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Education IT

Obama calls for US$90 mil federal edtech agency

By Xinghui Guo | 30 March 2011

US President Obama has called for a new federal agency within the Department of Education devoted to education technology innovations. In the 2012 budget request submitted to Congress in February 2011, the president has requested $90 million for the agency’s first year.

His proposal would create an Advanced Research Projects Agency - Education (ARPA-ED), with the goal of transforming educational technology like how the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has transformed military technology.

Obama told a crowd at TechBoston Academy: “I want everyone to pay attention. Even as we find ways to cut spending, we cannot cut back on job-creating investments like education. There’s nothing responsible about cutting back on our investment in these young people.”

ARPA-ED is meant to increase the country’s education technology investments that cloud improve student learning. Less than 0.1 per cent of the $600 billion spent each year on elementary and secondary school education goes to research on how students learn.

ARPA-ED is thought to be able to catalyse development of:

Digital tutors as effective as personal tutors;

Courses that improve the more students use them;

And education software as compelling as the best videogame.

With only 75 per cent of high school students graduating, America ranks below the average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and behind 16 other OECD countries.

To read more about the ARPA-ED, visit the Department of Education’s Winning the Education Future: The Role of ARPA-ED.

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