Researchers Seek Faster Answers to Innovation Questions

New Technologies in Education Prompt Calls for a Quicker Pace

Education futurists predict massive shifts in the way children will learn as a result of new technologies and an increasingly global job market. Yet policymakers worry that education research is not moving fast enough to provide a foundation for truly effective innovations.

“We need to set up better facilities for doing [education research] pilots quickly and well,” said Bror Saxberg, Kaplan Inc.’s chief learning officer, at a Dec. 17 discussion on improving educational technology and innovation held at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“Technology actually never solves a problem,” he continued. “Technology can take a really bad solution and make it work really quickly ... and it can take a really good solution and make it work incredibly efficiently and quickly as well. But notice you have to...