lack evidence about long-term impact. Research findings are often scattered, outdated, or produced by vendors, leaving educators without clear comparisons of effectiveness. Furthermore, evidence on EdTech's impact is inconsistent across learner groups and especially scarce for socio-economically disadvantaged students."

Page 59 - "schools shared that they find it difficult to comment on the impact of technology on pupil attainment, cost savings or teacher workload. Without established frameworks, evaluation becomes anecdotal rather than data-driven."

Page 68 - "One such area is personalised learning technologies, particularly those incorporating AI... there is still limited evidence regarding their long-term impact on learning outcomes, particularly in relation to general-purpose AI tools now widely used by both students and teachers."

This is a very recent governmental report and they are clearly saying that there is a lack of long-term, reliable evidence of the impact on learning. But this is not new and shouldn't be a surprise. These issues have been the same issues that have been around for a long, long time. Unfortunately education keeps on repeating the same mistakes, time and time again. 

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Governments continue to latch onto the latest hype that's being peddled to them by their friends in big tech companies, and schools will continue to be taken in by EdTech platforms who seduce them with their latest maths, reading or spelling platform, promising to improve learner outcomes for their school, but with little or no rigorous, independent evidence to show the long-term improvement for learners. 

Isn't it time that governments and schools looked more critically at EdTech solutions and ask a couple of simple questions, "Will this 'thing' improve standards for all my learners?" "Show me the evidence." "Is this 'thing' value for money or are there far more cost effective ways of achieving the same or better results but at less cost?"