How In-School Supervised Ed-Tech Support Produces Massive Learning Gains: A Khan Academy Field Experiment in India

Philip Oreopoulos, Oliver Keyes-Krysakowski and Deepak Agarwal

No 34683, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Computer-assisted learning (CAL) platforms frequently underperform at scale not because the technology is ineffective, but because schools face substantial implementation frictions: teachers and administrators must overcome initial technical hurdles, reorganize instructional routines, manage competing scheduling pressures, and do so while uncertain about the technology’s effectiveness—conditions that often lead to low and unproductive student engagement. This study explores whether strengthening implementation structure can raise both the quantity and quality of CAL usage in 83 residential government middle schools in Uttar Pradesh, India and, in turn, learning gains. All schools had access to Khan Academy, but randomly selected treatment schools received on-the-ground lab-in-charges whose sole responsibility was to ensure high-fidelity implementation by securing reliable connectivity, simplifying student rostering, protecting weekly practice time, supervising in-class use, coordinating content with teachers, and monitoring progress. The intervention increased platform usage from 7.2 to 47.4 minutes per week. Mathematics achievement rose by almost half a standard deviation over 31 weeks, with gains broad-based across achievement levels and question difficulty. These results show that the central constraint on effective and scalable CAL is not technology or content, but the presence of organizational structures that ensure sustained, productive instructional use.

JEL-codes: I2 I25 I3 O2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
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