A promise of what, exactly?

Fingers crossed that Duncan
keeps his R&D promise
(Photo by Carmello Fernando)

By 2015, South Korea will be entirely textbook-free, with students accessing content through tablet computers. Uruguay offers a PC to every pupil. Can you feel the fear of being left on the wrong side of education’s digital divide creeping in? So could Arne Duncan (and unlikely bedfellow Reed Hastings). Last Friday, the Secretary announced the official launch of the dormant Digital Promise nonprofit, a government-funded but privately run entity intended to “advance breakthrough technologies” in education, “while creating a business environment that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship.” (Though this Digital Promise initiative was first written into federal code through the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, it has gone unfunded, and largely forgotten, until Duncan’s recent revival.) The free-market backlash was swift, with Jay Greene warning that, at best, the feds would stifle innovators with a bureaucratic government agency, and, at worst, facilitate another Solyndra-esque debacle. Yet warnings of an education-industrial complex may be premature: Digital Promise has potential to spur needed technological breakthroughs—if it sticks to basic research and development. (While the feds have proven themselves wholly inept at guiding the market and choosing winning innovators, they are well-placed to invest in early-stage research, a vital component to tech advancements, but one that is rarely lucrative for private investors.) And although the actual Digital Promise website is discouragingly vague, there are some signs that it may do just that. If so, kudos to the DOE. If it goes further than that, Jay can say, “I told you so.”