If you can conceive of a solution to a problem that has a marginal cost of zero due to cheap replication and economies of scale, then that’s good. If you’re doing that by going into the digital space, where cost of experimentation is low, even better. 

Many elements of education are best seen through the marginal cost of zero lens, and it’s that dream of essentially free education, based on economies of scale, that tends to drive a lot of philanthropy. 

Where there’s dissonance, though, is that we are also told that what we do has to be evidence-based. And I think sometimes there is this show that granting agencies and philanthropic institutions make that they are going to cut through the bull and be scientific about this stuff, in a way that we have not been.

The problem is that most of the time these things don’t line up. The projects that get the most attention focus on the economies of scale (Khan, MITx) with very little focus on evidence-based practice. 

That seems to me a problem. Are we letting our dream of a completely free education undermine the more modest (and evidence-supported) goals of dirt cheap technology-assisted education? Maybe not. But if you looked at what gets covered in the press and funded on the ground, you could be forgiven for thinking that.