Technology has Betrayed Education

Technology was supposed to revolutionize education. Schools went for technology in a big way. Technology, for most schools, meant computers. Apple gave a boatload of computers to schools all over the country. Administrators contracted professional development training in technology for practicing teachers. Colleges of education created technology courses for teaching candidates, first as electives, and eventually as requirements, in many certification programs. Foundations began mandating a technology component in grant proposals as a condition for receiving funding. Society expected schools to provide computers either in stand-alone computer labs or in classrooms. Virtually every school in America has computers available for student use.

Background

Schools have computers and they have been using them. A few schools got on the computer bandwagon early, in the 1980's, when the first widely available computers stored data on cassette tapes. By the 1990's, a whole generation of primary children grew up with DOS-based programs like Reader Rabbit and Oregon Trail. A program called Operation Frog was a great help in teaching my junior high students anatomy and allowing them to virtually not only dissect a frog, but put it back together again.

It has been over a quarter century, and now we know computers were not the panacea everyone expected. Why would we have thought they could be? Common sense tells us that people have achieved high levels of academic achievement for hundreds, even thousands, of years, long before computers were invented. There is a school, Waldorf , dedicated to the proposition that computers are not only not necessary, but also potentially detrimental.

In the late 1990's, I judged a science fair that led me to agree with Waldorf. Most of the judges were mothers who may or may not have understood the judging criteria. Nearly all the projects were prepared with a computer; a number were nothing more than cut and paste jobs from Internet sources. One submission stood out. Prepared by a Waldorf student, it looked like a project from the 1960's. It was a beautifully hand-colored project about the solar system. According to the evaluations, most of the judges down-rated the project because it did not possess the glitzy appearance that computer graphics and typefaces gave all the other projects. The actual content, the quality of the research and written text, meant nothing.

Issues

Undoubtedly, there are teachers who have exploited the potential of computers to enhance students' educational experience and achievement. But in general, computers have been less than helpful:
1. Computers are handy for keeping disruptive students occupied and out of trouble.
2. Computers are overused for drill and kill.
3. Learning to read on computers is not the same as learning to read the printed page. Eyes scan a screen differently than they scan a printed page. Distance issues and posture problems (see photo bottom of page 10) with the neck are also evident.

4. Digital math manipulatives are unclear. The transformations seem too magical and often fail to communicate the mathematical process.
5. The focus of education has shifted from knowledge and applications of knowledge to information access. We have often heard that that the important thing is finding information, not knowing information.
a) Students no longer need to know their math facts—just pull out the calculator. However, students often fail to evaluate the reasonableness of a calculator answer. Furthermore, even at the college level, students use the calculator for trivial math. I did an experiment with a math class recently where I allowed them to freely use calculators for a test. I walked around and watched their inputs. It was surprising how many felt the necessity to input calculations like -2+1. Some of them complained that they did not have enough class time to finish the test.
b) Students often do not have enough knowledge to figure out what search terms they should use to find more information on a given topic. Worse, they frequently cannot evaluate the credibility of web sites.
c) Students fail to use the Internet to find or confirm knowledge when they need it. They frequently believe they already know enough. They take these habits into adulthood. A good example are the numbers of young people who got into predatory mortgages by relying on the representations of the loan officer. Famous last words: So and so told me....
6. For a while spelling went out the window as students whined, “Why do I need to learn to spell? the computer can spellcheck.” Email could not even spellcheck for a long time.
7. Students are not learning to create complete presentations; they merely read their PowerPoint slides.
8. Students are developing little tolerance for teachers who use “old” technology like overhead projectors, or no technology like blackboards or whiteboards, believing their education is somehow being shortchanged by the absence of current technology. Such a misplaced belief can contribute to student bad behavior.
9. More examples?


