OECD Report on Computers and Learning - Nothing New

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report titled "Students, Computers,\ and Learning: Making Connections". The conclusions are not surprising.

At the international level:

Over the past 10 years, there has been no appreciable improvement in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science, on average, in countries that have invested heavily in information and communication technologies for education. In 2012, in the vast majority of countries, students who used computers moderately at school had somewhat better learning outcomes than students who used computers rarely; but students who used computers very frequently at school did a lot worse, even after accounting for the students’ socio-economic status.

“School systems need to find more effective ways to integrate | technology into teaching and learning  to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills. “Technology is the only way to dramatically expand access to knowledge. To deliver on the promises technology holds, countries need to invest more effectively and ensure that teachers are at the forefront of designing and implementing this change.”

The United States:

The socio-economic divide in Internet access in the United States has not yet closed. In 2012, about one in five (20.2%) disadvantaged students – those among the bottom 25% in socio-economic status – did not yet have a link to the Internet at home. In the same year, 97% of the remaining students (those among the more advantaged 75% in socio-economic status) had access to the Internet at home.

Fifteen-year-olds in the United States perform above the OECD average in the PISA tests of digital reading (511 points on the PISA digital reading scale). They are also better than average in evaluating which links can lead them to relevant pages as they read on line. When looking for information on the web, only 11% of students navigate in an unfocused way, if at all – compared to 15% of students, on average, across OECD countries.

In 2012, schools in the United States serving 15-year-olds had about five school computers available for every nine students. The students-per-computer ratio of 1.8-to-1 is one of the lowest among the 34 OECD countries.

A particularly obvious and significant finding:

The report found that the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students in digital reading was very similar to the differences in performance in the traditional PISA reading test, despite the vast majority of students using computers whatever their background. This suggests that to reduce inequalities in digital skills, countries need to improve equity in education first.

Charter Schools

I've waited a very long time before writing about charters. Not sure why so long, maybe hoping for a non-conspiratory epiphany to my question, "Why Charter Schools?". I continue to grapple with the concept. Actually, I guess what I want to understand is why charters were even allowed in the first place. No. Even that's not my question. My question is, if they (you know who "they" are) really thought the charter concept could improve education, why not simply reform traditional public schools by adopting the perceived advantages offered by the charter concept. The questionable assumption long past debate is that our education system was not producing higher scores on international tests. It still isn't as of 2012 and that after 20 years of reform. Most research finds that charter schools and traditional public schools perform similarly. Another assumption, more verifiable, is that an education gap exists between children of less affluent families and those of more affluent families. Back to the question. What if we look at each perceived advantage and consider whether it could have been readily adopted by traditional public schools.

•  Operational autonomy: state and district waivers from procedural and administrative requirements such as staffing, curriculum, instructional approach, finances, length of the school day/year, discipline, etc. Wouldn't this be great? Maybe even no common core.


• More innovative and flexible (an obvious result of operational autonomy in general).


• Create a unique school culture. Already being done to some degree or more by the majority of traditional public schools.


• Parental choice (eliminate geographical boundaries). Combined with unique school culture, every public school could be a type magnet school.


• Create a competitive environment among schools (not sure why this is considered an advantage but would be unavoidable).


• Increase opportunity for poor kids and children of color. Costly yet doable. Charters haven't lived up to the promise.


• Less expensive. Not really when adjusted for services not performed; teacher unions, tenure, longevity, credentials, longer hours and turnover; selective enrollment; backfill policies; and donations (does the Gates fund contribute to poorer public schools?).


• Few or no unions. Probably not doable. Probably not advisable given that states without teacher collective bargaining laws tend to have lower levels of student achievement. Stronger teacher union states tend to have adequate overall funding levels. Stronger teacher union states tend to have fairer funding distributions. Stronger teacher union states tend to have more competitive teacher wages.


• No tenure. Obviously doable and in my opinion, advisable. However, concurrent with the elimination of tenure I believe that all teachers should be entitled to a presumption of continuous employment and dismissal only by due process. What I would add is a requirement for some form of profession self-regulatory body similar to the American Bar Association for lawyers and the American Medical Association for physicians.


• Smaller school/class size. Both tend to enhance student performance and are very doable but costly.


• No credentials needed. Ridiculous. If teaching is a true profession, which I believe it to be, there must be a right of passage and periodic recertification.

Another silly question: Once a district has converted to 100% charter schools are those schools now traditional public schools?

