From Protein Chips to EdTech

There are two multi-billion-dollar industries in America, and they share a lot in common. Both are quick to jump on the latest trends, both easily convince their “customers” that the evidence is undeniable, and both insist that those trends saturate every aspect of the industry. The two entities I’m referring to are the diet and weight-loss industry and the K-12 education industry.

Much like the cyclical nature of weight-loss fads, both entities have become fixated on peddling the latest breakthrough rather than adhering to foundational practices supported by decades of clear evidence. They frequently mistake novelty for genuine progress, leaving both “customers” and students to bear the ultimate cost.

Americans spent roughly $135 billion on diets and weight loss in 2025, yet more than 70% of adults remain overweight or obese. Likewise, nearly $1 trillion was spent on K–12 education in 2024, yet only about one-third of students reached proficiency in reading or math. Spending on K–12 education dwarfs spending on the diet industry, but the results over the past two decades reveal a surprisingly similar pattern.

It wasn’t the exorbitant amount of money spent or the lack of significant improvement that alerted me to the similarities between the diet-and-weight-loss industry and the education industry. It was actually a teacher friend who posted a picture of a protein-infused bag of chips. A high-protein diet is the latest weight-loss trend, so, naturally, everything from chips to water now contains excessive amounts of this magic ingredient that promises to satisfy hunger and build muscle.

A similar phenomenon occurred when “low-fat,” “sugar-free”, and “low-carb” were the trend. People assumed that those labels meant the food was good for them, regardless of how much they ate or whether they incorporated any physical activity into their routine. While limiting daily intake of fat, sugar, and carbohydrates isn’t necessarily a bad thing, none of those trends has proven to be a magic bullet for improving overall health and wellness.

Education has experienced a similar impulse: the belief that technology should be woven into nearly every aspect of teaching and learning. Initially, the education community celebrated computers and other technologies for the way they promised to simplify and streamline teachers’ tasks. The same community embraced educational technology for the way it got students excited about learning.

Unfortunately, in recent years, this has morphed into some teachers being unable to do their jobs effectively without the assistance of technology, and many students refusing to engage when they consider the task or assignment “boring”. It has also led to reduced learning due to the passive nature of most educational technology.

The recent backlash against excessive screen use in schools has prompted educators to reconsider the role of technology in the classroom. As Robert Pondiscio observed in a recent article, “The problem was never technology per se. The problem was schools using technology to replace adult judgment, bypass effort, occupy or distract students, and dress up bad pedagogy.”

In other words, just as the fad diets weren’t inherently bad in themselves, technology in schools is not necessarily bad. How it’s used, how much schools rely on it to solve all their problems, and whether or not the technology is moving the needle on student learning are the real issues. After investing roughly $30 billion in educational technology in 2024, schools have little evidence that those expenditures produced meaningful gains in student achievement.

Technology was by no means the only trend to sweep through the K-12 education system like the latest fad diet. The idea that children would somehow learn to read without being explicitly taught the foundations of literacy, including phonics, has been around almost as long as “The Cigarette Diet”. The concept of “balanced literacy” really took hold and gained popularity in mainstream “progressive” education in the 1990s.

This approach de-emphasized systematic phonics instruction, and instead encouraged students to guess words using a “three-cueing” method that involved children looking at pictures, guessing based on meaning, or checking the first letter rather than decoding (sounding out) words. It likely did as much damage to millions of students’ “literacy health” as “The Cigarette Diet” did to the physical health of millions of adults.

Inquiry-based learning, or discovery learning, is another novel trend that has promised big results in the past several decades, but has largely hollowed out K-12 education. Rooted in the learning theory and educational philosophy of constructivism, which “suggests learners actively build their knowledge through experiences and interactions,” inquiry promotes student-led classrooms in which teachers act as guides rather than experts or authority figures.

Protein is necessary for building muscle, and curiosity, inquiry, and discovery are key to students building a foundation of knowledge. However, just as protein by itself is not sufficient for overall health and wellness, and it is possible to consume too much protein, inquiry is an insufficient mechanism by itself for building the foundation of knowledge students need to gain a complete education. Schools that adopted inquiry at the expense of explicit instruction created serious deficiencies in many students’ content knowledge.

The list of fad diets and weight-loss trends is as long and as absurd as the list of “engaging” and “innovative” fads that have come along in the K-12 education world. These fads always promise rapid, dramatic results but fail to deliver because both health and education require long-term, consistent habits. They oversimplify complex problems and offer “quick fixes” that often exacerbate rather than alleviate the problems. And all of these fads distract from proven fundamentals.

Decades of research show that the healthiest people tend to eat a well-balanced diet and adhere to a regular exercise routine. Similarly, research strongly suggests that the schools most effective at achieving excellent educational outcomes for students are those that implement the tried-and-true methods of explicit instruction, knowledge building, and practice, among other things. A promising trend in education, and one that would certainly benefit students, would be more schools implementing those methods.