Positive Uses

Nevertheless, computers can be used positively in schools:
1. Computers can be used to teach computers. Most employers want employees to be able to use at least the Microsoft software, Word, Excel and sometimes PowerPoint. Everyone should know how to use a word processor and be able to find and evaluate information on the Internet. Some employers expect employees to use other commercially available programs like QuickBooks and/or be computer savvy enough to quickly master a proprietary program like Raintree for medical offices.
2. Computers can be used to train and enhance certain skills students are already using. In the work world, employees train with Computer Based Training (CBT) wherein they develop skills they are using everyday. The software is integrated with what students are actually doing rather than teaching them to do something they may or may not do.


Actually Nos. 1 and 2 go together. Learning to use the computer to produce a useful project and actually not only complete the project but use the skills ever after. In the early 1990's, I taught math, science, and computer to junior high students. I fully integrated all three subjects, rearranging the math and science curriculum to enhance each other and teaching students to use the computer to, for example, produce data tables and lab reports. In those days, the computers in my school did not have the Internet. Anybody remember those days?

Computers are an important tool in modern life, but they are only tools. Technology can only supplement fundamentally sound education, not produce such an education.

Schools are in the Business of Creating Low Achievement

Currently education reforms efforts operate like cosmetic concealer. Reformers focus on superficial solutions when the problems are profound. Researchers often fail to identify unexamined assumptions, leading to fatal flaws in the research. A good example is test scores. Test scores are low so we need to raise them. So we mandate and implement all sorts of myopic strategies for raising test scores. Then if test scores go up, the cosmetic concealer has been successfully applied and we can declare the problem solved. These strategies are myopic because they do not begin to address the deeply embedded, underlying features of the system. As long as superficial features take up our time and attention, we hardly notice, much less address, the deep systemic problems.

The public accepts increased test scores as an encouraging sign of improving academic achievement, in part because powerful education stakeholders, via the media, have conditioned us to consider test scores an acceptable proxy for achievement. Whether test scores do indeed serve as a valid proxy is a major unexamined assumption. Once in a while, the public becomes aware of an incongruity in the assumption. But we do not stop to question it closely.

For example, in the case of Head Start, whose goal is to give kids the advantages and opportunities they might not be receiving at home, early gains are lost by the third grade. Why is this happening? What is going on in school that is undermining the progress that the kids have already achieved? Is their achievement leaking out? Was it never there to begin with? Or is there a problem with the tests? The public simply is not demanding answers. On the contrary, society seems resigned to accepting low levels of academic achievement. Why could that be?

Let's ask Judge Joe Brown, an African-American TV judge, on Fox TV. On May 9, 2008, speaking to an African-American defendant, the judge declared, “There are not enough jobs to go around. So society is depending on people like you to get themselves in trouble, get locked up, and take themselves out of the job market.” Judge Joe Brown did not originate this idea; sociologists have been saying the same thing for fifty years. The judge is right. The unemployment rate is about 5 percent right now. Imagine what the rate would be if all people were educated to their full potential and much fewer were warehoused in prisons. Think too of all the people the criminal justice system supports. According to at least one account, criminal justice is one of the biggest growing occupational fields today. People who have accomplished high levels of academic achievement expect to be rewarded with a relatively high level job. Society needs to create people to take what society deems to be low level jobs. A PhD does not want to drive a taxi.

So children are legally compelled to go to school where they are exposed day after day and year after year to being molded to the specifications of society. One of the ways school shapes children is through a combination of low expectations and mislabeling the curriculum. Here are some examples:


1.Critical Thinking

What passes for critical thinking is not critical thinking. A second grade critical thinking workbook (critical thinking workbook? a workbook?) asks, Do you like African elephants or Asian elephants? Curriculum tells students year in and year out that any kind of opinion is critical thinking. In college, students often misinterpret an evaluative essay question to be an opinion question. When they lose points, they complain that everyone is entitled to their opinion and therfore there are no right or wrong answers to opinion questions. If so, there would be no point in ever having essays questions which ask for an opinion.

