Liz Kolb speaks with the Detroit Free Press about the importance of looking at evidence-based research on EdTech companies before incorporating their products in the classroom
The Free Press reports that EdTech companies are lobbying lawmakers to use state grant money on their products.
Since the pandemic, the EdTech sector has seen a boom in companies eager to market products to school districts, reports the Detroit Free Press.
Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education technologies at the Marsal School, says “There are kind of more hard sales tactics that are happening because they are now competing against many more vendors than they were 10 years ago and the finances for districts to buy ... is not as readily available as it used to be.”
The Free Press found that many companies have spent significant amounts of money to lobby state lawmakers to create grants that fit the niche their product serves. However, evidence of the products’ efficacy is usually thin.
“It's really important that we're looking at evidence-based research around these tools and not just the research that companies are putting out," says Kolb. “A lot of schools don't have the time to truly do these deep-dive evaluations ... so they end up trusting what the vendors are telling them and pushing on them because they just don't have the time or the capacity.”
