Funny, Innit?

While correlation is not causation, the correlation between the adoption of digital education technology with decreased student performance is rather striking.

In 1984, several U.S. states introduced mandatory seatbelt laws. Almost immediately, those states reported significant declines in traffic deaths and serious injuries - yet many observers dismissed these trends as coincidence.

Then more states adopted seatbelt laws. And each time they did, fatalities fell.

This is called staggered policy adoption, and it is one of the strongest natural tools social scientists have for identifying causal effects. When different jurisdictions implement the same policy at different times, and outcomes shift in alignment with those adoption dates rather than with a single calendar year, researchers gain strong evidence that the policy itself is driving the change.

Why does this matter?

Staggered EdTech Adoption

During my recent Senate testimony, I stated that when NAEP performance is aligned with state-level digital adoption, scores plateau and then decline.

I should note that in that testimony, I misspoke slightly - referring to ‘one-to-one’ deployment when the analysis, in fact, examines broader, statewide digital adoption. The distinction matters, and I want to be precise.

Since that testimony, I’ve received repeated requests to publish the underlying data. What follows is that analysis.

In the United States, education policy is largely controlled at the state level. As a result, digital infrastructure was not embedded into classrooms everywhere at once. Some states operationalized statewide digital testing and instructional systems earlier; others followed later.

When each state’s digital inflection year is aligned within a common event-time framework and mapped against NAEP performance, a striking empirical signal emerges.

For readers outside the United States, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative assessment of student learning. Often called ‘The Nation’s Report Card’, it tests 4th and 8th grade reading and mathematics every two years. Importantly, NAEP remains anchored to its original 1992 scoring scale, allowing genuine longitudinal comparison.

More Silly-Con Valley snake oil. 

I'm not a big fan of high stakes testing, and I do have my doubts as to the validity of the the accuracy of their measurements, but this data seems to be rather compelling.