Recent data from the 2024–25 school year continue to illustrate the persistence of academic achievement gaps for K-12 students. In response, headlines have blamed "screen time" and the purported detrimental effects of technology for much of this decline. From EdWeek to the New York Times, articles have presented a gross oversimplification; the story is more complicated.
Digital tools and programs present schools and systems with more durable, sustainable strategies to accelerate learning. During the 2024–25 school year, FullScale (formerly The Learning Accelerator) funded and evaluated 10 innovations through the Accelerating Adoption Network — six edtech tools, three programs, and one microschool model — each designed to scale promising, technology-enabled, evidence-based solutions.
Through this initiative, we learned about the complexities that emerge when evidence-based tools meet reality at scale.
3 Critical Lessons About Scale
The Accelerating Adoption Network sought to evaluate how these innovations scaled in terms of breadth, depth, and durability, as well as the impact on student learning, using a combination of teacher surveys, leader focus groups, and student outcome data (e.g., standardized assessments or course grades).
While the networks successfully scaled their breadth — expanding across 33 states, 130 sites, and impacting more than 3 million students — the depth and consistency of implementation varied significantly both across and within schools. Consequently, though student outcomes showed improvement over the course of the school year, the gains were not statistically significant. Regardless, most educators reported durable changes to instruction, with 62% reporting that the innovation positively influenced their instructional practices and 82% indicating that they wanted the work to continue.
The networks scaled, but the more interesting question is how. Three core learnings from the evaluation point to barriers that successful scaling need to overcome:
- Implementation incoherence: The timing of the rollout, competing interventions, infrastructure challenges, or lack of consistency between the innovation and school or district priorities led to variation in implementation.
- System conditions: Teachers largely found the innovations beneficial and easy to use, but system conditions such as from insufficient devices and bandwidth to competing tools and unclear expectations influenced implementation.
- Research and evaluation infrastructure: Data-sharing agreements and institutional review processes, combined with rigid study designs, prevented agile and responsive decision-making, and limited our ability to gather interim data or revise research questions based on reality.
Despite current narratives about “screen time” and edtech efficacy, the Accelerating Adoption Network produced evidence of successful scaling. The included innovations reached more students, demonstrated growth on academic outcomes, and led to teachers making durable instructional changes, but this evidence is incomplete.
Evidence-Based Is Necessary, But Not Sufficient
Successful scaling depends on more than just having a high-quality, evidence-based tool. It requires a set of system conditions to be in place.
In our work with the Accelerating Adoption Network, we identified five interrelated elements that enable scaling. These cut across contexts and roles, offering actionable guidance for funders, policy-makers, and system-level decision makers.
- Strategic Alignment Before Adoption: Decision-making and conversations about edtech should begin with instructional strategy, not procurement. Clearly communicate how an innovation advances priority goals, what it replaces, and what it deprioritizes.
- Protected Time and Instructional Coherence: Make explicit decisions about when, where, and for whom an innovation should be implemented, not just used, and how it connects to curriculum, pacing, and instructional goals.
- Implementation Capacity: Build implementation capacity deliberately at multiple levels, ensuring educators have access to timely coaching, technical assistance, and leadership support within sites, while establishing routines that surface implementation patterns across sites.
- Enabling Infrastructure and Operational Readiness: Before scaling, ensure schools have reliable access to devices and connectivity as well as technical support.
- Continuous Improvement and Learning: Use formative data such as usage patterns, educator feedback, and interim student indicators to guide adjustments throughout implementation rather than waiting for end-of-year results.
Scale requires conditions that go beyond individual tools to include broader system readiness. As funders, policymakers, and leaders take an ever more critical look at the efficacy of edtech, the focus should include both selecting strong innovations and creating the conditions that allow educators and systems to learn, adapt, and improve over time so that the field can move beyond isolated successes and toward durable, equitable learning for more students. To do so, before adopting or scaling a new tool, it is critical to first ask these three questions:
- How does implementation of this tool fit coherently into our context?
- Do the necessary system conditions exist to ensure successful implementation?
- What research and evaluation needs to occur to support continuous improvement and to determine whether the tool achieves its intended outcomes?