Federal or Local Control?

On the new 74million.org site, Conor Williams makes a strong argument against federal influence in education:

"I'm not some reflexively pro-centralization, big government cheerleader, OK? Let me be clear. There are plenty ofkludgeocratic, dumb regulations that creep down through federal and state mandates. Top-down accountability can get ugly fast. It works best when setting expectations and imposing (crisp, direct) consequences. Too often, it strays into unwieldy dictates for teachers' or administrators’ daily work. I get that."

And a strong argument against state and district control citing the misdirection of funds by LAUSD:

"At a systemic level, there's precious little evidence that states and districts are ready to seize their achievement gaps and make uncomfortable choices about reallocating educational resources to benefit the underserved. Remove the pressure from above, and they quickly find other priorities—like getting extra dollars to schools serving privileged white families."

His perfect solution is. . . ?

The stated primary goal of centralizers and localizers is equality of education for all students leading to closing the achievement gap. We've tried both with little no positive impact. From my perspective, placing all the responsibility on education is blaming the result for the cause. Neither the Department of Education nor state and district education bureaucracies no matter how well intentioned their efforts can ever make the needed changes to the broader underlying cultural issues that are reflected in rates of poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, and, yes, educational inequities.

Exactly How Do We Fix It?

The following article by Peter Greene is a reasoned positive response to education reforms. Rather than just slamming reforms as do most of the anti-reformist bloggers he admits to shortcomings and goes some way toward identifying areas needing improvement regarding teacher quality, student equity, and teacher accountability. However, and it is a big HOWEVER, he stops way short of proposing any sort of plan of how to do the "real work we need to do." How do we identify and help underperforming teachers? How do we inspire administrators to do a better job of hiring and growing staff? How do we improve teacher education? How do we transition teaching into a true, professional self-governing body? How can an excellent education be offered to every child? And what does that even mean? Does it mean ensuring all children have the same education advantages as those with the wealthiest parents? How do we ensure complete transparency and actionable accountability? Exactly how do we fix it?

The Curmudgucation writes:

We Can't Go Back

Those of us who argue against reformster policies in education sometimes fall into the mistake of wanting to go back, to roll back the clock to the days before high-stakes test driven accountability, federally-coerced standards, and privateering began messing with public education in earnest.
We can't, and we shouldn't want to. Because there is real work we need to do.

Teacher Quality

The assertion that the education system is overrun with terrible teachers and that if we just root them out, all will be hunky-dory-- that's a dumb assertion. But I am not going to look you in the eye and say there are not teachers who desperately need help or even teachers who just need to get out of the classroom. Those people exist. What often does not exist is any system or mechanism for helping them out and thereby lifting up the schools in which they teach.

Some of the work needs to be done on the administrative level. School leaders can do a better job of hiring and a better job of growing staff.

We also need to look at the supply chain. One of the unfortunate effects of thirteen years of assault on public education is some real damage to the teacher pipeline.

If only teaching were like other professions. Doctors, nurses, lawyers-- they control their own professional pipelines. To become a doctor, you have to go through a doctor-certified program and win the approval of other doctors. To become a teacher you just have satisfy a bunch of bureaucrats who haven't a clue what you do.

Equity

People who hate No Child Left Behind still praise its disaggregation of results. Some folks are right now still arguing that we must test every student every year so that non-white, non-wealthy, special needs students will not be hidden and invisible. Yes, some of those folks are money-grubbing opportunists, but some are absolutely sincere, and they have a point.

We cannot just say, "Oh, just trust us to take care of those kids. We always did right by them in the past." Because we didn't. Not in some places.

Is it really that surprising to say so? Schools reflect their communities. If your community is racist, chances are racism is embedded in your institutions as well. If your community bows to the power of the wealthy, chances are your not-so-wealthy students are getting the short end of the stick.
Reform programs have not addressed equity issues. They have instead disenfrachsed community members and resegregated students. But just because someone has sold you snake oil, that doesn't mean your illness isn't real. We face the challenge of providing excellent education for all students, and we have to do a far better job of meeting that challenge.

Accountability

Real accountability is not stack ranking, and it is not making many schools compete for limited resources. But we owe taxpayers a full accounting for what we do with the tax dollars they hand to us and the trust they place in us.

Schools have not always been great at transparency. We close the doors and tell our community, "Trust us. And leave us alone." In some communities public schools really have behaved like the obnoxious monopolies reformsters accuse us of being.