They do not understand that an opinion may be well defended or poorly defended. They have become used to assignments for which they are asked to give opinions without basis. For example, after a lesson on global warming, they typically might be asked how they would solve the problem. Scientists themselves have not figured that one out. Students are also encouraged to consider responses that are tantamount to “I think because I think” to be excellent critical thinking because they get good grades when they write such nonsense. After a lesson on the features of viruses and the debate among scientists as to whether viruses are living things, students might be asked whether they think viruses are living things. The most obvious approach would be to compare viruses to the characteristics of living things and evaluate whether they measure up or not. A response like, “I do not think viruses are living things because I think only living things can make other living things sick” is worthless.

Critical thinking is not just another subject like math or art. Critical thinking is integrative and interdisciplinary requiring research, analysis, synthesis, evaluation and defense. It is not supposed to be just one more piece of an already fragmented curriculum. By mislabeling poor thinking as “critical thinking,” schools betray that they do not really expect students to exhibit good thinking.

2.Integration

There are lots of good reasons to integrate the curriculum. For one, an integrated curriculum reflects the integrated nature of real life problems and promotes critical thinking. In practice, integrated curriculum is nothing but themed units. For example, the teacher might pick “the ocean” as a theme. In reading class, the story will involve the ocean somehow. Science may involve a topic from oceanography. The story problems for math will add and subtract fishes or shells or whatever. In reality the curriculum is as disjointed as it ever was.

At the next level, if “the ocean” is the organizing concept, then maybe the teacher would show how to determine the age of clam shells, or how Fibonaci numbers work in the spiral of sea shells. At an even higher level, the teacher would choose math, literature, science, social studies, art, and music topics where the ocean is integral to understanding the connections between the topics. In “The Old Man and the Sea,” Hemingway describes the anatomical effects of the old man's battle with the fish. This would be a good time to study the anatomy Hemingway describes. The anatomy illuminates the novel and the novel illustrates the anatomy. It would also be a good time to study not only Cuba, but American expatriates in Cuba. I am not saying that elementary teachers should teach Hemingway, but how about a fifth grade book, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” What an opportunity for a compelling social studies unit. By mislabeling themed units as integration, schools betray that they do not really expect students to synthesize knowledge.

3.Grades

Grades are intended to be a reflection of understanding, but they can be more like a fun house mirror with a distorted reflection. The problem is students do not know they are looking at a distorted reflection. A good grade is taken to indicate solid understanding. Students who get an “A” in math thus "know" they are good at math. However, the “A” may only mean the student has a good memory for recipes. The student is able to remember and execute accurately the mechanical recipe for solving a particular type of problem. A student can go a long time like that, but sooner or later, very often in algebra class, they find out they never really had a profound understanding of math. I cannot tell you how many struggling algebra students have complained that they do not understand why they are having so much trouble with algebra because they have always gotten an “A” in math. I often find they are harboring basic misunderstandings of place value, fractions, and other topics.


I surprise college students on a regular basis by telling them that they will not be able to earn an “A” or “B” by relying on partial credit. Too many of them respond as if I were breaching some implicit unwritten social contract. By mislabeling good grades as evidence of understanding, schools betray that they do not really expect deep levels of understanding because such understanding is not essential to earning a good grade.

Many educational buzzwords mislabel, resulting in a kind of Newspeak that allows society to maintain a structure for perpetuating and reinforcing the status quo. Here are few for the dear reader to think about: empower, diversity, self esteem, mentoring, student-centered, collaboration. I will leave it to you to consider how such words obscure more than they elucidate. Perhaps some of you will be able to add other words to the list.

Why “Good” Schools Need “Bad” Schools

Good schools need bad schools. That is one reason education reform cannot work. Here-today-gone-tomorrow education fads give the appearance of constant effort, keeping researchers employed, giving administrators something to implement, and making busy teachers even busier. These fads, masquerading as reform efforts, deflect attention from the need to maintain bad” schools for the benefit of “good” schools.

