WASHINGTON, D.C. – Recent activity on the education technology front has spurred a backlash from libertarians, free-market advocates and conservatives.

According to government education bureaucrats quoted in Politico, a lag exists between the technology and education sectors that can only be bridged by an influx of more tax dollars: “Innovation has been slow to reach classrooms across America in part because the federal government spends very little to support basic research on education technology, a senior White House official said….”

Only a small portion of the federal education budget – an estimate ranging between 1 percent and less than one-tenth of 1 percent – is allocated to education technology research and development, claimed Kumar Garg, assistant director for learning and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “[W]e’re just not taking enough shots on goal,” he said.

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Andrew Coulson finds this call for more funding preposterous. Coulson is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, for which he wrote:

Does federal research spending really determine an industry’s rate of technological progress? Was federal spending a driving force in the leap from cathode ray tubes to flat-panel displays? Was it responsible for the birth of the “brick” cell phone of 1984 and its astonishing progress from a pricy dumb radio to an inexpensive supercomputer/GPS device/entertainment center? Is federal research spending the reason desktop laser printers went from a $15,000 (inflation-adjusted) plaything of the rich to a $100 commodity?

According to Politico, the government agency is seeking to spur more activity in education technology. “To encourage more private-sector innovation, the Education Department is working on a ‘developer’s toolkit’ — a handbook for entrepreneurs interested in creating technology specifically for the education market, said Richard Culatta, director of the department’s Office of Education Technology.”

Not everyone in the Politico article advocates more technology, however. Some say there are already many technology applications that have yet to gain traction. Nancy Hoffman, for example, is “a longtime professor of education who has worked with teachers in districts nationwide. She said many teachers are bewildered by the new technology and unsure how to use it in the classroom.

“Stop producing new things and [help teachers] figure out how to work with what’s already there,” Hoffman pleaded. “I’d focus on that.’”

Writes Coulson:

If anything, the rate of technological progress across fields seems negatively correlated with federal spending—and indeed with government spending at all levels. As illustrated in my recent study of State Education Trends, education has suffered a massive productivity collapse over the past 40 years. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is the only field in this country dominated by a government-funded, state-run monopoly.