Boosting the R&D in ED

Danny Curtis, producer of the Future of Education podcast, joins me on the “mainstage” to discuss a new bill introduced recently in the Senate that would increase Research and Development in the Department of Education. We discussed the bill’s potential to spur learning innovation, the demand-side challenges to adoption, and systemwide reforms that can support in addressing those. Danny will be making more appearances in the weeks and months ahead, so I’m thrilled to introduce him to you all here by video.

Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education. I am Michael Horn, and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to a world where all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And over the past year and a half, it's been really fun because I've had a partner in crime on this. He's been largely behind the scenes, although we have bylined some articles together. So you’ve seen his name pop up in different things, different forums, but he has literally been overseeing all of my digital products, all the digital work that I do. He's helped bring up the quality a ton, but he also happens to know a lot about education as we'll get into it in a moment. He's none other than Danny Curtis. Danny, thanks so much for actually coming on the live stage and showing your face to the audience today.

Danny Curtis:

Thanks, Michael. It's great to have the chance to step in front of the mic today.

Danny’s Journey to the Work

Michael Horn:

Well, why don't you tell folks about yourself? Because part of this idea is we want you to be in front of the mic a little bit more, either riffing with me, bylining with me, or maybe even interviewing some guests. I know you've done one interview that’s super interesting coming down the pipeline, but why don't you give people a taste of, you know, your background, your experience in education specifically, and workforce issues as well. Before you and I teamed up to start doing some of this work together.

Danny Curtis:

Well, outside the work that you and I have done, Michael, I have also worked in education workforce policy, as you mentioned, at the state and local level, and a nonprofit, all towards designing systems that do a better job of connecting learners to opportunity. And got my start in this work as a high school English teacher in California, where I met so many inspiring people, teachers, administrators, students, and saw incredible work being done and also noticed the ways that that work was constrained by outdated systems. And that's really what got me into policy to try and create that change. And it's also why the mission of the Future of Education, to unlock the potential of schools and students through innovation, why that resonated so strongly with me.

The New Essential Education Discoveries Act

Michael Horn:

Well, I appreciate everything, obviously, and let's dive in. There's a bill that has come up that you called my attention to has some bipartisan support. It's around research, I think. But why don't you give folks a flavor of what we are talking about and why it caught your eye and worth talking about here in the show?

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a bipartisan bill. I know, very rare these days, that has proposed increases to federal education research and development funding. That was introduced in the Senate at the start of August. It's called the New Essential Education Discoveries act, NEED for short. And it was introduced by Senators Michael Bennett, a Democrat from Colorado, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas. And it would develop a fifth center in the Institute for Education Sciences that they're calling the National Center for Advanced Development and Education. And it would be dedicated to developing, disseminating, investing in what they're calling high risk, high reward, cutting edge innovations in education. And that includes technologies, innovative learning models. And it also proposes some changes to the state longitudinal data system. But for today, we'll stick to the R&D and learning. Innovation specialists have long argued that one of the great challenges of implementing innovation in education has been the lack of research and development and supply stemming from that. The federal education budget allocates only about $2.5 billion to R&D in education, which sounds like a lot, but it's only 2% of spending on education in the federal government and like, two tenths of a percent of total education spending when you take state and local into account. It also stands in stark contrast to the R&D spending in other departments. Like one department that it's often compared to is the Department of Defense with their DARPA fund, which spends $79 billion a year. And so for those reasons, this bill has garnered a lot of interest from learning innovators and a lot of excitement, too.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. And I think it's great. Like, if we start putting more research on those big sort of home run questions, if you will, budget behind it, see what we can develop out of it, I think that makes a heck of a lot of sense. Not nearly enough R, as you said, in education. I mean, that's, you know, that's pennies on the dollar when you think about what you just said. And for a sector where so much is riding on it, look, we'd never do that in healthcare at this point, right? We invest a lot in R&D. It's incredibly important. Basic research is incredibly important. Solving the most intractable problems, incredibly important. I think all those statements apply to education as well. And frankly, I talk a lot about personalizing, customizing education. That's akin to precision medicine in the medicine field. But they went through this whole field or movement where they had empirical medicine, where on average, if you have these symptoms, you should do this treatment. And, yeah, it didn't work all the time. But it started to come out of RCTs before they've started to refine it more and more. It's funny. In education, we don't even have the empirical stage often even in place. We don't even know on average often what works. And we're sort of trying to leapfrog into the precision or personalized. We just need a lot more research on a whole host of things, not just science of reading, so that we can get much more precise. I love all of that. 

The Education System’s Demand-side Differences 

Michael Horn:

The one quibble I have is, and you didn't say it, but, you know, you hinted to it, which is that a lot of people compare this to DARPA, the defense advanced research projects arm that has given us the Internet, you know, GPS. Right. All those things. And I just, I don't love the analogy.