Standardized tests drive this strange relationship. Most standardized tests are norm-referenced as opposed to criterion-referenced. Norm-referenced tests compare the test taker to the whole population of test takers. Criterion-referenced tests compare the test taker to a set of criteria.

Therefore, norm-referenced tests often express the score in terms of percentile. For example, if you score at the 85th percentile, it means you did better than 85 percent of the test takers. By definition, the 50th percentile means that half the test takers did better than the other half, and half the test takers did worse than the other half. Percentile deems the median to be the average. It does not matter how well a student learned or how well the teacher taught, half of the students are destined to be "below average" on a norm-referenced test (like nearly all standardized tests). Therefore the main problem with percentile is that the existence of a schools with above average performance necessitates the existence of schools with below average performance. It is impossible for all boats to rise.

A second problem with norm-referencing is the inherent competition. Academic achievement is an individual, personal achievement, or should be. All children have the potential to improve their academic achievement; all boats have the potential to rise. Norm-referencing undermines that potential. A third problem with norm-referencing is that it can actually disguise truly poor performance with a mask of apparent excellent performance. A bad score could be better than the 95% worse scores. A misleadingly high percentile could give the test taker a false sense of their performance. A fourth problem is that not all norm-referenced tests are expressed as percentiles. A good example is SAT tests which seem to be in terms of an actual score, but actually the scores are recalibrated periodically to ensure the mean and the median are the same.

Research has shown that time on task under the guidance of a skilled teacher is the major determinant of academic achievement. Every test reduces instructional time. It is ironic that so-called experts who should know better recommend more testing as the answer. Classroom teachers do not need tests to know how their students are doing. The system, however, does require some nominally “objective” measure of student performance. Maybe we can live with some tests; what we do not need is more tests, especially more norm-referenced tests.

Wanted: Teachers in Kansas

No kidding! Kansas, like everywhere else, has suddenly come alive to the fact that their teachers are retiring* and there are no replacements on the horizon.

Superintendent Jerry Burch, who heads USD 309 Nickerson-South Hutchinson, was in Colorado last month trying his luck at a recruitment fair.

In his district, 45 percent of the teachers are eligible to retire within the next three to five years, he said.

The San Luis Obispo California Coastal Unified School District (slcusd.org) realized about a year and half ago that one-third of their veteran teachers were retiring in the next three to five years, and worse, because of the common policy of rejecting experienced applicants in favor of cheaper new graduates, they realized there was a looming gap in mid-career cadre. The district had plenty of novices, few mid career teachers, and disappearing veterans.

The shortage of math and science teachers is especially severe, but should not have been unexpected. I have an article I clipped from Newsweek in 1985 predicting a future severe shortage of math and science teachers in twenty years. The future is now, and America responded by ignoring the warning.

Kansas legislators have come up with a list of suggestions for alleviating the shortage.

the development of alternative licensure programs, including Internet-based, off-campus and weekend programs; teacher preparation programs; scholarships for students pursuing teaching in math, science and special education; financial incentives to attract teachers; and promoting teaching in Kansas.

It is a typical list, but notice what this list, and most such lists, omit. The powers that be never think to attract the proven, mid-career teachers back to the classroom, by, for example, granting year-for-year credit for experience on the salary scale instead of the usual measly five to seven years. Schools insult teachers by paying teachers with fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years experience a wage corresponding to at most five years. Still, many teachers love teaching so much they would have accepted such stingy pay. These are teachers whose only mistake was to move from one school district to another for whatever reason (often to follow a husband's job opportunities), many never realizing that their proven experience had little value next to the cheap wages of novices. Schools could have had highly experienced teachers at the bargain price of just a little more than a newly minted teacher, but no. Schools all over America are facing the consequences of their shortsightedness.

*Link has expired. I could not find an alternative source.

The Ubiquitous 50 Percent

50 Percent. That number comes up again and again and again. Tonight I heard it yet again on The Newshour with Jim Lerher . Principals say it.

