May 7, 2007--The Latest Panacea
To fix our broken public schools some educators over the years have insisted that we dig in and work on the hard stuff—improve the quality of teaching by requiring that teachers major in the subjects that they teach, to be certified have all teachers earn masters degrees, improve the quality of what is taught by imposing higher curricular standards, hold students and their educators accountable by administering annual academic achievement tests, dramatically reduce class size so that instruction can be more individualized, break up large high schools and replace them with smaller versions, decentralize large school districts to give educators and parents control of their schools, and so on.
For each of these innovations and mandated reforms there has been one significant problem—they do not get the job done. Even when versions of them have been implemented there appears to be little impact on improving student performance. Especially for our low-income students there has been scant reduction in academic progress, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment and completion.
Partly out of frustration with the lack of progress, on a parallel track to these calls for deep, systemic reform there is another stream of activity that seeks quicker fixes—a series of initiatives whose proponents claim will make things much better if the schools would only ______.
Examples of these magic bullets are numerous—some of the more recent ones include calling for parents to be given tuition vouchers so they can opt out of the public schools and with them purchase a private education for their children, allow teachers and principals to form their own charter schools free of traditional bureaucratic requirements, give successful teachers cash bonuses to reward them for their accomplishments, teach literacy via “whole-language” instruction and math via the “new math,” extend the school day by an hour, add a few more days to the school year, require all students to wear uniforms, organize same-sex schools, and so on.
Again there is one significant problem with each of these panaceas--they also do not produce the desired results. And so on a third track there has been a series of innovations that are technological. These are touted (and resisted) because they are viewed to be “teacher-proof.” Some of you may remember “programmed instruction,” initially books which were designed like computer software that thus purported to allow students to proceed at their own pace without the direct intervention of teachers. A bit later, with the first introduction of computers in schools, this software was loaded into the computer so that students could learn via these “teaching machines.” Later still, with the introduction of PCs, the solution to failing schools and inferior teaching called for the “wiring” of all classrooms so that students could access the Internet and through that become effective, self-directed learners.
And more recently, embraced by many foundations and philanthropists (as have been the other schemes) there has been the call to equip all students with laptops so that on their own they could access the Internet for learning. Those schools and districts that raced ahead with the acquisition of laptops are now making a quick U turn because, again, this is not proving to solve the problem of poor student achievement. In fact, as reported in the NY Times, no real surprise--many kids are using their laptops to download pornography, cheat on tests, and hack into local businesses. (Article linked below.)
Not to be deterred, and as a sad paradigm for why unproven but theoretically and ideologically attractive “solutions” to our school woes persist in spite of negative outcomes, perhaps the leading advocate for the use of laptops in schools, Professor Mark Warschauer of UC Irvine, though he too found that laptops do not produce any evidence that they improve student performance, in spite of this, he continues to call for their widespread use because they contribute to student “innovation, creativity, and autonomy.” Though laptops, he says, “may not be the tool to bring kids up to basic standard levels, if the goal is to create the George Lucas of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”
Forget reading, forget educating teachers, and forget preparing students for business careers or the professions, if we can only produce one more version of Star Wars we’ll be able to sleep better at night.
For each of these innovations and mandated reforms there has been one significant problem—they do not get the job done. Even when versions of them have been implemented there appears to be little impact on improving student performance. Especially for our low-income students there has been scant reduction in academic progress, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment and completion.
Partly out of frustration with the lack of progress, on a parallel track to these calls for deep, systemic reform there is another stream of activity that seeks quicker fixes—a series of initiatives whose proponents claim will make things much better if the schools would only ______.
Examples of these magic bullets are numerous—some of the more recent ones include calling for parents to be given tuition vouchers so they can opt out of the public schools and with them purchase a private education for their children, allow teachers and principals to form their own charter schools free of traditional bureaucratic requirements, give successful teachers cash bonuses to reward them for their accomplishments, teach literacy via “whole-language” instruction and math via the “new math,” extend the school day by an hour, add a few more days to the school year, require all students to wear uniforms, organize same-sex schools, and so on.
Again there is one significant problem with each of these panaceas--they also do not produce the desired results. And so on a third track there has been a series of innovations that are technological. These are touted (and resisted) because they are viewed to be “teacher-proof.” Some of you may remember “programmed instruction,” initially books which were designed like computer software that thus purported to allow students to proceed at their own pace without the direct intervention of teachers. A bit later, with the first introduction of computers in schools, this software was loaded into the computer so that students could learn via these “teaching machines.” Later still, with the introduction of PCs, the solution to failing schools and inferior teaching called for the “wiring” of all classrooms so that students could access the Internet and through that become effective, self-directed learners.
And more recently, embraced by many foundations and philanthropists (as have been the other schemes) there has been the call to equip all students with laptops so that on their own they could access the Internet for learning. Those schools and districts that raced ahead with the acquisition of laptops are now making a quick U turn because, again, this is not proving to solve the problem of poor student achievement. In fact, as reported in the NY Times, no real surprise--many kids are using their laptops to download pornography, cheat on tests, and hack into local businesses. (Article linked below.)
Not to be deterred, and as a sad paradigm for why unproven but theoretically and ideologically attractive “solutions” to our school woes persist in spite of negative outcomes, perhaps the leading advocate for the use of laptops in schools, Professor Mark Warschauer of UC Irvine, though he too found that laptops do not produce any evidence that they improve student performance, in spite of this, he continues to call for their widespread use because they contribute to student “innovation, creativity, and autonomy.” Though laptops, he says, “may not be the tool to bring kids up to basic standard levels, if the goal is to create the George Lucas of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”
Forget reading, forget educating teachers, and forget preparing students for business careers or the professions, if we can only produce one more version of Star Wars we’ll be able to sleep better at night.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:21 PM
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