Edtech tool access per district grew more than 350% between 2019 and 2025, yet most tools are unused or used at low intensity¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoreticalr2·q1
Currency · newest study 2026 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2031: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q1 i? Between 2019 and 2025 the average number of edtech tools accessed per school district grew by more than 350%, but most edtech tools are not used at all or used at low levels of intensity, with only a small share of students engaging at the dosage needed for impact. → Digital Promise 2026
Evidence¶
Digital Promise 2026¶
Digital Promise. (2026). EdTech Quality Indicators Guide: Leveraging the Five EdTech Quality Indicators to save time and money, reduce risk, and improve student outcomes. https://digitalpromise.dspacedirect.org/items/f1e0fd08-9047-42e7-9a2d-190ccb4d10dd doi:10.51388/20.500.12265/301
q1 · i? · theoretical · r2
The guide's introduction reports, as field context rather than a tested study, that district edtech tool access "grew by more than 350%" between 2019 and 2025 while most tools see little use. No data source or analysis is printed for these figures.
"Between 2019 and 2025, the average number of edtech tools accessed per school district grew by more than 350%. Yet most edtech tools are not used at all or used at low levels of intensity, with only a small share of students engaging at the dosage needed for impact."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Cohort purchasing through consolidated edtech procurement produced savings of nearly $200,000 and roughly 50 percent per-license discounts in Denver Public Schools — related
- Schools and educators each use dozens of unique edtech tools per school year, averaging 45 tools for students and 49 for educators — related
- Edtech spending grew from $26B in 2018–2019 to $41B in 2022–2023, with projections over $145B — related
- Consolidating edtech tools enabled DPS to pursue vendor partnerships that systematically compare app usage with student data to evaluate tool effectiveness — related
- Denver Public Schools' cross-functional AI-edtech review cut its edtech portfolio from over 1,000 tools to fewer than 350 while saving millions of dollars — related
- In the reviewed RCT, students averaged 21.8 hours of DreamBox usage, below the developer's recommended 90 minutes per week — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Early trends suggest students of teachers using ASSISTments as the sole math edtech tool may have benefited more than students where it was part of a suite of tools — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
edtech-procurement-implementation-gap |
title |
Edtech tool access per district grew more than 350% between 2019 and 2025, yet most tools are unused or used at low intensity |
description |
Edtech tool access per district grew more than 350% between 2019 and 2025, yet most tools are unused or used at low intensity |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2026 |
source_checked |
2026-10-20 |
recheck_by |
2031 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — digital-promise-2026 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.