Some principals, like Nelson Burton, are eager to shake up their staff. Burton leads Coolidge High School. Low test scores show that his school has been failing for years.
L. NELSON BURTON, Principal, Coolidge Senior High School: It's a terrible thing to say, but half of the staff here ought not be(my bold). They just don't fit in to what we're doing here. And I dare say many of them won't fit into any program where they're trying to raise student achievement.
JOHN MERROW: Does that surprise you, a principal says, "I wish I could fire half my teachers, they're not on board, they're not effective"?
MICHELLE RHEE: Does it surprise me? No. I've heard things like that from lots of principals.

Professional developers say it.

JOHN MERROW: Michelle Rhee has set aside nearly $20 million for professional development. But Cheryl Krehbiel, who runs the program, doesn't think she can help every teacher.
CHERYL KREHBIEL, District of Columbia Public Schools: We have a number of teachers who I don't believe will ever believe that kids can learn at high levels. And those are the teachers we need to move out quickly, rapidly, at whatever cost.
JOHN MERROW: Can you quantify -- I mean, what percentage of your roughly 4,000 teachers feel this way, have this problem?
CHERYL KREHBIEL: Fifty percent don't have the right mindset(my bold). And there's the possibility that more of them don't have the content knowledge to do the job.

I have heard professors of education say that 50% of preservice teachers should never have been accepted into the schools of education. I have heard professors of math classes for preservice elementary teachers say that 50% of their students do not have the math skills or understanding to lay the essential foundation our children need to master math to the levels needed in the modern world. I have heard teachers say that 50% of their colleagues should not be teaching.

Tonight I decided that I have heard the 50 percent estimate so many times that I am going to start a collection of citations and look for research that may confirm or deny the estimate. I fully understand that I have cited nothing but anecdotal evidence, and I fully understand that some people believe anecdotal evidence equals worthless evidence, but anecdotal evidence is a place to start. Anecdotal evidence can often be the first indication of important research-worthy trends.


What research has confirmed is that the most crucial factor leading to academic achievement is teacher quality. If significant numbers of teachers should not be in the classroom and yet remain, all other education reform efforts are a waste of time, money and energy. Research may find that less than 50 percent should find another career, but even so, efforts to recruit and retain quality teachers must be the linchpin of education reform. One place to find quality teachers would be among the proven older teachers from out of district who are routinely denied teaching jobs in favor of younger, less experienced (read: cheaper) applicants. If such older teachers manage to get hired, they must accept deep pay cuts since most districts will only give about five to seven years credit for experience on the pay scale even to proven teachers with ten, twenty or thirty years experience.

The Problem with the Housing Market is the Schools...

...and mortgage bailouts do nothing to address the root causes. According to the book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke , the policy whereby students are assigned to a public school based on their address meant that parents who want the best for their children will be forced to buy a home in a desirable school district. A second wage-earner gives the family an edge in competing for scarce homes. But when so many families send Mom to work, the result is that the price of homes is bid up so high that people buy houses they cannot afford, especially after the mortgage industry deregulation of 1980. A side effect is that families headed by single women are forced into deeper poverty, of not only money, but also opportunity.

How should families escape the trap? The book's authors dismiss what they consider to be both the typical conservative approach of living within their means and the typical liberal approach of more government regulation of the housing market.

In order to free families from the trap, it is necessary to go to the heart of the problem: public education. Bad schools impose indirect—but huge-- costs on millions of middle-class families. In their desperate rush to save their children from failing schools, families are literally spending themselves into bankruptcy. The only way to take the pressure off these families to to change the schools....Schools in middle-class neighborhoods may be labeled “public,” but parents have paid for tuition by purchasing a (very expensive) home within a carefully selected school district

Such parents pay tuition in two ways: first, the original mortgage and second, the increased property taxes generated by these overpriced mortgages.

Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home just because it happens to lie within the boundaries of a desirable school district.

The authors believe that vouchers may be the answer, but not vouchers as currently conceived and hotly debated today. They believe the problem lies in framing the issue as “public-versus-private rift” and that a comprehensive voucher program based a parental choice is essential.

