Well-MeasurED: Building on Evidence from Day One with Shane Smith

Founded for impact: Why an evidence-first approach is more urgent than ever.

The language of evidence has become common in EdTech. Websites often cite Hattie, Rosenshine, or Bloom’s Taxonomy. Sales pitches reference cognitive science. Claims of being research-grounded have multiplied to the point where it has become harder — not easier — for school leaders to know what they actually mean.

Shane Smith co-founded Education Perfect with his brother Craig in 2007, and has watched that dynamic develop from a unique vantage point. When Education Perfect launched as Language Perfect, the principles built into the product, including the testing effect, spaced repetition, and deliberate practice, came not from a marketing brief, but from a genuine preoccupation with how people learn.

In this conversation with Dr Jill McGuire and James Santure, Smith offers a framework for thinking about the three stages EdTech companies typically move through in their relationship with evidence. The first cherry-picks research that broadly aligns with an existing product. The second maps features to recognised frameworks and treats that as sufficient. The third, which Smith describes as the most defensible and the hardest to reach, requires demonstrating that a specific implementation of a research principle actually produces the outcomes the underlying research predicts, in real classrooms, with real students.

That framework is a useful lens for school leaders evaluating any tool. The question it puts on the table is not whether a product references the research, but whether the company can show that its implementation of that research moves the dial for students.