Parents are entitled to know how their students are doing. taxpayers are entitled to know what they're getting for their hard-earned dollar.

The Irony

There are some schools that have met and conquered these challenges, and the rest of us can learn from them. We need to learn from them.

The irony is that many reformster programs, like the high stakes testing currently under the legislative microscope, have been sold as solutions to all of these problems, when in fact they don't solve any of these problems.

But in pushing back, we have to remember two things. First, don't confuse pointing out the false solutions with dismissing the actual problems, second, don't forget that the problems still need to be addressed.

We cannot go back, and even if we had a fully-tricked out DeLorean, we shouldn't go back. The problem with reformster policies is not that they keep us from staying in a perfect past, but that they keep us from moving forward into a better future. That journey into the future, that pursuit of real solutions and real improvements that actually address our real challenges-- that's what we need to reclaim.

Too Much or Not Enough High-Tech in Classrooms

NOTE: I use the term "high technology" to recognize the many non-digital forms of technology, e.g., the printed word, ball-point pens, etc.

This raging debate has been pretty much overshadowed by Common Core and high-stakes testing, but I believe we should revisit it periodically rather than just going with the flow which appears to be the status quo. Lacking definitive research we still forge ahead spending big bucks. "Just what if technology really does enhance learning?" "Do I, the teacher, the administrator, the board member, want to be responsible for denying students opportunities to achieve, gain a college degree, get a good job, succeed in the future digital world?" The answer: "We can't take the chance, we must spend the money." Or as is in many one-to-one schools, "We will dictate a BYOD policy and let the parents/guardians spend the money." Maybe we don't need to speed up, slow or stop the momentum, maybe we need allow the direction of the technology momentum to be guided by the practitioners, the teachers.

SmithSystem.com does a fairly good job of capturing the more common valid reasons behind too much or too little (http://smithsystem.com/smithfiles/2014/10/20/classroom-technology-much-enough/). Reasoning for more: eBooks, post-school tech use, gaming develops spatial skills and inductive reasoning, collaboration/communication, deeper engagement/broader learning, teacher tools, and support for PLEs. Reasoning for less: meaningful engagement comes from people, too much too soon, distracting, cost and obsolescence, taxes teachers' expertise, and classroom management. I can agree with both sides.

So my answer (too much, too little?) is both. We are all aware of the technology resource "gap" between wealthy and poor community schools. (A short aside: this gap also exists within Catholic schools systems, particularly in urban areas where many schools are dependent on donors for the majority of their technology resources.) This is without doubt a too little situation. I don't pretend to have an answer regarding how to close this gap without spreading the wealth which would mean lowering the amount of technology available to wealthier schools in order to raise the amount of technology available to poorer schools. Or without increasing taxes. Either solution requires more big government involvement, ala Common Core and high-stakes testing and I'm a firm believer in locally controlled schools, among most other things.

We are also aware, although we seldom admit, that gaps exist among teachers within even the better-resourced schools. Recent research points out that the teacher gap is not so much due to age and the digital native/digital immigrant thing but more to the pedagogical maturity and content adeptness of teachers. And that the gap is not so much regarding how much technology is in play but more so about how successful it is employed whatever the level of integration. In short, well-grounded teachers, if allowed, do their homework, select and implement the technology that works best for them. That's not an easy chore. There are many hardware choices and tens of thousands of educational apps and applications. Each teacher can't vet them all and obviously a certain amount of standardization is necessary. The standardization should occur at the lowest possible economically viable level but no higher than school level. Full collaboration among all stakeholders is essential. Technology budgets should be built from the bottom up beginning with individual teachers. Teachers should have full reign over the software applied within their classrooms. Again, not easy decisions, however, help is available through PLCs; individualized, non-workshop-based PD (please!); the Internet; mentorship; and the technology department.

Equity of Opportunity for All Students

Let's just say I am wealthy. I'm not wealthy, not even upper-middle,  but let's just say I am and that my annual income is at least in the mid six figures. My only child upon whom I unabashedly dote, attends a K-8 middle school in the Sunset Ridge School District 29 in Northfield, Cook County, Illinois which in 2014 had an operating expense per pupil (OEPP) of $24,452.92.  During the same school year the average OEPP for Cook County was $13,088.47.

Now, the question I have to ask myself is, in the interest of equity of opportunity for all students, at least in Cook County, would I agree that the Sunset Ridge School District should forfeit $11,367.45 of the amount now being spent to educate my child?