The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

Could it be that part of the failure is that EdTech companies are focused on replacing the pedagogical aspect of schools, but the main utility of schools for parents is not pedagogy - it is a daycare centre for kids while parents go on about their careers?

The elephant in the room.

That said, i think it more true of governments than of parents. It increases the size of the workforce, therefore higher business profits and household income, therefore higher GDP.

Its pretty evidence in various attempts to increase time in school. talk about the "summer slump" in the US, or the government encouraging extended school days (drop off for "breakfast club", pick up after "after school" activities) in the UK.

"it is a daycare centre for kids while parents go on about their careers?"

This is the kind of thing that could only be said by somebody who is not a parent. There might be a minority of parents for whom this is true, but I know zero other parents who don't care whether their kids are learning.

While I don't doubt that a benefit of schools is you don't have to pay for day care while you pursue a career, that is far from the "main utility" of schools.

The main utility of schools, despite the hyperbole on the internet, is to educate and cultivate a productive, adjusted society. Yes there is overlap with what parents do, yes there is overlap with daycare. But those are ancillary benefits, not the ultimate goal.

> I know zero other parents who don't care whether their kids are learning.

Nobody said that.

While I don't think you deserve to be downvoted, the reason you are is that you are complaining about generalization ("the kind of thing that could only be said by somebody who is not a parent") while immediately generalizing, implicitly, that commenters on Hacker News are not parents. I am a parent, I care about my son learning, and the experiences I've seen for very young children (less than 5) are very close to daycare, even at the very best schools.

It isn't saying much that very young children learn best with one-on-one time with a very engaged adult, which isn't something you can do in daycare. Some people believe that learning occurs because of a specific ethnic heritage, using a pile of money, or a piece of technology. If these are your beliefs, then it can be hard to make any progress whatsoever.

To your comment about even the best <=5 schools being glorified daycares, you might consider Montessori, if your kids are still in that 3-6 age band. There are many faux-Montessoris which are daycare with wooden toys, and use the name to collect that premium, but the real ones are very different, and do a good job of teaching independence in learning. You can look for the accredited ones on AMS’ site (you still have to evaluate the teacher, but it should weed out the worst offenders).

No. A legion of edtech companies have been born and died who solve the underlying pedagogical issues but die.

Some of the reasons they die are:

- students don’t control the budget for their spending, so their voice/progress has almost no impact on budgets

- parents in the US spend a tiny fraction of their deposable income on education (and also have almost no say in budgets)

- teachers have almost no say in budgets. In public schools, it’s none. In others, it’s performative if at all most of the time.

- administrators get promoted by doing a very specific set of small things, none of which include improving outcomes through addressing pedagogical innovation

This all adds up to: you can create an edtech startup that radically improves student outcomes and still run out of cash