Innovation and American K-12 Education: a Literature Review

Economists have long believed education is essential to the acquisition of human capital and contributes to economic growth. However, education researchers, political and business leaders and other stakeholders have raised concerns about the quality and costs of the K-12 education system in the United States and the implications for the development of the nation’s future workforce. Some of these groups have called for more innovation in K-12 education, leveraging technology in the classroom and experimenting with different organizing models for schools, both as a means to lower costs and increase quality.

To shed light on the prospects of this approach, this paper reviews the economics literature at the intersection between innovation and K-12 education from two different, but related, perspectives. First, the paper summarizes the evidence about the efficacy of technological and other kinds of innovation in the classroom. Second, thie paper discusses the state of research on how the American K-12 system influences the production of innovators and entrepreneurs.

Policy implications are discussed as well as opportunities for future research to generate actionable insights, particularly around increasing the low levels of research and development in the education sector.