Local governments could enact meaningful reform by enabling parents to choose from among all the public schools in a locale, with no presumptive assignment based on neighborhood...Tax dollars would follow the children, not the parents' home addresses, and children who live in a (less expensive) house would have the same educational opportunities as those who live in a (much more expensive) house.

Open enrollment is already policy in many school districts. Open enrollment is not necessarily tied to a comprehensive voucher program. I am curious to find out if open enrollment helps to put a brake on the overheated housing market as the authors contend. Or perhaps the US could do what Japan does: all taxes go into a central pot fromwhich they are distributed nearly equally to fully fund schools no matter the tax base of the school's neighborhood. Even as it is common knowledge that studies (cited by the authors) show that many Americans believe the American education system, especially in the public schools, is failing, there are also a number of studies that, intriguingly, show it is all a matter of how the questions are asked. When Americans are asked about the school their own child attends, they uniformly say the school is doing a good job, for just one example, this report from ADDitude . My child goes to a good school; everybody else's child goes to a bad school. Such a perception will naturally stand in the way of any meaningful education reform to benefit all children.

The Goal in Japan is NOT to Pass the Entrance Exam...

...Rather the goal is to avoid failing it. For Americans this may not seem to be an important distinction, but it is essential for understanding Japanese education. From preschool through high school the goal of every student and every student's mother is that the student will avoid failing the entrance exam. Probably the most crucial entrance exam is the one for high school. Every student in a prefecture (a political entity similar to a state or a province) will take the same entrance exam on the same day regardless of which high school they aspire to attend. But they can only apply to ONE high school and must carefully choose which school according to where they will most likely be able to avoid failing it. It is arguably the most important decision a Japanese person makes in their whole life, and they must make it at age fifteen.

It works like this: If a high school has 500 freshman slots, and 504 students apply, then the entrance exam determines which four students fail. There is no particular passing score. In fact, if the entrance exam is worth 200 points and if the 500th student scores ten points on the whole test, that student “passes.” It means it is possible to pass the entrance exam while getting 95 percent of the answers wrong. Americans are often astonished that some Japanese students commit suicide when they fail the entrance exam, but the 501st student is in true despair. They took the exam on the one day in the year all the high schools are holding the exam and they chose the wrong group to compete against.

There are three kinds of high school. I do not mean there are three tracks in a particular high school. I mean there are three separate and self-contained kinds of high school often located nowhere near each other in a particular region. The most desirable high school is the academic high school. In the Japanese language the academic high school is misleadingly referred to as the “usual” high school. When Americans want to visit a Japanese high school, they will be taken to a “usual” high school as if it were the only kind. In addition, there is the vocational high school for less able (mostly) boys and there is the commercial high school for less able (mostly) girls. Since all three types of high school will be giving the exact same entrance exam on the same day, students must evaluate at which school they will be most likely to avoid failure, that is, avoid being one of the students who fails to win a seat.

But in point of fact, my example of 504 students applying for 500 slots was unfair. Typically, many many students apply for the limited number of slots, so realistically, students will have to achieve very much higher than 5 percent to avoid failure. If the 500th student scores 83 percent, then 83 percent will be the cutoff score. Everyone scoring below 83 percent fails even though, given the difficulty of the exam, such a score is actually an incredible achievement. Each year the newspapers publish the prefectural high school entrance exam a couple days after administration. A little while later the newspapers will publish a variety of entrance exam statistics for each of the high schools in the prefecture. Each year students, parents, and teachers spend a great deal of time studying these exams and annual statistics in an effort to match each student with the high school where they are most likely to avoid failure. If they do fail, students must either study in a private school for the year while awaiting the administration of the next year's entrance exam or abandon plans to continue their education and enter the work force straightway. At which high school to sit for the entrance exam is the most momentous decision a Japanese student will make and the decision is made at age fifteen.